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• Headlines: Thursday, April 25, 8:35 PM

• The University of Southern California on Thursday canceled its main graduation ceremony amid pro-Palestinian protests on campus. USC in a commencement update said the main ceremony scheduled for May 10 was now canceled, citing new safety measures on processing people who come to campus. "With the new safety measures in place this year, the time needed to process the large number of guests coming to campus will increase substantially," USC wrote in a statement. "As a result, we will not be able to host the main stage ceremony that traditionally brings 65,000 students, families and friends to our campus all at the same time and during a short window from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m." The new safety measures also include issuing tickets for all commencement events and only allowing access onto campus through specific ports of entry, according to USC. School officials said they plan to post updated commencement plans on the graduation website by Tuesday. Doctoral hooding ceremonies, special celebrations and departmental activities and receptions will continue, USC said. The decision to cancel the main stage ceremony follows a controversial few weeks for USC. The campus shut down Wednesday after pro-Palestine protesters, some students and some not, clashed with police during a demonstration. The university last week said it canceled valedictorian Asna Tabassum's graduation speech, also citing safety concerns. Tabassum, who described herself as a first-generation South Asian Muslim student, drew fire from the campus group Trojans for Israel for a link on her Instagram account that called for "one Palestinian state" through "Palestinian liberation and the complete abolishment of the state of Israel." The group called for the post to be "denounced as anti-Semitic bigotry." USC Provost Andrew Guzman has said the discussion about Tabassum's selection as valedictorian had "taken on an alarming tenor." "The intensity of feelings, fueled by both social media and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, has grown to include many voices outside of USC and has escalated to the point of creating a substantial risk relating to security and disruption at commencement," Guzman said. Tabassum said she was "shocked" and "profoundly disappointed" by the university's decision to cancel her and argued the university failed to to explain what type of security threats she should be concerned about. "Because I am not being provided any increased safety to be able to speak at commencement, there remain serious doubts whether USC's decision to revoke my invitation to speak is made solely on the basis of safety," she said. USC then announced it was cancelling all outside speakers for the commencement after Tabassum's dismissal. Pro-Palestine protest encampments have sprung up on at least 30 college campuses across the United States, including University of Texas Austin, Harvard, Brown, University of Michigan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt.
• A first-quarter financial loss has prompted Southwest Airlines to suspend service to four cities, the carrier announced Thursday. The company will ground flights in both smaller and major markets including Bellingham, Washington International, Mexico's Cozumel International Airport, George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, and Syracuse Hancock International Airport in New York. Southwest, which only flies Boeing 737 aircraft, has said persistent production slowdowns at Boeing are unrelated to the financial hit and announced its service suspensions in an earnings call. "The network actions have really nothing to do with the Boeing delay. We are taking network actions regardless," Southwest CEO Bob Jordan told CNBC. "Now, the Boeing delays are very painful. They cause us to replan, they hurt us on the revenue front, they cause us to be inefficient, and we're working all of that." Despite reporting a $6.3 billion dollar first-quarter profit, Southwest reported a loss of $231 million in the first four months of 2024, substantially more than the $159 million it lost in the same quarter last year. Boeing has been under intense scrutiny for its safety culture following two deadly crashes of its 737-MAX aircraft, and specifically, a control system known as MCAS that overrode pilot instructions, causing the plane to dive. MCAS was identified as a culprit in the fatal crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 in Oct. 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March 2019. Those air disasters killed 346 people. Analysts have said Boeing rushed its production of the 737 to market amid fierce competition from its competitor, Airbus. Because of the heightened scrutiny, Boeing has been in the unique position of having to tighten its safety standards while still trying to meet customer demand for additional aircraft. Boeing's image took yet another hit on Jan. 5, when a panel of a Boeing 737 Max 9 jet blew out during an Alaska Airlines flight descending into Portland, leaving a gaping hole in the aircraft. That incident led to the temporary grounding of nearly 200 Max 9 planes, another production slowdown, and additional scrutiny over Boeing's safety culture and quality control. Southwest historically has bought its planes only from Boeing, a move that has hamstrung it amid an uptick in travel. Many of Southwest's competitors buy their planes from Airbus. Southwest was anticipating receiving 20 new Boeing jets this year, down from 46 it previously expected. The timing of the deliveries will depend on the Federal Aviation Administration, which has limited Boeing's production while it addresses the quality control issues. U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has said Boeing will not be permitted to increase its production until the company addresses the safety issues. "The recent news from Boeing regarding further aircraft delivery delays presents significant challenges for both 2024 and 2025," Jordan said in a statement. The airline said it would also limit hiring and end the year with 2,000 fewer employees than it started with. Southwest will also put fewer planes out of service than it previously planned, it said.
• The man who was convicted in January of killing New Orleans Saints defensive end Will Smith was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison for manslaughter. Cardell Hayes, who already has spent five years behind bars, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for manslaughter, with credit for time served, which totals to eight years. He will have to serve 13 years with the credited time before he can be considered eligible for parole. He previously faced up to 40 years for the charges. A jury in January found him guilty of manslaughter with a firearm and not guilty on count of attempted manslaughter of Smith's wife, Racquel, who was injured in the shooting. It was the second time Hayes faced trial in the case after he was granted a retrial under Louisiana's unanimous jury law. A jury in 2016 voted to convict him in a 10-2 verdict. The Supreme Court in 2020 ruled non-unanimous jury decisions unconstitutional, making Hayes and other defendants in trials with non-unanimous verdicts eligible for another trial. Witnesses testified that, in 2016, Hayes slammed his vehicle into Smith after Smith had bumped into Hayes. The two men exited their vehicles and confronted each other. At one point, Smith returned to his vehicle, and Hayes shot Smith eight times in the back and side. Racquel Smith was struck in the leg by a bullet. Smith, who was 34 when he was killed, played defensive end for the Saints from 2004 to 2013, helping them win the Super Bowl by a 31-17 score over the Indianapolis Colts in 2010. The Saints posthumously inducted Smith into its Hall of Fame in 2016 and Saints Ring of Honor in 2019.
• The crew of the first Boeing Starliner space mission on Thursday arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida ahead of the spacecraft's debut manned mission on May 6. Veteran NASA astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita "Suni" Williams will be commander and pilot of the Crew Flight Test mission to the International Space Station. The Boeing CST-100 Starliner is set to lift off on May 6 atop an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The CFT mission has been delayed for about four years because of various issues with the Starliner. While Wilmore and Williams said those issues are long resolved, they said new issues are sure to arise during the 11-day mission ahead of launch. "Do we expect it to go perfectly? This is the first human flight [with] the spacecraft. I'm sure we'll find things out," Wilmore said after he and Williams arrived on the tarmac in a two-seat T-38 jet used for training. "That's why we do this. This is a test flight. So when you do test, you expect to find things. We expect to find things." The planned launch follows two previous uncrewed flights Boeing and NASA undertook to lay out procedures for the first crewed flight and test those procedures in flight simulators. "We had the kitchen sink essentially thrown at us the other day, on a sim -- and we came out fine," Williams said. "So I have all the confidence in not only our capabilities, the spacecraft capabilities, but also our mission control team who's ready for the challenge. They're up for it." The first uncrewed Starliner mission in 2019 failed to rendezvous with ISS. Boeing overhauled the program, including major software and hardware changes, and conducted a successful uncrewed flight in 2022. Further hardware issues, such as with the main parachutes and wiring, have delayed Starliner's first crewed mission four years behind schedule. SpaceX's fleet of Crew Dragon spacecraft, meanwhile, have flown 50 people to space on 13 missions. NASA awarded the two companies contracts under its Commercial Crew Program to continue U.S.-based space travel after the Space Shuttle Program ended in 2011. Boeing's commercial crew contract for Starliner is valued at $4.2 billion, while the more successful SpaceX's contract is valued at $2.6 billion. Wilmore on Thursday, however, said it's now Starliner's time to shine. "We wouldn't be here if we weren't ready. We are ready. The spacecraft's ready. And the teams are ready," he said. Boeing's CFT mission plans to stay for eight days aboard the ISS, during which the crew will test both docking backup systems on approach, as well as landing operations on the return to Earth. If the CFT flight is a success, Starliner's first operational mission, Starliner-1, will take off for the ISS in early 2025 for a six-month tenure aboard the ISS. Onboard Starliner-1 will be NASA astronauts Scott Tingle and Mike Fincke, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk. Boeing is contracted for six crew rotation missions through the end of the ISS's operations, projected for 2030. SpaceX and Boeing will share one mission each per year until the ISS is decommissioned.
• The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday heard oral arguments on former President Donald Trump's claims of presidential immunity from the election interference case against him. Much of the three-hour-long hearing focused on whether there is a distinction between official presidential acts and private conduct regarding Trump's alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election. After a series of hostile questions, Trump attorney D. John Sauer conceded that some of the former president's alleged conduct were private, contradicting Trump's earlier claims that the entire prosecution ought to be thrown out. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump judicial nominee in 2020, was the first to hone in on Sauer's distinction between official and private acts. When asked whether Trump's alleged conspiring with attorneys to spread bogus election fraud claims was an official or private act, Sauer conceded such conduct was private and not subject to legal immunity. Justice Department attorney Michael Dreeben, who argued on behalf of special counsel Jack Smith, told justices it would be possible to prosecute Trump even if official acts were omitted. Conservative justices raised questions about the broad implications for the office of president, arguing that without some form of presidential immunity, past and future presidents could be unjustly subject to politically motivated prosecutions. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito asked, "If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election, knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?" Justice Brett Kavanaugh, another Trump appointee who also was part of the Ken Starr special prosecutor team that investigated President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, shared similar concerns, arguing that if former presidents are subject to prosecution, "it's not going to stop." Dreeben acknowledged that some criminal statutes might need to be interpreted differently for former presidents. While conservative justices questioned the scope of a president's legal immunity, the court's three liberal justices targeted Trump's "absolute" immunity claims. Justice Elena Kagan asked Sauer if a president hypothetically ordered a military coup, whether that could be prosecuted under Trump's claim. Sauer said a president would have to be impeached and convicted before he could be charged criminally, but the president could be immune if it were to happen in their final days in office and there was not enough time to impeach or convict. When Kagan asked if it then counted as an "official" act, Sauer replied, "it could well be." Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson argued that Trump's claim would put presidents above the law. "I'm trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminal activity in this country," she said. Smith's indictment alleged Trump "organized fraudulent slates of electors" in states that he lost in 2020 to "obstruct the certification of the presidential election." When asked by Justice Sonia Sotomayor if putting forward fake electors might fall under an official act, Sauer said Trump "absolutely" has the right to do so. Saurer, who used the term "so-called fraudulent electors," referenced the 1876 presidential election, where there were well-founded cases of fraud and multiple slates of electors in several key states. With oral arguments over, the Supreme Court indicated it's unlikely to issue a ruling soon, making it even less likely that Smith can bring his case against Trump to trial before the November election. Trump, meanwhile, is confined to New York City due to his ongoing criminal hush-money trial. He has been holding campaign events throughout the city when not in court. The former president earlier on Thursday visited a midtown Manhattan construction site, where he told reporters "a president has to have immunity, otherwise you just have a ceremonial president."
• Net neutrality rules were re-established Thursday by the Federal Communications Commission on a 3-2 vote. The vote was a win for Democrats after the rules had been overturned by former President Donald Trump's administration. Net neutrality refers to preventing Internet service providers from discriminating against different types of digital traffic, whether it be blocking sites, reducing connection speed or offering paid preference for some Internet traffic compared to others. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement, "We need broadband to reach 100% of us -- and we need it fast, open and fair." The FCC said it will once again "prevent broadband service providers from blocking traffic, slowing down content, or creating pay-to-play internet fast lanes." The FCC action restores Title II authority over internet service providers. But the agency stressed it will have no authority or any interest in policing online free speech. The FCC said net neutrality is important, "so that the small and medium-sized companies that are trying to compete with more established companies have a level playing field, and net neutrality would ensure that 'Big Tech' can't just cut a deal with a broadband provider to favor its products over upstart competitors." The FCC's Democratic commissioners said this is not an effort to regulate broadband provider prices. Republican commissioners were opposed to the restoration of net neutrality. "It's all just shifting sands," Brendan Carr, the senior GOP commissioner, said, referring to Democrat reasons for restoring net neutrality. "All fall apart under casual scrutiny." Democratic Commissioner Geoffrey Starks maintained that FCC authority to use Title II to regulate Internet providers is "clear as day." While he said he opposes rate regulation for broadband providers, he wants to see a permanent funding mechanism such as the Affordable Connectivity Program to provide Internet subsidies to low-income consumers.
• Vertical released the trailer for The Exorcism on Thursday. The film opens June 7 in theaters. The distributor announced the release date on Monday after acquiring the rights to the Miramax film. Russell Crowe stars as an actor making a horror movie who may be experiencing a real possession. Ryan Simpkins plays his daughter. In the trailer, she observes her father has gone off his medication and experienced blackouts. Crowe levitates and bends backwards, a familiar posture in exorcism movies. David Hyde Pierce plays a real priest brought onto the set of the movie to help. Sam Worthington, Chloe Bailey and Adam Goldberg also star. The Exorcism is not connected with Crowe's film The Pope's Exorcist. Joshua John Miller, son of The Exorcist star Jason Miller, directed and cowrote with M.A. Fortin. Scream creator Kevin Williamson produced with Ben Fast and Bill Block.
• New York federal judge Lewis Kaplan Thursday upheld E. Jean Carroll's $83 million defamation damages award against Donald Trump. Kaplan said Trump's defamatory attacks on her were malicious and unceasing, and he denied Trump a new trial. "Mr. Trump's malicious and unceasing attacks on Ms. Carroll were disseminated to more than 100 million people," Kaplan wrote in his ruling. "They included public threats and personal attacks, and they endangered Ms. Carroll's health and safety. The jury was entitled to conclude that Mr. Trump derailed the career, reputation, and emotional well-being of one of America's most successful and prominent advice columnists and authors -- to which she testified repeatedly -- and award her $18.3 million in compensatory damages." Carroll was awarded $17.3 million damage compensation and $65 million in punitive damages for Trump's 2019 defamation. Kaplan rejected Trump lawyers' arguments that the money awarded was excessive. Trump also was found liable in another trial May 2023 for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her in a 2022 social media post. Kaplan added that the punitive damages passes "constitutional muster." Kaplan said in his ruling that a jury in a "closely related case" found Trump "forcibly sexually abused plaintiff E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s" and then maliciously defamed her in an October 2022 statement. And Kaplan noted that in this case, another jury gave Carroll $17.3 million in compensatory and $65 million in punitive damages Trump for defamation while Trump was president on June 21 and 22, 2019. Kaplan concluded his ruling with "Mr. Trump's argument is entirely without merit both as a matter of law and as a matter of fact for all of the reasons articulated in Ms. Carroll's memorandum of law in opposition to his motion."
• An anonymous Maryland woman won a $50,000 Powerball prize after her boyfriend encouraged her to play lottery games. "He always says, 'Just play. It's only a couple of bucks,'" the winner told Maryland Lottery. The woman, dubbed "Olney Winner" because of the area in Maryland, bought the $10 quick-pick winning ticket at Weis Markets in Laurel before the April 20 drawing. The ticket stayed in her purse until Monday, when she found it and scanned it with the Maryland Lottery app. "I thought, 'This has to be a glitch. No way,'" the winner said. Her mom confirmed the win with another scan of the ticket. She said she plans to use her winnings for a vacation with her daughter and continue buying tickets on occasion.
• University of Pennsylvania scientists are predicting an estimated 33 named storms for the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season. University of Pennsylvania scientists Dr. Michael Mann, Shannon Christiansen and Penn State alumnus Dr. Michael Kozar made the forecast for the approaching hurricane season, which begins June 1 and runs until the end of November. Aside from their general prediction for estimated named storms, their prediction actually ranges between 27 and 39 possible named storms this year. "We've seen many hyperactive seasons over the past decade, and in just about all cases, like our prediction for this year, the activity is substantially driven by ever-warmer conditions in the tropical Atlantic tied to large-scale warming," said Mann, director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and Media. The forecast takes into account several key climate variables. "It takes into account the current Atlantic Sea Surface Temperatures, which significantly influence hurricane development by providing the necessary heat and energy," Christiansen said. "We also factor in the El Nio Southern Oscillation conditions, as shifts between El Nio and La Nia can dramatically alter atmospheric patterns that either enhance or suppress hurricane activity." If El Nio Southern Oscillation conditions neutralize later this year, Mann and Christiansen predict slightly reduced activity ranging between 25-36 storms. Earlier this month, Colorado State University also predicted an extremely active 2024 hurricane season, attributed to record warm water temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean. CSU's Tropical Weather and Climate team predicted 23 named storms and said 11 are expected to become hurricanes. The CSU forecast predicts a 62% chance of a major hurricane making landfall anywhere along the U.S. coastline. That compares to an average landfall chance of 43% from 1880-2020.