NEW YORK (AP) — The start date for the $15 toll most drivers will be charged to enter Manhattan’s central business district will be June 30, transit officials said Friday.

Under the so-called congestion pricing plan, the $15 fee will apply to most drivers who enter Manhattan south of 60th Street during daytime hours. Tolls will be higher for larger vehicles and lower for nighttime entries into the city as well as for motorcycles.

The program, which was approved by the New York state Legislature in 2019, is supposed to raise $1 billion per year to fund public transportation for the city’s 4 million daily riders.

“Ninety percent-plus of the people come to the congestion zone, the central business district, walking, biking and most of all taking mass transit,” Metropolitan Transportation Authority CEO Janno Lieber told WABC. “We are a mass transit city and we are going to make it even better to be in New York.”

Supporters say that in addition to raising money for buses and subways, congestion pricing will reduce pollution be disincentivizing driving into Manhattan. Opponents say the fees will be a burden for commuters and will increase the prices of staple goods that are driven to the city by truck.

The state of New Jersey has filed a lawsuit over the congestion pricing plan, will be the first such program in the United States.

Lieber said he is “pretty optimistic” about how the New Jersey lawsuit will be resolved.

Congestion pricing will start at 12:01 a.m. on June 30, Lieber said, so the first drivers will be charged the late-night fee of $3.75. The $15 toll will take effect at 9 a.m.

Low-income drivers can apply for a congestion toll discount on the MTA website, and disabled people can apply for exemptions.

DECATUR, Ga. (AP) — A judge upheld the disqualification of a candidate who had had planned to run against the judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s 2020 Georgia election interference case.

Tiffani Johnson is one of two people who filed paperwork to challenge Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee. An administrative law judge earlier this month found that she was not qualified to run for the seat after she failed to appear at a hearing on a challenge to her eligibility, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger adopted that decision.

Johnson last week filed a petition for review of that decision in Fulton County Superior Court. After all of McAfee’s colleagues on the Fulton County bench were recused, a judge in neighboring DeKalb County took up the matter and held a hearing Thursday on Johnson’s petition.

At the end of the hearing, DeKalb Superior Court Judge Stacey Hydrick upheld the decision that said Johnson is not eligible, news outlets reported. A representative for Johnson’s campaign did not immediately respond to an email Friday seeking comment.

The ruling leaves McAfee with a single challenger, civil rights attorney Robert Patillo, in the nonpartisan race for his seat.

With early voting set to begin Monday for the May 21 election, it’s likely too late to remove Johnson’s name from the ballot. The law says that if a candidate is determined not to be qualified, that person’s name should be withheld from the ballot or stricken from any ballots. If there isn’t enough time to strike the candidate’s name, prominent notices are to be placed at polling places advising voters that the candidate is disqualified and that votes cast for her will not be counted.

Georgia law allows any person who is eligible to vote for a candidate to challenge the candidate’s qualifications by filing a complaint with the secretary of state’s office within two weeks of the qualification deadline. A lawyer for Sean Arnold, a Fulton County voter, filed the challenge on March 22.

Arnold’s complaint noted that the Georgia Constitution requires all judges to “reside in the geographical area in which they are elected to serve.” He noted that in Johnson’s qualification paperwork she listed her home address as being in DeKalb County and wrote that she had been a legal resident of neighboring Fulton County for “0 consecutive years.” The qualification paperwork Johnson signed includes a line that says the candidate is “an elector of the county of my residence eligible to vote in the election in which I am a candidate.”

Administrative Law Judge Ronit Walker on April 2 held a hearing on the matter but noted in her decision that Johnson did not appear.

Walker wrote that the burden of proof is on the candidate to “affirmatively establish eligibility for office” and that Johnson’s failure to appear at the hearing “rendered her incapable of meeting her burden of proof.”

Walker concluded that Johnson was unqualified to be a candidate for superior court judge in the Atlanta Judicial Circuit. Raffensperger adopted the judge’s findings and conclusions in reaching his decision to disqualify her.

A lawyer Johnson, who said in her petition that she has since moved to Fulton County, argued that Johnson failed to show up for the hearing because she did not receive the notice for it.

Without addressing the merits of the residency challenge, Hydrick found that Johnson had been given sufficient notice ahead of the hearing before the administrative law judge and concluded that the disqualification was proper.

NEW YORK (AP) — New York can move ahead with a law requiring internet service providers to offer heavily discounted rates to low-income residents, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

The decision from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan reverses a lower court ruling from 2021 that blocked the policy just days before it went into effect.

The law would force internet companies to give some low-income New Yorkers broadband service for as low as $15 a month, or face fines from the state.

Telecoms trade groups sued over the law, arguing it would cost them too much money and that it wrongly superseded a federal law that governs internet service.

On Friday, the industry groups said they were weighing their next legal move.

“We are disappointed by the court’s decision and New York state’s move for rate regulation in competitive industries. It not only discourages the needed investment in our nation’s infrastructure, but also potentially risks the sustainability of broadband operations in many areas,” a statement read.

New York state lawmakers approved the law in 2021 as part of the budget, with supporters arguing that the policy would give low-income residents a way to access the internet, which has become a vital utility.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — As Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming opens for the busy summer season, wildlife advocates are leading a call for a boycott of the conservative ranching state over laws that give people wide leeway to kill gray wolves with little oversight.

The social media accounts of Wyoming’s tourism agency are being flooded with comments urging people to steer clear of the Cowboy State amid accusations that a man struck a wolf with a snowmobile, taped its mouth shut and showed off the injured animal at a Sublette County bar before killing it.

While critics contend that Wyoming has enabled such animal cruelty, a leader of the state’s stock growers association said it’s an isolated incident and unrelated to the state’s wolf management laws. The laws that have been in place for more than a decade are designed to prevent the predators from proliferating out of the mountainous Yellowstone region and into other areas where ranchers run cattle and sheep.

“This was an abusive action. None of us condone it. It never should never have been done,” said Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association and a Sublette County rancher who has lost sheep to wolves. “It’s gotten a lot of media attention but it’s not exemplary of how we manage wolves to deal with livestock issues or anything.”

Wolves are federally protected as an endangered or threatened species in most of the U.S. but not the Northern Rockies. Wyoming, Idaho and Montana allow wolves to be hunted and trapped, after their numbers rebounded following their reintroduction to Yellowstone and central Idaho almost 30 years ago. Before their reintroduction, wolves had been annihilated in the lower 48 states through government-sponsored poisoning, trapping and bounty hunting into the mid-1900s.

Today, Wyoming has the least restrictive policies for killing wolves. There are limits on hunting and trapping in the northwestern corner of the state and killing them is prohibited in Yellowstone and neighboring Grand Teton National Park, where they are a major attraction for millions of tourists. But outside the Yellowstone region, in the 85% of the state known as the “predator zone,” they can be freely killed.

The wolf allegedly was run down, shown off and killed within the predator zone.

Wolves roam hundreds of miles and often kill cattle and sheep. Gray wolves attacked livestock hundreds of times in 2022 across 10 states including Wyoming, according to an Associated Press review of depredation data from state and federal agencies, the most recent data available. Other times livestock succumb to other predators, disease or exposure or simply go missing.

Losses to wolves can be devastating to individual ranchers, yet wolves’ industry-wide impact is negligible: The number of cattle killed or injured in documented cases equals 0.002% of herds in the affected states, according to a comparison of depredation data with state livestock inventories.

The predator zone resulted from negotiations between U.S. and Wyoming officials who traded away federal compensation for livestock killed by wolves in exchange for allowing free killing of wolves in that area.

Saharai Salazar is among out-of-staters changing their travel plans based on what allegedly happened Feb. 29 near Daniel, a western Wyoming town of about 150 people.

The Santa Rosa, California, dog trainer posted on the state’s tourism Instagram account that she would not get married in Wyoming next year as planned. The post was among hundreds of similar comments, many with a #boycottwyoming hashtag on social media in recent weeks.

“We have to change the legislation, rewrite the laws so we can offer more protection, so they can’t be interpreted in ways that will allow for such atrocities,” Salazar said in an interview.

Wyoming’s rules have long invited controversy but are unlikely to harm the overall population because most of the animals in the state live in the Yellowstone region, said wolf expert and former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wolf biologist Ed Bangs.

Bangs said the incident of the wolf brought into the bar was a “sideshow” to the species’ successful recovery. The predator zone is made up largely of open landscapes that generally don’t support wolves, he said.

Wyoming’s rules, including the predator zone, have withstood multiple court challenges that have put wolves on and off the endangered species list since they were first delisted in 2008. Wolves haven’t been on the list in the region since a 2017 court order and their current Wyoming population of more than 300 is similar to their number in 2010.

Though state law doesn’t specify how wolves in the predator zone can be killed and doesn’t specifically prohibit running them over, the Humane Society and others argue the state’s animal cruelty law applies in this case.

Widely circulating photos show the man posing with the wolf with its mouth bound. Video clips show the same animal lying on a floor, alive but barely moving.

The Sublette County Sheriff’s Office said it has been investigating the anonymous reports of the man’s actions but has struggled to get witnesses to come forward.

“We’ve had the tip line open for two weeks hoping for witnesses or something helpful,” sheriff’s spokesperson Sgt. Travis Bingham said. “I know there’s some hesitation for people to come forward.”

The only punishment for the man so far is having to pay a $250 ticket for illegal possession of wildlife.

The suspect has not commented publicly and did not answer calls to his business. Calls to the bar went unanswered.

___

Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana, contributed to this report.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A real estate company owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has agreed to pay $250 million to settle lawsuits nationwide claiming that longstanding practices by real estate brokerages forced U.S. homeowners to pay artificially inflated broker commissions when they sold their homes.

HomeServices of America said Friday that the proposed settlement would shield its 51 brands, nearly 70,000 real estate agents and over 300 franchisees from similar litigation.

The real estate company had been a major holdout after several other big brokerage operators, including Keller Williams Realty, Re/Max, Compass and Anywhere Real Estate, agreed to settle. Last month, the National Association of Realtors agreed to pay $418 million.

“While we have always been confident in the legality and ethics of our business practices, the decision to settle was driven by a desire to eliminate the uncertainty brought by the protracted appellate and litigation process,” the company said in a statement.

HomeServices said its proposed settlement payout represents a current after-tax accounting charge of about $140 million, though it will have four years to pay the full amount. The real estate company also noted that its parent company is not part of the settlement.

Buffett said in February in his annual letter to shareholders that Berkshire had $167.6 billion cash on hand at the end of last year. That makes Berkshire, which is based in Omaha, Nebraska, an attractive target for litigation, but the company largely lets its subsidiaries run themselves and doesn’t directly intervene in litigation involving its many companies, which include Geico insurance, BNSF railroad and See’s Candy.

Including HomeServices’ proposed payout, the real estate industry has now agreed to pay more than $943 million to make the lawsuits go away.

“This is another significant settlement for American home sellers who have been saddled with paying billions in unnecessary commission costs,” Benjamin Brown, managing partner at one of the law firms that represented plaintiffs in a case filed in Illinois, said in a statement.

The lawsuits’ central claim is that the country’s biggest real estate brokerages and the NAR violated antitrust laws by engaging in business practices that required home sellers to pay the fees for the broker representing the buyer.

Attorneys representing home sellers in multiple states argued that homeowners who listed a property for sale on real estate industry databases were required to include a compensation offer for an agent representing a buyer. And that not including such “cooperative compensation” offers might lead a buyer’s agent to steer their client away from any seller’s listing that didn’t include such an offer.

In October, a federal jury in Missouri ordered that HomeServices, the National Association of Realtors and several other large real estate brokerages pay nearly $1.8 billion in damages. The defendants were facing potentially having to pay more than $5 billion, if treble damages were awarded.

The verdict in that case, which was filed in 2019 on behalf of 500,000 home sellers in Missouri and elsewhere, led to multiple similar lawsuits being filed against the real estate brokerage industry.

The major brokerages that have reached proposed settlements in these cases have also agreed to change their business practices to ensure homebuyers and sellers can more easily understand how brokers and agents are compensated for their services, and that brokers and agents who represent homebuyers must disclose right away any offer of compensation by the broker representing a seller.

HomeServices said it also agreed to make “substantially similar new or amended business practice changes that have been included in the other corporate defendant settlement agreements,” said Chris Kelly, a HomeServices spokesperson.

NAR also agreed to make several policy changes, including prohibiting brokers who list a home for sale on any of the databases affiliated with the NAR from including offers of compensation for a buyer’s representative. The new rules, which are set to go into effect in July, represent a major change to the way real estate agents have operated going back to the 1990s.

While many housing market watchers say it’s too soon to tell how the policy changes will affect home sales, they could lead to home sellers paying lower commissions for their broker’s services. Buyers, in turn, may have to shoulder more upfront costs when they hire an agent to represent them.

BALTIMORE (AP) — A Baltimore publishing company has filed a class action claim arguing the owner and manager of the massive container ship that took down the Francis Scott Key Bridge last month should have to pay damages to businesses adversely impacted by the collapse.

The claim, filed on behalf of American Publishing LLC, largely echoes an earlier filing by attorneys for Baltimore’s mayor and city council that called for the ship’s owner and manager to be held fully liable for the deadly disaster.

Singapore-based Grace Ocean Private Ltd. owns the Dali, the vessel that veered off course and slammed into the bridge. Synergy Marine Pte Ltd., also based in Singapore, is the ship’s manager.

The companies filed a petition soon after the March 26 collapse asking a court to cap their liability under a pre-Civil War provision of an 1851 maritime law — a routine but important procedure for such cases. A federal court in Maryland will decide who’s responsible and how much they owe in what could become one of the most expensive maritime disasters in history.

In their claim filed Thursday, attorneys for American Publishing accused the companies of negligence, arguing they should have realized the Dali was unfit for its voyage and staffed the ship with a competent crew, among other issues.

“Since the disastrous allision, commercial activities in and around Baltimore have virtually come to a standstill,” they wrote. “It could take several years for the area to recover fully.”

American Publishing saw its revenues plummet this month as local businesses halted advertising deals and other publishing requests following the collapse, the claim says.

A spokesperson for Synergy and Grace Ocean said Friday that it would be inappropriate to comment on the pending litigation at this time.

The ship was headed to Sri Lanka when it lost power shortly after leaving Baltimore and struck one of the bridge’s support columns, collapsing the span and sending six members of a roadwork crew plunging to their deaths.

FBI agents boarded the stalled ship last week amid a criminal investigation. A separate federal probe by the National Transportation Safety Board will include an inquiry into whether the ship experienced power issues before starting its voyage, officials have said. That investigation will focus generally on the Dali’s electrical system.

In their petition, Grace Ocean and Synergy sought to cap their liability at roughly $43.6 million. The petition estimates that the vessel itself is valued at up to $90 million and was owed over $1.1 million in income from freight. The estimate also deducts two major expenses: at least $28 million in repair costs and at least $19.5 million in salvage costs.

Baltimore leaders and business owners argue the ship’s owner and manager should be held responsible for their role in the disaster, which halted most maritime traffic through the Port of Baltimore and disrupted an important east coast trucking route.

Lawyers representing victims of the collapse and their families also have pledged to hold the companies accountable.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A proposed ban in Kansas on gender-affirming care for minors also would bar state employees from promoting it — or even children’s social transitioning.

Teachers and social workers who support LGBTQ+ rights worry about they will be disciplined or fired for helping kids who are exploring their gender identities.

Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the proposed ban, and top Republicans anticipated Friday that the GOP-controlled Legislature will attempt to override her action before lawmakers adjourn for the year Tuesday. Their bill appeared to have the two-thirds majorities needed in both chambers to override a veto when it passed last month, but that could depend on all Republicans being present and none of them switching.

Supporters of the bill said the provision now being singled out for criticism is designed to ensure that the banned care — puberty blockers, hormone treatments and surgery — isn’t still promoted with tax dollars or other state resources.

But compared to the restrictions or bans on gender-affirming care in two dozen other states, the Kansas proposal appears more sweeping because of its broad language against the promotion of social transitioning that applies to state employees “whose official duties include the care of children,” LGBTQ+ rights advocates said.

“That is not something that we have seen before,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, an attorney for the LGBTQ+ rights group Lambda Legal. “It really allows us to look behind the curtain at what is the true motivation behind this bill, which has nothing to do with protecting the health and safety of youth and everything to do with attacking transgender people and erasing transgender identity.”

About 300,000 youths ages 13 to 17 identify as transgender in the U.S., according to estimates by the Williams Institute, an LGBTQ+ research center at UCLA Law. It estimates that in Kansas, about 2,100 youths in that age group identify as transgender.

Other provisions of the proposed ban would prevent gender-affirming care from occurring on state property and prohibit groups receiving state funds from advocating medications or surgery to treat a child whose gender identity differs from their sex assigned at birth.

Brittany Jones, an attorney and policy director for the conservative Kansas Family Voice, said courts have consistently ruled that a state “has the right to direct what is being done with its funds.”

“This does not block any child from socially transitioning, but it cannot be at the behest of a government entity,” she said in an email.

In statehouses across the U.S., Republicans have promoted restrictions on gender-affirming care by portraying it as experimental and the potential source of long-term medical problems.

Backers of the Kansas proposal have repeatedly pointed to the National Health Service of England’s recent decision to stop prescribing puberty blockers as a routine treatment for minors seeking gender transitions.

“Obviously, we believe in our heart of hearts that they shouldn’t be steering students toward that sort of thing, that they should be looking at all alternative counseling and things of that nature,” said state Sen. Mike Thompson, a conservative Kansas City-area Republican.

Such bans are opposed by major American medical groups, which have firmly endorsed gender-affirming care for minors. At least 200 Kansas medical and mental health professionals signed a letter to lawmakers opposing the proposed ban.

Young transgender Kansas residents have repeatedly said their transitions improved their lives dramatically. Parents of transgender kids have described gender-affirming care as vital to combatting severe depression and suicidal tendencies.

But as troubling as they and others find the loss of access for kids to gender-affirming care, they have focused in recent weeks on the provision against promoting social transitioning as especially scary to them.

“I was taught to uplift students and make them know that I will support them 100 percent, no matter who they are,” Riley Long, a transgender special education teacher, said during a news conference in the Kansas City area. “This bill makes it seem like it is only OK to listen to my cisgender students, and that my transgender students are automatically incorrect.”

Under the bill, social transitioning includes “the changing of an individual’s preferred pronouns or manner of dress.” The measure doesn’t spell out what constitutes promoting it.

The Kansas State Department of Education says public school teachers and administrators aren’t legally considered state employees. However, educators who support transgender rights aren’t confident that they wouldn’t fall under the ban — or that opponents of transgender rights wouldn’t attack their jobs regardless.

Isaac Johnson, who is completing a social work degree and just finished an internship in Topeka’s public schools, said problems could arise from interactions like one he had with a girl who told him, “I don’t really feel like a girl. I only feel like a boy.”

“All I said back in response is, ‘Well, what does that mean? What does it mean to be a girl?’ ” Johnson, who is transgender, told reporters during a Statehouse news conference Thursday. “My fear is that, per the law, because I didn’t come out explicitly and say, ‘No, you’re a girl. You’ll always be a girl,’ that will be seen as promoting social transition.”

Transgender Kansas residents and parents of transgender kids also believe they have even more cause to be nervous after Republican lawmakers last year overrode Kelly’s veto of a measure that ended the state’s legal recognition of transgender people’s gender identities. The law’s most visible consequence has been to keep transgender people from changing their driver’s licenses and birth certificates to reflect their gender identities — something that wasn’t the focus of last year’s debate.

Aaron Roberts, the pastor of a United Church of Christ congregation in the Kansas City area, said support from social workers was crucial to his transgender daughter before she joined his family out of foster care. She is now a college student.

“All the support that she got from those wonderful social workers who went above and beyond to help her navigate her gender identity — this bill wipes them out,” he said. “Gone.”

(Reuters) -The Biden administration on Friday delayed a plan to ban menthol cigarettes, citing the need for more time to review the health regulator’s proposal.

The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the decision, said it came after the White House weighed the potential public-health benefits of banning the cigarettes against the political risk of angering Black voters in an election year.

For decades, menthol cigarettes have been in the crosshairs of anti-smoking groups who argue that they contribute to disproportionate health burdens on Black communities and play a role in luring young people into smoking.

“This rule has garnered historic attention and the public comment period has yielded an immense amount of feedback, including from various elements of the civil rights and criminal justice movement,” U.S. health secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement on Friday.

“It’s clear that there are still more conversations to have, and that will take significantly more time.”

A U.S. Food and Drug Administration decision expected last year to ban the cigarettes was delayed with the Biden administration taking time to discuss the matter with several groups.

Shares of Altria Group and British America Tobacco were down marginally, while Imperial Brands was down about 1%. Shares in Philip Morris International, which does not sell cigarettes in the United States, fell 1%.

Menthol cigarettes account for a third of the industry’s overall market share in the United States.

The highly addictive products have been cited for their appeal to young smokers, as well as significant health impacts for Black communities.

Civil rights groups have contended for years that menthol cigarettes pose a disproportionately higher risk in Black communities, where they are heavily marketed.

About 81% of Black adults who smoked cigarettes used menthol varieties, compared with 34% of white adults, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

(Reporting by Granth Vanaik in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar and Sriraj Kalluvila)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The CEOs of leading U.S. technology companies are joining a new artificial intelligence safety board to advise the federal government on how to protect the nation’s critical services from “AI-related disruptions.”

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced the new board Friday which includes key corporate leaders in AI development such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

AI holds potential for improving government services but “we recognize the tremendously debilitating impact its errant use can have,” Mayorkas told reporters Friday.

Also on the 22-member board are the CEOs of Adobe, chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, Delta Air Lines, IBM, Northrop Grumman, Occidental Petroleum and Amazon’s AWS cloud computing division. Not included were social media companies such as Meta Platforms and X.

Corporate executives dominate, but it also includes civil rights advocates, AI scientist Fei-Fei Li who leads Stanford University’s AI institute as well as Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, two public officials who are “already ahead of the curve” in thinking about harnessing AI’s capabilities and mitigating risks, Mayorkas said.

He said the board will help the Department of Homeland Security stay ahead of evolving threats.