CLINTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — The owner of a suburban Detroit business that caught fire and exploded, killing a man, was arrested at a New York airport as he was preparing to depart for Hong Kong on a one-way ticket, authorities said Friday.

U.S. Customs and New York Port Authority personnel arrested Noor Noel Kestou, 31, on Saturday at John F. Kennedy International Airport. He was brought back to Michigan on Wednesday.

Kestou, of Commerce Township, was arraigned Thursday on an involuntary manslaughter charge.

The March 4 fire and explosion occurred in a Clinton Township building that housed a distributor for the vaping industry called Goo. More than 100,000 vape pens were stored on-site. Authorities have said a truckload of butane canisters had arrived at the building within a week of the explosion that sent cannisters soaring up to 2 miles (3.2 kilometers), and more than half of that stock was still there when the fire began.

Turner Lee Salter, 19, was about a quarter of a mile (0.40 kilometers) away when he was struck by a nitrous oxide cannister that was propelled through the air by the explosion. Salter later died.

Authorities said they were given information on April 20 that Kestou was trying to fly to Hong Kong.

“We don’t know what his ultimate goal was,” Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido told reporters Friday. “Was it to stay out of the country with a wife and child here? Nobody has a crystal ball to determine who is a flight risk.”

“He was a suspect from the beginning, being the owner of this business,” Lucido added. “Anyone that owns a business and something like this happens has to be considered a suspect.”

Goo had received a township occupancy permit in September 2022 for the 26,700-square-foot (2,480-square-meter) building as a retail location for a “smoke shop/vape store” that would sell paraphernalia for vape products, Clinton Township’s Building Department has said.

Kestou has been released after posting a $500,000 bond. Lucido said authorities have his passport and that a condition of bond is that Kestou has to wear a GPS tether. A probable cause hearing is scheduled for May 7 in Clinton Township District Court.

Kestou’s attorney, James Thomas, said Thursday he had no comment on the case.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – President Joe Biden appeared on a live radio broadcast with interviewer Howard Stern on Friday, telling family stories and saying his stutter prepared him for the hard knocks of life.

Biden said the stutter that he has had since childhood was the best thing that happened to him. Biden eventually conquered the stutter but it occasionally returns in his public speaking.

The Stern interview came as Biden was in New York for political events. It was heavy on biographical details as the Democrat attempts to make himself more approachable to voters.

Biden also said his father, Joseph Robinette Biden senior, showed him tough love, telling a story about getting knocked out while playing football when he was in the fourth grade.

“My dad walked out with us and said, Joey get up. Just get up. Gotta get up,” he said.

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw, Steve Holland and Katherine Jackson)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A measure of inflation closely tracked by the Federal Reserve remained uncomfortably high in March, likely reinforcing the Fed’s reluctance to cut interest rates anytime soon and underscoring a burden for President Joe Biden’s re-election bid.

Friday’s report from the government showed that prices rose 0.3% from February to March, the same as in the previous month. It was the third straight month that the index has run at a pace faster than is consistent with the Fed’s 2% inflation target. Measured from a year earlier, prices were up 2.7% in March, up from a 2.5% annual rise in February.

After peaking at 7.1% in 2022, the Fed’s favored inflation index steadily cooled for most of 2023. Yet so far this year, the index has remained stuck above the central bank’s target rate. More expensive gas and higher prices for restaurant meals, health care and auto repairs and insurance, among other items, have kept the overall pace of price increases elevated.

With new-car prices up sharply in the past few years, auto repair and replacement costs have risen especially fast. Auto insurance, a major driver of inflation in recent months, was up 8% in March from a year earlier.

Gas prices jumped again last month, the government said — up 1.6% just from February to March. So far in April, gas prices are up still further, to a national average of $3.66 a gallon, from $3.53 a month ago.

Grocery prices, though, were unchanged last month and are up only 1.5% from a year earlier.

“This isn’t going to sit overly well with the Fed,” said Ryan Sweet, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “I think it’s clear that they’re going to keep rates higher for longer.”

Like many economists, Sweet envisions no rate cuts before September.

Friday’s inflation data showed that excluding volatile food and energy costs, “core” prices rose by an elevated 0.3% from February to March, unchanged from the previous month. Compared with a year earlier, core prices rose 2.8% for a second straight month. The Fed closely tracks core prices, which tend to provide a particularly good read of where inflation is headed.

The chronically elevated measures of inflation have become a source of frustration for the Fed, whose policymakers had projected as recently as last month that they expected to cut their benchmark rate three times this year. Most economists expected the cuts to begin in June. More recently, though, several Fed officials, including Chair Jerome Powell , have signaled that they have no immediate plans to cut their key rate, a move that would eventually lead to lower rates for mortgages, auto loans, credit cards and many business loans.

“Recent data have clearly not given us greater confidence” that inflation is coming fully under control, Powell said last week, and “instead indicate that it’s likely to take longer than expected to achieve that confidence.”

“If higher inflation does persist,” he added, “we can maintain the current level of (interest rates) for as long as needed.”

Many economists say they think the Fed may end up cutting its key rate only once or twice this year, perhaps beginning in September. Others say they think the central bank may not cut its benchmark rate at all in 2024.

One reason why inflation has remained persistently elevated is that many Americans are still willing to spend even at higher prices. In March, consumer spending jumped 0.8% for a second straight month, well above the rate of inflation. The spending figure underscored that even while the U.S. economy slowed in the first three months of 2024, consumer demand remained healthy, suggesting that economic growth remains on track.

Sweet said Friday’s figures suggest strong consumer spending is a key reason inflation has stayed stubbornly high in the first three months of this year.

Despite the continuing inflation pressures, robust gains in jobs and average wages have allowed many American consumers to continue spending at a healthy clip, supporting a still-durable economy. That helps explain why Fed officials have said they can afford to keep borrowing rates where they are for now. The economy did slow in the first three months of the year, the government reported Thursday, but consumers continued to fuel growth with their steady spending.

Average incomes, adjusted for inflation, grew 0.2% in March, Friday’s report said. After-tax disposable incomes are 1.4% higher than they were a year earlier, a modest gain, the figures show.

Beginning in March 2022, the Fed raised its benchmark rate 11 times to attack the worst bout of inflation in 40 years. Those rate hikes helped cool inflation drastically — until the decline stalled out at the start of this year.

The still-elevated price levels pose a challenge for the Biden administration, which has sought to claim credit for inflation’s decline. The White House points to an unemployment rate that has remained below 4% for more than two years, the longest such stretch since the 1960s.

But prices for food, rent, gas and other necessities are still roughly 20% to 30% higher than they were four years ago, which has soured many Americans on the economy. Though average pay has also risen since then, many Americans feel they earned their larger paychecks, only to have the higher prices undercut those gains.

The Fed tends to favor the inflation gauge that the government issued Friday — the personal consumption expenditures price index — over the better-known consumer price index. The PCE index tries to account for changes in how people shop when inflation jumps. It can capture, for example, when consumers switch from pricier national brands to cheaper store brands.

In general, the PCE index tends to show a lower inflation rate than CPI. In part, that’s because rents, which have been high, carry double the weight in the CPI that they do in the index released Friday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans’ majority could tighten by another vote after Tuesday’s special congressional election in Buffalo — at least, temporarily.

Voters are choosing a replacement for Democrat Brian Higgins, a longtime House member who cited the “slow and frustrating” pace of Congress before resigning in February. Democrats have a long record of success in the 26th Congressional District, and their nominee is highly favored to win on Tuesday.

Rather than holding a traditional primary, local party officials handpick the nominees in New York special elections for Congress. Democrats chose Buffalo state Sen. Tim Kennedy, while Republicans nominated West Seneca Town Supervisor Gary Dickson.

After a messy redistricting process in 2022, New York just recently approved new congressional maps, which will go into effect for the 2024 election. For now, New York is filling Higgins’ vacancy under the old congressional lines. However, the 26th District changes very little under the revised maps, which means whoever wins the special election to fill the remainder of Higgins’ term will face a similar electorate in November.

A Democratic victory would shrink Republicans’ 218-212 majority by one member — but not necessarily for long. Three special elections in previously Republican-held districts are on the calendar before the end of June.

Here’s a look at what to expect on Tuesday:

The congressional district election will be held on Tuesday. Polls close at 9 p.m. ET.

The Associated Press will provide coverage for the special election in New York’s 26th Congressional District. Kennedy’s name appears on the ballot under the Democratic Party and the Working Families Party. Dickson appears as the nominee for the Republican and Conservative parties.

Any voter registered in New York’s 26th Congressional District may participate in this special election.

New York’s 26th runs along the Niagara River, which separates western New York from Canada. Most of the Republican vote in the district stems from the area that falls in Niagara County, at its northern tip. However, that’s the least populous portion of the district. Most of the votes come from the southern part of the district in Erie County, which leans heavily toward Democrats.

Democrats have been successful in the congressional district in recent elections. Higgins represented a House seat in Buffalo for two decades, and Joe Biden carried the district by double digits in 2020 when he defeated President Donald Trump.

For lots of voters in the congressional district, the two nominees will be familiar names. For over a decade, Kennedy has represented Buffalo in the state Senate in a district that overlaps with the 26th Congressional District. Dickson, meanwhile, appeared on the ballot in West Seneca in 2019 and 2023, though in a much smaller election for town supervisor.

Dickson said he believes his path to victory depends on not only consolidating votes in the northern portion of the district but also winning over working-class voters in the southeast corner and flipping suburban voters who are frustrated with high taxes in Amherst. As of the latest filing deadline on April 10, Kennedy’s campaign had spent 50 times more on the race than Dickson’s had.

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

A recount is required if a candidate wins by 20 votes or fewer or by less than half a percentage point. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is eligible for a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

As of Nov. 1, there were 512,774 registered voters in New York’s 26th Congressional District. Of those, nearly 50% were Democrats and 22% were Republicans. The last race for the district took place in November 2022. At the time, 48% of registered voters turned out.

But there’s been another House special election in New York more recently, when Democrat Tom Suozzi replaced Republican George Santos on Long Island in February. As of Nov. 1, there were more than 570,000 registered voters in the 3rd District, and about 30% voted in the special election.

Santos had won office in what had been a reliably Democratic district partly by falsely portraying himself as an American success story — a son of working-class immigrants who made himself into a wealthy Wall Street dealmaker. But many elements of Santos’ life story were later exposed as fabrications, and he was indicted on multiple charges including allegations he stole money from Republican donors. He has pleaded not guilty.

Ahead of Tuesday’s special election, just over 8,700 early votes had been cast by April 23. Nearly 69% of those early votes came from registered Democrats, while 19% came from Republicans.

In the 2022 election, the AP first reported results at 9:43 p.m. ET, or 43 minutes after polls closed. The election night tabulation ended at 11 p.m. ET, with about 86 % of total votes counted.

(Reuters) – About one in five samples of commercial milk in the U.S. tested positive for traces of bird flu in a national survey, with a greater proportion coming from areas with infected herds, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said.

There is no evidence that the milk poses a danger or that a live virus is present, the regulator added.

The FDA said late on Thursday that additional testing is required to determine whether the intact pathogen is still present and if it remains infectious.

Earlier this week, the FDA said that if the milk is heated to a specific temperature, it remains safe for human consumption as the process kills harmful bacteria and viruses.

The health regulator and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have indicated that based on the information currently available, commercial milk supply remains safe due to the pasteurization process and the diversion or destruction of milk from sick cows.

“To date, the retail milk studies have shown no results that would change our assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe,” the FDA said in its latest update.

Eight states in the U.S. have confirmed cases of bird flu in 33 herds of dairy cattle, according to the USDA.

Only one person – a Texas farm worker – has been confirmed to have bird flu. The patient suffered conjunctivitis, an eye irritation that can cause redness and discomfort.

The health regulator said that epidemiological signals at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed no uptick in human cases and no cases of H5N1 beyond the one known case.

FDA is further assessing any positive findings through egg inoculation tests, which it described as a gold standard for determining viable virus.

(Reporting by Leroy Leo and Bhanvi Satija in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid)

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. monthly inflation rose moderately in March, but stubbornly higher housing and transportation costs suggested the Federal Reserve could keep interest rates elevated for a while.

The report from the Commerce Department on Friday, which also showed strong consumer spending last month, offered some relief to financial markets spooked by worries of stagflation after data on Thursday showed inflation surging and economic growth slowing in the first quarter.

“Markets should breathe a sigh of relief this morning,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Independent Advisor Alliance. “Given the elevated levels of inflation, and this is the new normal for 2024, the market is going to need to get over hopes for Fed rate cuts.”

The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index increased 0.3% last month, matching the unrevised gain in February, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis said. In the 12 months through March, inflation rose 2.7% after advancing 2.5% in February. The increase in inflation last month was broadly in line with economists’ expectations.

There had been fears that inflation could exceed forecasts in March after the release of the advance gross domestic product report for the first quarter on Thursday showed price pressures heated up by the most in a year, driven by surging costs for services, especially transportation, financial services and insurance. These more than offset a drop in the prices of goods.

Most of the spike in inflation occurred in January. The PCE price index is one of the inflation measures tracked by the U.S. central bank for its 2% target. Monthly inflation readings of 0.2% over time are necessary to bring inflation back to target.

Fed policymakers are expected to leave rates unchanged next week. The central bank has kept its benchmark overnight interest rate in the 5.25%-5.50% range since July, after raising it by 525 basis points since March 2022.

Financial markets initially expected the first rate cut to come in March. That expectation got pushed back to June and then September as data on the labor market and inflation continued to surprise on the upside.

Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the PCE price index increased 0.3% in March after rising by the same unrevised margin in February. Core inflation increased 2.8% on a year-on-year basis in March, matching February’s advance.

PCE services inflation excluding energy and housing climbed 0.4% last month after a 0.2% gain in February. Policymakers are monitoring the so-called super core inflation to gauge their progress in fighting inflation.

Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, increased by a solid 0.8% last month, matching the rise in February. The data was included in the GDP report, which showed consumer spending moderating to a still-solid 2.5% pace in the first quarter from the brisk 3.3% pace in the October-December period.

The economy grew at a 1.6% rate last quarter, held back by an increase in the trade deficit. The wider trade gap reflected a surge in imports, a function of strong domestic demand.

When adjusted for inflation, consumer spending rose 0.5%. The so-called real consumer spending also increased 0.5% in February. The solid rise in March put consumer spending on a higher growth path heading into the second quarter, which bodes well for the economy.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Paul Simao)

NEW YORK (AP) — Defense lawyers in Donald Trump’s hush money trial are digging Friday into assertions of the former publisher of the National Enquirer and his efforts to protect Trump from negative stories during the 2016 election.

David Pecker returned to the witness stand for the fourth day as defense attorneys tried to poke holes in his testimony, which has described helping bury embarrassing stories Trump feared could hurt his campaign.

Pecker has painted a tawdry portrait of “catch and kill” tabloid schemes — catching a potentially damaging story by buying the rights to it and then killing it through agreements that prevent the paid person from telling the story to anyone else.

The cross-examination, which began Thursday, will cap a consequential week in the criminal cases the former president is facing as he vies to reclaim the White House in November.

The charges center on $130,000 in payments that Trump’s company made to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen. He paid that sum on Trump’s behalf to keep porn actor Stormy Daniels from going public with her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the encounter ever happened.

Prosecutors say Trump obscured the true nature of those payments and falsely recorded them as legal expenses. He has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

The case is the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president and the first of four prosecutions of Trump to reach a jury.

Currently:

— Key moments from the Supreme Court arguments on Donald Trump’s immunity claims

— Trading Trump: Truth Social’s first month of trading has sent investors on a ride

— These people were charged with interfering in the 2020 election. Some are still in politics today

— Key players: Who’s who at Donald Trump’s hush money criminal trial

— The hush money case is just one of Trump’s legal cases. See the others here

Here’s the latest:

A lawyer for Donald Trump in his hush money trial turned Friday to the 2016 deal the National Enquirer’s parent reached with former Playboy model Karen McDougal.

The $150,000 agreement gave American Media exclusive rights to McDougal’s account of any relationship with “any then-married man.” McDougal claims she and Trump had an affair. Trump denies it.

The contract also called for McDougal to do work for various American Media titles. Former Enquirer publisher David Pecker earlier testified the provision was really about keeping McDougal’s story from becoming public and influencing Trump’s chances at the presidency.

But under questioning Friday from Trump lawyer Emil Bove, Pecker added that American Media had pitched itself as a venue to help McDougal restart her career.

When American Media signed its agreement with her, “you believed it had a legitimate business purpose, correct?” Bove asked.

“I did,” Pecker said.

The company ended up running more than 65 stories in her name, he said.

McDougal’s story, and American Media’s deal with her, ultimately became public anyway, in a Wall Street Journal article four days before the 2016 election, after early and absentee voting had started.

The insistence of Donald Trump’s defense in his hush money trial to refer to him as “President Trump,” even when describing events that took place before his election, is rankling prosecutors.

Trump’s lawyers said at the outset of the trial that they’d refer to their client as “president” out of respect for the office he held from 2017 to 2021.

But Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass suggested Friday that using the title is anachronistic and confusing when tacked onto questions and testimony that involve things that happened while he was campaigning in 2015 and 2016.

“Objection. He wasn’t President Trump in June of 2016,” Steinglass noted after one such mention. The judge sustained the objection.

A lawyer for Donald Trump in the former president’s hush money trial Friday got to a salacious story at the center of former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker’s earlier testimony.

Emil Bove brought out that the Enquirer’s parent company — not Trump or his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen — paid a former Trump Tower doorman $30,000 in 2015 for the rights to an unsubstantiated claim that Trump had fathered a child with an employee there.

Pecker testified earlier that the Enquirer thought the tale would make for a huge tabloid story if it were accurate but eventually concluded the story was “1,000% untrue” and never ran it. Trump and the woman involved both have denied the claims.

Bove asked Pecker whether he would run the story if it were true. Pecker replied: “Yes.”

Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker has testified in Donald Trump’s hush money trial that he hatched a plan with Trump and former Trump henchman Michael Cohen in August 2015 for the tabloid to help Trump’s presidential campaign.

But under questioning by Trump’s lawyer, Pecker acknowledged Friday there was no mention at that meeting of the term “catch-and-kill,” which describes the practice of tabloids purchasing the rights to story so they never see the light of day.

Nor was there discussion at the meeting of any “financial dimension,” such as the Enquirer paying people on Trump’s behalf for the rights to their stories, Pecker said.

Pecker also acknowledged that the National Enquirer had been running negative stories about Trump’s 2016 rival Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, long before the August 2015 meeting. Pecker previously testified that stories about the Clintons boosted sales of the supermarket tabloid.

Donald Trump’s lawyer Emil Bove is getting under the hood of the National Enquirer’s editorial process, seeking to show the tabloid had its own incentives unrelated to any deal with Trump, in the fourth day of testimony in the former president’s hush money trial.

To underscore his point, Bove pulled up five unflattering headlines that ran in 2015 about Ben Carson, who ran against Trump in the 2016 GOP primary. Bove noted the information was pulled from publicly available information published in other outlets, including The Guardian.

In his testimony, former Enquirer publisher David Pecker, on the stand for a fourth day, acknowledged that it was standard practice at the publication to recycle stories from other outlets with a new slant.

“Because it’s good, quick and cost efficient, and you would’ve done it without President Trump?” Bove asked.

“Um, yes,” Pecker replied.

The jury’s day in Donald Trump’s hush money trial began Friday with an instruction from the judge that it’s OK for prosecutors or defense lawyers to meet with witnesses ahead of a trial to help them prepare to testify.

That pertains to testimony that came out toward the end of Thursday, when Trump lawyer Emil Bove was cross-examining former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker.

Bove resumed questioning Pecker as the fourth day of testimony began in a Manhattan courtroom.

Donald Trump entered court Friday in his hush money trial in Manhattan carrying a thick stack of bound papers, which he said was a report put out by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee about the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

The former president said he had not read the report, “but it could be interesting.”

Trump told reporters that he wanted to wish his wife, former first lady Melania Trump, a happy birthday, saying, “It would be nice to be with her, but I’m in a courthouse.”

He said he planned to fly home to Florida, where she is, Friday evening after court wraps for the week.

Even by National Enquirer standards, testimony by its former publisher David Pecker at Donald Trump’s hush money trial this week has revealed an astonishing level of corruption at America’s best-known tabloid and may one day be seen as the moment it effectively died.

“It just has zero credibility,” said Lachlan Cartwright, executive editor of the Enquirer from 2014 to 2017. “Whatever sort of credibility it had was totally damaged by what happened in court this week.”

On Thursday, Pecker was back on the witness stand to tell more about the arrangement he made to boost Trump’s presidential candidacy in 2016, tear down his rivals and silence any revelations that may have damaged him.

A change in the court schedule means Donald Trump won’t be forced off the campaign trail next week to attend a hearing in his hush money criminal trial in New York.

Judge Juan M. Merchan moved a hearing on the former president’s alleged gag order violations to next Thursday, avoiding a conflict with his scheduled campaign events next Wednesday.

Merchan had initially set the hearing for next Wednesday, the trial’s regular off day. Trump is scheduled to hold campaign events that day in Michigan and Wisconsin. His lawyers have urged the judge not to hold any proceedings on Wednesdays so he can campaign.

The hearing — now set for 9:30 a.m. next Thursday, May 2 — pertains to a prosecution request that Trump be penalized for violating his gag order this week on four separate occasions.

The order bars Trump from making comments about witnesses and others connected to the case. Merchan is already mulling holding Trump in contempt of court and fining him up to $10,000 for other alleged gag order violations.

By Nathan Gomes

(Reuters) – Daimler Truck must reach a new labor contract with over 7,300 hourly workers at six facilities in the U.S. South by the end of Friday or face a possible strike by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union members.

The workers are seeking higher pay, institution of cost-of-living adjustments and greater job security from the heavy-truck maker, UAW President Shawn Fain said during an online speech earlier this week.

    “Workers’ wages at Daimler have not kept up,” he said on Tuesday. “The workers are going to come for their fair share. In the new UAW, we don’t take concessions. We raise standards for everyone and we fight for what we deserve, and we’re not afraid to strike to get it.”

Fain is scheduled to hold a press conference at 10 pm ET, ahead of a midnight ET strike deadline, during which he is expected to outline whether a strike will occur.

The UAW, under Fain, has been aggressive in seeking large raises and other concessions from companies for its members. Last fall, UAW secured large payouts, including 25% pay raises over the life of the new deals, at the Detroit Three automakers – General Motors, Ford and Stellantis.

At Daimler Truck, which makes Freightliner and Western Star trucks and Thomas Built buses, about 96% of workers at four factories in North Carolina, and parts warehouses in Georgia and Tennessee voted in March to authorize a strike.

The union has filed unfair labor practice charges with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against the company, citing violation of workers’ rights and federal labor laws, and for failing to bargain in good faith.

Daimler Truck did not respond to a Reuters’ request for a comment on the matter.

Since the deals last fall with the Detroit Three, the UAW has turned its efforts to organizing non-union U.S. plants of more than a dozen automakers.

The UAW clinched a historic victory at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee last week, and workers at a Mercedes factory in Vance, Alabama, are going to vote on whether to join the labor union during the week of May 13.

(Reporting by Nathan Gomes in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

By Brad Brooks

BRIGHTON, Colorado (Reuters) – A Colorado judge on Friday is expected to sentence a paramedic convicted in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, the last defendant to face jail time for the young Black man’s death.

McClain, 23, died after police slammed him to the ground soon after stopping him and put him in a chokehold at least twice. Paramedics injected him with an excessive dose of ketamine, an anesthetic used for sedation, after police said he was in a state of “excited delirium.” McClain was not suspected of any wrongdoing when he was walking on the street and police stopped him.

The sentencing of Jeremy Cooper, 49, who faces up to three years in prison for his conviction last December of criminally negligent homicide, closes out the three trials around McClain’s death. One police officer was sentenced to 14 months in prison, two officers were found not guilty, and Cooper’s fellow paramedic was sentenced to five years. Paramedics rarely face charges in such cases.

Colorado has undergone significant police reforms since the killing of McClain and the following year’s racial justice protests ignited by the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. Politicians and experts say even more must be done.

“It should not be the way that we have to make policy, to do so based on someone being murdered, like Elijah McClain,” said Colorado state Representative Leslie Herod.

“But when Elijah McClain was murdered, we were able to make a lot of progress in a lot of areas that people wanted to ignore or say did not happen here in Colorado,” the Democrat said.

Herod said one of the most impactful measures of a sweeping 2020 police reform bill she co-sponsored spelled out that officers have a duty to intervene if they see a colleague committing civil rights violations.

Herod said she is now focusing on providing whistleblower protections for police officers, and said new laws are needed to ensure, for example, that independent bodies investigate allegations against police.

Among other Colorado laws and measures taken since McClain’s death that even more directly stem from the details of his case:

– The banning of chokeholds;

– Prohibitions on police officers pushing paramedics to use the ketamine on a suspect;

– Banning police trainers from instructing on “excited delirium,” which some experts say is a racially charged pseudo-diagnosis.

‘BATTLEGROUND’ FOR REFORM

David Pyrooz, a University of Colorado criminologist, said Colorado had some of the largest racial justice protests in 2020 outside of those in Minneapolis, and that the public pressure helped turn the state “into a battleground for police reform.”

While that is positive, he said, Pyrooz cautioned that more scrutiny and regulation is going to lead some people to think twice about pursuing police careers.

Alexander Landau, co-director of the Denver Justice Project, a community group pushing for police reforms, said McClain’s case also puts a focus on district attorneys – the elected officials who decide if charges are even brought.

In McClain’s case, the local district attorney declined to press any charges, which were only brought after the state attorney general’s office stepped in.

“Influencing broader community members to pay attention to those district attorney races, and who the candidates are, is very important to helping shift the violent and racist practices in any law enforcement department,” Landau said.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Brighton, Colorado; editing by Donna Bryson and Aurora Ellis)

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. auto safety regulators said Friday they have opened an investigation into whether Tesla’s recall of more than 2 million vehicles announced in December to install new Autopilot safeguards is adequate.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it was opening an investigation after the agency identified concerns due to crash events after vehicles had the recall software update installed “and results from preliminary NHTSA tests of remedied vehicles.”

The agency’s new probe comes after it closed its nearly three-year investigation into Autopilot, saying it found evidence that “Tesla’s weak driver engagement system was not appropriate for Autopilot’s permissive operating capabilities” that result in a “critical safety gap.”

NHTSA also cited Tesla’s statement “that a portion of the remedy both requires the owner to opt in and allows a driver to readily reverse it.”

The agency said Tesla has issued software updates to address issues that appear related to its concerns but has not made them “a part of the recall or otherwise determined to remedy a defect that poses an unreasonable safety risk.”

Tesla said in December’s its largest-ever recall covering 2.03 million U.S. vehicles – or nearly all of its vehicles on U.S. roads – was to better ensure drivers pay attention when using its advanced driver assistance system.

The new recall investigation covers Model Y, X, S, 3 and Cybertruck vehicles in the U.S. equipped with Autopilot produced between the 2012 and 2024 model years, NHTSA said.

Tesla said in December Autopilot’s software system controls “may not be sufficient to prevent driver misuse” and could increase the risk of a crash.

The auto safety agency disclosed Friday that during its Autopilot safety probe it first launched in August 2021 it identified at least 13 Tesla crashes involving one or more death and many more involving serious injuries in which “foreseeable driver misuse of the system played an apparent role.”

NHTSA also on Friday raised concerns about Tesla’s Autopilot name “may lead drivers to believe that the automation has

greater capabilities than it does and invite drivers to overly trust the automation.”

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In February, Consumer Reports, a nonprofit organization that evaluates products and services, said its testing of Tesla’s Autopilot recall update found changes did not adequately address many safety concerns raised by NHTSA and urged the agency to require the automaker to take “stronger steps,” saying Tesla’s recall “addresses minor inconveniences rather than fixing the real problems.”

Tesla’s Autopilot is intended to enable cars to steer, accelerate and brake automatically within their lane, while enhanced Autopilot can assist in changing lanes on highways but does not make vehicles autonomous.

One component of Autopilot is Autosteer, which maintains a set speed or following distance and works to keep a vehicle in its driving lane.

Tesla said in December it did not agree with NHTSA’s analysis but would deploy an over-the-air software update that will “incorporate additional controls and alerts to those already existing on affected vehicles to further encourage the driver to adhere to their continuous driving responsibility whenever Autosteer is engaged.”

NHTSA’s then top official, Ann Carlson, said in December the agency probe determined that more needed to be done to ensure drivers are engaged when Autopilot is in use. “One of the things we determined is that drivers are not always paying attention when that system is on,” Carlson said.

NHTSA opened its August 2021 probe of Autopilot after identifying more than a dozen crashes in which Tesla vehicles hit stationary emergency vehicles.

NHTSA said in December it found Autopilot “can provide inadequate driver engagement and usage controls that can lead to foreseeable misuse.”

Separately, since 2016, NHTSA has opened more than 40 Tesla special crash investigations in cases where driver systems such as Autopilot were suspected of being used, with 23 crash deaths reported to date.

Tesla’s recall includes increasing prominence of visual alerts and disengaging of Autosteer if drivers do not respond to inattentiveness warnings and additional checks upon engaging Autosteer. Tesla said it will restrict Autopilot use for one week if significant improper usage is detected.

Tesla disclosed in October the U.S. Justice Department issued subpoenas related to its Full Self-Driving (FSD) and Autopilot. Reuters reported in October 2022 that Tesla was under criminal investigation.

Tesla in February 2023 recalled 362,000 U.S. vehicles to update its FSD Beta software after NHTSA said the vehicles did not adequately adhere to traffic safety laws and could cause crashes.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Jason Neely and Louise Heavens)