California just hiked minimum wage for fast food workers. Some restaurants are replacing them with kiosks


California just raised the minimum wage for the state’s fast food sector workers by $4 to $20. As if on cue, it raised a familiar refrain that those workers would be replaced by technology, such as self-service kiosks.

That’s likely to happen in some instances where business who haven’t yet done so will look to technology to help offset higher labor costs, industry experts said.

But the reality is that automation in the services industry is already on a roll, and the restaurant industry has been embracing it for a while now, even in states where the minimum wage hasn’t increased.

“There are two things in play. One, already in motion for a while is robotics and automation at the store level,” said Rob Dongoski, global lead for food and agribusiness at Kearney, a strategy and management consulting firm. Examples in what is known in the industry as the “quick service restaurant” space include auto-refill technology and automated frying machines.

The Biden administration will require thousands more gun dealers to run background checks on buyers

Thousands more firearms dealers across the United States will have to run background checks on buyers when selling at gun shows or other places outside brick-and-mortar stores, according to a Biden administration rule that will soon go into effect.

The rule aims to close a loophole that has allowed tens of thousands of guns to be sold every year by unlicensed dealers who don’t perform background checks to ensure the potential buyer is not legally prohibited from having a firearm.

It’s the administration’s latest effort to combat gun violence. But in a contentious election year, it’s also an effort to show voters — especially younger ones for whom gun violence deeply resonates — that the White House is trying to stop the deaths.

“This is going to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and felons,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “And my administration is going to continue to do everything we possibly can to save lives. Congress needs to finish the job and pass universal background checks legislation now.”

Billions of cicadas are set to appear in a rare ‘double brood emergence,’ scientists say


In a matter of weeks, they will dig their way out from underground, red eyes shining, deafening song filling the air. It will be a confluence of creatures the likes of which hasn’t been seen in the United States since Thomas Jefferson was president — and won’t happen again until 2245. It’s a rare emergence of insects some are referring to as cicadapocalypse.

Billions of cicadas are set to surface this spring as two different broods — one that appears every 13 years, and another every 17 years — emerge simultaneously. The 13-year group, known as Brood XIX, or the Great Southern Brood, is the largest periodical cicada brood, stretching across the southeastern United States. The Northern Illinois Brood, or Brood XIII, emerges every 17 years.

“It’s rare that we see this size of double brood emergence,” said Dr. Jonathan Larson, an extension entomologist and assistant professor at the University of Kentucky. “We’re talking about an absolute oddity of nature, one of America’s coolest insects.”

Though the idea of a cicadapocalypse may seem foreboding, experts predict that the two broods won’t overlap significantly, and the bugs themselves, while loud and numerous, are harmless. Here’s what you need to know going into cicada season.

Chicago police fired 96 shots after gunfire broke out at a fatal traffic stop, agency says. Here’s what bodycam footage shows


Newly released bodycam footage reveals the chaotic moments before and after 26-year-old Dexter Reed was fatally shot during a traffic stop by Chicago police.

The deadly encounter happened in a residential neighborhood on March 21. In one video, an officer approaches the driver of a white vehicle with dark-tinted windows. “Roll the window down. Roll the window down,” she tells the driver. But he keeps rolling the window up.

“What are you doing?” the officer asks. “Don’t roll the window up. Do not roll the window up!”

The officer pulls on the driver’s locked door handle and draws her gun.

“Unlock the doors now! Unlock the doors now!” she screams, as another officer shouts the same demands.

Condemned inmate could face ‘surgery without anesthesia’ if good vein is elusive, lawyers say

Missouri’s execution protocol allows for “surgery without anesthesia” if the typical process of finding a suitable vein to inject the lethal drug doesn’t work, lawyers for a death row inmate say in an appeal aimed at sparing his life.

Brian Dorsey, 52, is scheduled for execution Tuesday for killing his cousin and her husband at their central Missouri home in 2006. His attorneys are seeking clemency from Gov. Mike Parson and have several appeals pending.

A federal court appeal focuses on how Missouri injects the fatal dose of pentobarbital. The written protocol calls for insertion of primary and secondary intravenous lines. But it offers no guidance on how far the execution team can go to find a suitable vein, leaving open the possibility of an invasive “cutdown procedure,” Dorsey’s attorneys say.

The procedure involves an incision that could be several inches wide and several inches deep. Forceps are used to tear tissue away from a vein that becomes the injection point.

Germany to redesign Adidas soccer jersey numbering amid Nazi symbol controversy

German soccer authorities will redesign the number “4” on the country’s national jerseys amid claims it resembles a logo used by Nazi paramilitary units.

The German Football Association (DFB) made the announcement Monday after social media users began using an online customization service to create shirts bearing the number “44” — and pointing out the similarity to the Schutzstaffel, or SS, logo.

In a statement posted to X, the DFB said it had earlier submitted numbers 1 to 26 to European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, for review, and that “none of the parties involved saw any proximity to Nazi symbolism in the creation process of the jersey design.” The association said it was taking the matter “very seriously” and was developing “an alternative design” for the digit.

While 44 is not currently used by the German men’s or women’s teams, official uniform supplier Adidas allowed customers to personalize the jerseys with a number, from 00 to 99, and a name up to 10 letters long. The resulting images generated by Adidas’ online shop were then widely shared online.

White House to host scaled-back iftar dinner amid tensions with Arab and Muslim Americans

President Joe Biden is expected to host a significantly scaled-down iftar dinner at the White House on Tuesday to commemorate Ramadan, three sources familiar with the plans told CNN, a reflection of the tension between the administration and Arab and Muslim American communities over the Israel-Hamas war.

Several people who were invited to the dinner have declined, sources said, citing frustration with the administration’s support of Israel amid the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Vice President Kamala Harris, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, senior White House aides and fewer than a dozen invited guests are expected to attend the small gathering, a senior administration official said.

Last year, the White House did not hold an iftar dinner – the breaking of the daily fast after sundown – but hosted nearly 350 people for a reception celebrating Eid al-Fitr, a festival marking the end of Ramadan.

Charges: St. Paul man left kids alone, guns accessible before boy was shot in face

A man is now facing criminal charges in connection to a shooting at a St. Paul apartment on Friday night that left an 11-year-old critically hurt.

Martinez Castillo Lloyd, 34, is charged with illegal gun possession and negligent storage of a gun following the incident.

Prosecutors say that Lloyd’s children and several of their friends — ranging in age from 10 to 13 — were at his apartment in the 800 block of Pierce Butler Road starting at around 8:20 p.m. After about 30 minutes, Lloyd left and went to a store, leaving the kids by themselves.

Charging documents state that, after Lloyd left, his son and niece went into his room and grabbed two guns that he kept in an unlocked drawer in his room. The documents note that the kids said they’ve played with the guns a dozen times in the past year, including the weekend prior.

Lloyd later told police that he’d seen his kids play with his guns before and told them to put them back.

Biden administration set to greenlight $18 billion sale of F-15 fighter jets to Israel

The Biden administration is close to approving the sale of as many as 50 American-made F-15 fighter jets to Israel, in a deal expected to be worth more than $18 billion, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The transaction, which would amount to the largest US foreign military sale to Israel since the country went to war with Hamas on October 7, comes as the administration is also expected to notify Congress soon of a large new sale of precision-guided munitions kits to Israel, the people said.

The new sales of some of the US’ most sophisticated weaponry underscore the extent to which the US continues to support Israel militarily, even as Biden administration officials criticize Israel’s operations in Gaza, which have killed more than 32,000 Palestinians since October, according to the Gaza ministry of health.

The sale is likely to be hotly debated in Congress, particularly by members of the president’s own party. US weapons sales to Israel have come under intense scrutiny in recent months and Democratic lawmakers have called for restricting military aid to Israeli until it allows more humanitarian aid into Gaza and does more to protect civilians there.

Burnings and beheadings: Myanmar junta escalates terror tactics against its people

Warning: This story contains graphic descriptions of violence.

CNN
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The two young men are bloodied, their feet clamped in wooden stocks.

“What is the PDF (People’s Defence Force)?” their tormentors yell. “Dogs,” they reply.

Humiliated and dehumanized, the men are hogtied and dragged across the rough ground by their thick chains.

In front of dozens of onlookers, they are strung up to a tree and a fire stoked beneath them.

As smoke rises and the flames consume them, the two men writhe and scream in agony – their final moments of unimaginable pain and horror captured on video.

Phoe Tay was 21-years-old, Thar Htaung just 20.

The two young men had left their family farms in northwest Myanmar to join a local armed resistance group following the 2021 military coup, hoping to bring peace and democracy to the Southeast Asian country, their fathers told CNN.

But they were captured during a battle against the military on November 7 last year, and taken to a nearby village, where they were tortured and killed by a pro-junta militia under the watch of Myanmar army soldiers, according to witnesses.

CNN has built a timeline of events, using accounts from more than a dozen witnesses, villagers, resistance fighters, family members and analysts, with analysis of the video and pictures from the day using open source techniques. Those accounts and analysis point to the ruling military as being responsible for the killings, in contradiction of their public denials.