By TRÂN NGUYỄN

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Republicans filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday to block a new U.S. House map that California voters decisively approved at the ballot.

Related Articles

Why California voters approved a redistricting ballot measure, according to the AP Voter Poll

How key demographic groups voted in 2025, according to the AP Voter Poll

Mamdani tells Trump that New York is ready to fight after president’s threats fail to thwart voters

Judge in Comey case scolds prosecutors as he orders them to produce records from probe

Data scientists perform last rites for ‘dearly departed datasets’ in 2nd Trump administration

Proposition 50, backed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, is designed to help Democrats flip as many as five congressional House seats in the midterm elections next year. The lawsuit claims the map-makers illegally used race as a factor to favor Hispanic voters, and asks the court to block the new boundaries ahead of the 2026 elections. The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

The lawsuit was filed by The Dhillon Law Group, the California-based firm started by Harmeet Dhillon, who is now an assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice.

“The map is designed to favor one race of California voters over others,” Mike Columbo, whose plaintiffs include a state Republican lawmaker and 18 other voters, said at a news conference Wednesday. “This violates the 14th Amendment, guarantee of equal protection under the law, and the right under the 15th Amendment.”

Newsom’s office said on a social media post that the state hasn’t reviewed the lawsuit but is confident the challenge will fail.

“Good luck, losers,” the post reads.

It’s unclear whether a three-judge panel convened to hear such cases would grant a temporary restraining order before December 19, the date when candidates can start collecting voters’ signatures to lower the costs of their filing fee. It’s essentially the first step in officially running in the 2026 midterm elections. Columbo said he’s hoping to get a decision in the upcoming weeks.

Republicans have filed multiple lawsuits in California to block Democrats’ plan with little success so far.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Video game maker Epic Games has reached a “comprehensive settlement” with Google that could end its 5-year-old legal crusade targeting Google’s Play Store for Android apps.

Related Articles

Shipping delays expected after UPS cargo plane crash

Starbucks’ union workers plan strike next week unless company agrees to a contract

Musk the trillionaire? Debate over his Tesla pay package rages

Toyota reports a drop in profit as Trump’s taxes hurt Japanese automakers

Wall Street gains ground amid steady flow of earnings reports, upbeat economic updates

Epic and Google revealed the settlement agreement in a joint legal document they filed in a San Francisco federal court Tuesday.

They said it “would allow the parties to put their disputes aside while making Android a more vibrant and competitive platform for users and developers.”

Epic, which makes the hit online game Fortnite, won a victory over the summer when a federal appeals court upheld a jury verdict condemning Google’s Android app store as an illegal monopoly. The unanimous ruling cleared the way for a federal judge to enforce a potentially disruptive shake-up that’s designed to give consumers more choices. Google took another hit in October when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to protect it from the judge’s required app store makeover.

The specific terms of the settlement agreement remain under seal and must be approved by U.S. District Judge James Donato, but the two companies broadly outlined some of their agreements in their joint filing.

They said the settlement closely follows Donato’s October 2024 ruling ordering Google to tear down the digital walls shielding its Android app store from competition. That included a provision that will require its app store to distribute rival third-party app stores so consumers can download them to their phones, if they so desire.

Google had hoped to void those changes with an appeal, but the ruling issued in July by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a legal blow for the tech giant, which has been waylaid in three separate antitrust trials affecting different pillars of its internet empire.

Epic Games filed lawsuits targeting Google’s Play Store as well as Apple’s iPhone app store in 2020 in an attempt to bypass exclusive payment processing systems that charged 15% to 30% commissions on in-app transactions. The settlement agreement proposed Tuesday calls for Google to limit those payments to between 9% and 20%, depending on the transaction.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney called the settlement an “awesome proposal” in a social media post. Sameer Samat, president of Google’s Android division, said it will “focus on expanding developer choice and flexibility, lowering fees, and encouraging more competition all while keeping users safe.” Google had previously complained that Donato’s forcing of more app store competition posed security concerns. A hearing is set for Thursday.

By MAE ANDERSON

NEW YORK (AP) — The UPS cargo plane crash on Tuesday at the company’s global aviation hub in Kentucky, which killed at least nine, will temporarily disrupt the supply chain and result in some shipping delays.

Related Articles

Musk the trillionaire? Debate over his Tesla pay package rages

Toyota reports a drop in profit as Trump’s taxes hurt Japanese automakers

Wall Street gains ground amid steady flow of earnings reports, upbeat economic updates

Why I stayed with the same mediocre big bank for 10-plus years

Young homebuyers lose more ground in housing market as states struggle to help

But UPS says it has contingency plans in place, and experts say the impact should be cleared up before the peak holiday season.

The plane crashed Tuesday evening as it was departing for Honolulu from UPS Worldport, UPS’ largest shipping hub, at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport. Package sorting at the center was halted late Tuesday and the halt continued on Wednesday. About 416,000 packages can be sorted at the facility per hour, according to a UPS fact sheet.

Consumers who want to check on their UPS packages can wait to hear from the company or look up tracking details online.

Tom Goldsby, professor of supply chain management at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, said UPS will most likely step up flights to its regional hubs to offset Worldport’s closure.

The hubs are “going to take on a greater burden until that critical operation in Louisville gets back to the full capacity,” he said.

UPS said in a statement that it has contingency plans in place to help ensure that shipments arrive at their final destinations as quickly as conditions permit, but did not give specifics on what the plans were.

Goldsby said UPS will be under pressure to resolve any delays before the peak holiday season.

“It’s an issue that they quickly want to resolve, but they are going to have to do their due diligence in resolving the current crisis,” he said.

He himself was expecting a UPS package from Oregon routed through Worldport today, but got a message that it would have to be rescheduled.

“I understand the circumstance and will gladly receive it when it arrives,” he said, adding patience will be needed for others expecting packages. “People and businesses don’t have a lot of understanding (about the supply chain). We just don’t expect our logistics operations to have a calamity or even a bad day.″

The crash comes as UPS works on a turnaround, focusing less on Amazon deliveries and more on business-to-business deliveries. In its most recent earnings report last week, the company said it has cut 48,000 jobs in the year to date and closed some buildings as part of its turnaround. Its third-quarter results beat expectations.

By FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ and FERNANDA FIGUEROA, Associated Press

MEXICO CITY (AP) — What should have been a five-minute time-saving walk from Mexico’s National Palace to the Education Ministry for President Claudia Sheinbaum has become a stomach-churning viral moment after a video captured a drunk man groping the president.

The brief clip has given the daily harassment and assaults that women suffer in Mexico their highest-profile platform. And on Wednesday, Sheinbaum used her daily press briefing to say that she had pressed charges against the man.

She also called on states to look at their laws and procedures to make it easier for women to report such assaults and said Mexicans needed to hear a “loud and clear, no, women’s personal space must not be violated.”

Sheinbaum said she felt a responsibility to press charges, because if not, where would that leave Mexican women? “If this is done to the president, what is going to happen to all of the young women in our country?”

Indeed, if Mexico’s president cannot be in the street for five minutes without a man approaching her from behind, putting his hands on her body and leaning in for a kiss, then it’s not difficult to imagine what women with hours-long commutes on public transportation are experiencing daily.

Andrea González Martínez, 27, who works for Mexican lender Nacional Monte de Piedad, said she has been harassed on public transportation, in one case the man followed her home.

“It happens regularly, it happens on public transportation,” she said. “It’s something you experience every day in Mexico.”

Her coworker, Carmen Maldonado Castillo, 43, said she has witnessed it.

“It’s not good that men attack us,” she said. “You can’t walk around free in the street.”

Sheinbaum said Wednesday that she understands how widespread the problem is.

“I decided to press charges because this is something that I experienced as a woman, but that we as women experience in our country,” she said.

She said she had similar experiences of harassment when she was 12 years old and using public transportation to get to school. As president, she said, she felt like she had a responsibility to all women.

Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada had announced overnight that the man had been arrested.

The incident immediately raised questions about the president’s security, but Sheinbaum dismissed any suggestion that she would increase her security or change how she interacts with people.

She explained that she and her team had decided to walk from the National Palace to the Education Ministry to save time. She said they could walk it in five minutes, rather than taking a 20-minute car ride.

Brugada used some of Sheinbaum’s own language about being elected Mexico’s first woman president to emphasize that harassment of any woman – in this case Mexico’s most powerful – is an assault on all women.

Related Articles

Putin tells officials to submit plans for possibly resuming nuclear tests after Trump’s remarks

Typhoon Kalmaegi leaves 85 dead, mainly in Philippine province still recovering from deadly quake

As world leaders enter climate talks, people in poverty have the most at stake

Louvre heist suspect’s trial in a separate case postponed due to high media profile

Mamdani’s win inspires Ugandans who see hope in youth joining politics

When Sheinbaum was elected, she said that it wasn’t just her coming to power, it was all women. Brugada said that was “not a slogan, it’s a commitment to not look the other way, to not allow misogyny to continue to be veiled in habits, to not accept a single additional humiliation, not another abuse, not a single femicide more.”

Lilian Valvuena, 31, said she didn’t think Sheinbaum had really taken violence against women seriously until yesterday when she had a first-hand experience. She hopes that work to better train police to respond will follow.

“They have to prepare them,” she said. “They don’t know what protocols to follow.”

Marina Reyna, executive director of the Guerrero Association against Violence toward Women, said that watching the video she initially worried that Sheinbaum had minimized the assault, continuing to smile and talk calmly to the man. But she hoped the president’s willingness to talk about it Wednesday would change how such cases are handled.

“You lose confidence in the institutions,” Reyna said. “The people stop going to report it, because when you report it nothing happens.”

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america