By SARA CLINE and BARBARA ORTUTAY

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana sued the online gaming platform Roblox on Thursday, alleging the wildly popular site has perpetuated an environment where sexual predators “thrive, unite, hunt and victimize kids.”

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The lawsuit, filed in state court by Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, alleges that Roblox has failed to implement effective safety measures to protect child users from adult predators.

“Due to Roblox’s lack of safety protocols, it endangers the safety of the children of Louisiana,” Murrill said in a news release. “Roblox is overrun with harmful content and child predators because it prioritizes user growth, revenue, and profits over child safety.”

The company has faced lawsuits and backlash for not doing enough to protect kids on its gaming services. Last month, a lawsuit was filed in Iowa after a 13-year-old girl was allegedly introduced to an adult predator on the platform, then kidnapped and trafficked across multiple states and raped.

In Louisiana, Livingston Parish Sheriff Jason Ard said his office has had multiple cases involving Roblox. In one, police allege a man used voice-altering technology to pose as a girl on the platform. Ard said there have yet to be any arrests made related to the gaming site.

Ultimately, Murrill said she believes Roblox should be shut down.

An email seeking comment was sent to the company Thursday.

The free online gaming platform has more than 111 million monthly users. Its website describes Roblox as “the ultimate virtual universe that lets you create, share experiences with friends, and be anything you can imagine.”

Roblox doesn’t allow users to share videos or images in chats and tries to block any personal information, such as phone numbers. However, as with other gaming platforms and social media sites with similar policies, people find ways around such safeguards.

Roblox, which according to its website has “a zero-tolerance policy for the exploitation of minors,” doesn’t allow children under 13 to chat with other users outside of games unless they have explicit parental permission. Because the platform does not encrypt private chat conversations, the company can monitor and moderate them.

However, Murrill said there is no age minimum or substantial age verification process once a user signs up. As a result, young children, teens and adults posing as children can sign up, she said.

The company says on its website that age verification “is a new feature that is currently in testing on Roblox.” Last month, it launched a feature that requires teenagers aged 13 to 17 to send a video selfie to verify their ages if they want to chat freely with people they know, called “trusted connections.”

Amid mounting criticism in recent months, the company has implemented additional measures that it says will keep their young users safe.

In August, Roblox told AP that it was rolling out an artificial intelligence system to help detect early signs of possible child endangerment, such as sexually exploitive language. Roblox said the system led it to submit 1,200 reports of potential attempts at child exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the first half of 2025.

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — A woman who spit on the top federal prosecutor for the nation’s capital during a videotaped interview pleaded guilty on Thursday to assault charges.

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Emily Gabriella Sommer, 32, of Washington, D.C., is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 10 for assaulting then-acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin Jr. and two law-enforcement officers who arrested her several days after she spit on Martin. Sommer pleaded guilty to three counts of assaulting public officials, according to U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office.

A trial for Sommer had been scheduled to start next Monday. Instead, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb accepted Sommer’s guilty plea and will sentence her.

On May 8, a Newsmax reporter was interviewing Martin on a sidewalk outside his office when Sommer approached him.

“Are you Ed Martin? You are Ed Martin,” Sommer said before lunging at him and spitting on his left shoulder, according to prosecutors.

As she walked away, Sommer swore at Martin and called him “a disgusting man.”

“My name is Emily Gabriella Sommer, and you are served,” she said.

Sommer later took credit for the spitting incident in a message replying to a social media post by Martin.

The encounter occurred on the same day that President Donald Trump pulled Martin’s nomination to remain U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Martin faced bipartisan opposition in the Senate after a turbulent stint in the nation’s largest U.S. Attorney’s office. A key Republican senator said he could not support Martin for the job due to his support for rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Martin roiled the office with a series of unorthodox moves, such as firing and demoting subordinates who worked on politically sensitive cases. Trump replaced Martin with former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, who was confirmed by the Senate on Aug. 2.

When U.S. Marshals Service deputies went to arrest Sommer at her apartment on May 22, she spit in a deputy’s face and kicked him, prosecutors said.

“How is that spit? Taste good? I was just getting over a cold sore. I hope I gave you herpes,” Sommer told the deputy, according to prosecutors.

Sommer also kicked a second deputy during her arrest and told another deputy, “I would put a bullet in you if I had it. I would put a bullet in every one of you right now,” prosecutors said.

During her initial court appearance in May, Sommer repeatedly disrupted the hearing with outbursts. Deputies picked her up and carried her out of the courtroom after one of her interruptions prompted a magistrate to suspend the hearing. Sommer later apologized to the magistrate for her courtroom conduct.

By BEN FINLEY and COLLEEN SLEVIN

DENVER (AP) — A group of rabbits in Colorado with grotesque, hornlike growths may seem straight out of a low-budget horror film, but scientists say there’s no reason to be spooked — the furry creatures merely have a relatively common virus.

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The cottontails recently spotted in Fort Collins are infected with the mostly harmless Shope papillomavirus, which causes wart-like growths that protrude from their faces like metastasizing horns.

Viral photos have inspired a fluffle of unflattering nicknames, including “Frankenstein bunnies,” “demon rabbits” and “zombie rabbits.” But their affliction is nothing new, with the virus inspiring ancient folklore and fueling scientific research nearly 100 years ago.

The virus likely influenced the centuries-old jackalope myth in North America, which told of a rabbit with antlers or horns, among other animal variations. The disease in rabbits also contributed to scientists’ knowledge about the connection between viruses and cancer, such as the human papillomavirus that causes cervical cancer.

The virus in rabbits was named after Dr. Richard E Shope, a professor at The Rockefeller University who discovered the disease in cottontails in the 1930s.

News about the rabbit sightings in Fort Collins, 65 miles north of Denver, started getting attention after residents started spotting them around town and posting pictures.

Kara Van Hoose, a spokesperson for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the agency has been getting calls about the rabbits seen in Fort Collins.

But she said that it’s not uncommon to see infected rabbits, especially in the summer, when the fleas and ticks that spread the virus are most active. The virus can spread from rabbit to rabbit but not to other species, including humans and pets, she said.

The growths resemble warts but can look like horns if they grow longer, Van Hoose said. The growths don’t harm rabbits unless they grow on their eyes or mouths and interfere with eating. Rabbits’ immune systems are able to fight the virus and, once they do, the growths will disappear, she said.

Finley reported from Norfolk, Virginia.

By ED WHITE and MARK VANCLEAVE

PETERSBURG, Mich. (AP) — A retired Michigan autoworker looked at a Facebook message after midnight from a stranger: Did you lose your wallet years ago?

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“If so,” a Minnesota man wrote, “it was in the engine bay of a car.”

Richard Guilford couldn’t believe what he was reading on his phone — a decade-old mystery was remarkably solved.

Guilford’s tri-fold leather wallet — stuffed with $15, a driver’s license, work ID, gift cards worth $275 and lottery tickets — had turned up under the hood of a car in a repair shop in Lake Crystal, Minnesota.

A Christmas gift from Guilford’s sons was suddenly a family treasure again. “Big Red,” as he was affectionately known at Ford Motor, was in awe.

“It restores your faith in humanity that people will say, ‘Hey, you lost this, I found this, I’m going to get it back to you,’” Guilford said Thursday.

The wallet was discovered in June by mechanic Chad Volk, sandwiched between the transmission and the air filter box of a 2015 Ford Edge with 151,000 miles on it.

“Crazy,” Volk said.

The filter box wouldn’t snap in place after a repair, he said, “so I messed around a little bit and then pulled it back out and the wallet was sitting on a little ledge where it needed to snap down. I pulled the wallet out and that’s what it was.”

Turn back the calendar to 2014, around Christmas. Guilford was working on the same car at a Ford factory in Wayne, Michigan. It was in a long line of new vehicles assembled elsewhere that needed extra electrical work before being shipped to dealers.

Guilford realized later that his wallet had fallen out of his shirt pocket. He was certain he had lost it in a car, but figured it was on the floor of a Ford Flex, not an Edge, and certainly not in the engine.

Guilford said he searched 30 to 40 cars, and his co-workers looked at dozens more, “just opening the doors up, looking under the seats, looking behind it.”

“I can’t take too much time to look for this because I gotta work. I’m on the clock,” he recalled feeling. “No luck. Life went on.”

Guilford, now 56 and living in Petersburg, Michigan, retired from Ford in 2024 after nearly 35 years. He had put the wallet out of his mind long ago, until getting the message on Facebook, where his profile said he had worked at Ford.

Volk messaged a photo of the wallet and included the driver’s license. “Big Red” saw a younger version of himself with his red-tinged beard.

“The amazing part to me was it was so protected,” Guilford said of the wallet as he also traced the car’s history. “Think about this: 11 years, rain, snow. It was in Minnesota, for crying out loud. It was in Arizona when it was bought. Think about how hot a transmission gets in Arizona driving down the road. That’s incredible.”

Ford spokesperson Said Deep called it a “repair that’s right on the money,” adding: “Can you imagine the odds?”

Cabela’s, an outdoor retailer, said the $250 in gift cards remain valid, but it has offered to give him new cards anyway. Guilford doesn’t know the status of a $25 card from Outback Steakhouse. The numbers on the lottery tickets in the wallet faded long ago.

“I’m going to put everything back in it and leave it just like it is, and it’s gonna sit at the house in the china cabinet and that’s for my kids,” said Guilford, a part-time auctioneer. “They can tell my great-grandkids about it. We’re big into stories. I like tellin’ stories. That’s just who I am.”

Vancleave reported from Lake Crystal, Minnesota.