By WILL WEISSERT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that he was ready to restart U.S. mediation efforts between Egypt and Ethiopia with an eye toward resolving long-standing issues of water sharing from the ⁠Nile River.

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Washington-led mediations began during Trump’s first term, but they effectively collapsed in 2020, when Ethiopia withdrew — though some discussions later continued under the African Union.

Ethiopia formally inaugurated the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, or GERD, last fall. As Africa’s largest dam, it is located on the Blue Nile near Ethiopia’s border with Sudan and is meant to produce more than 5,000 megawatts, doubling Ethiopia’s electricity generation capacity.

Ethiopia sees the dam as a boon to its economy. But Egypt opposed its construction, arguing that it would reduce the country’s share of Nile River waters — which it almost entirely relies on for agriculture and to serve its more than 100 million people.

On Sept. 4, before the dam’s inauguration, Tamim Khallaf, spokesperson for the Egyptian foreign ministry, said Ethiopia built the dam “unilaterally without any prior notification, proper consultations, or consensus with downstream countries, thereby constituting a grave violation of international law and posing an existential threat.”

Trump posted on his social media site a letter he sent to Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, saying: “I am ‍ready to ‍restart ⁠U.S. ‌mediation between ⁠Egypt ‍and Ethiopia to responsibly resolve the ⁠question of ‘The Nile Water Sharing’ once ‌and for all.”

“My team and I understand the significance of the Nile River to Egypt and its people,” Trump wrote.

The president frequently boasts about ending eight wars around the world, though that claim is exaggerated. Egypt and Ethiopia are already on his list of wars he resolved, with Trump maintaining he stopped a conflict that might have led to fighting over issues that included the dam known as GERD.

Trump recently told Fox News that one of the ongoing conflicts that has continued despite his claiming to have stopped it — between Thailand and Cambodia — should actually count more than once.

“I did put out eight wars, eight and a quarter, because, you know, Thailand and Cambodia started going at it again,” he told Sean Hannity last week. The implication was a flare-up in the conflict made it an extra 1/4 of a war — something to watch for as he pushes mediation efforts again in Ethiopia and Egypt.

The St. Thomas women’s hockey team took one on the chin against the No. 1 squad in the land with a 5-1 loss to Wisconsin at the Lee & Penny Anderson Arena Friday afternoon.

Chloe Boreen, assisted by Cara Sajevic and Keara Parker, scored the Tommies’ lone goal of the game at 10:28 of the second period.

Unfortunately for the hosts, Wisconsin preceded Boreen’s goal with two scores in the first period and three more in the third to win by four goals.

Tommies goalkeeper Julia Minotti had a busy day in net, making 40 saves. St. Thomas put 14 shorts on Badgers netminder Ava McNaughton.

With the loss, the Tommies fell to 10-13-0 overall on the season, 5-12-0 in WCHA play. Wisconsin continues to lead the conference with a 20-1-2 overall record, 14-1-2 in the circuit.

The two teams play again at 2 p.m. Saturday in St. Paul.

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By DAVE COLLINS

The mother of one of Elon Musk’s children is suing his AI company, saying its Grok chatbot allowed users to generate sexually exploitive deepfake images of her that have caused her humiliation and emotional distress.

Ashley St. Clair, 27, who describes herself as a writer and political strategist, alleges in a lawsuit filed Thursday in New York City against xAI that the images have included a photo of her fully dressed at age 14 that was altered to show her in a bikini, and others showing her as an adult in sexualized positions and wearing a bikini with swastikas. St. Clair is Jewish. Grok is on Musk’s social media platform X.

Lawyers and media contacts for xAI did not immediately return emails seeking comment Friday. On Wednesday, following global backlash over sexualized images of women and children, X announced that Grok would no longer be able to edit photos to portray real people in revealing clothing, in places where that is illegal.

St. Clair said she reported the deepfakes to X after they began appearing last year and asked that they be removed. She said the platform first replied that the images did not violate its policies. Then it promised to not allow images of her to be used or altered without her consent, she said.

St. Clair said the social platform then retaliated against her by removing her premium X subscription and verification checkmark, not allowing her to make money from her account, which has 1 million followers, and continuing to allow degrading fake images of her.

“I have suffered and continue to suffer serious pain and mental distress as a result of xAI’s role in creating and distributing these digitally altered images of me,” she said in a document attached to the lawsuit. “I am humiliated and feel like this nightmare will never stop so long as Grok continues to generate these images of me.”

She also said she lives in fear of the people who view the deepfakes of her.

St. Clair is the mother of Musk’s 16-month-old son, Romulus. She lives in New York City, where she filed the lawsuit in state Supreme Court. She is seeking an undisclosed amount of damages for alleged infliction of emotional distress and other claims, as well as court orders immediately barring xAI from allowing more deepfakes of her.

Later Thursday, lawyers for xAI transferred the lawsuit to federal court in Manhattan, asking a judge to hear the case there. And the same day, xAI also countersued St. Clair in federal court in the Northern District of Texas, alleging she violated the terms of her xAI user agreement that requires lawsuits against the company be filed in federal court in Texas. It is seeking an undisclosed money judgment against her.

X is based in Texas, where Musk owns a home and his electric automaker Tesla in headquartered in Austin.

Carrie Goldberg, a lawyer for St. Clair, called the countersuit a “jolting” move that she had never seen by a defendant before.

“Ms. St. Clair will be vigorously defending her forum in New York,” Goldberg said in a statement. “But frankly, any jurisdiction will recognize the gravamen of Ms. St. Clair’s claims — that by manufacturing nonconsensual sexually explicit images of girls and women, xAI is a public nuisance and a not reasonably safe product.”

In its announcement on Wednesday, X said it was implementing other safeguards on Grok including limiting image creation and editing to paid accounts, which it said would improve accountability. It said it had zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation, nonconsensual nudity and unwanted sexual content, and it would immediately remove such content and report accounts involved in child sex abuse materials to law enforcement.

By MARCEL HONORE/Honolulu Civil Beat

At least one cruise line has started charging its passengers Hawaiʻi’s tax on visitor stays and the new, landmark environmental “green fee” that goes with it, even though a court order currently bars local tax officials from collecting those dollars on cruise stays.

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That decision by Norwegian Cruise Lines comes as the cruise industry simultaneously tries to overturn in court the parts of Hawaiʻi’s new green fee law that require ships to pay the same transient accommodations tax as hotel and vacation rental owners. Federal appellate judges issued the injunction against the tax collections on cruise ships on New Year’s Eve, hours before they were to take effect.

Norwegian representatives say the company will refund its passengers if the industry ultimately prevails in court.

It’s not clear whether any of the other cruise lines that visit the islands are similarly charging their passengers the tax amid the court injunction, or if the cruise industry’s main trade group is offering guidance on how to handle the situation. Only two of the other major lines that stop in the islands’ ports responded this week to requests for comment.

Oceania Cruises said it doesn’t have the taxes attached to its next Hawaiʻi cruises, which will happen in October. A Royal Caribbean spokesperson referred questions on whether the company was charging passengers to the Cruise Line Industry Association, saying the matter was an industrywide issue.

However, the association took a different view.

“Decisions about how to handle potential charges during ongoing litigation are individual commercial decisions made by each cruise line,” a statement from the association said,

Mid-Cruise Sticker Shock

Dallas resident Don Yonce, who’s currently aboard Norwegian’s latest Hawaiʻi cruise, said the company first notified him via email in October that his cruise would tack on Hawaiʻi’s 14% state and county transient accommodations taxes, or TAT, for any time spent in port.

That email estimated Yonce would be charged $1,035 in TAT, based on the weeklong cost of his family’s cabin suite. Still, he was surprised to get an invoice during the interisland voyage Sunday that included that charge.

“We were under the impression that the injunction stopped this,” Yonce said Wednesday from Norwegian’s Pride of America. Guest service managers aboard the ship acknowledged to him and other passengers that the injunction stopped the state from collecting the tax, Yonce said, but they also told him they “were told by corporate to charge it anyway.”

The other passengers, he added, were similarly irked at seeing the extra charges.

In its lawsuit, the association representing Norwegian and other lines says the TAT will substantially increase the costs of Hawaiʻi-bound cruises, harming not just the cruise operators but also the local businesses that depend on the industry.

“I also think that Norwegian is hurting their case.” Yonce said Wednesday. “They’ve argued in court this (tax) does irreparable harm to their passengers and their suppliers and themselves, but then they’re collecting it anyway, right? You can’t have it both ways.”

Hawaiʻi state officials estimate the recent 0.75 percentage point increase to the transient accommodations tax, which created the nation’s first-ever green fee, will generate around $100 million a year to help shield Hawaiʻi’s environment from overtourism, wildfires and other natural disasters, and the growing impacts of climate change.

The cruise industry’s portion, Gov. Josh Green has said, represents about 10% of those green fee dollars.

The association’s lawsuit continues to play out in federal court. The next hearing, a scheduling conference, is slated for Jan. 26.

Yonce said this will likely be his family’s last cruise on Norwegian not because of the tax itself but rather how the company is handling the tax.

This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.