By NOKUKHANYA MUSI and GERALD IMRAY, Associated Press

MANZINI, Eswatini (AP) — A group of 10 migrants deported from the United States arrived early Monday in the African nation of Eswatini, authorities there said.

They are the latest of more than 40 deportees sent to Africa since July after the Trump administration struck largely secretive agreements with at least five nations there to take migrants under the new third-country deportation program that rights groups and others have protested.

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A lawyer for two of the latest deportees told The Associated Press earlier on Monday that their flight had arrived in the southern African kingdom after departing from Alexandria, Louisiana, and stopping in Puerto Rico, Senegal and Angola.

Tin Thanh Nguyen, the U.S.-based lawyer, said he represents two Vietnamese nationals who were on the flight. He said they had been held at the Alexandria Staging Facility immigration detention center in Louisiana. Nguyen said he tracked their flight with help from rights group Human Rights First.

The Eswatini government confirmed in a statement that 10 deportees had arrived and “have been securely accommodated in one of the country’s correctional facilities.” It didn’t name them, give details on their nationalities or say where they are being held. It said they were “in good health and undergoing admission processes.”

Four men from Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and Yemen who were deported to Eswatini in mid-July have been held in the country’s maximum-security Matsapha prison without charge for nearly three months, their lawyers have said. Nguyen represents two of those men.

The U.S. said the men sent to Eswatini in July were convicted criminals who had deportation orders. A Jamaican man in that first group was repatriated to his home country last month.

After the arrival of the latest deportees, the Eswatini government said it “remains committed to the humane treatment of all persons in its custody.”

The four men have been allowed to make phone calls to their families and lawyers in the U.S. However, authorities haven’t allowed an Eswatini-based lawyer to visit them. The lawyer won a court ruling on Friday granting him access but the government immediately appealed, blocking him from visiting them.

U.S. authorities have referred questions over the men’s treatment to officials in Eswatini, a small kingdom bordering South Africa where the king holds absolute power and has been accused of clamping down on pro-democracy movements.

Few details of the deportation deals struck between the U.S. and African countries have been released, but international rights group Human Rights Watch has said it has seen documents that show the U.S. will pay Eswatini $5.1 million as part of an agreement to take up to 160 deportees.

The U.S. has said it wants to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Eswatini.

Rights groups have criticized the deportation program for sending migrants to countries where they will likely be denied due process.

The U.S. has also sent deportees to South Sudan, Rwanda and Ghana and has an agreement with Uganda, though no deportations there have been announced.

Six deportees are still detained in an unspecified facility in South Sudan, while Rwanda hasn’t said where it is holding seven deportees. Eleven of the 14 deportees sent to Ghana are suing the government there for holding them in what they described as terrible conditions at a military camp on the outskirts of the capital, Accra.

Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa.

By DAVID BAUDER, Associated Press Media Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Paramount said Monday that it has bought the commentary website The Free Press and installed its founder, Bari Weiss, as the editor-in-chief of CBS News, a newly created position.

The announcement, while anticipated, is a bold move for the venerable television news network initiated by new corporate leader David Ellison. Weiss’ experience is in print journalism, particularly in commentary.

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“I am confident her entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision will invigorate CBS News,” Ellison said in a news release. “This move is part of Paramount’s bigger vision to modernize content and the way it connects — directly and passionately — to audiences around the world.”

Some at CBS News have been concerned that the news division is moving in a direction more friendly to President Donald Trump.

This year, Paramount Global agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit regarding the editing of an interview with then presidential candidate Kamala Harris on CBS’ storied “60 Minutes” news program.

Journalists were infuriated and a senator suggested an investigation to determine whether bribery laws were broken. The company was hoping to put the issue to rest as it sought administration approval of a major merger.

That deal has since been approved by the Trump administration.

No purchase price was announced for The Free Press, which has been a success in the five years since Weiss started it after leaving The New York Times as an opinion editor. When she left the Times, she wrote a letter of resignation that talked about a culture of intolerance at the newspaper and said she was bullied by colleagues who disagreed with her.

In a letter to CBS News employees on Monday, Weiss said that CBS was part of a deep family tradition growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

“My goal in the coming days and weeks is to get to know you,” she wrote. “I want to hear from you about what’s working, what isn’t, and your thoughts on how we can make CBS News the most trusted news organization in America and the world. I’ll approach it the way any reporters would — with an open mind, a fresh notebook and an urgent deadline.”

Ellison said Weiss will report directly to him and partner with CBS News President Tom Cibrowski, who reports to Paramount executive George Cheeks.

Ellison said that Weiss will “shape editorial priorities, champion core values across platforms and lead innovation in how the organization reports and delivers the news.”

He said that “we believe the majority of the country longs for news that is balanced and fact-based, and we want CBS to be their home.”

By STAN CHOE, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is hanging near its records on Monday, as technology stocks keep rising.

The S&P 500 rose 0.3%, coming off its latest all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 17 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% higher.

Advanced Micro Devices soared 32.6% to help lead the market after announcing a deal where OpenAI will use its chips to power artificial-intelligence infrastructure. As part of the deal, OpenAI could own up to 160 million shares of AMD if it hits certain milestones.

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A frenzy around AI has been one of the main reasons Wall Street has been hitting record after record, though that’s also raising worries that prices have potentially shot too high. Much of the furor around AI in the last couple weeks has come from OpenAI, which has quickly become a $500 billion company, announcing deals with businesses around the world to develop more AI infrastructure.

Another chip company, Nvidia, announced a deal last month where it would invest $100 billion in OpenAI as part of a partnership, creating criticism that the AI investment pipeline was beginning to appear like a circle. Nvidia fell 1.5% following the AMD announcement.

Outside of tech, Comerica jumped 16.5% after Fifth Third Bancorp agreed to buy its rival in an all-stock deal valued at $10.9 billion. The combination would create the country’s ninth-largest bank. Fifth Third added 1%.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, trading remained relatively quiet as the stock market continues to largely ignore the U.S. government’s shutdown. Past closures of the federal government have had minimal effect on the stock market or on the economy, and the bet on Wall Street is that something similar will happen again.

Politics are playing a more active role in stock markets abroad, though, as Japanese stocks soared and French stocks slumped following their latest political shake-ups.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 4.8% after the country’s Liberal Democratic Party chose Sanae Takaichi as its leader and likely Japan’s first woman prime minister. She was an ally of the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who pushed for lower interest rates and market-friendly policies.

The yen’s value dropped against the U.S. dollar on expectations that Takaichi will boost spending, likely adding to inflationary pressures. That in turn helped push up stocks of Japanese exporters, whose products can become more attractive on the global market because of a cheaper yen.

“Obviously, investors like what she has been saying and certainly today judging by the number of stocks that moved and which stocks moved, it seems like pretty much led by foreigners so far,” Neil Newman, head of strategy at Astris Advisory Japan, said about Takaichi.

In Paris, the CAC 40 index slumped 1.2% following the resignation of France’s new prime minister.

Sébastien Lecornu resigned a day after he named his government, drawing a backlash across the political spectrum for his choice of ministers. French politics have been in disarray since President Emmanuel Macron called snap elections last year that produced a deeply fragmented legislature.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.16% from 4.13% late Friday.

The shutdown of the U.S. government means fewer economic data releases this week, though markets will have some earnings reports to comb through, including from Delta Air Lines, PepsiCo and Levi Strauss.

Despite the shutdown, the Federal Reserve will release minutes from its meeting last month when it cut its benchmark interest rate for the first time this year.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein.

On the first day of their new term, the justices declined to take up a case that would have drawn renewed attention to the sordid sexual-abuse saga after President Donald Trump’s administration sought to tamp down criticism over its refusal to publicly release more investigative files from Epstein’s case.

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Lawyers for Maxwell, a British socialite, argued that she never should have been tried or convicted for her role in luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein, a New York financier. She is serving a 20-year prison term, though she was moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after she was interviewed in July by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

As is their custom, the justices did not explain why they turned away the appeal.

Trump’s Republican administration had urged the high court to stay out of the case.

Maxwell’s lawyers contended that a non-prosecution agreement reached in 2007 by federal prosecutors in Miami and Epstein’s lawyers also protected his “potential co-conspirators” from federal charges anywhere in the country.

Maxwell was prosecuted in Manhattan, and the federal appeals court there ruled that the prosecution was proper. A jury found her guilty of sex trafficking a teenage girl, among other charges.

Maxwell’s trial featured accounts of the sexual exploitation of girls as young as 14 told by four women who described being abused as teens in the 1990s and early 2000s at Epstein’s homes.

Neither Maxwell’s lawyers nor the federal Bureau of Prisons has explained the reason for her transfer, but one of her lawyers, David Oscar Markus, has said she is “innocent and never should have been tried, much less convicted.” Markus also was the lead lawyer on her Supreme Court case.

Maxwell was interviewed by Blanche at a Florida courthouse. She was given limited immunity, allowing her to speak freely without fear of prosecution for anything she said except for in the event of a false statement. She repeatedly denied witnessing any sexually inappropriate interactions involving Trump, according to records released in August meant to distance the president from the disgraced financer.

Epstein was arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges and was accused of sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls. A month later, he was found dead in a New York jail cell in what investigators described as a suicide.

The Epstein case had consumed Trump’s administration following an announcement from the FBI and the Justice Department in July that Epstein had killed himself despite conspiracy theories to the contrary, that a “client list” that Attorney General Pam Bondi had intimated was on her desk did not actually exist, and that no additional documents from the high-profile investigation were suitable to be released.

The announcement produced outrage from conspiracy theorists and Trump supporters who had been hoping to see proof of a government coverup. That expectation was driven in part by comments from officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, who on podcasts before taking their current positions had repeatedly promoted the idea that damaging details about prominent people were being withheld.

Patel, for instance, said in at least one podcast interview before becoming FBI director that Epstein’s “black book” was under the “direct control of the director of the FBI.”

But the Justice Department said its review of evidence in the government’s possession determined that no “further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.” The department noted that much of the material was placed under seal by a court to protect victims and “only a fraction” of it “would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial.”

Faced with fury from his base, Trump sought to quickly turn the page, shutting down questioning of Bondi about Epstein at a White House Cabinet meeting and deriding as “weaklings” supporters he said were falling for the “Jeffrey Epstein Hoax.”