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A federal judge has temporarily blocked OpenAI’s use of several monikers, including “Cameos” and “CameoVideo,” for elements of its Sora artificial intelligence video generation products and marketing.

U.S. District Judge Eumi K. Lee on Friday issued a temporary restraining order to prevent the San Francisco AI giant from using names that are part of an ongoing trademark dispute.

The Northern California judge also set a Dec. 19 hearing to delve further into the matter.

The lawsuit was brought late last month by Chicago-based tech business Baron App, which also goes by the name of its product, Cameo. The eight-year-old firm sued OpenAI, alleging trademark infringement and unfair competition.

In its Oct. 28 lawsuit, Baron said it has secured several U.S. Trademark Registrations for its Cameo product, which enables fans to engage celebrities to make personalized videos to wish friends a happy birthday or other greetings.

Snoop Dogg, Tony Hawk, Jon Bon Jovi and Donald Trump Jr. are among celebrities who have participated, connecting with fans through Cameo, the company said in its complaint against Open AI. Cameo said its posts have been popular, attracting more than 100 million views in the past year.

The legal dispute began after OpenAI announced an update to its text-to-video tool Sora in September. The update included the launch of a new Sora feature that it called Cameos.

OpenAI’s fall product update gave consumers on the Sora app the ability to scan their faces and allow others to manipulate their facial images in AI-generated environments. YouTube influencer and boxer Jake Paul, who is an investor in OpenAI, participated in OpenAI’s Cameos’ rollout. In less than five days, the Sora app hit more than 1 million downloads.

“OpenAI is now using Cameo’s own mark, CAMEO, to compete directly with Cameo,” Baron wrote in its lawsuit against OpenAI.

Lawyers for the two companies argued their positions in a Tuesday hearing.

Lee’s decision forbids OpenAI and its “officers, directors and employees from using the mark ‘Cameo,’ or any other mark that includes or is confusingly similar to ‘Cameo,’ ” according to her order. “Defendants are ordered to show cause why a preliminary injunction should not [be] issue[d].”

The temporary restraining order expires Dec. 22.

“While the court’s order is temporary, we hope that OpenAI will agree to stop using our mark permanently to avoid any further harm to the public or Cameo,” Cameo CEO Steven Galanis said in a Saturday statement. “We would like nothing more than to put this behind us so that we can focus our full attention on bringing talent and fans together as we head into the holidays.”

An OpenAI spokesperson responded in a statement: “We disagree with the complaint’s assertion that anyone can claim exclusive ownership over the word ‘cameo’, and we look forward to continuing to make our case to the court.”

The move comes as OpenAI has faced blowback in Hollywood as images of celebrities and dead newsmakers were manipulated without their consent.

Texas redrew its voting map as part of US President Donald Trump’s plan to win extra Republican seats in the 2026 midterm elections.

The United States Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that found the Texas 2026 congressional redistricting plan likely discriminates on the basis of race.

The order signed on Friday by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito will remain in place at least for the next few days while the court considers whether to allow the new map, which is favourable to Republicans, to be used in the US midterm elections next year.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton hailed the ruling, which had granted an “administrative stay” and temporarily stopped the lower court’s “injunction against Texas’s map”.

“Radical left-wing activists are abusing the judicial system to derail the Republican agenda and steal the US House for Democrats. I am fighting to stop this blatant attempt to upend our political system,” Paxton said in an earlier post on social media.

Texas redrew its congressional map in August as part of US President Donald Trump’s efforts to preserve a slim Republican majority in the House of Representatives in next year’s mid-term elections, touching off a nationwide redistricting battle between Republicans and Democrats.

The new redistricting map for Texas was engineered to give Republicans five additional House seats, but a panel of federal judges in El Paso ruled 2-1 on Tuesday, saying that the civil rights groups that challenged the map on behalf of Black and Hispanic voters were likely to win their case.

The redrawn map was likely racially discriminatory in violation of US constitutional protections, the court found.

Nonprofit news outlet The Texas Tribune said the state is now back to using, temporarily, its 2025 congressional map for voting as the Supreme Court has not yet decided what map Texas should ultimately use, and the “legality of the map” will play out in court over the coming weeks and months.

Texas was the first state to meet Trump’s demands on redistricting. Missouri and North Carolina followed Texas with new redistricting maps that would add an additional Republican seat each.

To counter those moves, California voters approved a ballot initiative to give Democrats an additional five seats there.

Redrawn voter maps are now facing court challenges in California, Missouri and North Carolina.

Republicans currently hold slim majorities in both chambers of Congress, and ceding control of either the House or Senate to the Democrats in the November 2026 midterm elections would imperil Trump’s legislative agenda in the second half of his latest term in office.

There have been legal fights at the Supreme Court for decades over the practice known as gerrymandering – the redrawing of electoral district boundaries to marginalise a certain set of voters and increase the influence of others.

The court issued its most important ruling to date on the matter in 2019, declaring that gerrymandering for partisan reasons – to boost the electoral chances of one’s own party and weaken one’s political opponent – could not be challenged in federal courts.

But gerrymandering driven primarily by race remains unlawful under the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law and 15th Amendment prohibition on racial discrimination in voting.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that found Texas’ 2026 congressional redistricting plan likely discriminates on the basis of race.

The order signed by Justice Samuel Alito will remain in place at least for the next few days while the court considers whether to allow the new map favorable to Republicans to be used in the midterm elections.

The court’s conservative majority has blocked similar lower court rulings because they have come too close to elections.

The order came about an hour after the state called on the high court to intervene to avoid confusion as congressional primary elections approach in March. The justices have blocked past lower-court rulings in congressional redistricting cases, most recently in Alabama and Louisiana, that came several months before elections.

The order was signed by Alito because he is the justice who handles emergency appeals from Texas.

Texas redrew its congressional map in the summer as part of Trump’s efforts to preserve a slim Republican majority in the House in next year’s elections, touching off a nationwide redistricting battle.

The new redistricting map was engineered to give Republicans five additional House seats, but a panel of federal judges in El Paso ruled 2-1 Tuesday that the civil rights groups that challenged the map on behalf of Black and Hispanic voters were likely to win their case.

If the ruling holds for now, Texas could be forced to hold elections next year using the map drawn by the GOP-controlled Legislature in 2021 based on the 2020 census.

Texas was the first state to meet Trump’s demands in what has become an expanding national battle over redistricting. Republicans drew the state’s new map to give the GOP five additional seats, and Missouri and North Carolina followed with new maps adding an additional Republican seat each. To counter those moves, California voters approved a ballot initiative to give Democrats an additional five seats.

The redrawn maps are facing court challenges in California, Missouri and North Carolina.

The Supreme Court is separately considering a case from Louisiana that could further limit race-based districts under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. It’s not entirely clear how the current round of redistricting would be affected by the outcome in the Louisiana case.

Sherman writes for the Associated Press.

Nov. 19 (UPI) — The House voted Tuesday against censuring Delegate Stacey Plaskett and removing her from the Intelligence Committee following revelations she texted with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a congressional hearing.

The late night 209-214 vote came hours after the House approved a bill directing the Justice Department to release the files from its investigation into Epstein. Three Republicans joined Democrats voting against the measure. Another three Republicans voted “present.”

Leading up to the vote to release the files, the House Oversight Committee began releasing troves of documents from Epstein’s estate that included his texts and other communications.

Those included copies of texts Epstein had with Plaskett as she was about to question Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer of President Donald Trump, during a 2019 congressional hearing, The New York Times reported.

Republicans seized on the revelation, and Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., introduced the censure resolution accusing Plaskett of having “inappropriately coordinated” with Epstein, receiving suggested lines of questioning and congratulations from him. The resolution also would have directed the House Ethics Committee to investigate her ties to Epstein.

Plaskett, a Democrat, represents the U.S. Virgin Islands as a delegate. That means that while she may participate in many of the chamber’s functions while representing the territory, she cannot vote on the House floor.

She defended herself in a House floor speech, explaining that Epstein was a constituent she had been in contact with to get information, reported Politico.

“I know how to question individuals. I know how to seek information. I have sought information from confidential informants, from murderers, from other individuals because I want the truth,” she said.

Norman, however, told The Washington Post that it was “beyond comprehension” that Plaskett would work with the disgraced financier on House business.

“The American people expect honesty, the American people expect integrity and judgment from their elected officials,” he said in a floor speech, according to the Post. “They expect members of Congress to conduct themselves with one word — decency — not to seek advice from a predator who exploited minor children.”

WASHINGTON — A federal court has blocked Texas from moving forward with a new congressional map hastily drawn in recent months to net Republicans up to five additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections.

The ruling on Tuesday is a major political blow to the Trump administration, which set off a redistricting arms race throughout the country earlier this year by encouraging Texas lawmakers to redraw its congressional district boundaries mid-decade — an extraordinary move bucking traditional practice.

The three-judge federal court panel in El Paso said in a 2-1 decision that “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map,” ordering the state to revert to the maps it had drawn in 2021.

Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott, who at Trump’s behest directed GOP state lawmakers to proceed with the plan, vowed on Tuesday that the state would appeal the ruling all the way to the Supreme Court.

Californians responded to Texas’ attempted move by voting on Nov. 4 to approve a new, temporary congressional map for the state, giving Democrats the opportunity to pick up five new seats.

Initially, the proposal pushed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, known as Prop. 50, had trigger language that would have conditioned new California maps going into effect based on whether Texas approved its new congressional districts.

But that language was stripped out last minute, raising the possibility that Democrats enter the 2026 midterm election with a distinct advantage. The language was removed because Texas had already passed its redistricting plan, making the trigger no longer needed, said Democratic redistricting expert Paul Mitchell, who drew the maps for Prop. 50.

“Our legislature eliminated the trigger because Texas had already triggered it,” Mitchell said Tuesday.

Newsom celebrated the ruling in a statement to The Times, which he also posted on the social media site X.

“Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned — and democracy won,” Newsom said. “This ruling is a win for Texas, and for every American who fights for free and fair elections.”

Legal scholars had warned that Texas’ bid would invite accusations and legal challenges of racial gerrymandering that California’s maps would not.

The new Texas redistricting plan appears to have been instigated by a letter from Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, who threatened Texas with legal action over three “coalition districts” that she argued were unconstitutional.

Coalition districts feature multiple minority communities, none of which comprises the majority. The newly configured districts passed by Texas redrew all three, potentially “cracking” racially diverse communities while preserving white-majority districts, legal scholars said.

While the Supreme Court’s rulings on redistricting have been sporadic, the justices have generally ruled that purely political redistricting is legal, but that racial gerrymandering is not — a more difficult line to draw in southern states where racial and political lines overlap.

In 2023, addressing a redistricting fight in Alabama over Black voter representation, the high court ruled in Allen vs. Milligan that discriminating against minority voters in gerrymandering is unconstitutional, ordering the Southern state to create a second minority-majority district.

The Justice Department is also suing California to attempt to block the use of its new maps in next year’s elections.

Times staff writer Melody Gutierrez contributed to this report.

The majority on a federal court in El Paso, Texas, found that the new map used race to redraw congressional districts.

A panel of federal judges has ruled that Texas’s newly redrawn congressional districts cannot be used in next year’s 2026 midterm elections, striking a blow to Republican efforts to tilt races in their favour.

On Tuesday, a two-to-one majority at the US District Court for western Texas blocked the map, on the basis that there was “substantial evidence” to show “that Texas racially gerrymandered” the districts.

Partisan gerrymandering has generally been considered legal under court precedent, but dividing congressional maps along racial lines is considered a violation of the US Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics. To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics,” the court’s majority wrote in the opening of its 160-page opinion.

The ruling marked a major setback to efforts to redraw congressional districts ahead of the critically important midterms, which decide the composition of the US Congress.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs in that election. With Republicans holding a narrow 219-seat majority, analysts speculate that control of the chamber could potentially switch parties.

Texas, a Republican stronghold, had kicked off a nationwide race to redesign congressional districts in favour of one party or the other.

In June, news reports emerged that the administration of President Donald Trump had reached out to state officials to redraw the red state’s map, in order to gain five additional House seats for Republicans.

Despite hesitations and a walkout by state Democrats, the Texas legislature passed a new, gerrymandered map in August.

That inspired other right-leaning states, notably North Carolina and Missouri, to similarly redraw their districts. North Carolina and Missouri each passed a map that would gain Republicans one additional House seat.

Texas’s actions also sparked a Democratic backlash. California Governor Gavin Newsom spearheaded a ballot campaign in his heavily blue state to pass a proposition in November that would suspend an independent districting commission and instead pass a partisan map, skewed in favour of Democrats.

Voters passed the ballot initiative overwhelmingly in November, teeing up Democrats to gain five extra seats in California next year.

The state redistricting battle has sparked myriad legal challenges, including the one decided in Texas on Tuesday.

In that case, civil rights groups accused the Texas government of attempting to dilute the power of Black and Hispanic voters.

Judges David Guaderrama, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and Jeffrey V Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority decision in favour of the plaintiffs.

A third judge — Jerry Smith, appointed under Ronald Reagan — dissented from their decision.

Writing for the majority, Brown said that Trump official Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, made the “legally incorrect assertion” that four congressional districts in the state were “unconstitutional” because they had non-white majorities.

The letter Dhillon sent containing that assertion helped prompt the Texas redistricting fight, Brown argued.

The judge also pointed to statements Texas Governor Greg Abbott made, seeming to reference the racial composition of the districts. If the new map’s aims were purely partisan and not racial, Brown indicated that it was curious no majority-white districts were targeted.

Tuesday’s ruling restores the 2021 map of Texas congressional districts. Currently, the state is represented by 25 Republicans and 12 Democrats in the US House.

Already, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has pledged to appeal the ruling before the US Supreme Court.

“The radical left is once again trying to undermine the will of the people. The Big Beautiful Map was entirely legal and passed for partisan purposes to better represent the political affiliations of Texas,” Paxton wrote in a statement posted to social media.

He expressed optimism about his odds before the conservative-leaning Supreme Court. “I fully expect the Court to uphold Texas’s sovereign right to engage in partisan redistricting.”

California’s new congressional map likewise faces a legal challenge, with the Trump administration suing alongside state Republicans.

Palestinian families call for help as Israel’s two-year military assault has left hundreds of thousands vulnerable.

Cold temperatures and heavy rainfall have worsened already dire conditions for hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinian families across the Gaza Strip, as Israel continues to block deliveries of tents and other critical shelter supplies to the besieged territory.

Humanitarian groups have been warning for weeks that Palestinians living in tent camps and other makeshift shelters do not have what they need to withstand blistering winter conditions in the coastal enclave.

Many have been forcibly displaced multiple times as a result of Israel’s two-year bombardment of Gaza, which damaged and destroyed more than 198,000 structures across the Strip, according to United Nations figures.

“I have been crying since morning,” a displaced Palestinian mother of two told Al Jazeera from Gaza City on Saturday, pointing to her family’s tent, which had been flooded as a result of heavy rainfall overnight.

The woman, who did not provide her name, said she was struggling to provide for her children after several members of her family, including her husband, were killed in Israel’s genocidal war, which began in October 2023.

“I am asking for help to get a proper tent, a mattress and a blanket. I want my children to have suitable clothes,” she said. “I don’t have anyone to turn to … There is no one to help me.”

The UN and other humanitarian groups have urged Israel to lift all restrictions on aid to the Strip, where more than 69,000 people have been killed in more than two years of Israel’s war.

But the Israeli government has maintained its severe restrictions on the flow of humanitarian aid despite a ceasefire deal with the Palestinian group Hamas that came into effect on October 10.

Aid groups said earlier this month that about 260,000 Palestinian families in Gaza, totalling almost 1.5 million people, were vulnerable as the cold winter months approached.

‘Misery on top of misery’

At the same time, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has said it has enough shelter supplies to help as many as 1.3 million Palestinians – but cannot bring them into Gaza due to the Israeli restrictions.

On Saturday, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said deliveries were more critical than ever as this winter coincides with Gaza’s displacement crisis.

“It’s cold and wet in Gaza. Displaced people are now facing a harsh winter without the basics to protect them from the rain and cold,” he said in a social media post.

Describing the humanitarian toll as “misery on top of misery”, Lazzarini noted that Gaza’s fragile shelters “quickly flood, soaking people’s belongings”.

“More shelter supplies are urgently needed for the people,” he added.

Reporting from az-Zuwayda in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary also said many Palestinians have no other option but to remain in flooded and flimsy tents since their neighbourhoods were destroyed by Israel and shelters are full.

“Parents are unable to [buy] their children winter clothes, shoes and slippers,” she said. “Families are left helpless, without knowing what to do.”

Late on Saturday, the Israeli military fired flares in areas southeast of Khan Younis city, sources in southern Gaza told Al Jazeera. Armies generally launch flares to highlight enemy positions and indicate incoming attacks.

Earlier, Israel launched air strikes inside Gaza ceasefire’s “yellow line” demarcation near Khan Younis as well as Gaza City in the north.

Palestinians are turning to soup kitchens to feed their families as Gaza is gripped by a crippling food crisis because Israel is limiting the entry of aid trucks, despite the new ceasefire agreement.

Gaza residents say they fear a return to Israel’s full-scale bombing as they struggle to find food, water and medicine.

Oct. 31 (UPI) — A federal judge in Washington permanently blocked President Donald Trump‘s executive order requiring proof of citizenship for those who cast mail-in ballots.

The president lacks the authority to change federal election procedures because the Constitution places that authority with Congress and the respective states, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled on Friday.

“The president directed the Election Assistance Commission to ‘take appropriate action’ to alter the national mail voter registration form to require documentary proof of United States citizenship,” Kollar-Kotelly said in her 81-page ruling.

Because Trump does not have the authority to order the EAC to alter federal election procedures, Kollar-Kotelly permanently enjoined the EAC and others from enforcing the president’s directive.

The ruling arises from challenges to Executive Order 14,248 — Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections, which Trump signed on March 25.

In it, the president orders the EAC to require documentary proof of citizenship on the national mail voter registration form to ensure foreign nationals are not submitting votes via mail-in ballots.

State or local officials in turn would record the type of document used to show proof of citizenship.

The executive order also requires mail-in ballots to be received on or before election day for them to count.

The Democratic National Committee, League of United Latin American Citizens and League of Women Voters Education Fund filed the federal lawsuit against the president and the Republican National Committee to stop enforcement of the executive order.

“While the fight is far from over, we’re glad the court agreed that a president cannot ‘short circuit’ Congress and unilaterally use an illegal executive order to obliterate the rights of millions of voters,” said Marcia Johnson, who is chief counsel for the League of Women Voters, in a prepared statement.

Although Kollar-Kotelly blocked the enforcement of Trump’s executive order, other parts of the lawsuit are yet to be decided.