improved

A United States federal judge has ordered immigration authorities to improve conditions at a New York City facility following reports of overcrowding, inadequate food and unhygienic conditions.

On Tuesday, Judge Lewis Kaplan issued a temporary restraining order that mandated Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to implement reforms at 26 Federal Plaza, a government building in Manhattan where one floor contains holding cells for migrants and asylum seekers.

The restraining order requires the government to limit capacity at the holding facility, ensure cleanliness and provide sleeping mats.

“My conclusion here is that there is a very serious threat of continuing irreparable injury, given the conditions that I’ve been told about,” Kaplan said.

Under Kaplan’s order, the government will be forced to thoroughly clean the cells three times a day and provide adequate supplies of soap, towels, toilet paper, toothbrushes, toothpaste and feminine products.

He has also instructed immigration officials to allocate 4.6 square metres (50 square feet) per person, shrinking the capacity of the largest room from 40 or more detainees to just 15.

Finally, to ensure access to legal representation, Kaplan said the government must ensure detainees have accommodations to make confidential, unmonitored and unrecorded legal telephone calls.

Inside the complaint

The changes come in response to a complaint filed by lawyers for a Peruvian asylum-seeker named Sergio Alberto Barco Mercado, who was taken into custody on August 8 after appearing for a scheduled court date.

He was imprisoned at 26 Federal Plaza after his arrest. But his lawyers have argued that Barco Mercado and others in the facility have faced “crowded, squalid, and punitive conditions”. They also said they were denied access to their client after his arrest.

Barco Mercado testified that the holding room was “extremely crowded” and “smelled of sewage” and that the conditions exacerbated a tooth infection that swelled his face and altered his speech.

“We did not always get enough water,” Barco Mercado said in a sworn declaration. “There was one guard who would sometimes hold a bottle of water up and people would wait to have him squirt some into our mouths, like we were animals.”

Barco Mercado has since been transferred to a facility in upstate New York.

In court filings, other detainees complained that they had no soap, toothbrushes or other hygiene products while locked in the 26 Federal building.

They also said they were fed inedible “slop” and endured the “horrific stench” of sweat, urine and faeces, in part because the rooms have open toilets. One woman having her period could not use menstrual products because women in her room were given just two to divvy up, the lawsuit said.

A mobile phone video recorded last month showed about two dozen men crowded in one of the building’s four holding rooms, many lying on the floor with thermal blankets but no mattresses or padding.

ICE responds to allegations of ill treatment

At Tuesday’s hearing, a government lawyer conceded that “inhumane conditions are not appropriate and should not be tolerated”.

“I think we all agree that conditions at 26 Federal Plaza need to be humane, and we obviously share that belief,” said Jeffrey S Oestericher, a representative for the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.

The government also tried to downplay allegations of overcrowding at the facility and inhumane conditions.

In a sworn declaration, Nancy Zanello, the assistant director of ICE’s New York City Field Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations, wrote that 24 people were held in the building’s four holding rooms as of Monday.

That number was well below the 154-person limit imposed by the city fire marshal for the floor.

Zanello also said that each room was equipped with at least one toilet and sink, and hygiene products were available, including soap, teeth cleaning wipes and feminine products.

The 26 Federal Plaza site has become a flashpoint in New York as the city contends with President Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigration.

The holding cells are on the 10th floor, just two floors below an immigration court. The building also houses the New York field office for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other government offices.

While ICE has conducted high-profile raids on factories, farms and other workplaces elsewhere in the country, New York City has seen its immigration arrests largely unfold in court buildings, as migrants and asylum seekers exit their civil immigration hearings.

Critics have denounced such arrests as violations of the right to due process. They warn that, by carrying out arrests in court buildings, officials could discourage foreign nationals from pursuing lawful paths to immigration.

But in January, the Trump administration rescinded guidelines that limited immigration arrests in “sensitive locations”, court buildings generally considered to be among them.

An analysis published this week by local news outlet The City found that half of all court arrests nationwide in late May and early June took place in New York City.

Aug. 6 (UPI) — Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced Wednesday that the U.S. automaker is working on an improved full-self driving, or FSD, model that may be ready to roll soon.

“Tesla is training a new FSD model with ~10X params and a big improvement to video compression loss,” he posted to X. “Probably ready for public release end of next month if testing goes well.”

“Params” refers to a larger parameter size, which has to do with its artificial intelligence. An increase in parameters usually means that the AI is a larger model that is more capable and has been trained on more data. In a self-driving car, this means its AI can better use its cameras and sensors to recognize its surroundings and better navigate.

Tesla has been scrutinized in the past by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which in October of last year announced its Office of Defects Investigation was examining the records related to the use of Tesla’s self-driving systems.

According to the ODI, it identified four reports of a Tesla vehicle crashing after entering an area of “reduced roadway visibility conditions.” Each crash occurred with the FSD function engaged, in conditions like fog, sun glare or airborne dust.

The ODI reported that a pedestrian was fatally struck by a Tesla using its FSD, and another person was injured in a separate incident.

Tesla stock price has been down nearly 19% year-to-date as of Tuesday.

July 26 (UPI) — Israel Defense Forces are taking new steps to improve the delivery of aid to Gazans, who the IDF says are not subject to famine despite contrary reports.

Aerial aid drops will resume and include seven pallets of flour, sugar and canned food, while pauses in fighting will enable the safe movement of U.N. convoys that contain food and medical supplies, the IDF announced Saturday in a post on X.

Israel also reconnected a power line from Israel to a desalination plant in Gaza that will increase daily water output to nearly 22,000 cubic yards.

“The IDF emphasizes that there is no starvation in Gaza,” the IDF post says. “This is a false campaign promoted by Hamas.”

The U.N. and international aid organizations are responsible for food distribution in Gaza and for ensuring Hamas does not receive any, which the IDF says commonly steals humanitarian aid for personal use and profit.

Hamas accused of attacking aid distribution sites

Hamas has targeted GHF aid distribution sites with deadly violence, including a July 16 incident that killed 19 Gazans at a Khan Younis site and a July 5 grenade attack that injured two U.S. aid workers, according to the non-partisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Such attacks occurred as Hamas struggles to raise funds and is incapable of rebuilding its collapsed tunnels or paying its fighters, former Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer Oded Ailam told The Washington Post on Monday.

Hamas did not prepare for more than a year of war when it attacked Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, and is struggling to provide basic services for Gazans, Gazan analyst Ibrahim Madhoun said.

Hamas previously depended on revenues from taxing commercial shipments and seizing humanitarian goods for funding by deploying plainclothes Hamas personnel to take inventory at crossings into Gaza and warehouses and markets, The Washington Post reported.

U.N. and European Commission officials and others from international organizations say there is no evidence of Hamas stealing aid.

Officials with the U.S. Agency for International Development said they found no evidence of Hamas stealing aid for Gazans, ABC News reported on Saturday.

USAID investigated 150 reported incidents of stolen aid from October 2024 until May and said the perpetrators could not be identified in most cases in which aid was seized.

An unnamed Gazan contractor, though, told The Washington Post that over the past two years he witnessed Hamas charge local merchants about $6,000 each to receive aid or lose their trucks and threatened to kill or condemn those who did not cooperate.

The contractor claims he knew at least two aid truck drivers who Hamas killed for refusing to pay the designated foreign terrorist organization to deliver aid intended for Gazans.

U.N. aid trucks halted inside Gaza

While claims of Hamas intercepting aid deliveries to raise funds are disputed, the United Nations says it has thousands of tons of aid sitting idle.

The United Nations recently halted 950 trucks inside Gaza that holding a combined total of 2,500 tons of food near the Kerem Shalom crossing, Johnnie More, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation executive chairman, opined in The Wall Street Journal on Friday.

“Since we began our operations in May, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has repeatedly called for the U.N. and its affiliate agencies to combine efforts with us to feed the people of Gaza,” Moore said.

“As of Friday morning, hundreds of trucks loaded with food from the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations were sitting idle inside Gaza,” he wrote.

“The food is there, the people are starving, and yet it isn’t moving to them fast enough to meet the need.”

Moore said video footage shows many of the trucks have been looted or abandoned, and their drivers are walking away.

Officials with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency blame the GHF for what UNRWA calls a “constructed and deliberate mass starvation.”

The GHF is incapable of addressing the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza and called air drops the “most expensive and inefficient way to deliver aid” to Gazans, according to UNRWA.

The agency says it has the equivalent of 6,000 trucks of food and medical supplies “Stuck” in Egypt and Jordan.

Manchester United have submitted an improved bid of more than £60m for Brentford striker Bryan Mbeumo.

This month United had a bid rejected for the 25-year-old of £45m plus up to £10m in add-ons.

Talks over the Cameroon forward, who would become the club’s second signing of the summer, are due to continue this week.

Following the £62.5m capture of Matheus Cunha from Wolves, United are keen to further strengthen Ruben Amorim’s squad before they return for pre-season training on 7 July.

New Tottenham manager Thomas Frank was keen to be reunited with Mbeumo, while there has also been interest in the forward from other Champions League clubs.

Sources have suggested Brentford would want at least the same fee as Wolves have received for Cunha before they agree to the sale of a player who still has a year left on his contract.

As with Cunha, Mbeumo’s Premier League experience is viewed as a major positive as Amorim needs players who can hit the ground running as United look to make a more positive start to the season than their three sluggish efforts under Erik ten Hag.

Mbeumo scored a career-best 20 goals for Brentford last season, while he also contributed nine assists to the Bees’ cause.

An international colleague of United goalkeeper Andre Onana, Mbeumo is likely to miss four weeks of the 2025-26 campaign because of Cameroon’s participation in the Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco.

Cameroon play Gabon in their opening group game on 24 December.

The renewed move for Mbeumo comes as the future of Alejandro Garnacho is once again the subject of intense debate after he posted an image of himself wearing an Aston Villa shirt with the name ‘Rashford’ on his social media channels.

Fellow United outcast Marcus Rashford responded to the post with a ‘my brother’ message to the Argentina forward, who has been valued at £60m after being told by Amorim to find another club this summer.