Stationeers and Icarus developers RocketWerkz are making a spiritual successor to beloved space sim Kerbal Space Program, which is currently titled "Kitten Space Agency" in a flagrant display of adherence to wholesome internet trends. It's based on an actual Kerbal Space Program 2 pitch the studio threw at Take-Two subsidiary Private Division back in the day. RocketWerkz CEO and original DayZ creator Dean Hall has hired several former KSP and KSP2 developers to work on the game, and is describing it on social media as a "KSP killer".

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Inflexion Games are closing their UK office, laying off staff and restructuring their main Canadian studio after failing to find commercial success with their Victorian fantasy survival game Nightingale. Reportedly, at least 22 people have been let go.

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Part of the fun of Dragon Age's fantasy is that it's inconsistent - or at least, inconsistent by the standards of fantasy RPGs, which often break down into a million neatly organised and interlocking codex entries. It all rides on who you speak to. The humans believe one thing about the origins and workings of Thedas, the elves another, the qunari something else entirely. These differences are the basis for many factional disagreements and thus, many core series plot developments. According to former lead writer David Gaider, however, there's an "uber-plot" behind it all that may one day be resolved and bring the series to a close, assuming BioWare continue to refer to his original (and closely guarded) narrative documents.

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Some days, I wonder if every word written before a trailer is actually superfluous. It’s a visual medium, after all. What can a description achieve save to clumsily gesture at the true shape of something; a dog-eared tour brochure for a thrilling weekend spelunking in Plato’s cave? I can usually shake this feeling, but gory zombie action game Showa American Story is my breaking point. There is nothing I can impart about this thing that will not be conveyed better by allowing its new trailer to wash over you like a tide of sheer videogame. Here’s it:

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Remedy's Alan Wake 2 has now "recouped most of its development and marketing expenses", CEO Tero Virtala has announced in a business review for January-September 2024. Speaking as somebody who would quite like there to be more Alan Wake games - or at least, moderately weird and pretty decent blockbuster singleplayer horror games - I am both pleased by this news and a little troubled that Remedy's eldritch forest fable (which came out in October 2023) has yet to break even.

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Like a plague doctor delicately administering another handful of leeches, Ice Pick Lodge have shared a bit more about the recently announced Pathologic 3, explaining how their plans for the cult epidemic-battling series have progressed since the release of Pathologic 2.

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BioWare currently has no plans for Dragon Age: The Veilguard expansions, according to reports. Instead the studio will support the fantasy RPG with smaller updates and otherwise turn their full attention towards Mass Effect 5.

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Put your hand up if you'd forgotten that every Assassin's Creed game is, strictly speaking, set in the present day. I know I had. That's not the actual distant past you're parkouring through. That isn't actual Renaissance architecture you're clambering on. It's a holographic Animus simulation, conjured from ancestral memories flash-frozen within your DNA - convenient, inasmuch as it means that any inconsistencies are your DNA's fault, not Ubisoft's. If the ledge-mantling animations are glitchy, that's simply because you have bad genes.

We can both be forgiven for losing sight of Assassin's Creed's modern day narrative frame. Ubisoft themselves have downplayed it since the era of Desmond Miles, the watery Peter Parker figure who served as puppetmaster protagonist for AC games up to Assassin's Creed 3. In Assassin's Creed Shadows, however, they're planning to bring back the modern day setting in a big way, though details are scanty.

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I didn't sleep last night for entirely self-inflicted reasons and my brain feels like that one accursed hoover bag you refuse to empty, because there is no way of doing so that won't turn the neighbourhood into Silent Hill. I need to avoid any complicated write-ups, or my brain will detonate similarly and paint north London grey.

Ah, a minigolf game! I think I can just about hack the concept of minigolf, on this most desperate of Mondays. It is golf but mini. Bonzai golf. Digestible! Intuitive! Why, I've managed to write 100 words without even looking at the Steam page. Let's do so now. Wait a minute, this isn't minigolf. It's Mini Mini Golf Golf. What is Mini Mini Golf Golf? "Destabilize the present and plunge into a neon psychohistory of a bizarre entity in distress," the Steam page explains. "This is not a game about minigolf." It is too late to flee.

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Twitch have introduced a new "Politics and Sensitive Social Issues" label for streams that "focus" on topics like "elections, civic integrity, and war or military conflict". As with the streaming giant's existing labels for M-rated material, sexual themes or depictions of gambling, the idea is that viewers can filter out such streams in advance by altering their settings.

Advertisers, similarly, can "make better choices about the content they want to advertise next to" - in other words, pull their ads from a whole swathe of material if they don't want to be associated with anything controversial. Twitch's hope is that "the labels will allow advertisers to have more context to inform which types of streams they show their ads alongside, which we expect to increase brands’ confidence in running ads on Twitch, and could bring new advertisers to our service."

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While we're getting a Gears Of War prequel in Gears Of War: E-Day, this does mean that Gears Of War 6 is yet to be a thing. In a recent episode of IGN's Podcast Unlocked, former Gears Of War director and current Diablo 4 lead Rod Fergusson revealed what his plans were for Gears 6 when he left. In short, he was going to take the game to space. Righto.

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Early reactions to Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 multiplayer range from frothing dislike through omnimovement hype to our own Ed Thorn's dead-eyed appraisal that it's "a good one, I think. Not a bad one. If you like Call Of Duty, you will like this. If you don't like Call Of Duty, you will not like this." I feel like we need to emergency-deploy a supply crate of smelling salts, because the sheer OK-ness of Black Ops 6 appears to have tumbled Ed into a stupor.

Perhaps it would be a different story if he'd encountered some of the spawning issues and glitches people are talking about, with players joining games and materialising right into a hail of fire. The players in question include Black Ops 6's developers, who comically note in the latest Black Ops 6 patch notes that "Yes, we saw ourselves in a Killcam before selecting a Loadout too." The latest patch seeks to address this, naturally. As regards the campaign side of things, it also resets your safehouse currency to 5000, if you've had your single player funds stolen (or multiplied) by technical gremlins.

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To say that Factorio: Space Age throws out the rulebook is an understatement. It'd be more fitting to say it's somehow automated the whole process: an inserter plucked out the rulebook from my brain and deposited it in hot magma, while a new rulebook was churned out in a nearby machine and plopped into my brain from the other side - only for that to be immediately plucked out and incinerated as well. With each new planet and each new phase, Space Age reinvents itself. I'm battling hyperbole here, but ah hell, I admit defeat. Factorio: Space Age is a masterpiece, the final form of perhaps the most well-crafted building game I'll ever play.

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Hori's latest addition to its controller lineup, the "Horipad Wireless for Steam," is now available for preorder on Amazon. After already releasing in Japan at the end of October, now the gamepad is coming to the US.

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Ogres, Orcs, and Khorne are all on the way in the upcoming expansion for strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3, and Creative Assembly have just released their latest dev vlog with a few more details on what to expect. There’s still no word on the exact title, although given the established naming convention (Shadows Of Change, Thrones Of Decay), I’m tentatively calling it “Sniffers Of Glue” in honour of the No Think, Only Krump faction selection.

You’ll find the vlog in its full glory below. What’s interesting about this one is that vlog mainstay director Rich Alridge has brought along some new faces: battle designer Josh King and audio director Chris Goldsmith. And, yes, so no-one can accuse me of burying the lede: that audio design involved the enthusiastic, deeply disgusting slurping of porridge and yoghurt, and the jangling of real bones. The source of the bones is not revealed.

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Steam's built-in game recording feature has been usable in beta since the summer, but it has now been properly launched for every user, following a client update to Steam yesterday. It's basically another method of capturing funny ragdoll glitches and posting them on the "lol-games-are-dumb" channel of your friend's Discord. Or for posting that flukey knife throw in Call Of Duty to Twitter, as if you really meant to kill the man from across the map all along. Or saving a clip for your personal records, like the footage of that time you yeeted an innocent citizen off the 50-foot wall of a castle town in Dragon's Dogma 2. We all do that, right? Right?

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Back in the misty reaches of time (March) popular farming sim Stardew Valley got a big update that added more pets to the game (it also let you drink mayonaise but let's not get sidetracked). Those new cats, dogs, and turtles had the cute distinction of being able to wear hats, should you choose to kit your wee friends out. Now, following many months of smaller updates to the game, it seems those hats are causing a problem. "[If] you are experiencing performance issues in Stardew Valley 1.6, remove all hats from pets," said creator Eric Barone in a xeet. When asked the lore-accurate cause of this problem, he blamed: "a strange rash".

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Halo Infinite recently received a big update in the form of Delta Arena, a playlist that features recreations of Halo 2's most popular maps and a special third-person mode. The true highlight, though, is yet to come. And that's through an entirely different Halo game: The Master Chief Collection. Soon enough, you'll be able to play Halo 2's lost E3 demo on it, thanks to some lovely modders.

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We'll have a review of Planet Coaster 2 soon, but I keep making Brendy do other tasks so he's not had enough time yet to ride the rails. That means it falls to me to at least let you know that Frontier's theme park builder is out now.

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Putting aside my natural annoyance at Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater for almost beating out the Twarhammer series in the headline real estate wars, I am more than a little excited to play. Some days, you simply must feast on a tree frog, and while we still don’t have a solid release date, that day doesn’t feel too far away. Good news for stealth fans, and perhaps gooder news for a dozen strapline writers sweating profusely, soiling themselves in anticipation of using “kept you waiting, huh?”.

Until then, I at least have a steady drip feed of new information to keep me sated, the latest of which is the substantial hint that there'll be some new dialogue in the game, as per the video below. Alongside that, the previously pseudonymous Suzetta Miñet - who was credited with voicing EVA in MGS3 and Peace Walker - has revealed herself to be Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel in Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Cheers for the spot, Automaton West.

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When I was a competitive long-distance runner at school, breath control was paramount. We were never really taught this, mind. It was an art you picked up through practice: how to breathe before the race, saturating your blood with O2 without dizzying yourself; when to permit the shorter, emergency breaths and when to apply restraint; when to deepen your inhales and charge yourself up for an attack on a hill.

And then, how to organise your body around your breath, straightening your posture to expand your lungs without tipping back too far and squandering muscle power; how to breath in time with your stride and the movement of your shoulders, so as to firm up your momentum and shave a miraculous-feeling minute off your finishing time. All this, plus various daft psychological war gambits of my own devising. When overtaking or being overtaken, I used to seal my lips shut on that side and breath through the other corner of my mouth, to make it look like I was hardly out of breath at all.

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The dominion of hated Super Earth threatens to expand afresh as Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt toys openly with the prospect of Helldivers 2 cross-over games, beginning with tabletop wargame Trench Crusade and extending to, well, take your pick. Arrowhead's appetite for other licenses appears insatiable. It's the kind of sheer expansionism you'd expect from Earth's loathsome regime, whose "managed democracy" propaganda continues to enthrall thousands of hapless disposable imperialists. Pilestedt even wants to make a Fifth Element game! Milla Jovovich is spinning in her grave. Milla Jovovich isn't dead, you say? Well, that's good news at least.

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A few months ago, the rumour took root that GTA 6's release date would slip back from 2025 to 2026. An anonymous insider averred that studio heads were "worried" about the new open world game's progress - hence, perhaps, Rockstar's decision to mandate a full return to in-office work. Pshaw, say publishers Take-Two CEO. They announced a fall 2025 launch in March and have just doubled down on it in their latest financial briefing, with CEO Strauss Zelnick subsequently going on the tellybox to say that Take-Two are "highly confident in the timing", though he still has nothing to share about GTA 6 on PC.

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When multiplayer fishing game Webfishing came out last month, it offered a relaxing hangout zone for cats and dogs. Everything revolves around catching, selling, and collecting the fish that gather in the rivers of a small island. It also lets you customise your character with clothing. Mostly simple hats and shorts, but some options let players celebrate their sexuality, such as a rainbow-adorned t-shirts, or titles that hang above your character which simply say "Trans" or "Bi". All this led one player to complain there was no "Straight" title. So, the developer added one. It costs 10 grand.

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Got an email about this. Looks cool. Is free. “I’ll write about that,” I thought. “I’ll write about that for Rock Paper Shotgun, a place that semi-regularly posts articles about cool and free games.” So here we are. If you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, assuming the only reason I’d open an article in a superfluous and straightforward manner is because I’m about to deliver some sort of third sentence twist, you’re completely wrong! There’s no twist at all. I’m simply going to deliver some information about the game in a neutral tone. You can find VED: Purification, a free prologue demo to RPG VED, here.

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Back in the mists of 2021, No Man's Sky revealed its very own Normandy SR1 space frigate. "The Normandy in No Man's Sky?" you cry. "Why, that's a Mass Effect vessel. Some mistake here surely?" 1) My name's not Shirley, and 2) Indeed it is a Mass Effect ship, but HelloGames struck a time-limited deal with BioWare to create a version for their own space sim.

"Blast, if only I'd noticed this at the time and acquired one," you mourn. "Ah, so many years I have wasted." Be of good cheer, my friend, for No Man's Sky has a Normandy once again, just in time for the latest N7 Day of assorted Mass Effect celebrations. For the next two weeks, you'll be able to get a-hold of it by way of a revised version of 2021's Beachhead Expedition. Tray-tray, away!

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Roblox is making changes in an attempt to keep younger players safe in the online platform. Beginning later this month, children under the age of 13 will no longer be able to search, discover or play unrated experiences within Roblox, and will be unable to access social hangout experiences.

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I first played Taiko no Tatsujin in an arcade (in Japan, because I am very cool), where it's controlled by hitting a recreation of an actual taiko drum. It was fun enough that I wish there was a taiko drum peripheral available for PC now the series is on our platform.

Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythm Festival is out now via Steam, where it offers over 70 songs to drum through, and a subscription service through which to unlock over 700 more. Maybe I should try to get my Donkey Konga drums working on PC, but I'll probably settle for playing it with a gamepad.

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Could tower defence be the ultimate "it's Friday and I am here in body only" genre? I haven't really thought about it before, but Rift Riff's effusively laidback crowd control has me pondering those optimal moments in any tower defender when the incoming horde hits the flamer-MG triangle just right, and you can settle back comfortably into the role of clockwatcher.

Rift Riff encourages this behaviour by being nice to look at. Created by a trio of developers including Hidden Folks designer Adriaan de Jongh, it's a world of spacey, sun-carved mountains, forests and monoliths. The towers resemble the sacred architecture of Monument Valley, and the colour scheme and general ambience remind me of Cocoon. There's a demo, if you fancy it.

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Amplitude Studios, developers of many a game with "Endless" in the name, have split with publisher Sega to become independent again, with ownership of the studio reverting to its original founders and "other members of the team". The developers say everyone is parting "on good terms" and that the last eight years of getting published under Sega has been "amazing". But there are other businessy reasons, of course. Namely, Sega have been trying to trim down their European studios for the past year, and Amplitude is just the latest bunch of devs affected by that.

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In all honesty, Toads Of The Bayou could have been several notches less ribbet-ing than its Steam demo ended up being, because its stylised pixel fly-snatchers are just that good. There’s only one of the three characters available in the freebie (one of the others is a toad nun with a shotgun), but he’s got a little cutlass, a flintlock pistol, and a can-do attitude - at least when it comes to either stabbing or shooting things. The game itself is a little bit deckbuilder, a little bit Into The Breach: turn based strategy with perfect information and various tricks you can pull to make enemies hit each other instead of the thing you’re trying to protect. Indulge yourself on the gourmet tray-tray below.

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Palworld developers Pocketpair have finally revealed which patents Nintendo and the Pokémon Company are suing them about. It looks like they're focusing on the act of throwing capsular items to catch or release monsters, together with the usage of monsters as mounts.

If you've somehow yet to encounter Palworld, it's a bestselling survival game that takes hefty - some would say, scandalous - inspiration from Pokémon, with players poaching Pokésque critters using magic spheres, and deploying them as soldiers and minions.

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Warframe developers Digital Extremes have announced a new round of early access for their 2025-bound fantasy action-RPG Soulframe, which I saw a bit of last year and think is pretty promising. They're now adding 2000 players to a Preludes build of the game every week, with each invite email including an additional four invite codes, so you can get your friends involved.

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Let’s try and get you up to speed on the fascinating oddity that is simulation game Ecosystem, on the off chance that Nate's coverage of it hasn't stuck with you like an unwelcome brain parasite you’re nonetheless unwilling to get removed for fear of the lingering emptiness it might cause (he once described an eel as “a quaver with erectile dysfunction”). Broadly speaking, this game is Spore’s evolutionary-biology-degree-having cousin. It’s been in early access for about three years now, but with the latest "Crustacean" update, it’s just hit 1.0. Once again, carcinization has come for all things.

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"A lot of puzzle games can leave you staring at the same static screen for ages, but here, I’m always pushing you forward," says Mark Brown of Game Maker’s Toolkit. For a decade now, Brown has been releasing accessible deep dives on game design for his popular YouTube channel, like "How Game Designers Protect Players From Themselves" and "The Two Types of Random in Game Design." This week, he’s releasing his own for the first time.

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"Imagine you buy a pinball machine, and years later, you enter your den to go play it, only to discover that all the paddles are missing, the pinball and bumpers are gone, and the monitor that proudly displayed your unassailable high score is removed". As reported by Polygon, that's an argument put forth by a new lawsuit against Ubisoft, filed by two Californian players of The Crew. They're suing the company in a proposed class action lawsuit over shutting down the racing game's servers, rendering it unplayable.

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Here’s a Steam quote for you: ‘The Rise Of The Golden Idol is the best game I’ve ever played where I spent most of my time staring at the screen going “well what chuffing well is it, then?!” Fiendish but fair, this detective puzzler demands a heady mix of observation, deduction, and logic, but rewards you with a progressively engaging story, and steadily more infuriatingly brilliant puzzles. Despite teaching you everything you need to know in the tutorial, it still manages to introduce new wrinkles and twists on the formula with each fresh chapter. My verdict? Imagine me lying my floor, massaging my temple with one hand and giving a fat thumbs up with the other.

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The developers of hero shooter Overwatch 2 must have dropped a box full of old photographs while clearing the attic, spilling old snapshots of Route 66 onto the floor and getting snared in a nostalgic daze. The game is launching a "Classic" mode today that will let you play the first-person payload pusher as it (mostly) was back in 2016 when the first Overwatch launched. That means 6v6 fights, the original abilities of its heroes, and no limits to stop the entire team picking the same character.

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My strongest and most enduring memory of Grand Theft Auto will always be creasing into complete hysterics watching my mate pile into a crumpled police officer with a wooden baseball bat in GTA 3 after school one time. Young’uns these days just don’t appreciate how revolutionary it was to be able to hit a cop with a thing after he’d already fallen over. Suffice it to say I’ve got good memories of the open world series’ nascent forays into 3D, though never enough to tempt me into revisiting them, especially given the poor reception to Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition. I can sympathise. I’m annoyed just having to type a semicolon and a dash in the same game name.

If you’re in a similarly non-fussed position (I will never not be annoyed that ‘nonplussed’ doesn’t mean what it sounds like it should mean) I can’t imagine a lighting update that’s been available on the mobile versions for a while is enough to tempt you back. But what is a reporter's job if not pathetically treading water between chunklets of Grand Theft Auto news, upon the publishing of which Graham presses the button to release the nutritious pellets on which we all wholly subsist? I hope he doesn’t read that last sentence. I don’t get my pellet if the syntax becomes too convoluted. Moving swiftly on.

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After nearly a year of public beta honing, the Nvidia App – Team Green’s new one-stop shop for desktop GPU management – is out in full. Not alongside the upcoming RTX 50 series, as rumoured, but right-now-today-this-minute. I’ve been testing out the launch version and while it’s not without some dud features, it does agreeably achieve its stated goal of combining the functions within Nvidia Control Panel and GeForce Experience. And if installing it means never having to use the latter again, well, that’s 149MB well spent.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Firefighters say they are making some progress battling the wildfires in Northern California. In all, the fires have consumed more than 220,000 acres, an area larger than New York City.

More than 5,700 structures have been destroyed. And at least 41 people have died, making it the deadliest wildfire in the state’s history.

The wine industry and the tourism business connected with it are trying to take stock. More than $50 billion in California’s economy comes from the wine business. And nearly 24 million people visit the region for that reason every year.

Special correspondent Joanne Jennings reports from Napa County.

JOANNE JENNINGS, Special Correspondent: The Mayacamas mountain range creates a natural barrier between Sonoma and Napa Counties. And it is here where the massive Nuns fire is posing a tough challenge for some 11,000 firefighters who are taming the blaze with aircraft and units on the ground.

CAPT. MARK BRENNERMAN, Viejas fire Department: We’re going around and making sure none of these fires that are still smoldering and smoking, we’re not going to get another big fire out of them.

JOANNE JENNINGS: Even as firefighters are battling shifting winds, owners and workers in Wine Country are trying to determine just how much damage has been done.

The tony Highlands gated community was among the first to be consumed by flames when the Atlas fire raced through this canyon, leaving several mansions in rubble. Down the hill, at the Silverado resort, charred remnants of the Safeway PGA Tour remain. The major golf event had just wrapped up last Sunday afternoon, a few hours before flames engulfed tents and grandstands, forcing spectators and athletes to evacuate.

MAN: Do you see how it burned right up to the retaining wall here?

JOANNE JENNINGS: Silverado resident Steve Messina stayed behind and shot video of fire crews containing the flames, which consumed some condos. Within minutes, flames raced three miles down Silverado Trail, home to several storied hillside vineyards.

Most wineries in the region have been spared the worst. But hundreds suffered some damage. And at least eight vineyards have been significantly damaged or destroyed.

Pierre Birebent, who has been making wines for the family-owned Signorello estate for 20 years, rushed to his winery as quickly as he could.

PIERRE BIREBENT, Signorello Estate Vineyards: I jumped right in my truck, came down, and then when I was riding down, I saw the hill all flaming.

JOANNE JENNINGS: Two vineyard workers joined him to help save the estate’s tasting room.

PIERRE BIREBENT: But the smoke was getting very thick, and the wind was very strong. And after an hour, we couldn’t breathe anymore. At the moment, I was so upset. It was rage to see that I couldn’t do anything. But it was like fighting a giant.

JOANNE JENNINGS: The tasting room, which also housed the winery’s office and a dining room, burned to the ground. But Birebent says he wants to focused on what survived.

Fortunately, he said, the fire stopped short of reaching the vineyard, the crush pad, or any of the barrels of wine stored on site; 95 percent of this year’s grapes were already picked.

But, to be on the safe side, Birebent is taking these samples to a lab to make sure the juice is not too acidic for winemaking. If the crops are OK, a staff of 25 employees will have jobs to return to.

As the fires begin to recede and the smoke clears, people here are beginning to wonder when the tourists, who fuel much of the economy, will return.

It’s a serious concern for Andrew and Jeni (ph) Schluter, who are self-employed and are raising a young family.

ANDREW SCHLUTER, Andrew’s Tours and Transportation: I do wine tours and transportation for people. And my business started to do really, really well. I was on track to have the best month ever.

JOANNE JENNINGS: Andrew just bought this new SUV, which has been idle in his driveway collecting ash. Jeni is a personal trainer and has family who lost their homes in the fires. She’s just not sure how they’re going to make ends meet.

WOMAN: I think we’re just overwhelmed, you know? And uncertainty is kind of scary.

ANDREW SCHLUTER: We will hopefully get by for awhile, but we might make — have to make some hard decisions shortly.

JOANNE JENNINGS: While fires burn nearby, some vineyards are already open to tourists. At the Raymond Vineyard, workers are crushing grapes at a feverish pitch. The tasting room is open for the first time since the fires started.

Jeremy and Erika Moore arrived from Tennessee yesterday. They considered canceling their trip, but decided the best way they could help people here is to give them their business.

JEREMY MOORE, Tourist: On the one hand, a few hundred yards from here, you can see them shuttling up with the helicopters fighting fires, but then here it’s beautiful. They are doing some great tastings, and they are working outside on the crops. So, it’s a weird combination of tragedy, but then at the same time business must go on, too.

JOANNE JENNINGS: Proprietor Jean-Charles Boisset owns several wineries in California, France and Canada, but like many other people here, he and his family had to evacuate their home when the flames came dangerously close.

Still, he is bullish about the future of the wine industry in this region.

JEAN-CHARLES BOISSET, Boisset Collection: Napa has been one of the most amazing agricultural places in California for a long time, so it will survive those fires. What I love, as a Frenchman here in California, is that amazing American positive attitude.

We will recover. We will walk again, run again, and we will welcome all our guests and give them the dreams of fine wine.

JOANNE JENNINGS: For the PBS NewsHour, I’m Joanne Jennings in Napa Valley, California.

The post California wine country tries to get back to business despite wildfire destruction appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

A 61-year-old San Antonio man pleaded guilty to two federal charges in the human smuggling incident that led to the deaths of 10 undocumented immigrants this summer.

James Matthew Bradley Jr., who appeared before a U.S. magistrate judge Monday, pleaded guilty to “one count of conspiracy to transport aliens resulting in death and one count of transporting aliens resulting in death,” according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas.

The office added that Bradley’s “admission of guilt” meant he packed dozens of unauthorized immigrants into a tractor-trailer for financial gain, adding that the suspect confirmed that details from court documents were “factually correct.”

On July 23, San Antonio Police Department officers responded to a call from a Walmart employee shortly past midnight. Once officers arrived, they found 39 immigrants at the scene. Of those carried in the tractor-trailer, eight were found dead in the rear of the trailer, while two died later at nearby hospitals, the statement said.

Survivors of the incident said there was no air conditioning in the overheated trailer and had to take turns to breath through a hole in the back of the truck for air. Bradley also initially told investigators that he was unaware of the immigrants in the trailer until he had stopped at the Walmart in San Antonio for bathroom break.

The attorney’s office also said Bradley faces up to life in prison with the charges and that he is scheduled to be sentenced in January 2018. Immigrants said there were up to 200 people transported on the trailer and that different fees were quoted to them for the ride north from the U.S.-Mexico border, the statement added.

Jason Buch of San Antonio Express-News told the NewsHour earlier this year that Border Patrol agents in Laredo, Texas, reported an uptick of immigrants using tractor-trailers to get pass checkpoints at the border.

“People are usually going on to major metropolitan areas or regions of the country that employ a lot of immigrant laborers, so, areas with large agriculture industries or construction booms,” Buch said.

The NewsHour’s John Yang learned more about the July human smuggling case and immigration politics from Jason Buch of San Antonio Express News.

Shane M. Folden, special agent in charge of homeland security investigations in San Antonio, said in the statement that the proceeding “helps to close the door on one of the conspirators responsible for causing the tragic loss of life and wreaking havoc on those who survived this horrific incident.”

“This case is a glaring reminder that alien smugglers are driven by greed and have little regard for the health and well-being of their human cargo, which can prove to be a deadly combination,” he added.

Bradley’s co-defendant Pedro Silva Segura was also indicted last month with faces two counts of conspiracy and two counts of transporting undocumented immigrants resulting in serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy.

Segura, 47, is an undocumented immigrant who resides in Laredo, Texas.

The post San Antonio truck driver pleads guilty in fatal human smuggling case appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: The hashtag #MeToo has millions of women sharing stories of abuse, shining a spotlight on a troubling reality in our society.

It was first used in 2007, but when actor Alyssa Milano tweeted it Sunday night to talk about sexual harassment and assault in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein story, it went viral. The hashtag was tweeted nearly a million times in just 48 hours. Facebook reported 45 percent of its users have friends who posted #MeToo, as women wrote about their experiences about the workplace and culture, and what should change.

We explore some of those issues with Fatima Goss Graves. She’s president of the National Women’s Law Center. Lisa Senecal wrote about her own experience for the online news site Daily Beast. She’s with the Vermont Commission on Women. And Melissa Silverstein is the founder of the blog and Web site Women and Hollywood.

Thank you all for joining us.

Lisa Senecal, I’m going to start with you.

You have had a personal experience with sexual harassment. That’s in part what has drawn you to this #MeToo campaign movement.

Just tell us briefly about what happened.

LISA SENECAL, Member, Vermont Commission on Women: Sure.

Like most women, I have had a number of experiences with sexual harassment, beginning with my first job, when I was 15 years old. And it’s really been a threat off and on throughout my entire professional career.

The most egregious offense was an actual assault that occurred with a male executive. Unfortunately, because of an NDA — and we can go into the evils of nondisclosures another time — but because of that, there isn’t a lot that I’m able to say about the specific event.

But the issue of sexual harassment and finally having this come to the fore, so many women are already familiar with it from being on the receiving end. And I think, especially with the #MeToo campaign, it’s been really wonderful and an eye-opening experience for men to realize just how pervasive an issue this is.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, in your experience, it was a business setting.

Melissa Silverstein, you have been writing about women in Hollywood for 10 years. Of course, that’s where the Harvey Weinstein story came from.

If it’s been going on in Hollywood forever, why hasn’t it been talked about more before now?

MELISSA SILVERSTEIN, Founder, Women and Hollywood: Well, I think there was a culture of silence created around this man and also within this industry.

People were afraid. People are afraid for their jobs. It’s a very relational industry, where if someone is going to blacklist you, you are not going to get your next job.

So I think the way that a person was able to conduct himself for 30 years like this was to build a culture of fear, to make people sign nondisclosure agreements, and to get them to shut up.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Fatima Goss Graves, here with me in Washington with the National Women’s Law Center, we have been talking about Hollywood.

We have talking about the business workplace. Is there any field of work where this isn’t going on?

FATIMA GOSS GRAVES, President, National Women’s Law Center: Right.

The issue of harassment and assault, it’s a Hollywood problem, but really it’s an everywhere problem. It infects industries across the board, whether you’re high-wage jobs, low-wage jobs, male-dominated fields, but also female-dominated fields.

Restaurants are some of the areas where you have some of the highest rates of EEOC charges. And that’s not a male-dominated field.

JUDY WOODRUFF: EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Lisa Senecal, some people are saying that they’re uncomfortable with this #MeToo campaign movement because they’re saying, once again, women are being asked to go public with what happened to them, but there is no promise that there is going to be anything done about it. How do you see this?

LISA SENECAL: I don’t necessarily believe that women are being asked to come forward.

I think this is an opportunity to come forward, if that’s something that women want to do, but there’s no obligation to do it. And there’s been a lot of support for letting women know that if this isn’t something you’re comfortable with at this time, no one is obligated to tell their story, and no one is allowed to force you to tell your story before you’re ready.

But the stories are important. Without them, the degree to which this happens across all industries, across genders as well — we know that this happens to men. This happens to the transgender.

It’s not specific to women, although it affects us most frequently. Until we have a critical mass of women who are able to get the men in their lives, the men that they work with to understand how pervasive a problem it is, and then can get men to begin to act on this, because this isn’t a women’s issue.

This is a violence issue, and an issue of power and who has the power. So until the people who still primarily do hold the power, which is primarily men and primarily white men, until they’re going to begin to act, then the problems are going to persist.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Melissa Silverstein, how do you see that? What is it going to take for this to be a change?

MELISSA SILVERSTEIN: The fact that we’re having a global conversation about sexual harassment — I have been doing media for the last week all over the world.

People are really enthralled by this and want to see change. This is a global issue. And, also, Hollywood is a global industry. Seventy cents of every dollar of Hollywood studio movies are made outside the United States.

So what people are looking for is Hollywood to step up. And, today, we had a leader in Hollywood, Kathleen Kennedy, to say we need to have a commission, cross-industry commission, of people who are going to look into this and put a stop to it once and for all.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And pick up on that, Fatima Goss Graves. Just across the board, what is it going to take?

FATIMA GOSS GRAVES: Right.

We know that there are things that would make a difference here. If employers had processes that their employees actually use, you wouldn’t have harassment in the shadows. Right now, most people don’t report harassment to anyone. And it’s because they think their employers won’t do anything, or, worse, that they would experience retaliation.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And that’s — because that’s been what happened.

FATIMA GOSS GRAVES: And that is. They’re right to believe that they will experience retaliation, because they do. They’re shamed. They’re blamed.

But employees could make a difference. Right? They can be — take it seriously and communicate that to their workplace. They can also have the right policies that are in place. And, finally, they could, when someone comes forward, be really clear that they take it seriously and that they will not tolerate retaliation.

Those are things that aren’t happening among employers frequently enough.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Lisa Senecal, as somebody who had it happen to you in a business environment, what changes need to be made in the workplace? What has to happen?

LISA SENECAL: Well, I agree completely with what was just said.

Too often, the workplace education that goes on is incredibly insufficient. It’s more of companies wanting to be able to check the box and say that they did their sexual harassment training. And it isn’t truly something within the culture of companies that they believe that this is a problem and that it is a right of all people working at that company not to be harassed.

So, until it starts to be taken more seriously, and when a woman or anyone comes forward with an accusation, it does have to be taken so much more seriously. And the knee-jerk response, as was in my case, cannot be to shame the woman, can’t be to blame her for somehow bringing this on herself, and putting women back in a position of being victimized a second time because they’re not taken seriously when they come forward.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Melissa Silverstein, yes, go ahead.

MELISSA SILVERSTEIN: I just wanted to add, one of the things that’s so fundamental about this is how this — how it’s so normalized for all of us to go through this kind of harassment, especially in Hollywood, and how people kind of laugh off, oh, you know, that’s locker room talk, or, you know, this is the movie business, get used to it.

And what we need to do is really pierce that veil of the normalization of this kind of conduct, because it starts with, you know, the comments, and then it can escalate very quickly.

So we really need to just change people’s attitudes and get rid of the toxic masculinity. Hollywood has no much institutionalized sexism that sometimes I feel like we need to just start over, if possible.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Joining us also is Leigh Gilmore, a professor at Wellesley College who’s written a book about why — titled “Why We Doubt What Women Say About Their Lives.”

Leigh Gilmore, why don’t women — why haven’t women been believed and taken seriously on this, and could we now be at a moment when they are?

LEIGH GILMORE, Wellesley College: It’s good to be with you, Judy.

I think we have a persistent and a pervasive culture of doubting what women say, especially when they’re bringing forward accounts of harm into the public sphere. So we have these pre-made default cultural narratives of women’s unreliability. We have he said/she said, which is a false equivalence narrative.

We have that notion that nobody knows what really happened. We have that notion that you can’t really trust what women say. None of these are based in fact, but they are part of a kind of cloud that enables us to doubt any woman before she speaks up.

And it’s quite intimidating. And so, if we’re at a point of change, we really are at a moment where I think we have a new level of visibility, and we have the opportunity to amplify the voices of women who are speaking out.

So, insofar as we have that opportunity, there is a form of solidarity, and more women speaking can lead to change.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Fatima Goss Graves, as somebody who works on these issues from a legal standpoint, are we, could we be at a watershed point, or is it just a whole lot more complicated?

FATIMA GOSS GRAVES: Well, the culture change typically has to go together with both the enforcement of the laws and the policy change.

And so we’re at a tipping point, surely, on culture change. But I will tell you, you know, the National Women’s Law Center runs a hot line. And over the last two weeks, we have had double the intake on harassment.

And we have a new network called the Legal Network for Gender Equity, so we’re — attorneys are joining with us and will be ready to take these cases. But those people who are making these calls and contacting us, I think that that shows that you have people who are ready to come forward on social media, and there is power there, but it seems like there are people who are ready to come forward in other ways, too.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I want to quickly go around and ask each one of you about the role of men in all of this.

Lisa Senecal?

LISA SENECAL: Oh, I think it’s critical for men as allies to be coming forward and supporting women who do come forward.

Men also need to be willing to call out other men, whether that’s one-on-one, whether it’s in a group setting within a company, or socially. If a man hears, sees someone doing something inappropriate, they need to have the courage to stand up, even in front of other men, and say, it’s not OK, it’s inappropriate behavior, and it’s not going to be tolerated.

And until it’s also men joining in, women can’t do this by themselves. There is an organization, A Call to Men, that I’m a big fan of. And one of their mantras is, if women could have stopped abuse and assault, they would have done it already.

And that’s completely true. It’s not something that women are going to be able to do alone. It shouldn’t be looked at as only a women’s issue. And until people look at this on a larger scale and understand that this affects the bottom line of companies, it affects productivity, it affects, you know, absenteeism, just across the board, this is not a women’s issue.

It is a human issue.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Right.

Melissa Silverstein, what about that?

And we should point out that men are themselves the victims of sexual harassment and abuse at times.

MELISSA SILVERSTEIN: I feel that this is on men.

The men are most of the perpetrators. They’re also the collaborators. And, at The Weinstein Company, their board was all men, and they were all complicit in creating an environment that allowed this to thrive.

In Hollywood, there’s not a single woman, even the people at the tippy-top of the industry, who don’t report to men. This is also about getting more women into leadership positions and getting the men — and holding the men accountable.

The men in this industry need to step up. They need to say, we want to be — we want to create this industry in a way that women can thrive and don’t have to experience this anymore.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Leigh Gilmore?

LEIGH GILMORE: We’re talking about awareness and accountability.

So, as wonderful as it is to have increased visibility, and it enables us to connect the dots and to see the long histories of sexual abuse, harassment and discrimination, we need new levels of accountability.

I will echo the notion that Harvey Weinstein’s board certainly knew about these accusations. There’s a DA who failed to charge him. We have ample examples of failures.

And what we really need to do is to correct those. The role of men is certainly important here. Minimally, they can show up and be witnesses.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, finally, Fatima Goss Graves, the role of men and how we prevent this.

FATIMA GOSS GRAVES: We have had a little bit of conversation about men as survivors, but the conversation we haven’t really had is about what happens when men are abusers or enablers or allow this to happen in the workplaces, in schools, or in women’s everyday lives?

And so now we have an opportunity culturally for that conversation. That culture is going to have to hit where policy-makers are. It’s going to have to hit where employers are in order to make a real difference.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, it’s clear that everyone is hoping this is a watershed moment, that things will change as a result of what’s happened here. But we will see.

And we appreciate all of you joining us in this conversation, Fatima Goss Graves here with me in Washington, Lisa Senecal, Melissa Silverstein, and Leigh Gilmore.

We thank you all.

FATIMA GOSS GRAVES: Thank you.

MELISSA SILVERSTEIN: Thank you.

The post As survivors say #MeToo, what will it take to stop widespread sexual harassment? appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: It’s been almost a month since Hurricane Maria destroyed much of Puerto Rico and killed at least 48 people. The island and its residents are still coming to grips with the scale of the devastation.

William Brangham brings us the latest.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Many Puerto Ricans are still in the dark, without electrical power. Hundreds of thousands still have no access to running water, and the rebuilding of the countless damaged homes, roads and facilities is just beginning.

The Associated Press reported yesterday that almost half the sewage treatment plants on the island are still out of service, increasing the risk of contamination and disease.

I’m joined now by David Begnaud. He’s a correspondent from CBS News who’s been doing some very strong reporting there from since when the storm hit, and is just back from his latest trip to the island.

David, welcome to the NewsHour.

I wonder. We saw many of your reports and others of people still three weeks out from the storm who are still drinking from streams and creeks. You heard — I mentioned this AP report about fears of contamination.

Can you just tell us what is going on there? How are people getting water now?

DAVID BEGNAUD, CBS News: Well, let me tell you this.

The governor of Puerto Rico said this morning that he’s aware of those reports and that they’re looking into it. What’s concerning, William, is that three weeks after the storm and at least a week after the allegations first surfaced that people might be trying to drink from toxic wells at what’s known as Superfund sites, the governor of Puerto Rico is still saying, we’re looking into it and telling people to stay out of rivers where sewage may be spilling into the river.

And, he said, we want them to stay away from the coastal areas.

How are people doing? They’re still desperate to get water. No one seems to be able to figure out how to get enough water to every single person on that island who needs it. And as long as people need water, it’s still an emergency phase.

Nearly four weeks later, no one seems to be able to move from the emergency to the recovery.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, people who are — we see them drinking out of these PVC pipes that they have kind of rigged and sort of poked into the side of a creek.

People are just drinking that water straight, without purification, without boiling it; is that right?

DAVID BEGNAUD: Absolutely.

Look, they have got the PVC pipes tapped into the mountains so that it’s coming out of the stream that way. And they literally are — I saw a woman walk up to a potable water tank that the military had brought in, and she had a Clorox bottle.

And I said, “Ma’am, you’re putting drinkable water in a Clorox bottle?”

And she said, “It’s all I have got.”

Now, that was a good scenario. The other scenarios are people right now who are drinking from streams and creeks and rivers who have no water filters, who have nothing, right? They’re just taking this water.

Now, listen, the government got a million water-purifying tablets within the last week. It took almost three weeks to get those. Now there’s a large push to bring in water filters.

I have got to tell you, most of the water filters I’m seeing brought in are coming from the private sector, and civilian samaritans who are getting 1,000 or more from the mainland and flying them over to Puerto Rico and personally hand-delivering them.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That’s really incredible.

Medical facilities were another big — just a huge devastation on the island. I know you have been doing a lot of reporting on the USS Comfort.

DAVID BEGNAUD: Yes.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: This is the huge Naval hospital that is now just offshore Puerto Rico.

But I understand it hasn’t been fully utilized. Can you tell us what your reporting has found there?

DAVID BEGNAUD: The two men running the ship told us that nearly 87 percent of the ship is empty. Sounds alarming, right? They have 200 beds, and 87 percent are empty.

Now, here’s what they said: We stand ready for whatever the government wants to do. We are waiting to be told by the government.

So, I went to the governor, and said exactly what’s happening. And he said: “Look, I’m not satisfied with what the protocol was from the beginning.”

He said, initially, they were prioritizing only the most critically ill patients go to the Comfort. And he said there was a layered process that was complicating things.

So, the governor, Ricardo Rossello, said: “I started to take out some of those layers, and I, said, listen, take people on the ship who may not be critically ill, but need good medical care and can’t get it at the hospital, where the lights are flickering and the A.C. is not running.”

That’s what the governor said.

Within a matter of hours, I got a tweet from a third-year medical student who said: “Let me tell you what a nightmare it has been to reach the Comfort.”

He said: “We have got a pediatric patient who desperately needs to get off this island, either to a hospital on the mainland or to the Comfort.”

And he said: “I went through Google and the local newspaper to find the number. I couldn’t find it.”

Now, here is how things work. Within about 30 minutes of that tweet going out and that medical student’s story being posted, the governor’s spokesperson responded with numbers that should be able to help.

The bottom line here, William, is that asking relentless questions and the good work of journalism is what’s making a difference there. It’s no one person. There’s no heroic work that’s being done by any journalist, other than people who are going back to the same officials and asking some of the same questions, relentlessly seeking the right answer that will make a difference.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: One of the other pieces of reporting that you did that was very early in the story was this backlog of supplies trapped in container ships on the ports in Puerto Rico.

I understand some of that — some of those supplies are now moving. Can you tell us, are they getting to where they need to be throughout the island?

DAVID BEGNAUD: So, the shipping containers you’re talking about, about 3,000 sitting in the Port of San Juan, have been moved out, not all of them, but a majority of them.

And they were intended for grocery stores around the island. Right? So, those were private companies that had brought in these shipping containers, paid for the supplies, but couldn’t move them because their truck drivers were either at home, because the home had been destroyed, or the road was impassable.

More and more supplies are getting out. But let me tell you, the grocery stores around the island, they have a lot of nonperishables, Pringles, candy, cookies, all on the shelf.

But when you go to the meat section, it’s nearly 75 percent empty at the stores we have been to, the produce section 90 percent empty. And finding bottled water there is almost like playing a game.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: David Begnaud, CBS News, thank you so much for your reporting. Thanks for your time.

DAVID BEGNAUD: You bet.

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WASHINGTON — When Karen Pence found out that an art therapist in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico couldn’t afford the clay her clients needed, she sprang into action.

A trained watercolor artist and advocate of the little-known mental health profession, Vice President Mike Pence’s wife went to the Virginia art supply store she frequented when they lived in the state during his tenure in Congress, bought 120 pounds of self-drying clay and packed it aboard Air Force Two for their flight down to survey the damage.

“She cleaned him out,” the vice president said of the store’s owner.

Mrs. Pence made art therapy her cause ever since she first learned about it more than a decade ago. She has visited numerous art therapy programs, both in the U.S. and abroad, and on Wednesday in Florida, nine months into the administration, she planned to formally announce the goals for her art therapy initiative.

She wants to help people understand the difference between art therapy and arts and crafts, and to grasp that art therapy is a viable option for treating trauma, injury and other life experiences. She also wants to encourage young people to choose art therapy as a career.

“I don’t think that a lot of people understand the difference between therapeutic art and art therapy,” Mrs. Pence, a trained watercolor artist, told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview before the announcement at Florida State University in Tallahassee. The school has an art therapy program she described as “tremendous.”

Blabbing to a girlfriend can be therapeutic, she explained, but it is not the same as art therapy, which has three elements: a client, a trained therapist and art.

READ MORE: VP Pence’s wife aims to raise awareness about art therapy

As passionate as she is about raising art therapy’s profile, other issues help make Karen Pence tick, too.

One of them is helping military families, especially spouses. Her only son, Michael, is in the Marines.

There’s also her interest in honeybees. Mrs. Pence installed a beehive on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory, where the vice president’s official residence is located, to help call attention to a decline in managed bee colonies that officials say could negatively affect U.S. agricultural production. She had a beehive at the Indiana governor’s residence for the same reason.

Now 60 and married to the vice president since 1985, Mrs. Pence has long been viewed as one of her husband’s most trusted political advisers. They are often together on trips, at the White House, or at the observatory, almost always holding hands.

Since returning to Washington in January (the family lived in the area when her husband served in Congress), she has accompanied the vice president on goodwill tours of Europe, Asia and Latin America, as well as trips to survey recent hurricane damage in Texas, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. She tries to visit art therapy programs wherever she goes. Journalists who travel with Pence often keep an eye out for his wife; she often brings them cookies when he ventures back to the press cabin for small talk.

READ MORE: Devastated Puerto Rico needs unprecedented aid, says governor

She’s even done a little campaigning, urging Virginians to vote next month for Ed Gillespie in what’s viewed as a tight gubernatorial race.

“It really makes a difference, I can tell you. Nobody thought that we were going to win,” she said, an apparent reference to the Trump-Pence ticket.

The vice president often refers to his wife as the family’s “prayer captain.” She has led congregations in prayer during their hurricane-damage trips.

“We’re people of faith so we just try and approach everything with prayer,” Mrs. Pence said from her sunny, second-floor office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the White House complex, where she and her staff enjoy coveted views of the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial. Art therapy drawings given as gifts adorn the outer office.

She proudly displayed several of her paintings, including of the Capitol dome, the vice president’s residence, a Ball canning jar-turned-flower vase, a cardinal bird and a pink peony. She turns many of her watercolors into prints and boxed notecards that she gifts to art therapists she meets.

Except for myriad pets, including two cats, a dog and a rabbit named Marlon Bundo, the Pences are empty nesters. Their son and two adult daughters are off on their own.

“I think for us this is a good time in our life for this role because our kids are out of college. They’re living their own lives,” Mrs. Pence said.

She’s also launching a blog in conjunction with Wednesday’s announcement to chronicle her visits to art therapy programs.

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HARI SREENIVASAN: In the day’s other news: Attorney General Jeff Sessions insisted he never lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee about his conversations with the Russian ambassador during the presidential campaign. At a hearing today, he bridled at Democratic Senator Al Franken’s accusation that he’d — quote — “moved the goalposts” on the nature of his discussions.

SEN. AL FRANKEN, D-Minn.: First it was, I didn’t have communications with Russians, which wasn’t true. Then it was, I never met with any Russians to discuss any political campaign, which may or may not be true.

Now it’s, I didn’t discuss interference in the campaign.

JEFF SESSIONS, Attorney General: Well, let me just say without hesitation, that I conducted no improper discussions with the Russians at any time regarding the campaign or any other item facing this country.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Sessions has recused himself from the Justice Department’s investigation into Russia’s election meddling.

President Trump had new criticism today for former FBI Director James Comey over the Hillary Clinton e-mail probe. He complained again that Comey decided to clear Clinton before she was even interviewed. That’s based on newly released draft statements by Comey from May of 2016. FBI officials say it was already clear that no charges were warranted.

On another issue, the president faced fallout over the death of Army Sergeant La David Johnson in Niger this month. Congresswoman Frederica Wilson says she was with Mrs. Johnson when the president called. The Florida Democrat told The Washington Post that Mr. Trump said — quote — “He knew what he was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway.”

The sergeant’s mother confirmed it, but the president denied it, and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders went after Wilson.

SARAH SANDERS, White House Press Secretary: This is a president who loves our country very much, who has the greatest level of respect for men and women in uniform and wanted to call and offer condolences to the family, and I think to try to create something from that, that the congresswoman is doing, is, frankly, appalling and disgusting.

HARI SREENIVASAN: The Post also reported on another incident today. It quoted the father of a soldier killed in Afghanistan as saying the president offered $25,000 from his personal account, but never followed through.

We will get more detail on all of this after the news summary.

The death toll in Northern California’s wildfires rose to 42 today. Officials in Sonoma County found the remains of the latest victim, as they searched hundreds of burned homes. Meanwhile, fire crews made new gains overnight with the help of cooler weather and low winds.

A two-time Olympic medalist says the former team doctor for U.S. women’s gymnastics sexually abused her for years. McKayla Maroney is the highest profile athlete to come forward in the scandal. In a statement today, she said Dr. Larry Nassar began molesting her when she was just 13. He’s awaiting sentencing on a child pornography charge, but has denied any sexual abuse.

More questions tonight about drug pricing. A new study finds the costs of injectable cancer drugs, approved since 1996, rose an average of 25 percent over eight years. That’s far higher than the rate of inflation. The study was based at Emory University and published in “The Journal of Clinical Oncology.”

And on Wall Street, health insurers and IBM fueled a surge in stocks today. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 160 points, more than half-a-percent, to close above 23000 for the first time. The Nasdaq rose just a fraction, and the S&P 500 was up two points.

The post News Wrap: Sessions insists he didn’t lie about Russian contacts to Senate appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Secretary of State was questioned on Good Morning Britain over the pledge - with host asking 'how much will it have gone up by then?'

The energy bill support has been described as a "crucial lifeline" for certain individuals who are often "overlooked".

October marked the "biggest" sales month for supermarkets in the UK so far despite food price hikes.