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US coach Emma Hayes admits to anthem uncertainty ahead of England stalemateDonald Trump’s attorneys have asked the judge who presided over his criminal hush money case to dismiss the indictment and vacate the jury’s guilty verdicts — arguing their client is a victim of the same “raw politics” President Biden cited in pardoning his son , Hunter, according to filings made public Tuesday. “President Biden argued that ‘raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice,'” Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove wrote in the lengthy and politically charged filing, referring to Biden’s weekend statement announcing a 10-year pardon for his son. “Since [Manhattan] DA Bragg took office, he has engaged in ‘precisely the type of political theater’ that President Biden condemned.” Later arguing that the case threatens “the functioning of the federal government,” Bove and Blanche, who Trump has tapped for top roles at the Department of Justice , contended that Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan was required to throw it out based on the Presidential Immunity doctrine, the Presidential Transition Act, and the Supremacy Clause, arguing not doing so would impact Trump’s ability to govern. His election victory means the case must be tossed for the good of the country and that “potential incarceration, stigma, and diversions of attention” necessitate “categorical immunity,” Blanche and Bove wrote. “As President Biden put it yesterday, ‘Enough is enough,'” Blanche and Bove said. “This case, which should never have been brought, must now be dismissed.” The DA’s office, which declined to comment, is due to respond by Dec. 9. Prosecutors have said they plan to fight Trump’s efforts to get the case thrown out but have conceded the judge may need to postpone sentencing until Trump is out of office. Trump’s lawyers pushed back on the suggestion, writing that prosecutors’ “ridiculous suggestion that they could simply resume proceedings after President Trump leaves office, more than a decade after they commenced their investigation in 2018, is not an option.” A jury of 12 Manhattan residents found Trump, 78, guilty of 34 counts of falsification of business records on May 30 , stemming from his reimbursement to his ex-fixer Michael Cohen for paying off porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election. The verdicts marked him as the first U.S. president to be found guilty of committing a crime. The jury found Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Daniels bought her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump at a 2006 golf tournament. They determined the payoff was one in a scheme carried out before the election intended to bury unflattering information about Trump’s past that could negatively impact his standing with voters. It also encompassed payoffs to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who alleges she had an affair with Trump, and a doorman at Trump Tower who claimed Trump had fathered a child with a maid out of wedlock. Last month, Merchan adjourned Trump’s sentencing indefinitely and drew up a new schedule to consider arguments about how to proceed in light of his election win. The historic case was the only one of four brought against Trump after his first term that made it before a jury. The Department of Justice last week sought to drop the two federal cases he faced, alleging he plotted to subvert democracy after President Biden’s election victory in 2020 and hoarded sensitive classified documents after leaving office, which Blanche and Bove noted in Tuesday’s filing. Trump is fighting to get the Georgia state case against him thrown out, where a potential conviction could not be pardoned on the federal level. That case has been tied up significantly with appeals, and legal experts say it’s unlikely to see a revival before Trump takes office.
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Toronto Sceptres open PWHL season with 3-1 comeback win over Boston FleetWall Street's benchmark S&P 500 index rose on Wednesday and a rally in tech stocks lifted the Nasdaq above the 20,000-point milestone for the first time, after a U.S. inflation report boosted expectations of a Federal Reserve interest rate cut. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped, dragged by health insurers as U.S. lawmakers introduced a bill seen as crimping their profits. A Labor Department report showed U.S. consumer prices in November increased by the most in seven months, though broadly in line with market expectations. According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 49.21 points, or 0.82%, to end at 6,084.12 points, while the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC gained 347.66 points, or 1.77%, to 20,034.90. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 94.48 points, or 0.21%, to 44,153.35. "Nasdaq is rallying on the prospect of a rate cut next week and has room to move higher," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities. Capitalize on high interest rates: Best current CD rates Markets are pricing in more than a 96% chance the Fed will cut rates by 25 basis points next week, up from an 86% chance before the data, according to CME's FedWatch Tool. Bets had risen following Friday's employment report, which showed an uptick in unemployment alongside a surge in job growth. The yield on benchmark U.S. 10-year notes US10YT=RR rose 5.2 basis points to 4.267%. "The equity market seems to be breathing a sigh of relief that this is another steady-as-she-goes report," said Wasif Latif, chief investment officer at Sarmaya Partners in New Jersey. "There's no surprises. It seems the equity market was braced for a higher than expected number." Tesla TSLA.O shares climbed to a record high as the electric vehicle maker extended a rally in the wake of the U.S. presidential election. Nvidia NVDA.O and other megacap growth stocks, including Alphabet GOOGL.O and Amazon AMZN.O, also finished higher. Trump trades and tariffs: Here's how to prepare your finances for the next administration. Hint: don't hoard. Pharmacy benefit managers, including Cigna CI.N, CVS Health CVS.N, and UnitedHealth Group UNH.N, lost ground after a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a bill that would force health insurers or drug middlemen to divest their pharmacy businesses. GameStop GME.N gained after the videogame retailer reported a profit for the third quarter on cost-saving efforts. Broadcom AVGO.O jumped following a report that Apple AAPL.O is working with the company to develop its first server chip specially designed for artificial intelligence. Macy's M.N shed after the department-store bellwether cut its annual profit forecast as persistent weakness in demand clouded its expectations for the holiday shopping season. Reporting by Purvi Agarwal and Shashwat Chauhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva, Maju Samuel and David GregorioEach week, Quartz rounds up product launches, updates, and funding news from artificial intelligence-focused startups and companies. Here’s what’s going on this week in the ever-evolving AI industry. Nvidia’s AI audio model, Fugatto Nvidia’s AI audio model, Fugatto Nvidia ( NVDA ) announced its new AI audio model, Fugatto , this week that can generate or transform “any mix of music, voices and sounds described with prompts using any combination of text and audio files.” Fugatto is short for Foundational Generative Audio Transformer Opus 1, Nvidia said. With the new model, users can enter a text prompt and generate a music snippet, remove or add instruments to an already existing song, change accents or emotions in a voice, and “produce sounds never heard before.” “Fugatto is the first foundational generative AI model that showcases emergent properties — capabilities that arise from the interaction of its various trained abilities — and the ability to combine free-form instructions,” Nvidia said. Claude’s new features Claude’s new features Anthropic announced new updates to its Claude AI chatbot this week. With the new Google ( GOOGL ) Docs integration, Claude can use context from a user’s documents to improve the relevance and accuracy of its responses, Anthropic said. Claude can summarize long documents and “reference historical context” from Google Docs files. The integration is available for Claude Pro, Team, and Enterprise users. Claude’s new styles feature allows users to customize how the chatbot responds to follow a preferred communication style and work requirements. Users can choose a formal, concise, or explanatory style. Claude can also generate custom styles from uploaded sample content. Anthropic also added the ability to add global profile preferences for the chatbot to instruct it “on things you always want it to keep in mind,” such as a preferred coding language. AI agent startup /dev/agents’ $56 million raise AI agent startup /dev/agents’ $56 million raise AI agents startup /dev/agents came out of stealth mode this week and announced a $56 million seed round. The funding round was co-led by Index Ventures and CapitalG. The startup, which is building an operating system for AI agents , was founded by former Stripe chief technology officer David Singleton, and former vice presidents at Google and Meta ( META ) : Hugo Barra, Ficus Kirkpatrick, and Nicholas Jitkoff. “Today you can build an AI demo in hours, but getting something consumers can actually trust with their credit card is nearly impossible,” Singleton said. “Just as Android made mobile development accessible to virtually any developer, we’re building the platform that will help make AI agents mainstream.” Runway’s image generation model, Frames Runway’s image generation model, Frames Runway announced its new base model for image generation, Frames , this week. The new model represents “a big step forward in stylistic control and visual fidelity,” the AI startup, which develops multimodal AI systems for video, image, and audio generation, said. Frames can maintain stylistic consistency when generating images, Runway said. Access to Frames is rolling out in its Gen-3 Alpha foundation model and through Runway’s API. Luma’s first image generation model Luma’s first image generation model Visual AI platform Luma launched its first image generation model, Luma AI Photon Image Model, this week. The text-to-image foundation model was built on Luma’s Universal Transformer architecture. The model is 800% faster and cheaper than other models, Luma said. Luma also announced a free and subscription-based service for its Dream Machine visual AI service on the web and iOS . The Dream Machine model was released in June and has 25 million registered users.