NEW YORK (AP) — The start date for the $15 toll most drivers will be charged to enter Manhattan’s central business district will be June 30, transit officials said Friday.

Under the so-called congestion pricing plan, the $15 fee will apply to most drivers who enter Manhattan south of 60th Street during daytime hours. Tolls will be higher for larger vehicles and lower for nighttime entries into the city as well as for motorcycles.

The program, which was approved by the New York state Legislature in 2019, is supposed to raise $1 billion per year to fund public transportation for the city’s 4 million daily riders.

“Ninety percent-plus of the people come to the congestion zone, the central business district, walking, biking and most of all taking mass transit,” Metropolitan Transportation Authority CEO Janno Lieber told WABC. “We are a mass transit city and we are going to make it even better to be in New York.”

Supporters say that in addition to raising money for buses and subways, congestion pricing will reduce pollution be disincentivizing driving into Manhattan. Opponents say the fees will be a burden for commuters and will increase the prices of staple goods that are driven to the city by truck.

The state of New Jersey has filed a lawsuit over the congestion pricing plan, will be the first such program in the United States.

Lieber said he is “pretty optimistic” about how the New Jersey lawsuit will be resolved.

Congestion pricing will start at 12:01 a.m. on June 30, Lieber said, so the first drivers will be charged the late-night fee of $3.75. The $15 toll will take effect at 9 a.m.

Low-income drivers can apply for a congestion toll discount on the MTA website, and disabled people can apply for exemptions.

DECATUR, Ga. (AP) — A judge upheld the disqualification of a candidate who had had planned to run against the judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s 2020 Georgia election interference case.

Tiffani Johnson is one of two people who filed paperwork to challenge Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee. An administrative law judge earlier this month found that she was not qualified to run for the seat after she failed to appear at a hearing on a challenge to her eligibility, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger adopted that decision.

Johnson last week filed a petition for review of that decision in Fulton County Superior Court. After all of McAfee’s colleagues on the Fulton County bench were recused, a judge in neighboring DeKalb County took up the matter and held a hearing Thursday on Johnson’s petition.

At the end of the hearing, DeKalb Superior Court Judge Stacey Hydrick upheld the decision that said Johnson is not eligible, news outlets reported. A representative for Johnson’s campaign did not immediately respond to an email Friday seeking comment.

The ruling leaves McAfee with a single challenger, civil rights attorney Robert Patillo, in the nonpartisan race for his seat.

With early voting set to begin Monday for the May 21 election, it’s likely too late to remove Johnson’s name from the ballot. The law says that if a candidate is determined not to be qualified, that person’s name should be withheld from the ballot or stricken from any ballots. If there isn’t enough time to strike the candidate’s name, prominent notices are to be placed at polling places advising voters that the candidate is disqualified and that votes cast for her will not be counted.

Georgia law allows any person who is eligible to vote for a candidate to challenge the candidate’s qualifications by filing a complaint with the secretary of state’s office within two weeks of the qualification deadline. A lawyer for Sean Arnold, a Fulton County voter, filed the challenge on March 22.

Arnold’s complaint noted that the Georgia Constitution requires all judges to “reside in the geographical area in which they are elected to serve.” He noted that in Johnson’s qualification paperwork she listed her home address as being in DeKalb County and wrote that she had been a legal resident of neighboring Fulton County for “0 consecutive years.” The qualification paperwork Johnson signed includes a line that says the candidate is “an elector of the county of my residence eligible to vote in the election in which I am a candidate.”

Administrative Law Judge Ronit Walker on April 2 held a hearing on the matter but noted in her decision that Johnson did not appear.

Walker wrote that the burden of proof is on the candidate to “affirmatively establish eligibility for office” and that Johnson’s failure to appear at the hearing “rendered her incapable of meeting her burden of proof.”

Walker concluded that Johnson was unqualified to be a candidate for superior court judge in the Atlanta Judicial Circuit. Raffensperger adopted the judge’s findings and conclusions in reaching his decision to disqualify her.

A lawyer Johnson, who said in her petition that she has since moved to Fulton County, argued that Johnson failed to show up for the hearing because she did not receive the notice for it.

Without addressing the merits of the residency challenge, Hydrick found that Johnson had been given sufficient notice ahead of the hearing before the administrative law judge and concluded that the disqualification was proper.

NEW YORK (AP) — New York can move ahead with a law requiring internet service providers to offer heavily discounted rates to low-income residents, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

The decision from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan reverses a lower court ruling from 2021 that blocked the policy just days before it went into effect.

The law would force internet companies to give some low-income New Yorkers broadband service for as low as $15 a month, or face fines from the state.

Telecoms trade groups sued over the law, arguing it would cost them too much money and that it wrongly superseded a federal law that governs internet service.

On Friday, the industry groups said they were weighing their next legal move.

“We are disappointed by the court’s decision and New York state’s move for rate regulation in competitive industries. It not only discourages the needed investment in our nation’s infrastructure, but also potentially risks the sustainability of broadband operations in many areas,” a statement read.

New York state lawmakers approved the law in 2021 as part of the budget, with supporters arguing that the policy would give low-income residents a way to access the internet, which has become a vital utility.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — As Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming opens for the busy summer season, wildlife advocates are leading a call for a boycott of the conservative ranching state over laws that give people wide leeway to kill gray wolves with little oversight.

The social media accounts of Wyoming’s tourism agency are being flooded with comments urging people to steer clear of the Cowboy State amid accusations that a man struck a wolf with a snowmobile, taped its mouth shut and showed off the injured animal at a Sublette County bar before killing it.

While critics contend that Wyoming has enabled such animal cruelty, a leader of the state’s stock growers association said it’s an isolated incident and unrelated to the state’s wolf management laws. The laws that have been in place for more than a decade are designed to prevent the predators from proliferating out of the mountainous Yellowstone region and into other areas where ranchers run cattle and sheep.

“This was an abusive action. None of us condone it. It never should never have been done,” said Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association and a Sublette County rancher who has lost sheep to wolves. “It’s gotten a lot of media attention but it’s not exemplary of how we manage wolves to deal with livestock issues or anything.”

Wolves are federally protected as an endangered or threatened species in most of the U.S. but not the Northern Rockies. Wyoming, Idaho and Montana allow wolves to be hunted and trapped, after their numbers rebounded following their reintroduction to Yellowstone and central Idaho almost 30 years ago. Before their reintroduction, wolves had been annihilated in the lower 48 states through government-sponsored poisoning, trapping and bounty hunting into the mid-1900s.

Today, Wyoming has the least restrictive policies for killing wolves. There are limits on hunting and trapping in the northwestern corner of the state and killing them is prohibited in Yellowstone and neighboring Grand Teton National Park, where they are a major attraction for millions of tourists. But outside the Yellowstone region, in the 85% of the state known as the “predator zone,” they can be freely killed.

The wolf allegedly was run down, shown off and killed within the predator zone.

Wolves roam hundreds of miles and often kill cattle and sheep. Gray wolves attacked livestock hundreds of times in 2022 across 10 states including Wyoming, according to an Associated Press review of depredation data from state and federal agencies, the most recent data available. Other times livestock succumb to other predators, disease or exposure or simply go missing.

Losses to wolves can be devastating to individual ranchers, yet wolves’ industry-wide impact is negligible: The number of cattle killed or injured in documented cases equals 0.002% of herds in the affected states, according to a comparison of depredation data with state livestock inventories.

The predator zone resulted from negotiations between U.S. and Wyoming officials who traded away federal compensation for livestock killed by wolves in exchange for allowing free killing of wolves in that area.

Saharai Salazar is among out-of-staters changing their travel plans based on what allegedly happened Feb. 29 near Daniel, a western Wyoming town of about 150 people.

The Santa Rosa, California, dog trainer posted on the state’s tourism Instagram account that she would not get married in Wyoming next year as planned. The post was among hundreds of similar comments, many with a #boycottwyoming hashtag on social media in recent weeks.

“We have to change the legislation, rewrite the laws so we can offer more protection, so they can’t be interpreted in ways that will allow for such atrocities,” Salazar said in an interview.

Wyoming’s rules have long invited controversy but are unlikely to harm the overall population because most of the animals in the state live in the Yellowstone region, said wolf expert and former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wolf biologist Ed Bangs.

Bangs said the incident of the wolf brought into the bar was a “sideshow” to the species’ successful recovery. The predator zone is made up largely of open landscapes that generally don’t support wolves, he said.

Wyoming’s rules, including the predator zone, have withstood multiple court challenges that have put wolves on and off the endangered species list since they were first delisted in 2008. Wolves haven’t been on the list in the region since a 2017 court order and their current Wyoming population of more than 300 is similar to their number in 2010.

Though state law doesn’t specify how wolves in the predator zone can be killed and doesn’t specifically prohibit running them over, the Humane Society and others argue the state’s animal cruelty law applies in this case.

Widely circulating photos show the man posing with the wolf with its mouth bound. Video clips show the same animal lying on a floor, alive but barely moving.

The Sublette County Sheriff’s Office said it has been investigating the anonymous reports of the man’s actions but has struggled to get witnesses to come forward.

“We’ve had the tip line open for two weeks hoping for witnesses or something helpful,” sheriff’s spokesperson Sgt. Travis Bingham said. “I know there’s some hesitation for people to come forward.”

The only punishment for the man so far is having to pay a $250 ticket for illegal possession of wildlife.

The suspect has not commented publicly and did not answer calls to his business. Calls to the bar went unanswered.

___

Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana, contributed to this report.

BALTIMORE (AP) — A Baltimore publishing company has filed a class action claim arguing the owner and manager of the massive container ship that took down the Francis Scott Key Bridge last month should have to pay damages to businesses adversely impacted by the collapse.

The claim, filed on behalf of American Publishing LLC, largely echoes an earlier filing by attorneys for Baltimore’s mayor and city council that called for the ship’s owner and manager to be held fully liable for the deadly disaster.

Singapore-based Grace Ocean Private Ltd. owns the Dali, the vessel that veered off course and slammed into the bridge. Synergy Marine Pte Ltd., also based in Singapore, is the ship’s manager.

The companies filed a petition soon after the March 26 collapse asking a court to cap their liability under a pre-Civil War provision of an 1851 maritime law — a routine but important procedure for such cases. A federal court in Maryland will decide who’s responsible and how much they owe in what could become one of the most expensive maritime disasters in history.

In their claim filed Thursday, attorneys for American Publishing accused the companies of negligence, arguing they should have realized the Dali was unfit for its voyage and staffed the ship with a competent crew, among other issues.

“Since the disastrous allision, commercial activities in and around Baltimore have virtually come to a standstill,” they wrote. “It could take several years for the area to recover fully.”

American Publishing saw its revenues plummet this month as local businesses halted advertising deals and other publishing requests following the collapse, the claim says.

A spokesperson for Synergy and Grace Ocean said Friday that it would be inappropriate to comment on the pending litigation at this time.

The ship was headed to Sri Lanka when it lost power shortly after leaving Baltimore and struck one of the bridge’s support columns, collapsing the span and sending six members of a roadwork crew plunging to their deaths.

FBI agents boarded the stalled ship last week amid a criminal investigation. A separate federal probe by the National Transportation Safety Board will include an inquiry into whether the ship experienced power issues before starting its voyage, officials have said. That investigation will focus generally on the Dali’s electrical system.

In their petition, Grace Ocean and Synergy sought to cap their liability at roughly $43.6 million. The petition estimates that the vessel itself is valued at up to $90 million and was owed over $1.1 million in income from freight. The estimate also deducts two major expenses: at least $28 million in repair costs and at least $19.5 million in salvage costs.

Baltimore leaders and business owners argue the ship’s owner and manager should be held responsible for their role in the disaster, which halted most maritime traffic through the Port of Baltimore and disrupted an important east coast trucking route.

Lawyers representing victims of the collapse and their families also have pledged to hold the companies accountable.

(Reuters) -The Biden administration on Friday delayed a plan to ban menthol cigarettes, citing the need for more time to review the health regulator’s proposal.

The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the decision, said it came after the White House weighed the potential public-health benefits of banning the cigarettes against the political risk of angering Black voters in an election year.

For decades, menthol cigarettes have been in the crosshairs of anti-smoking groups who argue that they contribute to disproportionate health burdens on Black communities and play a role in luring young people into smoking.

“This rule has garnered historic attention and the public comment period has yielded an immense amount of feedback, including from various elements of the civil rights and criminal justice movement,” U.S. health secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement on Friday.

“It’s clear that there are still more conversations to have, and that will take significantly more time.”

A U.S. Food and Drug Administration decision expected last year to ban the cigarettes was delayed with the Biden administration taking time to discuss the matter with several groups.

Shares of Altria Group and British America Tobacco were down marginally, while Imperial Brands was down about 1%. Shares in Philip Morris International, which does not sell cigarettes in the United States, fell 1%.

Menthol cigarettes account for a third of the industry’s overall market share in the United States.

The highly addictive products have been cited for their appeal to young smokers, as well as significant health impacts for Black communities.

Civil rights groups have contended for years that menthol cigarettes pose a disproportionately higher risk in Black communities, where they are heavily marketed.

About 81% of Black adults who smoked cigarettes used menthol varieties, compared with 34% of white adults, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

(Reporting by Granth Vanaik in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar and Sriraj Kalluvila)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The CEOs of leading U.S. technology companies are joining a new artificial intelligence safety board to advise the federal government on how to protect the nation’s critical services from “AI-related disruptions.”

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced the new board Friday which includes key corporate leaders in AI development such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

AI holds potential for improving government services but “we recognize the tremendously debilitating impact its errant use can have,” Mayorkas told reporters Friday.

Also on the 22-member board are the CEOs of Adobe, chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, Delta Air Lines, IBM, Northrop Grumman, Occidental Petroleum and Amazon’s AWS cloud computing division. Not included were social media companies such as Meta Platforms and X.

Corporate executives dominate, but it also includes civil rights advocates, AI scientist Fei-Fei Li who leads Stanford University’s AI institute as well as Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, two public officials who are “already ahead of the curve” in thinking about harnessing AI’s capabilities and mitigating risks, Mayorkas said.

He said the board will help the Department of Homeland Security stay ahead of evolving threats.

NORTH WILDWOOD, N.J. (AP) — A long-running sandstorm at the Jersey Shore could soon come to an end as New Jersey will carry out an emergency beach replenishment project at one of the state’s most badly eroded beaches.

North Wildwood and the state have been fighting in court for years over measures the town has taken on its own to try to hold off the encroaching seas while waiting — in vain — for the same sort of replenishment projects that virtually the entire rest of the Jersey Shore has received.

It could still be another two years before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection begin pumping sand onto North Wildwood’s critically eroded shores. In January, parts of the dunes reached only to the ankles of Mayor Patrick Rosenello.

But the mayor released a joint statement from the city and Gov. Phil Murphy late Thursday night saying both sides have agreed to an emergency project to pump sand ashore in the interim, to give North Wildwood protection from storm surges and flooding.

“The erosion in North Wildwood is shocking,” Murphy said Friday. “We could not let that stand. This is something that has been out there as an unresolved matter far too long.”

Rosenello — a Republican who put up signs last summer at the entrance to North Wildwood beaches with Murphy’s photo on them, telling residents the Democratic governor was the one to blame for there being so little sand on the beach — on Friday credited Murphy’s leadership in resolving the impasse. He also cited advocacy from elected officials from both parties, including former Senate President Steve Sweeney, a Democrat, and Republican Sen. Michael Testa in helping to broker a deal.

“This is a great thing for North Wildwood and a good thing for the entire Jersey Shore,” Rosenello said.

The work will be carried out by the state Department of Transportation, but cost estimates were not available Friday. Rosenello said he expects the city will be required to contribute toward the cost.

The agreement could end more than a decade of legal and political wrangling over erosion in North Wildwood, a popular vacation spot for Philadelphians.

New Jersey has fined the town $12 million for unauthorized beach repairs that it says could worsen erosion, while the city is suing to recoup the $30 million it has spent trucking sand to the site for over a decade in the absence of a replenishment program.

Rosenello said he hopes the agreement could lead to both sides dismissing their voluminous legal actions against each other. But he added that more work needs to be done before that can happen. Murphy would not comment on the possibility of ending the litigation.

North Wildwood has asked the state for emergency permission to build a steel bulkhead along the most heavily eroded section of its beachfront — something previously done in two other spots.

But the state Department of Environmental Protection has tended to oppose bulkheads as a long-term solution, noting that the hard structures often encourage sand scouring against them that can accelerate and worsen erosion.

The agency prefers the sort of beach replenishment projects carried out for decades by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, where massive amounts of sand are pumped from offshore onto eroded beaches, widening them and creating sand dunes to protect the property behind them.

Virtually the entire 127-mile (204-kilometer) New Jersey coastline has received such projects. But in North Wildwood, legal approvals and property easements from private landowners have thus far prevented one from happening.

That is the type of project that will get underway in the next few weeks, albeit a temporary one. It could be completed by July 4, Rosenello said.

“Hopefully by the July 4 holiday, North Wildwood will have big, healthy beaches, and lots of happy beachgoers,” he said.

___

Follow Wayne Parry on X, formerly Twitter, at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — A New Hampshire man accused of participating in a plot in which a caller issued bomb threats last year to Harvard University and demanded a large amount of bitcoin was sentenced Thursday to three years of probation.

The threats caused the evacuation of Harvard’s Science Center Plaza and surrounding academic buildings, and the controlled detonation of what was later determined to be a hoax device on April 13, 2023, according to prosecutors.

William Giordani, 55, was arrested last year on charges including making an extortionate bomb threat. That charge was dropped, and he pleaded guilty to one count of concealing a federal felony, effectively knowing about a felony and not reporting it, according to his lawyer.

Giordani had faced a sentence of up to three years and a fine of up to $250,000. Prosecutors instead recommended a sentence of up to three years’ probation.

Prosecutors said at the time that they agreed to accept Giordani’s guilty plea in part because they believed he had been pulled into the plot after he responded to a Craigslist ad. They also said they believed his response to the ad was driven in part by a drug habit and that he has made efforts to remain in a recovery program.

The case stems from an episode last April when Harvard University’s police department received a warning from a caller electronically disguising their voice saying bombs had been placed on campus.

The caller demanded an unspecified amount in Bitcoin to prevent the remote detonation of the bombs, prosecutors said. Only one hoax device was discovered.

Investigators said Giordani responded to the Craigslist ad looking for someone to purchase fireworks in New Hampshire and pick up some other items in Massachusetts — including wire, a metal locking safe and a bag — and deliver the items to his son at Harvard.

After Giordani collected the items, the individual said his son was unable to meet him and he should leave the bag with the items on a bench in a science plaza area at the school. Police later destroyed those items.

Investigators said that at some point Giordani began to harbor suspicions that the items could be used to construct a bomb, pointing to deleted text messages where he acknowledged it could be bomb material. In another text to his girlfriend, Giordani said, “I got scammed,” police said.

Giordani also took steps to hide from police after they made attempts to reach him in order not to reveal his role in delivering the bag, investigators said.

There were no injuries.