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LABOR

A federal judge on Wednesday struck down regulations requiring most US employers to provide workers with time off and other accommodations for abortions. The ruling by US District Judge David Joseph of the Western District of Louisiana was a victory for conservative lawmakers and religious groups who decried the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s decision to include abortion among pregnancy-related conditions in regulations on how to implement the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which passed in December 2022. The EEOC’s decision swiftly prompted several lawsuits and eroded what had been strong bipartisan support for the law designed to strengthen the rights of pregnant workers. Joseph, who was appointed by President Trump during his first term, ruled that the EEOC exceeded its authority by including abortion in its regulations. His ruling came in two consolidated lawsuits brought by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Mississippi, and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic University, and two Catholic dioceses. Joseph sided with the plaintiffs’ argument that if Congress had intended for abortion to be covered by the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, “it would have spoken clearly when enacting the statute, particularly given the enormous social, religious, and political importance of the abortion issue in our nation at this time.” — ASSOCIATED PRESS

RETAIL

Target’s woes continue. The underperforming retailer has struggled with tariff-fueled anxiety among shoppers and protests in response to its retreat from diversity policies. On Wednesday, it again fell short of expectations for quarterly sales and slashed its full-year financial forecast. Target now expects a “low-single digit decline” in sales this year, down from a projection a few months ago of a small gain. The gloomy forecast set Target apart from some of its competitors that have in recent days maintained their outlooks, even while warning of the risks and uncertainty generated by President Trump’s tariffs. Comparable sales at Target last quarter, which ended May 3, fell 3.8 percent from a year earlier, reflecting both lower foot traffic and less spent per visit. The retailer’s stock fell 5.2 percent in Wednesday’s trading as investors digested the weaker-than-expected report. “We’re not satisfied with this performance,” Brian Cornell, Target’s CEO, said on a call with analysts. — NEW YORK TIMES

REGULATION

Commercial mining on the miles-deep Pacific Ocean floor came one step closer to reality with an announcement late Tuesday by the US Interior Department that it would evaluate a request from a California-based company to extract metals off the coast of American Samoa. The move follows an executive order last month that urged government agencies to expedite permits for seabed mining in US territorial waters as well as international waters. Most other nations argue that the United States does not have the legal right to mine the seabed beyond its own territorial waters. Parts of the ocean floor are blanketed by potato-size nodules containing valuable minerals like nickel, cobalt, and manganese that are essential to advanced technologies that the United States considers critical to its economic and military security. Supply chains of many of these valuable minerals are increasingly controlled by China. No commercial-scale mining of the seabed has ever taken place. The technological hurdles to seabed mining are high, and there have been serious concerns about the environmental consequences. Yet many countries have been impatient to get started as demand grows for the metals found there. — NEW YORK TIMES

TECH

AI largely remains the domain of an app on phones, despite efforts by startups and others to move it into devices. Now OpenAI, the world’s leading AI lab, is taking a crack at that riddle. On Wednesday, Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, said the company was paying $6.5 billion to buy io, a 1-year-old startup created by Jony Ive, a former top Apple executive who designed the iPhone. The deal, which effectively unites Silicon Valley royalty, is intended to usher in what the two men call “a new family of products” for the age of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, which is shorthand for a future technology that achieves human-level intelligence. The deal, which is OpenAI’s biggest acquisition, will bring in Ive and his team of about 55 engineers, designers, and researchers. They will assume creative and design responsibilities across OpenAI and build hardware that helps people better interact with the technology. — NEW YORK TIMES

TECH

Lawmakers in Washington have worked for years to limit China’s access to the cutting-edge computer chips needed for advanced artificial intelligence, particularly those made by Nvidia, America’s leading chipmaker. But according to Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, those regulations, driven by economic and security concerns, have only made Chinese tech companies stronger. The export controls on chips forced Nvidia to forfeit its dominant position in China while domestic companies like Huawei, the telecommunications giant, filled the gap, Huang said at a news conference in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, on Wednesday. Washington’s efforts gave Chinese companies “the spirit, the energy and the government support to accelerate their development,” said Huang, who attended a tech conference in Taipei this week. “All in all, the export control was a failure.” — NEW YORK TIMES

MEDIA

The Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer find themselves at the center of an AI-related gaffe after they published syndicated content packed with unidentifiable quotes from fake experts and imaginary book titles created using generative artificial intelligence. The articles were published in the papers’ “Heat Index” special sections — a multipage insert filled with tips, advice, and articles on summertime activities. The insert, which was published by the Sun-Times on Sunday and by the Inquirer on Thursday, was syndicated by King Features, a service from the Hearst media company that produces comics, puzzles, and supplemental material. (King Features did not respond to a request for comment.) “It is unacceptable for any content we provide to our readers to be inaccurate. We value our readers’ trust in our reporting and take this very seriously,” Victor Lim, senior director of audience development for Chicago Public Media, said in a statement. “We’ve historically relied on content partners for this information, but given recent developments, it’s clear we must actively evaluate new processes and partnerships to ensure we continue meeting the full range of our readers’ needs,” he added. Lisa Hughes, the publisher and CEO of the Philadelphia Inquirer, said the special section was removed from the e-edition after the discovery was made. “Using artificial intelligence to produce content, as was apparently the case with some of the Heat Index material, is a violation of our own internal policies and a serious breach,” she said in a statement to The Washington Post. Much of the content for the section was written by Marco Buscaglia, a Chicago-based freelance writer who used AI chatbots during the writing process, he told The Post in an interview Tuesday. Buscaglia said there was “no excuse” for not double-checking his work. — WASHINGTON POST