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Can AI help you figure out how much money you need to retire?

2026-05-07T17:13:00-0400 / CBS News

People are using artificial intelligence today for a range of tasks, from preparing work presentations and shopping to conducting scientific research. But is AI also useful in tackling the most consequential and complicated calculation a worker is ever likely to face: Can they afford to retire?

Americans are already turning to AI for financial advice, with about 20% saying they use chatbots for this purpose, according to a September study by AI company Pearl. About half of those who already use AI at work also use it for retirement planning — double the rate among workers who don’t use AI, MissionSquare Research Institute found in a separate study.

The need for retirement advice is real: Americans now say they expect to work four years longer than they’d like due to rising living costs and inadequate savings. The median balance for workers with retirement plans is $40,000, far short of the$1.5 million they say they need to retire comfortably.

Meanwhile, Social Security — the financial backstop millions are counting on in retirement — could cut monthly benefits by as much as 20% in just six years, unless lawmakers take action to shore it up.

How AI can help with retirement planning

Given those facts, it’s tempting to turn to ChatGPT or Claude and ask, “Here’s what I have saved so far. Will I be able to retire at 65?”

Some experts say AI offers a good starting point for answering basic retirement questions.

“I’ll say, ‘Come up with some financial planning ideas or even run a Monte Carlo simulation to see how much I can spend every year,’ and it might not be perfect yet, but it’s starting to be able to get to a place where it’s producing some pretty valuable output that I think will be beneficial to people,” said Luke Delorme, director of financial planning and a Certified Financial Planner at Tableau Wealth in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

A Monte Carlo simulation is a mathematical model that runs through thousands of potential outcomes for an individual retirement portfolio, factoring in best- and worst-case scenarios, such as the impact of a bear market. The model then projects the likelihood that a person’s retirement savings will last throughout their life.

Such simulations “are the perfect thing for a computer program to do. Eventually, I think that those tools will also become pretty powerful,” Delorme told CBS News.

Where AI struggles

Yet while generative AI may have value for basic financial planning, experts caution that so-called large language models aren’t ready for prime time when it comes to untangling the complex knot of retirement issues that will face a typical worker, ranging from tax impacts to longevity risk.

Noted Boston University economist and retirement expert Laurence Kotlikoff told CBS News that AI may do more harm than good in dispensing retirement advice. Such apps not only struggle to grasp the nuances of Social Security and other retirement issues, but are also based on what he views as flawed traditional financial planning advice, he said.

“It’s being trained on Wall Street’s guidance, and Wall Street’s guidance is all about maintaining and collecting and expanding its assets under management, so that has nothing to do with proper economic-based advice,” said Kotlikoff, who himself has developed a retirement planning tool called MaxiFi.

For instance, AI programs will estimate your retirement savings based on expected longevity, a typical framework for financial planners. Yet retirement planning should be based on a person’s maximum life expectancy to guard against outliving their money, Kotlikoff said.

He’s also found that AI often provides incorrect information in projecting Social Security scenarios, which can be highly complex given the federal program’s 22,000 pages of rules.

“Then you are off to the races of having the wrong analysis done for you,” Kotlikof said. AI “is like the hottest new thing — you can’t criticize it because otherwise you don’t sound cool or you are defending your job or company.”

But “I don’t give a s*** about feeling cool — I’m here to make people feel safe,” he added.

What AI told us

Andrew Lo, a finance professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, told an MIT publication in April that AI struggles with tax optimization, doesn’t understand regulatory nuance and — unlike a human financial adviser — isn’t subject to legal requirements, such as acting in a client’s best interest.

Lo also stressed that it’s important to ask critical questions when using AI for retirement advice, such as prompting an AI to say where it might be wrong and to list its assumptions and uncertainties.

For instance, consider a hypothetical 50-year-old single woman with an annual income of $70,000. She has a median retirement savings of about $185,000 for someone her age, mostly invested in S&P 500 index funds. She’s contributing 12% of her income to retirement, and at her full retirement age of 67, will receive about $2,400 a month in Social Security benefits.

CBS News asked Anthropic’s Claude app, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Perplexity whether the woman can afford to retire comfortably at age 65 and what advice the chatbots would give her.

Claude and ChatGPT had similar responses: She can retire, but it’ll be tight — and under some circumstances she risks running out of money in retirement. Perplexity was more pessimistic, saying that she likely cannot retire comfortably at 65 without significantly cutting her spending or boosting her income.

Asked about their assumptions, the AI chatbots noted that they are basing their models on the woman living to age 90, versus a possible maximum lifespan of 100, and that they aren’t modeling exact tax implications. Notably, the apps also revealed that they aren’t assessing the potential cost of long-term care, which can be substantial.

The chatbots then walked back some of their original conclusions, with Claude specifically noting that its original planning horizon was too short. It changed its conclusion to “a tight but doable retirement” to “meaningfully underfunded without course correction.”

A bigger problem

When it comes to retirement planning, a bigger issue may be that many people fear investing. That can lead to mistakes, such as keeping savings in cash or CDs, which often have returns lower than inflation, Delorme noted. That means their savings will be eroded over time, heightening the risk of running out of money in retirement.

Delorme thinks AI could help the roughly two-thirds of Americans who don’t work with financial planners begin to understand these concepts. But he also expressed skepticism that AI alone can overcome the anxieties many people have about engaging with financial issues.

“It’s much more behavioral than it is a technical lack of knowledge,” Delorme said. “I don’t know if today that’s going to help people overcome their fears of things, like the fear of investing, which is such a huge obstacle.”

Trump-appointed FEMA Review Council proposes major redesign of federal disaster response role

May 7, 2026 4:41 PM EDT / CBS/AP

A council appointed by President Trump to reform the Federal Emergency Management Agency proposed a major overhaul to the agency that stops short of the administration’s vows to dismantle it, but could reduce the number of disasters the federal government supports and the amount of money it distributes.

The FEMA Review Council’s report says it is “time to close the chapter on FEMA,” arguing the FEMA brand is damaged and should be replaced by a “transformed agency” with a leaner, less Washington-centered structure.

The council, appointed by Mr. Trump, suggests ways the administration would be able to put far more responsibility on states, tribes and territories for disaster preparedness, response and recovery.

It proposes upending how the federal government determines which disasters to support, how FEMA pays states and other governments for disaster recovery costs and what kind of FEMA assistance survivors receive, among other reforms.

After Hurricane Katrina, Congress strengthened FEMA’s federal coordination role. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, reforms were made in an effort to speed up the recovery process and make assistance more flexible. During the coronavirus pandemic, FEMA’s mission expanded even further to include vaccination. This review argues that the accumulation of missions has pulled FEMA away from its core role and created bureaucracy, backlog and too much dependency on the federal government.

“These recommendations are all about accelerating federal dollars, streamlining the process, making it less bureaucratic so that Americans can get the help they need on the worst day of their lives,” former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a council member, said in a public meeting Thursday with nearly 6,000 virtual attendees.

The council submitted its report 15 months after Mr. Trump created the panel and nearly six months after its original November 2025 deadline.

There is broad agreement that FEMA needs reforms to move faster and relieve bureaucracy. But the council’s recommendations raise concerns among some disaster experts that shifting responsibilities will be more than some state and local governments, the private sector or survivors can handle.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the report offered him “a clear direction and an oversight of an agency that is in need of reform, but is still mission capable.”

The recommendations will now be sent to Mr. Trump, though many of the reforms would require congressional action. The White House did not immediately respond to questions about whether the president endorses the recommendations or what actions the administration might take next.

Among the council’s most significant recommendations involves changing how states, tribes, and territories qualify for federal support from a decision informed by a per-capita formula that weighs costs against population to a pre-defined set of metrics for a disaster to trigger federal support.

It also recommended giving states direct payments within 30 days of a disaster, with a potential for another payment further down the line, replacing the current system of reimbursing states after recovery work is done.

Survivors’ assistance would be upended, too: The council proposed limiting housing assistance to those whose homes are rendered uninhabitable and offering survivors a one-time payment instead of multiple avenues for rental, repair, and replacement assistance.

FEMA would focus its survivor aid on emergency housing, moving away from long-term housing assistance and giving states the option to run their own housing programs while adhering to federal standards.

“States, figure it out,” said council member and Florida emergency management director Kevin Guthrie. “Do what’s best for you.”

Other recommendations include shifting most flood insurance policies away from the National Flood Insurance Program, which is over $20 billion in debt, to the private market, and continuing to align premium costs more closely with risk.

Mr. Trump has threatened to dismantle FEMA and has repeatedly said he wants to push more responsibility for disaster preparedness, response and recovery to the states.

The 12-person council he appointed is co-chaired by Mullin and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. It is made up of current and former officials and emergency managers from predominantly Republican-led states.

Emergency managers, local leaders, nonprofits involved with disaster management and survivor groups have anxiously awaited the council’s findings, which were due roughly six months ago but were delayed as former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and council members clashed over drafts.

The council says that in compiling its recommendations, it reviewed 11,708 public submissions, surveyed 1,387 state, local, tribal and territorial governmental and nongovernmental partners, engaged all 50 states and territories, held listening sessions in 13 cities, and held four tribal listening sessions.

The final recommendations seemed to move away from at least one of the most controversial reforms included in past drafts: Cutting the FEMA workforce by 50%, a recommendation included in a December draft reviewed by The Associated Press.

In a statement to The Associated Press, a spokesperson for The National Emergency Management Association said the group “broadly supports the overarching principles outlined by the council of less complexity in federal programs, faster assistance, and cost savings at all levels.”

Some disaster experts worry local governments and nonprofits won’t be able to fill in potential voids left by a federal pullback. Limiting survivor aid to those whose houses are uninhabitable, for example, “would dramatically increase the level of displacement and economic insecurity” for low-income survivors, said Noah Patton, director of disaster recovery at the National Low-Income Housing Coalition.

Asked about the council’s proposal, former FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate told CBS News, “Reports are often issued — what changes is the question.”

Most major changes would require legislative action. A FEMA reform act passed out of a House committee last year, but no further action has been taken.

Former FEMA chief of staff Michael Coen told CBS News, “The next step should be collaboration between the executive branch and Congress. The goals of these recommendations can’t fully be implemented without legislative statutory changes.” He added that “none of these recommendations will be easy to implement. FEMA has been changing and improving since 1979 and the work continues.”

Patton said he was skeptical that lawmakers could pass FEMA reform soon, especially with limited time before the midterm elections, and said the recommendations are not a foregone conclusion.

“It is important to remember that these are suggestions — they aren’t set in stone,” he said.

contributed to this report.

State Department reviewing all Mexican consulates in U.S. as tensions grow

May 7, 2026 4:59 PM EDT / CBS News

By Olivia Gazis

Olivia Gazis covers intelligence and international security matters for CBS News. Twice Emmy-nominated, she has traveled worldwide with the secretary of state and contributes reporting on intelligence, foreign policy and other security topics across CBS News broadcast, radio, online and streaming platforms.

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The State Department is initiating a review of all 53 Mexican consulates operating in the United States, a U.S. official told CBS News on Thursday, in a move that could lead Secretary of State Marco Rubio to consider ordering the closure of some diplomatic offices.

The review comes as bilateral tensions build over security cooperation and cartel violence, and it follows the deaths of two American CIA officers after a counter-narcotics operation in northern Mexico last month.

A State Department official said the review is part of a broader effort to align U.S. foreign policy with the Trump administration’s priorities.

Dylan Johnson, assistant secretary of state for global public affairs, said the “Department of State is constantly reviewing all aspects of American foreign relations to ensure they are in line with the President’s America First foreign policy agenda and advance American interests.”

Mexico maintains the largest foreign consular network in the United States, with offices that provide documentation and legal aid to millions of Mexican citizens living across the country. Most are concentrated in border states and cities with large Mexican American populations, including California, Texas and Arizona.

In recent years, U.S. consulate closures have usually reflected rising tensions with rival countries rather than routine diplomatic changes. In 2020, as relations between Washington and Beijing worsened, the Trump administration ordered China’s consulate in Houston to close, citing concerns over espionage and intellectual property theft. In 2017, the U.S. ordered Russia to close its consulate in San Francisco, along with diplomatic facilities in Washington and New York, in response to Moscow expelling American diplomats.

Tensions between the U.S. and Mexico spiked last month following the deaths of two American officials — later confirmed by CBS News to have been working for the CIA — who died alongside two Mexican investigators after their vehicle crashed in a remote mountain region where authorities were targeting suspected drug laboratories.

U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson announced the deaths of two embassy staff members in a post on X on April 19.

The operation quickly stoked political controversy, after Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said the American officers may not have had authorization from the federal government to operate in the country and publicly demanded explanations from the Trump administration.

The dispute has widened in recent days, as the U.S. announced drug trafficking and weapons charges against top Mexican political figures and issued multiple extradition requests, including one for Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya.

Sheinbaum said this week that Mexico’s Foreign Ministry sent a diplomatic note to Washington requesting evidence from the U.S. Justice Department regarding the allegations against Rocha and other senior officials, saying Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office would investigate if credible evidence was provided.

Rocha denied the accusations, calling them false, and said he would temporarily leave office to focus on his defense and cooperate with Mexican authorities as the case proceeds.

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico later said combating corruption and transnational organized crime remains a shared priority for both governments. While declining to comment on the specific allegations, the embassy said corruption that enables organized crime “will be investigated and prosecuted wherever U.S. jurisdiction applies.”

The diplomatic strife comes amid an expanded CIA counternarcotics push under Director John Ratcliffe, who has sought to advance a key Trump administration priority by deepening intelligence-sharing and training with Mexican antidrug units and has included surveillance drone flights over Mexico targeting cartel operations.

The growing U.S. role has fueled debate in Mexico over its sovereignty and security cooperation with the Trump administration, especially as President Trump has repeatedly floated taking unilateral military action against cartels.

The CIA declined to comment.

CBS News has reached out to the Mexican embassy in Washington, D.C., for comment.

Margaret Brennan contributed to this report.

FIRST ON FOX: Top Republicans take abortion pill fight to Supreme Court, citing coercion and safety risks

May 7, 2026 5:43pm EDT / Fox News

Amicus brief alleges loosened FDA rules have led to cases of women being coerced into taking mifepristone

By Jasmine Baehr Fox News

Live Action founder and president Lila Rose discusses the Supreme Court temporarily lifting restrictions on access to the abortion drug mifepristone by mail on ‘Fox News @ Night.’

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FIRST ON FOX: More than 100 Republican lawmakers are urging the Supreme Court to reinstate abortion pill restrictions, warning current policy allowing mifepristone to be mailed without in-person oversight has led to cases of women being coerced — and in some instances allegedly forced — to take the drug.

The amicus brief, led by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., backs Louisiana’s legal fight to restore an in-person dispensing requirement for the drug.

At the center of the filing are allegations that loosened federal rules have enabled coercion, with lawmakers arguing the Biden-era policy “increases the risk of coercion,” referring to changes to the FDA’s Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) that removed the in-person requirement.

The brief points to several alleged cases in which abortion pills were obtained online or administered without a woman’s consent, including plaintiff Rosalie Markezich, who says her boyfriend ordered mifepristone from a California doctor and coerced her into taking it.

ABORTION PILL MIFEPRISTONE SPARKS NEW PRO-LIFE DEBATE AS SOME DOCTORS STRESS SAFETY CONCERNS

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., speaks during a Senate hearing while pointing to a chart showing fetal development stages on Capitol Hill in Washington.(Courtesy U.S. Senate Photographic services)

“Had she visited a doctor in person, her boyfriend would never have been able to obtain the drugs he made her take,” the brief says.

Lawmakers also cite additional reported incidents, including a case in which a Louisiana mother allegedly obtained abortion pills online for her teenage daughter, leading to a medical emergency, as well as another case involving a man accused of administering the drugs to a pregnant woman without her knowledge.

Lawmakers argue such cases are more likely under a system that allows abortion pills to be prescribed online and shipped without face-to-face medical screening.

‘ABORTION PILL’ FOUND TO HAVE ‘SEVERE ADVERSE EFFECTS’ FOR 1 IN 10 WOMEN, STUDY FINDS

Activists for and against abortion demonstrate outside the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 24, 2024, three years after the Dobbs decision. The demonstration coincides with a landmark Texas filing seeking to prevent interstate abortion pill mailing.(Allison Robbert/The Washington Post/Getty Images)

They say the policy not only weakens safeguards but puts women at risk while removing protections designed to prevent abuse.

Cassidy said those safeguards should be restored immediately.

“Chemical abortion drugs kill innocent children and put mothers’ lives at risk,” Cassidy said. “Safeguards protecting against coercion, such as the in-person dispensing requirement, must be reinstated immediately. The Fifth Circuit got this right, and I urge the Supreme Court to affirm that decision.”

ABORTION PILL FIGHT HEADS TO SUPREME COURT AS MANUFACTURER WARNS OF ‘CHAOS’ AFTER RULING

Anti-abortion activists hold signs outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2022, following the overturning of Roe v. Wade.(Stefani Reynolds/AFP)

The filing comes after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Louisiana and reinstated the in-person dispensing requirement while litigation continues.

Lawmakers argue the FDA “overstepped its authority” by allowing abortion drugs to be distributed through the mail, saying the policy conflicts with the Comstock Act, which prohibits mailing items “designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.”

Smith also argued the drug poses serious risks, citing claims that more than one in 10 women experience complications such as infection or hemorrhaging.

They also contend the agency relied on insufficient safety data when it removed the in-person requirement, weakening adverse-event reporting standards and then using limited data to justify expanded access.

NEW YORK GOV. HOCHUL SIGNS LAW PROTECTING ABORTION PILL PRESCRIBERS AFTER DOCTOR INDICTED IN LOUISIANA

Louisiana lawmakers approved a bill on May 23, 2024, classifying two abortion-inducing drugs as controlled and dangerous substances despite criticism from doctors about their other reproductive health uses.(Allen G. Breed/AP)

The brief further argues that eliminating in-person visits prevents doctors from screening for serious medical conditions, including ectopic pregnancies, and makes it more difficult to detect coercion or abuse.

The legal fight intensified over the weekend when mifepristone manufacturers Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro filed emergency appeals to the Supreme Court, warning the lower court ruling is already causing “immediate confusion and upheaval” across the country.

Danco argued the decision is disrupting access and forcing providers, pharmacies and patients to navigate rapidly changing rules, while GenBioPro said the order effectively eliminates mail-order access and upends a system relied on for years.

The companies are asking the justices to block the ruling while litigation continues, setting up a high-stakes legal battle that could reshape how the abortion drug is distributed nationwide.

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The Supreme Court is now weighing emergency requests from the manufacturers, which are seeking to pause the 5th Circuit’s order while the case proceeds.

The outcome could reshape access to abortion pills nationwide, determining whether they remain widely available by mail or are once again restricted to in-person medical oversight.

“There are legitimate concerns about these drugs putting women and girls at significant risk,” said Leader Thune. “I urge the Supreme Court to reinstate the safety guardrails that were in place before the Biden administration while the Department of Health and Human Services reviews these drugs.”

Jasmine Baehr is a Breaking News Writer for Fox News Digital, where she covers politics, the military, faith and culture.

U.S. strikes 2 Iranian ports as American warships come under fire

May 7, 2026 / 6:57 PM EDT / CBS News

By James LaPorta, James LaPorta National security coordinating producer
James LaPorta is the national security coordinating producer for the CBS News’ Washington bureau. He is a former U.S. Marine veteran infantryman and veteran of the Afghanistan war.

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James LaPorta, Jennifer Jacobs, Jennifer Jacobs Senior White House reporter
Jennifer Jacobs is a senior White House reporter at CBS News.

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Jennifer Jacobs, Kathryn Watson, Kathryn Watson Politics Reporter
Kathryn Watson is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital, based in Washington, D.C.

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Kathryn Watson, Joe Walsh
Joe Walsh Senior Editor, Politics
Joe Walsh is a senior editor for digital politics at CBS News. Joe previously covered breaking news for Forbes and local news in Boston.

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Joe Walsh

Washington — Three U.S. Navy destroyers transiting the Strait of Hormuz came under attack on Thursday, and the U.S. carried out strikes on two Iranian ports abutting the strait, putting into question an increasingly fragile monthlong ceasefire between the two countries.

The American destroyers USS Truxton, USS Mason and USS Rafael Peralta were attacked by Iranian missiles, drones and small boats, CBS News was first to report. The U.S. military’s Central Command confirmed the attacks in a statement and said the U.S. military responded with “self-defense strikes” on Iranian facilities, including drone and missile launch sites. The U.S. vessels were not struck, CENTCOM said.

The U.S. targeted the Iranian ports of Bandar Abbas and Qeshm, multiple U.S. officials told CBS News.

President Trump told ABC News the ceasefire is still in effect despite the strikes on Iranian targets, which he described as “just a love tap.”

Fox News was first to report the strikes on Qeshm and Bandar Abbas.

American officials described the Iranian onslaught on three destroyers as fiercer and more sustained than a separate Iranian barrage that two of the warships faced only days earlier.

The vessels came under an intense Iranian assault as swarms of Iranian fast-attack boats maneuvered close enough that American warships opened fire to keep them at bay, U.S. officials told CBS News under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Over several hours, the American warships and supporting aircraft mounted a layered defense, firing their five-inch naval guns and their close-in weapon systems known as CIWS, officials said. Small-caliber gun teams on deck also engaged the attacking boats. American Apache helicopters fired Hellfire missiles, and .50-caliber machine guns were fired from the decks of the ships, as additional aircraft provided support overhead.

Iranian forces also launched drones and missiles during the confrontation, the officials said. As of publication, no casualties or damage to the ships was reported.

Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social that there was “great damage done to the Iranian attackers.”

“They dropped ever so beautifully down to the Ocean, very much like a butterfly dropping to its grave!” he wrote, referring to the U.S.’s efforts to shoot down Iranian drones.

On Monday, CBS News first reported that two of the same vessels — the USS Truxtun and USS Mason — transited the Strait of Hormuz and entered the Persian Gulf after navigating an Iranian barrage on Monday. During that engagement, Iran also launched small boats, missiles and drones against them in what officials described as a sustained barrage.

Despite the intensity of the attacks, neither U.S. vessel was struck earlier this week. CENTCOM said it destroyed six Iranian vessels on Monday, which Iran denied.

The incidents at sea mark some of the most direct known exchanges between the U.S. and Iran since the two countries entered into a ceasefire roughly one month ago, buying them time to negotiate a longer-term peace deal. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters earlier this week the ceasefire is still in place, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S.’s initial operation against Iran — Operation Epic Fury — is over.

Despite the ceasefire, the U.S. and Iran have continued to vie for control over the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman that normally carries one-fifth of the world’s oil.

Commercial shipping traffic ground to a virtual halt after the U.S. and Israel first launched strikes on Iran in late February, causing global oil prices to surge and trapping hundreds of tankers in the Persian Gulf. Most ships have continued to avoid the strait during the ceasefire, as Iran warns vessels not to sail through without permission.

Mr. Trump has pushed Iran to reopen the strait, and has enforced a blockade on Iranian ports in an effort to hobble the country’s economy and pressure it into a deal.

On Monday, Mr. Trump launched a project to guide commercial ships through the strait, allowing two American vessels to sail through the waterway. But a day later, Mr. Trump suspended that initiative, called Project Freedom. He said the project was on pause to see if negotiations between the U.S. and Iran can lead to a peace agreement.

The president hasn’t given a timeline for negotiations with Iran, and no in-person talks have been announced.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump warned that “we’ll knock them out a lot harder, and a lot more violently, in the future, if they don’t get their Deal signed, FAST!”

中国最高检挂牌督办湖南烟花爆炸重大责任事故案

2026年5月8日 07:47 / 联合早报

中国最高人民检察院星期四（5月7日）宣布，挂牌督办湖南浏阳烟花爆炸重大责任事故案。

这起发生在星期一（4日）的致命事故，已造成26人死亡、61人受伤。

最高人民检察院在官网公布，案发当日，浏阳市公安局以涉嫌重大责任事故罪进行立案侦查，后对涉事企业相关责任人员刑事拘留，案件正在进一步侦查中。

最高人民检察院也说，最高检要求湖南省检察机关充分履行检察职能，协同公安机关及有关部门，依法查清事故原因、案件事实和严重后果；查明涉案有关人员的违法违规责任，对于罪责严重的责任人员，依法从严惩处。

最高检有关负责人说，检察机关要在依法严厉打击危害生产安全刑事犯罪的同时，注重分析案件暴露出的安全生产风险防范等方面的突出问题，协同有关部门持续落实最高检“八号检察建议”，促进压实安全生产责任，推动重点行业领域风险排查整治，切实维护人民群众生命财产安全和社会大局稳定。

新华社曾在2022年报道，针对当前安全生产监管工作中存在的突出问题，最高检向应急管理部制发了安全生产溯源治理方面的检察建议，这也是最高检第八号检察建议。

Attorney for SPLC expecting a superseding indictment in fraud case

2026-05-07T20:33:48.042Z / CNN

By Wesley Bruer, Holmes Lybrand

PUBLISHED May 7, 2026, 4:33 PM ET

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel speak at a news conference at the Justice Department on April 21 in Washington, DC.

Jacquelyn Martin/AP

During the initial hearing in the Justice Department’s fraud case against the Southern Poverty Law Center, an attorney for the civil rights group said he believes a second indictment might be coming in the case.

The attorney, Abbe Lowell, told a federal judge in Alabama that a superseding indictment in the case could mean a trial date — currently expected to be in the fall — would need to be pushed back.

The SPLC has been charged with using fictious companies to secretly pay informants inside of extremist and racist groups over the span of a decade.

The group, however, says the informants passed along valuable information about the extremist groups that the Justice Department itself has relied on in certain cases.

Related article: Lawmakers accuse Justice Department of rushing SPLC indictment, citing whistleblower reports

Thursday’s hearing in Montgomery was the first in the case against the SPLC over a practice which, according to prosecutors, the civil rights group has been engaged in for 20 years.

SPLC CEO Bryan Fair pleaded not guilty to 11 charges, including wire fraud, making false statements to a federally insured bank and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

While the organization, founded in the early 1970s, has been known for its work investigating and tracking extremist groups, Republicans have accused the SPLC of unfairly labelling conservative organizations and individuals as extremists.

In this 1989 photo, family members of fallen civil rights activists view the Civil Rights Memorial at the Southern Poverty Law Center during a private family viewing in Montgomery, Alabama.

Dave Martin/AP

Following the murder of prominent right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk, that criticism was made anew, with Republicans noting the SPLC had described Kirk’s organization Turning Point USA in a report as “A Case Study of the Hard Right in 2024.”

It’s unclear what charges the SPLC could face in addition to the charges it already faces.

“The Southern Poverty Law Center will continue, as it has in the past, to stand as a beacon of hope on the right side of history,” Lowell said in a press conference following the initial hearing.

Louisiana presses US Supreme Court to halt abortion pill mail delivery

2026-05-07 21:38:44.554Z / Reuters

By Andrew Chung

May 7, 2026 9:38 PM UTC Updated 2 hours ago

• Louisiana challenged abortion pill telemedicine rule
• Federal appeals court backed Louisiana’s challenge
• Trump administration reviewing mifepristone regulation

May 7 (Reuters) – Louisiana urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to prevent abortion pills from being prescribed through telemedicine and distributed by mail, as the Republican-led state presses its case to overturn a 2023 federal rule that made access to ​the medication easier.

Republican Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill’s office in a filing asked the justices to deny emergency requests by two manufacturers of ‌the abortion pill to lift a lower court’s decision that narrowed access to it by blocking the regulation nationwide while the state’s legal challenge continues.

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The regulation concerning the medication, called mifepristone, was issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration during Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency.

Murrill’s office said the regulation has allowed medication abortions to skyrocket despite the state’s near-total ban on abortion.

“Notwithstanding Louisiana’s policy and laws, ​hundreds of abortions are occurring every month in Louisiana. That is the predictable consequence of a drug war enabled by President Biden’s FDA,” the office ​said in the filing.

The rule is currently in effect following an interim order by the Supreme Court on Monday that temporarily paused ⁠the decision by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in favor of Louisiana. That action was intended to give the justices time to decide on ​the requests by mifepristone makers Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro.

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The case has thrust the contentious issue of abortion back in front of the justices as abortion opponents again try ​to scale back access to mifepristone, with the November U.S. congressional elections looming.

The Supreme Court in 2024 unanimously rejected an initial bid by anti-abortion groups and doctors to roll back FDA regulations that had eased access to mifepristone, ruling that these plaintiffs lacked the necessary legal standing to pursue the challenge.

The ongoing battles over abortion rights follow the court’s 2022 ruling that overturned its 1973 Roe v. ​Wade precedent that had legalized abortion nationwide. That ruling has prompted 13 states to enact near-total bans on the procedure, while several others have sharply restricted access.

Since that ​ruling, anti-abortion advocates have targeted mifepristone, claiming that it is unsafe for women to take and that the FDA should not have approved it or relaxed limits on its use.

The FDA ‌has said ⁠mifepristone was approved based on scientific evidence and continues to be safe and effective for its intended purpose when used as directed. Reproductive health experts note that hundreds of clinical trials, studies and medical reviews have shown that mifepristone is safe and that complications are exceedingly rare.

They have said abortion opponents have misrepresented studies that actually show that complications and serious adverse events for women who have accessed the pill by telehealth and the mail are rare.

Mifepristone, given FDA regulatory approval in 2000, is taken with another ​drug called misoprostol to perform medication abortions, ​a method that now accounts for ⁠more than 60% of all abortions in the United States.

Louisiana sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2025 claiming that the FDA’s determination that data supported eliminating the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone – which it calls a longstanding safeguard – was illegal and ​undermined the state’s abortion ban.

Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro intervened in the litigation to defend the regulation. Republican President Donald Trump’s administration ​opposed Louisiana’s challenge, citing ⁠an ongoing review of safety regulations concerning mifepristone. The administration also argued that Louisiana does not have legal standing to pursue its case.

In April, U.S. Judge David Joseph in Lafayette, Louisiana, declined to block the regulation but agreed with the administration to put the case on hold pending the review. The 5th Circuit blocked the rule on May 1.

Abortion rights advocates call ⁠the Trump ​administration’s review politically motivated and unnecessary given decades of studies showing the safety of mifepristone. They said ​that the review could lead to tighter restrictions on the medication.

Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

U.S. trade court rules against Trump’s 10% tariffs

May 7, 2026 / 6:10 PM EDT / CBS News

A U.S. trade court on Thursday ruled that President Trump’s latest round of global 10% tariffs are invalid.

In a 2-1 decision, a panel of judges in the U.S. Court of International Trade sided with 24 states and a small group of businesses who filed a lawsuit in March challenging the legality of the Trump administration’s tax on most imports.

Those new tariffs were put in place in February, days after the Supreme Court struck down Mr. Trump’s previous round of sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs first issued in April 2025 under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the IEEPA does not give Mr. Trump the authority to impose tariffs.

Following that Supreme Court decision, the White House put in place new tariffs using Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, a legal provision that allows the president to impose tariffs for 150 days.

In its 88-page ruling Thursday, the U.S. Court of International Trade described the tariffs as “unlawful,” and noted that they had brought on “economic harm.”

“Defendants do not explain why they should be permitted to continue the unlawful collection of Section 122 duties from Importer Plaintiffs for the duration of the imposition of such duties,” the judges ruled.

The panel ruled that the Trump administration must implement the order within five days. It also ruled that the White House must issue refunds plus interest for all tariffs paid by businesses.

CBS News has reached out to the White House for comment on the ruling.

The Trump administration is also expected to begin issuing refunds this month to businesses that paid duties under the IEEPA tariffs.

Kathryn Watson, Lucia I Suarez Sang, Melissa Quinn and Joe Walsh contributed to this report.

中东冲突升级 美军称对伊朗无端敌对行动实施报复打击

2026年5月8日 07:00 / 联合早报

美国中央司令部5月7日说，三艘美国舰艇在霍尔木兹海峡驶往阿曼湾时拦截了伊朗的无端袭击，并以自卫打击予以回击。 （示意图/路透社）

霍尔木兹海峡发生爆炸，中东局势再升级。伊朗国家广播公司称，伊朗与“敌方”交火。美国军方指伊朗发动无端敌对行动，已对伊朗实施报复性打击。

伊朗半官方通讯社塔斯尼姆通讯社报道，伊朗海军袭击了霍尔木兹海峡附近的三艘美国驱逐舰。伊朗法尔斯通讯社报道，阿巴斯港、格什姆岛和伊朗首都德黑兰都听到爆炸声。

另据路透社报道，美国中央司令部星期四（5月7日）发表声明说，当天美国海军导弹驱逐舰在霍尔木兹海峡驶往阿曼湾途中，拦截了伊朗的无端袭击，并以自卫打击予以回击。

声明说：“当特鲁克斯顿号、拉斐尔·佩拉尔塔号、梅森号驱逐舰通过国际航道时，伊朗军队发射了多枚导弹和无人机，还出动小型船只。没有美军舰艇遭到击中。”

“美国中央司令部已消除来袭威胁，并对袭击美军的伊朗军事设施进行了打击，包括导弹和无人机发射场、指挥控制中心以及情报、监视和侦察节点。”

声明还说：“美国中央司令部不寻求局势升级，但仍保持部署状态，随时准备保护美军。”

伊朗国家媒体引述一不愿具名的伊朗军事官员说，在美国军方袭击了一艘伊朗油轮后，美国海军部队在霍尔木兹海峡区域执行任务时遭到伊朗导弹袭击。他说，美国军舰在伊朗导弹袭击中受损，被迫撤退。

美军5月7日通报，击沉了一艘试图驶往伊朗港口、悬挂伊朗国旗的油轮。

五角大楼尚未对此置评。