To get ahead in the new internet age, Google wants to help you google less. The company on Tuesday revealed a flurry of AI-powered features for its search engine, AI assistant Gemini and other services. It’s part of Google’s latest effort to revamp its decades-old business model to fit the era of artificial intelligence. Among those updates is a new version of the search bar that can crawl the web on a user’s behalf and a new mode in Gemini that can work autonomously over periods of time.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/05/19/tech/google-search-bar-updates-2026
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche made clear Wednesday that the conduct of January 6, 2021, rioters who attacked law enforcement will be factored when the soon-to-be-set-up commission reviews applications to the anti-weaponization fund. “One of the factors the commissioners have to consider is what the claimant did — the claimant’s conduct,” Blanche told CNN’s Paula Reid in an interview Wednesday. “The claimant would have to say, ‘I assaulted a cop and I want money.’” “Whether the commissioners will give that person money – that claimant – it’s up to them. But that’s one of the factors they have to consider,” he continued, adding that Trump “does not stand for assaulting law enforcement.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/05/20/politics/paula-reid-step-aside-with-blanche-hdfr
Supporters of President Donald Trump who tried to overturn the 2020 election are among those eager to potentially cash in from the $1.8 billion compensation fund for people the Trump administration believes were victims of government “weaponization and lawfare.” In interviews with CNN, convicted US Capitol rioters from January 6, 2021, fake electors and prominent election deniers said they’re hoping to tap the massive fund, which they think is long overdue. “I can’t even find a job answering the phone at a motorcycle dealership,” said convicted January 6 rioter Dominic Box, who spent 1.5 years in jail awaiting trial and was later pardoned by Trump. “I can’t find a way to support myself right now. I lost my career. I look forward to financial compensation. I need it. This will be a welcome relief.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/05/20/politics/trump-fund-january-6-election-deniers-want-money
President Donald Trump had a tense conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday that reflected their different views on how to proceed with the Iran war, a US official told CNN. It wasn’t their first conversation in recent days. When the two leaders spoke on Sunday, Trump shared that he was likely to move forward with new targeted attacks on Iran early in the week, the official said — an operation that, as CNN has previously reported, was expected to get a new name: Operation Sledgehammer. But roughly 24 hours after that initial conversation, Trump announced he was halting strikes that he said were planned for Tuesday at the request of allies in the Gulf, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In the days since, the Gulf nations have been in close contact with White House and Pakistani mediators in working on a framework that could further diplomatics talks, the US official and a person familiar with the situation said.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/05/20/politics/trump-netanyahu-tense-phone-call
The Justice Department’s criminal charges against former Cuban president Raúl Castro is a prosecution more than 30 years in the works, with federal prosecutors in Miami first drafting an indictment against him in the 1990s. After three decades, criminal charges that were announced Wednesday at an event in Miami focusing on the 94-year-old Castro’s role — years before his presidency — as defense minister and alleged role in ordering the 1996 shoot down of two civilian aircraft belonging to the Cuban-American group Brothers to the Rescue, according to people briefed on the matter. Four people, three of them Americans, were killed in the attack by two Cuban MiG fighters in international airspace. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the indictment at ceremony honoring the victims of the shootdown on a day that Cuban exiles celebrate as Cuba’s independence day.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/05/20/politics/behind-the-decades-long-effort-to-indict-raul-castro