Some foreign companies are considering moving Taiwanese employees out of China after Beijing said it could impose the death penalty on "diehard" Taiwan independence separatists, said four people familiar with the matter.

The new guidelines have caused some Taiwanese expatriates and foreign multinationals operating in China to scramble to assess their legal risks and exposure, said the people, who include a lawyer and two executives with direct knowledge of the discussions.

"Several companies have come to us to assess the risks to their personnel," said the lawyer, James Zimmerman, a Beijing-based partner at the Perkins Coie law firm. He declined to identify the companies or industries for confidentiality reasons.

"The companies are still concerned that there may be some grey areas such as whether a benign social media post or voting for a particular political party or candidate in Taiwan elections could be interpreted as engaging in pro-independence activities," Zimmerman said.

A Canadian prime minister who has outstayed his welcome, persistent inflation, a government bumped and bruised by scandal and a fired-up opposition leader itching for a public showdown.

It was against this backdrop, four decades ago, that Pierre Trudeau took his apocryphal “walk in the snow” and decided not to contest the next federal election.

After a shocking upset in a “safe” electoral district and with a looming possibility of a blowout in the next federal election, Justin Trudeau’s predicament closely mirrors that of his father.

But the incumbent prime minister says he has no intention of stepping down, despite mounting evidence the public is growing increasingly weary of both his tenure – and of his Liberal party.

In late June, Trudeau’s party lost a by-election for a seat the party had held for nearly three decades, foreshadowing what pundits say could portend the collapse of the party’s stronghold in Canada’s most populous city.

New research aimed at identifying foods that contain higher levels of PFAS found people who eat more white rice, coffee, eggs and seafood typically showed more of the toxic chemicals in their plasma and breast milk.

The study checked samples from 3,000 pregnant mothers, and is among the first research to suggest coffee and white rice may be contaminated at higher rates than other foods. It also identified an association between red meat consumption and levels of PFOS, one of the most common and dangerous PFAS compounds.

“The results definitely point toward the need for environmental stewardship, and keeping PFAS out of the environment and food chain,” said Megan Romano, a Dartmouth researcher and lead author. “Now we’re in a situation where they’re everywhere and are going to stick around even if we do aggressive remediation.”

Thursday’s presidential debate debacle — widely regarded as a low point for President Joe Biden, who appeared feeble and sometimes confused — many Democratic elites and nonpartisan pundits are suggesting a break-the-glass-in-case-of-emergency move that resided on the margins of conventional political thought just a week ago: The incumbent president, they argue, should step aside in the interest of the country, and delegates should name his replacement at the upcoming Democratic National Convention.

Any move to replace Biden just four months before the election carries considerable risk. The party can ill afford to pass over its sitting vice president, Kamala Harris, who represents a core Democratic constituency as a Black woman — but Harris consistently underperforms in polling. And allowing delegates to make such a momentous decision, negating the will of millions of primary voters and turning a nomination process that has been the norm for decades upside-down, is surely a recipe for division and rancor.

But it’s not like we haven’t been here before. On March 31, 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson stunned the nation when he announced that he was pulling out of that year’s presidential election. The Democratic National Convention that followed several months later devolved into chaos and violence and left the party’s eventual nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, hobbled at the start of the fall campaign season. He ultimately lost a painfully close election to Richard Nixon, in no small part because of the unruly convention in Chicago.

Embattled aerospace giant Boeing faces a monumental choice: Plead guilty to a felony fraud charge for its role in past deadly plane crashes, or roll the dice on a high-profile trial against the Justice Department.

The company has until Friday to decide.

Both options are potentially fraught. Accepting a plea deal for violating the terms of a 2021 agreement with DOJ would be a black mark for one of the United States’ most important manufacturers and defense contractors, whose factories support thousands of U.S. jobs and whose political arm gives heavily to candidates of both parties.

It would bring hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and could complicate the company’s ability to continue winning contracts with the federal government.

But a trial would spark a potentially damaging discovery process, perpetuate Boeing’s ordeal in the news headlines and produce made-for-TV moments of victims’ families calling for justice. The legal process would drag out well into next year — potentially bringing an unpredictable face-off against a Trump administration DOJ.

Public health officials in Colorado on Wednesday announced an adult man had tested positive for avian flu after reporting mild symptoms, including conjunctivitis, or pink eye.

The man is an employee at a dairy farm who had exposure to infected cattle and recovered after antiviral treatment, officials said.

It was the fourth human case of bird flu reported in the U.S. since avian flu was confirmed in cows in March. The prior three people to test positive were also dairy farm workers who recovered.

The first two workers to contract the virus had mild pink eye. In the third case, the worker had mild respiratory symptoms.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the case in a statement and said the risk to the general public from bird flu remains low, although people with exposure to infected animals are at greater risk.

The first African-born MP to enter the German parliament has announced he will not be standing in next year’s federal election, weeks after he revealed the hate mail, including racist slurs and death threats, he and his staff had received.

Karamba Diaby, 62, who entered the Bundestag in 2013 in a moment hailed as historic by equality campaigners, said he wanted to spend more time with his family and to make room for younger politicians.

Diaby said the racist slurs and death threats were “not the main reasons” for his decision, having frequently emphasised he would not be cowed by threats. But they are widely believed they have played a part.

He has increasingly faced racist abuse in recent years. His constituency office in Halle, Saxony Anhalt, has been an arson target, and has had bullets fired through the window. Some staff have faced blackmail attempts to stop them working for him and have been subjected to and threats, Diaby said.

General Motors will pay nearly $146 million in penalties to the federal government because 5.9 million of its older vehicles do not comply with emissions and fuel economy standards.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a statement Wednesday that certain GM vehicles from the 2012 through 2018 model years did not comply with federal fuel economy requirements.

The penalty comes after the Environmental Protection Agency said its testing showed the GM pickup trucks and SUVs emit over 10% more carbon dioxide on average than GM’s initial compliance testing claimed.

The EPA says the vehicles will remain on the road and cannot be repaired. The GM vehicles on average consume at least 10% more fuel than the window sticker numbers say, but the company won’t be required to reduce the miles per gallon on the stickers, the EPA said.

A leading House Democrat is preparing a constitutional amendment in response to the Supreme Court’s landmark immunity ruling, seeking to reverse the decision “and ensure that no president is above the law.”

Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, sent a letter to colleagues informing them of his intent to file the resolution, which would kickstart what’s traditionally a cumbersome amendment process.

“This amendment will do what SCOTUS failed to do — prioritize our democracy,” Morelle said in a statement to AP.

It’s the most significant legislative response yet to the decision this week from the court’s conservative majority, which stunned Washington and drew a sharp dissent from the court’s liberal justices warning of the perils to democracy, particularly as Trump seeks a return to the White House. Still, the effort stands almost no chance of succeeding in this Congress.

Hurricane Beryl is over Jamaica right now.

The center of Hurricane Beryl churned menacingly toward Jamaica on Wednesday, after uprooting trees, ripping off roofs and destroying farms as it forged a destructive, water-soaked path across smaller islands in the Caribbean.

The death toll from the powerful Category 4 hurricane increased to at least seven, but it is widely expected to rise as communications come back online across drenched islands damaged by flooding and deadly winds.

"Everything is destroyed, there's nothing else in Palm Island," said Katie Rosiak, the general manager of the Palm Island Resort in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, one of the hardest-hit areas in the eastern Caribbean.

When Robert Laboucan pictured his son taking his first steps he imagined it would be at home, maybe even in front of a camera in their living room. Instead, the one-year-old first walked in the hallway of the Flamingo Inn in High Level, the tiny Alberta town where the family have been living for more than a year after escaping the massive wildfires that devastated the Indigenous-owned Fox Lake Reserve.

“It was really hard,” said Laboucan, a member of the Little Red River Cree Nation.

Laboucan, his partner Jennifer, and their five children, aged one-16, are among dozens of fire evacuees still living at the hotel. While they will not get an exact replacement of the home they lost, Laboucan has been told that a new home will be ready for the family by July – approximately 14 months after the 2023 Paskwa fire tore through the Little Red River Cree Nation.

And a year later, as Canada braces for another hot summer, many Indigenous communities in the northern parts of the western provinces are still displaced.

Ann Wilson, the lead singer of rock band Heart, has announced that she has been diagnosed with cancer.

The 74-year-old wrote in an Instagram post: “I recently underwent an operation to remove something that, as it turns out, was cancerous. The operation was successful & I’m feeling great but my doctors are now advising me to undergo a course of preventive chemotherapy & I’ve decided to do it. And so my doctors are instructing me to take the rest of the year away from the stage in order to fully recover.”

Heart have therefore cancelled their next tour, entitled Royal Flush, which was due to have visited 48 cities across the US and Canada during the autumn. In May, Heart cancelled their UK and Europe summer tour, which included six UK arena dates, citing Wilson’s operation.

In her Instagram post, Wilson added that she intended to be back on stage in 2025, writing: “This is merely a pause. I’ve much more to sing.”