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Police in Turkey detained three more employees of a satirical magazine on Tuesday, raising the number of people taken into custody over a cartoon that allegedly depicted the Prophet Muhammad to four.

The cartoon, published in LeMan magazine, drew a string of condemnation from government officials who stated it represented the Prophet Muhammad and sparked an angry protest outside the magazine’s Istanbul office.

LeMan, in a statement late Monday, denied the allegations and insisted the drawing was intended to portray a Muslim man named Muhammad and was meant to highlight the suffering of Muslims.

The pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper said the cartoon showed “two figures alleged to be Prophet Muhammad and Prophet Moses — with wings and halos — shaking hands in the sky, while a war scene unfolds below with bombs raining down.”

The independent Birgun newspaper also said the winged figures hovering in the sky were interpreted by some as Prophets Muhammad and Moses.

Authorities on Monday launched an investigation into the weekly magazine over accusations of “publicly insulting religious values” and detained the cartoonist, Dogan Pehlevan, from his home.

Overnight, LeMan’s Editor-in-Chief Zafer Aknar, graphic designer Cebrail Okcu and manager Ali Yavuz were also detained, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. Detention warrants were also issued for two editors who are believed to be abroad, the report said.

Late on Monday, demonstrators, reportedly belonging to an Islamic group, hurled rocks at LeMan’s headquarters in central Istanbul and scuffled with police.

The publication apologized for any offense caused, but it also called on authorities to act against what it described as a smear campaign and to protect freedom of expression.

Separate videos of the arrests, shared by Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya, showed Pehlevan and Yavuz being forcibly taken from their homes, their hands being cuffed behind their backs.

“These shameless people will be held accountable before the law,” Yerlikaya wrote on X.

That marks a shift from decades ago, when supermarkets would use inexpensive packaging and stripped-down branding to send the message that they were “passing the savings on to you,” Myers explained.

It has long been common for some name brands and private-label operators to share manufacturers for certain goods, meaning that many of their competing packages contain the same products. The difference is that while Nabisco or General Mills, for example, have to spend on marketing and store placement fees for their items, Aldi or Costco don’t.

But the bare-bones packaging associated with private-label goods is increasingly a thing of the past — sometimes replaced by approaches that name-brand competitors criticize. Last month, Mondelēz International sued Aldi, alleging trademark infringement. The snack-maker accused the discount supermarket of “blatantly” copying the packaging of Oreos, Wheat Thins, Nilla Wafers and Ritz crackers for its private-label alternatives.

But in other instances, even store brands that don’t resemble well-known rivals have enough shelf appeal to attract shoppers on their own merit. The result is eroding brand loyalty for major incumbents. In First Insight’s survey, 47% of shoppers said they tried a store brand specifically because it was a “dupe” of a name-brand product, and 84% said they now trust private labels’ quality at least as much as national brands’.

Price, of course, remains a key factor in private labels’ appeal.

During the worst of the post-pandemic run-up in inflation, consumer goods giants such as Procter & Gamble raised prices on customers. Faced with steeper costs from supply-chain snarls and labor shortages, many companies bet that shoppers would shell out more to stick with products they knew and liked. And for a few years, many of their better-heeled customers did just that. But the winds have shifted, and in recent years shoppers have been reprioritizing value.

“They’re saying, ‘What I’m paying for what I’m getting is not worth it,’” Petro said.

After an earlier series of price hikes on cereals, snack bars and pet food, General Mills said last week that its main focus now is on juicing sales volume. “To do that, we’ll invest further in consumer value,” its CEO assured investors.

Michael Swanson, chief agriculture economist at Wells Fargo’s Agri-Food Institute, said the grocery wars largely hinge on what shoppers pay attention to.

When you look at the raw sticker prices on store shelves, it’s easy to notice how sharply they’ve climbed. Grocery prices have risen more than 23% over the last five years — but households’ average spending power has outpaced it, he pointed out. In “real,” or inflation-adjusted, terms, groceries are broadly cheaper than they’ve been in years. (While it surely didn’t feel that way for many families, 2024’s Thanksgiving dinner was its most affordable in nearly 40 years, farm data showed.)

“Whenever you get a pay raise, that’s a good thing. Whenever you see your favorite food go up, that’s a bad thing,” Swanson said. “But we really are very bad at tracking the relative change of those two things.”

Still, Swanson doesn’t expect shoppers’ diminishing brand loyalty or hunt for low prices to push name-brand products off supermarket shelves anytime soon. In fact, grocery stores typically rely on branded products to set price points for customers, he said.

“The only reason you know that private label is a value is because you glance right next to it in the refrigerator section and that something else is 25 or 40% more expensive,” Swanson said.

Former Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, announced Tuesday that he’s running for the Senate next year, eying the seat Republican John Cornyn has held for more than two decades.

Allred, a former NFL player who unsuccessfully tried to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, last year, is the first major Democratic candidate to jump into race.

In his campaign launch video, Allred seeks to flip the script many Republicans ran on last year and pin the blame for rising costs on President Donald Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress.

“Texans are working harder than ever, not getting as much time with their kids, missing those special moments, all to be able to afford less,” Allred says in the video. “And the people that we elected to help — politicians like John Cornyn and Ken Paxton — are too corrupt to care about us and too weak to fight for us.”

The GOP field for the Senate race is unsettled. Although Cornyn is a long-standing incumbent, he faces a serious primary challenge from far-right state Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Both are courting the endorsement of Trump, who has so far not weighed in. His decision to back a candidate — if he does so — could sway the outcome of the GOP contest.

While Paxton has strong appeal with the MAGA wing of the party, national Republican strategists fear he could blow the general election in Texas, a GOP stronghold. Some worry they’d have to spend heavily and detract from other Senate races to hold the seat if he’s the nominee.

Several other Democrats are considering jumping into the race. And as the party out of power in Washington, Democrats are expected to have a more favorable political environment next year.

Allred is seeking to make good on a long-standing Democratic dream of turning Texas red at the federal level. The party hasn’t won a Senate race there since 1988. Last year, Trump carried the state by nearly 14 points, while Allred lost to Cruz by more than 8 points.

Democrats came closer in the 2018 midterm elections, when then-Rep. Beto O’Rourke lost to Cruz by less than 3 points.

The party faces an uphill climb to take control of the Senate in the midterm elections, needing to flip a total of four seats, including in solidly Republican territory like Texas.

PHILADELPHIA — Nearly 10,000 city workers in Philadelphia who collect trash, answer 911 calls, maintain city pools and perform other jobs went on strike Tuesday after contract negotiations broke down.

District Council 33 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees announced the strike on its Facebook page early Tuesday, saying “HOLD THE LINES.”

Mayor Cherelle Parker said the city would suspend residential trash collection, close some city pools and shorten recreation center hours, but vowed to keep the city running. Police and firefighters are not on strike.

Parker, a pro-labor Democrat, promised that Fourth of July celebrations in the nation’s birthplace would go on as usual.

“Keep your holiday plans. Don’t leave the city,” she said at a Monday afternoon news conference that followed hours of last-minute negotiations.

Parker said in a statement early Tuesday that the city had “put its best offer on the table” but District Council 33 hadn’t accepted it.

“The City of Philadelphia remains committed to reaching a fair and fiscally responsible contract with our municipal workers who are a part of DC 33,” Parker said. “We are ready, willing and able to resume negotiations with the union at their convenience.”

City officials urged residents to be patient and not hang up should they need to call either 911 or the city’s non-emergency helpline. They said they would open drop-off sites for residential trash.

Parker said she had offered raises that amount to 13% over her four-year term and added a fifth step to the pay scale to align with other unionized workers. District Council 33 is the largest of four unions representing city workers.

Union leaders, in their initial contract proposal, asked for 8% annual raises each year of the three-year contract, along with cost-of-living hikes and bonuses of up to $5,000 for those who worked through the pandemic. The union also asked the city to pay the full cost of employee health care, or $1,700 per person per month.

“District Council 33’s members contribute as much blood, sweat and tears as does anyone else,” they said in a demand letter. “We all make the city work. Our contract must reflect that reality.”

In November, the city transit system averted a strike when the parties agreed to a one-year contract with 5% raises.

“Now she’s at Pride Month, and it is so awesome because they’re the most supportive community ever,” Davis says.

When asked if the team behind the film was expecting M3GAN to become a queer icon, Williams, through laughter, quickly replies: “No.”

“I think if we had been making her with the expectation that she would be a queer icon, she would have been dismissed by the queer community,” Williams says.

“It was like, if you just commit to the truth of it, making her feel like an authentic, real person, making all the characters real, making the world feel real, making the tone feel consistent, then you stand a better chance of creating a character that can be embraced by a community that loves a bold woman living in the truest expression of herself,” she adds.

M3GAN as a sequel

“M3GAN 2.0” defies expectations once again by totally reinventing the character that made the franchise a hit. The sequel goes almost full action movie while highlighting the need for AI regulation.

Two years after Gemma and her niece Cady neutralize M3GAN, they’ve resettled in San Francisco. Then, they learn a new robot is on the scene. A military contractor got hold of the leaked code that powered M3GAN and built a new robot: AMELIA, short for Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android.

The feds put Gemma and her crew in charge of AMELIA when she, just like M3GAN, begins to go rogue. The only way to end AMELIA? Bring back M3GAN.

Ivanna Sakhno, who portrays AMELIA, tells TODAY.com about joining the franchise as a new enemy.

“There’s definitely a sense of responsibility, because you know how beloved it is by people, so you want to just do it justice,” Sakhno says. “I do have full trust in (director) Gerard (Johnstone) and his vision, and I have to applaud him for being so open to go so far with it and being unpretentious in its craziness. He wasn’t afraid to do something quite different from the first one and take a risk.”

Davis also hopes audiences love the fighting scenes between M3GAN and AMELIA, as they start to see M3GAN as something other than just a villain.

“I think the funny thing about M3GAN is, yes, she’s a villain, but she can also be seen as a hero. But she’s also hilarious, and she’s sassy, and she doesn’t care what you’re saying, she just says it. I think it’s really fun for audiences, because they don’t know what’s going to happen next for her, and they can’t predict it.”

“I also think there’s some kinship between AMELIA and M3GAN — although there’s rivalry and fear that is also felt, they see each other. They’re made of the same seed. But M3GAN is that b—-,” Sakhno says with a smile, before adding, “Respectfully.”

M3GAN as a trilogy — and beyond

While a third installment of “M3GAN” hasn’t yet been greenlit, Williams, while appearing on TODAY on June 24, highlighted the fact there is a number “3” in the title of the films.

“We put a three in the first title, which was a conundrum, and it sort of means we have to be allowed to,” Williams said. “It’s already been there, it’s predestined.”

“That said,” she added, “we are dreaming of a third. We have talked about it and wondered what it would look like, and we’ve had some of those conversations, but we’ll need to see what happens this weekend.”

“M3GAN 2.0” is projecting $10 million in its opening weekend, according to Box Office Mojo, but regardless of whether the franchise becomes a trilogy, the M3GAN Cinematic Universe has already begun, Williams tells TODAY.com.

“You can take a real, deep, important theme that’s hard to talk about and put it into this mixy genre, and then suddenly people are able to talk about it in a bigger way,” Williams says. “And then doing it with ‘M3GAN,’ I realized, you can keep doing this.”

Williams is an executive producer on “SOULM8TE,” a “M3GAN” spinoff set in the same universe, premiering in 2026. The details on the film are minimal, though viewers do know that it follows a man who buys an android to help cope with the loss of his wife.

“From the moment the M3GAN doll was an idea, we were kind of like, because people are people, we just know it’s a matter of time before someone is like, ‘What about this, but for sex?’” Williams says with a smile.

“It’s not just that, obviously, it’s more complicated, and I don’t want to spoil anything or give too many details, but it’s sort of like an R-rated adventure into this world where we get to see M3GAN technology extrapolated into a use case that we do not explore in our franchise,” she continues.

Davis also calls the opportunities within the MCU “endless.”

“Especially because of how prevalent AI is in our society, and because of how uncanny it is,” she says. “Even with the first film, they predicted AI portraits, and then they came out — what are they predicting in this film that’s going to come true?”

Williams hopes that this franchise, which started as a question mark and then became a phenomenon, can spark relevant conversations about the world we’re living in, or about to be.

She points to the themes of the sequel — AI regulation (“not the sexiest”) and parenthood — as an example.

“We feel very strongly about the fact that people need to think about these things and to talk about them more openly. And we’re just hopeful that, as a result of this movie and all the other movies in the cinematic universe, people will have those conversations on the way to the car,” Williams says.

“You can talk about the things that are funny, yeah, whatever. But like later at dinner, when the giggling dies down, it’s like, ‘But really, what are we doing? What is our plan here? What are we going to do about these really intelligent lines of code that we’ve written?’”

Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of fatally stabbing four college students in Idaho, appears ready to accept a deal to plead guilty in connection with the killings, one victim’s family and their attorney said Monday.

Kaylee Goncalves’ family said they learned about the apparent deal in a letter from prosecutors, according to a statement. The family said on Facebook in an updated statement that they gave a “HARD NO” after prosecutors broached the possibility of a plea deal Friday, before prosecutors emailed them about the deal Sunday.

According to the Idaho Statesman, the letter said the plea deal will ensure Kohberger’s conviction and secure life in prison for him.

“This agreement ensures that the defendant will be convicted, will spend the rest of his life in prison, and will not be able to put you and the other families through the uncertainty of decades of post-conviction appeals,” read the letter, signed by Latah County Prosecuting Attorney Bill Thompson, according to the Statesman.

The Goncalves family had said that the Latah County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office “vaguely mentioned” a possible plea deal Friday, before it presented it to the family Sunday through a letter sent via email “without seeking our input.”

In its updated statement, the family said they met with prosecutors again Monday to reiterate their desire for the death penalty.

“Unfortunately all of our efforts did not matter,” the family said.

Kohberger, 30, was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and burglary in the 2022 killings of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Goncalves at an off-campus home in Moscow.

Steve Goncalves, Kaylee’s father, was upset in an interview Monday night and said he considers the plea agreement a “ridiculous joke.” He said he wants the judge to reject it.

“There’s no justice in this,” he said. The family also said on Facebook that they were “beyond furious at the State of Idaho.”

Additional details about the reported deal were not immediately available. The Latah County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and an attorney for Kohberger declined to comment.

Kohberger’s trial was scheduled to begin Aug. 11 in Boise.

Attorneys for Kohberger, a doctoral student in criminology at Washington State University in Pullman, have said he was out driving alone when the students were killed.

They attended the University of Idaho, just across the state line from Pullman.

The bodies of Chapin, 20; Kernodle, 20; Mogen, 21; and Goncalves, 21, were found Nov. 13, 2022. Authorities linked Kohberger to the killing through cellphone data, security camera video and DNA on a knife sheath discovered at the scene.

Kohberger was arrested Dec. 30 at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania.

The Goncalves family’s attorney, Shanon Gray, said they wanted the death penalty in part because that would change Kohberger’s time in prison.

“The death penalty, even though it’s probably not going to happen in anybody’s lifetime — when you’re in prison you’re basically on lockdown for 23 hours. And then you get about an hour,” Gray said.

“But if you’re life sentence, you’re just walking around and doing the things that any other prisoner will do,” he said. “So it was a big deal for them.”

Steve Goncalves also said that he believes Kohberger will try to write a book or have some other communication about the crimes and that the proposed plea deal doesn’t stop him from doing that.

“We have a killer who wants a show, and they just gave him one,” he said.

WASHINGTON — Tucked inside Republicans’ massive domestic policy bill is an excise tax for wind and solar projects, a provision that came as a surprise not just to the renewable energy industry, but also to numerous senators who are crafting the legislation.

In a twist, Republican senators insist they don’t know how or why the tax was inserted into the bill they’re rushing to pass. No senator is taking credit for or defending it. And at least one wants it removed.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the Budget Committee chairman, who released the 940-page bill, said he doesn’t know where that provision came from.

“It’s a secret, I guess,” Graham told NBC News on Monday evening. “I don’t know where it came from.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, was baffled by the provision, saying the excise tax “just came about” like it was “airdropped” into the bill before the vote Saturday to proceed.

“It wasn’t part of any consideration,” she said. “It’s like, surprise! It’s Saturday night. And we looked at it like, where did this come from?”

“My view of it is — it’s just entirely punitive to the wind and solar industry,” Murkowski said, adding that the Republican-controlled Senate is “looking at different options” to deal with it.

The provision would tax wind and solar projects if a certain share of their components come from China. It is ambiguously worded, and it would empower the Trump administration to iron out the rule.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., said she’s “OK with that” when she was asked about the details of the provision. But she, too, was in the dark about who inserted it.

“You can add me to the group that doesn’t know the answer,” Lummis said.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the former Trump adviser, torched the legislation, saying it would “destroy millions of jobs in America.”

“Utterly insane and destructive,” Musk said of the bill. “It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.” He added, “A massive strategic error is being made right now to damage solar/battery that will leave America extremely vulnerable in the future.”

Spokespeople for the Republican chairs of the Finance Committee (Mike Crapo of Idaho), the Energy and Natural Resources Committee (Mike Lee of Utah) and the Environment and Public Works Committee (Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia) didn’t respond to requests for comment when they were asked whether the senators championed the provision.

The White House and Republican leaders tout the bill as fulfilling President Donald Trump’s promise to boost energy production in the United States, including fossil fuels. Trump also vowed to unravel clean energy incentives Democrats passed in the Biden administration.

Democrats have blasted the excise tax — among other energy policies in the GOP bill — as an attempt to reward fossil fuel companies while further discouraging clean energy production.

Industry groups also tore into the new excise tax.

“With no warning, the Senate has proposed new language that would increase taxes on domestic energy production,” said Jason Grumet, the CEO of the American Clean Power Association.

“In what can only be described as ‘midnight dumping,’ the Senate has proposed a punitive tax hike targeting the fastest-growing sectors of our energy industry,” he said in a statement. “It is astounding that the Senate would intentionally raise prices on consumers rather than encouraging economic growth and addressing the affordability crisis facing American households.”

Neil Bradley, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, praised the overall bill but criticized that provision, writing on X that “taxing energy production is never good policy, whether oil & gas or, in this case, renewables.”

“Electricity demand is set to see enormous growth & this tax will increase prices,” he said. “It should be removed.”

A federal judge is pondering the nature of rap battles and the cutting wordplay in Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” the megahit diss track that spurred a defamation lawsuit from his fellow superstar Drake.

Drake sued Universal Music Group — both his and Lamar’s record label — over “Not Like Us,” saying the company published and promoted a song he deems slanderous. Universal says the lyrics are just hyperbole in the tradition of rap beefing, and the label is trying to get the case dismissed.

U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas didn’t immediately decide after a lively hearing in New York on Monday, when the raw creativity of hip-hop brushed up against the staid confines of federal court.

“Who is the ordinary listener? Is it someone who’s going to catch all those references?” Vargas wondered aloud, addressing a legal standard that concerns how an average, reasonable person would understand a statement. “There’s so much specialized and nuanced to these lyrics.”

Neither artist attended the hearing.

The case stems from an epic feud between two of hip-hop’s biggest stars over one of 2024 biggest songs — the one that won the record of the year and song of the year Grammys, got the most Apple Music streams worldwide and helped make this winter’s Super Bowl halftime show the most watched ever.

Released as the two artists were trading a flurry of insult tracks, Lamar’s song calls out the Canadian-born Drake by name and impugns his authenticity, branding him “a colonizer” of rap culture who’s “not like us” in Lamar’s home turf of Compton, California, and, more broadly, West Coast rap.

“Not Like Us” also makes insinuations about Drake’s sex life, including “I hear you like ’em young” — implications that he rejects.

Drake’s suit says that the song amounts to “falsely accusing him of being a sex offender, engaging in pedophilic acts” and more. Contending that the track endangered him by fanning notions of vigilante justice, the suit blames “Not Like Us” not only for harming Drake’s image but for attempted break-ins and the shooting of a security guard at his Toronto home. The mansion was depicted in an aerial photo in the song’s cover art.

“This song achieved a cultural ubiquity unlike any other rap song in history,” Drake lawyer Michael Gottlieb said. He argued that Universal had campaigned and contrived to make it “a de facto national anthem” that didn’t just address hip-hop fans who knew the backstory and were accustomed to over-the-top lyrical battling.

The average listener could be “a 13-year-old who’s dancing to the song at a bar mitzvah,” Gottlieb suggested.

“That would be a very interesting bar mitzvah,” the judge opined. (The song has indeed been played at some such celebrations.)

Universal, meanwhile, has emphasized that “Not Like Us” was part of an exchange of barbs between Drake and Lamar.

“Context is key,” label lawyer Rollin Ransom argued Monday, at one point apologizing for having to use profanity while reciting some of the lyrics Drake aimed at Lamar in a track called “Taylor Made Freestyle.”

“What you hear in these rap battles is trash-talking in the extreme, and it is not, and should not be treated as, statements of fact,” the attorney said.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

Drake also went after iHeartMedia, claiming in a Texas legal petition that the radio giant got illegal payments from Universal to boost airplay for “Not Like Us.” IHeartMedia has denied any wrongdoing. That dispute was resolved in March.

Drake hasn’t sued Lamar himself.

APPLE VALLEY, Minn. — An endangered wild Asian horse foal is thriving thanks to an unlikely hero.

Marat, a Przewalski’s horse, fell critically ill soon after his birth at the Minnesota Zoo nearly two months ago. He survived thanks to intensive care, but his mother rejected him when he returned.

His future looked grim until Alice, a domestic Pony of the Americas who’d recently lost her newborn, accepted him as her own. Veterinarians say this is one of the first times this kind of surrogacy has been tried with Asian wild horses, and his caregivers couldn’t be happier.

Zoo staffers picked the name Marat because it means “one who is brave,” and he’s had to be brave from such a young age.

Przewalski’s are considered the only remaining truly wild horse species. They were declared extinct in the wild in the 1960s, with just a few surviving in zoos. But they’ve since been reestablished on the steppes of Mongolia and China, with some in Russia and Ukraine. Since fewer than 2,000 exist today, each foal is critical to the species’ survival.

“Being one of the true wild horses left in the world, behaviorally, they are a little bit different,” said Kurt Heizmann, the zoo’s director of animal care. They’ve never been truly domesticated, and they’re shorter and stockier than familiar breeds, he said.

Marat was born with some limb problems that made it hard for him to stand up straight, said Dr. Annie Rivas, the zoo’s director of animal health.

“And because he was struggling to keep up with Mom in the herd, he was spending a lot of time lying down on the ground and unfortunately developed bacterial sepsis. So he was very, very sick,” Rivas said.

The University of Minnesota’s equine intensive care unit nursed him back from his pneumonia and wounds. But it wasn’t unusual that his first-time mom, Nady, would refuse to take him back.

“That left us with, ‘What are we going to do with this foal?’” Rivas said. “We could hand-rear him, but we’re not going to be the ones who are the best at teaching them how to be a horse — especially a wild horse.”

Fortunately, they found Alice, a gentle mare who was still grieving her own foal but immediately started nurturing Marat and allowing him to nurse.

“It was really kind of a perfect fairy-tale ending. … They just bonded like that,” Rivas said.

Integrating Marat into the complex social hierarchies of a wild herd will be the next challenge, she said, but Alice is helping Marat learn how to behave with other horses. They’ll probably stay together for a few more months. They want him to join the zoo’s adult Przewalski’s herd before he’s too old.

“He is definitely a wild horse,” Rivas said. “One, he is a stallion, so he’s already got a big personality from that. But he is also a little more wild than you would expect a domestic horse foal to be at this point in his life. And he is trying to show me that he’s the boss, he’s in charge, he’s dominant. So he’s trying to step up, kick, assert his dominance over me.”