A prisoner in Alabama is set to become the first inmate in America to be gassed to death with nitrogen after the US Supreme Court declined to halt his execution.
Convicted murderer Kenneth Smith is set to be executed on Thursday after his legal bid to have the method declared unconstitutional failed.
Smith’s survival following a botched lethal injection in 2022 helped prompt a review of the state’s death penalty procedures.
The Supreme Court justices denied Smith’s request to stay his execution and declined to hear his legal challenge contending that a second execution attempt by Alabama – after the first failed attempt caused him severe trauma – would violate the US Constitution’s Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
Smith, 58, is separately contesting the legality of Alabama’s nitrogen gas protocol on Eighth Amendment and other grounds.
Smith’s lawyers have urged the US Supreme Court to intervene, calling Alabama’s nitrogen-gas protocol “recently released and untested,” and “a novel method of execution that has never been attempted by any state or the federal government”.
Alabama’s gassing method – nitrogen hypoxia – is designed to deprive prisoners of oxygen by placing a mask connected to a cylinder of nitrogen over their face.
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Smith’s botched execution was the third consecutive instance in which Alabama officials encountered problems or delays inserting intravenous lines for a scheduled lethal injection, with two of the executions, including Smith’s, eventually called off, according to court filings.
State officials repeatedly tried and failed to place the necessary intravenous lines or a central line in his collarbone area before calling off the execution.
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Smith’s lawyers have characterised the experience as torture and said that it “exposed him to the severe mental anguish of a mock execution”.
Smith was convicted of the 1988 killing Elizabeth Sennett after he and an accomplice were hired as hitmen by her husband Charles Sennett, a Christian minister who had taken out a large life insurance policy on his wife.
She was stabbed repeatedly and beaten with a blunt object. Charles Sennett later committed suicide.
Smith’s accomplice also was convicted and sentenced to death and executed 2010.
States with the death penalty increasingly struggle to get the barbiturates used in lethal-injection protocols, in part due to a European ban on pharmaceutical companies selling drugs to be used in executions.
Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma have all introduced new gas-based protocols.
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2:46
Hear Trump and his lawyer discuss hush money
The court also heard a recording of a conversation between Mr Trump and Mr Cohen over hush money said to have been paid to another woman, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who he also allegedly had an affair with.
Mr Cohen suggests in the recording setting up another company to repay David Pecker – who said he provided the $150,000 to cover up the story.
The former National Enquirer boss previously testified he bought the story to keep it hidden and eventually decided against seeking reimbursement.
Later in the recording, Mr Trump can be heard suggesting the $150,000 might be better off being paid in cash.
Mr Cohen told the court this was to “avoid any type of paper transaction”.
The 57-year-old – who once said he would take a bullet for Mr Trump – worked for him for nearly a decade.
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He pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance law in 2018 over the Stormy Daniels payment and was jailed, but at the time prosecutors did not bring charges against Mr Trump.
Mr Cohen’s credibility is in the sights of defence lawyers as he has previously admitted lying under oath.
Mr Trump – who will take on Joe Biden in his bid to become president again in November – is unlikely to face a custodial sentence if found guilty.
His other cases are potentially more damaging but mired in delays.
They concern allegations of keeping stacks of secret documents after leaving office and trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat. He denies the claims.
A livestream portal between Dublin and New York was temporarily shut down after “inappropriate behaviour” in the Irish capital.
Thousands of people have visited the two-way portal, which allows people on either side to see and interact with each other.
And while there have been a number of wholesome moments – including Irish dancing and even a proposal – a handful of people have behaved “inappropriately”, Dublin City Council has said.
Videos on social media have shown people on the Irish side flashing body parts, and displaying images of 9/11 and swear words on phone screens.
A woman was also escorted away by police after being seen grinding against the portal.
In a statement issued on Monday evening, a spokesperson for Dublin City Council said “technical solutions” to address this are being implemented in the next 24 hours.
“We will continue to monitor the situation over the coming days with our partners in New York to ensure that Portals continue to deliver a positive experience for both cities and the world,” they said.
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“The team at portals.org and partners are still working on improving the software for better stability and to prepare for Portals to expand to more locations on Earth.
“Those works are being done mostly at night and during those hours, the livestream might be paused.”
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Dublin City Council noted there has been an increase in footfall since the Portal was unveiled in north Dublin, facing O’Connell Street. The New York portal is at the busy Manhattan junction of Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street.
“The overwhelming majority of interactions are positive,” the spokesperson added. “We have seen families and friends unite, dancing moves being shared as well as new friendships being made. There was even a successful marriage proposal.
“The Portal offers a window to other cities and is connecting people and cultures in a unique manner – what we are seeing between Dublin and NY is reflective of a wider narrative of cultural behaviour.”
The Portals Organisation said: “We do not intend to suggest people to interact with Portals in any particular way – our goal is to open a window between far away places and cultures that allows people to interact freely with one another.
“We encourage people to be respectful and from our position as observers, we see that the absolute majority of experiences is on the bright side.”
In an earlier statement, they confirmed the livestream had been paused so they could “update the software used on the Portal”.
The new version of the ChatGPT AI chatbot has been unveiled and offers near-instant results across text, vision and audio, according to its maker.
OpenAI said it was much better at understanding visuals and sounds than previous versions.
It offers the prospect of real-time ‘conversations’ with the chatbot, including the ability to interrupt its answers.
The firm says it “accepts as input any combination of text, audio, and image and generates any combination of text, audio, and image outputs”.
GPT-4o is to be rolled out over the next few weeks amid a battle by tech firms to develop ever-more advanced artificial intelligence tools.
Monday’s announcement showed tasks such as real-time language translation; using its vision capability to solve a maths question on a piece of paper, and to guide a blind person around London.
GPT-4o can respond to audio in as little as 232 milliseconds, with an average of 320 milliseconds, which the company says is similar to human response time.
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To try to ease concerns over bias, fairness and misinformation, the Microsoft-backed company says the new version has undergone extensive testing by 70 external experts.
It comes after Google earlier this year had a major PR blunder over images generated by its Gemini AI system.
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GPT-4o model will be free, but premium ‘Plus’ users get a greater capacity limit for messages.
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