By Kaanita Iyer, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump has refiled his lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal’s publisher and two of its reporters over a July 2025 report on a lewd birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein bearing Trump’s name.

Tuesday’s defamation lawsuit seeks $10 billion for damages and claims that the story had “glaring failures in journalistic ethics and standards of accurate reporting.”

“President Trump has refiled his powerhouse lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and all of the other Defendants. The President will continue to hold those who mislead the American People with Fake News and smears accountable for their actions,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told CNN.

CNN has reached out to the Wall Street Journal for comment.

The president’s earlier lawsuit was dismissed last month, with a federal judge ruling that Trump failed to plausibly allege the newspaper acted with “actual malice” when it reported the story.

Since returning to office, Trump has gone after media companies through legal pressure and public threats. When the president first filed the lawsuit last summer, legal experts consulted by CNN said they could not recall any past instances of a sitting president suing a news outlet over a story.

He has since filed lawsuits against other outlets including a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times in September, that accuses the outlet of being a “virtual mouthpiece” for the Democratic Party.

In December, Trump sued the BBC for $10 billion, alleging that it defamed him by splicing together two different parts of his January 6, 2021, speech.

The Wall Street Journal story published in July 2025 was about a collection of letters gifted to Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003. One of the letters, the Wall Street Journal reported, bore Trump’s name and an outline of a naked woman.

Trump has denied writing the letter. In Tuesday’s filing, his legal team said the reporters “falsely pass off as fact that President Trump, in 2003, wrote, drew, and signed this letter” but “failed to show proof.”

A spokesperson for Dow Jones, the Journal’s parent company said in a statement when the first lawsuit was filed, “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.”

Trump has previously been under scrutiny for his ties to Epstein, with the administration facing continued backlash for how it handled the release of the Justice Department’s files related to the late sex offender.

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CNN’s Brian Stelter, Paula Reid, Michael Williams, Dan Berman, Adam Cancryn and Andrew Kirell contributed to this report.

The post Trump refiles $10 billion lawsuit over Wall Street Journal report on Epstein birthday letter

Por Alicia Wallace, CNN

El shock del precio del petróleo por la guerra con Irán llevó el indicador de inflación preferido de la Reserva Federal al 3,8 % el mes pasado, su nivel más alto en casi tres años, mostraron nuevos datos publicados este jueves.

El índice de precios de Gastos de Consumo Personal aumentó un 0,4 % en abril respecto del mes anterior, una desaceleración frente al incremento del 0,7 % registrado en marzo. Con esta cifra del 3,8 %, la tasa anual de inflación es la más alta desde mayo de 2023.

El último informe mensual del Departamento de Comercio también mostró que los consumidores levantaron el pie del acelerador: el gasto aumentó un 0,5 % en abril, un retroceso desde un salto del 1 % el mes anterior.

Los precios de la gasolina continuaron subiendo en abril; sin embargo, se esperaba que las billeteras de los estadounidenses —muchas más abultadas por reembolsos de impuestos mayores— eventualmente no pudieran seguir el ritmo de los costos en aumento.

Al tener en cuenta la inflación, el gasto del consumidor aumentó apenas un 0,1 %.

Los economistas esperaban que la inflación aumentara un 0,5 % en términos mensuales y un 3,9 % respecto del año anterior, y que el gasto se desacelerara al 0,3 %, según FactSet.

Esta historia está en desarrollo y será actualizada.

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By Alicia Wallace, CNN

(CNN) — The Iran war’s oil price shock drove the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge to 3.8% last month, its highest rate in nearly three years, new data showed Thursday.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index rose 0.4% in April from the month before, a deceleration from the 0.7% increase recorded in March. At 3.8%, the annual rate of inflation is the highest since May 2023.

The latest monthly report from the Commerce Department also showed that consumers took their foot off the pedal: Spending rose 0.5% in April, a retreat from a 1% jump the month before.

Gas prices continued to rise in April; however, it was expected that Americans’ wallets – many fatter from bigger tax refunds – eventually wouldn’t be able to keep up with rising costs.

When taking inflation into account, consumer spending rose just 0.1%.

Economists were expecting that inflation would rise 0.5% on a monthly basis and 3.9% from the year before and that spending would slow to 0.3%, according to FactSet.

This story is developing and will be updated.

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By Brian Stelter, CNN

(CNN) — CNN is suing Perplexity, accusing the AI company of unlawfully copying and distributing CNN’s content.

Thursday’s lawsuit joins a long list of legal actions by publishers like The New York Times against generative AI startups. But it is CNN’s first AI copyright action and is thought to be the first by any television network.

The lawsuits are part of a larger effort to ensure that news providers are fairly compensated in a world where chatbots and other AI tools are funneling their news to consumers at scale.

Major news companies are taking a two-track approach, filing copyright infringement suits in some cases and striking content licensing deals with AI firms in other cases.

“CNN’s lawsuit stands for the proposition that Perplexity, a company valued at tens of billions of dollars, should not be able to steal from entities that create the original content Perplexity exploits,” a CNN spokesperson said in a statement. “The public rely on high quality news journalism reported by human beings to understand their world, which is frequently dangerous and expensive to produce. Commercial operators can and must pay to make use of it.”

The filing in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York indicates that CNN sought to strike a content deal with Perplexity last year but did not agree on terms.

“As a result, before and after Perplexity’s negotiations with CNN, Perplexity knew that it was not permitted to access CNN’s content or to use its trademarks or service marks,” the lawsuit states.

The network emphasized in a statement that it “actively embraces the opportunities AI creates” and has “multiple commercial partnerships, active agreements, and ongoing discussions with responsible industry players.”

One such deal, with Meta, was publicly reported last December.

The statement said CNN would prefer “sensible licensing arrangements” with operators, “but if they refuse to do that, as Perplexity has so far refused to do, they will have to pay through legal damages. There is no free option.”

News Corp, The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Encyclopedia Britannica and the Japanese media company Yomiuri Shimbun have also taken legal action against Perplexity in the past two years.

However, publishers including Gannett, TIME, Le Monde and Der Spiegel have announced deals with Perplexity during that same period.

Earlier this year, in a legal response to the Times and the Tribune, Perplexity said that the attempts “to stop this novel technology by monopolizing facts will founder on bedrock principles of intellectual property law that have consistently permitted innovative technologies like Perplexity to exist.”

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By Jen Rose Smith, CNN

(CNN) — For travelers stepping into their first Parisian pâtisserie, a few of the treats on offer might already be familiar — some famous French pastries have long since entered the world’s collective culinary lexicon.

“Everyone knows macarons, croissants and pains au chocolat,” said Gale Gand, an American pastry chef and television personality who studied at La Varenne Cooking School in Paris. “But there’s so much more than that. There’s a next level.”

The hefty cookbook “The Art of French Baking,” recently released by Phaidon and adapted from a pair of classic 1930s tomes by Ginette Mathiot, has more than 350 recipes, including little-known treats from the simple puff-pastry fingers allumettes glacées to Visitandines, tiny almond cakes invented by nuns.

Regions like Brittany and Bordeaux have their own distinctive baking traditions, with buttery treats that come shaped like bicycle wheels or coated in beeswax. Among the fairytale mountain villages of Alsace, where it’s still possible to hear old Germanic dialects, the sky-high, ring-shaped kugelhopf hints at a history of intermingling French and German cultures.

“We’ve got the basics down,” said Gand. “It’s time to expand our repertoire.”

Here are some of the essential French pastries to try next. What sweet treats did we miss? Share your favorites in the comments below.

Kouign Amann

Farms and dairies in rain-lush Brittany produce some of the finest butter in France, which is the defining ingredient of a perfect kouign amann — a layered, yeasted pastry whose name, in the Breton language, translates to “butter cake.” (It’s pronounced “queen uh-man.”)

The coastal town of Douarnenez, where the kouign amann was invented in the 1860s, is the object of pilgrimages for aficionados of the deeply caramelized dessert. Today it’s home to a professional association of artisans dedicated to producing authentic versions of kouign amann — like the golden pastries filling the cases of Pascal Jaïn, a bakery overseen by the president of the association.

Religieuse

France might be an adamantly secular state, but its pastry shops like to flirt with religion. Sweets inspired by nuns range from the gingerbread nonettes, or “little nuns,” to the feather-light fried choux buns known as pets-de-nonnes: nuns’ farts.

The religieuse — which also translates to “nun” — is a bit more literal. The dessert stacks two cream-filled choux buns into mini towers baptized with a dollop of sweet glaze. Some say it resembles a pope’s towering mitre; others see the adorably round-bottomed shape of a chubby nun.

You can find an old-school religieuse in nearly any Parisian bakery, and creative variations abound. For a modern twist, visit the city’s Carl Marletti for choux buns baked with a crunchy craquelin coating and plump with rose-flavored cream.

Cannelé

Baked in fluted c