WASHINGTON (AP) — Passengers on Southwest Airlines flights will soon be required to keep their portable chargers in plain sight while using them because of concerns about the growing number of lithium-ion battery fires in a new policy that other airlines may adopt.

Southwest announced the new policy that will go into effect May 28 and said passengers may have already seen notifications about the rule when using the airline’s app. While Southwest is the first U.S. airline to restrict the use of portable chargers like this, several Asian airlines have taken action earlier this year after a devastating fire aboard an Air Busan plane waiting to take off from an airport in South Korea in January.

There is growing concern about lithium-ion battery fires on planes because the number of incidents continues to grow yearly, and devices powered by those batteries are ubiquitous. There have already been 19 incidents involving these batteries this year, following last year’s record high of 89, according to Federal Aviation Administration statistics.

The incidents have more than doubled since the pandemic-era low of 39 in 2020, and have climbed annually.

Some research suggests that portable chargers might be the second-leading cause of battery fires on planes, only behind electronic cigarettes.

Compared to the roughly 180,000 flights U.S. airlines operate each week, the number of incidents is still relatively small and lithium batteries can overheat anywhere. However, this is a growing concern for the airlines.

“It’s definitely a serious risk,” said David Wroth, who studies the risks for UL Standards & Engagement and works with 37 airlines and battery manufacturers to minimize them. At least a couple of airlines UL is working with are reevaluating the risks associated with rechargeable batteries, so additional rule changes could be coming.

What has happened before?

In the Korean airline fire in January, all 176 people aboard the plane had to be evacuated because the blaze burned through the plane’s roof. The cause of that fire hasn’t been officially determined, but several airlines and Korean regulators took action against portable chargers afterward.

Korean airlines won’t allow the chargers to be stored in overhead bins anymore; they must either be packed in a plastic bag or have their ports covered with insulating tape to keep them from touching metal.

In addition, Singapore Airlines and Thai Airways both prohibit the use or charging of portable power banks at all during flights.

Last summer, a smoking laptop in a passenger’s bag led to the evacuation of a plane awaiting takeoff at San Francisco International Airport. In 2023, a flight from Dallas to Orlando, Florida, made an emergency landing in Jacksonville, Florida, after a battery caught fire in an overhead bin.

Why make this change?

Southwest said that requiring these chargers to be kept out in the open when they are being used will help because “in the rare event a lithium battery overheats or catches fire, quick access is critical and keeping power banks in plain sight allow for faster intervention and helps protect everyone onboard.”

Experts have long recommended keeping rechargeable devices in reach during flights so they can be monitored for any signs of problems like becoming too hot to touch or starting to bulge or smoke. But the airlines have to rely on educating consumers and encouraging them to take precautions.

“Ultimately, it comes down to a lot of personal responsibility that we as passengers have to take,” Wroth said.

Southwest will allow the chargers to be stored inside carry-on bags when they aren’t in use. But a spokeswoman said the airline is just alerting customers about the policy before their flight and asking for their compliance. Wroth said that approach is probably best.

“We have enough problems with unruly passengers already. And having cabin crew confront somebody over bringing something on board is not likely to be a good situation as well,” Wroth said.

What do the existing rules say?

The Transportation Security Administration has long prohibited e-cigarettes and chargers and power banks with lithium-ion batteries in checked bags, but allows them in carry-on bags. The rule exists precisely because fires in the cargo hold might be harder to detect and extinguish.

The FAA recommends passengers keep cell phones and other devices nearby on planes so they can access them quickly. The agency said flight crews are trained to recognize and respond to lithium battery fires. Passengers should notify the flight crew immediately if their lithium battery or device is overheating, expanding, smoking or burning.

How common is this problem?

The latest research from UL Standards & Engagement said that data from 2024 suggests that portable chargers were to blame in 19% of the incidents, though that was only slightly ahead of the number of cell phone incidents. E-cigarettes accounted for 28% of the problems.

Nearly one-third of all passengers carried portable chargers on flights last year.

More than one-quarter of passengers surveyed last year said they put vaping cigarettes and portable chargers in checked bags. That is against federal rules, but Wroth said it might be as much an issue of them not understanding the dangers as much as it is passengers trying to hide the devices.

UL Standards & Engagement, part of a safety-science company once known as Underwriters Laboratories, said it based its findings on data from 37 passenger and cargo airlines, including nine of the 10 leading U.S. passenger carriers. It is just getting ready to release this year’s report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday signed the Take It Down Act, bipartisan legislation that enacts stricter penalties for the distribution of non-consensual intimate imagery, sometimes called “revenge porn,” as fell as deepfakes created by artificial intelligence.

The measure, which goes into effect immediately, was introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, and later gained the support of First Lady Melania Trump. Critics of the measure, which addresses both real and artificial intelligence-generated imagery, say the language is too broad and could lead to censorship and First Amendment issues.

What is the Take It Down Act?

The law makes it illegal to “knowingly publish” or threaten to publish intimate images without a person’s consent, including AI-created “deepfakes.” It also requires websites and social media companies to remove such material within 48 hours of notice from a victim. The platforms must also take steps to delete duplicate content. Many states have already banned the dissemination of sexually explicit deepfakes or revenge porn, but the Take It Down Act is a rare example of federal regulators imposing on internet companies.

Who supports it?

The Take It Down Act has garnered strong bipartisan support and has been championed by Melania Trump, who lobbied on Capitol Hill in March saying it was “heartbreaking” to see what teenagers, especially girls, go through after they are victimized by people who spread such content.

Cruz said the measure was inspired by Elliston Berry and her mother, who visited his office after Snapchat refused for nearly a year to remove an AI-generated “deepfake” of the then 14-year-old.

Meta, which owns and operates Facebook and Instagram, supports the legislation.

“Having an intimate image – real or AI-generated – shared without consent can be devastating and Meta developed and backs many efforts to help prevent it,” Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in March.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a tech industry-supported think tank, said in a statement following the bill’s passage last month that it “is an important step forward that will help people pursue justice when they are victims of non-consensual intimate imagery, including deepfake images generated using AI.”

“We must provide victims of online abuse with the legal protections they need when intimate images are shared without their consent, especially now that deepfakes are creating horrifying new opportunities for abuse,” Klobuchar said in a statement. “These images can ruin lives and reputations, but now that our bipartisan legislation is becoming law, victims will be able to have this material removed from social media platforms and law enforcement can hold perpetrators accountable.”

Klobuchar called the law’s passage a “a major victory for victims of online abuse” and said it gives people “legal protections and tools for when their intimate images, including deepfakes, are shared without their consent, and enabling law enforcement to hold perpetrators accountable.”

“This is also a landmark move towards establishing common-sense rules of the road around social media and AI,” she added.

Cruz said “predators who weaponize new technology to post this exploitative filth will now rightfully face criminal consequences, and Big Tech will no longer be allowed to turn a blind eye to the spread of this vile material.”

What are the censorship concerns?

Free speech advocates and digital rights groups say the bill is too broad and could lead to the censorship of legitimate images including legal pornography and LGBTQ content, as well as government critics.

“While the bill is meant to address a serious problem, good intentions alone are not enough to make good policy,” said the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group. “Lawmakers should be strengthening and enforcing existing legal protections for victims, rather than inventing new takedown regimes that are ripe for abuse.”

The takedown provision in the bill “applies to a much broader category of content — potentially any images involving intimate or sexual content” than the narrower definitions of non-consensual intimate imagery found elsewhere in the text, EFF said.

“The takedown provision also lacks critical safeguards against frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests. Services will rely on automated filters, which are infamously blunt tools,” EFF said. “They frequently flag legal content, from fair-use commentary to news reporting. The law’s tight time frame requires that apps and websites remove speech within 48 hours, rarely enough time to verify whether the speech is actually illegal.”

As a result, the group said online companies, especially smaller ones that lack the resources to wade through a lot of content, “will likely choose to avoid the onerous legal risk by simply depublishing the speech rather than even attempting to verify it.”

The measure, EFF said, also pressures platforms to “actively monitor speech, including speech that is presently encrypted” to address liability threats.

The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit that helps victims of online crimes and abuse, said it has “serious reservations” about the bill. It called its takedown provision unconstitutionally vague, unconstitutionally overbroad, and lacking adequate safeguards against misuse.”

For instance, the group said, platforms could be obligated to remove a journalist’s photographs of a topless protest on a public street, photos of a subway flasher distributed by law enforcement to locate the perpetrator, commercially produced sexually explicit content or sexually explicit material that is consensual but falsely reported as being nonconsensual.

REDMOND (AP) — Microsoft began laying off about 6,000 workers Tuesday, nearly 3% of its entire workforce and its largest job cuts in more than two years as the company spends heavily on artificial intelligence.

Hard hit was the tech giant’s home state of Washington, where Microsoft informed state officials it was cutting 1,985 workers tied to its Redmond headquarters, many of them in software engineering and product management roles.

Microsoft said the layoffs will be across all levels, teams and geographies but the cuts will focus on reducing the number of managers. Notices to employees began going out on Tuesday.

The mass layoffs come just weeks after Microsoft reported strong sales and profits that beat Wall Street expectations for the January-March quarter, which investors took as a dose of relief during a turbulent time for the tech sector and U.S. economy.

“I think many people have this conception of layoffs as something that struggling companies have to do to save themselves, which is one reason for layoffs but it’s not the only reason,” said Daniel Zhao, lead economist at workplace reviews site Glassdoor. “Big tech companies have trimmed their workforces as they rearrange their strategies and pull back from the more aggressive hiring that they did during the early post-pandemic years.”

Microsoft employed 228,000 full-time workers as of last June, the last time it reported its annual headcount. About 55% of those workers were in the U.S.

Microsoft announced a smaller round of performance-based layoffs in January. But the 3% cuts will be Microsoft’s biggest since early 2023, when the company cut 10,000 workers, almost 5% of its workforce, joining other tech companies that were scaling back their pandemic-era expansions.

Microsoft’s chief financial officer, Amy Hood, said on an April earnings call that the company was focused on “building high-performing teams and increasing our agility by reducing layers with fewer managers.” She also said the headcount in March was 2% higher than a year earlier, and down slightly compared to the end of last year.

The layoffs are hitting all parts of Microsoft’s business, including the video game platform Xbox and the career networking site LinkedIn. Some laid-off workers and the executives who made the cuts took to LinkedIn to talk about them.

“This is the first time I’ve had to lay people off to support business goals that aren’t my own,” wrote Scott Hanselman, a vice president of Microsoft’s developer community. “I often have trouble separating my beliefs with the system that I participate in and am complicit in. These are people with dreams and rent and I love them and I want them to be OK.”

He added: “This is a day with a lot of tears.”

The company didn’t give a specific reason for the layoffs, only that they were part of “organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace.”

Microsoft has said it has been spending $80 billion in the fiscal year that ends in June on building data centers and other infrastructure it needs to develop its artificial intelligence technology, though it has also scaled back some of those projects. Those AI tools have been pitched as changing the way people work, including in Microsoft’s own workplaces.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at an AI event last month at Meta’s headquarters that “maybe 20, 30% of the code” for some of Microsoft’s coding projects “are probably all written by software.”

Even if AI is increasingly helping Microsoft software engineers, however, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a chief reason for laying them off.

“When these big tech companies say that they’re trimming management layers, that doesn’t really sound like it’s being driven by AI,” Zhao said. “You’re not expecting ChatGPT to replace the manager.”

Instead, cutting management ranks can often reflect a broader strategy.

“As companies grow quickly, you need to add managers who can coordinate across teams or within teams,” Zhao said. “But it’s not until things start to slow down that people start asking questions about how necessary those roles are.”

Of the laid-off employees in Washington, about 1,500 worked in person at Microsoft’s offices and 475 worked remotely, according to the notice the company sent to the state employment agency. Their official last day will be in July.

After hiring sprees that started when the COVID-19 pandemic spiked demand for online services, many tech companies are still in a process of “coming back to Earth and trying to kind of rebalance some things,” said Cory Stahle, an economist at Indeed, the job listings website.

And while Microsoft isn’t as directly affected by President Donald Trump’s wide-ranging tariffs as some of its peers, it must also think more broadly about economic conditions that could play out over the coming months and years.

“This could be an effort to think more long term,” Stahle said. “If you have to go out and buy groceries and spend more on groceries and produce that are more expensive due to tariffs, you maybe don’t have as much discretionary income to spend on electronics or video game systems.”