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When career advice guru Eve Peña was offered a five-figure brand deal to promote a company she had never heard of to her TikTok following, she was intrigued. Then she learned what it claimed to be offering: a service that would create AI clones of people, taking on their full human likenesses, to attend virtual job interviews and generate answers based on the clients’ résumés.
“The first thing I said to that was: ‘This is really unethical. People are going to tell me, too,’” Peña said in a phone interview. “And [the representative] said: ‘Well, I do think it’s unethical, as well … but we’re going to create some talking points that you can deflect hate comments with.’”
Peña is one of three creators who told NBC News that they were approached with the offer — and that they quickly grew wary that it was a scam. Less than two weeks later, the company, StartupHelper, went dark online, with its website’s contents taken down entirely and its TikTok page set to private.
It was a bizarre episode featuring the collision of two distinct dynamics: the murky world of partnerships, in which creators are approached to sponsor relatively unknown companies, and the rise of generative AI technology, which has tremendous potential but little oversight.
SIMI VALLEY, California, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Donald Trump's Republican rivals clashed at a chaotic presidential debate on Wednesday, leveling attacks at the absent former president, Democratic President Joe Biden and one another over issues from China to immigration to the economy.
But as the debate ended, none of the seven candidates on stage appeared to have secured the sort of breakout moment that would alter the dynamics of a primary contest that Trump has dominated for months, despite his four criminal indictments - which went virtually unmentioned during the two-hour broadcast.
GORIS, Armenia, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh said on Thursday they were dissolving the breakaway statelet they had defended for three decades, where more than half the population has fled since Azerbaijan launched a lightning offensive last week.
In a statement, they said their self-declared Republic of Artsakh would "cease to exist" by Jan. 1, in what amounted to a formal capitulation to Azerbaijan.
For Azerbaijan and its president, Ilham Aliyev, the outcome is a triumphant restoration of sovereignty over an area that is internationally recognised as part of its territory but whose ethnic Armenian majority won de facto independence in a war in the 1990s.
BALTIMORE (AP) — Police had been searching for the man arrested in the killing of a Baltimore tech entrepreneur since last week as a suspect in a separate rape and arson, officials said Thursday.
Jason Billingsley, who is charged with first-degree murder in the death of 26-year-old Pava LaPere, was released from prison last October after earning good behavior credits to reduce the time he served for 2015 sexual assault.
Baltimore police Commissioner Richard Worley said at a news conference Thursday that detectives believe LaPere was killed Friday night, although her body wasn’t found until after she was reported missing Monday. The Johns Hopkins University graduate, who founded the tech startup EcoMap Technologies while she was still a college student, was found dead with signs of blunt force trauma in her apartment complex.
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A Mexican mother bravely shielded her son after a bear leapt on a picnic table and devoured the tacos and enchiladas meant for the boy’s birthday dinner, inches from his face.
Silvia Macías of Mexico City had traveled to the Chipinque Park on the outskirts of the northern city of Monterrey to celebrate the 15th birthday of her son, Santiago, who has Down syndrome.
Soon after they sat down to eat the food they had brought, the bear showed up and gulped down french fries, enchiladas, tacos and salsa. A video shot by her friend, Angela Chapa, shows Macías sitting stoically, inches from the bear’s mouth, holding Santiago and shielding his eyes with her hand. She kept her eyes downcast, to avoid anything the bear might consider a challenge.
A judge in New York has ordered that former President Donald Trump, his eldest sons and his business associates committed fraud.
Judge Arthur Engoron issued an order Tuesday granting partial summary judgment in the lawsuit filed by New York's Democratic Attorney General Letitia James.
After a three-year investigation, James filed this lawsuit last September claiming Trump and his executive team engaged in fraudulent business practices including inflating the value of Trump's business and the market value of his real estate holdings in New York state and in Florida.
Gymnastics authorities in Ireland are responding to a video circulating on social media that shows an award ceremony last year in which a young Black gymnast is skipped over as medals are handed out.
The video shows roughly a dozen young girls lined up to receive medals at a gymnastics event in Dublin in March 2022. As an official goes down the line awarding medals, she passes by the only Black child.
Though it was recorded over a year ago, the video now spreading online is drawing renewed attention to the incident and prompting condemnations from many viewers, including U.S. gymnastics star Simone Biles.
"[W]hen this video was circulating, her parents reached out. It broke my heart to see, so I sent her a little video," Biles said in a post on X (formerly Twitter). "[T]here is no room for racism in any sport or at all !!!!"
New research about the Electoral College found that a disproportionate number of Americans are in favor of moving away from electing presidents by way of electors and toward counting the popular vote instead. Doing so would have a range of consequences that data suggest would bode well not only for Black voters but also for Democrats.
“Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults (65%) say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency,” according to data shared on Monday by the Pew Research Center. “A third favor keeping the current Electoral College system.”
To put it simply, Black voters have plenty to gain from replacing the electoral college — a system built originally to protect the interest of white, male slave owners — with selecting presidents through a popular vote.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday pledged to give Native Americans a stronger voice in federal affairs, promising at the first in-person summit on tribal affairs in six years that he will bolster tribal consultations, inclusion of Indigenous knowledge in decision-making and funding for communities struggling with the impacts of climate change.
Biden spoke on the opening day of the two-day White House Tribal Nations Summit to representatives from hundreds of Native American and Alaska Native tribes, reiterating and announcing a series of new commitments. The summit coincides with National Native American Heritage Month, which is celebrated in November.
The Biden administration said its goal is to build on previous progress and create opportunities for lasting change in Indian Country, which isn’t guaranteed without codified laws and regulations.
PHOENIX (AP) — Hispanic history and culture take center stage across the U.S. for National Hispanic Heritage Month, which is celebrated annually from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15. The celebration recognizes the contributions of Hispanic Americans, the fastest-growing racial or ethnic minority, according to the Census.
It includes people whose ancestors come from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America.
With a U.S. population of over 63 million people, there will be a plethora of Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations all over the country starting Friday.
PHOENIX (AP) — Autumn Nelson said she was seeking help for alcohol addiction last spring when fellow members of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana suggested a rehabilitation center in Phoenix, far to the south.
The 38-year-old said the center even bought her a one-way airline ticket to make the 1,300-mile (2,100-kilometer) journey. But Nelson said after a month, she was kicked out after questioning why there was one therapist for 30 people and no Native American staff despite a focus on Indigenous clients.
“All of a sudden I was out in the 108-degree heat in Phoenix, Arizona,” said Nelson. “I was scared, and didn’t know where to go.”
The March on Washington of 1963 is remembered most for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have a Dream” speech — and thus as a crowning moment for the long-term civil rights activism of what is sometimes referred to as the “Black Church.”
At the march, King indeed represented numerous other Black clergy who were his colleagues in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. But the march was the product of sustained activism by a broader coalition. Black and white labor leaders, as well as white clergy, played pivotal roles over many months ahead of the event.
Moreover, the Black Church was not monolithic then — nor is it now. Many Black pastors and their congregations steered clear of civil disobedience and other nonviolent confrontational tactics in the civil rights era, just as some now steer clear of the Black Lives Matter movement and shun progressive Black pastors’ engagement on behalf of abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights.
Fossils unearthed in Laos are rewriting the history of ancient human migration. The two new discoveries—a piece of skull and a shin bone—suggest modern humans arrived in mainland Southeast Asia much earlier than thought.
Scientists had previously estimated that early humans spread out from Africa between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago and reached places like Southeast Asia shortly after. But the newly discovered fossils, described Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, date to between 68,000 and 86,000 years ago.
Youths won a David and Goliath climate lawsuit
Young environmentalists in Montana, US, have emerged victorious after suing state officials for violating their right to a clean environment.
The 16 youths – aged between five and 22 – argued that Montana’s fossil fuel policies contributed to climate change, which harms their health.
Montana – a major coal producer with large oil and gas reserves – rebuffed the claim, saying its emissions were insignificant on a global scale.
But in a 103-page ruling, judge Kathy Seeley set a legal precedent for young people’s rights to a safe climate by finding in their favour. “Every additional tonne of GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions exacerbates plaintiffs’ injuries and risks locking in irreversible climate injuries,” she wrote.
It’s the first time a US court has ruled against a government for a violation of constitutional rights based on climate change. It will now be up to Montana lawmakers to bring state policies in line.
Julia Olson, executive director of the nonprofit law firm, Our Children’s Trust, which represented the youths, said: “As fires rage in the west, fueled by fossil fuel pollution, today’s ruling in Montana is a gamechanger that marks a turning point in this generation’s efforts to save the planet from the devastating effects of human-caused climate chaos.”
A dedicated grandma has run a week-long summer camp to bring her 11 grandchildren together for daily meals, and activity schedules, with homemade trophies and gold medals.
Narnie Shyrel Mack has four daughters and takes looking after her grandchildren very seriously.
The kids, aged seven months to 18 years, live hours apart and only see each other during holidays, so she hosts a ‘camp’ at her home to bring them all together.
‘Camp Narnie 2023’ saw them enjoy a busy schedule of outdoor sports, games, crafts, and challenges.
The unmarried 68-year-old even went the extra mile with meal plans, homemade awards and medals for the game winners, at her four-bed home in Kingsland, Georgia.
Self-driving taxis are ferrying passengers across San Francisco and Phoenix, and they could be coming to a street near you very soon.
The two leading robotaxi companies, GM’s Cruise and Alphabet’s Waymo, are expanding commercial services to cities across the country, including Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City. They’re scaling up fast, and a third company, Amazon’s Zoox, is playing catch-up.
On August 10, the California Public Utilities Commission handed Cruise and Waymo a victory by allowing them to operate across San Francisco at all hours and charge fares. During a six-and-a-half-hour hearing, hundreds of residents testified for and against the robotaxis. Supporters claimed they were safer and more reliable than human-driven vehicles, and disabled people said they were more accessible, especially for service animals. Opponents, including transit and fire officials, argued that the taxis had repeatedly gotten in the way of emergency responders and had become a nuisance.
The very next day, Cruise cars snarled traffic in the city’s North Beach neighborhood after the Outside Lands Music Festival being held in the western part of the city caused wireless service problems and the cars lost contact with their central office. The traffic meltdown was proof to many that the cars were not ready for a larger rollout.
Then, on Wednesday, August 16 — less than a week after California regulators lifted restrictions on Cruise and Waymo — San Francisco officials asked for that approval to be halted, arguing the city “will suffer serious harm” with the services expanded to daytime hours.
Liz Lindqwister, a data journalist at the nonprofit news startup the San Francisco Standard, has been documenting the bumpy expansion of robotaxis — while using them herself to commute around town.
“People like to say that San Francisco is at the heart of the robotaxi revolution. And they’re practically everywhere in the city now. You can see them crawling on every single street,” Lindqwister said.
One day in the Bronx, a first-grade teacher sat down in a barbershop for a trim and one of his students walked in, sat down, and started looking antsy.
He thought to himself that it was a perfect opportunity to practice reading, a thought that changed Alvin Irby’s life, and in five years’ time, he’s filling dozens of barbershops around the country with free books to trim back childhood illiteracy.
His non-profit, Barbershop Books, has delivered 50,000 free books to more than 200 barbershops in predominantly black neighborhoods in 24 states, leveraging the fact that in Black American communities, barbershops are like community centers where people congregate naturally.
At nearly 150 acres, the Jardim Gramacho landfill in Rio de Janeiro was one of the largest and most infamous in all of Latin America. Now it’s a mangrove forest teeming with life.
Decommissioned 11 years ago, between 1970 and 2012 the dump, bordering Rio’s famous Guanabara Bay, received 80 million metric tonnes of trash from the area’s Gramacho neighborhood.
Now, a public-private partnership led by the Rio Municipal Cleaning Company has returned the area to nature, specifically mangroves, one of the most valuable of all ecosystems.
At the southern cusp of Cape Flattery in Washington, off a long sandy beach tucked away from the Northern Pacific’s rough seas, seven dancers hide. They crouch inside the belly of a puppet, in the shape of a humpback whale. They move the whale’s fins and flukes. Feathers spew from its blowhole. Then, one by one, they crawl out through its mouth, wearing shawls and sea serpent headdresses. Slowly, they look around. High above the dancers, perched on a cliff, a Thunderbird puppet lurks, waiting. A crowd watches at Wa-atch, one of the people’s five villages — Waʔač̓, in the language of the Qʷidiččaʔa·tx̌, the people of the cape.
Thunderbird swoops down and snatches the whale puppet in his talons, just like he taught the Qʷidiččaʔa·tx̌ to do in the beginning, when they first hunted the giant sea mammals.
Chief Hiškʷi·sa·na·kši·ł, or Hishka, stands in front as the dancers perform the last song of the potlatch near the Wa-atch River on a late-summer evening.
That was only three generations ago, not long after the U.S. government sent so-called Indian agents to assimilate the people of the cape, now known as Makah.
Juneteenth is a wonderful monument to the African American community’s indomitable spirit and its continuous quest for freedom. On this day in Galveston, Texas, in the year 1865, Major General Gordon Granger announced the historic news that slavery had ended and all enslaved Black people were now free.
This article goes into Juneteenth’s varied significance, tracing its roots, discussing the hurdles encountered, and honoring the tenacity and empowerment of a community that shaped—and continues to shape— the nation of the United States of America.
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, freeing enslaved people in the Confederate States. However, due to insufficient enforcement and Confederate resistance, Texas remained a slave state until 1865. The Proclamation set the basis for change, but further effort was required to achieve freedom for everyone.
The date of June 19, 1865, was a watershed moment in history. In Galveston, Major General Granger issued General Order No. 3, effectively abolishing slavery and delivering freedom to enslaved Black people. This statement, which was announced to an estimated 250,000 people, read in part:
“The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer.”
Understandably so, such words sparked a sense of emancipation and hope across the African American community.
BAMBER BRIDGE, England (AP) — The village of Bamber Bridge in northwestern England is proud of the blow it struck against racism in the U.S. military during World War II.
When an all-Black truck regiment was stationed in the village, residents refused to accept the segregation ingrained in the U.S. Army. Ignoring pressure from British and American authorities, pubs welcomed the GIs, local women chatted and danced with them, and English soldiers drank alongside men they saw as allies in the war against fascism.
But simmering tensions between Black soldiers and white military police exploded on June 24, 1943, when a dispute outside a pub escalated into a night of gunfire and rebellion that left Private William Crossland dead and dozens of soldiers from the truck regiment facing court martial. When Crossland’s niece learned about the circumstances of her uncle’s death from an Associated Press reporter, she called for a new investigation to uncover exactly how he died.
The leader of the Wagner mercenary group defended his short-lived insurrection in a boastful audio statement Monday, but uncertainty still swirled about his fate, as well as that of senior Russian military leaders, the impact on the war in Ukraine, and even the political future of President Vladimir Putin.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made his first public appearance since the uprising that demanded his ouster, in a video aimed at projecting a sense of order after the country’s most serious political crisis in decades.
In an 11-minute audio statement, Yevgeny Prigozhin said he acted “to prevent the destruction of the Wagner private military company” and said he acted in response to an attack on a Wagner camp that killed some 30 of his fighters.
“We started our march because of an injustice,” Prigozhin said in the recording that gave no details about where he is or what his future plans are.
A feud between the Wagner Group leader and Russia’s military brass that has festered throughout the war erupted into a mutiny that saw the mercenaries leave Ukraine to seize a military headquarters in a southern Russian city and roll seemingly unopposed for hundreds of miles toward Moscow, before turning around after less than 24 hours on Saturday.
The Kremlin said it had made a deal for Prigozhin to move to Belarus and receive amnesty, along with his soldiers. There was no confirmation of his whereabouts Monday, although a popular Russian news channel on Telegram reported he was seen at a hotel in the Belarusian capital, Minsk.
My relationship with wellness is more complicated than running into a guy I ghosted at an office party. I began my journey in 2017 as a lot of people do: dressed in Lululemon and sipping green juice on my way to a yoga class. (I had chosen trap classes because I was much more comfortable hearing “Mouth Full of Golds” during child’s pose than risking stepping on a white woman’s yoga mat.) Soon, wellness became a capitalistic pursuit I held near. I loved grabbing a blue spirulina smoothie while out on a run — but only dressed in head-to-toe Nike gear. Lulu was for the gym and yoga. I became obsessed with rings, namely, closing the ones on my Apple Watch.
By 2020, after spending thousands of dollars on this journey without seeing any measurable improvement in my mental health — which people do experience from wellness efforts — I began to interrogate why I expected this effort to cure my anxiety and depression. I was sidelined by the coronavirus pandemic and, like many others, began to question what actually mattered to me. Still, I did yoga, strength trained, cycled, and meditated at home to keep myself mentally afloat during the pandemic and during the antiracism protests over the murder of George Floyd, an immensely triggering moment for Black folks. Having a routine was helpful until it wasn’t.
News and the Culture of Lying: How Journalism Really Works, Paul H. Weaver (The Free Press, 1994).
Who Stole the News?: Why We Can’t Keep Up with What Happens in the World, Mort Rosenblum (John Wiley & Sons, 1993).
Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America, Cynthia Crossen (Simon & Schuster, 1994).
The U.S. press, like the U.S. government, is a corrupt and troubled institution. Corrupt not so much in the sense that it accepts bribes but in a systemic sense. It fails to do what it claims to do, what it should do, and what society expects it to do.
The news media and the government are entwined in a vicious circle of mutual manipulation, mythmaking, and self-interest. Journalists need crises to dramatize news, and government officials need to appear to be responding to crises. Too often, the crises are not really crises but joint fabrications. The two institutions have become so ensnared in a symbiotic web of lies that the news media are unable to tell the public what is true and the government is unable to govern effectively. That is the thesis advanced by Paul H. Weaver, a former political scientist (at Harvard University), journalist (at Fortune magazine), and corporate communications executive (at Ford Motor Company), in his provocative analysis entitled News and the Culture of Lying: How Journalism Really Works.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday preserved the system that gives preference to Native American families in foster care and adoption proceedings of Native children, rejecting a broad attack from some Republican-led states and white families who argued it is based on race.
The court left in place the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, which was enacted to address concerns that Native children were being separated from their families and, too frequently, placed in non-Native homes.
Tribal leaders have backed the law as a means of preserving their families, traditions and cultures.
The “issues are complicated” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for a seven-justice majority that included the court’s three liberals and four of its six conservatives, but the “bottom line is that we reject all of petitioners’ challenges to the statute.”
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, with Alito writing that the decision “disserves the rights and interests of these children.”
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — In a rare address to a federal court Wednesday, Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike Randolph called efforts to attach him to a lawsuit challenging a new state law a “circus” with “no legal precedent in U.S. history.”
Randolph was named a defendant in the lawsuit challenging House Bill 1020. The legislation was signed into law by Republican Gov. Tate Reeves in April. The new state law, which U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate has temporarily prevented from taking effect, expands the state’s role in courts and policing in Jackson.
Speaking before Wingate, Randolph said Wednesday was the first day in over 19 years that he addressed a courtroom from the podium rather than from the judge’s bench.
“I have never seen a circus like this one,” Randolph said. “I can’t find a case in U.S. history like this.”
The lawsuit, filed by the national, state and local chapters of the NAACP, says “separate and unequal policing” will return to Mississippi’s majority-Black capital under the state-run police department whose territory would widen under the new state law. The law also creates a new court in part of Jackson with a judge appointed by Randolph and requires him to appoint four temporary judges to serve with the four elected judges in the area’s circuit court.
SAN FRANCISCO, June 15 (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) is cautioning employees about how they use chatbots, including its own Bard, at the same time as it markets the program around the world, four people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The Google parent has advised employees not to enter its confidential materials into AI chatbots, the people said and the company confirmed, citing long-standing policy on safeguarding information.
The chatbots, among them Bard and ChatGPT, are human-sounding programs that use so-called generative artificial intelligence to hold conversations with users and answer myriad prompts. Human reviewers may read the chats, and researchers found that similar AI could reproduce the data it absorbed during training, creating a leak risk.
Alphabet also alerted its engineers to avoid direct use of computer code that chatbots can generate, some of the people said.
NEW YORK, June 14 (Reuters) - A New York grand jury voted on Wednesday to indict Daniel Penny, a former U.S. Marine sergeant, in last month's killing of Jordan Neely, a homeless man, with a chokehold on a Manhattan subway car, a person familiar with the case said.
Penny, 24, was captured in videos recorded by bystanders putting Neely in a chokehold on May 1 while they rode on an F train in Manhattan.
The killing drew national attention and sparked protests in May by those angered by the police's delay in arresting Penny, who is white, with killing Neely, a Black man.
At an initial court appearance last month, Penny was charged with one count of second-degree manslaughter.
The charge or charges in the grand jury indictment will not be unsealed until Penny appears in court on a later date, the person familiar with the case said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on record.
Neither the district attorney's office nor Penny's defense lawyer immediately responded to requests for comment.
MIAMI (AP) — Florida’s shift to the right is perhaps nowhere more notable than in this vibrant swath of the state’s southeast coast where the latest Donald Trump drama is unfolding.
Republicans have made steady inroads in this former Democratic stronghold in recent years, culminating in the GOP carrying Miami-Dade County in last year’s midterm elections. The party’s broader future could now hinge on what happens next in south Florida -– but for a very different reason.
A mood of deepening gloom is gripping Russia’s elite about prospects for President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, with even the most optimistic seeing a “frozen” conflict as the best available outcome now for the Kremlin.
Many within the political and business elite are tired of the war and want it to stop, though they doubt Putin will halt the fighting, according to seven people familiar with the situation, who asked not to be identified because the matter is sensitive. While nobody’s willing to stand up to the president over the invasion, absolute belief in his leadership has been shaken by it, four of the people said.
On a pleasure boat cruising Gulf waters near Dubai’s glittering skyline, a Nigerian woman in a white dress and gold jewelry nodded and swayed as a gathering sang “Happy Birthday” to her.
Videos of Christy Gold’s 45th birthday party were posted in May last year on an Instagram account that showcases her glamorous lifestyle, months after Gold fled Nigeria, where she was facing sex trafficking charges.
Gold – whose name appears in court records as Christiana Jacob Uadiale – was a ringleader in a criminal network that lured African women to Dubai and forced them into prostitution in brothels, backstreets, bars, hotels and dance clubs, according to six Nigerian government anti-trafficking officials, a British human rights activist who has tracked her operation and five women who say they were trafficked and exploited by her.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — U.S. Olympic champion sprinter Tori Bowie died from complications of childbirth, according to an autopsy report.
Bowie, who won three medals at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, was found dead last month. She was 32.
The report from the office of the medical examiner in Orlando, Florida, said Bowie was estimated to be eight months pregnant and showing signs of undergoing labor when she was discovered dead on May 2. It said she was found in bed in a “secured residence” with possible complications including respiratory distress and eclampsia. The autopsy report said “the manner of death is natural.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans plan to open the second day of the new Congress much like the first — with leader Kevin McCarthy trying to become House speaker despite losing in multiple rounds of voting that threw the new GOP majority into chaos.
It was the first time in 100 years that a nominee for House speaker could not take the gavel on the first vote, but McCarthy appeared undeterred. Instead, he vowed to fight to the finish, encouraged, he said, by former President Donald Trump to end the disarray and pull the Republican Party together.
Early Wednesday, Trump publicly urged Republicans to vote for McCarthy: “CLOSE THE DEAL, TAKE THE VICTORY,” he wrote on his social media site. He added: “REPUBLICANS, DO NOT TURN A GREAT TRIUMPH INTO A GIANT & EMBARRASSING DEFEAT.”
Damar Hamlin had dreamed so long of playing in the NFL that when he was drafted by the Buffalo Bills in 2021, he said he'd still be happy even if his only contribution was as a water boy.
The scouting report on the star defensive back from the University of Pittsburgh said he had great instincts and a nose for the ball, but that he was undersized and perhaps a bit slow.
As a result, Hamlin had fallen all the way to the sixth round, where the Bills picked him up as the 212th overall pick.
Hamlin didn't mind.
"I'm willing to do whatever just to be a contributor on the team, man. I don't care if it's I gotta pass out water at halftime," he said to reporters after the draft. "No matter what it is, I'm willing to do it. I don't got no pride."
A few years ago, I’d sometimes find myself needing to answer the question, “Why does Future Perfect, which is supposed to be focused on the world’s most crucial problems, write so much about AI?”
After 2022, though, I don’t often have to answer that one anymore. This was the year AI went from a niche subject to a mainstream one.
In 2022, powerful image generators like Stable Diffusion made it clear that the design and art industry was at risk of mass automation, leading artists to demand answers — which meant that the details of how modern machine learning systems learn and are trained became mainstream questions.
Meta pushed releases of both Blenderbot (which was a flop) and the world-conquering, duplicitous Diplomacy-playing agent Cicero (which wasn’t).
OpenAI ended the year with a bang with the release of ChatGPT, the first AI language model to get widespread uptake with millions of users — and one that could herald the end of the college essay, among other potential implications.
And more is coming — a lot more. On December 31, OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman tweeted the following: “Prediction: 2023 will make 2022 look like a sleepy year for AI advancement & adoption.”
One of the defining features of AI progress over the past few years is that it has happened very, very fast. Machine learning researchers often rely on benchmarks to compare models to one another and define the state of the art on a specific task. But often in AI today, a benchmark will barely be created before a model is released that obviates it.
Amazing TRUE story!
WASHINGTON (AP) — Kamala Harris used her first late-night network TV appearance since becoming vice president to reflect on how her life has changed since she got the job — including a shortage of emojis — and to talk up the need to vote in the midterm elections.
Harris, appearing early Tuesday on NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers” in a taped appearance, promoted Biden administration efforts to fight climate change, restore abortion rights and pardon people with federal convictions for marijuana possession as she urged people to “speak with your vote” in the midterms.
“Nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed, right?” she said, adding that governors and states should follow the president’s lead in offering pardons for state convictions.
Asked by Meyers how life had changed for her since she became vice president, Harris referenced “high-class problems” like security restrictions that alter day-to-day dynamics. She said taking a walk with her husband, Doug Emhoff, is no longer a one-on-one affair and that family chats via group text are “no longer a thing.”
As for her digital conversations, Harris said: “I have not received directly an emoji in a year and a half.”
Facing outrage over a controversial leaked audio recording with top L.A. city officials, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera offered his resignation at a Monday night meeting with the federation’s executive board, which accepted, according to two sources close to the situation.
Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, head of the California Labor Federation and former head of the AFL-CIO’s San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, confirmed to The Times that Herrera offered his resignation to the board. “We are focused on rebuilding solidarity and trust in the worker movement,” she said.
A spokeswoman for the county federation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The sources requested anonymity to describe sensitive internal matters. One source said that the organization would make a formal statement Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, reports circulated that Herrera had reportedly been “placed on administrative leave, pending an LA Federation of Labor Executive Board meeting to be held this evening,” the California Labor Federation said in a Monday email to state labor leaders obtained by The Times.
Herrera — along with Los Angeles City Councilmembers Nury Martinez, Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo — participated in an October 2021 closed-door conversation where Martinez said a white councilmember handled his young Black son as though he were an “accessory” and described Councilmember Mike Bonin’s son as “Parece changuito,” or “like a monkey.”
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Moscow’s barrage of missile strikes on cities all across Ukraine has elicited celebratory comments from Russian officials and pro-Kremlin pundits, who in recent weeks have actively criticized the Russian military for a series of embarrassing setbacks on the battlefield.
Russian nationalist commentators and state media war correspondents lauded Monday’s attack as an appropriate, and long-awaited, response to a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive and a weekend attack on the bridge between Russia and Crimea, the prized Black Sea peninsula Russia annexed in 2014.
Many of them argued that Moscow should keep up the intensity of Monday’s strikes to win the war now. Some analysts suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin was becoming a hostage of his allies’ views on how the campaign in Ukraine should unfold.
“Putin’s initiative is weakening, and he is becoming more dependent on circumstances and those who are forging the ‘victory’ (in Ukraine) for him,” Tatyana Stanovaya, founder of the independent R.Politik think tank, wrote in an online commentary Monday.
After a disaster strikes, once the dead have been counted and the immediate damage stops, recovery is almost always the first question. How do we build things back to the way they were or even better?
For Puerto Rico — where over 3 million people were left without electricity and 760,000 without clean water after Hurricane Fiona flooded the archipelago last month — talking about solutions yet again can feel like déjà vu.
It’s no wonder. Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico in mid-September, right before the fifth anniversary of Hurricane María, the Category 4 storm that led to the death of thousands of people in 2017 and knocked out the power grid for many islanders for nearly a year. In the immediate aftermath of María, politicians, NGOs, and economists rushed to craft potential solutions to make Puerto Rico more resilient against future climate events, ranging from privatizing the electrical grid to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding approximately $28 billion for construction and economic revitalization projects.
Yet despite the damage and the death toll, only $5 billion of that money was actually disbursed and spent. And four-fifths of that went not to broader resiliency for future disasters but to emergency relief, according to the New York Times. That pattern holds true for other federal funds, such as the Housing and Urban Development department (HUD), too.
Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo has criticised Western nations for their low financial commitment to addressing issues caused by climate change on the continent.
“$55m for 54 countries – this is not fair,” Akufo-Addo was quoted as saying by French state broadcaster RFI on Monday.
Akufo-Addo who is on a six-day visit to France where he is expected to meet President Emmanuel Macron, was referring to commitments made during a climate summit in Rotterdam last September – $23m from the United Kingdom, $15m from Norway, $10m from France and $7m from Denmark.
“The adaptation summit had the mission of mobilising $25bn by 2025 … ridiculously, while the G20 countries are responsible for 80 percent of emissions, Africa left Rotterdam with pledges of up to $55m,” the Ghanaian leader said.
The African Development Bank pledged an additional $12.5bn to support the cause.
The Rotterdam summit was set up to discuss climate change financing for Africa and took place ahead of the 27th annual summit of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) to be held this November in Egypt.
It also came on the heels of a warning from the UN climate science panel that extreme weather and rising seas are hitting faster than expected, prompting calls for more money and political will to help people adapt.
The Rotterdam meeting – attended by former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa and International Monetary Fund head Kristalina Georgieva – heard from representatives of African nations, small island developing states and other climate-vulnerable countries.
Editor’s note, October 11, 10:50 am: Baltimore prosecutors have dropped all charges against Adnan Syed. This original story, published on September 20, is below.
In a shocking new twist to one of the most notable true crime cases of the modern era, a Baltimore judge has vacated the conviction and ordered the immediate release of Adnan Syed, 41, from prison. Syed has maintained his innocence while serving 23 years of a life sentence for the 1999 murder of 18-year-old Hae Min Lee — the case that turned the 2014 podcast Serial into a podcasting phenomenon.
The decision comes as part of a new investigation spearheaded by the state as part of ongoing citywide and statewide efforts to create significant criminal justice reform — a reform arguably galvanized by a cultural wave of interest in true crime that began because of Serial itself.
The investigation revealed serious errors in Syed’s original court case, including multiple Brady violations, meaning that the prosecution refused to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence to the defense prior to Syed’s trial.
In light of this new evidence, brought forth not by the defense but by the prosecution in an extremely rare moment of self-reflection, Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn overturned the verdict and gave the state 30 days in which to drop the existing charges against Syed or schedule a retrial.
At the time of Lee’s murder, Syed, then 17, was considered a beloved and upstanding member of his Baltimore Muslim community. Following the murder of Lee, his high school ex-girlfriend, Syed was put through a trial — thoroughly excavated by journalist Sarah Koenig in Serial, as well as by advocates like Rabia Chaudry — that relied heavily on circumstantial evidence, shaky testimony from Syed’s drug dealer, and now-infamous cellphone tower records whose accuracy has been hotly debated.
Syed’s defense was further hampered by what was generally believed to have been an inadequate defense counsel who failed to investigate at least one potential alibi witness on his behalf, and who was later disbarred.
Rep. Mary Peltola's election to the U.S. House of Representatives made history in several ways.
With her recent swearing-in, it became official for the first time in more than 230 years: A Native American, a Native Alaskan and a Native Hawaiian are all members of the House — fully representing the United States' Indigenous people for the first time, according to Rep. Kaiali'i Kahele of Hawaii. Now, there are six Indigenous Americans who are representatives in the House.
Kahele shared this history-making moment on social media this week with a photograph of him, Peltola, and Rep. Sharice Davids of Kansas (a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation).
Peltola, the first Native Alaskan and woman elected to the House for Alaska, is taking over for Rep. Don Young, who died in March.
"It's a historic moment," Lani Teves, an associate professor at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa said.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Hurricane Fiona blasted the Turks and Caicos Islands on Tuesday as a Category 3 storm after devastating Puerto Rico, where most people remained without electricity or running water and rescuers used heavy equipment to lift survivors to safety.
The storm’s eye passed close to Grand Turk, the small British territory’s capital island, on Tuesday morning after the government imposed a curfew and urged people to flee flood-prone areas. Storm surge could raise water levels there by as much as 5 to 8 feet above normal, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
Late Tuesday morning, the storm was centered about 40 miles (65 kilometers) north-northwest of that island, with hurricane-force winds extending up to 30 miles (45 kilometers) from the center.
“Storms are unpredictable,” Premier Washington Misick said in a statement from London, where he was attending the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. “You must therefore take every precaution to ensure your safety.”
Fiona had maximum sustained winds of 115 mph (185 kph) and was moving north-northwest at 9 mph (15 kph), according to the Hurricane Center, which said the storm is likely to strengthen further into a Category 4 hurricane as it approaches Bermuda on Friday.
Nearly one million people descended on London on Monday to bid a final farewell to Queen Elizabeth II, among them heads of state and representatives from nearly 200 governments as well as visitors from across Britain and around the world. The international nature of the gathering was a testament to the Queen’s immense global soft power, the likes of which is unlikely to be rivaled by any of her successors.
But it’s also fitting of the country over which she reigned. The Britain that Queen Elizabeth II leaves behind is considerably more ethnically and religiously diverse than the one that she inherited 70 years ago.
Over the course of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, Britain’s population grew by nearly a third from roughly 50 million in 1950 to 67 million today—an increase spurred, at least in part, by increased immigration. As of last year, people born outside of the country made up 14.5% of the population, compared to just 8% in 2004.
Georgia official escorting Trump operatives into election offices in 2020.
CHILDERSBURG, Ala. (AP) — Michael Jennings wasn’t breaking any laws or doing anything that was obviously suspicious; the Black minister was simply watering the flowers of a neighbor who was out of town.
Yet there was a problem: Around the corner, Amber Roberson, who is white, thought she was helping that same neighbor when she saw a vehicle she didn’t recognize at the house and called police.
Within minutes, Jennings was in handcuffs, Roberson was apologizing for calling 911 and three officers were talking among themselves about how everything might have been different.
Harry Daniels, an attorney representing Jennings, said he plans to submit a claim to the city of Childersburg seeking damages and then file a lawsuit. “This should be a learned lesson and a training tool for law enforcement about what not to do,” he said.
A 20-minute video of the episode recorded on one of the officers’ body cameras shows how quickly an uneventful evening on a quiet residential street devolved into yet another potentially explosive situation involving a Black man and white law enforcement authorities.
An upset victory for US Democrats in conservative-leaning Alaska has refuelled the party’s hope of retaining its slim majorities in Congress in the upcoming midterm elections against historical trends.
In a special congressional election on Tuesday, Mary Peltola became the latest Democrat to score an surprise win against Republicans, defeating former vice presidential candidate, ex-Alaska governor and Donald Trump ally Sarah Palin.
Peltola, a former state legislator, is now the first Alaska Native to represent the remote northwestern state in Congress. The special election was to replace Republican Congressman Don Young, who held Alaska’s sole seat in the US House of Representatives for nearly half a century until his death earlier this year.
Pelota will serve in Congress until the end of the year and face reelection in November. Alaska employed its ranked voting system for the first time on Tuesday.
Palota bested Palin and Republican candidate Nick Begich, coming on top in the first round of voting with nearly 40 percent of the vote. After third-placed Begich votes were distributed between her and Palin based on ranked choice, she beat the former governor 51.5 to 48.5 percent.
LONDON, Sept 1 (Reuters) - While Pakistanis count the cost of one of the country's worst recorded floods, heavy rain is hitting southwestern China as the Texas city of Dallas recovers from a 10-inch deluge in a single day last month.
Each of these rain-fuelled disasters followed a heatwave, suggesting the regions have been swinging wildly between two contradictory extremes. But extreme heat and extreme rainfall are closely related - and being gassed-up by climate change, scientists say.
Sweltering spring temperatures in South Asia, topping 50 degrees Celsius, are likely to have warmed the Indian Ocean. That warm water would then have fuelled what the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres this week called "a monsoon on steroids" over Pakistan – dumping more than three times as much rain as the 30-year average for August and inundating a third of the country.
More than 1,100 people have been killed, crops are ruined, and homes destroyed, prompting urgent pleas for aid.
Oh man, this is a GREAT Video by Ari ...Poetry by J-Zee about the hypocrisy of this country based on Race - and ONLY Race.
The actions — or more notably, the inaction — of a school district police chief and other law enforcement officers have become the center of the investigation into this week’s shocking school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
Damn...
Check it out:
The former top leader of the Proud Boys will remain jailed while awaiting trial on charges that he conspired with other members of the far-right extremist group to attack the U.S. Capitol and stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory, a federal judge has ruled.
Now, I bet - he’s pissed because most white folks who were there too got out. So I bet this “MF" just realized that he championed a white-false cause and still at the end of the day - is Black anyway and still locked up.
Just what he deserves.
Check it out:
The family and friends of 86-year-old Ruth E. Whitfield held visitation and funeral services at a Buffalo church two weeks after police say a White supremacist killed Whitfield and nine other people. Authorities say the gunman targeted the Tops Friendly Markets store because it was in a predominately Black neighborhood.
Damn shame.
Check it out:
The social media that this evil person got his news from, and FOX is the reason that this will probably get even worse.
These are our people that are being slaughtered and the white perpetrators, in the right wing media...are basically celebrating.
Including candidates running for office, like JD Vance. Damn shame.
Check it out:
The revelation indicates the breach of ballot data in Elbert County was wider than previously understood. The case, now being investigated by the Colorado secretary of state, is one of at least nine unauthorized attempts to access voting-system data around the United States, at least eight of which involved Republican officials or activists seeking evidence to delegitimize Democratic President Joe Biden's election victory.
Check it out:
Within days of the deadly 2019 arrest of Ronald Greene, when body-camera video captured white troopers stunning, beating and dragging the Black motorist, the head of the Louisiana State Police wrote a stark note about the case in his journal: “Realize there is a problem — must address immediately.”
Check it out:
A series of articles about the voting experiences and the effort needed to save our rights.
In this Reuters Institute factsheet we analyse the percentage of non-white top editors in a strategic sample of 100 major online and offline news outlets in five different markets across four continents: Brazil, Germany, South Africa, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US).
Article originally appeared several years ago.
Harry Reid was, in the senate, a great man and he needs to be appreciated.
This is a very disturbed individual, only because of his hate for people different in his idea of America.
These are some great thinkers forming the MasterClass streaming platform.
Everyone should be able to have a second chance at life, no matter what.
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