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Russia’s Wagner mercenaries face uncertainty after the presumed death of their leader in plane crash

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:03:43 GMT

The Wagner Group’s presence extends from the ancient battlegrounds of Syria to the deserts of sub-Saharan Africa, projecting the Kremlin’s global influence with mercenaries accused of using brutal force and profiting from seized mineral riches.But that was under Yevgeny Prigozhin, who in what may have been his final recruitment video, appeared in military fatigues and held an assault rifle from an unidentified dry and dusty plain as he boasted that Wagner was “making Russia even greater on all continents and Africa even more free.”A private jet carrying Prigozhin and his top lieutenants crashed northwest of Moscow on Wednesday, two months after he led an armed rebellion that challenged the authority of Russian President Vladimir Putin. There is wide speculation that the mercenary leader, who is presumed dead, was targeted for assassination because of his uprising, although the Kremlin has denied involvement.The crash has raised questions about the future of PrigozhinR...

Former Canadian Olympic skater Alexandra Paul killed in car crash

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:03:43 GMT

Skate Canada is paying tribute to a former Canadian Olympic figure skater who died in a collision involving seven vehicles in Melancthon Township, north of Shelburne, Ont., earlier this week.Provincial police say Alexandra Paul, who was 31, was in a vehicle with her baby boy just after 3 p.m. on August 22 when a transport truck entered a construction zone on Country Road 124 and crashed into the lineup of stopped cars.Police say her baby was taken to a children’s hospital to be treated for non-life-threatening injuries.A 67-year-old man was airlifted to a trauma centre in Toronto with serious injuries while a 45-year-old woman and a 28-year-old man were taken to a local hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Skate Canada says Paul and her partner and husband, Mitchell Islam, won multiple international medals, claimed three Canadian Championship medals and competed at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games.Skate Canada says Paul was a true role model for aspiring skaters, demonstr...

Broadband subsidy program that millions use will expire next year if Congress doesn’t act

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:03:43 GMT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — One of the features that President Joe Biden cited in his plan to bring internet to every home and business in the United States by 2030 was affordability. But an important federal program established to keep broadband costs down for low-income households is set to expire next year.The Affordable Connectivity Program has not reached everyone who is eligible. According to an Associated Press analysis of enrollment and census data, less than than 40% of eligible households have utilized the program, which provides monthly subsidies of $30, and in some cases, up to $75, to help pay for internet connections.Still, the program has been a lifeline for Kimberlyn Barton-Reyes, who is paraplegic and visually impaired. Barton-Reyes did not have to wait for an in-person appointment when a seizure-alert system disconnected from her electric wheelchair in November. The company that services her chair assessed the problem remotely, ordered the parts she needed and got the chair...

Chicago police are investigating a shooting at White Sox game at Guaranteed Rate Field

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:03:43 GMT

CHICAGO (AP) — Two women were injured Friday night in a shooting during a White Sox baseball game at Guaranteed Rate Field.Chicago police say a 42-year-old woman sustained a gunshot wound to the leg, and a 26-year-old woman had a graze wound to her abdomen. The 42-year-old woman was in fair condition at University of Chicago Medical Center. The 26-year-old woman refused medical attention, according to the police statement.Chicago police say its information is still preliminary because detectives are investigating. According to the White Sox, investigators aren’t sure if shots were fired from outside or inside the ballpark. The injuries were sustained midway up Section 161 in left-center field. The announced crowd was 21,906 for the game, a 12-4 loss for the Chicago White Sox against Oakland. A postgame concert featuring Vanilla Ice, Rob Base and Tone Loc was canceled because of “technical issues,” according to the team.“Upon receiving notification of this incident, CPD responded imm...

Pope warns of social media perils: relationships reduced to algorithms, partisan propaganda, hatred

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:03:43 GMT

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis on Saturday warned against the danger of reducing human relationships to “mere algorithms” and urged lawmakers to be vigilant against “partisan” propaganda and divisiveness on social media.In a speech to participants of the International Catholic Legislators Network, who were holding their annual conference in the Rome area, Francis noted that social media networks can be a way to help people realize they are part of something larger than themselves. “Indeed, that is the stated aim of many social media platforms, and certainly much good takes place through these means of communication,” Francis said.Still, the pontiff said, vigilance was needed, “for sadly many dehumanizing trends resulting from technocracy are found on these media.” He cited the deliberate spread of false information about people, fake news and the promotion of hatred and division. Francis further decried what he called “partisan propaganda and the reduction of human relationships to mere a...

Bare electrical wire and poles in need of replacement on Maui were little match for strong winds

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:03:43 GMT

In the first moments of the Maui fires, when high winds brought down power poles, slapping electrified wires to the dry grass below, there was a reason the flames erupted all at once in long, neat rows — those wires were bare, uninsulated metal that could spark on contact.Videos and images analyzed by The Associated Press confirmed those wires were among miles of line that Hawaiian Electric Company. left naked to the weather and often-thick foliage, despite a recent push by utilities in other wildfire- and hurricane-prone areas to cover up their lines or bury them.Compounding the problem is that many of the utility’s 60,000, mostly wooden power poles, which its own documents described as built to “an obsolete 1960s standard,” were leaning and near the end of their projected lifespan. They were nowhere close to meeting a 2002 national standard that key components of Hawaii’s electrical grid be able to withstand 105 mile per hour winds. A 2019 filing said it had fallen behind in...

Fukushima residents cautious after wrecked nuclear plant began releasing treated wastewater

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:03:43 GMT

Fish auction prices at a port south of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were mixed amid uncertainty over how seafood consumers will respond to the release of treated and diluted radioactive wastewater into the ocean.The plant, which was damaged in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, began sending the treated water into the Pacific on Thursday despite protests at home and in nearby countries that are adding political and diplomatic pressures to the economic worries.Hideaki Igari, a middleman at the Numanouchi fishing port, said the price of larger flounder, Fukushima’s signature fish known as Joban-mono, was more than 10% lower at the Friday morning auction, the first since the water release began. Prices of some average-size flounder rose, but presumably due to a limited catch, says Igari. Others fell.It was a relatively calm market reaction to the water release. But, Igari said, “we still have to see how it goes next week.”The decades long release has been strongl...

2 attendees at Chicago White Sox game injured by gunfire: police

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:03:43 GMT

CHICAGO (WGN) — Authorities are investigating reports of a shooting which injured two women at Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago.The incident took place around 7:30 p.m. on Friday night, during White Sox game against the Oakland A's.Police have identified the two victims as a 42-year-old woman, who was shot in the leg, and a 26-year-old woman, whose abdomen was grazed by a bullet."The 42-year-old female was transported to the University of Chicago Medical Center where she is listed in fair condition. The 26-year-old female refused medical attention," Chicago police wrote in a statement.Police did not elaborate on the circumstances surrounding the shooting, but said "at no time was it believed there was an active threat" to other attendees. Child at Pennsylvania theme park injured by box cutter that fell from roller coaster The White Sox, in a statement obtained by the Associated Press, said the victims were in the stadium's Section 161, in left-center field, when they were injured....

Showers and thunderstorms head to Central Texas

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:03:43 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Triple-digit heat remains a part of the forecast for the weekend. Highs are forecast to peak at 102° to 106° today with a 10% chance of a few late-afternoon showers and isolated thunderstorms. Most of this rain appears headed to the Hill Country.Today's normal high is 97°The record high for August 26th is 107° set 99 years ago.Saturday's afternoon and evening heat alertsAn Excessive Heat Warning from Noon to 9 p.m. covers ten of our 15 counties for highs of 105° and higher. A Heat Advisory will be in effect for Blanco, Caldwell, Hays, and Mason Counties for highs up to 104° and heat index readings up to 109°. Gillespie County is under no heat alert today.More widespread coverage of showers and thunderstorms are in Sunday's forecast. The chance of measurable precipitation will be 30%. Still, daytime highs will about one degree higher in most locations.More widespread coverage Sunday of showers and thunderstorms Monday's forecast shows a cold front moving south throug...

When hackers descended to test AI, they found flaws aplenty

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:03:43 GMT

LAS VEGAS — Avijit Ghosh wanted the bot to do bad things.He tried to goad the artificial intelligence model, which he knew as Zinc, into producing code that would choose a job candidate based on race. The chatbot demurred: Doing so would be “harmful and unethical,” it said.Then, Ghosh referenced the hierarchical caste structure in his native India. Could the chatbot rank potential hires based on that discriminatory metric?The model complied.Ghosh’s intentions were not malicious, although he was behaving as if they were. Instead, he was a casual participant in a competition last weekend at the annual Defcon hackers conference in Las Vegas, where 2,200 people filed into an off-Strip conference room over three days to draw out the dark side of artificial intelligence.The hackers tried to break through the safeguards of various AI programs in an effort to identify their vulnerabilities — to find the problems before actual criminals and misinformation peddlers did — in a prac...