Incarnate Word beats East Texas A&M 38-24 to finish undefeated in conference play
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol's brief imposition of martial law marks a new warning for the worldwide fragility of democracy, even in a country hailed as a model of political transformation. Yoon's overnight attempt to shut down political activity, censor media and lock out opposition lawmakers stunned South Korea's longtime ally, the United States, which said it had no advance warning and issued a statement of concern. South Korea's transition to elected rule since a mass uprising in 1987 had been seen as so thorough that the United States increasingly spoke of its ally as a global partner. Meanwhile, Seoul billed itself as a new, ideal hub for international media as China clamped down on Hong Kong. President Joe Biden had even chosen Yoon as the host in March of his final Summit for Democracy -- a signature initiative of the outgoing US leader, who sought to champion liberal values globally, in an unstated repudiation of Donald Trump, who returns to the White House next month. But observers, while stunned by Yoon, said there were warning signs. Danny Russel, a top US diplomat for Asia under former president Barack Obama and who earlier served in South Korea, pointed to the deadlock in parliament where the opposition repeatedly sought impeachments against Yoon's administration. Yoon's move "was a complete surprise to me (but) yes, there were very obvious structural forces at work," he said. "There is a radically polarized political scene in Korea. The opposition has been pursuing scorched-earth political obstruction tactics," he said. But he pointed to the quick, large-scale protests that erupted after Yoon's declaration as a sign of a vibrant civil society ready to defend democracy. "One certainly would hope that this would serve as a wake-up call to both the ruling conservative party and the progressive opposition that both sides have gone too far and that there needs to be some process of reconciliation, of dealing with legitimate differences and grievances." Yoon himself had earlier shown signs of authoritarianism. In a national address last year, Yoon raged against supposed communists who have "disguised themselves as democracy activists, human rights advocates or progressive activists." A prosecutor, Yoon narrowly won the 2022 election on a platform of economic reform and advocated close ties with the United States as well as historic rival Japan. But his popularity swiftly slid and the opposition won the National Assembly. Celeste Arrington, a Korea expert at George Washington University, noted that Yoon had never held elected office before and had become increasingly frustrated. "This is really an extreme move that may signal, I think, the president's lack of political experience," she said. She said that martial law showed "some cracks in democracy" but that the quick reversal "gives me hope in the health and strength and vibrancy of democracy in South Korea." Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, expected Yoon's career to be over after attempting martial law, which constitutionally can only be imposed for wars or other emergencies. "Yoon's action is a damning reversal to decades of South Korean efforts to put its authoritarian past behind it," he said. The number of democracies worldwide soared starting in the late 1980s as the Soviet Union collapsed and student-led uprisings brought reforms elsewhere. But globally, democracy has been in retreat for the last 18 straight years, according to the Washington-based group Freedom House, which promotes political liberty. Democratically elected leaders have taken increasingly authoritarian steps in countries as diverse as India, Turkey and Hungary. V-Dem, another closely watched democracy index, had most recently ranked South Korea third in Asia after Taiwan and Japan. In the United States, Trump has rejected long-held norms, refusing to accept he lost to Biden four years ago -- culminating in his supporters violently rampaging through the US Capitol. Trump's rejection of democracy ultimately worked out for him: campaigning on the rage of 2020, he won last month's election. But experts said Yoon's power play -- and its reversal -- could in fact show a victory for democratic values. "Yoon is a deeply unpopular and ineffectual leader, but there was nothing I saw of people being dissatisfied with the way government runs," Alan Yu, a senior vice president at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, said after a recent trip to Seoul. Darcie Draudt-Vejares of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that with the swift response to Yoon, "this crisis may ultimately strengthen Korean democracy by reaffirming civilian control and demonstrating institutional resilience." sct/nro
Following the win over Nottingham Forest, Arsenal ended their winless streak in the Premier League 2024-25 season. The side will look to put solid performance against their London rivals as they face West Ham next. The West Ham vs Arsenal match will be played at London Stadium, starting at 11:00 PM IST (Indian Standard Time) on November 30. Star Sports Network is the official broadcast partner of the Premier League 2024-25 in India. Fans in India can watch the West Ham vs Arsenal, Premier League 2024-25 Football Match live telecast on the Star Sports Select channels. Also, West Ham vs Arsenal, Premier League 2024-25 match live streaming is available on the Disney+ Hotstar app and website. Premier League 2024-25: Arsenal Aiming for Title As Ambitions Reach All-Time High, Says Manager Mikel Arteta . Back in Premier League action ✊ pic.twitter.com/stoWsBZMaH — Arsenal (@Arsenal) November 29, 2024 (SocialLY brings you all the latest breaking news, viral trends and information from social media world, including Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. The above post is embeded directly from the user's social media account and LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body. The views and facts appearing in the social media post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY, also LatestLY does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)Utah State, Salesforce Team to Improve Student Support
Greens concede on Labor’s housing billsUAC FOOTBALL: EKU's Calwise honored again
Dow ends at fresh record as oil prices pull back on ceasefire hopesBurt, the huge Australian crocodile who had a cameo in ‘Crocodile Dundee,’ dies at 90MENLO PARK, Calif. , Dec. 23, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- BillionToOne, a next-generation molecular diagnostics company with a mission to create powerful and accurate tests that are accessible to all, today announced that they will be presenting at the 43rd Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, CA , on January 14, 2025 . BillionToOne marks a transformative year of achievements as it looks toward 2025. The company closed an oversubscribed, upsized Series D funding round led by Premji Invest in June, and was recently recognized as the Biotech Breakthrough Awards' Diagnostics Company of the Year. More than 500,000 patients have received BillionToOne tests to date, and the company has grown from $0M to $150M+ in annual recurring revenue over the past five years. This will be BillionToOne's second year in attendance at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, and the company will present on the topic of "Redefining Molecular Diagnostics with Single-Molecule Precision." Presentation details are as follows: Location: Mission Bay (32nd Floor) at The Westin Date: Tuesday, January 14, 2025 Time: 2:30-2:55 pm PT A webcast and presentation materials will be available on BillionToOne's website: https://billiontoone.com/event/jpm-2025-43rd-annual-healthcare-conference/ About BillionToOne Headquartered in Menlo Park, California , BillionToOne is a precision diagnostics company on a mission to make molecular diagnostics more accurate, efficient, and accessible for everyone. The company's patented Quantitative Counting TechnologyTM (QCTTM) molecular counting platform is the only multiplex technology that can accurately count DNA molecules at the single-molecule level. For more information, please visit www.billiontoone.com . View original content to download multimedia: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/billiontoone-to-present-at-the-43rd-annual-jp-morgan-healthcare-conference-302338634.html SOURCE BillionToOne
Anze Kopitar rallies Kings past Flyers with late pair
LaLiga: Ancelotti hints at new positions for Vinicius Jr, MbappeNEW YORK (AP) — Sneaking a little ahead of line to get on that plane faster? American Airlines . In an apparent effort to reduce the headaches caused by airport line cutting, has rolled out boarding technology that alerts gate agents with an audible sound if a passenger tries to scan a ticket ahead of their assigned group. This new software won’t accept a boarding pass before the group it’s assigned to is called, so customers who get to the gate prematurely will be asked to go back and wait their turn. As of Wednesday, the airline announced, the technology is now being used in more than 100 U.S. airports that American flies out of. The official expansion arrives after successful — Albuquerque International Sunport, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Tucson International Airport. The initial response from customers and American employees “has exceeded our expectations,” Julie Rath, American’s senior vice president of airport operations, reservations and service recovery, said in a statement. She added that the airline is “thrilled” to have the technology up and running ahead of the . American got lots of attention when it unveiled its gate-control testing last month. Analysts say that isn’t surprising. It’s no secret that line cutting in airports hits a nerve. Whether intentional or not, just about every air traveler has witnessed it, noted Henry Harteveldt, an airline industry analyst with Atmosphere Research Group. It can add to frustrations in what can already be a tense environment, with particular anxiety around passengers wanting to sit together or rushing for some overhead bin space. Harteveldt doesn’t see American’s recent move as “shaming” customers who cut the line. “What it is intended to do is bring order out of chaos,” he said. “And I hope it will defuse any potential flare ups of anger (from) people who simply think they’re entitled to board out of turn .... It’s just not fair.” Harteveldt added that he thinks this change will enhance the experiences of both customers and gate agents. Others say more time will tell. Seth Miller, editor and founder of air travel experience analysis site PaxEx.aero, said he can see the benefits of more orderly and universal gate-control enforcement, particularly for airlines. But he said he isn’t “100% convinced this is perfect for passengers” just yet. Families, for example, might be booked on several different reservations across more than one group, he said. Airlines typically have workarounds for that, and American noted Wednesday that customers traveling with a companion in an earlier group can simply have a gate agent “override the alert” to continue boarding. Still, Miller said, “you have to go through the extra hoops.” And a difficult customer still might choose to hold up the line and argue when they’re not allowed to board, he added. Another question is whether customers who encounter a beep will walk away feeling embarrassed. But Harteveldt said he was happy to learn that American’s alert is “not a bellowing sound that can be heard throughout the terminal,” or accompanied by your name read over a loudspeaker, noting that this is important to avoid feelings of shame. Expanding this technology just a week before peak Thanksgiving travel could be “both good and bad,” Harteveldt adds. On one hand, the tech could help significantly improve the boarding process during such a busy time, he said, but airport employees might also have appreciated more time to prepare. Both Miller and Harteveldt said they wouldn’t be surprised if other carriers soon follow American’s lead. Headaches over airport line cutting are far from new. While maybe not to the extent of American’s new tech, Miller noted he’s seen gate agents from other airlines ask people to leave a line and wait for their group. Harteveldt added that he’s been to some airports in Asia and Europe with “sliding doors” that ensure passengers are in the right group before boarding a plane. The more than 100 airports that American is now using its gate-control technology in are all spoke, or non-hub, locations — including Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. The airline says it expects to further expand to its hubs and other airports in the coming months.
Michigan upsets No. 2 Ohio State 13-10
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Rep. Kay Granger, Republican of Texas, has missed four months of votes in Congress after "having some dementia issues late in the year," her son Brandon Granger told The Dallas Morning News. “It’s been a hard year,” said the 52-year-old Brandon, who also shared that his mother is living in Traditions Senior Living in Fort Worth, Texas. Questions regarding Granger’s deteriorating health were raised when The Dallas Express reported that she had been seen wandering the neighborhood “lost and confused.” Granger, who is 81 years old, cast her last vote on Capitol Hill in July. She was chair of the House Appropriations Committee until she stepped down in April. She did not run for reelection in November, and her days in Congress are waning with her term ending in January. Her absence was felt last week during the chaotic negotiations as House Republicans tried to legislate their way out of a government shutdown. Even her Republican colleagues decried her running for office despite the first signs of decline, calling the government a “congressional gerontocracy.” “The fact that Kay Granger is unable to leave her nursing home to participate in the most important congressional vote of the year suggests she was already in visible decline when she ran for re-election in 2022,” State Republican Executive Committeeman Rolando Garcia said on X on Friday. “A sad and humiliating way to end her political career. Sad that nobody cared enough to ‘take away the keys’ before she reached this moment. And a sad commentary on the congressional gerontocracy.” Granger’s absence reignites a debate on age and term limits in Congress and the White House, including whether public officials should be required to pass a cognitive test to serve. Americans have witnessed the inevitable slowing that comes with age among other elected officials such as the late Dianne Feinstein ; 91-year-old Chuck Grassley ; 84-year-old Nancy Pelosi ; and Mitch McConnell and President Joe Biden , both 82. This past month, Democrats, forced to map out a new agenda after their defeat in November, have been clinging to long-held government positions and committee roles even as younger, more progressive candidates and officials vie for their roles. In a backroom deal reportedly led by Pelosi , 35-year-old Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was passed over for 74-year-old Rep. Gerry Connolly for ranking member of the House Oversight Committee last week. While candidates must be at least 25 years old to be elected to the House, 30 to be elected to the Senate, and 35 to become president, there are currently no term or age limits for members of Congress despite being backed by the majority of Americans across party lines. Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, says the lack of term or age limits reflects the self-interest of members of Congress. “The incentives are all wrong: Stay too long, spend too much, serve The Firm & you’ll find yourself in powerful positions ... for far too long. Meanwhile, staffers wielding power in your name will hide your declining mental and physical condition,” Lee said on X on Sunday. For many, Granger’s case underscores the risks of allowing career politicians to remain in power for decades, even when they’re no longer capable of performing their duties. It also raises an uncomfortable question: Is the political system doing enough to protect the interests of voters when their representatives no longer can? Right now, Daily Kos is falling short of our 2024 goal. Your donations are how we make ends meet. Can you please donate $5 right now so we can close the books on 2024?Anze Kopitar rallies Kings past Flyers with late pair
Daily Post Nigeria Oil production: Nigeria targets 2m barrels per day by December 31 — NNPCL Home News Politics Metro Entertainment Sport Business Oil production: Nigeria targets 2m barrels per day by December 31 — NNPCL Published on November 25, 2024 By Matthew Atungwu The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, said it is working closely with relevant stakeholders to boost crude oil production to over two million barrels per day, bpd, by the end of 2024. NNPCL Chief Corporate Communications Officer, Olufemi Soneye, made this known in a statement on Monday while debunking reports on production disparity figures supplied by the company and the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Company, NUPRC. There were reports earlier alleging that the 1.54 million bpd for September cited by NUPRC was far below the 1.8 million bpd for November cited by NNPCL. However, Soneye said there was no disparity between production given by both stakeholders. The statement further explained that the seeming disparity is a result of the difference in the period of coverage in the reports—whereas the NNPCL figure was the peak production for October 2024, the NUPRC figure was the average production for September 2024. “The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has clarified that there is no discrepancy between its crude oil production figures and those supplied by the regulatory agency, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Company (NUPRC),” the statement read in part. According to the statement, the Chief Executive Officer of NUPRC, Mr. Gbenga Komolafe, confirmed this at the recent 42nd Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists Annual International Conference & Exhibition in Lagos, where he disclosed that Nigeria’s crude oil output, including condensate, increased by 16.56 per cent to 1.8m bpd in October 2024, from 1.54 million bpd in September 2024. Represented by the Executive Commissioner, Development & Production, Enorense Amadasu, the CEO of NUPRC was quoted as saying: “This represents an increase of 253,710 bpd to reach 1.8 million bpd in October, up from 1.54 million bpd in September 2024, representing 16.56 per cent month-on-month rise. NUPRC also confirmed at the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists event that the 1.8m bpd feat pushed Nigeria’s production beyond the 1.5m bpd quota of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). “There is, therefore, no disparity or discrepancy in the production figures by NNPCL and the regulator,” the statement added. Related Topics: NNPCL oil production Don't Miss Nigerian govt excited over GDP growth of 3.46% despite inflationary trends You may like FIRS, Customs, NNPCL, other agencies exceed 2024 revenue target Import licence: NNPCL asks court to strike out Dangote Refinery’s suit Energy group laments high importation of fuel amid NNPCL decision to patronise local refineries Coalition demands probe of alleged N3tn fuel importation fraud by NNPCL, business partners NNPCL vows to hit 2mbpd crude production in Nigeria by December South-South group reacts to Tinubu’s latest appointments in NNPCL Advertise About Us Contact Us Privacy-Policy Terms Copyright © Daily Post Media Ltd
On Thursday, Nov. 26, 1789, George Washington woke early. Assisted by his enslaved valets – William “Billy” Lee and the young Christopher Sheels – he powdered his hair, put on his favorite black velvet suit, tied his white neckwear and donned his yellow gloves. Finally ready, he set out to travel the short distance from the President’s House, at what used to be 3 Cherry St. , New York, and St. Paul’s Chapel, which still stands at 209 Broadway . He had an important aim that day: to celebrate Thanksgiving. Washington had thought carefully about this Thanksgiving, the first of his presidency. On Oct. 3, 1789, following the recommendation of a joint committee of the Senate and House of Representatives, Washington had issued a proclamation . He urged the people of the United States to celebrate “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.” But Washington believed that particular Thanksgiving in 1789 was a crucial occasion. He would use it to call on the people he now led to hold their new country together in the face of forces that he knew could pull it apart. It was not the first Thanksgiving Americans celebrated. The first took place at Plymouth colony in the autumn of 1621 – Pilgrims held a feast to thank God for their first harvest and invited members of the neighboring Wampanoag tribe. It was not even the first national Thanksgiving – which was held on Dec. 18, 1777 , at then-General Washington’s behest. Nor was Thanksgiving yet a federal holiday to be observed every last Thursday of November – it became so with the 1863 proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln . Nov. 26, 1789, was a Thursday, and the weather was miserable. Few New Yorkers showed up at St. Paul’s Chapel to see the president: “ I went to St. Pauls Chapel ,” Washington wrote in his diary, “though it was most inclement and stormy.” There were “but few people at Church.” The president had prepared for the occasion. He also contributed a sizable sum of his own money to buy beer and food for prisoners confined for debt in the New York City jail. The donation was deemed to be a magnanimous and moving gesture, suitable to the spirit of the holiday. A week later, in an advertisement in the Dec. 3 issue of the New York Journal , those very prisoners returned their “grateful thanks” to their president “for his very acceptable donation on Thursday last.” Washington’s first Thanksgiving as a president may have not been tremendously successful, given the scarce attendance at the church service. Yet, as a scholar writing a biography about Washington , I believe it was an important step in his much larger political plan to bring the executive branch to the people’s doorstep. What Washington wanted was a virtuous kind of populism in the new country he led. Washington’s populism wasn’t about inciting an angry mob; it was about sharing in their rituals, worshiping their God, speaking their own language. And he did so in the sole interest of the American people. Thanksgiving 1789, for Washington, was at once religious and more than religious. Washington’s proclamation invoked devotional language, literally. The upcoming festivity, in his words , could “be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.” But Washington’s main concern was political. The nation was recently formed, and he feared that it could easily collapse. Its many internal divisions and separate interests could be lethal. Consequently, the president wanted this holiday to be a civic celebration in which “we may then all unite.” As its first president, Washington recognized that the United States was born out of slavery, conquest and violence as much as of sacred principle. Civic unification required acknowledgment of these flaws. Thus, in the proclamation, Washington asked God “to pardon our national and other transgressions.” A tremendously self-aware man , Washington knew that he was a deeply flawed person himself. He was a slave owner, a relentless pursuer of African American fugitives and a destroyer of Native American villages. He was also a warrior who deployed brutality against enemies. He was a commander who resorted to corporal punishment with his own soldiers. Washington believed that he was not a saint to be mindlessly imitated. This made him humble in his duties. More importantly, Washington also grasped the power of his symbolic position as president. He sought to leverage that for the good of the nation. As president, Washington could not advertise his actions effectively via Twitter and social media. He had to show himself around constantly, no matter the weather. He had to painstakingly attend balls, plays, dinners, public receptions and of course the church. Every occasion, every Thanksgiving counted. Through his outings, Washington met with a diversity of people, including those who were second-class citizens or were not citizens at all. Women, for example, greeted Washington at nearly every stop of the extended presidential trips he took between 1789 and 1791 . Textile workers in New England, Jewish leaders in Newport, many enslaved persons in the South and churchgoers everywhere did the same. These women and men, in bondage or free, believers or skeptics, played a part in the invention of a new political theater. Maybe, it was just a theatrical illusion. But these individuals – just like the prisoners in the New York City jail – thanked President Washington because they felt they were voices in a larger political culture. Washington made sure his Thanksgiving message – not simply a message, but a “proclamation” – sounded clear and strong: May God “render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed.” This article is republished from The Conversation , a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Maurizio Valsania , Università di Torino Read more: Maurizio Valsania does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.BillionToOne to Present at the 43rd Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare ConferenceA new artificial intelligence (AI) model has just achieved human-level results on a test designed to measure “general intelligence”. On December 20, OpenAI’s o3 system scored 85% on the ARC-AGI benchmark , well above the previous AI best score of 55% and on par with the average human score. It also scored well on a very difficult mathematics test. Creating artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is the stated goal of all the major AI research labs. At first glance, OpenAI appears to have at least made a significant step towards this goal. While skepticism remains, many AI researchers and developers feel something just changed. For many, the prospect of AGI now seems more real, urgent and closer than anticipated. Are they right? Generalization and intelligence To understand what the o3 result means, you need to understand what the ARC-AGI test is all about. In technical terms, it’s a test of an AI system’s “sample efficiency” in adapting to something new — how many examples of a novel situation the system needs to see to figure out how it works. An AI system like ChatGPT (GPT-4) is not very sample efficient. It was “trained” on millions of examples of human text, constructing probabilistic “rules” about which combinations of words are most likely. The result is pretty good at common tasks. It is bad at uncommon tasks, because it has less data (fewer samples) about those tasks. Until AI systems can learn from small numbers of examples and adapt with more sample efficiency, they will only be used for very repetitive jobs and ones where the occasional failure is tolerable. The ability to accurately solve previously unknown or novel problems from limited samples of data is known as the capacity to generalize. It is widely considered a necessary, even fundamental, element of intelligence. Grids and patterns The ARC-AGI benchmark tests for sample efficient adaptation using little grid square problems like the one below. The AI needs to figure out the pattern that turns the grid on the left into the grid on the right. An example task from the ARC-AGI benchmark test. ARC Prize Each question gives three examples to learn from. The AI system then needs to figure out the rules that “generalize” from the three examples to the fourth. These are a lot like the IQ tests sometimes you might remember from school. Weak rules and adaptation We don’t know exactly how OpenAI has done it, but the results suggest the o3 model is highly adaptable. From just a few examples, it finds rules that can be generalized. To figure out a pattern, we shouldn’t make any unnecessary assumptions, or be more specific than we really have to be. In theory , if you can identify the “weakest” rules that do what you want, then you have maximized your ability to adapt to new situations. What do we mean by the weakest rules? The technical definition is complicated, but weaker rules are usually ones that can be described in simpler statements . In the example above, a plain English expression of the rule might be something like: “Any shape with a protruding line will move to the end of that line and ‘cover up’ any other shapes it overlaps with.” Searching chains of thought? While we don’t know how OpenAI achieved this result just yet, it seems unlikely they deliberately optimized the o3 system to find weak rules. However, to succeed at the ARC-AGI tasks it must be finding them. We do know that OpenAI started with a general-purpose version of the o3 model (which differs from most other models, because it can spend more time “thinking” about difficult questions) and then trained it specifically for the ARC-AGI test. French AI researcher Francois Chollet, who designed the benchmark, believes o3 searches through different “chains of thought” describing steps to solve the task. It would then choose the “best” according to some loosely defined rule, or “heuristic”. This would be “not dissimilar” to how Google’s AlphaGo system searched through different possible sequences of moves to beat the world Go champion. You can think of these chains of thought like programs that fit the examples. Of course, if it is like the Go-playing AI, then it needs a heuristic, or loose rule, to decide which program is best. There could be thousands of different seemingly equally valid programs generated. That heuristic could be “choose the weakest” or “choose the simplest”. However, if it is like AlphaGo then they simply had an AI create a heuristic. This was the process for AlphaGo. Google trained a model to rate different sequences of moves as better or worse than others. What we still don’t know The question then is, is this really closer to AGI? If that is how o3 works, then the underlying model might not be much better than previous models. The concepts the model learns from language might not be any more suitable for generalization than before. Instead, we may just be seeing a more generalizable “chain of thought” found through the extra steps of training a heuristic specialized to this test. The proof, as always, will be in the pudding. Almost everything about o3 remains unknown. OpenAI has limited disclosure to a few media presentations and early testing to a handful of researchers, laboratories and AI safety institutions. Truly understanding the potential of o3 will require extensive work, including evaluations, an understanding of the distribution of its capacities, how often it fails and how often it succeeds. When o3 is finally released, we’ll have a much better idea of whether it is approximately as adaptable as an average human. If so, it could have a huge, revolutionary, economic impact, ushering in a new era of self-improving accelerated intelligence. We will require new benchmarks for AGI itself and serious consideration of how it ought to be governed. If not, then this will still be an impressive result. However, everyday life will remain much the same. – Rappler.com This article originally appeared on The Conversation . Michael Timothy Bennett , PhD Student, School of Computing, Australian National University Elija Perrier , Research Fellow, Stanford Center for Responsible Quantum Technology, Stanford University Must Read How AI was used in 2024 elections: Voice and chatbot clones, drafting speeches, emails
Bushra Bibi and Imran Khan (Picture credit: Agencies) Pakistan defence minister Khawaja Asif on Saturday said that jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan had agreed to move the protest from D-Chowk to a location outside Islamabad but his wife, Bushra Bibi, refused. The protest, organized by Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party on November 24, resulted in several deaths and injuries following late-night clashes with security forces. According to Asif, the government had offered alternative protest sites to the PTI. While Khan agreed to relocate the protest, Bushra Bibi rejected the proposal, leading to chaos in the Pakistani capital. “While PTI’s crowd size was impressive, as anyone familiar with politics could expect, Bushra Bibi, unfamiliar with handling such a massive gathering, reportedly expressed concern, saying, ‘Who will go there now?’ and insisted on continuing the march toward D-Chowk,” Asif said. The minister further alleged that Bibi and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister Ali Amin Gandapur fled the scene after clashes erupted. “What happened later? She fled, escaping with Gandapur,” Asif said, adding that Gandapur’s vehicle was damaged during their escape. Asif also refuted PTI claims of hundreds of deaths during the protest, saying the actual number was significantly lower and questioning the party’s lack of supporting evidence. The defence minister noted that security personnel were among those killed and injured during the violence. He praised the security forces for preventing what he called a third attack on the federal government. Information minister Attaullah Tarar announced the formation of an anti-riot force in response to the events. He accused the PTI of spreading misinformation and using old or AI-generated images. Tarar claimed that protesters used weapons against security personnel and damaged public property. The PTI has temporarily suspended its Islamabad protest, citing the crackdown. The party confirmed that Bibi and Gandapur were in Mansehra. Approximately 450 protesters have been arrested in the aftermath of the crackdown, according to police.
Planned Parenthood, the nonprofit organization that provides reproductive and sexual healthcare, is reporting a surge in demand for long-acting and permanent contraceptive options following the recent presidential election. Nationally, Planned Parenthood Health Centers saw vasectomy appointments increase by 1,200 percent. IUD appointments, meanwhile, increased by more than 760 percent, while birth control and gender-affirming appointments increased by 350 percent and 140 percent, respectively. RELATED STORY | Trump would veto legislation establishing a federal abortion ban, Vance says Planned Parenthood said the uptick "reflects patients' intensified concerns over preserving their reproductive choices as political uncertainties grow." “We’re seeing record numbers of patients making proactive reproductive health choices to help secure their ability to control pregnancy outcomes,” said Rebecca Gibron, CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky. “In a landscape where reproductive health care access is increasingly under threat, expanded access to effective contraception options — supported by essential programs like Title X and Medicaid — has become even more urgent.” RELATED STORY | Patients have paid over $1 million for contraception care that should be free Planned Parenthood of Northern New England also reported a rise in people volunteering with the organization, which operates 15 clinics in the region. CEO Nicole Clegg said it reflects a growing concern among Americans that they may not be able to access the care that they need in the future. "The day after the election and in the weeks since, our health centers have opened their doors, and our staff has done what they’ve always done: care for our patients," Clegg said in a statement. "We understand the fear and the uncertainty, and unfortunately, we anticipate more chaos and confusion in the coming months and years."