Society's ChildS


Briefcase

Attorney who challenged Trump's 2020 loss gives up law license as states weigh disciplining him

Meg Kinnard
Yahoo News
Wed, 05 Jul 2023 11:46 UTC
LWood
© Ben Margot/File/APAttorney Lin Wood, member of President Trump's legal team
Attorney Lin Wood, who filed legal challenges seeking to overturn Donald Trump's 2020 election loss, is relinquishing his law license, electing to retire from practicing rather than face possible disbarment. Multiple states have weighed disciplining him for pushing Trump's false claims that he defeated Joe Biden.

On Tuesday, Wood asked officials in his home state of Georgia to "retire" his law license in light of "disciplinary proceedings pending against me." In the request, made in a letter and posted on his Telegram account, Wood acknowledges that he is "prohibited from practicing law in this State and in any other state or jurisdiction and that I may not reapply for admission."

Wood, a licensed attorney in Georgia since 1977, did not immediately respond to an email Wednesday seeking comment on the letter. A listing on the website for the State Bar of Georgia accessed on Wednesday showed him as retired and with no disciplinary infractions on his record. A spokeswoman for the Bar confirmed that the Bar had dismissed its two complaints involving Wood. In a court filing, its Office of General Counsel said it "believes that it has achieved the goals of disciplinary action, including protecting the public and the integrity of the judicial system and the legal profession" by achieving Wood's inability to practice law.

Comment: By these standards, half of all lawyers - who find themselves arguing a case involving politics - would be disbarred.

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Briefcase

Prominent authors launch legal battle against OpenAI over alleged copyright infringements

Elizabeth Allen
The Federalist Papers
Wed, 05 Jul 2023 04:08 UTC
ape to ai
Seasoned authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad have turned to the U.S. District Court in California with allegations against artificial intelligence firm OpenAI.

The authors claim the company violated copyright laws by utilizing their literary works to train its sophisticated language model, ChatGPT, without acquiring explicit consent.

As described in the filed complaint, ChatGPT, an advanced AI language model, builds its capabilities by absorbing and analyzing immense volumes of text, distilling meaningful data, and ultimately compiling what is referred to as a "training dataset". The process, however, has brought up serious legal implications.

According to the lawsuit, neither Tremblay nor Awad, both Massachusetts-based authors, granted OpenAI permission to use their copyrighted works as fodder for ChatGPT's training. Despite this, the training process allegedly involved the integration of their literary content.

Tremblay, the creator of books like The Cabin at the End of the World, and Awad, author of works including 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl and Bunny, both hold registered copyrights for their respective works.

As the complaint outlines, "ChatGPT generates summaries of Plaintiffs' copyrighted works — something only possible if ChatGPT was trained on Plaintiffs' copyrighted works."
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Fire

Ukrainian police investigate explosion in Kyiv court building

Anders Hagstrom
Fox News
Wed, 05 Jul 2023 11:45 UTC
explosion
© Irakli Gedenidze/ReutersExplosion in Kyiv courtroom
Ukrainian police are investigating an explosion at a court building in the nation's capital of Kyiv on Wednesday, the nation's Internal Affairs Ministry announced.

Initial reports suggest the blast may have been set off by a man who was brought to the court building for a hearing. Officials have offered no details regarding casualties.

The ministry said Wednesday:
"Law enforcement officers are working at the scene. The police received information that an explosion took place in the courthouse in Shevchenkivskyi district. Currently, an investigative and operative group, special forces, explosives technicians and dog experts are working at the site."
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko also said in a statement:
"An extraordinary event took place in the Shevchenkivskyi Court of the city of Kyiv. The police received a report about the explosion. The details are being clarified. Stay calm and stay away from the scene."
Local media reports that the culprit is a man charged in a 2015 grenade attack outside Ukraine's parliament, who now set off another explosive during his court proceedings.

It is not clear whether Russia was involved in the incident.
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Nuke

Japanese and neighbors brace for radioactive Fukushima water release into ocean

Andrei Dergalin
Sputnik
Thu, 06 Jul 2023 17:44 UTC
Fukushima Nuclear Plant
© AP Photo / Pablo M. Diez/Pool
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has attempted to assuage public concerns about the impending discharge of treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi met with residents of the Fukushima Prefecture where the crippled nuclear plant is located this week in preparation for the discharge of the contaminated water into the ocean.

In the years that followed the Fukushima nuclear disaster, some 1.33 million cubic meters of contaminated water ended up being accumulated at the plant: water that was used to cool the damaged reactors, as well as rainwater and groundwater that seeped into the site.

Now, as the site is running out of storage space, Fukushima Daiichi's operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) plans to release this water into the ocean after subjecting the contaminated liquid to a treatment by ALPS processing system meant to remove the majority of radioactive elements.

Comment: From nine years ago: Japan begins purposely dumping 100s of tons of radioactive water from Fukushima into the Pacific

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Attention

Bus accident in southern Mexico kills 29 people


Sputnik
Thu, 06 Jul 2023 17:39 UTC
Mexico
© CC0 / softed75
A bus heading from Mexico's capital has crashed off of a road and into a ravine in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, having killed 29 people, the interior ministry of Oaxaca said Wednesday.

The prosecutor's office in Oaxaca said earlier in the day that 27 people had been killed and 17 more had been injured as a result of the bus crashing from a height of 10 meters (33 feet).

"Unfortunately, the death toll in a bus accident that happened this morning in the municipality of Magdalena Penasco has risen to 29," the ministry said on Twitter.

The bus of the Yosondua company heading from Mexico City to the municipality of Santiago Yosondua in Oaxaca crashed into a ravine while it was parked near a local church, local media reported. The prosecutor's office specified that the crash could have been caused by a malfunction.

The list of passengers, published by local media, showed that the bus was used by a group of Mexican tourists.
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Eye 1

Severed human leg found hanging from bridge, other body parts strewn across city in Mexico with messages signed by cartel


CBS News
Thu, 06 Jul 2023 17:25 UTC
Toluca Mexico
Toluca, Mexico
A violent drug cartel is suspected of leaving a severed human leg found hanging from a pedestrian bridge Wednesday in Toluca, just west of Mexico City. Before the day was out, parts of at least two bodies had turned up around the city.

At the bridge, the trunk of the body was left on the street below, near the city's center, along with handwritten signs signed by the Familia Michoacana cartel.

Other parts of the body were found later in another neighborhood, also with handwritten drug cartels signs nearby. The victim was apparently a man aged between 35 and 40.

Then parts of at least one other body were found elsewhere in the city.
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Stock Down

"Persistent poverty exists across much of the U.S.

Aimee Picchi
CBS MoneyWatch
Thu, 06 Jul 2023 16:56 UTC
USA poverty
© EIGAbout 35 million Americans live in neighborhoods that are persistently poor, meaning that the area's poverty rate has remained above 20% for more than 30 years, according to Economic Innovation Group.
Although the U.S. has periodically sought to reduce poverty around the country since the 1960s, roughly 35 million Americans — or almost 1 in 10 — live in communities suffering from "persistent poverty," a recent analysis shows.

That troubling number is 72% higher than previously thought, according to the Economic Innovation Group, which focused on areas where the poverty rate has remained above 20% for more than three decades. To arrive at their figures, the public policy group examined poverty by Census tract — smaller geographic divisions of a county — rather than at the current county level, which can mask pockets of impoverishment.

For instance, by some measures there are no counties in Maine, New Hampshire or Vermont that rank as persistently poor. But each of these states encompasses smaller Census tracts that meet the definition, with most of them home to thousands of deeply poor residents, according to the analysis.
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Bad Guys

Why Russia and the US will never go back to the pre-2022 state of affairs

Ivan Timofeev
RT
Wed, 05 Jul 2023 14:54 UTC
3D rendering of the apocalypse in Red Square, Moscow, Russia.
© Getty Images/Pavel_Chag3D rendering of the apocalypse in Red Square, Moscow, Russia.
There is an increasingly widespread view in Russia that the goal of the US - and the "collective West" it leads - is to achieve a "final solution" to the "Russian question." The goals are believed to be defeating Russia, wrecking its military potential, restructuring its statehood, reshaping its identity and possibly eliminating it as a state, in its current form.

For a long time, this view remained on the periphery of foreign policy thinking. However, much has changed in the past year and a half. Today, this perception of the West's goals has gone mainstream. Indeed, it seems quite rational, when placed into the proper context.

Meanwhile, Russia itself is pursuing a similar sort of policy towards the Ukrainian state, the existence of which in its former form and borders is perceived in Moscow as a key security challenge.
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Star

16 arrested after mob of Minneapolis teens roam streets, shoot fireworks at people

Katie Daviscourt
The Post Millennial
Wed, 05 Jul 2023 00:01 UTC
somali youth fireworks
The Fourth of July turned out to be another chaotic night in Minneapolis as shocking video shows minors brazenly launching fireworks at police cruisers in the city.

WCCO News reports that the incident happened in the middle of the road near Boom Island at about 1:30 am on Wednesday. Multiple law enforcement agencies responded to the scene to disperse the reluctant crowd that refused to comply.

Officers with the Minneapolis Police Department, Minneapolis Park Police, and the Minnesota State Patrol were able to restore order around 2 am.
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Stock Down

More than 105 million working age Americans do not have a job right now - a 25% unemployment rate


The Most Important News
Tue, 04 Jul 2023 12:00 UTC
homeless los angeles
© MattGush/Getty Images/iStockphotoThe homelessness counts are a rough estimate assessed in January this year.
Our long slide toward economic oblivion continues, and survey after survey has shown that most Americans are deeply unsatisfied with the current state of the U.S. economy. Inflation is out of control, most Americans are getting poorer due to the rapidly rising cost of living, the housing bubble has started to burst, and the commercial real estate market is a giant mess. But employment is supposed to be our bright spot. The Biden administration continues to tell us that the unemployment rate is less than 4 percent and that there are lot of jobs available for those that want them. But is this really true?

To answer that question, it is imperative to understand that our government places unemployed persons into one of two categories...
Jobless people are classified into one of two categories by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) — either unemployed or not in the labor force. To be classified as unemployed in the month they are surveyed, people must be actively looking for work. If they are not actively looking, they are classified as not in the labor force.

Comment: A similarly dire outlook is forecast across much of the West:

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