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Election officials sue conservative voting group over refusal to produce ballot-harvesting evidence

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:14:43 GMT

ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia State Election Board is asking a judge to order a conservative voting organization to produce information to help investigate its claims of ballot trafficking in the state.The Texas-based True the Vote group filed complaints with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in November 2021, including one saying it had received “a detailed account of coordinated efforts to collect and deposit ballots in drop boxes across metro Atlanta” during the 2020 general election and in a runoff election in January 2021. True the Vote’s assertions were relied upon heavily for the film “2000 Mules,” a widely debunked film by conservative pundit and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza. The film featured surveillance video from drop boxes in Atlanta’s suburbs showing people depositing multiple ballots. A State Election Board investigation found that those people were submitting ballots for themselves and family members who lived with them, which is allowed under Georgia law.In the...

Leslieville residents share concerns over criminal activity near supervised consumption site

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:14:43 GMT

Leslieville residents are sharing growing concerns over what they say is an uptick in criminal activity near a supervised consumption site near Queen Street East and Carlaw Avenue.“We walk our kids to school paths that area. There’s always a large group in there. Our kids have all seen people doing drugs. We’ve seen drug deals happen,” said Ashley Kea, a nearby resident.She said recently that she was walking with her kids through the path and they found a bag with a pink rock inside of it. “Later on, we found out it was pink fentanyl.”Pink fentanyl found by a Leslieville resident near Queen St. and Carlaw Ave. Photo credit: Ashley Kea“It was pretty. Any child would have found it really fascinating. I mean, I don’t really know a child that doesn’t collect rocks and things like that. They could have grabbed it, touched it. They could open the bag … thinking it was something harmless,” explained Kea.The safe consumption ...

The friendship behind summer’s most charming comedy ‘Theater Camp’

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:14:43 GMT

There is quite a bit of history between the team behind “Theater Camp,” a loving satire of musical theater kids and their teachers that opens in theaters Friday.Molly Gordon, Ben Platt, Noah Galvin and Nick Lieberman are all, first and foremost, theater kids themselves. They’re also longtime friends. Lieberman has been making things with Platt since they were in high school. Galvin and Gordon are best friends and did a play together about a decade ago. And Galvin and Platt are currently engaged.It’s Platt and Gordon’s relationship that stretches back the furthest, though. Both children of parents in the entertainment industry, they’ve been friends since they were 3 years old.“I was deeply in love with him,” Gordon laughed in an interview with her collaborators during the Sundance Film Festival. “He came out to me and didn’t want to be with me, but I still tried for years.”The ins and outs of all of their collaborations, musical workshops, web series, comedy videos and hours improvis...

Militants attack a security post in southwest Pakistan and trigger a clash that leaves 15 dead

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:14:43 GMT

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Five militants attacked a security post in southwest Pakistan in the early hours Wednesday, triggering an intense shootout that left nine soldiers, five attackers and a female passerby dead, officials and the military said.The newly formed militant group Tehreek-e-Jihad Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement, without providing further details.Hours after the attack, Pakistan’s military said in a statement that “a group of terrorists launched a dastardly attack” in the garrison district of Zhob in the southwestern Baluchistan province. The “initial attempt of terrorists to sneak into the facility was checked by soldiers on duty,” it read. The shootout left three militants and four soldiers dead, while five troops were critically wounded.The military later said the security forces in a search operation killed two more attackers who had escaped. Earlier, a senior government official, Azam Kakar, said the militants were armed with ass...

Russia’s Defense Ministry says Wagner mercenaries are surrendering their weapons to the military

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:14:43 GMT

MOSCOW (AP) — Mercenaries of the Wagner Group are completing the handover of their weapons to the Russian military, the Defense Ministry said Wednesday, a move that follows the private army’s brief rebellion last month that challenged the Kremlin’s authority.The disarming of Wagner reflects efforts by authorities to defuse the threat it posed and also appears to herald an end to the mercenary group’s operations on the battlefield in Ukraine.The actions come amid continued uncertainty about the fate of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and the terms of a deal that ended the armed rebellion by offering amnesty for him and his mercenaries along with permission to move to Belarus.Among the weapons turned over were more than 2,000 pieces of equipment, such as tanks, rocket launchers, heavy artillery and air defense systems, along with over 2,500 metric tons of munitions and more than 20,000 firearms, the Defense Ministry said.The statement follows the Kremlin’s ackno...

The Pittsburgh synagogue gunman should be eligible for the death penalty, prosecutor argues

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:14:43 GMT

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The gunman who committed the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history should be deemed eligible for the death penalty because he intentionally planned the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue massacre and preyed on vulnerable victims as they were beginning Sabbath worship, a prosecutor urged jurors on Wednesday.“On Oct. 27, 2018, this defendant violated the safe, holy sanctuary that was the Tree of Life synagogue. He turned it into a killing ground,” prosecutor Soo Song told jurors in the sentencing phase for Robert Bowers, who was convicted last month in the attack that claimed 11 lives. But Bowers’ defense lawyer, Michael Burt, cited expert witnesses to bolster the claim that a “delusional belief system took over his thinking,” which left him unable to do anything but “following the dictates” of those delusional thoughts.At issue is whether Bowers is eligible for the death penalty — a preliminary stage in the weekslong sentencing process. If it determines he is el...

Canada’s premiers urge Ottawa to advance infrastructure to boost economic growth

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:14:43 GMT

WINNIPEG — Canada’s premiers have ended their annual three-day conference in Winnipeg on Wednesday with a request that Ottawa do more to boost economic growth and trade.Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson, who hosted the meeting, said the premiers have asked for a dedicated meeting with the prime minister to discuss infrastructure priorities. Stefanson said partnerships are needed to keep Canada competitive, but Ottawa must respect the unique jurisdictions of each province. She said the provinces are united in their goal of advancing infrastructure in communities and between jurisdictions, including national economic trade corridors.“That’s going to be absolutely critical moving forward, making sure that we can get our goods to markets,” she said.The Atlantic provinces in particular raised concerns about incoming clean-fuel regulations, asking Ottawa to offset some of the costs to consumers. Other premiers urged dialogue with Ottawa over how costs of environme...

Union and employers receive terms from mediator to end B.C. port strike, source says

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:14:43 GMT

VANCOUVER — A source close to negotiations over the British Columbia port strike says both sides have received the terms of a settlement recommended by a federal mediator that could end the 12-day-old industrial action.The delivery of the terms comes after Federal Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan late Tuesday instructed the mediator to send him the terms within 24 hours so he could forward them to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada and the B.C. Maritime Employers Association.The two sides have 24 hours upon receiving the recommendations to decide whether or not to ratify the agreement.Neither side have confirmed they have received the terms.British Columbia business groups say there’s no guarantee the strike will end quickly despite O’Regan’s move.The groups, including the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, the B.C. Council of Forest Industries and the Mining Association of B.C. say they are continuing to call for federal back-to-work legisla...

Sarah Silverman and novelists sue ChatGPT-maker OpenAI for ingesting their books

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:14:43 GMT

Ask ChatGPT about comedian Sarah Silverman’s memoir “The Bedwetter” and the artificial intelligence chatbot can come up with a detailed synopsis of every part of the book.Does that mean it effectively “read” and memorized a pirated copy? Or it scraped so many customer reviews and online chatter about the bestseller or the musical it inspired that it passes for an expert? The U.S. courts may now help sort that out after Silverman sued ChatGPT-maker OpenAI for copyright infringement this week, joining a growing number of writers who say they unwittingly built the foundation for Silicon Valley’s red-hot AI boom.Silverman’s lawsuit says she never gave permission for OpenAI to ingest the digital version of her 2010 book to train its AI models, and it was likely stolen from a “shadow library” of pirated works. It says the memoir was copied “without consent, without credit, and without compensation.” It’s one of a mounting number of cases that could crack open...

WATCH LIVE | NASA celebrates anniversary of Webb Space Telescope: reveals moment of stellar birth, dramatic close-up of 50 baby stars

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:14:43 GMT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The Webb Space Telescope is marking one year of cosmic photographs with one of its best yet: the dramatic close-up of dozens of stars at the moment of birth.NASA unveiled the latest snapshot Wednesday, revealing 50 baby stars in a cloud complex 390 light-years away. A light-year is nearly 6 trillion miles (9.7 trillion kilometers).The region is relatively small and quiet yet full of illuminated gases, jets of hydrogen and even dense cocoons of dust with the delicate beginnings of even more stars.All of the young stars appear to be no bigger than our sun. Scientists said the breathtaking shot provides the best clarity yet of this brief phase of a star’s life.“It’s like a glimpse of what our own system would have looked like billions of years ago when it was forming,” NASA program scientist Eric Smith told The Associated Press.Smith pointed out that the starlight visible in the image actually left there 390 years ago. On Earth in 1633, Italian astronomer Ga...