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Democracies Around the GlobeWEBUY GLOBAL LTD. WBUY shares are trading higher on Tuesday after the company disclosed the success of its Disney cruise campaign, driven by its innovative Micky1.0 Travel AI on WhatsApp . Earlier this month, the company had launched Micky1.0, available through WhatsApp . Webuy’s Micky1.0 instantly answers travel inquiries with real-time quotes, detailed information on travel packages, flights, and accommodations. It offers personalized recommendations based on user preferences, including weather updates and itinerary suggestions. Micky1.0 supports multiple languages (English, Malay, Chinese) and communicates via both voice and text, streamlining trip planning for group tours and independent travel. Webuy’s Disney cruise campaign utilized its digital marketing expertise to channel leads to Micky1.0. The campaign showcased the company’s ability to enhance customer engagement and achieve strong financial outcomes through advanced AI and personalized service integration. Micky1.0 handled customer inquiries, delivered real-time quotes, and offered tailored recommendations, seamlessly transitioning qualified leads to travel consultants for finalizing bookings. This approach demonstrated the effective integration of advanced technology with human expertise. Also, this month, Webuy progressed to the next phase of NVIDIA ‘s AI Accelerator Program . Webuy's participation in this program highlights its commitment to driving innovation through technology, aiming to transform the e-commerce and travel industries. Price Action : WBUY shares rose 6.2% to 18 cents on Tuesday. Read Next : HIVE Digital Boosts AI Ambitions With $30 Million Nvidia GPU Deployment Photo: Shutterstock This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. © 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Suspected gang members opened fire on journalists in Haiti's capital on Tuesday as they were covering the attempted reopening of the country's largest hospital, wounding or killing an unknown number of people. Haiti's interim president, Leslie Voltaire, said in an address to the nation that journalists and police were among the victims of the vicious Christmas Eve attack. He did not specify how many casualties there were, or give a breakdown for the dead or wounded. “I send my sympathies to the people who were victims, the national police and the journalists,” Voltaire said, pledging “this crime is not going to go unpunished.” There were concerns there could be fatalities — a video posted online by the reporters trapped inside the hospital showed what appeared to be two lifeless bodies of men on stretchers, their clothes bloodied. One of the men had a lanyard with a press credential around his neck. Radio Télé Métronome initially reported that seven journalists and two police officers were wounded. Police and officials did not immediately respond to calls for information on the attack. Street gangs have taken over an estimated 85% of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. They forced the closure of the General Hospital early this year during violence that also targeted the main international airport and Haiti’s two largest prisons. Authorities had pledged to reopen the facility Tuesday but as journalists gathered to cover the event, suspected gang members opened fire. Video posted online earlier showed reporters inside the building and at least three lying on the floor, apparently wounded. That video could also not be immediately verified. Johnson “Izo” André, considered Haiti’s most powerful gang leader and part of a gang coalition known as Viv Ansanm that has taken control of much of Port-au-Prince , posted a video on social media claiming responsibility for the attack. The video said the gang coalition had not authorized the hospital's reopening. Haiti has seen journalists targeted before. In 2023, two local journalists were killed in the space of a couple of weeks — radio reporter Dumesky Kersaint was fatally shot in mid-April that year, while journalist Ricot Jean was found dead later that month. In July, former Prime Minister Garry Conille visited the Hospital of the State University of Haiti, more widely known as the General Hospital, after authorities regained control of it from gangs. The hospital had been left ravaged and strewn with debris. Walls and nearby buildings were riddled with bullet holes, signaling fights between police and gangs. The hospital is across the street from the national palace, the scene of several battles in recent months. Gang attacks have pushed Haiti’s health system to the brink of collapse with looting, setting fires, and destroying medical institutions and pharmacies in the capital. The violence has created a surge in patients and a shortage of resources to treat them. Haiti’s health care system faces additional challenges during the rainy season, which is likely to increase the risk of water-borne diseases. Poor conditions in camps and makeshift settlements have heightened the risk of diseases like cholera, with over 84,000 suspected cases in the country, according to UNICEF. Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
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As concerns about AI security, risk, and compliance continue to escalate, practical solutions remain elusive. While NIST released on July 26, 2024, most organizations are just beginning to digest and implement its guidance, with the formation of internal AI Councils as a first step in AI governance. So as AI adoption and risk increases, it’s time to understand why sweating the small and not-so-small stuff matters and where we go from here. Recently, I attended the annual member conference of the , a non-profit organization focused on improving cybersecurity defense for enterprises, universities, government agencies, and other organizations. From the discussions, it is clear that today, the critical focus for CISOs, CIOs, CDOs, and CTOs centers on protecting proprietary AI models from attack and protecting proprietary data from being ingested by public AI models. While a smaller number of organizations are concerned about the former problem, those in this category realize that they must protect against prompt injection attacks that cause models to drift, hallucinate, or completely fail. In the early days of AI deployment, there was no well-known incident equivalent to the 2013 Target breach that represented how an attack might play out. Most of the evidence is academic at this point in time. However, executives who have deployed their own models have begun to focus on how to protect their integrity, given it will be only a matter of time before a major attack becomes public information, resulting in brand damage and potentially greater harm. The latter issue, data protection, touches every company. How do you ensure that your core IP, code, customer data, etc., isn’t intentionally or accidentally exfiltrated into a public LLM model? It’s become ultra-important for CISOs to monitor LLM interactions, track protected source code in cloud repositories (repos), and prevent unauthorized AI indexing of intellectual property and other private data. From the data observed at the recent conference and talking with other industry security executives, it is clear that only a minority of organizations have deployed solutions to protect their enterprises against AI dangers. In general, it appears that there are three mindsets at this point in time: No matter your beliefs, protecting your organization’s internal data has to be at the top of the CISO checklist. For those with proprietary AI models, preventing malicious attacks, data leaks, or model contamination (both accidental and intentional) are critical tasks. Time is short to deliberate further on activating these cyber protections. As , it’s time to advance these organizational efforts in 2025. CISOs are and should be concerned about several AI-related areas in their cybersecurity pursuits. One is the monitoring of employee’s AI use. While many organizations can now track which Large Language Models (LLMs) employees are accessing, can your teams monitor the actual prompt content? For many, that’s a significant blind spot. Additionally, does your enterprise flat-out restrict or permit public LLM access? That’s an additional hand-wringing dilemma shared by technology executives. Even if there is a prohibition on corporate networks and assets, will employees find a way around these restrictions if they believe that they provide a shortcut to getting their work done? This can create the problem of Shadow AI, which organizations should avoid. Second, enterprises face concerns over data protection. AI usage may bring the risk of sensitive data exfiltration through AI interactions. Thus, CISOs must emphasize the need for a balance between accessibility and security and oversee the growing demand for logging and tracking capabilities. For example, a concern that security executives frequently discuss is the monitoring of source code movement into public repos or LLMs where it should never flow. Several notorious instances have been made public where developers foolishly or accidentally used public resources to troubleshoot or look for advice on how to fix their code. These have led to the exposure of core IP, API keys, and other sensitive data. So, how do you prevent your source code from being put into a public GitHub or GitLab repo or input to ChatGPT? While employee training is a must to avoid these behaviors, in some cases it goes directly against the desires of the development team to maximize productivity and meet schedule deadlines. I’ve talked to development executives who have encouraged the use of public tools and repos for their employees who are “stuck.” As one recently told me, it can create a time and quality advantage to upload code segments into public repos, so long as it is just a small enough segment that IP leakage is avoided. But how does one measure the risk of “small enough”? These are the types of situations that are driving a considerable thrust around next-generation data exfiltration, protection, and prevention. While the foundations of AI security threats exist, the current landscape is driven more by preventative concerns than actual incidents. We’ve heard rumors of model contamination or poisoning, even though documented research shows potential vulnerabilities (e.g., training image recognition models to misidentify objects). Anecdotal evidence shows that even LLM firewall providers haven’t encountered attacks in recent months. Sure, we hear about , but we’ve yet to hear much about an AI-generated attack in which an organization’s model was contaminated or poisoned. At this time, organizations need to focus on developing balanced, practical security measures rather than overly restrictive protocols. These will start with existing controls and be augmented with new AI-specific ones. As regulations continue to evolve, businesses need to implement new reasonable security measures while maintaining the productivity benefits of AI tools. The challenge lies in finding the balance between protection and practicality. CISOs should be taking essential small steps to protect against any data breach event and any accidental (or malicious) AI-related incidents. The first should be to have a clear, common-sense policy around your data usage, with internal limits for access. Your enterprise should have a policy around an LLM that’s no different than current policies for putting information into the cloud or web today. Continuous training is essential. Create an audit trail of employees’ interactions with a specific LLM. Find out what questions employees ask via LLM prompts and what data they might ingest. Track these efforts internally for further exploration. Choose to adopt a private instance explicitly built for the organization’s needs without compromising data privacy. Your enterprise needs to decide if your employees will access public LLMs or a dedicated, isolated version of an AI model trained solely on an organization’s data. This private instance will help ensure that sensitive information remains confidential and is not shared with other users or the broader AI platform. This customized internal AI system effectively controls the company’s data and model usage. After all these are implemented, CISOs can look at protecting their AI models once they are in place. With bigger use cases to come, that may be the subject of a forthcoming column here. Beyond focusing on the items discussed above, some CISOs foresee futuristic doomsday-type scenarios to be wary of. For example, what if a tech hacker disliked a particular hedge fund manager and launched a coordinated strike against all of the AI models their firm used to trade? That manipulation of financial trading platforms might cause the company and its investors to lose a great deal of money. Or imagine a bad actor that goes after the self-driving algorithms of automobiles, leading to physical harm. While we all hope these are in the realm of negative speculation at best, it’s not unreasonable to fathom that these types of attacks are possible in the future. And before you say that these models wouldn’t be accessible from the outside world, there is always the risk of an insider threat. Rogue employees exist, and you never know what a disgruntled employee on the opposite of the political spectrum could do. We hope we won’t have to contend with these extreme cases of model contamination for a very long time, if ever. However, security executives and their AI Councils must focus on preventing these risks, however small, from materializing.
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WASHINGTON – Former Rep. Matt Gaetz said Friday that he will not be returning to Congress after withdrawing his name from consideration to be attorney general under President-elect Donald Trump amid growing allegations of sexual misconduct. “I’m still going to be in the fight, but it’s going to be from a new perch. I do not intend to join the 119th Congress,” Gaetz told conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, adding that he has “some other goals in life that I’m eager to pursue with my wife and my family.” Recommended Videos The announcement comes a day after Gaetz, a Florida Republican, stepped aside from the Cabinet nomination process amid growing fallout from federal and House Ethics investigations that cast doubt on his ability to be confirmed as the nation’s chief federal law enforcement officer. The 42-year-old has vehemently denied the allegations against him. Gaetz's nomination as attorney general had stunned many career lawyers inside the Justice Department, but reflected Trump's desire to place a loyalist in a department he has marked for retribution following the criminal cases against him. Hours after Gaetz withdrew, Trump nominated Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general, who would come to the job with years of legal work under her belt and that other trait Trump prizes above all: loyalty. It's unclear what's next for Gaetz, who is no longer a member of the House. He surprised colleagues by resigning from Congress the same day that Trump nominated him for attorney general. Some speculated he could still be sworn into office for another two-year term on Jan. 3, given that he had just won reelection earlier this month. But Gaetz, who has been in state and national politics for 14 years, said he's done with Congress. “I think that eight years is probably enough time in the United States Congress," he said.FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Dec. 19, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ZEFIRO METHANE CORP. (Cboe Canada: ZEFI) (Frankfurt: Y6B) (OTCQB: ZEFIF) (the “Company”, “Zefiro”, or “ZEFI”) , an environmental services company specializing in methane abatement operations, took numerous steps in 2024 to accelerate the Company’s profitability and commercial momentum. Specifically, Zefiro’s success over the past twelve months can be attributed to its execution of the Company’s strategy to expand its commercial footprint in critical marketplaces across North America and generate industry-leading, American Carbon Registry-approved carbon credits via an expanding, nationwide orphaned oil and gas well plugging operation. By actively advancing numerous strategic initiatives and bolstering its internal infrastructure throughout 2024, Zefiro is poised to remain at the forefront of the environmental services industry and reach yet another slate of notable accomplishments in the year ahead. The Company’s 2024 highlights include: Recording consolidated revenues of USD $32.8 million and a positive adjusted EBITDA (that was doubled over the previous quarter) on the Company’s 2024 year-end earnings report; Facilitating an Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the Cboe Canada, Inc. stock exchange, with a subsequent listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange . Zefiro's common shares are also now quoted on the OTCQB in the U.S. under the symbol ZEFIF; Expanding the Company’s well plugging operations across the nation, including projects in West Virginia , Pennsylvania , Oklahoma , and Ohio ; Entering into a landmark methane abatement offset market-setting presale agreement with EDF Trading , adding to Zefiro's pipeline of carbon offset pre-sales with the first delivery of offset products set to take place in the new year; Finalizing a number of strategic acquisitions and corporate partnerships, including the whole-sale acquisition of Plants & Goodwin , a Pennsylvania-based oil and gas well plugging operation; Bolstering the Company’s senior leadership team by appointing longtime Wells Fargo executive Mohit Gupta as the Chief Financial Officer and Bain & Company alumnus Richard Walker to serve as Chief Technology Officer; and Featuring at numerous leading industry conferences and events, including UN COP29 , NYC Climate Week , Wall Street Green Summit , Argus Europe Climate Conference , and more. Crew members contracted by Zefiro subsidiary Plants & Goodwin on-site at an Ohio-based well plugging operation in November 2024. Readers using news aggregation services may be unable to view the link provided above. Please access SEDAR+ or the Investors section of the Company’s website for a version of this press release containing links and media. Zefiro Founder and Chief Executive Officer Talal Debs commented, “From our plugging crews completing projects across the country to our expert team of carbon market specialists connecting with customers throughout the world, we have strived to invest in the resources needed to position each of our dedicated team members for success. The string of new milestones that we have been able to achieve over the past twelve months is directly linked to our senior management team’s commitment to that process, and I am incredibly proud that the progress that our team has earned in 2024 will guide our positive commercial momentum well into the future.” Zefiro Chief Financial Officer Mohit Gupta commented, “2024 has been a transformative year for Zefiro, and our ability to garner sustainable, increasing returns for our investors is a direct result of the unwavering dedication and expertise of our entire team. Through consistent execution of our comprehensive, client service-oriented strategy, we have established our position as a market leader, forged a consistent pipeline of project opportunities, and helped more communities safeguard public health.” About Zefiro Methane Corp. Zefiro is an environmental services company, specializing in methane abatement. Zefiro strives to be a key commercial force towards Active Sustainability. Leveraging decades of operational expertise, Zefiro is building a new toolkit to clean up air, land, and water sources directly impacted by methane leaks. The Company has built a fully integrated ground operation driven by an innovative monetization solution for the emerging methane abatement marketplace. As an originator of high-quality U.S.-based methane offsets, Zefiro aims to generate long-term economic, environmental, and social returns. On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Company, ZEFIRO METHANE CORP. “Talal Debs” Talal Debs, Founder & CEO For further information, please contact: Zefiro Investor Relations 1 (800) 274-ZEFI (274-9334) investor@zefiromethane.com For media inquiries, please contact: Rich Myers - Profile Advisors (New York) media@zefiromethane.com +1 (347) 774-1125 Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains “forward-looking information” within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information is often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as “seeks”, “believes”, “plans”, “expects”, “intends”, “estimates”, “anticipates” and statements that an event or result “may”, “will”, “should”, “could” or “might” occur or be achieved and other similar expressions. In particular, this news release contains forward-looking information including statements regarding: the Company’s intention to reduce emissions from end-of-life oil and gas wells and eliminate methane gas; the Company’s partnerships with industry operators, state agencies, and federal governments; the Company’s expectations for continued increases in revenues and EBITDA growth as a result of these partnerships; the Company’s intentions to build out its presence in the United States; the anticipated federal funding for orphaned well site plugging, remediation and restoring activities; the Company’s expectations to become a growing environmental services company; the Company’s ability to provide institutional and retail investors alike with the opportunity to join the Active Sustainability movement; the Company’s ability to generate long-term economic, environmental, and social returns; and other statements regarding the Company’s business and the industry in which the Company operates. The forward-looking information reflects management’s current expectations based on information currently available and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause outcomes to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking information. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed timeframes or at all. Factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations include, but are not limited to: (i) adverse general market and economic conditions; (ii) changes to and price and volume volatility in the carbon market; (iii) changes to the regulatory landscape and global policies applicable to the Company's business; (iv) failure to obtain all necessary regulatory approvals; and (v) other risk factors set forth in its Prospectus dated April 8, 2024 under the heading “Risk Factors”. The Company operates in a rapidly evolving environment where technologies are in the early stage of adoption. New risk factors emerge from time to time, and it is impossible for the Company’s management to predict all risk factors, nor can the Company assess the impact of all factors on Company’s business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ from those contained in any forward-looking information. Forward-looking information in this news release is based on the opinions and assumptions of management considered reasonable as of the date hereof, including, but not limited to, the assumption that general business and economic conditions will not change in a materially adverse manner. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking information in this news release are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information. The forward-looking information included in this news release is made as of the date of this news release and the Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. Statement Regarding Third-Party Investor Relations Firms Disclosures relating to investor relations firms retained by Zefiro Methane Corp. can be found under the Company's profile on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca/ . A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/6a438934-f40c-440b-b8a7-af17ae78c414
SAN DIEGO, Nov. 24, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP announces that purchasers or acquirers of Acadia Healthcare Company, Inc. ACHC publicly traded securities between February 28, 2020 and September 26, 2024, inclusive (the "Class Period"), have until Monday, December 16, 2024 to seek appointment as lead plaintiff of the Acadia Healthcare class action lawsuit. Captioned Kachrodia v. Acadia Healthcare Company, Inc. , No. 24-cv-01238 (M.D. Tenn.), the Acadia Healthcare class action lawsuit charges Acadia Healthcare as well as certain of Acadia Healthcare's top current and former executives with violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. If you suffered substantial losses and wish to serve as lead plaintiff of the Acadia Healthcare class action lawsuit, please provide your information here: https://www.rgrdlaw.com/cases-acadia-healthcare-company-inc-class-action-lawsuit-achc.html You can also contact attorneys J.C. Sanchez or Jennifer N. Caringal of Robbins Geller by calling 800/449-4900 or via e-mail at info@rgrdlaw.com . CASE ALLEGATIONS : Acadia Healthcare provides behavioral healthcare services. The Acadia Healthcare class action lawsuit alleges that defendants throughout the Class Period made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Acadia Healthcare's business model centered on holding vulnerable people against their will in Acadia Healthcare's facilities, including in cases where it was not medically necessary to do so; (ii) while in Acadia Healthcare facilities, many patients were subjected to abuse; and (iii) Acadia Healthcare deceived insurance providers into paying for patients to stay in Acadia Healthcare's facilities when it was not medically necessary. The Acadia Healthcare class action lawsuit further alleges that on September 1, 2024, The New York Times published an article entitled "How a Leading Chain of Psychiatric Hospitals Traps Patients," which revealed that The New York Times 's "investigation found that some of that success was built on a disturbing practice: Acadia has lured patients into its facilities and held them against their will, even when detaining them was not medically necessary." On this news, the price of Acadia Healthcare stock fell more than 4%, according to the complaint. Then, on September 27, 2024, the Acadia Healthcare class action lawsuit further alleges that Acadia Healthcare revealed that "[o]n September 24, 2024, Acadia Healthcare . . . received a voluntary request for information from the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York as well as a grand jury subpoena from the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri (W.D.Mo.) related to its admissions, length of stay and billing practices," further disclosing that "Acadia anticipates receiving similar document requests from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and may receive additional document requests from other government agencies." On this news, the price of Acadia Healthcare stock fell more than 16%, according to the Acadia Healthcare class action lawsuit. THE LEAD PLAINTIFF PROCESS : The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 permits any investor who purchased or acquired Acadia Healthcare publicly traded securities during the Class Period to seek appointment as lead plaintiff in the Acadia Healthcare class action lawsuit. A lead plaintiff is generally the movant with the greatest financial interest in the relief sought by the putative class who is also typical and adequate of the putative class. A lead plaintiff acts on behalf of all other class members in directing the Acadia Healthcare class action lawsuit. The lead plaintiff can select a law firm of its choice to litigate the Acadia Healthcare class action lawsuit. An investor's ability to share in any potential future recovery is not dependent upon serving as lead plaintiff of the Acadia Healthcare class action lawsuit. ABOUT ROBBINS GELLER : Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP is one of the world's leading law firms representing investors in securities fraud cases. Our Firm has been #1 in the ISS Securities Class Action Services rankings for six out of the last ten years for securing the most monetary relief for investors. We recovered $6.6 billion for investors in securities-related class action cases – over $2.2 billion more than any other law firm in the last four years. With 200 lawyers in 10 offices, Robbins Geller is one of the largest plaintiffs' firms in the world and the Firm's attorneys have obtained many of the largest securities class action recoveries in history, including the largest securities class action recovery ever – $7.2 billion – in In re Enron Corp. Sec. Litig. Please visit the following page for more information: https://www.rgrdlaw.com/services-litigation-securities-fraud.html Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. Services may be performed by attorneys in any of our offices. Contact: Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP J.C. Sanchez, Jennifer N. Caringal 655 W. Broadway, Suite 1900, San Diego, CA 92101 800-449-4900 info@rgrdlaw.com © 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Time for Britain to follow the Aussies and take kids offline