sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman sells $1.97 million in stockRed Violet director Peter Benz sells $935,429 in stock
Download These Raw+JPEG Files From Sony's a1 II Flagship CameraA bill that would recognize Métis political associations in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario as Indigenous governments is essentially quashed, according to Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Gary Anandasangaree. "At this point in the journey of C-53, I would reluctantly say that it is a bill that may be hard to continue in its current form," Anandasangaree told the Indigenous and Northern Affairs standing committee on Tuesday. "There was a court decision relating to the Métis Nation of Alberta and there was also a decision by the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan to pull out of that process ... and as a result, [Bill] C-53 will not be moving forward." The bill was never supported by the Manitoba Métis Federation, and just last year the Métis Nation-Saskatchewan withdrew their support of the bill. As for the Otipemisiwak Métis Government of the Métis Nation within Alberta (MNA), they signed a self-government agreement in Feb. 2023, but did not withdraw their support of Bill C-53. Feds mull options as Métis self-government bill threatens to collapse Métis National Council president blames 'ambitions of a few' after Sask. withdraws In a statement to CBC Indigenous, the minister's office confirmed that the MNA did not withdraw their support, but in March 2024 "the federal government rendered their decision with regard to the self-government agreement with MNA, and struck down certain provisions," said Jennifer Cooper, spokesperson for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada. "We have since been working with MNA to address the impacts of the court decision and to make the necessary amendments to the self-government agreement." The government further reiterated that "Bill C-53 is not moving forward and cannot continue its current form," said Cooper. But they didn't say what the new form of the bill could look like. Métis Nation of Ontario President Margaret Froh takes part in a press conference following a Métis National Council meeting in Ottawa on Thursday, June 1, 2023. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press) Of the three Métis organizations who were originally behind Bill C-53, the most dedicated to it was the Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO), which called the decision disappointing. "It was the first Métis piece of federal recognition legislation," said MNO president Margaret Froh. 'The foundation of the future': MMF signs 1st modern Métis treaty with federal government "We have a legally binding self-government agreement with Canada, though, that ensures that if the federal recognition legislation that Canada introduces fails, that another bill will be introduced later on, and it will be when the time is right." Froh says the MNO is currently developing their constitution, and are on the path to developing a modern treaty similar to what the Manitoba Métis Federation just signed. Contentious bill Since it was first introduced in 2021 the bill has faced opposition from First Nations in Ontario, and other Métis organizations, including the Manitoba Métis Federation (MMF). "It caught us off guard when it came so quickly into the parliament," said MMF president David Chartrand. At issue for the MMF is the recognition this bill would grant the MNO, who they accuse of watering down Métis national identity. David Chartrand, president of the Manitoba Métis Federation, is pictured during the annual general assembly in October 2024. (Radio-Canada) They also accuse the MNO of erroneously recognizing six new historic Métis communities, some as far east as the Ontario-Quebec border. "These are a bunch of new people, new communities, and new definitions, and Ontario has been clever enough to disguise themselves as being us, but not us," said Chartrand. "They falsified their identity and claimed to be us, but they used a different definition to define themselves, not the national definition we had." The MNO say federal recognition of those historic Métis communities is what got them to where they are today. "It is the inherent rights of self-determination and self-government of those communities that is the foundation for our self-government agreement and will be the foundation of our modern self-government treaty with Canada," said Froh. Métis Nation of Ontario urges judge to reject First Nations court challenge Ontario chiefs laud Sask. Métis leaders for leaving national organization over identity dispute Issues with the MNO have boiled over in Ontario with First Nations, who say that the newly recognized historic Métis communities infringe on their treaty rights. In a statement to CBC Indigenous, the Wabun Tribal Council (WTC), which represents several First Nations in Ontario, says it applauds the end of the bill. "We know it was an error in judgment, and in assessment, that Canada and Métis Nation of Ontario had any right to impose a treaty on our lands," said Jason Batise, executive director for WTC. "Canada and Ontario must continue to follow through to investigate the legitimacy of so-called Indigenous groups that wrongly assert over Treaty 9 and other First Nations territories." The federal government said in a statement it is working to "recognize and affirm the rights of all Indigenous people in Canada with mutual respect, cooperation, and full partnership," according to Jennifer Cooper, spokesperson for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada. "Bill C-53 is about self-government and self-determination, focusing on core governance matters to each Métis Government. It does not address harvesting or land-related matters or rights."
Sports betting odds suggest that the AFC North race between the Ravens and Steelers is far from over.
Tafara Gapare throws down 19 points and a highlight dunk, and Maryland beats Bucknell 91-67SAN FRANCISCO — A former OpenAI researcher known for whistleblowing the blockbuster artificial intelligence company facing a swell of lawsuits over its business model has died, authorities confirmed this week. Suchir Balaji, 26, was found dead inside his Buchanan Street apartment on Nov. 26, San Francisco police and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said. Police had been called to the Lower Haight residence at about 1 p.m. that day, after receiving a call asking officers to check on his well-being, a police spokesperson said. The medical examiner’s office has not released his cause of death, but police officials this week said there is “currently, no evidence of foul play.” Information he held was expected to play a key part in lawsuits against the San Francisco-based company. Balaji’s death comes three months after he publicly accused OpenAI of violating U.S. copyright law while developing ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence program that has become a moneymaking sensation used by hundreds of millions of people across the world. Its public release in late 2022 spurred a torrent of lawsuits against OpenAI from authors, computer programmers and journalists, who say the company illegally stole their copyrighted material to train its program and elevate its value past $150 billion. The Mercury News and seven sister news outlets are among several newspapers, including the New York Times, to sue OpenAI in the past year. In an interview with the New York Times published Oct. 23, Balaji argued OpenAI was harming businesses and entrepreneurs whose data were used to train ChatGPT. “If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company,” he told the outlet, adding that “this is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole.” Balaji grew up in Cupertino before attending UC Berkeley to study computer science. It was then he became a believer in the potential benefits that artificial intelligence could offer society, including its ability to cure diseases and stop aging, the Times reported. “I thought we could invent some kind of scientist that could help solve them,” he told the newspaper. But his outlook began to sour in 2022, two years after joining OpenAI as a researcher. He grew particularly concerned about his assignment of gathering data from the internet for the company’s GPT-4 program, which analyzed text from nearly the entire internet to train its artificial intelligence program, the news outlet reported. The practice, he told the Times, ran afoul of the country’s “fair use” laws governing how people can use previously published work. In late October, he posted an analysis on his personal website arguing that point. No known factors “seem to weigh in favor of ChatGPT being a fair use of its training data,” Balaji wrote. “That being said, none of the arguments here are fundamentally specific to ChatGPT either, and similar arguments could be made for many generative AI products in a wide variety of domains.” Reached by this news agency, Balaji’s mother requested privacy while grieving the death of her son. In a Nov. 18 letter filed in federal court, attorneys for The New York Times named Balaji as someone who had “unique and relevant documents” that would support their case against OpenAI. He was among at least 12 people — many of them past or present OpenAI employees — the newspaper had named in court filings as having material helpful to their case, ahead of depositions. Generative artificial intelligence programs work by analyzing an immense amount of data from the internet and using it to answer prompts submitted by users, or to create text, images or videos. When OpenAI released its ChatGPT program in late 2022, it turbocharged an industry of companies seeking to write essays, make art and create computer code. Many of the most valuable companies in the world now work in the field of artificial intelligence, or manufacture the computer chips needed to run those programs. OpenAI’s own value nearly doubled in the past year. News outlets have argued that OpenAI and Microsoft — which is in business with OpenAI also also has been sued by The Mercury News — have plagiarized and stole its articles, undermining their business models. “Microsoft and OpenAI simply take the work product of reporters, journalists, editorial writers, editors and others who contribute to the work of local newspapers — all without any regard for the efforts, much less the legal rights, of those who create and publish the news on which local communities rely,” the newspapers’ lawsuit said. OpenAI has staunchly refuted those claims, stressing that all of its work remains legal under “fair use” laws. “We see immense potential for AI tools like ChatGPT to deepen publishers’ relationships with readers and enhance the news experience,” the company said when the lawsuit was filed. Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.
Trump seeks to have Georgia election case dismissed, citing presidential immunity (copy)
ASSAULTS on Welsh emergency workers have increased, new data has revealed. In the first six months of 2024, Newport saw assaults at the rate of 1.22 per 1,000 population, Blaenau Gwent 1.33, Torfaen 1.17, and Caerphilly 1.01. More than 3,000 assaults were committed across Wales in the 12 months to June 2024, representing a year-on-year increase of nine per cent. They included kicking, slapping, spitting, biting, head-butting and verbal abuse, and ranged from common assault to serious premediated attacks involving grievous bodily harm. Nine incidents involved a weapon. With Christmas approaching, emergency workers are asking the public to treat them with respect. Jason Killens, chief executive of the Welsh Ambulance Service, said: “Ambulance crews are there to help people, but they can’t fight for someone’s life if they’re fighting for their own. “In our control room, meanwhile, the verbal abuse of call handlers could potentially be delaying help for the patient. “The run-up to Christmas means more people are out enjoying the revelry, and with alcohol consumption comes an increase in assaults, both physical and verbal. “Our ask is simple – emergency workers want to help you, so please treat them with respect and work with us, not against us.” The campaign was launched in May 2021 by the Joint Emergency Service Group in Wales to try and reduce the number of assaults on emergency workers. Mark Hobrough, temporary chief constable at Gwent Police, said: “Nobody should be subjected to any kind of assault, and it is concerning that some people believe this is an appropriate way to act towards another person. "Our officers, along with our emergency service colleagues, will often deal with people during difficult times in their lives, but that does not justify the abusive, threatening and violent behaviour they frequently experience. “We will support any officer or emergency service worker who has experienced abuse or violence while also taking firm action against those responsible.” Judith Paget, Welsh Government’s director general for health and social services and the NHS Wales chief executive, said: “The impact of any form of assault, verbal or physical, is incredibly harmful to our NHS emergency workers who work tirelessly to care and treat those in greatest need. “The Welsh Government is committed to working in partnership with NHS Wales, the police and the CPS via the to ensure that we are doing everything to prevent incidents occurring, and to support any staff who do experience threats and violence.”
Geoffrey Hinton to donate some of his Nobel Prize winnings to create new annual award
WASHINGTON (AP) — After several weeks working mostly behind closed doors, Vice President-elect JD Vance returned to Capitol Hill this week in a new, more visible role: Helping Donald Trump try to get his most contentious Cabinet picks to confirmation in the Senate, where Vance has served for the last two years. Vance arrived at the Capitol on Wednesday with former Rep. Matt Gaetz and spent the morning sitting in on meetings between Trump’s choice for attorney general and key Republicans, including members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The effort was for naught: Gaetz announced a day later that he was withdrawing his name amid scrutiny over sex trafficking allegations and the reality that he was unlikely to be confirmed. Thursday morning Vance was back, this time accompanying Pete Hegseth, the “Fox & Friends Weekend” host whom Trump has tapped to be the next secretary of defense. Hegseth also has faced allegations of sexual assault that he denies. Vance is expected to accompany other nominees for meetings in coming weeks as he tries to leverage the two years he has spent in the Senate to help push through Trump's picks. The role of introducing nominees around Capitol Hill is an unusual one for a vice president-elect. Usually the job goes to a former senator who has close relationships on the Hill, or a more junior aide. But this time the role fits Vance, said Marc Short, who served as Trump’s first director of legislative affairs as well as chief of staff to Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence, who spent more than a decade in Congress and led the former president’s transition ahead of his first term. ”JD probably has a lot of current allies in the Senate and so it makes sense to have him utilized in that capacity,” Short said. Unlike the first Trump transition, which played out before cameras at Trump Tower in New York and at the president-elect's golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, this one has largely happened behind closed doors in Palm Beach, Florida. There, a small group of officials and aides meet daily at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort to run through possible contenders and interview job candidates. The group includes Elon Musk, the billionaire who has spent so much time at the club that Trump has joked he can’t get rid of him. Vance has been a constant presence, even as he’s kept a lower profile. The Ohio senator has spent much of the last two weeks in Palm Beach, according to people familiar with his plans, playing an active role in the transition, on which he serves as honorary chair. Vance has been staying at a cottage on the property of the gilded club, where rooms are adorned with cherubs, oriental rugs and intricate golden inlays. It's a world away from the famously hardscrabble upbringing that Vance documented in the memoir that made him famous, “Hillbilly Elegy.” His young children have also joined him at Mar-a-Lago, at times. Vance was photographed in shorts and a polo shirt playing with his kids on the seawall of the property with a large palm frond, a U.S. Secret Service robotic security dog in the distance. On the rare days when he is not in Palm Beach, Vance has been joining the sessions remotely via Zoom. Though he has taken a break from TV interviews after months of constant appearances, Vance has been active in the meetings, which began immediately after the election and include interviews and as well as presentations on candidates’ pluses and minuses. Among those interviewed: Contenders to replace FBI Director Christopher Wray , as Vance wrote in a since-deleted social media post. Defending himself from criticism that he’d missed a Senate vote in which one of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees was confirmed, Vance wrote that he was meeting at the time "with President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI Director.” “I tend to think it’s more important to get an FBI director who will dismantle the deep state than it is for Republicans to lose a vote 49-46 rather than 49-45,” Vance added on X. “But that’s just me.” While Vance did not come in to the transition with a list of people he wanted to see in specific roles, he and his friend, Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who is also a member of the transition team, were eager to see former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. find roles in the administration. Trump ended up selecting Gabbard as the next director of national intelligence , a powerful position that sits atop the nation’s spy agencies and acts as the president’s top intelligence adviser. And he chose Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services , a massive agency that oversees everything from drug and food safety to Medicare and Medicaid. Vance was also a big booster of Tom Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who will serve as Trump's “border czar.” In another sign of Vance's influence, James Braid, a top aide to the senator, is expected to serve as Trump’s legislative affairs director. Allies say it’s too early to discuss what portfolio Vance might take on in the White House. While he gravitates to issues like trade, immigration and tech policy, Vance sees his role as doing whatever Trump needs. Vance was spotted days after the election giving his son’s Boy Scout troop a tour of the Capitol and was there the day of leadership elections. He returned in earnest this week, first with Gaetz — arguably Trump’s most divisive pick — and then Hegseth, who has was been accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2017, according to an investigative report made public this week. Hegseth told police at the time that the encounter had been consensual and denied any wrongdoing. Vance hosted Hegseth in his Senate office as GOP senators, including those who sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee, filtered in to meet with the nominee for defense secretary. While a president’s nominees usually visit individual senators’ offices, meeting them on their own turf, the freshman senator — who is accompanied everywhere by a large Secret Service detail that makes moving around more unwieldy — instead brought Gaetz to a room in the Capitol on Wednesday and Hegseth to his office on Thursday. Senators came to them. Vance made it to votes Wednesday and Thursday, but missed others on Thursday afternoon. Vance is expected to continue to leverage his relationships in the Senate after Trump takes office. But many Republicans there have longer relationships with Trump himself. Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican, said that Trump was often the first person to call him back when he was trying to reach high-level White House officials during Trump's first term. “He has the most active Rolodex of just about anybody I’ve ever known,” Cramer said, adding that Vance would make a good addition. “They’ll divide names up by who has the most persuasion here,” Cramer said, but added, “Whoever his liaison is will not work as hard at it as he will.” Cramer was complimentary of the Ohio senator, saying he was “pleasant” and ” interesting” to be around. ′′He doesn’t have the long relationships," he said. "But we all like people that have done what we’ve done. I mean, that’s sort of a natural kinship, just probably not as personally tied.” Under the Constitution, Vance will also have a role presiding over the Senate and breaking tie votes. But he's not likely to be needed for that as often as was Kamala Harris, who broke a record number of ties for Democrats as vice president, since Republicans will have a bigger cushion in the chamber next year. Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.Police warn fake feds are scamming seniors out of life savings