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FEC moves toward potentially regulating AI deepfakes in campaign ads

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:31 GMT

The Federal Election Commission has begun a process to potentially regulate AI-generated deepfakes in political ads ahead of the 2024 election, a move advocates say would safeguard voters against a particularly insidious form of election disinformation.The FEC’s unanimous procedural vote on Thursday advances a petition asking it to regulate ads that use artificial intelligence to misrepresent political opponents as saying or doing something they didn’t — a stark issue that is already being highlighted in the current 2024 GOP presidential primary. Though the circulation of convincing fake images, videos or audio clips is not new, innovative generative AI tools are making them cheaper, easier to use, and more likely to manipulate public perception. As a result, some presidential campaigns in the 2024 race — including that of Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis — already are using them to persuade voters. The Republican National Committee in April released an entirely AI-generated ad meant t...

A Georgia teacher wants to overturn her firing for reading a book to students about gender identity

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:31 GMT

MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia public school teacher took the stand Thursday trying to reverse her firing after officials said she improperly read a book on gender fluidity to her fifth grade class.Katie Rinderle had been a teacher for 10 years when she got into trouble in March for reading the picture book “My Shadow Is Purple” at Due West Elementary School in suburban Atlanta’s Cobb County.The case has drawn wide attention as a test of what public school teachers can teach in class, how much a school system can control teachers and whether parents can veto instruction they dislike. It comes amid a nationwide conservative backlash to books and teaching about LGBTQ+ subjects in school.“This termination is unrelated to education,” Craig Goodmark, the lawyer defending Rinderle, argued Thursday. “It exists to create political scapegoats for the elected leadership of this district. Reading a children’s book to children is not against the law.”Officials in Cobb County, ...

Man convicted of 1989 murder of girl, 10, granted chance for new appeal

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:31 GMT

A man convicted of killing a 10-year-old girl in Toronto more than 30 years ago has been granted a chance for a new appeal after the federal justice minister determined there was a reasonable basis to conclude that a miscarriage of justice had occurred.Timothy Rees has been fighting for his innocence since being found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for 15 years for the murder of 10-year-old Darla Thurrott, who was found strangled to death in her Toronto home in March 1989.Minister of Justice Arif Virani says he is referring Rees’s conviction back to the Court of Appeal of Ontario after the identification of new information that was not before the courts in the original trial and previous appeal.Rees’ appeal to the Court of Appeal for Ontario was dismissed in 1994, but he was in allowed out of custody on parole in 2016 and submitted an application for criminal conviction review in 2018.If granted, the appeal...

Suburban Detroit woman says she found a live frog in a spinach container

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:31 GMT

DETROIT (AP) — A woman in suburban Detroit said she got a scare when she discovered a life frog in a container of spinach she had just bought at a grocery store.Amber Worrick of Southfield said she bought the sealed Earthbound Farm spinach package earlier this week from a Meijer store, WJBK-TV reported. When she got home, her daughter found a live frog in the container and screamed, Worrick said.“It was alive and moving,” Worrick said. “Just thank God I didn’t eat the frog.”Worrick said she immediately returned the package and the frog to the store. Workers there released the frog and gave her a refund, she said.The TV station’s video showed the frog in a sealed container.Jennifer Holton, a spokesperson with the Michigan Department of Agricultural and Rural Development, told the Detroit Free Press that no one has filed any complaints about the incident. Holton said the store workers shouldn’t have released the frog because now her department has no way of knowing what ty...

Preschool pals Toopy and Binoo leap from books to TV to theatres

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:31 GMT

TORONTO — Nearly 30 years after debuting in a francophone book series, Canadian preschool TV stars Toopy and Binoo leap to the big screen with their first animated feature.By chance, the long-gestating project from Quebec author Dominique Jolin opens the same day her daughter turns 23, and the gregarious writer-turned-director jokes that this Friday’s premiere will celebrate two “babies.”However, her maternal perspective runs deeper than that – the candid Jolin says she created Toopy and Binoo (Toupie et Binou in French) in 1994 because she longed for a child and thought that writing a children’s book would give her a chance to participate inthe nightly storytime rituals common to many families.“I wanted so much to have a kid. I was dying to have a baby. I wanted to be part of a family in their home, their bedtime, so I created little ones to be with families,” an effusive Jolin says during a recent video call, joined by line producer Janice Metzger who provided the occasional trans...

Former Conservative senator, longtime politico Hugh Segal dead at 72

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:31 GMT

OTTAWA — In 1962, then-prime minister John Diefenbaker visited Hugh Segal’s school in Montreal to present the principal with a copy of the newly minted Canadian Bill of Rights.So impressed was Segal with Dief’s description of Canada as a country that was open, free, democratic and based on the presumption of innocence that, at the tender age of 12, he became a lifelong Conservative.“I went home on that Friday night and declared at the dinner table that I like Mr. Diefenbaker and I would be supporting his candidate in the local riding of Mount Royal,” Segal recounted in a speech to the Senate in 2013.“That was not a happy bit of news for me to bring to the Friday night table in our home. My father (a Liberal campaign manager) said those wonderful words which every pre-teen waits for: ‘Over my dead body’ … It got me excited because I knew there was one thing I could do that would upset him all the time.”It was a pattern Segal was t...

US probing Virginia fatal crash involving Tesla suspected of running on automated driving system

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:31 GMT

DETROIT (AP) — U.S. auto safety regulators have sent a team to investigate a fatal crash in Virginia involving a Tesla suspected of running on a partially automated driving system.The latest crash, which occurred in July, brings to 35 the number of Tesla crashes under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration since June of 2016. In all the cases, the agency suspects the Teslas were operating on a partially automated driving system such as Autopilot. At least 17 people have died.The safety agency said in documents Thursday that the Tesla ran beneath a heavy truck, but gave no further details.The Fauquier County Sheriff’s office in Virginia said in a statement that on July 19, a Tesla ran underneath the side of a tractor-trailer pulling out of a truck stop, killing the Tesla driver. The department says the truck driver was charged with reckless driving. Sheriff’s office spokesman Jeffrey Long said the possible role of automated driving systems in the cr...

Stock market today: Wall Street swings after inflation data, ends little changed

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:31 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks swung through shaky trading Thursday following the latest update on inflation across the U.S., only to end up roughly where they started.The S&P 500 edged up by 1.12, or less than 0.1%, to 4,468.83. It was just the second winning day for the index in the last eight, but it had been up 1.3% in the morning before wobbling between small gains and losses.The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 52.79, or 0.2%, to 35,176.15 after giving up most of a morning gain of 455 points. The Nasdaq composite added 15.97, or 0.1%, to 13,737.99.The morning’s highly anticipated report showed U.S. consumers paid prices that were 3.2% higher in July than a year earlier. That’s a touch milder than the 3.3% inflation rate economists expected to see and down sharply from last summer’s peak above 9%. Beneath the surface, underlying trends for inflation were also within expectations.The readings bolstered hopes among investors that the Federal Reserve’s campaign to grind down ...

S&P/TSX composite index keeps climbing on Thursday, U.S. markets also rise

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:31 GMT

TORONTO — Canada’s main stock market index posted a small gain Thursday as it continued its climb this week, helped by strength in financial, telecom and technology stocks, while U.S. markets also rose after the latest inflation report. The latest CPI print in the U.S. showed that inflation ticked higher in July to 3.2 per cent after 12 straight months of declines, but core inflation matched the smallest monthly increase in almost two years. The report helped support continued hope for a soft landing in the U.S., said Tamsin Wilding, fixed income analyst at Leith Wheeler.In both Canada and the U.S., investors will continue to look for data that supports a gradual softening of inflation and the labour market ahead of September, when central banks on both sides of the border are set to make their next rate decision, said Wilding.“They’ve both been facing very similar dynamics on (the labour) front with elevated job vacancies, strong hiring through the first half of the yea...

Construction to limit access to Chicago's Bean

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:31 GMT

CHICAGO — Fans of Chicago’s beloved “Bean” won’t be able to get up close and personal with the sculpture for several months.The city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events announced Thursday that construction in Millennium Park is set to begin next week at which point “access and views of Cloud Gate will be limited.”According to the statement on their website, construction on Grainger Plaza surrounding Cloud Gate will begin on August 15, 2023 and continue through the Spring of 2024.Read more: Latest Chicago news headlines“This necessary maintenance by the City of Chicago will replace pavers and make other repairs and accessibility upgrades to the Plaza—to enhance the nearly 20-year-old Park’s appearance, visitor experience, and position as the #1 attraction in the Midwest,” the department said.