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On paper, Luigi Mangione had it all: wealth, intellect, athleticism, good looks. But the child of a prominent Maryland family may have spurned it all in a spasm of violence, in a killing that has mesmerized Americans. The 26-year-old was arrested Monday and charged with the murder of Brian Thompson, a health insurance chief executive and father of two who was gunned down in Manhattan last week by someone who, evidence suggests, has endured his own debilitating health crises and grew angry with the privatized US medical system. The cold-blooded killing has laid bare the deep frustration many Americans feel toward the country's labyrinthine health care system: while many have condemned the shooting, others have praised Mangione as a hero. It has also prompted considerable interest in how a young engineer with an Ivy League education could have gone off the rails to commit murder. News of his capture at a Pennsylvania McDonald's triggered an explosion of online activity, with Mangione quickly amassing new followers on social media as citizen sleuths and US media tried to understand who he is. As Americans have looked for clues about a political ideology or potential motive, a photo on his X account (formerly Twitter) includes an X-ray of an apparently injured spine. Mangione lived in Hawaii in 2022 and, according to his former roommate R.J. Martin, suffered from back pain, and was hoping to strengthen his back. After a surfing lesson, Mangione was "in bed for about a week" because of the pain, Martin told CNN. Earlier this year, Martin said, Mangione confirmed he'd had back surgery and sent him photos of the X-rays. Police said the suspect carried a hand-written manifesto of grievances in which he slammed America's "most expensive health care system in the world." "He was writing a lot about his disdain for corporate America and in particular the health care industry," New York police chief detective Joseph Kenny told ABC. According to CNN, a document recovered when Mangione was arrested included the phrase "these parasites had it coming." Meanwhile, memes and jokes proliferated, many riffing on his first name and comparing him to the "Mario Bros." video game character Luigi. Many expressed at least partial sympathy, having had their own harrowing experiences with the US health care system. "Godspeed. Please know that we all hear you," wrote one user on Facebook. Mangione hails from the Baltimore area. His wealthy Italian-American family owns local businesses, including the Hayfields Country Club, according to local outlet the Baltimore Banner, and cousin Nino Mangione is a Maryland state delegate. A standout student, Luigi graduated at the top of his high school class in 2016. A former student who knew Mangione at the elite Gilman School told AFP the suspect struck him as "a normal guy, nice kid." "There was nothing about him that was off, at least from my perception," the person said. Mangione attended the prestigious University of Pennsylvania, where he completed both a bachelor's and master's degree in computer science by 2020, according to a university spokesperson. While at Penn, Mangione co-led a group of 60 undergraduates who collaborated on video game projects, as noted in a now-deleted university webpage. On Instagram Mangione shared snapshots of his travels, and shirtless images of himself flaunting a six-pack. X users have scoured Mangione's posts for potential motives. His header photo includes an X-ray of a spine with bolts attached. Finding a political ideology that fits neatly onto the right-left divide has proved elusive, though he had written a review of Ted Kaczynski's manifesto on online site Goodreads, calling it "prescient." Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, carried out multiple bombings in the United States from 1978 to 1995, in a campaign he said was aimed at halting the advance of modern society and technology. Mangione has also linked approvingly to posts criticizing secularism as a harmful consequence of Christianity's decline, and retweeted posts on the impact mobile phones and social media have on mental health. ia/abo-mlm/nroThe New York Yankees have agreed to sign left-handed pitcher Max Fried to an eight-year, $218 million dollar contract -- the largest ever for a left-handed hurler, MLB.com reported Tuesday. The reported deal would be the fourth-largest for any pitcher, a list led by the Los Angeles Dodgers' 10-year, $700 million contract with Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani. Fried would join right-hander Gerrit Cole in a formidable Yankees rotation. He had an 11-10 record with the Atlanta Braves last season with a 3.25 earned run average in 29 starts. Fried gave up 146 hits and 57 walks with 166 strikeouts for the Braves and tied the Major League Baseball lead with two complete games. The Yankees' reported signing of Fried comes after the club missed out on Dominican superstar Juan Soto, who entered free agency after playing for the Yankees last year but is reportedly headed to the New York Mets on a record-breaking 15-year, $765 million deal. bb/js © Agence France-Presse
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Dozens of us crowd around the coffee shop’s tables, eyes glued to our phones, waiting for something — anything — to come through. Our cube-shaped bags clutter the floor of the Tim Hortons at Dundas St. W. and Spadina Ave., a popular waiting spot for food delivery couriers. An occasional “ping” cuts through the idle chatter, jolting us to attention. I snatch my phone, hoping for a notification — but my screen is blank. It’s another courier’s order and he’s already bolting out the door, bag in hand. It’s my first week working as an courier and despite it being peak time for deliveries on a Thursday afternoon, I haven’t received an order in over three hours. I turn to the driver next to me. Is my app malfunctioning or am I doing something wrong? After all, the app’s city map shows I’m in a “hot spot,” a high-demand area during high-demand hours. He shrugs. He spent $10 on his to the city, he tells me, and has only made $8 on Uber Eats all day. “Too many drivers and not enough orders,” he says. Toronto’s sidewalks and congested streets have never felt more crowded with food couriers. Spurred by a pandemic surge in delivery app usage, the food courier workforce has ballooned, increasingly made up of newcomers and for whom few other job options exist. In 2023 alone, Statistics Canada says the workforce for delivery apps like Uber Eats grew by a . Toronto Star reporter Ghada Alsharif spent six weeks working as a Uber Eats food courier. In taking a job as a delivery worker for Uber Eats, the city’s most popular food delivery app, I joined the ranks of an oversaturated workforce, where on any given night, a surplus of food couriers outnumbers the available orders. Behind the boom lies a troubling trend: couriers’ pay and behaviour are governed by opaque algorithms that determine wages based on hidden criteria. Using artificial intelligence technology, these platforms keep drivers tethered to the app, waiting unpaid for their next order. For drivers, the results are unpredictable and too often unfair. Data obtained by the Star shows Uber Eats’ platform can offer two food couriers different wages for the exact same trip. Labour advocates charge that the app collects data on driver behaviour and can use it to decide who it can pay at a lower rate, allowing the company to pocket the difference and boost its revenue. This concept is widely referred to as algorithmic wage discrimination. “The app has total control over how a worker gets paid,” says Veena Dubal, a University of California law professor whose research focuses on the gig economy. “Minimum wage and the idea that hard work should lead to economic security, can be — and are being — destroyed by these A.I. systems.” The Ontario government’s legislation aimed at for digital platform workers won’t take effect until 2025 — and even then, workers say it will fail to address the most of gig work. Uber says my experience as a food courier “was atypical” and didn’t match that of an average Toronto delivery driver. The company denies allegations of algorithmic wage discrimination, stating that it does not use a driver’s “past behaviours” to determine who it can pay at a lower rate. Uber says it’s transparent with drivers about potential earnings. The company says delivery workers choose the platform for its flexibility and their ability to “earn money on their own terms.” I worked as an Uber Eats courier for six weeks. I wanted to understand the costs behind the convenience of app-based delivery and gain insight into how gig work is evolving as algorithms call the shots. Many of the food couriers I worked alongside were young international students struggling to earn an income while they make their way through school. Others were refugees or undocumented workers, navigating precarious lives. Of the dozens of workers I spoke with, almost none of them have permanent status in Canada. Most were afraid to speak openly about their experiences with Uber Eats or other apps they deliver for out of fear of jeopardizing their livelihoods. I rented an electric bike and set out to complete at least 100 orders. The goal was to collect independent data that could shed light on how drivers’ wages are determined. But I soon discovered I’d get far fewer orders than expected, a struggle many couriers say is becoming all too common. After my first 20 hours on the Uber Eats app as a food courier, I made just $28.98. In my first weeks delivering food there were hours and even days when I wouldn’t get a single order. Hot spots on the app could change at any moment. When I followed the prompts and biked to one of these locations, like in Liberty Village, it vanished the moment I arrived. A new hot spot appeared on the other end of the downtown core at Yonge and Dundas, nudging me to wait on sidewalks crowded with couriers competing for the same jobs. The more time I spent on the app, the more I felt like a player in a game where I couldn’t figure out the rules. But every courier I met had their own theory on how to beat the game. Some swear by logging in and out of the app to trigger more orders. Others insist on keeping the app open at all times without interruption. Many advise ignoring the heatmap altogether and heading to quieter areas with less competition. Some say to keep biking around instead of waiting in one spot for too long — “the app will think you’re taking a break,” they say. One thing became clear: chasing orders was part of the job. “This is the gamification of work,” said , economist and director of the think tank Centre for Future Work. Employing and data scientists, Uber has talked about how the company has experimented with video game techniques and other tactics to incentivize drivers to stay on the road for more hours. However, Uber told the Star this characterization was “misleading,” and that its data science team was “focused on making offers more transparent and improving the Uber Eats app.” As soon as I logged into the app, I was met with flashing heat maps signalling high demand areas, performance goals tied to rewards programs and countdown timers pressuring me to accept rides while I was in the middle of biking in rush hour traffic. I noticed that I was more likely to get orders if I was constantly on the move. To test this theory, I logged on to the app and stayed in a hot spot for seven hours. Not a single order came through. When asked about this experience, Uber Eats said it “does not require a delivery person to be moving to receive trips.” I changed my strategy and biked in circles around the city during peak lunch and dinner hours. More orders came in this way than when I’d stop and wait at hot spots. Over six weeks, I spent 140 hours and 22 minutes on the app in search of work. But I was paid only for 15 hours and 49 minutes — the time Uber Eats determined I was actively delivering orders. One courier I met on the road was a 28-year-old from India who had been delivering food for over a year trying to pay off his MBA tuition. Unable to find a steady job, he worked on multiple delivery apps, but said it wasn’t uncommon to go six hours between receiving orders. Sometimes, he earned less than $10 over an eight-hour workday. “I’m OK to do hard work, but I’m not making any money,” said the driver. What are the conditions like as a food delivery courier? Toronto Star reporter Ghada Alsharif spent six weeks delivering Uber Eats to find out. Like most of the couriers I spoke to, he asked not to be quoted by name for fear that he will face repercussions from delivery platforms or jeopardize his chances of finding better opportunities in the future. Having work appear scarce creates a sense of competition that makes drivers less selective of what orders they take, said labour relations lawyer Ryan White of Cavalluzzo LLP. “This feeling of scarcity might lead delivery workers to think, ‘If I don’t take this assignment, even if it’s not an assignment I want ... someone else is going to,’ ” White said. Uber spokesperson Keerthana Rang said it’s “difficult to comment on experiences a specific delivery person has because many factors play a role in earnings, like time of day, demand in the area, weather.” Delivery workers “control where and when they work, they are free to use other apps at the same time as they’re on Uber, choose which deliveries to accept, and they can deliver using their own vehicle, by bike, or on foot.” I felt anything but in control. As I spent more time on the app, another change occurred. Instead of simply allowing me to “accept” an order immediately, the app started prompting me to request to “match” with it, meaning the app would first determine whether I was the best fit for the delivery before giving me the job outright. More often than not, I’d lose the match to another driver. The power to choose was not mine. Uber says “there are a number of factors that determine how a match is made, including the proximity to the merchant and estimated delivery times.” One driver suggested I rush to the restaurant as soon as I got a “match” request, in a bid to be the closest to the location when the app made its decision — more guessing, more waiting. Often, after a few match requests were given to other drivers, finally receiving an order I could accept felt like a small victory — one that kept me eager and engaged. Control for drivers is an illusion — it’s really “all in the hands of the apps,” White said. “Workers don’t get to determine their terms and conditions of employment and they don’t get to set the prices that they’re working for.” Toronto was the first city in the world where Uber Eats operated, launching onto the food delivery scene in 2015. On a bitter February evening in 2022, a group of Uber Eats delivery workers gathered at Wychwood Barns Park near St. Clair Ave. W. and Christie St. Soaked in freezing rain, they huddled together to test an algorithm that had become their boss. They ran a simple experiment: logging into the app simultaneously mere inches apart, they strived to document how pay varied for identical orders. When one driver received an order, they took a screenshot capturing the pay and details before declining the job. If one of the other drivers was then offered the order, they did the same thing, creating a side-by-side comparison. The Star analyzed the data of six delivery workers collected by Gig Workers United, a network of app-based couriers advocating for better workers’ rights. Out of 21 assignments offered to at least two drivers in the group, all but one — 95 per cent — revealed pay discrepancies for the same job. For one delivery, from a Harvey’s at St. Clair and Bathurst to a location near Casa Loma, the first driver was offered $6.81. The second was offered $6.18 — a nearly 10 per cent pay difference for the same delivery. In many cases, the pay difference for identical deliveries was less than 10 cents, an amount that may go unnoticed. But given the thousands of drivers and orders around the world, if Uber were to “skim off a few cents” from each delivery, the difference could result in “millions ... of dollars in profit across millions of rides globally,” Dubal said. Dubal has spent more than a decade researching the ride-hailing and gig economy and how these platforms affect workers’ rights, livelihoods and legal protections. Her research, which includes interviews with drivers and analysis of their pay patterns, has found the business model the couriers participate in ultimately relies on an imbalance of power and information. Artificial intelligence technology determines what an Uber Eats worker gets paid. Platforms like Uber use these complex algorithms to streamline customer service while maximizing profits and also dictating worker pay, speed and behaviour. It has fostered a system, Dubal says, where workers performing the same task with the same skills under identical conditions can receive different pay. Dubal’s research documented this alleged algorithmic wage discrimination among rideshare drivers in the San Francisco Bay area, comparing the fares they received to what other drivers got. The data from the Toronto food couriers’ experiment, she says, adds to a growing body of evidence that “proves that Uber Eats has created a system where workers do not earn the same amount even if they’re doing the exact same thing.” “This upends the notion that there should be and is an assumption of equal pay for equal work.” Uber has denied the app uses an individual worker’s past behaviour to set different wages. “Uber Eats does not send lower-paying upfront offers to a delivery person with a history of accepting them. Anything written in your story otherwise would be false,” Rang said. The Uber spokesperson said that any variation of earnings between drivers for the same trip “is likely due to the technical limitations of GPS. “GPS Satellite visibility, location settings, and device orientation are some of the reasons why phones next to each other might have different geolocation results.” According to Dubal and Stanford, Uber Eats is applying a concept similar to one it popularized: consumer price discrimination, sometimes called dynamic or surge pricing, where customers are charged different prices based on what companies think they’re willing to pay. Now, critics say it appears it’s being used to set couriers’ wages. This raises serious concerns, particularly given the vulnerable demographics of many workers, Stanford said. Among the couriers I spoke with was a refugee from Eritrea unable to work legally in Canada, who said he had no choice but to rely on income from food delivery apps despite earning dismal wages. “I do this or I die,” he said. In February, Uber reported its first annual net profit since the company went public in 2019. The company booked a net profit of $1.9 billion in 2023, compared with a loss of $9.1 billion in 2022. Uber says the company’s “profitability has come from the ever-growing volume of trips, which has resulted in our revenues growing faster than our costs.” Hours after announcing its first-ever annual profit, Uber’s CEO told investors on a conference call that the company is increasingly focused on offering drivers’ orders and rides based on their “behavioural patterns.” “I think what we can do better is targeting different trips to different drivers based on their preferences, or based on behavioural patterns that they are showing us,” said CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, saying it will lead to shorter wait times for customers, happier drivers and a more efficient system. “That is really the focus going forward: Offering the right trip, at the right price to the right driver.” Landed immigrants accounted for nearly 60 per cent of people who provided either personal transport or delivery services through an app or platform in 2023, according to data from Statistics Canada. Toronto was the first city in the world where Uber Eats operated, launching onto the food delivery scene in 2015. Uber was competing against other companies such as DoorDash and Hurrier. To ensure there were enough couriers available at all times to meet customer demand, delivery platforms offered workers incentives to keep engaging with their apps. Companies offered “boosts,” which multiplied courier earnings if they delivered food in areas seeing a surge in demand, recalls Brice Sopher, who has spent nearly a decade as a bike courier in Toronto. “Uber paid so well in the beginning that you didn’t even care about tips — it was that good,” said Sopher, who is also the vice-president of Gig Workers United. When the pandemic hit, the use of online food delivery platforms surged as customers were confined to their homes and restaurants shuttered their doors. In June 2020, Uber scrapped a payment structure that had offered couriers clear pay based on pickups, drop-offs, distance and time. It was replaced by algorithmic pricing. Drivers could no longer see how their base pay was being calculated. For example, I have no way of knowing why a 2.5-kilometre delivery earned me $4.06 before tip, while a nearly identical 2.3-kilometre delivery paid $6.08. Uber maintains the changes made wages more transparent. Before accepting a delivery, drivers can see fares, including estimated tip, trip distance, estimated time to completion and locations for pick-up and drop off. “The delivery person is in control in determining whether they wish to choose or decline the offer,” Uber’s spokesperson said. The upfront fare and estimated time calculated by the app often failed to account for delays beyond my control, from waiting for food that wasn’t ready at the restaurant to climbing flights of stairs at a condo tower because the elevators were down. When these incidents happened, my deliveries took longer but my pay stayed the same — this meant I would be earning less money per hour. Uber said it aims to “minimize delivery person wait time by adjusting expected merchant preparation time based on actuals.” Demographics of the gig-economy workforce have also changed. Data shows that the surge of ride-hailing and delivery gig workers has been driven largely by newcomers. Landed immigrants accounted for nearly 60 per cent of people who provided either personal transport or delivery services through an app or platform in 2023, according to data from Statistics Canada. One courier I spoke with, a 19-year-old university student from India, came to Canada in search of a good education and better living standards. Instead, he says he’s barely scraping by, struggling to pay his tuition at Niagara College. These days, he considers himself lucky to make $50 on a weekend shift. He searched for work for six months. “When I couldn’t find anything I started doing Uber (deliveries) full-time,” he said. With low barriers to entry, app-based delivery jobs can be appealing to newcomers who are often shut out of other jobs in the labour market, Stanford said. High levels of immigration “combined with the weakening of the labour market, means there are more people willing to do this lousy work than there were two years ago,” he said. “They’re desperate and the platforms take advantage of that.” Over six weeks, I hustled to complete 56 orders. I spent more than 140 hours glued to the app and biking around the city in hopes of coaxing an order out of an algorithm, and made just $243.82, plus another $73 and change in tips. This money is being donated to charity. In the end, I earned a shocking $1.74 per hour online. Uber says the average delivery person in Toronto is engaged four times more on an hourly basis than I was during my six-week experiment. And the company reports that the median driver earnings in Toronto in late 2023 was $33.35 per “engaged hour.” Uber says earnings “must be calculated against engaged time” because a delivery person can have multiple food-delivery apps open at once to optimize their earnings. Even by that standard, my earnings fell short. I made approximately $15.41 per engaged hour before tips, below Ontario’s $17.20 minimum wage. The per-hour pay fluctuated on each order. For one delivery, I made the equivalent of $34 per hour. On another, a paltry $6.95 per hour. In fact, on roughly half of the orders I delivered, I earned the equivalent of less than minimum wage. The effort didn’t even cover my expenses. Renting an e-bike alone cost me $460 for those six weeks. Food-delivery apps keep drivers tethered to the phones, waiting unpaid for their next order. The Ontario government has brought forward legislation meant to improve working conditions for gig workers such as food couriers and ride share drivers. The Digital Platform Workers’ Rights Act will require companies to provide workers with a description of how their wages are calculated, and will guarantee gig workers earn minimum wage — but only for engaged hours. But the legislation, introduced in 2022, does not come into effect until summer 2025. “It is important that the government get this right, which includes consulting with workers, digital platforms, the legal sector, and other affected stakeholders,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Labour said. Some cities have taken steps to regulate platforms such as Uber. City staff had recommended limiting how many drivers could work for the app-based ride-hailing companies at 80,429. That proposal is now in doubt. City staff had recommended limiting how many drivers could work for the app-based ride-hailing companies at 80,429. That proposal is now in doubt. Earlier this month, Toronto city staff the number of rideshare licences in a bid to address the ride-hailing industry’s negative impacts on traffic, emissions, and public transit. A staff report concluded that drivers’ median income, when accounting for all the time spent on the app, was just $5.97 an hour after costs such as fuel and insurance — a figure Uber disputes. The city’s executive committee voted to to the drawing board. Other cities, such as New York City, have focused on guaranteed wages for drivers. By paying drivers a guaranteed wage, Stanford said the hope is that this will dissuade companies from courting a surplus of workers to compete for orders. Critics say that delivery apps for years have gotten around paying drivers minimum wage by misclassifying gig workers as independent contractors — excluding workers from the full set of rights they would otherwise be entitled to as employees. Organizations like Gig Workers United and RideFair TO have been advocating for gig workers to be classified as employees, which would grant them access to essential benefits, including employment insurance and minimum sick days. App companies have pushed back saying this would undermine couriers’ flexibility to work across multiple platforms and to set their own schedules. Sopher, who has worked on more than one app at once, described the experience as “degrading.” “It’s like working two or more jobs at the exact same time and still not making enough money,” he said. “You only do it because you have to.” In Uber’s 2023 annual report, the company said its business “would be adversely affected if drivers were classified as employees, workers or quasi-employees instead of independent contractors.” Dubal warns that the ripple effects of this algorithm-driven system, in which drivers have minimal protections, extend far beyond food delivery. This same technology is already playing a significant role in managing jobs in some distribution warehouses, from scheduling shifts to assigning tasks and even reportedly firing employees. For six weeks, I knew I had the option to log off whenever I wanted, to step away from the relentless chase for orders. But for a growing number of workers, their primary — often sole — source of income is determined by an app, with wage rates and assignments beyond their control. Sopher, who has all but given up on delivery work, fears that if companies like Uber continue to misclassify delivery workers “you’re going to have a permanent two-tier employment regime in Ontario.” “It’s all of the worst parts of being an employee and all the worst parts of being an independent contractor rolled up in one.”Breaking News Don't miss out on the headlines from Breaking News. Followed categories will be added to My News. A Sydney mother has been killed while an apprehended violence order was in place. Police discovered the body of Kholoud Bakkour at a home in the suburb of Belmore about 8am on Wednesday. Her husband, Terrance Howot, was arrested about 30km away a short time later. Campsie police area Superintendent Sheridan Waldau confirmed the incident was being investigated as domestic violence-related. Kholoud Bakkour was found dead in her Belmore unit on Wednesday morning. Picture: Facebook Forensics combed over the scene after Ms Bakkour’s body was discovered. Picture: NewsWire / Gaye Gerard “Crime scene (police) are investigating and it does look like it is a very violent murder scene,” she told media on Wednesday afternoon. “We expect that he will be charged with murder later on this afternoon. “We expect that we will have more answers later this afternoon.” Terrance Howot is expected to be charged on Wednesday. Picture: Supplied Police forced their way into the Knox St apartment to discover the body of the mother of five after a triple-0 call from a family member from a separate location. Ms Bakkour is believed to be aged in her 30s. Mr Howot is 35 years old. Superintendent Waldau said there was an apprehended violence order in place “which was in force until February 2025”. Wellwishers brought flowers to the scene on Wednesday. Picture: NewsWire / Gaye Gerard Superintendent Sheridan Waldau described the incident as ‘very violent’. Picture: NewsWire / Gaye Gerard The man in custody had “minimal interactions” with police in the past year, Superintendent Waldau said. Mr Howot was arrested in the suburb of Denham Court a short time later. He was taken to Campbeltown Police Station where police said he was co-operating. According to the Australian Femicide Map database, Ms Bakkour is the 98th female killed by violence in this country this year. Originally published as ‘Very violent’: Police expect to charge husband with murder after Sydney woman found dead More related stories Breaking News Tamil migrants reach UK after ‘darkest’ time in Chagos camp Tamil migrants reach UK after 'darkest' time in Chagos camp Read more Business Breaking News ASX falls to three week low A sharp sell-off in information technology and energy stocks dragged the Australian markets down during Wednesday’s trading. Read more
By HALELUYA HADERO, Associated Press President-elect Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to pause the potential TikTok ban from going into effect until his administration can pursue a “political resolution” to the issue. The request came as TikTok and the Biden administration filed opposing briefs to the court, in which the company argued the court should strike down a law that could ban the platform by Jan. 19 while the government emphasized its position that the statute is needed to eliminate a national security risk. Related Articles “President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute. Instead, he respectfully requests that the Court consider staying the Act’s deadline for divestment of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case,” said Trump’s amicus brief, which supported neither party in the case. The filings come ahead of oral arguments scheduled for Jan. 10 on whether the law, which requires TikTok to divest from its China-based parent company or face a ban, unlawfully restricts speech in violation of the First Amendment. Earlier this month, a panel of three federal judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld the statute , leading TikTok to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. The brief from Trump said he opposes banning TikTok at this junction and “seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office.”TPAA forms middle school robotics teams
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — CNN wants a court to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed by North Carolina Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson that attacks its report that he made explicit posts on a pornography website’s message board. The network says Robinson presented no evidence that the network believed its story was false or aired it recklessly. The September report says Robinson, who ran unsuccessfully for governor this month, left statements over a decade ago on the message board in which, in part, he referred to himself as a “black NAZI" and said he enjoyed transgender pornography. The report also says he preferred Adolf Hitler to then-President Barack Obama and slammed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “worse than a maggot.” Robinson, who was seeking to become the state's first Black governor, said he didn’t write those posts and sued in October, just before early in-person voting was to begin. While filing a dismissal motion Thursday in Raleigh federal court, attorneys for CNN said Robinson’s arguments suggesting he was the likely victim of a computer hacking operation that created fake messages would require a series of events that is not just “implausible, it is ridiculous.” Generally speaking, a public official claiming defamation must show a defendant knew a statement it made was false or did so with reckless disregard for the truth. “Robinson did not and cannot plausibly allege facts that show that CNN published the Article with actual malice,” attorney Mark Nebrig wrote in a memo backing the dismissal motion, adding that the lawsuit “does not include a single allegation demonstrating that CNN doubted the veracity of its reporting.” For Robinson, who already had a history of inflammatory comments about topics like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights , the CNN story nearly led to the collapse of his campaign. After the report's airing, most of his top campaign staff quit, advertising from the Republican Governors Association stopped and fellow Republicans distanced themselves from him, including President-elect Donald Trump. Robinson lost to Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein by nearly 15 points and will leave office at year-end. Robinson's lawsuit was initially filed in state court. It says, in part, that CNN chose to run its report based on data from the website NudeAfrica, which had been hacked several years ago and ran on vulnerable, outdated software. His suit claims the network did nothing to verify the posts. He's seeking monetary damages. Thursday's memo highlights the network's story, including a section where the CNN journalists showed how they connected Robinson to a username on the NudeAfrica site. As the CNN story said previously, the memo says the network matched details of the account on the message board to other online accounts held by Robinson by comparing usernames, an email address and his full name. The details discussed by the account holder matched Robinson’s length of marriage, where he lived at the time, and that both Robinson and the account holder had mothers who worked at a historically Black university, the memo says. CNN also said it found matches of figures of speech used by both the NudeAfrica account holder and in Robinson’s social media posts. “This is hardly a case where, as Robinson alleges, CNN ‘disregarded or deliberately avoided the truth’ rather than investigate,” Nebrig said, adding later that the network “had no reason to seriously doubt that Robinson was the author” of the posts. Robinson's attorneys didn't immediately respond to an email Friday seeking comment. The lawsuit says anyone could have used Robinson's breached data to create accounts on the internet. His state lawsuit also sued Louis Love Money, a former porn shop worker who alleged in a music video and a media interview that for several years starting in the 1990s, Robinson frequented a porn shop where Money was working and that Robinson purchased porn videos from him. Robinson said that was untrue. Money filed his own dismissal motion in the state lawsuit. But since then, CNN moved the lawsuit to federal court, saying that it's the proper venue for a North Carolina resident like Robinson and a Georgia-based company like CNN and that the claims against Money are unrelated.
Donald Trump DEA pick Chad Chronister withdraws from consideration, citing 'gravity' of jobWriters Guild of America this week sent a letter to major Hollywood studios asking them to take action against tech companies that are using writers’ work to train AI tools without their permission. “The studios, as copyright holders of works written by WGA members, have done nothing to stop this theft,” the guild’s leadership said in a letter. “They have allowed tech companies to plunder entire libraries without permission or compensation. The studios’ inaction has harmed WGA members.” The guild said its collective bargaining agreement requires studios “to defend their copyrights on behalf of writers” and urged studios to “take immediate legal action against any company that has used our members’ works to train AI systems.” The letter was sent to studios including Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery, Walt Disney Co., Paramount Global, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures and Amazon MGM Studios. Representatives from those studios either declined to comment or didn’t respond to requests for comment. WGA‘s letter referenced an Atlantic article last month that reported that subtitles from thousands of movies and TV episodes were included in an AI-training data set used by companies including Facebook parent company Meta and San Francisco-based AI company Anthropic. Anthropic and Meta did not immediately return a request for comment. The WGA letter comes as some studios are in discussions with tech companies that are developing AI tools. In September, “Hunger Games” studio Lionsgate announced a partnership with AI startup Runway. Under that deal, Runway will create a new AI model for Lionsgate to help with behind-the-scenes processes such as storyboarding. Other major Hollywood studios have yet to publicly announce deals, in part because AI is a complicated landscape where regulations and legal questions surrounding the technology are still evolving. There are also questions over how studio libraries should be valued for AI purposes and concerns about protecting intellectual property.
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