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  • Peru’s embattled president could have eased the crisis. What happened? | CNN

    Peru’s embattled president could have eased the crisis. What happened? | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    When Dina Boluarte was anointed Peru’s sixth president in five years, she faced battles on two fronts: appeasing the lawmakers who had ousted her boss and predecessor Pedro Castillo, and calming protesterse enraged by the dethroning of yet another president.

    She called for a “political truce” with Congress on her first day of her job — a peace offering to the legislative body that had been at odds with Castillo and impeached him in December after he undemocratically attempted to dissolve Congress.

    But nearly two months on, her presidency is looking even more beleaguered than Castillo’s aborted term. Several ministers in her government have resigned while the country has been rocked by its most violent protests in decades. She was forced to once again call for a truce on Tuesday – this time appealing to the protesters, many of whom hail from Peru’s majority-indigenous rural areas, saying in Quechua that she is one of them.

    Boluarte, who was born in a largely indigenous region in south-central Peru where Quechua is the most spoken language, might have been the leader to channel protesters’ frustrations and work with them. She has made much of her rural origins, and rose to power initially as Castillo’s vice president on the leftwing Peru Libre party ticket, buoyed by the rural and indigenous vote.

    But her plea for mutual understanding with protesters now is likely too late in what analysts are calling the deadliest popular uprising in South America in recent years. Officials say 56 civilians and one police officer has died in the violence, and hundreds more have been injured, as protesters call for fresh elections, a new constitution and Boluarte’s resignation.

    Boluarte has tried to placate protesters, asking Congress for an earlier election date. But Peru watchers say she already made the fatal error of distancing herself from rural constituents after she took the top job as Peru’s first woman president.

    “One has to understand Boluarte’s own ambitions, she was clearly willing to sacrifice her leftist ideas and principles in order to build a coalition with the right to hold onto power,” Jo-Marie Burt, a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America and an expert on Peru, told CNN. “And to use force against the very same people who voted for the Castillo-Boluarte ticket.”

    Castillo’s brief term saw him face a hostile Congress in the hands of the opposition, limiting his political capital and capacity to operate. ” (Boluarte) had to make a choice: either she went the Castillo way and spent the next four years fighting a Congress that wants to impeach her or she sided with the right and got power,” Alonso Gurmendi, a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Oxford, who is a Peruvian legal expert, told CNN.

    She chose the latter, experts say, distancing herself from Castillo and instead relying on support of a broad coalition of right-wing politicians to stay in presidency. CNN has reached out to Boluarte’s office for comment and has made repeated requests for an interview.

    During her inauguration, former political rival Keiko Fujimori – whose father Alberto Fujimori is a former president who used security forces to repress opponents during his decade-long rule of Peru – said Boluarte could “count on the support and backing” of her party.

    Boluarte’s woes are a far cry from her early days in Peruvian’s civil service, working at the National Registry of Identification and Civil Status in Surco, as an advisor to senior management and, later, as the head of the local office.

    She ran as a candidate for mayor of Surquillo with the Marxist-Leninist Peru Libre Party in 2018. She failed to gain a seat in the 2020 parliamentary elections, but had better luck the following year, as Castillo’s running-mate.

    In an interview with CNN en Espanol that year, Boluarte clarified a statement she made about dissolving Congress: “We need a Congress that works for the needs of Peruvian society and that coordinates positively with the executive so that both powers of state can work in a coordinated manner to meet the multiple needs of Peruvian society. We do not want an obstructionist Congress … At no time have I said that we are going to close Congress.”

    Castillo, a former teacher and union leader, was also from rural Peru and positioned himself as a man of the people. Despite his political inexperience and mounting corruption scandals, Castillo’s presidency was a symbolic victory for many of his rural supporters. They hoped he would bring better prospects to the country’s rural and indigenous people who have long felt excluded from Peru’s economic boom in the past decade.

    Indigenous women take part in a protest against Boluarte's government in Lima on January 24.

    His ousting from power last year was seen by some of his supporters as another attempt by Peru’s coastal elites to discount them.

    The public have long been disillusioned with the legislative body, which has been criticized as being self-interested and out-of-touch. In a January poll by the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP) more than 80% of Peruvians say they disapproved of Congress.

    The public also have a dim view of Boluarte, according to polling by IPSOS, which found that 68% disapproved of her in December. That figure rose to 71% in January, according to the poll. She is more unpopular in rural areas, according to the same poll, which found that she had an 85% disapproval score in rural regions in January compared to urban areas (76%).

    In January 2022, Peru Libre expelled her from the party. She told Peruvian newspaper La República at the time she had “never embraced the ideology of Peru Libre.”

    As protests spread through many of Peru’s 25 regions following Castillo’s detention, Boluarte’s government declared a state of emergency and doubled down on law-and-order policies.

    The country has since seen its highest civilian death toll since strongman Alberto Fujimori was in power, say human rights advocates, when 17 civilians were killed during a protest in the south-eastern Puno region on January 9. A police officer was burned to death in Puno on the following day. Autopsies of the 17 dead civilians found wounds caused by firearm projectiles, the city’s head of legal medicine told CNN en Español.

    Human rights groups have accused Boluarte of using state violence to stymie protests and on January 11, Peru’s prosecutor launched an investigation into the president and other key ministers for the alleged crime of “genocide, qualified homicide, and serious injuries” in relation to the bloodshed.

    Boluarte has said she will cooperate with the probe, but plans to remain in office and has shown little sympathy for the demonstrators. “I am not going to resign, my commitment is with Peru, not with that tiny group that is making the country bleed,” she said in a televised speech days after the investigation was announced.

    Boluarte has tried to placate protesters, asking Congress for an earlier election date.

    When asked why she has not prevented security officials from using lethal weapons on protesters, Boluarte said on Tuesday that investigations will determine where the bullets “come from,” speculating without evidence that Bolivian activists may have brought weapons into Peru – a claim that Burt describes as “a total conspiracy theory.”

    Boluarte has done little to ease the angry rhetoric deployed by public officials, parts of the press and the public in criticizing the ongoing demonstrations. Boluarte herself described the protests as “terrorism” – a label that the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR) has warned could instigate a “climate of more violence.”

    She again inflamed tensions during Tuesday’s press conference. When asked how she intended to implement a national truce, she said attempts for dialogue with representatives in the region of Puno had not been successful. “We have to protect the life and tranquillity of 33 million Peruvians. Puno is not Peru,” she said. At least 20 civilians have died in clashes in the region, according to data by Peru’s Ombudsman office, and the comment led to an immediate online backlash.

    The presidential office later apologized for the statement on Twitter, saying Boluarte’s words were misinterpreted, and that the president intended to emphasize that the safety of all Peruvians was important. “We apologize to the sisters and brothers of our beloved highland region,” it wrote.

    As the protests show no end in sight, Boluarte on Wednesday dialed down the inflammatory rhetoric when she spoke at a special meeting on the Peruvian crisis at the Organization of American States (OAS).

    She announced plans to investigate the alleged abuses by security forces against protesters, adding that while she respected the “legitimate right to peaceful protest, but it is also true that the state has the duty to ensure security and internal order.”

    The violence had caused around $1 billion in damages to the country, and affected 240,000 businesses, but she was “deeply pained” at the “loss of lives of many compatriots,” she said.

    Boluarte, again, appealed to her former base of voters, indigenous Peruvians. “You are the great force that we need to include to achieve development with equity,” she said. “Your contributions to national development needs to be valued as well as your strength.”

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  • Jan. 6 Committee failed to hold social media companies to account for their role in the Capitol attack, staffers and witnesses say | CNN Business

    Jan. 6 Committee failed to hold social media companies to account for their role in the Capitol attack, staffers and witnesses say | CNN Business


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    “There might be someone getting shot tomorrow.”

    That was the warning from Twitter staff at an internal meeting on Jan. 5, 2021, the eve of the deadly attack on the US Capitol. It wasn’t the only stark warning Twitter management received ahead of the insurrection, according to two former Twitter employees who spoke to the House Jan. 6 Committee.

    But now these witnesses, along with some committee staff, are frustrated, saying the committee failed to adequately hold major social media companies to account for the role they played in the worst attack on the Capitol in 200 years.

    It was a “real missed opportunity,” Anika Collier Navaroli, a former Twitter employee turned whistleblower who gave evidence to the committee, told CNN in an interview last week. “I risked a lot to come forward and speak to the committee and to share the truth about these momentous occasions in history,” Navaroli said.

    CNN spoke to half a dozen people who interacted with and were familiar with the Jan. 6 Committee’s so-called “purple team” – a group that included staff with expertise in extremism and online misinformation. Some witnesses and staff said the committee pulled its punches when it came to Big Tech, failing to include critical parts of the team’s work in its final report. The discontent has poured into public view, with an unpublished draft of the team’s findings leaked and obtained by multiple news organizations, including CNN.

    One source familiar with the probe acknowledged that the committee obtained evidence that social media companies like Twitter largely ignored concerns that were raised internally prior to Jan. 6, but while those platforms should have done something at the time, the panel was limited in its ability to hold them accountable. A lawyer who worked on the committee said the panel did its job and focused on the unique and malign role of then-President Donald Trump in an unprecedented attack on American democracy. They also said the final report outlines structural issues across social media and society that need to be studied further.

    Disagreement about social media companies’ role in the Jan. 6 attack comes as 2023 looks to be a pivotal year for Silicon Valley firms in Washington, DC. Spurred in part by the release of Elon Musk’s so-called “Twitter Files,” House Republicans are set to investigate purported Big Tech censorship, particularly as it pertains to social media companies’ handling of a 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden and his laptop. Facebook parent company Meta’s high-stakes decision Wednesday to reinstate Trump on its platforms is also expected to stoke further scrutiny of tech companies’ influence in elections. At the Supreme Court, justices are set to rule this year on a case that could strip key protections afforded to tech companies moderating online speech.

    It isn’t just Navaroli who has taken issue with the committee’s findings. Three of the committee’s own staff members, part of the so-called purple team, published an article earlier this month, sharply criticizing the decisions made by social media companies in the lead up to the attack.

    The final report’s “emphasis on Trump meant important context was left on the cutting room floor,” they wrote.

    “Indeed, the lack of an official Committee report chapter or appendix dedicated exclusively to these matters does not mean our investigation exonerated social media companies for their failure to confront violent rhetoric,” they wrote.

    In wake of the decision, CNN has reviewed thousands of pages of deposition transcripts and other supporting documents the committee has publicly released that provide insight into Silicon Valley’s action and inaction in the critical period between Election Day 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021.

    Navaroli, who worked on Twitter’s safety policy team, told the committee she had repeatedly warned Twitter’s leadership in the lead-up to Jan. 6 about the dangers of not cracking down on what she said was violent rhetoric.

    Navaroli pointed to Trump’s infamous “stand back and stand by” message to the Proud Boys at the first 2020 presidential debate as one instance that incited more violent rhetoric on Twitter.

    Navaroli initially appeared before the committee as an anonymous whistleblower. Part of her testimony was played during the public committee hearings last summer, with her voice distorted to protect her identity. However, she later decided to go public, testifying before the committee for a second time, and speaking to The Washington Post.

    In an interview with CNN, Navaroli said she is speaking out now because she believes it is important for the “truth to be on the record.” She warned that without a full reckoning of social media’s role in the Capitol attack, political violence could once again ignite in the United States and elsewhere around the world, pointing to recent unrest in Brazil where supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country’s top government offices.

    The final report from the Jan. 6 Committee stated, “Social media played a prominent role in amplifying erroneous claims of election fraud.”

    But a far more blistering assessment was laid out in an unpublished draft document prepared by committee staff that was obtained by several news organizations, including CNN. Its key findings included:

    • “Social media platforms delayed response to the rise of far-right extremism—and President Trump’s incitement of his supporters—helped to facilitate the attack on January 6th.”
    • “Fear of reprisal and accusations of censorship from the political right compromised policy, process, and decision-making.”
    • “Twitter failed to take actions that could have prevented the spread of incitement to violence after the election.”
    • “Facebook did not fail to grapple with election delegitimization after the election so much as it did not even try.”

    Tech companies would broadly dispute these findings and have repeatedly said they are working to keep their platforms safe.

    Twitter’s previous management repeatedly outlined steps it said it was taking to crack down on hateful and violent rhetoric on its platform prior to Jan. 6, 2021, but stressed it didn’t want to unnecessarily limit free expression. Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter no longer has a responsive communications team, and the company did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Facebook parent company Meta, pointed to an earlier statement from the company where it said it was cooperating with the committee.

    Jacob Glick, an investigative counsel, conducted multiple depositions for the Jan. 6 Committee, including Navaroli's.

    Jacob Glick, an investigative counsel who conducted multiple depositions for the Jan. 6 Committee, including Navaroli’s, told CNN he believes the committee did its job to show “the American public the dangers posed by President Trump’s multilayered attack on our democracy.”

    He said the lack of awareness he believes tech companies have shown about their role in the attack was “stark.”

    “I don’t think social media companies recognize they were dealing with a sustained threat to American democracy,” he said.

    Glick, who now works at the Georgetown Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, said the purple team’s report had not been fact-checked, contains some errors, and should not have been leaked.

    Another source familiar with the committee’s work told CNN, “It couldn’t be clearer that Trump was at the center of this plot to overturn the election. Not everything staff worked on could fit into this extensive report and hearings, including some who wanted their work to be the center of the investigation.”

    How social media platforms write and enforce their rules has become a central and ongoing debate, raising the key question of what power the companies should wield when it comes to politicians like Trump.

    While some, including Navaroli, insist Trump repeatedly broke social media platforms’ rules by inciting violent rhetoric that should have resulted in his removal before Jan. 6, others including Musk and Twitter’s previous management, argue that what politicians say should be made available to as many people as possible so they can be held to account.

    Meta and Twitter have both reversed their bans on Trump.

    “We’re moving backwards and it’s concerning to me,” Navaroli said of the return of prominent election conspiracy theorists to major tech platforms. “History has taught us what happens when political speech on social media companies is allowed to fester unchecked.”

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  • BuzzFeed’s CEO says AI could usher in a ‘new model for digital media,’ but warns against a ‘dystopian’ path | CNN Business

    BuzzFeed’s CEO says AI could usher in a ‘new model for digital media,’ but warns against a ‘dystopian’ path | CNN Business


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Over the holidays, while most media executives were perhaps looking to get a reprieve from work, Jonah Peretti was online, fully immersed in experimenting with artificial intelligence.

    The BuzzFeed co-founder and chief executive, who has always raced to test out the latest technologies, was familiar with AI and predictions of how it could one day revolutionize the media industry. In fact, BuzzFeed had dabbled in using it over the years.

    A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.

    But Peretti, sitting in his California home in late December, started probing how the developing robot writing technology could quickly be infused into the very DNA of BuzzFeed.

    In a phone interview Thursday, Peretti said that as he and a handful of colleagues prototyped how the technology could be used to enhance the site’s hallmark quizzes, interactive articles, and other types of content, he found himself genuinely having fun. “It started to feel like we were all playing,” Peretti recalled.

    That “playful work,” as he described it, soon “led to multiple Google docs full of the implications of the technology and how [BuzzFeed] could build this into our platform and how we could extend it to other formats.”

    Those efforts culminated in Peretti’s formal announcement on Thursday: That BuzzFeed will work with ChatGPT creator OpenAI to assist in the creation of content for its audience and move artificial intelligence into the “core business.”

    Peretti said that he understood people might read the news and conclude that BuzzFeed was, in short, moving to replace humans with robots. But Peretti insisted that is not his vision for the technology, even as he predicted other companies will likely go down that dark path.

    “I think that there are two paths for AI in digital media,” Peretti said. “One path is the obvious path that a lot of people will do — but it’s a depressing path — using the technology for cost savings and spamming out a bunch of SEO articles that are lower quality than what a journalist could do, but a tenth of the cost. That’s one vision, but to me, that’s a depressing vision and a shortsighted vision because in the long run it’s not going to work.”

    “The other path,” Peretti continued, “which is the one that gets me really excited, is the new model for digital media that is more personalized, more creative, more dynamic — where really talented people who work at our company are able to use AI together and entertain and personalize more than you could ever do without AI.”

    Put more simply, Peretti said he envisions artificial intelligence being used to enhance the work of his employees, not replace them.

    The example the company provided is the BuzzFeed quiz. Typically, a human would write the questions and perhaps a dozen responses that would be delivered to the user based on their inputs. But, with AI, the staffer could write the questions and the software could spit out a highly personalized response for the user. In the supplied example, a user would take a quick quiz and the AI would write a short RomCom using the data provided.

    “We don’t have to train the AI to be as good as the BuzzFeed writers because we have the BuzzFeed writers, so they can inject language, ideas, cultural currency and write them into prompts and the format,” Peretti said. “And then the AI pulls it together and creates a new piece of content.”

    Peretti indicated that he had no interest in utilizing artificial intelligence to replace human journalists for authoring news articles, as the technology outlet CNET recently did with disastrous consequences (dozens of the outlet’s stories written by AI were riddled with errors that required correcting.)

    “There’s the CNET path, and then there is the path that BuzzFeed is focused on,” Peretti said. “One is about costs and volume of content, and one is about ability.”

    “Even if there are a lot of bad actors who try to use AI to make content farms, it won’t win in the long run,” Peretti predicted. “I think the content farm model of AI will feel very depressing and dystopian.”

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  • FDA vaccine advisers vote to harmonize Covid-19 vaccines in the United States | CNN

    FDA vaccine advisers vote to harmonize Covid-19 vaccines in the United States | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    A panel of independent experts that advises the US Food and Drug Administration on its vaccine decisions voted unanimously Thursday to update all Covid-19 vaccines so they contain the same ingredients as the two-strain shots that are now used as booster doses.

    The vote means young children and others who haven’t been vaccinated may soon be eligible to receive two-strain vaccines that more closely match the circulating viruses as their primary series.

    The FDA must sign off on the committee’s recommendation, which it is likely to do, before it goes into effect.

    Currently, the US offers two types of Covid-19 vaccines. The first shots people get – also called the primary series – contain a single set of instructions that teach the immune system to fight off the original version of the virus, which emerged in 2019.

    This index strain is no longer circulating. It was overrun months ago by an ever-evolving parade of new variants.

    Last year, in consultation with its advisers, the FDA decided that it was time to update the vaccines. These two-strain, or bivalent, shots contain two sets of instructions; one set reminds the immune system about the original version of the coronavirus, and the second set teaches the immune system to recognize and fight off Omicron’s BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, which emerged in the US last year.

    People who have had their primary series – nearly 70% of all Americans – were advised to get the new two-strain booster late last year in an effort to upgrade their protection against the latest variants.

    The advisory committee heard testimony and data suggesting that the complexity of having two types of Covid-19 vaccines and schedules for different age groups may be one of the reasons for low vaccine uptake in the US.

    Currently, only about two-thirds of Americans have had the full primary series of shots. Only 15% of the population has gotten an updated bivalent booster.

    Data presented to the committee shows that Covid-19 hospitalizations have been rising for children under the age of 2 over the past year, as Omicron and its many subvariants have circulated. Only 5% of this age group, which is eligible for Covid-19 vaccination at 6 months of age, has been fully vaccinated. Ninety percent of children under the age of 4 are still unvaccinated.

    “The most concerning data point that I saw this whole day was that extremely low vaccination coverage in 6 months to 2 years of age and also 2 years to 4 years of age,” said Dr. Amanda Cohn, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Birth Defects and Infant Disorders. “We have to do much, much better.”

    Cohn says that having a single vaccine against Covid-19 in the US for both primary and booster doses would go a long way toward making the process less complicated and would help get more children vaccinated.

    Others feel that convenience is important but also stressed that data supported the switch.

    “This isn’t only a convenience thing, to increase the number of people who are vaccinated, which I agree with my colleagues is extremely important for all the evidence that was related, but I also think moving towards the strains that are circulating is very important, so I would also say the science supports this move,” said Dr. Hayley Gans, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Stanford University.

    Many others on the committee were similarly satisfied after seeing new data on the vaccine effectiveness of the bivalent boosters, which are cutting the risk of getting sick, being hospitalized or dying from a Covid-19 infection.

    “I’m totally convinced that the bivalent vaccine is beneficial as a primary series and as a booster series. Furthermore, the updated vaccine safety data are really encouraging so far,” said Dr. David Kim, director of the the US Department of Health and Human Services’ National Vaccine Program, in public discussion after the vote.

    Thursday’s vote is part of a larger plan by the FDA to simplify and improve the way Covid-19 vaccines are given in the US.

    The agency has proposed a plan to convene its vaccine advisers – called the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC – each year in May or June to assess whether the instructions in the Covid-19 vaccines should be changed to more closely match circulating strains of the virus.

    The time frame was chosen to give manufacturers about three months to redesign their shots and get new doses to pharmacies in time for fall.

    “The object, of course – before anyone says anything – is not to chase variants. None of us think that’s realistic,” said Jerry Weir, director of the Division of Viral Products in the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review.

    “But I think our experience so far, with the bivalent vaccines that we have, does indicate that we can continue to make improvements to the vaccine, and that would be the goal of these meetings,” Weir said.

    In discussions after the vote, committee members were supportive of this plan but pointed out many of the things we still don’t understand about Covid-19 and vaccination that are likely to complicate the task of updating the vaccines.

    For example, we now seem to have Covid-19 surges in the summer as well as the winter, noted Dr. Michael Nelson, an allergist and immunologist at the University of Virginia. Are the surges related? And if so, is fall the best time to being a vaccination campaign?

    The CDC’s Dr. Jefferson Jones said that with only three years of experience with the virus, it’s really too early to understand its seasonality.

    Other important questions related to the durability of the mRNA vaccines and whether other platforms might offer longer protection.

    “We can’t keep doing what we’re doing,” said Dr. Bruce Gellin, chief of global public health strategy at the Rockefeller Foundation. “It’s been articulated in every one of these meetings despite how good these vaccines are. We need better vaccines.”

    The committee also encouraged both government and industry scientists to provide a fuller picture of how vaccination and infection affect immunity.

    One of the main ways researchers measure the effectiveness of the vaccines is by looking at how much they increase front-line defenders called neutralizing antibodies.

    Neutralizing antibodies are like firefighters that rush to the scene of an infection to contain it and put it out. They’re great in a crisis, but they tend to diminish in numbers over time if they’re not needed. Other components of the immune system like B-cells and T-cells hang on to the memory of a virus and stand ready to respond if the body encounters it again.

    Scientists don’t understand much about how well Covid-19 vaccination boosts these responses and how long that protection lasts.

    Another puzzle will be how to pick the strains that are in the vaccines.

    The process of selecting strains for influenza vaccines is a global effort that relies on surveillance data from other countries. This works because influenza strains tend to become dominant and sweep around the world. But Covid-19 strains haven’t worked in quite the same way. Some that have driven large waves in other countries have barely made it into the US variant mix.

    “Going forward, it is still challenging. Variants don’t sweep across the world quite as uniform, like they seem to with influenza,” the FDA’s Weir said. “But our primary responsibility is what’s best for the US market, and that’s where our focus will be.”

    Eventually, the FDA hopes that Americans would be able to get an updated Covid-19 shot once a year, the same way they do for the flu. People who are unlikely to have an adequate response to a single dose of the vaccine – such as the elderly or those with a weakened immune system – may need more doses, as would people who are getting Covid-19 vaccines for the first time.

    At Thursday’s meeting, the advisory committee also heard more about a safety signal flagged by a government surveillance system called the Vaccine Safety Datalink.

    The CDC and the FDA reported January 13 that this system, which relies on health records from a network of large hospital systems in the US, had detected a potential safety issue with Pfizer’s bivalent boosters.

    In this database, people 65 and older who got a Pfizer bivalent booster were slightly more likely to have a stroke caused by a blood clot within three weeks of their vaccination than people who had gotten a bivalent booster but were 22 to 42 days after their shot.

    After a thorough review of other vaccine safety data in the US and in other countries that use Pfizer bivalent boosters, the agencies concluded that the stroke risk was probably a statistical fluke and said no changes to vaccination schedules were recommended.

    At Thursday’s meeting, Dr. Nicola Klein, a senior research scientist with Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, explained how they found the signal.

    The researchers compared people who’d gotten a vaccine within the past three weeks against people who were 22 to 42 days away from their shots because this helps eliminate bias in the data.

    When they looked to see how many people had strokes around the time of their vaccination, they found an imbalance in the data.

    Of 550,000 people over 65 who’d received a Pfizer bivalent booster, 130 had a stroke caused by a blood clot within three weeks of vaccination, compared with 92 people in the group farther out from their shots.

    The researchers spotted the signal the week of November 27, and it continued for about seven weeks. The signal has diminished over time, falling from an almost two-fold risk in November to a 47% risk in early January, Klein said. In the past few days, it hasn’t been showing up at all.

    Klein said they didn’t see the signal in any of the other age groups or with the group that got Moderna boosters. They also didn’t see a difference when they compared Pfizer-boosted seniors with those who were eligible for a bivalent booster but hadn’t gotten one.

    Further analyses have suggested that the signal might be happening not because people who are within three weeks of a Pfizer booster are having more strokes, but because people who are within 22 to 42 days of their Pfizer boosters are actually having fewer strokes.

    Overall, Klein said, they were seeing fewer strokes than expected in this population over that period of time, suggesting a statistical fluke.

    Another interesting thing that popped out of this data, however, was a possible association between strokes and high-dose flu vaccination. Seniors who got both shots on the same day and were within three weeks of those shots had twice the rate of stroke compared with those who were 22 to 42 days away from their shots.

    What’s more, Klein said, the researchers didn’t see the same association between stroke and time since vaccination in people who didn’t get their flu vaccine on the same day.

    The total number of strokes in the population of people who got flu shots and Covid-19 boosters on the same day is small, however, which makes the association a shaky one.

    “I don’t think that the evidence are sufficient to conclude that there’s an association there,” said Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office.

    Nonetheless, Richard Forshee, deputy director of the FDA’s Office of Biostatistics and Pharmacovigilance, said the FDA is planning to look at these safety questions further using data collected by Medicare.

    The FDA confirmed that the agency is taking a closer look.

    “The purpose of the study is 1) to evaluate the preliminary ischemic stroke signal reported by CDC using an independent data set and more robust epidemiological methods; and 2) to evaluate whether there is an elevated risk of ischemic stroke with the COVID-19 bivalent vaccine if it is given on the same day as a high-dose or adjuvanted seasonal influenza vaccine,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

    The FDA did not give a time frame for when these studies might have results.

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  • Five former Memphis police officers indicted on charges of murder and kidnapping in Tyre Nichols’ death | CNN

    Five former Memphis police officers indicted on charges of murder and kidnapping in Tyre Nichols’ death | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Five former Memphis police officers who were fired for their actions during the arrest of Tyre Nichols earlier this month were indicted on charges including murder and kidnapping, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy announced Thursday.

    The former officers, Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr., have each been charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, two charges of aggravated kidnapping, two charges of official misconduct and one charge of official oppression, Mulroy said.

    “While each of the five individuals played a different role in the incident in question, the actions of all of them resulted in the death of Tyre Nichols, and they are all responsible,” he said.

    Live updates on the Tyre Nichols case

    Second-degree murder is defined in Tennessee as a “knowing killing of another” and is considered a Class A felony punishable by between 15 to 60 years in prison.

    The criminal charges come about three weeks after Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was hospitalized after a traffic stop and “confrontation” with Memphis police that family attorneys have called a savage beating. Nichols died from his injuries on January 10, three days after the arrest, authorities said.

    Four of the officers remained in custody Thursday evening, after being booked into the Shelby County Jail. Bond was set at $350,000 for Haley, 30, and Martin, 30, and $250,000 for Bean, 24, and Smith, 28, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Mills, 32, posted $250,000 bond Thursday evening and was released, according to jail records.

    In a joint news conference Thursday afternoon, Blake Ballin, an attorney for Mills, and William Massey, Martin’s attorney, said they have not yet watched the video of the police encounter, which is expected to be released to the public Friday.

    Ballin described Mills as a “respectful father,” who was “devastated” to be accused in the killing. Mills, previously a jailer in Mississippi and Tennessee, was in the process of posting bond Thursday to secure his release and plans to enter a not guilty plea in court, his attorney said. Ballin said he had not spoken to Mills specifically about Nichols.

    Martin also intended to post bond and will also plead not guilty, his attorney said. “No one out there that night intended for Tyre Nichols to die,” Massey said.

    Other officers’ attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    Police nationwide have been under heightened scrutiny for how they treat Black people, particularly since the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and the mass protest movement known as Black Lives Matter. Officials in Memphis have braced for potential civil unrest due to Nichols’ death and have called for peaceful protests.

    President Joe Biden said in a Thursday statement the killing is a “painful reminder that we must do more to ensure that our criminal justice system lives up to the promise of fair and impartial justice, equal treatment, and dignity for all.”

    Video of the fatal police encounter, a mix of body-camera and pole-cam video, is expected to be released publicly after 6 p.m. Friday, Mulroy said.

    Speaking to CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday night, Mulroy said that while he can’t definitively say what caused the encounter to escalate, the video shows that the officers were “already highly charged up” from the start of the video and “it just escalated further from there.”

    The video doesn’t capture the beginning of the altercation between the officers and Nichols but rather “cuts in as the first encounter is in progress,” Mulroy said.

    “What struck me (about the video) is how many different incidents of unwarranted force occurred sporadically by different individuals over a long period of time,” the district attorney added.

    Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch said the fatal encounter was not proper policing.

    “I’m sickened by what I saw and what we’ve learned from our extensive and thorough investigation,” he said. “I’ve seen the video, and as DA Mulroy stated, you will too. In a word, it’s absolutely appalling.”

    Nichols’ family and attorneys were shown the video on Monday and said it shows officers severely beating Nichols and compared it to the Los Angeles police beating of Rodney King in 1991.

    “The news today from Memphis officials that these five officers are being held criminally accountable for their deadly and brutal actions gives us hope as we continue to push for justice for Tyre,” attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci said Thursday.

    Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis took on the position in June 2021.

    The five Memphis police officers, who are also Black, were fired last week for violating policies on excessive use of force, duty to intervene and duty to render aid, the department said.

    In a YouTube video released late Wednesday, Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis condemned the officers’ actions and called for peaceful protests when the arrest video is released.

    “This is not just a professional failing. This is a failing of basic humanity toward another individual,” Davis said in the video, her first on-camera comments about the arrest. “This incident was heinous, reckless and inhumane.”

    “I expect our citizens to exercise their First Amendment right to protest to demand action and results. But we need to ensure our community is safe in this process,” said Davis, the first Black woman to serve as Memphis police chief. “None of this is a calling card for inciting violence or destruction on our community or against our citizens.”

    The five terminated officers all joined the department in the last six years, according to police. Other Memphis police officers are still under investigation for department policy violations related to the incident, the chief said.

    In a statement posted Thursday, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said the city had initiated an “outside, independent review” of the training, policies and operations of the police department’s specialized units. At least two of the officers belonged to one of those special units, according to their attorneys.

    Two members of the city’s fire department who were part of Nichols’ “initial patient care” also were relieved of duty, a fire spokesperson said. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced an investigation into Nichols’ death and the US Department of Justice and FBI have opened a civil rights investigation.

    Mulroy said the investigation is ongoing and there could be further charges going forward.

    Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies nationwide are bracing for protests and potential unrest following the release of video, multiple sources told CNN.

    The Memphis Police Department has terminated five police officers in connection with the death of Tyre Nichols. Top: Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmit Martin. Bottom: Desmond Mills Jr., Justin Smith

    Nichols, the father of a 4-year-old, had worked with his stepfather at FedEx for about nine months, his family said. He was fond of skateboarding in Shelby Farms Park, Starbucks with friends and photographing sunsets, and he had his mother’s name tattooed on his arm, the family said. He also had the digestive issue known as Crohn’s disease and so was a slim 140 to 145 pounds despite his 6-foot-3-inch height, his mother said.

    On January 7, he was pulled over by Memphis officers on suspicion of reckless driving, police said in their initial statement on the incident. As officers approached the vehicle, a “confrontation” occurred and Nichols fled on foot, police said. The officers pursued him and they had another “confrontation” before he was taken into custody, police said.

    Nichols then complained of shortness of breath, was taken to a local hospital in critical condition and died three days later, police said.

    In Memphis police scanner audio, a person says there was “one male Black running” and called to “set up a perimeter.” Another message says “he’s fighting at this time.”

    On Thursday, Mulroy offered a few further details, saying the serious injuries occurred at the second confrontation. He also said Nichols was taken away in an ambulance after “some period of time of waiting around.”

    Attorneys for Nichols’ family who watched video of the arrest on Monday described it as a heinous police beating that lasted three long minutes. Crump said Nichols was tased, pepper-sprayed and restrained, and Romanucci said he was kicked.

    “He was defenseless the entire time. He was a human piñata for those police officers. It was an unadulterated, unabashed, nonstop beating of this young boy for three minutes. That is what we saw in that video,” Romanucci said. “Not only was it violent, it was savage.”

    Nichols had “extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating,” according to the attorneys, citing preliminary results of an autopsy they commissioned.

    Among the charges, the officers were indicted on two counts of aggravated kidnapping: one for possession of a weapon and one for bodily injury.

    “At a certain point in the sequence of events, it is our view that this, if it was a legal detention to begin with, it certainly became illegal at a certain point, and it was an unlawful detention,” Mulroy said.

    Less than a month after the murder of Floyd, the Memphis Police Department amended its duty to intervene policy, according to a copy of the policy sent to CNN by the MPD.

    “Any member who directly observes another member engaged in dangerous or criminal conduct or abuse of a subject shall take reasonable action to intervene,” the policy, sent out on June 9, 2020, said.

    “A member shall immediately report to the Department any violation of policies and regulations or any other improper conduct which is contrary to the policy, order, or directives of the Department.”

    The policy went on to say “this reporting requirement also applies to allegations of uses of force not yet reported.”

    Correction: A previous version of this story gave the wrong spelling for the name of one of the arrested officers. According to the indictment, it is Tadarrius Bean.

    Previous versions of this story spelled Emmitt Martin’s name incorrectly.

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  • First on CNN: National Archives asks former presidents and vice presidents to check for classified and presidential documents | CNN Politics

    First on CNN: National Archives asks former presidents and vice presidents to check for classified and presidential documents | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The National Archives is formally asking former presidents and vice presidents to re-check their personal records for any classified documents or other presidential records in the wake of classified documents discovered in the homes of former President Donald Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence and President Joe Biden over the last year.

    The Archives sent a letter Thursday to representatives of former presidents and vice presidents from the last six presidential administrations covered by the Presidential Records Act (PRA) – from former President Ronald Reagan’s White House to the present.

    The letter, which was reviewed by CNN, requests that they check their files to ensure that material thought to be personal does not “inadvertently” contain presidential records that are required by law to be turned over to the Archives.

    “The responsibility to comply with the PRA does not diminish after the end of an administration,” the letter states. “Therefore, we request that you conduct an assessment of any materials held outside of NARA that relate to the Administration for which you serve as a designated representative under the PRA, to determine whether bodies of materials previously assumed to be personal in nature might inadvertently contain Presidential or Vice Presidential records subject to the PRA, whether classified or unclassified.”

    The letter notes that “while much of the attention of these instances has focused on the classified information, the PRA requires that all Presidential records of every Administration from Reagan onward must be transferred to NARA, regardless of classification status.”

    The Archives sent the letter to representatives for former Presidents Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, and former Vice Presidents Pence, Biden, Dick Cheney, Al Gore and Dan Quayle.

    Freddy Ford, chief of staff to former President George W. Bush, quickly responded to the letter Thursday: “Thank you for your note. We understand its purpose and remain confident that no such materials are in our possession.”

    Representatives for four former presidents have previously told CNN they do not have any classified records in their possession. The representatives for former Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama and the late George H.W. Bush all told CNN that all classified records had been turned over to the National Archives upon leaving office.

    Former President Jimmy Carter did not receive a letter from the Archives, since he is technically exempt from the Presidential Records ACT. Though Carter signed the PRA into existence, it did not become effective until he left office.

    A source familiar with the Archives told CNN that they did not remember Carter finding any stray classified documents.

    Quayle confirmed to CNN that everything was turned over to the Archives, and sources familiar with the records of Cheney said he also turned everything over when he left the White House. A spokesperson for Gore said he and his staff turned everything over when leaving the White House and no classified material has been discovered since.

    In the most recent case, Pence turned over roughly a dozen classified documents to the FBI, as CNN first reported this week, in what is now the third case of a current or former White House occupants possessing classified material at his home or office. Out of an abundance of caution, Pence also provided four boxes of unclassified material to the National Archives to make sure nothing else in his possession fell under the Presidential Records Act.

    Trump had more than 300 classified documents in his possession at his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort, while Biden had ten classified documents at his former private office in Washington. Further batches of classified documents were subsequently found at Biden’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Video: How Elon Musk’s Twitter drama impacts Tesla and how ChatGPT can be useful to students on CNN Nightcap | CNN Business

    Video: How Elon Musk’s Twitter drama impacts Tesla and how ChatGPT can be useful to students on CNN Nightcap | CNN Business

    CNN’s Allison Morrow tells “Nightcap’s” Jon Sarlin that Elon Musk’s Twitter antics are damaging Tesla’s brand. Plus, high school teacher Cherie Shields argues that ChatGPT is an excellent teaching tool and schools are making a mistake if they ban the AI technology. To get the day’s business headlines sent directly to your inbox, sign up for the Nightcap newsletter.

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  • Tyre Nichols was a son and father who enjoyed skateboarding, photography and sunsets, his family says | CNN

    Tyre Nichols was a son and father who enjoyed skateboarding, photography and sunsets, his family says | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Tyre Nichols was a father, a man who loved his mama and a free-spirited soul who was looking for a new life in Memphis, Tennessee.

    That life was tragically cut short earlier this month after a violent arrest by five officers with the Memphis Police.

    Now, as attention turns to the five former officers being charged with second-degree murder in Nichols’ death, according to court documents, Nichols’ family wants the world to know the man Nichols was.

    The 29-year-old was the baby of his family, the youngest of four children. He was a “good boy” who spent his Sundays doing laundry and getting ready for the week, his mother, Ravaughn Wells, said.

    “Does that sound like somebody that the police said did all these bad things?” Wells said. “Nobody’s perfect OK, but he was damn near.”

    “I know everybody says that they had a good son, and everybody’s son is good, but my son, he actually was a good boy,” she said.

    Above all else, Nichols loved being a father and loved his son, his family said.

    “Everything he was trying to do was to better himself as a father for his 4-year-old son,” attorney Benjamin Crump said at the family’s news conference.

    Nichols was someone who brought everyone joy. “When he comes through the door, he wants to give you a hug,” Crump said, speaking on behalf of Nichols’ family.

    Nichols moved to Memphis right before the Covid-19 pandemic and got stuck there when things shut down, his mother said. “But he was OK with it because he loved his mother,” she added.

    His mom said he loved her “to death” – so much so that he inked it permanently.

    “He had my name tattooed on his arm, and that made me proud because most kids don’t put their mom’s name, but he did,” Wells said with a laugh.

    “My son was a beautiful soul and he touched everyone,” she said.

    Nichols became friends with an unlikely group of people because they kept showing up to the same Starbucks around the same time in the morning, his friend Nate Spates Jr. said.

    A couple times a week, these five or six friends would sit together, put their phones away so they could be present and enjoy each other’s company, said Spates, who met Nichols about a year ago at a Starbucks in Germantown, Tennessee.

    The group didn’t talk much about their personal lives, and they never touched politics. But sports, particularly football, and Nichols’ favorite team, the San Francisco 49ers, were regular topics.

    Nichols was a “free spirited person, a gentleman who marched to the beat of his own drum,” Spates told CNN. “He liked what he liked. If you liked what he liked – fine. If you didn’t – fine.”

    Spates said he saw himself in Nichols and recognized a young man who was trying to find his own way and learning to believe in himself.

    He saw Nichols grow and start to believe he could do whatever “he set out to do in this world,” Spates said.

    Spates’ favorite memory of Ty, as he called Nichols, was last year on Spates’ birthday, when Nichols met Spates’ wife and 3-year-old at their usual Starbucks. He watched Nichols play with his toddler and talk to his wife with kindness.

    “When we left, my wife said, ‘I just really like his soul. He’s got such a good spirit,’” Spates said.

    “To speak about someone’s soul is very deep,” he said. “I’ll never forget when she said that. I’ll always remember that about him.”

    Tyre Nichols loved his mother so much, he got a tattoo of her name.

    Spates joins the rest of Nichols’ family and wider Memphis community in being frustrated at the lack of information that has come out about the traffic stop that resulted in Nichols’ death. He said he’s had to do a lot of compartmentalizing to be able to even speak about his friend.

    “I just hope that this truly does open up honest dialogue, and not dialogue until the next one happens, but a dialogue for change,” he said.

    Nichols’ daily life was ordinary at times, as he worked and spent time with family, but he also made time for his passions, his mom, Wells, said.

    After his Starbucks sessions, he would come home and take a nap before heading to work, said Wells, with whom he was living. Nichols worked the second shift at FedEx, where he had been employed for about nine months, she said.

    He came home during his break to eat with his mom, who would have dinner cooked.

    Nichols loved his mom’s homemade chicken, made with sesame seeds, just the way he liked it, Wells said.

    When he wasn’t working, Nichols headed to Shelby Farms Park to skateboard, something he had been doing since he was 6 years old. He would wake up on Saturdays to go skate or sometimes, he’d go to the park to enjoy the sunset and snap photos of it, his mom said.

    “My son every night wanted to go and look at the sunset, that was his passion.”

    Photography was a form of self-expression that writing could never capture for Nichols, who wrote that it helped him look “at the world in a more creative way,” on his photography website.

    While he snapped everything from action shots of sports to bodies of water, landscape photography was his favorite, he wrote.

    “I hope to one day let people see what i see and to hopefully admire my work based on the quality and ideals of my work,” he wrote. He signed the post: “Your friend, – Tyre D. Nichols.”

    Tyre Nichols does tricks on his board in a YouTube video, which was shown at a news conference by his family's attorney Crump.

    Skating was another way Nichols showed the world his personality. A video montage of Nichols on YouTube shows his face up close with the sun shining behind him before he coasts up and down a ramp on his skateboard. He grinds the rail and does tricks on his board in the video, which was shown at a news conference by his family’s attorney Crump.

    Sunsets, skateboarding and his positive nature were all things that Nichols was known for, longtime friend Angelina Paxton told The Commercial Appeal, a local paper.

    Skating was a big part of his life in Sacramento, California, where he lived before he moved to Memphis, Paxton said.

    “He was his own person and didn’t care if he didn’t fit into what a traditional Black man was supposed to be in California. He had such a free spirit and skating gave him his wings,” Paxton said.

    Paxton and Nichols met when they were 11 years old and attending a youth group, she told the Appeal.

    “Tyre was someone who knew everyone, and everyone had a positive image of him because that’s who he was,” Paxton said. “Every church knew him; every youth group knew him.”

    When Paxton found out about Nichols’ death, she crumbled, she told CNN affiliate WMC.

    “My knees gave out,” she told WMC. “I just fell because I could not believe that someone with such light was taken out in such a dark way.”

    Paxton attended Nichols’ memorial service earlier this month in Memphis. She said she represented the people in California who knew him and wanted to support his family.

    “There would be a couple thousand people in this room,” Paxton told WMC, if the memorial had been in Sacramento. “He was such an innocent person. He was such a light. This could have been any of us.”

    For his family, seeing the turnout and feeling the outpouring of support meant a lot.

    Nichols’ stepfather Rodney Wells told WMC: “My son is a community person, so this (memorial) was good to see.”

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  • The US economy grew by 2.9% in the fourth quarter, more than expected | CNN Business

    The US economy grew by 2.9% in the fourth quarter, more than expected | CNN Business


    Minneapolis
    CNN
     — 

    The US economy expanded again during the fourth quarter, registering solid growth to end 2022 even as consumers and businesses battled historically high inflation and rising interest rates.

    Gross domestic product — the broadest measure of economic activity — increased at an annualized rate of 2.9% from October to December last year, according to Commerce Department data released Thursday. For 2022, GDP expanded 2.1%, the report showed.

    “It seems that the zeitgeist is very negative these days on the economy, so I’m seeing people pick apart these numbers, and the numbers are good,” said Robert Frick, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. “We shouldn’t expect them to be fantastic, because the economy is slowing down … but they were still very positive.”

    Last quarter’s 2.9% expansion, while a step back from the 3.2% annualized growth seen in the third quarter, represents continued improvement on the first half of the year when GDP shrank.

    Following 2021, which saw GDP growth of 5.9% — the highest since 1984 — last year kicked off with two back-to-back quarters of contraction. Those declines set off alarm bells, since two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth mark a rule-of-thumb, but unofficial, definition of a recession.

    However, 2022 was a year of transition as the economy continued to recover from the pandemic. Imbalances in trade and inventories had an outsized effect on the GDP data in the earlier parts of the year.

    But businesses have since readjusted to snarls in the supply chain, and consumers have shifted their spending away from furniture, bikes and other goods and toward services like travel and dining out.

    The robust economic growth registered during the fourth quarter was mostly fueled by a “shockingly resilient consumer,” said John Leer, chief economist at Morning Consult.

    However, there are signs that’s starting to wane, he said.

    Fourth-quarter consumer spending, which was primarily focused in services sectors, increased 2.1%, a tick down from the 2.3% gain in the third quarter, according to Thursday’s report.

    “Consumers are increasingly struggling to navigate the ongoing effects from the spike in prices last year by drawing on credit and savings,” Leer said. “With consumer demand likely to continue its downward trajectory, business investment is also likely to slow in the coming quarters, increasing the probability of a recession this year.”

    Last year, inflation ballooned to a 40-year high and remained stubbornly elevated, chipping away at consumers’ finances and their confidence. The Federal Reserve embarked on a heavy-handed effort to quickly ramp up interest rates to help tamp down demand and lower inflation. While monetary policy changes require some time to take effect, certain areas of the economy (notably housing) have already grown considerably weaker.

    Thursday’s report showed residential fixed investment slumped 26.7% during the final three months of the year, slightly narrower than the third-quarter plunge of 27.1%. Business investment in equipment fell 3.7% during the final quarter of the year.

    Inflation, which is slowing, remains the wild card for 2023, Frick said.

    “Inflation is the bogeyman here, and the smaller the bogeyman we have, the less pressure there is on all of the other things that are holding up the economy — consumer spending, business spending, government spending,” he told CNN.

    Expect the first six months of the year to be very dynamic, he said.

    “A lot of it is going to depend on which of these things fades the fastest: If it’s inflation, we’re in great shape; and if it’s consumer spending, we’re in not-so great shape,” he said. “But I think there are a lot more positives that we’re looking at now than we were in November.”

    Economists were expecting fourth-quarter GDP to grow at an annualized adjusted rate of 2.6%, according to Refinitiv.

    Thursday’s GDP figures are the first of three official estimates to be released by the Commerce Department for the fourth quarter. GDP data is often revised, sometimes years later.

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  • ChatGPT passes exams from law and business schools | CNN Business

    ChatGPT passes exams from law and business schools | CNN Business



    CNN
     — 

    ChatGPT is smart enough to pass prestigious graduate-level exams – though not with particularly high marks.

    The powerful new AI chatbot tool recently passed law exams in four courses at the University of Minnesota and another exam at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, according to professors at the schools.

    To test how well ChatGPT could generate answers on exams for the four courses, professors at the University of Minnesota Law School recently graded the tests blindly. After completing 95 multiple choice questions and 12 essay questions, the bot performed on average at the level of a C+ student, achieving a low but passing grade in all four courses.

    ChatGPT fared better during a business management course exam at Wharton, where it earned a B to B- grade. In a paper detailing the performance, Christian Terwiesch, a Wharton business professor, said ChatGPT did “an amazing job” at answering basic operations management and process-analysis questions but struggled with more advanced prompts and made “surprising mistakes” with basic math.

    “These mistakes can be massive in magnitude,” he wrote.

    The test results come as a growing number of schools and teachers express concerns about the immediate impact of ChatGPT on students and their ability to cheat on assignments. Some educators are now moving with remarkable speed to rethink their assignments in response to ChatGPT, even as it remains unclear how widespread use is of the tool among students and how harmful it could really be to learning.

    Since it was made available in late November, ChatGPT has been used to generate original essays, stories and song lyrics in response to user prompts. It has drafted research paper abstracts that fooled some scientists. Some CEOs have even used it to write emails or do accounting work.

    ChatGPT is trained on vast amounts of online data in order to generate responses to user prompts. While it has gained traction among users, it has also raised some concerns, including about inaccuracies and its potential to perpetuate biases and spread misinformation.

    Jon Choi, one of the University of Minnesota law professors, told CNN the goal of the tests was to explore ChatGPT’s potential to assist lawyers in their practice and to help students in exams, whether or not it’s permitted by their professors, because the questions often mimic the writing lawyers do in real life.

    “ChatGPT struggled with the most classic components of law school exams, such as spotting potential legal issues and deep analysis applying legal rules to the facts of a case,” Choi said. “But ChatGPT could be very helpful at producing a first draft that a student could then refine.”

    He argues human-AI collaboration is the most promising use case for ChatGPT and similar technology.

    “My strong hunch is that AI assistants will become standard tools for lawyers in the near future, and law schools should prepare their students for that eventuality,” he said. “Of course, if law professors want to continue to test simple recall of legal rules and doctrines, they’ll need to put restrictions in place like banning the internet during exams to enforce that.”

    Likewise, Wharton’s Terwiesch found the chatbot was “remarkably good” at modifying its answers in response to human hints, such as reworking answers after pointing out an error, suggesting the potential for people to work together with AI.

    In the short-term, however, discomfort remains with whether and how students should use ChatGPT. Public schools in New York City and Seattle, for example, have already banned students and teachers from using ChatGPT on the district’s networks and devices.

    Considering ChatGPT performed above average on his exam, Terwiesch told CNN he agrees restrictions should be put in place for students while they’re taking tests.

    “Bans are needed,” he said. “After all, when you give a medical doctor a degree, you want them to know medicine, not how to use a bot. The same holds for other skill certification, including law and business.”

    But Terwiesch believes this technology still ultimately has a place in the classroom. “If all we end up with is the same educational system as before, we have wasted an amazing opportunity that comes with ChatGPT,” he said.

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  • Emhoff to visit Auschwitz to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day | CNN Politics

    Emhoff to visit Auschwitz to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff is traveling this week to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, visiting key sites in Poland and Germany to honor those lost in the Holocaust and renew a pledge to “Never Forget.”

    As the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president, Emhoff has made countering the recent global scourge of antisemitism a key priority. The goals of this trip abroad will build on that, senior administration officials told reporters before his departure, focused on Holocaust education and remembrance, as well as combating antisemitism worldwide.

    “There will be many events focusing on honoring the victims of the Holocaust, and having a second gentleman educating the public on the true nature of the Holocaust. You will see the second gentleman push back against Holocaust denial, distortion and disinformation, and educating the next generation about the Holocaust,” a senior administration official said.

    Emhoff, the official added, “will be meeting with and working with our European partners, both those in and out of government to strengthen our efforts to combat the rise in antisemitism and to deepen our relationships with these European partners as we take on the challenge together.”

    The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, which has tracked incidents of US antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assault since 1979, found 2,717 incidents of antisemitism in the US in 2021, up a significant 34% from the previous year. And in recent months, there have been multiple incidents of incendiary antisemitic incidents in the public sphere, including tweets from Kanye West, a link posted by Brooklyn Nets player Kyrie Irving to a video filled with antisemitic tropes, a sign over a major Los Angeles bridge and other troubling views shared by political figures.

    The second gentleman has a packed schedule of events aimed at highlighting Jewish history and the Holocaust, and combating antisemitism, though officials cast the trip as “more of a listening session” than focused on “big policy deliverables.”

    On Friday, marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Emhoff is set to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Memorial and Museum in Poland, where he will receive a tour, then participate in a candle-lighting and wreath-laying. He will also attend the commemoration of the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz, per his office.

    On Saturday, Emhoff will visit Schindler’s Enamel Factory museum, a key site commemorating the Holocaust, and attend a roundtable on antisemitism in Krakow.

    “The goal here is to hear directly from experts, religious leaders, and academics on their work in Poland to promote tolerance, education, and inclusiveness. And throughout that, the second gentleman will be signaling to them our eagerness to work with them and that we are with them in their fight,” the official said.

    He is also set to meet with Ukrainian refugees and United Nations officials at a UN community center.

    On Sunday, he will tour Krakow’s Jewish quarter and then visit historic Jewish sites in Gorlice, Poland, before traveling to Berlin.

    In Berlin on Monday, Emhoff joins a Convening of Special Envoys and Coordinators on Combating Antisemitism, where he will be joined by US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt. He is later set to visit Berlin’s Topography of Terror Museum and the Museum of Jewish Life.

    On Tuesday, he will participate in a roundtable with interfaith leaders.

    “Interfaith dialogue has been an area of focus for a second gentleman. And the basic idea is here, which he will be speaking about throughout the trip, is that we know that Semitism is not only a threat to Jews, it is often accompanied or the precursor to other forms of hatred and intolerance, including against other ethnic or religious minority groups or immigrants. So we view this engagement as about building coalitions across all groups to combat hate in all its forms,” the senior official said.

    Emhoff will meet with Ukrainian refugees at the Oranienburgerstrasse Synagogue. He will also visit multiple memorials, including the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, where he will meet with “a small group” of Holocaust survivors.

    The trip takes on special significance for Emhoff, whose “great grandparents (fled) persecution from what is now Poland at the beginning of the 19th century,” the senior official said.

    “That is a pretty incredible moment for him to return as an American Jew, as the first second gentleman, as the first Jewish spouse of the president or vice president, and work on these issues,” the official said.

    Emhoff has previously warned of an “epidemic of hate facing our country” as he convened a roundtable on antisemitism at the White House last month.

    “We’re seeing a rapid rise in antisemitic rhetoric and acts,” Emhoff said at the start of the roundtable. “Let me be clear: words matter. People are no longer saying the quiet parts out loud – they are literally screaming them.”

    In addition to the roundtable, as second gentleman, Emhoff has met with students to discuss domestic antisemitism, hosted a virtual Seder, lit the menorah and affixed a mezuzah outside the entrance of the vice president’s Naval Observatory residence.

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  • Brett Kavanaugh Fast Facts | CNN

    Brett Kavanaugh Fast Facts | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

    Birth date: February 12, 1965

    Birth place: Washington, DC

    Birth name: Brett Michael Kavanaugh

    Father: Everett Edward Kavanaugh Jr., president of a trade association

    Mother: Martha Kavanaugh, teacher, prosecutor and judge

    Marriage: Ashley (Estes) Kavanaugh

    Children: Liza and Margaret

    Education: Yale College, B.A., 1987, graduated cum laude; Yale Law School, J.D., 1990

    Religion: Roman Catholic

    Regularly taught courses on separation of powers and on the Supreme Court at Harvard Law School.

    Kavanaugh finished the Boston Marathon in 2010 and in 2015.

    1990-1991 – Law clerk to Judge Walter Stapleton of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

    1991-1992 – Clerks for Judge Alex Kozinski of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

    1992-1993 – Attorney with the Solicitor General’s Office at the Department of Justice.

    1993-1994 – Serves as law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy.

    1994-1997 and 1998 – Associate counsel for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s Whitewater investigation, which leads to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

    1997-1998 and 1999-2001 – Partner at Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, DC.

    2001-2003 – Serves as associate counsel and then senior associate counsel to President George W. Bush.

    July 25, 2003 – Bush nominates Kavanaugh to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but the Senate doesn’t vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination for almost three years.

    July 2003-May 2006 – Serves as assistant and staff secretary to Bush.

    May 26, 2006 – The Senate confirms Kavanaugh to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals by a vote of 57-36.

    May 30, 2006 – Sworn in by Kennedy.

    July 9, 2018 – President Donald Trump announces Kavanaugh as his nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by Kennedy’s retirement.

    September 4-7, 2018 – Confirmation hearings are held on Capitol Hill. A Senate Judiciary Committee vote is tentatively slated for the week of September 17.

    September 16, 2018 – The Washington Post publishes an article about a California psychology professor who accuses Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her when they were both teenagers at a house party during the early 1980s. Christine Blasey Ford says she initially sent a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein about the incident when Kavanaugh’s name was included on a shortlist for the Supreme Court. Ford tells the newspaper she initially did not want to go public but she decided to talk on the record because her letter to Feinstein had been leaked to the media. Kavanaugh denies that such an incident ever took place.

    September 23, 2018 – The New Yorker magazine publishes a report about a second allegation of sexual misconduct, prompting Feinstein to call for a postponement of confirmation proceedings. The magazine article centers on a college classmate from Yale, Deborah Ramirez who says Kavanaugh exposed himself to her while a group of students were drinking at a party in a dorm during the 1983-1984 academic year. Kavanaugh denies the allegation and a White House spokeswoman dismisses the claim as uncorroborated.

    September 27, 2018 – Kavanaugh and Ford testify during an all-day hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    September 28, 2018 – GOP Senator Jeff Flake, a member of the Judiciary Committee, agrees to vote yes, paving the way to a floor vote but he says the FBI should reopen its background investigation of Kavanaugh and spend a week looking into claims made by Kavanaugh’s accusers. Trump later agrees to direct the FBI to reopen its background check but the probe will be limited in scope and must be completed in a week.

    October 3, 2018 – The FBI completes its supplemental background check and sends the information to the Senate late in the day.

    October 4, 2018 – The Wall Street Journal publishes an op-ed by Kavanaugh in which argues that he is an independent, impartial judge. He expresses regret for a few of his statements during the September 27 hearing, explaining that he was frustrated and emotional. He pledges, going forward, that litigants and colleagues will be treated with respect. The same day, retired Justice John Paul Stevens says that Kavanaugh’s comments during his confirmation hearings suggest bias. Stevens says Kavanaugh should not serve on the Supreme Court.

    October 6, 2018 – The Senate confirms Kavanaugh with a 50-48 vote. He is sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts during a private ceremony. The vote takes place amid public protests for and against Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

    September 14, 2019 – The New York Times publishes an article adapted from a forthcoming book, “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh” that contains a new allegation of college sexual misconduct. According to the report, the FBI did not investigate the new allegation and the bureau did not speak with witnesses to verify Ramirez’s original claim.

    July 2020 – An exclusive CNN report says Kavanaugh urged his colleagues in a series of private memos this spring to consider avoiding decisions in major disputes over abortion and Democratic subpoenas for Trump’s financial records, according to multiple sources familiar with the inner workings of the court.

    October 28, 2020 – Kavanaugh tweaks a line in his controversial opinion on Wisconsin mail-in voting, after he received criticism for incorrectly saying Vermont had not changed its election rules due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

    July 22, 2021 – Senator Sheldon Whitehouse releases a letter from the FBI disclosing that it received more than 4,500 tips on a phone line in 2018 as part of a background investigation Kavanaugh and provided “relevant” ones to former President Trump’s White House counsel.

    October 1, 2021 – The Supreme Court announces that Kavanaugh has tested positive for Covid-19. This is the first publicly known case of coronavirus among the high court’s justices. Kavanaugh was fully vaccinated, according to the court.

    June 8, 2022 – Nicholas John Roske is arrested near Kavanaugh’s house, after calling emergency authorities to say he was having suicidal thoughts, had a firearm in his suitcase, and had traveled from California “to kill a specific US Supreme Court Justice.” The Justice Department charges him with attempting to kidnap or murder a US judge.

    January 20, 2023 – “Justice,” a documentary examining the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh, premieres at the Sundance Film Festival.

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  • CNN Exclusive: Pence classified documents included briefing memos for foreign trips | CNN Politics

    CNN Exclusive: Pence classified documents included briefing memos for foreign trips | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The roughly 12 classified documents found at the Indiana home of former Vice President Mike Pence included materials described as background briefing memos that were prepared for Pence’s foreign trips, multiple sources told CNN.

    One source said some of those classified documents were likely used to prepare Pence for foreign meetings while he was vice president and may have been overlooked during the packing process because they were tucked into old trip binders.

    According to another source, the classified briefing materials would not have been visible unless the packers went through the binders page by page.

    It is not unusual for presidents and vice presidents to be given travel briefing binders that include background memos on people they are meeting with in foreign countries. The sources who spoke to CNN said they sometimes include basic biographical information on foreign leaders, but sometimes also include more sensitive information.

    The FBI is working with US intelligence agencies to assess the documents, a process which involves determining how recent the information is, its level of classification and potential risks of having classified material stored in an unauthorized location, according to a US official.

    One source who was briefed on some of the classified documents told CNN that, based on what they were told, there was nothing particularly unusual in the papers, and described the classification markings as on the “lower level.” There was no mention of documents with SCI or SAP markings, two designations of some of the most sensitive classified material, the source said.

    Top secret, the highest level of classification, can include a subset of documents known as SCI, or sensitive compartmented information, which is reserved for certain information derived from intelligence sources. Access to an SCI document can be even further restricted to a smaller group of people with specific security clearances.

    Another category of sensitive information within either Top Secret or Secret classification is known as an SAP, or special access program, which requires additional safeguards. Not everyone with a Top Secret security clearance may have access to information in an SAP.

    CNN reported earlier this month that the classified materials discovered at President Joe Biden’s former private office in Washington included US intelligence memos and briefing materials from Biden’s time as vice president covering Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom.

    The materials found at Biden’s former office included some documents marked top secret with an SCI designation, CNN previously reported.

    More than 300 classified documents have been discovered at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, both in boxes Trump’s aides turned over to the National Archives and material later found by the FBI. The FBI’s August search included 18 documents marked top secret, 54 documents marked secret and 31 documents marked confidential, according to court filings.

    One set of classified documents retrieved by the FBI in August included SCI markings, according to the property receipt released in court filings.

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  • Court orders the release of video capturing the attack on Paul Pelosi at his San Francisco home | CNN Politics

    Court orders the release of video capturing the attack on Paul Pelosi at his San Francisco home | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    A California court on Wednesday ruled that the San Francisco district attorney’s office must make public the 911 audio calls, police body camera footage and home surveillance video recorded the night of the attack at the Pelosis’ San Francisco home last year. Audio from police interviews with David DePape, the alleged attacker, must also be made public, the court ruled.

    The decision came following a motion by a coalition of news organizations, including CNN, seeking the release of the material.

    It’s not immediately clear how soon the material will be made public.

    DePape has pleaded not guilty to a litany of state and federal crimes, including assault and attempted murder. His lawyers argued against the public release of the audio and footage, writing it would “irreparably damage” his right to a fair trial.

    Paul Pelosi was violently attacked in October with a hammer at the couple’s home by a male assailant who was searching for the House speaker, according to court documents – a development that ultimately drove then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to leave House Democratic leadership.

    Pelosi underwent surgery “to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands” following the incident, a spokesman for Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. The California Democratic congresswoman told CNN last week that while her husband is “doing OK,” it will still “take a little while for him to be back to normal.”

    Court documents revealed DePape allegedly woke Paul Pelosi shortly after 2 a.m., carrying a large hammer and several white zip ties, and demanded: “Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?” He then threatened to tie up Paul Pelosi and prevented him from escaping via elevator, according to the documents. DePape later allegedly told him, “I can take you out.”

    Pelosi placed a 911 call during the attack after convincing the assailant to let him go to the bathroom, where his phone was charging, and he spoke cryptically to police. CNN previously reported that police body cam footage from the incident is expected to show what officers saw when Paul Pelosi opened the door and his assailant attacked him with a hammer, fracturing his skull.

    A limited number of Pelosi family members met with authorities in November to listen to the call and to view the footage, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins told Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room” at the time, confirming details first reported by CNN.

    Asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper in early November whether she wanted to hear the call her husband placed, Nancy Pelosi said, “I don’t think so. I don’t know if I’ll have to. I just don’t know. That’s all a matter on the legal side of things.” But she added, “Paul saved his own life with that call.”

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  • Southwest posts quarterly loss and warns more losses are ahead after service meltdown | CNN Business

    Southwest posts quarterly loss and warns more losses are ahead after service meltdown | CNN Business


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Southwest Airlines reported a loss for the fourth quarter because of the company’s service meltdown over the holiday travel season, and it warned the costs from those problems will result in another loss in the first quarter.

    The airline was forced to cancel more than 16,700 flights between December 21 and 29, roughly half its schedule during that period. Thursday, Southwest said the meltdown cost the airline about $800 million, resulting in an adjusted net loss in the quarter of $226 million. Still, it managed to report an adjusted annual profit of $723 million, a turnaround from $1.3 billion it lost in 2021.

    It said it expects another loss in the first quarter due to the continued impact and costs associated with meltdown. The first quarter is typically the slowest and least profitable period for US air travel. However, Southwest said it is encouraged by strong bookings for March.

    Southwest

    (LUV)    ’s quarterly loss of 38 cents a share was far worse than Wall Street analysts’ forecast. Shares of Southwest

    (LUV)     lost 3% because of that miss and especially its sour outlook.

    The airline said it expected a first quarter loss because of an increase in passengers canceling reservations and a lower level of bookings for January and February, which the airline said “are assumed to be associated with the operational disruptions in December.” Those lost bookings in the current quarter are expected to cost it between $300 million to $350 million.

    To repair customer relations, Southwest has given affected passengers 25,000 bonus points in frequent flier accounts, as well as travel vouchers. And in addition to refunding fares for canceled flights, it is reimbursing those passengers who bought tickets on other airlines or incurred other unexpected travel costs.

    Even with the meltdown, which cost Southwest $410 million in lost revenue when it had to refund tickets to passengers on canceled flights, it still reported record fourth quarter sales of $6.2 billion, up 7% from the same quarter of 2019, just before the pandemic.

    Southwest brought in that record revenue even though the number of seats it was able to fly in the quarter was down 6% from the same period of 2019, before the pandemic, when adjusted for miles flown. But the strong demand meant that Southwest passengers paid 10.6% more for every mile they flew than they were paying in late 2019.

    A massive winter storm started the service problems, but Southwest had a much tougher time recovering from the weather than other airlines because of an antiquated crew scheduling system that was quickly overwhelmed, leaving the airline unable to get the staffing it needed to locations to fly flights. Nearly half of its schedule was canceled during the December 20 to 29 period. Some days, as much as 75% of its scheduled flights were grounded.

    The airline said that it is “conducting a third-party review of the December events and … reexamining the priority of technology and other investments planned in 2023.”

    Southwest has traditionally been the most profitable US airline by a large margin. Many of its rivals were in and out of bankruptcy in recent decades due to losses brought on by recessions and events like the 9/11 attack, but Southwest had put together a string of 47 consecutive profitable years before the pandemic. In 2020, Southwest and all other airlines to reported a loss.

    All other airlines lost money again in 2021, excluding special items such as financial support from the federal government, and most airlines reported another quarterly loss in the first three months of 2022 as the surge in Covid cases caused by the Omicron variant limited demand for travel.

    But demand to fly had been very strong starting with the Spring Break travel season, and air fares soared as passengers paid top dollar to take long-delayed trips. Southwest and most other US airlines reported profits in the second and third quarters, and most have either reported profitable fourth quarters or are forecast to do so – as Southwest had been before the meltdown.

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  • One news publication had an AI tool write articles. It didn’t go well | CNN Business

    One news publication had an AI tool write articles. It didn’t go well | CNN Business


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    News outlet CNET said Wednesday it has issued corrections on a number of articles, including some that it described as “substantial,” after using an artificial intelligence-powered tool to help write dozens of stories.

    The outlet has since hit pause on using the AI tool to generate stories, CNET’s editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo said in an editorial on Wednesday.

    The disclosure comes after CNET was previously called out publicly for quietly using AI to write articles and later for errors. While using AI to automate news stories is not new – the Associated Press began doing so nearly a decade ago – the issue has gained new attention amid the rise of ChatGPT, a viral new AI chatbot tool that can quickly generate essays, stories and song lyrics in response to user prompts.

    Guglielmo said CNET used an “internally designed AI engine,” not ChatGPT, to help write 77 published stories since November. She said this amounted to about 1% of the total content published on CNET during the same period, and was done as part of a “test” project for the CNET Money team “to help editors create a set of basic explainers around financial services topics.”

    Some headlines from stories written using the AI tool include, “Does a Home Equity Loan Affect Private Mortgage Insurance?” and “How to Close A Bank Account.”

    “Editors generated the outlines for the stories first, then expanded, added to and edited the AI drafts before publishing,” Guglielmo wrote. “After one of the AI-assisted stories was cited, rightly, for factual errors, the CNET Money editorial team did a full audit.”

    The result of the audit, she said, was that CNET identified additional stories that required correction, “with a small number requiring substantial correction.” CNET also identified several other stories with “minor issues such as incomplete company names, transposed numbers, or language that our senior editors viewed as vague.”

    One correction, which was added to the end of an article titled “What Is Compound Interest?” states that the story initially gave some wildly inaccurate personal finance advice. “An earlier version of this article suggested a saver would earn $10,300 after a year by depositing $10,000 into a savings account that earns 3% interest compounding annually. The article has been corrected to clarify that the saver would earn $300 on top of their $10,000 principal amount,” the correction states.

    Another correction suggests the AI tool plagiarized. “We’ve replaced phrases that were not entirely original,” according to the correction added to an article on how to close a bank account.

    Guglielmo did not state how many of the 77 published stories required corrections, nor did she break down how many required “substantial” fixes versus more “minor issues.” Guglielmo said the stories that have been corrected include an editors’ note explaining what was changed.

    CNET did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    Despite the issues, Guglielmo left the door open to resuming use of the AI tool. “We’ve paused and will restart using the AI tool when we feel confident the tool and our editorial processes will prevent both human and AI errors,” she said.

    Guglielmo also said that CNET has more clearly disclosed to readers which stories were compiled using the AI engine. The outlet took some heat from critics on social media for not making overtly clear to its audience that “By CNET Money Staff” meant it was written using AI tools. The new byline is just: “By CNET Money.”

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  • A new partisan era of American education | CNN Politics

    A new partisan era of American education | CNN Politics

    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says he’s protecting kids from indoctrination and political agendas, but the zeal with which he has pushed expansive efforts to remake the Florida education system also represents an effort to influence young minds.

    However you view DeSantis’ motivations, he is getting results.

    The College Board, the nonprofit organization that oversees the Advanced Placement program offered across high schools, said it would change a new AP African American studies course that DeSantis said violated a state law to restrict certain lessons about race in schools.

    His state’s Department of Education complained the college-level course mentioned Black queer theory and the idea of intersectionality. Read more about why Florida rejected the course.

    “Governor DeSantis, are you really trying to lead us into an era akin to communism that provides censorship of free thoughts?” the civil rights lawyer Ben Crump said at a press conference on Wednesday in Florida, where he announced he would sue DeSantis on behalf of three high school students if DeSantis would not negotiate with the College Board about the AP course.

    DeSantis recently demanded a list of names of staff and programs related to diversity at public colleges and universities, part of a crackdown on “trendy ideology.”

    Separately, he wants details on students who sought gender dysphoria treatment at state universities.

    DeSantis also wants to remake the New College of Florida, a small, public liberal arts school, as a sort of “Hillsdale of the South,” according to Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz.

    Hillsdale, as USA Today points out, is a private, conservative Christian college in Michigan.

    A new DeSantis appointee to the New College of Florida board of trustees has clashed with board officials over his request to open every meeting with a prayer.

    Republicans across the country are focused on education. They want to guard against anything perceived as pushing equity rather than merit.

    Virginia’s governor sees a conspiracy in how school districts recognize distinction in a scholarship program based on scores on the PSAT.

    The state attorney general has launched a discrimination investigation into whether the Fairfax County Public Schools system – including Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a nationally recognized Virginia magnet school – discriminated against students by not informing them of recognition under the National Merit Scholarship program.

    The students qualified for recognition but did not advance in the competition for a scholarship.

    Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, according to CNN’s report, claimed these revelations were a result of the “maniacal focus on equal outcomes for all students at all costs.”

    “The failure of numerous Fairfax County schools to inform students of their national merit awards could serve as a Virginia human rights violation,” the governor’s office said in a previous statement provided to CNN.

    Fairfax County Public Schools superintendent Michelle Reid told CNN the recognitions should have come earlier, but cited a lack of a “division-wide protocol” rather than any kind of mania about equity. Read more about the controversy.

    Texas officials also have their eyes on the state’s colleges and universities, according to CNN’s Eric Bradner.

    “Our public professors are accountable to the taxpayer because you pay their salary,” said Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in an inauguration speech. Bradner notes Patrick has pushed to end tenure at Texas public colleges and universities.

    “I don’t want teachers in our colleges saying, ‘America is evil and capitalism is bad and socialism is better,’” he said. “And if that means some of those professors that want to teach that don’t come to Texas, I’m OK with that.” Read Bradner’s full report.

    Meanwhile, in South Dakota, lawmakers are looking to develop a social studies curriculum based on “American exceptionalism,” propelled by the governor’s desire to put more patriotism in the classroom.

    The focus by Republican politicians on issues of race in colleges and the classroom is mirrored by the potential for a court-mandated turnaround in how American students are viewed for admissions.

    The Supreme Court heard arguments in October in two separate cases regarding affirmative action and seems poised to say colleges and universities cannot consider race in admissions.

    Nine states have already outlawed affirmative action for public universities. Voters in California were the first to do so, and the end result was falling enrollment, in particular among Black students at top public schools in the University of California system and at the University of Michigan. Those states both encouraged the Supreme Court not to outlaw affirmative action.

    Florida, which also ended the practice, encouraged the court to throw affirmative action out.


    Education was a major focus for Republicans in the recent election. While it clearly worked for DeSantis in Florida and a year earlier for Youngkin in Virginia, the mixed results for Republicans writ large may call the strategy into question as the 2024 election looms.

    I read on the education news website Chalkbeat about a new study that predicts more politics in the classroom as Americans increasingly sort themselves by political ideology.

    In the working paper, David Houston, an education policy professor at George Mason University, argues that previous debates over desegregation, prayer and sex education in public schools were divisive but not inherently partisan.

    He points to the moderate positions of previous presidents as proof. Then-President George W. Bush worked with then-Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy on education reform in 2001. Former President Barack Obama was praised by Republicans in 2012 for his work on education.

    Those stories feel like they’re from a different universe when today’s Republican governors are looking to root out liberal extremism in schools.

    Houston argues in his study, which is based on survey data, that the US may be on the cusp of a new and divisive era with “heightened partisan animosity across all aspects of education politics.”

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  • Chinese engineer sentenced to 8 years in US prison for spying | CNN Politics

    Chinese engineer sentenced to 8 years in US prison for spying | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    A former graduate student in Chicago was sentenced to eight years in prison Wednesday for spying for the Chinese government by gathering information on engineers and scientists in the United States.

    Ji Chaoqun, a Chinese national who came to the US to study electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 2013 and later enlisted in the US Army Reserves, was arrested in 2018.

    The 31-year-old was convicted last September of acting illegally as an agent of China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) and of making a material false statement to the US Army.

    According to the Justice Department, Ji was tasked with providing an intelligence officer with biographical information on individuals for potential recruitment as Chinese spies. The individuals included Chinese nationals who were working as engineers and scientists in the US, some of whom worked for American defense contractors.

    Ji’s spying was part of an effort by Chinese intelligence to obtain access to advanced aerospace and satellite technologies being developed by US companies, the Justice Department said in a statement.

    In 2016, a year after graduation, Ji enlisted in the US Army Reserves under a program in which foreign nationals can be recruited if their skills are considered “vital to the national interest.”

    In his application to join the program, Ji falsely stated that he had not had any contact with a foreign government within the past seven years. He also failed to disclose his relationship and contacts with Chinese intelligence officers in a subsequent interview with a US Army officer, according to the Justice Department.

    In 2018, Ji had several meetings with an undercover US law enforcement agent who was posing as a representative of China’s MSS. During these meetings, Ji said that with his military identification, he could visit and take photos of “Roosevelt-class” aircraft carriers. Ji also explained that once he obtained his US citizenship and security clearance through the Army Reserves program, he would seek a job at the CIA, FBI or NASA, the Justice Department said, citing evidence at trial.

    Ji intended to perform cybersecurity work at one of those agencies so that he would have access to databases, including those that contained scientific research, the Justice Department said in the statement.

    Ji was working at the direction of Xu Yanjun, a deputy division director at the Jiangsu provincial branch of the MMS, the statement said.

    Xu, a career intelligence officer, was sentenced last year to 20 years in prison for plotting to steal trade secrets from several US aviation and aerospace companies. Xu was also the first Chinese spy extradited to the US for trial, after being detained in Belgium in 2018 following an FBI investigation.

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  • Scammers posed as tech support to hack employees at two US agencies last year, officials say | CNN Politics

    Scammers posed as tech support to hack employees at two US agencies last year, officials say | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Cybercriminals hacked employees of at least two US federal civilian agencies last year as part of a “widespread” fraud campaign that sought to steal money from individuals’ bank accounts, US cybersecurity officials revealed Wednesday.

    In one case, the unidentified hackers posed as tech support, convinced a federal employee to call them and then instructed the federal employee to visit a malicious website, according to the advisory from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, National Security Agency and a threat-sharing center for state and local governments known as MS-ISAC.

    The goal of the scam, which appears to have hit both private sector and government agencies, was to trick victims into sending the scammers money. It was unclear if that happened in the case of the federal employees.

    The episodes underscore how federal officials, like others, can be duped into sharing sensitive financial information – and that they might not find out about it for weeks or months afterward.

    CISA discovered the activity in October 2022, but the hackers had been sending phishing emails to federal employees’ personal and government email accounts since at least June, according to the advisory.

    Forensic analysis “identified related activity” on many other federal networks in addition to the two initial agency victims, the advisory said.

    While financially motivated crooks were apparently behind this campaign, the US agencies said they were concerned such hackers could sell stolen data to government-backed spies. The legitimate tech-support software used in the scam is useful for hackers looking to maintain covert, long-term access to a network, officials said.

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  • These are the names to know in the murder trial of Alex Murdaugh | CNN

    These are the names to know in the murder trial of Alex Murdaugh | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    The murder trial of disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh is underway at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, a small town about 40 miles east of Charleston. The case goes back to June 2021, when Murdaugh’s wife and son were found shot to death at the family’s Islandton property, known as Moselle.

    Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime related to his wife and son’s deaths. Separate from the murder charges, he is also facing 99 charges stemming for alleged financial crimes.

    Here are the key players in the murder trial:

    Now disbarred, Murdaugh is a member of a prominent legal family in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Three generations of his family over 87 years have served as solicitor for the 14th Circuit, which oversaw prosecutions throughout the area. A portrait of his late grandfather, one of the solicitors, had hung on the wall of the courtroom; it was removed before trial. Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

    Alex Murdaugh’s wife, who was 52 when she was found fatally shot with the couple’s younger son at the family’s Moselle estate on June 7, 2021.

    Alex Murdaugh’s 22-year-old son, who was found fatally shot with his mother at the family’s Moselle estate on June 7, 2021. At the time, he was facing charges of boating under the influence, causing great bodily harm and causing death in connection to a 2019 boat crash that claimed the life of 19-year-old Mallory Beach, court records show. He had pleaded not guilty, and the charges were dropped after his death.

    South Carolina senior assistant deputy attorney general and lead prosecutor. He has been involved with the case since 2021. The state attorney general’s office is prosecuting the case because of the Murdaugh family’s close ties to the local solicitor’s office.

    One of Alex Murdaugh’s defense attorneys, along with Jim Griffin. Harpootlian is a South Carolina state senator and attorney whose Columbia-based practice specializes in criminal defense.

    One of Alex Murdaugh’s defense attorneys, along with Dick Harpootlian. A former federal prosecutor, he now works as a state and federal criminal defense attorney based in Columbia, South Carolina.

    Alex Murdaugh sits in the Colleton County Courthouse with defense attorneys Dick Harpootlian, middle, and Jim Griffin, right, on January 23.

    Judge Clifton Newman speaks during jury selection on Wednesday, January 25.

    The South Carolina Circuit Court judge hearing the case. He has been on the bench since 2000. Newman has presided over various proceedings in the Murdaugh case since 2021.

    A former client of Alex Murdaugh. Murdaugh told authorities he conspired with Smith to kill Murdaugh as part of an insurance fraud scheme, per court documents, purportedly so Murdaugh’s surviving son, Buster, could collect a $10 million life insurance payout. Smith admitted in 2021 to being present at the shooting and disposing of the firearm afterward, according to an affidavit.

    Alex Murdaugh’s surviving son. He was in court for opening statements – the first time he has appeared at legal proceedings for his father – and is listed as a witness at trial. His father’s scheme for Smith to kill Murdaugh was “an attempt on his part to do something to protect his child (Buster),” Harpootlian, the attorney, said.

    Alex Murdaugh’s younger brother. He is listed as a witness at trial and accompanied Buster Murdaugh to court this week.

    The Murdaugh family’s longtime housekeeper who died in 2018 in what was described as a “trip and fall accident” at their home. Murdaugh is accused of misappropriating funds meant for Satterfield’s family as part of a wrongful death settlement.

    An expert in bloodstain pattern analysis who analyzed the shirt worn by Alex Murdaugh on the night his wife and son were killed. In a motion filed just before the trial, the defense asked the court to prohibit Bevel from testifying.

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