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  • 3 dead, 1 missing as rain pounds New Zealand’s largest city

    3 dead, 1 missing as rain pounds New Zealand’s largest city

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    WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Authorities said Saturday that three people had died and at least one was missing after record levels of rainfall pounded New Zealand’s largest city, causing widespread disruption.

    Prime Minister Chris Hipkins flew to Auckland on a military plane after a state of emergency was declared in the region.

    “Our priority is to ensure that Aucklanders are safe, that they’re housed and that they have access to the essential services that they need,” Hipkins said.

    He said the city was in for a big cleanup and that people should remain indoors if possible. He said a break in the weather could prove temporary, with more heavy rain forecast.

    “This is an unprecedented event in recent memory,” Hipkins said.

    Friday was the wettest day ever recorded in Auckland, according to weather agencies, as the amount of rain that would typically fall over the entire summer hit in a single day. On Friday evening, more than 15 centimeters (6 inches) of rain fell in just three hours in some places.

    The rain closed highways and poured into homes. Hundreds of people were stranded at Auckland Airport overnight after the airport stopped all flights and parts of the terminal were flooded.

    Police said they found one man’s body in a flooded culvert and another in a flooded carpark. They said fire and emergency crews found a third body after a landslide brought down a house in the suburb of Remuera. One person remained missing after being swept away by floodwaters, police said.

    Hipkins said power had been restored to most places, although about 3,500 homes remained without electricity.

    Video posted online showed chest-deep water in some places.

    Lawmaker Ricardo Menéndez posted a video of water surging into houses. “We’ve just had to evacuate our home as the water was already rising rapidly and coming in aggressively,” he tweeted.

    Fire and Emergency New Zealand said crews had responded to more than 700 incidents across the region and staff had taken more than 2,000 emergency calls.

    “We had every available career and volunteer crew on the road responding to the most serious events,” said district manager Brad Mosby.

    Mosby said crews had rescued 126 people who were trapped in houses or cars, or who had been involved in vehicle crashes.

    Air New Zealand said it resumed domestic flights in and out of Auckland on Saturday afternoon, but wasn’t yet sure when international flights would resume.

    “The flooding has had a huge impact our Auckland operations,” said David Morgan, the airline’s chief operational integrity and safety officer. “We’re working on getting customers to their final destinations and getting our crew and aircraft back in the right place. It might take a few days to get everything back on track.”

    In a series of updates on Twitter, Auckland Airport said people were able to leave the airport early Saturday for their homes or accommodation after hundreds spent the night in the terminal.

    “It’s been a long and challenging night at Auckland Airport, we thank everyone for ongoing patience,” the airport wrote.

    “Unfortunately, due to earlier flooding in the baggage hall, we are currently unable to return checked luggage to you,” the airport wrote. “Your airline will make arrangements for its return at a later time.”

    The storm also caused an Elton John concert to be canceled just before it was due to start Friday night. A second concert by John that was planned at the stadium on Saturday night was also canceled.

    About 40,000 people were expected to attend each concert at Mt Smart Stadium. Thousands were already at the venue Friday night when organizers decided to cancel not long before John was due to take the stage at 7:30 p.m.

    Many concertgoers who had braved the conditions were frustrated the decision hadn’t been made hours earlier.

    Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown defended criticism that his office did not communicate the seriousness of the situation well and held off on declaring an emergency until about 9:30 p.m. Friday.

    He said the timing of the emergency declaration was guided by experts.

    “We will review everything that took place,” Brown said. “We’ve got to make sure we had the coordination, and the consultation with the public, correct.”

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  • IMSA takes North American sports cars into hybrid era

    IMSA takes North American sports cars into hybrid era

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    DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The Cadillac growls, while the Porsche and BMW scream. The Acura sounds like an Indy car, and for fun, turn your back to the track and listen carefully as the cars roar around Daytona International Speedway in a new era of IMSA sports car racing.

    The top prototype class has switched to hybrid engines this year to make IMSA the first North American racing series to make the technology upgrade. It was the automakers that wanted to move to hybrid so that their motorsports programs would reflect the direction most have taken for their road cars.

    “We are in the transformation, or transition, into the electric world,” said Andreas Roos, head of BMW M Motorsport. “This is the perfect fit to be in parallel between our road car development and our racing. It’s very important that we have a road-car relevance and this is a perfect match.”

    The cars make their debut Saturday in the twice-round-the-clock Rolex 24 at Daytona, which has been described as a “symphony of sounds” because of the new engines. The hybrid powertrains marry a traditional internal combustion engine with Bosch’s Motor Generation Unit, an energy recovery system that includes batteries and an Xtrac gearbox.

    One of the major concerns headed into this new era was that the hybrid technology would rob the cars of the loud roar that is part of motorsports’ allure. But the opposite has happened as the four manufacturers in GTP — double the number from last year — created engines with distinctive sounds. BMW and Porsche both moved up classes to be part of the endeavor, and Lamborghini has announced plans to enter the series.

    “The thing I like about the hybrid system versus strictly (electric) is we still have a nice sound, and I think that’s very important. They all sound good, like an orchestra playing out there,” said NASCAR chairman Jim France, who also owns IMSA. “I think the formula that we have is going to be very important for motorsports.”

    The new rules package also makes IMSA’s top GTP class eligible to race at the 24 Hours of Le Mans as early as this year. Acura and BMW have already said they won’t be ready for Le Mans this year.

    The changes have also lured Roger Penske back to sports car racing. Rahal Letterman Lanigan moved its BMW program up to IMSA’s top class, and Michael Andretti last month partnered with Wayne Taylor Racing to get Andretti Autosport onto the grid.

    The excitement has Daytona officials predicting the largest crowd in at least a decade for the 61st running of North America’s most prestigious endurance race.

    But getting to Saturday’s debut has been a challenge as the manufacturers have battled supply—chain crises and a compressed timeline to launch an entirely new program.

    “It’s been a huge undertaking,” said Mike O’Gara, the director of operations for Chip Ganassi Racing’s two-car Cadillac program. “In the 30-year history of Chip Ganassi Racing, we’ve been fortunate to be part of a lot of different vehicle launches. This one is by far the most intense, the most complex and, honestly, the most exciting for the company. The timelines we’ve been holding to have been difficult with supply-chain issues, trying to put adequate miles on the cars to be ready and the level of complexity of the cars with the hybrid system and the other control systems.”

    Teams had 18 months from when the rules package was set to build their cars and engines, but only 17 weeks from the conclusion of last season to finalize their entries for the biggest race of the IMSA season.

    The Porsche program, which has partnered with Roger Penske for his return to sports car racing and chance to win Le Mans, did the early testing of the single-source hybrid system.

    “Everything is new. So that comes with new challenges — you need enough parts to assemble a reasonable amount of race cars at a reasonable quality,” said David Salters, president of Honda Performance Development. “When every single component is new, the effort is daunting, really. But that’s why we do it. That’s why we torture ourselves and that’s why we love it.

    “The easy thing would have been just to have lifted (last year’s) engine and plunk it in, but that’s not why we do this. We just started with a clean sheet of paper and said, ‘What do we need to make the best racing car?’”

    And now that the cars have made it to Daytona and are ready to race, there are significant concerns about their durability over a 24-hour race. So much concern that multiple second-class LMP2 teams believe they’ve got a shot at the overall win because the prototypes won’t be able to finish the race.

    Meyer Shank Racing, both the defending race winner and IMSA champion, starts from the pole but is so concerned about the durability of the Acura for the full race that it skipped Friday night’s final practice. The MSR lineup includes four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves, who has won two consecutive Rolex 24s.

    There have been reports that the two Acura programs of Shank and Andretti/Taylor have yet to complete a 24-hour test.

    ___

    AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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  • Usain Bolt fires business manager over Jamaica fraud case

    Usain Bolt fires business manager over Jamaica fraud case

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    SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt told reporters Friday that he is baffled over how $12.7 million of his money has gone missing from a local private investment firm that authorities are investigating as part of a massive fraud that began more than a decade ago.

    Bolt also said he has fired his business manager, adding that it was not an amicable split.

    When asked if he was “broke,” the retired star athlete laughed.

    “I’m not broke, but it’s definitely put a damper on me,” he said. “It was for my future. Everybody knows I have three kids. I’m still looking out for my parents, and I still want to live very well.”

    Bolt’s attorneys have said the athlete’s account with Kingston-based Stocks and Securities Limited dwindled from nearly $12.8 million to some $12,000. They had given the company until Friday to return the money or face civil and criminal action.

    It wasn’t immediately clear whether any action had been taken as of late Friday. Attorney Linton P. Gordon did not return a message seeking comment.

    He told the Jamaica Observer newspaper that the public should anticipate the “expected and the unexpected” in the case.

    “There is nothing to say at this stage, given what is happening,” he was quoted as saying. “We have met with persons, and we are dealing with certain matters.”

    Earlier this week, Jamaican Finance Minister Nigel Clarke announced that the director of the Financial Services Commission was stepping down and that the Bank of Jamaica would now be in charge of regulating the island’s financial system.

    He said several government agencies and elderly customers also were affected by the alleged fraud.

    “It’s always a sad situation. Definitely disappointed,” Bolt said of the elderly who were affected. “Everybody’s confused. … I’m as confused as the public.”

    Jamaican authorities have requested help from the FBI and other unidentified international experts, adding that clients were given false statements regarding their balances as part of the alleged fraud. Officials have not yet said how many clients overall were affected and how much money in total is missing.

    Earlier on Friday, Bolt spoke at a sponsored luncheon for an upcoming relay and referred to the alleged fraud.

    “As you all know. I’ve been going through a tough week, a few tough weeks,” he said, adding that he would continue to do everything he can to uplift his island.

    “No matter what’s going on right now, Jamaica is my country. That will never change,” he said.

    In an aside with reporters, he said: “I’m just trying to focus on my family and trying not to think too much about it because it’s a difficult situation.”

    Stocks and Securities Limited did not return a message seeking comment Friday. The company contacted authorities earlier this month to alert them that a manager had apparently committed fraud.

    Earlier this week, Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced that his administration would not bail out the company.

    “The government will not socialize any debt, and we will not socialize the failure of our banks,” he said.

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  • Willie Nelson to celebrate 90th birthday at all-star concert

    Willie Nelson to celebrate 90th birthday at all-star concert

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    NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Texas troubadour Willie Nelson will celebrate his 90th birthday with his friends and family at an all-star two-day concert at the Hollywood Bowl this April.

    The Grammy-winning country icon’s milestone birthday party will take place on April 29-30 and feature Nelson and dozens of performers, including Neil Young, Chris Stapleton, Lyle Lovett, Miranda Lambert, Rosanne Cash, Snoop Dogg, The Chicks, Kacey Musgraves and many more.

    Six decades into his career, the singer-songwriter, author and activist is still going strong, with a new album — “I Don’t Know a Thing About Love” — coming in March and a five-part documentary premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. He’s also nominated for four Grammys this year. Some of his biggest hits include “On The Road Again,” “Crazy” and “Funny How Time Slips Away.”

    Additional performers include Norah Jones, Tom Jones, Tyler Childers, Warren Haynes, Ziggy Marley, Sturgill Simpson, Allison Russell, Beck, Billy Strings, Bobby Weir, Charley Crockett, Edie Brickell, Leon Bridges, Margo Price, Nathaniel Rateliff, Orville Peck, Sheryl Crow, The Avett Brothers, The Lumineers, and Nelson’s sons, Lukas Nelson and Micah Nelson, the latter of whom performs as Particle Kid.

    Tickets for the concerts go on sale to the general public on Jan. 28, with a presale starting on Wednesday.

    __

    Online: WillieNelson90.com

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  • Light at the end of the tunnel: Grand Central annex opens

    Light at the end of the tunnel: Grand Central annex opens

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    NEW YORK (AP) — For decades, work on a massive rail project has been grinding 15 stories below the shuffling footsteps of millions of New Yorkers and beneath the East Hudson River and Manhattan skyscrapers.

    After years of delays and massive cost overruns, the enormously expensive railway project shuttled its first passengers Wednesday from Long Island to a new annex in New York City’s iconic Grand Central Terminal.

    The new transit center, built inside a massive man-made cavern and served by rail tunnels carved through bedrock, is being heralded as an important addition to the nation’s busiest railway network.

    “We got the job done,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said, the ninth governor to oversee the project that had its genesis six decades ago. “There were so many roadblocks and challenges and detours along the way.”

    The new 700,000-square-foot (65,032-square-meter) terminal, dubbed Grand Central Madison, was conceived and constructed at a time when New York City’s transportation system was bursting with passengers. It opens in a different era, with ridership still significantly down from where it was before the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a new era of remote work.

    The new terminal, adorned with colorful mosaics and replete with storefronts and restaurants — most still empty — is the country’s largest new railway station in nearly seven decades and the most significant expansion over the last century of the Long Island Rail Road, the busiest commuter railroad in North America. The two-level concourse supports four platforms and eight tracks.

    Much of the construction of the terminal has been complete for months, though some finishing touches won’t be complete for another few weeks, officials acknowledged.

    The station was to have opened by the end of 2022 but was delayed slightly by issues with heating, ventilation and air conditioning. For Long Island commuters headed for Manhattan, the terminal’s key benefit is the ability to take a train directly to the East Side, where previously the only option was to go to Pennsylvania Station on the West Side, then travel back by subway or bus.

    “I’ve been waiting for 30 years,” said John Cannon, a Long Island man who was on the inaugural 21-minute ride from Jamaica, Queens, to Manhattan. “I don’t have to take the subways anymore.”

    Passenger Alexander Rodriguez, a 15-year-old Queens resident, described the inaugural ride as “nice and smooth.”

    “And it was fun,” he said. “It was the first train. It’s a once in a lifetime thing.”

    Many of the subterranean tunnels that carry rail passengers below the Hudson River are more than a century old, some of which are in need of deeper maintenance. The new tunnels built for the project will also allow Amtrak to temporarily divert its trains to the new tunnels so it can begin refurbishing aging eastside tunnels and tracks.

    For decades, the project kept chugging along, even amid concerns about ballooning costs. Construction began in the 1960s, but was abandoned for a time because of a series of economic crises.

    Spending on the massive construction project has grown to more than $11 billion — more than triple the initial estimate of $3.5 billion two decades ago. The project bore through 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) of bedrock; per mile, it would be one of the world’s most expensive rail projects ever completed.

    “It’s a useful project. But for $11 billion, it would be better not to have built it,” said Alon Levy, a transportation fellow at New York University’s Marron Institute, who has been compiling railway cost data from around the world.

    The money, he argues, could have been used for other transportation projects, including improving capacity for existing railway lines.

    Officials have acknowledged that engineering costs and the high price of New York City labor contributed to spiraling expenses.

    “This is not a small project. This is one of the greatest engineering feats. And it’s a tribute to the MTA that they were able to overcome what I would say was some delays of bureaucracy, delays of engineering,” said Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University.

    Despite the setbacks, Tom Wright, the president of the Regional Plan Association, hailed Wednesday’s opening as a “driver of economic growth and prosperity,” even as the region “still faces urgent transportation, housing and resiliency challenges.”

    “Because this region has an interconnected network of transit, when you make an improvement, the beneficiaries are actually systemwide,” said Wright, whose nonprofit develops and advocates for ways to improve the regional economy, environment and quality of life.

    Over the past week, the Long Island Rail Road carried about 1 million riders, or about two-thirds the number it transported for roughly the same week in 2019, according to statistics compiled by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

    When full service begins to Grand Central Madison, the LIRR will add another 269 trains per weekday on top of the roughly 660 trains already in operation, officials said. About 160,000 passengers are expected to hop on and off platforms at the new terminal.

    Coupled with expanded service to Penn Station, the link to Grand Central would allow rail stops to open along long-neglected parts of the city, including the Bronx, spur new housing developments and serve as an economic engine.

    “It obviously makes the businesses in Midtown East a more attractive destination for commuters from Long Island,” said Kathryn Wylde, the president of the Partnership for New York City.

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  • Lawsuit: Vegas Strip resorts used vendor to fix hotel rates

    Lawsuit: Vegas Strip resorts used vendor to fix hotel rates

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    LAS VEGAS (AP) — A federal lawsuit in Nevada is seeking class-action damages for countless hotel patrons who booked rooms in Las Vegas since 2019, alleging that most hotel-casinos on the Las Vegas Strip have used a third-party vendor to illegally fix prices.

    The complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas alleges that casino giants MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment, along with Treasure Island and Wynn Resorts, share information with a company that used pricing algorithms to “maximize market-wide prices.”

    It accuses the resorts and Rainmaker Group Unlimited, a revenue management company owned by Cendyn Group, of “algorithmic-driven price-fixing … at the expense of consumers and in violation of antitrust laws.”

    The Associated Press sent an email to Rainmaker seeking comment. Michael Bennett, a representative of Boca Raton, Florida-based Cendyn, declined to comment.

    The lawsuit was filed on behalf of plaintiffs Richard Gibson and Heriberto Valiente by attorneys from the law firm of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro in Seattle and Berkeley, California.

    It seeks class status and unspecified monetary damages for “tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands” of people based on alleged antitrust violations of the federal Sherman Act.

    MGM Resorts, which operates properties including Bellagio, New York-New York, MGM Grand and Mandalay Bay, responded Thursday with a statement calling the lawsuit “meritless.”

    “The claims against MGM Resorts are factually inaccurate, and we intend to defend ourselves vigorously,” it said.

    Wynn Resorts declined to comment. The Associated Press left messages seeking comment from representatives of Treasure Island and Caesars Entertainment.

    Caesars Entertainment operates Las Vegas Strip properties including Caesars Palace, Harrah’s, the Horseshoe, Paris Las Vegas and the Flamingo.

    In a statement, plaintiffs’ attorney Steve Berman invoked and reshaped a ubiquitous advertising campaign tagline introduced in early 2003.

    “What happens in Vegas will no longer stay in Vegas,” Berman said. “We intend to expose the under-the-table deals perpetrated by these Vegas hotels.”

    Alan Feldman, a longtime MGM Resorts executive who is now a fellow at the International Gaming Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said hotels, airlines and car rental companies monitor costs and prices throughout what he termed “the travel ecosystem.”

    “Rest assured, they watch each other,” Feldman said. “Then they can decide if they want to go above it, below it, or just ignore it.”

    “But I can’t imagine these companies talking to one another,” he said, “and certainly not on price.”

    The lawsuit points to concerns about algorithmic pricing identified in a 2017 speech by Maureen Ohlhausen, a former acting chairperson of the Federal Trade Commission.

    Ohlhausen defined a computer algorithm as a set of rules or instructions that can model thousands of “extremely complex and nuanced behaviors” in a fraction of a second “and react almost instantaneously to changes.”

    She said companies provide their pricing data to “a common, outside agent” that uses the information to program its algorithm “to maximize industry-wide pricing.”

    “We even have an old-fashioned term for it,” Ohlhausen said, “the hub-and-spoke conspiracy.”

    “In effect, the firms themselves don’t directly share their pricing strategies,” she said, “but that information still ends up in common hands, and that shared information is then used to maximize market-wide prices.”

    The court filing said two former Rainmaker employees told attorneys the company’s products are used by 90% or “just about every” property on the resort-lined Las Vegas Strip. The lawsuit didn’t identify the former employees.

    The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that average daily room rates for Strip resorts hit record highs in 2022, topping $200 a night in October during a busy convention month.

    For the year through November, the average rate was $170.45, the highest in history, and did not include add-on resort fees or account for complimentary rooms provided to high-rollers, the newspaper said.

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  • Green comet zooming our way, last visited 50,000 years ago

    Green comet zooming our way, last visited 50,000 years ago

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    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A comet is streaking back our way after 50,000 years.

    The dirty snowball last visited during Neanderthal times, according to NASA. It will come within 26 million miles (42 million kilometers) of Earth Wednesday before speeding away again, unlikely to return for millions of years.

    So do look up, contrary to the title of the killer-comet movie “Don’t Look Up.”

    Discovered less than a year ago, this harmless green comet already is visible in the northern night sky with binoculars and small telescopes, and possibly the naked eye in the darkest corners of the Northern Hemisphere. It’s expected to brighten as it draws closer and rises higher over the horizon through the end of January, best seen in the predawn hours. By Feb. 10, it will be near Mars, a good landmark.

    Skygazers in the Southern Hemisphere will have to wait until next month for a glimpse.

    While plenty of comets have graced the sky over the past year, “this one seems probably a little bit bigger and therefore a little bit brighter and it’s coming a little bit closer to the Earth’s orbit,” said NASA’s comet and asteroid-tracking guru, Paul Chodas.

    Green from all the carbon in the gas cloud, or coma, surrounding the nucleus, this long-period comet was discovered last March by astronomers using the Zwicky Transient Facility, a wide field camera at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory. That explains its official, cumbersome name: comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF).

    On Wednesday, it will hurtle between the orbits of Earth and Mars at a relative speed of 128,500 mph (207,000 kilometers). Its nucleus is thought to be about a mile (1.6 kilometers) across, with its tails extending millions of miles (kilometers).

    The comet isn’t expected to be nearly as bright as Neowise in 2020, or Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake in the mid to late 1990s.

    But “it will be bright by virtue of its close Earth passage … which allows scientists to do more experiments and the public to be able to see a beautiful comet,” University of Hawaii astronomer Karen Meech said in an email.

    Scientists are confident in their orbital calculations putting the comet’s last swing through the solar system’s planetary neighborhood at 50,000 years ago. But they don’t know how close it came to Earth or whether it was even visible to the Neanderthals, said Chodas, director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

    When it returns, though, is tougher to judge.

    Every time the comet skirts the sun and planets, their gravitational tugs alter the iceball’s path ever so slightly, leading to major course changes over time. Another wild card: jets of dust and gas streaming off the comet as it heats up near the sun.

    “We don’t really know exactly how much they are pushing this comet around,” Chodas said.

    The comet — a time capsule from the emerging solar system 4.5 billion years ago — came from what’s known as the Oort Cloud well beyond Pluto. This deep-freeze haven for comets is believed to stretch more than one-quarter of the way to the next star.

    While comet ZTF originated in our solar system, we can’t be sure it will stay there, Chodas said. If it gets booted out of the solar system, it will never return, he added.

    Don’t fret if you miss it.

    “In the comet business, you just wait for the next one because there are dozens of these,” Chodas said. “And the next one might be bigger, might be brighter, might be closer.”

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Storm system dumps heavy, wet snow on Indiana and Michigan

    Storm system dumps heavy, wet snow on Indiana and Michigan

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    INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Heavy, wet snow — part of a storm system that spawned tornadoes in the Houston area — has covered roads, vehicles, houses and buildings Wednesday from central and northern Indiana into much of southeastern Michigan.

    About six inches of snow was expected to fall on the Detroit area, while four inches was reported before noon in eastern Indiana, just southwest of Fort Wayne, said Maddi Johnson of the National Weather Service in northern Indiana.

    The storm on Wednesday was expected to bring damaging winds to parts of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, forecasters said. Winter weather advisories stretched from southern Missouri to Maine, with areas of New England expected to see 8 to 12 inches (20 to 30 centimeters) of snow, the National Weather Service said.

    Fort Wayne, Indiana, has seen numerous crashes due to the snowfall on the roads.

    “People are sliding off exit ramps on the highways,” Johnson added. “They’re just driving too fast for the conditions.”

    Just north of Indianapolis, some power outages were reported in Hamilton County as the wet snow accumulated on power lines, said meteorologist Gregory Melo with the weather service’s Indianapolis office.

    Indianapolis had recorded 2.8 inches by about 11:30 a.m. Wednesday and while the snow was still falling it was expected to end by early afternoon. Total snowfall amounts were projected to range from 5 to 8 inches to the north and northeast of Indianapolis by mid to late afternoon.

    “This is one of the first big snowfalls we’ve had,” said Scott Cabauatan, deputy director of public services in Wayne County, which includes Detroit. “This snowfall poses a concern from the aspect that it’s a wet, heavy snow versus a lighter snow.”

    Cabauatan said crews will roughly clear on one regular pass just under 5,000 lane miles of roadway. “We will have right around 100 pieces of equipment and operators working” at any given time to salt and clear roadways of snow and ice, he added.

    Snow also is in the forecast for late in the week and over the weekend. “We’re anticipating many days on end of working here and being in the trucks,” Cabauatan said.

    Schools and businesses remained closed Wednesday in parts of Oklahoma, which saw snowfall totals of between 1 and 6 inches (3 and 15 centimeters) across central and eastern parts of the state. More than 160,000 homes and businesses were without power Wednesday morning in northern Arkansas and southern Missouri after heavy snow fell in the Ozarks a day earlier.

    On Tuesday, forecasters issued a rare tornado emergency for the Houston area as the storm system moved through the heavily populated area. Substantial damage was reported in cities east of Houston, but there were no reports of injuries.

    In Louisiana, three people suffered “mild to moderate injuries” when their mobile homes were flipped or destroyed after a tornado hit the Morel Lane area north of Baton Rouge, the Pointe Coupee Parish Sheriff’s Office said.

    In Texas, several businesses in Pasadena, east of Houston, sustained major damage, including the city’s animal shelter.

    ___

    Householder reported from Wayne, Michigan. Associated Press writers Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas, David Phillip in Pasadena, Texas, and Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.

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  • Elon Musk takes witness stand to defend Tesla buyout tweets

    Elon Musk takes witness stand to defend Tesla buyout tweets

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    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Elon Musk took the witness stand Friday to defend a 2018 tweet claiming he had lined up the financing to take Tesla private in a deal that never came close to happening.

    The tweet resulted in a $40 million settlement with securities regulators. It also led to a class-action lawsuit alleging he misled investors, pulling him into court for about a half hour Friday to deliver sworn testimony in front of a nine-person jury and a full room of media and other spectators.

    The trial was then adjourned for the weekend and Musk was told to return Monday to answer more questions.

    In his initial appearance on the stand, Musk defended his prolific tweeting as “the most democratic way” to distribute information even while acknowledging constraints of Twitter’s 280-character limit can make it difficult to make everything as clear as possible.

    “I think you can absolutely be truthful (on Twitter),” Musk asserted on the stand. “But can you be comprehensive? Of course not.”

    Musk’s latest headache stems from the inherent brevity on Twitter, a service that he has been running since completing his $44 billion purchase of it in October.

    The trial hinges on the question of whether a pair of tweets that Musk posted on Aug. 7, 2018, damaged Tesla shareholders during a 10-day period leading up to a Musk admission that the buyout he had envisioned wasn’t going to happen.

    In the first of those those two 2018 tweets, Musk stated “funding secured” for a what would have been a $72 billion buyout of Tesla at a time when the electric automaker was still grappling with production problems and was worth far less than it is now. Musk followed up a few hours later with another tweet suggesting a deal was imminent.

    After it became apparent that the money wasn’t in place to take Tesla private, Musk stepped down as Tesla’s chairman while remaining CEO as part of the Securities and Exchange Commission settlement, without acknowledging any wrongdoing.

    The impulsive billionaire came into court wearing a dark suit and tie on the third day of the civil trial in San Francisco that his lawyer unsuccessfully tried to move to Texas, where Tesla is now headquartered, on the premise that media coverage of his tumultuous takeover of Twitter had tainted the jury pool.

    The jury that was assembled earlier this week focused intently on Musk while he answered questions posed by Nicholas Porritt, a lawyer representing Tesla shareholders. At one point, Musk asked Porritt if he would speak closer to the microphone so he could hear him better. At other times, Musk craned his neck as he gazed around the courtroom.

    Musk, 51, said he cares “a great deal” about investors and also railed against short sellers who make investments that reward them when a company’s stock price falls. He called short selling an “evil” practice that should be outlawed, denigrating those who profit from it as “a bunch of sharks.”

    When shown communications from Tesla investors urging him to curtail or completely stop his Twitter habit before the 2018 buyout tweet, Musk said he couldn’t remember all those interactions from years ago, especially since he gets a “Niagara Falls” of emails.

    Even before Musk took the stand, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen had declared that the jurors can consider those two tweets to be false, leaving them to decide whether Musk deliberately deceived investors and whether his statements saddled them with losses.

    Musk has previously contended he entered into the SEC settlement under duress and maintained he believed he had locked up financial backing for a Tesla buyout during meetings with representatives from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

    An expert on corporate buyouts hired by shareholder lawyers to study the events surrounding Musk’s proposal to take Tesla private spent the bulk of his three hours on the stand Friday deriding the plan as an ill-conceived concept.

    “This proposal was an extreme outlier,” said Guhan Subramanian, a Harvard University business and law professor for more than 20 years. “It was incoherent. It was illusory.”

    In a lengthy cross examination that delayed Musk’s appearance, a lawyer for Tesla’s board of directors tried to undermine Subramanian’s testimony by pointing out that it relied on graduate student assistance to review some of the material related to the August 2018 tweets. The lawyer, William Price, also noted Subramanian’s $1,900-per-hour fee for compiling his report for the case.

    The trial over his Tesla tweets come at a time when Musk has been focusing on Twitter while also serving as the automaker’s CEO and also remaining deeply involved in SpaceX, the rocket ship company he founded.

    Musk’s leadership of Twitter — where he has gutted the staff and alienated users and advertisers — has proven unpopular among Tesla’s current stockholders, who are worried he has been devoting less time steering the automaker at a time of intensifying competition. Those concerns contributed to a 65% decline in Tesla’s stock last year that wiped out more than $700 billion in shareholder wealth — far more than the $14 billion swing in fortune that occurred between the company’s high and low stock prices during the Aug. 7-17, 2018 period covered in the class-action lawsuit.

    Tesla’s stock has split twice since then, making the $420 buyout price cited in his 2018 tweet worth $28 on adjusted basis now. The company’s shares were trading around $133.42 Friday, down from the company’s November 2021 split-adjusted peak of $414.50.

    After Musk dropped the idea of a Tesla buyout, the company overcame its production problems, resulting in a rapid upturn in car sales that caused its stock to soar and minted Musk as the world’s richest person until he bought Twitter. Musk dropped from the top spot on the wealth list after the stock market’s backlash to his handling of Twitter.

    When asked Friday about the challenges that Tesla faced in 2018, he recalled spending many nights sleeping at the automaker’s California factory as he tried to keep the company afloat.

    “The sheer level of pain to make Tesla successful during that 2017, 2018 period was excruciating,” he recalled.

    ___

    This story has been updated to correct that Twitter’s character limit is 280 characters, not 240.

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  • Obnoxiously loud car? A traffic camera might be listening

    Obnoxiously loud car? A traffic camera might be listening

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    NEW YORK (AP) — After the relative quiet of the pandemic, New York City has come roaring back. Just listen: Jackhammers. Honking cars and trucks. Rumbling subway trains. Sirens. Shouting.

    Over the years, there have been numerous efforts to quiet the cacophony. One of the latest: traffic cameras equipped with sound meters capable of identifying souped-up cars and motorbikes emitting an illegal amount of street noise.

    At least 71 drivers have gotten tickets so far for violating noise rules during a yearlong pilot program of the system. The city’s Department of Environmental Protection now has plans to expand the use of the roadside sound meters.

    “Vehicles with illegally modified mufflers and tailpipes that emit extremely loud noise have been a growing problem in recent years,” said City Council member Erik Bottcher, who heralded the arrival of the radars to his district to help reduce “obnoxious” noise.

    New York City already has one of the most extensive noise ordinances in the country, setting allowable levels for a host of noisemakers, such as jackhammers and vehicles.

    A state law known as the Stop Loud and Excessive Exhaust Pollution Act, or the SLEEP Act, that went into effect last spring raised fines for illegal modifications of mufflers and exhaust systems.

    Because police officers often have other priorities, offenders have gone their merry, noisy way. The new devices record the license plates of offenders, much like how speedsters are nabbed by roadside cameras. Vehicle owners face fines of $800 for a first noise offense and a penalty of $2,625 if they ignore a third-offense hearing.

    City officials declined to reveal where the radars are currently perched.

    A year ago, Paris, one of Europe’s noisier cities, installed similar equipment along some streets.

    Evidence is clear that noise affects not only hearing but mood and mental health, not to mention possible links to heightened risks of heart disease and elevated blood pressure.

    “You listen to the noise out there, it is nonstop — the horns, the trucks, the sirens,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams bemoaned during a recent press conference that blamed an expressway for noise and illness. “Noise pollution makes it hard to sleep and increases the risk of chronic disease.”

    Nearly a decade ago, one of Adams’ predecessors, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, launched a war on noise, releasing 45 pages of rules that covered chiming ice cream trucks and how long a canine can continuously yap (five minutes during the wee hours of the night, 10 during most of the day) before its owner gets in the doghouse.

    In 1905, the New York Times had declared the metropolis “a bonfire of sound that is rapidly spreading beyond control of any ordinary extinguisher.” The article asked: “Is there any relief possible?”

    A global pandemic more than a century later answered that question. For a few months in the spring of 2020, the roar of vehicles on city streets stopped as people stayed in their homes.

    The silence allowed people to hear birdsong again — though it was often interrupted by wailing ambulance sirens and, at night, bursts of illegal fireworks.

    “As quiet as it was during the lockdown, it was a very uncomfortable quiet. It was a scary quiet because it carried a lot of implications with it,” said Juan Pablo Bello, the lead investigator of Sounds of New York City, or SONYC, a New York University endeavor to study urban noise.

    Bello and his team initially hoped to collect data on the dissonance of routine urban life but the coronavirus intervened. Instead, they monitored the acoustical rhythms of a city under lockdown.

    The number of noise complaints actually grew during the pandemic, but some experts say that was a symptom of homebound people becoming hypersensitive to their uneasy environments.

    Complaints over noisy neighbors nearly doubled in the first year of the pandemic. Many other complaints were attributed to cars and motorcycles with modified mufflers.

    Still, some people say efforts to quiet loud vehicles go too far. Phillip Franklin, a 30-year-old Bronx car enthusiast, launched an online petition to protest the state’s noise law.

    “The majority of us live here in New York City, where noise is a part of our daily lives,” said his petition, which asserted that quiet vehicles pose dangers to inattentive pedestrians.

    “Fixing potholes is a lot more important than going after noisy cars,” Franklin said in an interview.

    Loud noise, hitting 120 decibels, can cause immediate harm to one’s ears, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even prolonged noise above 70 decibels can eventually damage hearing. A roaring motorcycle is about 95 decibels.

    Firms specializing in architectural acoustics have multiplied. Designing new buildings or retrofitting old ones with anti-noise technology is now a booming business.

    At the Manhattan offices of the environmental engineering firm AKRF, the company has what it calls the “PinDrop” room — suggesting a space so quiet you might hear a pin drop — that has an audio system that simulates the erratic symphony of sounds that the city’s denizens must endure.

    While architectural drawings might render the use of space, acoustical renderings depict how sound and noise might fill a space.

    “So if it’s for sleeping, we want you to be able to sleep. If it’s for listening, we want you to be able to hear,” said AKRF acoustical consultant Nathaniel Fletcher.

    Even with sound barriers, tight-fitting windows and noise-dampening insulation, there’s only so much that can be done about the racket. Most New Yorkers come to peace with that.

    “I think people developed an appreciation for the fact that it’s a messy, noisy city,” said Bello, the NYU researcher. “We like it to be active, and we like it to be lively. And we like it to be full of jobs and activity, and not this sort of scary, quite unnerving place.”

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  • Spotify latest tech name to cut jobs, axes 6% of workforce

    Spotify latest tech name to cut jobs, axes 6% of workforce

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    LONDON (AP) — Music streaming service Spotify said Monday it’s cutting 6% of its global workforce, or about 600 jobs, becoming yet another tech company forced to rethink its pandemic-era expansion as the economic outlook weakens.

    CEO Daniel Ek announced the restructuring in a message to employees that was also posted online.

    As part of the revamp involving a management reshuffle, “and to bring our costs more in line, we’ve made the difficult but necessary decision to reduce our number of employees,” Ek wrote.

    Big tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google announced tens of thousands of job cuts this month as the economic boom that the industry rode during the COVID-19 pandemic waned.

    Stockholm-based Spotify had benefited from pandemic lockdowns because more people had sought out entertainment when they were stuck at home. Ek indicated that the company’s business model, which had long focused on growth, had to evolve.

    The company’s operating costs last year grew at double its revenue growth, a gap that would be “unsustainable long-term” in any economic climate, but even more difficult to close with “a challenging macro environment,” he said.

    Spotify made “considerable effort” to rein in the costs over over the past few months, “but it simply hasn’t been enough,” he said.

    “I hoped to sustain the strong tailwinds from the pandemic and believed that our broad global business and lower risk to the impact of a slowdown in ads would insulate us. In hindsight, I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth,” Ek said.

    He said that’s why the company is cutting its global workforce by about 6%. Ek didn’t give an actual number of job losses but a company spokesman said it’s 600, based on 9,808 employees listed in its latest quarterly report.

    “I take full accountability for the moves that got us here today,” Ek said.

    After years of heady growth, analysts say tech companies are being forced to cut jobs in preparation for an economic dowturn that’s likely to cut demand for their software, products and services and reduce digital ad spending.

    Just last week, Google announced it was slashing 12,000 jobs while Microsoft said it would cull 10,000 workers, bringing to at least 48,000 the number of cuts that Big Tech companies announced in January alone.

    Even with all of the recent layoffs, most tech companies are still vastly larger than they were three years ago. Spotify had 4,405 employees in 2019, before the pandemic began, according to that year’s annual report.

    In morning trading, shares of Spotify added 3.5% to $101.32.

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  • Sundance doc looks into Brett Kavanaugh investigation

    Sundance doc looks into Brett Kavanaugh investigation

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    PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — A new documentary looks into the sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and raises questions about the depth of the FBI investigation in 2018.

    “Justice,” from filmmaker Doug Liman, debuted Friday night at the Sundance Film Festival to a sold-out theater surrounded by armed guards.

    The film, made under intense secrecy, focuses on allegations made by Kavanaugh’s Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez that were detailed in a New Yorker article in 2018. Ramirez alleged that at a gathering with friends when she was a freshman in 1983, Kavanaugh pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her. Kavanaugh has denied those claims. “Justice” also plays a taped recording of a tip given to the FBI from another Yale classmate, Max Stier, that describes a similar incident that the FBI never investigated.

    The Stier report was previously detailed in 2019 by New York Times reporters Robin Pogebrin and Kate Kelly as part of their book “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation.” But the details of it came under scrutiny. After the story was posted online but before it was in the print edition, the Times revised the story to add that the book reported that the woman supposedly involved in the incident declined to be interviewed, and that her friends say she doesn’t recall the incident.

    Stier was not directly interviewed for the film and declined the filmmakers’ request to comment on the contents. An unnamed person whose voice was manipulated for anonymity provided the Stier tape to the filmmakers.

    Kavanaugh was sworn in as the 114th justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in October of 2018 after a narrow 50-48 roll call following a wrenching debate over sexual misconduct. He strenuously denied the allegations of Christine Blasey Ford, who says he sexually assaulted her when they were teens.

    Many people referenced in the film, from Kavanaugh himself to several of Ramirez’s friends who were allegedly there, similarly declined to speak or never responded.

    “Justice” is especially critical of the FBI investigation that took place after the hearings. Through FOIA requests the filmmakers found that there were some 4,500 tips sent to the tipline that went uninvestigated.

    One of Ramirez’s friends from Yale who was interviewed for the film provided text messages in which a mutual friend admits to being contacted by “Kavanaugh’s people” and participated in the narrative that Ramirez didn’t remember things correctly.

    Blasey Ford appears in new footage only in the first several moments of “Justice,” asking Liman, a filmmaker known for “Swingers” and “The Bourne Identity,” why he’s making this film — a question that he doesn’t quite answer.

    In a Q&A after the film, Liman said he was simply outraged after watching her testimony in 2018. The making of the film, which they self-financed, was shrouded in secrecy. Everyone signed nondisclosure agreements, Liman said, and they even had code names for those who agreed to participate. He said that people are “terrified” and that those who came forward are “heroes.”

    Most of the focus is on telling Ramirez’s story — where she came from, how she ended up at Yale and what kind of person she is and was. Several academics specializing in trauma, as well as lawyers, help explain why memory of traumatic events is reliably fractured and how those gaps can be weaponized by prosecutors.

    “Justice’s” surprise inclusion in the festival was announced on Thursday, the first day of the festival, but it quickly became one of the most anticipated films in a slate of over 100. At least part of the reason for something like “Justice” to debut at Sundance is to drum up buzz and secure a distributor. As many of the lawyers in the film say, the stakes are whether or not Kavanaugh perjured himself under oath.

    Asked what he wants to happen when audiences see “Justice,” Liman said, “I kind of feel like the job ends with the film and what happens afterwards in beyond my control.”

    Standing beside him, his producer Amy Hardy said she disagreed. Hardy said she hopes it triggers outrage and leads to “a real investigation with subpoena powers.”

    ___

    Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr: www.twitter.com/ldbahr.

    ___

    For more coverage of the Sundance Film Festival, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/sundance-film-festival

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  • Florida congressman Steube injured after falling off ladder

    Florida congressman Steube injured after falling off ladder

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    FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — U.S. Rep. Greg Steube sustained “several serious injuries” when he fell off a ladder while cutting trees on his property on Florida’s Gulf Coast, his office said Thursday.

    Steube spent the night in the intensive care unit after Wednesday’s 25-foot (7.6-meters) fall. His injuries are not considered life-threatening, a statement posted on Twitter said. A update later Thursday said he remained hospitalized but had left the ICU.

    “He is making progress and in good spirits,” the statement said.

    “Congressman Steube and his family would like to express their deepest thanks to the team of doctors, nurses, and medical personnel treating him,” the statement said. They also credited “an individual” who witnessed the fall and called 911, and Sarasota County’s emergency services for the quick response and transportation to the hospital.

    Steube’s office initially tweeted about the accident late Wednesday.

    “We will provide additional updates when possible,” the statement said. “Please pray for the Congressman and his family.”

    Fellow Republican Christian Ziegler, who is vice chair of Florida’s GOP, tweeted late Wednesday that he had just heard that Steube was still in the hospital, but doing well. “Big relief to hear,” Ziegler said in the tweet.

    Steube was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2018 and just began his third term. He represents all of Sarasota and Charlotte counties and part of Lee County.

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  • Climate misinformation ‘rocket boosters’ on Musk’s Twitter

    Climate misinformation ‘rocket boosters’ on Musk’s Twitter

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Search for the word “climate” on Twitter and the first automatic recommendation isn’t “climate crisis” or “climate jobs” or even “climate change” but instead “climate scam.”

    Clicking on the recommendation yields dozens of posts denying the reality of climate change and making misleading claims about efforts to mitigate it.

    Such misinformation has flourished on Twitter since it was bought by Elon Musk last year, but the site isn’t the only one promoting content that scientists and environmental advocates say undercuts public support for policies intended to respond to a changing climate.

    “What’s happening in the information ecosystem poses a direct threat to action,” said Jennie King, head of climate research and response at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based nonprofit. “It plants those seeds of doubt and makes people think maybe there isn’t scientific consensus.”

    The institute is part of a coalition of environmental advocacy groups that on Thursday released a report tracking climate change disinformation in the months before, during and after the U.N. climate summit in November.

    The report faulted social media platforms for, among other things, failing to enforce their own policies prohibiting climate change misinformation. It is only the latest to highlight the growing problem of climate misinformation on Twitter.

    Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, allowed nearly 4,000 advertisements on its site — most bought by fossil fuel companies — that dismissed the scientific consensus behind climate change and criticized efforts to respond to it, the researchers found.

    In some cases, the ads and the posts cited inflation and economic fears as reasons to oppose climate policies, while ignoring the costs of inaction. Researchers also found that a significant number of the accounts posting false claims about climate change also spread misinformation about U.S. elections, COVID-19 and vaccines.

    Twitter did not respond to questions from The Associated Press. A spokesperson for Meta cited the company’s policy prohibiting ads that have been proven false by its fact-checking partners, a group that includes the AP. The ads identified in the report had not been fact-checked.

    Under Musk, Twitter laid off thousands of employees and made changes to its content moderation that its critics said undercut the effort. In November, the company announced it would no longer enforce its policy against COVID-19 misinformation. Musk also reinstated many formerly banned users, including several who had spread misleading claims about climate change. Instances of hate speech and attacks on LGBTQ people soared.

    Tweets containing “climate scam” or other terms linked to climate change denial rose 300% in 2022, according to a report released last week by the nonprofit Advance Democracy. While Twitter had labeled some of the content as misinformation, many of the popular posts were not labeled.

    Musk’s new verification system could be part of the problem, according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, another organization that tracks online misinformation. Previously, the blue checkmarks were held by people in the public eye such as journalists, government officials or celebrities.

    Now, anyone willing to pay $8 a month can seek a checkmark. Posts and replies from verified accounts are given an automatic boost on the platform, making them more visible than content from users who don’t pay.

    When researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate analyzed accounts verified after Musk took over, they found they spread four times the amount of climate change misinformation compared with users verified before Musk’s purchase.

    Verification systems are typically created to assure users that the accounts they follow are legitimate. Twitter’s new system, however, makes no distinction between authoritative sources on climate change and anyone with $8 and an opinion, according to Imran Ahmed, the center’s chief executive.

    “We found,” Ahmed said, “it has in fact put rocket boosters on the spread of lies and disinformation.”

    __

    This story has been updated to correct the last name of Imran Ahmed.

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  • Leslie Jones promises to be herself hosting ‘The Daily Show’

    Leslie Jones promises to be herself hosting ‘The Daily Show’

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Comedian Leslie Jones will be taking a temporary whirl as host of “The Daily Show” this week, and she says viewers can expect her trademark — some blunt, edgy humor.

    “I’m not Jon Stewart. I’m not Trevor Noah, I’m Leslie Jones. So I’ll be bringing that vulnerable honesty,” the “Saturday Night Live” alum joked in an interview on the eve of her new gig.

    Jones’ stand-in as host on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday on the Comedy Central topical show yields to four more upcoming weekly gigs by comedians: Wanda Sykes, D.L. Hughley, Chelsea Handler and Sarah Silverman.

    Jones’ guest on Tuesday will be Morris Chestnut, starring in “The Best Man: The Final Chapters.” In a video promoting her guest host gig, correspondent Roy Wood Jr. is seen helping her practice identifying prominent people like Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Supreme Court Clarence Thomas.

    While this week marks the first time Jones has appeared on “The Daily Show,” she’s no stranger to MC-ing, having guest-hosted “The Ellen Show” and taking charge of ABC’s game show revival “Supermarket Sweep.”

    “No assignment to me is ever different. It’s always them asking for me. Pretty much what I come to deliver is me. So it’s not really too much different than when I used to do — updates at ‘SNL’ or doing standup, you know?” she said. “It’s all talking.”

    Over the years, “The Daily Show” — first hosted by Craig Kilborn, then Jon Stewart and more recently Trevor Noah — has skewered the left and right by looking at the day’s headlines with a jaundiced view. Noah stepped down late last year, and no permanent successor has yet been named.

    On “SNL,” three-time Emmy Award nominee Jones did impressions of Whoopi Goldberg, Serena Williams, Michelle Obama, Omarosa Manigault Newman and, most memorably, Donald Trump.

    During her run from 2014 to 2019, she routinely hit on Colin Jost while appearing on his “Weekend Update” desk, calling him things like a “little salty oyster cracker,” and showing off her complicated and fictional relationship with fellow cast member Kyle Mooney.

    Her viral tweets earned her an NBC correspondent job at the 2016 and 2018 Olympics. She hosted the BET Awards in 2017 and starred in the 2016 “Ghostbusters” remake.

    Jones said she has been keeping up with daily events and personalities to ensure “The Daily Show” is still topical under her watch, but she’s also got stuff planned.

    “We got already a lot of ideas wrapped up and what we want to do and what we want the show to look like,” she said. “Of course that changes with daily events. If something big happened, of course, we would have to change it for that. But, yeah, we got a lot of stuff that we already want to do.”

    Asked if she’d be interested in inheriting the host’s chair on a permanent basis, Jones was non-committal. “I don’t really want to answer that,” she said.

    ___

    Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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  • Sally Field to receive SAG lifetime achievement award

    Sally Field to receive SAG lifetime achievement award

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    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Sally Field will be honored at the 29th Screen Actors Guild Awards with the SAG lifetime achievement award.

    The actors guild announced Tuesday that Field will be the 58th recipient of the tribute award, following recent honorees including Helen Mirren, Robert De Niro, Alan Alda and Morgan Freeman.

    “She has an enduring career because she is authentic in her performance and always projects likability and humanity — she just connects. That’s part of why she has sustained her massive fandom and incredibly rich and layered career,” said Fran Drescher, SAG-AFTRA president, in a statement. “Sally is a massive star with a working actor’s ethos — just keep doing the work, being as good as you can. Every stage of an actor’s life brings different opportunities, and you just need to keep working. Sally does not stop and we hope she never does.”

    Field, 76, has won two Oscars (for “Norma Rae” and “Places in the Heart”) and three Emmys (“Sybil,” “ER,” “Brothers & Sisters”). She received the National Medal of Arts in 2015 and the Kennedy Center Honor in 2019. Her recent credits include playing Jessie Buss on “Winning Time” and the 2015 film “Hello, My Name Is Doris.” She co-stars in the upcoming “80 for Brady.”

    The SAG Awards will take place Feb. 26 at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles and be livestreamed on Netflix’s YouTube channel.

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  • Swift guitar, Eminem shoes among items in charity auction

    Swift guitar, Eminem shoes among items in charity auction

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    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Taylor Swift’s acoustic guitar, Eminem’s signed tennis shoes and an ensemble worn by a BTS member are among the items to be auctioned for charity next month.

    Julien’s Auctions said Tuesday the memorabilia from some of the most popular music performers will be auctioned at the MusiCares Charity Relief Auction on Feb. 5.

    All proceeds from the event following the Grammy Awards ceremony will go toward MusiCares, an organization dedicated to helping musicians in times of financial and medical crisis.

    A signed Epiphone acoustic guitar that appeared on Swift’s 2020 “evermore” album artwork could draw between $5,000 and $10,000. Eminem wrote the words “Shady” on a white pair of Nike Air Max that could go for up to $3,000. A black utility-style jumpsuit and buckle belt worn by BTS’s J-Hope during a photo shoot for his debut solo album “Jack In the Box” could garner up to $4,000.

    Snoop Dogg and his son, Cordell, will donate sound systems signed by both, along with a special NFT that could go for up to $8,000.

    Joni Mitchell will have several items auctioned including a signed print of her original oil painting of Jimi Hendrix. Another painting on the auction block will come from former Van Halen lead singer David Lee Roth, a signed acrylic on canvas called “Dark Ocean.”

    Olivia Rodrigo’s custom-made “Chopova Lowena” 2022 Glastonbury Festival ensemble and Katy Perry’s 2019 FIFA Live Performance are expected to be auctioned.

    The rest of the items to be auctioned come from a wide range of entertainers including Barbra Streisand, Daft Punk, Jimmy Buffet, Ozzy Osbourne, Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones and Jon Batiste.

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  • Renner says he’s home from hospital after snow plow accident

    Renner says he’s home from hospital after snow plow accident

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    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Actor Jeremy Renner says he is out of the hospital after being treated for serious injuries from a snow plow accident.

    In response to a Twitter post Monday about his Paramount+ TV series “Mayor of Kingstown,” Renner tweeted, “Outside my brain fog in recovery, I was very excited to watch episode 201 with my family at home.”

    Renner was run over by his own 7-ton Pistenbully snow groomer in Nevada while trying to use it to free a relative’s vehicle on a private road near Lake Tahoe on New Year’s Day, authorities said.

    The accident left him in critical condition with major chest trauma and other injuries, according to a Renner representative.

    Authorities are still investigating but have said there were no signs that Renner was impaired and no indication of any foul play.

    The 52-year-old two-time Oscar nominee plays Hawkeye in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and has a recurring role in the “Mission Impossible” franchise.

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  • Madonna unveils 2023 North America and European tour dates

    Madonna unveils 2023 North America and European tour dates

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Madonna will “Take a Bow” with a new tour through North America and Europe starting this summer that will be a “Celebration” of the pop icon’s hits, which include 38 songs in the Billboard Hot 100.

    The 35-city Live Nation-backed “Madonna: The Celebration Tour” will kick off July 15 at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, British Columbia, with stops in Detroit, Chicago, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Denver, Atlanta and Boston, among others. That leg ends on Oct. 7 in Las Vegas.

    Then the Material Girl hits Europe, where she has 11 dates throughout the fall, including London, Barcelona, Paris, Berlin, Milan and Stockholm, among others. The tour will wrap in Amsterdam on Dec. 1.

    The singer will “be highlighting her unmatched catalog of music from the past 40-plus years,” according to the announcement. It will also “pay respect to the city of New York, where her career in music began.”

    “I am excited to explore as many songs as possible in hopes to give my fans the show they have been waiting for,” Madonna says in the announcement.

    Tickets go on sale starting Friday, Jan. 20.

    Some of Madonna’s Hot 100 hits include “Vogue,” “Music,” “Crazy For You,” “Like a Virgin,” “Like a Prayer,” “Justify My Love,” “Live to Tell” and “Papa Don’t Preach.”

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  • Norway archaeologists find ‘world’s oldest runestone’

    Norway archaeologists find ‘world’s oldest runestone’

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    COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Archaeologists in Norway said Tuesday that have found a runestone which they claim is the world’s oldest, saying the inscriptions are up to 2,000 years old and date back to the earliest days of the enigmatic history of runic writing.

    The flat, square block of brownish sandstone has carved scribbles, which may be the earliest example of words recorded in writing in Scandinavia, the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo said. It said it was “among the oldest runic inscriptions ever found” and “the oldest datable runestone in the world.”

    “This find will give us a lot of knowledge about the use of runes in the early Iron Age. This may be one of the first attempts to use runes in Norway and Scandinavia on stone,” Kristel Zilmer, a professor at University of Oslo, of which the museum is part, told The Associated Press.

    Older runes have been found on other items, but not on stone. The earliest runic find is on a bone comb found in Denmark. Zilmer said that maybe the tip of knife or a needle was used to carve the runes.

    The runestone was discovered in the fall of 2021 during an excavation of a grave near Tyrifjord, west of Oslo, in a region known for several monumental archaeological finds. Items in the cremation pit — burnt bones and charcoal — indicate that the runes likely were inscribed between A.D. 1 and 250.

    “We needed time to analyze and date the runestone,” she said to explain why the finding was first announced on Tuesday.

    Measuring 31 centimeters by 32 centimeters (12.2 inches by 12.6 inches), the stone has several types of inscriptions and not all make linguistic sense. Eight runes on the front of the stone read “idiberug” — which could be the name of a woman, a man or a family.

    Zilmer called the discovery “the most sensational thing that I, as an academic, have had.”

    There is still a lot of research to be done on the rock, dubbed the Svingerud stone after the site where it was found.

    “Without doubt, we will obtain valuable knowledge about the early history of runic writing,” Zilmer said.

    The runestone will be exhibited for a month, starting on Jan. 21, at the Museum of Cultural History, which has Norway’s largest collection of historical artifacts, from the Stone Age to modern times.

    Runes are the characters in several Germanic alphabets that were used in northern Europe from ancient times until the adoption of the Latin alphabet. They have been found on stones and different household objects.

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