Biden’s Republican Rivals Pounce on Questions of Mental Acuity

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Washington — Joe Biden’s Republican rivals are pouncing on questions about his mental acuity, following a verbal slip by the U.S. president that has exacerbated Democrats’ anxiety about his age. “Biden’s not going to be any sharper in November,” said Jason Miller, senior adviser to the Trump campaign in a statement to VOA. The campaign released a statement saying, “Joe Biden isn’t just senile, he put our national security at risk.” Former President Donald Trump has a commanding lead in the Republican primaries and is likely to become the party’s nominee, despite facing 91 felony indictments in various federal and statemore

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Trump Wins Nevada’s Republican Caucuses

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LAS VEGAS — Former President Donald Trump won Nevada’s Republican presidential caucuses Thursday after he was the only major candidate to compete, winning his third straight state as he tries to secure his party’s nomination. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, his last major rival still in the race, skipped the caucuses even though they are the only contest in Nevada that counts toward the GOP nomination. Haley cited what she considered an unfair process favoring Trump and instead ran in Nevada’s symbolic state-run presidential primary on Tuesday, when she finished behind the “none of these candidates” option. Trump will win most,more

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Biden Denies Claims of Poor Document Handling, Contrasts Case with Trump’s

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WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday pushed back on claims he incorrectly handled sensitive government documents, forcefully contrasting his case with that of former President Donald Trump – and drawing a contrast with Trump’s own high-stakes legal travails the same day the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could remove Trump from the presidential race. Biden, at turns defiant and bitterly jocular with the reporters called in for the last-minute remarks Thursday evening, strongly disputed that he “willfully” retained and shared classified materials, as was said in a report released earlier in the day. “These assertions aremore

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Biden Won’t Seek Redactions in Report on Classified Documents

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WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden will not seek any redactions in a report by the Justice Department special counsel investigating his handling of classified documents, the White House said Thursday, clearing the way for its release.  White House Counsel’s office spokesman Ian Sams said the White House had notified the Justice Department that it had completed a review of the report Thursday morning. “In keeping with his commitment to cooperation and transparency throughout this investigation, the president declined to assert privilege over any portion of the report,” he said.  The yearlong investigation centered on the improper retention of classified documentsmore

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Oversight Board Urges Meta to Rethink Policy on Manipulated Media

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NEW YORK — An oversight board is criticizing Facebook owner Meta’s policies regarding manipulated media as “incoherent” and insufficient to address the flood of online disinformation that already has begun to target elections across the globe this year.  The quasi-independent board on Monday said its review of an altered video of President Joe Biden that spread on Facebook exposed gaps in the policy. The board said Meta should expand the policy to focus not only on videos generated with artificial intelligence, but on media regardless of how it was created. That includes fake audio recordings, which already have convincingly impersonated politicalmore

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Deepfake Scam Video Cost Company $26 Million, Hong Kong Police Says

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Hong Kong — Scammers tricked a multinational firm out of some $26 million by impersonating senior executives using deepfake technology, Hong Kong police said Sunday, in one of the first cases of its kind in the city. Law enforcement agencies are scrambling to keep up with generative artificial intelligence, which experts say holds potential for disinformation and misuse — such as deepfake images showing people mouthing things they never said. A company employee in the Chinese finance hub received “video conference calls from someone posing as senior officers of the company requesting to transfer money to designated bank accounts,” police toldmore

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Republicans Governors, National Guard and the Texas Border: What to Know

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AUSTIN, Texas — As Republicans cheer on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s escalating feud with the Biden administration over immigration enforcement, some governors are considering deploying National Guard members to the border — again. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday was among the first to commit more personnel to Texas, announcing he would send hundreds of additional guard members as tensions grow between state authorities and the U.S. government over who has the power to enforce immigration policies, where and how. Republicans say tougher actions along the border are needed in response to record levels of illegal crossings, but sending guard membersmore

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Biden Wins South Carolina’s Democratic Primary

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COLUMBIA, South carolina — U.S. President Joe Biden overwhelmingly won South Carolina’s Democratic primary on Saturday, notching a 2024 victory in the state that vaulted him to the White House four years ago.  Biden defeated the long-shot Democrats on South Carolina’s ballot, including Minnesota Representative Dean Phillips and author Marianne Williamson.  “In 2020, it was the voters of South Carolina who proved the pundits wrong, breathed new life into our campaign, and set us on the path to winning the presidency,” Biden said in a statement. “Now in 2024, the people of South Carolina have spoken again and I have nomore

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Court to Rule If ‘Insurrection Provision’ Voids Trump’s Eligibility

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washington — A case with the potential to disrupt former U.S. President Donald Trump’s drive to return to the White House is putting the U.S. Supreme Court uncomfortably at the center of the 2024 presidential campaign.  In arguments Thursday, the justices will, for the first time, wrestle with a constitutional provision that was adopted after the Civil War to prevent former officeholders who “engaged in insurrection” from reclaiming power.  The case is the court’s most direct involvement in a presidential election since Bush v. Gore, a decision delivered a quarter-century ago that effectively delivered the 2000 election to Republican George W.more

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China Launches Rocket as Commercial Missions Pick Up Pace

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BEIJING — A small but powerful Chinese rocket capable of carrying payloads at competitive costs delivered nine satellites into orbit Saturday, Chinese state media reported, in what is gearing up to be another busy year for Chinese commercial launches.  The Jielong-3, or Smart Dragon-3, blasted off from a floating barge off the coast of Yangjiang in southern Guangdong province, the second launch of the rocket in just two months.  Developed by China Rocket Company, a commercial offshoot of a state-owned launch vehicle manufacturer, Jielong-3 made its first flight in December 2022.  President Xi Jinping has called for the expansion of strategicmore

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Beheading Video Gone from YouTube, But Questions Remain

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NEW YORK — A graphic video from a Pennsylvania man accused of beheading his father that circulated for hours on YouTube has put a spotlight yet again on gaps in social media companies’ ability to prevent horrific postings from spreading across the web. Police said Wednesday that they charged Justin Mohn, 32, with first-degree murder and abusing a corpse after he beheaded his father, Michael, in their Bucks County home and publicized it in a 14-minute YouTube video that anyone, anywhere could see. News of the incident — which drew comparisons to the beheading videos posted online by the Islamic Statemore

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Court Filing Reveals Relationship Between District Attorney, Special Prosecutor in Trump Case

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atlanta, georgia — A court filing Friday discloses that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is involved in a “personal relationship” with a special prosecutor she hired for the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump, but she argues there are no grounds to dismiss the case or to remove her from the prosecution.  Willis hired special prosecutor Nathan Wade in November 2021 to assist her investigation into whether the Republican former president and others broke any laws as they tried to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Since Trump and 18 others were indictedmore

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History of AI

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From counting machines to neural networks, the development of artificial intelligence has paralleled emerging brain science. Writer, Matt Dibble; graphic designer, Kateryna Stepchenko; motion designer, Valeryia Rusak; narrator, Hayde Fitzpatrick. …

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Lunar Night Puts Japan’s Lander Back to Sleep

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TOKYO — After a brief awakening, Japan’s Moon lander is out of action again but will resume its mission if it survives the two-week lunar night, the space agency said Thursday. The unmanned Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) touched down last month at a wonky angle that left its solar panels facing the wrong way. As the sun’s angle shifted, it came back to life for two days this week and carried out scientific observations of a crater with its high-spec camera. “After completing operation from 1/30 (to) 1/31, #SLIM entered a two-week dormancy period during the long lunar night,”more

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Remote Washington State Town Becomes Hub for EV Battery Production

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Moses Lake, Washington — It’s mid-winter in east Washington state, yet despite the chilly fog, two construction sites in the town of Moses Lake are brimming with activity. Several hundred workers are on an ambitious timeline to complete two new factories slanted to begin production of the next-generation components for electric vehicle batteries later this year. Two American start-ups, backed by $100 million in federal grants each, in addition to commercial partnerships, are racing to secure the domestic supply chain with the next-generation battery materials for EV automakers. “That’s going to go into everything from electric vehicles to IoT [Internet ofmore

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