Author: KnowledgeHippo
Some parents of students at the University of California, Berkeley, have hired private security workers to patrol near campus, which the school says should be left to campus police.The group, called SafeBears, says it represents more than 1,300 parents of students at the university. He said he decided to hire the security guards after several crimes involving students last year, including a carjacking near a fraternity house and another near campus.The university, which has about 45,000 students, said in a statement that the hiring raised concerns about training and experience and that “university funds are better spent hiring more” campus…
One year ago Friday, Ella Milman and Mikhail Gershkovich received a chilling phone call from the editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal. Their son, Evan, a foreign correspondent for The Journal on a reporting assignment in Russia, had missed his daily security check.”We were hoping that this was some kind of mistake, that everything would be okay,” the elder Mr. Gerskovich recalled. But the startling reality became clear: Russian authorities had arrested Evan and charged him with spying for the US government, making him the first American reporter to be held in Russia on espionage charges since the end of…
In a sign that the tech industry is getting weirder and weirder, Meta plans to release a big update soon that turns the Ray-Ban Meta, the video-capturing camera glasses, into a gadget only seen in sci-fi movies.Next month, the glasses will be able to use new artificial intelligence software to see the real world and describe what you’re looking at, similar to the AI assistant in the movie “Her.”The glasses, which come in a variety of frames starting at $300 and lenses starting at $17, have been used primarily for taking photos and videos and listening to music. But with…
For Dr. Theresa Cheng, the scene was “revealing.”He had come to Valley of the Moon, an outdoor holding in San Diego’s rural Mountain Empire, to provide volunteer medical care to asylum seekers who had breached the US-Mexico border wall and were waiting to be apprehended by US authorities.Among the crowd at this and other locations, he found children with deep wounds, broken bones, fevers, diarrhea, vomiting, and even seizures. Some were hidden in garbage cans and overflowing portajons. An asthmatic boy without an inhaler was wheezing in the thick smoke from brush and trash fires lit for warmth.With capacity at…
If Indiana Jones took a turn for the stylish and developed an obsession with textiles, he might look a bit like Louis Bartholomew, the French illustrator and designer who travels to Africa and the Middle East to work with weavers and artisans who they are skilled in traditional techniques. Ishkar, a London-based company that works with NGOs and artisans to create employment opportunities for those living in isolated areas of countries often affected by war, was recently commissioned to create a capsule collection featuring women weavers in Afghanistan. Barthélemy usually works personally with artisans to create tapestries or carpets, but…
Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prisonSam Bankman-Fried, who was convicted of stealing $8 billion from customers of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, was sentenced to 25 years in prison. It was a much lighter sentence than the 110-year maximum sentence his charges carried, but it was far longer than the six-and-a-half years his defense attorneys had sought. Bankman-Fried was also ordered to forfeit $11.2 billion in assets.The conviction marked the end of a sweeping fraud case that exposed greed and risk-taking throughout the loosely regulated world of cryptocurrencies. In November 2022, FTX collapsed almost overnight, wiping out $8…
The moral panic about “woke” campuses has spilled over into actual legislation, not just Florida’s swamp idols. Last week, Alabama’s governor signed a bill that is supposed to limit the teaching of “divisive” topics at its colleges and universities. The bill is similar to Florida’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at public colleges, which was signed into law last May. Both are all-out attacks on learning, ostracizing liberal ideas from the classroom. Other state legislatures have also been busy. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Republican lawmakers have proposed 81 anti-DEI bills in 28 states. (So far,…
Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX convicted of stealing billions of dollars from customers, was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday, capping an extraordinary saga that has rocked the crypto industry and become a cautionary tale of greed and hubris.Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sentence was less than the 40 to 50 years federal prosecutors had sought after a jury found him guilty of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering — charges that carried a maximum sentence of 110 years behind bars . But the sentence was much longer than the six and a half years that his defense lawyers…
Concerns about the impact of the Baltimore bridge collapse on auto imports and exports are beginning to ease as auto companies turn to other ports along the East Coast.On Thursday, market researcher Cox Automotive said it expected the situation in Baltimore not to have a material impact on vehicle sales in the United States.”While Baltimore is the top port for auto shipments, this is not likely to cause or create a sudden new problem in vehicle supply that will materially affect the market,” Jonathan Smoke, Cox’s chief economist, said in a conference call. “The port is heavy for exports and…
The Biden administration announced Thursday that it has finalized a new regulation that restricts the use of short-term health insurance plans that do not comply with the Affordable Care Act, reversing the Trump administration’s move to give consumers greater access to lower-cost but cheaper plans.Under the new rule, short-term programs will only be able to last for 90 days, with the possibility of a one-month extension.In 2018, the Trump administration issued a rule allowing plans to last just under a year, renewable for a total of up to three years. Previously, under an Obama-era policy, plans had to last less…