Month: February 2024

Volkswagen and BASF Are Reconsidering Ties to Xinjiang, China
18
Feb
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By William Lee
Business

Volkswagen and BASF Are Reconsidering Ties to Xinjiang, China

Volkswagen Group is reviewing the future of its joint venture in the Xinjiang region of northwestern China and another German industrial giant is starting to sell its stakes there following new international scrutiny of forced labor by predominantly Muslim ethnic groups.Volkswagen said last week that it was in discussions with one of its main joint venture partners in China, the state-owned Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, in the wake of allegations of human rights violations at their joint venture in Xinjiang.The companies are examining “the future direction of the J.V.’s business activities in Xinjiang,” VW said, adding that “various scenarios are…
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Biden to Address Reports of Aleksei Navalny’s Death: Watch Live
16
Feb
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By William Lee
New miscellaneous

Biden to Address Reports of Aleksei Navalny’s Death: Watch Live

On Wednesday, two days before Russian authorities reported his death, Aleksei A. Navalny was sentenced to another term in a special punishment cell in an Arctic prison, a notoriously harsh form of incarceration generally used to force inmates into subjugation.The sentencing marked the 27th time that prison authorities had sent Mr. Navalny into a punishment cell, according to Kira Yarmysh, his spokeswoman. If he were to have served this last term in full, he would have spent a total of 308 days in similar cells, Ms. Yarmysh said.According to Eva Merkacheva, a Russian journalist who has covered the country’s prisons…
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More Young People Are on Multiple Psychiatric Drugs, Study Finds
16
Feb
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By William Lee
Health

More Young People Are on Multiple Psychiatric Drugs, Study Finds

The NewsGrowing numbers of children and adolescents are being prescribed multiple psychiatric drugs to take simultaneously, according to a new study in the state of Maryland. The phenomenon is increasing despite warnings that psychotropic drug combinations in young people have not been tested for safety or studied for their impact on the developing brain.The study, published Friday in JAMA Open Network, looked at the prescribing patterns among patients 17 or younger enrolled in Medicaid in Maryland from 2015 to 2020. In this group, there was a 9.5 percent increase in the prevalence of “polypharmacy,” which the study defined as taking…
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Kylian Mbappe is leaving PSG: Thank god that’s finally over
16
Feb
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By William Lee
Sports

Kylian Mbappe is leaving PSG: Thank god that’s finally over

Ice ages haven’t lasted as long as this.Kylian Mbappe to Real Madrid… it has been a thing for about a decade at least.The Athletic was not even in existence when the pair began courting each other. Twitter was still fun (and called Twitter), Taylor Swift hadn’t heard of American football and the closest thing we got to a global pandemic was from watching Contagion.It has been an inexorably long saga, the very worst kind of transfer saga in fact, with endless posturing, incessant lies and spin and thousands upon thousands of stories claiming that it is finally happening.Well now, once…
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In Big Election Year, A.I.’s Architects Move Against Its Misuse
16
Feb
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By William Lee
Technology

In Big Election Year, A.I.’s Architects Move Against Its Misuse

Artificial intelligence companies have been at the vanguard of developing the transformative technology. Now they are also racing to set limits on how A.I. is used in a year stacked with major elections around the world.Last month, OpenAI, the maker of the ChatGPT chatbot, said it was working to prevent abuse of its tools in elections, partly by forbidding their use to create chatbots that pretend to be real people or institutions. In recent weeks, Google also said it would limit its A.I. chatbot, Bard, from responding to certain election-related prompts to avoid inaccuracies. And Meta, which owns Facebook and…
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Amazon Argues National Labor Relations Board Is Unconstitutional
16
Feb
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By William Lee
Business

Amazon Argues National Labor Relations Board Is Unconstitutional

In the latest sign of a growing backlash within corporate America to the 88-year-old federal agency that enforces labor rights, Amazon argued in a legal filing on Thursday that the National Labor Relations Board was unconstitutional.The move followed a similar argument by SpaceX, the rocket company founded and run by Elon Musk, in a legal complaint in January, and by Trader Joe’s during a labor board hearing a few weeks later.The labor board consists of a prosecutorial arm, which issues complaints against employers or unions deemed to have violated federally protected labor rights; administrative judges, who hear complaints; and a…
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