List of All Articles with Tag 'rica'

National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan are joining a White House meeting

The heat wave engulfing the Mediterranean is set to intensify as another Saharan anticyclone threatens record temperatures from

Sasol Ltd. was castigated by South Africa’s national air quality officer for failing to cut pollution as its

Vice President Kamala Harris has been left somewhat red-faced after a clip of her attempting to explain artificial intelligence was viewed more than 800,000 times. Ms Harris describing AI as a “fancy thing” during a roundtable with advocacy representatives has been roundly mocked, with many people comparing the answer to some of the gaffes that President Joe Biden has become known for. “I think the first part of this issue that should be articulated is AI is kind of a fancy thing, first of all, it’s two letters, it means artificial intelligence but ultimately ... it’s about machine learning,” Ms Harris said. “And so the machine is taught and part of the issue here is what information is going into the machine that will then determine, and we can predict then if we think about what information is going in, what then will be produced in terms of decisions and opinions that may be made through that process.” One Twitter user referred to Ms Harris’ description as being like “the introduction to a 6th-grade essay on AI”, while another suggested the vice president “always speaks as if she is talking to a room of 3rd graders”. “It’s nearly impossible to tell the difference between Kamala Harris speaking about AI and Bart Simpson’s book report on Treasure Island,” another user added. Ms Harris has previously been mocked for past comments, in particular after she told Today in January 2022 on the topic of the coronavirus pandemic: “It is time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day. Every day, it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down.” The vice president currently has an approval rating of 39.2 per cent, according to polling averages from FiveThirtyEight, while President Biden has a slightly higher approval rating of 40.6 per cent. Read More Vice President Kamala Harris makes history with tiebreaking votes in Senate Kamala Harris arrives in Ghana to ‘deepen ties’ with country amid competition from China Ron DeSantis rules out being Trump’s running mate: ‘I’m not a number two guy’

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is attempting to rally support for a bill that would reveal to Americans if their household devices are spying on them. Mr Cruz took to the Senate floor on Tuesday to rally support for the Informing Consumers about the Smart Devices Act — warning that as more and more Americans bring smart devices into their homes, the result could be a loss of privacy. “In Texas, we’ve become very aware of that cost,” Mr Cruz said. “The past few years, smart thermostats have allowed electric companies to control the temperature in your own home from afar in the name of conserving energy. Furthermore, a lot of Americans don’t realize or expect that the growing number of smart household devices and appliances, have cameras on them, and microphones that can surreptitiously record families and transmit data.” Mr Cruz says his bill would require technology manufacturers to clearly disclose whether their appliances have listening devices, cameras, or any other spying technologies. The bill would not apply to cell phones, laptops, or other devices “that a consumer would reasonably expect to include a camera or microphone.” Mr Cruz first introduced the proposal back in January with Sen Maria Cantwell of Washington, a Democrat. Sen Raphael Warnock of Georgia also joined the bill as a co-sponsor in late March, shortly after it was marked up by the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee. According to Mr Cruz’s testimony, the bill passed the Commerce Committee by a voice vote but has not yet been taken up by the full Senate. At its core, Mr Cruz said, the bill is designed as a consumer protection measure to let Americans know what they’re bringing into their home — a right that he feels takes precedent over concerns about government overreach. “Now, I’m sympathetic to the argument that there are too many mandates from government and that many of the mandates are unnecessary, burdensome, and costly,” Mr Cruz said. “But requiring a manufacturer to tell you if they’re spying on you does not fall into that category. And I have to say in assessing the minimal burden, the disclosure burden, against the harm, I fall down on the side of individual liberty. I fall down on the side of privacy.” Privacy is, in many ways, one of the defining issues of the internet age — particularly at a time when the buying and selling of people’s personal data is a multi-billion dollar industry that is expected to grow exponentially in the coming years. “I don’t think the American people want their air fryer spying on them,” Mr Cruz said. “And at a minimum, they have a right to know if their air fryer is spying on them.” Read More Ted Cruz accuses new Barbie movie of ‘pushing Chinese propaganda’

The world just had its hottest June ever for land and sea, with ocean temperatures setting new highs

The United Arab Emirates is coming under increasing pressure to achieve ambitious results when it hosts the COP28

The world’s biggest global climate fund has made its largest bid yet to encourage private investors to spend

Gold Standard, a verifier of carbon offsets, is temporarily pausing the issuance of credits from projects based in

Eskom Pension and Provident Fund has signed up for the United Nation’s Net Zero Asset Owners Alliance as

Tucker Carlson’s Twitter show has reportedly suffered a significant drop in viewership since his debut episode of Tucker on Twitter. Journalist Matt Binder tweeted the number of video views the former Fox News host has garnered since his Twitter show began on 6 June. While his first show attracted 26.7m video views, the subsequent episode attracted half as many: 13.9m. His most recent episode, his eighth, only garnered 3.8m video views, according to Binder. It counts as a “view” if someone watched the video for more than two seconds. Media Matters senior fellow Matthew Gertz also calculated the views per posts, noting a significant decline since Carlson’s show launched. Although the first post generated 120m views, his most recent only generated 8.6m. Carlson was fired from Fox News — for reasons that reportedly remain unknown to the network’s former superstar. In March, one month before his termination, Carlson averaged 3.3m viewers per show, according to Nielsen. The social media platform’s views aren’t necessarily equivalent to broadcast news views. According to Twitter, a post view is tallied when “anyone who is logged into Twitter who views a Tweet counts as a view, regardless of where they see the Tweet (e.g. Home, Search, Profiles, etc.) or whether or not they follow the author. If you’re the author, looking at your own Tweet also counts as a view.” The views are also not always from unique viewers, the social media giant noted. Carlson may have joined Twitter at a particularly turbulent time for the platform, after Elon Musk took over. Mr Musk’s policies have sparked a lot of criticism from users as well as a Congressional investigation. Things may have gotten more complicated last week after the “Twitter killer” app was introduced. Threads, a rival platform created by Mark Zuckerberg, comes as many fed-up Twitter users are threatening to leave Mr Musk’s platform. “I don’t know why I was fired. I really don’t. I’m not angry about it. I wish Fox well,” Carlson said during a recent podcast interview. Fox News reached a massive $787m settlement with Dominion Voting Systems after spreading false statements about the voting machine company. His former employer sent him a cease-and-desist letter, to which Carlson’s lawyer replied, he will “not be silenced.” The Independent has reached out to Carlson and Twitter for comment. Read More Tucker Carlson doesn’t know why he was fired from Fox News but suggests his views on Ukraine were a ‘red line’ Fox News ousts eight remaining Tucker Carlson show staff as Jesse Watters takes over primetime spot Fox reaches $12m settlement with former producer who sued company over ‘toxic’ workplace

It didn’t take very long for conservatives to pounce on Meta’s new Twitter competitor and accuse it of censoring a prominent conservative, forcing the social media giant to back down. Last week, the New York Post reported that users of Instagram Threads — the upstart from Facebook’s parent company meant to take advantage of Twitter users’ discontent over the site’s Elon Musk-era problems — were offered a warning when they attempted to follow Donald Trump Jr, the eldest son of twice-impeached, twice-indicted ex-president Donald Trump. They were asked if they were “sure” they wanted to do so, and warned that the younger Mr Trump had “repeatedly posted false information that was reviewed by independent fact-checkers or went against our Community Guidelines”. The Trump Organization executive, who frequently posts false and inflammatory statements targeting prominent Democrats, posted a screen grab of the warning to Twitter on Thursday, around the time the new app went live. “Threads not exactly off to a great start,” he wrote. “Hey Instagram, threads is verbal, so the whole skimpy bikini thing is not going to work so well if your influencers can’t actually formulate a sentence… IMHO you may want to rethink cutting off those who can”. Meta communications boss Andy Stone responded that the warning “was an error and shouldn’t have happened”. “It’s been fixed,” he added. In response, Mr Trump replied: “Ok thanks I appreciate that”. The frustrated would-be poster’s father was banned from Instagram and Facebook for two years after he incited a deadly riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. On that day, a mob of the defeated president’s supporters stormed the seat of the US legislature in hopes of preventing certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Read More Instagram Threads hits 100 million users, becoming easily the fastest growing app ever Twitter restores old, ‘better’ version of TweetDeck – but for how long? Account tracking Elon Musk’s jet is now on Threads after it was suspended from Twitter Elon Musk says ‘Zuck is cuck’ as Threads inches closer to 100m users