This paper investigates the impact of using morphologically-informed tokenizers to aid and streamline the interlinear gloss annotation of an audio corpus of Yoloxóchitl Mixtec (YM) using a combination of ASR and text-based sequence-to-sequence tools, with the goal of improving efficiency while reducing the workload of a human annotator. We present two novel tokenization schemes that separate words in a nonlinear manner, preserving information about tonal morphology as much as possible. One of these approaches, a Segment and Melody tokenizer, simply extracts the tones without predicting segmentation. The other, a Sequence of Processes tokenizer, predicts segmentation for the words, which could allow an end-to-end ASR system to produce segmented and unsegmented transcriptions in a single pass. We find that these novel tokenizers are competitive with BPE and Unigram models, and the Segment-and-Melody model outperforms traditional tokenizers in terms of word error rate but does not reach the same character error rate. In addition, we analyze tokenizers on morphological and information-theoretic metrics to find predictive correlations with downstream performance. Our results suggest that nonlinear tokenizers designed specifically for the non-concatenative morphology of a language are competitive with conventional BPE and Unigram models for ASR. Further research will be necessary to determine the applicability of these tokenizers in downstream processing tasks.

The number of people living in urban areas has tripled in the last 50 years, meaning when a major natural disaster such as an earthquake strikes a city, more lives are in danger. Meanwhile, the strength and frequency of extreme weather events has increased--a trend set to continue as the climate warms. That is spurring efforts around the world to develop a new generation of earthquake monitoring and climate forecasting systems to make detecting and responding to disasters quicker, cheaper, and more accurate than ever. On Nov. 6, at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain, the Global Initiative on Resilience to Natural Hazards through AI Solutions will meet for the first time. The new United Nations initiative aims to guide governments, organizations, and communities in using AI for disaster management.

Photos have emerged showing children in Mexico wielding rifles as they have been recruited by a volunteer police force to combat organized crime, a report says. The children, who are as young as 12, paraded around a sports field before joining the patrol in Ayahualtempa, a village in the southwestern Guerrero state where authorities report being overwhelmed by kidnappings, according to Reuters. "We can't study because of lawlessness," one of the teenagers was quoted by the news agency as telling the Milenio television channel, adding that he had learned how to shoot a gun following a series of lessons. In early January, an alleged cartel drone attack in the Guerrero state left five people dead. Children hold rifles before a ceremony to join the ranks of the community police a few days after an armed group abducted four people from Ayahualtempa, in Mexico's Guerrero state, on January 24.

A bride was arrested in her wedding dress and accused of being involved in an extortion scheme with her would-be husband and six others, police in Mexico said. The woman, identified as Nancy N. by Mexico state prosecutors, was detained during her nuptials amid a major police operation in December. Pictures of the bride showed her handcuffed and flanked by police officers. Authorities said that Nancy was preparing to marry her fiancé – Clemente N., who goes by the alias "Mouse," when authorities arrested her. Nancy N. was arrested by police in Mexico while in her wedding dress.

An alleged cartel drone attack in a remote community in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero killed 5 people, the Guerrero state prosecutor's office said. In a translated press release, the Guerrero state prosecutor's office said that the cartel attacked at least 30 people in the remote Mexican village that is plagued by cartel violence. Officials confirmed that five people were burned to death in a January 4 attack. "Through the Ministerial Investigative Police, on January 5, 2024, the first field investigations were conducted," the translated press release said. "Authorities found charred bone remains corresponding to 5 people from a burned vehicle."

Over the last decade, Mexican drug cartels have been fighting each other--and corrupt police and military units--for control of the lucrative drug trade, plunging the country into chaos. Outsiders might think of Mexico as sunny and tequila-soaked, but beyond the beach resorts of Cancun and Mazatlan there hides a grimmer tale: levels of murder, rape, and kidnapping are hitting levels rarely seen outside hotspots in Africa, Asia, and South America. So grim the tale, when 43 college students went missing in Mexico's southern state of Guerrero in 2014, investigators found 129 other bodies in 60 fosas clandestinas (mass graves) before stumbling on badly burned remains in a mass grave they think might--possibly, maybe--contain what's left of the missing students. Mexico's attorney general says the local mayor conspired with the town's police force to abduct the students and turn them over to a local gang, who murdered them and burned the bodies, and dumped the charred corpses into a river. The situation is so bad that, after six decades of gains, the average life expectancy in Mexico has decreased, according to recent research.

A disgruntled Minecraft gamer is believed to be behind a bomb hoax email sent to more than 400 schools and colleges. Some students were evacuated from school and college buildings across the country on Monday after an email threatening to detonate a bomb if they refused to hand over cash was sent out. The email appeared to come from gaming network VeltPvP – a server which allows users to compete in the game Minecraft – but the US company said that the account had been "spoofed". Carson Kallen, the US firm's 17-year-old CEO, told the BBC he suspected the hoax emails had been sent by a disgruntled Minecraft player in a bid to damage VeltPvP's reputation. He said: "Everyone who plays it is between the ages of eight and 18 years old - it's all kids playing. "Every now and then we have a little rebel who will try to do something bad like this.

The Workshop on Logic-Based Artificial Intelligence (LBAI) was held in Washington, D.C., on 13 to 15 June 1999. The workshop was organized by Jack Minker and John McCarthy. Its purpose was to bring together researchers who use logic as a fundamental tool in AI to permit them to review accomplishments, assess future directions, and share their research in LBAI.