For more information about how to interpreting these hierarchical Bayesian networks, we refer the reader to [24].

Charlie Hurt and Griff Jenkins examine a protest of border czar Tom Homan's meeting in Albany with New York lawmakers over their refusal to enforce immigration laws. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem announced the building of seven new miles of border wall in Arizona as part of the administration's efforts to "make America safe again." Noem's announcement, coming in a short video posted to her X account, marks the beginning of additional border wall construction along the southern border during the second Trump administration. The DHS said in a press release Friday that U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) awarded the first contract of President Donald Trump's second term to Granite Construction Co. for more than 70 million, which will result in seven new miles of border wall in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, according to Noem's announcement. "Everybody, I'm here in Arizona, and right at this spot, you can see where the border wall ends," Noem said while standing along the border, donning a CBP hat and jacket.

The transition of the electricity production from fossil fuels to renewable sources is one of the most important tasks of the present and future. State financed feed-in tariffs have helped to kick-off this transition. Today though, the production from renewable sources is more and more brought to liberalised electricity markets using so-called Green Power Purchase Agreements (PPA). PPAs are contracts that sell the production of a generating asset at a fixed price. PPAs are not new, they have helped to secure the large investment sums needed when building conventional power plants for decades. This is achieved by guaranteeing a secure stream of income to the owner of the asset. At the same time the buyer is exposed to market risk. A PPA is called "Green" when its underlying generating asset uses a renewable source. Due to the fact that electricity is not storable its production has to match consumption at every point in time.

During a press conference at the White House Monday, US President Donald Trump and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world's largest chip manufacturer, announced that TSMC will spend 100 billion in the US in coming years to build multiple chip factories, on top of 65 billion already committed to US investment. TSMC, in a press release, billed the combined 165 billion investment as the "largest single foreign direct investment in US history." The spending is expected to focus on "advanced technologies," which could be taken to include chips for artificial intelligence, which has largely been done by TSMC in its Taiwan factories until now. TSMC serves just about every chip maker in the world, including producing the most powerful chips from Nvidia for AI, the Hopper and Blackwell GPU chips. Also: Intel touts new Xeon chip's AI power in bid to fend off AMD, ARM advances Trump said the move means "The most powerful AI chips in the world will be made right here in America," according to an account by Bloomberg.

A film released by The New Yorker was among the winners at Sunday's Academy Awards. "I'm Not a Robot," a darkly comic portrayal of a woman trying to convince her computer that she is human, claimed the prize for Best Live Action Short. It is the second film released by the magazine to be honored with an Oscar. The film, written and directed by Victoria Warmerdam, opens with a seemingly typical office scene that quickly unravels. When the protagonist, a music producer, fails a series of CAPTCHA tests, she begins to question her own grip on reality.

Moon exploration is undergoing a potentially transformative moment. Over the course of six weeks, three different lunar landers began a rocket-fueled space journey to learn more about Earth's nearest neighbor. All three landers are operated by private, and relatively newly-formed companies. That's a marked shift away from space exploration of the 20th century, which was dominated by state-backed, public institutions like NASA. If they complete their missions, these space upstarts could help pave the way for future planned human moon missions, and possibly, even a not-too distant lunar economy.

Assassin's Creed maker confirms leaked game footage is real 38 minutes agoTom RichardsonBBC NewsbeatUbisoftAssassin's Creed Shadows is seen as a pivotal release for Ubisoft The makers of Assassin's Creed Shadows - the forthcoming entry in one of video gaming's biggest franchises - have confirmed footage leaked online is real. Some players managed to get their hands on the game - due to be released on 20 March - ahead of its official release. Developer Ubisoft said gameplay videos shared online "did not represent the final quality of the game". In a statement posted online, the company said it was "still working on patches" and urged fans not to share spoilers. Shadows will be the first Assassin's Creed instalment set in Japan - something fans have long been asking for.

Microsoft is wading deeper into generative artificial intelligence for gaming with Muse, a new AI model announced today. The model, which was trained on Ninja Theory's multiplayer game Bleeding Edge, can help Xbox game developers build parts of games, Microsoft says. Muse can understand the physics and 3D environment inside a game and generate visuals and reactions to players' movements. Among the various use cases for Muse that Microsoft outlines in its announcement, perhaps the most intriguing involves game preservation. The company says Muse AI can study games from its vast back catalog of classic titles and optimize them for modern hardware.

Google's AI "co-scientist" is based on the firm's Gemini large language models Google has unveiled an experimental artificial intelligence system that "uses advanced reasoning to help scientists synthesize vast amounts of literature, generate novel hypotheses, and suggest detailed research plans", according to its press release. "The idea with [the] 'AI co-scientist' is to give scientists superpowers," says Alan Karthikesalingam at Google. The tool, which doesn't have an official name yet, builds on Google's Gemini large language models. When a researcher asks a question or specifies a goal – to find a new drug, say – the tool comes up with initial ideas within 15 minutes. Several Gemini agents then "debate" these hypotheses with each other, ranking them and improving them over the following hours and days, says Vivek Natarajan at Google. During this process, the agents can search the scientific literature, access databases and use tools such as Google's AlphaFold system for predicting the structure of proteins.

Humane's Ai Pin is about to become an expensive brick, with the startup set to discontinue service less than a year after the wearable AI gadget began shipping. It seems the fairy tale is over, and they can no longer deny that their golden carriage is actually a rotting pumpkin. In a post to Humane's support website, the company announced that all of its Ai Pins will stop working in just 10 days. All Ai Pins will stop connecting to Humane's servers on Feb. 28, and all customer data will be permanently deleted as well, with users instructed to download anything they don't want to lose before then. Humane has also ceased selling the gadget effective immediately.