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Irish police investigating drone activity during Zelensky visit

BBC News

An Garda Síochána (Irish police force) has launched an investigation after drones were detected in Irish skies on the night the Ukrainian president arrived in Ireland. Volodymyr Zelensky flew into Dublin late on Monday night for a one-day official visit with his wife, First Lady Olena Zelenska. Senior Irish government figures, including Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Micheál Martin, have been briefed on the issue. Martin confirmed it would be discussed at a National Security Council meeting later this month. In a statement, gardaí said its Special Detective Unit (SDU) is investigating the matter and will be liaising with the Defence Forces and international security partners.


Former executives of AI developer Alt arrested for window-dressing

The Japan Times

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office's special investigation squad arrested Kazutaka Yonekura, 48, the founder and former president of Japanese artificial intelligence developer Alt, and three others on Thursday on suspicion of padding the firm's sales in violation of the financial instruments and exchange law. The other three include Yusuke Hioki, 34, also a former president of the Tokyo-based company. The special squad did not reveal whether the suspects have admitted the allegations against them. They allegedly submitted to the Kanto Local Finance Bureau in September 2024 financial statements, in which the company's sales in the period from January 2022 to June 2024 were inflated by about ¥8.4 billion. In March this year, after Alt's listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's Growth section for startup in October 2024, the suspects submitted a statement that overstated sales for the business year to December 2024 by about ¥4.9 billion, according to the special squad.


Biden's doctor thought cognitive tests were 'meaningless,' ex-aide Bruce Reed told investigators

FOX News

Former deputy chief of staff for policy Bruce Reed arrived on Capitol Hill for his closed-door deposition with the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday. Former White House physician Kevin O'Connor previously dismissed cognitive tests as "meaningless," ex-Biden administration aide Bruce Reed told House investigators on Tuesday, according to a source familiar with the proceedings. Reed, who served as White House deputy chief of staff for policy, is the ninth member of former President Joe Biden's inner circle to sit down with House Oversight Committee lawyers. A source familiar with his interview told Fox News Digital that Reed attributed Biden's disastrous 2024 debate performance against then-candidate Donald Trump to the former president's stutter, a condition that's been well-documented and Biden himself has publicly acknowledged. But his meandering and seemingly tired demeanor on stage with Trump alarmed both Democrats and media pundits, who saw it as a glaring sign of Biden's advanced age.


Run for president? Start a podcast? Tackle AI? Kamala Harris' options are wide open

Los Angeles Times

Former Vice President Kamala Harris closed a big door when she announced Wednesday that she would not run for California governor. But she left open a heap of others. Departing presidents, vice presidents, first ladies and failed presidential candidates have pursued a wide variety of paths in the past. Empowered with name recognition and influence but with no official role to fill, they possess the freedom to choose their next adventure. Al Gore took up a cause in global warming, while George W. Bush took up painting.


Biden camp denies cancer was diagnosed earlier amid cover-up claims

Al Jazeera

Former United States President Joe Biden was not diagnosed with prostate cancer before last week, and received his "last known" blood test for the disease more than a decade ago, his office has said. The Biden camp's statement on Tuesday came as critics, including current President Donald Trump, stoked scepticism over the timing of the diagnosis, which has reanimated questions about whether the former president misled the public about his health while in office. "President Biden's last known PSA was in 2014," Biden's office said in the brief statement, referring to the prostate-specific antigen test used to detect prostate cancer. "Prior to Friday, President Biden had never been diagnosed with prostate cancer." On Monday, Trump said he was "surprised" that the public had not been notified about Biden's diagnosis "a long time ago".


Fox News Politics: Nearly 1 million migrants staying 'indefinitely'

FOX News

Welcome to the Fox News' Politics newsletter, with the latest political news from Washington, D.C. and updates from the 2024 campaign trail. Nearly 1 million illegal immigrants are staying in the U.S. "indefinitely" after their cases were dismissed or closed, or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) failed to file the necessary documentation, according to a new House Judiciary Committee report released Thursday taking aim at a "sort of quiet amnesty has become a staple of the Biden-Harris Administration's immigration courts." "Through administrative maneuvering at both the Justice Department and DHS, the Biden-Harris Administration has already ensured that nearly 1 million illegal aliens can remain in the United States without the possibility of deportation--and that trend shows no sign of stopping," the report by the House majority on the committee, first obtained by Fox News Digital, says. When illegal immigrants are encountered, they can be put into removal proceedings by which they will eventually face an immigration judge to have their case decided. There are around 700 immigration judges across the U.S., and they currently face a backlog of millions of cases after the historic crisis at the border.


Elon Musk Is Offering People Cash To Identify Trump Voters. What Could Go Wrong?

Mother Jones

Elon Musk, one of the world's richest men, has gone "Deep MAGA." The billionaire owner of X--the "everything app"--endorsed Donald Trump seconds after the former president was nearly assassinated in July, and within a few days was hatching plans to spend 45 million to get Trump elected. On Saturday, Musk joined the former president on stage in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he did his signature hop (which is vaguely in the shape of an X), and predicted that if Kamala Harris is elected there will be no more elections in the United States. Musk has a habit of making predictions that don't amount to much. It is one of the defining facets of his personality, up there with scientific racism and being a guy with a signature hop. You can go online and watch a supercut of him promising fully autonomous self-driving cars every year since 2014.


Meta explains why its AI claimed Trump's assassination attempt didn't happen

Engadget

Meta has explained why its AI chatbot didn't want to respond to inquiries about the assassination attempt on Trump and then, in some cases, denied that the event took place. The company said it programmed Meta AI to not answer questions about an event right after it happens, because there's typically "an enormous amount of confusion, conflicting information, or outright conspiracy theories in the public domain." As for why Meta AI eventually started asserting that the attempt didn't happen "in a small number of cases," it was apparently due to hallucinations. An AI "hallucinates" when it generates false or misleading responses to questions that require factual replies due to various factors like inaccurate training data and AI models struggling to parse multiple sources of information. Meta says it has updated its AI's responses and admits that it should have done so sooner.


One Big Topic Didn't Come Up at the Debate. Thank God.

Slate

The first 2024 presidential debate unfolded Thursday night between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump and it was, as fellow Slate writer Jill Filipovic put it, the "most painful two hours of television in living memory." If you missed it, good for you. If you did watch it, you'd be forgiven for not remembering the topics that were actually debated vaguely shouted about. In between Biden's excruciatingly painful and "nightmarishly confused" performance and Trump's boorish firehose of lies and falsehoods, the debate also ostensibly featured a wide range of topics like abortion, the economy, climate change, foreign policy in Ukraine and Israel, election integrity, immigration, veterans, race, crime, health care, and even which of the two candidates has a better golf game. However, there was one major issue that the debate failed to broach--despite the fact that it's one of the most (if not the most) consequential developments since the last election cycle: artificial intelligence.


The Inconvenient Truth About Elon Musk's New Love Affair With Trump

Slate

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported on Elon Musk's increasingly close relationship with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, which has flourished to the point that the two "talk on the phone several times a month." The conversation subjects tend to cover Trump's attempt to regain White House control and the potential opportunities for Musk and his companies, like Tesla and SpaceX, under another potential Trump administration. Musk rejected the report's central conceit--that Trump had discussed an advisory role for him should the former president be reelected--but he certainly keeps behaving like a typical Trump supplicant. Just look at his X posts following Trump's 34-count conviction in the New York hush money trial, in which he refers to the process as "troubling," endorses a Sequoia Capital partner's 300,000 donation to Trump's campaign, proclaims that "great damage was done today to the public's faith in the American legal system," and reply-guys a couple of characteristically lame Babylon Bee headlines. President Joe Biden's reelection campaign has responded with a scoff, declaring that, "Despite what Donald Trump thinks, America is not for sale to billionaires, oil and gas executives, or even Elon Musk."