A "cocaine addicted" police officer who was found to be stealing drugs from an evidence store after he accidentally dropped a bag of white powder at his daughter's school has been jailed. Andrew Talbot, at the time a Greater Manchester Police detective, had taken just under 4kg (9lb) of cocaine worth almost 400,000 from police property rooms between 2018 and 2020. He also used the force's computer systems to find a drug dealer to help him sell the drugs on the streets of Manchester. The 54-year-old was found guilty of supplying the drug and misconduct in public office and sentenced to 19 years in jail at Liverpool Crown Court.GMPThe detective stole drugs from Greater Manchester's Police evidence rooms Sentencing him on Friday, Judge Neil Flewitt KC said Talbot had deceived colleagues to put a "significant" quantity of cocaine back into circulation as a result of his "addiction and greed". The investigation into Talbot by GMP's anti-corruption unit began in February 2020 after he dropped a small bag of cocaine outside his daughter's primary school.

Introduced as battery-powered sticks that emit nicotine-infused vapor, vape pens have transformed into increasingly sophisticated entertainment devices. And that, researchers say, is a potentially huge problem. Disposable vapes gained small illuminated displays last year, typically to show how much battery life remained. In about six months, though, the displays grew to the size of a flip phone screen and came equipped with retro games similar to Pac-Man and Tetris -- all on a product that costs less than 20. The speed at which vapes advanced to include an interactive display, as well as the devices' potential appeal to young people, is raising concerns about nicotine addiction among teenagers, say UC Riverside researchers Man Wong and Prue Talbot.

How significant an impact can we reasonably expect AI to make on digital marketing? Rosy predictions have a knack for either showing up late, floundering or somehow failing to fulfill their promise. At IBM Watson Advertising, CMO Randi Stipes looks at AI as a practical toolset that has been in place for a decade rather than the vague promise of a rosier future. I recently asked Randi to give us an AI update. Paul Talbot: What's happening with AI at IBM that's different from how it's being deployed elsewhere?

We don't know how the massive shifts in consumer behavior brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic will evolve or endure. But we do know that as our lives change, marketers' data change. Both the current impact and the future implications may be significant. I asked Alex Atzberger, CEO of Episerver, a digital experience company, to put the issues in perspective. Paul Talbot: How is AI holding up?

As the promises of AI proliferate and expectations expand, marketers are examining the intersection of AI and video production for potential benefits. At QuickFrame, a video-as-a-service (VaaS) firm which works with brands such as Colgate and publishers such as Bleacher Report, AI tools have been woven into the VaaS platform. I recently asked QuickFrame COO Joe Reid to fill us in. Paul Talbot: How does the AI piece of the platform work? Joe Reid: The AI technology that powers the video intelligence portion of QuickFrame's video-as-a-service platform is not a random assortment of machine learning models that are unleashed on videos.

Marketers who look for artificial intelligence to provide fresh insights don't always get what they want. Insights are not always easy to categorize, let alone evaluate and implement. The result: patterns that may be intriguing but unprofitable to pursue. I recently asked R. J. Talyor, Founder and CEO of Pattern89, an AI firm that helps marketers predict their campaigns' performance, for his thoughts. Paul Talbot: Since marketers began to use AI, what unintended consequences of significance have emerged?

The march toward personalization means marketing strategy finds itself under the expanding shadow of artificial intelligence. AI is being deployed in a growing number of functions. I recently asked Jerry Roche, CEO of Trial Run, a fractal analytics firm, for his perspective on the impact of AI on marketing strategy. Paul Talbot: Are AI capabilities changing the way we create and manage marketing strategy? Jerry Roche: Given the need to serve personalized experiences to a large customer base, marketers can no longer rely on intuitive heuristics targeted to the lowest common denominator.

The march toward personalization means marketing strategy finds itself under the expanding shadow of artificial intelligence. AI is being deployed in a growing number of functions. I recently asked Jerry Roche, CEO of Trial Run, a fractal analytics firm, for his perspective on the impact of AI on marketing strategy. Paul Talbot: Are AI capabilities changing the way we create and manage marketing strategy? Jerry Roche: Given the need to serve personalized experiences to a large customer base, marketers can no longer rely on intuitive heuristics targeted to the lowest common denominator.

Margaret Talbot's article on polychromy in classical Greek and Roman sculpture reveals that the figures we are used to seeing as white were, in fact, fully colored ("Color Blind," October 29th). It also shows that the techniques used to identify the applications of those pigments are clearly in their infancy. Nothing Talbot writes credibly explains how these ancient sculptors--driven by a naturalistic aesthetic so intense that they labored in marble in order to replicate muscles beneath the surface of human skin and to painstakingly re-create delicate drapery--would allow painters to effectively obliterate the subtlety of their hard effort with daubs of color, at least in the way that pigment is unconvincingly applied to modern replicas. Talbot's article brought to mind the video game Assassin's Creed Odyssey. The game is a fictional re-creation of the Peloponnesian War in all its colorful glory.

An image from the product page of Amazon's Rekognition service, which provides image and video facial and item recognition and analysis. SAN FRANCISCO -- The city of Orlando's police department has ended its test of a facial recognition program created by Amazon that has come under fire from privacy advocates. But other law enforcement organizations say they continue to use it to solve crimes. Amazon's Rekognition software works by comparing images provided by the customer to a database of images the customer has also provided. It searches for a match using the computing power of Amazon's cloud computing network AWS.