Florida immigration jail that became byword for cruelty and cost state taxpayers $1.2m a day shuts down after a year
Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, boasted on Thursday of deporting 21,000 people from Alligator Alcatraz, as he confirmed the closure of the notorious immigration jail hastily erected in the Everglades that became a byword for cruelty and human rights abuses and environmental damage.
Standing beside Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s so-called border czar, at a press conference at the now dismantled site in Ochopee in the environmentally sensitive region in south Florida, DeSantis presented its year-long operation as a victory for the president’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda.
Continue reading...Kennedy repeatedly said in Senate testimony 2019 Samoa trip had ‘nothing to do with vaccines’. An email from his then colleague says they were on a vaccine-related ‘mission’
New evidence has emerged that Robert F Kennedy Jr was on a vaccine-related “mission” when he visited Samoa ahead of a deadly measles outbreak in 2019, raising further questions about whether the US health secretary lied to the US Senate when he said the trip had “nothing to do with vaccines”.
Records obtained by the Guardian show Kennedy’s colleague told Samoan officials in an email that he and Kennedy were coming as part of a mission to study the island nation’s medical records in the aftermath of a “discontinuity in vaccinations”.
Continue reading...LastPass says hackers stole customers' personal information, support case records, and sales data by breaching market research partner Klue. The password manager told TechCrunch that its own systems and password vaults were unaffected. However, the hackers used their access to obtain "reams of data about LastPass customers," the report says. From the report: In a blog post that shared information about the incident, LastPass said the hackers took customers' names, phone numbers, email addresses, and physical addresses, as well as customer support case data and sales-related data. It's not yet known what was in the contents of customer support tickets, although they likely contain fragments of potentially private or sensitive information. Customers typically contact customer service when they are having a billing issue or need assistance in gaining access to their accounts. Past incidents involving customer support tickets have included credentials and government-issued identity documents. The last data breach LastPass reported was in 2022, when hackers stole the company's entire store of customer password vaults.
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Ruling strikes down law that bans people from carrying guns in most public spaces and private property without owner’s permission
The US supreme court struck down a restrictive gun law in the state of Hawaii that bans people from carrying guns in certain public spaces and on private property without the permission of the property’s owner.
The decision was made in a 6-3 vote, with Justice Samuel Alito offering the majority opinion – backed by the other members of the court’s rightwing supermajority – and Ketanji Brown Jackson writing the dissent.
Continue reading...Senior official alleges in court filing that damage included about ‘70 fence post tops thrown’ into the pool
A senior National Park Service (NPS) official has said a liner along the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool was “cut with a sharp knife or razor” earlier this month, repeating Donald Trump’s claims of vandalism.
Frank Lands, the deputy director for operations for NPS, made the allegation in a court filing on Wednesday, as part of a lawsuit brought by a nonprofit group seeking to stop the US president’s renovation of the site.
Continue reading...Seattle’s World Cup committee is pushing forward with “Pride Match” celebrations this week despite backlash from Egypt and Iran, who have called for the cancellation of LGBTQ+ rights festivities around the game.
Last year, Seattle’s local organising committee, which is separate from Fifa, made plans for 26 June to be a Pride-themed match coinciding with the city’s annual Pride weekend.
In December, Egypt and Iran were drawn to play each other on that date in Seattle, causing a swift firestorm and condemnation from the two countries, as Sam Levin explains
Continue reading...An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Anthropic has accused the Chinese firm Alibaba of launching the largest attack yet attempting to clone Claude, as China races to match the capabilities of Anthropic's leading model following Mythos' release and subsequent restriction from foreign markets. Ars obtained a June 10 letter sent to Senators Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) one day ahead of a Senate committee hearing on "AI and the American Dream." In the letter, Anthropic shared "new, confidential evidence of the largest campaign to illicitly extract Claude's capabilities we have ever measured." The attacks occurred between April 22 and June 5, when "operators afliated with Alibaba and Alibaba Qwen, Alibaba's AI lab" allegedly generated "more than 28.8 million exchanges with Claude through almost 25,000 fraudulent accounts," Anthropic said. Violating Claude's terms of service and access restrictions, this campaign "targeted some of Claude's most valuable capabilities, such as agentic reasoning, software engineering, and long-horizon tasks." According to Anthropic, Alibaba evaded detection by "using obfuscation techniques and proxy networks." As Chinese demand for reliable obfuscation techniques increases, Anthropic warned there's already "a growing circumvention economy" to fuel an ever-expanding web of future distillation attacks. [...] "Alibaba is governed by an independent board, none of whom has any military affiliation," Alibaba said. "Its products and services are built for retail, logistics, and enterprise information technology -- not weapons, defense, or intelligence." Anthropic appears unconvinced, however, that Alibaba isn't working with the Chinese government. In the letter, Anthropic warned that without stronger interventions, these distillation attacks will "help China reach Mythos Preview-level capabilities sooner." To keep the US ahead of China, Anthropic recommended that Congress pass legislation with three objectives. First, antitrust laws must be updated to allow AI firms to share information about evolving Chinese tactics to deter more threats. Second, the US needs more export controls on chips to hamstring Chinese access to advanced compute so that they simply can't train on US model outputs. That could make conducting distillation attacks pointless, Anthropic suggested. Finally, Congress should pass laws penalizing Chinese labs' "bad behavior" so that it's "more difficult and costly" to rely on distillation attacks to advance Chinese models. Penalties could include limiting Chinese firms from accessing US models or advanced US chips or from relying on data centers outside of China, Anthropic suggested.
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Decision affects hundreds of thousands of people who have permission to live and work in the US because their home countries are unsafe
The US supreme court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s bid to strip temporary protected status (TPS) from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians, who were legally in the US and protected from deportation.
In another boost to Donald Trump’s unprecedented hardline crackdown on immigrants, including many who have lived legally in the US for years, the court issued a 6-3 ruling. That was powered by its conservative-leaning majority, overturning decisions by federal judges in New York and Washington DC that had halted the administration’s actions terminating TPS for more than 350,000 people from Haiti and 6,100 from Syria.
Continue reading...Wyden says in a letter addressed to Robert F Kennedy Jr that HHS is preparing an ‘unprecedented legal framework’
Ron Wyden, a US senator of Oregon, accused the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) of preparing to use what he describes as an “unprecedented legal framework” to deport more than 500 unaccompanied migrant children currently in the custody of the agency’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).
In a letter addressed to the HHS secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Wyden said he had obtained “credible information” that the department was using a list of more than 500 children as targets for expedited removal under a new administrative process that he says lacks statutory authority. He called the reported initiative “deeply alarming” and urged HHS to immediately suspend any related screening or removal efforts.
Continue reading...Content creation and online safety among new topics for 14- to 18-year-olds – but tweaks may be needed when social media ban comes in
Scouts are introducing badges in content creation, digital communication and online safety after consulting nearly 3,000 teenagers who said they wanted skills to help them navigate a world increasingly shaped by AI, social media and digital technology.
The new Explorer Scout badges, part of the Scout movement’s first major overhaul in almost 25 years, will require 14- to 18-year olds to explore how digital communities shape opinion, create online campaigns, investigate digital footprints and design toolkits to help others stay safe online.
Continue reading...Top Democrat signals party will not back paying for unpopular conflict never authorized by Congress
The White House has requested Congress approve $87.6bn in new funding, much of which would go towards the costs of Donald Trump’s war with Iran, but a top Democrat has signaled the party will not support paying for an unpopular conflict that lawmakers never authorized.
The Trump administration’s supplemental funding request released on Wednesday comes amid a logjam in US Congress sparked by the president’s demand that the Senate pass a measure to impose sweeping new restrictions on voting nationwide.
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