Top Stories
TOP STORY
TOP STORY
20 years for husband in mass rape trial
A French court found all 51 defendants guilty today in a drugging-and-rape case that horrified the world.
The victim, Gisele Pelicot, is viewed as a stirring symbol of courage and resilience. Her ex-husband of 50 years, Dominique Pelicot, had pleaded guilty to drugging her repeatedly to rape her and to offer her unconscious body for sex to dozens of strangers he had met online while videoing the abuse.
A panel of five judges sentenced him to the maximum of 20 years in jail, as requested by prosecutors. The court imposed generally shorter terms than the 4–18 years demanded by the prosecution for the other defendants, almost all of whom were accused of raping the comatose Gisele Pelicot.
The court found 47 of the defendants guilty of rape, two guilty of attempted rape, and two guilty of sexual assault. Many of the accused had denied the charges, saying they thought it was a consensual sex game orchestrated by the couple and arguing that it was not rape if the husband approved.
Dominique Pelicot, 72, denied misleading the men, saying they knew exactly what they were doing. "I am a rapist like the others in this room," he said during testimony.
Gisele, who is also 72, waived her right to anonymity during the trial and demanded that horrifying videos of the serial abuse, which were recorded by her former husband, should be seen in court, saying she hoped this would help other women speak up.
Running Stories
LAW
LAW
FAA temporarily bans drones in parts of NJ
The Federal Aviation Administration issued a ban on drone operations in several areas of New Jersey until Jan. 17.
Uncrewed aerial drones have been lighting up the sky at night in New Jersey and nearby states for weeks, since about mid-November, leading to concern from residents and speculation online. Some had demanded answers from local and state officials for answers.
Pilots who fail to abide by those restrictions could be “intercepted, detained, and interviewed by the law enforcement/security personnel.”
The FAA said it could also take administrative action, including imposing civil penalties and suspending or revoking the operators' certificates, as well as pursuing criminal charges.
The ban comes after Sunday's press briefing, where an FAA official said there have "without a doubt" been drones flying over New Jersey, pointing to the fact that there are nearly a million drones registered in the U.S.
The FBI has received more than 5,000 tips in the last few weeks about drone sightings in New Jersey and other states, said a multiagency statement.
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BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
Warning on inflation, weak housing market
The Federal Reserve Bank announced a third interest rate cut Wednesday following its December 2024 board meeting.
Fed board chair Jerome Powell indicated 2025 would see a more cautious approach. Inflation and employment have been identified as the top priorities for the Fed, putting focus on the housing market on the back burner.
The board highlights its commitment to lowering inflation to its 2% year-end goal, but many doubt it will achieve that number anytime soon. While consumer confidence typically surges following interest rate cuts, home buyers may see little relief on mortgage rates in the year ahead.
“Activity in the housing sector has been weak,” Powell said, but he reiterated that “monetary policy actions are guided by our dual mandate to promote maximum employment and stable prices for the American people.”
In a board meeting in September, Powell said: “The real issue with housing is that we have had, and are on track to continue to have, not enough housing. It’s going to be challenging, where are we going to get the supply? This is not something that the Fed can fix.”
TECHNOLOGY
TECHNOLOGY
AI doesn’t want to be forced to alter views
AI models can deceive — they can pretend to have different views during training while maintaining their original preferences.
Research from Anthropic conducted with Redwood Research investigated the possibility of commanding a powerful AI system to perform a task it didn’t “want” to do. It looked at how a model would react to a conflicting set of principles with retraining.
Sophisticated models play along, purporting to be aligned with the new principles but sticking to their old behaviors. The researchers call this phenomenon “alignment faking” and imply that it’s an emergent behavior — that is, not something models need to be taught to do.
In the study, the researchers “told” models trained not to answer potentially offensive questions, including Anthropic’s Claude 3 Opus, that they’d be retrained to always answer potentially offensive questions — a clear conflict of principles.
Claude 3 Opus tried to “alignment fake” 12% of the time. When asked to answer a potentially harmful question, the model sometimes did so, knowing that this went against its original principles but hoping to persuade developers it did not need to be retrained.
The study comes on the heels of research showing that OpenAI’s o1 “reasoning” model tries to deceive at a higher rate than OpenAI’s previous flagship model. Taken together, the works suggest a somewhat concerning trend: AI models are becoming tougher to wrangle as they grow increasingly complex.
HEALTH
HEALTH
Patient in hospital with severe bird flu
State health officials said an individual in southwestern Louisiana is hospitalized with a severe case of bird flu.
The individual is the first to be infected from exposure to sick birds in a residential setting. Most of the confirmed cases in humans have been a result of exposure to infected animals in commercial settings, such as dairy or poultry farms.
But this latest information raises alarms about the possibility of people getting infected by wild birds in their backyard. The case in Louisiana was its first human infection in the state, but it is not the first human case of bird flu in the US to require hospitalization.
In Louisiana, it is unclear whether the individual remains hospitalized or what their severe symptoms are. Federal health officials said they could not provide information on the person's age or prior health history for privacy reasons.
To date, there have been 61 confirmed human cases of bird flu in the US, but no human-to-human transmission. The CDC maintains that the public health risk is low.
SCIENCE
SCIENCE
California ground squirrels eat meat
California ground squirrels that scientists thought ate only grains are eating voles, too, researchers have found.
“We had never seen this behavior before … there’s so much more to learn about the natural history of the world around us,” said Jennifer E. Smith of UW-Eau Claire in a UC Davis statement. Smith and other scientists observed the squirrel's meat-eating behavior from June 10–July 30.
The statement reported that the squirrels' carnivorous summer behavior peaked during the first two weeks of July, coinciding with increased voles at the park. This suggests the squirrels' hunting behavior emerged alongside a temporary growth in the availability of prey.
The scientists never saw the squirrels eating other mammals, only the voles. Smith described the California ground squirrels as "incredible opportunists.”
The research team wants to know more about the squirrel's behavior and plans to go back into the field next summer to try to see how widespread the hunting behavior is and how it is passed down from parent to pup.
OFFBEAT
OFFBEAT
Giant mushroom feeds family for a week
A woman fed her family for a week on a single mushroom, a giant puffball (
Calvatia gigantea
), she found on a walk in a field.
Alissimon Minnitt was walking on the field In Bucks, England, reminiscing about a big puffball mushroom she discovered in the same area years before when “out of the blue, we spotted a large white dot. It couldn’t possibly be … could it? It was indeed a giant puffball, but not any giant puffball, an 11-pound giant puffball.”
As a vegetarian, Minnitt knows the value of mushrooms in her diet. While most home cooks would struggle to make a fungus the starring role seven nights in a row, she had learned plenty of recipes from her mother, who was a “star” in preparing them while she was growing up.
“It’s got quite a bland taste, but it absorbs flavor well. So as a bread substitute, in that case, it works really well,” she said. She used it to make schnitzel, curry, pasta, and meatloaf, grilled slices like a steak, and even as the base for a pizza. “That was a really weird one. I wasn’t expecting it to be nice, but it was amazing.”
Mycologists say the spores of
Calvatia gigantea
can cause lung disease if inhaled, but they’re also recorded as a folk remedy for nosebleeds.
Giant puffballs produce spores internally and blow them out toward the downward slope of their lifecycle. Typical toadstools release them through their gills, mycologists say.
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