Border town crisis

Florida kids steal car

20 Questions!

Crossings at the US-Mexico border hit a record high last fiscal year and have stayed high. Most people who cross are released into the US pending future court dates

Eagle Pass is a small city of ~28,000 people that borders the Rio Grande, a river that forms part of the US-Mexico border. In recent days, 4,000+ people have crossed the border there, prompting its mayor to declare a state of emergency

State and federal officials, in addition to ~800 soldiers, have since arrived to help process the migrants

The Biden administration is currently in a legal battle with Texas over a string of buoys and razor wire the state installed near Eagle Pass to deter crossings

In a post on X, Texas’s governor accused the federal government of cutting that razor wire, allowing for the migrant surge. “I immediately deployed more Texas National Guard to…install more razor wire,” he wrote. Eagle Pass’s mayor denied that, saying migrants had managed to cut through the wire

ChatGPT is powered by a large language model (LLM) trained on massive amounts of data

On Tuesday, a union representing several major authors sued OpenAI for allegedly training ChatGPT with content from their books. The authors said they have not received money from OpenAI or given it permission

Authors involved in the lawsuit include George RR Martin, who wrote the book series that inspired Game of Thrones. OpenAI said it is optimistic it can work “cooperatively” with authors

The suit alleges that ChatGPT can give highly detailed summaries of the authors’ books, suggesting ChatGPT trained on those books’ content. It also alleges that ChatGPT can create high-quality knockoffs using the books

For instance, the lawsuit noted that a programmer had used ChatGPT to write an AI-generated version of the final two books of a series which Martin is currently writing

Murdoch inherited two Australian news outlets from his father and grew them into a global media empire with film, TV, and other holdings

Today, Murdoch’s holdings include the Wall Street Journal, the Times of London, the New York Post, HarperCollins, and dozens of other media properties, in addition to Fox News, which he founded in 1996

Murdoch, 92, has been co-running his companies with his eldest son, Lachlan, for years. On Thursday, he said he will retire in November and Lachlan will take over

“For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change,” he wrote in a memo. “But the time is right for me to take on different roles”

While Lachlan will replace Murdoch as sole executive at both Fox and News Corp, Murdoch’s four children will have to determine his successor themselves upon his death

Rumble is a social media platform dedicated to free speech. Brand – who several women have accused of sexual assault – has 1.4M followers on it. He often discusses controversial topics on the app

On Thursday, Rumble received a letter from the UK’s government asking it to demonetize Brand’s account, like YouTube did

Rumble called that request “disturbing” and refused, saying his content had nothing to do with accusations against him

The UK’s government reportedly sent similar letters to Meta, X, and TikTok. TikTok responded that it will “continue to keep Mr Brand's content under review”; it is unclear if the other companies responded

Elon Musk, who owns X, opposes “cancel culture”: “No more canceling,” he wrote of Brand

Angus’s autopsy: Actor Angus Cloud died of an accidental overdose from a mixture of drugs that included fentanyl. The 25-year-old star played the drug dealer Fez on HBO’s “Euphoria”

Sunk-o Mode: Lawyers involved in the Astroworld festival case cannot access rapper Travis Scott’s cell phone records because it was reportedly lost in the Gulf of Mexico

Airbn-banned: Airbnb removed 59,000 fake listings and blocked 157,000 more from joining this year to combat fraudsters scaring off consumers

Insults were meant to fly: Kenneth Petty – Nicki Minaj’s husband – was sentenced to four months of house arrest for posting social media clips threatening rapper Offset

Florida man kids steal car: Two Florida children, aged 10 and 11, stole their mother’s car and drove it three hours away before police stopped them on a highway

Carbonated moon: Scientists discovered that an ocean on Europa – one of Jupiter’s moons – contains carbon, which is a key ingredient for life