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☆ Brazil electoral court close to ending Bolsonaro's political career
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-29 | by ( Ricardo Brito | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

So far three judges have voted to convict the far-right nationalist for abuse of political power and misuse of the media, while one has not. The TSE trial is part of a broader reckoning in Brazil with the fallout from the country's most painful election in a generation. While the former president faces electoral court scrutiny, many of his one-time allies are being questioned by lawmakers in a congressional probe into the Jan. 8 riots. Bolsonaro's best hope at future relevance may lie with his family, including his wife and lawmaker sons, who could also harbor their own presidential ambitions. He told the Folha de S. Paulo that his wife Michelle could well be a presidential candidate in 2026, but said she lacked political experience.

Persons: Jair Bolsonaro, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Donald Trump, Bolsonaro, Brazil's, Tarcisio Freitas, Romeu Zema, Paulo, Michelle, Ricardo Brito, Steven Grattan, Gabriel Stargardter, Angus MacSwan, Conor Humphries Organizations: Brasilia, TSE, Folha, Paulo, Sao Paulo, Thomson Locations: BRASILIA, Brasilia, Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais

☆ Bolsonaro clings to his political future as electoral court case begins
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-22 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

The outlook appears bleak for Bolsonaro, a career politician who was until recently Brazil's most powerful man. Tarcisio Vieira, Bolsonaro's lawyer, told Reuters this week that his polarizing client faces an "unfavorable" climate from the country's media and the political and judicial classes. In an opening speech, Vieira said the case against Bolsonaro was "doomed to failure." If the TSE rules against Bolsonaro, the 68-year-old could find himself unable to run for public office until 2030. Much of Brazil appears eager to move on from the fire and brimstone of the Bolsonaro years.

Persons: Jair, Salgado, Diego Vara, Jair Bolsonaro's, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro's, Tarcisio Vieira, Vieira, Bolsonaro, Lula, Tarcisio Freitas, Romeu Zema, Gabriel Stargardter, Brad Haynes, Chizu, Rosalba O'Brien Organizations: Electoral, REUTERS, Diego Vara RIO, Reuters, Bolsonaro, Sao Paulo, Thomson Locations: Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, JANEIRO, Brasilia, Jan, Minas Gerais

☆ Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira: Brazil names two more suspects in deaths of British journalist and indigenous expert
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-05 | by ( Sahar Akbarzai | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —Two more suspects have been named in the alleged murders of British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, including the alleged mastermind of the crime, Brazilian police say. Phillips and Pereira were shot dead a year ago while they were returning from a reporting trip in the Amazon. Fisherman Janio Freitas de Souza has also been named as a suspect and has links to the illegal fishing criminal organization, the statement added. Both men have been imprisoned since July 2022, along with three other suspects and are awaiting trial, police told CNN. The deaths of Phillips and Pereira has drawn global attention to the perils often faced by journalists and environmental activists in Brazil.

Persons: Dom Phillips, Bruno Pereira, Phillips, Pereira, Ruben Villar, ”, Janio Freitas de Souza Organizations: CNN, Amazon, Brazil’s Federal Police, Indigenous Organization, Human Rights, Commission, Catholic Church Locations: British, Colombia, Javari, Brazil

☆ Google tells staff it plans to limit publishing AI research to 'compete and keep knowledge in house' as its rivalry with Microsoft's OpenAI heats up
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Google told staff it will be more selective about the research it publishes. Recently, information like code and data has become accessible on a "much more on a need-to-know" basis, according to a Google AI staffer. LaMDA, a chatbot technology that forms the basis of Bard, was originally built as a 20 percent project within Google Brain. (The company has historically allowed employees to spend 20% of their working days exploring side projects that might turn into full-fledged Google products.) Google's AI division has faced other setbacks.

☆ Bolsonaro steals show at Brazil's biggest farm fair
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Lais Morais | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/5] Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro attends the Agrishow fair, in Ribeirao Preto, Brazil, May 1, 2023. REUTERS/Carla CarnielRIBERAO PRETO, Brazil, May 1 (Reuters) - Former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro stole the show on Monday at Brazil's largest agribusiness fair where he was acclaimed by supporters from the country's strong farm sector. Bolsonaro criticized the decision by Lula to recognize new Indigenous reservations, a constant complaint by farmers in Brazil's expanding agricultural frontier. The deep-pocketed and powerful farm sector were major supporters of Bolsonaro's 2018 election. Bolsonaro faces legal risks that could ban him from running in the 2026 election.

☆ A former Google researcher behind a seminal AI paper describes how the company lost a top chatbot visionary
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Character.ai CEO Noam Shazeer, a former Googler who worked in AI, spoke to the "No Priors" podcast. He says Google was afraid to launch a chatbot, fearing consequences of it saying something wrong. Like the chatbot ChatGPT, Character.ai's technology leans on a vast amount of text-based information scraped from the web for its knowledge. Shazeer was a lead author on Google's Transformer paper, which has been widely cited as key to today's chatbots. Google had also received pushback internally from AI researchers like Timnit Gebru who cautioned against releasing anything that might cause harm.

☆ Toyota to invest $338 mln in new hybrid, flex car in Brazil
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

SAO PAULO, April 19 (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) said on Wednesday it will invest 1.7 billion reais ($337.68 million) to manufacture a new hybrid, flex-fuel compact car in Brazil, which will run on both gasoline and ethanol in addition to its electric engine. Toyota's announcement came at an event attended by the firm's local head, Rafael Chang, and Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas. Part of the investment - roughly 1 billion reais - will come from tax credits Toyota had with the state. "Toyota believes in the Brazilian market and continues to invest in technology and innovation to meet consumer needs," Chang said. The car is set to be launched in Brazil in 2024 and sold in 22 Latin American countries, it added.

Bolsonaro's electoral outlook contrasts sharply with former U.S. President Donald Trump, another right-wing populist who challenged the results of his failed re-election campaign. Bolsonaro never conceded his narrow defeat in the October election and continues to question the reliability of Brazil's voting system. RISING CONSERVATIVE STARSStill, conservative powerbrokers allied with Bolsonaro are ready to reshuffle the deck for the next election cycle. He said a TSE decision to bar Bolsonaro from running would only boost the ex-president's political appeal. Any right-wing substitute could win with his endorsement, he added, while side-stepping the high rejection rates Bolsonaro faced as a candidate last year.

☆ Ex-Google employees' A.I. chatbot startup valued at $1 billion after Andreessen Horowitz funding
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Character.AI, an artificial intelligence start-up founded by two former Google employees, is capitalizing on venture capitalists' unquenchable thirst for deals in technology's hottest space. The two-year-old company said on Thursday that it raised $150 million at a $1 billion valuation in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Andreessen Horowitz has been a significant player in driving up prices in both markets. The firm announced a $4.5 billion crypto fund in mid-2022 as the digital currency market was in freefall. A year earlier, it added to its investment in audio app Clubhouse, valuing the early-stage startup at $4 billion.

March 23 (Reuters) - Character.AI has raised $150 million in a new funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz that valued the AI chatbot startup at $1 billion, and it's in talks with cloud providers for more strategic investment, the company told Reuters. The billion-dollar valuation for a company with zero revenue is another example of the continued AI funding boom since OpenAI's ChatGPT became a widely recognized name. AI investment in 2023 to date has surpassed the full-year amount in 2020 of $1.5 billion, according to PitchBook data. While not currently generating any revenue, Character.AI plans to launch a paid subscription "in the not distant future", while keeping the current free version available, Shazeer said. Founded in 2021 by former Google researchers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, Character.AI had attracted backers including former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.

☆ Google's AI teams are experiencing a brain drain. Here's where its top researchers are now.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Top AI researchers have been leaving for startups where their work can have more impact. That frustration over Google's slow movement has been corroborated by other former Google researchers who spoke to Insider. Niki Parmar left Google Brain after five years to serve as a co-founder and CTO of Adept, though like Vaswani she recently left for a stealth startup. Lukasz Kaiser left Google Brain after over seven years to join OpenAI in 2021. Sharan Narang, another contributor to the T5 paper, left Google Brain in 2022 after four years.

☆ Spring training roundup: Max Fried stays unbeaten, Braves blank Twins
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

Ozuna's home run -- his first of the spring -- came in the third inning and completed the scoring. Twins starter Kenta Maeda (0-1) gave up five runs (all earned) and five hits in four innings. For the Blue Jays, starter Alek Manoah (1-2) gave up one run and five hits in six innings. Rockies 7, Royals (split squad) 0 (six innings)German Marquez tossed five shutout innings as visiting Colorado blanked Kansas City in Las Vegas. Elehuris Montero and Michael Toglia went deep for the Rockies, while Matt Beaty doubled for the Royals' only extra-base hit.

☆ Two Google engineers built a ChatGPT-like AI chatbot years ago, but execs reportedly shut it down due to safety concerns
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Ex-Google engineers developed a conversational AI chatbot years ago, per The Wall Street Journal. Google is now racing to catch up with Microsoft's AI and plans to release its AI chatbot this year. "It caused a bit of a stir inside of Google," Shazeer said in an interview with investors Aarthi Ramamurthy and Sriram Krishnan last month. But Google's AI plans may now finally see the light of day, even as discussions around whether its chatbot can be responsibly launched continue. Alphabet chairman John Hennessy agreed that Google's chatbot wasn't "really ready for a product yet."

☆ How Google Became Cautious of AI and Gave Microsoft an Opening
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( Miles Kruppa | Sam Schechner | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

More than two years ago, a pair of Google researchers started pushing the company to release a chatbot built on technology more powerful than anything else available at the time. The conversational computer program they had developed could confidently debate philosophy and banter about its favorite TV shows, while improvising puns about cows and horses. The researchers, Daniel De Freitas and Noam Shazeer , told colleagues that chatbots like theirs, supercharged by recent advances in artificial intelligence, would revolutionize the way people searched the internet and interacted with computers, according to people who heard the remarks.

☆ Sao Paulo govt to hire World Bank to study privatizing water utility
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Rodrigo Viga Gaier | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

RIO DE JANEIRO, March 3 (Reuters) - Sao Paulo's state government will hire the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) in the next few days for studies on the possible privatization of state water utility Sabesp (SBSP3.SA), Governor Tarcisio de Freitas said on Friday. "The privatization of Sabesp is a very complex matter," Tarcisio told Reuters after attending an event in Rio de Janeiro. Freitas said utility would only be privatized "if we reach the conclusion that we are going to increase efficiency, have upsides, reduce tariffs." "I think that all these objectives are possible and I understand that studies will show this," he said. The board of directors of Sao Paulo's state privatization program had earlier this week authorized the body to commission studies on Sabesp's possible privatization.

☆ Death toll from Brazil downpours hits 48, dozens still missing
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/7] Volunteers, firefighters, army officers and a civil guard carry the body of a woman who died at one of the landslide sites after severe rainfall at Barra do Sahy, in Sao Sebastiao, Brazil, February 22, 2023. REUTERS/Amanda PerobelliSAO PAULO, Feb 22 (Reuters) - The death toll from heavy rains that devastated coastal areas of Brazil's southeastern Sao Paulo state reached 48 people, official figures showed on Wednesday, but dozens were still missing as search and rescue efforts continued. The number of casualties rose from 46 reported a day earlier, the Sao Paulo state government said in a statement. The city of Sao Sebastiao, located some 200 km (124.3 miles) from Sao Paulo, bore the brunt of the human toll, with 47 of the reported deaths. The floods in coastal Sao Paulo state were the latest in a series of such disasters to recently strike Brazil, where shoddy construction, often on hillsides, can have tragic consequences during the country's rainy season.

☆ Death toll from devastating Brazil downpours rises to 44
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

SAO PAULO, Feb 21 (Reuters) - The death toll from heavy rains that devastated coastal areas of Brazil's southeastern Sao Paulo state rose to 44 people, according to a state government statement on Tuesday. The city of Sao Sebastiao bore the brunt of the human toll, with 43 reported deaths. [1/5] Firefighters work to find victims in one of the landslides sites after severe rainfall at Barra do Sahy in Sao Sebastiao, Brazil, February 21, 2023. Sao Paulo state Governor Tarcisio de Freitas said the Navy would build a field hospital for victims starting Thursday. The deluge happened as tourists thronged to Brazil's beaches during the annual Carnival holiday, likely making the human toll much worse.

SAO SEBASTIAO, Brazil, Feb 20 (Reuters) - The death toll from devastating rainfall in southeastern Brazil rose to 40 on Monday, official figures showed, as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visited the region and said homes should no longer be built in areas at risk of landslides and major floods. Lula flew over the coastal town of Sao Sebastiao alongside Cabinet ministers and pledged to help rebuild the town of some 91,000 people by constructing new houses in safer places. "Sometimes nature takes us by surprise, but sometimes we also tempt nature," Lula said in a speech after meeting with Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas and Sao Sebastiao Mayor Felipe Augusto to coordinate their response to the disaster. "I express my solidarity with the people of Sao Sebastiao and I hope this never happens again." [1/4] Landslides are seen after severe rainfall in Sao Sebastiao, Brazil, February 20, 2023.

☆ I'm a millennial advertising CEO and my Gen Z employees have taught me to lead with emotion first
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( Jordan Hart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

I've worked as the CEO of my own advertising company since 2020, and my Gen Z employees have taught me a lot. I use a unique approach when giving constructive criticism to my Gen Z workers. When we first started, Wonderkind was made up of the exact target audience of a lot of brands — Gen Z and millennials. I spend a lot of time teaching my Gen Z employees one-on-one, but I would never change that because of the results. I've had Gen Z employees leave much earlier than I wanted, but I try to combat that by checking in frequently with my employees.

☆ Will We Blame Self-Driving Cars?
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( Julian De Freitas | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

The autonomous vehicle (AV) industry has been promising for years that self-driving cars will be the future of transportation. But technological progress remains slow, and in recent months investors have shown signs of impatience. When Intel took its Mobileye car-technology unit public in October 2022, it was valued at $23 billion, dramatically lower than the company’s original expectation of $50 billion. One of the challenges facing the industry is trying to estimate how much liability AV firms will have for accidents involving their vehicles. As fully autonomous vehicles become more common, they will inevitably be involved in accidents.

☆ A Virginia bill would allow a pregnant driver to use the HOV lane by counting the fetus as a person, proving that despite recent failures the fight for fetal personhood is far from over
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-15 | by ( Katie Balevic | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

A Virginia bill would grant a fetus personhood to permit a pregnant driver to use the high-occupancy lane. It follows a similar case where a Texas woman fought a traffic ticket for driving while pregnant in the HOV. The fight over fetal personhood is far from overIn October, the US Supreme Court declined an appeal on the question of whether fetuses have constitutional rights, according to Reuters. The movement to establish fetal personhood began in 1973 following the Roe decision, and US lawmakers were trying as early as 1983 to establish fetal personhood at the national level, according to ProPublica. As of now, Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, and Missouri have some kind of fetal personhood laws on the books, PBS and NPR-affiliate GPB News reported.

A Virginia bill would deem a pregnant person's fetus a passenger in a car, thereby allowing the vehicle to use the car pool lane on highways. Under the bill, the certifications would then be "linked" to toll collection devices — typically E-Z Passes — in vehicles. High occupancy lanes require drivers to have at least one passenger in their vehicles when they use the lanes. And by considering a pregnant person as two people — in this case, allowing a pregnant person to use an HOV lane — you're ultimately making it harder to uphold abortion rights, because you have essentially imbued a fetus with personhood," Nash added. Doug Ducey, a Republican, that included a provision, carried over from a 2021 law, that reproductive rights advocates say granted personhood to fetuses.

Companies Petroleo Brasileiro SA Petrobras FollowRIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 23 (Reuters) - Caio Paes de Andrade, the chief executive of Brazil's state-run oil firm Petrobras (PETR4.SA), has decided to resign before his term ends in April, but has not yet set a date for his departure, six sources told Reuters. Andrade's early exit would provide a pathway for leftist President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to quickly install his own choice to lead the company. Lula, a leftist former president, takes office on Jan. 1. Prates has previously said the incoming government will not have an interventionist stance on Petrobras. Petrobras had previously said Andrade had accepted an invitation from future Sao Paulo state Governor Tarcisio Freitas to join his team.

☆ The political and spiritual symbolism of Mauna Loa’s historic eruption
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Kimmy Yam | Kimmy Yam Is A Reporter For Nbc Asian America. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +6 min

For many in the Native Hawaiian community, it carried a larger cultural and political symbolism and a message to respect Indigenous communities and land. Many Native Hawaiians are drawing from their mythology around Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire and creator of the islands, to help assign meaning to the historic eruption. “You don’t have authority to shape our sacred lands.”The eruption, Ing said, “is Pelehonuamea saying, ‘They’re right. And Pele’s lava flow, ho’omanawanui said, is associated with a cleansing that the Native Hawaiian community receives with gratitude rather than fear. So now Pele is coming in.”The symbolism around the eruption can also be applied to another lasting colonial force on the island: the tourism industry, Ing said.

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