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[1/2] A Tesla Model 3 vehicle drives on autopilot along the 405 highway in Westminster, California, U.S., March 16, 2022. Tesla denied liability for the accident and said in a court filing that Hsu used Autopilot on city streets, despite a user manual warning against doing so. "This case should be a wakeup call to Tesla owners: they can't over-rely on Autopilot, and they really need to be ready to take control and Tesla is not a self-driving system," he said. The Hsu trial unfolded in Los Angeles Superior Court over three weeks, with testimony from three Tesla engineers. The main question in Autopilot cases was who is responsible for an accident while a car is in driver-assistant Autopilot mode - a human driver, the machine, or both?

☆ Defunct NASA spacecraft returns to Earth after 21 years
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Katie Hunt | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —A NASA satellite that observed solar flares and helped scientists understand the sun’s powerful bursts of energy will fall to Earth this week, almost 21 years after it was launched. The retired Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) spacecraft, which launched in 2002 and was decommissioned in 2018, is expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere Wednesday at approximately 9:30 p.m. The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth as a result of RHESSI’s return is low — approximately 1 in 2,467, according to NASA. From its former perch in low-Earth orbit, the satellite captured images of high-energy electrons that carry a large part of the energy released in solar flares, NASA said. NASA said that the agency, along with the Department of Defense, would monitor the satellite’s reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.

☆ German auto association sees 2023 electric passenger car output up 50%
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

BERLIN, April 16 (Reuters) - Germany's auto industry association VDA expects the number of electric passenger cars produced in Europe's biggest economy to jump by 50% to over a million this year, due to rising foreign demand and carmakers ramping up e-mobility production. "We assume that the domestic production of electrically-powered passenger cars will increase by 50 percent to 1.33 million units, of which 980,000 will be purely battery-electric cars," VDA head Hildegard Mueller was quoted as saying by Automobilwoche on Sunday. Some 885,000 electric cars were produced in Germany last year, 300,000 of which were plug-in hybrids, according to VDA. Mueller said the forecast was based on new e-models on offer and rising production at Tesla's Gruenheide and Mercedes-Benz's Bremen plants, adding that demand from abroad was stronger than in Germany due to partial reductions in government subsidies that went into effect this year. Reporting by Riham AlkousaaOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ A paper mill in Alabama told authorities a worker died from a heart attack. He actually died after being electrocuted by machinery, the labor department says.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

A paper mill in Alabama told OSHA that a worker who was electrocuted actually died from a heart attack. The company's lawyer also asked the coroner's office to change the cause of death to heart attack, OSHA said. The department said that the company – South Coast Paper LLC – had "willfully" violated safety standards, including failing to implement procedures to protect employees performing maintenance on machinery. The plant's manager and the company's general manager, however, told an OSHA certified safety and health officer that the worker had died from electrocution, OSHA wrote. South Coast Paper did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, made outside of regular working hours.

[1/3] U.S. President Joe Biden attends the groundbreaking of the new Intel semiconductor manufacturing facility in New Albany, Ohio, U.S., September 9, 2022. But all that new construction has a real estate problem. That would be a problem for the Biden administration, which has pushed through legislation to fuel the developments. A White House official said it was a "high-class problem" to have, adding: "Folks are finding places to build. The governors of South Carolina, Virginia and North Carolina have each proposed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on readying industrial sites in the coming years.

☆ 10 ways Tasers and stun guns can damage your body and brain, from twisted testicles to temporary memory loss
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-10 | by ( Kelly Burch | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Tasers, AKA stun guns, cause your muscles to seize up, which can make them sore for days after. Police and law enforcement have been using Tasers, known generally as stun guns, since 1974 as a safer alternative to guns. Put another way, all Tasers are stun guns, but not all stun guns are Tasers. Stun guns make your muscles seize up like a Charley horseA police officer's painful reaction to being tasered during a training course on stun guns. Rarely, stun guns can severely harm kidney functionVery rarely, stun guns can cause a serious condition called rhabdomyolysis, AKA rhabdo, which can be fatal.

☆ Wind and solar power generators wait in yearslong lines to put clean electricity on the grid, then face huge interconnection fees they can't afford
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Catherine Clifford | In Catclifford | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +18 min

The local utility in charge of overseeing the interconnection process told Pine Gate it would be more than $30 million. Pine Gate had to terminate the project because it couldn't afford the new fees, its vice president of regulatory affairs, Brett White, told CNBC. "Those projects ended up withdrawing from the queue or terminating, because they don't pencil anymore," White told CNBC. "There is Texas, and then there's the rest of the country with respects to interconnection," White of Pine Gate told CNBC. And that means getting those engineers out of some of the rote manual data entry and into the actual analysis," White told CNBC.

☆ Fetch.ai helps companies build and deploy autonomous smart agents. Check out the 19-slide pitch deck it used to raise $40 million.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Riddhi Kanetkar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Check out the 19-slide deck it used to raise the fresh funds. A startup that uses AI to improve the autonomy of digital agents has raised $40 million as investors continue to pile in on the breakthrough tech. Cambridge-based Fetch.ai, founded in 2017, has developed technology that can help digital agents communicate with one another. Any transactions or activities between these various agents, who work with their own independent services, are recorded on the blockchain using Fetch.ai's native token, FET. With the fresh funds, Fetch.ai will develop and build out its technology.

☆ Syria port authority shuts all ports due to bad weather
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

[1/3] Waves crash during high winds in the Syrian port city of Banias, Syria, March 29, 2023. SANA/Handout via REUTERSDAMASCUS, March 29 (Reuters) - Syria's port authority has shut down all the country's sea ports including Tartous due to poor weather and high winds, state media reported on Wednesday. The port of Tartous had initially been exempt from the closure but the country's ports authority later said it was shutting down as conditions worsened. "There are winds and high waves in bursts and we cannot risk opening the ports at this time," Brigadier General Samer Kobrosli, the director general of the authority, told Reuters. The war-ravaged country operates seven sea ports through which it brings in basic needs including food and petroleum products.

☆ The Northern Lights could dazzle the skies from Washington to New York on Friday, blown by winds from a giant 'hole' on the sun
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Chris Panella | Morgan Mcfall-Johnsen | Jessica Orwig | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The Northern Lights could appear in the skies over some northern US states on Friday. The lights could be dazzling thanks to solar winds blowing from a giant coronal hole on the sun. NOAA/Space Weather Prediction CenterThese solar winds are coming from a giant coronal hole on the sun. As that giant hole spread across the corona, it blasted strong, high-speed solar winds into space, in the direction of Earth. They have previously driven the aurora lights as far south as New York and Idaho.

☆ Norfolk Southern reaches new paid sick leave deal as it contends with derailment fallout
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-15 | by ( Noah Sheidlower | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Norfolk Southern said Wednesday it agreed to provide up to seven paid sick days per years for members of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers and Blacksmiths. The deal provides Norfolk Southern's mechanical railroaders with four paid sick days per year, in addition to three existing days of paid time off that can now be used as sick days. The IBBB is now the ninth of Norfolk Southern's 12 unions that have negotiated paid sick days, benefitting about 6,000 workers. The move comes after months of fighting between unions and railraods – including Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific and BNSF – over paid sick leave. The legislation, however, did not include paid sick leave.

☆ Former Apple and Cisco engineers are 'sneaking' cheaper, energy-saving tech into buildings. See the pitch deck they used to raise $4 million.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Domatic's founders walked Insider through the pitch deck they used to raise seed capital. When smart home products began to take off in the early 2010's, Baldwin became obsessed with Nest cameras and security systems. "There's a parallel universe where I had gone to Nest," to help develop its products, Baldwin said. "This is sneaking the smart system into the building" through the wiring, Baldwin said. Wong and Baldwin walked Insider through the pitch deck they used to raise the round.

The AI industry is vast, encompassing not only buzzy chatbots and conversational search engines but also things like self-driving vehicles. Big technology companies have laid off tens of thousands of workers in recent months, but workers with AI skills are still in demand. Highly educated data scientists and core AI specialists with technical know-how are still highly in demand despite recent layoffs, Forshaw said. Natural language processing is really hot right now, but data science and data analytics skills are still in high demand." Still, Kimmel— who recently launched a bootcamp for AI startups— suggests that it's best to jump in and learn alongside early builders.

☆ Passengers Fly 16 Hours to Nowhere After Fire, Power Outage at JFK Thwarts Operations
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-17 | by ( Alyssa Lukpat | Gareth Vipers | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Passengers with their luggage in JFK’s Terminal 1 on Friday. A power outage at John F. Kennedy International Airport’s Terminal 1 caused dozens of flight cancellations and forced several planes to turn around in midair on Friday, including one bound for New York from New Zealand. Terminal 1 was closed on Friday because of electrical issues that started a day earlier, thwarting operations at one of the busiest airports in the world at the start of a holiday weekend.

☆ Passengers took a 16-hour flight to nowhere after their plane to New York U-turned because of an electrical fire at JFK Airport
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-17 | by ( Kate Duffy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

A flight to New York headed back to New Zealand because of an electrical fire at JFK Airport. An electrical failure in the terminal caused an outage and a "small isolated fire," per JFK Airport. Passengers were rebooked onto the next available flight to JFK Airport, the spokesperson added. The power outage at JFK Airport also caused other flights to divert to their departure airports on Thursday. These included two ITA Airways flights from Milan and Rome, and a Korean Air flight from Seoul, per FlightAware.

☆ Biden takes aim at Republican spending cuts plan
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Andrea Shalal | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

At issue is Republicans' refusal to raise the statutory $31.4 trillion U.S. debt limit unless Biden agrees to spending cuts. The White House has said such measures will only be discussed after the debt ceiling is lifted. In a speech at a union hall in suburban Maryland, Biden accused Republicans, who now control the House of Representatives, of pushing him to agree to spending cuts, while their own plans would add $3 trillion to the debt. Republicans argue that federal spending is too high and will fuel inflation while raising the U.S. debt level. They also plan a separate news conference on Wednesday aimed at highlighting House Republicans' planned budget cuts.

☆ Biden to blast Republican agenda as 'massive giveaway' to big companies
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Andrea Shalal | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

At issue is Republicans' refusal to raise the statutory $31.4 trillion U.S. debt limit unless Biden agrees to spending cuts, while the White House has said such measures will only be discussed after the debt ceiling is lifted. With his own approval ratings now at 36%, despite 53-year low unemployment and rising consumer sentiment, Biden will seek to flip the script and point the finger at a Republican agenda that he says will amount to "a massive giveaway to the super-rich, big corporations and Big Pharma," the White House said. By contrast, Biden says his administration's plans will cut U.S. debt by another $2 trillion on top of $1.7 trillion in reductions already made. Republicans argue that U.S. federal spending is too high and will fuel inflation while raising the U.S. debt level. Republican have discussed repealing the stock buyback tax entirely, which the White House says would add $74 billion to the federal debt.

☆ Watch live: Biden outlines plans to cut U.S. deficit by $2 trillion over the next decade
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Emma Kinery | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Please refresh the page if you do not see a video above at that time.) Biden has made a point of speaking to union workers and highlighting jobs being created by his policies, like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, that don't require four-year college degrees. The president visited a LIUNA Laborers' Apprenticeship and Training Center in Wisconsin last week and a steamfitters hall in Virginia in late January. Biden, in excerpts from his speech, will argue that his budget won't include taxes on Americans making less than $400,000 a year and will ultimately cut the deficit by $2 trillion over the next decade. The president has yet to release his budget plan but has promised to by March 9.

☆ Fact Check-Earthquake in Turkey was not a HAARP operation
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

Multiple experts told Reuters that HAARP could not have been responsible for the earthquake in Turkey or anywhere as it does not have such capabilities. HAARP CANNOT TRIGGER EARTHQUAKESAccording to the HAARP website’s FAQ section, it cannot control or manipulate the weather (haarp.gi.alaska.edu/faq). Nishimura said there may not have been lightning strikes at all in the video shared online. Experts say the Feb. 6 earthquake in Turkey was not a result of a HAARP operation because HAARP does not have capabilities to trigger earthquakes. (Update Feb. 13, 2023: Replaces paragraph 8 with response from HAARP program manager)This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team.

☆ How to delete yourself from the internet
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( Cheryl Winokur Munk | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

With so much personal data floating publicly on the internet, consumers have a legitimate interest in controlling the information flow. Self-help tools to remove personal informationFor those who are so inclined, there are ways to limit the amount of personal information available on the internet. If that fails, Google says it may remove personal information "that creates significant risks of identity theft, financial fraud, or other specific harms." It can be hard to gauge the effectiveness of these services, partly because there's so much personal information in the public domain. DeleteMe's website says that 2,389 pieces of personal information, on average, are found over a two-year subscription.

☆ Japan's Nippon Steel to pay record FY dividend on rising profit
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Feb 9 (Reuters) - Japan's top steelmaker Nippon Steel Corp (5401.T) on Thursday posted a 2% increase in April-December net profit to 517 billion yen ($4 billion) and said it would pay a record-high full-year dividend of 180 yen per share. Nippon Steel, which kept its full-year net profit forecast unchanged at 670 billion yen, paid an annual dividend of 160 yen per share last year. The company raised its full-year underlying business profit forecast by 60 billion yen to 690 billion yen, as it expects its non-consolidated steel output to be 200,000 tonnes higher than estimated in its previous forecast released in November. As Nippon Steel expands in lower-emission business including carbon capture and storage, it plans to issue a green bond on the Japanese market to co-finance production of electrical steel sheets used in eco-friendly car motors, it said. The size and maturity of the bond are yet to be announced and the issue itself may come in March or later, Nippon Steel added.

☆ Precision Neuroscience, co-founded by Neuralink alum, is creating a brain implant thinner than a human hair
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Ashley Capoot | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Precision was co-founded by Benjamin Rapoport, who also co-founded Elon Musk's BCI company, Neuralink , and Michael Mager. But while Neuralink's BCI is designed to be implanted directly into the brain tissue, Precision relies on a surgical technique that is designed to be less invasive. A BCI is a system that deciphers brain signals and translates them into commands for external technologies, and several companies have successfully created devices with this capability. The device is called the Layer 7 Cortical Interface , and it's a brain implant that aims to help patients with paralysis operate digital devices using only neural signals. "I think that the brain is, in a lot of ways, the next frontier for modern medicine," he said.

☆ Hundreds evacuated as fire burns makeshift homes in Seoul
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +4 min

A fire destroyed about 60 makeshift homes in a densely packed neighborhood surrounded by some of the wealthiest streets of South Korea’s ultramodern capital Friday. Firefighters extinguished the flames in Seoul’s Guryong village within about five hours, and no injuries or deaths were reported. Shin Yong-ho, an official at the fire department of Seoul’s Gangnam district, said rescue workers have searched areas affected by the fire but all residents were believed to have safely evacuated. Photos showed firefighters fighting the flames under thick, white smoke covering the village as helicopters sprayed water from above. Kim Ah-reum, an official at the Gangnam district office, said around 500 residents evacuated to nearby facilities including a school gym.

☆ More than half of German companies report labour shortages
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

The proportion of companies facing difficulties hiring was at its highest ever level, the DIHK found in its survey of 22,000 companies, with 53% reporting shortages. The labour market's resilience did not mean companies were doing well, he added. Staff shortages, high energy prices and the shift towards climate neutrality were a "dangerous mix" that could lead firms to move production abroad. The survey found that 67% of electrical equipment manufacturers were unable to fill vacancies and 67% of mechanical engineering companies. In carmaking, 65% of companies reported labour shortages.

☆ Purdue’s 1st Asian American president takes office weeks after school official mocks Asian languages onstage
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-11 | by ( Kimmy Yam | Kimmy Yam Is A Reporter For Nbc Asian America. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

Chiang’s tenure comes shortly after Thomas L. Keon, chancellor of PNW mocked Asian languages during a winter commencement. A post published by nonprofit Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, written by writer Emil Guillermo, said that action from Chiang could send a strong message. The first Asian American president fires the racist chancellor who told a bad Asian joke.”Keon did not respond to a request for comment. “The Board has therefore issued a formal reprimand to Dr. Keon.”Thomas L. Keon, chancellor of Purdue University Northwest in Indiana. Instead, he said, it’s reflective of larger problems that Asian and Asian American students often faced.

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