CBS News reports: Floridians battered by Hurricane Idalia this week may not have expected another threat — that floodwaters could cause their cars to suddenly burst into flames. Yet that's exactly what happened when two electric vehicles caught fire after being submerged in saltwater churned up by the storm...

"If you own a hybrid or electric vehicle that has come into contact with saltwater due to recent flooding within the last 24 hours, it is crucial to relocate the vehicle from your garage without delay," the fire department said in a Facebook post. "Saltwater exposure can trigger combustion in lithium-ion batteries. If possible, transfer your vehicle to higher ground." The warning also applies to electric golf carts, scooters and bicycles, with lithium-ion batteries potentially sparking a fire when they get wet. More specifically, salt residue remains after the water dries out and can create "bridges" between the battery's cells, potentially creating electrical connections that can spark a fire.
Fire crews were actually towing one of the vehicles when it burst into flames, the article points out. And EV manufacturers want people to take the possibility seriously: Tesla warns car owners about the risks of vehicle submersion and advises against driving a car that has been flooded. "Treat your vehicle as if it has been in an accident and contact your insurance company," the company says in its guidance for handling a submerged vehicle.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.

CNN reports that newspaper chain Gannett "has paused the use of an AI tool to write high school sports dispatches after the technology made several major flubs in articles in at least one of its papers." In one notable example, preserved by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, the story began: "The Worthington Christian [[WINNING_TEAM_MASCOT]] defeated the Westerville North [[LOSING_TEAM_MASCOT]] 2-1 in an Ohio boys soccer game on Saturday...." The reports were mocked on social media for being repetitive, lacking key details, using odd language and generally sounding like they'd been written by a computer with no actual knowledge of sports.

CNN identified several other local Gannett outlets, including the Louisville Courrier Journal, AZ Central, Florida Today and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, that have all published similar stories written by LedeAI in recent weeks. Many of the reports feature identical language, describing "high school football action," noting when one team "took victory away from" another and describing "cruise-control" wins. In many cases, the stories also repeated the date of the games being covered multiple times in just a few paragraphs.

Gannett has paused its experiment with LedeAI in all of its local markets that had been using the service, according to the company. The pause was earlier reported by Axios... The AI tool debacle comes after Gannett axed hundreds of jobs in December when it laid off 6% of its news division.
From Axios's report: One such Dispatch article from Aug. 18 was blasted on social media for its robotic style, lack of player names and use of awkward phrases like "close encounter of the athletic kind." "I feel like I was there!" The Athletic senior columnist Jon Greenberg posted sarcastically.
More from the Washington Post: Another story about a game between the Wyoming Cowboys and Ross Rams described a scoreboard that "was in hibernation in the fourth quarter." When Ayersville High School staged a late comeback in another game, a write-up of their win read: "The Pilots avoided the brakes and shifted into victory gear...."

In a statement, Gannett called the deployment of Lede AI an "experiment" in automation to aid its journalists and add content for readers... LedeAI CEO Jay Allred said in a statement to The Post that he believes automation is part of the future of local newsrooms and that LedeAI allows reporters and editors to focus on "journalism that drives impact in the communities they serve."

"Silicon Valley billionaires behind a secretive $800 million land-buying spree in Northern California have finally released some details about their plans for a new green city," reports the Associated Press, "but they still must win over skeptical voters and local leaders." After years of ducking scrutiny, Jan Sramek, the former Goldman Sachs trader spearheading the effort, launched a website Thursday about "California Forever." The site billed the project as "a chance for a new community, good paying local jobs, solar farms, and open space" in Solano, a rural county between San Francisco and Sacramento that is now home to 450,000 people. He also began meeting with key politicians representing the area who have been trying unsuccessfully for years to find out who was behind the mysterious Flannery Associates LLC as it bought up huge swaths of land, making it the largest single landholder in the county...

[T]o build anything resembling a city on what is now farmland, the group must first convince Solano County voters to approve a ballot initiative to allow for urban uses on that land, a protection that has been in place since 1984. Local and federal officials still have questions about the group's intentions... California is in dire need of more housing, especially affordable homes for teachers, firefighters, service and hospitality workers. But cities and counties can't figure out where to build as established neighborhoods argue against new homes that they say would congest their roads and spoil their quiet way of life.

In many ways, Solano County is ideal for development. It is 60 miles northeast of San Francisco and 35 miles southwest of California's capital city of Sacramento. Solano County homes are among the most affordable in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a median sales price of $600,000 last month. But Princess Washington, mayor pro tempore of Suisun City, said residents deliberately decided to protect open space and keep the area around Travis Air Force Base free of encroachment given its significance. She's suspicious that the group's real purpose is "to create a city for the elite" under the guise of more housing.
The web site for "California Forever" acknowledges they've purchased 50,000 acres — about 78 squares miles — "strategically located" in Northern California's Solano County with access to water and low fire risk.

Speculative illustrations on the site "evoke a cityscape with a dreamy white stucco and red rooftop Mediterranean vibe that might be found in a Greek or Italian village," writes the San Francisco Chronicle. There are hillside neighborhoods stepping down to what must be the banks of the Sacramento River, kayakers tooling through lily pads and anglers fishing from the riverbank at sunrise... The website also names an investor who has not been named previously — venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, an early investor in Google, Slack and other companies...

While California Forever may have billions to invest in the project, it will face staunch opposition from some ranchers who argue that the city would disrupt the economy of a county that is 62% farmland.
The San Francisco Chronicle's urban design critic writes "OK, this is something new — an elevator pitch for a whole new city..." But the website launched Thursday by California Forever offers no real details, such as the projected population or precise location. Instead, there are renderings of cuddly townscapes and soothing talk of building "a remarkable place for Solano residents." Oh, and an earnest promise to "begin the phase of our work that matters most: our conversation with you." Let the eye-rolling commence. It's impossible to critique the vision of the investors, because what was unfurled is so innocuous as to be an insult...

The website also refers to how this will be a center of "economic opportunity" and "new employers." Great! But only two of the 12 renderings show people at work, including one where three men install solar panels while the sun sets in the west. Let's hope they're being paid overtime... The Bay Area needs housing and jobs. It also needs honest approaches to making this happen. Let's hope when California Forever 2.0 launches, there is less fluff and more facts.

Though it's Saturday at Nevada's desert-based Burning Man event "Dawn brought a growing realization for attendees that they might not be going home as planned, given rain forecast for later Saturday into Sunday..." reports the Reno Gazette-Journal. "More than 73,000 Burning Man attendees remain confined to their camps Saturday and are blocked from leaving the event after a slow-moving rainstorm turned their desert playground into a soupy, muddy morass."

Burning Man has now closed both its entrance and exits gates. "Organizers warned attendees to conserve their food and water, indicating the closures could be lengthy." There was no estimated time for reopening, and thousands of attendees are facing the potential of missing flights, failing to return rental cars or failing to return to work Tuesday. The event is set to officially end Monday but many people begin leaving Saturday night or Sunday...

The closures and order to remain in shelter come as the event was supposed reach its zenith on Saturday night with the burning of the giant wooden Man effigy towering over the temporary city. All vehicle traffic within the encampment has been halted, including servicing for the thousands of portable toilets that make the event possible. Organizers have also begun rationing ice sales... Given the conditions, which include forecast rain Sunday, it appears unlikely anyone will be permitted to drive out soon. Burning Man officials have not provided a comprehensive update on conditions, departure timing or even the multiple art burns scheduled for Saturday and Sunday. Longtime attendees said they can't remember a burn with this much rain...

Organizers banned vehicle traffic from the roads Friday afternoon and kept the exit gates closed as of 5 a.m. Saturday.
"Many attendees appeared to remain in good spirits, playing beer pong in the muddy streets or splashing in the standing water. Techno continued echoing around the encampment, and spontaneous dance parties kept breaking out."

"Walking was almost impossible Saturday morning, but started to improve as the ground began to dry. Then it began raining again."

An anonymous reader shares The Hill's report from earlier this month. Apparently America's tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service "cannot locate thousands of microfilm cartridges containing millions of sensitive individual and business tax account records, according to a watchdog report." The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said in a report released August 8 that the IRS cannot account for microfilm cartridges — which contain backups of tax records as required under federal law — from fiscal 2010 that were originally stored at a processing center in Fresno, California... The watchdog also found seven empty boxes, which could hold up to 168 cartridges total, at the Ogden Tax Processing Center in Utah. Ogden personnel did not know where the missing cartridges were.

More than 4,000 cartridges containing business tax account information from fiscal 2018 and 4,500 cartridges containing individual tax account information from fiscal 2019 also could not be accounted for at the Kansas City facility, according to the report.

"The personal taxpayer and tax information included on these backup cartridges is key information that can be used to commit tax refund fraud identity theft," the report noted.

What caused Monday's glitch in the UK's air traffic control system that left thousands of passengers stranded?

Wednesday the Independent reported that it may have been triggered by "an incorrectly filed flight plan by a French airline." Several sources say the issue may have been caused when a French airline filed a dodgy flight plan that made no digital sense. Instead of the error being rejected, it prompted a shutdown of the entire National Air Traffic Services (Nats) system — raising questions over how one clerical error could cause such mayhem... Downing Street has launched an independent review into the incident, which caused more than a quarter of flights at UK airports to be cancelled on Monday...

In his statement, Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe said Nats' systems, both primary and the back-ups, responded to the incorrect flight data by suspending automatic processing "to ensure that no incorrect safety-related information could be presented to an air traffic controller or impact the rest of the air traffic system".
The article also points out that "Passengers hit by the air traffic control meltdown face being stranded abroad for up to a week." Around 300,000 airline passengers have now been hit by flight cancellations since the hours-long failure of the Nats system on bank holiday Monday. The knock-on effect is set to last for several more days, as under-pressure airlines battle the backlog in a week where millions are already returning to the UK from their summer holidays.
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.

The U.S. Department of Defense has launched a website collecting publicly available, declassified information on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs). "For now, the general public will be able to read through the posted information," reports CNET. "Soon, US government employees, contractors, and service members with knowledge of US programs can report their own sightings, and later, others will be able to submit reports." From the report: "This website will provide information, including photos and videos, on resolved UAP cases as they are declassified and approved for public release," the department said in a release posted on Thursday. "The website's other content includes reporting trends and a frequently asked questions section as well as links to official reports, transcripts, press releases, and other resources that the public may find useful, such as applicable statutes and aircraft, balloon and satellite tracking sites."

For now, one of the most interesting parts of the site is its trends section. Apparently, most reported UAPs are round, either white, silver or translucent, spotted at around 10,000 to 30,000 feet, 1-4 meters in size, and do not emit thermal exhaust. Hotspots for sightings include both the US East and West coasts. There's also a small section of videos with names such as "DVIDS Video - Unresolved Case: Navy 2021 Flyby," and "UAP Video: Middle East Object." Readers are able to leave comments on the videos. Of the "Middle East Object" video, one person writes,"Noticed I never saw it cast a shadow. But other objects have shadows."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Early human ancestors came close to eradication in a severe evolutionary bottleneck between 800,000 and 900,000 years ago, according to scientists. A genomics analysis of more than 3,000 living people suggested that our ancestors' total population plummeted to about 1,280 breeding individuals for about 117,000 years. Scientists believe that an extreme climate event could have led to the bottleneck that came close to wiping out our ancestral line. "The numbers that emerge from our study correspond to those of species that are currently at risk of extinction," said Prof Giorgio Manzi, an anthropologist at Sapienza University of Rome and a senior author of the research. However, Manzi and his colleagues believe that the existential pressures of the bottleneck could have triggered the emergence of a new species, Homo heidelbergensis, which some believe is the shared ancestor of modern humans and our cousins, the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Homo sapiens are thought to have emerged about 300,000 years ago. "It was lucky [that we survived], but we know from evolutionary biology that the emergence of a new species can happen in small, isolated populations," said Manzi.

Prof Chris Stringer, the head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, who was not involved in the research, said: "It's an extraordinary length of time. It's remarkable that we did get through at all. For a population of that size, you just need one bad climate event, an epidemic, a volcanic eruption and you're gone." The decline appears to coincide with significant changes in global climate that turned glaciations into long-term events, a decrease in sea surface temperatures, and a possible long period of drought in Africa and Eurasia. The team behind the work said the time window also coincides with a relatively empty period on the fossil record. However, Stringer said there was not convincing evidence for a global "blank" in the fossil record of early humans, raising the possibility that whatever caused the bottleneck was a more local phenomenon. "Maybe this bottleneck population was stuck in some area of Africa surrounded by desert," he said. The findings have been published in the journal Science.

"The NYC police department intends to use drones to monitor Labor Day backyard parties, raising privacy concerns," writes Slashdot reader jjslash. "Drone usage by U.S. police departments is increasing, with some operating them beyond visual line of sight. TechSpot reports: "If a caller states there's a large crowd, a large party in a backyard, we're going to be utilizing our assets to go up and go check on the party," said assistant NYPD Commissioner Kaz Daughtry at a recent press conference. Naturally, the admission attracted the attention of privacy and civil liberties advocates who questioned if the department's plans violate existing laws governing surveillance in the area.

In its unmanned aircraft systems (UAS): Impact and use policy from 2021, the NYC police department said drones would not be used in areas where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy without a search warrant, except in exigent circumstances (PDF). Are backyard parties really all that pressing? "Deploying drones in this way is a sci-fi inspired scenario," said Daniel Schwarz, a technology and privacy strategist with the New York Civil Liberties Union. Schwarz added that it is at variance with the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act, which "requires the reporting and evaluation of surveillance technologies used by the NYPD."

"Given that too many schools don't teach calculus, chemistry and physics, CalTech is allowing potential undergraduates to demonstrate their ability in these fields by using Khan Academy," writes Slashdot reader Bruce66423. Los Angeles Times reports: One of Caltech's alternative paths is taking Khan Academy's free, online classes and scoring 90% or higher on a certification test. Sal Khan, academy founder, said Caltech's action is a "huge deal" for equitable access to college. While Caltech is small -- only 2,400 students, about 40% of them undergraduates -- Khan said he hoped its prestigious reputation would encourage other institutions to examine their admission barriers and find creative solutions to ease them. The Pasadena-based institute, with a 3% admission rate last year, boasts 46 Nobel laureates and cutting-edge research in such fields as earthquake engineering, behavioral genetics, geochemistry, quantum information and aerospace. "You have one of the most academically rigorous schools on the planet that has arguably one of the highest bars for admission, saying that an alternative pathway that is free and accessible to anyone is now a means to meeting their requirements," said Khan, whose nonprofit offers free courses, test prep and tutoring to more than 152 million users. [...]

The impetus for the policy change began in February, when Pallie, the admissions director, and two Caltech colleagues attended a workshop on equity hosted by the National Assn. for College Admission Counseling. They were particularly struck by one speaker, Melodie Baker of Just Equations, a nonprofit that seeks to widen math opportunities. As Baker pointed out the lack of access to calculus for many students, Pallie and her team began to question Caltech's admission requirement for the course, along with physics and chemistry. Pallie and Jared Leadbetter, a professor of environmental microbiology who heads the faculty admissions committee, began to look into potential course alternatives. Pallie connected with Khan's team, which started a second nonprofit, Schoolhouse.world, during the pandemic in 2020 to offer free tutoring. Peer tutors on the platform certify they are qualified for their jobs by scoring at least 90% on the course exam and videotaping themselves explaining how they solved each problem on it. The video helps ensure that the students actually took the exam themselves and understand the material. That video feature gave Caltech assurances about the integrity of the alternative path.

Under the new process, students would take a calculus, physics or chemistry class offered by Khan Academy and use the Schoolhouse platform to certify their mastery of the content as tutors do with a 90% score or better on the exam and a videotaped explanation of their reasoning. Proof of certification is required within one week of the application deadline, which is in November for early action and January for regular decisions. Pallie and Leadbetter also wanted to test whether the Khan Academy courses are sufficiently rigorous. Several Caltech undergraduates took the courses to assess whether all concepts were covered in enough breadth and depth to pass the campus placement exams in those subjects. Miranda, a rising Caltech junior studying mechanical engineering, took the calculus course and gave it a thumbs-up, although she added that students would probably want to use additional textbooks and other study materials to deepen their preparation for Caltech.

Robinhood announced it has purchased more than 55 million shares of the firm previously held by former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, which were seized in January by the U.S. Department of Justice as part of the criminal case against FTX and its executives. CoinTelegraph reports: The purchase had been expected. Robinhood's board of directors announced the approval of the deal in the company's Q4 2022 report, and an Aug. 30 SEC filing said the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York had approved the purchase "free and clear of any claims, interests, liens and encumbrances." Robinhood made the repurchase agreement with the U.S. Marshals Service. "We are happy to have completed the purchase of these shares and look forward to executing on our growth plans on behalf of our customers and shareholders," said Robinhood chief financial officer Jason Warnick.

Hot on the heels of its lunar landing success, India is readying to blast a probe even deeper into space to study the sun. From a report: The country's first solar observation mission, named Aditya-L1, is set to be launched from India's main spaceport on Sriharikota, an island off the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, at 11:50 a.m. local time on Saturday. The spacecraft is scheduled to spend 125 days traveling 1.5 million kilometers (932,000 miles) to its destination, a point in space where objects stay put and consume less fuel.

While arriving there would be an impressive achievement for ISRO, the Indian space agency, Aditya-L1 would have gone just a fraction of the 150 million km between Earth and the sun. For ISRO, success would be another major feat after India became the first country to land a spacecraft close to the lunar south pole in August. India has more ambitious projects in the works. A human spaceflight program aims to launch astronauts into orbit for the first time possibly by 2025, ISRO Chairman S Somanath said in an interview with news agency Asian News International. ISRO and NASA plan to cooperate on sending astronauts to the International Space Station and India is in discussions with Japan to work together on a mission.

The centenary of the Great Kanto earthquake brings angst, and lessons for the world. From a report: Every year on September 1st, Japan's ministers trek by foot to the prime minister's office to take part in a crisis simulation. Across the country, local officials and schoolchildren drill for disasters. The date marks the Great Kanto earthquake, a 7.9-magnitude tremor that struck near the capital back in 1923. The ensuing disaster killed at least 105,000 people, including around 70,000 in Tokyo itself, destroyed 370,000 homes and changed the course of Japanese history.

This year's centenary of the disaster has occasioned much commemoration -- and angst. What will happen when the next Big One hits? Seismologists cannot predict earthquakes, but their statistical models, which are based on past patterns, can estimate the likelihood of one. The city government's experts reckon there is a 70% chance of a magnitude 7 or higher quake hitting the capital within the next 30 years. Far fewer people will probably die than during the disaster in 1923, thanks to better technology and planning: the worst case foresees some 6,000 deaths in the city. But millions of lives will be upended.

Another, similarly likely scenario could be much worse. A Nankai Trough earthquake, envisaged south of Kansai, Japan's industrial heartland, could trigger a tsunami; as many as 323,000 might be killed, according to an official estimate. Japan's approach to the risks of such catastrophes offers insights for a warming world facing more frequent disasters. Quakes of this size could "challenge the survival of Japan as a state" and send economic shock waves around the globe, says Fukuwa Nobuo of Nagoya University. After the next Tokyo quake, recovering basic city functions could take weeks and rebuilding the capital could take years; direct damage alone could run to as much as $75bn. One piece of research estimates that gdp would dip by 11% following a Nankai earthquake.

Hundreds of people who participated in a recent Tough Mudder event -- a very muddy obstacle course race -- held in Sonoma, California, have fallen ill with pustular rashes, lesions, fever, flu-like symptoms, nerve pain, and other symptoms, local health officials and media outlets report. From a report: The cases could be caused by various infectious agents, including Staphylococcus bacteria, but the leading culprit is the relatively obscure Aeromonas bacteria -- specifically A. hydrophila, according to the Sonoma County health department. In a statewide alert this week, the California Department of Public Health said it is considering it an Aeromonas outbreak, noting that multiple wound cultures have yielded the hardy bacterium.

A spokesperson for the Sonoma County health department told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday that, based on calls and emails the department had received, health officials estimate that the outbreak involves around 300 cases. Tough Mudder participants, meanwhile, have tallied as many as 489 cases in online forums. The Tough Mudder event was held at the Sonoma Raceway on August 19 and 20, 2023, with symptoms of infection developing in cases within 12 to 48 hours afterward. The Sonoma County health department advisory noted that the race "involved extensive skin exposure to mud" and that participants with a rash, fever, or other symptoms should go to their health care provider or, if no provider is available, to a local emergency department.

During the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, IBM announced that it would no longer offer "general purpose" facial recognition technology due to concerns about racial profiling, mass surveillance, and other human rights violations. Now, according to The Verge and Liberty Investigates, "IBM signed a $69.8 million contract with the British government to develop a national biometrics platform that will offer a facial recognition function to immigration and law enforcement officials." From the report: A contract notice for the Home Office Biometrics Matcher Platform outlines how the project initially involves developing a fingerprint matching capability, while later stages introduce facial recognition for immigration purposes -- described as "an enabler for strategic facial matching for law enforcement." The final stage of the project is described as delivery of a "facial matching for law enforcement use-case." The platform will allow photos of individuals to be matched against images stored on a database -- what is sometimes known as a "one-to-many" matching system. In September 2020, IBM described such "one-to-many" matching systems as "the type of facial recognition technology most likely to be used for mass surveillance, racial profiling, or other violations of human rights."

IBM spokesman Imtiaz Mufti denied that its work on the contract was in conflict with its 2020 commitments. "IBM no longer offers general-purpose facial recognition and, consistent with our 2020 commitment, does not support the use of facial recognition for mass surveillance, racial profiling, or other human rights violations," he said. "The Home Office Biometrics Matcher Platform and associated Services contract is not used in mass surveillance. It supports police and immigration services in identifying suspects against a database of fingerprint and photo data. It is not capable of video ingest, which would typically be needed to support face-in-a-crowd biometric usage."

Human rights campaigners, however, said IBM's work on the project is incompatible with its 2020 commitments. Kojo Kyerewaa of Black Lives Matter UK said: "IBM has shown itself willing to step over the body and memory of George Floyd to chase a Home Office contract. This won't be forgotten." Matt Mahmoudi, PhD, tech researcher at Amnesty International, said: "The research across the globe is clear; there is no application of one-to-many facial recognition that is compatible with human rights law, and companies -- including IBM -- must therefore cease its sale, and honor their earlier statements to sunset these tools, even and especially in the context of law and immigration enforcement where the rights implications are compounding."

Shell PLC has quietly abandoned its plan to spend $100 million a year on carbon credits, "which is the largest offset program among corporations," notes CarbonCredits.com. The move comes six months after its new CEO Wael Sawan took office. From the report: In June, Sawan announced a major shift in Shell's strategy -- to maintain its current level of oil production until 2030, not to reduce it as initially declared, while reducing costs and increasing shareholders profits. What the CEO missed to reveal at the time is the energy giant's plans for investing in carbon credit projects. These credits are part of Shell's offsetting program in line with its 2050 net zero emissions goal. Shell has made a commitment to cut Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 50% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. It managed to reduce total emissions from all scopes (Scope 1, 2, and 3) in 2022 compared to 2016 levels. A big part of the oil major's carbon reduction strategy is the use of carbon credits to offset emissions.

Originally, Shell aimed at spending $100 million each year on carbon offsets. The oil company also targeted to generate 120 million carbon credits yearly by 2030 from natural carbon sequestration projects. These targets would have offset about 10% of Shell's carbon emissions. But with the company's recent revelation, they confirmed that they're putting an end to those plans. However, the company hasn't revealed publicly any new plans for carbon credits or how they now intend to meet their climate targets. According to Shell, those prior goals weren't attainable due to the lack of carbon offsets that meet its quality standards. [...]

As what [Flora Ji, a 17-year Shell veteran confirmed], Shell's long-term approach to carbon reduction toward net zero follows the Science-Based Targets initiative. That means avoiding emissions first and reducing them before resorting to carbon offsets. If Shell stays loyal to its net zero pledge, it will still need carbon offsets eventually, according to BloombergNEF analysis. The Dutch energy giant will be needing the offset credits for the residual emissions on its way to net zero. Indeed, Shell is not totally abandoning its carbon offset efforts; only the $100M and 120M credit targets. And though it's prioritizing its short-term goal of maximizing profits, it has yet to disclose new plans for its long-term climate targets.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has recommended easing restrictions on marijuana, a department spokesperson said on Wednesday, following a review request from the Biden Administration last year. Reuters reports: The scheduling recommendation for marijuana was provided to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) on Tuesday as part of President Biden's directive to HHS, the spokesperson said. "As part of this process, HHS conducted a scientific and medical evaluation for consideration by DEA. DEA has the final authority to schedule or reschedule a drug under the Controlled Substances Act. DEA will now initiate its review," a DEA spokesperson said.

Marijuana is currently classified as a schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act, meaning it has a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use, along with drugs like heroin and LSD. HHS is recommending reclassifying marijuana to say it has a moderate to low potential for dependence and a lower abuse potential, which would put it in a class with ketamine and testosterone. "If marijuana classification were to ease at the federal level, that could allow major stock exchanges to list businesses that are in the cannabis trade, and potentially allow foreign companies to begin selling their products in the United States," notes Reuters.

While marijuana remains illegal on the federal level, nearly 40 U.S. states have legalized it in some form. According to a survey last year from the Pew Research Center, "an overwhelming share of U.S. adults (88%) say either that marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use by adults (59%) or that it should be legal for medical use only (30%)."

UK's Home Office is looking to increase its use of controversial facial recognition technologies to track and find criminals within policing and other security agencies. From a report: In a document released on Wednesday, the government outlined its ambitions to potentially deploy new biometric systems nationally over the next 12 to 18 months. The move comes after privacy campaigners and independent academics criticised the technology for being inaccurate and biased, particularly against darker-skinned people.

MPs have previously called for a moratorium on its use on the general population until clear laws are established by parliament. The government is calling for submissions from companies for technologies that "can resolve identity using facial features and landmarks," including for live facial recognition which involves screening the general public for specific individuals on police watch lists.

In particular, the Home Office is highlighting its interest in novel artificial intelligence technologies that could process facial data efficiently to identify individuals, and software that could be integrated with existing technologies deployed by the department and with CCTV cameras. Facial recognition software has been used by South Wales Police and London's Metropolitan Police over the past five years across multiple trials in public spaces including shopping centres, during events such as the Notting Hill Carnival and, more recently, during the coronation.

The latest version of the flagship FOSS browser is out, and it's picked up one of the main features for which we keep Chrome around. From a report: The Firefox version 117 feature list might not look all that impressive, but it does have a big-ticket feature that may tempt people back: automatic translation. The snag is it's disabled by default in the release version, and you'll have to manually enable it. Although it was enabled in the betas, Mozilla has decided to go for a staged rollout and not enable it for everyone until Firefox 118 in six weeks or so.

The new feature is integrated, privacy-respecting machine translation between multiple languages. This was already possible in older versions, but it needed an extension, and that had two side effects. One is that the extension hooked deep into the core of the browser in ways that Mozilla wasn't comfortable about, and the other is that once your text had been sent out to a third-party website, it could be snooped upon -- but the victims of any snooping would blame the browser, even if it wasn't the browser's fault. To enable it, go to the configuration page (enter about:config in the address bar), and search for a setting called browser.translations.enable.

A U.S. Department of Commerce spokesperson on Thursday said the Biden administration "has not blocked chip sales to the Middle East." From a report: The comments come after artificial intelligence chip firms Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices received notifications from U.S. officials about new export licensing requirements to ship chips to some countries in the Middle East.