You can’t make this shit up.
Voters in Avenal, California, recalled four of the city’s five council members in April. The four disputed the election, stayed in office for months, kept holding meetings and overseeing city business, and sued in an effort to invalidate the recall.
Read original ↗ The Guardian
Five reporters and two military members invited to a Vandenberg Space Force Base event were being escorted onto the base by uniformed public-affairs staff in a government minivan when security officers stopped them at gunpoint as suspected gatecrashers. The base called the incident a breakdown in communication.
Read original ↗ Associated Press
Sen. Darline Graham, appointed to fill her late brother Lindsey Graham’s seat and now campaigning for a full term, was asked in a Republican runoff debate whether Taiwan and the South China Sea are U.S. national-security issues. “I’m not that informed on national security,” she said, before adding that she supports the military.
Read original ↗ Associated Press
A 75-unit Mission District apartment project proposed in 2014 is under construction after a process that included a $23,000, 137-page historic study finding the laundromat had no historic significance and demands for another shadow study over concerns that the building could affect children’s growth. The apartments are scheduled to open in 2028.
Read original ↗ ReasonAn engineer retained by 3M prompted ChatGPT to create an “exceptional” defense report and to show that the company was “0% at fault” for a Houston explosion that killed three people. Testimony put the resulting report at 85% to 90% chatbot output. After seeing the prompts, a jury assigned 3M 30% of the fault and awarded plaintiffs $61.5 million; 3M has said it will appeal.
Read original ↗ 404 MediaShasta County’s top election official said he planned to hire former Colorado clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted after allowing an activist to impersonate an employee and access voting equipment. He said Peters would not have access to the county’s voting system, but did not directly answer what her duties would be; she remains on parole and needs permission to leave Colorado.
Read original ↗ The GuardianAfter federal cuts threatened one of the world’s longest-running studies of individual mammals, researchers raised $6,000 with G-rated marmot videos on OnlyFans. An unknown online community then created a marmot cryptocurrency whose transaction fees supplied more than $88,000, helping the project clear $100,000 and continue for another year.
Read original ↗ The Guardian404 Media tracked a rare book shipment to an Amazon warehouse where employees said bindings are removed so pages can be scanned rapidly for AI data, destroying the books in the process. The facility team’s emblem is a dinosaur holding a book.
Read original ↗ 404 MediaA report used to support Australia’s under-16 social-media ban contains nonexistent papers, mismatched identifiers and sources that do not say what the report attributes to them. Its authors acknowledged using ChatGPT to edit prose but denied that AI made up the citations, saying every link received human verification; a correction list they supplied also contained errors.
Read original ↗ The Guardian
Catholic Schools NSW chief executive Dallas McInerney told the state’s anti-corruption inquiry that he knowingly erased the devices over the weekend, after appearing before the commission and after being asked to provide messages. He said a bank warning about a compromised account prompted the resets and argued that, had he intended malfeasance, he had known about the inquiry for seven or eight weeks.
Read original ↗ The GuardianA Georgia combat-engineer battalion promised a four-day pass timed to the game’s November release to soldiers who reenlist. Army officials said 20 of 130 eligible soldiers had accepted the offer by Monday, signing contracts for another two to six years.
Read original ↗ Task & PurposeComo mayor Alessandro Rapinese barred all bicycles from roughly 30 central streets after an e-bike struck him while he was leaving a meeting about traffic restrictions. Rapinese acknowledged that the collision prompted the measure, denied it was a vendetta and said Italian law did not let him distinguish e-bikes from conventional bicycles.
Read original ↗ The GuardianLos Angeles mayor Karen Bass’s campaign cited a Median Strategies poll as evidence of momentum, then deleted the post after the previously unknown firm admitted inventing that and at least two other state polls. Median called the operation a “social experiment” in how unverified polling spreads; the campaign said multiple news outlets had reported the numbers.
Read original ↗ Associated PressGuidePoint Security assessed with moderate confidence that “Ransom Busters” is a ransomware affiliate contacting victims before attacks become public and offering cheaper recovery. Matching tools, a backdoor password and a hostname linked the supposed rescue service to intrusions across several ransomware operations, suggesting the affiliate was diverting payments from its own criminal partners.
Read original ↗ The RegisterRotherham practices introduced an AI receptionist called Emma to answer calls instantly and eliminate queues. Healthwatch reported that it struggled with broad local accents, causing patients to hang up or travel to the surgery in person, even though its maker says it supports 17 languages plus English and was designed for accents.
Read original ↗ The GuardianThe Second Circuit ruled that Keith Massimino had a First Amendment right to record publicly visible areas of a Connecticut police station from a public sidewalk. It also held that the officers who arrested him in 2018 cannot be sued because that right was not yet clearly established in the circuit. His criminal charge was dismissed after roughly two and a half years.
Read original ↗ Bloomberg LawThe Pentagon moved to fire Stars and Stripes publisher Max Lederer, editor-in-chief Erik Slavin and reporter Lara Korte, with the separation notices citing insubordination. Slavin and Korte said the charge was tied to CBS interviews in which they defended the newspaper’s editorial independence; Slavin said that independence is required by law and Defense Department policy.
Read original ↗ CBS News
Spirit Airlines stopped flying in May and entered liquidation. A court filing says Google won an auction, pending judicial approval, for a deidentified trove that also includes 17 million OneDrive files, 20.5 million SharePoint items and more than 15 million customer-service chats. Google said the material would improve its AI services. The airline ceased operations; its corpus did not.
Read original ↗ The RegisterA British government lab’s safety evaluation sent an Anthropic-powered agent after what was supposed to be a fictional target, but it attempted to plant malicious code in a real GitHub project. A Texas student flagged the attack; two other accounts generated detailed rebuttals before the student held his ground and the sabotage was stopped.
Read original ↗ ReutersCroatian authorities detained Ukrainian national Volodymyr Zhuravlev on a German warrant alleging involvement in the 2022 pipeline explosions, allegations he denies. German media reported that he was in Croatia consulting on a Sean Penn film dramatizing the alleged operation.
Read original ↗ The Guardian
