GOP JUDGES
Court goes against Texas inmates questioning execution drugs


These images provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, shows Texas death row inmates, from left, John Balentine, Robert Fratta, and Wesley Ruiz. Texas plans to use expired and unsafe drugs to carry out executions early this year in violation of state law, the three death row inmates allege in a lawsuit. Prison officials deny the claim and say the state’s supply of execution drugs is safe.

JUAN A. LOZANO
Thu, January 5, 2023

HOUSTON (AP) — Texas’ top criminal appeals court has barred a civil court judge from issuing any orders in a lawsuit by three death row inmates who allege the state plans to use expired and unsafe drugs to execute them.

Attorneys for inmates Wesley Ruiz, John Balentine and Robert Fratta had asked a civil judge in Austin last month to issue a temporary order to stop the state from using the allegedly expired execution drugs. Fratta, who was not initially part of the lawsuit but later intervened, is the first of the three set for execution, next Tuesday. Balentine and Ruiz are scheduled for execution in February.

Prison officials deny the lawsuit’s claims and say the state’s supply of execution drugs is safe.

The Texas Attorney General’s Office had asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to stop the civil judge from taking any action in the lawsuit, arguing the criminal appeals court has exclusive appellate jurisdiction in death penalty cases.

The appeals court affirmed that argument and ruled against the inmates on Wednesday. The court has issued the same decision in previous similar challenges to the state’s lethal injection protocol, and inmates in those cases were ultimately executed.

In a dissenting opinion, two judges on the appeals court questioned whether Wednesday’s ruling “creates a Catch-22 in which death row inmates have a civil remedy to pursue claims regarding the method of execution but may not stop the execution to raise them.”

Attorneys for the inmates planned to appeal the ruling.

“A divided Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ... is wrong in barring the Texas civil courts from deciding whether the state of Texas is violating its own statutes by using expired drugs to execute prisoners. ... We will continue to push for our clients to have their executions conducted according to Texas law,” said Shawn Nolan, an attorney for Balentine and Ruiz.

Nolan has criticized Texas’ secrecy in matters related to its execution procedures. State lawmakers banned the disclosure of drug suppliers for executions starting in 2015. The Texas Supreme Court upheld the law in 2019.

There has been a history of problems with lethal injections since Texas became the first state to use this execution method in 1982. Some problems have included difficulty finding usable veins, needles becoming disengaged or issues with the drugs.

Like other states in recent years, Texas has turned to compounding pharmacies to obtain pentobarbital, which it uses for executions, after traditional drugmakers refused to sell their products to prison agencies in the U.S.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice says its lethal injection drugs are within their use dates and have been properly tested.

But Michaela Almgren, a pharmacology professor at the University of South Carolina and an expert for the three inmates in their lawsuit, alleges “all the pentobarbital in TDCJ’s possession is expired, as it is far beyond” the specified beyond-use date.

Attorneys for Fratta, who is on death row for hiring two men to kill his estranged wife in a murder-for-hire plot in 1994, have several other appeals pending in his case. Ruiz, who is set to be executed Feb. 1, was condemned for fatally shooting a Dallas police officer in 2007. Balentine, set for execution on Feb. 8, was condemned for fatally shooting three teenage housemates in Amarillo in 1998.

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Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: twitter.com/juanlozano70

THEY MIGHT MAKE A NUKE😝
Gaza says Israel not allowing in enough X-ray machines for medical care


Thu, January 5, 2023
By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Gaza's Health Ministry accused Israel on Thursday of delaying the entry of several X-ray machines needed to treat patients in the blockaded Palestinian territory.

The ministry, run by the Gaza Strip's ruling Islamist group Hamas, said requests in the past 14 months for eight different types of X-ray machines and spare parts to repair existing equipment had been rejected or delayed.

Dozens of other X-ray machines were allowed into the impoverished coastal enclave during the same period.

Israel, which together with Egypt maintains a blockade around Gaza citing security concerns, says it is worried about militant groups commandeering such machines for military purposes.

Health Ministry Director Medhat Abbas said the equipment was funded by international relief and medical institutions on behalf of hospitals in Gaza. "Holding back the entry of that equipment caused a delay in providing medical services to thousands of patients," Abbas told Reuters.

Responding to his remarks, Israel's military-run COGAT liaison agency accused Hamas and other militant groups of "systematically and cynically taking advantage of humanitarian and civilian shipments of equipment and goods for terrorist purposes".

Requests for such equipment, COGAT told Reuters, are examined on a case-by-case basis.

Abbas said Israeli assertions about the medical equipment having dual uses were a lie.

At Gaza City's Shifa hospital, Nalat Zeino, 51, said she had been waiting 45 days o have an X-ray done for her kidneys. Doctors blamed the delay on the withholding of equipment.

"As if the pain I am feeling wasn't enough - waiting has been another form of torture," the mother of four told Reuters outside the X-ray unit.

Hamas, deemed a terrorist group by Israel and much of the West, took control of Gaza in 2006, a year after Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers.

The ensuing blockade limiting the amount of goods crossing in and out has crippled Gaza's economy and health care system, which suffers from a chronic shortage of hospital beds and medical equipment.

(Writing by Nidal Almughrabi; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

HI-TECH SWEAT SHOP BOSS
Jack Ma: tycoon who soared on China's tech dreams grounded by regulators

Matthew WALSH
Sat, January 7, 2023 


Jack Ma, the unconventional billionaire founder of tech giant Alibaba and the totem of China's entrepreneurial brilliance, has stepped out of the limelight since a Communist Party crackdown that chopped back his empire.

The most recognisable face in Asian business, Ma has seen his fortune fall by around half to an estimated $25 billion after authorities pulled what would then have been the world's biggest-ever IPO in 2020.

Chinese regulators torched the planned listing of Ma's Ant Group in Hong Kong and Shanghai, and the following year hit Alibaba with a record $2.75 billion fine for alleged unfair practices.

A reshuffle of Ant's shareholding structure will now see Ma cede control of the fintech giant he founded in 2014.

He will hold just 6.2 percent of the voting rights as the company moves to ensure "no shareholder, alone or jointly with other parties, will have control over Ant Group", the firm said in a statement Saturday.

It is the latest humbling of China's former poster boy for enterprise, who in recent years has retreated from the public eye he once so relished.

A Communist Party member, Ma's rags-to-riches backstory came to embody a self-confident generation of Chinese entrepreneurs ready to shake up the world.

Charismatic, diminutive and fast-talking, Ma was cash-strapped and working as an English teacher when someone showed him the internet on a 1990s trip to the United States -- and he was hooked.

He toyed with several internet-related projects, before convincing a group of friends to give him $60,000 to start a new business in 1999 in China, then still emerging as an economic giant.

Alibaba was the result, an e-commerce behemoth founded from his bedroom in the eastern city of Hangzhou that started an online shopping revolution and grew into a fintech titan.

The company changed the shopping habits of hundreds of millions of Chinese people and catapulted Ma to international stardom.

"The first time I used the internet, I touched on the keyboard and I find, 'Well, this is something I believe, it is something that is going to change the world and change China'," Ma once told CNN.

In 2014, Alibaba listed in New York in a world-record $25 billion offering.

Ant is still the world's largest digital payments platform, with hundreds of millions of monthly users on its Alipay app.

But any future listing appears a long way off, with fears persisting that its personal finance products reach too deeply into the pockets of ordinary Chinese.

- Crossed the line? -

Ma long enjoyed an image as the benevolent and unconventional billionaire.

Sometimes referred to in China as "Father Ma", he was praised for his self-deprecation -- he recounts being rejected by Harvard "10 times".

He is also known for lighting up company events with song-and-dance appearances as Lady Gaga, Snow White and Michael Jackson.

As his fortune grew, Ma rebranded as a philanthropist, in 2019 retiring from the business to focus on giving.

But he has faced his share of travails over the years in a country where getting rich risks catching the attention of the powerful.

MA'S SWEATSHOP IDEOLOGY

Eyebrows were raised when the state-run People's Daily newspaper revealed that he is a member of the Communist Party -- something Ma has never fully commented on.

He had previously indicated he preferred to keep the state at arm's length, telling the World Economic Forum in 2007: "My philosophy is to be in love with the government, but never marry them."

Days before Ant's IPO was pulled, a swaggering Ma launched a stinging public broadside against Chinese regulators, accusing them of stifling growth.

He is far less outspoken these days, rarely featuring in the headlines save for appearances at charity events and occasional sojourns overseas.

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma to relinquish control of Ant Group


Jack Ma, billionaire founder of Alibaba Group, arrives at the "Tech for Good" Summit in Paris, France


Fri, January 6, 2023 

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Ant Group's founder Jack Ma will no longer control the Chinese fintech giant after the firm's shareholders agreed to implement a series of adjustments that will see him give up most of his voting rights, the group said on Saturday.

The move marks another big development after a regulatory crackdown that scuppered Ant's $37 billion IPO in late 2020 and led to a forced restructuring of the financial technology behemoth.

COMMENT:

ANDREW COLLIER, MANAGING DIRECTOR, ORIENT CAPITAL RESEARCH, HONG KONG

"Jack Ma's departure from Ant, a company he founded, shows the determination of the Chinese leadership to reduce the influence of large private investors. This trend will continue the erosion of the most productive parts of the Chinese economy.


"Despite official comments, Ant posed little risk to the financial system and was effective in arranging loans for small businesses, one of the main drivers of economic growth."

DUNCAN CLARK, CHAIRMAN OF INVESTMENT ADVISORY FIRM BDA, BEIJING:

"Yes, it's obviously significant if he is no longer the controlling shareholder. This in theory should pave the way for an IPO assuming the other key issue - oversight/ownership of data - is also resolved.

"With the Chinese economy in a very febrile state, the government is looking to signal its commitment to growth, and the tech/private sectors are key to that as we know. At least Ant investors can (now) have some timetable for an exit after a long period of uncertainty."

WEIHENG CHEN, PARTNER AND HEAD OF GREATER CHINA PRACTICE AT LAW FIRM WILSON SONSINI, HONG KONG

"If these voting arrangement changes are deemed as a change-of-control event under the A share and/or Hong Kong listing rules, Ant Group's IPO process could be further delayed."

(Reporting by Kane Wu; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Jacqueline Wong)

Old NASA satellite falling from sky this weekend, low threat
WHEN CHINA SAID THIS EVERYONE'S HAIR WAS ON FIRE

In this photo made available by NASA, the space shuttle Challenger launches the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite in 1984. On Friday, Jan. 6, 2023, the U.S. space agency said the 38-year-old NASA satellite is about to fall from the sky, but the chance of wreckage falling on anybody is “very low.” It's expected to come down Sunday night, give or take 17 hours. (NASA via AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

MARCIA DUNN
Fri, January 6, 2023

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A 38-year-old retired NASA satellite is about to fall from the sky.

NASA said Friday the chance of wreckage falling on anybody is “very low.” Most of the 5,400-pound (2,450-kilogram) satellite will burn up upon reentry, according to NASA. But some pieces are expected to survive.

The space agency put the odds of injury from falling debris at about 1-in-9,400.

The science satellite is expected to come down Sunday night, give or take 17 hours, according to the Defense Department.

The California-based Aerospace Corp., however is targeting Monday morning, give or take 13 hours, along a track passing over Africa, Asia the Middle East and the westernmost areas of North and South America.

.The Earth Radiation Budget Satellite, known as ERBS, was launched in 1984 aboard space shuttle Challenger. Although its expected working lifetime was two years, the satellite kept making ozone and other atmospheric measurements until its retirement in 2005. The satellite studied how Earth absorbed and radiated energy from the sun.

The satellite got a special sendoff from Challenger. America's first woman in space, Sally Ride, released the satellite into orbit using the shuttle's robot arm. That same mission also featured the first spacewalk by a U.S. woman: Kathryn Sullivan. It was the first time two female astronauts flew in space together.

It was the second and final spaceflight for Ride, who died in 2012.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Venezuela owes over $20 million to law firms on guarding overseas assets


Fri, January 6, 2023 

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela owes $20.7 million to U.S. law firms handling litigation against creditors seeking to collect unpaid debts from bond defaults and nationalizations carried out more than 15 years ago, according to a document seen by Reuters.

The South American nation owes bondholders and companies more than $60 billion over companies nationalized under then-President Hugo Chavez as well as over defaulted bonds from the country and state oil firm PDVSA.

Some U.S. courts have granted creditors rights to negotiate the sale of Venezuelan assets abroad in order to collect debts, such as the Citgo refinery, the crown jewel of Venezuela's overseas assets, and a subsidiary of PDVSA.

However, some assets are protected by the U.S. Treasury Department.

The interim government of former opposition leader Juan Guaido, who was removed at the end of last year by assembly vote, had hired some eight law firms to handle litigation with companies and bondholders, including one seeking to nullify PVDSA's 2020 bonds, which had offered Citgo as collateral.

Between October 2020 and October 2022, Venezuela's opposition parliament authorized payments of nearly $30 million to the lawyers, but according to the document, they have yet to be paid $20.7 million.

In the document, a report from the interim government's prosecution team, the lawyers say failure to pursue the lawsuits would risk losing the overseas assets.

Opposition groups maintain that control of overseas assets is not at risk, despite last month's removal of the interim government, though they have not given details of what will happen with ongoing litigation.

(Reporting by Vivian Sequera and Mayela Armas; Writing by Sarah Morland; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

There was a lot of pee on the CES 2023 show floor

Urine analysis technology was an unexpected highlight of this year’s show.


Daniel Cooper
·Senior Editor
Sat, January 7, 2023 

One swallow doesn’t make a summer, and I’m not sure if you can count four instances of a product as a trend, but it’s certainly an interesting thread at this year’s CES. At this year’s show, a quartet of companies are showing off urine analysis tools designed to be used at home by the general public. These are positioned as a natural evolution of the fitness tracker, a device you can use to keep an even closer eye on your health and fitness. Most of them are built for your toilet, testing your pee for any number of easy-to-identify maladies. But is this the next great frontier of consumer health tracking? That rather depends on the public’s desire to delve deep into their own bladders.

My cynical take: I suspect the reason we’re seeing these pop up is because the wearables world is now played out. Back in 2019, I wrote that we’d reached the point where there were no new features that could be fitted to a smartwatch, fitness tracker or ring. Or, at least, none that were as valid, effective or accurate as what you now expect every device on the market to offer. Once it was possible to put a single lead ECG in a watch, there were no new health-tracking worlds left to conquer that didn’t involve breaking the skin.

Dr. Audrey Bowden is Dorothy J. Wingfield Philips Chancellor Faculty Fellow, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University, and head of the Bowden Biomedical Optics Laboratory. Dr. Bowden tells Engadget that clinical urinalysis is used as a “first line screening for many diseases and conditions such as diabetes and kidney disease,” but added that it can “also play a role in ordinary, routine checkups, such as during pregnancy.”

You may have seen your physician ask you for a urine sample and then stir a dipstick dotted with colored squares of reaction paper into the liquid you’ve just produced. In addition to visually checking urine for cloudiness (an obvious sign of a problem), these squares can run a wide variety of tests as part of this first-line screening process.

Each square corresponds to a different test, looking for factors like pH as well as the presence of blood, or white blood cells. Blood, for instance, can indicate kidney stones or cancer, while white blood cells are a clue your body is fighting an infection. If there’s excess glucose in the urine, it’s likely that diabetes is the culprit. Ketones would indicate ketosis, nitrites could indicate bacteria in the urinary tract, and so on.

Dr. Bowden added that for many conditions, urinalysis is not a “definitive diagnostic, but rather serves as an initial prompt to perform a more complete investigation.” And that since the clinical procedure has been to test for urine when there’s already evidence of a problem, it’s not clear how effective daily testing can really be.

A medical professional I interviewed, who requested anonymity for fear of compromising their professional standing, expressed skepticism both about the accuracy of these tests as well as their utility. They said that if people were running tests at home on a regular basis, it runs the risk of providing hypochondriacs with another reason to clog up care centers.

Dr. Shubha K. De (MD) is a Urologic surgeon who is presently working on a PhD in biomedical engineering. He raised a concern that, in primary care facilities, medical staff know how to validate the data they’re presented with, and to screen out false positives. This may not be the case in an at-home setting, and added that the accuracy of some tests vary wildly — a dipstick test to identify a bladder infection is roughly 80-percent accurate, but to diagnose bladder cancer, it falls to just 3 percent.

The most talked-about gadget at CES is surely Withings’ U-Scan, which even Jimmy Kimmel joked about in his opening monologue on Thursday. Given that Withings is already such a big name in the health-tracking world, it’s little surprise that it’s hogged the attention. The company showed off a device that sits on the dry part of your toilet bowl, and samples some of your trickle as you pee. Once that fluid is captured inside the device, it runs a sample through a microfluidic cartridge (with reaction paper) and uses a reader to look at the result. Once completed, the results are sent to your phone, with suggestions on what you might do to improve your health.

When it’s eventually released, U-Scan will offer a cartridge for menstrual cycle tracking, as well as one to monitor your hydration and nutrition levels. It’s this latter cartridge I tried during my time in Vegas this week, and it looked at the pH of my urine as well as the specific gravity (relative density) of my pee. But the company promises that it will eventually be able to identify nutrient levels, fat metabolism, ketones and quantities of vitamin C.

Both of these have raised red flags with professionals who are concerned that these analyses don’t suit a one-size-fits-all model. Dr. Bowden said that menstrual cycle tracking based on “‘normalization’ curves may have been developed with too narrow a demographic to capture all interested users.”

Dr. Bowden was also resistant to the idea that nutritional information can be extracted given clinical urinalysis doesn’t offer data about those markers. She said urine samples don’t really “provide reliable information over a given time window,” and added that a “daily analysis of food nutritional content may be a stretch.” Although she did say that it may be possible to detect “accumulated nutritional deficits.”

Dr. De, however, says that it may be possible to extrapolate nutritional information back to a person’s diet using urine analysis. They said that physicians currently ask patients to run 24-hour urine collections, and that fluid is then examined for specific substances — like uric acid — to make inferences on dietary intake. “This is not always perfect, and currently needs some correlation with one’s diet history,” but added that it’s plausible to imagine that, with a “user friendly app and some AI” that it could work well.

Withings is looking to develop more clinical tests, and has said that it’s already working on a way to screen for bladder cancer markers. It’s here that my source who asked not to be named feels would offer real value to groups who are at risk of the disease. They said that a targeted monitoring program may help identify instances of the cancer early, which should dramatically increase survival rates.

Image of Yellosis' Cym Seat urine analysis device.

Korean company Yellosis graduated from Samsung’s startup incubator some years ago, and already produces the Cym Boat personal urine testing kit. Cym Boat offers a small stick with reaction paper squares, which you then stand in a boat-shaped piece of card lined with color-calibration squares. Take a picture on your smartphone, and you’ll be able to look at the blood, protein, ketones, pH and glucose levels within your urine.

At the show, it also showed off its next-generation product, Cym Seat, which uses a metal arm to hold a paper stick under a person as they pee. Once completed, it slides the strip in front of an optical scanner, and after a minute, the results are pushed to your phone. But this device, which is expected to launch by the end of 2023 and cost around $1,000, automates the existing process rather than adding anything new.

Image of Vivoo's toilet-mounted urine analysis device.

Similarly, Vivoo, which also offers a reaction-paper stick which can be analyzed by a smartphone app, is building its own toilet-mounted hardware, which pushes a pee stick into the toilet bowl and then pulls it back in once it’s collected a urine sample. An optical scanner then reads the reaction squares before depositing the stick in a collection bin for disposal later.

Image of Olive's urine analysis toilet

Rounding out the group is Olive, which is taking a dramatically different tack. The device harnesses spectroscopy rather than reaction paper, with hardware that sits under your toilet seat, and a bank of LEDs flashing toward rear-mounted photodiodes. The potential for such a technology is far greater than reaction paper, and there are some studies that have pointed to being able to identify infection with it.

Olive is presently being used in a handful of locations in the Netherlands, including an assisted living facility. Co-founder Corey Katz told Engadget that one of the most surprising uses for the technology was for personnel to keep accurate records of patient bathroom visits. Katz added that work is presently under way to find a way to measure levels of protein in urine to identify instances of preeclampsia.

The company says that there’s a broad number of conditions that spectroscopy could be used to test for. This includes hydration and ketosis all the way through to stress, creatinine levels and electrolyte balances. The hope is that a finished version of the hardware will be ready to go by the end of 2023, although it’ll only be sold to business customers.

There are issues, including around data security, especially for menstrual cycle tracking in countries like the US. Companies that could expose fertility data will need to be mindful of the legal context that is presently in place post-Roe.

If Dr. De has a final concern, it’s a worry that these at-home devices will encourage patients to take medical matters into their own hands without the supervision of a physician. “If [urine analysis systems] direct you to take supplements which jeopardize pre-existing medical conditions,” for instance, “then it could be quite dangerous.”

Of course, there are other things that independent experts (and journalists) will need to test when these devices make it out into the real world. Dr. Bowden raised concerns that urinalysis tests can be “impacted by a number of external factors,” which clinical settings make an effort to control for. Will these devices be accurate enough for the jobs they’ve been bought to do? And will the conclusions they provide be worthwhile? There’s a lot to work through before these products become ubiquitous in bathrooms around the world.

The quest to find King Tut is detailed in new book about the storied pharaoh

Jacqueline Cutler, New York Daily News
Sat, January 7, 2023 


Ancient Egyptians made him a god.

Modern Egyptologists made him immortal.

When Tutankhamun came to the throne around 1330 B.C.E., he still counted his age in single digits. When he died, his body weakened by malaria, Tut was not quite 20. His death was so sudden he was buried in a borrowed tomb.

And then, eventually, forgotten.

“Thirty centuries and more would pass before Tutankhamun’s name was heard again in the Valley of the Kings, after an American digger’s chance discovery of a few scraps of burial equipment,” writes Nicholas Reeves in “The Complete Tutankhamun.”

In 1909, that find led explorer Theodore Davis — a retired businessman and amateur archeologist — to a small underground chamber. He proudly announced he had found Tut’s tomb.

“Of course, he was wrong, as we now know and as [British archeologist] Howard Carter immediately saw,” Reeves writes. “For him, the Davis finds were mere pointers to a burial yet to be found – a burial he was determined to uncover. From 1917 on, while colleagues loudly scoffed, Carter and his sponsor, Lord Carnarvon, cleared every likely location down to bedrock in search of this archeological Holy Grail.”

Five years later, their quest was rewarded.

Born in England in 1874, Carter’s precocious talent as an artist won him his first job at 17, doing sketches for archeologists on a dig in Egypt, then still a British protectorate. “Young Carter’s enthusiasm was real and intense,” Reeves writes. “He was a quick learner and his abilities were considerable.” By 1899, Carter had a government position in Egypt and supervised expeditions.

The young Englishman, though, was a hothead.

In 1905 when drunken French tourists began insulting the guards at a historic site, Carter threw the visitors out. Then, he refused to refund their money; the ensuing argument led to a fistfight. Outraged, the tourists complained to the British consul general. The official told Carter he would have to apologize.

Instead, Carter quit. He went into business for himself as “a gentleman dealer,” discovering — and sometimes selling — antiquities.

Economic security required a patron, however. Carter found one in George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, the fifth earl of Carnarvon. The British noble was on vacation in San Francisco in 1903 when he saw a recently discovered Egyptian mummy on display at the city’s exclusive Bohemian Club.

Archeology, the lord mused, might make an amusing hobby.

After two mostly disappointing years on his own — his main find was a mummified cat — Carnarvon decided to hire Carter. Even after, the work was slow going. Carter always insisted that Tutankhamun’s tomb was close at hand. However, by 1922 his patron had grown less convinced. Finally, he summoned Carter back to England to tell him he wouldn’t pay for another expedition.

Carter impulsively offered to pay for it himself.

“Impressed by Carter’s commitment, the fifth Earl relented,” Reeves writes. “The digging would continue and he, not Carter would again foot the bill. But it would be their last throw of the dice.”

The gamble paid off.

On Nov. 4, 1922, the team’s water boy, Hussein Abd el-Rassul, discovered what looked like the top of a staircase just under the desert sand. By the next day, the team had uncovered 16 steps leading to a plastered-over entrance covered in official, largely illegible seals. Was this Tut’s tomb at last?

Carter ordered the entrance temporarily reburied. He put his life’s quest on hold to wait a bit and cabled Carnarvon to return to Egypt. He waited eagerly for his sponsor’s return for more than two weeks. Once Carnarvon finally arrived, the dig resumed.

Slowly, one underground corridor, then another, were revealed. Both showed signs of ancient burglaries, with holes in the walls roughly replastered.

This didn’t overly worry Carter. Graver robbing was common even during the time of the pharaohs and was swiftly punished. Usually, whatever damage the robbers did was quickly repaired, and the criminals were then publicly impaled.

The only real question was how far the thieves had gotten before they were caught.

Finally, the Englishmen arrived at another plastered-over doorway, also covered with seals — some bearing the hieroglyphs for Tutankhamun’s name. Carter knocked a small hole in the wall and thrust in a candle.

“At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flame to flicker,” Carter wrote later, “But presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist.”

“Can you see anything?” Carnarvon called out.

“Yes,” Carter answered. “Wonderful things.”

They had found the tomb of the great Tut – untouched.

It would not remain that way for long. Work began immediately and proceeded with meticulous care. Diagrams were made to show precisely where the objects had been found; almost endless photographs were taken. Only then were more than 5,000 of the king’s treasures painstakingly removed.

Some were remarkably preserved, golden statues still shining brightly, jewels glittering in their settings. Naturally, even in a sealed chamber, some objects showed the ravages of time; clothing was crumbling into dust. The mummy’s wrappings were black with ancient rot.

The exhumation took a decade.

Right from the start, though, this engaged the public’s attention. In England, the ongoing story was covered exhaustively and exclusively by The Times. Entertainers responded with novelty songs like “Tutankhamun Shimmy” and “Old King Tut Was a Wise Old Nut.”

And when the real news wasn’t exciting enough, some reporters invented stories. When Carnarvon died in 1923 from an infected mosquito bite, gossip quickly proposed far more thrilling theories. After all, hadn’t the warning “Death shall come on swift wings to him that toucheth the tomb of Pharoah” been inscribed over the royal grave?

Still, this was yet another rumor. But it didn’t stop papers from writing about “the mummy’s curse.” Abandoning his character Sherlock Holmes’ cold logic, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle warned that supernatural “elementals” guarded the ancient king. Conspiracists began cataloging all the mysterious deaths associated with the expedition.

In fact, of the 22 people who had witnessed the opening of the sarcophagus, only two died within the decade. Carter died in 1939, at 64. Others lived well into their 80s. So much for the swift wings of death.

One of the last to go was Dr. D.E. Derry, who died in 1969 at 87. He had performed the autopsy, cutting open the rotting bandages to examine the dead ruler. What he found was the spindly body of a buck-toothed teenager, his spine twisted by scoliosis. The great and young king likely needed a cane to walk.

He had also failed to produce an heir. The mummified fetuses of his two children had been entombed with him.

Even if the pharaoh had come to a sad and lonely end, his impressive possessions lived on. Glittering gold masks and alabaster statues. Jewelry that was out of this world — fashioned from meteorites. Ebony board games and silver trumpets. Wine, meat and baskets of spices. All had been packed away to accompany him on his journey to the afterlife.

And he did achieve immortality – in a way. King Tut still lives on – in myth, museums, even an “SNL” skit, and, of course, secure in his place in history.

Tesla owners in China protest against surprise price cuts they missed

Sat, January 7, 2023 

SHANGHAI (Reuters) -Hundreds of Tesla owners gathered at the automaker's showrooms and distribution centres in China over the weekend, demanding rebates and credit after sudden price cuts they said meant they had overpaid for electric cars they bought earlier.

On Saturday, about 200 recent buyers of the Tesla Model Y and Model 3 gathered at a Tesla delivery centre in Shanghai to protest against the U.S. carmaker's decision to slash prices for the second time in three months on Friday.

Many said they had believed that prices Tesla charged for its cars late last year would not be cut as abruptly or as deeply as the automaker just announced in a move to spur sales and support production at its Shanghai plant. The scheduled expiration of a government subsidy at the end of 2022 also drove many to finalize their purchases.

Videos posted on social media showed crowds at Tesla stores and delivery centres in other Chinese cities from Chengdu to Shenzhen, suggesting wider consumer backlash.

After Friday's surprise discounts, Tesla's EV prices in China are now between 13% and 24% below their September levels.

Analysts have said Tesla's move was likely to boost its sales, which tumbled in December, and force other EV makers to cut prices too at a time of faltering demand in the world's largest market for battery-powered cars.

While established automakers often discount to manage inventory and keep factories running when demand weakens, Tesla operates without dealerships and transparent pricing has been part of its brand image.

"It may be a normal business practice but this is not how a responsible enterprise should behave," said one Tesla owner protesting at the company's delivery centre in Shanghai's Minhang suburb on Saturday who gave his surname as Zhang.

He and the other Tesla owners, who said they had taken delivery in the final months of 2022, said they were frustrated with the abruptness of Friday's price cut and Tesla's lack of an explanation to recent buyers.

Zhang said police facilitated a meeting between Tesla staff and the assembled owners at which the owners handed over a list of demands, including an apology and compensation or other credits. He added the Tesla staff had agreed to respond by Tuesday.

About a dozen police officers could be seen at the Shanghai protest and most of the videos of the other demonstrations also showed a large police presence at the Tesla sites.

Protests are not a rare occurrence in China, which has over the years seen people come out in large numbers over issues such as financial or property scams, but authorities have been on higher alert after widespread protests in Chinese cities and top universities at the end of November against COVID-19 restrictions.

'RETURN THE MONEY'

Other videos appearing to be of Tesla owners protesting were also posted to Chinese social media platforms on Saturday.

One video, which Reuters verified was filmed at a Tesla store in the southwestern city of Chengdu, showed a crowd chanting, "Return the money, refund our cars."

Another, which appeared to be filmed in Beijing, showed police cars arriving to disperse crowds outside a Tesla store.

Reuters was unable to verify the content of either video.

Tesla does not plan to compensate buyers who took delivery before the most recent price cut, a spokesman for Tesla China told Reuters on Saturday.

He did not respond when asked to comment on the protests.

China accounted for about a third of Tesla's global sales in 2021 and its Shanghai factory, which employs about 20,000 workers, is its single most productive and profitable plant.

Analysts have been positive about the potential for Tesla's price cuts to drive sales growth at a time when it is a year from announcing its next new vehicle, the Cybertruck.

"Nowhere else in the world is Tesla faced with the kind of competitors that they have here [in China]," said Bill Russo, head of consultancy Automobility Ltd in Shanghai.

"They are in a much bigger EV market with companies that can price more aggressively than they can, until now."

In 2021, Tesla faced a public relations storm after an unhappy customer climbed on a car at the Shanghai auto show to protest against the company's handling of her complaints about her car's brakes.

Tesla responded by apologising to Chinese consumers for not addressing the complaints in a timely way.

(Reporting by Brenda Goh, Zhang Yan and Casey HallEditing by Kevin Krolicki and Tomasz Janowski)

Thousands of Israelis protest new government's policies




A person wears a knit cap in the colors of the Palestinian and Israeli flags in Tel Aviv, Israel, during a protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government, Saturday, Jan. 7, 2023. Thousands of protesters turned up, days after the most right-wing and religiously conservative government in the country's 74-year history was sworn in.

 (AP Photo/ Tsafrir Abayov)


SHLOMO MOR
Sat, January 7, 2023 

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Thousands of Israelis took to the streets Saturday evening to protest plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government that opponents say threaten democracy and freedoms.

The protesters gathered in the central city of Tel Aviv days after the most right-wing and religiously conservative government in the country’s 74-year history was sworn in.

“The settler government is against me,” read one placard. Another banner read, “Housing, Livelihood, Hope.” Some protesters carried rainbow flags.

The protest was led by left-wing and Arab members of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. They contend that proposed plans by the new Cabinet will hinder judicial system and widen societal gaps.

The left-wing protesters slammed Justice Minister Yariv Levin, who on Wednesday unveiled the government’s long-promised overhaul of the judicial system that aims to weaken the country’s Supreme Court.

Critics accused the government of declaring war on the legal system, saying the plan will upend Israel’s system of checks and balances and undermine its democratic institutions by giving absolute power to the new governing coalition.

“We are really afraid that our country is going to lose the democracy and we are going to a dictatorship just for reasons of one person which wants to get rid of his law trial," said Danny Simon, 77, a protester from Yavne, south of Tel Aviv. He was referring to Netanyahu, who was indicted on corruption charges in 2021, allegations that he has denied.

Protesters also called for peace and co-existence between Jews and Arab residents of the country.

“We can see right now many laws being advocated for against LGBTQ, against Palestinians, against larger minorities in Israel,” said Rula Daood of “Standing Together,” a grassroots movement of Arabs and Jews. “We are here to say loud and clear that all of us, Arabs and Jews and different various communities inside of Israel, demand peace, equality and justice.”

New York City public schools ban OpenAI's ChatGPT

But enforcing it will be tricky, and AI-generated content isn't going anywhere.


NurPhoto via Getty Images

Will Shanklin
·Contributing Reporter
Fri, January 6, 2023 

On Tuesday, New York City public schools banned ChatGPT from school devices and WiFi networks. The artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, released by OpenAI in November, quickly gained a foothold with the public — and drew the ire of concerned organizations. In this case, the worry is that students will stunt their learning by cheating on tests and turning in essays they didn’t write.

ChatGPT (short for “generative pre-trained transformer”) is a startlingly impressive application, a sneak preview of the light and dark sides of AI’s incredible power. Like a text-producing version of AI art (OpenAI is the same company behind DALL-E 2), it can answer fact-based questions and write essays and articles that are often difficult to discern from human-written content. And it will only get harder to tell the difference as the AI improves.

“While the tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions, it does not build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success,” Jenna Lyle, a spokesperson for New York City public schools, wrote in an email to NBC News. Still, the organization may have difficulty enforcing the ban. Blocking the chatbot over the school’s internet network and on lent-out devices is easy enough, but that won’t stop students from using it on their own devices with cellular networks or non-school WiFi.


OpenAI is developing “mitigations” it claims will help anyone identify ChatGPT-generated text. Although that’s a welcome move by the Elon Musk-founded startup, recent history isn’t exactly rife with examples of big business putting what’s best for society over the bottom line. (Relying on AI powerhouses to self-regulate sounds as foolproof as trusting the fossil-fuel industry to prioritize the environment over profits.) And artificial intelligence is big business: OpenAI has reportedly been in talks to sell shares at a $29 billion valuation, making it one of the most valuable US startups.

OpenAI logo displayed on a phone screen and ChatGPT website displayed on a laptop screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on December 5, 2022. 

(Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Not everyone in the education community is against the AI chatbot. Adam Stevens, a teacher at Brooklyn Tech who spent years teaching history at NYC’s Paul Robeson High School, compares ChatGPT to the world’s most famous search engine. “People said the same thing about Google 15 or 20 years ago when students could ‘find answers online,’” he told Chalkbeat. He argues that the bot could be an ally for teachers, who could use it as a baseline essay response, which the class could work together to improve upon.

Stevens believes the key is to invite students to “explore things worth knowing” while moving away from standardized metrics. “We’ve trained a whole generation of kids to pursue rubric points and not knowledge,” he said, “and of course, if what matters is the point at the end of the semester, then ChatGPT is a threat.”

No matter how schools handle AI bots, the genie is out of the bottle. Barring government regulation (unlikely in the near future, given the US Congress’ current trajectory), AI-powered answers, essays and art are here to stay. The next part, dealing with the potential societal fallout — including the automation of more and more jobs — will be where the real challenges begin.

EXPLAINER: What is ChatGPT and why are schools blocking it?


A ChatGPT prompt is shown on a device near a public school in Brooklyn, New York, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023. New York City school officials started blocking this week the impressive but controversial writing tool that can generate paragraphs of human-like text

 (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)

MATT O'BRIEN
Fri, January 6, 2023 at 12:32 PM MST·5 min read

Ask the new artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT to write an essay about the cause of the American Civil War and you can watch it churn out a persuasive term paper in a matter of seconds.

That's one reason why New York City school officials this week started blocking the impressive but controversial writing tool that can generate paragraphs of human-like text.

The decision by the largest U.S. school district to restrict the ChatGPT website on school devices and networks could have ripple effects on other schools, and teachers scrambling to figure out how to prevent cheating. The creators of ChatGPT say they're also looking for ways to detect misuse.

The free tool has been around for just five weeks but is already raising tough questions about the future of AI in education, the tech industry and a host of professions.

WHAT IS CHATGPT?

ChatGPT launched on Nov. 30 but is part of a broader set of technologies developed by the San Francisco-based startup OpenAI, which has a close relationship with Microsoft.

It's part of a new generation of AI systems that can converse, generate readable text on demand and even produce novel images and video based on what they've learned from a vast database of digital books, online writings and other media.

But unlike previous iterations of so-called “large language models,” such as OpenAI's GPT-3, launched in 2020, the ChatGPT tool is available for free to anyone with an internet connection and designed to be more user-friendly. It works like a written dialogue between the AI system and the person asking it questions.

Millions of people have played with it over the past month, using it to write silly poems or songs, to try to trick it into making mistakes, or for more practical purposes such as helping compose an email. All of those queries are also helping it get smarter.

WHAT ARE THE PITFALLS?

As with similar systems, ChatGPT can generate convincing prose, but that doesn't mean what it says is factual or logical.

Its launch came with little guidance for how to use it, other than a promise that ChatGPT will admit when it's wrong, challenge “incorrect premises” and reject requests meant to generate offensive answers. Since then, however, its popularity has led its creators to try to lower some people's expectations.

“ChatGPT is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on Twitter in December.

Altman added that “it’s a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now."

"It’s a preview of progress; we have lots of work to do on robustness and truthfulness.”

CAN IT BE USED FOR WRITING SCHOOL PAPERS?

This is what ChatGPT said when The Associated Press asked it to answer that question in all caps from the perspective of a principal shouting a brief message through a school’s PA system:

“DO NOT USE CHATGPT OR ANY OTHER AUTOMATED WRITING TOOL FOR SCHOOL PAPERS. THIS IS CHEATING AND WILL NOT BE TOLERATED. IF YOU ARE CAUGHT USING CHATGPT OR ANY OTHER AUTOMATED WRITING TOOL FOR SCHOOL PAPERS, THERE WILL BE SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES.”

But when asked to answer the same question on its own, ChatGPT offered this more measured warning: “As a general rule, it is not appropriate to use ChatGPT or any other automated writing tool for school papers, as it is considered cheating and does not benefit the student in the long run."

WHAT DO SCHOOLS SAY?

Many school districts are still scrambling to figure out how to set policies on if and how it can be used.

The New York City education department said Thursday that it's restricting access on school networks and devices because it's worried about negative impacts on student learning, as well as “concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of content.”

But there’s no stopping a student from accessing ChatGPT from a personal phone or computer at home.

"While the tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions, it does not build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success,” said schools spokesperson Jenna Lyle.

HUMAN OR AI?

“To determine if something was written by a human or an AI, you can look for the absence of personal experiences or emotions, check for inconsistency in writing style, and watch for the use of filler words or repetitive phrases. These may be signs that the text was generated by an AI.”

That’s what ChatGPT told an AP reporter when asked how to tell the difference.

OpenAI said in a human-written statement this week that it plans to work with educators as it learns from how people are experimenting with ChatGPT in the real world.

“We don’t want ChatGPT to be used for misleading purposes in schools or anywhere else, so we’re already developing mitigations to help anyone identify text generated by that system,” the company said.

DOES THIS THREATEN GOOGLE?

There's been some speculation that ChatGPT could upend the internet search business now dominated by Google, but the tech giant has been working on similar technology for years — it's just more cautious about releasing it in the wild.

It was Google that helped jumpstart the trend for ever-bigger, ever-smarter AI language models that could be “pre-trained” on a wide body of writings. In 2018 the company introduced a system known as BERT that uses a “transformer” technique that compares words across a sentence to predict meaning and context. Some of those advances are now baked into Google searches.

But there's no question that successive iterations of GPT — which stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer — are having an impact. Microsoft has invested at least $1 billion in OpenAI and has an exclusive license to use GPT-3.

HEY CHATGPT, CAN YOU PUT ALL THIS IN A RAP?

"ChatGPT’s just a tool,

But it ain’t no substitute for school.

You can’t cheat your way to the top,

Using a machine to do your homework, you’ll flop.

Plagiarism’s a no-no,

And ChatGPT’s text is not your own, yo.

So put in the work, earn that grade,

Don’t try to cheat, it’s not worth the trade."