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Social media platforms with infinite scrolling, auto-play and algorithmic feeds will be required to display warning labels about their potential harm to young users’ mental health under a new law, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced yesterday.”Keeping New Yorkers safe has been my top priority since taking office, and that includes protecting our kids from the potential harms of social media features that encourage excessive use,” she said in a statement.This month Australia imposed a social media ban for children under 16.New York joins states like California and Minnesota that have similar social media laws.The New York law includes platforms that offer “addictive feeds”, auto play or infinite scroll, according to the legislation.The law applies to conduct occurring partly or wholly in New York but not when the platform is accessed by users physically outside the state.It allows the state’s attorney general to bring legal action and seek civil penalties of up $5,000 per violation of the law.Hochul compared the social media labels to warnings on other products like tobacco, where they communicate the risk of cancer, or plastic packaging, where they warn of the risk of suffocation for small children.Spokespeople for TikTok, Snap, Meta, and Alphabet did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The effect of social media on children’s mental health has become a growing global concern, with US school districts suing Meta Platforms and other social media companies.In 2023, the US surgeon-general issued an advisory on safeguards for children and later called for social media warning labels like the one now required in New York. Source link
Storm-hit Southern California is at risk of more floods hampering millions of motorists traveling after Christmas, but the National Weather Service (NWS) predicts a drier weekend.The holiday deluge that started in earnest on Christmas Eve was spawned by the region’s latest atmospheric storm, a vast airborne current of dense moisture siphoned from the Pacific, that swept inland over the greater Los Angeles area.It dumped 6” of rain in the Los Angeles area with up to 18” of rain in the mountains, washing out some roads, and spurred evacuations and some shelter-in-place orders.An additional 1-3” of rain was expected yesterday, said Tom Kines, a senior meteorologist with AccuWeather, a commercial forecasting company.”Our overall picture is that there’s just one more day of this mess, mostly across Southern California, specifically in the LA area,” Kines said yesterday. “We still have some issues today with bouts of heavy rain, but this weekend is mainly dry, thankfully.”More than 14.5mn Californians were expected to travel by car over the Christmas holiday, according to AAA.The coming drier weather should make traveling easier, after days of slick or flooded roads, forecasters said.The atmospheric river that brought the trouble will wind down throughout the day across California with lingering heavy rainfall, heavy mountain snow, and gusty winds.Many of the evacuation warnings issued in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties were lifted on Christmas Day.However, the orders remained yesterday in the hard-hit town of Wrightwood, a rural community with a population of about 5,000 in the San Gabriel Mountains on the border between Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties.Aerial video footage posted online on Christmas Eve by the fire department showed rivers of mud coursing through inundated cabin neighbourhoods, and mud-covered cars and homes.Videos posted online on Thursday showed some residents scrambling over washed-out roads, picking through rubble on Christmas Day as streams of water still flowed over mounds of mud and into gullies that were once streets. Source link
Thailand’s prime minister yesterday expressed hope for a ceasefire with Cambodia, even as Phnom Penh accused the Thai military of intensifying its bombardment of disputed border areas.Anutin Charnvirakul said Thailand’s National Security Council had agreed to send the country’s defence minister to meet his Cambodian counterpart today – the fourth day of border talks aimed at negotiating an end to deadly clashes. “If the defence ministers can reach an agreement that both Thailand and Cambodia accept, the document they sign will largely follow the four main points” outlined in a previous joint declaration that followed a round of clashes earlier this year, he said. The October declaration said the two sides would organise mine clearing efforts along their border, withdraw heavy weapons and allow access to ceasefire monitors.“What matters is that we must keep our promise not to invade, threaten, provoke or escalate tensions between the two sides,” Anutin told reporters at a news conference.“You can trust Thailand. We always uphold our agreements and commitments. Let this be the final signing, so that peace can be restored and our people can return home.”The neighbours’ long-standing border conflict reignited this month, shattering an earlier truce and killing more than 40 people, according to official counts. Around a million people have also been displaced.As Cambodian and Thai officials held their third day of talks at a border checkpoint yesterday, Cambodia’s defence ministry said Thailand carried out a heavy bombardment of disputed border areas in Banteay Meanchey province.“From 6am to 7.15am, the Thai military deployed F-16 fighter jets to drop as many as 40 bombs, to intensify its bombardment in the area of Chok Chey village,” the defence ministry said in a statement.Thai media said yesterday that Cambodian forces had launched heavy attacks overnight along the border in Sa Kaeo province, where several homes were damaged by shelling.The two countries blame each other for instigating the fresh fighting, which has spread to nearly every province along their border.Both countries also claim to have acted in self-defence and accuse the other of attacking civilians.The US, China and Malaysia brokered a truce to end five days of deadly clashes in July, but the ceasefire broke down.Earlier yesterday, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet said on Facebook that he had spoken by phone with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the two discussed “ways to secure a ceasefire along the Cambodia-Thailand border”.The conflict stems from a territorial dispute over the colonial-era demarcation of their 800km frontier and a collection of temple ruins situated there. Source link
Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak (second right) leaves after his verdict in the 1MDB trial at the Palace of Justice, which houses the Malaysian Court…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will discuss territorial issues, the main stumbling block in talks to end the war, with US President Donald Trump in Florida tomorrow, as a 20-point peace framework and a security guarantee deal near completion. Announcing the meeting, Zelensky said “a lot can be decided before the New Year,” as Washington drives efforts to end Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two. “As for the sensitive issues: We will discuss both Donbas and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. We will certainly discuss other issues as well,” he told reporters in a WhatsApp chat. Source link
Nearly 5,000 flights were disrupted in the US due to winter storm warnings. The flight tracking website FlightAware reported that US airlines cancelled and delayed thousands of flights during the peak travel season yesterday due to warnings of a severe winter storm. The website reported 1,139 cancellations and 3,808 delays due to the winter storm warnings. The National Weather Service issued winter storm warnings yesterday, saying they would cause hazardous travel conditions in the Great Lakes region, extending to the North Mid-Atlantic and Southern New England, from Friday until Saturday morning. Source link
The United States has carried out air strikes against Islamic State (ISIS) targets in north-west Nigeria, following a request from the Nigerian government, President Donald Trump has said.In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he had ordered a strong and lethal strike against ISIS fighters accused of killing civilians, including Christians. He warned that further action would follow if the violence continued. US Africa Command (Africom) said the operation, conducted in Sokoto state, killed a number of ISIS militants. Nigerian authorities confirmed the strikes, describing them as precision attacks on terrorist targets. Nigeria’s foreign ministry said the operation reflected ongoing security cooperation with Washington as the country battles multiple armed groups. Source link
Authorities in Tajikistan announced the deaths of five people during armed clashes on the border with Afghanistan. The Tajik news agency Khovar quoted the country’s National Security Committee as saying in a statement Thursday that five people were killed, including two Tajik border guards, during clashes with an armed group in Khatlon province, which borders Afghanistan. The committee added in its statement that three members of a terrorist organization had illegally crossed the border and were killed during the clash with Tajik border guards.Tajikistan shares a mountainous border with Afghanistan that stretches for approximately 1,350 kilometers. Source link
People are seen on the roof of a building while floodwaters partially submerge the surrounding area in the aftermath of torrential rains, in San Bernardino County,…
A great idea in theory, recycling is a pain in practice – a dirty job that relies on people to sift plastics from glass, sort soggy paper from rotten vegetables and root out hazardous items before they get tipped into fast-filling dumps.Now artificial intelligence (AI) is here promising help, bringing potentially the biggest shakeup of the trash industry in decades.”I’ve been working on increasing recycling rates my whole career and nothing seems to move the needle. People are typically lazy,” said Dennis Bagley, who runs garbage collection for eight cities and counties across the state of Virginia.”This takes that responsibility off (the public). We can do it with AI and robotics, and increase the amount of recyclables,” Bagley told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.Bagley’s Southeastern Public Service Authority processes tens of thousands of tonnes of rubbish a year, burning the garbage of more than a million Virginia residents before transferring the resulting ash to landfill.But the regional landfill is just decades away from capacity – and as Bagley said: “In my industry, that’s just around the corner.” Now he has a solution – and one that is sparking plenty of interest in local governments across the country: an AI-driven sorting system that should halve the waste going to landfill.Over the past two years, piloting the AI process has already almost tripled recycling rates from 6.8% – where Bagley says they have been stuck for years – to 20%. The project should start operating early next year, following an agreement signed in November between Bagley’s waste handling firm and an affiliate of AMP, which is building and will operate the operation.The plant, in Portsmouth, Virginia, will be the largest such operation in the country and will be a trailblazer, Bagley said. “This is a big deal,” he said. “This will catch on across the country.”Modern recycling in the United States began in the 1960s amid the growing environmental movement, but more recent efficiencies have been hard to come by.Under the new AI system, residents should be able to throw all their garbage, recycling and even organics in one big bin, to be separated later, said Tim Stuart, CEO of AMP. He said the system should be able to pull out an additional 15% to 20% of plastics, for instance, and 40% more organics, all with a system that will keep learning over time.This could not only lower costs for municipalities, but bring in new revenue as more materials are recovered, and could make recycling affordable for rural areas that may not yet offer the service. “The industry has tried this over many years, but the downfall was the technology wasn’t there – it was very prohibitive, very dirty, with lots of manual labor,” Stuart said.”The AI allows us to be extremely efficient and then pull out additional recycling and organics that is today making its way to landfill. That is a huge opportunity.”‘Revolutionising’ wasteLocal government has long grappled with the ever-shifting demands of recycling: juggling a constant evolution in packaging and markets, as well as the vagaries of public habits, said Kristyn Oldendorf, senior director of public policy and communications with the Solid Waste Association of North America.While the association has no statistics on AI adoption, it says the tech is “revolutionizing” the solid waste industry.And AI’s potential goes well beyond waste sorting, she said. “It’s a revolution in different ways – marketing, workforce needs, everything”.Cities such as Centerville, Ohio, for instance, are experimenting with AI-assisted cameras mounted on collection trucks. The cameras scan refuse in real time, detect any “contamination” – items unsuitable for recycling – then send educational notices to the offending households.”For the city, it costs us more to recycle if we have a higher percentage of contamination. These are things the sort centre has to throw away — pay to dispose and truck it,” said Pat Turnbull, Centerville’s public works director.Centerville has tried public education on recycling, but found efforts – while effective – were labor-intensive.The truck-mounted cameras, which the city is currently piloting, promise easier, more widespread results, Turnbull said. “We want a higher percentage of recyclables for the ‘double green’ reason: We want to do the right thing for the environment, and we want to save ourselves money.”E-WasteAI might also help solve more modern trash problems, such as electronic waste, which can pose a risk to humans if mishandled, said researcher David Park.Every American makes an average of 47 pounds of e-waste a year, according to non-profit Environment America.Among this new e-waste are lithium ion batteries – used to power e-scooters, among other products – which can explode if compressed, for instance in a processing facility.AI could pinpoint a particular type of battery’s shelf life, help waste workers identify potential hazards and even suggest safe and efficient disposal instructions, said Park, a visiting fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.Elements of the recovered materials could also be of great value, he said, suggesting a future of “urban mining leases” to extract more value from trash.”In the US, just 20 to 30% gets processed, so the rest ends up in landfills or incinerators – a missed opportunity,” Park said. “The raw materials we might need to build our future are in our trash.” Related Story Source link