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BOULDER, Colo. — Travis Hunter is a throwback-type player — an elite receiver one moment, a lockdown cornerback the next — who rarely leaves the field and has a knack for making big plays all over it. The Colorado Buffaloes' two-way standout ( see: unicorn ) even celebrates at an elite level, unveiling imaginative dance moves following touchdowns and interceptions, some of which include the Heisman Trophy pose. It's one of the many awards he's in line to win. Hunter is the The Associated Press college football player of the year, receiving 26 of 43 votes Thursday from a panel of AP Top 25 voters. Boise State tailback Ashton Jeanty finished second with 16 votes and Arizona State running back Cameron Skattebo received one vote. Hunter kept piling up the hardware later Thursday night. He won the Maxwell Award given to the nation's outstanding player, the Chuck Bednarik Award as the top defensive player and the Biletnikoff Award for the best wide receiver. "Couldn't do what I do without my team," Hunter said in an email on a trip to Las Vegas for an awards ceremony. "So I view being up for these awards as team awards." Jeanty won the Doak Walker Award as the nation's top running back after leading the nation with 2,497 yards and 29 touchdowns. The coach of the year was Indiana's Curt Cignetti, who led his team to the playoffs after being picked to finish 17th of 18 Big Ten teams. South Carolina defensive end Kyle Kennard captured the Bronco Nagurski Trophy as the top defensive player, racking up 11 1/2 sacks and 18 1/2 tackles for loss. Ohio State center Seth McLaughlin, an Alabama transfer, won the Rimington Trophy. The Jim Thorpe Award as the best defensive back went to Texas cornerback Jahdae Barron, who led the Southeastern Conference with five interceptions. The top punter was USC's Eddie Czaplicki, who captured the Ray Guy Award. Georgia's Jalon Walker won the Butkus Award as the nation's best linebacker, heading into the playoffs with 57 tackles, including 6 1/2 sacks and 10 1/2 tackles for loss. Texas left tackle Kelvin Banks Jr. was the Outland Trophy winner as the top interior lineman. Penn State's Tyler Warren won the John Mackey Award given to the most outstanding tight end after setting school single-season records with 67 catches for 808 yards. Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe won the William V. Campbell Award as the top scholar-athlete. Oregon leading tackler Bryce Boettcher captured the Burlsworth Trophy as the best player who started his career as a walk-on. But the biggest winner was Hunter. A player with his particular set of skills doesn't come around that often. He's a flashback to the days of Charles Woodson at Michigan or Champ Bailey at Georgia. Or even his coach, Deion Sanders, a two-way star in the NFL. The prospect of significant playing time on both sides of the ball is what led Hunter to join Sanders at Jackson State and why he followed Sanders to Boulder. "Coach Prime was the only coach who would consider allowing me to do what I'm doing," said Hunter, who's expected to be a top-five pick next spring in the NFL draft, possibly even the No. 1 overall selection. "He did it and knows what it takes — how much you have to be ready on both sides of the ball." Want to fuel Hunter? Simply tell him he can't. "I'm motivated when people tell me I can't do something," Hunter said. "That I can't dominate on both sides of the ball. I want to be an example for others that anything is possible. Keep pursuing your dreams." Hunter helped the 20th-ranked Buffaloes to a 9-3 record and a berth in the Alamo Bowl against No. 17 BYU (10-2) on Dec. 28. He played 688 defensive snaps and 672 more on offense — the lone Power Four conference player with 30-plus snaps on both sides of the ball, according to Colorado research. Hunter has already won a second straight Paul Hornung award as the game's most versatile player. He's up for the Walter Camp (player of the year), Maxwell (most outstanding player), the Biletnikoff (best receiver) and Bednarik (top defensive player) awards. And, of course, the Heisman, where he's the odds-on favorite to win over Jeanty this weekend. Hunter can join the late Rashaan Salaam as the only Colorado players to capture the Heisman. Salaam won it in 1994 after rushing for 2,055 yards. Hunter wasn't a finalist for the Jim Thorpe Award, which goes to the nation's top defensive back. That drew the wrath of Sanders, who earned the award with Florida State in 1988 and vowed to give his trophy to Hunter. Hunter's high school coach, Lenny Gregory, knew he had a special player the summer of Hunter's freshman year. Gregory, then the coach at Collins Hill in Georgia, had a conditioning test for his players — run six 200-yard dashes with a minute of rest in between. Defensive backs had to complete each in under 32 seconds. Hunter never even got winded. He played safety, cornerback and receiver as a freshman and helped Collins Hill to a state title his senior season. "I remember just talking to colleges the spring of his ninth-grade year and telling coaches that this kid's going to be the No. 1 player in the country," recounted Gregory, who's now the coach at Gordon Central High in Calhoun, Georgia. "They'd look at him and laugh at me, 'What are you talking about? This scrawny kid? He's not big enough.' I was like, 'Just watch. Just watch.'" Hunter finished the regular season with 92 catches for 1,152 yards and 14 touchdowns as a receiver. On defense, he had four interceptions, broke up 11 passes and forced one crucial fumble, which secured an OT win over Baylor. Overall, Hunter had 92 receptions and allowed 22. He hauled in 14 receiving TDs and allowed just one. He was responsible for 53 first downs and gave up just six. He was targeted 119 times by quarterback Shedeur Sanders & Co. but only 39 times by opposing QBs. Hunter's likely final game in Boulder, a rout of Oklahoma State, was a three-touchdown, one-interception performance. "I'm used to seeing him do all this spectacular stuff," Shedeur Sanders said. "I'm used to all this stuff — you all are just now seeing it on national stage."Do you know India’s most-watched film with 25 crore tickets sold?Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Wemby
The abuse began when she was still an infant. A relative molested her, took photographs and swapped the images with others online. He allowed another man to spend time with her, multiplying the abuse. Nearly every day, the woman, now 27 and living in the Northeast, is reminded of that abuse with a law enforcement notice that someone has been charged with possessing those images. One of those notifications, which she received in late 2021, said the images had been found on a man's MacBook in Vermont. Her lawyer later confirmed with law enforcement that the images had also been stored in Apple 's iCloud . The notice arrived months after Apple had unveiled a tool that allowed it to scan for illegal images of sexual abuse. But it quickly abandoned that tool after facing criticism from cybersecurity experts, who said it could pave the way to other government surveillance requests. Now, the woman, using a pseudonym, is suing Apple because she says it broke its promise to protect victims like her. Instead of using the tools that it had created to identify, remove and report images of her abuse, the lawsuit says, Apple allowed that material to proliferate, forcing victims of child sexual abuse to relive the trauma that has shaped their lives. The lawsuit was filed late Saturday in U.S. District Court in Northern California. It says Apple's failures mean it has been selling defective products that harmed a class of customers, namely child sexual abuse victims, because it briefly introduced "a widely touted improved design aimed at protecting children" but "then failed to implement those designs or take any measures to detect and limit" child sexual abuse material. 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Under law, victims of child sexual abuse are entitled to a minimum of $150,000 in damages, which means the total award, with the typical tripling of damages being sought, could exceed $1.2 billion should a jury find Apple liable. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories The lawsuit is the second of its kind against Apple, but its scope and potential financial impact could force the company into a yearslong litigation process over an issue it has sought to put behind it. And it points to increasing concern that the privacy of Apple's iCloud allows illegal material to be circulated without being as easily spotted as it would be on social media services such as Facebook. For years, Apple has reported less abusive material than its peers, capturing and reporting a small fraction of what is caught by Google and Facebook. It has defended its practice by saying it is protecting user privacy, but child safety groups have criticized it for not doing more to stop the spread of that material. The case is the latest example of an emerging legal strategy against tech companies. For decades, Section 230 of the Communications and Decency Act has shielded companies from legal liability for what users post on their platforms. But recent rulings by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit have determined that those shields can be applied only to content moderation and don't provide blanket liability protection. The rulings have raised hope among plaintiffs' attorneys that tech companies could be challenged in court. In August, a 9-year-old girl sued the company in North Carolina after strangers sent her child sexual abuse videos through iCloud links and encouraged her to film and upload her own nude videos. Apple filed a motion to dismiss the North Carolina case, saying Section 230 protects it from liability for material posted on iCloud by someone else. It also argued that iCloud couldn't be subject to a product liability claim because it wasn't a product, like a defective tire. In a statement in response to the new suit, Fred Sainz, an Apple spokesperson, said: "Child sexual abuse material is abhorrent and we are committed to fighting the ways predators put children at risk. We are urgently and actively innovating to combat these crimes without compromising the security and privacy of all our users." Sainz pointed to safety tools the company has introduced to curtail the spread of newly created illegal images, including features in its Messages app that warn children of nude content and allow people to report harmful material to Apple. Riana Pfefferkorn, a lawyer and policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, said there are significant hurdles to any lawsuit over Apple's policies on child sexual abuse material. She added that a victory for the plaintiffs could backfire because it could raise questions about whether the government is forcing Apple to scan for illegal material in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The New York Times granted anonymity to the 27-year-old woman suing Apple so she could tell her story. She spoke anonymously because people have been known to seek out victims and search for their child sexual abuse material on the internet. Her abuse started not long after she was born. An adult male family member would engage in sexual acts with her and photograph them. He was arrested after logging into a chat room and offering to swap photos of the girl with other men. He was found guilty of several felonies and sent to prison. What she could remember of the abuse came to her in bits and pieces. One night as her mother watched an episode of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" about child sexual abuse, the story seemed eerily familiar. She screamed and startled her mother, who realized that she thought that the episode was about her. "It's not just you," her mother told her. "There are thousands of other kids." As her images were found online, the authorities would notify her mother. They have commonly received a dozen or so notifications daily for more than a decade. What bothered her the most was knowing that pedophiles shared some of her photos with children to normalize abuse, a process called grooming. "It was hard to believe there were so many out there," she said. "They were not stopping." The internet turbocharged the spread of child sexual abuse material. Physical images that had once been hard to find and share became digital photos and videos that could be stored on computers and servers and shared easily. In 2009, Microsoft worked with Hany Farid, now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, to create a software system to recognize photos, even altered ones, and compare them against a database of known illegal images. The system, called PhotoDNA, was adopted by a number of tech companies, including Google and Facebook. Apple declined to use PhotoDNA or do widespread scanning like its peers. The tech industry reported 36 million reports of photos and videos to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the federal clearinghouse for suspected sexual abuse material. Google and Facebook each filed more than 1 million reports, but Apple made just 267. In 2019, an investigation by the Times revealed that tech companies had failed to rein in abusive material. A bar graph the paper published detailing public companies' reporting practices led Eric Friedman, an Apple executive responsible for fraud protection, to message a senior colleague and say he thought the company may be underreporting child sexual abuse material. "We are the greatest platform for distributing child porn," said Friedman in the 2020 exchange. He said that was because Apple gave priority to privacy over trust and safety. A year later, Apple unveiled a system to scan for child sexual abuse. It said its iPhones would store a database of distinct digital signatures, which are known as hashes, that are associated with known child sexual abuse material identified by groups like the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. It said it would compare those digital signatures against photos in a user's iCloud storage service. The technique, which it called NeuralHash, would flag matches and forward them to the federal clearinghouse of suspected sexual abuse material. But after cybersecurity experts warned that it would create a back door to iPhones that could give governments access, the company dropped its plan. It said it was almost impossible to scan iCloud photos without "imperiling the security and privacy of our users." Early this year, Sarah Gardner, the founder of a child advocacy group called the Heat Initiative, began searching for law firms with experience representing victims of child sexual abuse. In March, the Heat team asked Marsh Law, a 17-year-old firm that focuses on representing victims of child sexual abuse, if it could bring a suit against Apple. Heat offered to provide $75,000 to support what could be a costly litigation process. It was a strategy borrowed from other advocacy campaigns against companies. Margaret Mabie, a partner at Marsh Law, took on the case. The firm has represented thousands of victims of child sexual abuse. Mabie dug through law enforcement reports and other documents to find cases related to her clients' images and Apple's products, eventually building a list of more than 80 examples, including one of a Bay Area man whom law enforcement found with more than 2,000 illegal images and videos in iCloud. The 27-year-old woman from the Northeast, who is represented by Marsh, agreed to sue Apple because, she said, she believes that Apple gave victims of child sexual abuse false hope by introducing and abandoning its NeuralHash system. An iPhone user herself, she said the company chose privacy and profit over people. Joining the suit was a difficult decision, she said. Because her images have been downloaded by so many people, she lives in constant fear that someone might track her down and recognize her. And being publicly associated with a high-profile case could cause an uptick in trafficking of her images. But she said she had joined because she thought it was time for Apple to change. She said the company's inaction was heart-wrenching.
David Perry, a longtime urban planner and Chicago professor who focused on strengthening cities and making urban spaces serve residents, has died at age 82. He died Dec. 2 at home following a long illness, according to his family. Mr. Perry was the director of the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois Chicago for nearly 12 years. He was also an urban planning and policy professor at UIC and served as associate chancellor for the Great Cities Commitment. He retired from the university in 2018. He also served on several public projects, including Chicago’s Zoning Reform Commission, the Urban Land Institute’s National Public Infrastructure Committee and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Judith Kossy, his wife of 20 years, told the Sun-Times Mr. Perry had a “profound sense of social justice” and his guiding philosophy was to “live your values.” He was also curious and eager to learn from his students, Kossy said. “David was never the professor who behaved like the font of all wisdom,” she said. “Rather, he treated his students as peers and joined them in exploring key questions, ‘What’s different here, and how does it affect our thinking about cities and the people who live there?’” He championed engaged research, Kossy said. Whenever he would go into a community to research them, he would treat the people he studied as a partner and would share his findings with them to help address the problems facing their community. Mr. Perry wrote and edited over a dozen books and over 150 articles that focused on economic development, race, politics, urban violence, public infrastructure, urban space and the role of universities and community foundations in American cities. Integrating universities with the surrounding community was especially a passion for Mr. Perry. In 2014, he delivered a guest lecture at the University of Washington in Tacoma in which he asserted that “universities need to be community-based organizations.” He pointed to the once-neglected section of the Loop that was transformed into a hub for higher education, including DePaul’s downtown campus, Columbia College and Roosevelt University. “The academic corridor is no longer the desolate hole in the downtown doughnut. It’s a new anchor of Chicago’s development in the Loop,” Mr. Perry said. “It’s a 24/7 educational corridor with clusters in the knowledge economy.” Mr. Perry earned his doctoral degree from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He taught in the government department at the University of Texas at Austin and chaired the urban planning program at SUNY Buffalo. He was also a senior faculty fellow of New York’s Rockefeller Institute and held joint appointments as professor of Public Administration and professor of Political Science at UIC. Aside from his work, Mr. Perry’s joys were his family and friends, music, skiing and traveling. In addition to Kossy, he is survived by his sons, Clayton Perry and Evan Perry; his daughters-in-law, Jamie Perry and Veronica Perry; and four grandchildren, Sam, Jack, Colin and Dillon.Romanian lawmakers on Monday voted narrowly in favor of a new pro-European coalition government led by incumbent Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu. The move could usher in an end to a protracted political crisis in the European Union country following the annulment of a presidential election by a top court. Parliament approved the new administration in a 240-143 vote in Romania's 466-seat legislature. The new coalition is made up of the leftist Social Democratic Party, or PSD, the center-right National Liberal Party, PNL, the small ethnic Hungarian UDMR party and national minorities. It caps a month-long period of turmoil in which far-right nationalists made significant gains in a Dec. 1 parliamentary election, a week after a first-round presidential race saw the far-right outsider Calin Georgescu emerge as the front-runner. “It will not be an easy mandate for the future government,” Ciolacu, whose PSD party topped the polls in the parliamentary election, said in a statement Monday. “We are aware that we are in the midst of a deep political crisis," he said. "It is also a crisis of trust, and this coalition aims to regain the trust of citizens, the trust of the people.” Romani's 16 ministerial positions will be shared among the parties, which will hold a slim majority in the legislature. It's widely seen as a tactical partnership to shut out far-right nationalists whose voices found fertile ground amid high living costs and a sluggish economy. Ciolacu, who came third in the first-round presidential ballot despite polls indicating he would win the most votes, has served as prime minister since June 2023. After parliament’s approval, President Klaus Iohannis swore in the new government and warned the new Cabinet that it's entering a “difficult new period” in which “for many Romanians, there are major concerns.” Romania was plunged into turmoil after Georgescu’s surprise success in the presidential race, after allegations of electoral violations and Russian interference emerged. Days before the Dec. 8 runoff, the Constitutional Court made the unprecedented move to annul the presidential race. “We go through complicated times, but I think we all learned from mistakes of the past,” Ciolacu said. “I hope that together with my colleagues in the coalition, we’ll find the best solutions to get past the challenges we have in front of us.” Ciolacu said that the new government would aim to quickly organize the rerun of the presidential election in which the new coalition has agreed to put forward an agreed common pro-European candidate. Cristian Andrei, a political consultant based in Bucharest, said that the new government made up of the same political parties will likely embrace “soft populist” rhetoric such as economic patriotism, anti-austerity, and a peace solution in neighboring Ukraine to counter the rise of far-right populism. “This will be a way to answer the concerns of many Romanians who voted for populists ... but will not solve the fundamental problem of trust,” he said. “The only decisive factor now will be who and how convincing the pro-European candidates will be against this popular revolt.” George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, which came second in the parliamentary election, said that all lawmakers from his party on Monday would vote against the Ciolacu government. In 2021, the PSD and the PNL also formed an unlikely but increasingly strained coalition together with UDMR, which exited the Cabinet last year after a power-sharing dispute.Governments around the world have reacted to the abrupt fall of the Assad family's five-decade rule over Syria with a mixture of hope and trepidation, as the balance of power in the Middle East shifts. Several Arab countries expressed support for Syria's unity and territorial integrity after Islamist rebels declared President Bashar al-Assad's ouster and seized control of Damascus early on Sunday. Turkey, Iran, Russia and the United States all deployed forces in Syria after protests against al-Assad's regime erupted into a multi-sided civil war in 2011. Various non-state factions continue to control different parts of the fragmented country. Egypt, the Arab world's most populous country, said it stands with Syria and supports its sovereignty. Egypt "calls on all Syrian sides of all leanings to preserve the state resources and national institutions and give precedence to the country's supreme interests," the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said. In Jordan, Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said Syria must be protected from sliding towards chaos." "Jordan will offer all possible support for the brotherly Syrian people in their efforts for rebuilding their country, institutions and political system," he said. The Foreign Ministry of Qatar, a country that has long been an outspoken critic of al-Assad, also said it is necessary to preserve Syria's national institutions and unity of the state to prevent it from "descending into chaos". "The state of Palestine and its people stand by the side of the brotherly Syrian people," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said. But all eyes were firmly on the governments of Iran and Russia, which were staunch backers of al-Assad. With his downfall, their influence in Syria and the wider Middle East could be weakened. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said it hopes to maintain good relations with Syria despite the change in power. "Bilateral relations with Syria have a long history and we hope that this will continue with wisdom and foresight," the Foreign Ministry in Tehran said in a statement. Tehran hopes for a quick end to the military tensions and an early dialogue between all political factions in the country, the Foreign Ministry was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency. According to unconfirmed reports, Tehran is already in contact with the Islamist alliance Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in order to facilitate a peaceful withdrawal of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards from Syria. For Tehran, al-Assad was a strategically important ally within a self-declared front of resistance against arch-enemy Israel. Syria also served as a corridor for the supply of Iranian weapons to Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon, who in turn would attack Israel. "The change of power in Syria could affect the further course of the resistance front against the Zionist regime in the short term, but definitely not stop it," said Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi. The resistance against Israel is "an ideological mission and not a classic war" and will therefore continue, said the top diplomat in an interview with the state broadcaster IRIB late Sunday. The Russian Foreign Ministry issued an appeal for all parties to refrain from the use of force. Al-Assad had abandoned his post and left Syria, the ministry said, without providing any information on the location of its former ally. Russia was in contact with groups in Syria, it said. Moscow had provided critical military support to al-Assad's regime since 2015. Russia maintains an airbase in Syria and a strategic naval base at Tartus, which provides access to the Mediterranean Sea. The ministry said the Russian military bases were not under threat but were in a state of heightened alert. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the seismic change in Syria presented an "opportunity". Israel has frequently hit Iranian-linked military targets in Syria in order to prevent arch-enemy Iran from expanding its influence. Netanyahu said Israel is interested in "neighbourly relations" with Syria, but also in making sure "that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel". In Europe, the French and German governments welcomed al-Assad's overthrow. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called it "good news" - but that order needed to be restored and the rights of minorities respected. UN Secretary General António Guterres said he believed there was now a "historic opportunity to build a stable and peaceful future" for Syria.
The World Summit AI Qatar 2024 (WSAI 2024) will be held for the first time in the Mena (Middle East and North Africa) region Tuesday and on Wednesday. Under the patronage of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and organised by Inspired Minds, the summit will take place under the theme *Putting Humanity at the Heart of AI. Global experts will present in-depth insights into artificial intelligence (AI) and its various challenges during the summit. The MCIT said in a statement that the event aims to foster global dialogue on the technical and ethical dimensions of AI advancements, focusing on delivering innovative solutions that enhance quality of life and contribute to achieving sustainable development goals. This platform will bring together experts and decision-makers from various sectors to exchange knowledge and insights on the future of AI globally. The summit will feature the launch of several significant projects by the MCIT and other participating government entities. One of the event’s key highlights will be the "Qatar Pavilion", which will include entities such as the MCIT, the Ministry of Labour, the Supreme Judiciary Council, Public Prosecution, and Qatar University. The pavilion will showcase initiatives in AI and their role in driving digital transformation in alignment with Qatar National Vision 2030. This participation provides an opportunity for knowledge exchange and exploring new frameworks for collaboration with local and international partners. The summit will focus on four key pillars: “Responsible AI and Governance”, “Human-AI convergence”, “Generative AI and Large Language Models”, and “Accelerating AI Adoption”. It will address various discussion topics, including Generative AI, ethical governance of modern technologies, and accelerating the adoption of technological solutions. Additionally, it will emphasise the importance of public-private sector collaboration to develop technologies that serve society and meet its needs. Discussions will cover a wide range of topics, such as balancing technological progress with human values, exploring intersections between AI and psychology, and analysing the structural determinants of current AI systems. The summit will also explore the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration to understand AIs impact on human life and its potential to shape a better future for humanity. Discussions will further highlight the unpredictable nature of AI development, with a particular focus on the ethical considerations involved in creating reliable and safe AI systems. Related Story Qatar and Estonia to strengthen trade and economic ties Qatar Airways expects to equip entire fleet with Starlink connectivity by end-2025: Group CEO
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