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Balaji, a former employee at the AI giant OpenAI, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on November 26. OpenAI has expressed condolences following the death of former researcher Suchir Balaji , who was found dead in his San Francisco apartment earlier this month. The company released a statement Thursday, December 26, confirming they are supporting Balaji's family during this difficult time. The statement on OpenAI newsroom comes exactly a month after Balaji's death on November 26. "We were devastated to learn of this tragic news and have been in touch with Suchir's family to offer our full support," the statement read. "Our priority is to continue to do everything we can to assist them." Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on Nov. 26 in what police said “appeared to be a suicide. No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation.” Balaji worked at OpenAI for nearly four years before quitting in August this year. Oone of his first projects at OpenAI, called WebGPT, is said to have helped pave the way for ChatGPT . Balaji had publicly raised concerns about potential copyright infringement by OpenAI and other AI companies, particularly regarding the use of copyrighted material to train generative AI models like ChatGPT. His concerns gained attention amidst numerous lawsuits from writers, programmers, and journalists alleging unauthorized use of their work. OpenAI stated they first became aware of Balaji's concerns through his comments published in The New York Times and that there has been no subsequent interaction. In the NYT interview, Balaji explained his growing interest in copyright law, sparked by the increasing number of lawsuits against AI companies. He also shared his skepticism about "fair use" as a viable defense for many generative AI products in a widely circulated post on X. Elon Musk , currently engaged in legal disputes with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman , reacted to Balaji's death with a brief "hmm" post on X.
Jimmy Carter, the 39th US president, has died at 100Rep. Patrick McHenry sat in the House Financial Services Committee office on Dec. 19, looking fairly relaxed, despite the chaos erupting around him in every other corridor of the Capitol. He had already been asked to move out of his office in the Rayburn building to make room for the next member of Congress who would occupy it. Cardboard boxes were stacked against the wall to his right. From one of them peeked out a plaque that marked his time as the nation’s first House speaker pro-tem. On a table lay two large photographs of McHenry on the House floor during major moments from this session of Congress. He had only seen them for the first time that morning. McHenry sat back in his leather chair ready to talk about his 20-year congressional career, and how it was about to come to an end. But everywhere else in the building, the only conversations happening were about Republican infighting and a potential government shutdown, a constant refrain from the last two years. McHenry looked calm. “This place doesn’t stop,” McHenry said. “It’s just not built that way. So I look back at 20 years and think about the results I got, the type of work I engaged in and the people I engaged with and accrued over the years. “There’s no grand retirement flourish, where the institution stops and all of America stops in reverence or whatever else. That does not happen for members of the House,” McHenry said. As McHenry spoke, breaking news scrolled on the TV across from him about the latest developments in the efforts to fund the government. A funding bill would eventually pass and prevent a shutdown. It’s similar to the place where McHenry found himself at the start of this session of Congress, the place that cost his friend Kevin McCarthy his leadership role and the place that made McHenry have to step in and lead the House for 22 days until Mike Johnson was chosen to succeed McCarthy as House speaker. Rep. Richard Hudson, a Republican from Southern Pines and chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, thought back to that moment as he talked about his longtime friend McHenry’s time in office. “If you think about the great turmoil it was for Congress, for the country; and he was just such a steady hand,” Hudson said. “If he mishandled that. If he let his ego get in the way of that, if he tried to grab more power for himself, it would have been detrimental for the institution — detrimental for our country. To show great restraint, great judgment: to lose someone like that, you just can’t replace them.” Becoming speaker It was Oct. 3, 2023, when McHenry made his way from the back of the House chamber to the dais as he saw the vote to oust McCarthy going the wrong direction. Few people knew at the time, but McCarthy had asked McHenry to step in if anything should happen to him. It was part of McCarthy’s role as speaker to name a successor in an emergency, under a post-9/11 rule. But people thought if that happened it would be because of something catastrophic, and not Republican infighting. The clerk announced the vote total. McCarthy was out. McHenry was in. McHenry raised the gavel and slammed it as hard as he could , releasing his pent-up anger. It became a gif, a meme, the butt of late-night comedy. And McHenry’s older sister did what any good sister would do: she sent him “the cruelest things” said about him on the internet. “She knew that was exactly what I needed,” McHenry said. “I mean, truly. And she sent me some of the funniest stuff, and like some of the meanest stuff, and gave me her commentary about all of it. When you look like me and you’re my size, you better have a good sense of humor.” For the record: McHenry would not comment on how tall he is, but he’s taller than this reporter, who is 5-foot-2. And with the gavel slam heard round the world, McHenry recessed the House having no idea if he was allowed to adjourn it as speaker pro-tem. No one had been in this position before, so there were a lot of questions about what he could or couldn’t do. As the days stretched on his colleagues offered him, and sometimes urged him to take on, more power than he deemed constitutionally allowed. He went quiet, believing anything he said or did could shape the position’s power for future generations. And he didn’t take any of the extras he was offered. “I’ve studied the institution and it’s one thing to understand checks and balances in a cerebral way, or study it,” McHenry said. “It’s another thing to be in it. What the Founding Fathers envisioned was you would primarily want to be jealous for your branch of government and then, in fighting for that branch, (provide) the checks and balances to the American people; their liberties are protected.” McHenry said each branch of government needs to function well in order for them to be aligned. “The House is meaningful because we empowered the speaker to be on par with the president, to negotiate on our behalf and to have the powers of the institution,” McHenry said. “The president pro-tempore of the Senate is a ceremonial gig. The speaker is a meaningful negotiator of outcomes. So if we diminish the powers of the institution, if we diminish the powers of the speakership, we diminish the powers of the House; we then throw out of alignment the constitutional balance since the first Congress.” McHenry ‘the firebrand’ McHenry wasn’t always like this — so measured. “Patrick preceded me by one term in the legislature,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, a former speaker of the North Carolina House. “He had a great reputation down there, but it was interesting in the legislature. He had a reputation as sort of a firebrand.” McHenry, a Republican from Lincoln County, won his election to the state House in 2002. Then in 2004 he was elected to Congress, making him, at 29, the youngest member. McHenry was still in high school when he met Hudson, who was in college. They were working on opposing campaigns for governor. “It’s just really incredible to watch his development over the years from energetic campaign volunteer to college Republican leader to freshman rabble-rouser in the House to really an elder statesman. He’s, of all the people I’ve ever worked with, he’s just one of the smartest on policy, smartest on strategy; great with people.” But Hudson laughs as he remembers young McHenry picking fights with Democrats whenever McHenry thought they were spending too much or doing something wrong. He said McHenry and former Rep. Barney Frank, a Democrat, both knew parliamentary procedure well and the two of them would get into it. “McHenry would just twist him in knots with parliamentary procedure, and Barney would get mad. His face would get red. Barney kind of had a unique tone to his voice anyway, but when he got mad it would get more high-pitched.” Hudson said watching the two of them duke it out was “high entertainment.” McHenry doesn’t shy away from talking about his reputation when he first entered Congress. “What I did in my first and second term was, I wanted to be in the big fights that consumed the House and I thought to engage in those fights would further conservative policy,” McHenry said. “And in my second term, I realized that my actions did not yield the results that I wanted them to yield.” Hudson pointed to a “seminal moment” involving then-Rep. Jeff Flake, who he said would “introduce amendments to strike people’s earmarks.” “McHenry had one that was for the Christmas tree industry, which is huge in North Carolina,” Hudson said. “Jeff introduced dozens of these amendments. Everybody voted against them, they’d all fail, but in this case, because McHenry had agitated Democrats so much, all the Democrats voted to strip out this earmark. It was important to Patrick’s district.” Hudson said that was a wake-up call for McHenry. McHenry told McClatchy he noticed that his actions weren’t yielding the results he wanted so he found mentors, studied what lawmakers past and present did and read about the institution and legislative craftsmanship and power. “In studying all those things and studying the institution and the history of the institution, that’s how I created the pathway that I then followed, for frankly the next 16 years,” McHenry said. Setting goals in Congress McHenry said in his second term he decided he either wanted to chair the Financial Services Committee or become whip. From 2014 to 2019, McHenry served as chief deputy whip, a position he called “an incredible honor.” His favorite place in the Capitol is by the whip desk in the House chamber, he said. “That’s the cockpit for the majority party,” McHenry said. “You’re at the whip desk, you know the count, you know who has voted, you know how they voted and if you’re in that position you know why they voted.” He was asked to step in for House Majority Whip Steve Scalise after a gunman opened fire, on June 14, 2017, on Republican members of Congress practicing for the congressional baseball game. McHenry ran for whip, but did not win election. Financial Services chairman He then focused himself toward his other goal. McHenry calls the issues before the Financial Services Committee his passion project, and thinks about how those issues affected his father when he started a small business in lawn service. “That’s been my motivator on this committee,” McHenry said. “Helping the small business person that just wants to start a little business in their backyard so they can provide for their family.” McHenry points out that the committee isn’t high-profile, but it touches every American in meaningful ways. “So to chair this committee was in itself, that was the high-water mark of everything I dreamed of achieving in Congress,” McHenry said. McHenry took the helm of the committee in January 2023. He chuckles slightly when he thinks back to his plans for the start of the 118th Congress. They were thorough. But you know what they say about plans. In October 2022, McHenry sat down with his staff director to create his list of goals. He wanted to achieve goals in three policy areas, all focused on the Financial Services Committee. —Financial data privacy standards —Capital formation —Digital assets “So we had this thing worked out,” McHenry said. “We knew the agenda, we even had a calendar for what we do, month-by-month and week-by-week, going into ‘23.” McHenry said he had wanted to leave this session of Congress with changes to the law that he could point to and say, “That’s my mark.” “And it turns out that the marker for members of this committee was the way I treated them, what I tried to cultivate in discussion in the committee, and it was the institution, and the testing of the institution in October of ‘23,” McHenry said. “And maybe I have a few fingerprints on the institution because of that.” McHenry’s legacy Hudson doesn’t downplay McHenry’s legacy as much as McHenry himself does. He said he can’t think of a more consequential member of Congress, in his lifetime, who represented North Carolina. “He’s someone who’s been in leadership, been responsible for ushering important legislation through Congress,” Hudson said. Tillis said McHenry leaves a big pair of shoes to fill. After Johnson replaced McCarthy as speaker and McHenry gave up his gavel, McHenry almost immediately announced another run for Congress. But by the time he needed to file paperwork to run, he had changed his mind. McHenry said he knew by then that if there was a right time to leave, it had come. He served 20 years and 10 terms, and completed his term limit of six years as either a committee chairman or ranking member, his role when Democrats led the House. He said he wanted to honor the institution by not asking for an extension on the committee. “I knew after that experience of October, that there was nothing else for me left to do here in the House, and I knew I that I wouldn’t be in a more meaningful position next Congress to affect policy and outcomes and get results,” McHenry said. “I knew it was time. It was time to let somebody else take over and build. I felt just a complete clarity about the decision and peace that my time was done.” And he added that the last 14 months have confirmed he made the right decision. Honoring McHenry McHenry’s colleagues weren’t going to let him go without a gentle ribbing. Every speaker of the House is given a portrait that hangs in the speaker’s gallery. They have to commission the painting themselves. There was a question about whether McHenry, as speaker pro-tem, should get one. Hudson said he couldn’t afford a full-size portrait of McHenry but he felt he was deserving. So he had a smaller one commissioned, complete with McHenry’s gavel bang. Why a little one? “Well, he had a short term as speaker, and, you know, his stature is not as large, as say, the congressman replacing him, so there are a couple areas to highlight there,” Hudson said. The portrait now hangs in the cloakroom. “That was a great surprise,” McHenry said. “Rather than give me some deep sense of meaning, they roasted me, which felt right.” ©2024 McClatchy Washington Bureau. Visit mcclatchydc.com . Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro was fully aware of and actively participated in a coup plot to remain in office after his defeat in the 2022 election, according to a federal police report unsealed on Tuesday. Brazil’s federal police last Thursday formally accused Mr Bolsonaro and 36 other people of attempting a coup. They sent their 884-page report to the Supreme Court, which lifted the seal. “The evidence collected throughout the investigation shows unequivocally that then-president Jair Messias Bolsonaro planned, acted and was directly and effectively aware of the actions of the criminal organisation aiming to launch a coup d’etat and eliminate the democratic rule of law, which did not take place due to reasons unrelated to his desire,” the document said. At another point, it says: “Bolsonaro had full awareness and active participation.” Mr Bolsonaro, who had repeatedly alleged without evidence that the country’s electronic voting system was prone to fraud, called a meeting in December 2022, during which he presented a draft decree to the commanders of the three divisions of the armed forces, according to the police report, signed by four investigators. The decree would have launched an investigation into suspicions of fraud and crimes related to the October 2022 vote, and suspended the powers of the nation’s electoral court. The navy’s commander stood ready to comply, but those from the army and air force objected to any plan that prevented Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s inauguration, the report said. Those refusals are why the plan did not go ahead, according to witnesses who spoke to investigators. Mr Bolsonaro never signed the decree to set the final stage of the alleged plan into action. Mr Bolsonaro has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing or awareness of any plot to keep him in power or oust his leftist rival and successor. “No one is going to do a coup with a reserve general and half a dozen other officers. What is being said is absurd. For my part, there has never been any discussion of a coup,” Mr Bolsonaro told journalists in the capital Brasilia on Monday. “If someone came to discuss a coup with me, I’d say, that’s fine, but the day after, how does the world view us?” he added. “The word ‘coup’ has never been in my dictionary.” The top court has passed the report on to prosecutor-general Paulo Gonet. He will decide whether to formally charge Mr Bolsonaro. Rodrigo Rios, a law professor at the PUC university in the city of Curitiba, said Mr Bolsonaro could face up to a minimum of 11 years in prison if convicted on all charges. “A woman involved in the January 8 attack on the Supreme Court received a 17-year prison sentence,” Mr Rios told the Associated Press, noting that the former president is more likely to receive 15 years or more if convicted. “Bolsonaro’s future looks dark.” Ahead of the 2022 election, Mr Bolsonaro repeatedly alleged that the election system, which does not use paper ballots, could be tampered with. The top electoral court later ruled that he had abused his power to cast unfounded doubt on the voting system, and ruled him ineligible for office until 2030. Still, he has maintained that he will stand as a candidate in the 2026 race. Since Mr Bolsonaro left office, he has been targeted by several investigations, all of which he has chalked up to political persecution. Federal police have accused him of smuggling diamond jewellery into Brazil without properly declaring them and directing a subordinate to falsify his and others’ Covid-19 vaccination statuses. Authorities are also investigating whether he incited the riot on January 8 2022 in which his followers ransacked the Supreme Court and presidential palace in Brasilia, seeking to prompt intervention by the army that would oust Mr Lula from power. Mr Bolsonaro had left for the United States days before Mr Lula’s inauguration on January 1 2023 and stayed there for three months, keeping a low profile. The police report unsealed on Tuesday alleges he was seeking to avoid possible imprisonment related to the coup plot, and also await the uprising that took place a week later.Teen social media ban inquiry didn’t even respond to man with disability’s accessibility request
'Fatally wrong': Musk causes uproar for backing Germany's far-right partyAfter pushing remote work before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt now wants state employees to come back to the office full time in early 2025. Stitt issued an executive order on Wednesday directing state employees to perform their work in an office, facility, or field location assigned by their agency by Feb. 1. The move mirrors an effort pushed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the unelected businessmen appointed by incoming President Donald Trump to study government efficiency at the federal level. Stitt, in a press release, said pandemic-era work arrangements should end. “COVID altered the way we did business for a time, but that time has passed,” Stitt said. “Now, we need to put stewardship of taxpayer dollars as our top priority. Oklahomans deserve a government that operates with full accountability and delivers services effectively. Returning to traditional work environments is a critical step in achieving that goal.” Stitt’s executive order includes several exceptions. Agencies that have eliminated office space in the last few years and would have problems accommodating a full return to office could get an exception from the policy. Agency executives can also approve teleworking for employees with non-standard work hours. The Department of Corrections used the increased use of state employee teleworking to move its Oklahoma City headquarters this year. Agency leaders found space at the Oklahoma Health Care Authority building north of the Capitol partly because more Health Care Authority employees were teleworking. Stitt put the Office of Management and Enterprise Services in charge of collecting data from agencies on teleworking status after the executive order goes into effect. OMES had almost 30% of its employees working remotely in fiscal year 2024, the agency disclosed in budget documents this year. Another 60% of the agency’s 1,036 employees were in a hybrid work arrangement, which means they were onsite two to four days per week. As a state agency, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education will comply with the executive order, said Angela Caddell, associate vice chancellor for communications. “State system institutions are reviewing the EO, and any next steps will be determined by the respective campus governing boards,” Caddell said in an email. The latest statewide employee engagement survey , issued by OMES in July, showed widespread satisfaction with telework or a hybrid arrangement. The survey had responses from 16,000 employees across 111 state agencies. “Respondents indicating either hybrid or full-time telework had slightly higher favorable responses related to engagement and satisfaction,” the report said. “Among those indicating a full-time or hybrid telework status, engagement is slightly higher and satisfaction is slightly lower among employees working hybrid schedules.” Department of Government Efficiency Musk and Ramaswamy said in a Wall Street Journal opinion column last month their reform project, which they dubbed the Department of Governmental Efficiency, could lead to lower costs if the federal government got rid of telework. “Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the COVID-era privilege of staying home,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in the opinion column. Some Oklahoma lawmakers said Stitt’s executive order could hamper efforts to keep state employment competitive with the private sector. In recent years, lawmakers on a bipartisan basis have expanded state benefits to include 6 weeks of paid maternity leave for state employees. “We want great jobs in our state with opportunities for advancement,” said Senate Democratic Leader Julia Kirt, D-Oklahoma City. “These state positions need to be competitive with modern employers to provide high quality, desirable jobs. We were just hearing cost savings reports from state agencies who moved positions to remote work. What will it cost in taxpayer funds with this U-turn?” House Democratic Leader Cyndi Munson, D-Oklahoma City, said offering telework as an option to prospective state employees helps recruitment, especially in rural areas. “With all the costs of getting to work, paying for gas and car maintenance, especially if you’re living in a rural area, being able to access a job and being able to work from home is a huge benefit,” Munson said. “And it’s a way to grow our workforce for state employees.” Munson said both private and public sector employees have reevaluated their work-life balance in the wake of the pandemic. “We spend the majority of our days working,” Munson said. “If you can work from home and be as effective and efficient in the comfort of your home, why would we take that away from folks? It’s very confusing.” The Department of Human Services, which at more than 6,200 employees is the state’s largest agency, had 44% of its workforce working remotely in fiscal year 2024. DHS closed dozens of county offices in the early part of the pandemic and pushed employees to telework or to be embedded with other social service agencies, The Frontier found in a July, 2021 investigation . In his 2021 State of the State address , Stitt touted the benefits of teleworking for state employees. He mentioned an employee called Cody, who worked for the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission in Idabel. “Cody was doing way more work than his title and job description indicated, but factors out of his control made a promotion nearly impossible,” Stitt said in the speech. “One of those factors was location. An agency policy required directors to live in Oklahoma City. Generations of Cody’s family had lived in Idabel and a promotion wasn’t worth leaving his family. It took a pandemic – and my Executive Order to have state employees working from home – to change the policy so he could become a director.”
TFI International Inc. (TFII) to Issue Quarterly Dividend of $0.45 on January 15thNASA’s Parker Solar Probe has sent signal to home after completing its closest-ever sun flybyPHILADELPHIA (AP) — Jalen Hurts remained in the NFL's concussion protocol on Monday, limiting his ability to practice this week for the Philadelphia Eagles and casting doubt on his availability for Sunday's game against Dallas. If Hurts can't play, the Eagles would turn to backup Kenny Pickett — who suffered a rib injury and couldn't protect a big lead in a 36-33 loss to Washington — with third-stringer Tanner McKee on deck. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings. Get any of our free email newsletters — news headlines, obituaries, sports, and more.