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Shorter matches a ‘real possibility’ as schedule expands – Mikel ArtetaEfforts are underway to try and salvage the Albion Hotel in Bayfield. The historic building’s roof collapsed early Sunday morning under the weight of heavy snowfall, and rain. No one was in the building at the time of the collapse, and no one was injured, but the structure which was built in the 1840’s suffered extensive damage. After meticulously removing the Albion’s damaged roof yesterday, crews from across Ontario were on Bayfield’s Heritage Main Street today working toward protecting the exposed second floor from the elements. Restoration work underway on the Albion Hotel and Restaurant in Bayfield following the collapse of the building's roof, December 10, 2024 (Scott Miller) Neighbours on scene today thought a temporary roof or roof covering of some kind was going to be installed to keep the incoming snow from causing more damage to the historic structure. In the meantime, over $50,000 has been raised to help out the 27 Albion staff, who will be without a job for the foreseeable future. You can learn more about the Albion Hotel online fundraiser here. Shopping Trends The Shopping Trends team is independent of the journalists at CTV News. We may earn a commission when you use our links to shop. Read about us. 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Even experienced drivers can be forgiven for missing a roundabout exit once or twice, but a disoriented robotaxi in Arizona did it 36 times... in a row. While Waymo taxis are among the most advanced autonomous vehicles on the road today, in a video on X, a confused AV appears to be quite literally stuck in a loop. (Waymo clarified there was the high-tech merry-go-round.) And yet, even with blunders like these, there were more vehicles driving themselves this year than ever before. Once cordoned off to a few test tracks and small patches of land in Mountain View, AVs are now rearing their sensors-flapping heads in . Tens of millions of drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians are learning how to coexist amongst these machines while their shared roads serve as real-world test-beds for full-scale AV deployment. Sure, it’s not , but 2024 was the year driverless cars hit their stride and flooded the streets–in other words, ready or not, they got real. Whether or not that’s a good thing depends entirely on who you ask. Several computer science experts and civil engineers told that they were confident these early autonomous vehicles (AV’s), slow and as they might seem sometimes, are the harbingers of a near-future marked by considerably less deadly damage caused by distracted humans. Others, were less optimistic. The actual of these cars in 2024 remains a . One thing seems certain: the AV race is on. Though many companies have faded, , a handful of major players like Alphabet’s Waymo, Amazon-backed Zoox, and Aurora are bulking up and scaling up operations. In the process, they are changing the way millions of people interact on the road. And it’s just getting started. Though this proliferation of AVs can feel sudden to the average person, Carnegie Mellon University Professor Ragunathan Rajkumar told the road there was incremental. Rajkumar, who has worked on autonomous research for decades, says the first example of what one could consider a rudimentary autonomous vehicle dates all the way back to 1984 at Carnegie Mellon. Progress in the space leaped forward twenty years later when DARPA, the , held a driverless car competition called the “ ” The teams that won attracted the attention of Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. That eventually led to the creation of what would become Waymo and helped turbo charge the current era of privatized driverless car development. “The [2007] competition showed it was actually feasible,” Rajkumar siad. “It made this singular point that autonomous vehicles are only a question of when and not a question of if anymore.” Waymo was not only one of the earliest entries into the space, but also one of the most uniquely suited to make their product commercially available in 2024. Being tied to Google gave Waymo all the technical expertise and crucially, the deep pockets it needed to slowly build up its testing apparatus over the course of several years without a pressing need for an immediate return on investment. The company started in relatively sparse, Arizona suburbs and has gradually built up to more complex environments over time. Rajkumar said this approach differs from competitors like GM-backed Cruise which started later and may have tried to rush over some steps in a race to make a commercially viable product. That and an . By the time they were ready to test again this year, Waymo had already gained too much ground. In other words, slow and steady really does win the race. (GM announced it would absorb Cruise and and towards fully autonomous personal vehicles earlier this month.) 2024 marked a “milestone” in driverless vehicle deployment according to Autonomous Industry Vehicle Association (AIVA) CEO Jeff Farrah. He told that 25 states are now on the policy path towards some AV deployment. These new laws will cover around 56% of the US population. Waymo, after testing for the better part of a decade, in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix through its app. As of late October 2024, Waymo said it was every week. Those numbers will balloon further next year when the company begins offering . Waymo isn’t alone either. Zoox— that is working on deploying a purpose-built, bi-direcitonal vehicle with no steering wheel and four seats facing towards each other—is currently testing their fleet in Cruise resumed testing in Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix, earlier this year that saw it lose its license to operate in California. Tesla, which is controversially trying to achieve full autonomy without using LiDAR technology, charted out plans to begin production of a “ ” robotaxis service sometime before 2027. Taxi-style ride hailing services also aren’t the only types of self-driving vehicles already filling US roads. Mercedes-Benz, last year, , a SAE Level 3 system that lets drivers legally operate a vehicle up to 40mph hands free and without their eyes facing the road. Aurora, a company , has been conducting self-driving tests (with a human safety driver present) in Texas for several years. The company to let trucks drive free of human operators in the state next year. “It’s clear that AVs are here to stay and as more consumers experience them, the data shows they are enjoying their experience,” Farrah told For cities like San Francisco and Austin, Texas where are making their way around town at any given time, the presence of cars without a human driver has gone from novel to common. Though they once regularly solicited gawking pedestrians and yells from angry pickup drivers, AVs in 2024 increasingly blend into the urban traffic. That seeming sense of normalcy on the ground runs counter to broader snapshots of American sentiment. Only 37% of US adults said they would want to ride in a driverless vehicle. And yet, in places where driverless options are actually available, early reports show some riders are being won over. Part of that acceptance may be due to their passive behavior. “They [robotaxis] tend to drive very cautiously,” University of Texas Professor of Transportation Engineering Kara Kockelman told “They look and feel much less dangerous than other vehicles driven by 19-year-olds who want a speed rush.” Nicole Moore, the President of Rideshare Drivers United and herself a part-time Lyft driver had another way of describing them: “It’s slow, stoned driving,” Moore told Proponents of autonomous vehicles say the billions of dollars and investment and countless hours of testing are in the service of two main overarching goals: safety and convenience. On safety, experts told a world awash with AVs could meaningfully cut down on the in the US every year. Globally, around 1.3 million people die every year in auto accidents. Kockelman, who has conducted academic research on the cost-benefit analysis of AV fleets on public roads, said she expects driverless tech to potentially cut down on 80-85% of costs associated with auto crashes, a figure she puts close to $1 trillion. That’s not counting other non-economic costs resulting from crashes too like pricey doctors’ visits and long-lasting mental and emotional scars. A conducted by Waymo and insurer Swiss Re analyzing insurance claims data found Waymo vehicles resulted in less property damages and fewer injuries than human drivers. Aside from the safety argument, Rajkumar said he was optimistic AVs would also empower legally blind individuals and others with physical disabilities to have greater degrees of mobility and autonomy. For others, time spent saved from focusing on driving could be spent completing a meeting, speaking with family, or simply taking a nap. “The arc of the progress has been happening,” Rajkumar said. Maybe. But that vision wasn’t what was on offer in 2024. It doesn’t take long scrolling through social media to find shocking examples of supposedly advanced autonomous vehicles appearing undeniably stupid. There’s these accounts of Cruise driverless vehicles causing traffic jams in and . In other cases, a fleet of recharging Waymo vehicles at each other, much to the annoyance of nearby apartment residents trying to sleep. A Cruise vehicle operating in San Francisco last year drove into a city paving project and . In Austin, a server at a local taco shop told this reporter about a recent case of a Waymo seemingly getting trapped in the restaurant’s parking lot, apparently mistaking it for a side-street. “Everyone went outside and started clapping when it drove away,” he said. But there are more serious concerns as well. For starters, research looking into the limited test cases of AVs currently operating on public roads hasn’t met the high-bar set by some of the tech’s most vocal boosters. A recent conducted by researchers from George Mason and Duke University concluded many areas of improvement were needed. The paper, which compared crash reporting data from AVs and human drivers, claims AV computer vision systems were at times “very brittle” and can “play an outsized role in crashes. In some notable cases, self-driving vehicles were more likely to be involved in accidents than humans. The self-driving vehicles reviewed were struck from behind at a rate 1.7 times higher than human drivers. And while AV-makers often blame these incidents on other distracted human drivers, the researchers say AV can surprisingly decelerate or slam on the brakes “for no obvious reason.” The researchers also noted a “substantial” number of crashes that occurred from AVs seemingly unable to properly understand social norms around driving. Those issues can lead to tragedies when scaled up. In 2018, the first reported human death linked to an autonomous vehicle occurred when an Uber self-driving car crossing a road in Temple, Arizona. An found the vehicle’s software wasn’t prepared to expect pedestrians crossing streets outside of crosswalks. Last year, a Cruise vehicle collided with and then dragged a pedestrian for 20 feet. Experts told the brutal dragging incident, which contributed to Crusie losing its license to operate in California, was likely the result of the company failing to include sensors underneath its vehicle. Though fully-autonomous vehicles like those operated by Waymo and Zoox haven’t resulted in human fatalities thus far, they also mostly aren’t yet operating on more dangerous highway speeds. This year, just as more AVs were filling US roads, the National Highway Traffic Administration (NHTSA) over allegations their vehicles had “potentially violated traffic safety laws.” A Waymo Spokesperon told it currently provides 150,000 paid trips. Weekly “in some of the most challenging and complex environments.” “We are proud of our performance and safety record over tens of millions of autonomous miles driven, as well as our demonstrated commitment to safety transparency,” the spokesperson said. “NHTSA plays a very important role in road safety and we will continue to work with them as part of our mission to become the world’s most trusted driver.” There’s also the still unresolved question of what happens to the more than one million human and Uber Lyft drivers who are increasingly finding themselves in competition with driverless cars. Moore, the Lyft driver and Rideshare Drivers United President says she has watched as AVs have proliferated around her in Los Angeles. In the past, her and other drivers would share videos of the cars getting stuck or malfunctioning for a quick laugh. But recently, Moore says she saw a Waymo vehicle pick up a passenger and suddenly had a realization. “Oh my god,” she recalls. “That [Waymo] is driving somebody that I could be taking!” That’s a thought many more gig workers may have to come to terms with in the months and years to follow. Uber, the leading ride-hailing service, has plans to let riders request Waymo vehicles from its app in Austin and Atlanta next year. And while Waymo’s still slightly more expensive options and have limited routes, that may soon change. Kockelman and Rajkumar agreed robottaxis may become more appealing to riders but they noted it would likely take time before they mean guly chip away at human gig-worker number. Human drivers will still be needed for the immediate future to operate in inclement weather and high speed situations. Even in markets where robotaxis proliferate, ride-share companies may still rely on humans to meet rider demands during peak periods. “It’s going to be a slow rollout just like electric vehicles,” Kockelman said. Those words aren’t all that reassuring for professional drivers like Moore. “Every Waymo that people get into is costing a driver. There’s no doubt about that,” she said. “It’s the same market. This is the wild, wild west of deregulated transportation.” And while 2024 saw the realization of driverless vehicles for many, it also previewed a brewing backlash from an impassioned minority. Waymo is currently suing a San Francisco man prosecutors alleged was between June 24 and June 26, sometimes with riders present. The slashing incidents came several months after a crowd of people, also in San Francisco, , and ultimately set it ablaze. People in the crowd cheered and posed for photographs next to the burning wreckage. Anti-driverless car activists previously to trick AV sensors and temporarily disable them. Farrah of the AVIA said driverless vehicles are at an “inflection point” in the US. As more states allow them to operate on public roads, there may be increased pressure for new federal legislation mandating a set of standards. Driverless vehicles are present in numerous cities but actually having one drive across the country would be a legal nightmare. Companies like Waymo and Zoox meanwhile, which have had years of generous coddling from wealthy investors to train up their fleets, may increasingly feel pressure to make their products financially viable. 2024 may have been the year driverless cars became “real” for many Ameircans, but 2025 will be the year we find out just how disruptive, both positively and negatively, this technology may really wind up being. And while that transformation can feel gradual in the moment, it can also snowball in what feels like an instant. “The technology is going to take a while to develop, but when you think about it, AI just popped out and all of a sudden it was there,” Moore said. “We’re dealing with a pop-out [moment] here.”Wake Forest keeps trying new things early in the season, even if not all of the adjustments are by design. The Demon Deacons will try to stick to the script when Detroit Mercy visits for Saturday's game in Winston-Salem, N.C. The Demon Deacons (5-1) will be at home for the final time prior to three consecutive road games. Detroit Mercy (3-2) already has two more victories than all of last season. After a couple of narrow wins and a loss at Xavier, Wake Forest had a smoother time earlier this week in defeating visiting Western Carolina 82-69 on Tuesday night. Yet these are games when teams have to figure where contributions are going to come from in certain situations. The experimenting took a turn for Wake Forest in the Western Carolina game. Center Efton Reid III had limited minutes because of migraines, so there was a shift in responsibilities. Normal backcourt players Cameron Hildreth and Juke Harris logged time at the power forward slot. "That's just part of it," coach Steve Forbes said. "They did a good job adjusting. We ran a lot of stuff and there are several guys learning different positions. ... I give credit to those guys for doing the best job that they could do on the fly and adjusting to the play calls that we ran and the stuff that we changed." Wake Forest could excel if both Parker Friedrichsen and Davin Cosby can be consistent 3-point threats. Friedrichsen slumped with shooting in the first few games of the season and was replaced in the starting lineup by Cosby. In Tuesday's game, Friedrichsen drained four 3-pointers, while Cosby hit two. "It was really good to see Parker and Davin both make shots together," Forbes said. Not everything was solved for the Demon Deacons. Western Carolina collected 12 offensive rebounds, and that took some of the shine off Wake Forest's defensive efforts. "We can't be a good defensive team, or a really good defensive team, unless we rebound the ball," Forbes said. "It's demoralizing to your defense to get stops and then not get the ball." In Detroit Mercy's 70-59 win at Ball State on Wednesday, Orlando Lovejoy tallied 19 points, seven rebounds and five assists. "We got the ball to the shooters and playmakers," first-year Titans coach Mark Montgomery said. "You could tell by the guys' body language that we were going to get a road win. It had been a long time coming." On Saturday, the Titans will look for their second road victory since February 2023. The outcome at Ball State seemed significant to Montgomery. "We had to get over the hump," he said. "Our guys grinded it out." --Field Level Media
abrdn Emerging Markets Equity Income Fund, Inc. (AEF) Announces Results Of Strategic Review Including: Changes To The Fund’s Name And Investment Strategy, A 20% Tender Offer And Renewed Performance-based Conditional Tender Offer Policy, And An Increase To Managed Distribution PolicyAston Villa up to third in Champions League as they triumph in five-goal thriller
Shares of United Natural Foods ( UNFI 20.02% ) were soaring today after the leading wholesaler of organic and natural foods posted strong results in its fiscal first-quarter earnings report, beating estimates on the top and bottom lines. As a result, the stock finished the day up 20%. UNFI is on the rebound United Natural Foods (UNFI) has now more than tripled from its low in the spring as investments in increased efficiency and other initiatives are paying off. In Q1, revenue increased 4.2% to $7.87 billion, easily beating estimates at $7.61 billion. Its supernatural segment, which currently consists of just Whole Foods, delivered strong growth with revenue up 13.8% to $1.84 billion. At its largest segment, chains, which consists of grocery banners with more than 10 locations, revenue rose 3.5% to $3.29 billion. The business benefited from value initiatives that attracted increased spending from existing customers like Whole Foods, and it's also optimizing its distribution network, driving profitability improvements. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization ( EBITDA ) rose 14.5% to $134 million. On the bottom line, adjusted earnings per share (EPS) rose from a loss of $0.04 to a profit of $0.16, well ahead of the consensus at a loss of $0.01. UNFI CEO Sandy Douglas said, What's next for UNFI The food wholesaler also raised its guidance for the full year. It now sees revenue of $30.6 billion to $31 billion, which represents a 0.6% decline at the midpoint, and was up from its previous forecast of $30.3 billion to $30.8 billion. It also raised its adjusted EPS forecast from $0.20 to $0.80 to $0.40 to $0.80, which compares to just $0.14 in the quarter a year ago. The stock might look pricey based on that forecast, but there is a lot of room for improvement here and upside potential for this niche leader.
US asks Syrian rebels HTS to help in search for journalist Austin TiceFLAGSTAR FINANCIAL, INC. APPOINTS BRIAN CALLANAN TO BOARD OF DIRECTORSIt took me a whopping three months just to organize the photo albums on my phone to reflect all the places I lived in and traveled to throughout my 20s. Then I realized: although I have 10,611 photos, I've never actually physically commemorated my time spent in those places. This brought me face to face with Mixbook , an online photo book creation and memory curation platform. It recently added artificial intelligence design technology -- an AI-powered caption generator, along with "Mixbook Movies," an AI-powered video created from your photo book, with customizable themes and accompanying music. Founded in 2006 by Andrew Laffoon and Aryk Grosz , friends who met during their studies at UC Berkeley, Mixbook is a collaborative online photo book creation platform. Prices for Mixbook's products start from between $0.15 and $90, depending on paper type, size, number of pages and other product personalizations. In the nearly two decades since its launch, the company has expanded from yearbooks and photo books to include cards, calendars and other photo products, like its new AI-powered design technology and Mixbook Movies. The company's goal is to make personal storytelling intuitive, achievable and fast. But as I skimmed through photos of time spent in Toronto, New York, Copenhagen, Portland and Puerto Rico, I found myself hesitant to select certain photos over others. I was oddly worried about what AI could intuit from my photos and art direction, and even the photo placement and layout. Was I really concerned about how a non-human entity understood, processed and described my photos? Yes. But was I eager to have AI help generate fun and creative ideas for my photo book? Also yes. Mixbook's new key features Mixbook AI generates caption ideas for your photos. Mixbook's AI features suggest captions, text elements and layouts, allowing you to edit and customize the suggestions according to your preferences, enhancing the narrative behind the images. As a result, you can create professional-looking photo books that encapsulate the essence of your experiences -- all as part of Mixbook's ongoing efforts to blend technology and creativity to preserve and share its users' stories. Once I began uploading photos, Mixbook immediately stepped in to accommodate the process. After setting up my photo placement, I used its AI caption generator. Caption ideas were set up as different themes, including smart, by topic and location. For my leading photo, I was impressed to see that AI knew my photo was taken in Brooklyn (the Brooklyn Museum, to be exact). Though the caption generator feature was intended to be used this way, it still felt thoughtful and personal, reflecting a significant time in my life. I also spent time playing with typefaces to alter the mood and feeling the text conveyed on top of my photo. If you're lacking inspiration, the caption generator acts as a creative boost to better develop and understand the storytelling your photos naturally convey. My favorite feature was AI's ability to regenerate results, even if I wasn't satisfied with its attempt. I was struck by Mixbook's second attempt at generating text for my photo. So much so that I kept it in as part of my photo book's final design. From my experience, if you give AI the freedom to continually regenerate new ideas across its subcategories, you are bound to find something that either you like, or inspires a caption of your own. The process took less than 2 hours, mostly with most of the time spent placing my photos in layout and playing with features once they were laid out. With upgrades like choosing a hardcover book and using premium lustre paper, my Mixbook Photo Book totaled $65 before tax and shipping, and close to $100 following. But I also created a 10x10-inch Deluxe Square Glossy Premium Lustre Hardcover Photo Book -- 11 hand-selected pages with my travels in mind and text built out across them. Should you try out Mixbook's AI-Powered Design Technology? The Mixbook dashboard where you create and edit your photo book. I can't knock any company that uses AI in a way that's nothing more (or less!) than feel-good and genuinely helpful. Mixbook's caption generator helped me riff and come up with captions that felt true to me and what I was trying to evoke through my photos. And after some trial and error, I found some text that suited the story I wanted to tell with my photos. (I guess my AI-powered anxiety was unnecessary in the end.) Additionally, receiving my Mixbook Movie at the end of the process allowed me to digitally share my photo book with friends and family who were curious about it or the places I had been, with music themes and specific songs to match. These features were nice to have in the process and provided additional offerings when deciding if the price of my photo book was worth it. Mixbook consistently features 40 to 50% discount codes on its website, which helps keep prices accessible. I bought my photo book without a discount code. I also appreciated Mixbook's parameters throughout the process. When my copy was too close to the binding, I found my cursor in the "red zone." I was also flagged for not having 10 pages total in my photo book, which restricted me from checking out. But when I received my book, I was a little bummed to see that even with these callouts, the text on the backside of the book was, indeed, touching the binding of the book. The photo book also contained extra white pages in the back section, though I had met its page requirements. While these features aren't AI-related, I'd keep a close eye out for proximity within your design in hopes of not being disappointed. While Mixbook isn't the leading company for innovative photo editing or out-of-the-box typography, its success is built around memories, and commemorating the pleasant feeling from them. In turn, its new AI-powered additions are a nice add-on. The AI can step in as a collaborator without entirely removing humans from the process. For special occasions, a sentimental gift or simply a bonding activity to do with friends and family, Mixbook is proof that AI can be a benefit to humans. Its product affirms that it can't replace us -- or our memories. But this specific use of AI can help both become larger than life.
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