Biden education secretary rails against Republican-led ‘book bans’: Using education as a ‘political football’
Biden Education Secretary Miguel Cardona railed against Republican-led book bans Wednesday, calling pushes to remove content containing LGBTQ+ themes as well as alleged restrictions on Black history material in public schools “heartbreaking.”
“As U.S. secretary of education, as well as a father and lifelong educator, here’s what I know to be true: Parents don’t want politicians dictating what their children can learn, think and believe. That’s not how public education is supposed to work in a free country,” he wrote in a guest column published in The Tampa Bay Times on Thursday.
He alleged that an overwhelming majority of parents are upset with politicians’ attempts to use their children’s education as a “political football” in refusing to allow curriculum that violates their own opinions.
Cardona presumably turned the article into a jab at GOP leaders like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who came under fire for pushing back against an allegedly “woke” College Board outline for an AP African-American Studies course earlier this year, and ventured into a discussion of censoring Black history and culture.
“It’s heartbreaking, for example, to see politicians trying to prevent students from learning about the history, arts and culture, contributions and experiences of African Americans — especially when Black history is a vital part of our shared American story,” Cardona later said.
COLLEGE BOARD TO REVISE AP AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES FRAMEWORK AFTER FLORIDA REJECTS COURSE
“They want to ban kids from learning the truth when it doesn’t align with their political agenda. But it’s vital for all of us to understand our full history — the triumphs and the tragedies — so we can build a stronger, shared American future.”
DeSantis, as the most notorious example cited by opponents who allege he actively censored Black history and culture, claimed the proposed framework for the AP African-American Studies course violated Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act” by containing content regarding Black Queer Theory and critical race theory-based material.
Cardona’s next hit fired back at attempts to strip LGBTQ+ content from public schools, including some movements in predominantly red states and districts to restrict or monitor what is being taught in the classroom or placed in school libraries.
“It’s just as disturbing that some politicians want to limit our children’s freedom to read. Over the last year, 4 million students have had their reading censored through book bans — with the majority of book bans censoring stories of people of color or LGBTQ Americans,” he wrote.
“Just imagine being a parent whose kid has never read a single book in school about a family who looks like theirs,” he added.
Many Republicans, however, contend that such books, including those like the infamous Maia Kobabe graphic novel “Gender Queer” are age-inappropriate, with some containing explicit content referencing sexual acts.
Cardona alleged that censorship of academic material not only goes “against our values as a nation” but it also makes learning more difficult.
“The thousands of families I’ve met want more — not fewer — books on the shelves of their schools and local libraries,” he said.
The education secretary also lambasted some Republicans’ calls for “steep cuts to federal funding” for education, claiming the Biden administration has contrastingly put forth “real policies” geared toward giving students the funding they need.
“We do not dictate what is taught in classrooms. But we do stand up for what we’re hearing from parents across America,” he said.
Wedding platform Joy will let you outsource your vows to OpenAI
There’s nothing more romantic than having an AI-powered bot write your vows for you. Earlier this month, wedding planning platform Joy launched a new OpenAI-powered “Wedding Writer’s Block” tool that uses AI technology to generate a draft for one of the most important speeches of your life.
The AI assistant is designed to help write vows and wedding toast speeches, among other “wedding-related wordage,” the company claims, like a love story for your wedding website, thank you notes, or if you’re stuck on how to politely decline a wedding invite.
There are also several different tones that the draft can be written in. For instance, if you want to sound like William Shakespeare or maybe a pirate for some reason. The AI assistant can even write in the style of a therapist, TikToker, astrologist or pessimistic ex.
Image Credits: Joy
“Weddings are unique because they are a time to celebrate and honor relationships while bringing friends and family closer. At Joy, we always look for a way by which smart technology can eliminate roadblocks and make couples focus on what’s really important: each other,” Vishal Joshi, Co-Founder and CEO of Joy said in a statement.
In a recent survey, Joshi claims that 89% of users found it “somewhat overwhelming” to begin writing their wedding materials. Twenty-eight percent considered using AI to jumpstart the process, he added.
While Joy’s Writer’s Block Assistant is only meant to be an inspiration tool, it’s wild to think about the people out there who might use the feature to possibly copy the AI-generated draft word-for-word. So, keep an eye out for anyone that sounds a little more robotic than usual. (Just kidding.)
Jokes aside, Joy’s new AI assistant is a sign that companies are integrating OpenAI’s ChatGPT into literally anything. Even dating app users are using the chatbot tech for messaging their matches—which we’d argue is a little much. Let’s just stick to using it for silly things, shall we?
Wedding platform Joy will let you outsource your vows to OpenAI by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/16/wedding-platform-joy-will-let-you-outsource-your-vows-to-openai/
Jalen Carter, top NFL Draft prospect, pleads no contest to reckless driving, racing charges
Former Georgia defensive lineman and top NFL Draft prospect Jalen Carter has pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor charges of reckless driving and racing in connection to a January crash that killed one of his Georgia teammates and another staff member, his attorney said in a statement Thursday.
Carter, 21, was sentenced to 12 months probation and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine after entering no-contest pleas to both charges stemming from his alleged conduct in the Jan. 15 crash that resulted in the deaths of Georgia offensive lineman Devin Willock and recruiting staffer Chandler LeCroy.
“We are happy that we were able to work with the Solicitor General’s office to reach a resolution that was fair and just based on the evidence in this case,” attorney Kim Stephens said in the statement.
TOP NFL PROSPECT JALEN CARTER CAN’T COMPLETE WORKOUTS IN BRUTAL GEORGIA PRO DAY: REPORT
“Mr. Carter continues to grieve for the loss of his friends and continues to pray for their families, as well as for the continued healing for injured friends.”
Carter was also ordered to serve 80 hours of community service and will have to complete a state-approved defensive driving course.
Carter was accused of racing his 2021 Jeep Trackhawk against the 2021 Ford Expedition driven by LeCroy, which led to the Jan. 15 wreck. The crash occurred just hours after the Bulldogs celebrated their second straight championship with a parade ceremony. Willock was also killed in the crash.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM
Stephens disputed this accusation, citing the police investigation.
“If the investigation had determined otherwise, Mr. Carter would have been charged with the far more serious offenses of vehicular homicide and serious injury by vehicle under Georgia law, both felony offenses, and would have faced a lengthy prison sentence.”
Stephens also noted that Carter never left the scene until instructed by police and returned to speak with investigators when asked. He also phoned 911 and was not under the influence of alcohol or any other illegal substance.
“If there had been any suspicion that Mr. Carter had consumed alcohol or used an illegal substance when Athens-Clarke County police officers and investigators spoke to him at the scene, following the accident, they would have arrested him for DUI,” Stephens said.
Carter attended Georgia’s Pro Day on Wednesday where he weighed in nine pounds heavier at 323 compared to his 314-pound weigh-in at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis.
He also opted to only do positional workouts for the coaches, scouts and media present instead of doing the full workout.
Fox News’ Ryan Morik contributed to this report.
Oklahoma bombing co-conspirator’s son pleads guilty to armed robbery and kidnapping in Nevada: report
Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols’ son pleaded guilty to armed robbery and kidnapping on Wednesday for an incident in Henderson, Nevada in 2020, according to reports.
The Associated Press reported that Joshua Nichols, 40, and George William Moya III, 27, took plea deals in a case from February 2020 in which the two men attacked a man in Henderson. The deal avoids having the case go to trial next month in Clark County District Court.
Police allege that in 2020, Nichols and Moya kidnapped and robbed a 67-year-old man of his money, jewelry, clothing and cellphone while he was at his home in Henderson.
OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING ACCOMPLICE’S SON CHARGED IN KIDNAPPING, ARMED ROBBERY
Moya is expected to receive between four and 15 years in prison for pleading guilty to robbery with a deadly weapon.
Nichols, the AP reported, could get more than 17 years in prison, though his plea deal allows him to post $50,000 bail to be released on high-level electronic monitoring until his sentencing on June 14.
Nichols and his mother moved to Las Vegas after she divorced Terry Nichols. Years later, in April 1995, Nichols helped Timothy McVeigh bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. That bombing killed 168 people, the deadliest homegrown terrorist attack in US history according to the FBI.
Nichols, now 65, was sentenced to multiple lifetime sentences and is currently being held at a super-maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado, where the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman are also being held.
McVeigh was executed in 2001.
Joshua Nichols has been arrested numerous times as far back as 2005, for charges including vehicle theft, resisting arrest and armed assault.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
More than 2 tons of ‘missing’ uranium found in Libya after sparking nuclear fears
The International Atomic Energy Agency said that its inspectors had found 2.5 tons of uranium missing during a check at a storage facility in Libya.
https://nypost.com/2023/03/16/more-than-2-tons-of-missing-uranium-found-in-libya/
Credit Suisse, mired in chaos, says it’s bullish on Charles Schwab
Credit Suisse raised its rating on the stock to “outperform” saying it has “overshot to the downside.”
https://nypost.com/2023/03/16/credit-suisse-bullish-on-charles-schwab/
Anonymous app Sidechat picks up rival Yik Yak…and users aren’t happy
Sidechat, the anonymous posting platform that began blowing up last year on college campuses, appears to have acquired a rival anonymous social platform, Yik Yak. While you may recall Yik Yak’s troubles from earlier years, where bullying and harassment ultimately led to an ignominious exit in the form of an acquihire by Square, the gossip app relaunched under new Nashville-based ownership in 2021, promising improved moderation.
But now, Yik Yak’s app has been republished under the same App Store developer account as Sidechat — Flower Ave. It had originally been published under its own name, Yik Yak, Inc. (The first version under the original founders was Yik Yak LLC).
In addition, Sidechat’s users are complaining in App Store reviews about the forced migration from one app to the other.
“Bring back Yikyak,” one review is titled, noting they received an update that warned them that their “herd is moving,” which pointed them to Sidechat’s app. Several reviews also complain that Yik Yak had been anonymous, but Sidechat was asking for students’ school emails in order to participate.
“Yikyak merging with sidechat is the worst decision,” another reviewer lamented, adding that Yik Yak had been available to everyone, not just college students. Plus, the reviewer said, everyone is worried about the merger because their account info is now being associated with their school.
Oddly, not all Yik Yak users have gotten the push to migrate. As other App Store reviews noted, Yik Yak is still operating in some markets but not others. In fact, we were able to log in to Yik Yak in our local community when testing the app today — and have not yet received a push to move to Sidechat.
It could be that Sidechat is selectively pushing users located on or near universities and college campuses to migrate, as that’s its core demographic.
What’s interesting about this M&A event — which we’re hearing is more akin to an acqui-hire than some sort of big exit — is that both companies’ founders have tried to stay anonymous. Yik Yak earlier refused to respond to questions about its relaunch. And, even when being profiled by The New York Times, Sidechat only responded to press inquiries from a generic email. Dozens of student ambassadors for the app had also declined to respond to or ignored the paper’s inquiries.
However, an SEC filing for Sidechat’s parent company, Flower Ave., points to involvement from ex-Snap engineer Sebastian Gil and ex-Snap product designer Chamal Samaranayake. Per the filing, the company raised north of $10 million last summer, shortly after getting written up by various university press, like The Harvard Crimson and The Tufts Daily. More recently, Sidechat was covered by Annenberg Media, a paper funded by USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Some of the papers highlighted students’ misgivings over Sidechat’s moderation capabilities and overall influence on campus.
When asked, Sidechat’s founders declined to be interviewed for those articles, as well.
Our phone calls, emails, and other outreach to Yik Yak, Sidechat, and its founders have not been returned.
But there are plenty of social media complaints about the merger from less-than-satisfied users.
The timing of the complaints and App Store reviews point to a deal that went through sometime last month. For what it’s worth, Yik Yak Inc. updated its privacy policy in January, but it has not disclosed any change in ownership.
According to app store intelligence firm data.ai, Yik Yak’s app changed the name of its publisher from Yik Yak Inc. to Flower Avenue Inc. on February 28, 2023.
The firm tells us the new Yik Yak has seen approximately 3.5 million installs since its August 2021 relaunch. The highest ranking it ever received was the day after its relaunch when it briefly became the No. 1 Overall app on the U.S. App Store. Today, it no longer ranks in the Overall listings but is No. 89 in Social Networking.
Sidechat, meanwhile, had just slightly north of 180,000 lifetime installs, making it the smaller of the two apps. (But perhaps the one with more runway!). Its highest rank was No. 30 in the U.S. Social Networking category, which was achieved in November 2022.
The merger makes sense given that both Sidechat and Yik Yak share a similar purpose of connecting people anonymously, though Sidechat has more squarely focused on college student gossip.
But staying anonymous when asking others to trust your platform is an odd choice for these companies — and one which seems to be backfiring. Because the users don’t know who is running Sidechat or what their values are, they’re hesitant to even provide the company with their email, it seems.
Sarah Perez is available via email sarahp@techcrunch.com and Signal (415) 234-3994.
Anonymous app Sidechat picks up rival Yik Yak…and users aren’t happy by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch
New York police close to cracking decades-old murder of cop’s daughter: ‘We’re coming for you’
Megan McDonald, the 20-year-old daughter of an NYPD detective, was beaten to death in the backseat of her white Mercury Sable and dumped on the side of the road in Orange County, New York, 20 years ago Wednesday.
This year, New York State Police believe they’re closer than ever to an arrest in the case.
“We’re coming for you,” said New York State Police (NYSP) Lieutenant Brad Natalizio. “And we’re not going to stop until justice is served for Megan and her family, who has been suffering for 20 years.”
Authorities found McDonald’s vehicle at the Kensington Manor apartment complex parking lot in Wallkill, New York, two days after they discovered her body. A medical examiner determined her cause of death to be repeated blunt-force trauma to the head.
ALASKA MAN ARRESTED IN COLORADO MURDER FOR SECOND TIME AFTER WITNESSES COME FORWARD
McDonald had been a student at SUNY Orange Community College and working as a waitress to pay for her tuition.
MARYLAND HIGH SCHOOL GIRL’S MURDER SOLVED HALF A CENTURY LATER
NYSP is “very focused” on one suspect who knew McDonald. They believe the 20-year-old’s murder was “a crime of passion” and “intimate partner violence.”
“We’re getting to the point now where we see the finish line in sight,” Natalizio told Fox News Digital.
The lieutenant feels a personal connection to the case for several reasons. He was the same age as McDonald, grew up in Orange County, and worked for the NYPD in 2006 before he eventually moved back upstate.
“Prior to getting promoted to investigator, when I was on patrol, I was actually … driving around and my wife — my girlfriend at the time. She texted me, and she asked, ‘Hey, do you know Megan McDonald?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard of her.’ It’s a very popular case in the Orange County area,” Natalizio recalled. “And she said, ‘If you’re ever promoted to investigator, I … want you to get that case. And I want you solve that case because I work with her mom at the hospital.’ They were both… registered nurses on the same floor. It hits home.”
When Natalizio eventually began working for the NYSP, he took on McDonald’s case in 2017 and hasn’t stopped digging since despite several job changes, calling the work a “community effort” across departments, personnel and the community.
DNA STRANDS ARE KEY IN SOLVING COLD CASE INVESTIGATIONS THROUGH GENETIC GENEAOLOGY
Their current suspect “flew under the radar for the first several years of the investigation because there was an original suspect that the police and even the suspect were focused on,” he explained.
Police have since been able to “confidently eliminate” that individual as a suspect and have narrowed down their focus to the new suspect. The New York City Detective’s Endowment Association and FBI have offered two separate $10,000 rewards that could lead to the suspect’s arrest.
In a March 12 statement posted to the Facebook group “Justice for Megan McDonald,” her family said that “as always,” they stand “with the State Police” and are “grateful for the enormous amount of support from other agencies.”
“There is nowhere this COWARD can hide from all of them,” they wrote.
McDonald’s father died in 2002, a year before she was killed.
Authorities are asking anyone with information about this case to call State Police Middletown BCI at 845-344-5300. Anonymous tips may be called into the Troop F Major Crimes confidential tip line at (845) 344-5370 or emailed to crimetip@troopers.ny.gov
TikTok in talks with potential buyers as US presses for ban: sources
TikTok is mulling over its options and exploring possible deals it considered when President Trump had threatened to ban the app in 2020.
https://nypost.com/2023/03/16/tiktok-in-talks-with-potential-buyers-as-us-presses-for-ban-sources/
First Republic secures $30 billion rescue from large banks
• Mortgage rates drop in wake of bank failures
• Longer-term uncertainty is expected to keep the cost of buying a home unaffordable for many
• European Central Bank hikes rates half a point
• Credit Suisse: Why it’s struggling and why that’s a big deal
• Credit Suisse’s $54 billion lifeline calms panic
• KFILE: Ron DeSantis blames SVB’s diversity initiatives and federal regulators for crisis
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/16/investing/first-republic-bank/index.html