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Facing pushback from Lebanese officials, UN walks back plan to give aid to Syrian refugees in USD

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:10:31 GMT

BEIRUT (AP) — The United Nations announced Saturday that it will suspend a plan to begin making aid payments to Syrian refugees in crisis-wracked Lebanon in dollars, after pushback from Lebanese officials.Lebanon has been in the throes of a severe financial crisis since 2019, with triple-digit inflation and the domestic currency having lost more than 98% of its market value. An estimated three-quarters of the population is now living in poverty, with refugees having been hit particularly hard. Some 90% of Syrian refugees in Lebanon are below the extreme poverty line, according to a U.N. assessment.Since the collapse of Lebanon’s currency, U.N. agencies had been paying assistance to refugees in Lebanese pounds.However, on Wednesday, citing “the rapid depreciation of the pound, increased fluctuations of the exchange rate, and the strain on the financial provider in supplying large volumes of cash in Lebanese pounds” the U.N. refugee agency and the World Food Program, along with the U....

12 shot, 3 dead in overnight shootings in Chicago ahead of weekend

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:10:31 GMT

CHICAGO — Chicago police reported 12 people shot, three fatally, in overnight shootings all over the Chicagoland area ahead of the holiday weekend.Police reported that a 33-year-old man was found unresponsive on the sidewalk near the 7800 block of South Seeley Avenue around 12:50 a.m. with a gunshot wound to the left armpit. He was pronounced dead on the scene. Around 1:18 a.m., police found a 25-year-old man near the 1400 block of West 49th Street inside a car with a gunshot wound to the head. he was transported to the hospital in critical condition.According to reports, a 34-year-old man was found on the sidewalk near the 500 block of West Surf Street with a gunshot wound to the chest. He was pronounced dead at the hospital shortly after. Shots fired on Chicago’s North Avenue Beach hours after opening for the summer Two women were standing on a sidewalk near the 2300 block of West 18th Street around 2:55 a.m. when shots were fired.A 36-year-old woman was transported to the hosp...

ATCEMS: Motorcyclist dies after collision in northwestern Travis County

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:10:31 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) — A motorcyclist died early Saturday morning after a collision in northwest Travis County near Lago Visa. Travis County STAR Flight and the Austin-Travis County EMS both responded to the crash.ATCEMS said it responded to a single motorcycle crash at 4:12 a.m. in the 19900 block of Boggy Ford.According to officials, ATCEMS performed CPR on an adult patient, but the person was later pronounced dead on the scene.

During the pandemic, one St. Paul family took on a very big project: They bought a resort.

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:10:31 GMT

Remember those pandemic projects of 2020?We spruced up our back yards to create outdoor living spaces … we painted after noticing all those scuff marks during lockdown … we learned how to make sourdough bread.Anne and James Dougherty of St. Paul took it a bit further: They purchased, renovated and reopened a vintage lake resort for seasonal vacationers to northern Minnesota.Jeni Anderson enjoys the quiet morning at the end of the dock at Wambolts Cabins, near Park Rapids, Minn. on Saturday, May 20, 2023. Anderson and her family were visiting to help the owners with getting the resort ready for the tourist season. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)Cabins and trees are silhouetted against the darkening sky at Wambolts Cabins, on Upper Bottle Lake near Park Rapids, Minn., on Friday evening, May 19, 2023. The Dougherty family of St. Paul bought the vintage fishing camp in 2021 and are refurbishing and updating it to give vacationers that classic Minnesota "vacation at the lake" exp...

Teen shot multiple times in Carondelet

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:10:31 GMT

ST. LOUIS -- A 15-year-old boy is seriously injured after being shot several times in South City. This happened around seven last night. Near Michigan and Mott in the city's Carondelet Neighborhood.  We will update you on any possible suspect or suspects and that boy's condition.

Colorado’s overdose rates stabilized in 2022 but remain near record levels

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:10:31 GMT

Fatal overdoses declined slightly in Colorado in 2022, newly finalized state data shows, after two years of surging deaths. But public health officials and addiction experts drew little comfort from last year’s totals, which remain near record highs amid fentanyl’s growing dominance of the illicit drug supply.“(Overdoses) evened themselves out a little bit. We have a new normal, which is terrible,” said Dr. Josh Blum, an addiction medicine physician at Denver Health. “Now we have a stable, unacceptably high death rate.”In 2022, 1,799 people fatally overdosed in Colorado, a 4% drop from 2021’s total of 1,881, according to data from the state Department of Public Health and Environment. The figures represent a bittersweet stabilization: A slight, one-year decline is still a reprieve after rates nearly doubled in recent years. The number of fentanyl-related deaths — which quadrupled between 2019 and 2021 — plateaued, and methampheta...

For Gen Z, playing an influencer on TikTok comes naturally

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:10:31 GMT

Rachel Aaron, a 24-year-old who works in public relations in New York, recently dressed up for a work event at Bloomingdale’s. In the era of “get ready with me” videos on TikTok, it was a golden opportunity to create content.Aaron, who has just 3,300 followers on TikTok, filmed herself chatting to the camera while selecting a black Skims dress, a blazer and a belt. Her post garnered a few hundred views and some favorable comments like “Slay mamas.”Aaron is not a major social media star, nor is she a celebrity. At least not yet. But she is part of a generation that is increasingly posting on social media in the manner of professional influencers: sharing daily routines, pitching or unboxing products, modeling clothing and advertising personal Amazon storefronts. These videos are often viewed as cool and entrepreneurial by peers (and sometimes by bemused parents). They can also lead to free stuff and extra cash.Aaron lists an email for brand inquiries on her TikTok profile and a link ...

Avalanche Journal: Connor Bedard is in Central Division and Florida Panthers are in Stanley Cup Final thanks to this regular-season game

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:10:31 GMT

In this week’s Avalanche journal, reflections on the Stanley Cup Playoffs and surrounding NHL topics as Colorado prepares to watch a Cup Final from home.A regular season game with all-time ripple effects: Pittsburgh vs. Chicago was a Game 82 for the history books in April. All the Penguins needed was to beat the tanking Blackhawks to reach the playoffs for the 17th consecutive season. Instead they unraveled in a 5-2 loss, allowing the Florida Panthers to sneak into the second wild card spot on the final day. Barely a month later, the No. 8 seed Panthers are in the Stanley Cup Final after knocking off arguably the three best teams in the NHL. They have won 11 of 12 games since trailing Boston 3-1. They’re 6-0 in overtime games these playoffs. It’s an all-time underdog run.In the Panthers’ wake is Toronto, which didn’t extend general manager Kyle Dubas after a dramatic and dysfunctional series of communications between Dubas and the team. Not to mention t...

Driver’s licenses, addresses, photos: Inside how TikTok shares user data

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:10:31 GMT

In August 2021, TikTok received a complaint from a British user, who flagged that a man had been “exposing himself and playing with himself” on a livestream she hosted on the video app. She also described past abuse she had experienced.To address the complaint, TikTok employees shared the incident on an internal messaging and collaboration tool called Lark, according to company documents obtained by The New York Times. The British woman’s personal data — including her photo, country of residence, Internet Protocol address, device and user IDs — were also posted on the platform, which is similar to Slack and Microsoft Teams.Her information was just one piece of TikTok user data shared on Lark, which is used every day by thousands of employees of the app’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, including by those in China. According to the documents obtained by the Times, the driver’s licenses of American users were also accessible on the platform, as were some users’ potentially illegal con...

In battle over AI, Meta decides to give away its crown jewels

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:10:31 GMT

SAN FRANCISCO — In February, Meta made an unusual move in the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence: It decided to give away its AI crown jewels.The Silicon Valley giant, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, had created an AI technology, called LLaMA, that can power online chatbots. But instead of keeping the technology to itself, Meta released the system’s underlying computer code into the wild. Academics, government researchers and others who gave their email address to Meta could download the code once the company had vetted the individual.Essentially, Meta was giving its AI technology away as open-source software — computer code that can be freely copied, modified and reused — providing outsiders with everything they needed to quickly build chatbots of their own.“The platform that will win will be the open one,” Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist, said in an interview.As a race to lead AI heats up across Silicon Valley, Meta is standing out fro...