The Full Belmonte, 4/24/2023
Biden
“President Joe Biden is preparing to formally announce his bid for a second term this week. Sources tell CNN that final edits have been made to an announcement video likely to be released Tuesday, marking four years since Biden declared himself a candidate in the 2020 presidential election. While Democratic lawmakers are poised to coalesce around his campaign, polls are showing tepid support among Americans for his reelection run. An NBC News poll released Sunday found just 26% of Americans think Biden, at 80, should run for a second term as president, while 70% say he should not. Among Democrats, 51% say Biden should not run for a second term. That mirrors the findings of other recent polls, including an AP-NORC poll released Friday and CNN polling released earlier this month. In the NBC poll, nearly half of those who oppose a Biden run cite his age is a major reason for that view.” [CNN]
Trial begins in 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting
“Jury selection is set to begin in the federal death penalty trial of a truck driver accused of shooting to death 11 Jewish worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. Robert G. Bowers, from the Pittsburgh suburb of Baldwin, faces 63 counts in the Oct. 27, 2018, attack at the Tree of Life synagogue where members of three Jewish congregations were holding Sabbath activities. Jury selection begins Monday. If convicted, Bowers could get the death penalty. The 50-year-old offered to plead guilty in return for a life sentence, but federal prosecutors turned him down. Watch a video of congregants speaking out ahead of the trial.” [USA Today]
The long-delayed capital murder trial of Robert Bowers in the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue massacre will begin with jury selection beginning April 24, 2023, a federal judge has ruled.
Gene J. Puskar, AP
Abortion
“House Republicans are abandoning a yearslong push by their party to pass a federal abortion ban and are exploring other ways to advance their anti-abortion agenda — a remarkable shift that underscores how the GOP is wrestling with how to approach the topic ahead the 2024 presidential election. In interviews with dozens of Republicans, the vast majority — even among the staunchest opponents of abortion — rejected the idea of Congress pursuing a national ban and said leadership has no plans on the horizon for it to be a centerpiece of their agenda, despite passing federal restrictions on the procedure in previous years when they were in power. Instead, they argue that the question of whether to ban abortion is now best left to the states.” [CNN]
N.A.A.C.P. Sues Mississippi Over Laws on Policing and the Courts in Jackson
Two laws signed by the governor on Friday expand a state-controlled police force in the capital, stirring more tension between white state lawmakers and the majority Black city.
By Neelam Bohra and Eliza Fawcett
“In another sign of the deep rift in Mississippi between white state lawmakers and Black residents of its capital, Jackson, the N.A.A.C.P. is suing state leaders over two new laws that it says create a ‘separate and unequal’ structure involving the police and courts in the city.
The laws, passed by the overwhelmingly white and Republican Legislature and signed on Friday by Gov. Tate Reeves, also a Republican, establish state control of policing and the judicial system in much of Jackson, something not done in other cities in the state, according to the N.A.A.C.P. The city’s leaders are mostly Black and Democratic, and 80 percent of its 150,000 residents are Black.
One of the laws, Senate Bill 2343, extends the jurisdiction of the Capitol Police from a compact district surrounding state government buildings to broader areas of the city, where tension already exists between Black residents and the Capitol Police over officers’ conduct. The other law, House Bill 1020, establishes a new court system overseeing Jackson’s downtown, with judges and prosecutors who are appointed, not elected.
Proponents of the laws have insisted that they are needed to help reduce crime in Jackson, which has a higher murder rate than much of the nation, and assist the city’s police force….” Read more at New York Times
The way the IRS operates is about to undergo a major change
“Following the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, the Internal Revenue Service will receive nearly $80 billion in added funding from now through fiscal year 2031 to catch up with backlogs, hire more employees, implement 21st-century technology, go after increasingly sophisticated tax cheats and, in short, reinvent itself. The agency envisions significant changes to improve taxpayer services, quickly resolve problems, use technology to operate more effectively, expand the workforce, improve its culture and collect a lot more money from corporations, partnerships and wealthy individuals.” Read more at USA Today
Pinkeye might be a symptom of a new coronavirus subvariant.
“What to know: The subvariant Arcturus can cause fever and conjunctivitis, mainly among children, anecdotal reports suggest. But experts haven’t made a conclusive link.
What causes pinkeye? Allergies, injury, or bacterial and viral infections. It appears as an inflamed, itchy and painful eye, and sometimes requires treatment.” [Washington Post]
Sudan evacuations
Smoke is seen in Khartoum, Sudan, Saturday, April 22, 2023.
Marwan Ali, AP
“After a week of heavy fighting in Sudan between rival military factions, the Biden administration moved to evacuate US government personnel from the region over the weekend. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that all US personnel and their families had been evacuated and that operations at the US embassy in Khartoum have been ‘temporarily suspended.’ However, a State Department spokesman confirmed they do not ‘foresee coordinating a US government evacuation for our fellow citizens in Sudan at this time or in the coming days.’ The State Department does not keep an official count of US citizens in foreign countries and Americans are not required to register when they go abroad. Officials last week said that there could be an estimated 16,000 American citizens in Sudan, most of whom are dual nationals.” [CNN]
Ukraine
“Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will chair a UN Security Council meeting today as tensions continue to rise between Russia and several UN countries over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Russia leads the council this month due to procedural rules, presiding over a body where members have slammed its war. This comes as Russia is also threatening to terminate the Black Sea grain deal, viewed as critical for solving the world hunger crisis, if Group of Seven nations ban exports to the country. In July 2022, Ukraine and Russia established the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal brokered by the UN and Turkey aimed at guaranteeing safe passage for ships carrying grain and oilseeds —some of Ukraine's most important exports.” [CNN]
U.S. spends more on military than next 10 nations combined
Data: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Chart: Axios Visuals
“Countries around the world spent a combined $2.24 trillion on their militaries last year — a 3.7% increase on last year's previous record high when adjusted for inflation, Axios World editor Dave Lawler writes from an annual report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Many of the biggest increases came in Europe as countries responded to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.” [Axios]
Chinese Censorship Is Quietly Rewriting the Covid-19 Story
Under government pressure, Chinese scientists have retracted studies and withheld or deleted data. The censorship has stymied efforts to understand the virus.
By Mara Hvistendahl and Benjamin Mueller
Mara Hvistendahl, an investigative reporter who has worked and reported on science inside China, and Benjamin Mueller, a health and science reporter, obtained previously unreported documents and interviewed scientists across several continents to piece together China’s censorship campaign.
“Early in 2020, on the same day that a frightening new illness officially got the name Covid-19, a team of scientists from the United States and China released critical data showing how quickly the virus was spreading, and who was dying.
The study was cited in health warnings around the world and appeared to be a model of international collaboration in a moment of crisis.
Within days, though, the researchers quietly withdrew the paper, which was replaced online by a message telling scientists not to cite it. A few observers took note of the peculiar move, but the whole episode quickly faded amid the frenzy of the coronavirus pandemic.
What is now clear is that the study was not removed because of faulty research. Instead, it was withdrawn at the direction of Chinese health officials amid a crackdown on science. That effort kicked up a cloud of dust around the dates of early Covid cases, like those reported in the study.
‘It was so hard to get any information out of China,’ said one of the authors, Ira Longini, of the University of Florida, who described the back story of the removal publicly for the first time in a recent interview. ‘There was so much covered up, and so much hidden.’
That the Chinese government muzzled scientists, hindered international investigations and censored online discussion of the pandemic is well documented. But Beijing’s stranglehold on information goes far deeper than even many pandemic researchers are aware of. Its censorship campaign has targeted international journals and scientific databases, shaking the foundations of shared scientific knowledge, a New York Times investigation found.
Under pressure from their government, Chinese scientists have withheld data, withdrawn genetic sequences from public databases and altered crucial details in journal submissions. Western journal editors enabled those efforts by agreeing to those edits or withdrawing papers for murky reasons, a review by The Times of over a dozen retracted papers found.
Groups including the World Health Organization have given credence to muddled data and inaccurate timelines.
This scientific censorship has not universally succeeded: The original version of the February 2020 paper, for example, can still be found online with some digging. But the campaign starved doctors and policymakers of critical information about the virus at the moment the world needed it most. It bred mistrust of science in Europe and the United States, as health officials cited papers from China that were then retracted.
The crackdown continues to breed misinformation today and has hindered efforts to determine the origins of the virus.
Such censorship spilled into public view recently, when an international group of scientists discovered genetic sequence data that Chinese researchers had collected from a Wuhan market in January 2020 but withheld from foreign experts for three years — a delay that global health officials called ‘inexcusable.’
The sequences showed that raccoon dogs, a fox-like animal, had deposited genetic signatures in the same place that genetic material from the virus was left, a finding consistent with a scenario in which the virus spread to people from illegally traded market animals….” Read more at New York Times
“South Korea reinstated Japan’s preferred trading status, a major step in mending ties with a long-time rival that also aligns with Washington’s efforts to create a global supply chain less reliant on China. The development is part of broader attempts by both nations to fix strained diplomatic ties, rooted in disagreements over wartime labor and compensation.” [Bloomberg]
NBCUniversal CEO
Jeff Shell at the Allen & Co. media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, last July. Photo: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
“NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell is stepping down after an outside investigation ‘into a complaint of inappropriate conduct,’ its parent company Comcast announced Sunday. ‘I had an inappropriate relationship with a woman in the company, which I deeply regret,’ Shell said in a statement. ‘I'm truly sorry I let my Comcast and NBCUniversal colleagues down, they are the most talented people in the business and the opportunity to work with them the last 19 years has been a privilege.’ The brief statement did not specify who the woman was or include any other details about the investigation. Shell had been named CEO in January 2020 after leading content creation, programming and distribution for NBCUniversal Film and Entertainment.” [CNN]
How AI tapped our brains
Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios
“Ever written a blog? Built a web page? Participated in a Reddit thread?
Chances are your words have contributed to the education of AI chatbots everywhere, Axios tech managing editor Scott Rosenberg writes from the Bay Area.
Why it matters: The AI boom is built on data. The data comes from the internet — and the internet came from us. But we produced all that stuff for one another, not for AI.
What's happening: This massive verbal repurposing is triggering a legal brawl over whether it should be treated as fair use or theft.
It's also inspiring a personal reckoning for many of the millions whose postings built today's online world.
How it works: We thought we were sharing our hearts and minds — and of course we were.
But without realizing it, we were also creating a database — incomplete, but rich — of human expression.
That database fuels he uncanny sentence-completion gymnastics of ChatGPT and its competitors.
Visual AI tools — Dall-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion — got popular before verbal chatbots like ChatGPT. So visual creators — photographers, illustrators and fine artists — were the first to grapple with this realization.
Musicians face the same epiphany, as they encounter multiplying AI-conjured facsimiles of their works — like the (fake) collaboration between Drake and the Weeknd, ‘Heart on My Sleeve.’
A Washington Post project, ‘Inside the Black Box,’ lets you enter any internet domain name to answer the question: ‘Is your website training AI?’ (This doesn't include ChatGPT: OpenAI has not disclosed its sources.)
Scott's thought bubble: The personal blog I wrote for 15 years is well represented in the Post data set — along, it seems, with most of the other writing I contributed for 10 years to the web magazine I helped create.” [Axios]
AI drives top stock in S&P 500
Data: FactSet. Chart: Axios Visuals
“Nvidia, a chipmaking giant that helped ignite PC gaming, is this year's highest-flying stock in the S&P 500, Matt Phillips writes for Axios Markets.
Why it matters: Soaring semiconductor share prices reflect the promise — and hype — surrounding artificial intelligence.
Nvidia — which transformed the industry in 1999 by inventing the graphics processing unit (GPU) — now says it's ‘The Engine of AI.’
By the numbers: Nvidia — based in Santa Clara, Calif. — has seen its stock rocket 85% this year.
The bottom line: The surge shows that, as Axios' Felix Salmon notes, ‘there's real money in selling picks and shovels to the folks getting into AI.’” [Axios]
Twitter sours on checkmarks
“Twitter users are pushing back against Elon Musk's new pay-for-verification policy, with many journalists and celebrities refusing to pay to keep their once-coveted blue checks, Axios' Sara Fischer and Rebecca Falconer report.
Why it matters: Internet verification used to be a badge of honor. Now it's achievable to anyone who is willing to buy it.
What's happening: Twitter on Thursday began removing blue check marks from hundreds of thousands of accounts belonging to celebrities, journalists and other public figures who were verified by the platform before Musk changed the rules.
The Twitter CEO later announced he's personally paying for some high-profile users to remain verified on Twitter, even when they'd indicated they didn't want this status under his new subscription system.
Blue checks have returned to the Twitter profiles of many accounts with more than 1 million followers.
The checkmarks returned to accounts of several famous Twitter users who are no longer alive, with the message: ‘This account is verified because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number.’
This includes journalist Jamal Khashoggi, killed in 2018; chef Anthony Bourdain, who died the same year; Kobe Bryant and actor Chadwick Boseman, who both died in 2020; and Barbara Walters, who died last year.” [Axios]