One former Louder with Crowder employee told Mediaite that he received unsolicited, sexually graphic texts that included photos of Crowder’s genitalia.

A year after dozens were arrested during protests in Akron over the police shooting death of 25-year-old Jayland Walker, the vast majority of cases ended without convictions. A grand jury previously declined to bring charges against the Akron Police officers who shot Walker more than 46 times. “These individuals were engaged in expression of their First Amendment rights, and the vast majority were doing so lawfully,” said Summit Legal Defenders director Andrea Whitaker. “So I'm not surprised by these numbers, that they are not the numbers we typically see in criminal cases.” That non-profit legal agency serves as the public defender for Summit County and represented 50 of the 62 cases. Of those 62 cases, 38 were dismissed and 10 ended in pleas or diversion programs. Of the 14 cases that did go to trial, seven ended in not guilty verdicts, five had guilty verdicts to some or all charges and two had cases that were dismissed or ended in mistrials, according to Whitaker. Based on these numbers, first compiled by the Akron Beacon Journal, only eight percent of cases ended in guilty verdicts. “I think that there was a decision to arrest everybody downtown at a certain point,” Whitaker said. “And that was regardless of the type of activity they were engaged in. And that is what has led to the numbers that we're seeing.” Last month, 24 plaintiffs arrested during protests brought a federal lawsuit, alleging mass arrests — including of those who were not protesting and instead happened to be in the area — and unnecessary violence against protesters exercising their First Amendment rights and bystanders with chemical weapons and beatings.

Women in India's northeastern state of Manipur attacked the house of the main suspect in a sexual assault case that has enraged the nation, state police said on Friday.

Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski has revealed that a single executive put Babylon 5 on the back burner... but now they've retired, the "floodgates opened". Unqualified support for this hero who held back the tide of JMS’s bloated hack sci-fi “mythology” for as long as he humanly could.

A B.C. family's attempt to trade in their birth certificates for access to mythic, secret bank accounts containing untold riches has prompted a scathing decision from a judge, who called their claims "incoherent, unintelligible nonsense."

Sam Bankman-Fried seemed unprepared for the end of his FTX crypto exchange, but he’d certainly started planning for the end of civilization. According to new court filings, Bankman-Fried had chalked out how he would purchase the island nation of Nauru. Come the great fire or flood, he would move himself and his colleagues in the effective altruism movement into a bunker there, to wait out the apocalypse. The court filings in a federal bankruptcy court in Delaware, dated July 20, included a memo crafted by an FTX Foundation official and Sam Bankman-Fried’s brother Gabriel Bankman-Fried. It outlined the future survival of FTX and Alameda Research employees and all those who subscribed to the effective altruism concept. The ultimate strategy, according to the memo, was “to purchase the sovereign nation of Nauru in order to construct a ‘bunker / shelter’ that would be used for some event where 50%-99.99% of people die [to] ensure that most EAs (effective altruists) survive.” The memo also mentioned to plans to develop “sensible regulation around human genetic enhancement, and build a lab there,” noting that perhaps “there are other things it’s useful to do with a sovereign country, too.”

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen…

High-profile A.I. chatbot ChatGPT performed worse on certain tasks in June than its March version, a Stanford University study found. The study compared the performance of the chatbot, created by OpenAI, over several months at four “diverse” tasks: solving math problems, answering sensitive questions, generating software code, and visual reasoning. Researchers found wild fluctuations—called drift—in the technology’s ability to perform certain tasks. The study looked at two versions of OpenAI’s technology over the time period: a version called GPT-3.5 and another known as GPT-4. The most notable results came from research into GPT-4’s ability to solve math problems. Over the course of the study researchers found that in March GPT-4 was able to correctly identify that the number 17077 is a prime number 97.6% of the times it was asked. But just three months later, its accuracy plummeted to a lowly 2.4%. Meanwhile, the GPT-3.5 model had virtually the opposite trajectory. The March version got the answer to the same question right just 7.4% of the time—while the June version was consistently right, answering correctly 86.8% of the time. Similarly varying results happened when the researchers asked the models to write code and to do a visual reasoning test that asked the technology to predict the next figure in a pattern.

Extreme heat is the single largest cause of weather-related deaths in the United States over the last three decades. Heat-related deaths here have increased by 74 percent since 1980, one study found. Last year, Maricopa County, Arizona, reported a 25 percent spike in heat-related mortality. In Phoenix this year, where temperatures hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit 10 days in a row this month, at least 18 people have died of heat-related causes since April, while an additional 69 deaths are under investigation. As climate change delivers ever hotter summers, extreme heat is only set to wreak more havoc on the country—and require more and more resources to keep people safe. But the U.S. government doesn’t officially consider its deadliest—and increasingly common—weather events a major disaster. To date, the U.S. has never issued a federal disaster declaration for heat; according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, three such requests have been denied. Why doesn’t the federal government treat extreme heat like the catastrophe it is? The Stafford Act—which governs federal disaster assistance provided by FEMA—omits not just extreme heat but also droughts and wildfires from its list of incident types that qualify for a major disaster declaration, which states apply for in order to unlock resources from the federal government. While extreme heat is technically eligible to be treated as a limited emergency or major disaster, states applying for a federal emergency declaration must prove that the disaster has exceeded their capabilities and resources. Yet the federal government’s lack of preparedness around extreme heat is also due to how different heat is from other major disasters like tornadoes and hurricanes. Both offer more dramatic scenes of destruction than sweltering temperatures. Crucially, they also pose a major threat to property.

The decline of the Continent’s largest economy will send shudders across the EU’s already polarized political landscape.

An important Pfizer pharmaceutical plant in North Carolina was severely damaged on Wednesday after a powerful tornado ripped through the area, threatening production lines that normally provide huge amounts of medicine to U.S. hospitals. Meanwhile, torrential rain flooded parts of Kentucky and communities from California to South Florida endured scorching heat that at times reached record-high temperatures. Pfizer confirmed the large manufacturing complex was damaged by a twister that touched down shortly after midday near Rocky Mount, but said in an email that it had no reports of serious injuries. A later company statement said all employees were safely evacuated and accounted for. Parts of roofs were ripped open at the Pfizer plant in Rocky Mount, which is a complex composed of several massive buildings. The plant stores large quantities of medicine that were tossed about, said Nash County Sheriff Keith Stone. "I've got reports of 50,000 pallets of medicine that are strewn across the facility and damaged through the rain and the wind," Stone said. The plant produces anesthesia and other drugs as well as nearly 25% of all sterile injectable medications used in U.S. hospitals, Pfizer said on its website. Erin Fox, senior pharmacy director at University of Utah Health, said the damage "will likely lead to long-term shortages while Pfizer works to either move production to other sites or rebuilds."

According to the lawsuit, Infante began exhibiting heatstroke symptoms including confusion, altered mental state, dizziness and loss of consciousness. His friend and co-worker Joshua Espinoza began pouring cold water over him, trying to cool him down. A foreman insisted Espinoza call the police, claiming Infante’s bizarre behavior was due to drugs, and the foreman pushed for a drug test when emergency medical services arrived. On the day of the incident, temperatures in San Antonio reached in excess of 100F (37.7C) with humidity levels reaching as high as 75%, noted the lawsuit. Infante later died in a hospital from severe heatstroke and had a recorded internal temperature of 109.8F (43.2C). The Center for Disease Control states a body temperature of 103F (39.4C) or higher is a main symptom of heatstroke.

Cracks caused by the kind of strain described above are known as fatigue damage: repeated stress and motion that causes microscopic breaks, eventually causing machines or structures to break. Amazingly, after about 40 minutes of observation, the crack in the platinum started to fuse back together and mend itself before starting again in a different direction.

How much would you be willing to pay for a donair costume? Restaurants that sell the sweet and savoury treat on both sides of the country have been asking themselves just that, as they fervently outbid each other in an online auction for the unique meaty attire. The costume is being sold on the Alberta government's surplus website, and the bids had topped a whopping $6,500 on Thursday afternoon.

Just a reg'lar American loving relatable American food that Americans eat.

A working theory of how The Donald is funded.

U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal, Cory Booker and Jerry Moran released a discussion draft of a new, bipartisan NIL bill. The senators’ latest, bipartisan bill with Sen. Moran also provides lifetime scholarships and long-term medical coverage, according to the Yahoo! report. It reportedly doesn’t address the issue of athletes being classified as employees of their institutions. Yahoo! reported the College Athletes Protection and Compensation Act creates the College Athletics Corporation (CAC) to “serve as an NIL clearinghouse in charge of administering the bill, creating specific policy and regulating and certifying NIL agents.” A major issue with any proposed federal legislation is which entity is tasked with regulating the NIL market – a current federal agency, a newly created one, or the NCAA itself through legal protections provided through a bill. A 15-member board would serve the CAC, which would be provided with subpoena power.

New details in the mystery of a missing documentary.

MEXICO CITY, July 18 (Reuters) - An Australian sailor finally touched dry land on Tuesday in the Mexican port city of Manzanillo, capping off months spent adrift at sea with his dog until a surprise rescue by a Mexican fishing ship.

Central Amsterdam gets millions of tourists all year round, who all tend to congregate around a very small area. The local government wants to move the Red Light District and "centralize" Amsterdams prostitutes in a single mega brothel somewhere else in town.