The World Robot Conference 2023 has opened in China, aimed at promoting scientific and technological progress. The event is a forum for participants to network and seek resources for further innovation. There’s also the opportunity for ice-cream served by a robot

Beekeeper Luc Peters was one of several local beekeepers called in to help after some five million bees fell off a truck on Guelph Line in Burlington, north of Dundas Street Wednesday morning. Shortly after 9 a.m., police said the situation was almost clear.

Despite promises that new repayment plans would make monthly payments lower, many borrowers report they are higher.

I spoke with more than 50 insurance experts, patients, lawyers, physicians and consumer advocates about building a tool anyone could use to navigate insurance appeals. Nearly everyone said the same thing: Great idea. But almost impossible to do.

“A lot of us feel TSMC is only dealing with the union and trying a little bit at all because they want that Chips Act money, they’re chasing it,” they added. “The US is just worried about getting their microchips because of all the drama with China and we’re kind of dragged into it.”

New research reveals the vast scope of the Native American boarding school system, which for more than a century removed Native children from their homes and families in an effort to assimilate them. Students at the schools gave up their names, their labor and sometimes their lives.

KHOU 11 Investigates discovered more than half of the cops in the Coffee City Police Department had been suspended, demoted or fired from their previous jobs.

Half the staff of Atlanta magazine has quit after the publisher challenged their effort to present a modern picture of life in a diverse, LGBTQ-friendly town. On a hot Tuesday in late June, staffers at Atlanta magazine gathered for a tense meeting with longtime publisher Sean McGinnis. On his agenda: pronouns. “Are we, as a matter of fact, now writing stories based upon preferred pronouns?” McGinnis asked, citing to a recent profile of a labor organizer. “‘She’ is referred to as ‘they’ throughout the story.” One editor responded that using pronouns corresponding with a subject’s identity is standard journalistic practice, “not a left or right thing.” The publisher disagreed, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Washington Post: “People will think that that is taking a stance.” McGinnis did not respond to repeated messages and emails. His current and former employees say they are concerned that their longtime boss’s perception of Atlanta’s leftward drift is based less on his own opinions than on orders from his bosses — the owners of a Michigan-based publishing company that purchased Atlanta and several other regional magazines — who, McGinnis told them, believe “woke” coverage is bad for business and wants it to stop.

A college baseball team you’ve never watched is outsmarting the competition with a painfully simple concept: If a pitch is coming at you, do not move.

Kyle de Rothschild Deschanel was an instant New York sensation who seemed to live on a 24/7 carousel of mega-dollar deals and raucous parties. Then his best friend found an ID marked “Aryeh Dodelson.”

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made a stop in northern Kentucky Wednesday, where during a media gaggle, appeared to have some trouble understanding and speaking with reporters.

Wage theft, where an employer illegally withholds payment from employers, isn't just an accounting oversight, it's a crime. But in New York, it's rarely treated as one—and possibly because of that, it's tremendously common and often unseen. For the past five years, the good folks over at Documented have been compiling a literal map of wage theft across New York, a compendium of the times owners looked at invoices and timecards and said, "Nah." It took a legal battle with the state to get the full records and then a whole lot of sifting through data, but Documented's interactive Wage Theft Monitor has finally arrived, and now anyone can view the map of just who's been stiffing workers, how many of them, and for how much. Downtown standout Kiki's owed $56,208.16 in stolen wages to 16 workers. Cafe Mogador? A whopping $94,135.8 to 39 workers. Soho House? They owed $3,190.52 to one worker. (Look up your favorite restaurant or stationary store—the results may surprise you.) The scale is staggering, with wages stolen on almost every single block in Manhattan, ranging from hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands per business—money that workers had to go to the state and file a complaint, in order to get paid what was owed to them. The map only reflects instances where workers actually filed complaints, meaning the scale of wage theft in the state is assuredly much bigger. (Imagine how many times workers don't do that?) "Behind the dots on this map are the stories of over 100,000 workers, some of whom missed rent, went hungry, or were unable to pay for medical care after losing a paycheck," writes Max Sieglebaum, the co-executive director of Documented who helped spearhead the project.

Inside Axon, the maker of Taser electroshock guns, workers take hits from the company's weapons or get inked with its logos. Axon says it's all voluntary. Staff tasings, known as “exposures,” are corporate rituals at Axon. Sometimes they involve mid-career employees like Blank, but often they are used to initiate interns or new recruits into Axon’s all-in culture, according to numerous interviews and videos seen by Reuters. “Tase, Tase, Tase,” staffers chanted in unison in a March 2019 recording as a target stood in the line of fire. “It looks like a scene from ancient Rome, gladiator-style,” said Valencia Gibson, a former international support manager at Axon. She was one of several former staffers to compare tasings, frequently held in the tiered atrium at Axon’s Scottsdale headquarters, to the Colosseum’s spectacles. Gibson said there was pressure in general for staff to be tased but that she was able to decline due to pregnancy.

An investigation by Military Times and The Texas Tribune charts the rise and fall of a military intelligence directorate gone rogue on the border. When officers from the Texas National Guard showed up to their 7 a.m. meeting with federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations in El Paso, they didn’t arrive empty-handed. Six military intelligence officials turned over a list of names at the February 2022 meeting. The Texans were part of an intelligence directorate supporting Operation Lone Star, Gov. Greg Abbott’s state-run border mission. The officers, which included the group’s top two leaders, told federal agents they’d secretly infiltrated invite-only WhatsApp group chats filled with migrants and smugglers and wanted their help investigating the targets they’d identified, according to a sworn statement attached to a whistleblower complaint filed later that month. The Homeland Security officials in the meeting rebuffed the Texans on the spot — with one official saying that they were an investigative body and “not an intelligence agency,” the whistleblower recalled. An investigation by Military Times and The Texas Tribune has found that Texas National Guard leaders disbanded Operation Lone Star’s intelligence wing after whistleblowers reported the WhatsApp surveillance, which targeted migrant groups to track them through Mexico, because they believed it violated long-standing rules against state-run spy operations. During the same period, another team from the intelligence directorate allegedly sent classified FBI intelligence to their Texas Guard colleagues in an apparent violation of federal secrecy laws, according to an internal incident report.

The court order preventing San Francisco officials from clearing homeless encampments is “preposterous” and “inhumane,” Gov. Gavin Newsom told the Chronicle on Tuesday. The December order by U.S. Magistrate Donna Ryu halted the city’s efforts to clear most tent encampments in the city. Democrats like Newsom and San Francisco Mayor London Breed get perhaps the most blame for the sprawling homeless encampments on California streets. But they’ve also become the most vocal advocates for clearing those encampments, including in court, setting them at odds with those who argue their encampment-clearing policies violate homeless people’s civil rights. Newsom said friends recently asked him to clean up a specific encampment in San Francisco and reacted with disbelief when he told them he already knew about the spot they were talking about, but couldn’t do anything because of the court order.

As discussions over the newly instituted “strong mayor” system in Minneapolis are back in the news, local politicians, policy aides, activists, and pundits have been sharing their perspectives on the changeover. A month ago, Minneapolis City Council Member Robin Wonsley sat down with Unicorn Riot and discussed her thoughts on the government restructuring, corruption in the city and acts of political retaliation within the halls of power. Wonsley said there’s a split within the council and a “massive pressure campaign” to oppose her and her colleagues that are trying to advance a working class agenda. She accused the mayor of jeopardizing public safety and withholding constituent services.

A Saudi court has sentenced a man to death based solely on his Twitter and YouTube activity.

Union leaders identified the man who died Friday while working at a Kroger Distribution Center in Memphis. Members of Teamster 667 are demanding change at the facility located in the 5000 block of Bledsoe Road, following the death of Tony Rufus. The union said Rufus died Friday while desperately trying to find a way to cool off amid extremely hot temperatures. “This guy was just humped over on a jack laying there dead,” said Teamster 667 Union Representative Jeremy Austin. “Tony, he deserved better than that.”

Michael Gonzales talks with Adam Rowe about his new book, Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s Coming of age in the 1970s I was an aficionado of all things visual: from comic books on newsstand racks to paintings on museum walls to paperback covers on the shelves of my favorite bookstores. Gazing at the beautifully painted covers in the science fiction and fantasy sections, it wasn’t long before I became a fan of various cover artists including Frank Frazetta, Leo & Diane Dillon, Jeff Jones and numerous others. Though considered commercial art, many of the illustrators were as visionary as Pablo Picasso or Salvador Dalí, and deserved to be taken seriously. Decades later I stumbled across the wonderful site 70s Sci-Fi Art, a Tumblr curated by writer Adam Rowe that transported me back to those years of discovering brave new illustration styles. After years of spreading the images through his site and social media, Rowe has recently compiled the innovative book Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 70s (Abrams Books). In addition to the full-color reproductions, Rowe’s book contains interviews, critical evaluations and an introduction by legendary science fiction artist Vincent Di Fate. For fans of the genre, this tome offers the perfect yesteryear view of a speculative tomorrow.

As advocates fight to provide relief to incarcerated people, officials are resisting many measures that could help prisoners combat the heat.