World News

By Andy Rose, Artemis Moshtaghian, Polo Sandoval, Josh Campbell and Pete Muntean, CNN This photo provided by Brian Glenn shows what appears to be multiple drones flying over Bernardsville, New Jersey, on 5 December, 2024. Photo: Brian Glenn/TMX/AP via CNN Newsource Federal agencies are facing intense pressure to give the public more details on unexplained drone sightings in the New York City metropolitan area, which have been going on for weeks over residential neighbourhoods as well as restricted sites and critical infrastructure. "The bottom line is this: They're not providing enough information to the public, and the public is concerned," US Representative Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat and member of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN's Kate Bolduan on Friday. "Bel...

A television screen shows South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol announcing the lifting of martial law, in Seoul, South Korea on December 4, 2024, hours after Yoon imposed it. Photo: YONHAP / AFP South Korea's parliament has voted to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol over his declaration of martial law on 3 December. Reuters reported that 204 lawmakers voted for the impeachment. Yoon appointed Prime Minister Han Duck-Soo to become South Korea's acting president after the impeachment. More to come... Source link

Ilya Sutskever speaks at Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv on 5 June 2023. Photo: JACK GUEZ / AFP By Jeffrey Dastin for Reuters Former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, one of the biggest names in artificial intelligence, had a prediction to make on Friday: reasoning capabilities will make technology far less predictable. Accepting a "Test Of Time" award for his 2014 paper with Google's Oriol Vinyals and Quoc Le, Sutskever said a major change was on AI's horizon. An idea that his team had explored a decade ago, that scaling up data to "pre-train" AI systems would send them to new heights, was starting to reach its limits, he said. More data and computing power had resulted in ChatGPT that OpenAI launched in 2022, to the world's acclaim. "But pre-training as we know it will unquesti...

Michael Jackson performing during his Dangerous tour, in 1993. Photo: AFP A retired California highway patrolman has stumbled into possession of a trove of unreleased Michael Jackson songs - which the world may never have a chance to hear. Gregg Musgrove, now a stay-at-home dad, procured the tapes after an associate purchased a storage unit in the Van Nuys area of Los Angeles that contained the recordings, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The unit had once belonged to music producer Bryan Loren - who also worked with artists including Whitney Houston and Sting - but whose whereabouts are currently unknown. Inside were cassette tapes and digital-audio tapes (DAT) of 12 unreleased tracks Jackson had worked on before releasing his Grammy-nominated Dangerous album in 1991. Sadly for Jac...

By Georgie Hewson for the ABC B-Girl Raygun of Team Australia drew international attention at the Olympics. Photo: Getty Images / Ezra Shaw Olympic breaker Rachel 'Raygun' Gunn has told followers on social media why she made the decision to shut down a comedy musical inspired by her moves. In a video posted to her Instagram account, Gunn said she learnt about the show through the media and felt "blindsided". Sydney comedian Steph Broadbridge had to cancel her Raygun-inspired musical after receiving letters from the Olympic breakdancer's lawyers. "People had assumed we had developed it and we had approved it and it damaged many relationships, both personal and professional," Gunn said. "This is why my management had to work to quickly to shut it down. "It was really unfortunate that ...

Donald Trump (L) and Apple CEO Tim Cook tour the Flextronics computer manufacturing facility where Apple's Mac Pros are assembled in Austin, Texas, on 20 November, 2019. Photo: MANDEL NGAN / AFP By Nandita Bose and Kanishka Singh, Reuters Apple chief executive Tim Cook will meet Donald Trump on Friday night (US time) at the US president-elect's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. Business leaders have attempted to establish a positive rapport with Trump since his election win in November. Meta Platforms and Amazon have each donated US$1 million (NZ$1.7m) to Trump's inaugural fund. Bank of America, the second-largest US lender, also plans to contribute to Trump's inaugural committee but has yet to decide on the amount. Trump will take office in J...

By David Shepardson, Reuters US President-elect Donald Trump says he will work toward ending daylight savings time (file photo). Photo: KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / AFP US President-elect Donald Trump says the Republican Party "will use its best efforts" to end daylight saving time in the United States, which he called "inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation." "The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn't!" Trump said on social media on Friday. "Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation." Daylight saving time - putting the clocks forward one hour during the summer half of the year to make the most of the longer evenings - has been in place in nearly all of the United St...

By David Shepardson and Kanishka Singh, Reuters Photo: 123rf A US appeals court rejected an emergency bid by TikTok to temporarily block a law that would require its Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest of the short-video app by 19 January or face a ban on the app. TikTok and ByteDance on Monday filed the emergency motion with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, asking for more time to make their case to the US Supreme Court. Today's ruling means that TikTok now must quickly move to the Supreme Court in an attempt to halt the pending ban. The companies had warned that without court action, the law will "shut down TikTok - one of the nation's most popular speech platforms - for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users." "The petitioners have not identi...

Philip Stevens had previously enjoyed going to horse races but had always been "careful" with his bets. Photo: PIXABAY / Creative Commons A British man who became a compulsive gambler and shopper after he was prescribed a medication for restless leg syndrome has received a £70,000 (NZ$153,000) settlement from his doctor, his lawyers said on Friday. Philip Stevens, 66, was prescribed Ropinirole - a dopamine antagonist medication - in 2017 but was not warned of known possible side effects such as impulse control disorder. He had previously enjoyed going to horse races but had always been "careful" with his bets. But after taking the medication his gambling "spiralled out of control" and he regularly made bets on his smartphone and even woke up in the middle of the night to place a wager. ...

New Zealand rugby player Rory Grice (R) leaves the court following a hearing at the Bordeaux courthouse, south-western France on 17 June, 2024. Photo: CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT / AFP Warning: This story contains details of sexual assault. A court in France on Friday jailed three rugby players formerly with French side Grenoble for 12 to 14 years over the 2017 gang rape of a student. It sentenced Irishman Denis Coulson, 30, and Frenchman Loick Jammes, 30, to 14 years behind bars, and New Zealander Rory Grice, 34, to 12 years in jail. It handed four years in jail, including two suspended, to ex-Ireland international 31-year-old Chris Farrel over failure to prevent the crime. New Zealander Dylan Hayes, 30, received a two-year suspended sentence, also for not intervening to stop it. In the sma...