FlashMobOfOne

US and Ecuadorian forces have launched joint operations to combat drug trafficking, the US Southern Command said on Tuesday, but neither side gave more details.

Southern Command, which encompasses 31 countries through South and Central America and the Caribbean, said in a statement on X that the “decisive action” was aimed at combating illicit drug trafficking.

The Ecuador defense ministry said details of the offensive operations were classified.

The father of a teenage boy accused of killing two students and two teachers in a mass shooting at a Georgia high school in 2024 was found guilty on Tuesday of second-degree murder and other charges.

After roughly two weeks of testimony, jurors deliberated for just a few hours before convicting 54-year-old Colin Gray on more than two dozen charges, including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, related to the 4 September fatal shooting at Apalachee high school in Georgia.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday ⁠to take up the issue of whether art generated by artificial intelligence can be copyrighted under U.S. law, turning away ​a case involving a computer ​scientist from Missouri who was ​denied a copyright for a piece of visual art made by his AI system.

Plaintiff Stephen Thaler had appealed to the justices after lower courts upheld a U.S. Copyright Office decision that the AI-crafted visual ⁠art ‌at issue in the case was ineligible for copyright protection ⁠because it did not have a human creator.

Thaler, of St. Charles, Missouri, applied for a federal copyright registration in 2018 covering “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” visual art he said his AI technology “DABUS” created. The image shows train tracks entering ‌a portal, surrounded by what appears to be green and purple plant imagery.

The Copyright Office rejected his application in 2022, finding that creative works must have human authors ​to be eligible to receive a copyright. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration had urged the Supreme Court not to hear Thaler’s appeal.

Nevada’s ban on taking drugs to end a pregnancy after the 24th week makes it the only state left in the nation that explicitly criminalizes abortions, advocates say, and legislative efforts last year to change that fell flat.

Patience Rousseau was the only person ever charged and convicted under the law, according to Laura FitzSimmons, a Carson City-based lawyer who has represented her since 2020. FitzSimmons helped get Rousseau’s conviction vacated in 2021 for ineffective assistance of counsel.

Now Nevada will pay Rousseau $100,000 for her ordeal, a settlement approved without comment during last Tuesday’s meeting of the Board of Examiners — a panel consisting of the governor, the attorney general and the secretary of state.

The compensation marks the conclusion of an eight-year fight that upended Rousseau’s life and brought national attention to a Nevada law that abortion advocates describe as uniquely punitive toward women who want to end their pregnancy.

Iran struck the world-famous Fairmont hotel in Dubai, setting the hotel alight, as the war launched by the US and Israel on Iran quickly spread to the rest of the Middle East on Saturday.

Residents watched in shock as an Iranian missile hit the five-star hotel in Dubai’s luxurious Palm Jumeirah area. Social media videos showed fires breaking out near the entrance of the hotel, which led to four people being injured.

One resident said that “everyone is very scared” as the situation in Dubai continued to deteriorate.

“There is footage of missile interceptions all over the city,” they said. “I am packing a suitcase just in case … not that we can leave, because airspace is closed. It is the thing we have all been frightened about happening, and now it has.”

Instagram said Thursday it will start alerting parents if their kids repeatedly search for terms clearly associated with suicide or self-harm. The alerts will only go to parents who are enrolled in Instagram’s parental supervision program.

Instagram says it already blocks such content from showing up in teen accounts’ search results and directs people to helplines instead.

The announcement comes as Meta is in the midst of two trials over harms to children. A trial underway in Los Angeles questions whether Meta’s platforms deliberately addict and harm minors. Another, in New Mexico, seeks to determine whether Meta failed to protect kids from sexual exploitation on its platforms. Thousands of families — along with school districts and government entities — have sued Meta and other social media companies claiming they deliberately design their platforms to be addictive and fail to protect kids from content that can lead to depression, eating disorders and suicide.

Supercharged by billions in dollars from Congress, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has hired thousands of new officers to carry out Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign in an effort it has likened to “wartime recruitment”. In several states, Democratic lawmakers want applicants to think twice about taking part.

Bills introduced in recent weeks in the legislatures of at least four Democratic-led states would impose long-term consequences on new ICE employees by rendering them ineligible for jobs in law enforcement, public education, and, in their most expansive form, the entire state civil service.

Four people riding in a speedboat registered in the U.S. were killed Feb. 25 in a gunfight with Cuban government forces after entering the country’s waters, according to the Cuban Embassy in the U.S.

Crewmembers aboard a speedboat registered in Florida entered Cuban waters and opened fire on Cuban Ministry of the Interior forces when they approached the American vessel, the Cuban Embassy said in a statement. Aboard the Florida-registered vessel, four were killed and six were injured in the gunfight; the commander of the Ministry of the Interior vessel was wounded in the gunfight, Cuba said.

"In the face of current challenges, Cuba reaffirms its determination to protect its territorial waters, based on the principle that national defense is a fundamental pillar of the Cuban State in safeguarding its sovereignty and ensuring stability in the region," Cuban authorities said. "Investigations by the competent authorities continue in order to fully clarify the events."

According to Cuban officials, the wounded crewmembers of the Florida-registered boat were evacuated for medical assistance.

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City police are investigating after officers were pelted with snowballs while responding to a massive snowball fight at Washington Square Park in Manhattan.

A video of the fracas shows two uniformed officers pacing a walkway in the park Monday as snowballs fly at them from all directions, hitting the officers and covering them in snow.

The officers, growing visibly frustrated, shoved at least two people to the ground as snowballs continued to whizz by. At one point, a person runs up behind an officer and mushes some snow onto his head. One of the officers can be seen rubbing his eye toward the end of the video.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. military forces boarded a third sanctioned oil tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking it from the Caribbean Sea in an effort to target illicit oil connected to Venezuela, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

An organization that tracks ship movements said the vessel was the only tanker left to pursue after more than a dozen fled the coast of Venezuela following the capture of the South American country’s authoritarian then-president, Nicolás Maduro.

U.S. Southern Command said in a post on X that U.S. forces boarded the Bertha overnight, conducting “a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding.”

Department of Justice prosecutors across the US have suffered a string of embarrassing defeats in their aggressive pursuit of criminal cases against people accused of “assaulting” and “impeding” federal officers.

In recent months, the federal government has relentlessly prosecuted protesters, government critics, immigrants and others arrested during immigration operations, often accusing them of physically attacking officers or interfering with their duties.

But many of those cases have recently been dismissed or ended in not guilty verdicts.

In several high-profile cases, the prosecutions fell apart because they relied on statements by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers that had no supporting evidence or in some instances were proven by video footage to be blatantly false.

Criminal defense lawyers said it was unusual for federal prosecutors to pursue a high volume of charges over minor clashes with law enforcement, and that it was extraordinary to see the DoJ lose case after case across jurisdictions.

François "Pierre" Picaud (French: [piko]) was a 19th-century shoemaker in Nîmes, France who may have been the basis for the character of Edmond Dantès in Alexandre Dumas, père's 1844 novel The Count of Monte Cristo.