Sophia Romine’s wonderful goal from nearly 30 yards out propelled the Gophers women’s soccer team into the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA tournament on Friday. Down 1-0 at halftime, sixth-seeded Minnesota staked a two-goal comeback to beat third-seeded South Carolina 2-1 in a second-round match in Chapel Hill, N.C. Minnesota (14-4-3) will play either No. 2 North Carolina or Santa Clara at 4 p.m. Sunday. Head coach Erin Chastain has brought the Gophers back to the third round of the national tourney for the first time since coach Mikki Denney Wright did it in 2010. The U’s comeback Friday included a penalty kick goal from captain Sophia Boman in the 57th minute. The PK was earned by a foul on leading scorer Khyah Harper in the box. Boman’s confident PK rippled the back of the net to make it 1-1. Romine, a graduate transfer from Wisconsin, has started every game for Minnesota this season. It was her fifth goal of the season. Related ArticlesThis Chip Stock Skyrocketed! Another May Catch Up Soon.
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BERLIN (AP) — Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk caused uproar after backing Germany’s far-right party in a major newspaper ahead of key parliamentary elections in the Western European country, leading to the resignation of the paper’s opinion editor in protest. Germany is to vote in an early election on Feb. 23 after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party governing coalition collapsed last month in a dispute over how to revitalize the country’s stagnant economy. Musk's guest opinion piece for Welt am Sonntag — a sister publication of POLITICO owned by the Axel Springer Group — published in German over the weekend, was the second time this month he supported the Alternative for Germany, or AfD. “The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the last spark of hope for this country," Musk wrote in his translated commentary. He went on to say the far-right party “can lead the country into a future where economic prosperity, cultural integrity and technological innovation are not just wishes, but reality.” The Tesla Motors CEO also wrote that his investment in Germany gave him the right to comment on the country's condition. The AfD is polling strongly, but its candidate for the top job, Alice Weidel , has no realistic chance of becoming chancellor because other parties refuse to work with the far-right party. An ally of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, the technology billionaire challenged in his opinion piece the party's public image. “The portrayal of the AfD as right-wing extremist is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please!” Musk’s commentary has led to a debate in German media over the boundaries of free speech, with the paper's own opinion editor announcing her resignation, pointedly on Musk's social media platform, X. “I always enjoyed leading the opinion section of WELT and WAMS. Today an article by Elon Musk appeared in Welt am Sonntag. I handed in my resignation yesterday after it went to print," Eva Marie Kogel wrote. The newspaper was also attacked by politicians and other media for offering Musk, an outsider, a platform to express his views, in favor of the AfD. Candidate for chancellor, Friedrich Merz, of the Christian Democratic Union, said Sunday that Musk's comments were “intrusive and presumptuous”. He was speaking to the newspapers of the German Funke Media Group. Co-leader of the Social Democratic Party, Saskia Esken said that “Anyone who tries to influence our election from outside, who supports an anti-democratic, misanthropic party like the AfD, whether the influence is organized by the state from Russia or by the concentrated financial and media power of Elon Musk and his billionaire friends on the Springer board, must expect our tough resistance,” according to the ARD national public TV network. Musk's opinion piece in the Welt am Sonntag was accompanied by a critical article by the future editor-in-chief of the Welt group, Jan Philipp Burgard. “Musk’s diagnosis is correct, but his therapeutic approach, that only the AfD can save Germany, is fatally wrong,” Burgard wrote. Responding to a request for comment from the German Press Agency, dpa, the current editor-in-chief of the Welt group, Ulf Poschardt, and Burgard — who is due to take over on Jan. 1 — said in a joint statement that the discussion over Musk's piece was "very insightful. Democracy and journalism thrive on freedom of expression.” “This will continue to determine the compass of the “world” in the future. We will develop “Die Welt” even more decisively as a forum for such debates,” they wrote to dpa.Misusing artificial intelligence (AI) can have some very clear and expensive consequences. Movie studio Lionsgate recently joined a long list of organisations discovering that quotations and citations from generative AI (GenAI) systems need to be verified like any other source; Microsoft is being sued by a German journalist after Bing Copilot suggested he had committed crimes he had instead reported on; and a US telecoms service is paying a $1m fine for simply transmitting automated calls featuring a fake AI voice mimicking President Biden. Enterprise enthusiasm for adopting GenAI remains high, meaning organisations are busy putting various governance, risk and compliance protections in place around their usage in different jurisdictions. While the main reason for restrictions on AI usage is frequently data privacy and security concerns, regulation and copyright concerns are also high on the list. Part of the problem for chief information officers (CIOs), however, is knowing exactly which regulations apply to AI, from the legal basis of using personal data to train AI models, to questions of transparency and discrimination when using AI systems. Many organisations focus on upcoming legislation specifically designed to set rules for those developing and deploying AI systems, alongside a mix of regulations and voluntary guidelines for AI that can be individually useful, but make up what United Nations secretary-general António Guterres rather politely called a "patchwork" of potentially inconsistent rules. But the impact of new laws hasn't yet been felt, and changes in government in the UK and US make it harder to predict what future legislation will dictate, especially for UK businesses caught between the US and the European Union (EU). Meanwhile, existing regulations that don't explicitly mention AI already apply – and are being applied. This summer, the Brazilian data processing authority temporarily forced Meta to stop using "publicly available" information... Mary Branscombe
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch announced Wednesday that he will recuse himself from a case dealing with a western railway line after Democratic lawmakers called attention to the fact that a longtime ally of his could benefit from the court’s decision. The court’s clerk notified attorneys in the case in a letter that, in light of the Supreme Court’s recently approved code of conduct, Gorsuch would recuse in the case set for oral argument Tuesday. The letter did not elaborate on Gorsuch’s thinking. But the decision from the conservative Trump nominee comes weeks after a letter from Democrats on Capitol Hill argued that Denver-based billionaire Philip Anschutz – a longtime ally of Gorsuch – has a possible financial interest in the outcome of the case. The Supreme Court did not respond to a request for further information about Gorsuch’s decision. At issue in the case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, is an 88-mile railway line connecting parts of Utah to Colorado. The line would be used to transport waxy crude oil to refineries. The legal question deals with the extent of the environmental review of that project by the US Surface Transportation Board. Anschutz owns an oil and gas company in Denver and filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case supporting more limited environmental reviews. Critics have noted that Gorsuch served as an attorney for Anschutz. During his confirmation hearing in 2017, Democrats called attention to a Denver Post report at the time that Anschutz had lobbied the White House on Gorsuch’s behalf for a judgeship on the Denver-based 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The connections prompted Rep. Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat and member of the House Judiciary Committee, to write a letter to Gorsuch last month seeking his recusal in the case. “Our nation’s highest court should hold itself to the highest ethical standards,” Johnson and other Democrats wrote. “To show the American people that the Supreme Court is impartial, you must recuse yourself from any case that directly impacts the financial fortunes of Philip Anschutz, the man who was your previous legal client.”Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Belfast News Letter, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Industry bodies say it’s too early to tell how sales are going, and that it’ll be next month before full details are known. But anecdotal evidence suggests that far fewer people are heading out to scoop a bargain immediately after Christmas. Advertisement Advertisement Glyn Roberts, chief executive of Retail NI, suggests that could be down to what he calls ‘promotions fatigue’ – that people are so gorged on pre-Christmas deals and offers like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, they don’t come out in force for Boxing Day. “That, plus the fact that the bulk of sales are online now,” he says. "It’s estimated that last year, 63% of sales were online. When you take that into account, it’s very easy to see why footfall would be down.” Asked if he believes this could be a marker of a cultural shift that’s seeing traditional British Boxing Day deals edged out in favour of the likes of Black Friday, an American import largely brought in by massive international internet-based retailers, Mr Roberts agrees. Advertisement Advertisement "Yes,” he says. “But from a retailer’s point of view, joining in with that is understandable – they’ve bought a lot of stock in specifically for Christmas, so they want to make sure it sells in advance of the day.” One shop manager in the Belfast area, who asked to remain nameless, said she’s seen a noticeable fall in Boxing Day customers over the past few years. "There has been a decline,” she said. “Obviously Covid was a hit, but after that the cost of living crisis had people prioritising paying their winter food and energy bills, and I think many would still be in that situation. "It’s difficult for a bricks and mortar store to compete with the prices and convenience of the internet, and many of the big retailers on there have huge sales before Christmas and not so much on Boxing Day. It seems to be a trend, people follow where they go.” Advertisement Advertisement Data gathered across the UK on Boxing Day indicated the number of people heading out to sales was down almost 5% compared to last year. Many preferred to browse sales online, it’s suggested, and several major retailers such as Next, John Lewis, and Marks and Spencer deciding to stay shut until December 27. Mr Roberts reinforced that the actual amount of money spent on Boxing Day isn’t known yet, stating: “It’s not footfall that counts, it’s sales, and we won’t know that detail for quite a while.” But, he added, online retail continues to have a massive effect on the ability of High Street stores to survive, to the point that he believes government intervention may be necessary. Advertisement Advertisement “Online retailers have a number of advantages over bricks and mortar stores,” he said. “For example, they don’t pay rates in the same way as a High Street store does. "I think there may need to be some legislation to correct that and help small businesses thrive. All I want to see is a level playing field; currently, we don’t have one.”
BPSC aspirants continue their protest in Patna's Gandhi Maidan