Koch Network Will Get Involved in Politics

The only other candidate expected to get into the race soon is Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, whose allies, despite her work as the U.N. ambassador under Trump, have cast her as a change from the past.

It remains to be seen how successful the Koch group will be marshaling resources behind a single candidate, or if Charles Koch will donate significantly himself. But at minimum, the development is the latest indication that traditional aspects of the Republican ecosystem are less fearful of Trump than they had been. (© The New York Times)

The donor network created by billionaire industrialist brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch is preparing to get involved in the presidential primaries in 2024, with the aim of turning “the page on the past” in a thinly veiled rebuke of former President Donald Trump, according to an internal memo.

The network, comprising an array of political and advocacy groups that have been backed by hundreds of ultrawealthy conservatives, has been among the most influential forces in American politics over the past 15 years, spending nearly $500 million supporting Republican candidates and conservative policies in the 2020 election cycle alone. But it has never before supported candidates in presidential primaries.

The potential move against Trump could motivate donors to line up behind another prospective candidate. Thus far, only the former president has entered the race.

The memo went out to the affiliated activists and donors after a weekend conference in Palm Springs, California, where the network’s leaders laid out their goals for the next presidential election cycle. At various sessions, they made clear they planned to get involved in primaries for various offices, and early.

“The Republican Party is nominating bad candidates who are advocating for things that go against core American principles,” the memo declares. “And the American people are rejecting them.” It asserts that Democrats are responding with “policies that also go against our core American principles.”

The memo’s author is Emily Seidel, CEO of the lead nonprofit group in the network, Americans for Prosperity, and an adviser to an affiliated super PAC. But the principles sketched out in the memo are expected to apply to some other groups in the network, which is now known as Stand Together.

Trump’s early entry into the race, in November, has largely frozen the field.

Close Call

Just 100 feet – that’s how close a Southwest passenger jet and a FedEx cargo plane came to each other on Saturday at the main airport in Austin, Texas, before a pilot told Southwest to abort its takeoff.

Controllers at Austin’s international airport had cleared the arriving FedEx Boeing 767 and a departing Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 jet to use the same runway, but the FedEx crew “realized that they were overflying the Southwest plane,” Jennifer Homendy, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said.

The FedEx pilot told the Southwest crew to abort taking off. At the same time, the FedEx plane aborted its landing to help avoid a collision, the Federal Aviation Administration has said.

“I’m very proud of the FedEx flight crew and that pilot,” Homendy said. “They saved, in my view, 128 people from a potential catastrophe.”

The Austin airport is not among the 35 airports nationwide that use Airport Surface Detection Equipment, or ASDE, to notify controllers of potential disasters and to prevent collisions at airports.

The NTSB in 2018 recommended improvements to the technology and has classified the FAA’s handling of the matter as an “acceptable response.”

That system, Homendy said, played a role in preventing a runway collision last month between taxiing and departing aircraft at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport.

“Air traffic control in this situation can see the FedEx plane on radar. They cannot in Austin see where Southwest is on the ground,” Homendy said.

The Battle of the Robots

Like ChatGPT, which was released publicly in late November by AI research company OpenAI, Bard is built on a large language model. These models are trained on vast troves of data online in order to generate compelling responses to user prompts.

“Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models,” Pichai wrote. “It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses.” more, Maryland, the FBI said.

Microsoft, which has confirmed plans to invest billions in OpenAI, has already said it would incorporate the tool into some of its products – and it is rumored to be planning to integrate it into its search engine, Bing.

On Monday, Google unveiled a new chatbot tool named “Bard” in an apparent bid to compete with the viral success of ChatGPT.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and parent company Alphabet, said in a blog post that Bard will be opened up to “trusted testers” starting Monday, with plans to make it available to the public “in the coming weeks.”

Google has been the go-to source for online searching for years. In fact, it has become a verb: “just google it.” But now, observers are saying that Google’s online search is facing its most significant risk in years. In the two months since it launched to the public, ChatGPT has been used to generate essays, stories and song lyrics – and to answer some questions one might previously have searched for on Google.

ChatGPT’s success has forced Google to declare a “code red” for it search business. In a tweet last year, Paul Buchheit, one of the creators of Gmail, forewarned that Google “may be only a year or two away from total disruption” due to the rise of AI.

The underlying technology that supports Bard has been around for some time, though not widely available to the public. Google unveiled its Language Model for Dialogue Applications (or LaMDA) some two years ago and said this week that this technology will power Bard. LaMDA made headlines late last year when a former Google engineer claimed the chatbot was “sentient.” His claims were widely criticized in the AI community.

In the post this week, Google offered the example of a user asking Bard to explain new discoveries made by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in a way that a 9-year-old might find interesting. Bard responds with conversational bullet-points. The first one reads: “In 2023, The JWST spotted a number of galaxies nicknamed ‘green peas.’ They were given this name because they are small, round, and green, like peas.”

Bard can be used to plan a friend’s baby shower, compare two Oscar-nominated movies, or get lunch ideas based on what’s in your fridge, according to the post from Google.

Neo-Nazi Targets Power Grid

“Sara Beth Clendaniel and Brandon Russell conspired to inflict maximum harm on the power grid, a key component of our critical infrastructure,” said Thomas Sobocinski, a special agent of the FBI Baltimore field office.

“Russell provided instructions and location information. He described attacking the power transformers as the greatest thing somebody can do.”

Clendaniels said doing so “would probably permanently completely lay this city to waste,” according to the indictment filed in federal court.

The arrest follows a series of attacks on power substations in various parts of the country. In early January, two men were arrested in the state of Washington after attacks on four power substations using high-powered weapons that knocked out power for around 15,500 homes and businesses in December.

On January 17, another North Carolina power facility was damaged by gunfire.

In February 2022, three men with neo-Nazi ties pleaded guilty in Columbus, Ohio, to plotting to use rifles and explosives to damage power infrastructure in various locations.

In 2021, five men who allegedly had white supremacist beliefs were charged in North Carolina with planning similar attacks.

Monday’s indictment described Atomwaffen as a “violent extremist group” that has targeted racial minorities, the Jewish community, the government, and critical infrastructure.

In recent years, the group changed its name to “National Socialist Order,” the filing said.

Democrats Overhaul Primary Calendar

The co-founder of neo-Nazi group has been arrested after authorities determined that he had set his sights on targeting public electricity facilities.

Brandon Russell, who helped found the notorious Atomwaffen group in 2015, was arrested in Florida. He has previously been in jail for possession of bomb-making materials.

Sarah Beth Clendaniel, a woman he met online, was arrested in Maryland where she had also spent time in prison for armed robbery.

Guided by Russell, Clendaniel had planned to acquire a gun and to attack five electrical substations around Balti-

Upending decades of political tradition, members of the Democratic National Committee voted Saturday to approve a sweeping overhaul of the Democratic primary process, a critical step in President Joe Biden’s effort to transform the way the party picks its presidential nominees.

For years, Democratic nominating contests have begun with the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, a matter of immense pride in those states and a source of political identity for many highly engaged residents.

But amid forceful calls for a calendar that better reflects the racial diversity of the Democratic Party and the country — and after Iowa’s 2020 meltdown led to a major delay in results — Democrats endorsed a proposal that would start the 2024 Democratic presidential primary circuit on February 3 in South Carolina, the state that resuscitated Biden’s once-flailing candidacy. It would be followed by New Hampshire and Nevada on February 6, Georgia on February 13 and then Michigan on February 27.

It’s a calendar that in many ways rewards the racially diverse states that propelled Biden to the presidency in 2020.

But logistical challenges to fully enacting it still remain. And resistance to the proposal has been especially fierce in New Hampshire, where officials have vowed to hold the first primary anyway, whatever the consequences.

New Hampshire, a small state where voters are accustomed to cornering candidates in diners and intimate town hall settings, has long held the first primary as a matter of state law.

The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee has given New Hampshire until early June to work toward meeting the requirements of the calendar, but some Democrats in the state have made clear that their position is not changing.

DNC rules demand consequences for any state that operates outside the committee-approved early lineup. That state would risk losing delegates in the nom- ination process — New Hampshire, for instance, could go from 32 delegates to 16 should it buck the lineup, which could make delegate-hunting contenders question the time investment.

Georgia Democrats have also received an extension until June to work toward hosting a primary under the new calendar lineup, but they face their own logistical hurdles.

Meantime, Nevada, South Carolina, and Michigan have met the committee’s requirements for holding early primaries, according to a letter from the leaders of the Rules and Bylaws Committee.

(© The New York Times)

Every Dog Has Its Day

World Records said, has broken the nearly century-old record for the oldest dog ever. That was set by Bluey, an Australian cattle-dog who lived 29 years, 5 months between 1910 and 1939.

“Bobi is 30 years 266 days old as of February 1, 2023. He has lived his entire life with the Costa family in the rural village of Conqueiros, in Leiria, Portugal,” the Guinness statement said. “Bobi is a purebred Rafeiro do Alentejo, which is a breed of livestock guardian dog with an average life expectancy of 12-14 years.”

Bobi’s age isn’t the only miracle of his life. He was one of several puppies born in an outbuilding belonging to the Costa family. But it was decided not to keep them.

“Unfortunately, at that time, it was considered normal by older people who could not have more animals at home...to bury the animals in a hole so that they would not survive,” Leonel Costa explained.

He said his parents quickly removed the puppies but left Bobi behind by mistake.

According to the Costa family, Bobi was never chained or attached to a leash and has always roamed the farmland and forests near the Costa home. The dog has always eaten human food rather than standard dog food.

That’s ruff.

Too Much Food

He added: “I don’t really find it funny yet, but I can laugh with people a little bit. It’s a lot of money and it kind of came out of nowhere.”

Mason ordered jumbo shrimp, salads, shawarma and chicken pita sandwiches, chili cheese fries and other foods that one Grubhub driver after another delivered to their Chesterfield Township home.

In fact, Chase sent Keith a fraud alert declining a $439 order from Happy’s Pizza, although a $183 order of jumbo shrimp went through.

For now, the family’s refrigerator is bursting with grub. The family also invited some neighbors to share in the bounty.

The biggest lesson of it all? Don’t let your kid play on your phone when you’re not around.

Smell That?

Every dog has its day, and this animal sure has a lot of them.

Bobi is now the world’s oldest dog ever, with an age of 30 years and 266 days old.

The Portuguese canine nabbed the record from a 23-year-old dog named Spike who was crowned the world’s oldest living dog in January.

Even more than that, Bobi, Guinness

A Michigan family is going to be eating well over the next few days after their six-year-old did the food ordering without considering the costs.

Mason Stonehouse was playing on his father’s phone on Saturday night before going to bed. But instead of playing a game, Mason unwittingly ordered loads of food from the Grubhub account on his father’s phone, amassing $1,000 worth of food to their home.

Keith, Mason’s dad, did not realize what had happened until the doorbell started ringing.

“This was like something out of a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit,” Keith quipped.

The sweet smell of green chile roasting on an open flame could best describe fall in New Mexico. Now, one state lawmaker says it’s time for everyone to wake up and smell the chile.

Sen. Bill Soules and other lawmakers want to make the aroma the official state smell.

The state’s official question is “red or green.” Chile is one of the state’s official vegetables. The aroma could just be the next step in cementing this adoring relationship.

New Mexico produced more than 60% of the U.S. chile pepper crop in 2021 and is home to Hatch, an agricultural village known as the chile capital of the world for the unique red and green peppers it has turned out for generations. The famous crop is also used in powders, sauces and salsas that are shipped worldwide.

Legislation recognizing roasted chile as the official aroma passed its first committee on Tuesday, and supporters say it’s not likely to fire up much debate — other than lawmakers sharing their own stories about how they can’t go a day without eating it, from red chile lattes to smothered breakfast burritos to plates of enchiladas and tamales infused with the peppers. Makes “scents.”