UNITED STATES
Biden criticizes ‘MAGA king’
President Joe Biden on Wednesday labeled former president Donald Trump “the great MAGA king” and criticized Republicans ahead of midterm elections this year. “I think it’s important that, as we go forward, you’re gonna hear me talking more about not only what we’ve done, but what they’re trying to do,” Biden told a fundraiser at a Chicago hotel. Biden has begun decrying “ultra-MAGA” Republicans — a reference to Trump’s “make America great again” campaign slogan. When an attendee’s cellphone rang, the president joked: “I know that’s Trump calling. He always does that.” Earlier in the day, Biden offered a new nickname for Trump. “Under my predecessor — the great MAGA king — the deficit increased every single year he was president,” he told the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers conference. “The first year of my presidency, the first year, I reduced the deficit.”
UNITED STATES
Trooper meets ex-president
A Connecticut state trooper who is a native of Poland on Wednesday got a surprise while responding to an SUV with a flat tire: A passenger in the vehicle was former Polish president Lech Walesa. State police said Trooper Lukasz Lipert arrived to the call in Tolland and was greeted by Walesa, who had spoken in Hartford on Tuesday as part of a tour advocating for aid for refugees who have fled Ukraine during the war with Russia. Lipert, 35, who moved to the US when he was 18, told the Hartford Courant that he spoke with Walesa in Polish about their homeland and the anti-communist movement Walesa helped lead. “It was definitely a great opportunity to meet the man who had a voice during those times,” Lipert said.
ITALY
Ukrainian circus stuck
A Ukrainian circus troupe is performing a never-ending “Alice in Wonderland” tour of Italy, caught in the real-world rabbit hole of having to create joyful performances on stage while their families at home are living through war. The acrobats and dancers of the Theater Circus Elysium of Kyiv were opening a limited engagement in Italy when the invasion began on Feb. 24. The tour, originally scheduled to end in the middle of March, has now been extended at least through next month as the performers seek to keep working to send money to relatives back home. On a recent weekend, the circus arrived in Pistoia. There was the Mad Hatter, sporting a green top hat and a purple beard; the White Rabbit with a red nose covered in silver glitter and Alice, with a little blue dress and long ringlets. However, behind their colorful costumes, cheerful smiles and fantastical story line of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland, troupe members are struggling. “It is very hard to work and dance on the Italy stage because we know in our country now [there] is war, said Oleksandr Bandaliuk, who plays the Mad Hatter. “We can’t go to Ukraine because in my house now [there are] Russian soldiers.”
GUATEMALA
Judge says threats rising
A judge who last week ordered nine former police and military officers to stand trial for alleged crimes during the country’s civil war, on Wednesday said that death threats against him had increased since announcing his decision. “They send me messages, they call me on the phone, there’s vehicles following; all of that is happening,” Magistrate Miguel Angel Galvez said. Galvez once ordered former leader Efrain Rios Montt to be tried. “Before they had threatened me, but now they even come to hearings to photograph me,” he said.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
STILL IN POWER: US intelligence reports showed that the Iranian regime is not in danger of collapse and retains control of the public, casting doubt on Trump’s exit Nearly every US Senate Democrat on Wednesday signed a letter sent to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth requesting a “swift investigation” of airstrikes on a girls’ school in Iran that killed scores of children and any other potential US military actions causing civilian harm. Reuters reported on Thursday last week that US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for the Feb. 28 strike on the school, as US and Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran. “The results of this school attack are horrific. The majority of those killed in the strikes were girls between the ages
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