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Artificial intelligence powerhouse OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, on Monday announced it is building a more open generative AI model as it faces growing competition in the open-source space from Chinese rival DeepSeek and Meta.

The announcement marks a strategic shift by OpenAI, which until now has been a fierce defender of closed, proprietary models that do not allow developers to modify the basic technology to make AI more adapted to their goals.

OpenAI and defenders of closed models - which include Google - have often decried open models as more risky and vulnerable to nefarious uses by bad actors or foreign adversaries.

OpenAI’s embrace of closed models has also been a bone of contention in its battles with former investor Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, who has called on OpenAI to honour the spirit of the company’s name and “return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was”.

Putting pressure on OpenAI, many large companies and governments have proved reluctant to build their AI products or services on models they have no control over, especially when data security is a concern.

A Washington Post report on March 28 that the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) forced the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) top vaccine official—Peter Marks, MD—to resign or be fired quickly caught the attention of some lawmakers, along with members of the scientific and business communities.

Marks submitted his resignation letter, with an effective date of April 5. The development comes amid a major change in focus under the leadership of new HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time vaccine skeptic, which the agency spelled out in a March 27 announcement.

Marks: Kennedy wants support for misinformation, lies

Marks is a hematologist oncologist who has led the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) since 2016 after serving as its deputy director since 2012. He has widely been credited as playing a key role in Operation Warp Speed, a partnership between the federal government and the private sector that streamlined the development, production, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccine.

In his resignation letter, published by the Post and other media outlets, Marks raised concerns about efforts to undermine confidence in vaccines, especially against the backdrop of a multistate measles outbreak that is especially severe in Texas. Marks said he was willing to work with Kennedy to address his concerns over vaccine safety and transparency. Kennedy has minimized the outbreak and has suggested alternative treatments, including vitamin A, which some hospital officials said has been linked to cases of liver problems.

Niger’s democratically elected former President Mohamed Bazoum and his wife Hadiza have spent more than 20 months in detention by a military that seized power in 2023 and this week cemented its grip on the country.

A former high school philosophy teacher who went on to become Niger’s interior minister, Bazoum represented a break with the past: His presidential inauguration in 2021 was hailed as the first peaceful democratic transition in the West African nation since it gained independence from France in 1960.

But he was ousted only two years later as Niger followed in the footsteps of neighboring Mali, Guinea, and Burkina Faso in returning to military rule. On Wednesday, coup leader General Abdourahamane Tchiani was sworn in as Niger’s president for a “transitional” five years.

edit: downvotes from spineless coward Putin removed. maybe if you're a cunt hard enough your daddy dictator will anal you softly.

As Senator Bernie Sanders put it after Trump’s recent address to Congress, “the purpose of all of this lying is not just to push his hateful right-wing ideology. It is not just to try to divide us up. It’s more than that. It’s a masterful effort to deflect attention away from the most important issues facing the people of our country, issues that Trump and his billionaire friends do not want to address because it’s not in their financial interests to do so.”

Trump appears to have no interest in tackling the revision of the USMCA comprehensively. This agreement isn’t just about trade — the document contains 34 chapters, in addition to annexes, protocols, and a climate cooperation compromise. The chapters contain everything from a vague acknowledgement of legal obligations to indigenous communities to overly broad rights for foreign investors.

Beyond tariffs, when and how are issues like intellectual property, telecommunications and digital rights, small businesses and climate change being discussed? Where are abuses of investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) suits being publicly discussed?

Black Americans, Hispanics, and young adults are all more positive on US President Donald Trump than they were eight years ago, helping to drive up his approval rating higher than it was during the first three months of his first term.

Longtime farmworker organizer Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents this week in what many believe to be retaliation for his organizing. Juarez was pulled over while driving his wife to work. ICE agents shattered Juarez’s window and dragged him out of the vehicle for exercising his right to remain silent, his brother said.

Juarez helped form Familias Unidas por la Justicia, an independent farmworker union that emerged out of a 2013 work stoppage by berry workers in Washington state. He himself began working as a berry picker at 14, and has fought for the rights of farmworkers since, advocates say.

1. Attend a vigil or action.
2. Make phone calls demanding the release of Alfredo Juarez and other politically targeted detainees.

Washington Attorney General's office: 360-753-6200 Washington State Governor’s office: 360-902-4111 Representative Rick Larson: (425) 252-3188 Senator Patty Murray: (253) 572-3636 Senator Maria Cantwell: (253) 572-2281

3. Donate.

What's happening:

-Co-plaintiff, Professor Wa Ngũgĩ: “We shouldn’t be punishing the people who are calling out what clearly is a genocide”

-Eric Lee: “If democracy is going to be defended, it is not going to come from the Democratic Party.”

-Taal’s lawyer, Eric Lee: This “is a test case to determine whether the government can... put you in jail for the things you say”

-“I’m afraid it’s just leading to a fascist state” Hearing begins today on Momodou Taal’s case against Trump

-Lawyers for Momodou Taal denounce Trump administration’s deportation effort as unconstitutional political retaliation-

Recent actions by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Massachusetts, coupled with policy changes spearheaded by Democratic Governor Maura Healey, underscore the deepening collaboration of Democratic Party leaders with the Trump administration’s fascistic immigration agenda. While claiming opposition to Trump’s policies,

Democrats have aligned themselves with measures that scapegoat migrants and undermine the democratic rights of the working class. Between March 18 and March 23, ICE conducted a major enforcement operation across Massachusetts, arresting 370 individuals. The agency claimed to target “dangerous alien offenders,” including alleged members of transnational gangs like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua. In fact, the operation swept up individuals with minor offenses or tenuous connections to criminal activity, further criminalizing undocumented immigrants.

Local radio station WBUR reported that civil rights activists dispute how ICE characterized its operation and quoted Neenah Estrella-Lune of East Boston, who said it was likely that many of the people apprehended have only minor criminal records.

“The overwhelming majority of the people are not criminals in that way,” she said. “They’re people who, at worst, they overstay their visa and—Oh, God forbid, they’re painting people’s homes.”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in Hollywood has steadfastly refused to release a statement in defense of Hamdan Ballal, co-director of No Other Land, who was brutally assaulted by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the occupied West Bank Monday night.

Precisely three weeks earlier, Ballal had stood on the platform at the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles and received, along with Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the prize for Best Documentary Feature Film.

The pretentiously named Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as we have previously noted, has a thoroughly unprincipled history. It was set up in the 1920s by studio boss Louis B. Mayer to subvert the unionization of film workers. The establishment of a corporatist entity, with different branches, would—Mayer and the others hoped—induce writers and others to feel they were part of the industry and not make any unreasonable demands.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, during the Red Scare and the purges of Communist Party and other left-wing actors, writers and directors, the Academy played a rotten role.

As late as 1957, on the eve of the collapse of the blacklist, the AMPAS passed a by-law decreeing that no one who had invoked his or her Fifth Amendment rights (against self-incrimination) in front of the witch-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) could receive an Academy Award. It had also stripped award eligibility from anyone who had been a member of the Communist Party. In 1999, the Academy despicably went out of its way to bestow an honorary award on arch-informer, director Elia Kazan.

The World Socialist Web Site spoke recently with a United States Postal Service (USPS) letter carrier about the effects of the consolidation of a former facility into a new Sorting and Delivery Center (S&DC). The consolidation of offices into larger S&DCs has accelerated under the Delivering for America (DFA) initiative, now in its fourth year, which is aimed at consolidating operations into large Amazon-style automated facilities, wiping out tens of thousands of jobs.

According to the Save the Post Office website, as of last year, more than 3,300 postal delivery routes from 200 spoke offices had been consolidated into 60 S&DCs, a process which appears to be accelerating.

WSWS: What kinds of changes were introduced with Deliver for America?

LC: Now a new machine has been added, the SDUS, which increases the speed but has lowered the efficiency. Packages not only are more likely to end up in the wrong gurney, but they also sort big [within weight and dimension limits of the machine] and small packages together.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has launched a campaign calling on the University of New Hampshire and Harvard to withdraw their hirings of former President Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan and former White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Brett McGurk. CAIR said in a statement the two men “spent four years acting as shadow presidents and executing foreign policy disaster after foreign policy disaster, from the botched U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan to President Biden’s embrace of dictators he once pledged to ostracize to the horrific genocide in Gaza.”

Men wearing street clothes identifying themselves as “the police” whisked away an international graduate student at Tufts University in Massachusetts after she co-authored an op-ed critical of Israel.

Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish citizen in the U.S. on a student visa, was detained on Tuesday in Somerville by two men wearing street clothes and masks. In a video posted on social media by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Ozturk is seen walking down a sidewalk when she is stopped by a man wearing a hat and hoodie. After saying, “Hi, ma’am,” the man – who did not appear to flash a badge of any kind – seizes her phone as a second man approaches. Those two men eventually handcuff her as others, wearing masks, stand guard.

At one point, one of the men can be heard saying, “We’re the police,” but he did not identify an agency or department.

“You don’t look like it,” a bystander can be heard saying. “Why are you hiding your faces? Why are you hiding your faces?”

One bystander told The Boston Globe that Ozturk informed the men, “I’m a student.” The paper said the bystander spoke on condition of anonymity “for fear of retaliation from the government.”

“We are unaware of her whereabouts and have not been able to contact her,” Ozturk’s attorney Mahsa Khanbabai told The New York Times. “No charges have been filed against Rumeysa to date that we are aware of.”

Here's a followup. They kidnapped her to Louisiana: https://sh.itjust.works/post/35100426