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before the sophisticated agents I’m describing become a reality, we need to confront a number of questions about the technology and how we’ll use it.

Today, AI’s main role in healthcare is to help with administrative tasks. Abridge, Nuance DAX, and Nabla Copilot, for example, can capture audio during an appointment and then write up notes for the doctor to review.

At issue are essential questions of how Hollywood should operate in a world of massive global entertainment conglomerates. Are the middlemen who unite the creative and business communities increasingly central to the birthing of ideas, and should they thus be allowed — even encouraged — to expand their role?

Or does such expansion amount to profiteering in contradiction of their purpose, and tasks should be limited to the specific goal of landing clients jobs?

The WGA also says it resists the much more established practice of so-called packaging fees, in which agencies take money, both upfront from a show’s budget as well as from back-end revenue, for bringing to a writer’s project other agency clients such as actors, producers and directors and then presenting the whole package to distributors and financiers

Two FBI agents are dead and at least three others are wounded after a raid on a home in Sunrise, Fla., turned violent early Tuesday.

President Biden offered his condolences to the agents' loved ones. "Every family dreads the possibly of receiving that call," he said. "My heart aches for the families."

State Sen. Lauren Book, who is based in Broward County, where the raid occurred, and is also a survivor of child sexual abuse, echoed Wray's words. Alfin and Schwartzenberger were heroes who were "working to keep children safe from sexual abuse and online exploitation — scourges amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic," Book said in a statement to NPR.

An FBI agent has been charged with attempted murder in the off-duty shooting of another man on a Metro subway train last year in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., according to court records unsealed Tuesday.

The charges stem from a Dec. 15 shooting on a train near Medical Center Station in Bethesda. Police for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority said in a Dec. 18 statement that the agent fired multiple shots after the man had approached him that morning and they exchanged words.

When the man asked Valdivia for money on the train, the agent said no and the man muttered expletives while walking away, Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Robert Hill said during Tuesday’s hearing. Valdivia told the man, "Watch your mouth," and the man turned around and approached Valdivia, who told him to back up multiple times. Valdivia shot the man from 2 to 3 feet away, Hill said, and did not identify himself as an agent until after the shooting. The man had part or all of his spleen, colon and pancreas removed during surgery after the shooting.

Russia’s Ministry of Justice added five people, including veteran rights activist Lev Ponomaryov, to its list of media “foreign agents”

a law in 2012 allowing it to label foreign-funded non-governmental organisations and rights groups it viewed as engaged in political activity as “foreign agents”

“foreign agent” media outlets and independent journalists and bloggers

The Chicago-based N.A.R. is the largest professional organization in the United States. It has 1.5 million members, more than $1 billion in assets and owns the trademark to the word “Realtor,” making a real estate agent’s ability to call themselves a Realtor and to buy and sell homes contingent upon the payment of membership dues in much of the country.

A coalition of home sellers sued N.A.R. and several brokerages in 2019, challenging N.A.R.’s policy that requires a listing agent to pay a fee to a buyers’ agent in a home sale transaction — a fee that is nearly always passed on to the home seller.

Agents who are members of N.A.R. must follow the organization’s policies when buying, selling and listing homes, including the one that led to what home sellers in the lawsuits described as a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act by inflating seller costs.

During the hearing, several senators expressed their outrage, focusing their future actions on the FBI’s failures. Senator Patrick Leahy even supported the gymnasts’ calls for prosecuting the FBI agents accused of mishandling the case. But the Senators are avoiding the fundamental legal problem at the heart of the investigation: federal law did not cover Nassar’s abuse.

FBI agents did nothing when first confronted with Olympians’ accusations because the federal agents had a legal rationale for not pursuing their claims. Nassar could not be charged with a federal offense based on his assaults. That’s accurate—even if it sounds perverse. (His ultimate federal conviction was for possessing kiddie porn, not hundreds of assaults). And it is why the Indianapolis agents claimed that they did not have “federal jurisdiction” to take the case.

The US Olympic Committee had knocked on the wrong prosecutorial door. The survivors should have gone to a different set of Michigan state prosecutors,  according to the FBI agents.

Russian Sports Agent and U.S. Marathon Officials Under Federal Investigation

Officials are scrutinizing the agent, Andrey Baranov, for bribery and corruption, according to several people familiar with the case who requested anonymity because the investigation was continuing.

The investigators are looking into whether Mr. Baranov conspired with American marathon organizers — including New York City Marathon officials — to allow athletes using banned substances to compete in their events.

The armed occupiers of a wildlife refuge in Oregon say they will turn themselves in on Thursday morning, hours after Cliven Bundy -- the father of protest leader Ammon Bundy -- was arrested by federal agents.

Cliven Bundy, who came to the national spotlight in a fight with the federal Bureau of Land Management over grazing rights for his cattle in 2014, was heading to Oregon earlier Wednesday.

After landing in Portland, Oregon, Bundy was taken into federal custody, the FBI said.Read MoreIt's not clear what he's been charged with. The FBI said authorities would make charging information available on Thursday morning.

Heading into the spring sales season, the housing market in the suburbs of New York has already gone into overdrive, with bidding wars becoming the norm and many homes selling within days of coming on the market.

The frenetic sales activity — a second wave after a surge last summer — has been fueled by multiple forces: historically low mortgage rates; pandemic-fatigued city dwellers desperate for more space; and many employers’ willingness to embrace remote work, allowing buyers to look in places beyond what would be considered an easy commute.

“This is the strongest market I have seen in two decades,” said Sara Littlefield, an agent in Connecticut with Coldwell Banker.

A Florida law enforcement officer and a suspect were injured Tuesday when they exchanged gunfire during a drug operation, officials said. 

Florida authorities secure the scene at a Kissimmee, Fla., apartment complex where a Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent and a suspect exchanged gunfire Tuesday. (FOX 35 Orlando)

He was expected to survive and be released from a hospital on Tuesday. The extent of his injuries was not disclosed. Four agents from the FDLE's Tampa office were involved in Tuesday's operation.

Last summer, Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny narrowly survived an assassination attempt, widely believed to have been organized by Russia's security services, through a Novichok nerve-agent poisoning. Now, without concerted action, he may die from medical neglect in a Russian penal colony where the authorities locked him up following a mockery of a trial. The botched nerve-agent attack, since exposed, was supposed to have been accomplished with deniability. If Navlany now dies in prison, the blame will lie unequivocally with the Kremlin.

It's not hard to see why Russian authorities are now sparing no effort to make Navalny -- and his backers -- believe that political opposition is futile and to make them pay a very high price for their activism. Navalny's support was once said to extend no further than the intelligentsia of Moscow and St. Petersburg, but he eventually built a following across the country. Indeed, it was while he was visiting supporters in distant Siberia that the Federal Security Service (FSB), the KGB's main successor, apparently tried to kill him.

Russian authorities' imprisonment of Navalny has only boosted his profile. Now from his prison cell, he is highlighting the Kremlin's refusal to give him independent medical care he can trust for what appears to be a combination of an undiagnosed respiratory illness and serious back pain. His three-week hunger strike has brought him to what his doctors say from afar could be the brink of death. One of the doctors said that test results he received from Navalny's family showed sharply elevated levels of potassium, which could lead to cardiac arrest, and signs of kidney failure.

Russian security forces detained opposition leader Alexei Navalny on his return to the country, heightening a confrontation between the Kremlin and its most vocal critic after he recovered in Germany from a near-fatal poisoning attack last summer.

His followers, who had congregated at a different airport west of Moscow, were barred from entering the arrival area by dozens of security officials, many in riot gear, who swarmed the area.

Russia’s federal prison service said in a statement that Mr. Navalny, who has been on the agency’s “wanted list” since Dec. 29, was detained for repeated violations of his probation. Further measures would be determined by a court, the agency said. Until then, Mr. Navalny would remain in custody, officials said.

“Jews scam, n----rs rape, and I mag dump.”Teixeira raised his weapon, aimed at an unseen target and fired 10 times in rapid succession, emptying the magazine of bullets.

Previously unpublished videos and chat logs reviewed by The Washington Post, as well as interviews with several of Teixeira’s close friends, suggest that he was readying for what he imagined would be a violent struggle against a legion of perceived adversaries — including Blacks, political liberals, Jews, gay and transgender people — who would make life intolerable for the kind of person Teixeira professed to be: an Orthodox Christian, politically conservative and ready to defend, if not the government of the United States, a set of ideals on which he imagined it was founded.

For Teixeira, firearms practice seemed to be more than a hobby. “He used the term ‘race war’ quite a few times,” said a close friend who spent time with Teixeira in an online community on Discord, a platform popular with video game players, and had lengthy private phone and video calls with him over the course of several years.“He did call himself racist, multiple times,” the friend said in an interview. “I would say he was proud of it.”

31 October 2013 Last updated at 19:42 ET Share this page Email Print Share this page2.6KShareFacebookTwitter Syria chemical weapons equipment destroyed, says OPCW Advertisement $render("advert-post-script-load"); Jerry Smith, OPCW: "We have... observed all of the destruction activities" Continue reading the main story Syria conflict Arms destruction Chemical stockpile 'Please let it be over' Assad opponents Syria's declared equipment for producing, mixing and filling chemical weapons has been destroyed, the international watchdog says. This comes a day before the deadline set by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The weapons have been placed under seal, an OPCW spokesman said. Inspectors were sent to Syria following allegations, denied by the government, that its forces had used chemical weapons in civilian areas. Continue reading the main story Analysis Jonathan Marcus BBC diplomatic correspondent The achievement of this crucial initial target is an important moment for the chemical weapons destruction effort in Syria. The inspectors' first task was to move swiftly to prevent the government from producing any more chemical agent and to destroy facilities and equipment used for mixing agents and filling munitions. Production facilities will be closely monitored to ensure that there are no moves to repair them. The next deadline is mid-November, by which time the OPCW and the Syrians must agree a detailed plan to destroy Syria's chemical weapons stockpile. All sorts of questions are raised. Where will this destruction be carried out ? Who will provide the necessary equipment and so on? Western intelligence agencies will be studying Syria's declarations carefully. They will be eager to direct inspectors to additional locations if there are any grounds to believe that Damascus has been less than frank in its disclosures. The inspections were agreed between Russia and the US after Washington threatened to use force in Syria. Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad

Syria's declared equipment for producing, mixing and filling chemical weapons has been destroyed, the international watchdog says.

In a separate development, a large explosion at a Syrian army base has been reported outside the coastal city of Latakia. A White House official told the BBC Israeli planes carried out the attack, saying he believed the intended target was Russian missiles. Separately, a US security official said Russian-made SA-125 missiles had been targeted, according to the Associated Press news agency.

RULES? MORE RULES? REALLY? Isn’t life complicated enough, restricting enough, without abstract rules that don’t take our unique, individual situations into account? And given that our brains are plastic, and all develop differently based on our life experiences, why even expect that a few rules might be helpful to us all?

“I’ve got some good news…and I’ve got some bad news,” the lawgiver yells to them. “Which do you want first?” “The good news!” the hedonists reply. “I got Him from fifteen commandments down to ten!” “Hallelujah!” cries the unruly crowd. “And the bad?” “Adultery is still in.”

Maps of Meaning was sparked by Jordan’s agonized awareness, as a teenager growing up in the midst of the Cold War, that much of mankind seemed on the verge of blowing up the planet to defend their various identities. He felt he had to understand how it could be that people would sacrifice everything for an “identity,”