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The record-tampering charges accused Mr. Daleiden and Ms. Merritt of making and presenting fake California driver’s licenses, with the intent to defraud, for their April meeting at Planned Parenthood in Houston.

Abortion opponents claimed that the videos, which were released starting in July, revealed that Planned Parenthood was engaged in the illegal sale of body parts — a charge that the organization has denied and that has not been supported in numerous congressional and state investigations triggered by the release of the videos.

In a statement on Monday night, Mr. Daleiden said: “The Center for Medical Progress uses the same undercover techniques that investigative journalists have used for decades in exercising our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and of the press, and follows all applicable laws. We respect the processes of the Harris County district attorney, and note that buying fetal tissue requires a seller as well. Planned Parenthood still cannot deny the admissions from their leadership about fetal organ sales captured on video for all the world to see.”

The release of the videos last summer created a furor and gave new strength to the conservative drive to defund Planned Parenthood. The organization was forced to apologize for the casual tone that one of its officials had used to discuss a possible transfer of fetal tissue to what she believed was a legitimate medical company. But Planned Parenthood said the fees being discussed were to cover costs and were legal. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main story

But Obama has largely remained silent. That should not come as surprise. His reticence reflects one of the problems that constrained his presidency—his hesitation and resistance to getting down and dirty in the muck of partisan politics. He aimed high, but American politics went low.

But when it came to partisan politics, Obama declined to enter into bare-knuckled combat with Tea Party Republicans. He bowed out of the fight at the exact time that he was requiring congressional Democrats to vote on a series of highly controversial issues.

Obama’s strategy of trying to deflate his opposition by downplaying or hiding the impact of his programs posed political problems for his political supporters. Democrats wanted Obama to wave the flag of victory, but the president believed that avoiding drama was a better approach. As the president expanded the federal government with a hidden hand, refusing to boast of the effects of the stimulus or downplaying discussions about what his regulatory changes achieved (a sharp contrast from President Trump), Democrats didn’t have as much to work with on the campaign trail.

When Obama became president in 2009, Republicans could afford to have former President George W. Bush sit on the sidelines as they rebuilt their strength. Unlike Obama, Bush was hugely unpopular. But more importantly, the right had its institutions as a solid base for revival. The grassroots energy of the Tea Party was connected to these entrenched institutions, from Fox News to Dick Army’s FreedomWorks. But the Democratic Party can’t afford to wait; it needs Obama to learn from one of the great mistakes of his own presidency: his failure to take seriously enough the grave political threat his party was facing.

The last time Obama was too timid, the Republicans roared. His party can’t afford to see Obama make that same mistake once again.

the hacking campaign certainly had a major effect on the progress of election. There's no question about that. But we knew all this months ago. Let's not pretend we didn't.

When you click to show the list of people who “liked” a post, you probably think you’re getting a list of people who expressed positive sentiment toward a particular combination of sentences. But computationally, what you’re getting is slightly different. “Show me a list of the people who liked a Facebook post” is actually a command more like “Display a list of FirstName and LastName for usernames where the flag LikedThisPost = True.” There are a lot of assumptions built in there.

There’s the assumption that the username corresponds to a single real person, which is not always true—people have multiple Facebook accounts, and some accounts have multiple people posting to them, and some accounts are fake

There’s the assumption that the agent that clicked the like button is the same person referred to by the username—not necessarily true. People often forget to log out of their Facebook accounts on desktops and laptops, or use other people’s phones to browse social media

A like button is merely a tool. Humans use tools in breathtakingly creative ways—this is one of the many exciting and inspiring things about social uses of technology. However, the meaning a person imparts to an action on a social-media platform does not always correspond to the actual intent. In real-life social interactions, nuance is everything. On social media, where that nuance is obscured, we ought to be hyper-critical about the ethical ramifications of using social media data for real-world judgments.

For the kid listed in a gang database, it can be unclear how to get out of it. In the world of human interaction, we accept change through behavior: the addict can redeem himself by getting clean, or the habitual interrupter can redeem himself by not interrupting. We accept behavior change. But in the database world, unless someone has permission to delete or amend a database record, no such change is possible

The National Gang Center, in its list of gang-related legislation, shows only 12 states with policies that specifically address gang databases. Most deny the public access to the information in these databases. Only a few of these twelve mention regular purging of information, and some specifically say that a person cannot even find out if they have a record in the database

. “The last time that the gang unit purged its files, however, was in 1993—approximately 4 years before this study was conducted,” he wrote. “One clerk who is responsible for data entry and dissemination estimated, ‘At a minimum, 400 to 500 gang members would be deleted off the gang list today if we went through the files.

n predict what book I want to buy next, hasn’t this problem already been solved?” The answer is inevitably no. When computer scientists were building the Internet in the late 1990s, there weren’t any widely adopted or established ethical guidelines because we were building these systems for the first time in human history.

We also need to acknowledge that computer systems are not a panacea. “Your program really does stink, and the sooner you get used to the idea, the better,” writes Nathan S. Borenstein in Programming as if People Mattered. “The inadequacies of your software are simply a reflection of your frail, shortsighted, and limited human nature. Every program ever built is doomed to eventual obsolescence.” We need to put people before programs, and if programs don’t reflect our human values, we need to change the code. And if programmers can’t write code that is fair and just, we should consider relying on people instead of programs.

If American law enforcement is going to go deeper into the brave new world of data-driven policing, we need to create systems that have human values embedded in them. If our technological systems are entrapping innocent citizens or tampering with the presumption of innocence, should they be used?

South Africa has been hit by an outbreak of African swine fever, a highly contagious disease that causes fatal haemorrhages in pigs, the Ministry of Agriculture has said.

Leading rights group Amnesty International has called on the Ethiopian government to disband a police unit which is accused of carrying out human rights abuses in the Somali and Oromia regions of the country.

About 40 civil servants and 14 private sector individuals were charged on Monday over the alleged theft of $78m (£59m) from the youth agency.

Trump’s well-attested attempts to induce Georgia state officials to manipulate November’s election count in his favour were a crime, Fulton County prosecutors suggest. If so, why the delay? Charge him! Add to the rap sheet allegations of the ex-president corruptly channelling US taxpayer and foreign funds into his hotel and resort businesses.

It’s truly strange that in a land of laws, Trump still walks free, strutting around his fancy-pants golf course, holding $250,000 a head fundraisers, evading justice, encouraging sedition, and daily blogging divisive bile about a stolen election. The Big Kahuna peddles the Big Lie. What other self-respecting country would allow it?

The trial could include testimony from top Trump advisers with firsthand knowledge of his alleged attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals. But the White House has indicated that Trump would invoke executive privilege to prevent such advisers from testifying, setting up a court fight that could drag the trial out for weeks or longer.

The House impeachment managers, who will act as prosecutors, declared the president must be removed for putting his political career ahead of the public trust and seeking to hide that betrayal from Congress and the American people.

The seven managers led by intelligence committee chair Adam Schiff published a 46-page tiral brief. A 61-page “statement of material facts” was attached.

Another impeachment manager, Jason Crow of Colorado, said the White House was in effect arguing that Trump was above the law. “If all of the president’s arguments are true, that a president can’t be indicted, and that the abuse of power, the abuse of public trust doesn’t count as an impeachable offense – if that is true, then no president can be held accountable,” he told CNN’s State of the Union. “Then the president truly is above the law.”

Trump must be removed, Democrats argue, owing to the egregiousness of his past misconduct and his ongoing efforts to encourage foreign tampering in US elections.

“President Trump’s continuing presence in office undermines the integrity of our democratic processes and endangers our national security,” the managers wrote. “President Trump’s abuse of power requires his conviction and removal from office.”

Officials said that in a written statement to Aurora Health public safety officials, the pharmacist responsible admitted "to intentionally removing the vaccine knowing that if not properly stored the vaccine would be ineffective."

Chief Aurora Medical Group Officer Jeff Bahr told reporters that the former employee deliberately removed the vials from refrigeration on two separate occasions — on Dec. 24 overnight, then returning them to proper storage, and then again on Dec. 25 into Saturday morning.

As a result, health care workers were forced to throw out about 570 doses of vaccine. However, some people were given the medicine that had been left out.

Grafton police detectives reported 57 patients received those injections. Bahr said those vaccines were rendered potentially less effective or altogether ineffective. The patients, who have been notified, are not at any risk of adverse health effects because the doses were left out, he noted.

The value of the spoiled doses is estimated to be between $8,000 and $11,000.

But that thought is antithetical to the war Trump wants to wage in America between the suburbs and what he deems problematic “inner cities” and “Democrat-run cities” — code for where concentrations of Black people and other people of color live.

It threatens to strengthen efforts to disenfranchise Black voters and other voters of color who disproportionately vote for Democrats in the future.

“ensuring that Americans can have faith in this election and in all future elections.” As Jay Willis pointed out in The Washington Post, “Even after Trump’s presidency ends, that message will pave the way for G.O.P. politicians and judges to further one of their party’s and the conservative movement’s most important ongoing projects: restricting voting rights.” He continued: “Trump lost this election, but he can still help Republicans win in the future.”

Trump not only attempted to erase Black votes after they were cast, he attempted to suppress them before they were cast. This is nothing new among conservatives, but Trump has dragged the practice out of the back rooms and into the light of day once again, giving it a telegenic, digitally contagious persona.

As Eric Levitz pointed out in New York Magazine: “The G.O.P. is now a party that has no compunction about nullifying the voting rights of its opposition to retain power. And once a party has liberated itself from the shackles of respecting its detractors’ rights, much else becomes permissible.”

But we don’t talk enough about how for Black people and other racial minorities, this isn’t only about faith. For them, it’s about being able to participate in elections at all.

Republicans plan to challenge the counting of state Electoral College votes. This effort, too, is expected to fail. But it will provide yet another spectacle on a grand stage for the lie that Trump and his sycophantic courtiers have sown: that the political machine in liberal cities full of Blacks, hipsters, gays and gangs stole elections from the real Americans in the hinterlands.

What we are seeing unfold before our eyes is not about building trust in elections, it is anti-patriotic. It is not about ensuring that every legal vote is counted. It’s about attempting to legally limit whose ballots can be counted.

Trump is attempting to drag Jim Crow into the Twitter era.

“Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong,” he said

During the call, the president offered several false conspiracy theories, including debunked charges that ballots in Fulton County were shredded and that voting machines operated by Dominion Voting Systems were tampered with and replaced.

Then the president suggested that Mr. Raffensperger could be prosecuted criminally.

“You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” the president said. “You know, that’s a criminal — that’s a criminal offense. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”

Mr. Raffensperger wrote: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true. The truth will come out.”

It doesn’t matter to these Republicans that their assertions have no basis in fact; for them, words have no intrinsic meaning. A party that once portrayed itself as a fierce critic of relativism and a fierce defender of objective truth now delights in debasing words in order to gain and maintain political power. Theirs is the ethic of Thrasymachus, the cynical Sophist in Plato’s Republic who believes that might makes right and that injustice is better than justice.

The base of the Republican Party fell in love with the Trump Show—with his “owning the libs” and willingness to validate conservatives’ grievances and resentments, his chaos-creating ways, and his capacity to shatter norms and channel hatreds. To his supporters, Trump is entertaining and cathartic, a “fighter,” a middle finger to an establishment they revile. Every criticism of him, every legal action taken against him, provides them with one more reason to rally around him. The stronger the evidence against him, the deeper their devotion to him and the more intense their rage at those who call him out

The trials of Donald Trump will deepen the divides in a country already brimming with political hate. The more threatened he feels, the more he will advocate political violence. We saw what he did when he was losing his presidency; imagine what he’ll do when he’s losing his freedom.

Here’s something we should prepare for: If Donald Trump thinks he’s going down, he’s going to try to burn down our institutions. He will mobilize his MAGA base, his Republican enablers, and the right-wing media to unleash yet more lies and conspiracy theories. He will portray himself as a martyr who is being persecuted for the sake of his supporters. He will claim that his legal troubles prove that the system is corrupt, and not him. Trump and his supporters will try to tamper with witnesses, intimidate jurors, and threaten public officials. And he will try to cause enough confusion, disorientation, discord, fear, and even violence to escape accountability yet again.

Donald Trump has already deeply wounded our nation. He’s perfectly willing to break it. It’s up to us to keep him from succeeding.

Authoritarian governments have created seemingly realistic news broadcasters to advance their political goals

Experts fear the technology could hasten an erosion of trust in media, in government and in society. If any image can be manufactured — and manipulated — how can we believe anything we see?

“The tools are going to get better, they’re going to get cheaper, and there will come a day when nothing you see on the internet can be believed,” said Wasim Khaled, chief executive of Blackbird.AI, a company that helps clients fight disinformation.

Artificial intelligence allows virtually anyone to create complex artworks, like those now on exhibit at the Gagosian art gallery in New York, or lifelike images that blur the line between what is real and what is fiction. Plug in a text description, and the technology can produce a related image — no special skills required.

Midjourney’s images, he said, were able to pass muster in facial-recognition programs that Bellingcat uses to verify identities, typically of Russians who have committed crimes or other abuses. It’s not hard to imagine governments or other nefarious actors manufacturing images to harass or discredit their enemies.

In February, Getty accused Stability AI of illegally copying more than 12 million Getty photos, along with captions and metadata, to train the software behind its Stable Diffusion tool. In its lawsuit, Getty argued that Stable Diffusion diluted the value of the Getty watermark by incorporating it into images that ranged “from the bizarre to the grotesque.”

Getty’s lawsuit reflects concerns raised by many individual artists — that A.I. companies are becoming a competitive threat by copying content they do not have permission to use.

Trademark violations have also become a concern: Artificially generated images have replicated NBC’s peacock logo, though with unintelligible letters, and shown Coca-Cola’s familiar curvy logo with extra O’s looped into the name.

The threat to photographers is fast outpacing the development of legal protections, said Mickey H. Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association

Newsrooms will increasingly struggle to authenticate conten

Social media users are ignoring labels that clearly identify images as artificially generated, choosing to believe they are real photographs, he said.

The video explained that the deepfake had been created, with Ms. Schick’s consent, by the Dutch company Revel.ai and Truepic, a California company that is exploring broader digital content verification

The companies described their video, which features a stamp identifying it as computer-generated, as the “first digitally transparent deepfake.” The data is cryptographically sealed into the file; tampering with the image breaks the digital signature and prevents the credentials from appearing when using trusted software.

The companies hope the badge, which will come with a fee for commercial clients, will be adopted by other content creators to help create a standard of trust involving A.I. images.

“The scale of this problem is going to accelerate so rapidly that it’s going to drive consumer education very quickly,” said Jeff McGregor, chief executive of Truepic

Adobe unveiled its own image-generating product, Firefly, which will be trained using only images that were licensed or from its own stock or no longer under copyright. Dana Rao, the company’s chief trust officer, said on its website that the tool would automatically add content credentials — “like a nutrition label for imaging” — that identified how an image had been made. Adobe said it also planned to compensate contributors.