Minnesota workers pressure employers to take action against ICE operations

Some of the US’s biggest companies are coming under increasing pressure to speak out about the Trump administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s operations in Minnesota.Workers throughout Minnesota have been pressuring their employers to act following the death of Renee Good, an unarmed woman killed by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis earlier this month.The killing on Saturday of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old Veterans Affairs Hospital ICU Nurse and member of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), intensified those calls from labor unions against ICE.“ICE continues to make everyone less safe, and Minnesota’s Labor Movement repeats and amplifies our call for them to leave our state immediately,” said Bernie Burnham, Minnesota AFL-CIO President, in a statement. “Minnesota’s Labor Movement will continue to actively support and stand in solidarity with every worker who has been unlawfully detained

City minister accused of ignoring £2bn car finance tax loophole

The City minister, Lucy Rigby, has been accused of snubbing taxpayers after she appeared to brush off concerns about a £2bn tax loophole benefiting big banks caught up in the car loans scandal.Rigby was urged to intervene by a member of the parliamentary Treasury committee after it emerged that lenders including Barclays, Lloyds and Santander could sidestep rules designed to ensure banks pay tax on compensation linked to corporate misconduct.Rules introduced in 2015 prevent banks from deducting compensation payouts from their profits before calculating corporation tax, meaning they cannot reduce their tax bill, regardless of the financial impact of their own wrongdoing.However, the Guardian revealed last month that banks will be able to exploit a loophole when they start paying compensation to victims of the £11bn car finance scandal this year. Their motor finance divisions are registered as “non-bank entities”, even though they are part of the larger banking groups, placing them outside the scope of rules

Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries, study suggests

Google’s search feature AI Overviews cites YouTube more than any medical website when answering queries about health conditions, according to research that raises fresh questions about a tool seen by 2 billion people each month.The company has said its AI summaries, which appear at the top of search results and use generative AI to answer questions from users, are “reliable” and cite reputable medical sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Mayo Clinic.However, a study that analysed responses to more than 50,000 health queries, captured using Google searches from Berlin, found the top cited source was YouTube. The video-sharing platform is the world’s second most visited website, after Google itself, and is owned by Google.Researchers at SE Ranking, a search engine optimisation platform, found YouTube made up 4

How the ‘confident authority’ of Google AI Overviews is putting public health at risk

Do I have the flu or Covid? Why do I wake up feeling tired? What is causing the pain in my chest? For more than two decades, typing medical questions into the world’s most popular search engine has served up a list of links to websites with the answers. Google those health queries today and the response will likely be written by artificial intelligence.Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, first set out the company’s plans to enmesh AI into its search engine at its annual conference in Mountain View, California, in May 2024. Starting that month, he said, US users would see a new feature, AI Overviews, which would provide information summaries above traditional search results. The change marked the biggest shake-up of Google’s core product in a quarter of a century

‘Alex Pretti was murdered’: NBA’s Haliburton among sports stars to condemn Minnesota killing

A number of prominent US sports stars have condemned the killing of a registered nurse, Alex Pretti, by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday.Pretti, 37, is the second person shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis in less than three weeks as protests over Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown sweep the city. Senior Trump administration officials have claimed Pretti intended to “massacre” federal officers with a handgun but video of the killing appears to contradict those claims.Two-time NBA All-star Tyrese Haliburton, one of the best young players in the league, posted about the killing on Saturday. “Alex Pretti was murdered,” the Indiana Pacers guard wrote

Alex Honnold free solos Taipei 101 skyscraper in live Netflix climb

The US rock climber Alex Honnold climbed one of Asia’s tallest skyscrapers without ropes or a harness on Sunday, fulfilling an ambition that began more than a decade ago and which he hoped would inspire people to pursue their own challenges because “time is finite”.Honnold, who starred in the 2019 Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo, ascended the 508-metre (1,667ft) Taipei 101 using the skyscraper’s horizontal metal beams to pull himself up with his bare hands. The challenge had originally been scheduled to take place on Saturday but was postponed because of rain.Cheers erupted from a gathered crowd as Honnold, 40, began to climb the 101-floor building in Taiwan’s capital city, and again when he paused at one point and turned around to face them.The 91-minute ascent was broadcast globally on Skyscraper Live, Netflix’s latest foray into live sports programming