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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean legislative push to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol over his short-lived imposition of martial law fell through on Saturday after most lawmakers from his conservative governing party boycotted the vote. Related video above: Thousands protest, march to president's office in S. Korea (12/05/24) The defeat of the motion is expected to intensify public protests calling for Yoon's ouster and deepen political chaos in South Korea, with a survey suggesting a majority of South Koreans support the president's impeachment. Yoon's martial law declaration drew criticism from his own ruling conservative party, but it is also determined to oppose Yoon's impeachment apparently because it fears losing the presidency to liberals. Impeaching Yoon required support from two-thirds of the National Assembly, or 200 of its 300 members. The opposition parties who brought the impeachment motion had 192 seats, but only three lawmakers from PPP participated in the vote. The motion was scrapped without ballot counting because the number of votes didn't reach 200. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP's earlier story follows below: Most ruling party lawmakers were boycotting a parliamentary vote Saturday to deny a two-thirds majority sought by the opposition to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol over his short-lived imposition of martial law, as protests grew nationwide calling for his removal. The likely defeat of the motion is expected to intensify public protests calling for Yoon's ouster and deepen political chaos in South Korea, with a survey suggesting a majority of South Koreans support the president's impeachment. Yoon's martial law declaration drew criticism from his own ruling conservative party, but it is also determined to oppose Yoon's impeachment apparently because it fears losing the presidency to liberals. Impeaching Yoon would require support from two-thirds of the National Assembly, or 200 of its 300 members. The opposition parties who brought the impeachment motion have 192 seats, meaning they need at least eight additional votes from Yoon's People Power Party. The opposition-controlled parliament began a vote earlier Saturday, but only three lawmakers from PPP took part with opposition members. If the number of lawmakers who cast ballots doesn't reach 200, the motion will be scrapped at midnight without the ballot counting, according to the National Assembly. Opposition parties could submit a new impeachment motion after a new parliamentary session opens next Wednesday. There are worries that Yoon won't be able to serve out his remaining 2 1⁄2 years in office because his leadership took a huge hit. Many experts say some ruling party lawmakers could eventually join opposition parties' efforts to impeach Yoon if public demands for it grow further. If Yoon is impeached, his powers will be suspended until the Constitutional Court decides whether to remove him from office. If he is removed, an election to replace him must take place within 60 days. National Assembly Speaker Woo Won Shik urged ruling party members to return to the chamber to participate in the vote, stressing that it was closely watched by the nation and also the world. "Don't make a shameful judgment, and please vote based on your convictions," Woo said. Democratic Party leaders visited a hall on the floor below the main chamber where PPP lawmakers were gathered, attempting to persuade them to vote. After being blocked from entering, they angrily accused the conservatives' leadership of preventing its lawmakers from voting freely. Earlier Saturday, Yoon issued a public apology over the martial law decree, saying he won't shirk legal or political responsibility for the declaration and promising not to make another attempt to impose martial law. He said would leave it to his party to chart a course through the country's political turmoil, "including matters related to my term in office." "The declaration of this martial law was made out of my desperation. But in the course of its implementation, it caused anxiety and inconveniences to the public. I feel very sorry over that and truly apologize to the people who must have been shocked a lot," Yoon said. Since taking office in 2022, Yoon has struggled to push his agenda through an opposition-controlled parliament and grappled with low approval ratings amid scandals involving himself and his wife. In his martial law announcement on Tuesday night, Yoon called parliament a "den of criminals" bogging down state affairs and vowed to eliminate "shameless North Korea followers and anti-state forces." The turmoil resulting from Yoon's bizarre and poorly thought-out stunt has paralyzed South Korean politics and sparked alarm among key diplomatic partners like the U.S. and Japan. Tuesday night saw special forces troops encircling the parliament building and army helicopters hovering over it, but the military withdrew after the National Assembly unanimously voted to overturn the decree, forcing Yoon to lift it before daybreak Wednesday. The declaration of martial law was the first of its kind in more than 40 years in South Korea. Eighteen lawmakers from the ruling party voted to reject Yoon's martial law decree along with opposition lawmakers. Yoon's speech fueled speculation that he and his party may push for a constitutional amendment to shorten his term, instead of accepting impeachment, as a way to ease public anger over the marital law and facilitate Yoon's early exit from office. Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the main liberal opposition Democratic Party, told reporters that Yoon's speech was "greatly disappointing" and that the only way forward is his immediate resignation or impeachment. His party called Yoon's martial law "unconstitutional, illegal rebellion or coup." The passage of Yoon's impeachment motion appeared more likely Friday when the chair of Yoon's party called for his removal on Friday, but the party remained formally opposed to impeachment. On Saturday, tens of thousands of people densely packed several blocks of roads leading up to the National Assembly, waving banners, shouting slogans and dancing and singing along to K-pop songs with lyrics changed to call for Yoon's ouster. Protesters also gathered in front of PPP's headquarters near the Assembly, angrily shouting for its lawmakers to vote to impeach Yoon. A smaller crowd of Yoon's supporters, which still seemed to be in the thousands, rallied in separate streets in Seoul, decrying the impeachment attempt they saw as unconstitutional. Lawmakers on Saturday first voted on a bill appointing a special prosecutor to investigate stock price manipulation allegations surrounding Yoon's wife. Some lawmakers from Yoon's party were seen leaving the hall after that vote, triggering angry shouts from opposition lawmakers. On Friday, PPP chair Han Dong-hun, who criticized Yoon's martial law declaration, said he had received intelligence that during the brief period of martial law, Yoon ordered the country's defense counterintelligence commander to arrest and detain unspecified key politicians based on accusations of "anti-state activities." Hong Jang-won, first deputy director of South Korea's National Intelligence Service, told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing Friday that Yoon had ordered him to help the defense counterintelligence unit to detain key politicians. The targeted politicians included Han, Lee and Woo, according to Kim Byung-kee, one of the lawmakers who attended the meeting. The Defense Ministry said Friday it suspended three military commanders, including the head of the defense counterintelligence unit, over their involvement in enforcing martial law. Vice Defense Minister Kim Seon Ho has told parliament that Defense Minister Kim Yong Hyun ordered the deployment of troops to the National Assembly after Yoon imposed martial law. Opposition parties accused Kim of recommending to Yoon to enforce martial law. Kim resigned Thursday, and prosecutors imposed an overseas travel ban on him.The abuse began when she was still an infant. A relative molested her, took photographs and swapped the images with others online. He allowed another man to spend time with her, multiplying the abuse. Nearly every day, the woman, now 27 and living in the Northeast, is reminded of that abuse with a law enforcement notice that someone has been charged with possessing those images. One of those notifications, which she received in late 2021, said the images had been found on a man's MacBook in Vermont. Her lawyer later confirmed with law enforcement that the images had also been stored in Apple 's iCloud . The notice arrived months after Apple had unveiled a tool that allowed it to scan for illegal images of sexual abuse. But it quickly abandoned that tool after facing criticism from cybersecurity experts, who said it could pave the way to other government surveillance requests. Now, the woman, using a pseudonym, is suing Apple because she says it broke its promise to protect victims like her. Instead of using the tools that it had created to identify, remove and report images of her abuse, the lawsuit says, Apple allowed that material to proliferate, forcing victims of child sexual abuse to relive the trauma that has shaped their lives. The lawsuit was filed late Saturday in U.S. District Court in Northern California. It says Apple's failures mean it has been selling defective products that harmed a class of customers, namely child sexual abuse victims, because it briefly introduced "a widely touted improved design aimed at protecting children" but "then failed to implement those designs or take any measures to detect and limit" child sexual abuse material. 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Under law, victims of child sexual abuse are entitled to a minimum of $150,000 in damages, which means the total award, with the typical tripling of damages being sought, could exceed $1.2 billion should a jury find Apple liable. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories The lawsuit is the second of its kind against Apple, but its scope and potential financial impact could force the company into a yearslong litigation process over an issue it has sought to put behind it. And it points to increasing concern that the privacy of Apple's iCloud allows illegal material to be circulated without being as easily spotted as it would be on social media services such as Facebook. For years, Apple has reported less abusive material than its peers, capturing and reporting a small fraction of what is caught by Google and Facebook. It has defended its practice by saying it is protecting user privacy, but child safety groups have criticized it for not doing more to stop the spread of that material. The case is the latest example of an emerging legal strategy against tech companies. For decades, Section 230 of the Communications and Decency Act has shielded companies from legal liability for what users post on their platforms. But recent rulings by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit have determined that those shields can be applied only to content moderation and don't provide blanket liability protection. The rulings have raised hope among plaintiffs' attorneys that tech companies could be challenged in court. In August, a 9-year-old girl sued the company in North Carolina after strangers sent her child sexual abuse videos through iCloud links and encouraged her to film and upload her own nude videos. Apple filed a motion to dismiss the North Carolina case, saying Section 230 protects it from liability for material posted on iCloud by someone else. It also argued that iCloud couldn't be subject to a product liability claim because it wasn't a product, like a defective tire. In a statement in response to the new suit, Fred Sainz, an Apple spokesperson, said: "Child sexual abuse material is abhorrent and we are committed to fighting the ways predators put children at risk. We are urgently and actively innovating to combat these crimes without compromising the security and privacy of all our users." Sainz pointed to safety tools the company has introduced to curtail the spread of newly created illegal images, including features in its Messages app that warn children of nude content and allow people to report harmful material to Apple. Riana Pfefferkorn, a lawyer and policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, said there are significant hurdles to any lawsuit over Apple's policies on child sexual abuse material. She added that a victory for the plaintiffs could backfire because it could raise questions about whether the government is forcing Apple to scan for illegal material in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The New York Times granted anonymity to the 27-year-old woman suing Apple so she could tell her story. She spoke anonymously because people have been known to seek out victims and search for their child sexual abuse material on the internet. Her abuse started not long after she was born. An adult male family member would engage in sexual acts with her and photograph them. He was arrested after logging into a chat room and offering to swap photos of the girl with other men. He was found guilty of several felonies and sent to prison. What she could remember of the abuse came to her in bits and pieces. One night as her mother watched an episode of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" about child sexual abuse, the story seemed eerily familiar. She screamed and startled her mother, who realized that she thought that the episode was about her. "It's not just you," her mother told her. "There are thousands of other kids." As her images were found online, the authorities would notify her mother. They have commonly received a dozen or so notifications daily for more than a decade. What bothered her the most was knowing that pedophiles shared some of her photos with children to normalize abuse, a process called grooming. "It was hard to believe there were so many out there," she said. "They were not stopping." The internet turbocharged the spread of child sexual abuse material. Physical images that had once been hard to find and share became digital photos and videos that could be stored on computers and servers and shared easily. In 2009, Microsoft worked with Hany Farid, now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, to create a software system to recognize photos, even altered ones, and compare them against a database of known illegal images. The system, called PhotoDNA, was adopted by a number of tech companies, including Google and Facebook. Apple declined to use PhotoDNA or do widespread scanning like its peers. The tech industry reported 36 million reports of photos and videos to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the federal clearinghouse for suspected sexual abuse material. Google and Facebook each filed more than 1 million reports, but Apple made just 267. In 2019, an investigation by the Times revealed that tech companies had failed to rein in abusive material. A bar graph the paper published detailing public companies' reporting practices led Eric Friedman, an Apple executive responsible for fraud protection, to message a senior colleague and say he thought the company may be underreporting child sexual abuse material. "We are the greatest platform for distributing child porn," said Friedman in the 2020 exchange. He said that was because Apple gave priority to privacy over trust and safety. A year later, Apple unveiled a system to scan for child sexual abuse. It said its iPhones would store a database of distinct digital signatures, which are known as hashes, that are associated with known child sexual abuse material identified by groups like the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. It said it would compare those digital signatures against photos in a user's iCloud storage service. The technique, which it called NeuralHash, would flag matches and forward them to the federal clearinghouse of suspected sexual abuse material. But after cybersecurity experts warned that it would create a back door to iPhones that could give governments access, the company dropped its plan. It said it was almost impossible to scan iCloud photos without "imperiling the security and privacy of our users." Early this year, Sarah Gardner, the founder of a child advocacy group called the Heat Initiative, began searching for law firms with experience representing victims of child sexual abuse. In March, the Heat team asked Marsh Law, a 17-year-old firm that focuses on representing victims of child sexual abuse, if it could bring a suit against Apple. Heat offered to provide $75,000 to support what could be a costly litigation process. It was a strategy borrowed from other advocacy campaigns against companies. Margaret Mabie, a partner at Marsh Law, took on the case. The firm has represented thousands of victims of child sexual abuse. Mabie dug through law enforcement reports and other documents to find cases related to her clients' images and Apple's products, eventually building a list of more than 80 examples, including one of a Bay Area man whom law enforcement found with more than 2,000 illegal images and videos in iCloud. The 27-year-old woman from the Northeast, who is represented by Marsh, agreed to sue Apple because, she said, she believes that Apple gave victims of child sexual abuse false hope by introducing and abandoning its NeuralHash system. An iPhone user herself, she said the company chose privacy and profit over people. Joining the suit was a difficult decision, she said. Because her images have been downloaded by so many people, she lives in constant fear that someone might track her down and recognize her. And being publicly associated with a high-profile case could cause an uptick in trafficking of her images. But she said she had joined because she thought it was time for Apple to change. She said the company's inaction was heart-wrenching.777 jili casino online games gameplay

AUSTON Trusty has revealed how the impromptu Huddle which the Celtic players formed during their Champions League encounter with Club Brugge tonight gave them the wake-up call they needed and helped to spark their fightback. And the centre-half revealed that he and his team mates had all let Cameron Carter-Vickers know they were firmly behind him after the own goal he scored to give the visitors the lead in the league phase match at Parkhead. The Scottish champions' players come together as a team to listen to a pep talk from their captain Callum McGregor before kick-off in every game – but this evening they did so immediately after their opponents had gone ahead for the first time ever. However, Trusty, the United States internationalist who moved to Glasgow from Sheffield United in a £6m transfer during the summer, felt that it helped the hosts, who equalised through Daizen Maeda in the second half and drew the match 1-1, to regroup. “They are clearly a good side,” he said. “We didn't start off as strong, as fast as we normally do, so they kind of got on top of us in the first half. But in the second half we changed things and we saw how the game shifted into our favour. “We just weren't playing in our character in the first half, so I think we all felt it. Sometimes you need that little huddle to wake everybody up and say, ‘Okay, what's happened has happened, now we can move on from it’. So that was a moment for us to make some changes and get some momentum back in the game." Asked what the message to Carter-Vickers had been, Trusty said: “We have his back. I don't think any defender, any player, wants that to happen to him. But, you know, sometimes it's part of football . I've had own goals as well, so it's one where you need a team mate to get your back. “The game happened so fast, so I'm not in that position. I'm looking away, I'm also looking, I'm trying to find my next pass as well. So I have to go back and watch it. But either way, he made the decision and we have his back. “So I went over to him, made sure his head was up. With all of us, he knows that we have his back. You don't want to make mistakes, but you feel fine to make mistakes, because you know your team mates have your back. “I haven't been here for the whole time he's been here, but I don't think anybody would try to do that or let that happen. But we bounced back. He showed his character and also the team showed its character. We bounced back and the game went on and we had plenty of life left in it.” Trusty also revealed the Celtic players had been angry that they failed to beat Brugge and pick up another three Champions League points when they returned to their dressing room at full-time – even though the draw kept them in the top 24 of the table and on course for the knockout round play-off. “I've been in locker rooms when you get away from this kind of game and guys are excited,” he said. “But you go back in the locker room tonight and see guys p****d off and really, really upset and that shows a lot of the character that’s in the team. “We weren't happy with how we played in the first half, but we thought that we should have won this game and it was a real opportunity for us, not just to get one point but to get three points. Obviously, you take the point, but it's good to see that guys are angry going into the locker room and sitting there just quiet. “That's the level we play at and that's the level of the team. When we train, it’s the same level. We have to keep it that way because if you make a mistake, you may do something and you get punished. Even in training, it’s just as intense as the games, if not more intense. “We train that way and that's the level we're at and I think we've shown that we have the quality and we can play with any team and we back ourselves. We're confident and the team's confident. We know our ability and we've shown to you guys but also shown to ourselves that we're here. So we’re in good shape.”

No. 22 Xavier aims to keep its perfect record intact Monday night in Fort Myers, Fla., when it takes on South Carolina in the Fort Myers Tip-Off. The Musketeers (5-0) are coming off an 80-55 victory on Wednesday over Siena, while the Gamecocks (3-2) beat Mercer on Thursday 84-72. Against Mercer, South Carolina sank a season-best 12 3-pointers -- tied for the fourth-most in a single game under third-year coach Lamont Paris. Jamarii Thomas, a senior transfer from Norfolk State, had 19 points and swished 4 of 5 shots from behind the arc. "Thomas got some good, clean looks," Paris said. "It was good to see those guys make their shots. Hopefully it gets those guys going in the right direction." On the season, the Gamecocks are making 7.8 3-pointers per game and shooting 32.5 percent from deep. Senior guard Jacobi Wright makes a team-best 1.8 3-pointers per game and shoots 37.5 percent from behind the arc. At 13.0 ppg, he is second on the team behind Collin Murray-Boyles (15.8). Xavier is allowing eight makes from deep per game and is letting opponents shoot 38.5 percent from behind the arc, which ranks 337th in the country. And despite an undefeated record so far for the Musketeers, third-year coach Sean Miller is worried about his players developing bad habits. "We have a virus that everybody is looking at the stat sheet, trying to get as many points as they possibly can," Miller said after the win over Siena. "They want to win, but they really want to win and score. We need a couple of guys that are willing to rebound, defend, make the extra pass, play at a high level defensively and understand what makes a team great." Marcus Foster did a decent job of doing a little bit of everything for Xavier against Siena, piling up 12 points, five rebounds, five assists and a steal. It was the first double-digit scoring outing for Foster -- a grad transfer from Furman -- in a Xavier uniform. Since 2008, Xavier is 25-11 against teams from the Southeastern Conference, but it hasn't played South Carolina in that stretch. --Field Level Media

No. 7 Tennessee outscored UT Martin by 28 points in the second half in routing the visiting Skyhawks 78-35 on Friday afternoon in Knoxville. Chaz Lanier scored a game-high 18 points for the Volunteers (7-0), who expanded on a 35-20 halftime lead with a 43-15 second half. Felix Okpara had 10 points, 11 rebounds and four blocks, helping Tennessee command the paint along with Igor Milicic, who added nine points and 13 rebounds. Zakai Zeigler nearly had a double-double with 11 points and nine assists. The Volunteers used their size to their advantage, outscoring UT Martin 36-10 in the paint and out rebounding the Skyhawks 49-24. That included 20 offensive rebounds for Tennessee, which led to 19 second-chance points. UT Martin (2-5) was cold coming out of the locker room after halftime, missing its first eight shots. Conversely, the Vols started the second half with a nine-point run to extend their lead to 24 points. The Vols never let the Skyhawks score consecutive baskets in the first half, holding UT Martin to 25 percent shooting (4 of 16) from beyond the arc and allowing a total of only three points from the starting five. For the game, guard Josue Grullon led UT Martin with 15 points. The leading scorer in the Ohio Valley Conference entering Friday at 18.2 points per game, Grullon has not started any game for head coach Jeremy Shulman. Most of the Skyhawks' points -- 28 of 35 -- came from their reserves. The starting five combined to score seven points -- six points from Matija Zuzic and a free throw for Lamine Niag. The starters went a combined 2 of 18 from the floor, while UT Martin as a team shot 22.6 percent (12 of 53) from the field. The Skyhawks made 5 of 7 free-throw attempts and made 18 turnovers. The Volunteers, who got 23 points off the bench, were 8-for-10 and had 11 turnovers. Tennessee improved to 6-0 all-time against UT Martin since 1993. --Field Level MediaDefiant Adani says committed to compliance after US indictmentSyria's Assad is in Moscow after deal on military basesNone

Preclinical tests show mRNA-based treatments effective for blinding condition November 27, 2024 Mass Eye and Ear A new study found that a novel mRNA-based therapy that targets a protein called RUNX1 may be able to prevent blindness and scarring from proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR), a disease caused by a traumatic eye injury or surgery like a retinal detachment repair that currently lacks effective treatments other than additional surgical procedures. Since RUNX1 is active in other diseases, the researchers also hope in the future to apply their mRNA technique to treat other retinal conditions like wet age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIN Email A new preclinical study by Mass Eye and Ear investigators showed that a novel mRNA-based therapy may be able to prevent blindness and scarring from proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR) following a retinal detachment repair or traumatic injury to the eye. There is no current treatment for PVR other than surgery, which itself carries a high risk of causing or exacerbating PVR. Their results, published in Science Translational Medicine , show the promise that mRNA-based therapies may one day offer patients with PVR and other retinal conditions. "This therapy is the first to deliver mRNA-based treatments inside the eye," said co-corresponding author of the study Leo A. Kim, MD, PhD, the Monte J. Wallace Ophthalmology Chair in Retina at Massachusetts Eye and Ear. "We were pleasantly surprised that we could even use this approach inside the eye without causing excessive inflammation. We hope that these early findings can usher in new treatment options for PVR and other eye diseases." PVR is scar tissue that forms inside the eye, commonly after eye trauma, that can contract and detach the retina. This pathologic scar tissue response, rather than the eye injury itself, is what can lead to blindness. In the new paper, the researchers detail preclinical studies using mRNA as a therapeutic in the eye. Messenger RNA, or mRNA, is an essential part of every single cell in the body. Cells copy the code of genes into pieces of RNA and these RNAs act as messengers that ferry the genetic codes to the ribosomes, which use it to create proteins. Strands of mRNA can code for any protein -- even ones not in the cell's genome. When introduced into cells, the cellular machinery turns these mRNAs into proteins. Proteins make up the structure of the cell and help it carry out its functions. They can also turn other genes on or off. In the new study, the research team used cell-based, tissue-based, and preclinical models of proliferative vitreoretinopathy and abnormal blood vessel growth to show that mRNA-based therapeutics can be used safely in the eye. The researchers developed and studied the efficacy of various mRNAs encoding for proteins related to the scar tissue formation to see which might be useful as a therapeutic. To develop a treatment for PVR, the researchers targeted a protein called RUNX1 that regulates the expression of a gene that turns eye cells into scar tissue. Earlier in their careers, Kim and study co-corresponding author Joseph Arboleda-Velasquez, MD, PhD, discovered that RUNX1 was involved in two processes seen in several retinal diseases: the formation of abnormal blood vessels, called aberrant angiogenesis, and scar tissue, or fibrosis. In PVR and other diseases, the gene that RUNX1 regulates is overexpressed in the eye, causing scar tissue and abnormal blood vessels to grow. The investigators initially believed that targeting RUNX1 was the best approach, but current technologies were limited. mRNA is primarily used to increase protein expression, whereas the issue in PVR was excessive RUNX1. A key insight for developing this new experimental therapy was the idea of creating a molecule that would trap RUNX1 and inhibit its function -- a strategy known as a dominant-negative inhibitor in biology. These dominant negative molecules are powerful and their effects cannot be easily compensated by cells. They settled on an mRNA called RUNX1-Trap, which keeps RUNX1 in a cell's cytoplasm, preventing it from entering the nucleus and turning on the gene that turns the cells into scar tissue. They saw that in patient-derived cells in a lab culture, in an animal model, and in patient tissues in the lab, treating the cells with this mRNA helped stop the development of scar tissue and abnormal blood vessels. The researchers consider this study a proof of concept that suggests that the mRNA approach may be useful for PVR and other eye diseases. The study's limitations include that the experiments were in cellular and preclinical models. This approach has not been tested in human subjects. The technology itself may have some limitations as mRNA doesn't remain in the cell very long making proteins. Thus, the researchers don't know how long the effects of one treatment may last or whether a patient may require multiple doses over weeks or months for the treatment to effectively prevent PVR. The researchers are now looking at ways to extend the half-life of the mRNA so that it can last longer and to determine the optimal timing of the treatment to ensure the mRNA gets in the eye at the right time. Since RUNX1 is active in other diseases, the researchers also hope to apply their mRNA system and RUNX1-Trap therapy to treat other retinal conditions like wet age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. "We believe targeting RUNX1 could lead to new therapies for sight-threatening conditions," said Arboleda- Velasquez, an associate scientist at Mass Eye and Ear. "The same idea of making dominant negative molecules produced using mRNA could result in the generation of potentially effective treatments for other conditions, greatly expanding the potential uses for mRNA," added Arboleda- Velasquez. Study co-first author William P. Miller, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Ophthalmology at Mass Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School, noted, "This work is the result of substantial effort put forth by our team, encompassing multiple experts across several different fields. It demonstrates novel applications of mRNA technology in ophthalmology and has implications for other aspects of medicine as well." Story Source: Materials provided by Mass Eye and Ear . Note: Content may be edited for style and length. Journal Reference : Cite This Page :Burton, Muntu score 18 as Western Michigan defeats Youngstown State 73-62

WASHINGTON -- Trump says he will nominate former Florida AG Pam Bondi to be US Attorney General after first pick, Matt Gaetz, withdrew.By MEAD GRUVER and AMY BETH HANSON, Associated Press A judge on Monday rejected a request to block a San Jose State women’s volleyball team member from playing in a conference tournament on grounds that she is transgender. Monday’s ruling by U.S. Magistrate Judge S. Kato Crews in Denver will allow the player, who has played all season, to continue competing in the Mountain West Conference women’s championship scheduled for later this week in Las Vegas. The ruling comes after a lawsuit was filed by nine current players who are suing the Mountain West Conference to challenge the league’s policies for allowing transgender players to participate. The players argued that letting her compete was a safety risk and unfair. Related Articles While some media have reported those and other details, neither San Jose State nor the forfeiting teams have confirmed the school has a trans women’s volleyball player. The Associated Press is withholding the player’s name because she has not publicly commented on her gender identity. School officials also have declined an interview request with the player. Judge Crews referred to the athlete as an “alleged transgender” player in his ruling and noted that no defendant disputed that San Jose State rosters a transgender woman volleyball player. He said the players who filed the complaint could have sought relief much earlier, noting that the individual universities had acknowledged that not playing their games against San Jose State this season would result in a forfeit in league standings. He also said injunctions are meant to preserve the status quo. The conference policy regarding forfeiting for refusing to play against a team with a transgender player had been in effect since 2022 and the San Jose State player has been on the roster since 2022 – making that the status quo. The player competed at the college level three previous seasons, including two for San Jose State, drawing little attention. This season’s awareness of her identity led to an uproar among some players, pundits, parents and politicians in a political campaign year. The tournament starts Wednesday and continues Friday and Saturday. San Jose State is seeded second. The judge’s order maintains the seedings and pairings for the tournament. Several teams refused to play against San Jose State during the season, earning losses in the official standings. Boise State and Wyoming each had two forfeits while Utah State and Nevada both had one. Southern Utah, a member of the Western Athletic Conference, was first to cancel against San Jose State this year. Nevada’s players stated they “refuse to participate in any match that advances injustice against female athletes,” without providing further details. Crews served as a magistrate judge in Colorado’s U.S. District Court for more than five years before President Joe Biden appointed him to serve as a federal judge in January of this year. Gruver reported from Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Hanson from Helena, Montana.

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He killed a high-profile CEO on a sidewalk in America’s largest city, where thousands of surveillance cameras monitor millions of people every day. But the man who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a busy hotel keeps evading capture. Now, authorities say he might have slipped out of New York – meaning the elusive gunman could be anywhere. Aren’t there cameras everywhere in New York City? It could take weeks to find and scrub through a massive array of video footage from all the places where the gunman may have traveled. Police believe the suspect arrived in New York City ten days before the killing – on Nov. 24, a law enforcement official told CNN. Throughout his stay, the suspect appeared on camera numerous times – but always kept his hood over his head and wore a mask in public places. "He knows he's on camera – it’s New York," said John Miller, CNN’s chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst. Police are searching for and scouring countless hours of video footage in hopes of finding more clues, such as whether the suspect met with anyone while in the city. "It will take them weeks. ... They will build out every step of his trip that’s on video," Miller said. "They will create a movie of his every move." While the gunman meticulously planned many parts of his crime and getaway, he might be surprised by "how far the NYPD is going to go in collecting video," said former NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey. "And they’re not just going to take it from the crime scene to his escape route," Corey said. "They’re actually going to rewind now, and they’re going to try to account for all 10 days that he spent in New York City. And I don’t think that he anticipates that." Why couldn’t they find him in Central Park on the day of the killing? Minutes after Thompson was gunned down Wednesday, surveillance video captured the suspect riding an electric bike into colossal Central Park at 6:48 a.m. Spanning 341 hectares, Central Park is larger than the country of Monaco. "It’s a big park, and it’s complicated terrain," Miller said. The suspect apparently left the park within minutes. After reviewing security footage, police believe he may have left the park through the West 77th Street exit – but without the “distinctive gray backpack” seen on the suspect during the shooting. At 7 a.m., a man resembling the suspect was spotted riding a bicycle on West 85th Street, private surveillance footage shows. Law enforcement told CNN they have reviewed the video and believe it likely shows the gunman. We now have a photo showing the suspect’s unmasked face. How has no one recognized him and come forward to police? Some have portrayed the killer as a man enacting vigilante justice against a health care system they say values profits over patients' lives, which could hinder some people’s motivation to report possible sightings of him. The evidence suggests the gunman viewed himself as a "Batman-type figure that was seeking justice on behalf of people that he thinks he's representing," said Bryanna Fox, a professor of criminology at the University of South Florida. The words "delay" and "depose" were written on a live round and a shell casing linked to the shooter, law enforcement sources told CNN. Police are investigating whether those words suggest a motive. The words are similar to a popular phrase about the insurance industry: “ delay, deny, defend .” Tens of thousands of social media users mocked the death of the health insurance CEO and showed little sympathy after the killing. A post by UnitedHealthcare’s parent company mourning Thompson's death received more than 82,000 reactions as of Friday; 76,000 of them were laughing emojis. Can facial recognition technology identify the suspect? An image of the suspect with his mask down – captured during a flirtatious moment with a hostel employee – is the best photo yet to help identify the suspect, authorities said. But contrary to popular belief, facial recognition software doesn’t always link a suspect’s face and identity, said Donnie Scott, CEO of IDEMIA Group, which specializes in facial recognition technology. "Most Americans may believe that law enforcement has images on everybody in the United States. That’s very much not true," he said. "If he happens to not be a resident of New York who happens to not have been arrested before, odds are he’s not going to be in their criminal database or their mugshot repository," Scott said. "So what’s likely happening across all law enforcement is they’re looking for this image in their local systems to see if this perpetrator exists in their galleries." Some believe police can just cross-check a suspect’s face with driver’s license photos from the Department of Motor Vehicles. But the reality is not that simple. "It’s a legal permissioning process. The state of New York does not have access to the DMV database for law enforcement purposes by statute," Scott said. "It requires cooperation and information sharing and a reason and willingness by the respective agencies to be allowed to share that by law." Facial recognition technology should not be used alone to identify a suspect, Scott said. "Our job is really to make law enforcement’s job easier. If you think about the real basis and use of facial recognition technologies, it’s to sift through the millions and millions of images to get it down to a small, small subset that the expert can use to make the identification," he said. "Face is not a fingerprint. It’s not DNA. It’s not used for (an) affirmative match. It’s used to get to a small enough number where that expert can say, 'Yes, I believe we have an investigative lead here. What other evidence may we have that can match this person to the crime?'" Why is it so hard to get data from a phone? Police are investigating a phone found in an alley the suspect ran through. But extracting data from a phone can be extremely difficult, depending on the model of the phone and the operating system. "This is something that law enforcement at every level has been struggling with for the last 10 years ... and that’s because of the ubiquity of end-to-end encryption and these incredibly secure kind of locking programs that we have on most phones," said former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. During his time in the FBI, he recalled, "When we would take in an iPhone on a significant case, whether or not we could get into it had to do not only with the model of phone that it was, but also the specific iOS version that it was running." For example, "you might be able to get into an iPhone 7 running iOS whatever, but you couldn’t get into one if it was running a different iOS," McCabe said. "It’s a very complex matrix of hardware and software, and that’s kind of what determines whether or not law enforcement has the capability to get past that locking mechanism." Even if authorities can "open up the phone," he said, the technical challenges might not be over. "Once you get into the phone, then you’re dealing with the problem of encrypted content," McCabe said. "Some users are not as disciplined, and they keep things like text messages and those sort of records on their phones, so you can read it off the device. But others are better at having messages expire and automatically deleted." Can’t they identify the suspect based on DNA from the water bottle? Detectives have recovered possible DNA evidence from the abandoned cell phone and from a water bottle they believe the suspect may have sipped from. The potential DNA evidence was turned over to a lab for testing, a senior law enforcement official told Miller. But the presence of DNA data might not be enough to identify the suspect. If the suspect committed a crime previously and had his DNA entered into a law enforcement database, it may be easier to identify him. But if the suspect had a previously clean record, identifying him through DNA becomes harder. "If they’re able to pull DNA ... but there’s no match to those DNA (samples), it’s going to be very difficult," said Callahan Walsh, co-host of "America’s Most Wanted." There’s a chance the suspect could be isolated using genetic genealogy, if one of his relatives entered their DNA data into a public database. "They can bring in familial DNA, but that takes a little bit longer to process," Walsh said. "There also has to be a match in a database somewhere from one of his family members." Even though the suspect may have left New York , the NYPD will keep searching for clues, Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. "We are right now processing a tremendous amount of evidence in this case," Tisch said Friday. "We already have lots of forensic evidence, fingerprints, DNA evidence,” plus a “massive camera canvass" of the suspected shooter’s movements through the city, she said. But despite the plethora of evidence, finding the suspect is an arduous task, McCabe said. "It’s far more complicated than it seems from the outside." __ CNN’s Mark Morales, Shimon Prokupecz, Tami Luhby, Claire Duffy, Elise Hammond, Erin Burnett, Brynn Gingras and Courtney Fennell contributed to this report.

Nasdaq Inc. stock underperforms Wednesday when compared to competitors despite daily gainsNonealvarez/E+ via Getty Images Purpose I look at the high frequency weekly indicators because while they can be very noisy, they provide a good nowcast of the economy, and will telegraph the maintenance or change in the economy well before monthly Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

Guest Opinion: Minnesota is about to give a crash course in bipartisanship

New York, NY, Nov. 27, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Launch Two Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: LPBBU) (the “ Company ”) announced today that, commencing November 29, 2024, holders of the units sold in the Company’s initial public offering may elect to separately trade the Company’s Class A ordinary shares and warrants included in the units. No fractional warrants will be issued upon separation of the units and only whole warrants will trade. The Class A ordinary shares and warrants that are separated will trade on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbols “LPBB” and “LPBBW,” respectively. Those units not separated will continue to trade on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol “LPBBU.” This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy the securities of the Company, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction. About Launch Two Acquisition Corp. Launch Two Acquisition Corp. is a blank check company formed for the purpose of effecting a merger, amalgamation, share exchange, asset acquisition, share purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses. The Company may pursue an acquisition opportunity in any business or industry or at any stage of its corporate evolution. The Company’s primary focus, however, will be on technology and software infrastructure companies whose products and services target financial services, real estate and asset management companies. Forward-Looking Statements This press release may include, and oral statements made from time to time by representatives of the Company may include, “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Statements regarding possible business combinations and the financing thereof, and related matters, as well as all other statements other than statements of historical fact included in this press release are forward-looking statements. When used in this press release, words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “possible,” “potential,” “predict,” “project,” “should,” “would” and similar expressions, as they relate to us or our management team, identify forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs of management, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to, the Company’s management. Actual results could differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements as a result of certain factors detailed in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“ SEC ”). All subsequent written or oral forward-looking statements attributable to us or persons acting on our behalf are qualified in their entirety by this paragraph. Forward-looking statements are subject to numerous conditions, many of which are beyond the control of the Company, including those set forth in the Risk Factors section of the Company’s registration statement and prospectus for the Company’s initial public offering filed with the SEC. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this release, except as required by law. Company Contact: Launch Two Acquisition Corp. Jurgen van de Vyver jurgen@launchpad.vc (510) 692-9600

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