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Developers will have to show that their project either helps reduce the amount of non-recyclable waste going to landfill, or replaces an older, less efficient incinerator. The move forms part of the Government’s drive to increase recycling rates, which have held at about 45% of household waste since 2015. Environment minister Mary Creagh said: “For far too long, the nation has seen its recycling rates stagnate and relied on burning household waste, rather than supporting communities to keep resources in use for longer. “That ends today, with clear conditions for new energy from waste plants – they must be efficient and support net zero and our economic growth mission, before they can get the backing needed to be built.” Developers will also have to ensure their incinerators are ready for carbon capture technology, and demonstrate how the heat they produce can be used to help cut heating bills for households. The Government expects that its “crackdown” on new incinerators will mean only a limited number are built, while still reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill and enabling the country to process the waste it produces. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the country was almost at the point where it had enough waste facilities to handle non-recyclable rubbish, and so had limited need for new incinerators. But the proposals stop short of the plans included in the Conservatives’ 2024 manifesto, which committed to a complete ban on new incinerators due to their “impact on local communities” and declining demand as recycling increased.
Governor Idris Attracts National Dignitaries To KebbiOpenAI is reportedly bolstering sales staff amid a “paradigm shift” in corporate AI spending. In an interview with The Information Wednesday (Nov. 27), OpenAI Chief Commercial Officer Giancarlo “GC” Lionetti said the company hopes to capitalize on that shift as it tries to achieve $100 billion in revenue by 2029. The company has been landing new contracts with healthcare, manufacturing and legal companies, among them vaccine maker Moderna and home improvement company Lowe’s , Lionetti told the publication. And to close similar deals, the report said, the artificial intelligence (AI) giant has been bolstering its sales team, which now accounts for close to 20% of its 1,600-member workforce. The report notes that OpenAI competes for corporate business with the likes of Microsoft — its largest investor — and Google, and thus has to counter their ability to offer security and compliance guarantees. “If you look at our road map forward, security is a huge focus for us, and that’s how we represent it to our customers as well,” Lionetti said. The Information noted that some companies are using OpenAI’s ChatGPT as a catch-all to replace legacy software and asked Lionetti if he was seeing the same thing. “We believe AI products are truly a paradigm shift, and that starts to unlock these new ways of working that you’re referring to here,” he said. “Users and customers are finding a new way to work.” He offered some examples of how that’s playing out, whether it means Lowe’s using the company’s APIs to help employees identify product description errors, or Arizona State University using ChatGPT for teaching and research. “So we don’t want to think too far ahead, but when you think of AI as a technology, we’ve been at the frontier of that, and the whole goal is to have a true paradigm shift, and that’s what you’re seeing,” Lionetti said. The news comes as enterprise spending on generative AI is booming , reaching $13.8 billion, up from $2.3 billion in 2023, according to venture capital firm Menlo Ventures. “2024 marks the year that generative AI became a mission-critical imperative for enterprise,” Joff Redfern, partner at Menlo Ventures, said last week. “The numbers tell a dramatic story of organizations moving beyond pilots to embedding AI at the core of their business strategies.” The same is true in the financial sector, with research by PYMNTS Intelligence and NCR Voyix collaboration showing that 72% of finance leaders are actively using AI in their operations.
More than 34,000 register as candidates for Mexico judges’ election MEXICO CITY: More than 34,000 people have registered as candidates for 881 posts in elections next year that will make Mexico the first country to choose all its judges, at every level, by popular vote, data released on Monday showed. The move has sparked street protests and diplomatic tensions, and prompted eight of the country ́s 11 Supreme Court justices -- including its president -- to rule themselves out of consideration for the first election round next year. Critics fear that elected judges could be swayed by politics and be vulnerable to pressure from drug cartels, which use bribery and intimidation to influence officials.COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A fight broke out at midfield after Michigan stunned No. 2 Ohio State 13-10 on Saturday as Wolverines players attempted to plant their flag and were met by Buckeyes who confronted them. Police had to use pepper spray to break up the players, who threw punches and shoves in the melee that overshadowed the rivalry game. Ohio State police said in a statement “multiple officers representing Ohio and Michigan deployed pepper spray.” Ohio State police will investigate the fight, according to the statement. After the Ohio State players confronted their bitter rivals at midfield, defensive end Jack Sawyer grabbed the top of the Wolverines' flag and ripped it off the pole as the brawl moved toward the Michigan bench. Eventually, police officers rushed into the ugly scene. Ohio State coach Ryan Day said he understood the actions of his players. “There are some prideful guys on our team who weren't going to sit back and let that happen,” Day said. The two Ohio State players made available after the game brushed off questions about it. Michigan running back Kalel Mullings, who rushed for 116 yards and a touchdown, didn't like how the Buckeyes players involved themselves in the Wolverines' postgame celebration. He called it “classless.” “For such a great game, you hate to see stuff like that after the game," he said in an on-field interview with Fox Sports. “It’s just bad for the sport, bad for college football. But at the end of the day, you know some people got to — they got to learn how to lose, man. ... We had 60 minutes, we had four quarters, to do all that fighting.” Michigan coach Sherrone Moore said everybody needs to do better. “So much emotions on both sides," he said. "Rivalry games get heated, especially this one. It’s the biggest one in the country, so we got to handle that better.” Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football
Advertisement Elon Musk says a lot of us are doing it wrong when it comes to posting links on X. He says people should write a description in their main post, followed by the link in a reply. Musk says this will stop "lazy linking." If you have any idea what that even means, please let me know! For anyone who posts links to X, it's been intuitively clear that since Elon Musk took over , posts with links don't get the same reach as they used to. On old Twitter, a tweet with a link to a news article would often go viral or get a lot of engagement. Now, with the new "For you" algorithm that prioritizes images and videos, posts with links go almost unnoticed. Advertisement Finally, we now have some confirmation. Over the weekend, Elon Musk responded to Paul Graham, a Y-Combinator founder, about the topic: Just write a description in the main post and put the link in the reply. This just stops lazy linking. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2024 What Musk describes — putting the link in a reply instead of in the main tweet — is what savvy posters have already been doing. You've probably seen a variety of workarounds on X lately from people who often post links to articles, such as posting a screenshot of the headline or a multi-tweet thread. Advertisement As you have probably noticed, all of these options are kind of annoying for readers. I can confirm that they're also very annoying for the person posting the article. (I should note that one of the features of the paid version of X is a "Top Articles" feature where you can see the articles your friends are posting.) Initially, it seemed (to me) that the downranking of link posts was partly because of the new emphasis on video on X, and partly about a desire to keep people from leaving X to go anywhere else (in various posts, links to other social platforms have faced some version of a shadowban ). Advertisement Musk says this is meant to stop "lazy linking" — which ... I'm not sure exactly what that is. The term isn't common social media slang like "dirty delete," "subtweeting," or "soft block." (The term is sometimes used in computer programming.) X didn't respond to questions about lazy linking. Graham's response was to ask Musk what was so lazy about putting a link in the main tweet instead of following it up with a reply that contains a link. Musk, so far, has not responded. If I write a new essay and tweet a link to it, that's "lazy linking," but if I tweet that I've written a new essay and then put the link in a reply, that's somehow better? — Paul Graham (@paulg) November 24, 2024 The overall effect here is that X is no longer useful for finding links to interesting articles to read — something that Twitter used to be fantastic at. Bummer!
NoneBond Vigilantes Upend France’s Debt Market: Credit Weekly
By Marco Trujillo and Dominique Vidalon , Reuters The word "Merci" was projected on to the front of Paris' Notre-Dame cathedral as it reopened, in thanks for its salvation after a devastating fire that brought the 860-year-old building close to collapse five years ago . The first responders who helped preserve the Gothic masterpiece and some of those who subsequently restored it received a standing ovation after the Archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, struck the doors of Notre-Dame three times with his crozier before symbolically reopening the building. "I stand before you to express the gratitude of the French nation, our gratitude to all those who saved, helped and rebuilt the cathedral," French President Emmanuel Macron said. "Tonight we can together share joy and pride. Long live Notre-Dame de Paris, long live the Republic and long live France." Minutes earlier, the cathedral's bells rang out and Macron welcomed guests including US President-elect Donald Trump. Pope Francis said it was a day of "joy, celebration and praise". In a message read aloud, the pope hoped "the rebirth of this admirable church would constitute a prophetic sign of the renewal of the Church in France". Notre-Dame has been meticulously restored, with a new spire and rib vaulting, its flying buttresses and carved stone gargoyles returned to their past glory and white stone and gold decorations shining brightly once again. Getting Trump to attend, and organising a meeting between him and Ukraine's leader Volodymyr Zelensky at the Elysee Palace ahead of the Notre-Dame ceremony, was a coup for Macron as he faces a political crisis at home, after parliament ousted his prime minister . Trump shook hands with Britain's Prince William and heads of state and government as he made his way to the front of the cathedral. He sat next to Macron in the front row. Earlier, guests stood and applauded as Zelensky walked into the cathedral. Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, a close adviser in Trump's transition team, also attended, as did Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and former French presidents François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy. Earlier, tourists, who still cannot go inside the cathedral, snapped pictures with the restored building in the background as final preparations for the event went on inside. "It was very sad to see it burnt down and all black and ashy but amazing to see it rebuilt. Yeah, it's very special," said 26-year-old US tourist Amanda Nguyen, from Texas. Some Parisians were particularly thrilled. "What does Notre-Dame mean to me? This. Look, it's here," said careworker Pascal Tordeux, displaying a tattoo on his arm representing the cathedral. "It means everything." "I saw the construction every day from my window, the spire being brought down, being brought back. I saw it burn, I saw it rise again. I followed it day by day," said Tordeux, who lives across the river from Notre-Dame. On the evening of 15 April, 2019, dismayed Parisians rushed to the scene and TV viewers worldwide watched horrified as the fire raged through the cathedral . "The planet was shaken on that day," Macron said ahead of Saturday's event. "The shock of the reopening will - I believe and I want to believe - be as strong as that of the fire, but it will be a shock of hope." Thousands worked on restoration Would-be visitors can now book a free ticket online, on the Cathedral's website. But on Saturday, the first day bookings could be made for the coming days, all tickets were gone, a message on the site said. Group visits will be allowed next year - from 1 February for religious groups or from 9 June for tourists with guides. The Catholic Church expects the cathedral to welcome 15 million visitors each year. Thousands of experts - from carpenters and stonemasons to stained glass window artists - worked around the clock for the last five years, using age-old methods to restore, repair or replace everything that was destroyed or damaged. "Notre-Dame is more than a Parisian or French monument. It's also a universal monument," historian Damien Berne said. "It's a landmark, an emblem, a point of reference that reassures in a globalised world where everything evolves permanently," Berne said, a member of the scientific council for the restoration. The cathedral's first stone was laid in 1163, and construction continued for much of the next century, with major restoration and additions made in the 17th and 18th centuries. Victor Hugo helped make the cathedral a symbol of Paris and France when he used it as a setting for his 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame . Quasimodo, the main character, has been portrayed in Hollywood movies, an animated Disney adaptation and in musicals. So much money poured in for the renovation from all over the world - more than 840 million euros (NZ$1.52 billion), according to Macron's office - there are still funds left over for further investment in the building. - Reuters