10-year-old arrested for public urination was Treated like an adult criminal,
lawyer says
The mother of a 10-year-old Mississippi boy who was arrested after urinating behind her car is refusing to sign a probation agreement because the terms that were set are of a severity typically reserved for adults, the family’s lawyer, Carlos Moore, said Thursday. The 90-day probation agreement stipulated that the boy, who is Black, would have to submit to random drug tests, observe an 8 p.m. curfew and meet with a probation officer once a month, among other requirements, according to Moore, who said he had filed a motion to dismiss the charge. If the motion is denied, he said, the family plans to take the case to trial.
War in Ukraine has China cashing In
On China’s snowy border with Russia, a dealership that sells trucks has seen its sales double in the past year thanks to Russian customers. China’s exports to its neighbor are so strong that Chinese construction workers built warehouses and 20-story office towers at the border this summer. The border town Heihe is a microcosm of China’s ever closer economic relationship with Russia. In turn, Russia has sold oil and natural gas to China at deep discounts. Trade between Russia and China surpassed $200 billion in the first 11 months of this year, a level the countries had not expected to reach until 2024.
Rite Aid’s artificial intelligence facial recognition wrongly tagged people of color as shoplifters
Rite Aid, a pharmacy chain, used facial recognition technology to falsely and disproportionately identify people of color and women as likely shoplifters, the Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday, describing a system that embarrassed customers and raised new concerns about the biases baked into such technologies. Under the terms of a settlement, Rite Aid will be barred from using facial recognition technology in its stores for surveillance purposes for five years, the FTC said. The agency, which enforces federal consumer protection laws, appeared to be signaling just how seriously it would respond to concerns about facial recognition technology.
Breaking with postwar history, Japan to sell patriot missiles to U.S.
Japan is set to announce it will approve the sale of advanced air defense systems to the United States, a significant shift in its postwar policies restricting the export of weapons and military hardware, and a move that could help Washington support Ukraine in its fight against Russia. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s Cabinet is expected to meet Friday morning to discuss changes to Japan’s restrictions on weapons exports, a Japanese and an American official said, which would allow Tokyo to sell U.S.-designed Patriot missiles made in Japan back to the U.S. government. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity.
U.S. says it’s ready
to back U.N. resolution to allow more aid
into Gaza
After nearly a week of intense negotiations, the United States said Thursday night that it was ready to support a United Nations Security Council resolution that would call for more desperately needed aid to enter the Gaza Strip. A vote was not expected until Friday at the earliest. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., told reporters that the U.S. had “worked hard and diligently over the course of the past week” with the countries that had proposed the resolution, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, to ensure that “we put a mechanism on the ground that will support humanitarian assistance and we’re ready to vote for it.”
By wire sources
