March 15 top stories
It is March 15. Here are today’s top stories.
Free-diver swims record depth at icy lake
A 40-year-old Czech diver named David Vencl broke a record for freediving under the ice without a wetsuit when he successfully swam 170 feet below an icy lake in Switzerland.
The water’s temperature was about 35 degrees F. He wore only a speedo and fins and went down through a hole in the ice and recovered a sticker that was placed at the bottom of the lake and emerged with it. It took him one minute and 54 seconds. He spat some blood but was otherwise okay and celebrated by opening a bottle of champagne.
Vencl trained for the dive by putting himself into a barrel of extremely cold salt water that was at below-freezing temperatures and holding his breath for up to five minutes.
Man wrongfully convicted released after 30 years in prison
In Florida, a 57-year-old man named Sidney Holmes who was wrongfully convicted in an armed robbery case was freed after serving more than 30 years in prison.
CBS News said he was convicted in 1989 for a 1988 robbery in which he was accused of being the getaway driver for two men who robbed two people at gunpoint in southern Florida and stole a car. The two robbers haven’t been found. Holmes was sentenced to 400 years.
CBS said Holmes was freed through the support of the State Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit (CRU). The CRU said an eyewitness who pointed to Holmes was likely wrong. An investigation found that Holmes’ car was likely misidentified as the one that the robbers were using. There was no other evidence that would have linked Holmes to the crime. A panel voted that Holmes was innocent.
When Holmes walked out of prison, his family, including his mother, was there to embrace him. He said the first thing he wanted to do is to get something to eat. He said, “I can’t have hate, just have to keep moving.”
Federal judge hears arguments on abortion pills
Reuters said a federal judge in Texas is hearing arguments today on whether an abortion pill called mifepristone/Mifeprex should be banned across the country, even in states where abortion is legal.
Anti-abortion groups allege the FDA used an improper process when it approved the pill in 2000. The Biden administration disputed this, saying the FDA used an appropriate process and that the challenge is too late.
Reuters said mifepristone, used in combination with another drug, is used to terminate a pregnancy within the first 10 weeks and the drug accounts for more than half of all abortions in the country.
Legal experts said the case could be the most consequential abortion case since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade that recognized a constitutional right to abortion.
The Texas judge can rule any time after hearing arguments and the case is likely going to be appealed to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
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Russian fighter jets down American drone
Two Russian military jets approached an American drone that was flying over the Black Sea and caused it to crash.
The U.S. said the drone was flying over international waters on a reconnaissance mission when two Russian Su-27 fighter planes approached it and poured fuel on it. One of the jets then clipped the drone’s propeller, causing it to crash into the sea.
The U.S. said this incident shows that the Russian pilots were unsafe and unprofessional. Russia told the U.S. to keep away from their air space.
The U.S. said they may not be able to recover the drone. Russia said they will try to get it.
It is the first time that the U.S. and Russia have confronted each other since the start of the war in Ukraine last year.
New AI tool: GPT-4
Vox.com reported that tech company OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot that is capable of answering a wide range of questions and writing essays, announced that it has released an even more advanced version of its technology.
The new chatbot is called GPT-4. It can pass very complicated exams with high scores. It passed the bar exam with a score that would put it in the top 10 percent of test takers. GPT-4 scored 700 out of 800 on the SAT math test.
OpenAI said GPT-4 can be beneficial in teaching people new languages and helping blind people with creating visual descriptions. The company admitted that GPT-4 is not perfect because it can show societal bias or give wrong information without realizing it.
If you want to use GPT-4, you will have to be a paid subscriber to ChatGPT Plus, which costs $20 a month. There is a free version of ChatGPT but it uses older technology.
Analysts said this kind of technology, called generative AI, is taking the tech world by storm and that there are companies large and small rushing to add this kind of technology to their products.
Meta laying off another 10,000 people
Meta/Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company is laying off another 10,000 people and cutting 5,000 job openings as a part of a larger plan to “flatten” the company’s management structure.
In November, Meta laid off over 11,000 people, so this is the second round of massive layoffs.
Zuckerberg said the company is reorganizing and has a principle of “flatter is faster” and “leaner is better.”
Axios said the company lost more than 70% of its value last year and it is trying to recover this year.
That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
https://people.com/sports/freediver-world-record-170-feet-frozen-lake/
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/free-diver-breaks-world-record-beneath-icy-swiss-lake/48361620
https://www.vox.com/2023/3/15/23640640/gpt-4-chatgpt-openai-generative-ai
https://www.axios.com/2023/03/14/openai-gpt-4-release-chatgpt
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sidney-holmes-exonerated-400-year-sentence-florida/
https://www.axios.com/2023/03/14/meta-facebook-layoffs-jobs
https://www.reuters.com/legal/texas-judge-consider-banning-abortion-pill-us-2023-03-15/