Groundhog
PHIL
Predicts More Cold Weather
PHIL
Predicts More Cold Weather
A2
NEWS BRIEFS
REUTERS/ALAN FREED
Punxsutawney Phil, the weather-forecasting groundhog, emerged from his burrow in Pennsylvania on Feb. 2, saw his shadow, and predicted six more weeks of winter, despite his rival Staten Island Chuck in New York predicting an early spring.
Phil’s prognostication, which was delivered at about 7:20 a.m., was met with a mix of cheers and groans from thousands of revelers on Feb. 2 who gathered in the town of Punxsutawney about 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.
According to legend, if the groundhog emerges from his dwelling and sees his shadow, six more weeks of winter should be expected. But if there is no shadow, spring will make an early arrival.
REUTERS/CRIS TOALA OLIVARES
Daimler AG’s new Mercedes A-Class, unveiled on Feb. 2, includes the German automaker’s own machine-learning and voice recognition technology in one of the industry's boldest attempts so far to take on Silicon Valley’s finest.
The Mercedes “MBUX” dashboard system to be rolled out across the lineup is about as capable at understanding what you say as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, or Alphabet’s Google Assistant.
Its debut comes as carmakers are embroiled in a tech arms race, raising questions about the ultimate profitability of new services that often duplicate those available on smartphones. Daimler itself warned on Feb. 1 that 2018 profit growth would be dampened by technology investment.
The-MBUX system, presened on two large horizontal touch screens that dispense entirely with dashboard instruments, uses artificial intelligence to make sense of commands and even anticipate them by learning the preferences and habits of up to eight different users. Spoken instructions can command everything from navigation to infotainment.
Daimler hopes customers already used to voice assistants won’t miss Siri or Alexa when they climb aboard and must remember to preface requests with with “hey Mercedes” instead.
JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
They have put institutional protectionism ahead and above the souls of little children.
—Rachael Denhollander, the first woman to make public the allegations against former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar in 2016. She criticized Michigan State’s request to ask a judge to dismiss lawsuits from many of the victims, who accused the university of ignoring complaints against Nassar.
For a person, slamming your head full force into a tree trunk could be enough to knock you silly. Woodpeckers do this untold thousands of times during their lives, and these birds have thrived on Earth for some 25 million years.
But research published on Feb. 2 shows for the first time that all this pecking seems to carry consequences for the woodpecker’s brain. Scientists said an examination found buildups of a protein called tau in woodpeckers’ brains that in people is associated with brain damage from neurodegenerative diseases and head trauma.
The scientists are now trying to determine whether the woodpecker tau buildup is indicative of brain damage or somehow protective instead.
Tau helps to stabilize brain nerve cells or neurons. If a neuron is damaged, a form of tau can build up, sometimes altering brain function. Cummings said there are many types of tau and some may be neuroprotective.
We’ve been doubted since Day One. This team, no one picked us. We come out here and we’re World Champions.
—Philadelphia Eagles tight end Zach Ertz, who caught the Super Bowl game-winning touchdown on Feb. 4, in a 41-33 victory over the New England Patriots.
SOURCE: NPR/MARIST POLL
56%
of American workers say
they have received a
RAISE
in the last year
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
The average pay
increase was 4.5%
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
have been hospitalized due to the flu so far this season, the highest rate in nearly 10 years, according to the CDC.
Italian police have arrested a postman from the northern town of Vicenza after finding more than half a ton (1,100 pounds) of undelivered mail stashed away in his garage.
Police were called in when workers from a recycling plant were sent to empty the garage and found 43 yellow plastic postal containers stuffed full of letters, bills, bank statements, and even electoral pamphlets dating back to 2010.
The postman, who was not named, was 56 and came from the southern city of Naples, police said. They added that it was the largest ever haul of undelivered mail in Italy.
The Vicenza postal service has promised to deliver the huge pile of post, albeit several years late.
support increasing federal spending for infrastructure
SOURCE: ECONOMIST/YOUGOV.COM POLL OF 1,500 U.S. ADULTS
REUTERS/RANDALL HILL
in a train crash on Feb. 4 when an Amtrak passenger train was diverted onto a side track and slammed into a parked, unmanned freight train in South Carolina.
Seattle’s election authority said on Feb. 5 that Facebook is in violation of a city law that requires disclosure of who buys election ads, the first attempt of its kind to regulate U.S. political ads on the internet.
Facebook must disclose details about spending in last year’s Seattle city elections or face penalties, Wayne Barnett, executive director of the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, said in a statement.
The penalties could be up to $5,000 per advertising buy, Barnett said.
SAMIRA BOUAOU/THE EPOCH TIMES
John Cronan, acting assistant attorney general, on Feb. 6.
The U.S. Justice Department announced one of its largest-ever takedowns of a global cyber crime ring on Feb. 7, saying it had indicted 36 people accused of trafficking in stolen identities and causing more than $530 million in losses to consumers.
The cyber crime network ran a sophisticated scheme that facilitated the purchase and sale of Social Security numbers, birthdays, and passwords that had been stolen from around the world, the department said.
The group worked under the slogan “In Fraud We Trust” and was created in 2010 by Svyatoslav Bondarenko, a 34-year-old Ukrainian, according to the indictment.
A Philadelphia judge on Feb. 6 ruled that the engineer at the throttle of an Amtrak train during a deadly derailment in 2015 must face criminal charges, overturning another judge who had dismissed them, prosecutors said.
Judge Kathryn Streeter Lewis reinstated charges, including involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment, against the engineer, Brandon Bostian, after finding that the previous decision was wrong, prosecutors said. She did not give a reason for her ruling.
The passenger train was traveling from Washington to New York on May 13, 2015, when it flew off the rails at more than 100 miles per hour, double the posted speed limit, while rounding a curve in Philadelphia.
REUTERS/REEM BAESHEN
Construction of the world’s tallest skyscraper in Jeddah is going ahead, the head of the consortium behind the $1.5 billion project said, despite the detention of some businessmen backing the plan in Saudi Arabia’s crackdown on corruption.
His comments were a sign that the government is trying to prevent the purge from disrupting major economic development schemes, even as authorities seize billions of dollars of assets from detainees in settlements of allegations against them.