Daily Archives: 08/24/2023


Death Toll Rises to Five in Poland Legionnaires’ Disease Outbreak

The death toll from an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in Rzeszow, southeast Poland, has risen to five, local authorities said Thursday as they tried to detect the contamination source.  The fifth victim was a woman, 79, admitted to the hospital a few days ago.  “She was a patient with multiple long-term conditions, including cancer, and had been in the anesthesiology and intensive care ward,” the director of the Rzeszow municipal hospital, Grzegorz Materna, told state news agency PAP.  In all, at least 71 people have been hospitalized in the outbreak. …


US Sues SpaceX for Discriminating Against Refugees, Asylum-Seekers

The U.S. Justice Department is suing Elon Musk’s SpaceX for refusing to hire refugees and asylum-seekers at the rocket company. In a lawsuit filed on Thursday, the Justice Department said SpaceX routinely discriminated against these job applicants between 2018 and 2022, in violation of U.S. immigration laws. The lawsuit says that Musk and other SpaceX officials falsely claimed the company was allowed to hire only U.S. citizens and permanent residents due to export control laws that regulate the transfer of sensitive technology. “U.S. law requires at least a green card …


India Becomes Fourth Country to Land Spacecraft on Moon

On Wednesday, India became the first country to put an unmanned lander and robotic probe on the moon’s south pole. Experts say the mission marks a major milestone in the country’s efforts to emerge on the front lines of space exploration. Anjana Pasricha reports from New Delhi. …


Fukushima Nuclear Plant Begins Releasing Radioactive Water Into Sea

The operator of the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says it has begun releasing its first batch of treated radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. In a live video from a control room at the plant Thursday, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings showed a staff member turn on a seawater pump, marking the beginning of the controversial project that is expected to last for decades. “Seawater pump A activated,” the main operator said, confirming the release was under way. Japanese fisher groups have opposed the plan out of worry …


AI Firms Under Fire for Allegedly Infringing on Copyrights

New artificial intelligence tools that write human-like prose and create stunning images have taken the world by storm. But these awe-inspiring technologies are not creating something out of nothing; they’re trained on lots and lots of data, some of which come from works under copyright protection. Now, the writers, artists and others who own the rights to the material used to teach ChatGPT and other generative AI tools want to stop what they see as blatant copyright infringement of mass proportions. With billions of dollars at stake, U.S. courts will …


Renowned Iranian Writer, Filmmaker Ebrahim Golestan Dies

Ebrahim Golestan, a renowned Iranian writer and filmmaker, has died at his home in Britain at the age of 101. His daughter Lili, the director of Tehran’s Golestan Gallery, confirmed news of his death this week. On Instagram, she wrote “Father, you have left us. Farewell.”   Golestan was born in Shiraz and left Iran before the 1979 Revolution.  His notable films include “The Hills of Marlik,” “Brick and Mirror,” “The Secrets Treasure of Jin Valley,” “Waves, Coral and Rock,” and “From One Drop to the Sea.” Ebrahim Golestan also …