‘They’re Selling You Down the River.’ Musk Slams Apple Deal with OpenAI

Elon Musk took aim at Apple after it announced a partnership to use OpenAI’s technology on its devices. Musk took to his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to voice concerns about Apple potentially integrating OpenAI at the operating system level, after the tie-up was announced Monday, calling the deal a security risk. 

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“If Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS level, then Apple devices will be banned at my companies,” Musk wrote. “Visitors will have to check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the company’s new AI offering, which the company dubs “Apple Intelligence,” during the tech giant’s developers conference on June 10. Apple Intelligence will significantly expand Siri’s capabilities, but also add writing and image generation tools to Apple’s stock apps like Mail and Notes. The company also unveiled a new deal with OpenAI, which allows Apple to integrate ChatGPT directly into its digital assistant Siri and its generative AI tools. Cook said Apple plans to offer integration with other AI models in future.

During his presentation at the event, Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, emphasized privacy, saying that Apple Intelligence is aware of personal data without collecting it. However, Musk didn’t appear convinced.

“It’s patently absurd that Apple isn’t smart enough to make their own AI, yet is somehow capable of ensuring that OpenAI will protect your security & privacy!” he posted to X after Apple’s announcement. “Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI,” he added. “They’re selling you down the river.”

It’s patently absurd that Apple isn’t smart enough to make their own AI, yet is somehow capable of ensuring that OpenAI will protect your security & privacy!

Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the river.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 10, 2024

Apple has already created its own AI models, which underpin many of the new features it announced this week, and run locally on-device. For more complex tasks, Apple uses its own larger models running on what it calls “Private Cloud Compute”. According to Apple, these servers do not store customer data, and only use it to verify requests. Approved volunteers appended this information to Musk’s post on X via a “Community Note”—a feature Musk has touted in the past as a way to combat misinformation.

“Private Cloud Compute uses your data only to fulfill your request, and never stores it, making sure it’s never accessible to anyone, including Apple. And we’ve designed the system so that independent experts can verify these protections,” Federighi said.

Alongside its own models, Apple will integrate OpenAI’s ChatGPT into Siri and its new generative tools to prevent the need for “jumping between tools.” Apple said users will be asked before sharing any information with ChatGPT. A demonstration of the tool indicates that users will be prompted with the option to accept input from ChatGPT for each task.

Musk’s comments come amid heightened concerns over AI’s potential to infringe on user privacy. In May Microsoft drew criticism from a privacy watchdog for a new AI feature that would regularly capture users’ screens. Meta, sparked backlash recently when it introduced new terms, allowing it to train its AI models on data collected since 2007. 

Musk’s criticism of the deal is the latest development in an ongoing spat with OpenAI, which he helped co-found alongside the current CEO Sam Altman and three others in 2015. Musk left OpenAI in 2018 following a disagreement with the company’s leadership team over its future.  

Read More: Inside Elon Musk’s Struggle for the Future of AI

In February 2023, three months after the launch of ChatGPT, Musk criticized OpenAI, writing that it had become a “ maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft.” The following month, Altman called Musk a “jerk” on journalist Kara Swisher’s podcast, but also said he believed the Tesla CEO cared about AI and the future of humanity. Later that month, Musk was among the more-than 30,000 signatories to an open letter that called for a pause to training AI system’s larger than OpenAI’s GPT-4. Although the letter did not succeed in convincing top AI labs like OpenAI to halt these activities, it did highlight the growing concern over the potential risks posed by artificial intelligence.

In July 2023, Musk revealed his own artificial intelligence company, xAI. In November, it began previewing its own chatbot, Grok, to select X Premium users. In March 2024, xAI released Grok-1, an open-source AI model and xAI has subsequently raised $6 billion. That same month, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman, alleging that they had violated the company’s founding principles by putting profit over benefiting humanity. OpenAI responded by releasing a trove of emails that show Musk supported the creation of a for-profit entity. OpenAI has denounced the court case, calling it “incoherent” and aimed at advancing Musk’s “commercial interests.” 

source https://time.com/6987391/elon-musk-apple-openai/

Pixar’s Pete Docter: If Inside Out 2 Doesn’t Succeed, We Have to ‘Radically’ Rethink Our Business

Pete Docter knows the stakes are high for Inside Out 2. Docter started at Pixar when he was 21, and quickly rose through the ranks, working on classics like Toy Story. He went on to direct films like Up and Monsters Inc. as well as the original Inside Out, the most profitable non-sequel Pixar has ever produced. In 2018, he was named Pixar’s Chief Creative Officer. He’s racked up nine Oscar nominations, with three wins.

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But in recent years, Pixar has found itself in a commercial and critical rut. Movies like Turning Red and Luca that were largely based on creators’ own childhoods didn’t seem to resonate with audiences the way that more universal tales like Toy Story and Monsters Inc. did. Docter points out it can be difficult to come up with original ideas that resonate with a wide audience two decades into the studio’s existence. “A lot of people say, ‘I totally thought toys came to life when I wasn’t in my room.’ ‘I totally believed there were monsters in my closet,’” he says. “We’re still rummaging around for things like that, but it’s harder and harder to find as we’re into our 28th movie or whatever.” 

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And ever since Disney put movies like Turning Red, Luca, and Soul (the last of which Docter co-directed) on its streaming service Disney+ during the pandemic, Pixar has struggled to coax audiences back to theaters. In the last two years, Lightyear and Elemental both failed to meet opening weekend expectations at the box office. The studio has been forced to overhaul its creative vision and business strategy by returning to the properties that won over fans in the first place, like Inside Out.

Box office prognosticators have predicted that Inside Out 2 will become one of the highest-grossing movies of 2024. And theater owners are praying that it will drive families to the cinema in a year that’s been light on kid-friendly content. Overall, it’s been an abysmal year at the movies. The Memorial Day box office hit a 26-year low after several big-budget films underperformed. It may be that audiences just want to watch movies—especially kids’ movies—at home rather than forking over a hefty sum to take the family to the theater.

The future of Pixar, this year’s box office, and theaters in general may hinge, in part, on the success of movies like Inside Out 2. “If this doesn’t do well at the theater, I think it just means we’re going to have to think even more radically about how we run our business,” says Docter.

Inside Out 2 picks up a few years after the events of its predecessor with a girl named Riley preparing for high school. The anthropomorphized emotions that live inside Riley’s head and help to steer her through the world—Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear—wake in the middle of the night to a blaring “Puberty” alarm and the introduction of new roommates: Embarrassment, Ennui, Jealousy, and Anxiety. Joy (Amy Poehler) and Anxiety (Maya Hawke) tussle over how to steer Riley through the awkward teenage years.

Docter spoke to TIME about why Pixar is focusing much of its energy on making more sequels, how they can find universal ideas that connect with large audiences, and why you won’t see live-action adaptations of Pixar’s animated movies. (Sorry, Josh O’Connor. That means no Ratatouille remake.)

Why did you think there was enough in the Inside Out story for a sequel?

We’ve built the entire ocean for Nemo, the entire universe for Wall-E. But it turned out the biggest set we had built [when Inside Out debuted] was inside of a little girl’s mind. We only saw like 3% of it in the first film. There was way more to play with, and we had a lot of leftover ideas. 

But the big question is, was there something substantive? We tapped Kelsey Mann, who was head of story on Onward and Monsters University, and he ran off and thought of this idea having to do with anxiety. It felt like that’s something that was really ripe. 

My editor showed the trailer to her kids, and they were like, “What’s anxiety?” Do you think that concept will go over the head of a six-year-old? 

Yes, though so did things like Anger or Sadness [in the first movie]. After the first film, we heard story after story of people saying, “I now have tools to talk about this stuff with my kids.”

That was true especially of little boys who have a lot of trouble talking about emotions. I don’t know if that’s genetics or a societal thing. But either way, they really connected, especially with Anger. One of the great gifts of this project is taking these abstract ideas and making them real.

You have talked about how releasing Pixar movies straight to Disney+ trained audiences to expect those movies on streaming. How do you get audiences to go to the theater for Pixar movies again?

Part of our strategy is to try to balance our output with more sequels. It’s hard. Everybody says, “Why don’t they do more original stuff?” And then when we do, people don’t see it because they’re not familiar with it. With sequels, people think, “Oh, I’ve seen that. I know that I like it.” Sequels are very valuable that way. 

On the other hand, they’re almost harder than originals because we can’t do the same idea again. We have to build on it hopefully in ways that people don’t expect. 

Lightyear underperformed at the box office. If the focus is more sequels and spin-offs, what’s the lesson from that spin-off not working?  

We took a long moment of self scrutiny after that didn’t deliver. I think we overestimated the audience’s nerd level of being like, “Oh, that kid in the first Toy Story bought a toy, and it was based on a movie. And this is that movie.” That’s probably a few layers too deep. Because I think people are going, “Well, where’s Mr. Potato Head? Where’s Woody?” 

What are you looking for when it comes to ideas for original movies that will get people to theaters?

It’s sort of cynical to say people want to see stuff they know. But I think even with original stuff, that’s what we’re trying to do too. We’re trying to find something that people feel like, “Oh yeah, I’ve been through that. I understand that I recognize this as a life truth.” And that’s been harder to do.

A lot of people say, “I totally thought toys came to life when I wasn’t in my room.” “I totally believed there were monsters in my closet.” We’re still rummaging around for things like that, but it’s harder and harder to find as we’re into our 28th movie or whatever.

A recent Bloomberg article emphasized that going forward, Pixar is going to prioritize universality over specificity—which means fewer movies inspired by a creator’s specific childhood experiences, andmore based on universal truths. But as journalists, we’re taught the specific is the universal.

I believe that too.

So how do you find that balance?

I think there was a bit of a misunderstanding about that because it’s not that [those movies were] too specific. But what I’ve found is sometimes, if you are telling a personal story, you’ll be like, “Oh, no, that’s not the way the story goes. Because my story is this.” But we’re not telling my story; we’re telling a story that needs to work for a fictional character that we’re creating. So there’s sometimes a reluctance to let go or let the movie shape itself the way it needs to. 

Nemo is very personal. Obviously, [writer-director] Andrew Stanton is not a fish, and he’s not a single dad. But he recognized his own smothering of his child in an effort to protect them. He was able to springboard off of that to tell stories about octopuses and all sorts of wild, fun stuff. 

The story shouldn’t come fully formed. You’re always adding and removing stuff. It’s an organic, messy process. But sometimes, your own personal experience can drive that and other times it can get in the way.

Practically, how does that work? The Pixar braintrust gives more input into every movie?

Avoid being seduced by “This is really clever.” We want to drill down before they go into production to be like, what’s the core idea? Okay, this is really about the struggles of being a parent or the struggles of losing a loved one. 

I know Pixar is stepping away from doing as much short-form content for Disney+ in order to focus on features. But Bluey, which has eight-minute-long episodes, has become wildly popular on Disney+. And I think part of the reason they’re so successful is we have short attention spans now. Does that pressure Pixar to explore that short-form space again?  

Well, when they first announced Disney+, we immediately jumped in with a bunch of shorts. Turns out the audience didn’t want short little things from Pixar at least. It just didn’t perform as well. It didn’t earn its keep in terms of what we had to put into it to make them. So Disney asked us to pull back on anything that’s not the features. 

We’ve also found the better [a movie] does at the theater, the more successful it has been on Disney+. Initially you’d think if it does really well in the theater, nobody’s going to watch it on Disney+ because we’ve seen it already. It’s actually the opposite, which kind of makes sense. I remember as a kid I had The Muppet Show album, and I played that thing to death. As a kid you want the comfort of watching this one thing over and over and over. 

That’s true for us on Disney+. I don’t know if it’s true on Netflix.

I actually saw this morning that Super Mario Bros. has been on the Top 10 Netflix chart for 25 weeks. To your point, that movie did well in theaters and now it’s doing well on streaming.

That’s the same model. You know, I would love to push the theatrical window more. I’m no businessman, but just creatively it’d be great to make audiences feel if you don’t see this now, it’s going to be awhile before it’s readily available at your house.

I’ve been shocked by how many big-budget movies this summer have wound up on PVOD (premium video on demand) two weeks after their release. 

It’s crazy. 

Inside Out 2 has a 100-day release window. That feels like a statement.

That’s how long we had for Elemental. When that movie came out we all said, “Oh, no, that didn’t open the way we thought it should!” But as time went on, it just had legs. I don’t know if the marketing was wrong, the space was too crowded, or people thought it didn’t look interesting. But word of mouth made people go check it out. I think that would not have happened if we came out three weeks later on Disney+.

Industry analysts have really built up the opening weekend of Inside Out 2. If it doesn’t succeed the summer box office is doomed. If it doesn’t succeed, Pixar is doomed. How do you see the stakes?

I can’t imagine having a better chance at a big box office than this because it’s a known movie and characters that meant something to people and a really funny cast—and hopefully something meaty at the heart of it that you can take home as well. 

So if this doesn’t do well at the theater, I think it just means we’re going to have to think even more radically about how we run our business. So far Pixar has built a business around pretty large budgets. It allows us to make a lot of mistakes and take risks, and if it doesn’t work, we can still go back and fix it. 

I think if you really want to make it cheap, you think of an idea, and you make it. But if you want to make it good, you have to change and iterate a ton and that’s what we’ve been able to do so far. If the box office doesn’t support that, if the economics don’t support that, we just have to make even more giant shifts. 

What shifts have been made? [Pixar had a round of layoffs in May.]

We’ve already been able to tuck our budgets way down. We’ve made films in much fewer weeks. 

In the Monsters Inc. through Ratatouille days there was—I was going to say opulence, but that’s not the right word. There was much more freedom to explore. And now we’re tightening the belt and we’re really going to be targeted about when we take risks.

You mentioned Ratatouille. I don’t know if you’re aware that Josh O’Connor, one of the stars of Challengers, has been talking nonstop on his press tour about his love of Ratatouille.

No!

And there is a fan campaign to get him cast in a live-action Ratatouille. Are live-action adaptations something you guys would ever consider?

No, and this might bite me in the butt for saying it, but it sort of bothers me. I like making movies that are original and unique to themselves. To remake it, it’s not very interesting to me personally.

That’s maybe for the best because I don’t know how you make a live-action rat cute.

It would be tough. So much of what we create only works because of the rules of the [animated] world. So if you have a human walk into a house that floats, your mind goes, “Wait a second. Hold on. Houses are super heavy. How are balloons lifting the house?” But if you have a cartoon guy and he stands there in the house, you go, “Okay, I’ll buy it.” The worlds that we’ve built just don’t translate very easily.

source https://time.com/6986308/inside-out-2-peter-docter-interview/

Macron Dissolves French Parliament and Calls a Snap Election After Defeat in EU Vote

(PARIS) — President Emmanuel Macron dissolved the lower house of France’s parliament in a surprise announcement sending voters back to the polls in the coming weeks to choose lawmakers, after his party was handed a humbling defeat by the far-right in the European elections Sunday.

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The legislative elections will take place in two rounds on June 30 and July 7.

The announcement came after the first projected results from France put the far-right National Rally party well ahead in the European Union’s parliamentary elections, handing a chastening loss to Macron’s pro-European centrists, according to French opinion poll institutes.

Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration, nationalist party was estimated to get around 31%-32% of the votes, a historic result more than double the share of Macron’s Renaissance party, which was projected to reach around 15%.

Macron himself wasn’t a candidate in the EU elections and his term as president still runs for three more years.

He said the decision was “serious” but showed his “confidence in our democracy, in letting the sovereign people have their say.”

“In the next few days, I’ll be saying what I think is the right direction for the nation. I’ve heard your message, your concerns, and I won’t leave them unanswered,” he said.

Read More: Inside the Billion-Dollar Effort to Clean Up the World’s Most Romantic River

In latest legislative elections in 2022, Macron’s centrist party won the most seats but lost its majority at the National Assembly, forcing lawmakers into political maneuvering to pass bills.

With Sunday’s decision, he is taking a big risk with a move that could backfire and increase the chances of Le Pen to eventually take power.

A scenario in which an opposition party would eventually win a parliament majority could lead to a fraught power-sharing situation called “cohabitation,” with Macron to name a prime minister with different views.

Le Pen, who head the National Rally group at the National Assembly, “welcomed” Macron’s move.

’We’re ready for it,” said Le Pen, who was the runner-up to Macron in the last two presidential elections. “We’re ready to exercise power if the French people place their trust in us in these future legislative elections. We’re ready to turn the country around, ready to defend the interests of the French, ready to put an end to mass immigration, ready to make the purchasing power of the French a priority.”

The EU elections results were a hard blow for Macron, who has been advocating for Europe-wide efforts to defend Ukraine and the need for the EU to boost its own defenses and industry.

The National Rally’s lead candidate for the EU elections, Jordan Bardella, campaigned for limiting free movement of migrants by carrying out national border controls and dialing back EU climate rules. The party no longer wants to leave the EU and the euro, but aims to weaken it from within.

“Tonight, our compatriots have expressed a desire for change,” Bardella said. “Emmanuel Macron is tonight a weakened president.“

An official at Macron’s office said the decision to dissolve the National Assembly was justified by the “historic score of the far-right” that could not be ignored and the current “parliamentarian disorder.”

“You’re never wrong when you give the people a say,” said the official, who spoke anonymously in line with the practice of Macron’s office.

EU elections’ projections also show a resurgence of the Socialist Party, with about 14% of the votes. The party campaigned on more ambitious climate policies and protections for European businesses and workers, with about 14% of the votes.

Reacting to Macron’s announcement, far-left politician Francois Ruffin called on all leaders from the left, including the Greens to unite under a single “Popular Front” banner. “To avoid the worse, to win,” he wrote on X.

France is electing 81 members of the European Parliament, which has 720 seats in total.

___

Petrequin reported from Brussels.

source https://time.com/6987112/emmanuel-macron-dissolves-french-parliament-vote/

Do Less. It’s Good for You

You take a vacation day, but get distracted by the thought of your work inbox filling up. Or you sit down to watch a movie and immediately feel guilty about all the tasks still on your to-do list. Or perhaps you splurge on a massage, but barely enjoy it because your thoughts are racing the entire time.

If any of these sound familiar, you’re not alone. Relaxing may sound like the easiest thing in the world, but for many people it’s anything but. 

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Erin Westgate, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Florida, learned that a decade ago, when she helped design a study to test the effects of letting people do nothing but sit with their thoughts for a few minutes. “We had this idea that if we gave people a few moments in their busy days to just sit and slow down and be alone with their thoughts, that they’d find it really enjoyable and it would be relaxing and increase well-being,” Westgate says. The opposite happened: people were so uncomfortable doing nothing that many opted to give themselves small electric shocks instead.

Doing nothing, as Westgate’s study illustrated, can be difficult because most of us aren’t used to thinking without turning those thoughts into actions—a disconnect that can be “incredibly cognitively intense,” she says.

Researchers including Michelle Newman, a professor of psychology at the Pennsylvania State University, have also studied the concepts of “relaxation anxiety” and “relaxation sensitivity,” which relate to the discomfort, boredom, or unease some people feel when they slow down. For some, “There’s this view that, ‘I should always be busy doing something,’” Newman says. “Often people feel like it’s not okay to just be reading a good book or watching a good program on TV.”

No wonder. Productivity and hard work are nothing if not the American Way, with mainstream institutions from government to church urging people to stay busy, says Celeste Headlee, author of the book Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving. “Our society has valued really, really toxic things,” she says. “We have for generations been brainwashed” to believe that productivity is morally superior to rest—so it’s no wonder relaxing sometimes feels uncomfortable or even wrong, Headlee says. Research shows that people are, to varying degrees, motivated by what they feel they “should” be doing; some may feel guilty when they deviate from that.

Rebecca Schaumberg, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has studied the positive side of work-related guilt, finding that people who are guilt-prone tend to be more productive and reliable workers. But in recent years, she says, she has come to question whether guilt is good for people, or just the organizations that employ them. “Guilt can be good in the workplace, but it doesn’t always mean it’s good for the person who feels it,” she says—especially if it prevents them from ever taking time to step away and decompress.

The truth is, rest and relaxation are vital to well-being. Chronic stress negatively affects nearly every aspect of mental and physical health, even contributing to higher risks for chronic disease and premature death. Meanwhile, rest may boost your health, quality of life, and longevity. Getting better at resting and relaxing, then, isn’t frivolous; it could actually be lifesaving.

Here’s how to start.

Reframe what “counts” as rest

If the idea of meditating makes you break out in hives, that’s okay. Scientifically speaking, “relaxation” just means activating your parasympathetic nervous system—the one that handles bodily processes you don’t think about, like breathing and digestion—instead of your sympathetic nervous system, which is in charge of your stress response, says Christina Luberto, an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School who has studied relaxation. “You can elicit that physiological state in any activity that involves a single, pointed focus while setting aside intrusive or unrelated distractions,” Luberto explains.

Anything from gardening to cooking to reading to your kids could fit the bill, she says. These activity-oriented forms of relaxation may be especially beneficial for people who don’t enjoy slower mindfulness practices, like meditation. Often, Luberto says, the pressure to feel zen during these sessions contributes to anxiety—so trying to push through a “relaxation” practice that isn’t working for you may do more harm than good.

Read More: How to Get Real Rest

Westgate seconds that advice. People often ruminate and get anxious if they simply sit and think about what they need to do or what happened to them that day—but find it restorative to write those thoughts in a journal. “By actually physically doing something…we’re reducing some of the [cognitive] demand,” Westgate says. In other words, it can be helpful to do a little something when you’re doing nothing.

Set boundaries

When work creeps into your personal life—ducking out of Sunday brunch to check your emails, for example—that’s “polluted time,” Headlee says. If your relaxation hours are polluted, you’re not reaping their full benefits. What’s more, you may be reinforcing the idea that you “should” be accomplishing tasks even during your downtime. 

To keep your free time free, Headlee recommends writing down your working hours and posting them somewhere visible as a reminder to yourself. Just as a store wouldn’t reopen for a customer who arrived after it closed, Headlee says, you shouldn’t make exceptions to your hours when you get a late-night email or feel the itch to check in with the boss on a Sunday afternoon. “Closed is closed,” she says. For extra reinforcement, consider adding a line about your working hours to your email signature or telling your friends and family about the boundaries you’ve set so they can hold you accountable.

Remember to relax your body, too

Lots of people walk around with muscular tension that keeps them in a stressed-out state, feeling frazzled even when they’re trying to relax. Newman recommends tensing, then releasing, different muscles in the body to help release pent-up stress. Breathing exercises can also help catalyze a relaxation response.

Read More: How to Get Back to Sleep After Waking Up at Night

Consider seeing a therapist

Not all busy people have relaxation anxiety or sensitivity, Luberto notes. If you’re active by nature but also enjoy your downtime, however occasional, there’s probably no cause for concern. But if relaxing feels hard or impossible to you—whether because you’re guilty or anxious or distracted—it may be time to call on a professional, she says. Psychological techniques like cognitive behavioral therapy may help.

Start small, then practice

If you struggle to unwind, don’t dive straight into the deep end by booking a weeklong beach vacation. Start by finding small moments in your day to practice slowing down and getting comfortable just being. And pick moments strategically, choosing those when you’re most likely to succeed—like during your morning shower, Westgate says.

Like most things in life, resting gets easier the more you do it, Headlee says. Slowing down may feel uncomfortable or even shameful at first, but once you train your brain, it will get easier, she says. “It’s going to take a little time to teach your brain that you can not answer that email and nothing will happen, nothing will explode,” Headlee says. “You just have to keep doing it.”

source https://time.com/6981061/relaxation-health-benefits/

Sacramento Mass Shooting Suspect Dies in Jail

A suspect who was being held in a California jail on charges connected to a 2022 mass shooting in the state capital died in his cell Saturday, according to police and his attorney.

The 29-year-old male inmate died while in custody at the Sacramento County Main Jail around 2:15 a.m., the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement posted on social media.

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The San Francisco Chronicle reported public defender Norman Dawson identified the man as Smiley Martin, his client who was awaiting trial on three felony charges stemming from an April 3, 2022, shooting in Sacramento that killed six people and wounded 12 others, including two of the alleged shooters.

Jail deputies were conducting a cell check and found an unresponsive inmate. The deputies and then fire department personnel attempted life-saving procedures but he was pronounced dead, the sheriff’s office said.

The Sacramento County Coroner’s Office will determine the cause of death and release the man’s name after notification of his next of kin, according to the sheriff’s office, which said it will investigate.

Martin was “fighting to defend his innocence in the preliminary hearing process” at the time of his death, Dawson said in a written statement.

More than 100 shots were fired in rapid-fire succession in a downtown entertainment area near the state Capitol building during the shooting around 2 a.m.

Two groups of men connected to gangs began shooting as bars and clubs emptied out at closing time, sending hundreds of people desperately trying to reach safety. At least five gunmen were involved, police said.

Martin, who was 27 at the time, was arrested while hospitalized with gunshot wounds. He was charged with murder, being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession and transport of a machine gun.

Authorities also arrested his brother, Dandrae Martin, 26 at the time, as a “related suspect” on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and being a convict carrying a loaded gun. He suffered minor wounds.

Dandrae Martin posted a live video of himself with a handgun hours before the shooting, a law enforcement official said.

A third man, Mtula Payton, also was charged in connection with the shooting.

source https://time.com/6986981/sacramento-mass-shooting-suspect-dies-jail/

Modi Is Sworn in for a Rare Third Term as India’s Prime Minister

New Delhi — Narendra Modi was sworn in Sunday for a rare third consecutive term as India’s prime minister, relying on his coalition partners after his party failed to win a parliamentary majority in a surprise outcome.

Modi and his Cabinet ministers took the oath of office, administered by President Droupadi Murmu, at India’s presidential palace Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.

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The 73-year-old popular but polarizing leader is only the second Indian prime minister after Jawaharlal Nehru to retain power for a third five-year term.

His Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which won by landslides in 2014 and 2019, failed to secure a majority to govern on its own in the latest national election. However, Modi’s National Democratic Alliance coalition won enough seats to form a government, with him at the helm.

This is the first time the BJP under Modi has needed support from its regional allies to form a government after a decade of commanding the majority in Parliament.

Final election results released Wednesday showed Modi’s BJP won 240 seats, well below the 272 needed for a majority. Together, the parties in the NDA coalition secured 293 seats in the 543-member lower house of Parliament.

Modi’s coalition government now largely depends on two key regional allies — the Telugu Desam Party in southern Andhra Pradesh state and Janata Dal (United) in eastern Bihar state — to stay in power.

Meanwhile, Modi’s political challenger, the INDIA alliance led by the resurgent Congress party, put up a stronger-than-expected fight, doubling its strength from the last election to win 232 seats.

An avowed Hindu nationalist, the prime minister is considered a champion of the country’s Hindu majority, who make up 80% of India’s 1.4 billion population. His supporters credit him with rapid economic growth and improving India’s global standing since coming to power.

But critics say he’s also undermined India’s democracy and its status as a secular nation with attacks by Hindu nationalists against the country’s minorities, particularly Muslims, and a shrinking space for dissent and free media. His political opponents have questioned his government’s economic record, pointing to high unemployment and growing inequality despite strong growth.

Several South Asian leaders attended the swearing-in ceremony Sunday, including Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe, Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu.

Tensions between India and Maldives have grown since Muizzu was elected last year. He has since taken a pro-China stance and removed Indian troops stationed on one of Maldives’ islets.

source https://time.com/6986973/modi-is-sworn-in-for-a-rare-third-term-as-indias-prime-minister/

Chunk of Teton Pass Road Collapses; Unclear How Quickly It Can Be Rebuilt

Jackson, Wyo. — A large chunk of a twisting mountain pass road collapsed in Wyoming, authorities said Saturday, leaving a gaping chasm in the highway and severing a well-traveled commuter link between small towns in eastern Idaho and the tourist destination of Jackson.

Aerial photos and drone video of the collapse show the Teton Pass road riven with deep cracks, and a big section of the pavement disappeared altogether. Part of the guardrail dangled into the void, and orange traffic drums marked off the danger area. The road was closed at the time of the collapse.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The section that failed first drew attention Thursday when a crack and drop in the road contributed to the crash of a motorcycle.

Geologists and engineers who were sent to the area that day noticed “that crack and that drop started to move a lot,” said Stephanie Harsha, a spokesperson for District 3 of the Wyoming Department of Transportation. A paving crew temporarily patched the road, and traffic began moving again that night.

But that was short-lived as maintenance crews were sent to respond to a mudslide a couple of miles away in the pre-dawn hours of Friday, prompting the road to be closed once again.

Crews then noticed that the damage to the pavement had become more pronounced. Workers trying to figure out a detour around that section left for the night, “and by 5 a.m., this morning, WYDOT had discovered that the road had completely failed,” Harsha said Saturday.

“We were very, very lucky that no crews were harmed. No equipment was damaged,” she said. “So now, engineers and geologists are doing geological assessments on the pass. They’ve been looking at it all day.”

The transportation department said via social media that the road “catastrophically failed” at milepost 12.8.

It was not immediately clear how long it will take to reopen the road, a vital artery for people who live across the border in Idaho and work in pricey Jackson, which is also close to the popular Grand Teton National Park.

Harsha said an alternate route between Jackson and the area of Victor, Idaho, goes more than 60 miles (97 kilometers) out of the way and adds “quite a bit to any commute.”

Gov. Mark Gordon signed an executive order declaring an emergency, which his office said would help the state access additional resources from the Federal Highway Administration to begin repair work.

In a statement, the governor said the transportation department is working on “a long-term solution to rebuild this critical roadway.”

“I recognize the significant impacts this closure has to Teton County residents, regional commuters and the local economy,” Gordon said.

source https://time.com/6986968/chunk-of-teton-pass-road-collapses/