Judge blocks tighter Washington state oversight of immigration detention center

 A federal judge blocked Washington state from enforcing most of a law intended to boost oversight and improve living conditions at the state's only privately-run, for-profit immigration detention facility.

Friday's decision by U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle will benefit Geo Group, the owner of the Northwest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Processing Center in Tacoma.

The center has about 1,575 beds, and is among the largest such facilities in the country.

Washington's law required operators of private detention facilities to regularly clean and sanitize living areas; provide detainees with personal hygiene items such as soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste at no cost; and offer nutritious, balanced diets.

The law also let state officials conduct unannounced inspections, gave detainees a right to sue over conditions, and provided for civil fines of $1,000 per violation per day.

Geo sued Governor Jay Inslee and state Attorney General Bob Ferguson last July, two months after the law took effect, claiming it was being singled out while Washington spared state-run facilities of tighter oversight.

In a 64-page decision, Settle said the law "impermissibly discriminates against Geo" by imposing greater requirements on federal contractors such as the Boca Raton, Florida-based company, than on similarly situated state constituents.

Despite's Washington interest in protecting public health and safety, "the court will not permit the state to enforce unconstitutional laws so that it can seek to address the public policy concerns that gave rise to those laws," the judge wrote.

Inslee's and Ferguson's offices did not immediately respond to requests on Sunday for comment. Geo and its lawyers did not immediately respond to similar requests. The judge is based in Tacoma.

Detainees and human rights critics had long complained about sanitary conditions, food safety and medical care at the Tacoma facility. Some detainees have gone on reported hunger strikes.

More than 90 percent of the average 30,000 people held daily in ICE detention are housed in private facilities, the American Civil Liberties Union estimated last July.

Geo owns, manages or leases more than 100 correctional facilities, immigration detention centers and treatment facilities.

The case is Geo Group Inc v Inslee et al, U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington, No. 23-05626.

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/THE-GEO-GROUP-INC-16970422/news/Judge-blocks-tighter-Washington-state-oversight-of-immigration-detention-center-46136684/

Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir: AI, the weapon of war of the future?

 Palantir CEO Alex Karp highlights the progress made with Project Titan (an advanced defence project to integrate and improve intelligence and data capabilities for governments and military institutions), highlighting the changing perception in the US government of the importance of software in warfare and national security. The government, and particularly the Pentagon, now recognises that software systems greatly enhance hardware systems, and that the US has a software advantage over its adversaries.

He recognises the crucial importance of artificial intelligence (AI) in modern defence operations, alluding to Project Maven, which is a Pentagon initiative using AI to improve strike accuracy and intelligence processing. Karp discusses how Maven has integrated the best of US software know-how, providing the armed forces with a powerful AI-based tool. He points out that this software integration is both essential and expensive, but necessary to maintain US superiority on the battlefield. 

He also describes the emergence of an ecosystem of defence-focused startups in Silicon Valley and mentions that the Pentagon is now open to adopting commercial software.

Karp admits that Palantir is overwhelmed by demand and hasn't yet found a solution to effectively serve all their customers. He highlights Palantir's bootcamps (intensive programmes run over a short period of time), which speed up the integration and use of the software.

Karp is critical of companies' reliance on PowerPoint presentations and fancy business lunches to sell products, preferring to concentrate on demonstrating the real capabilities of their software. He says that customers appreciate this approach because it offers concrete and effective solutions.

As far as the general public is concerned, Karp says that Palantir's products are mainly aimed at professionals at the moment, but suggests that future developments could make their technologies more accessible.

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/PALANTIR-TECHNOLOGIES-INC-113108869/news/Alex-Karp-CEO-of-Palantir-AI-the-weapon-of-war-of-the-future-46122567/

Nvidia is sued by authors over AI use of copyrighted works

 Nvidia, whose chips power artificial intelligence, has been sued by three authors who said it used their copyrighted books without permission to train its NeMo AI platform.

Brian Keene, Abdi Nazemian and Stewart O'Nan said their works were part of a dataset of about 196,640 books that helped train NeMo to simulate ordinary written language, before being taken down in October "due to reported copyright infringement."

In a proposed class action filed on Friday night in San Francisco federal court, the authors said the takedown reflects Nvidia's having "admitted" it trained NeMo on the dataset, and thereby infringed their copyrights.

They are seeking unspecified damages for people in the United States whose copyrighted works helped train NeMo's so-called large language models in the last three years.

Among the works covered by the lawsuit are Keene's 2008 novel "Ghost Walk," Nazemian's 2019 novel "Like a Love Story," and O'Nan's 2007 novella "Last Night at the Lobster."

Nvidia declined to comment on Sunday. Lawyers for the authors did not immediately respond to requests on Sunday for additional comment.

The lawsuit drags Nvidia into a growing body of litigation by writers, as well as the New York Times, over generative AI, which creates new content based on inputs such as text, images and sounds.

Nvidia touts NeMo as a fast and affordable way to adopt generative AI.

Other companies sued over the technology have included OpenAI, which created the AI platform ChatGPT, and its partner Microsoft.

AI's rise has made Nvidia a favorite of investors.

The Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker's stock price has risen almost 600% since the end of 2022, giving Nvidia a market value of nearly $2.2 trillion.

The case is Nazemian et al v Nvidia Corp, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 24-01454.

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/NVIDIA-CORPORATION-57355629/news/Nvidia-is-sued-by-authors-over-AI-use-of-copyrighted-works-46136558/

Kura Starts Phase 1 Trial of KO-2806 Plus Cabozantinib in Renal Cell Carcinoma

  Company anticipates dosing of KO-2806 in combination with adagrasib in KRASG12C-mutant NSCLC next quarter –

– Dose escalation of KO-2806 as a monotherapy continues in parallel –

Kura Oncology, Inc. (Nasdaq: KURA), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company committed to realizing the promise of precision medicines for the treatment of cancer, today announced dosing of the first patient with KO-2806, the Company’s next-generation farnesyl transferase inhibitor (FTI), in combination with the tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) cabozantinib in the clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) cohort of the Phase 1 portion of the FIT-001 trial.

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/03/06/2841290/35186/en/Kura-Oncology-Reports-First-Patient-Dosed-in-Trial-of-KO-2806-Plus-Cabozantinib-in-Renal-Cell-Carcinoma.html

US officials urge UnitedHealth to expedite payments to providers

 Officials from the U.S. government asked UnitedHealth Group to expedite payments to healthcare providers in an open letter on Sunday, after a hack of the insurer's Change Healthcare tech unit crippled medical claims and payments.

Officials from the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services urged UnitedHealth (UHG) to take "responsibility to ensure no provider is compromised by their cash flow challenges stemming from this cyberattack on Change Healthcare."

While the letter specifically named UnitedHealth and addressed the recent hack, it also asked other companies in the industry to help.

"We call on UHG, other insurance companies, clearinghouses, and health care entities to take additional actions to mitigate the harms this attack places on patients and providers, particularly our safety net providers," the letter said.

UnitedHealth did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. government said last Tuesday it would accelerate Medicare and Medicaid payments to some hospitals hurt by the cyber attack on Change Healthcare late last month.

The cyberattack on Change, disclosed on Feb.21, was perpetrated by hackers who identified themselves as the "Blackcat" ransomware group and has had a knock-on effect on players across the U.S. healthcare system.

Disruptions triggered by the attack have impacted electronic pharmacy refills and insurance transactions.

UnitedHealth has said it expects to restore disrupted services for medical claims and payments platforms by mid-March.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-officials-urge-unitedhealth-expedite-205653405.html

Trump Eviscerates Biden for 'Apology Tour' After Calling Illegal Alien Murderer "Illegal"

 by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Joe Biden is now seemingly on an apology tour after accurately describing the illegal immigrant who killed Laken Riley as an “illegal” in his State of the Union speech.

The 22-year-old nursing student at Augusta University was kidnapped and killed by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela when she was jogging at the University of Georgia last month.

Biden accurately described her murderer as an “illegal” during his address to the nation, but only after being pressured into doing so by Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Leftists who didn’t care at all about the murder are still mad at Biden for using the word “illegal,” and he’s now on an apology tour to try to make up for it.

During your response to her heckling you, you used the word ‘illegal’, when talking about the man who allegedly killed Laken Riley,” an MSNBC host chastised Biden.

“An undocumented person,” he responded, “I shouldn’t have used illegal, it’s undocumented,” before Biden attacked Trump for the way he talks about illegal immigrants.

“I’m not gonna treat any of these people with disrespect. Look, they built the country,” the president added.

Apparently, illegal alien murderers built America.

Respondents on X slammed Biden and the leftist media.

As we previously highlighted, both Nancy Pelosi and Congressman Chuy García were also incensed that Biden used the word “illegal”.

Respondents on X pointed out that Garcia had never even previously expressed any outrage about the murder itself.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump spent time with Laken Riley’s family prior to a rally in Georgia, and then slammed Joe Biden for apologising over calling the girl’s killer an “illegal” immigrant.

During the Rally that followed, Trump spoke at length about Riley, noting “She was the brightest light in every room,” and vowed to her family to pursue “Justice for Laken.”

He added “Laken Riley would be alive today if Joe Biden had not willfully and maliciously eviscerated the borders of the United States and set loose thousands and thousands of dangerous criminals into our country.”

Trump also blasted Biden, saying the president “went on television and apologised for calling Laken’s murderer an illegal he didn’t want to call him an illegal. He said he should have called him an undocumented not an illegal and he wanted to apologise.”

Trump referred to the alleged killer, Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang member Jose Ibarra, urging “He was an illegal alien, he was an illegal immigrant,” adding “he shouldn’t have been in our country and he never would have been under the Trump policy.”

“Biden should be apologising for apologising to this killer,” Trump boomed as thousands in attendance roared their approval.

Powerful stuff.

As we also highlighted yesterday, the left is still pushing a narrative that conservatives are using the murder of Laken Riley by an illegal immigrant as a political point scoring stunt, despite the fact that the girl’s own family has slammed Joe Biden as “pathetic”.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-eviscerates-biden-over-apology-tour-after-calling-illegal-alien-murderer-illegal

David Sacks: "Biden's Big Backfire" Is Ukraine, Warns Of "Woke War III"

 Venture capitalist David Sacks, who also hosts the All-In Podcast, sat down with Saagar Enjeti, a political commentator and podcaster from Breaking Points, to explore President Biden's failures in Ukraine and Gaza. 

Sacks has been a vocal critic of Western propaganda on Ukraine, advocating for a more nuanced understanding of the conflict and opposing NATO expansion to prevent further escalation. 

"I was a little bit familiar with the conflict and with the idea that NATO expansion was something that the Russians really didn't like. And so I started advocating on the All-In Podcast that we should take NATO expansion off the table; it's clearly a huge irritant here in the situation," Sacks told Enjeti. 

Sacks continued, "I realized that this was the result of a deliberate US policy, kind of a neocon policy that either wanted this war or certainly wasn't willing to avoid it. They weren't willing to take NATO expansion off the table to avoid the war, so um, so yeah, I just started speaking out about it, I guess, using my channels." 

Enjeti asked Sacks what sources he reads to gather intel on the Ukraine situation. He blasted corporate media for "shading the truth or not telling us what was really happening in the war," adding that independent media outlets and certain X users were giving the most accurate information about the conflict. 

Sacks then criticized US foreign policy and neoconservatives for making "horrible policy decisions" on Ukraine in what could be the biggest blunder since the Iraq War. 

Cough, cough, Victoria Nuland... 

"The whole mainstream media stampeding us into this policy - and um the sort of the taboo they're trying to create around it - where you know, it's a lot like the Iraq War where anyone who opposed it was considered unpatriotic or sort of treasonous." 

Sacks pointed out, "I guess I wouldn't speak out as much about it if I thought that the issue was being covered accurately - and it is such an important issue. This could lead to World War III or what I call Woke War III if we're not careful." 

He also spoke about the "fusion of the woke left and the neocon right" in supporting the war in Ukraine, expressing concern over their views of not finding a peaceful resolution and only escalating the war closer to World War III. 

Jumping to the halfway point of the interview, Sacks said:

"I call this Biden's big backfire. If you look at all of his claims at the beginning of the war, they've all come true in reverse. He said that we would weaken Russia in order to prevent them from waging uh this type of War again. In fact, we've made the Russian military stronger - it's larger than it was before. It's produced, uh, far more weapons the industrial base is ramped up, plus it's now a battle-tested battle-harden, especially against Western weapons. It's a much more formidable military Biden has created on the part of the Russians than when we started.

"Meanwhile, it's the United States that has seen its stockpiles depleted and hollowed out. Then you look at the economic claims that Biden made, he said that sanctions would crush the Russian economy. In fact, the Russian economy is growing faster than any of the G7 economies." 

Enjeti then asked Sacks: "How would you rate President Biden's handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict so far?"

Sacks responded: 

"In the wake of October 7th, the first thing I said this was a little bit of reminiscent of 9/11. And the purpose of an outrageous terrorist attack is usually provoking overreaction, yes, and I hope that the Israelis would react wisely and not in the 911 manner as the United States did. It's safe to say now that the Israeli reaction is exactly what Hamas wanted. 

"They've created this humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and it's basically turned the whole Middle East and most of the world against Israel. I'm shocked by some of the arguments I'm seeing now that this sort of decolonization narrative that used to really be in academic circles has now kind of gone mainstream. 

"I think Biden made a huge mistake of basically going to the Middle East initially and hugging Netanyahu and giving him carte blanch ... Israeli indiscriminately bombing a civilian population in Gaza is going to backfire horribly." 

Watch Sacks' full interview below:

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/david-sacks-bidens-big-backfire-ukraine-warns-woke-war-iii