Italy to offer defunct Stellantis brands to Chinese automakers, report says

  Italy's government is considering taking over by decree defunct auto brands owned by Stellantis and offering them to Chinese companies to encourage them to set up factories in Italy, Il Sole 24 Ore daily reported on Friday.

The plan would involve the Innocenti and Autobianchi brands, both shut down in the 1990s.

Innocenti was famous in the 1960s and 1970s for producing an Italian version of the British Mini, before it was taken over by Fiat, now part of Stellantis. Former Fiat unit Autobianchi produced upmarket city cars such as the A112 and Y10.

Il Sole said the government's appropriation would be made possible under a law passed in December and a draft implementing decree, under examination by the Court of Auditors, concerning brands that have been unused for at least five years.

Once under government control, they could be given to "companies, including foreign ones, that intend to invest in Italy or move to Italy manufacturing activities located abroad," the law says.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's nationalist government has for months been at loggerheads with Fiat-parent Stellantis, accusing the automaker of neglecting its historic production bases in Italy.

It is engaged in talks with the group, the country's sole major automaker, to boost Italian production to 1 million vehicles per year, but also said it wants to expand the domestic industry by attracting a Chinese automaker to Italy.

On Thursday, Fiat unveiled at its historic Turin headquarters in northern Italian its Serbian-made Panda model and celebrated its 125th anniversary. Industry Minister Adolfo Urso, who attended the event, again urged Stellantis to relaunch its manufacturing activities in Italy.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/italy-offer-defunct-stellantis-brands-124500397.html

Colorado reports three presumptive human bird flu cases, CDC says

 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday that the state of Colorado has reported three presumptive cases of H5 bird flu virus infection in poultry workers.

"There are no signs of unexpected increases in flu activity otherwise in Colorado, or in other states affected by H5 bird flu outbreaks in cows and poultry," CDC said in a statement.

All three individuals experienced mild symptoms, it said. The infections occurred in workers who were culling infected animals at a poultry facility that was experiencing an outbreak of H5N1 bird flu, the statement added.

The CDC said the risk to the general public remains low. The agency is sending a team to Colorado to support an investigation, it said.

According to the CDC, all three workers were exposed through contact with infected animals.

The cases are part of a far-reaching outbreak of H5N1 bird flu that has been spreading globally in wild birds, infecting poultry and various species of mammals and causing an outbreak in U.S. dairy cows.

Preliminary testing by Colorado officials showed the three were infected with a novel type of influenza and are presumed to have bird flu. Samples have been sent to the CDC for confirmatory testing.

If positive, they will represent the fourth case of bird flu in Colorado and the seventh U.S. cases of the virus this year.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/colorado-reports-three-presumptive-human-011945251.html

OpenAI working on new reasoning technology under code name ‘Strawberry’

 ChatGPT maker OpenAI is working on a novel approach to its artificial intelligence models in a project code-named “Strawberry,” according to a person familiar with the matter and internal documentation reviewed by Reuters.

The project, details of which have not been previously reported, comes as the Microsoft-backed startup races to show that the types of models it offers are capable of delivering advanced reasoning capabilities.

Teams inside OpenAI are working on Strawberry, according to a copy of a recent internal OpenAI document seen by Reuters in May. Reuters could not ascertain the precise date of the document, which details a plan for how OpenAI intends to use Strawberry to perform research. The source described the plan to Reuters as a work in progress. The news agency could not establish how close Strawberry is to being publicly available.

How Strawberry works is a tightly kept secret even within OpenAI, the person said.

The document describes a project that uses Strawberry models with the aim of enabling the company’s AI to not just generate answers to queries but to plan ahead enough to navigate the internet autonomously and reliably to perform what OpenAI terms “deep research,” according to the source.

This is something that has eluded AI models to date, according to interviews with more than a dozen AI researchers.

Asked about Strawberry and the details reported in this story, an OpenAI company spokesperson said in a statement: “We want our AI models to see and understand the world more like we do. Continuous research into new AI capabilities is a common practice in the industry, with a shared belief that these systems will improve in reasoning over time.”

The spokesperson did not directly address questions about Strawberry.

The Strawberry project was formerly known as Q*, which Reuters reported last year was already seen inside the company as a breakthrough.

Two sources described viewing earlier this year what OpenAI staffers told them were Q* demos, capable of answering tricky science and math questions out of reach of today’s commercially-available models.

On Tuesday at an internal all-hands meeting, OpenAI showed a demo of a research project that it claimed had new human-like reasoning skills, according to Bloomberg. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the meeting but declined to give details of the contents. Reuters could not determine if the project demonstrated was Strawberry.

OpenAI hopes the innovation will improve its AI models’ reasoning capabilities dramatically, the person familiar with it said, adding that Strawberry involves a specialized way of processing an AI model after it has been pre-trained on very large datasets.

Researchers Reuters interviewed say that reasoning is key to AI achieving human or super-human-level intelligence.

While large language models can already summarize dense texts and compose elegant prose far more quickly than any human, the technology often falls short on common sense problems whose solutions seem intuitive to people, like recognizing logical fallacies and playing tic-tac-toe. When the model encounters these kinds of problems, it often “hallucinates” bogus information.

AI researchers interviewed by Reuters generally agree that reasoning, in the context of AI, involves the formation of a model that enables AI to plan ahead, reflect how the physical world functions, and work through challenging multi-step problems reliably.

Improving reasoning in AI models is seen as the key to unlocking the ability for the models to do everything from making major scientific discoveries to planning and building new software applications.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said earlier this year that in AI “the most important areas of progress will be around reasoning ability.”

Other companies like Google, Meta and Microsoft are likewise experimenting with different techniques to improve reasoning in AI models, as are most academic labs that perform AI research. Researchers differ, however, on whether large language models (LLMs) are capable of incorporating ideas and long-term planning into how they do prediction. For instance, one of the pioneers of modern AI, Yann LeCun, who works at Meta, has frequently said that LLMs are not capable of humanlike reasoning.

AI CHALLENGES

Strawberry is a key component of OpenAI’s plan to overcome those challenges, the source familiar with the matter said. The document seen by Reuters described what Strawberry aims to enable, but not how.

In recent months, the company has privately been signaling to developers and other outside parties that it is on the cusp of releasing technology with significantly more advanced reasoning capabilities, according to four people who have heard the company’s pitches. They declined to be identified because they are not authorized to speak about private matters.

Strawberry includes a specialized way of what is known as “post-training” OpenAI’s generative AI models, or adapting the base models to hone their performance in specific ways after they have already been “trained” on reams of generalized data, one of the sources said.

The post-training phase of developing a model involves methods like “fine-tuning,” a process used on nearly all language models today that comes in many flavors, such as having humans give feedback to the model based on its responses and feeding it examples of good and bad answers.

Strawberry has similarities to a method developed at Stanford in 2022 called "Self-Taught Reasoner” or “STaR”, one of the sources with knowledge of the matter said. STaR enables AI models to “bootstrap” themselves into higher intelligence levels via iteratively creating their own training data, and in theory could be used to get language models to transcend human-level intelligence, one of its creators, Stanford professor Noah Goodman, told Reuters.

“I think that is both exciting and terrifying…if things keep going in that direction we have some serious things to think about as humans,” Goodman said. Goodman is not affiliated with OpenAI and is not familiar with Strawberry.

Among the capabilities OpenAI is aiming Strawberry at is performing long-horizon tasks (LHT), the document says, referring to complex tasks that require a model to plan ahead and perform a series of actions over an extended period of time, the first source explained.

To do so, OpenAI is creating, training and evaluating the models on what the company calls a “deep-research” dataset, according to the OpenAI internal documentation. Reuters was unable to determine what is in that dataset or how long an extended period would mean.

OpenAI specifically wants its models to use these capabilities to conduct research by browsing the web autonomously with the assistance of a “CUA,” or a computer-using agent, that can take actions based on its findings, according to the document and one of the sources. OpenAI also plans to test its capabilities on doing the work of software and machine learning engineers.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-openai-working-reasoning-technology-212356650.html

'IRS Strikes Gold: $1 Billion Collected From Wealthy Tax Dodgers'

 The Biden administration has collected $1 billion - a few days worth of Ukraine funding - from wealthy tax cheats, in what the Associated Press frames as a showcase of how the agency is making use of monies received from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

The outlet suggests that the announcement is part of a public push to raise awareness that a Republican takeover of the White House or Congress could mean future budget cuts for the IRS - which last year launched a series of initiatives aimed at pursuing high-wealth individuals who have shirked their tax obligations.

According to the agency, the campaign is focused on taxpayers with over $1 million in income and over $250,000 in recognized tax debt.

"President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is increasing tax fairness and ensuring that all wealthy taxpayers pay the taxes they owe, just like working families do," said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in a statement.

Among the initiatives are measures to halt “partnership basis shifting,” potentially raising $50 billion over the next decade, and targeting improper deductions on personal flights via corporate jets. Eugene Steuerle from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center emphasized the positive impact of these efforts, suggesting increased public support for the IRS if they "can show they’re having a positive impact and it’s not impacting average American taxpayers, there would be more public support for this activity and the agency."

That said, Republicans are not backing down from threats to make deep cuts to the IRS.

House Republicans built a $1.4 billion reduction to the IRS into the debt ceiling and budget cuts package passed by Congress in the summer of 2023. The deal included a separate agreement to take $20 billion from the IRS over the next two years and divert that money to other non-defense programs.

House Republicans’ fiscal year 2025 proposal out of the Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee in June proposes further cuts to the IRS in 2025, and would cut funding to the Direct File program that is being expanded to allow Americans to file their taxes directly with the IRS. -AP

All of that said- according to Demian Brady, VP of research for the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, says that the IRS is still targeting non-high net worth partnerships for audits. 

"It should also be noted that nearly two-thirds of audits initiated in 2023 were on those making less than $200,000."

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/irs-strikes-gold-1-billion-collected-wealthy-tax-dodgers

Not Too Late To Hold China Accountable on COVID

 No matter who wins in November, preparing for the next pandemic needs to be a top priority for America's leaders. An essential first step must be holding the last pandemic's main culprit—the Chinese government—accountable.

COVID-19 resulted in over 28 million excess deaths around the world, including 1.1 million in America. As our new Nonpartisan Commission on China and COVID-19 report shows, the financial cost to our country amounted to 18 trillion dollars. Despite these astronomical damages, however, our government has so far failed to hold China to account for its unacceptable negligence and malfeasance.

The strong preponderance of evidence supports our assessment that a research-related incident in Wuhan was most likely the source of the initial outbreak. But our assertion of Chinese culpability holds regardless of how the initial spillover happened, whether from a laboratory accident or, as some allege, as a result of China's illegal wildlife trade. Either way, what followed was a coverup.

Beijing could have contained the outbreak early on by alerting its own citizens—and the world—to the threat. Instead, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) maximized COVID-19's spread and impact by destroying samples, hiding records, imprisoning journalists, gagging scientists, blocking international investigations, and lying to and seeking to co-opt the World Health Organization.

That's why accountability today is so important to our safety tomorrow. Without it, every authoritarian state official facing similar circumstances in the future will be incentivized to follow the CCP's COVID-19 playbook of lies and obfuscation.

To that end, our report lays out a blueprint for the next administration to hold China accountable. One of our most important recommendations is that the U.S. government empower American victims of COVID-19 to hold Chinese entities liable through mass tort class action lawsuits.

Establishing liability is an essential tool for fostering accountability in any functioning domestic legal system. The same principle can be applied appropriately in the international context. But while America's Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) provides a limited path forward for potential plaintiffs, the bar for these types of actions remains dauntingly high.

This restrictiveness makes sense in normal circumstances and helps prevent international chaos. But these are not normal circumstances. Our world remains dangerously and unnecessarily at risk for future pandemics because we've collectively failed to establish accountability for the last one.

Congress can fix this problem with a single-paragraph amendment to the FSIA. Republicans and Democrats should work together to ensure that U.S. federal courts are granted jurisdiction over cases where injured American citizens are seeking monetary damages against a foreign state, with the important caveat that the foreign state must have directly through malfeasance or indirectly through negligence sparked a pandemic leading to over a million excess deaths in America and failed to carry out or allow a comprehensive and unfettered investigation.

Congress should take this action for three essential reasons. First, it would give teeth to ongoing American and international efforts exploring the pandemic's origins that the CCP is currently impeding. Second, it would remind China that misleading the world comes with a cost. Third, and most important, it would establish a precedent encouraging all countries to respond to pathogenic outbreaks with transparency and accountability.

Although these steps may seem aggressive, particularly in the context of worsening relations between the United States and China, we have already lived through the consequences of the status quo. Twenty-eight million people are dead as a result of a totally avoidable pandemic. If we do not take tough action now, future pandemics will almost certainly be far worse.

Our children's safety shouldn't be a partisan issue. Fighting for answers about what went wrong with COVID-19 shouldn't be something we put off until the next pandemic is upon us. By holding the Chinese government accountable today, our leaders can save countless American and other lives tomorrow.

Dr. Jamie Metzl@JamieMetzl

Founder, OneShared.World, and Former Director, Multilateral and Humanitarian Affairs, US NSC

John Ratcliffe

Visiting Fellow, Davis Institute

https://www.heritage.org/china/commentary/its-not-too-late-hold-china-accountable-covid

Our Brezhnev, Our Pravda, Our Soviet Union...

By Victor Davis Hanson

Leonid Brezhnev led the former Soviet Union as General Secretary of the Communist Party until 1982. But like most Russian apparatchiks who excessively smoked, drank, and gained weight, he aged prematurely. Also like them, his disabilities never led to his abdication.

By Brezhnev's late 60s and early 70s, he was too ill to travel abroad or make public appearances. Indeed, his debility left the Soviet Union without a real leader for the final six or seven years of his tenure.

Brezhnev got away with it because the Soviet state-controlled media doctored photos and videos to attest to his supposedly vigorous health and constant hands-on involvement.

"Journalists" sent out false communiques. They spun narratives that Brezhnev was robust, hale, and working long hours on behalf of the Russian people. Any dissenting journalists who sought to report the true, sad state of affairs were in danger of losing their jobs, freedom -- or even their lives.

Instead, the "reporters" of Pravda ("Truth"), the official print megaphone of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, wrote lies about Brezhnev's busy workdays. Pravda's handlers spun fables about the respect (and fear) the rest of the world held for such a dynamic leader -- even as Brezhnev became an ill virtual recluse.

The cynical Russian people shrugged because they had long been accustomed to their lying media and the falsehoods they peddled. And besides, Brezhnev was a doctrinaire Stalinist communist. So his job was not to rock the boat or upset the Russian communist hierarchy.

Instead, he reigned over the penultimate Soviet "era of stagnation," while an ossified communism increasingly destroyed all incentives and hope, leaving the Russian people poor, cynical, and helpless.

Something similar has happened to a calcified America under President Joe Biden. Like the late-stage Brezhnev, Biden is now a president in name only. He has outsourced his administration to a vestigial hard-left apparat from the Obama years.

Now, Biden can no longer even perform his assigned ceremonial tasks of putting a moderate veneer on radical, nihilist agendas that are stagnating the country.

Yet our Pravda journalists have sworn to the American people that, in private, the reclusive, three-day-a-week Biden outpaces the energy and drive of those half his age. Obsequious staffers plant stories in the Soviet-like ears of reporters about Biden's singular dynamism.

Any dissenters are publicly demonized as peddlers of "cheap fakes."

When Biden's reclusiveness prompts too much gossip that he is near senile, he is wheeled out for a staged interview that must be edited before release. Or he answers questions secretly shown to him in advance.

On sporadic occasions where the state media and the Biden nomenklatura cannot control events -- such as rare presidential debates or international summits -- our Pravda media go into overdrive to convince the public that what they see and hear is not real.

In the end, Brezhnev could not even hobble to the May Day dais to celebrate communism's national holiday.

He soon reached the point that his debilities were so manifest that even his hirelings and the media could not hide them. He then vanished from public view, leaving the Russian people with no idea as to who was running their communist nation.

Then one day, Soviet propagandists announced suddenly but matter-of-factly that the dynamic Brezhnev had died and that his successor, Yuri Andropov, was now brilliantly running the Soviet Union.

Biden, too, is at that point of stasis. He cannot do press conferences, town halls, debates, or real interviews. To do so would confirm to the public the truth: that Biden is too cognitively challenged to continue his presidency.

And yet the cloistered Biden can no longer hide during a campaign season with his accustomed three-day workweek.

The media has done its best to continue its Orwellian ruse. They claim that Trump interrupted Biden (he did not) in the recent debate and that he lied (if so, not as much as did Biden). Sometimes, the press corps just blurts out that an inert, left-wing Biden is still preferable to a dynamic, conservative Trump.

What is next for our increasingly Soviet state?

We will continue to be lectured on the vigor of Biden -- until one day we aren't, when Biden either steps down -- or worse.

Then, our Pravda will likely present the new official narrative. They will convince us that his successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, is an underappreciated genius whose past portfolios led to solving the border crisis and renewing American dominance in space.

One day, the same reporters who swore Biden was a virtual Socrates behind closed doors and then suddenly just confessed he was not when their lies were no longer operative will sing the praises of our new comrade leader -- the brilliant, accomplished, eloquent, and articulate Harris.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/07/12/our_brezhnev_our_pravda_our_soviet_union_151249.html

Fearing New Panama President Will Block Key Route To US, Migrants Flood Darién Gap

 by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times,

Thousands of migrants streamed into Panama through the treacherous jungle of the Darién Gap last week, with many fearing that the route will be shut down, thereby dashing their hopes of reaching the United States.

The influx of migrants intent on crossing the U.S. southwest border unlawfully came as Panama’s new president, Raúl Mulino, took steps to stop the flow through the Darién Gap.

On July 1, the same day that he took office, Mr. Mulino forged a deal with the United States to pay for repatriation flights for migrants entering Panama on their way to the United States.

Migrants expressed desperation and sometimes frustration at the idea that Panama would close the dangerous passageway from Colombia.

In February, The Epoch Times visited the four migrant camps located in Panama, where migrants who had just made it out of the Darién Gap described lawless gangs, whose members robbed, raped, and murdered, along the route.

Several migrants interviewed on-site last week said Panama should start accepting migrants who fly into the country or create another pathway to facilitate their journey to the United States.

At least 1,000 migrants per day on average arrived at the camps last week.

Traffic dropped to roughly half that on July 5 as SENAFRONT, Panama’s national border patrol, began blocking jungle pathways using concertina wire, also known as razor wire.

Video recordings posted on social media by an Epoch Times freelance reporter about the Darién Gap being blocked prompted an avalanche of questions and requests for help in Spanish.

One social media user who said he had four children asked when the route would close because he wants to cross in late July, but he doesn’t yet have the money.

Users posted pleas for help in guiding them through the Darién Gap or into Mexico.

Some expressed disbelief that the passageway north was being shut down, while others cursed the news.

Of the migrants exiting the Darién Gap over a four-day period last week, at least 700 were Chinese nationals who made their way into camp Canaán Membrillo in Panama.

The more-affluent Chinese migrants use the Carreto route to get to Canaán Membrillo.

The Carreto route is used by smuggling organizations to move migrants into Panamanian territory by sea before docking and taking a shorter jungle trail by foot.

Panama President-elect José Raúl Mulino visits the Reception Center for Migrant Care in Lajas Blancas, in the jungle province of Darién, Panama, on June 28, 2024. Mr. Mulino has pledged to close the dangerous Darién Gap, a crucial corridor for migrants heading to the U.S. border. (Martin Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images)

Several migrants who spoke with The Epoch Times said they are making their journey to America now because they fear President Joe Biden’s term is ending.

“He’s going, so I’m coming,” one Chinese migrant said.

Two Chinese migrants who spoke on camera but didn’t want to be named, cursed Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party.

The pair indicated that they wanted to go to the United States because of the freedom that its citizens enjoy, saying there are no human rights in China.

Some migrants said family members had told them they could vote in the United States.

Many said they would vote for President Biden if given the chance. One of the Chinese migrants said he would vote for former President Donald Trump if he could “because Trump is more tough” on the Chinese regime.

He said he believes that some Chinese nationals crossing into the United States are Beijing spies.

At Panama’s Bajo Chiquito migrant camp, one Indian national who gave his first name as Monish said he is concerned that he could be deported if former President Trump is reelected.

Monish believes it is legal to walk into the United States because his friends who have already done so told him that the U.S. Constitution says that “no human is illegal.”

“Joe Biden is a very good person. He’s very helpful for immigrants,” Monish said.

Panama began placing razor wire inside the dense jungle, cutting off some routes used by human smugglers.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who attended Mr. Mulino’s inauguration, signed a memorandum of understanding to provide assistance to Panama for illegal migrant repatriation flights out of the country.

Illegal immigrants arrive at the Reception Center for Migrant Care in Lajas Blancas, in Darién, Panama, on June 28, 2024. Panama reported more than 500,000 migrant crossings in the Darién Gap in 2023. (Martin Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images)

“As the United States continues to secure our borders and remove individuals without a legal basis to remain, we are grateful for our partnership with Panama to manage the historic levels of migration across the Western Hemisphere,” Mr. Mayorkas said in a statement about the deal.

The agreement is “designed to jointly reduce the number of migrants being cruelly smuggled through the Darién, usually en route to the United States,” according to a statement from National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson.

Sending migrants back home “will help deter irregular migration in the region and at our southern border and halt the enrichment of malign smuggling networks that prey on vulnerable migrants,” she said.

The United States agreed to supply Panama with equipment, transportation, and logistics to send migrants illegally entering Panama back to their countries.

Panama has reported record numbers of crossings along the Darién jungle pathway in recent years, including more than 520,000 in 2023 alone.

Mr. Mulino, the country’s 65-year-old former security minister and new president, promised to shut down the migration route controlled by criminal organizations.

“I won’t allow Panama to be an open path for thousands of people who enter our country illegally, supported by an international organization related to drug trafficking and human trafficking,” he said during his inauguration speech.

However, Panama will not be getting help from its neighbor Colombia.

The Ombudsman’s Office of Colombia put out a statement cautioning Panama to not violate the “mobility rights” of migrants.

Illegal immigrants who crossed the Darién Gap into Panama wait in line for bus transportation to Costa Rica, in the Lajas Blancas migrant camp in Darién, Panama. (The Epoch Times)

Colombia’s notice warned its neighbor to not violate international law, which forbids countries from returning asylum seekers to places where they may face danger.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—many of which have received millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars—embedded in Panama help migrants with food, shelter, medical aid, and maps at the migrant camps.

One NGO, Human Rights Watch, cast doubt on Panama’s ability to close the Darién Gap completely and feared it would force migrants to find more dangerous routes.

“Whatever the reason for their journey, migrants and asylum-seekers crossing the Darién Gap are entitled to basic safety and respect for their human rights along the way,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director of Human Rights Watch.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/fearing-new-panama-president-will-block-key-route-us-migrants-flood-darien-gap