Firefighters found a dead woman entangled in machinery Thursday in a non-public baggage-processing area at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.
Larry Langford, a spokesperson for the Chicago Fire Department, said firefighters were called to the airport around 7:45 a.m. for a report of a person pinned in machinery used to move baggage. He said they discovered the woman entangled in a conveyer belt system in a baggage room.
Police said she was 57 years old but have not released her name.
The baggage room wasn’t publicly accessible, Langford said, and it’s not clear how she found her way into it. Scott Allen, a spokesperson for the US Department of Labor, said an official with the Occupational Health and Safety Administration visited the scene and learned the woman was not an airport employee.
Firefighters turned the scene over to police investigators, and Langford had no more details. The Chicago Police Department’s communications office said in an email to The Associated Press that the woman was found unresponsive and pronounced dead on the scene. Detectives have opened an investigation, the office said.
The police communications office initially said the woman was discovered at 2:27 a.m., creating confusion about why firefighters and paramedics didn’t arrive for more than five hours. After checking with the police department about the timing, Langford said that he was told surveillance footage shows the woman walking in the baggage room at 2:27 a.m.
The communications office issued a second statement Thursday afternoon saying that surveillance video shows the woman entering the room at 2:27 a.m. She was actually discovered at 7:30 a.m., prompting a 911 call.
The footage only shows her walking and does not show what happened to her.
Police spokesperson Nathaniel Blackman clarified during a phone interview with The Associated Press that no one was watching the surveillance cameras in real time and investigators reviewed the footage after the woman’s body was discovered.
Dead woman found entangled in baggage machinery at Chicago airport
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Dead woman found entangled in baggage machinery at Chicago airport
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Apple embraces the AI craze with its newly unleashed iPhone 16 lineup
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- Apple’s AI features are designed to turn its often-blundering virtual assistant Siri into a smarter and more versatile sidekick
CUPERTINO, California: Apple on Monday charged into the artificial intelligence craze with a new iPhone lineup that marks the company’s latest attempt to latch onto a technology trend and transform it into a cultural phenomenon.
The four different iPhone 16 models will all come equipped with special chips needed to power a suite if AI tools that Apple hopes will make its marquee product even more indispensable and reverse a recent sales slump.
Apple’s AI features are designed to turn its often-blundering virtual assistant Siri into a smarter and more versatile sidekick, automate a wide range of tedious tasks and pull off other crowd-pleasing tricks such as creating customized emojis within seconds.
After receiving a standing ovation for Monday’s event, Apple CEO Tim Cook promised the AI package will unleash “innovations that will make a true difference in people’s lives.”
But the breakthroughs won’t begin as soon as the new iPhones — ranging in price from $800 to $1,200 — hit the stores on September 20.
Most of Apple’s AI functions will roll out as part of a free software updates to iOS 18, the operating system that will power the iPhone 16 rolling out from October through December. US English will be the featured language at launch but an update enabling other languages will come out next year, according to Apple.
It’s all part of a new approach that Apple previewed at a developers conference three months ago to create more anticipation for a next generation of iPhones amid a rare sales slump for the well-known devices.
Since Apple’s June conference, competitors such as Samsung and Google have made greater strides in AI – a technology widely expected to trigger the most dramatic changes in computing since the first iPhone came out 17 years ago.
Just as Apple elevated fledgling smartphones it into a must-have technology in 21st-century society, the Cupertino, California, company is betting it can do something similar with its tardy arrival to artificial intelligence.
In an attempt to set itself apart from the early leaders in AI, the technology being baked into the iPhone 16 is being promoted as “Apple Intelligence.” Despite the unique branding, Apple’s new approach mimics many of the features already available in the Samsung Galaxy S24 released in January and the Google Pixel 9 that came out last month.
“Apple could have waited another year for further development, but initial take up of AI- powered devices from the likes of Samsung has been encouraging, and Apple is keen to capitalize on this market,” said PP Foresight analyst Paolo Pescatore.
As it treads into new territory, Apple is trying to preserve its long-time commitment to privacy by tailoring its AI so that most of its technological tricks can processed on the device itself instead of relying on giant banks of computers located in remote data centers. When a task needs to connect to a data center, Apple promises it will be done in a tightly-controlled way that ensures that no personal data is stored remotely.
While corralling the personal information shared through Apple’s AI tools inherently reduces the chances that the data will be exploited or misused against a user’s wishes, it doesn’t guarantee iron-clad security. A device could still be stolen, for instance, or hacked through digital chicanery.
For users seeking to access even more AI tools than being offered by the iPhone, Apple is teaming up with OpenAI to give users the option of farming out more complicated tasks to the popular ChatGPT chatbot.
Although Apple is releasing a free version of its operating system to propel its on-device AI features, the chip needed to run the technology is only available on the iPhone 16 lineup and the high-end iPhone 15 models that came out a year ago.
That means most consumers who are interested in taking advantage of Apple’s approach to AI will have to buy one of the iPhone 16 models – a twist that investors are counting on will fuel a surge in demand heading into the holiday season.
The anticipated sales boom is the main reason Apple’s stock price has climbed by more than 10 percent, including a slight uptick Monday after the shares initially slipped following the showcase for the latest iPhones.
Besides its latest iPhones, Apple also introduced a new version of its smartwatch that will include a feature to help detect sleep apnea as well the next generation of its wireless headphones, the AirPods Pro, that will be able to function as a hearing aid with an upcoming software update.
James Earl Jones, acclaimed actor and voice of Darth Vader, dies at 93
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NEW YORK: James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, “The Lion King” and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York’s Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.
The pioneering Jones, who in 1965 became one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama (“As the World Turns”) and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors. He was also given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of “The Gin Game” having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.
“The need to storytell has always been with us,” he told The Associated Press then. “I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn’t get him.”
Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in “Field of Dreams,” the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit “The Great White Hope,” the writer Alex Haley in “Roots: The Next Generation” and a South African minister in “Cry, the Beloved Country.”
He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader (“No, I am your father,” commonly misremembered as “Luke, I am your father”), as well as the benign dignity of King Mufasa in both the 1994 and 2019 versions of Disney’s “The Lion King” and announcing “This is CNN” during station breaks. He won a 1977 Grammy for his performance on the “Great American Documents” audiobook.
“If you were an actor or aspired to be an actor, if you pounded the payment in these streets looks for jobs, one of the standards we always had was to be a James Earl Jones,” Samuel L. Jackson once said.
Some of his other films include “Dr. Strangelove,” “The Greatest” (with Muhammad Ali), “Conan the Barbarian,” “Three Fugitives” and playing an admiral in three blockbuster Tom Clancy adaptations — “The Hunt for Red October,” “Patriot Games” and “Clear and Present Danger.” In a rare romantic comedy, “Claudine,” Jones had an onscreen love affair with Diahann Carroll.
Jones made his Broadway debut in 1958’s “Sunrise At Campobello” and would win his two Tony Awards for “The Great White Hope” (1969) and “Fences” (1987). He also was nominated for “On Golden Pond” (2005) and “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man” (2012). He was celebrated for his command of Shakespeare and Athol Fugard alike. More recent Broadway appearances include “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” “The Iceman Cometh,” and “You Can’t Take It With You.”
As a rising stage and television actor, he performed with the New York Shakespeare Festival Theater in “Othello,” “Macbeth” and “King Lear” and in off-Broadway plays.
Jones was born by the light of an oil lamp in a shack in Arkabutla, Mississippi, on Jan. 17, 1931. His father, Robert Earl Jones, had deserted his wife before the baby’s arrival to pursue life as a boxer and, later, an actor.
When Jones was 6, his mother took him to her parents’ farm near Manistee, Michigan. His grandparents adopted the boy and raised him.
“A world ended for me, the safe world of childhood,” Jones wrote in his autobiography, “Voices and Silences.” “The move from Mississippi to Michigan was supposed to be a glorious event. For me it was a heartbreak, and not long after, I began to stutter.”
Too embarrassed to speak, he remained virtually mute for years, communicating with teachers and fellow students with handwritten notes. A sympathetic high school teacher, Donald Crouch, learned that the boy wrote poetry, and demanded that Jones read one of his poems aloud in class. He did so faultlessly.
Teacher and student worked together to restore the boy’s normal speech. “I could not get enough of speaking, debating, orating — acting,” he recalled in his book.
At the University of Michigan, he failed a pre-med exam and switched to drama, also playing four seasons of basketball. He served in the Army from 1953 to 1955.
In New York, he moved in with his father and enrolled with the American Theater Wing program for young actors. Father and son waxed floors to support themselves while looking for acting jobs.
True stardom came suddenly in 1970 with “The Great White Hope.” Howard Sackler’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play depicted the struggles of Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight boxing champion, amid the racism of early 20th-century America. In 1972, Jones repeated his role in the movie version and was nominated for an Academy Award as best actor.
Jones’ two wives were also actors. He married Julienne Marie Hendricks in 1967. After their divorce, he married Cecilia Hart, best known for her role as Stacey Erickson in the CBS police drama “Paris,” in 1982. (She died in 2016.) They had a son, Flynn Earl, born in 1983.
In 2022, the Cort Theatre on Broadway was renamed after Jones, with a ceremony that included Norm Lewis singing “Go the Distance,” Brian Stokes Mitchell singing “Make Them Hear You” and words from Mayor Eric Adams, Samuel L. Jackson and LaTanya Richardson Jackson.
“You can’t think of an artist that has served America more,” director Kenny Leon told the AP. “It’s like it seems like a small act, but it’s a huge action. It’s something we can look up and see that’s tangible.”
Citing his stutter as one of the reasons he wasn’t a political activist, Jones nonetheless hoped his art could change minds.
“I realized early on, from people like Athol Fugard, that you cannot change anybody’s mind, no matter what you do,” he told the AP. “As a preacher, as a scholar, you cannot change their mind. But you can change the way they feel.”
A hurricane-damaged Louisiana skyscraper is imploded
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- Formerly known as the Capital One Tower, the building had been a dominant feature of the city’s skyline for more than four decades
- After a series of hurricanes ripped through southwest Louisiana in 2020, the building became an eyesore, its windows shattered and covered in shredded tarps
BATON ROUGE, Louisiana: An abandoned, 22-story building in Lake Charles, Louisiana — once an icon in the city that became a symbol of destruction from hurricanes Laura and Delta — was imploded Saturday after sitting vacant for nearly four years.
The Hertz Tower crashed down in a matter of seconds after a demolition crew set off a series of explosions inside. The tower fell in a large cloud of dust into a pile about five stories high.
The building, formerly known as the Capital One Tower, had been a dominant feature of the city’s skyline for more than four decades. However, after a series of hurricanes ripped through southwest Louisiana in 2020, the building became an eyesore, its windows shattered and covered in shredded tarps.
For years the owners of the building, the Los Angeles-based real estate firm Hertz Investment Group, promised to repair the structure once they settled with their insurance provider Zurich in court, The Advocate reported. The estimated cost of bringing the building back up to code was $167 million. Eventually, the two parties settled for an undisclosed amount.
The demolition was funded by $7 million in private money secured by the city. Hertz still owns the property and the future of the site is undetermined, according to the city.
Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter described the implosion of the building as “bittersweet.”
“I know how hard the city tried to work with several development groups to see it saved, but ultimately ... it proved to be too tall a task,” Hunter said before the implosion. He was in office during the hurricanes. “At this juncture, I am ready for a resolution. It’s been four years. It’s been long enough.”
Lake Charles, which sits on the banks of the Calcasieu River and is a two-hour drive from Houston, is home to around 80,000 residents. While the city is known for its copious amounts of festivals, bayous, casinos and its Cajun flair, it also has been labeled by the Weather Channel as America’s “most-weather battered city.”
Hurricane Delta crashed ashore in southern Louisiana in October 2020 just six weeks after Laura took a similar, destructive path onto the US Gulf Coast. At the time, Lake Charles was already reeling from damage caused by Laura, which battered roofs, claimed more than 25 lives in the region and left mud and debris filling streets.
The Hertz tower offers an example of the city’s long road to recovery following back-to-back hurricanes that inflicted an estimated $22 billion in damage, according to the National Hurricane Center.
While there are signs of rebuilding and growth in much of Lake Charles, there are still buildings that remain in disarray and residents living in the same conditions as four years ago — waiting for financial relief to rebuild their homes, looking for affordable housing after the hurricanes’ destruction exacerbated the housing crisis or stuck in court with their insurance provider to get a fair payout.
Crazy man charged with animal cruelty after massacring 81 pets in California community
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- Vicente Arroyo faces animal cruelty and other charges for massacring 81 animals, including miniature horses, goats and birds in a California neighborhood
- Police confiscated 15 firearms, including high-powered assault rifles, and 2,000 rounds of various calibers of ammunition from the 39-year-old suspect
SAN FRANCISCO, California: A man suspected of going on a three-hour shooting rampage in northern California and killing 81 animals, including miniature horses, goats and chickens, pleaded not guilty to animal cruelty and other charges.
Vicente Arroyo, 39, made his first court appearance Thursday after Monterey County Sheriff deputies arrested him earlier in the week for allegedly using several weapons to shoot the animals being housed in pens and cages on a lot in the small community of Prunedale.
The animal owners do not want to be identified or speak with the media, Monterey County Sheriff Commander Andres Rosas told The Associated Press Friday.
“I went out there, and it was a pretty traumatic scene. These were people’s pets,” he said.
One of the miniature horses belonged to the owner of the lot where the animals were housed, the other 80 belonged to someone who rented the land to house their pets, Rosas said.
According to court records, Arroyo was charged with killing 14 goats, nine chickens, seven ducks, five rabbits, a guinea pig and 33 parakeets and cockatiels. Arroyo is also charged with killing a pony named Lucky and two miniature horses named Estrella and Princessa, KSBW-TV reported.
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Some animals survived the shooting that lasted several hours but had to be euthanized because of the severity of their injuries, Rosas said.
Rosas said Arroyo lived in a camper in a vineyard next to the lot where the animals were kept and that a motive is not yet known.
His attorney, William Pernik, did not immediately respond to a telephone message from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Pernik raised doubts about his mental competency during Thursday’s trial, KSVW-TV reported. The judge ordered Arroyo, who is being held on a $1 million bail, to undergo a mental evaluation.
The court will get an update on Arroyo’s mental status in two weeks, the television station reported.
Authorities received multiple 911 calls around 3:25 a.m. Tuesday reporting shots being fired in Prunedale, an incorporated community about 8 miles (13 kilometers) from the city of Salinas, he said.
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Deputies who arrived on the scene could hear shots being fired, and a shelter-in-place was ordered for a five-mile radius.
Monterey County S.W.A.T. members were sent in, and the sheriff’s office also requested drone assistance from the nearby Seaside Fire Department and Gonzales Police Department, Rosas said.
Officers in an armored vehicle arrested Arroyo without incident, he said.
Deputies found a crashed pickup truck and recovered eight firearms, including long rifles, shotguns and handguns, at the scene. After executing a search warrant on his camper, they found another seven firearms, including an illegal AK-47 assault rifle, two ghost guns, and about 2,000 rounds of various calibers of ammunition, Rosas said.
Prosecutors charged Arroyo with dozens of charges involving animal cruelty, willful discharge of a firearm with gross negligence, illegal possession of an assault weapon, vandalism, drug possession and making criminal threats and terrorizing while being in possession of a firearm as a felon.
“This is obviously the most horrific animal cruelty case we’ve ever seen in this county, I’m sure,” Chief Assistant District Attorney Berkley Brannon told KSBW-TV after the Thursday hearing.
Rarely sighted Blanford’s fox caught on camera during UAE wildlife-mapping initiative
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- The fox — strictly nocturnal and rarely caught on camera — was in Fujairah and was mapped as part of the Notice Nature initiative
ABU DHABI: The Blanford’s fox is the latest species to be captured on camera during a wildlife-mapping initiative in the UAE, the Emirates News Agency (WAM) reported on Friday.
The fox — strictly nocturnal and rarely caught on camera — was in Fujairah and was mapped as part of the Notice Nature initiative, a collaboration between Emirates Nature-WWF, the Fujairah Environment Authority, and Mashreq Bank launched last year.
The initiative uses infrared motion-sensor cameras, which offer a non-intrusive way to monitor wildlife, especially shy species like the Blanford’s fox, and provide an insight into the state of biodiversity in the area and the effectiveness of designating protected areas to wildlife conservation.
While the Blanford’s fox is rated as being of “least concern” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s threat-of-extinction list, it is classified as vulnerable on the National UAE Red List and the Arabia Regional Red List.
Vulnerable species are those whose populations have decreased significantly across the region, making them likely to be classified as endangered in the near future if current challenges persisted.
Andrew Gardner, associate director of biodiversity conservation at Emirates Nature-WWF said in a statement: “We are excited to capture such clear images of the rare and secretive Blanford’s fox. These animals are very rarely seen and so each record gives new information on the distribution of the species and its status.
He continued: “We are confident that we will be able to collect more records of Blanford’s fox and other rare species, such as the Arabian tahr and caracal, in the UAE mountains. This is incredibly valuable scientific information, that feeds into the conservation management of these species.”
Mina Al-Ghurari, group head of marketing and corporate communication at Mashreq, said the sighting showed the importance and effectiveness of local conservation efforts.
“These sightings provide critical insights into the UAE’s rich biodiversity, helping us understand and protect our unique wildlife. We are proud of our collaboration with Emirates Nature-WWF, for this exclusive biodiversity and wildlife mapping system,” she said. “This data not only expands our knowledge of the UAE’s diverse ecosystems but also allows us to address the detrimental impacts of urbanization, pollution, and climate change on the country’s flora and fauna.”