Important Takeaways:
- Top scientist warns AI could surpass human intelligence by 2027 – decades earlier than previously predicted
- The computer scientist and CEO who popularized the term ‘artificial general intelligence’ (AGI) believes AI is verging on an exponential ‘intelligence explosion.’
- The PhD mathematician and futurist Ben Goertzel made the prediction while closing out a summit on AGI this month: ‘It seems quite plausible we could get to human-level AGI within, let’s say, the next three to eight years.’
- ‘Once you get to human-level AGI,’ Goertzel, sometimes called ‘father of AGI,’ added, ‘within a few years you could get a radically superhuman AGI.’
- In recent years, Goertzel has been investigating a concept he calls ‘artificial super intelligence’ (ASI) — which he defines as an AI that’s so advanced that it matches all of the brain power and computing power of human civilization
- In May 2023, the futurist said AI has the potential to replace 80 percent of human jobs ‘in the next few years.’
- ‘Pretty much every job involving paperwork,’ he said at the Web Summit in Rio de Janeiro that month, ‘should be automatable.’
- Goertzel added that he did not see this as a negative, asserting that it would allow people to ‘find better things to do with their life than work for a living.’
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Important Takeaways:
- The tremors rattling US commercial real estate are spreading to other countries and sectors, and threaten to escalate into a financial earthquake as refinancing deadlines loom.
- Barry Sternlicht, a billionaire real estate investor and Starwood Capital’s CEO, recently predicted $1 trillion of losses on office properties alone.
- More than $900 billion, or 20%-plus of the total debt owed on US commercial and multi-family real estate, will mature this year, Bloomberg reported this week. Borrowers may have no choice but to refinance at much higher interest rates, or sell their properties at a big discount.
- Moreover, the European Central Bank has threatened to impose steeper capital requirements on lenders unless they take commercial real estate risks seriously, sources told Bloomberg.
- At the same time, some Chinese investors are rushing to sell foreign real estate at discounts of 45% or more, in an effort to free up cash as they weather a worsening property crisis at home.
- Fears were reignited this month after New York Community Bancorp abruptly cut its dividend, set aside some $500 million to cover bad debts, and revealed a surprise quarterly loss that it blamed on just two troubled loans.
- Investors promptly sent NYCB stock down 60% in five days, and it’s still trading at two-decade lows.
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Important Takeaways:
- Xcel Energy admits faulty pole may be to blame for deadly Smokehouse Creek wildfire that torched 1million acres in Texas as residents line up to sue
- Xcel Energy has admitted its equipment was likely responsible for starting the worst fire in Texas history.
- The Smokehouse Creek fire ravaged more than a million acres of land, killed two residents and burned dozens of cattle to death after igniting last Monday.
- The company is currently being sued by a local homeowner who alleged that a splintered power pole owned by the company fell and started the catastrophic blaze.
- ‘Based on currently available information, Xcel Energy acknowledges that its facilities appear to have been involved in an ignition of the Smokehouse Creek fire,’ the company said in a statement on Thursday.
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Important Takeaways:
- Gang Members Outnumber Police 22 To 1 In The City Of Chicago, And The Ratio Just Keeps Getting Worse
- Criminal gangs are thriving in most of our major urban areas, and Joe Biden’s open border policies are greatly fueling their growth.
- Today, the CPD has identified more than 280,000 gang members in the city of Chicago…
- The Chicago Police Department maintains two massive gang databases, collectively labeling more than 280,000 people as “gang members.” 95% of those people listed are people of color, most being young men in their late teens and 20s, but also thousands being Black and Latinx youth and elders.
- And it is important to note that these are just the individuals that the CPD has been able to identify and put into their databases.
- Meanwhile, the size of the CPD has been hovering just above 12,000…
- However, the size of the Chicago Police Department was essentially unchanged on Johnson’s 100th day in office as compared with his first day in office. CPD had 12,360 employees on Johnson’s first full day in office and 12,363 employees on Monday, according to a city database. The number of sworn officers has also remained steady, with 11,720 officers on duty as of May 1, and 11,722 on the force as of Aug. 1, according to a database maintained by the Chicago Police Department.
- Once I had the numbers, I did the math, and I discovered that gang members now outnumber police in the city of Chicago by a ratio of 22 to 1.
- Memphis is another city that has an absolutely massive gang problem.
- It is being reported that the mayor recently met with gang leaders and “asked them to agree to a seven-day ceasefire”…
- The Atlanta metropolitan area is also caught in a downward spiral. Crime is completely out of control, and over the weekend a massive riot that involved hundreds of young people made headlines all over the nation…
- One person was shot when suspects opened fire on police during a riot involving hundreds of ‘youths’ at a Six Flags amusement park in Georgia over the weekend, according to reports.
- The shocking string of events unfolded on Saturday evening in Austell, a city in the Atlanta metro region.
- Thousands of people turned out for opening day at Six Flags Over Georgia before the event devolved into extreme mob violence.
- Hundreds of mostly-younger guests began fighting and sowing chaos throughout the park, forcing evacuations as security lost control of the crowd.
- Right now, the state of California is experiencing an absolutely relentless crime wave, and authorities are telling us that approximately 300,000 gang members currently reside there…
- This week, we learned that the Biden administration has actually been flying hundreds of thousands of “asylum seekers” directly into the United States…
- A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit has revealed that the Biden administration has flown at least 320,000 migrants into the United States in an effort to reduce the number of crossings at the southern border, according to Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies.
- Overall, it is being estimated that there will be over 8 million “asylum seekers” living in the U.S. “by the end of September”…
- More than 8 million asylum seekers and other migrants will be living inside the U.S in legal limbo by the end of September — a roughly 167% increase in five years, according to internal government projections obtained by Axios.
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Important Takeaways:
- While the Biden administration cracks down on the Christians Democrats and the press smear as extremists, church attacks are up 800 percent in the last six years, according to a new report from the Family Research Council (FRC).
- In February, the conservative group published the report, “Hostility Against Churches Is on the Rise in the United States.” It identified 915 acts of hostility against churches between January 2018 and November 2023.
- “Although the motivations for many of these acts of hostility remain unknown, the effect is unmistakable: religious intimidation,” said FRC Center for Religious Liberty Director Arielle Del Turco in a press release. “They send the message that churches are not wanted in the community or respected in general. Our culture is demonstrating a growing disdain for Christianity and core Christian beliefs, and acts of hostility towards churches could be a physical manifestation of that.”
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“When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
Important Takeaways:
- After a Pause, Jan. 6 Arrests Are Now Sharply Increasing
- The FBI is making arrests and the DOJ is filing charges at the quickest pace in three years, pushing the expected total up to 2,150 arrests by 2026.
- The pace of FBI arrests and the opening of new Jan. 6 criminal cases quickened so much in late 2023 and early 2024 that District of Columbia federal courts could bend under the weight.
- In the past two months, 93 people have been arrested and charged, according to Department of Justice (DOJ) reports.
- At the current rate, some 445 new cases could hit the docket in 2024—more than in 2022 and 2023, according to one estimate.
- In total, up to March 6, at least 1,358 people have been arrested by the FBI and criminally charged by the Department of Justice (DOJ) for crimes related to Jan. 6.
- If the current trend is to hold, total arrests could be 2,150 by the time the statute of limitations on Jan. 6 crimes expires in early 2026, according to Jacob Rugh, associate professor of sociology at Brigham Young University in Provo
- William Shipley, a former federal prosecutor who has represented more than 50 Jan. 6 defendants, said… “Every day, every day you see two or three more,” Mr. Shipley said. “My own view: it’s a political operation. Just my personal opinion. I think the Department of Justice, the Biden administration, is committed to continuing to keep this story front and center for purposes of the campaign.”
- Shipley said the pace of arrests helps perpetuate the idea that supporters of former President Donald Trump comprise a threat to society.
- “They want to continue to have that argument that some portion of the political opposition is actually a criminal element,” he said. “They use the branding of all these J6 defendants to say, ‘See that sliver of the MAGA movement, they’re insurrectionists, they’re foes of democracy.’”
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Important Takeaways:
- Texas wildfires map: Track latest locations of blazes as dry weather, wind poses threat
- Texas wildfires have been burning for 5 days
- The wildfires were ignited in the panhandle on Monday Feb. 26. The flames continued to spread throughout the state as dry, warm and windy weather conditions created obstacles for rescue crews to contain the fire.
- The Smokehouse Creek Fire, about 60 miles northeast of Amarillo, is the largest reported fire in state’s history and has burned over a million acres of land.
- Where are the Texas wildfires?
- 687 Reamer — Hutchinson County, 2,000 acres, 10% contained
- Grape Vine Creek — Gray County, 30,000 acres, 60% contained
- Magenta — Oldham County, 3,297 acres, 85% contained
- Smokehouse Creek — Hutchinson County, 1,078,086 acres, 60% contained
- Windy Deuce — Moore County, 142,000 acres, 60% contained
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Important Takeaways:
- Moment Ukrainian drones hit $65million Putin warship, causing ‘significant damage’ in fireball explosion as bridge linking Crimea to mainland ‘also comes under attack’
- This is the astonishing moment one of Putin’s most modern warships was ‘hit and sunk’ by a devastating Ukrainian drone strike overnight.
- The $65mn Sergey Kotov, which only came into service in 2022, was reportedly struck by an exploding kamikaze sea drone attack near Feodosia, in occupied Crimea.
- Footage purports to show the moment of the major explosion in darkness close to the coast.
- The vessel normally has a crew of 80 – and the fate of those on board remains unclear.
- Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, said on Telegram on Tuesday that ‘The Russian Black Sea Fleet is a symbol of occupation. It cannot be in the Ukrainian Crimea,’ in an apparent reference to the attack.
- It came as the £3mn Crimean Bridge – the main connecting link between Russia and the annexed territory – also fell under sustained attack, causing at least nine hours of traffic disruption.
- There was no official response from the Russian defense ministry.
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Important Takeaways:
- UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten visited Israel to collect evidence and reported that there was “clear and convincing” evidence corroborating Israeli accusations of rape by Hamas in three locations.
- At the Nova music festival and its surroundings, there are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple incidents of sexual violence took place with victims being subjected to rape and/or gang rape and then killed or killed while being raped. Credible sources described finding murdered individuals, mostly women, whose bodies were naked from their waist down – and some totally naked – tied with their hands behind their backs, many of whom were shot in the head.
- The mission team also found a pattern of bound naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down, in some cases tied to structures including trees and poles, along Road 232.
- In kibbutz Re’im, the mission team further verified an incident of the rape of a woman outside of a bomb shelter
- With respect to hostages, the mission team found clear and convincing information that some have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence including rape and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and it also has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing.
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Important Takeaways:
- The U.S. government is intensifying a manhunt for an Iranian intelligence operative who the Federal Bureau of Investigation believes has been plotting to assassinate current and former American officials, including one-time Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
- The FBI’s Miami field office on Friday issued a public alert seeking information on Majid Dastjani Farahani, a suspected member of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, who the Bureau alleged has been recruiting “individuals for operations in the U.S., to include lethal targeting of current/former USG officials.”
- The Iranian government has repeatedly vowed over the past four years to avenge the 2020 death of Major General Qasem Soleimani – a commander of Iran’s elite Qods Force – whom the Trump administration assassinated in Baghdad using a drone strike on his convoy.
- The DoJ indicted members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) in 2022 for allegedly plotting to murder Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton
- U.S. officials told Semafor they believe Pompeo and Trump’s special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook, are also on Tehran’s hit list. The U.S. government is currently providing both men with around-the-clock security due to the severity of the threat.
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