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A day care facility in a Texas county that’s part of the measles outbreak has multiple cases, including children too young to be fully vaccinated, public health officials say.West Texas is in the middle of a still-growing measles outbreak with 505 cases reported on Tuesday. The state expanded the number of counties in the outbreak area this week to 10. The highly contagious virus began to spread in late January and health officials say it has spread to New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Mexico.Three people who were unvaccinated have died from measles-related illnesses this year, including two elementary school-aged children in Texas. The second child died Thursday at a Lubbock hospital, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attended the funeral in Seminole, the epicenter of the outbreak.As of Friday, there were seven cases at a day care where one young child who was infectious gave it to two other children before it spread to other classrooms, Lubbock Public Health director Katherine Wells said.“Measles is so contagious I won’t be surprised if it enters other facilities,” Wells said.The measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine is first recommended between 12 and 15 months old and a second shot between 4 and 6 years old.Maegan Messick, co-owner of Tiny Tots U Learning Academy, where the outbreak is occurring, recently told KLBK-TV in Lubbock that they’re taking precautions like putting kids who are too young to get the vaccines together in isolation.“We have tried to be extremely transparent,” she told the TV station.There are more than 200 children at the day care, Wells said. Most have had least one dose of the vaccine, though she added, “we do have some children that have only received one dose that are now infected.”The public health department is recommending that any child with only one vaccine get their second dose early, and changed its recommendation for kids in Lubbock County to get the first vaccine dose at 6 months old instead of 1. A child who is unvaccinated and attends the day care must stay home for 21 days since their last exposure, Wells said.Case count and hospitalization numbers in Texas have climbed steadily since the outbreak began, and spiked by 81 cases from March 28 to April 4.On Tuesday, the state added another 24 cases to its count and two additional counties, Borden and Randall. One more person was hospitalized since Friday, with 57 total.Gaines County, where the virus has been spreading through a close-knit Mennonite community, has the majority of cases, with 328 on Tuesday. Neighboring Terry County is second with 46, followed by Lubbock County with 36.The Texas Department of State Health Services tracks vaccinations rate for kindergartners, though the data doesn’t include homeschooled children or some kids who attend private school. Gaines County’s rate is 82%, which is far below the 95% level needed to prevent community spreadand health officials have said it’s likely lower in the small religious schools and homeschooling groups where the early cases were identified.In Terry County, the vaccination rate for kindergartners is at 96%, while Lubbock County is at 92%.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention met with Texas officials Monday to determine how many people it would send to West Texas to assist with the outbreak response, spokesman Jason McDonald said Monday. He expected a small team to arrive later this week, followed by a bigger group on the ground next week.The CDC said its first team was in the region from early March to April 1, withdrawing on-the-ground support days before a second child died in the outbreak.A spokesperson for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said late Sunday that the governor and first lady were extending their “deepest prayers” to the family and community, and that the state health department had sent epidemiologists, immunization teams and specimen collection units to the area. AP reporter Amanda Seitz in Washington contributed to this report. Jamie Stengle, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Last month, First Lady Melania Trump used her first public remarks of President Trumps second term to voice her support for the Take It Down Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at curbing deepfake revenge porn. She was joined by Elliston Berry, a Texas teenager who was a victim of deepfake porn. The widespread presence of abusive behavior in the digital domain affects the daily lives of our children, families, and communities, Mrs. Trump said. Every young person deserves a safe online space to express themself freely, without the looming threat of exploitation or harm. The Take It Down Act unanimously passed the Senate and is now headed for the House. Across the political spectrum, lawmakers generally agree that deepfake porn, in which generative AI renders a sexually explicit likeness of a real person, must be regulated. The public is on board as well. When pornographic deepfakes of Taylor Swift were circulated online, her fans were outraged and social media platforms raced to restrict these images. But the conversation has been framed too narrowly as a problem of exploitation and consent. It is also an existential labor problem: AI-generated porn could put thousands of Americans out of work. Like it or not, porn is big business. The industry currently operates as a hybrid market. Porn studios hire performers as private contractors, paying them a flat rate per shoot to own the recorded scene and freely disseminate it online. Performers can also create their own porn for OnlyFans, a social media platform primarily for explicit content where users pay for subscriptions to content creators accounts. Pornhub, the largest porn sitereceiving 5.25 billion visits each monthhosts around 20,000 verified performers. On OnlyFans, the numbers are even more staggering. In 2023, OnlyFans received $6.6 billion in payments, generating $1.3 billion in revenue. The company has over four million content creators, an estimated two million of whom are Americanabout twice the number of Uber drivers in the US. AI throws the porn industry, along with the rest of us, into new legal territory. For promotional purposes, porn studios have long included clauses in performers contracts giving them rights over not only the film itself but also derivatives of all images created during the shoot. These clauses could now grant studios sweeping ownership of performers likeness that they could use to make deepfakes porn scenes without providing additional pay to performers. But performers face an even broader threat, one that jeopardizes the studio and OnlyFans markets alike: In the not-too-distant future, companies will likely be able to make porn scenes generated by AI that are difficult to distinguish from scenes involving real performers and are cheaper to produce than hiring them. Even if consumers know that the person they are watching is not real, they may not care. Porn performers will not merely have to worry about having their particular likeness stolen for deepfake porn, because their profession as a whole could be largely replaced by AI. Los Angeles economy, already ravaged by wildfires, would be particularly hard-hit. The San Fernando Valley remains the epicenter of the global porn industry, supporting not only tens of thousands of porn performers and adult content creators, but also other porn industry members, from makeup artists to grips. Los Angeles is a company town, and porn workers are its employees. One might argue that the porn industry should simply be allowed to collapse. Indeed, this is the tact that has often been taken with sin industries through restrictions on banking, for example. The porn industry has a way to go when it comes to empowering performers, but further cutting into their pay is not the solution. Porn performers are workers, and AI-generated porn poses a threat to their work. Instead, the porn industry should be recognized as part of the entertainment ecosystemthe rebellious stepsister, shall we say, of the mainstream film industryand shares with it a common foe in AI. SAG-AFTRA, the labor union representing about 160,000 media professionals globally, has made the fight against AI a top priority. The union won important protections for its members in the historic 2023 strike, including consent procedures regarding deepfakes in contracts, minimum pay scales for using deepfakes, and limitations on employing generative AI for screenwriting. In the ongoing video game strike, deepfakes remain the sticking point. Unfortunately, none of these negotiations will directly help porn performers. Although SAG-AFTRA represents a wide range of media professionalsincluding mainstream actors, screenwriters, broadcast journalists, news writers, DJs, recording artists, stunt performers, puppeteers, and other media professionalsporn performers have never been eligible for membership. The porn industry also struggles to organize from within due to fragmentation and notoriously high turnover. While the Free Speech Coalition serves as the industrys trade association, the industry has no labor union. SAG-AFTRA should add porn performers to its ranks, devoting a branch to their specific needs. The entertainment ecosystem would be strengthened if media professionals recognize that, when it comes to AI, their fate is intertwined with that of porn performers. Indeed, when it comes to fair compensation and the protection of human labor, all of our jobs may depend on it.
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a series of executive orders aimed at boosting the struggling coal industry, a reliable but polluting energy source that’s long been in decline.Under the four orders, Trump uses his emergency authority to allow some older coal-fired power plants set for retirement to keep producing electricity to meet rising U.S. power demand amid growth in data centers, artificial intelligence, and electric cars.Trump also directed federal agencies to identify coal resources on federal lands, lift barriers to coal mining, and prioritize coal leasing on U.S. lands.In a related action, Trump also signed a proclamation offering coal-fired power plants a two-year exemption from federal requirements to reduce emissions of toxic chemicals such as mercury, arsenic, and benzene.Trump’s administration had offered power plants and other industrial polluters a chance for exemptions from rules imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA, under Trump appointee Lee Zeldin, set up an electronic mailbox to allow regulated companies to request a presidential exemption under the Clean Air Act to a host of Biden-era rules.Trump, a Republican, has long promised to boost what he calls “beautiful” coal to fire power plants and for other uses, but the industry has been in decline for decades.“I call it beautiful, clean coal. I told my people, never use the word coal unless you put beautiful, clean before it,” Trump said at a White House signing ceremony where he was flanked by coal miners in hard hats. Several wore patches on their work jackets that said “coal.”“Pound for pound, coal is the single most reliable, durable, secure, and powerful form of energy,” Trump said. “It’s cheap, incredibly efficient, high density, and it’s almost indestructible.”Trump’s orders also direct Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to “acknowledge the end” of an Obama-era moratorium that paused coal leasing on federal lands and require federal agencies to rescind policies transitioning the nation away from coal production. And they seek to promote coal and coal technology exports, and accelerate development of coal technologies.Trump also targeted what he called “overreach” by Democratic-controlled states to limit energy production to slow climate change. He ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to take “all appropriate action to stop the enforcement” of such laws.New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, cochairs of the U.S. Climate Alliance, said Trump’s order illegally attempts to usurp states’ rights to act on climate.“The federal government cannot unilaterally strip states’ independent constitutional authority. We are a nation of statesand lawsand we will not be deterred,” the two Democrats said. “We will keep advancing solutions to the climate crisis that safeguard Americans’ fundamental right to clean air and water (and) grow the clean energy economy.”The climate alliance is a bipartisan coalition of 24 governors representing nearly 55% of the U.S. population. Trump has long championed coal Trump, who has pushed for U.S. “energy dominance” in the global market, has long suggested that coal can help meet surging electricity demand from manufacturing and the massive data centers needed for artificial intelligence.“We’re ending Joe Biden’s war on beautiful, clean coal once and for all,” he said Tuesday. “All those plants that have been closed are going to be opened, if they’re modern enough, (or) they’ll be ripped down and brand new ones will be built. And we’re going to put the miners back to work.”In 2018, during his first term, Trump directed then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry to take “immediate steps” to bolster struggling coal-fired and nuclear power plants, calling it a matter of national and economic security.At that time, Trump also considered but didn’t approve a plan to order grid operators to buy electricity from coal and nuclear plants to keep them open. Energy industry groupsincluding oil, natural gas, solar, and wind powercondemned the proposal, saying it would raise energy prices and distort markets. The national decline of coal Energy experts say any bump for coal under Trump is likely to be temporary because natural gas is cheaper, and there’s a durable market for renewable energy such as wind and solar power no matter who holds the White House.Trump’s administration has targeted regulations under the Biden administration that could hasten closures of heavily polluting coal power plants and the mines that supply them.Coal once provided more than half of U.S. electricity production, but its share dropped to about 16% in 2023, down from about 45% as recently as 2010. Natural gas provides about 43% of U.S. electricity, with the remainder from nuclear energy and renewables such as wind, solar, and hydropower.The front line in what Republicans call the “war on coal” is in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana, a sparsely populated section of the Great Plains with the nation’s largest coal mines. It’s also home to a massive power plant in Colstrip, Montana, that emits more toxic air pollutants such as lead and arsenic than any other U.S. facility of its kind, according to the EPA.EPA rules finalized last year could force the Colstrip Generating Station to shut down or spend an estimated $400 million to clean up its emissions within the next several years. Another Biden-era proposal, from the Interior Department, would end new leasing of taxpayer-owned coal reserves in the Powder River Basin. Changes and promises under Trump Trump vowed to reverse those actions and has named Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright to lead a new National Energy Dominance Council. The panel is tasked with driving up already record-setting domestic oil and gas production, as well as coal and other traditional energy sources.The council has been granted sweeping authority over federal agencies involved in energy permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, and transportation. It has a mandate to cut bureaucratic red tape, enhance private sector investments, and focus on innovation instead of “unnecessary regulation,” Trump said.Zeldin meanwhile, has announced a series of actions to roll back environmental regulations, including rules on pollution from coal-fired power plants. In all, Zeldin said he’s moving to roll back 31 environmental rules, including a scientific finding that has long been the central basis for U.S. action against climate change. Coal industry applauds, but environmental groups warn of problems Industry groups praised Trump’s focus on coal.“Despite countless warnings from the nation’s grid operators and energy regulators that we are facing an electricity supply crisis, the last administration’s energy policies were built on hostility to fossil fuels, directly targeting coal,Ý said Rich Nolan, president and CEO of the National Mining Association.Trump’s executive actions “clearly prioritize how to responsibly keep the lights on, recognize the enormous strategic value of American-mined coal and embrace the economic opportunity that comes from American energy abundance,” Nolan said.But environmental groups said Trump’s actions were more of the same tactics he tried during his first term in an unsuccessful bid to revive coal.“What’s next, a mandate that Americans must commute by horse and buggy?” asked Kit Kennedy, managing director for power at the Natural Resources Defense Council.“Coal plants are old and dirty, uncompetitive and unreliable,” Kennedy said, accusing Trump and his administration of remaining “stuck in the past, trying to make utility customers pay more for yesterday’s energy.”Instead, she said, the U.S. should do all it can to build the power grid of the future, including tax credits and other support for renewable energy such as wind and solar power. Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim contributed to this report. Matthew Daly, Associated Press
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