Month: July 2024

Commentary: Beware of Artificial Intelligence’s Influence on the Election

South Carolina Sun Staff
Computer programmer

In recent weeks we’ve seen multiple stories involving the two leading presidential candidates — Joe Biden and Donald Trump — signaling the rising dangers of Artificial Intelligence and related technology during an intense campaign. The examples run from alleged misinformation and video distortion to flat-out false imagery. The warnings are certainly apt.

Sure, AI has the potential for great benefits, whether in the healthcare field or even something like your GPS, but it also holds potential for terrible misuse in politics. Specifically, to get technical, it’s the so-called “generative AI” that can be directed to produce bogus human voices, imagery, text, and video. It can be used to create some of the worst “fake news.”

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South Carolina Sees Unemployment Rate Increase in May

The Center Square
William Floyd

South Carolina’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate increased in May to 3.4%, and the state’s top labor official said higher interest rates may be partly to blame.

While the state’s unemployment rate increased from 3.2% last month, officials noted it is below the national rate of 4%.

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Major Pediatric Medical Organization Plotted Ways to ‘Circumvent’ Child Sex Change Bans, Emails Show

South Carolina Sun Staff
Child at the doctor's office

Members of America’s leading pediatric medical association discussed possible ways to “circumvent” red states’ bans on sex change procedures and drugs for children, according to emails obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The emails are part of a trove of documents that show how the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the country’s largest professional association of pediatricians with a membership of 67,000 doctors, quietly partnered with transgender activist groups, such as the Human Rights Campaign and the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH), to push child sex changes nationwide.

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White House Signs Deal with Panama to Crack Down On Major Illegal Immigration Route to U.S.

South Carolina Sun Staff
Panama's president-elect, José Raúl Mulino

The Biden administration on Monday inked a deal with the Panamanian government to help stop illegal migration along the Darien Gap, a sign that the country’s new president is following through on a major campaign promise.

The White House announced a Memorandum of Understanding with Panama, an initiative that will deploy American screening officers to assist their government deport migrants who cross the Darien Gap, a vast jungle region between Panama and Colombia that hundreds of thousands of migrants trek across every year en route to the U.S. The announcement followed a pledge by then-presidential candidate Jose Raul Mulino to close Panama off to illegal immigration.

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Commentary: The Federal Government Loses More Money than Could Ever Be Accounted For

RealClearWire
Accountant working on spreadsheets

Not long after Jeremy Gober started running a sleep center, he quit treating patients for narcolepsy and sleep apnea and went full-time submitting bogus insurance claims. According to Gober’s 2022 indictment, he committed at least one especially sloppy error: One of his make-believe billings included a Medicare claim for treatment in March 2018 for a patient who’d died in December 2017. Before Gober was caught, Medicare and California’s healthcare system, Medi-Cal, ended up paying him a total of $587,000 for claims that turned out to be fiction.

The payments to Gober were part of $260 million the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spent from 2009 through 2019 to reimburse healthcare providers in 15 states and Puerto Rico for services to patients who were dead, according to the inspector general of the HHS, which administers Medicare and Medicaid — programs with combined expenditures of $1.7 trillion.

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China Expands Its Surveillance Capabilities in America’s Backyard, Report Finds

South Carolina Sun Staff
Xi Jinping

China’s surveillance efforts off the coast of America’s shores are expanding, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Monday.

China has been closely collaborating with Cuba — located just about 200 miles off the coast of Florida — to expand its military and intelligence presence on the island since at least 2019. Satellite imagery reviewed by CSIS appears to show that Cuba is building on its existing infrastructure in the region and now has multiple signal intelligence (SIGINT) facilities on the island, furthering concerns that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is attempting surveillance efforts inside the U.S., according to The Wall Street Journal.

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Biden Admin Contracts 1 Million Barrels from Emergency Gasoline Stockpile to ‘Lower Prices’ Ahead of July 4th

South Carolina Sun Staff
Gas Station

The Biden administration is selling off a million barrels of gasoline from an emergency reserve in a deliberate effort to cut prices ahead of the upcoming holiday weekend.

The Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it has awarded contracts to five energy companies to purchase the barrels the administration is releasing from the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve (NGSR), which is part of the federal Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) system. The NGSR releases are intended to “help lower gas prices ahead of the Fourth of July holiday,” according to DOE.

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