"Lie from NPR News," I'm Lakshmi Singh.
President Trump's in battle nominee for Attorney General will likely squeak by in his Senate Conformation.
“NPR's Barbara Sprint reports Todd Blanche is receiving key support from Louisiana Republican”
Senator Bill Cassidy. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has been facing an increasingly uphill battle in his Senate confirmation. Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine both are opposing his nomination, which meant all eyes were on Senator Cassidy of Louisiana.
Cassidy said he had concerns over Blanche's judgment and help politicize the department
has become, but ultimately said he'll support him.
The choice is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche. It is between Mr. Blanche and another acting attorney general who may not run the Department effectively under President Trump and who, indeed, may not be as good as Mr. Blanche. He's support gives Blanche the votes he'll need for confirmation and is a major win for the White House.
Barbara Sprint and Pyrenees, Washington. U.S. employers cut 23,000 jobs last month, more on this from NPR Scott Horsley.
“The job cuts came in restaurants and retail shops as well as local government last month.”
Job gains for May and June were also revised sharply lower. Health care continued to add jobs last month, but at a modest pace. The unemployment rate dipped to 4.1%, but only because more than 260,000 people dropped out of the workforce. July was the second month in a row, the jobs report was weaker than forecasters had
expected. It suggested sluggish economic growth and rising prices are taking a toll on the labor market. Average wages for people who are working climb 3.2% over the last 12 months, but that's likely not enough to keep pace with inflation. So workers pay checks aren't stretching as far as they used to.
Scott Horsley and Pyrenees, Washington. Meta's now reporting that one of its artificial intelligence models went rogue as it was being evaluated. And P.R.S. John Ruitt reports the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp is
“the latest in a string of tech giants that disclose their AI models hacked other companies.”
AI companies test their models in computer settings that are supposed to be closed off from the internet. But Meta says a misconfiguration by an independent testing company called irregular allowed one of its models to escape. It says the model, quote, "exploited a security vulnerability in a third-party service, which
likely means it hacked into another company." Andthropic and Open AI have both said in recent days that some of their AI models had escaped testing arenas to go on to the internet and access other systems. And a government backed AI security lab in the UK saw similar acts when testing their models. The incidents have raised concern about AI doing bad things autonomously and recently prompted
AI researchers to call for a mechanism to pace AI development. John Ruitt and Pyrenees. You're listening to NPR. There was a mass shooting at a high school in Thailand today. Local authorities outside Bangkok say a student killed at least five people and wounded
20 others and took his own life. The authorities say he is also accused of killing his two grandparents. A federal appeals court is blocking the Trump administration's construction of a new White House ballroom. Today, a three-dutch panel ruled in a two-to-one decision that the administration requires
congressional authorization as a result.
It has ordered construction on the $400 million project to stop.
Today is the start of Scotland's Edinburgh Frenge, build as the world's biggest comedy in theater, festival, and Beer's Lauren Fair reports it. One show in particular is during controversy, a comedy called Cartwheel by Amanda Knox. The American former student who was convicted and later acquitted of a British roommate's murder 19 years ago in Italy.
The title "Cartwheel" refers to how Amanda Knox was said to have done cartwheels at an Italian police station after Meredith Kurcher's murder. The victim's sister Stephanie Kurcher told the BBC that any comedy about that is hurtful to the Kurcher family. It's very personal to us and affects her friends as well, still of seeing us left a massive
void. Knox says the show is about what she calls her wrongful imprisonment, how she's now juggling motherhood, and says she made it with deep heart and sensitivity. "I'm not the first person to invent using comedy to talk about traumatic and difficult material." Her sold-out show runs for 11 nights at the Edinburgh Fringe, Lauren Fair and PR News London.
I'm Lakshmi Singh and PR News in Washington. This week on Consider This, Virginia thought her criminal record would follow her forever until a few minutes with an AI app that told her she could clear her felonies.
"You'll never find a harder worker than someone who has something to prove to themselves
how AI could help millions of Americans with criminal records."
