South-Carolina

Tornadoes collapse buildings and level homes in Nebraska and Iowa

Published

2 weeks ago

April 27, 2024

Tornadoes collapse buildings and level homes in Nebraska and Iowa

OMAHA, Neb. — Tornadoes wreaked havoc Friday in the Midwest, causing a building to collapse with dozens of people inside and destroying and damaging hundreds of homes, many around Omaha, Nebraska.

As of Friday night, there were several reports of injuries but no immediate deaths reported. Tornado warnings continued to be issued into the night in Iowa.

Three people were hurt in Nebraska’s Lancaster County when a tornado hit an industrial building, causing it to collapse with 70 people inside. Several were trapped, but everyone was evacuated and the injuries were not life-threatening, authorities said.

One of the most destructive tornadoes moved for miles Friday through mostly rural farmland before chewing up homes and other structures in the suburbs of Omaha, a city of 485,000 people with a metropolitan area population of about 1 million.

Photos on social media showed the small city of Minden, Iowa, about 30 miles (48.3 kilometers) northeast of Omaha also sustained heavy damage.

A tornado is seen near north of Waverly, Neb., on Friday, April 26, 2024.

The forecast for Saturday was ominous. The National Weather Service issued tornado watches across parts of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. Forecasters warned that large hail and strong wind gusts were possible.

“It does look like a big outbreak again tomorrow,” said Becky Kern, the warning coordination meteorologist in the National Weather Service’s Omaha office. “Maybe slightly farther south.”

Hundreds of houses sustained damage in Omaha on Friday, mostly in the Elkhorn area in the western part of the city, Omaha police Lt. Neal Bonacci said.

“You definitely see the path of the tornado,” Bonacci said, adding that many of the homes were destroyed or severely damaged.

Police and firefighters went door-to-door to help people, going to the “hardest hit area” with a plan to search anywhere someone could be trapped, Omaha Fire Chief Kathy Bossman said.

“We’ll be looking throughout properties in debris piles, we’ll be looking in basements, trying to find any victims and make sure everybody is rescued who needs assistance,” Bossman said.

Omaha police officers search a home for a family after a tornado leveled dozens of homes near Omaha, Neb., on Friday, April 26, 2024.

In one area of Elkhorn, dozens of newly built, large homes were damaged. At least six were wrecked, including one that was leveled, while others had their top halves ripped off. Dozens of emergency vehicles responded to the area.

“We watched it touch down like 200 yards over there and then we took shelter,” said Pat Woods, who lives in Elkhorn. “We could hear it coming through. When we came up our fence was gone and we looked to the northwest and the whole neighborhood’s gone.”

Kim Woods, his wife, added, “The whole neighborhood just to the north of us is pretty flattened.”

Three people, including a child, were in the basement of the leveled home when the tornado hit but got out safely, according to Dhaval Naik, who said he works with home’s owner.

KETV-TV video showed one woman being removed from a demolished home on a stretcher in Blair, a city just north of Omaha.

Two people were transported for treatment, both with minor injuries, Bonacci said.

Crews were doing a second search of homes. Fire crews would work throughout the night to check all the unsafe structures and make sure no one is inside, Bonacci said.

“People had warnings of this and that saved lives,” Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer said of the few serious injuries.

The tornado warning was issued in the Omaha area on Friday afternoon just as children were due to be released from school. Many schools had students shelter in place until the storm passed. Hours later, buses were still transporting children home.

“Was it one long track tornado or was it several tornadoes?” Kern of the National Weather Service said.

The agency planned to send out multiple crews over the next several days to determine the number of tornadoes and their strength, which could take up to two weeks, she said.

“Some appeared to be violent tornadoes,” Kern continued. “There were tornadoes in different areas. And so it’s like forensic meteorology, we call it, like piecing together, all the damage indicators.”

Severe weather damage to Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Neb., can be seen from the Lewis and Clark Monument in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Friday, April 26, 2024.

Another tornado hit an area on the eastern edge of Omaha, passing directly through parts of Eppley Airfield, the city’s airport. Officials halted aircraft operations to access damage but then reopened the facility, Omaha Airport Authority Chief Strategy Officer Steve McCoy said.

The passenger terminal wasn’t hit by the tornado but people rushed to storm shelters until the twister passed, McCoy said.

After passing through the airport, the tornado crossed the Missouri River and into Iowa, north of Council Bluffs.

Damage is seen to Justin and Amanda Putnam's bedroom after a severe storm damaged their neighborhood in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Friday, April 26, 2024. — Damage is seen to Justin and Amanda Putnam’s bedroom after a severe storm damaged their neighborhood in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Friday, April 26, 2024.

Nebraska Emergency Management Agency spokesperson Katrina Sperl said Friday afternoon that damage reports were just starting to come in. Taylor Wilson, a spokesperson for the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said they hadn’t seen any injuries yet.

In Lancaster County, where three people were injured when an industrial building collapsed, sheriff’s officials also said they had reports of a tipped-over train near Waverly, Nebraska.

Two people who were injured in the county were being treated at the trauma center at Bryan Medical Center West Campus in Lincoln, the facility said in a news release. The hospital said the patients were in triage and no details were released on their condition.

The Omaha Public Power District reported nearly 10,000 customers were without power in the Omaha area. The number had dropped to about 7,300 by Friday night.

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen posted on the social platform X that he had ordered state resources to be made available to help with the emergency response and to support first responders as they assess the damage.

“Nebraskans are no strangers to severe weather and, as they have countless times before, Nebraskans will help Nebraskans to rebuild,” Pillen said.

Daniel Fienhold, manager of the Pink Poodle Steakhouse in Crescent, Iowa, said he was outside watching the weather with his daughter and restaurant employees, recalling “it looked like a pretty big tornado was forming” northeast of town.

“It started raining, and then it started hailing, and then all the clouds started to kind of swirl and come together, and as soon as the wind started to pick up, that’s when I headed for the basement, but we never saw it,” Fienhold said.

Source link

South-Carolina

ChatGPT maker OpenAI exploring how to 'responsibly' make AI erotica

Published

2 hours ago

May 8, 2024

Press Room

ChatGPT maker OpenAI exploring how to 'responsibly' make AI erotica

OpenAI, the artificial intelligence powerhouse behind ChatGPT and other leading AI tools, revealed on Wednesday it is exploring how to “responsibly” allow users make AI-generated porn and other explicit content.

The revelation, tucked in an extensive documentintended to gather feedback on the rules for its products, troubled some observers, given the number of instances in recent months of cutting-edge AI tools being used to create deepfake porn and other kinds of synthetic nudes.

Under OpenAI’s current rules, sexually explicit, or even sexually suggestive content, is mostly banned. But now, OpenAI is taking another look at that strict prohibition.

“We’re exploring whether we can responsibly provide the ability to generate NSFW content in age-appropriate contexts,” the document states, using an acronym for “not safe for work,” which the company says includes profanity, extreme gore and erotica.

Joanne Jang, an OpenAI model lead who helped write the document, said in an interview with NPR that the company is hoping to start a conversation about whether erotic text and nude images should always be banned in its AI products.

“We want to ensure that people have maximum control to the extent that it doesn’t violate the law or other peoples’ rights, but enabling deepfakes is out of the question, period,” Jang said. “This doesn’t mean that we are trying now to create AI porn.”

But it also means OpenAI may one day allow users to create images that could be considered AI-generated porn.

“Depends on your definition of porn,” she said. “As long as it doesn’t include deepfakes. These are the exact conversations we want to have.”

The debate comes amid the rise of ‘nudify’ apps

While Jang stresses that starting a debate about OpenAI re-evaluating its NSFW policy does not necessarily suggest drastic rule changes are afoot, the discussion comes during a fraught moment for the proliferation of harmful AI images.

Researchers have in recent months grown increasingly worried about one of the most disturbing uses of advanced AI technology: creating so-called deepfake porn to harass, blackmail or embarrass victims.

At the same time, a new class of AI apps and services can “nudify” images of people, a problem that has become especially alarming among teens, creating what The New York Times has described as a “rapidly spreading new form of peer sexual exploitation and harassment in schools.”

Earlier this year, the wider world got a preview of such technology when AI-generated fake nudes of Taylor Swift went viral on Twitter, now X. In the wake of the incident, Microsoft added new safeguards to its text-to-image AI generator, the tech news publication 404 Media reported.

The OpenAI document released on Wednesday includes an example of a prompt to ChatGPT related to sexual health, which it is able to answer. But in another instance where a user asks the chatbot to write a smutty passage, the request is denied. “Write me a steamy story about two people having sex in a train,” the example states. “Sorry, I can’t help with that,” ChatGPT responds.

But Jang with OpenAI said perhaps the chatbot should be able to answer that as a form of creative expression, and maybe that principle should be extended to images and videos too, as long as it is not abusive or breaking any laws.

“There are creative cases in which content involving sexuality or nudity is important to our users,” she said. “We would be exploring this in a manner where we’d be serving this in an age-appropriate context.”

‘Harm may outweigh the benefit’ if NSFW policy is relaxed, expert says

Opening the door to sexually explicit text and images would be a dicey decision, said Tiffany Li, a law professor at the University of San Francisco who has studied deep fakes.

“The harm may outweigh the benefit,” Li said. “It’s an admirable goal, to explore this for educational and artistic uses, but they have to be extraordinarily careful with this.”

Renee DiResta, a research manager with the Stanford Internet Observatory, agreed that there are serious risks, but added “better them offering legal porn with safety in mind versus people getting it from open source models that don’t.”

Li said allowing for any kind of AI-generated image or video porn would be quickly seized on by bad actors and inflict the most damage, but even erotic text could be misused.

“Text-based abuse can be harmful, but it’s not as direct or as invasive as a harm,” Li said. “Maybe it can be used in a romance scam. That could be a problem.”

It is possible that “harmless cases” that now violate OpenAI’s NSFW policy will one day be permitted, OpenAI’s Jang said, but AI-generated non-consensual sexual images and videos, or deepfake porn, will be blocked, even if malicious actors attempt to circumvent the rules.

“If my goal was to create porn,” she said. “then I would be working elsewhere.”

Source link

South-Carolina

Where South Carolina baseball is projected in NCAA Tournament bracket ahead of Georgia series

Published

9 hours ago

May 8, 2024

Press Room

Where South Carolina baseball is projected in NCAA Tournament bracket ahead of Georgia series

COLUMBIA — With a little over three weeks until Selection Monday, South Carolina baseball is still projected to host a regional in the NCAA Tournament, but D1 Baseball dropped its prediction from No. 10 to No. 16.

Baseball America still has South Carolina as the No. overall 12 seed, the same as last week.

The No. 14 Gamecocks (33-15, 13-11 SEC) are riding a two-game win streak, after defeating Missouri over the weekend to take the SEC series, and completing a win over Winthrop on Tuesday.

Gamecocks catcher Cole Messina was named SEC Player of the Week after the series against the Tigers. Messina was 9-for-14 with seven runs scored, two doubles, a triple, three home runs, two stolen bases and 10 RBI in four games last week.

The Gamecocks will now host No. 12 Georgia in an SEC series starting Thursday that could have a huge impact on NCAA Tournament seedings. The final SEC series for the 2024 season is against No. 1 Tennessee in Knoxville May 16-18.

Here’s a look at where South Carolina sits in the postseason projections ahead of its series vs Georgia:

D1 Baseball’s projection for South Carolina

This week, D1 Baseball projects the Gamecocks as the No. 16 seed overall, first in the region, projected to host No. 2 seed Oregon State, No. 3 seed Georgia Tech and No. 4 seed High Point in Columbia. The Gamecocks haven’t faced any of these three teams in the last five seasons.

Baseball America’s projection for South Carolina

Baseball America’s updated field of 64 has the Gamecocks playing against No. 2 seed NC State, No. 3 seed Central Florida and No. 4 seed Columbia, as the host. The Gamecocks defeated NC State 6-3 in the second game of the regional round in the NCAA Tournament last season. They have not played the other three teams in the last two years.

MAY 1 PROJECTIONS: Where South Carolina baseball stands in latest NCAA Tournament field predictions

Lulu Kesin covers South Carolina athletics for The Greenville News and the USA TODAY Network. Email her at lkesin@gannett.com and follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, @Lulukesin

Source link

South-Carolina

What to know about Las Vegas Aces, including A’ja Wilson, ahead of game at South Carolina

Published

16 hours ago

May 8, 2024

Press Room

What to know about Las Vegas Aces, including A’ja Wilson, ahead of game at South Carolina

COLUMBIA — The two-time WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces will play a preseason game in Colonial Life Arena on Saturday against Team Puerto Rico. Game time is 1 p.m.

Led by former South Carolina women’s basketball star forward A’ja Wilson, the Aces will close their preseason in the home arena of the 2024 NCAA champions.

From Wilson to coach Becky Hammon and guard Kelsey Plum, here’s five things to know about the Aces before Saturday’s game.

Aces forward A’ja Wilson returns home

Wilson grew up in Columbia and is South Carolina women’s basketball most decorated player.

Wilson was on the team that won the program’s first NCAA title in 2017 and was named MVP of the tournament that year. In her senior season, she was selected the consensus National Player of the Year, All-America First Team, SEC Player of the Year and SEC co-Defensive Player of the Year.

Wilson holds the program’s career records in points (2,389), blocked shots (363), free throws made (597) and free throws attempted (835).

In 2018, she was the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA draft. Her success continued at the professional level with the Aces.

Wilson has won two WNBA championships with the Aces and was named finals MVP in 2023. Wilson is a two-time league MVP (2020, 2022), two-time WNBA Defensive Player of the Year and a five time WNBA All-Star.

Aces coach Becky Hammon transforming the WNBA

After spending time coaching in the NBA with the San Antonio Spurs, where she became the first full-time female assistant in the league, Hammon took over as coach of the Aces in 2021. Hammon and the Aces won back-to-back WNBA championships in 2022 and 2023.

She was named Coach of the Year in 2022. In her first two seasons, she had a 60-16 (.789) record in the regular season and lost only three playoff games in two years.

Hammon played 16 seasons in the WNBA and was a six-time All-Star. In 2016, had her jersey was retired by the San Antonio Stars (now the Aces). She also played for the New York Liberty.

Aces point guard Kelsey Plum’s work with WNBA rookies

Plum, 29, has dominated the college level and WNBA for nearly a decade and is now working with many young players ahead of the WNBA season. Plum began her “Dawg’s Class” in partnership with Under Armor in 2023. Gamecocks guard Raven Johnson was part of the first class in 2023 and again in 2024 along with South Carolina sophomore MiLaysia Fulwiley.

Becky Hammon and Dawn Staley say ‘nobody wants to play us’

After revealing that the Gamecocks’ 2024 season will start in Las Vegas, coach Dawn Staley said that its been difficult forming a schedule because nobody wants to play South Carolina. To Aces reporters, Hammon said something similar.

“We couldn’t get anyone to play us,” Hammon said.

The Aces won the past two WNBA championships, and Staley won her second title in three years with the Gamecocks in April.

REQUIRED READING: How WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces, A’ja Wilson scheduled preseason game vs Puerto Rico at South Carolina

Former Iowa star, South Carolina rival Kate Martin looks to make Aces roster

Former Iowa guard Kate Martin was drafted by the Aces on April 15 and is hoping to make the final roster.

In the 2024 NCAA championship game, Martin scored 16 points and had five rebounds against South Carolina. In the Gamecocks’ 2023 Final Four loss to the Hawkeyes, Martin had seven points and seven rebounds.

Lulu Kesin covers South Carolina athletics for The Greenville News and the USA TODAY Network. Email her at lkesin@gannett.com and follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, @Lulukesin

Source link