Secularism Is Not Atheism

A Florida man was arrested Wednesday and charged with a plot to “reboot” the U. S. government by planting a bomb at the New York Stock Exchange this week and detonating it with a remote-controlled device, according to the FBI. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Harun Abdul-Malik Yener, 30, of Coral Springs, Florida, was charged with attempt to use an explosive device to damage or destroy a building used in interstate commerce. The FBI began investigating Yener in February based on a tip that he was storing “bombmaking schematics” in a storage unit.

VIENTIANE, Laos — An Australian teenager has died after drinking tainted alcohol in Vang Vieng, Laos, in what Australia’s prime minister on Thursday called every parent’s nightmare, and the U. S. State Department confirmed an American also died in the same party town, bringing the death toll to four. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Parliament that 19-year-old Bianca Jones had died after being evacuated from Laos for treatment in a Thai hospital.

MELBOURNE — Australia’s communications minister introduced a world-first law into Parliament on Thursday that would ban children under 16 from social media, saying online safety was one of parents’ toughest challenges. Michelle Rowland said TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram were among the platforms that would face fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for systemic failures to prevent young children from holding accounts. “This bill seeks to set a new normative value in society that accessing social media is not the defining feature of growing up in Australia,” Rowland told Parliament. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “There is wide acknowledgement that something must be done in the immediate term to help prevent young teens and children from being exposed to streams of content unfiltered and infinite,” she added. X owner Elon Musk warned that Australia intended to go further, posting on his platform: “Seems like a backdoor way to control access to the Internet by all Australians.” The bill has wide political support.

“AI is a technology like no other in human history,” U. S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Wednesday in San Francisco. “Advancing AI is the right thing to do, but advancing as quickly as possible, just because we can, without thinking of the consequences, isn’t the smart thing to do.” Raimondo’s remarks came during the inaugural convening of the International Network of AI Safety Institutes, a network of artificial intelligence safety institutes (AISIs) from 9 nations as well as the European Commission brought together by the U.

U. S. regulators want a federal judge to break up Google to prevent the company from continuing to squash competition through its dominant search engine after a court found it had maintained an abusive monopoly over the past decade. The proposed breakup floated in a 23-page document filed late Wednesday by the U.

Dhaka looks reborn after a fresh lick of paint. Though this is not your typical municipal spruce-up. The sprawling Bangladeshi capital has been festooned with garish political murals celebrating August’s student-led ouster of reviled Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed. Mile upon mile of concrete balustrades are daubed with caricatures of the deposed autocrat with fangs and devil horns, slogans extolling “Gen-Z, the real heroes,” and vows to “flush sh-ts from our society.” It’s not language that sits easily with 84-year-old Muhammad Yunus, though the Nobel laureate says he can forgive the students’ salty exuberance.