Category: News
Chicago Bulls first-round draft pick Noa Essengue out for the season with a shoulder injury
The Chicago Bulls must wait another year to begin the development of their latest draft pick.
Rookie Noa Essengue will be out for the rest of the season as the team prepares its No. 12 draft pick for left shoulder surgery, which will take place in the coming weeks. Coach Billy Donovan announced the news ahead of Wednesday’s game against the Brooklyn Nets.
The decision was ultimately made by Essengue, who faced a difficult deliberation for any 18-year-old — continue facing delays throughout his rookie season or accept the realities of surgery and a season-long recovery. Essengue had been working through shoulder discomfort for the first 20 games of the regular season.
Essengue never suffered a full dislocation, but Donovan said the injury created looseness and instability in the rookie’s shoulder. Although the forward could have continued to play through the injury, every reaggravation would have required a seven- to 10-day shutdown period, creating a staccato rhythm in his rookie season. The team’s medical staff ultimately recommended shoulder surgery to guarantee a full return to play after a six- to seven-month recovery window.
The Bulls viewed Essengue as a long-term investment when they drafted him this summer. At 18, expectations for his debut year were low. The forward played only six minutes for the Bulls before the season-ending injury. He had yet to score his first NBA points. That fit with the team’s overall plan to play Essengue sparingly with the senior team, giving him the bulk of his minutes at the G League level.
“The setback to me in it all is the fact that you’d like for a guy like that — whether it was limited minutes for us or good minutes with the G League — to play,” Donovan said. “I think a young player, when you’re taking away the playing, that’s never great. We’ve just got to figure out what we can do to help him with his body, footwork, things that we had talked about since he’s been here.”
Chicago Bulls head coach Billy Donovan speaks to forward Noa Essengue during media day at the United Center on Monday, Sept. 29, 2025. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
Essengue had another crucial task this season: bulk up. He weighs only 200 pounds despite standing at 6-foot-8 and visibly still needs to grow into his frame. Donovan previously hoped this season would serve as a foundation for Essengue to build strength through diet and weightlifting. But that won’t be possible — at least for the next two months.
Donovan said the team anticipates a six-week full shutdown for Essengue after his surgery, which still has not been scheduled. After that period, he will be able to slowly return to activity, but his ability to lift weights with his upper body will be severely limited for several months.
This means the Bulls will need to be creative with how they approach the rest of Essengue’s season. It will be highly structured for Essengue, particularly during his initial recovery period when he can’t travel with the team. Donovan also wants teammate Ayo Dosunmu — who underwent surgery last season to repair a fracture in his left shoulder — to advise the rookie throughout this process.
“The days can become very, very long and monotonous,” Donovan said. “He just can’t waste days, so to speak. We’ve got to do a job with the staff — watching film with him, showing him different things, weight room, the medical guys will do their rehab and their strengthening.”
This is only the latest blow for the Bulls, who entered Wednesday’s game short-handed again with six total players on the injury report: Zach Collins (left wrist surgery), Kevin Huerter (groin), Isaac Okoro (back), Jalen Smith (left hamstring) and Coby White (left calf) in addition to Essengue.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/03/chicago-bulls-noa-essengue-shoulder-surgery/
US Data Center Power Demand Could Reach 106 GW By 2035
US Data Center Power Demand Could Reach 106 GW By 2035
By Brian Martucci of UtilityDive
Summary:
U.S. data center power demand could reach 106 GW in 2035, BloombergNEF said Monday in one of the more aggressive load growth estimates to date. The U.S. had about 25 GW of operating data centers in 2024, Bloom Energy said earlier this year.
BloombergNEF’s latest forecast is 36% higher than its previous prediction, released in April. The jump is due in part to the higher average size of the 150 significant U.S. data center projects announced in the past year, over a quarter of which are larger than 500 MW, BNEF said.
The Energy Information Administration, which tracks demand for the federal government, generally only publishes detailed projections out two or three years, and few other analyses have attempted firm forecasts as far out as 2035.
BNEF’s report comes as some energy industry analysts and executives warn that an artificial intelligence bubble or speculative data center proposals could be fueling excessive load growth projections.
A report from Grid Strategies released last month said utility forecasts of 90 GW additional data center load by 2030 were likely overstated; market analysis indicates load growth in that time frame is likely closer to 65 GW, it said.
A July report from the Department of Energy estimated an additional 100 GW of new peak capacity is needed by 2030, of which 50 GW is attributable to data centers. Those facilities could account for as much as 12% of peak demand by 2028, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
BNEF’s data center project tracker shows the industry diversifying beyond traditional data center hubs like Northern Virginia, metro Atlanta and central Ohio into exurban and rural regions served by existing fiber-optic trunk lines for data traffic.
A map of under-construction, committed and early-stage projects shows gigawatts of planned data center capacity spreading south through Virginia and the Carolinas, up through eastern Pennsylvania and outward from Chicago along the Lake Michigan shore. More data centers are also planned for Texas and the Gulf Coast states.
Much of the capacity is poised to materialize on grids overseen by the PJM Interconnection, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. BNEF predicts PJM alone could add 31 GW of data center load over the next five years, about 3 GW more than expected capacity additions from new generation.
With the expected surge, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. warned late last year of “elevated risk” of summer electricity shortfalls this year, in 2026 and onward in all three regions.
Some experts disputed NERC’s methodology, however. MISO’s independent market monitor said in June that the group’s analysis was flawed and that MISO was in a better position than grid regions not expected to see exponential data center growth, like ISO New England and the New York Independent System Operator.
Other technology and energy system analysts expect a significant amount of proposed data center capacity to dissipate in the coming years due to chip shortages, duplicative permit requests and other factors.
In July, London Economics International said in a report prepared for the Southern Environmental Law Center that meeting projections for U.S. data center load in 2030 would require 90% of global chip supply — a scenario it called “unrealistic.”
Patricia Taylor, director of policy and research at the American Public Power Association, told Utility Dive earlier this year that it’s common for data center developers to “shop around” the same project across neighboring jurisdictions.
Still, U.S. grid operators face an “inflection moment” as they balance the desire to accommodate large-scale data centers with the obligation to ensure reliable service for all customers, BNEF said.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/03/2025 – 19:15
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-data-center-power-demand-could-reach-106-gw-2035
Llega a Venezuela avión con deportados de EEUU tras comentarios de Trump sobre cierre espacio aéreo
CARACAS (AP) — Un vuelo con 266 migrantes venezolanos deportados desde Estados Unidos arribó el miércoles a Caracas en un avión de una aerolínea estadounidense luego de los comentarios del presidente Donald Trump sobre que el espacio aéreo de Venezuela debe considerarse cerrado.
“El gobierno de los Estados Unidos, como lo informó nuestra autoridad aeronáutica”, solicitó la reanudación de los vuelos de repatriación al presidente Nicolás Maduro” y este “de manera inmediata” lo aprobó después que Washington unilateralmente “habían suspendido de manera verbal” esos traslados aéreos, declaró el canciller Yván Gil a periodistas en el aeropuerto que sirve la ciudad de Caracas momentos antes de la llegada de la aeronave.
Gil destacó que hace un par de días, sin embargo, el gobierno estadounidense nuevamente solicitó permisos para los vuelos con deportados, directamente desde territorio estadounidense, y Maduro “sin dilaciones aprobó para que retornaran felices a la patria”.
Gil indicó que desde Estados Unidos han retornado 14.407 venezolanos deportados en 76 vuelos.
El avión de la empresa Eastern Airlines llegó al aeropuerto internacional Simón Bolívar, a unos 20 kilómetros al norte de Caracas, procedente de Estados Unidos.
El arribo se produjo después de que el sábado pasado el mandatario estadounidense dijo que el espacio aéreo “sobre y alrededor” de Venezuela debería considerarse “cerrado en su totalidad” y en medio de la afectación de los vuelos comerciales generada por la decisión de más de una decena de empresas aéreas locales e internacionales de suspender sus operaciones en el país sudamericano tras la advertencia de la Administración Federal de Aviación de Estados Unidos sobre los presuntos riesgos de volar en el espacio aéreo venezolano.
Los vuelos de retorno de migrantes deportados desde Estados Unidos se han regularizado desde fines de marzo por ambos países como parte de los traslados acordados a fines de marzo por los gobiernos de Caracas y Washington. En ocasiones hay incluso varios por día y semanalmente dos llegan directamente a Caracas operados por un contratista del gobierno de Estados Unidos.
Todo esto tiene lugar en momentos de creciente tensión entre ambas naciones por el despliegue desde septiembre de fuerzas militares estadounidenses que ejecutan una serie de ataques contra botes sospechosos de contrabandear drogas en aguas internacionales del Caribe y del océano Pacífico, incluidas varias embarcaciones que, afirman, partieron de Venezuela. Al menos 83 personas han fallecido.
El gobierno de Trump sostiene que el despliegue naval busca combatir las amenazas de los cárteles de drogas latinoamericanos. Maduro, en tanto, describe el despliegue como un ataque a la soberanía de la nación y parte de un esfuerzo por derrocarlo.
La Asociación de Líneas Aéreas en Venezuela (ALAV) confirmó que se han suspendido los vuelos de TAP Air Portugal, LAN (Latam), Avianca, Iberia, Air Europa, Plus Ultra, Gol, Caribbean y Turkish Airlines.
Las aerolíneas venezolanas Estelar y Laser, citando motivos operacionales de sus proveedores aéreos españoles Plus Ultra e Iberojet, respectivamente, también suspendieron sus vuelos entre Caracas y Madrid.
El desprecio del presidente Trump impacta a la mayor comunidad somalí de EEUU
Por TIM SULLIVAN
MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota, EE.UU. (AP) — Incluso para un presidente que ha dejado claro durante mucho tiempo que no es fanático de Somalia, los más recientes comentarios despectivos provenientes de la Casa Blanca fueron un shock para la comunidad somalí más grande de Estados Unidos.
“No contribuyen en nada. No los quiero en nuestro país”, afirmó el presidente estadounidense Donald Trump a periodistas durante una reunión del gabinete el martes. “Podemos ir por un camino o por otro, y vamos a ir por el camino equivocado si seguimos aceptando basura en nuestro país”.
“Los somalíes deberían estar fuera de aquí. Han destruido nuestro país”, comentó Trump el miércoles.
Hamse Warfe, un ciudadano estadounidense del área metropolitana de Minneapolis que nació en Somalia y ha fundado una serie de negocios exitosos, ve las cosas de manera diferente.
“No soy basura”, expresó Warfe, quien ahora dirige una organización educativa sin fines de lucro a nivel nacional: World Savvy.
“Las palabras importan mucho, especialmente cuando es el presidente de Estados Unidos quien está hablando”, manifestó, eligiendo cuidadosamente sus propias palabras.
El área metropolitana de Minneapolis-St. Paul es hogar de aproximadamente 84.000 personas de ascendencia somalí, quienes representan casi un tercio de los somalíes que viven en Estados Unidos.
Los refugiados de la nación del este de África han estado llegando a las frías llanuras de Minnesota desde la década de 1990, atraídos por los generosos servicios sociales del estado y una comunidad de la diáspora somalí en constante crecimiento.
Se han vuelto cada vez más prominentes en el estado, sirviendo en los consejos municipales de Minneapolis y St. Paul y en la legislatura estatal. La representante federal demócrata Ilhan Omar –un objetivo frecuente de Trump, quien el martes la tachó específicamente de “basura”– representa parte del estado en la Cámara de Representantes de Estados Unidos.
Los comentarios de Trump se produjeron días después de que su administración anunciara que suspendería todas las decisiones de asilo luego de que dos soldados de la Guardia Nacional fueran baleados en Washington. El sospechoso del ataque es originario de Afganistán, pero Trump ha utilizado el momento para plantear preguntas sobre inmigrantes de otras naciones, incluida Somalia.
Trump habló poco después de que se informara que las autoridades federales están preparando una operación de inmigración en Minnesota que se centraría principalmente en inmigrantes somalíes que viven ilegalmente en Estados Unidos, según una persona familiarizada con la planificación.
La mayoría de los somalíes del estado son ciudadanos estadounidenses, muchos de ellos de nacimiento.
Trump prometió la semana pasada en una publicación en redes sociales enviar a los somalíes “de regreso a de donde vinieron”, y alegó que Minnesota es “un centro de lavado de dinero”.
Más tarde el martes, el gobierno estadounidense dijo que pausaría todas las solicitudes de inmigración, como las solicitudes de residencia permanente para personas de 19 países, a las cuales se les vetó la entrada a Estados Unidos como parte de los cambios de inmigración tras el tiroteo en DC.
Los líderes de la comunidad somalí local, así como aliados como el gobernador Tim Walz y el alcalde de Minneapolis Jacob Frey, también han rechazado a quienes podrían culpar a la comunidad somalí en general por casos recientes de fraude masivo en programas públicos.
Prometieron proteger a la comunidad somalí de la ciudad.
“Minneapolis es, y seguirá siendo, una ciudad que defiende a nuestros residentes”, afirmó Frey en un comunicado el miércoles.
___
El periodista de The Associated Press Steve Karnowski contribuyó a este despacho. ___
Esta historia fue traducida del inglés por un editor de AP con la ayuda de una herramienta de inteligencia artificial generativa.
“What The F**k Just Happened?” Homeless Man Violently Attacks NYU Student Walking To Class
“What The F**k Just Happened?” Homeless Man Violently Attacks NYU Student Walking To Class
A 20-year-old New York University student was violently assaulted from behind while walking to class on Lower Manhattan’s Broadway on Monday morning.
The alleged victim, Amelia Lewis, posted on TikTok about the broad daylight assault, telling her followers that she was listening to music through headphones shortly before 9:30 a.m. when a man struck her forcefully, grabbed her by the hair, and threw her to the sidewalk before fleeing.
“As I’m walking, like with my headphones on listening to music, I feel something slap me so hard, like literally on my ass,” a visibly distressed Lewis explained. “And I was like, ‘Oh my God, oh that hurts so bad!’ I thought it was like one of my friends. I was gonna turn around and be like, ‘Oh, that hurt so bad, why did you do that?’
NYU student assault pic.twitter.com/LxFhzmiafM
— Amelia Lewis (@AmeliaLewi33832) December 1, 2025
“But when I turned around, I saw this old white guy. And like right when I turned around, he grabs my fucking hair like this and, like, yanks me and, like, threw me to the ground. My headphones went fucking flying,” she added while breaking into tears. “And I was like on the ground and I saw him just bolt away down Waverly. And I was like, ‘Holy shit? What the fuck just happened?’”
🚨 NYU student Amelia Lewis shares her harrowing experience after being attacked by a stranger on Broadway in Lower Manhattan pic.twitter.com/z4gis4Day2
— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) December 3, 2025
On Tuesday, NYPD officers arrested 45-year-old James Rizzo, who is homeless, and charged him with assault in the second degree, forcible touching, and persistent sexual abuse stemming from Monday’s alleged attack on Lewis, according to the New York Post. Rizzo has an extensive criminal history that includes sixteen prior arrests, including multiple felony convictions for sexual abuse and forcible touching, as well as a 1997 arrest for murder. Rizzo was released from New York State prison only in September after serving a two-year sentence for his most recent felony conviction of persistent sexual abuse, the Post reports. Rizzo remains in custody pending arraignment.
Lewis branded the violent assault “unacceptable” and suggested that New Yorkers reconsider their support for city leaders with little regard for public safety (too late!).
“I should not be scared to walk to my 9:30 a.m. class,” Lewis said. “This just shows that you really need to reflect on who you’re voting for and supporting right now, because New York needs help and we’re just not getting the help we need.”
An NYU spokesman said the university is “deeply disturbed” by the attack and is providing support to the student while assisting the NYPD’s investigation.
“The University is deeply disturbed by the attack on one of its female students that took place yesterday morning on a Broadway sidewalk. We take this incident very seriously; we are offering support to the student, and NYU’s Campus Safety Department is working with the police in investigating the incident,” the statement read. “The incident was reported to our Department of Campus Safety yesterday afternoon. The department’s victim services unit promptly reached out to the student; they have assisted her in connecting with detectives from the local precinct.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/03/2025 – 18:50
‘It’s gonna be their version against ours’: Undercover tape played at bribery trial of ex-Summit police chief
The gravel of a funeral home parking lot could be heard crunching under the feet of two public officials from suburban Summit as they left a wake to privately compare notes on a worrisome federal bribery investigation.
During the March 2022 conversation, John Kosmowski, the Summit police chief, tried to tell his colleague and frequent drinking buddy, then-Public Works Director Bill Mundy, that a cash payment they’d received from a bar owner five years earlier was just a loan — and that neither he nor Mundy pulled any strings to get the owner’s liquor license transferred.
“Kris gave me the money as a loan. I gave you $3,000 because just, in general principle, you need the money,” Kosmowski said to Mundy, who was secretly wearing a wire for the FBI.
“You think anybody’s gonna buy that?” Mundy replied. “I love you like a brother, but this is (expletive) up.”
Kosmowski, though, warned that the feds were closing in and it was important for them to be on the same page.
“There’s a statute of limitations coming up — that means that they’re going to be indicting soon,” Kosmowski said. “Here’s the thing, no matter what we say, remember this: It’s gonna be their version against ours. It always is. It was a loan from me to you. That was that.”
The 15-minute conversation took center stage Wednesday in a federal courtroom in Chicago, where Kosmowski is on trial on charges of bribery and obstruction of justice. It was played during the direct examination of Mundy, who pleaded guilty in 2023 and is the prosecution’s star witness.
While the charges were relatively low-level, the case was an offshoot of a larger corruption probe that netted indictments against then-state Sen. Martin Sandoval and a slew of other suburban elected officials, police chiefs and political operatives allegedly on the take.
Jurors heard a number of names from that investigation Wednesday, including Omar Maani — the red-light camera company executive who also wore a wire for the FBI — who Mundy said paid him bribes to help find properties to buy in Summit.
Mundy also told investigators he took money from now-deceased developer Boris Nitchoff, who was implicated in parallel bribery investigations into former Chicago Ald. Carrie Austin and employees of the Cook County Assessor’s Office.
Mundy and Kosmowski, meanwhile, were charged in an indictment in 2022 with conspiring to accept $10,000 from the owner of the Fire Station Pub in Summit in exchange for helping secure the transfer of a liquor license to a relative.
According to prosecutors, Kosmowski received the bribe payment from the owner, Kris Hodurek, in March 2017 and then gave Mundy his $5,000 cut later that day. In the meantime, Mundy called Summit Mayor Sergio Rodriguez and, with Kosmowski listening in, urged the mayor to approve the transfer, the charges alleged. Rodriguez has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
In opening statements Tuesday, Kosmowski’s attorney, Gabrielle Sansonetti, told jurors that Mundy cannot be trusted.
Sansonetti called him an alcoholic and drug abuser who was offering his own self-interested interpretation of conversations in order to get a deal from prosecutors on a host of schemes he allegedly pulled in his years as a building inspector and public works director.
She also warned that wiretapped recordings are only as reliable as the witness who interprets them.
“Think of an interpreter who is drunk, who forgets the right words, who can’t remember the language, who was caught committing other crimes,” Sansonetti said. “You would not trust the interpretations that you got. And you should not trust Bill Mundy.”
Sansonetti said at the time Kosmowski took the money from Hodurek, his daughter was going off to college and he was worried about making the first tuition payment. So he did what many in the tight-knit Polish immigrant community do — he turned to a friend for financial help, she said.
Hodurek, who also cooperated with the investigation, pleaded guilty in October to collecting $115,000 in fraudulent unemployment benefits and is expected to testify against Kosmowski later in the trial.
“It was a small loan from one member of the immigrant community to another to help his kid be better in this world,” Sansonetti told the jury.
Mundy, 62, whose lengthy career in Summit and knowledge of the village’s inner workings earned him status as “unofficial mayor,” took jurors Wednesday through a series of wiretapped calls and other evidence, including a 2017 meeting at a cul-de-sac street on Chicago’s Southwest Side where the FBI was watching as Kosmowski handed him $5,000 in cash in a cup.
A large chunk of Mundy’s direct testimony centered on the conversation he recorded outside the funeral home in southwest suburban Justice in 2022, more than two years after he first began cooperating with the feds.
“We had attended a wake, and on the way out, John stopped me and asked if we could have a conversation in the parking lot,” Mundy testified.
Mundy said Kosmowski wanted to go over the details of the ongoing federal investigation, which had recently heated up with a flurry of grand jury subpoenas. During the conversation, Kosmowski repeatedly “tried to classify the transaction” with Hodurek as a loan, Mundy testified.
“It was kind of a tough conversation,” he told the jury. “I think he was trying to get me to look at it his way. I just explained that the facts are the facts…and trying to make up some story about a loan was just not gonna fly.”
In the expletive-laden conversation, Kosmowski told Mundy there was no way they could’ve helped Hodurek with any licensing because it was not in their power to do so. Kosmowski also said he suspected Hodurek was wearing a wire for the feds when he came to Kosmowski’s house the previous Thanksgiving and told him “two FBI guys” had been asking him about the money.
“I says, ‘Well, tell them you loaned me money. I paid you back, and that’s it. End of story,’” Kosmowski told Mundy on the recording.
Later, Mundy asked, “What if the (expletive) on the tape doesn’t corroborate what you just said?”
“Well, I’d like to hear the tape, because I know I never talked about money for licensing with Kris,” Kosmowski said. “…I specifically remember, I says, ‘Listen, you got a problem with your licensing, you have to contact the mayor, make an appointment, and you have to ask him what you can do,’ and that was it. I says “Kris, that’s out of my league. I can’t help you there.”
Mundy testified that while it was true he and Kosmowski could not “officially” get a liquor license approved, they could — and did — pull strings with the mayor to get things done.
To bolster that point, prosecutors played a wiretapped call from 2017 where Kosmowski and Mundy talked about the status of several taverns in Summit, including one that they wanted to see remained closed.
“Now do they know in the office not to renew his license?” Mundy said on the call. “You might want to send a memo over there when he comes in to pay for it. He shouldn’t get it.”
Kosmowski replied that he would make sure officials in Summit were aware. “(Expletive) him. He needs to be closed as far as I’m concerned,” he said on the call.
In her direct examination, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tiffany Ardam asked Mundy whether it was true that the money they took from Hodurek was a loan. Mundy said it was not.
So why did they help out Hodurek?
“Uh, we did it for the cash,” Mundy said. That’s what I recall.”
On cross-examination, Mundy acknowledged abusing both alcohol and cocaine while he was under investigation as well as after he was charged, which was a violation of his pretrial release conditions.
Sansonetti also grilled Mundy on the bribes he allegedly admitted taking over his 30 years as a building inspector, including one instance when a developer threw cash into his car for helping him get a construction contract and another where a real estate magnate paid for trips to Florida and Panama.
“Sometimes if I did somebody a favor, they would give me money, but I wouldn’t take money up front to pass an inspection,” Mundy testified. “I guess it’s technically a bribe, but it wasn’t like I was shaking them down for the money
More like a gratuity? Sansonetti asked.
“Nah, not really. It’s all a crime,” he said.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/03/undercover-tape-bribery-trial-summit-police-chief/
Charges dropped against Lakeview comedy club manager accused of assaulting federal agents
Federal prosecutors moved Wednesday to drop charges against a comedy club manager accused of shutting a car door on a federal immigration agent’s leg in the Lakeview neighborhood, the latest in a string of dismissals in high-profile cases that resulted from the Trump administration’s so-called Operation Midway Blitz.
Nathan Griffin, 24, was charged in late October with assaulting, impeding or interfering with a federal officer during one of many skirmishes between federal agents and U.S. citizens that punctuated the Trump administration’s wave of illegal immigration enforcement in and around Chicago.
Most federal agents have moved on from Chicago, while criminal cases against U.S. citizens that arose from their time here have continued to move through the legal system. But many of those charges have disintegrated only weeks after being filed.
Griffin’s family declined to comment on the dismissal and his attorney didn’t immediately respond
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agent Paul Delgado, whom Griffin had been accused of injuring, testified in a preliminary examination last month that when he and a group of other agents had just conducted an arrest at Belmont Avenue and Broadway in the Lakeview neighborhood when they mistakenly thought one of the other agents had dropped his body camera and returned to the scene in two separate cars.
Delgado testified that he saw a crowd of people forming around the other vehicle and tried to get out of the car when Griffin allegedly slammed the door back on his leg. Agents then tackled Griffin and took him into custody, leading to a videotaped car ride in which Griffin, apparently well aware he was being filmed, unleashed a steady stream of invective about his opinion of the blitz and the agents carrying it out. One of the agents, several minutes into the tirade, told Griffin to “relax.”
“Relax?,” Griffin asked in response. “You guys are abducting people off the streets! Relax?”
“No comment,” said one of the agents in the back seat.
“Oh, no comment,” Griffin repeated. “No comment.”
The agent riding in the front passenger seat radioed that the car was on Sheridan Road, mispronouncing Sheridan as “Shirden.” The agent driving the car said they were at Sheridan and Belmont before Griffin interjected again.
“We’re on the corner of (expletive) and (expletive),” he said. “Oh, and also there is a (expletive) sad (expletive) jerk off sitting right beside me, holding my arm. The only human contact he’s ever gonna feel for the rest of his (expletive) life.”
The motion to scrap the case against Griffin without prejudice follows prosecutors’ move to drop charges against Marimar Martinez, the 30-year-old woman who was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent in Brighton Park who claimed Martinez “rammed” a federal vehicle with her own car in an Oct. 4 standoff.
In a nine-page opinion regarding another one of those cases, against a U.S veteran charged with assault, U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel Fuentes wrote he could not “help but note just how unusual and possibly unprecedented it is” for Chicago’s venerable U.S. attorney’s office to bring charges “so hastily” that, once more facts came out, they were unable to obtain an indictment in the grand jury or were forced to dismiss the case as not provable.
Only a handful of people are still facing charges for their actions in opposition to the blitz. Among them is the congressional candidate and digital creator Katherine “Kat” Abughazaleh, who has been accused of conspiracy along with several other local political figures for their actions outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in a west suburb. All of the “Broadview Six” have pleaded not guilty.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/03/charges-dropped-comedy-club-manager/
Judge orders OpenAI to hand over ChatGPT conversations in win for newspapers in copyright case
A Manhattan judge has ordered OpenAI to provide the Chicago Tribune and other news outlets with millions of anonymous chats between ChatGPT and its users in a major ongoing copyright infringement case.
In a nine-page order made public Wednesday, Manhattan Magistrate Judge Ona Wang denied OpenAI’s request to reconsider her November ruling requiring the tech giant to hand over 20 million ChatGPT output logs to the media outlets.
The newspapers want to analyze a sample of ChatGPT’s consumer logs to test its language-learning model to see whether and how it’s propagating journalists’ work.
The ruling comes in a major consolidated class-action lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI initiated in 2023, in which The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The New York Daily News and affiliated outlets with Tribune Publishing and MediaNews Group allege the artificial intelligence company is stealing and distorting their copyrighted works. The Authors Guild and a litany of best-selling writers are also parties in the complex litigation.
“OpenAI’s leadership was hallucinating when they thought they could get away with withholding evidence about how their business model relies on stealing from hardworking journalists, and we look forward to holding them accountable for their ongoing misappropriation of our work. They should pay for the copyright-protected work they use to build and maintain their apps and products, and they know it,” said Frank Pine, Executive Editor of MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing, in a statement.
A spokesperson for OpenAI pointed to a blog post by company executive Dane Stuckey after Wang’s original order on the matter. “We will continue to explore every option available to protect our users’ privacy,” the statement read in part.
But in the decision, Wang reaffirmed that users’ privacy was not in jeopardy, noting that OpenAI had almost completed an internal process to anonymize the chats. Also mitigating privacy risks raised by OpenAI are the “multiple layers of protection in this case precisely because of the highly sensitive and private nature of much of the discovery that is exchanging hands,” the judge wrote.
She found the A.I. conversations were “clearly relevant” to the news outlets’ claims that they contain partial or complete reproductions of their copyrighted works and to OpenAI’s defense that they contain other user activity.
“News Plaintiffs are entitled to discovery on both,” the judge wrote.
“Production of the 20 Million ChatGPT Logs is also proportional to the needs of the case. The total universe of retained consumer output logs is in the tens of billions. The 20 million sample here represents less than 0.05% of the total logs that OpenAI has retained in the ordinary course of business.”
Wang wrote that once the tech behemoth has completed the deidentification process, it will have 7 days to hand over the data. OpenAI has also appealed Wang’s November order to Manhattan Federal Judge Sidney Stein, the district judge overseeing the case.
The sizable 20 million chats represent a fraction of the billions of output logs ChatGPT has retained, Wang noted in her Wednesday order.
Steven Lieberman, an attorney for MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing, in a statement pointed to Wang’s finding that OpenAI had withheld “critically important evidence” when it was first requested and rejected the tech giant’s arguments to the contrary.
“The Court also raised the issue of whether OpenAI’s efforts to delay production of the ChatGPT logs was motivated by an improper purpose, saying of the two possible explanations for OpenAI’s behavior: [n]either bode well for OpenAI.”
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/03/openai-chatgpt-conversations/
Congreso colombiano aprueba convención contra mercenarismo en rechazo a reclutamiento de exmilitares
Associated Press
BOGOTÁ (AP) — El Congreso colombiano aprobó el miércoles un proyecto gubernamental que pretende que el país ratifique una convención internacional contra el mercenarismo, tras lidiar con el reclutamiento de sus exmilitares, apetecidos como mercenarios en otros países por ser curtidos en el prolongado conflicto interno.
El proyecto recibió 94 votos a favor y 17 en contra en la Cámara de Representantes durante el último de cuatro debates necesarios. El presidente Gustavo Petro deberá decidir si lo sanciona como ley.
De convertirse en ley, Colombia ratificará una convención internacional contra el reclutamiento, la utilización, financiación y entrenamiento de mercenarios aprobada en 1989 por la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas, de la que hoy el país no es firmante.
“Con esta aprobación, Colombia reafirma su rechazo categórico al mercenarismo, una práctica que constituye una forma contemporánea de explotación humana”, aseguró la Cancillería en un comunicado.
Tras dejar el servicio activo, los militares colombianos son usualmente contratados para prestar servicios de consultoría, seguridad de personas y custodia de sectores petroleros. Se trata de una mano de obra abundante y calificada.
Sin embargo, en los últimos años se ha reportado la presencia de exmilitares colombianos en conflictos de otros países y en procesos penales, tras ser reclutados como mercenarios.
“Nos comprometemos con la paz, no podemos seguir con las manos untadas de sangre, con los niños en Sudán entrenados por mercenarios colombianos, de los que no pueden regresar a su tierra porque no han sido repatriados en Ucrania; de aquellos que han sido engañados y terminan hasta asesinando presidentes”, dijo tras la aprobación del proyecto Alejandro Toro, representante a la Cámara por el oficialista Pacto Histórico.
En Haití permanecen detenidos un grupo de exmilitares por su presunta participación en el asesinato del presidente haitiano Jovenel Moïse, perpetrado en 2021. Sus familias han dicho que fueron contactados para dar seguridad y luego resultaron implicados en el crimen.
La Cancillería ha reportado que desde el 2022 ha tenido noticia de al menos medio centenar de colombianos que han resultado víctimas del conflicto tras unirse voluntariamente a las fuerzas ucranianas.
Mientras que en agosto, Sudán acusó a Emiratos Árabes Unidos de enviar mercenarios colombianos para luchar junto al grupo paramilitar Fuerzas de Apoyo Rápido (FAR) contra el ejército en la guerra civil del país.
Judge Restricts Immigration Arrests In DC
Judge Restricts Immigration Arrests In DC
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A federal judge on Dec. 2 ordered the Trump administration to stop making warrantless immigration arrests in the District of Columbia without probable cause.
Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said the plaintiffs made a strong case that immigration officers have been arresting immigrants without warrants or conducting assessments to determine if each individual poses a flight risk.
Federal law states that an officer can arrest an immigrant without a warrant “if he has reason to believe that the alien so arrested is in the United States in violation of any such law or regulation and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest.”
“Defendants’ systemic failure to apply the probable cause standard, including the failure to consider escape risk, directly violates the clear statutory requirement,” as well as Department of Homeland Security (DHS) regulations implementing the law, Howell said in an 88-page decision.
Howell ordered the Department of Homeland Security and its divisions, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to stop making warrantless arrests without an individualized determination of whether the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained and that the person being arrested “is in the United States in violation of law or regulation regulating the admission, exclusion, expulsion or removal of aliens.”
The Department of Justice, which represents agencies in legal cases, and the DHS did not return requests for comment on the ruling.
CASA, a Maryland-based organization that sued along with individuals who have been arrested in the nation’s capital in recent months by immigration officers, did not respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit stated that federal agents have been “indiscriminately arresting without warrants and without probable cause District residents whom the agents perceive to be Latino” without warrants and without individualized assessments that those being arrested are illegally in the United States or likely to escape before agents can obtain a warrant.
“In some cases, officials belatedly realize that there is no legal basis to hold in custody the individual whom federal agents arrested without any individualized assessment and release them,” it stated. “Even those released from detention experience significant physical and psychological harm from their arbitrary arrest and detention, and they fear that they will experience those harms again.”
Federal officials said in court filings that, in carrying out President Donald Trump’s order to make the District of Columbia safer, they have been arresting people identified as being illegally in the country, and that Howell should not enter a preliminary injunction.
“Plaintiffs assert that ICE has a pattern and practice of acting otherwise, but that evidence consists of their individual arrest experiences, pseudonymous third-party anecdotes, and third-party statements by immigration attorneys,” officials stated. “At most, those declarations describe varying, unconnected encounters, not an official, routinely applied, district-wide warrantless arrest pattern and practice. Plaintiffs thus have not even shown an unlawful law enforcement policy—let alone that they face a ’real and immediate’ threat of being harmed by it.”
Earlier this year, a federal judge in Colorado and a federal judge in California issued similar rulings. Another judge in California ordered officers not to stop people based on factors such as race. The Supreme Court put that order on hold.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/03/2025 – 18:25
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/judge-restricts-immigration-arrests-dc
