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Biden Slams Supreme Court Decision On Race-based College Admissions

Published

11 months ago

June 29, 2023

Editor

US President Joe Biden on Thursday expressed his disappointment with the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action in college admissions, insisting the country “cannot let this decision be the last word.”

“While the court can render a decision, it cannot change what America stands for,” he said from the White House.

The court’s ruling in a pair of cases involving the admissions practices of Harvard College and the University of North Carolina fell along ideological lines, with the conservative majority finding that the use of race as a factor in accepting students violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

CBS News reported that Biden said he “strongly, strongly” disagrees with the court’s decision.

“For 45 years, the United States Supreme Court has recognized colleges’ freedom to decide how to build diverse student bodies and to meet their responsibility of opening doors of opportunity for every single American,” the president said.

“In case after case … the court has affirmed and reaffirmed this view — that colleges could use race, not as a determining factor for admission, but as one of the factors among many in deciding who to admit from an already qualified pool of applicants. Today, the court once again walked away from decades of precedent, as the dissent has made clear.”

Biden has long expressed support for affirmative action, and his administration urged the Supreme Court to decline to hear Harvard’s case. He urged schools to continue prioritising diversity and laid out “guidance” for how the nation’s colleges and universities should navigate the new legal landscape.

“They should not abandon their commitment to ensure student bodies of diverse backgrounds and experience that reflect all of America,” Biden said. “What I propose for consideration is a new standard, where colleges take into account the adversity a student has overcome when selecting among qualified applicants. Let’s be clear, under this new standard, just as was true under the earlier standard, students first have to be qualified applicants.”

This new “adversity” standard, Biden noted, would comply with Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion.

“[The students] need the GPA and test scores to meet the school’s standards,” the president said. “Once that test is met, then adversity should be considered, including students’ lack of financial means, because we know too few students of low-income families, whether in big cities or rural communities, are getting an opportunity to go to college.”

Biden said he is also directing the Department of Education to review what practices help build more inclusive student bodies, and which practices work against that goal.

“Practices like legacy admissions and other systems expand privilege instead of opportunity,” he said.

Biden said he knows Thursday’s court decision “is a severe disappointment to so many people, including me.”

“But we cannot let the decision be a permanent setback for the country,” he concluded.

As he was leaving, a reporter asked the president whether he thinks the court is a “rogue court.”

“This is not a normal court,” he replied.

Headline

Google To Offer AI-generated Answers In Search Results

Published

9 hours ago

May 14, 2024

Editor

Google has announced it would introduce AI-generated answers to online queries made by users in the United States, in one of the biggest updates to its search engine in 25 years.

“I’m excited to announce that we will begin launching this fully revamped experience, ‘AI overviews,’ to everyone in the US this week,” Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said at an event in California on Tuesday, May 14.

Google’s search results will feature an AI summary at the top of the page before the more typical unfurling of links.

The AI answers generated by Google’s Gemini technology will offer succinct summaries of what it found on the internet with links to the online sources that supplied the information.

“You can ask whatever’s on your mind or whatever you need to get done – from researching to planning to brainstorming – and Google will take care of the legwork,” said Google Search team boss Liz Reid.

The change comes as Google feels growing pressure from AI-powered search engines like Perplexity, and from the rumors that OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is building its own AI search tool.

Searches through AI chats have also appeared on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, with users able to get information from the web without Google.

The change will soon spread to other countries, Pichai added, making it accessible to more than a billion people.

Headline

College Volleyball Player Killed In US Nightclub Shooting

Published

9 hours ago

May 14, 2024

Editor

Albany State University volleyball player Mariam Creighton has been tragically killed in a nightclub shooting in Atlanta.

Atlanta Police Department said on Tuesday, May 14, that the incident happened around 2:28 AM on Sunday, May 14, when officers responded to shots fired at the Elleven45 establishment.

Six people were shot, two of whom were pronounced dead at the scene, Creighton and 20-year-old Nakyris Ridley.

The police department said in a statement;

“Preliminary investigation indicates the shooting occurred during a physical dispute at the location that escalated to gunfire.”

Creighton was a member of the ASU Golden Rams volleyball team, and was one semester from graduating from the HBCU with a biology degree.

Her family said she was at the club on Sunday celebrating her niece’s birthday. “It’s just senseless,” Creighton’s sister, Tiffany, said. “My sister was just out having a good time, and now our lives are just altered forever.”

Headline

Nigerian Burnt To Death In Bangkok Car Crash

Published

9 hours ago

May 14, 2024

Editor

A 35-year-old Nigerian man identified as Daniel was burnt to death in a car accident in Bangkok, Thailand.

Bangkok’s Prawet Police Station, confirmed the identity of the Nigerian national in a statement on Tuesday, May 14, 2024,

Daniel, whose Thai wife came to confirm his identity with the police, died on Saturday, May 11, when his car crashed into a road median and caught fire.

This serious road accident occurred at 5:30 a.m. on a three-lane road near Soi Phatthanakan 53/1, Suan Luang Subdistrict and District, Bangkok.

When officials received the report and arrived at the scene, they found a gray Toyota Vios with Samut Prakan province license plates overturned and engulfed in flames, blocking the middle of the road.

The officers spent about 10 minutes spraying water to extinguish the fire, but the car was completely damaged by the flames.

At that time, rescuers had to use cutting and prying equipment to remove the driver’s body from the wreckage and send it to the Police Hospital for an autopsy. They found a document with a front-facing photo of a foreign man.

Eyewitnesses stated that they saw the car driving at high speed in the far right lane before losing control and crashing into the road median.

The car spun and hit a palm tree with such force that it flipped over and ended up on its roof in the middle of the road.

At that moment, good Samaritans tried to pry open the door to help the unconscious driver, but before they could pull him out, sparks ignited, and the car quickly caught fire.