Portage County Legal News

Portage County Legal News.

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Man charged with setting Spokane's largest wildfire went to prison for killing his father

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SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — A man who went to prison for killing his father in 2010 has been charged with intentionally setting the largest of the wildfires that have destroyed hundreds of buildings in and around Washington state’s second-largest city and forced tens of thousands of people from their homes.
Aaron F. Farina ... (full story)

At colleges, the AI boom means everyone wants to dabble in computer science

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With no background in coding, Faith Maeba, a psychology major, was reluctant when her mother first suggested she enroll in classes on artificial intelligence.
But the senior at Virginia Commonwealth University began to see it differently as she looked into graduate psychology programs that explore human behavior in the workplace ... (full story)

New York school pauses plan to deploy humanlike AI robot teacher after backlash

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NEW YORK (AP) — A school district in a rural corner of upstate New York is hitting pause on plans to deploy an AI-powered, humanoid robot in the classroom after state education officials, teachers and local residents raised concerns, including the maker's ties to a company that produces hyper realistic sex bots.
The Salama ... (full story)

Busiest US death chamber: Florida executes 2 men in a day, including an octogenarian

STARKE, Fla. (AP) — Florida on July 28 became the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, the last an 80-year-old man who was the second-oldest inmate known to receive a lethal injection in modern U.S. history.
Hours earlier, the state executed a former police officer convicted of killin ... (full story)

Legal Legacy: School's right to limit free expression upheld

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Wearing a Marilyn Manson band T-shirt to class in August 1997, Van Wert High School senior Nicholas Boroff could reasonably have expected it to cause a stir. What he never could have predicted was that it would lead to a landmark federal ruling concerning schools' rights to limit the free expression of students.
By many standard ... (full story)