NEW YORK — For her 18th birthday in March, "Jacky Dejo," a snowboarder, bikini model and child influencer turned social media entrepreneur, celebrated on the secluded island of Dominica.

Miranda Cosgrove surprised 'iCarly' fans with a surprise updateMiranda Cosgrave revealed good news for the iCarly fans.In a conversation with Natalie Morales on The Talk, the Nickelodeon star teased a potential new project in the iCarly universe to give fans the closure they yearned for following...

AFTER Pakistan floated the idea of ‘climate diplomacy’ to tackle cross-border pollution in light of smog which has engulfed vast tracts of India and Pakistan, a US official indicated on the sidelines of COP29 that the White House may throw its weight behind any initiative taken in this regard.

Last month, Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz expressed her government’s intention to approach India to jointly counter the air pollution, which mostly comes from vehicular and industrial emissions, and is exacerbated in winter due to stubble burning.

Talking to Dawn on the sidelines of COP29 in Baku, Ali Zaidi — national climate adviser to the Biden administration — said the US was “100 per cent supportive” of partnership-based approaches to tackle problems that cannot be solved in isolation.

“In the US, we have this thing called the ‘good neighbour rule’, which governs smog. It actually was developed when we witnessed exactly this phenomenon in the US. So you know when it comes to cross-border pollution and cross-border issues, we are 100pc suportive of partnership-based approaches to tackle problems that cannot be solved on their own,” he said in response to a question about smog, which has made life unbearable for millions in Pakistan.

The White House official said the US was already active in the Hindu Kush — often referred to as ‘The Third Pole’ for housing the most glaciers in the world outside the polar regions — to better coordinate the mitigation response, because environmental impacts from glaciers do not isolate themselves to one jurisdiction.

“I think the regional solutions are a necessary complement to this sort of multilateral dialogue,” he said, referring to the COP summit.

The adviser said regional cooperation among relevant parties to address climate change would have more impact than putting “another ornament on a 1,000-page document (COP)”.

In response to a question about the failure of the world to help Pakistan after the 2022 floods caused damages to the tune of $30 billion, he said the global community needed to reinvent its approach to rebuilding from disasters, particularly by investing in pre-disaster mitigation.

According to the White House official, the US took a really long time to reengineer its thinking domestically in terms of building resilience into the recovery.

He favoured approaches that ran “consistent with the financial position” of states that needed to do rebuilding, saying there was a need to mobilise more countries to move more capital to help with adaptation and mitigation in these vulnerable countries.

In response to a question about the loan-laden climate finance framework, he said, “If you are targeting projects that have very clear cash flow and a strong counterparty then debt works just fine.”

He agreed some concessionary capital did need to come in depending on the technological aspect, the richness of the resources and the maturity of the market, while referring to India’s solar projects.

Vulnerable areas need significant grant-based aid, but there is still a need to figure out how to monetise risk reduction associated with adaptation finance and that’s why it was difficult to do. These places are going to soak up more grant-based finance, he said.

Speaking about the Trump-led US administration all set to take over from the Biden administration, he appeared optimistic, saying the states in the US will figure out how to provide the policy support even if the federal government stopped being part of it. About the US, he said it should remain part of the dialogue and be the author of the roadmap that will govern the contours of climate finance for decades to come.

Produced as part of the 2024 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organised by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Centre for Peace and Security.

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2024

LONDON: In a dramatic turn of events at the Old Bailey, Urfan Sharif confessed to the murder of his 10-year-old daughter, Sara Sharif, admitting in court that he “takes full responsibility” for her tragic death.

Sharif detailed the brutal treatment he inflicted upon the girl, acknowledging he beat her with a cricket bat and metal pole, leading to her death on Aug 8, 2023, days before her body was discovered in their Surrey home.

The confession came during cross-examination by Caroline Carberry KC, who asked him bluntly if he had killed her by beating. “Yes, she died because of me,” Sharif responded. He revealed that he had struck Sara “severely” over several weeks, reportedly because he was angered by her frequent episodes of soiling herself and vomiting.

Sharif, 42, his wife, Beinash Batool, 30 and his brother Faisal Malik, 29, all facing charges related to what prosecutors have described as a “campaign of abuse” against Sara. The trio fled to Pakistan shortly after Sara’s death, with Sharif later calling the British police to confess he had “beat her up too much”.

A handwritten note, found near Sara’s fully clothed body, further documented Sharif’s admission, stating: “I swear to God that my intention was not to kill her. But I lost it.”

Medical examination reports presented to the court were harrowing. Sara’s postmortem revealed 71 external injuries, including fractures, burns, and bite marks.

When confronted with images of Sara’s injuries, Sharif appeared unable to look, repeatedly saying, “I accept everything,” as Carberry questioned him on the details of his alleged actions.

The prosecution presented a disturbing video clip from Aug 6, showing Sara dancing just two days before her death. Despite this glimpse of her lively spirit, Sharif admitted to brutally beating her that same evening.

The defence team for Sharif later sought a private consultation with him in court, delaying further proceedings.

The trial, however, continues, with Sharif and co-defendants maintaining not guilty pleas to the charges of murder and causing or allowing the child’s death.

Cross-examination

During the hearing, Carberry asked: “Do you accept that you had been beating Sara severely over a number of weeks?” He replied: “Yes, ma’am.”

He went on to accept attacking Sara with a cricket bat repeatedly and causing 25 fractures to her body.

Carberry continued: “I want to ask you about the occasions when you assaulted her with a cricket bat. What had she done to deserve such beatings in your mind?”

Sharif replied: “Nothing.”

She asked: “Why were you beating her so forcefully?”

He replied: “I was wrong.”

She continued: “Were you angry with her because in the summer of last year, she had started soiling herself?”

He replied: “Yes ma’am.”

She added: “And she had started vomiting, hadn’t she?” to which Sharif replied: “Yes, ma’am.”

Carberry asked: “And when she was sick you would get angry? And when she soiled herself you would get angry?” He replied: “Yes ma’am.”

He accepted causing injuries to Sara’s face and head by beating her with the bat and metal pole on 6 Aug.

Carberry continued: “You have pleaded not guilty to the offence of murder. Would you like that charge to be put to you again?”

He replied: “Yes ma’am.”

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2024

Nvidia, Oracle, Google, Dell and 13 other companies reported how long it takes their computers to train the key neural networks in use today. Among those results were the first glimpse of Nvidia’s next generation GPU, the B200, and Google’s upcoming accelerator, called Trillium. The B200 posted a doubling of performance on some tests versus today’s workhorse Nvidia chip, the H100. And Trillium delivered nearly a four-fold boost over the chip Google tested in 2023.

The benchmark tests, called MLPerf v4.1, consist of six tasks: recommendation, the pre-training of the large language models (LLM) GPT-3 and BERT-large, the fine tuning of the Llama 2 70B large language model, object detection, graph node classification, and image generation.

Training GPT-3 is such a mammoth task that it’d be impractical to do the whole thing just to deliver a benchmark. Instead, the test is to train it to a point that experts have determined means it is likely to reach the goal if you kept going. For Llama 2 70B, the goal is not to train the LLM from scratch, but to take an already trained model and fine-tune it so it’s specialized in a particular expertise—in this case, government documents. Graph node classification is a type of machine learning used in fraud detection and drug discovery.

As what’s important in AI has evolved, mostly toward using generative AI, the set of tests has changed. This latest version of MLPerf marks a complete changeover in what’s being tested since the benchmark effort began. “At this point all of the original benchmarks have been phased out,” says David Kanter, who leads the benchmark effort at MLCommons. In the previous round it was taking mere seconds to perform some of the benchmarks.

Performance of the best machine learning systems on various benchmarks has outpaced what would be expected if gains were solely from Moore’s Law [blue line]. Solid line represent current benchmarks. Dashed lines represent benchmarks that have now been retired, because they are no longer industrially relevant.MLCommons

According to MLPerf’s calculations, AI training on the new suite of benchmarks is improving at about twice the rate one would expect from Moore’s Law. As the years have gone on, results have plateaued more quickly than they did at the start of MLPerf’s reign. Kanter attributes this mostly to the fact that companies have figured out how to do the benchmark tests on very large systems. Over time, Nvidia, Google, and others have developed software and network technology that allows for near linear scaling—doubling the processors cuts training time roughly in half.

First Nvidia Blackwell training results

This round marked the first training tests for Nvidia’s next GPU architecture, called Blackwell. For the GPT-3 training and LLM fine-tuning, the Blackwell (B200) roughly doubled the performance of the H100 on a per-GPU basis. The gains were a little less robust but still substantial for recommender systems and image generation—64 percent and 62 percent, respectively.

The Blackwell architecture, embodied in the Nvidia B200 GPU, continues an ongoing trend toward using less and less precise numbers to speed up AI. For certain parts of transformer neural networks such as ChatGPT, Llama2, and Stable Diffusion, the Nvidia H100 and H200 use 8-bit floating point numbers. The B200 brings that down to just 4 bits.

Google debuts 6th gen hardware

Google showed the first results for its 6^th generation of TPU, called Trillium—which it unveiled only last month—and a second round of results for its 5^th generation variant, the Cloud TPU v5p. In the 2023 edition, the search giant entered a different variant of the 5^th generation TPU, v5e, designed more for efficiency than performance. Versus the latter, Trillium delivers as much as a 3.8-fold performance boost on the GPT-3 training task.

But versus everyone’s arch-rival Nvidia, things weren’t as rosy. A system made up of 6,144 TPU v5ps reached the GPT-3 training checkpoint in 11.77 minutes, placing a distant second to an 11,616-Nvidia H100 system, which accomplished the task in about 3.44 minutes. That top TPU system was only about 25 seconds faster than an H100 computer half its size.

A Dell Technologies computer fine-tuned the Llama 2 70B large language model using about 75 cents worth of electricity.

In the closest head-to-head comparison between v5p and Trillium, with each system made up of 2048 TPUs, the upcoming Trillium shaved a solid 2 minutes off of the GPT-3 training time, nearly an 8 percent improvement on v5p’s 29.6 minutes. Another difference between the Trillium and v5p entries is that Trillium is paired with AMD Epyc CPUs instead of the v5p’s Intel Xeons.

Google also trained the image generator, Stable Diffusion, with the Cloud TPU v5p. At 2.6 billion parameters, Stable Diffusion is a light enough lift that MLPerf contestants are asked to train it to convergence instead of just to a checkpoint, as with GPT-3. A 1024 TPU system ranked second, finishing the job in 2 minutes 26 seconds, about a minute behind the same size system made up of Nvidia H100s.

Training power is still opaque

The steep energy cost of training neural networks has long been a source of concern. MLPerf is only beginning to measure this. Dell Technologies was the sole entrant in the energy category, with an eight-server system containing 64 Nvidia H100 GPUs and 16 Intel Xeon Platinum CPUs. The only measurement made was in the LLM fine-tuning task (Llama2 70B). The system consumed 16.4 megajoules during its 5-minute run, for an average power of 5.4 kilowatts. That means about 75 cents of electricity at the average cost in the United States.

While it doesn’t say much on its own, the result does potentially provide a ballpark for the power consumption of similar systems. Oracle, for example, reported a close performance result—4 minutes 45 seconds—using the same number and types of CPUs and GPUs.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) went live on X Wednesday, giving the public a way to question and see how tax dollars are being spent.

Federal officials have updated the number of patients in an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 infections traced to slivered onions on McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers. The patient count now stands at 104. The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are continuing to investigate the... Continue Reading

EXCLUSIVE: As part of the celebrations, the team at Blizzard has a whole slew of announcements across the core strategy franchise, WoW, Hearthstone and Warcraft Rumble

Special Counsel Jack Smith is asking an appeals court to halt his appeal against President-elect Trump regarding the Florida case.

1. Anupamaa producer Rajan Shahi's ex-wife breaks silence in Rupali Ganguly-Esha Verma case  Bollywood Life
2. Exclusive: Rupali Ganguly's Lawyer Sana Raees Khan Reveals Why The Actress Is Seeking Rs 50 Crore In Defamation Compensation  NDTV Movies
3. Amid defamation case and Rs 50 crore compensation sent by Rupali Ganguly; Esha Verma posts a note on star  The Times of India
4. Anupamaa producer Rajan Shahi supports actor Rupali Ganguly amid family dispute  India Today
5. Actor Rupali Ganguly files ₹50 crore defamation suit against stepdaughter Esha Verma  The Hindu

The Arizona Commerce Authority has announced 15 finalists for its 2024 Arizona Innovation Challenge. Read on to learn more about the participating companies.

Sure, early Black Friday deals offer a great opportunity to snag some essentials and upgrades for a lower price than usual, but if you have the leeway for a fun treat for yourself or a loved one, you'll find plenty of discounts in that realm too. For instance, you can snag the Ninja Creami ice cream maker for $50 off the list price. At $180, that's not too far away from its record low price, making it a solid deal. While it isn't quite the season for ice cream in North America, there's never truly a bad time to enjoy it.

The Ninja Creami is among our picks for the best kitchen gadgets. In fact, we reckon it's the best ice cream maker around.

This is a more compact ice cream machine than many other household models. The Ninja Creami is very easy to use as well, since it operates in a similar way to a food processor. You'll need to make a liquid ice cream base and then freeze it, ideally for 24 hours. You can then use the machine to blend in flavors. Cleaning up is a cinch if you have a dishwasher, since everything aside from the machine component is safe to place alongside your dishes on the racks.

On the downside, it is a rather noisy machine. We estimate that the volume is somewhere between that of a food processor and a countertop blender running at full speed. It's fairly tall too at 16 inches, so you'll want to make sure you have enough space for the Ninja Creami before buying it. Otherwise, we have no major complaints, other than the design not being overly attractive. As such, we gave it a score of 90 in our review.

The Ninja Creami has seven one-touch programs, but if you'd prefer an 11-in-1 deluxe model, you're in luck: that's on sale too. At $220, it's $30 off. It supports 24 oz tubs that hold 50 percent more ice cream than those in the original Ninja Creami. The Deluxe model also has a dual processing feature. This allows you to add two different mix-in flavors to the same base. So you can, for instance, add sprinkles to the top part and cookies to the bottom.

Check out all of the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals here.

With its rich resources, uranium mining companies want Canada to play a key role in fuelling nuclear reactors worldwide.

The need for a strong, centralized regulatory structure for India's pharmaceutical industry has taken center stage, with experts calling for the establishment of a Central Drug Regulatory Cadre and a Central Drug

UNITED NATIONS — An entire generation of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip would "be denied the right to education" if the United Nations Palestinian relief agency UNRWA collapses in the enclave under new Israeli legislation, the head of UNRWA warned on Wednesday (Nov 13). Israel's parliament passed a law last month that will ban UNRWA from operating in the country when it takes effect in late January. UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said its implementation "will have catastrophic consequences." "In Gaza, dismantling UNRWA will collapse the United Nations humanitarian response, which relies heavily on the agency's infrastructure," he told a UN General Assembly committee. "Glaringly absent from discussions about Gaza without UNRWA, is education." "In the absence of a capable public administration or state, only UNRWA can deliver education to more than 660,000 girls and boys across Gaza. In the absence of UNRWA, an entire generation will be denied the right to education," he said, warning that this would sow "the seeds for marginalisation and extremism."

bPembrolizumab, an immunotherapy medication/b, significantly enhanced disease-free survival when added to the standard of care for patients with advanced soft tissue sarcoma of the limb.

Discover how pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy drug, enhances disease-free survival in advanced soft tissue sarcoma, offering a promising treatment alternative.

Managing payments in the hospitality industry has long presented challenges for many hoteliers, often involving manual processes and disconnected systems that contribute to operational inefficiencies.

Arun Gopalakrishna emphasizes that effective SEO demands a holistic, adaptive approach. As search engines and user behaviors change, staying proactive is essential.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has put brakes on a proposal to undertake uranium exploration in the Kappatralla reserve forest area in Kurnool district, offering relief to agitating villagers.

Mercedes-Benz India is on course to close the current year with a double-digit jump in sales, as demand for luxury cars increased.

The Indian government launched the official website for the 18th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Convention, a key platform for engaging with the Indian diaspora worldwide. The convention, scheduled for January 8-10, 2025, will focus on the diaspora's contribution to a developed India.

India's Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) has enrolled over five lakh senior citizens, providing free health coverage. The Ayushman Vaya Vandana Card offers an individual health cover of ₹5 lakh per year, benefiting around 6 crore individuals across 4.5 crore families.

1. Mendis, Fernando and spinners star as Sri Lanka clinch rain-affected ODI opener  Cricbuzz
2. Sri Lanka beat NZ to go 1-0 up  DAWN.com
3. Kusal Mendis 143 and Avishka Fernando 100 put Sri Lanka 1-0 up  ESPNcricinfo
4. Sri Lanka vs New Zealand Highlights: Sri Lanka beat New Zealand by 45 runs (DLS method)  Mint
5. Sri Lanka vs New Zealand, 1st ODI Highlights: SL beat NZ by 45 runs via DLS method  The Times of India

1. India celebrates joining Square Kilometre Array Observatory as member country, to set up regional data centre  The Indian Express
2. India becomes full member of SKA, aims to build world’s most sensitive radio telescope  Deccan Herald
3. India to host regional centre for world’s biggest radio telescope  The Times of India
4. India set to contribute Rs 1,250 crore for construction of Square Kilometre Array Observatory  Telegraph India
5. India celebrates joining SKAO as member country  Hindustan Times

1. Won’t back off from ‘Pharma Village’, says Telangana CM’s brother  The Siasat Daily
2. Lagcherla: KTR named in remand report  Deccan Chronicle
3. Ex-BRS MLA held over mob attack on Vikarabad collector  Hindustan Times
4. Video | Violence Over Land Row In Telangana Chief Minister's Constituency, 55 Detained  NDTV
5. Govt. charges BRS with hatching conspiracies to stall development projects for political gains  The Hindu

Moov Leasing, un start-up românesc lansat de Bogdan Speteanu și Mircea Dihel, propune o schimbare radicală în leasingul auto, transformând experiența de utilizare a unei mașini într-una simplă și accesibilă, la fel ca utilizarea unui telefon mobil. După 20 de ani de experiență la BCR, timp în care a ocupat mai multe funcții de conducere, printre care și ...

The post Bogdan Speteanu, Moov Leasing: “Utilizatorii pot închiria o mașină pe o perioadă medie, de la unu la cinci ani, și au posibilitatea de a o schimba în funcție de nevoile de moment” appeared first on Forbes Romania.

Talking about Priyanka Chopra, Arjun admitted that she was already a big star when they made the film.

The number of skilled Indian workers in Germany has increased to 1.3 lakh from 23,000 a decade ago

This is her first official visit to Darjeeling in two years; she did not go to the hills even during the 2024 Lok Sabha election campaigns

Israeli warplanes launched a strike at dawn targeting a residential apartment in a building in the Dawhet

The Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki volcano located in a remote island in East Nusa Tenggara province erupted earlier this month and has resulted in ash clouds

It also assures Madras High Court of putting in place an effective complaint redressal mechanism in the interest of school students

Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar had stated, in Wayanad in Kerala, that the government would take all possible measures to lift night traffic ban through Bandipur, which had riled wildlife conservationists in Karnataka

At least five to six cases of the infection being reported every day at the Government Medical College Hospital in recent weeks

The government is focussing on four “I”s infrastructure, investment, innovation and inclusivity to realise the goal set for 2047

The Railways have requested passengers to avail of the services of the extra coaches

The new facility will have an annual production capacity of 180,000 tons, tripling TCEL’s current pharmaceutical-grade sodium bicarbonate production capacity in the UK

Uzbekistan's young grandmaster Abdusattorov Nodirbek emerged sole leader in the open section of the Tata Steel Chess India Rapid tournament in Kolkata on Wednesday.