In a shocking score for Major League Soccer, superstar Lionel Messi reportedly turned down $1.5 billion from Saudi Arabia’s oil coffers to play for Inter Miami, the struggling MLS team co-owned by David Beckham. Messi’s deal may be less lucrative on paper than what the Saudis offered but comes with plenty of perks.

Though the deal is not yet finalized, MLS promoted the arrival of the GOAT and reigning World Cup champion Wednesday.

“It looked like, at least initially, like there’s no way that MLS would be able to have the sort of money needed to pry away a player like Messi for the sort of money that the Saudis had already shown they were willing to pull up for [Cristiano] Ronaldo,” said Victor Matheson, a sports economist and professor at the College of the Holy Cross.

But Matheson said MLS engaged in some “fancy financing” to draw in Messi, just as they had done with Beckham more than 15 years earlier. Messi’s deal reportedly includes team ownership stake when he’s done playing, relaxed salary rules and competitive commercial partnerships with Apple and Adidas.

Apple has exclusive rights to air MLS games for years to come in a 10-year, $2.5 billion deal. And now, it appears that Messi could get a chunk of revenue sharing from the tech giant, in addition to Apple TV+ airing a 4-part documentary series about the superstar.

“What’s really interesting is the only other soccer player that we can actually think of who has been linked to a deal like this is no other than David Beckham,” Matheson said.

“We see a case here where money doesn’t necessarily buy everything,” Matheson said. “We’re looking at that full package with Messi saying, ‘Do I need to associate with the Saudis in order to get what’s going to be the best deal for me?'”

The answer, evidently, is no. Matheson said Messi risked tarnishing his brand by going to Saudi Arabia.

“He is, without question, one of the greatest players ever to play the game,” Matheson said. “And I think he thought…’It could tarnish my long-term earning capacity. I’m only going to be playing for a few more years as an actual player, but I could be a brand ambassador for decades. Last thing I want to do is tarnish that decades of brand ambassadorship by taking a job at the end of my career at a place that clearly has troubling associations.'”

It’s an association that professional golf has decided to risk, with an LIV-PGA merger that is being challenged by U.S. politicians.

Watch the full interview with Victor Matheson in the video above.

The hallways are empty, rooms are dark and chairs are on top of desks at Weeping Water High School on Mondays. Students do not arrive until Tuesday.

Weeping Water Public Schools in eastern Nebraska is one of a growing number of districts across the country that have switched to a four-day school week. The move is seen as a way to attract and retain teachers, who are increasingly in demand.

Kevin Reiman, the superintendent of Weeping Water Public Schools, said the decision to switch to a four-day week was made after the district struggled to hire teachers.

“We were at a financial disadvantage to get the best adults to come work with our kids because of our funding,” Reiman said. “We thought this would be a way to level the playing field.”

The switch to a four-day week has been successful in attracting teachers, Reiman said. The district has seen an increase in the number of applications for teaching positions, and teachers are now more likely to stay in the district for longer periods of time.

However, the four-day school week is not without its challenges. Reiman said the district has had to increase the length of the school day to make up for some of the fifth day. Because the district still loses some teaching time, teachers have had to make some changes to the curriculum to ensure that students are still learning the same amount of material each year.

The four-day school week is becoming increasingly popular across the country. According to the Four-Day School Week Policy group at Oregon State University, there are now over 850 school districts in the United States that have transitioned to the shorter week. In 2019, there were 650, according to the researchers.

It seems more school districts in metropolitan areas are considering switching to a four-day school week. Dr. Chris Fiedler, the superintendent of 27J Schools in Brighton, Colorado, said his district transitioned to the shorter school week in 2018 after struggling to hire teachers.

“We are an extremely fast growing district,” Fiedler said. “We hire between 150 and 200 new teachers a year. So it matters, right?”

Fiedler said the four-day school week has been a success for the district in terms of teacher recruitment.

“I don’t want anyone around us to make that move,” Fiedler said. “Because eventually, if everyone’s on a four-day week, that is not an advantage for us.”

As more urban schools show interest in the shortened school week as a recruitment tactic, it will not only create more competition in those highly populated areas, but it could also eliminate the incentive for teachers to go to those more rural schools.

Researchers in the Four-Day School Week Policy group said the shorter week also hurts student achievement.

A sea of yellow is washing over large portions of the American Southwest. The beautiful yellow blooms began carpeting portions of California and Arizona after heavy storms this winter.

Pretty, but also problematic. The flowers belong to a noxious weed called “stinknet.” It speads quickly, chokes native plants, and most importantly, presents a massive fire danger.

“It’s just like a kindling carpet out there,” said Shawn Gilleland, a public information officer with Rural Metro Fire Department in Central Arizona. 

“It is probably the most prevalent danger. There’s also the side effect of causing a lot of irritation, and the allergies, people with allergies and asthma, stuff like that. But, as we’re coming into fire season, particularly, it poses a great threat because it’s a pre-emergent weed that comes out in late winter. So now as we enter the summer season and temperatures start to rise, especially here in Arizona and across the Southwest, all that stuff starts to die off. And because of its invasive growth, it’s everywhere. And so now you have a whole new source of fire fuel across the desert floor,” Gilleland said.

Stinknet is not native to the U.S. It was first found in Southern California in 1982, possibly carried over from South Africa or Australia. It was detected in the Phoenix area in 1997.

“It moves along road corridors, we think that it can be picked up on vehicles, or just on people’s clothing as they get in and out of vehicles. So, it’s very likely that our plants got here from Southern California from the infestation there. We find that in Phoenix, it’s actually spreading and being more of an issue than it has been in Southern California,” said Michael Chamberland, an agent in urban culture for the University of Arizona Maricopa County Cooperative Extension. 

“By the time people really started realizing how serious it was, it had really overrun a large portion of the Phoenix area,” Chamberland said. “It was first in the city and in the residential areas. But now we see it moving out into parks and natural areas and deserts around the city. And unfortunately, it’s also moving to other parts of Arizona, too.”

“One of the things that’s concerning about stinknet is that it has such a broad habitat, it can invade a wide variety of habitats. It can grow near the coast, it can grow in the mountain foothills, it can grow in valleys that are filled with grasslands. It can grow in disturbed areas, it can grow in natural wildland type, areas like your national parks or national forests,” said Chris McDonald, a natural resource adviser with the University of California Cooperative Extension. McDonald specializes in managing invasive plants.

“It was being monitored locally, and there were land managers who were trying to stop it. We call this early detection, rapid response. You try and find a new piece of species quickly, and then you rapidly respond to it by trying to control it. And that idea wasn’t necessarily as strong and prevalent as it is now. So, back when it was here in the 80s and 90s, people noticed it and they tried, but there wasn’t a large-scale effort with funding to try and help them eradicate it before it spread further. And on top of that, there was not a lot of research in North America, if any at all, on this plant,” McDonald said.

Stinknet germinates around October. As soon as it begins sprouting green leaves, it gives off a noxious odor, much like turpentine, hence its name. In winter, it blooms into beautiful yellow orbs that contain hundreds of seeds. Once the plants dry out at the beginning of summer, they become a ticking time bomb. 

“The unfortunate thing is we’re getting early monsoon-type activity, so dry lightning or lightning with just a very minimal amount of water or rain associated with it. So, that becomes, again, another hazard that we’ll be facing,” Gilleland said.

“There are several organizations starting at the federal level, the state level, the county level, and the city level, to deal with problems with invasive fire type plants that can cause the spread of forest fires,” Scottsdale City Councilwoman Betty Janik said.

Janik said the state is throwing money at the invasive weed swallowing the Sonoran Desert.

“In the past year and a half, we’ve gotten $350,000 for the Forestry and Fire Management Invasive Plant Program. And then we also got another $192,000, just in January, to get rid of invasive plants,” Janik said.

The councilwoman believes that getting rid of the plants might come down to using harsh chemicals, which is something she knows her constituents won’t be happy about. 

“I know they will be upset. I know they will be upset because we have a very, very active community in Scottsdale. And we’ve already had some criticism for using herbicides. And we’ve had quite a few complaints about the use of Roundup, asking us if we can find another way to do it. And the other problem, they will destroy any plants that come in contact with the herbicide So, it is a problem. It is a problem,” Janik said.

It’s a problem that needs to be addressed before stinknet spreads to more parts of the U.S.

Tech

This AI tool may let news reporters get back to journalism ‘out there in the world’

Jun 05, 2023

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Shannon Longworth Reporter

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By Shannon Longworth (Reporter), Ryan Tiedgen (Editor)

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A B2B SAAS company, HeyWire AI, is in the process of developing an AI news engine that could free up journalists to focus on original reporting. HeyWire AI founder and CEO Von Raees said the product is called Wells in honor of 19th century journalist Ida B. Wells.

Raees said that Wells will be able to automate aggregation, freeing up journalists to focus on more original stories.

Raees founded a publishing company in 1996 and that is where he noticed that aggregation was a drag on resources.

“Our journalists are spending a lot of time on the internet, looking for leads, researching stories, and then writing their own versions of that,” Raees said. “That takes away from them being out in the field doing like, true journalism, like original content, investigative work that’s out there in the world – not so much on the internet.”

“The purpose of Wells is to do the mundane work of research, finding leads, researching various stories, and generating articles from those stories, submitting that to editors for publishing,” Raees said. “If we allow Wells to take care of that, then journalists can actually be in the field, doing what they’re passionate about doing.”

Wells is still in development, but Raees hopes to launch it sometime in mid-2024. Raees said HeyWire AI has spoken with multiple national and local publishers about beta testing the engine.

“We’re going to spend some substantial amount of time and volume testing, testing, testing, trying to break it, see what we come up with, and make all of those changes and corrections, before we ever launch a product for general market,” Raees said.

The development of Wells comes at a time when smaller digital outlets continue to struggle competing with legacy media. AI tools like Wells can automate tasks like aggregation, freeing up resources to focus on better reporting.

An AP-NORC poll from early 2023 shows 57% of respondents found deeper reporting to be “very helpful” in trying to understand current events.

“Our intention is to sort of democratize the use of journalism tools, and empower small to medium size news organizations, and to enable small organizations like ourselves to, like our own publishing company, to be able to compete with the larger organizations on scales that they currently are not available to compete,” Raees said.

Wells is just one example of artificial intelligence tools that are entering newsrooms nationwide. Ultimately, it’s up to each newsroom to decide how comfortable they are with AI and how they will use it. The Radio Television Digital News Association has issued guidance encouraging newsrooms to consider these issues as AI inevitably enters the industry.

Hurricane season is about to pick up steam again. As many communities in the U.S. are still picking up the pieces from last season, some are looking to learn lessons anywhere they can. 

In Florida, a place known as America’s first solar city has earned a reputation as the city that survived Hurricane Ian.

Babcock Ranch is a community 25 miles north of Fort Myers on Florida’s West Coast developed by Kitson & Partners.

CEO Syd Kitson was living in Babcock Ranch when Hurricane Ian blew through the area. 

“We had sustained winds over 100 miles an hour, and we had gusts of over 150 miles an hour. And if you’ve never experienced that, it’s like a freight train running through your house. And it lasted for eight hours,” Kitson said. “I think if you talk to most of the people here at Babcock Ranch, they will tell you that the thing that mattered most to them was the fact that the electricity never went out, the internet never went out. And that’s because we worked with Florida Power and Light for eight years, and put a system together,”

Kitson began developing Babcock Ranch 17 years ago. 

“I consider myself a strong environmentalist and I wanted to prove that a new city could work hand in hand with the environment,” Kitson said. 

The land deal to make Babcock happen remains the largest in state history. Kitson said the shape of the community formed by staying out of the wetlands as best as they could. 

“We ended up with 18,000 acres, and out of the 18,000 acres, we are preserving half of that. So really, at the end of the day, 90% of that original ranch is in preservation forever and might be what we’re most proud of,” Kitson said.

By partnering with Florida Power and Light, Kitson & Partners built a 150 megawatt solar power generating facility which included 700,000 panels on 840 acres.

“During the day, when the sun is shining, Babcock Ranch is powered by solar energy. The entire town. We had one of the first solar to battery facilities in the world that was built here 10 megawatts. The ultimate goal here would be for them to build a battery facility that actually can power this town through the night,” Kitson said.

Eventually, that solar energy will support 55,000 people in 20,000 homes and 6,000,000 square feet of commercial space.

“We have apartments here, we have single family rentals, we have townhouses, we have condos, we have single family homes, small lots, large lots, medium lots, you name it. And that’s what a town is all about. It’s that diversity that creates diversity of products, creates a diversity of people. And that’s what makes one of the things that makes this place special,” Kitson said.

As the community grows, so will the need for battery storage.

Dr. Jennifer Languell, the green building sustainable development resiliency adviser to Babcock Ranch, notes that battery technology is rapidly changing. And as those advances are made and implemented into the community, they also have built-in power redundancies, like being connected to a natural gas power plant. 

“For the builders, we really focus on efficiency, resource efficiency, and whether it’s energy efficiency, water efficiency or materials, and help them fine tune where they want to go with green building,” Languell said.

Sustainability is top of mind for developers as sea levels rise and storms continue to batter Florida.

“When we trained the builders, initially, we talked to them about durability. And we really wanted them to focus on durability, because Syd wanted a safe-from-the-storm type of community. He wanted people to be able to shelter in place,” Languell said.

Safety from coastal storms was Kitson’s main goal. So, he chose land that was naturally 30 feet above sea level, built the community around natural wetlands that prevent flooding, buried all power lines, and incorporated stormwater drains and retention ponds.

Kitson says location, coupled with ecological preservation, are crucial to future Florida residency. 

“It’s very, very important because, you know, as developers, we impact the land. We have impacts. And 1000 people a day are moving to Florida. A lot of that reason is because of the natural resources, our beaches, the water, the landscapes. They come down here because Florida is beautiful. If we destroy that, there’s going to be no reason for people to come down here. And we need to be thinking about our kids and our grandkids. And we truly need this to be sustainable and to get back in and make sure all this works in a proper way. So the kind of planning that we’re doing, the idea that we can work with nature, is incredibly important. And we’re proving that. And I’m hoping that because of that, that type of development will continue throughout the state of Florida, maybe even throughout the country. As we continue to grow, let’s do it the right way,” Kitson said.

A new report from the U.S. State Department sheds light on the ongoing religious persecution faced by Christians trapped in North Korea. Open Doors USA, an advocacy group for persecuted Christians, estimates that as many as 70,000 individuals are incarcerated in North Korea solely due to their religious beliefs.

The State Department’s report provides harrowing details about the conditions inside the prisons, with stories of religious persecution resembling those from biblical times unfolding in the present day.

A particularly disturbing case outlined in the report involves a 2-year-old child who was sentenced to life in prison simply because a Bible was found in the family’s possession. The entire family will spend the remainder of their lives in prison camps.

Another shocking incident involved a member of Kim Jong Un’s political party who was executed in front of 3,000 residents after being found in possession of a Bible. Additionally, a North Korean woman and her grandchild were executed by firing squad due to their family’s Christian beliefs.

The report also highlights the arbitrary arrest and punishment of relatives up to three generations back, irrespective of their own personal beliefs.

Open Doors characterizes Christians in North Korea as “the most dangerous political class of people,” facing intense and violent persecution. Life for Christians in the country is described as a “constant pressure cooker,” where “capture or death is only a mistake away.”

“Open Doors USA (ODUSA) estimated that authorities held 50,000 to 70,000 citizens in prison for being Christian. ODUSA stated that Christians experienced persecution that was ‘violent and intense,'” the State Department’s report added. 

A report by human rights watchdog Korea Future, which was cited by the State Department, concludes that the campaign to eradicate Christian adherents and institutions in North Korea has “been brutally effective.” While estimates suggest a Christian population of anywhere between 200,000 and 400,000 people still exists in the country, all of them remain at risk of torture under the rule of the North Korean regime.

In a recent report by the Korean Institute for National Unification (KINU), concerns were raised regarding the usage of state-controlled Christian churches in North Korea for political purposes.

The report stated that the government has been employing these state-approved religious institutions as a means of “political propaganda” aimed at foreign visitors, while strictly prohibiting regular citizens from entering the facilities.

According to KINU’s 2021 report, the North Korean authorities gathered several hundred carefully selected individuals to participate in what were described as “fake church services.” These services were allegedly orchestrated to create an illusion of religious freedom and to impress foreign guests and were not accessible to ordinary citizens.

Testimonies from defectors have shed further light on the situation. In KINU’s 2019 report, one defector revealed that during his time in Pyongyang, authorities arrested individuals who were suspected of being secret Christians. These suspicions arose from behaviors such as lingering too long outside these churches to listen to the music or repeatedly driving past them each week when services were being held.

The North Korean government has previously acknowledged the existence of 500 “family worship centers” in a 2002 report submitted to the UN Human Rights Committee. Although, a 2018 report, which surveyed 12,810 defectors, stated that none of them had witnessed any of these supposed home churches.

The State Department’s report also highlights the indoctrination of anti-religious views in North Korean children, starting as early as kindergarten. Children are encouraged to report any signs of Christian faith within their homes, further perpetuating the control and persecution of Christians in the country. Both the United States and the United Nations have consistently condemned North Korea’s control and mistreatment of its people, as it “remains one of the most repressive countries in the world.”

However, these condemnations have failed to loosen the regime’s grip on its extreme views regarding Christianity. In October 2020, the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights reported 1,411 cases of religious persecution by authorities, including 126 killings and 94 disappearances, based on reports of defectors from the DPRK between 2007 and July 2020, as well as other sources.

North Koreans who have managed to escape their home country have revealed the various forms of torture inflicted on tens of thousands of Christians imprisoned daily. These torturous methods include beatings, strangulation, deprivation of food, water, and sleep, hanging by the legs, and being forced into fixed positions for days on end.

Escapees have also reported being subjected to repetitive physical exercises, consuming contaminated food, and having red pepper powder forcefully poured into their nostrils. This distressing list of torture tactics only scratches the surface of the atrocities endured by victims.

Meanwhile, the number of North Koreans escaping the communist regime has seen a significant decline of 94% since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to recent reports. The pandemic presented an opportunity for dictator Kim Jong Un to reinforce border security measures, including the construction of new border walls and increased patrols, further restricting the movement of North Korean citizens.

Rare earth minerals, known for their immense value to the global economy, have become a focal point for the United States. Lawmakers and leaders want to boost domestic production to reduce reliance on foreign adversaries like Russia and China. Mineral exploration company NioCorp is working to establish a first-of-its-kind mine in the Midwest that would extract some of these elements, but concerns remain regarding the potential impact of the facility’s construction and operation on the surrounding environment.

The proposed mine, set to be built in Elk Creek, Nebraska, will involve drilling approximately 1,500 feet underground and span over 60 acres of land. NioCorp claims to be taking steps to minimize the project’s overall environmental footprint and has developed strategies to reduce waste production. These efforts include limiting air emissions, ensuring no discharge of wastewater, and advancing research for recycling and reusing chemical materials that were previously destined for disposal.

“We’ve done very extensive environmental studies of the plant area and some off-site areas, and by doing those studies, and doing them up front, we can avoid impacting sensitive areas of the environment,” NioCorp COO Scott Honan said. “This work illustrates how strongly NioCorp is committed to reducing our net greenhouse gas emissions when and where we can. Niobium, scandium, titanium, and the rare earths all play critical roles in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the products in which they are used.”

The company has emphasized its commitment to sustainability with this project, citing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles as fundamental to its core values. NioCorp CEO Mark Smith has asserted his organization’s dedication to minimizing the ecological impact of the mine.

“Environmental, social, and governance factors can and should play a major role in any business, particularly those involved in natural resource development,” Smith said. “These factors are fundamental to NioCorp’s core values. Moreover, implementing the proper corporate ESG culture can be good for the environment and for business.”

Despite these pollution-mitigating techniques, rare-earth mining still carries significant risks to the environment. According to the Harvard International Review, for every ton of rare earth minerals produced, as much as 12,000 cubic meters of waste gas are released into the surrounding area. Additionally, each ton of mined materials results in the production of two thousand tons of toxic waste.

“Rare earth mining is one of the most environmentally destructive practices that occurs on the planet.” said James Taylor, president of The Heartland Institute, a public policy think tank.

While these minerals are crucial to the U.S. economy and national defense, their near-exclusive production by foreign adversaries is partly attributed to lax environmental regulations imposed by other nations.

China, which accounted for 85% of the global supply of rare earth minerals in 2016 despite possessing only 35% of the world’s reserves, employed low-cost, high-pollution mining methods to quickly establish a monopoly in the industry. Other countries were reluctant to adopt similar practices due to the resulting environmental impact.

“Why is China so dominant? Well, one of reasons is that China does not impose the environmental standards that people in western democracies justly require for mining and especially of rare earth minerals mining,” Taylor said while testifying before the Pennsylvania General Assembly regarding the viability and impact of rare earth materials in the state.

The Chinese government has even acknowledged the existence of “cancer villages” near some if its mines, where a disproportionately high number of people have fallen ill as a result of excessive pollution.

“The toxic chemicals have caused many environmental emergencies linked to water and air pollution,” China’s environment ministry said in a 2013 report. “There are even some serious cases of health and social problems like the emergence of cancer villages in individual regions.”

“The cleanup has been difficult, especially because there has been a long history of mining here,” said Xu Cheng, director of the Longnan Rare Earths Bureau, according to the Yale School of the Environment. “Some experts said that it will take 50 to 100 years before the environment can fully recover, so the cost born by the locals has been high … We have made huge sacrifices to extract the resources they need.”

To mitigate the domestic impact, China struck deals with developing countries in Africa, allowing them to move their mining operations there in exchange for Chinese-built infrastructure. This strategy enabled China to transfer the pollution burden to external communities while maintaining control over a multi-billion dollar industry. For example, the Democratic Republic of Congo, which controls more than 70 percent of the world’s cobalt supply, reached a $6 billion infrastructure-for-minerals agreement with China in 2007 that has resulted in the pollution of a major tributary of the Congo River.

In Nebraska, NioCorp has secured all the necessary government permits for construction to commence and has presented testimonies from members of the Elk Creek community who support the project. However, as the construction of the mine moves forward, many stakeholders will closely monitor its effects on a region where the economy is primarily driven by agricultural production.

The rollout of commercial AI tools in recent months has shown that the technology can make mistakes. It can hallucinate, show bias and discrimination and it can be misused by humans.

These fears have sent governments scrambling to form regulation about a technology that many don’t fully understand yet.

The European Union is already prepared to vote on a proposal for AI regulation, while the United States is only just beginning the process.

“My worst fears are that we cause significant — we, the field, the technology industry — cause significant harm to the world,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said at a congressional hearing in early May.

With a wave of new AI products coming out every week, the road to regulation can be as steep as the learning curve.

Suresh Venkatasubramanian has an insider’s perspective on where the U.S. is in this process. Venkatasubramanian is a professor of computer science and data science at Brown University. Previously, he worked as the assistant director for science and justice in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. There, Venkatasubramanian co-authored the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights.

The Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights is a set of principles for guiding the development and use of AI. Published in October of 2022, it calls for safe and effective automation, protections against discrimination, data privacy, notice and explanation, and more.

“We think of it in terms of we should be regulating businesses, entities that do things that impact people, because the government is the keeper of the public interest,” Venkatasubramanian said. “Think about credit. Think about housing, you think about policing and criminal justice. These are specific areas where the public is impacted, and now increasingly impacted by the use of technology, whether it’s AI machine learning or what have you.”

The Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights is not legally binding, but it provides examples of the risks Americans face without responsible innovation in the AI realm.

Without transparency, for example, child welfare investigations could open against parents based on an algorithm, without notifying those parents and giving them an opportunity to contest the decision.

A predictive policing system could identify people at greater risk of being involved in gun violence and put them on a watch list. Those people might receive no explanation for how they ended up on such a list.

Venkatasubramanian says different agencies are working internally to develop guidelines for using AI within their scopes. For example, in May, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued guidance on how employers can use AI for recruitment and retention without violating federal anti-discrimination law.

While U.S. guidelines and legislation are lagging behind commercial innovation, Venkatasubramanian doesn’t think that’s a huge issue.

“The fact that products are coming out quickly, does not mean that things are changing very quickly,” he said. “ChatGPT changed a lot of things. I agree. But it hasn’t changed the fundamentals of how we should think about regulating systems that affect us all.”

Concerned about the lack of regulation, tech giants Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak — along with other industry insiders — signed an open letter calling for a pause in large AI experiments while policymakers catch up.

But there’s no telling how long it would take for Congress to develop and pass concrete legislation. However, what is known is that there’s an assortment of proposals in Congress.

Some lawmakers have proposed a ban on facial recognition technology, while others are calling for more transparency and accountability from AI developers. It is still too early to say what form AI regulation will take in the United States, but it’s clear that the conversation has begun.

A faked AI-generated image of an explosion near the Pentagon on May 22 actually moved the stock market. While it may be the first AI image to do so, it’s not the first time fake news has led to serious financial damages. Here are five times fake reports caused real dips in the stock market in this week’s Five For Friday.

5: Fake White House explosion

In 2013, a single tweet sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 145 points in two minutes.

The tweet came from the verified Associated Press Twitter account claiming two explosions at the White House injured then-President Barack Obama. A separate AP corporate communications account quickly got on the record saying the tweet was bogus.

It turned out hackers had gained access to AP’s main account, sending the scary claim to its roughly 2 million followers. The tweet even appeared on the Bloomberg Terminal, flashing in front of numerous investors. The Syrian Electronic Army claimed responsibility for the chaos.

4: Scottish man’s scheme

Scottish investor James Alan Craig faced securities fraud charges for allegedly sending fake tweets in 2013 to drive down stock prices.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said he made fake accounts posing as short-selling firms Muddy Waters and Citron Research, tweeting about fake investigations into two public companies.

Audience Inc.’s share price plunged 28% before the Nasdaq halted trading while Sarepta Therapeutics dropped 16% before the fraud was revealed. Craig, though, was reportedly too slow to capitalize himself. The SEC said he only made $97 on the trades, though the indictment claimed the scheme itself cost other investors more than $1.6 million.

3: United Airlines plunges

This one cost United Airlines a cool $1 billion in market value and resulted in a lot of finger pointing. Somehow, an undated Sun Sentinel article about United’s 2002 bankruptcy resurfaced six years later under “most viewed” on the Tribune newspaper’s website with the current day’s date at the top of the website header.

The Google News algorithm reportedly picked up the article as new, a research firm then sent out a summary of the article to a Bloomberg news service, Bloomberg flashed a headline and suddenly, the stock went from more than $12 to $3 before trading halted.

Even after it became clear United was not heading for another bankruptcy, the stock still closed down 11% on the day.

2: Zoomlion bribery scam

In 2013, Chinese journalist Chen Yongzhou confessed to accepting bribes to publish defamatory articles about heavy equipment company Zoomlion.

The New Express reporter said a middleman paid him tens of thousands of dollars to submit more than 10 articles under his byline that accused Zoomlion of false financial reporting and other crimes and deceptive practices.

The stock took multiple hits from the articles published over many months. Once Chen confessed, media reports suggested a Zoomlion rival was behind the scheme.

1: Fake Pentagon explosion

The AI-generated image of black smoke billowing near the Pentagon spooked the stock market in May, causing a quick dip shortly after markets opened.

The fake shot fooled news outlets like Russia’s RT, which tweeted the image and report under its gold-check account, and Zerohedge, which has a blue checkmark. An Indian news channel even broadcasted the image live, citing RT’s report.

The image quickly spread through a number of blue-check accounts that pay for verified status, including accounts deceptively made to look like news organizations. One account called Bloomberg Feed sported a blue check but is not associated with Bloomberg and was later suspended.

It may be the first time an AI-generated image moved markets, but experts fear it won’t be the last.

Schools across the country are facing a teacher shortage, and some are turning to a four-day school week as a way to attract and retain qualified staff. However, research shows that it harms student achievement.

The four-day school week is not new, but it has become more popular in recent years. According to the Four-Day School Week Policy Group at Oregon State University, more than 850 school districts in the United States now use the four-day model.

“With issues of teacher shortages, teacher burnout, it seems that, you know, school districts are thinking that this might be an effective mechanism,” said Paul Thompson, associate professor of economics and researcher with the Four-Day Research Policy Group. “In terms of the research, we don’t really know whether that’s an effective strategy, we’re playing catch up.”

One concern about the shorter school week is that it leads to a loss of instructional time, which harms student achievement.

“Those drops in time in school kind of link almost directly to the achievement declines that we’ve seen,” Thompson said.

On the other hand, there are several potential benefits to the four-day school week.

For one, it can help to improve teacher morale and reduce teacher burnout. In a RAND study, administrators, teachers, students and parents in 12 rural school districts said the change to a shorter week improved morale. Teachers also reported feeling less burnt out.

Another potential benefit of the four-day school week is that it can reduce student bullying. One study found that the four-day school week reduced bullying by 39%