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Florida bill would establish tougher penalties for children caught carrying guns

A new bill in Florida would create stricter penalties for children caught carrying guns, and the state House is expected to hear arguments over the proposal this week. House Bill 1181, or the Juvenile Justice Bill, would make a minor’s first illegal possession of a gun a first-degree felony instead of a first-degree misdemeanor, and would increase the time a child would spend in a juvenile detention facility. A first-time offender would spend five days, a second-time offender would spend 21 days and a third-time offender would be committed to a juvenile residential program. State Rep. Berny Jacques, a Republican, is a sponsor of the legislation. “We’re going to be safer as a result when we address these types of offenses,” Jacques told FOX 13 Tampa Bay. “Secondly, this is going to help these young people because I saw it as a prosecutor in the adult court system. You had young people who were getting away with the same offenses as juveniles, but when they were in the adult system, it was much less forgiving.” ‘AMERICA’S MOST WANTED’ SUSPECT LINKED TO CHILD SEX CRIMES CAUGHT IN FLORIDA Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri helped state lawmakers create the bill, according to FOX 13. “The laws need to change,” Gualtieri said at a December news conference. “We need to get serious and we need to get tough and these kids need to get locked up. Send a message.” Gualtieri was speaking after a 14-year-old boy shot and killed his 23-year-old sister, Abrille Baldwin, as she was attempting to break up an argument over Christmas presents between him and their 15-year-old brother on Christmas Eve in Largo, Florida. The 15-year-old then allegedly shot his 14-year-old brother. Both brothers had previous charges for gun possession. Gualtieri suspects the guns used in the shooting were stolen from unlocked cars, which officials say is how the guns involved in most crimes by teenagers in the area are accessed. “This proliferation of guns on the streets and guns in this area and guns in the hands of these kids, this is the worst I’ve ever seen,” Gualtieri said. FLORIDA MAN GAVE HIS GRANDFATHER A GLOWING EULOGY WEEKS BEFORE HIS MURDER “And what happens to them? ‘Oh, well, you know, he’s only 14. He really doesn’t understand what’s going on. We’ll just give him probation.’ It’s not working. It is not working … enough of this slap on the wrist,” he added. Gualtieri said the bill was being worked on even before Baldwin’s death. “I really hope the Florida Legislature in the upcoming legislative session will get serious about it and will pass legislation that will hold these kids accountable and help us to slow this down because if we don’t slow it down, we’ve got a big problem,” Gualtieri said. The Fiscal Policy Committee in the Senate will hear the House’s companion bill on Thursday. 

Embattled Rep Cori Bush faces campaign cash crunch; trails Dem primary challenger in money on hand

Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., who is facing a Justice Department investigation over her campaign’s security spending, which includes payments to her husband, has a campaign cash crunch and is trailing her Democrat primary challenger in terms of money on hand. Bush’s campaign has struggled to retain cash six months after the Aug. 6 Democrat primary. In fact, her committee’s most recent filings show that it entered January with just $215,000 at its disposal. Her opponent, Wesley Bell, a progressive prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County who differs from Bush in his Israel stance, is currently better positioned and ended the fourth quarter with $408,000 in the bank. Bell has also seen a fundraising surge since pivoting from challenging Republican Sen. Josh Hawley to entering the Democrat primary against Bush. From the beginning of October until late December, his campaign raised $492,000 and slightly edged Bush’s money haul. He reportedly added another $100,000 in the first few weeks of January, his campaign told the Riverfront Times, which is not included in his most recent filing. CORI BUSH’S CAMPAIGN PAYS $17,500 MORE TO HER HUSBAND, BRINGING HIS TOTAL TO $120K, NEW FILINGS SHOW Along the way, Bell has also garnered the support of some deep-pocketed Democrat donors, such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who gave the maximum $6,600 to his campaign for the primary and general elections, his filings show. A recent poll found that Bush may also be in trouble come August. Bell is currently up by 22 points over the “Squad” member, the New York Post reported. In addition to her campaign’s substandard position, Bush is also staring down a federal investigation into her campaign payments for security, including to her husband, Cortney Merritts, who she wed in February 2023. At the time of their marriage, Bush’s office said they had been together before she entered Congress in 2021. Merritts began accumulating money for security services starting in January 2022. Bush’s committee, however, switched their description to “wage expenses” in April 2023 as they continued to bring scrutiny to the campaign. Merritts has now collected $120,000 from Bush’s campaign coffers. Politicians can pay family members from their committees if they provide “bona fide” services at fair market value. He pocketed the money as Bush’s campaign simultaneously spent significantly more on St. Louis-based companies such as PEACE Security for private detail. She’s spent over $770,000 on such services. WATCH: CORI BUSH’S HUSBAND CONFRONTED OVER THE THOUSANDS IN CASH HE HAS RECEIVED FROM HER CAMPAIGN Merritts’ online accounts and posts have indicated he worked at a railway company for years before starting a moving company. He did not have a private security license as of late February 2023, Fox News Digital previously reported. He also did not appear in a Washington, D.C., database of licensed security specialists at the time.  The ordeal triggered at least two complaints from watchdog groups in the subsequent weeks. The first complaint, filed to the FEC in March 2023 by the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, is still pending. The ethics committee has since cleared Bush in a second complaint from the Committee to Defeat the President. “Since before I was sworn into office, I have endured relentless threats to my physical safety and life,” Bush previously said in response to the Justice Department investigation. “As a rank-and-file member of Congress, I am not entitled to personal protection by the House, and instead have used campaign funds as permissible to retain security services.” “These frivolous complaints have resulted in a number of investigations, some of which are still ongoing,” Bush said. “The Federal Election Commission and the House Committee on Ethics are currently reviewing the matter, as is the Department of Justice. We are fully cooperating in all of these pending investigations.” Bush’s and Bell’s campaigns did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.

NRA leaders knock back liberal pols ‘who want to exaggerate our death’: ‘We haven’t lost a beat’

The National Rifle Association remains unwavering in its mission to defend law-abiding Americans’ Second Amendment rights amid a civil corruption lawsuit in New York and repeated attacks from liberal politicians, the group’s president and interim CEO told Fox News Digital.  “We’re gonna be as active, if not more active, than we’ve ever been. We’ve always been a grassroots organization,” interim NRA CEO and Executive Vice President Andrew Arulanandam told Fox News Digital in an interview this month.  Arulanandam and NRA President Charles Cotton spoke to Fox News Digital in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, earlier this month, where the gun rights group held its annual Great American Outdoor Show. The nine-day event reported record attendance of more than 200,000 people, and was joined by former President Donald Trump this year, who delivered the event’s presidential forum keynote address.  The interview comes ahead of a verdict in a civil corruption case brought by Democrat New York Attorney General Letitia James, and when the NRA has come under increased condemnation from critics under the Biden administration.  GUN RIGHTS IN BATTLEGROUND STATE TAKE CENTER STAGE AHEAD OF 2024: ‘SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED’ “The New York AG is not trying to put any other organization out of business. No other organization is attacked on a near daily basis like the NRA. You go after the enemy that’s making your life miserable, not the one who has no impact,” Cotton, an attorney who has been fighting for Second Amendment rights since the 1970s, said of the attacks and court case in New York.  NRA DIGS IN FOR LEGAL FIGHT AGAINST WOKE PROSECUTOR OVER ALLEGED ‘ROADMAP’ OF ABUSE In August 2020, James filed a dissolution lawsuit aiming to break up the NRA over alleged corruption. A New York Supreme Court justice ultimately blocked James’ effort to dissolve the organization in a 2022 decision, saying the suit did not meet the requirements of ordering a “corporate death penalty” on the group. The judge did allow the suit against the NRA’s top officials, including former CEO Wayne LaPierre, to proceed. James accused officials at the NRA of “years of illegal self-dealing” with NRA funds that provided a “lavish lifestyle.” The NRA, however, has hit back against the case repeatedly since it was first floated, arguing it is politically motivated and intended to silence the organization, pointing to James’ previous comments vowing to take on the NRA before her election as New York AG.  NEW YORK AG CASE AGAINST NRA LEADER FACES TRIAL AFTER COURT AGAIN REJECTS GUN GROUP’S CLAIM OF POLITICAL PROBE While on the campaign trail ahead of her 2018 election, James called the group “an organ of deadly propaganda” and “a terrorist organization” and vowed to investigate whether the NRA could keep its charity status.  Cotton said during the interview that the case has had an impact on the organization, but argued James and other critics “want to exaggerate our death,” giving a hat tip to the late Mark Twain.  “That is exactly what the AG is trying to do. When she originally filed the lawsuit, she was seeking to have the NRA dissolved, which simply means we’re not gonna exist anymore. Worse than that, all of our assets would be seized by the state and given to other Second Amendment organizations – they didn’t even have to be pro-gun. And we know where the money would have gone. It would have gone to Bloomberg’s Everytown,” he said of the pro-gun control organization.  NEW YORK SUING TO DISSOLVE NRA IS ‘ONE OF THE DUMBEST MISTAKES’ YOU CAN MAKE IN ELECTION YEAR: ARI FLEISCHER Now, James’ case focuses on the NRA, LaPierre, former CFO Wilson “Woody” Philips and general counsel John Frazer’s use of funds on luxury personal purchases and trips – not to dissolve the organization. LaPierre stepped down from the organization last month, citing health reasons, with Arulanandam soon taking the reins.  The NRA has also repeatedly come under fire from critics who call the organization “racist” or say it promotes White supremacy, which Arulanandam shot down as “nothing … farther from the truth,” arguing the organization is focused on good vs. bad. “The NRA is a colorblind organization. What we do care about is good and bad. And good and bad, there’s there’s no color. There’s good people across all race, color, creed. Same as bad. What we care about are the good people. We want to empower good people and we want to make sure that the criminal element in our country pays the price. And there’s nothing racist when you draw a line between good and bad,” he said.  Following LaPierre’s departure, which took effect at the end of last month, Arulanandam said the mission of the organization has remained steadfast: defending law-abiding Americans’ rights to firearms and self-defense.  “We’ve always been the leading organization to fight for self-defense laws, hunting rights, anything firearm related, anything self-defense related. We’ve been at the tip of the spear for decades, for as long as I can remember,” he said, adding that “we have a great team in place.”  “People should judge us by record,” he said. “… 27 states now with constitutional carry – that’s like the gold standard as far as self-defense law. And we’ve done that in a relatively short period of time.”  CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY: 2023 SAW NEW MILESTONE FOR GUN RIGHTS Last year, the U.S. officially tipped as a constitutional carry majority nation, when 2023 closed out with 27 states having laws on the books allowing law-abiding residents to carry a concealed firearm without a permit, effectively eliminating the need for qualifying residents to ask the government for permission to carry.  When asked how the NRA is working to grow, especially among youths, Arulanandam pointed to their teams at the NRA who interact with the public and produce viral videos of legal gun owners that reach millions of Americans. He added, however, that the media has “refused” to report on stories highlighting how guns can save lives from criminals acts, or on the

Ashley Biden pays off thousands owed in taxes, latest filing shows

FIRST ON FOX: President Biden’s daughter, Ashley Biden, paid off thousands in taxes owed since 2015, Pennsylvania Department of Revenue filings show.  As of Jan. 3 at 12:30 a.m., the Department of Revenue updated Ashley’s docket to “satisfaction filed,” indicating the previous lien notification “should be removed from the court records” in Philadelphia County. On Dec. 18, Fox News Digital first reported Ashley’s tax delinquency after the issuance of a tax lien at the start of the month, indicating unpaid taxes totaling $4,985 plus a filing fee of $94.44, totaling $5,079. A tax lien is a legal claim imposed by the government on a property or assets to secure unpaid taxes after repeated attempts to collect. BIDEN’S DAUGHTER OWES THOUSANDS IN INCOME TAXES, LIEN DOCUMENTS SHOW On Dec. 1, the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue in Philadelphia County notified Ashley Biden that the “amount of such unpaid tax, interest, additions or penalties is a lien in favor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania upon the taxpayer’s property – real, personal, or both – as the case may be,” according to the notice. The period start date listed on the lien begins Jan. 1, 2015 – when Joe Biden was vice president in the Obama administration – and ends Jan. 1, 2021, days before he was sworn in as president. Ashley Biden’s attorney and the White House did not respond to Fox News Digital’s multiple requests for comment. BIDEN DAUGHTER ADDS TO LENGTHY FAMILY HISTORY OF TAX ISSUES Ashley worked as a social worker in the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth and Their Families from 2007 to 2012. She received her master’s degree in social work from University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice in 2010. In 2017, while working at the Delaware Center for Justice – a nonprofit criminal justice reform organization – she launched a charitable fashion brand, Livelihood. In 2019, she left her job at the Delaware Center for Justice to help her father’s presidential campaign. Garrett Ziegler, one of the board members of the nonprofit Marco Polo and former President Trump aide, told Fox News Digital in a statement Monday that “Marco Polo is pleased that Ashley has come into compliance with the law.” Ziegler, who Hunter Biden is suing for leaking the contents of his infamous laptop, first notified Fox News Digital about the tax filings. “However, to be clear, as a social worker who has had to deal with adversity and trauma from her past … and as the wife of a prominent surgeon, Ashley should have never had to deal with this — the people in her life should have done a better job of helping with her financial affairs,” he said. Ashley’s brother, Hunter Biden, meanwhile, allegedly carried out a multiyear scheme to bypass paying $1.4 million in federal taxes while living an indulgent lifestyle that included spending significant sums on escorts and illegal drugs, according to his California indictment on nine tax-related charges. MAN, WOMAN PLEAD GUILTY TO STEALING ASHLEY BIDEN DIARY, SELLING IT TO PROJECT VERITAS Special Counsel David Weiss said he “engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019, from in or about January 2017 through in or about October 15, 2020, and to evade the assessment of taxes for tax year 2018 when he filed false returns in or about February 2020,” which was in the middle of his father’s presidential campaign. Weiss added that in “furtherance of that scheme,” Hunter Biden “subverted the payroll and tax withholding process of his own company, Owasco, PC by withdrawing millions” from the company “outside of the payroll and tax withholding process that it was designed to perform.” Hunter Biden had allegedly “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills,” and in 2018, “stopped paying his outstanding and overdue taxes for tax year 2015.” Fox News’ Joe Schoffstall contributed to this report.

PM Modi launches Rs 32,000-crore worth development projects in Jammu and Kashmir

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday launched multiple development projects, including for education, railway, aviation and road sectors, in Jammu and Kashmir worth over Rs 32,000 crore.

Media deem Trump the nominee, despite Haley tying him to Putin

Nikki Haley is campaigning hard, making the television rounds and ramping up her rhetoric against Donald Trump. She is fighting on her home turf – South Carolina, the state that knows her best – and yet the media are acting in many ways as if the campaign is over. That’s largely because the state’s former governor trails Trump by 22 to 36 percentage points, according to the last several South Carolina polls. RON DESANTIS ACCUSES NIKKI HALEY OF APPEALING TO ‘LIBERAL’ T-SHIRT WEARERS: ‘SHE’S POISONED THE WELL’ Haley is not only way behind Trump, she’s not closing the gap in a way that makes it a competitive contest on Saturday. And if she loses by more than 20, the pundits will view that as the final nail in her political coffin. Beyond that, I can’t think of a single state that Haley can win outright. She says she’ll continue at least through Super Tuesday, but the former president may have mathematically clinched the nomination by then, or shortly afterward. This is not a knock on Haley (though contemporaries say she burned some bridges in South Carolina). The former U.N. ambassador managed to be the last woman standing, well after Pence, DeSantis, Scott, Christie and the others dropped out. But it’s instructive to look at how she’s campaigning, and why Trump – despite his four indictments and $355 million civil fraud penalty – seems unstoppable. In a Sunday interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Haley increasingly tried to tie Trump to Vladimir Putin’s murderous tactics in the wake of the Arctic prison killing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny: “When you hear Donald Trump say in South Carolina a week ago that he would encourage Putin to invade our allies if they weren’t pulling their weight, that’s bone-chilling, because all he did in that one moment was empower Putin. And all he did in that moment was, he sided with a guy that kills his political opponents, he sided with a thug that arrests American journalists and holds them hostage, and he sided with a guy who wanted to make a point to the Russian people, don’t challenge me in the next election or this will happen to you too.” TRUMP’S NATO COMMENTS TRIGGER FIERCE MEDIA AND EUROPEAN OPPOSITION: HOW SERIOUS IS HE? What’s more, Haley told Jonathan Karl, “it’s actually pretty amazing that he – not only after making those comments that he would encourage Putin to invade NATO, but the fact that he won’t acknowledge anything with Navalny. Either he sides with Putin and thinks it’s cool that Putin killed one of his political opponents, or he just doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal.”  Trump had said he wouldn’t protect any NATO country that didn’t spend 2% of its funds on defense, and in that case he would encourage Putin and Russia to “do whatever they hell they wanted.” He has made no mention of Navalny’s death, which President Biden quickly blamed on Putin. Haley reminded viewers that if Ukraine falls, Poland or the Baltics could be next. Now think about this. If a candidate not named Trump had made comments interpreted as potentially blowing up the Atlantic alliance – drawing condemnation from top European leaders – and stayed silent when Russia’s dictator had the opposition leader killed, after a previous poisoning attempt, wouldn’t there be a political uproar? But since it is Trump, who as president had a friendly relationship with Putin, there has been scant criticism from Republicans. If Trump believes it, most of the party falls into line. It harkens back to his old 2016 line about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. Just as the Senate seemed on the verge of passing a bipartisan border bill that included aid to Ukraine and Israel, Trump torpedoed the measure by coming out against it. DEMOCRATS WIN SEAT, REPUBLICANS WIN IMPEACHMENT, TWO PRESIDENTS CLASH OVER NATO And in a FOX town hall Sunday night, Haley, who often says her ex-boss was a good president at the time, offered a more negative assessment: “There were things that he did wrong,” Haley told John Roberts. “His press conference in Helsinki, when he went and was trying to buddy up with Putin, I called him out for that. I explained that deeply in my book…how he was completely wrong. Because every time he was in the same room with him, he got weak in the knees. We can’t have a president that gets weak in the knees with Putin.” About 20 minutes after Haley used the “weak in the knees” line yesterday on “Fox & Friends,” saying Trump has “yet to say anything about Navalny’s death,” the ex-president responded on Truth Social:  “The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country. It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction.” You might have noticed the pivot, and the failure to mention Putin at all.  All this, in a nutshell, is why the press are far more interested in the veepstakes chatter surrounding Trump than in Haley’s dogged campaigning. What most of the media and other critics fail to understand is that Trump represents the majority of his party. He has remade the GOP in his own image. Most leaders, with the notable exception of the strongly pro-Ukraine Mitch McConnell, follow their leader, as do rank-and-file members afraid of a Donald-backed primary challenger. Speaker Mike Johnson admitted he consulted with Trump before declaring the border compromise DOA. Marco Rubio, who two months ago helped pass a law barring any president from withdrawing from NATO, said he had no problem with Trump’s remarks about the alliance. There are even lines that Haley won’t cross. Asked repeatedly on ABC whether she still plans to endorse Trump if he wins, as she said at the campaign’s outset, Haley kept deflecting the question. A decade ago, Haley’s pro-military and anti-Russia views would have

Australia plans to build biggest navy since World War II

Defence minister says the $7.25bn plan will increase Australian navy’s surface combatant fleet to 26 from 11. Australia has announced a decade-long plan to double its fleet of warships and boost its defence spending by an additional 11.1 billion Australian dollars ($7.25bn). Defence Minister Richard Marles said on Tuesday that the government’s plan would eventually increase the navy’s surface combatant fleet to 26 from 11, the largest since the end of World War II. He cited concerns over rising geopolitical tensions as competition between the United States, its allies and China heats up in the Asia Pacific region. Under the new plan, Marles said Australia will get six Hunter class frigates, 11 general-purpose frigates, three air warfare destroyers and six state-of-the-art surface warships that do not need to be crewed. At least some of the fleet will be armed with Tomahawk missiles capable of long-range strikes on targets deep inside enemy territory – a major deterrent capability. “It is the largest fleet that we will have since the end of the second world war,” Marles told reporters. “What is critically important to understand is that as we look forward, with an uncertain world in terms of great power contest, we’ll have a dramatically different capability in the mid-2030s to what we have now,” he added. “That is what we are planning for and that is what we are building.” The minister said the large optionally crewed surface vessels (LSOV), which can be operated remotely and are being developed by the US, will significantly boost the navy’s long-range strike capacity. The vessels could be inducted by the mid-2030s. Australia will also take steps to accelerate the procurement of 11 general-purpose frigates to replace the ageing ANZAC-class ships, with the first three to be built overseas and expected to enter service before 2030. “This decision we are making right now sees a significant increase in defence spending … and it is needed, given the complexity of the strategic circumstances that our country faces,” Marles said. The announcement – which comes amid Australian plans to procure at least three US-designed nuclear-powered submarines – would see Canberra increase its defence spending to 2.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), above the 2 percent target set by its NATO allies. Experts say that taken together, Australia is poised to develop significant naval capability. But the country’s major defence projects have long been beset by cost overruns, government U-turns, policy changes and project plans that make more sense for local job creation than defence. Michael Shoebridge, a former senior security official, told the AFP news agency that the government must overcome past errors and had “no more time to waste” as competition in the region heats up. Shoebridge said there must be a trimmed-down procurement process, otherwise, it will be a “familiar path that leads to delays, construction troubles, cost blowouts – and at the end, ships that get into service too late with systems that are overtaken by events and technological change”. Wooing specific electorates with the promise of “continuous naval shipbuilding” cannot be the priority, he said. “This will just get in the way of the actual priority: reversing the collapse of our navy’s fleet.” Adblock test (Why?)

Deepfake democracy: Behind the AI trickery shaping India’s 2024 election

New Delhi, India — As voters queued up early morning on November 30 last year to vote in legislative elections to choose the next government of the southern Indian state of Telangana, a seven-second clip started going viral on social media. Posted on X by the Congress party, which is in opposition nationally, and was in the state at the time, it showed KT Rama Rao, a leader of the Bharat Rashtra Samiti that was ruling the state, calling on people to vote in favour of the Congress. The Congress shared it widely on a range of WhatsApp groups “operated unofficially by the Congress party” according to a senior party leader who requested anonymity, it eventually ended up on the official X account of the party, viewed more than 500,000 times. It was fake. “Of course, it was AI-generated though it looks completely real,” the Congress party leader told Al Jazeera. “But a normal voter would not be able to distinguish; voting had started [when the video was posted] and there was no time for [the opposition campaign] to control the damage.” The astutely timed deepfake was a marker of the flood of AI-generated, or manipulated, media that marred a series of elections in India’s states in recent months, and that’s now threatening to fundamentally shape the country’s coming general elections. Between March and May, India’s nearly one billion voters will pick their next national government in the world’s, and history’s, biggest elections. The threats posed by deceptive AI-generated media caught the world’s attention when faked sexually explicit images of the artist Taylor Swift appeared on social media platforms in January. In November, Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s information technology minister, called deepfakes a “threat to democracy” and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has echoed those concerns. But with the increased availability of handy artificial intelligence tools, teams across India’s political parties, including Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress, are deploying deepfakes to influence voters, managers of nearly 40 recent campaigns told Al Jazeera. While several AI tools used to generate deepfakes are free, others are available on subscription for as little as 10 cents per video. ‘Creating perception’ The BJP, arguably India’s most technologically sophisticated party, has been at the forefront of using illusions for campaigning. As far back as 2012, the party used 3D hologram projections of Modi so that he could simultaneously “campaign” in dozens of places at the same time. The strategy was deployed widely during the 2014 general elections that brought Modi to power. There was little deception involved there, but in February 2020, Manoj Tiwari, a BJP member of parliament, became among the world’s first to use deepfakes for campaigning. In three videos, Tiwari addressed voters in Delhi ahead of the capital’s legislative assembly elections in Hindi, Haryanvi and English – reaching three distinct audiences in the multicultural city. Only the Hindi video was authentic: The other two were deepfakes, where AI was used to generate his voice and words and alter his expressions and lip movement to make it almost impossible to detect, just on viewing, that they were not genuine. In recent months, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which rules the southern state of Tamil Nadu, has used AI to resurrect its iconic leader M Karunanidhi from the dead, using lifelike videos of the former movie writer and veteran politician at campaign events. Now, consultants and campaign managers say the 2024 elections could turbocharge the use of deepfakes even further. “Politics is about creating perception; with AI tools [of voice and video modulation] and a click, you can turn the perception on its head in a minute,” said Arun Reddy, the national coordinator for social media at the Congress, who oversaw the party’s tech-savvy Telangana election. He added that the team was bursting with ideas to incorporate AI in campaigning, but that they didn’t have enough “trained people” to execute them all. Reddy is strengthening his team – as are other parties. “AI will have a resounding effect in creating the narrative,” Reddy told Al Jazeera. “The political AI-manipulated content will increase multifold, much more than what it ever was.” ‘Campaigns are getting weirder’ Living in the desert town of Pushkar in western India, 30-year-old Divyendra Singh Jadoun runs an AI startup, The Indian Deepfaker. Launched in October 2020, his company cloned the voice of Rajasthan state’s Congress chief ministerial candidate Ashok Gehlot for his team to send personalised messages on WhatsApp, addressing each voter by their name, during November assembly elections. The Indian Deepfaker is currently working with the team of Sikkim’s chief minister Prem Singh Tamang for holograms during upcoming campaigns. Sikkim is one of India’s smallest states in the northeast, perched on the Himalayas between India, Bhutan and China. That’s the clean, official work, he said. But in recent months, he has been swamped by what he describes as “unethical requests” from political campaigns. “The political parties reach out indirectly via international numbers on WhatsApp, burner handles on Instagram, or connect on Telegram,” Jadoun told Al Jazeera in a phone interview. In the November election, his company denied more than 50 such requests, he said, where potential clients wanted videos and audio altered to target political opponents, including with pornography. As a startup, Jadoun said his company is particularly careful to avoid any legal trouble. “And it is a very unethical use of AI,” he added. “But I know many people who are doing it for very low prices and are readily available now.” During the election campaigns for the state legislatures of Madhya Pradesh in central India and Rajasthan in the west last November, police registered multiple cases for deepfake videos targeting senior politicians including Modi, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Kailash Vijayvargia (all BJP) and Kamal Nath (Congress). The deepfake content production is often outsourced to private consulting firms, which rely on social media networks for distribution, spearheaded by WhatsApp. A political consultant who requested anonymity told Al Jazeera that numbers of ordinary citizens with no public profile are registered

China’s C919 jetliner showcased at Singapore Airshow

Biennial air show opens to the public for the first time since the onset of the COVID-pandemic in 2020. China’s C919 jetliner is being showcased at Asia’s biggest airshow, as its Beijing-backed manufacturer seeks buyers for the country’s first homegrown passenger jet. Chinese state-run aerospace firm COMAC has touted the C919 as a challenger to the A320 and the 737 MAX, manufactured, respectively, by long-standing industry leaders Airbus and Boeing. The C919 made its inaugural flight outside China on Sunday at a media event ahead of the Singapore Airshow, which opened to the public for the first time since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. China’s Tibet Airlines said on the sidelines of the show on Tuesday that it had finalised an order for 40 of the narrow-body jets, which are designed to carry up to 192 passengers and travel up to 3,500 miles (5,644km). The C919, which has been flying commercially in China since May, has so far only been authorised to fly in its home country. The biennial air show, which has more than 1,000 companies from some 50 countries in attendance this year, comes as Asia’s aviation sector is bouncing back from several years of dire business conditions due to the pandemic. International air traffic recovered to nearly 89 percent of pre-pandemic levels in 2023, with the remaining gap mostly the result of China’s slow exit from pandemic curbs, according to International Air Transport Association (IATA) data. Asia-Pacific airlines saw the biggest rise among regions, posting a 126 percent rise in traffic compared to 2022, according to the IATA. Other aircraft expected to be displayed in Singapore include Airbus’s A350-1000 and the US Air Force’s B-52 Stratofortress. US-based Boeing is not presenting any commercial aircraft as it grapples with the fallout of January’s near-catastrophe in which a 737 MAX 9 Alaska Airlines jet lost a door-sized section of the fuselage in mid-flight. Russian companies that attended previous shows, including Russian Helicopters and Irkut, are not participating this year amid the war in Ukraine. Adblock test (Why?)

Maharashtra government approves Bill to extend 10% reservation to Marathas

The decision to convene a special session was prompted by Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange Patil, who is on a hunger strike at Antarwali Saarati village in Jalna district.