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Florida begins work on ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

breaches at Job Corps centres. The association and other plaintiffs claimed the department does not have the power to dismantle a programme established and funded by Congress. Federal law allows the department to close individual Job Corps centres only after seeking public comment and notifying local members of Congress, according to the lawsuit. Ending Job Corps would have disastrous consequences for participants, contractors and communities where centres are located, the plaintiffs said. Carter added that the administration lacked the authority to shut down the programme without congressional approval. “Once Congress has passed legislation stating that a programme such as Job Corps must exist, and set aside funding for that programme, the department is not free to do as it pleases, it is required to enforce the law as intended by Congress.“ – Reuters Meta wins AI training copyright lawsuit SAN FRANCISCO: A US judge on Wednesday handed Meta a victory over authors who accused the tech giant of violating copyright law by training language model Llama’s artificial intelligence (AI) on their creations without permission. District court judge Vince Chhabria ruled that Meta’s use of the works to train its AI model was “transformative” enough to constitute “fair use” under copyright law. The ruling came with a caveat that the authors could have pitched a winning argument that by training powerful generative AI with copyrighted works, tech firms are creating a tool that could let a sea of users compete with them in the literary marketplace. “No matter how transformative (generative AI) training may be, it is hard to imagine that it can be fair use to use copyrighted books to develop a tool to make billions or trillions of dollars while enabling the creation of a potentially endless stream of competing works that could significantly harm the market for those books,“ said Chhabria. Tremendous amounts of data are needed to train large language models powering generative AI. Musicians, book authors, visual artists and news publications have sued various AI companies that used their data without permission or payment. AI companies generally defend their practices by claiming fair use, arguing that training AI on large datasets fundamentally transforms the original content and is necessary for innovation. “We appreciate today’s decision from the court,“ a Meta spokesperson said. “Open-source AI models are powering transformative innovations, productivity and creativity for individuals and companies, and fair use of copyright material is a vital legal framework for building this transformative technology.” The group of authors had sued Meta for downloading pirated copies of their works and using them to train the open-source Llama AI, according to court documents. Books involved in the suit included Sarah Silverman’s comic memoir “The Bedwetter” and Junot Diaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,“ the documents showed. “This ruling does not stand for the proposition that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful,“ said Chhabria. “It stands only for the proposition that these plaintiffs made the wrong arguments and failed to develop a record in support of the right one.” – AFP

MIAMI: Florida began construction this week on a detention centre surrounded by fierce reptiles and cypress swamps, an “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Everglades wetlands, as part of US President Donald Trump’s expansion of deportations of undocumented migrants. The chosen site, an abandoned airfield in the heart of a sprawling network of mangrove forests, imposing marshes and “rivers of grass” that form the conservation area, will house large tents and beds for 1,000 “criminal aliens”, according to state Attorney-General James Uthmeier. The 78sq km area “presents an efficient, low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility because you do not need to invest that much in the perimeter,” he said in a video on X showing the area and clips of migrant arrests. o Detention centre at abandoned airfield amid mangrove forests to house 1,000 ‘criminal aliens’ PARIS: Two people have died in France amid severe storms that swept the country following a spell of extreme heat, German Press Agency (dpa) reported, citing local media and authorities. Gusts of wind reached up to 120kph, prompting a severe weather warning for 57 departments. Emergency services were heavily engaged in response to incidents as over 100,000 households lost power temporarily, civil defence officials said. Heavy rain flooded many metro stations and caused traffic problems. In just 20 minutes, the temperature in Paris dropped by 11°C. – Bernama-dpa U.S. TO CREATE NEW MILITARY ZONES AT BORDER WASHINGTON: The Pentagon will create two new military zones along the border with Mexico, US officials said on Wednesday, a move that allows troops to temporarily detain migrants or trespassers. A new “National Defense Area” will be created covering about 402km of the Rio Grande river in Texas and administered as a part of Joint Base San Antonio, according to the Air Force. US officials said the other military zone would be administered as a part of the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, Arizona. – Reuters GLOBAL CO2 EMISSIONS REACH RECORD HIGH LONDON: Global carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector hit a record high for the fourth year running last year as fossil fuel use kept rising even as renewable energy reached a record high, the Energy Institute annual statistical review of world energy showed yesterday. The report figures highlight the challenge of trying to wean the world economy off fossil fuels. Last year was the hottest year on record, with global temperatures exceeding 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era for the first time. – Reuters SEVERE STORMS BATTER FRANCE, TWO DEAD

local media. The plan has raised hackles among critics of Trump’s immigration crackdown, which recently sparked anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles and other American cities. “Turning the Everglades into a taxpayer-funded detention camp for migrants is a grotesque mix of cruelty and political theatre,” former department spokesperson Alex Howard told the Miami Herald . “You do not solve immigration by disappearing people into tents guarded by gators. “You solve it with lawful processing, humane infrastructure and actual policy, not by staging a US$450 million stunt in the middle of hurricane season.” The project is also controversial because of its environmental impact on a subtropical ecosystem that is home to more than 2,000 species of animals and plants, and is the site of costly conservation and rehabilitation programmes. Friends of the Everglades, a non-profit group that is instrumental in helping preserve and protect the wetlands, has criticised the project in a letter to DeSantis, saying construction of the centre “poses an unacceptable and unnecessary risk to on-site wetlands”. – AFP

“If people get out, there is not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide,” he said. Uthmeier described what he is calling Alligator Alcatraz as a “one-stop shop to carry out Trump’s mass deportation agenda”. Such a project fits into a broader series of harsh optics that officials hope would discourage migrants from coming to the United States. During searing summer months, the site provides an inhospitable and dangerous landscape filled with reptiles and mosquitos. The large southeastern state governed by Republican Ron DeSantis boasts of collaborating closely with the Trump administration on immigration enforcement. Since Trump’s return to the White House in January, his administration has enlisted local authorities to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ramp up arrests of undocumented migrants. Uthmeier said the new facility would be up and running between 30 and 60 days after construction begins. It is expected to cost roughly US$450 million (RM1.9 billion) per year to operate, with the state likely to apply for funding from the federal government, Homeland Security Department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told

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DEFEATED DISSENT ... A protester from the Extinction Rebellion group being taken off the road after blocking the street near the Nato summit in The Hague on Wednesday. – AFPPIC

Block extended on bid to close job training programme MANHATTAN: A US judge on Wednesday blocked President Donald Trump’s The White House and Labour Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling.

administration from shutting down Job Corps, a major residential job training programme for low-income youth. US district judge Andrew Carter in Manhattan said the abrupt shuttering of the 60-year-old programme by the Labour Department without authorisation from Congress is likely illegal. The ruling came in a lawsuit by the National Job Corps Association, a trade group for contractors who operate Job Corps sites, and some of its members. Carter issued a preliminary injunction stopping the department from ending the programme, pending the outcome of the lawsuit, extending an emergency ruling he issued in June. The association said the decision was “a lifeline for the tens of thousands of young people whose futures depend on the training, support and opportunities Job Corps provides”.

Job Corps was created by Congress in 1964 and allows people aged between 16 and 24 from disadvantaged backgrounds to obtain high school diplomas or an equivalent, vocational certificates and licences, and on-the-job training. The programme serves about 25,000 people at 120 Job Corps centres run by contractors and has a US$1.7 billion (RM7.18 billion) budget. Shuttering the programme is a small piece of a broader effort by Trump and his appointees to shrink the federal bureaucracy, including by getting rid of some offices and agencies altogether. The department announced the end of the programme in May, saying it was not cost-effective, had a low graduation rate and was not placing participants in stable jobs. It also said there had been thousands of instances of violence, drug use and security