(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Tuesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
Texas 6, Pittsburgh 1
Milwaukee 6, Houston 0
San Francisco 4, Minnesota 3
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Chi White Sox 4, Cleveland 2
Toronto 20, Tampa Bay 1
Kansas City 4, Detroit 1
NY Yankees 6, Baltimore 5
LA Angels 4, Boston 0
Seattle 3, Oakland 2
NATIONAL LEAGUE
St. Louis 8, Cincinnati 5
Arizona 4, Philadelphia 3
LA Dodgers 8, Atlanta 1
San Diego 7, Washington 4
Chi Cubs 7, NY Mets 2
Colorado 5, Miami 4
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION PLAYOFFS
Boston 116, Miami 99 (Miami leads 3-1)
NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE PLAYOFFS
Vegas 4, Dallas 0 (Dallas leads 3-0)
WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Connecticut 88, Washington 81
Atlanta 83, Minnesota 77
(NEW YORK) — Verified accounts on Twitter may have contributed to the viral spread of a false claim that an explosion was unfolding at the Pentagon.
Around 8:42 AM on Monday, a verified account on Twitter, labeling itself as a media and news organization, shared a fake image of smoke billowing near a white building they said was the Pentagon. The tweet’s caption also misrepresented the Pentagon’s located.
No such incident took place, the Arlington County Fire Department later said on Twitter. The Pentagon, the headquarters building of the U.S. Department of Defense, is located in Arlington County, Virginia.
A Pentagon spokesperson also told ABC News that no explosion had occurred.
But throughout the morning, the fake image and misleading caption picked up steam on Twitter. Cyabra, a social analysis firm, analyzed the online conversation and found that roughly 3,785 accounts had mentioned the falsehoods, dozens of these were verified.
“The checkmark may well have contributed to giving the account the appearance of authenticity, which would have helped it with achieved virality,” Jules Gross, a solutions engineer at Cyabra, told ABC News.
Some of these accounts were verified, but they didn’t appear to be coordinated, according to Cyabra.
“The bad news is that it appears that just a single account was able to achieve virality and cause maximum chaos,” Gross added.
While ABC News has not been able to determine the source of the content, nor confirm that the original tweet was the 8:42 tweet, the image contains many hallmarks of being generated using a text-to-image AI tool.
There are many visual inconsistencies in the image, including a streetlamp that appears to be both in front and behind the metal barrier. Not to mention that the building itself doesn’t look like the Pentagon.
Text-to-image tools powered by artificial intelligence allow users to input a natural language description, called a prompt, to get an image in return.
In the last few months, these tools have become increasingly sophisticated and accessible, leading to an explosion of hyperrealistic content fooling users online.
The original false tweet was eventually deleted, but not before it was amplified by a number of accounts on Twitter bearing the blue check that was once reserved for verified accounts, but which can now be purchased by any user.
ABC News could not immediately reach a spokesperson for Twitter to request comment.
What are the solutions?
“Today’s AI hoax of the Pentagon is a harbinger of what is to come,” explained Truepic CEO Jeff McGregor, who says his company’s technology can add a layer of transparency to content posted online.
Truepic, a founding member of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, has developed a camera technology that captures, signs, and seals critical details in every photo and video, such as time, date, and location.
The company also created tools that would allow users to hover over a piece of AI-generated content to find out how it was fabricated. In April, they published the first “transparent deepfake” to showcase how the technology works.
While some companies have adopted the C2PA technology, it’s now up to social media platforms to make that information available to their users.
“This is an open-source technology that lets everyone attach metadata to their images to show that they created an image, when and where it was created, and what changes were made to it along the way,” Dana Roa, general counsel and chief trust officer at Adobe, told ABC News. “This allows people to prove what’s real.”
Alterations like if an image was cropped or filtered would be displayed, but the user would also be able to select how much data they make available to the public.
The user would be able to select how much data they make available to the public.
ABC News could not immediately reach a spokesperson for Twitter to request comment.
Both state and local law enforcement were provided a written briefing Monday by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an organization dedicated to countering extremism, hate and disinformation, with details on the incident.
“Security and law enforcement officials are increasingly concerned there’s an increased concern in AI-generated information operations intended to undermine credibility in government, stoke fear or even incite violence,” said John Cohen, an ABC News contributor and former acting undersecretary for intelligence.
“Digital content provenance will help mitigate these events by scaling transparency and authenticity in visual content by empowering users and creators,” added McGregor.
(FLORIDA) — Police in Florida are looking for a missing man who friends say was last seen likely going out for a run three days ago.
Makuach Yak, 31, a youth basketball coach from Delray Beach, was supposed to coach on Saturday but was nowhere to be found, his friend and business partner told ABC West Palm Beach affiliate WPBF.
“He’s very responsible,” his friend, Tate VanRoekel, told the station. “If he says he’s gonna do something, he’s gonna do it.”
Home security footage shared with WPBF recorded Yak in his front yard around 6:30 a.m. Saturday in a purple shirt and black shorts, the station reported.
VanRoekel told WPBF that Yak’s wallet, keys, cellphone and Apple Watch were “all on the counter, just sitting there.”
The Delray Beach Police Department said in a missing person post on social media that Yak had walked away from his home in Delray Beach on Saturday and “most likely was wearing workout clothes.”
In the days since he was reported missing, friends have been knocking on doors and organizing searches for Yak throughout Delray Beach, a city on Florida’s east coast located between West Palm Beach and Boca Raton.
“I’ve been looking through alleyways,” VanRoekel told WPBF. “I’ve been looking underneath bridges, in wooded areas, abandoned houses, anything, anywhere.”
Yak’s cousin, Diew Malou, has also been involved in the search efforts, WPBF reported.
“We’re just trying to make sure that he’s safe,” Malou told WPBF.
“We just miss him,” Malou added. “If we can find where he’s at, if anybody could help us, that would be great.”
A police spokesperson told ABC News Tuesday evening there were no updates in the case and that Yak, a native of South Sudan, remains missing.
“We are urging the public to call us if they see someone matching his description,” Delray Beach Police spokesperson Ted White said.
Police said Yak is around 6 foot 4 and weighs 165 pounds. Anyone with information is asked to call the Delray Beach Police Department at 561-243-7800.
(NEW YORK) — A U.S. nonprofit created after a school shooting is helping troops in Ukraine learn crucial medical care — and some soldiers on the ground credit the new skill set with saving lives.
Stop the Bleed, a nonprofit collaboration from the American College of Surgeons formed in the aftermath of the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, is training Ukrainian soldiers and giving kits that could save lives to troops fighting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Dr. Roxolana Horbowyj, a Philadelphia-based surgeon, has been teaching Stop the Bleed directly to people in Ukraine via Zoom. Horbowyj said she used to teach the techniques in person in Ukraine before the war started but faced challenges when students did not have tourniquets. Now, she instructs soldiers about how to use everyday items to stanch bleeding.
“We use a sock-like scarf that’s meter by meter, a spoon and a keyring, and they’re very specific steps of what to do. And it works,” said Horbowyj, who is of Ukrainian descent.
The nonprofit also released a YouTube video in Ukrainian to train those who could not be trained in person or virtually.
A Ukrainian soldier who survived in Bakhmut for a month said that the skills from Stop the Bleed were invaluable.
“[The skills] even saved my life sometimes. … If I am writing to you now, then I was successful in them,” said the soldier.
The soldier asked ABC News not to share his or her identity due to safety concerns.
Dr. Aaron Epstein, the founder of the non-governmental organization Global Surgical and Medical Support Group which partners with Stop the Bleed, agreed that the work is critical, saying he’s heard anecdotally that hundreds of trainees have saved lives amid the conflict. treated some of the injured in Ukraine and educated medical personnel on the frontlines.
“These people probably could have left and fled to Europe, but knowing full well that they had some level of medical knowledge as med students or residents chose to stay and try and learn more and kind of that higher level [medical training] to help their fellow Ukrainian citizens,” said Epstein, whose mission is to train those in war zones.
Stop the Bleed distributed bleeding control equipment, including 50,000 combat application tourniquets, after receiving $99,000 in donations. The organization has trained more than 20,000 Ukrainians as of January, according to its website.
But the work comes with risks, including discovery of the new resources by Russian forces.
“They’re much more muted and much more careful — I know they can’t always speak,” Horbowyj said of her more recent visits to train troops. “Some of the classes that we had we might have to take a pause because somebody’s bomb alarm went off.”
Epstein said his team was targeted by a drone in Ukraine, but luckily lost it in a neighboring building.
“It’s just particularly heinous when they deliberately target someone who is trying to help someone else. It just is kind of barbaric,” said Epstein.
Horbowyj said that ambulances and even medics are often targeted.
“The medics will pull someone out and be you know, sheltered behind a rock or something, a drone with a grenade and come find them and drop a grenade on them too,” said Horbowyj.
Epstein said that seeing the atrocities has made him more motivated to help Ukrainians, but also made him more grateful for life in the U.S.
“Whenever I hear med students or residents say, ‘Oh man, I’m so stressed out. I didn’t get my six hours of sleep last night.’ Well, at least you don’t have the Russians coming here to kill you tomorrow,” said Epstein.
Epstein said that his next step is to provide more surgical relief, training and support. But, he noted, the most important thing is “the relief of being there for people.”
Horbowyj told ABC News she hopes to provide frontline medic training in person.
May is National Stop the Bleed Month, which encourages people to learn how to stop bleeding before first responders arrive.
While Ukrainian officials have released very little information on military casualties, there have been an estimated 22,734 civilian casualties including 8,490 deaths and 14,244 people injured since Russia invaded in February 2022, the United Nations said in April.
(NEW YORK) — Netflix announced Tuesday that it will begin to send emails to members who are sharing their account information outside of their households in the U.S.
“A Netflix account is for use by one household,” the streaming company said in a blog post.
Account members who subscribed to standard or premium plans, which cost $15.50 to $20 per month, will be allowed to share their password outside their household for an additional $7.99 per month, according to the company.
In April, Netflix stated during its first quarter earnings call that it will end the sharing of passwords in the U.S. and other countries by the end of the second quarter in June.
The company said that households will still be able to enjoy entertainment “at home, on the go, and] on holiday” through features like Transfer Profile and Manage Access and Devices.
“We recognize that our members have many entertainment choices. It’s why we continue to invest heavily in a wide variety of new films and TV shows,” said part of a statement in the blog post.
The streaming giant first announced a crackdown on password sharing last year after the company reported a decline in subscribers for the first time in more than a decade amid an increase in competition.
“This is an important transition for us, and so we’re working hard to make sure that we do it well and as thoughtfully as we can,” Gregory Peters, the CEO of Netflix, said during the April earnings call.
Dave Grohl is featured in a new documentary about famed Australian concert promoter Michael Gudinski.
The film, titled Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story, features interviews with the Foo Fighters frontman, as well as artists Bruce Springsteen, Garbage‘s Shirley Manson, Vance Joy and Ed Sheeran sharing their thoughts on Gudinski’s impact. Through his Mushroom Group company, Gudinski helped foster the career of many Australian artists and bring international musicians Down Under.
“I imagine being a rock promoter as the biggest f****** nightmare,” Grohl says in the Egotrailer. “There has to be a reason why he did it.”
According to The Music Network, Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story will premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival August 10, before opening in theaters in Australia on August 31. There’s no word on a U.S. theatrical or streaming release yet.
Foo Fighters performed at Australia’s GMHBA Stadium in March 2022, just days after Gudinski passed away at age 68. During the show, which marked the first full-capacity stadium concert in Australia headlined by an international artist since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Grohl paid tribute to Gudinski, while Taylor Hawkins‘ drum kit featured a photo of him.
On Tuesday, Netflix released the teaser to Skull Island, the animated spinoff of the “Monsterverse” movies that kicked off with 2014’s Godzilla.
The snippet of the anime shows a group of humans marooned on the mysterious, monster-filled home of King Kong, tangling with its nasty inhabitants.
The Hollywood Reporter says Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem voice star Nicolas Cantu will play Charlie, one of the marooned; the cast also includes Law & Order veteran Benjamin Bratt as Cap, The Duff‘s Mae Whitman playing Annie and The Tomorrow War‘s Betty Gilpin as Irene.
While Celine Dion is taking time out of the spotlight to deal with her diagnosis of Stiff Person syndrome, she’s also growing her bank account. The real estate website Dirt reports she’s just sold her Las Vegas mansion for $30 million.
Celine bought the place in the Summerlin neighborhood of Las Vegas for $9.2 million in 2017. The deal was private; it’s not clear if the singer ever actually lived in the home. The 31,000-square-foot home on 1.4 acres overlooks a golf course. It has four bedrooms and 12 bathrooms, plus a swimming pool, spa and a huge underground garage.
According to Architectural Digest, Celine still owns an estate in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson, which she bought for $5 million in 2003. She previously owned a mansion in Paris, an estate in Florida and property in her native Quebec, Canada.
Celine is scheduled to resume her Courage tour in August, but of course, that all depends on her ability to perform.
In a touching new article in AARP The Magazine, Jeff Bridges speaks candidly about his battle with lymphoma, which he revealed in 2020, and a subsequent fight with COVID-19.
Bridges recalls he was on a pandemic break of shooting his FX show The Old Man when he noticed something was wrong. “I was doing some exercises while on the ground and felt what seemed like a bone in my stomach. I thought to myself, Hmm. But it didn’t hurt or anything,” he explained, so he put off seeing a doctor.
He later found out he had lymphoma and a 9-by-12-inch cancerous tumor near his stomach.
While being treated with chemotherapy, his immune system was suppressed and he contracted COVID. “Cancer was nothing compared to the COVID,” the actor recalled, explaining he spent five weeks in the hospital.
“I was in surrender mode,” he admitted. “I’d say to myself, ‘Everybody dies, and this is me dying.'”
He explained, “I fought by surrendering, which is not the same as giving up … What I really felt at the time was love. … So what I did was more like giving in to love, you know?”
Bridges said after leaving the hospital he set “really small goals.”
“At first, they’d say, ‘How long can you stand?’ For a while, my record was 45 seconds before I’d collapse. And then they were saying: ‘Oh, look, you’re standing for a minute! That’s so cool, now can you walk five feet?'” he recalls.
He met a goal of walking his daughter Hayley down the aisle in August 2021; that September, he announced his cancer was in remission.
Bridges, who feared he’d never work again, returned to finish shooting The Old Man in October 2021, calling it “like a dream.”
The mass in his stomach is now the size “of a marble,” Bridges said, and he’s about to start work on season 2 of the spy drama.
(OHIO) — Two inmates, including one convicted of murdering two people, have escaped from an Ohio prison, authorities said.
The Allen County Sheriff’s Office warned residents on Tuesday to “be aware and use caution” after the two men escaped from the Allen-Oakwood Correctional Institution in Lima.
“If you see either inmate please DO NOT APPROACH,” the sheriff’s office said on social media. “Immediately call 911.”
The inmates were identified by the sheriff’s office as Bradley Gillespie, 50, and James Lee, 47.
Gillespie was convicted of murdering a man and woman in 2016 and sentenced to 32 years to life in prison, according to Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction online records. He is described by authorities as being 200 pounds and bald with blue eyes.
Lee was convicted in 2021 of charges including burglary, safecracking and breaking and entering and was serving at least 20 years in prison, state records show. He is described by authorities as being 300 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes.
No other information was immediately available on the escape.
