Geo Group, an Ice partner, is moving at ‘unprecedented speed’ to build out its monitoring, executive chair says
The Geo Group, the largest single private contractor to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), said it is building out its surveillance business to be able to monitor hundreds of thousands or millions more immigrants than it already does.
The Geo Group, a private prison corporation and parent company of BI Inc, has contracted with Ice for nearly 20 years to manage the agency’s electronic monitoring program. It currently tracks approximately 186,000 immigrants using devices such as ankle monitors, smart watches and a facial recognition app, according to public Ice data. Due to increasing demand from Donald Trump’s administration, which has promised mass deportations, company executives said that they expect that number to grow past its previous peak of 370,000 to 450,000 immigrants within the next year. The remarks were made during the company’s fourth quarter earnings call on Thursday morning.
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© Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters
© Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters
Canadian event loses three sponsors who also do business in the US to avoid being seen as supporting LGBTQ+ rights
Pride Toronto, one of the largest celebrations of LGTBQ+ people in North America, is reeling from the loss of three major sponsors who have pulled funding after Donald Trump’s purge of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes in the US.
Kojo Modeste, the executive director of the Canadian event said that the sponsors who also do business in the US are seeking to avoidbeing seen as supporting LGBTQ+ rights.
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© Photograph: Alamy
© Photograph: Alamy
After the announcement of a follow-up festival in Mexico, tourism and local officials have denied any knowledge of its existence
When tickets to the second Fyre festival went on sale this week, there was just one concrete detail: it would take place on Isla Mujeres, a tropical island off Cancún, Mexico.
But the festival seems to be repeating its own history as an improvised disaster after the local government in Isla Mujeres denied knowing anything about it.
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© Photograph: marako85/Getty Images/iStockphoto
© Photograph: marako85/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Manchester City have been accused of an Enron-style financial deception by La Liga’s president, Javier Tebas.
Tebas said the Spanish league filed a complaint against City to the European Commission in the summer of 2023, which he says the Commission is investigating. City have not commented on Tebas’s allegations but club sources are aware of them, and strongly refute them.
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© Photograph: Oscar J Barroso/AFP7/REX/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Oscar J Barroso/AFP7/REX/Shutterstock
Amazon Web Services enters emerging race against tech giants days after Microsoft revealed its quantum chip
Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Thursday announced Ocelot, its first-generation quantum computing chip, as it enters the race against fellow tech giants in harnessing the experimental technology.
Developed by the AWS Center for Quantum Computing at the California Institute of Technology, the new chip can reduce the costs of implementing quantum error correction by up to 90%, according to the company.
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© Photograph: Courtesy Amazon Web Services/Reuters
© Photograph: Courtesy Amazon Web Services/Reuters
Users complained of ‘not safe for work’ videos in feeds despite some having enabled setting to filter such content
Meta Platforms said on Thursday it had resolved an error that flooded the personal Reels feeds of Instagram users with violent and graphic videos worldwide.
It was not immediately clear how many people were affected by the glitch. Meta’s comments followed a wave of complaints on social media about violent and “not safe for work” content in Reels feeds, despite some users having enabled the “sensitive content control” setting meant to filter such material.
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© Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images
© Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images
Israeli team heads to Cairo as end of deal’s first phase approaches, but big differences remain between two sides
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has announced that he has instructed a delegation to depart for Egypt for talks on continuing the ceasefire in the war with Hamas in Gaza, two days before the first stage of the fragile agreement expires.
The Israeli team is scheduled to leave Cairo, Egypt’s capital, late on Thursday, a statement from the prime minister’s office said. The announcement was made a day after Hamas handed over the bodies of four Israeli hostages, the last due to be released under the terms of the six-week first phase of the deal agreed in January.
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© Photograph: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP
© Photograph: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP
About 112 people held in immigration center deep in the jungle are unable to communicate with their attorneys
Lawyers for immigrants from around the world who were deported from the United States and moved to a remote jungle camp in Panama say they have been unable to communicate with their clients since they arrived there.
About 112 deported people are being held in the “San Vicente” immigration center deep in the dense jungle that separates Panama from Colombia, according to Panamanian authorities. Their future is uncertain as they wait to see whether they will be granted asylum in Panama or elsewhere.
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© Photograph: Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images
Trial-monitoring committee in Dakota Access lawsuit have shared concerns of judicial bias and due-process violations
More than half the jurors selected to hear a case brought by a major energy company against Greenpeace have ties to the fossil fuel industry, and most had negative views of anti-pipeline protests or groups that oppose the use of fossil fuels.
The closely watched trial against Greenpeace in Mandan, North Dakota, showcased the difficulty in seating a jury in oil country, where many make their living in the industry. Greenpeace again on Wednesday sought to move the trial to another venue in the state.
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© Photograph: Terray Sylvester/Reuters
© Photograph: Terray Sylvester/Reuters
Airports want new runways that would allow them to massively increase the number of flights in and out of capital
The government has signalled its backing for expansion at UK airports. But what are the next steps for the two biggest, London’s Gatwick and Heathrow?
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© Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
© Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
Dream of going from LA to San Francisco in three hours is past deadline, over budget, and after 16 years, incomplete
Californians know their state is a punching bag for Donald Trump’s administration, a “paradise lost” that the president intends to wrest back from the “radical left lunatics”. But when Trump took aim at the state’s much-delayed high-speed rail project earlier this month, saying it was “the worst managed project” he’d ever seen, some of those leftwingers – and more moderate voters – found themselves in the unusual position of conceding he might have a point.
California’s beautiful dream of a bullet train whisking passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in less than three hours has been more than 16 years in the making, approved by voters but dogged by so many delays, broken deadlines and cost overruns that it has only just reached the initial stages of laying down track.
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© Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
Abdullah Öcalan’s declaration paves way for end to 40-year conflict between militant Kurdish groups and Turkish state
The jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) has called on the group to disarm and dissolve, a major development that paves the way towards ending the 40-year conflict between militant Kurdish groups and the Turkish state and has far-reaching implications for the rest of the Middle East.
“I am making a call for the laying down of arms and I take on the historical responsibility for this call,” Abdullah Öcalan was quoted as saying in a letter read out by political allies in Istanbul. “All groups must lay down their arms and the PKK must dissolve itself.”
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© Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP
© Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP
The London-born US actor on having Richard Attenborough as a mentor, why she loves starring in horror films, and hanging out with the Killers on the set of The OC
What was it like working with Richard Attenborough in Closing the Ring, Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense, and Hugh Grant in Notting Hill? Also why the obsession with horror films? MrSOBaldrick
Richard I loved because he was like a mentor to me. He’s probably single-handedly done more for my career than anyone else. Just taking me under his wing, putting me in Rada, especially coming off the back of my crazy run on television. I couldn’t tell you how he found me. I don’t think he ever really told me.
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© Photograph: Zach Hilty/BFA.com/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Zach Hilty/BFA.com/Shutterstock
Fresh out of jail, does it matter that his 2017 festival was one of the biggest social-media-driven deceptions of our time? Not a bit
“Since 2016, Fyre has been the most talked about festival in the world,” organiser Billy McFarland told a US broadcaster when tickets for Fyre 2 went on sale this week. McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison for wire fraud in 2018, related to his organisation of the first Fyre (he served only four). Whatever you think about the first Fyre – with its limp cheese sandwiches, its disaster-relief-tent accommodation, the absence of advertised headliners, the $26m of unpaid debt, the rats (were the rats influencer hyperbole? Perhaps, but on the other hand the festival happened on the parking lot of an abandoned resort development, and where else is a rat supposed to live?), you have to admit it lived up to one promise: it was legendary.
Wire fraud is any swindling that happens electronically, whether by text, email, phone or social media. It’s so easy to fall on the wrong side of that – you could commit it just by sending a round robin, asking for a million dollars. Really, all that is standing between so many of us and jail is the sucker who will give us a million dollars. It’s really the suckers who belong in prison, if you think about it. Anyway, back to McFarland. “Obviously, a lot of that [talk] has been negative … but if it’s done well, I think Fyre has the chance to be this annual festival that really takes over the festival industry,” he said.
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© Photograph: Netflix
© Photograph: Netflix
Trachtenberg, who has died aged 39, was the fortunate child actor: successfully pivoting into an adult career peppered with millennial hits
Michelle Trachtenberg, who has died aged 39, is most famous for two very different roles in two very different shows that both loom large in the millennial consciousness. She was a fifth season addition to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, taking on the role of Buffy’s mysterious sister Dawn, a complicated, maturing young woman who came to occupy a central role in the series’ mythology. Four years later, she began a recurring role on Gossip Girl, as the Cruella-squared pot-stirrer Georgina Sparks, whom Trachtenberg once described as “basically the evil bitch from hell”.
With their very different aesthetics and intended audiences, Trachtenberg’s two hit series speak to very different parts of her fanbase: Buffy has a campy, B-movie charm, whereas Gossip Girl is as slick and indulgent as a delicious dessert. As those two shows indicate, her career defied easy generalisation – what to say of the woman who had her breakout role aged 11 in Harriet the Spy, before moving on to the racy teen raunchfest EuroTrip and the wholesome Disney banger Ice Princess?
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© Photograph: Landmark Media/Alamy
© Photograph: Landmark Media/Alamy
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