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Showing posts with label AFP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AFP. Show all posts

Tuesday, 8 March 2016

How Google's Neural Network Hopes To Beat A 'Go' World Champion

South Korean Go champion Lee Sedol (right) poses with Google DeepMind head Demis Hassabis. On Wednesday, Sedol will begin a five-match series against a computer


'Dentist Of Horror' Allegedly Mutilated Scores Of Patients In France


Dutch dentist Jacobus Van Nierop in his dental office in Chateau-Chinon, France, in 2009.

The Dutch dentist was initially welcomed to the rural French town of Chateau-Chinon, which had been without a dental care provider for two years.
Then the horror stories started.
Now Jacobus Van Nierop is standing trial on charges of aggravated assault and insurance fraud, after scores of patients said he caused them injuries since arriving in town in 2008, Agence France-Presse reports. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to as many as 10 years in prison and fined up to $165,000, according to AFP.
The Associated Press has this account from a woman who said she was treated by the "Dentist of Horror," as he has been dubbed in French media:
"One patient, Sylviane Boulesteix, has said she was unexpectedly summoned to the dental office in central-eastern France in May 2012. Without warning, the dentist pulled eight of her teeth out and immediately fixed dentures on her raw gums. For three hours, the elderly woman says she sat gushing blood.
"In the following days, she says Van Nierop refused to relieve her pain. A judicial expert later described a 'cruel and perverse' man whose incompetence made Boulesteix lose several health teeth, go through trauma and suffer irreversible damage to her mouth."

The town of Chateau-Chinon, where Van Nierop is accused of mutilating dozens of patients

According to AFP, some patients said they would wake to find notes asking them to come back for further treatment:
" 'Every time, he would give us what he called 'a little prick' and we were asleep, knocked out,' said Nicole Martin, a retired teacher who lost several teeth to abscesses caused by the horrific operations.
" 'When it was over, we would find a Post-it note saying to come back for an appointment the next day or the day after,' she added."
Martin set up a victims' group to press charges that grew to more than 120 members, according to AFP.
Van Nierop, 51, has said he "suffers from 'psychological problems' including gender identity issues and suicidal tendencies," AFP reports.
He had a blanket over his head when he arrived today at the courthouse in the nearby city of Nevers, AFP reports. He has been incarcerated for the past 18 months.
"What my clients and I expect are explanations," Charles Joseph-Oudin, who is representing some of the victims, tells AFP. "To understand how Mr. Van Nierop could have acted in such a way for so long, how things could have become so bad. Today, we have no explanations. Understanding is the first step of the victims' healing process."
According to the AP, the defendant has "refused to answer questions during the investigation, saying only that the oral health of the people in the region was 'deplorable.' "
Van Nierop was arrested in 2013 but was released and then fled to Canada, AFP reports. He was found in New Brunswick in 2014, extradited to the Netherlands and then sent back to France to stand trial.
According to Vice, the Van Nierop case highlights the problem of France's 192 " 'medical deserts' — areas where the authorities have failed to find successors for retiring doctors." Vice says some 2.5 million people live in these areas.

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Hulk Hogan Testifies In His $100 Million Lawsuit Against Gawker


Hulk Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, testifies in court on Tuesday during his trial against Gawker Media, in St Petersburg, Fla


Former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan testified in his invasion of privacy suit in St. Petersburg, Fla., against the media organization Gawker, which published a portion of a sex tape.
The case raises major questions about freedom of expression, privacy and celebrity. That being said — "it really couldn't be seedier in terms of the topic that provoked this suit," as NPR's David Folkenflik told Here and Now.
The news and gossip site published a portion of a tape showing Hulk Hogan (whose legal name is Terry Bollea) having sex with the wife of a former friend. That's accompanied by a 1,400-word graphic description of the extended encounter. Bollea maintains he was unaware that they were being taped, and Gawker says an anonymous source mailed it to the organization.
Bollea is seeking $100 million in damages from Gawker.
The issue of whether this video is "newsworthy" was in focus in court today. Gawker argues that Bollea's "frequent public discussion of his sex life made the clip newsworthy and thus protected by the First Amendment."
That's a point Bollea rejected under cross-examination from Gawker's lawyer Michael Sullivan, The New York Times reports:
"[Bollea] gently rebuffed attempts by Mr. Sullivan to paint him as someone who carelessly and routinely flaunted his sexuality and his conquests, and for whom even the most intimate personal details were fodder for publicity. Mr. Bollea insisted that any such disclosures in public were purely an act, a crucial component of his 'character' as Hulk Hogan."
Making the distinction between the character of Hogan and the person of Terry Bollea, he says he was playing Hogan in interviews where he discussed personal and intimate details of his sex life, his anatomy and his family.
"I'm kind of concerned about Hulk Hogan's privacy, but you kind of give it away," Bollea testified, according to the Times. "But in the privacy of your own home, no one invades my privacy."
Additionally, Bollea says he didn't have a problem with "news outlets discussing or even writing about the sex tape," The Associated Press reports. "It was only when Gawker broadcast an edited clip of the actual video that he said he began to suffer."
Gawker also rests its First Amendment argument on the claim that the videorepresents events truthfully:
"I am not going to make a case that the future of the Republic rises or falls on the ability of the general public to watch a video of Hulk Hogan f****** his friend's ex-wife. But the Constitution does unambiguously accord us the right to publish true things about public figures."
Conversely, Bollea's lawyers "cautioned that the privacy of many Americans could be compromised" as a result of the case, the Times reports.
Other recent cases have grappled with the issue of newsworthiness versus privacy.
David breaks down why a case about a sex tape could have significant implications for other kinds of news:
"If you're thinking about this from a legal perspective, the idea that a public figure can say what about his or her life you can publish or post and what you cannot is troubling. Because even if one concedes — as most reasonable human beings would — that this isn't something that should be out there, this isn't something he seems to have encouraged the filming of, this is not a video he wanted out there at all. He's not a pornographic actor — he should have the right for his sex ... he has the right for that, in a sense, one would think, not to get out.
"But if you cede that right to individuals to do it, then suddenly news organizations and citizens are suddenly having taken away from them the right to publish what we want. There are consequences to what we publish in this country — if you libel somebody that is something that you face consequences for. But the idea that pre-emptively you can prevent somebody from doing that is really deeply problematic."

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