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School district turns to AI to solve bus driver shortage, add convenience
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Approved, CBS Colorado, El Paso County

School district turns to AI to solve bus driver shortage, add convenience

By Meg Oliver, Analisa Novak | CBS News Colorado The nationwide shortage of school bus drivers has left many students without reliable transportation. In 2023, the number of bus drivers nationwide in K-12 schools dropped to about 192,400, down 15.1% since 2019, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute. Despite offering training and higher salaries, districts like Colorado Springs School District 11 couldn't find enough candidates.  At the beginning of the school year, District 11 had a budget for about 110 bus drivers, but only managed to hire around 60. To address the shortage, the school district partnered with RouteWise AI. The rideshare company HopSkipDrive developed the AI technology being tested. READ THE FULL STORY AT CBS COLORADO
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Antoni: Biden’s indifference to Americans’ plight of soaring food prices is appalling
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Approved, Commentary, The Daily Signal

Antoni: Biden’s indifference to Americans’ plight of soaring food prices is appalling

By EJ Antoni  | The Daily Signal If you’re having trouble affording groceries, don’t expect sympathy from the White House. In a recent interview, President Joe Biden was told that food prices are up more than 30% on his watch. But he casually dismissed this fact, claiming people have money to pay those elevated prices. This doesn’t just demonstrate Biden’s tone-deafness to the plight of Americans who struggle to afford necessities like groceries; it shows his ignorance of his own administration’s data. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average weekly paychecks have increased about $150 under Biden, or 14.1% in roughly three years. Normally, that would be cause for celebration, but not in the inflationary environment of “Bidenomics.” READ THE FU...
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New technology may help find missing people in Colorado’s backcountry within minutes
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Approved, The Colorado Sun, Western Slope

New technology may help find missing people in Colorado’s backcountry within minutes

By Olivia Prentzel | The Colorado Sun A Durango-based helicopter company is testing a new tool that could help search and rescue teams in helicopters detect missing and distressed people in Colorado’s backcountry within minutes and communicate with them, even if they are stuck in an area without cellphone service. The technology, akin to a miniature cellphone tower, attaches to the outside of a helicopter and allows searchers to pinpoint the locations of any cellphones within a 3-mile radius using a map on a tablet, Dr. Tim Durkin, a search and rescue program coordinator for Colorado Highland Helicopters.  “As we detect the phone, basically a blotch shows up on the map and as we fly around that area, that blotch gets smaller and smaller and smaller until we can see exactly wh...
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McCall: Government has no business trying to ‘save’ journalism 
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Approved, Commentary, National, THE HILL

McCall: Government has no business trying to ‘save’ journalism 

By JEFFREY M. MCCALL | The Hill It seems everybody wants to “save” the journalism industry these days, except for the people who matter most — news consumers.   Citizens have been turning away from establishment news sources for some time. Audiences no longer trust news outlets to be fair, and this decline in media credibility has caused readers and viewers to disengage from the news. That necessarily leads to lost revenue for news organizations, layoffs of journalists and, ultimately, the closing of news outlets. There is no doubt: the journalism industry is suffering.  Legislators across the country are hopping on their white horses to ride to the rescue, with several states approving various measures to prop up the news industry with...
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Trump trial: Defense slams Cohen as ‘greatest liar of all time’ in closing arguments, protesters scuffle outside
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Approved, National, New York Post

Trump trial: Defense slams Cohen as ‘greatest liar of all time’ in closing arguments, protesters scuffle outside

By Ben Kochman , Kyle Schnitzer , Max Rivera and Kaydi Pelletier | New York Post Closing arguments are underway in Donald Trump’s criminal trial over his alleged “hush-money” payments to Stormy Daniels. Meanwhile, outside the courthouse actor Robert De Niro and retired Capitol police officers slammed Trump during a Biden campaign presser. Trump’s team took the mic with a rebuttal at the same spot right after. Presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 payment that his former “fixer” lawyer, Michael Cohen, made to the porn star ahead of the 2016 election. FOLLOW UPDATES AT THE NEW YORK POST
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T-Mobile to acquire most of U.S. Cellular in $4.4 billion deal. What it means for customers.
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Approved, National, The Street

T-Mobile to acquire most of U.S. Cellular in $4.4 billion deal. What it means for customers.

By Rebecca Mezistrano and Ross Kohan | The Street T-Mobile, one of the three largest wireless providers in the country, is about to get a little bigger. The company announced plans to acquire U.S. Cellular in a $4.4 billion deal. T-Mobile will gain stores, more spectrum rights, and all of Cellular’s 4-plus million customers. The deal, which includes up to $2 billion of assumed debt, is expected to be finalized by the middle of 2025. T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said in a statement “As customers from both companies will get more coverage and more capacity from our combined footprint, our competitors will be forced to keep up – and even more consumers will benefit." READ THE FULL STORY AT THE STREET
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Elon Musk’s ‘X’ tops list of companies trampling on the 1st Amendment
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Approved, National, The Daily Signal

Elon Musk’s ‘X’ tops list of companies trampling on the 1st Amendment

By Hudson Crozier  | The Daily Signal Several major U.S. companies continue to flout First Amendment freedoms, according to a legal group’s new analysis and rankings.  Alliance Defending Freedom’s annual Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index ranks dozens of corporations based on their “respect for free speech and religious freedoms” both inside and outside of the companies.  In its third edition, announced Tuesday, the Top 10 list of shame for flouting those freedoms includes many companies on the same list last year. The companies’ scores ranged from 1% to 100%, measuring 43 different factors, including employee trainings, charitable donations, and various policies for consumers that reveal ideological bias.   ADF, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based legal no...
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Initiatives to open primaries, bring ranked choice voting challenged in Colorado Supreme Court
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Approved, completecolorado.com, State

Initiatives to open primaries, bring ranked choice voting challenged in Colorado Supreme Court

By Sherrie Peif | Complete Colorado DENVER — While two ballot initiatives dealing with Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) are already either gathering signatures or in the petition approval phase with the secretary of state, two more citizen-initiated measures that would completely upend Colorado elections are going through an appeals process with the Colorado Supreme Court. Ballot initiatives 188 and 310 “Concerning the Conduct of Elections,” would drastically change the way primary elections are held in Colorado. Only one of the two initiatives would actually go to voters, as they are near mirror images of each other, but either one would make Colorado’s primaries fully open and mandate use of RCV to conduct the elections. According to the final app...
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Congress preps for drama with spending, farm bill, Pentagon policy and election-year bombast
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Approved, National, The Washington Times

Congress preps for drama with spending, farm bill, Pentagon policy and election-year bombast

By Lindsey McPherson | The Washington Times Memorial Day for Congress kicked off an election-year summer sprint in which serious legislating usually takes a backseat to partisan messaging bills. The Senate started voting on bills that the Democrats in control there know will fail but want to message on. That started last week with a second failed vote on a border policy bill and will continue next week when Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer plans a vote on a bill to establish a statutory right to contraception. The Republican-led House is more focused on bills it can pass but also wants to score points. House GOP leaders laid out an ambitious plan to pass all 12 annual spending bills in June and July. With what will soon be a two-vote GOP majority, they don’t have much ...
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Libertarians pick Chase Oliver as presidential nominee, rejecting RFK, Jr., and Trump
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Approved, National, Politico

Libertarians pick Chase Oliver as presidential nominee, rejecting RFK, Jr., and Trump

By BRITTANY GIBSON | Politico The Libertarian Party selected former Georgia Senate candidate Chase Oliver as their presidential nominee on Sunday, spurning appeals for support over the weekend from both Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The selection of Oliver, who has described himself as “armed and gay” and whose third-party candidacy helped force a runoff in the Georgia Senate race in 2022, came a day after Trump suggested he would be the best nominee for the party, drawing a sustained chorus of boos. The former president was deemed ineligible for the nomination by the Libertarian Party chair — Trump wrote on his social media platform that, as the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, he could not have accepted the nomination, anyway — while Kennedy was eliminated in the...
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