ICE arrests Chicago man whose teenage daughter is fighting cancer: ‘He belongs with her’

CHICAGO — Ofelia Torres has spent almost every day of the past month at Lurie Children’s Hospital, where the 16-year-old Lake View High School student is fighting cancer.

After a tough few weeks where the disease spread through her body and doctors inserted a drain in her abdomen to relieve fluid, the Torres family worked with her oncologist to arrange a short getaway over the weekend, where she and three of her closest friends could enjoy a Saturday of simple pleasures and normalcy before a scheduled return to the hospital and chemotherapy.

The girls were getting their nails done as Ofelia’s father, Ruben Torres Maldonado, was at work. Hours later, he called his wife Sandibell Hidalgo from a number that came up on caller ID as “prison / jail.” “It’s me,” he said. “They got me.”

In that moment, the Torres family experienced the pain of separation gripping hundreds of immigrant families across Chicago and the suburbs since Donald Trump’s administration last month launched “Operation Midway Blitz,” the president’s aggressive deportation plan.

—Chicago Tribune

Preservation group demands Trump pause demolition and ballroom project

A leading historic preservation group is demanding President Donald Trump pause the demolition of all or part of the White House’s East Wing to make room for his glitzy planned $250 million ballroom.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a congressionally chartered nonprofit, said in a letter that the controversial project should be put on hold until a review of Trump’s plans can be completed by regulatory agencies. It also wants the public to have a say.

“We respectfully urge the administration … to pause demolition until plans for the proposed ballroom go through the legally required public review processes, including consultation and review by the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts, and to invite comment from the public,” the trust said.

The trust voiced aesthetic concerns that “the proposed new construction will overwhelm the White House itself. A White House official told The New York Times on Wednesday that the entire East Wing will be demolished for the ballroom even though Trump initially denied the construction would even “touch” the historic wing.

—New York Daily News

Johns Hopkins engineers use artificial intelligence to predict car crashes

If you change the timing of a traffic light from 20 seconds to 30 seconds, a new artificial intelligence tool developed by Johns Hopkins University researchers can predict how many more — or how many fewer — accidents will happen at that intersection.

“These are complex events affected by numerous variables, like weather, traffic patterns, roadway design and driver behavior,” said senior author Hao “Frank” Yang, an assistant professor of civil and systems engineering at Johns Hopkins. “With SafeTraffic Copilot, our goal is to simplify this complexity and provide infrastructure designers and policymakers with data-based insights to mitigate crashes.

“Generative AI has a big potential to improve the trustworthiness of accident prediction,” he continued. Yang’s team of researchers hopes to help reduce the number of crashes and fatalities that occur each year. Nature Communications published their work in October.

The team’s AI uses large language models to process, understand, and learn from massive amounts of data. SafeTraffic Copilot was trained using descriptions of more than 66,000 accidents, including road conditions, numerical values such as blood alcohol levels, satellite images and on-site photography.

—Baltimore Sun

Louvre reopens after latest in slew of spectacular thefts in France

PARIS — The Louvre in Paris is open again, days after the spectacular robbery at the world-renowned museum, the latest in a series of robberies that has left visitors puzzling over empty cabinets and police in search of clues.

The museum opened Wednesday at 9 a.m., its usual starting time, but the Apollo Gallery, where the break-in occurred, is closed for the time being. The weekend burglary netted the thieves some $102 million in stolen jewelry and led to the temporary closure of the world's largest museum. So far there has been no trace of the jewels.

Meanwhile tourists seeking treasure elsewhere in France may be stunned to note that some 2,000 gold and silver coins were also stolen during another theft at a French museum, hours after the daring day-light robbery of the Louvre.

The latest incident involved a break-in at the House of Enlightenment, Denis Diderot, in Landres in north-eastern France, home to manuscripts, letters and historical objects from the 18th Century.

—dpa