A one-year-old girl has died after allegedly being left in a childcare centre’s van, as scorching temperatures affect numerous US states.
Ra’Miyah Worthington was found unresponsive in the vehicle in Nebraska, after mistakenly being left inside for between “five to six hours”, Douglas County chief deputy attorney Brenda Beadle said.
She later died in hospital.
As temperatures reached the mid-30C (more than 90F) outside the Kidz of the Future Childcare van, court documents said Ra’Miyah’s body temperature reached 42.8C.
A high temperature for children is classed as 38C or more, according to the NHS.
Ra’Miyah’s mother, Sina Johnson, described her daughter as “daddy’s little girl”.
“She loved, loved, loved her family,” she told NBC affiliated television station WOWT. “She loved her daddy. She was daddy’s little girl.”
Prosecutors charged van driver, Ryan Williams, 62, of Omaha, on Tuesday with a felony count of child negligence resulting in death, which carries a sentence of up to four years in prison.
He told police he was distracted by a young boy who did not want to get out the van and forgot Ra’Miyah was inside, closing the vehicle before checking it was empty.
“I’m not comprehending how this could have even possibly happened,” the girl’s father, Reeyon Worthington, told WOWT.
“How can you forget a kid that you yourself put into the vehicle, but you took the other two off? How do you forget one when you take two off the van? How did you forget my baby?”
State officials said the nursery will remain closed while the death is investigated.
Temperatures were expected to be as much as 20C above average, in various states across the Midwest down to the Gulf Coast, including Nebraska.
The National Weather Service said “extremely dangerous heat” will persist across the central to southeast region, with heat alerts affecting around 17 states and 150 million people.
The weather has led to schools making changes to daily routines, with children being kept inside for breaktime and sport events being postponed.
Firefighters in Missouri helped remove 117 patients from a nursing home after the air conditioning failed in the sweltering weather.
Most were taken to other nursing facilities, but seven who had COVID-19 and were taken to local hospitals, authorities said.
Higher overnight temperatures and high humidity expected to stick around until Thursday and possibly into Friday, the weather service said.
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Hear Trump and his lawyer discuss hush money
The court also heard a recording of a conversation between Mr Trump and Mr Cohen over hush money said to have been paid to another woman, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who he also allegedly had an affair with.
Mr Cohen suggests in the recording setting up another company to repay David Pecker – who said he provided the $150,000 to cover up the story.
The former National Enquirer boss previously testified he bought the story to keep it hidden and eventually decided against seeking reimbursement.
Later in the recording, Mr Trump can be heard suggesting the $150,000 might be better off being paid in cash.
Mr Cohen told the court this was to “avoid any type of paper transaction”.
The 57-year-old – who once said he would take a bullet for Mr Trump – worked for him for nearly a decade.
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He pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance law in 2018 over the Stormy Daniels payment and was jailed, but at the time prosecutors did not bring charges against Mr Trump.
Mr Cohen’s credibility is in the sights of defence lawyers as he has previously admitted lying under oath.
Mr Trump – who will take on Joe Biden in his bid to become president again in November – is unlikely to face a custodial sentence if found guilty.
His other cases are potentially more damaging but mired in delays.
They concern allegations of keeping stacks of secret documents after leaving office and trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat. He denies the claims.
A livestream portal between Dublin and New York was temporarily shut down after “inappropriate behaviour” in the Irish capital.
Thousands of people have visited the two-way portal, which allows people on either side to see and interact with each other.
And while there have been a number of wholesome moments – including Irish dancing and even a proposal – a handful of people have behaved “inappropriately”, Dublin City Council has said.
Videos on social media have shown people on the Irish side flashing body parts, and displaying images of 9/11 and swear words on phone screens.
A woman was also escorted away by police after being seen grinding against the portal.
In a statement issued on Monday evening, a spokesperson for Dublin City Council said “technical solutions” to address this are being implemented in the next 24 hours.
“We will continue to monitor the situation over the coming days with our partners in New York to ensure that Portals continue to deliver a positive experience for both cities and the world,” they said.
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“The team at portals.org and partners are still working on improving the software for better stability and to prepare for Portals to expand to more locations on Earth.
“Those works are being done mostly at night and during those hours, the livestream might be paused.”
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Dublin City Council noted there has been an increase in footfall since the Portal was unveiled in north Dublin, facing O’Connell Street. The New York portal is at the busy Manhattan junction of Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street.
“The overwhelming majority of interactions are positive,” the spokesperson added. “We have seen families and friends unite, dancing moves being shared as well as new friendships being made. There was even a successful marriage proposal.
“The Portal offers a window to other cities and is connecting people and cultures in a unique manner – what we are seeing between Dublin and NY is reflective of a wider narrative of cultural behaviour.”
The Portals Organisation said: “We do not intend to suggest people to interact with Portals in any particular way – our goal is to open a window between far away places and cultures that allows people to interact freely with one another.
“We encourage people to be respectful and from our position as observers, we see that the absolute majority of experiences is on the bright side.”
In an earlier statement, they confirmed the livestream had been paused so they could “update the software used on the Portal”.
The new version of the ChatGPT AI chatbot has been unveiled and offers near-instant results across text, vision and audio, according to its maker.
OpenAI said it was much better at understanding visuals and sounds than previous versions.
It offers the prospect of real-time ‘conversations’ with the chatbot, including the ability to interrupt its answers.
The firm says it “accepts as input any combination of text, audio, and image and generates any combination of text, audio, and image outputs”.
GPT-4o is to be rolled out over the next few weeks amid a battle by tech firms to develop ever-more advanced artificial intelligence tools.
Monday’s announcement showed tasks such as real-time language translation; using its vision capability to solve a maths question on a piece of paper, and to guide a blind person around London.
GPT-4o can respond to audio in as little as 232 milliseconds, with an average of 320 milliseconds, which the company says is similar to human response time.
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To try to ease concerns over bias, fairness and misinformation, the Microsoft-backed company says the new version has undergone extensive testing by 70 external experts.
It comes after Google earlier this year had a major PR blunder over images generated by its Gemini AI system.
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GPT-4o model will be free, but premium ‘Plus’ users get a greater capacity limit for messages.
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