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President Joe Biden is celebrating a “crisis averted” in his inaugural speech to the nation from the Oval Office. He's ready to sign on Saturday a budget agreement that suspends the nation's debt ceiling and eliminates the potential for a first-ever government default that would have sent shock waves through the U.S. and global economies. The legislation was passed by the Senate late Thursday night after being approved by the House the previous night. The weekend signing will end a tumultuous episode in Washington.

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HARKER HEIGHTS — The Stewart C. Meyer Harker Heights Public Library and Activities Center on Saturday hosted a soap making seminar by the CEO of Pure Skin Repair, Catrina Jackson,

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Free Comic Book Day — an international annual event that supplies comic book lovers with tales of super heroes, super villains and more — will be celebrated in Killeen on Saturday.

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The final spring semester Patio Café Cuisine Nights dinner at Central Texas College features a Caribbean cuisine. Dinner will be served Friday from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in the Student Center on the CTC campus.

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HARKER HEIGHTS — The Super Walmart in Harker Heights has been remodeled to be more inviting to the public, store officials said during a celebration event Friday morning.

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The conversion of the landmark Extraco Tower in downtown Temple into a 90-room executive hotel could get under way in mid-July, however developers are still negotiating details with Temple officials and the project hinges on support from the city.

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BELTON — Belton ISD will host a job fair from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday at the district’s Support Services Center, 1220 Huey Dr. in Belton.

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The City of Killeen Recreation Services Department said in a news release it will hold an onsite job fair on May 3 from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Family Recreation Center, 1700 E Stan Schlueter Loop.

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Apple appears poised to unveil a long-rumored headset that will place its users between the virtual and real world. The headset will also serve to test the technology trendsetter’s ability to popularize new-fangled devices after others failed to capture the public’s imagination. The stage is set for the widely anticipated announcement be be made Monday at Apple’s annual developers conference. Apple is also likely discuss other products and software during the event. But the show's star is expected to be a pair of goggles that could become another milestone in Apple's lore of releasing game-changing technology, even though the company wasn’t always the first to try its hand at making a particular device

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A top Twitter executive responsible for safety and content moderation is leaving the company. The executive quit Friday, shortly after Twitter owner Elon Musk publicly complained about the platform’s handling of posts about transgender topics. Ella Irwin confirms her departure but isn't saying why she left. Twitter has faced turmoil including mass layoffs, staff quitting, and the firing of top executives since Musk took over last year. Next to Musk, Irwin was the most prominent voice of the company’s ever-changing content policies in recent months. Twitter has struggled to bring back advertisers turned off by Musk’s drastic changes and loosening of rules against hate speech.

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President Joe Biden is celebrating a “crisis averted” in his inaugural speech to the nation from the Oval Office. He's ready to sign on Saturday a budget agreement that suspends the nation's debt ceiling and eliminates the potential for a first-ever government default that would have sent shock waves through the U.S. and global economies. The legislation was passed by the Senate late Thursday night after being approved by the House the previous night. The weekend signing will end a tumultuous episode in Washington.

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YouTube says it will stop removing content that falsely claims the 2020 election and other past U.S. presidential elections were marred by widespread fraud, errors or glitches. The Google-owned video service said in a blog post Friday that it wanted to avoid the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm. The updated policy will not stop YouTube from removing material that attempts to deceive voters in future elections, including the upcoming 2024 presidential election. The change comes as YouTube and other major social media companies have come under fire for not doing more to combat election misinformation.

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The nation’s employers stepped up their hiring in May, adding a robust 339,000 jobs, well above expectations and evidence of enduring strength in an economy that the Federal Reserve is desperately trying to cool. Friday’s report from the government reflected the job market’s resilience after more than a year of rapid interest rate increases by the Fed. Many industries, from construction to restaurants to health care, are still adding jobs to keep up with consumer demand and restore their workforces to pre-pandemic levels. Yet there were some mixed messages in the jobs figures, which also showed that the unemployment rate rose to 3.7%, from a five-decade low of 3.4% in April.

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Alabama lawmakers have voted to include themselves in legislation that would allow judges, law enforcement officers and prosecutors to shield their personal information from being released on public records. The Alabama Senate on Thursday approved the House-passed bill. It would allow law enforcement officials to request that their personal identifying information be redacted from public documents. That can include a home address, phone number or driver’s license number. Senators approved an amendment to add legislators to the list of shielded occupations.  The bill has now goes to Gov. Kay Ivey.

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An Amazon worker in Alabama that has been vocal in unionization efforts, has been terminated by the company, according to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. The union says Jennifer Bates is dealing with injuries she received while working at Amazon and that her termination comes shortly after reaching three years of service with the company. Bates worked at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, where some workers organized the biggest unionization push at the company since it was founded in 1995. Amazon has a history of crushing unionizing efforts at its warehouses and its Whole Foods grocery stores.

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Customers of Venmo, PayPal and CashApp should not store their money with those apps for the long term because the funds may not be covered by deposit insurance. That's according to a warning from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Thursday. The alert comes several weeks after the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank. Those institutions experienced bank runs after fearful customers with uninsured deposits pulled their money en masse. Money stored on a payment app is not being held in a traditional bank account. So, if there is an event similar to a bank run with the payment apps, those funds may not be protected.

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A bill that would force Big Tech companies to pay news agencies for using their content passed its first big test in the state Legislature on Thursday. Proponents said the measure will provide a lifeline to local news organizations, but opponents said the bill favors out-of-state big newspaper chains and could violate the First Amendment. Meta, the company that owns Facebook, has vowed to remove news stories from Facebook if the bill were to become law. Similar efforts to bolster local journalism have been attempted by the United States Congress, with little success. The California bill received bipartisan support.

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A Los Angeles startup that is designing facilities to remove carbon dioxide from the ocean says it has struck a pre-purchase agreement with Boeing. Equatic says it will provide the aerospace giant with a byproduct of the carbon removal process to help it cut emissions from planes. The carbon removal company says the deal is a pre-purchase agreement for the hydrogen that it produces when it removes the greenhouse gas from the ocean. The green hydrogen could then be used as a component in sustainable aviation fuel. Aviation currently accounts for about 2.5% of worldwide emissions of the greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.

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Twitter may now be worth one-third of what Elon Musk paid for the social media platform just seven months ago. The Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund has reduced the market value of its equity stake in Twitter for a third time, now putting it at $6.55 million. That’s down from the nearly $20 million the Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund valued its stake at in October. Fidelity Investments, a financial services company, is privately held, not public, but is required by the SEC to regularly disclose its holdings. Because Twitter is a private company now called X Holdings Corp., information about its finances can’t be verified.

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Amazon has agreed to pay a $25 million civil penalty to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations it violated a child privacy law and deceived parents by keeping for years kids’ voice and location data recorded by its Alexa voice assistant. Separately, the company has agreed to pay $5.8 million in customer refunds for alleged privacy violations involving its doorbell camera Ring. Amazon says it disagrees with the FTC’s claims on both matters and denies violating the law. But it says the settlements “put these matters behind us” and its devices and services aim to protect consumer privacy.

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The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rose slightly last week but remains at healthy levels that continue to show a strong U.S. labor market. U.S. applications for jobless claims were 232,000 for the week ending May 27, an increase of just 2,000 from the previous week. The weekly claims numbers are considered representative of the number of U.S. layoffs. The four-week moving average of claims, which flattens out some of the week-to-week volatility, fell by 2,500 to 229,500. Overall, 1.8 million people were collecting unemployment benefits the week that ended May 20, about 6,000 more than the previous week.

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Europe is getting a break on inflation. Price increases for the 20 countries that use the euro fell to 6.1% in May. That's down from 7% in April. But that doesn't feel like much relief for people going shopping for food and other necessities. That's because price increases this summer are coming on top of already-high prices from last year caused by the war in Ukraine. Still, the new figures are a sign that inflation is heading in the right direction. Economists say it will still be many months before inflation approaches the European Central Bank's official goal of 2%.

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A humble Corolla running on liquid hydrogen has made its racing debut, part of a move to bring the futuristic technology into the racing world and to demonstrate Toyota Motor Corp.’s resolve to develop hydrogen vehicles. The Corolla is powered by a combustion engine common in regular cars, and not by a battery and motor that drive electric vehicles. The car won't be appearing in dealerships anytime soon. Toyota officials said the 24-hour race at Fuji Speedway near Mount Fuji was just meant to test the technology. Toyota, a powerhouse for hybrids, has fallen behind in the global shift to battery EVs. But it’s been banking on hydrogen for years.

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U.S. job openings rose unexpectedly in April a sign the American labor market remians surprisingly resilient as the Federal Reserve pushes interest rates higher to combat inflation. Employers posted 10.1 million job openings last month, up from 9.7 million in March and the most since January. Economists had expected vacancies to slip below 9.5 million. Layoffs fell, but the number of people quitting their jobs — a sign of confidence that they can find better pay or working conditions elsewhere — slid last month.

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Last year was a mixed bag pay-wise for the women who run companies in the S&P 500 -- compensation increased for more than half of them, but the median pay package fell 6%. Of the 343 CEOs in the compensation survey of S&P 500 companies done by the AP and Equilar, only 20 were women. Because they are a small group, changes in pay for only a few can easily skew the overall figures. The drop comes after a 26% jump in pay for female CEOs in 2021, a year when pay packages reflected a recovering economy and soaring stock prices and profits.

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China’s commerce minister met Tesla Ltd. CEO Elon Musk and promised to support the development of foreign companies. Musk joined a series of CEOs from global companies including Apple Inc. who have met with Cabinet officials this year following the end of anti-virus controls that blocked most travel into China. The ruling Communist Party is trying to revive investor interest in China’s slowing economy and reassure companies that have been rattled by anti-monopoly and data-security crackdowns, raids on consulting firms and tension with Washington. The commerce minister, Wang Wentao, said Beijing will “support long-term, stable development of foreign-invested enterprises in China."

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For its annual analysis of CEO pay, The Associated Press used data provided by Equilar, an executive data firm. Equilar examined regulatory filings detailing the pay packages of 343 executives. Equilar looked at companies in the S&P 500 index that filed proxy statements with federal regulators between Jan. 1 and April 30, 2023. To avoid the distortions caused by sign-on bonuses, the sample includes only CEOs in place for at least two years.

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China has warned of the risks posed by advances in artificial intelligence while calling for heightened national security measures. The statement issued after a meeting Tuesday chaired by Communist Party leader and President Xi Jinping underscores the tension between the government’s determination to seize global leadership in cutting-edge technology and concerns about the possible social and political harms of such technologies. It followed a warning by scientists and tech industry leaders in the U.S., including high-level executives at Microsoft and Google, about the perils AI poses to humankind. The official Xinhua News Agency said Xi urged “dedicated efforts to safeguard political security and improve the security governance of internet data and artificial intelligence.”

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Eleven former Twitter cleaning workers at its New York City offices are suing the company, saying they are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay and damages after abruptly being fired in December. The lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court maintains the company violated New York City rules protecting union workers. It said the workers were replaced with those from another cleaning company despite protections in place for them. The firings came within days of four dozen janitors losing their jobs at Twitter's San Francisco headquarters. Twitter had no comment Tuesday when messaged seeking a response.

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Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is in custody at the Texas prison where she will spend the next 11 years serving her sentence for overseeing an infamous blood-testing hoax. Holmes could be seen Tuesday from outside the prison’s gates walking into the a federal women’s prison camp located in Bryan, Texas.  She wore jeans, a brown sweater and was smiling as she spoke with two prison employees accompanying her. Her arrival comes more than a year after a jury convicted Holmes on four felony counts of fraud and conspiracy in January 2022. She was sentenced to prison time in November.

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Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes has reported to a federal prison in Texas — marking the start of her 11-year sentence for overseeing a notorious blood testing hoax. Holmes was convicted last year for duping investors who contributed hundreds of millions of dollars in the failed Silicon Valley startup. On Tuesday, she entered a federal women’s prison camp in Bryan, Texas — a minimum-security facility where the federal judge who sentenced Holmes in November recommended she be incarcerated. Federal Prison Camp Bryan, located around 95 miles from Houston, houses about 650 women.

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NATO will send 700 more troops to northern Kosovo to help quell violent protests after clashes with ethnic Serbs there left 30 international soldiers wounded. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said an additional reserve battalion would be put on high readiness in case additional troops are needed. Stoltenberg made the announcement Tuesday in Oslo after talks with the Norwegian prime minister. The NATO-led peacekeeping mission known as KFOR currently consists of almost 3,800 troops. Earlier Tuesday, KFOR’s multinational peacekeepers used metal fences and barbed-wire barriers to reinforce positions in a northern town that has become a hot spot.

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A federal appeals court has breathed new life into a rural Nevada town's unusual bid to halt government repairs to an aging irrigation canal that burst and flooded more than 500 homes in 2008. The town of Fernley and area farmers and ranchers say the renovation that began this year would eliminate leaking water they have used for a century to help fill their wells east of Reno. The government says locals don't have any rights to the water that belongs to U.S. taxpayers. A federal appeals court recently ordered a lower court to reconsider the case.

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Robots are on display at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in London, where visitors can get a glimpse of the future. The event this week is sort of the Olympics of the robot world. Student teams compete in a host of challenges like robot cooking and autonomous driving contests, academics present their research and startups show off their latest technology. Packs of robotic dogs swarmed the exhibition floor Tuesday. Visitors used virtual reality headsets and joysticks to move the arms of android sentries on wheels. Organizers say new artificial intelligence systems are part of the buzz at this year’s show.

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Scientists and tech industry leaders, including executives at Microsoft and Google, have issued a new warning about the perils that artificial intelligence poses to humankind. The statement posted online Tuesday says that “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war." Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, and Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist known as the godfather of artificial intelligence, are among the hundreds of leading figures who signed the statement. Worries about artificial intelligence systems outsmarting humans and running wild have intensified with the rise of a new generation of highly capable AI chatbots such as ChatGPT.

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Nvidia has joined the exclusive club of companies with a $1 trillion market capitalization as the chipmaker benefits from the growing use of artificial intelligence. Nvidia Corp. joins tech titans like Alphabet, Apple and Microsoft in the $1 trillion club. Its stock rose 5% in Tuesday trading, eclipsing $408 per share. Last week the maker of graphics chips for gaming and artificial intelligence reported a quarterly profit of more than $2 billion and revenue of $7 billion, both exceeding Wall Street’s forecasts.

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U.S. highway safety regulators have closed an investigation into Tesla allowing video games to be played on center touch screens while vehicles are moving. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says in documents posted Tuesday that Tesla disabled the feature called “passenger play” with an online software update in December of 2021 under pressure from the agency. The agency says removing “passenger play” resolved its concerns about distracted driving. The 2021 software update covered more than 580,000 vehicles from the 2017 through 2022 model years. The agency said it opened the investigation in December of 2021 after getting a complaint from a Tesla owner that games could be played by the driver while the vehicles are moving.

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The Michigan Supreme Court will hear a dispute over the legality of using a drone to take pictures of a salvage yard near Traverse City. Aerial photos were used as evidence in a lawsuit against Todd and Heather Maxon. They were accused of violating a zoning ordinance and creating a nuisance with cars and other salvaged material in Long Lake Township. The Maxons argue that aerial photos violated their constitutional right against unreasonable searches. But a local judge and the state Court of Appeals have ruled against them. The appeals court said the dispute was a civil matter, not a criminal one.

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The Vatican is urging the Catholic faithful, and especially bishops, to be “reflective, not reactive” on social media. The Vatican's communications office issued a reflection Monday to try to tame the toxicity on Catholic Twitter and other social media platforms and encourage users to instead be “loving neighbors.” For decades the Holy See has offered such thoughts on different aspects of communications technologies, welcoming the chances for encounter they offer but warning of the pitfalls. The new message singled out bishops and other church leaders in warning that their engagement can be particularly problematic.

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Europe's largest desalination plant for drinking water had largely remained idle since its construction near Barcelona over a decade ago. But since a prolonged drought gripped Spain last year the plant has been running at full throttle to help keep some five million people adapt to climate change and not go thirsty. Before the drought desalination provided just 3% of Barcelona's drinking water. Now desalination is its leading source of water, providing 33% of the city’s water compared to 19% that currently comes from its shrinking rivers. But desalination comes with high costs both for taxpayers and for the environment due to its high energy costs which can actually make the underlying conditions of climate change worse.

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has won reelection in a victory that extends his increasingly authoritarian rule into a third decade. The divisive populist won Sunday's presidential runoff despite the fact that his country is reeling from high inflation and the aftermath of an earthquake that leveled entire cities. A third term gives Erdogan an even stronger hand domestically and internationally, and the election results will have implications far beyond the capital of Ankara. Turkey stands at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, and it plays a key role in NATO.

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President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy have reached an “agreement in principle” to resolve the looming debt crisis. McCarthy outlined the proposed deal Saturday night. Biden and McCarthy spoke by phone earlier in the evening as they raced to prevent a catastrophic debt default. With the outline of an agreement, a legislative package can be drafted in time for votes in Congress next week. That's ahead of a projected June 5 federal default. Negotiators have wrangled over a deal that would also making spending cuts that House Republicans are demanding.