Three Austrian nuns in their 80s who escaped a care home and reclaimed their old convent are refusing the church's offer to stay because it requires them to quit Instagram, stop speaking to the press, and avoid legal counsel -- conditions they call a gag order. Their standoff with church authorities has now escalated to the Vatican as the nuns continue posting to their 185,000 followers. NPR reports: Before the church authorities moved the nuns into care almost two years ago, the local abbey and Archdiocese of Salzburg acquired the convent. The sisters say they were not aware they were signing away what they understood to be their lifelong right to remain in the cloister. On Friday, their superior, Provost Markus Grasl from Reichersberg Abbey, announced that the sisters can stay. But his offer comes with conditions: The nuns must cease all social media activities, stop talking to the press and forgo seeking legal advice. The nuns have rejected the proposal, and now Grasl has called on the Vatican to intercede.

In a statement released Friday, the nuns said the provost's offer is nothing short of a gag order. Speaking via Instagram, Sister Regina said, "We can't agree to this deal. Without the media, we'd have been silenced." Sister Bernadette told Instagram followers: "We need to resolve this but any agreement we reach must be in accordance with God's will and shaped by human reason." [...] The provost's proposed agreement -- which NPR has seen -- also bans laypeople from entering the cloisters, including the sisters' helpers, many of whom they've known for decades and on whom the nuns now depend for help.

Speaking to NPR on Monday, the provost's spokesperson, crisis PR manager Harald Schiffl, said that the provost does not understand why the nuns reject his offer and that, in response, he has requested the Vatican authorities responsible for religious orders to step in. The Vatican has not commented on the situation. So while they await news from Rome, the sisters continue to follow the papal Instagram account. Schiffl says the terms relating to the nuns' social media use are reasonable: "The abbey wishes to discontinue the sisters' social media accounts because what they show has very little to do with real religious life."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Flock, the automatic license plate reader and AI-powered camera company, uses overseas workers from Upwork to train its machine learning algorithms, with training material telling workers how to review and categorize footage including images people and vehicles in the United States, according to material reviewed by 404 Media that was accidentally exposed by the company. The findings bring up questions about who exactly has access to footage collected by Flock surveillance cameras and where people reviewing the footage may be based. Flock has become a pervasive technology in the US, with its cameras present in thousands of communities that cops use every day to investigate things like carjackings. Local police have also performed numerous lookups for ICE in the system.

Companies that use AI or machine learning regularly turn to overseas workers to train their algorithms, often because the labor is cheaper than hiring domestically. But the nature of Flock's business -- creating a surveillance system that constantly monitors US residents' movements -- means that footage might be more sensitive than other AI training jobs. [...] Broadly, Flock uses AI or machine learning to automatically detect license plates, vehicles, and people, including what clothes they are wearing, from camera footage. A Flock patent also mentions cameras detecting "race." It included figures on "annotations completed" and "annotator tasks remaining in queue," with annotations being the notes workers add to reviewed footage to help train AI algorithms. Tasks include categorizing vehicle makes, colors, and types, transcribing license plates, and "audio tasks." Flock recently started advertising a feature that will detect "screaming." The panel showed workers sometimes completed thousands upon thousands of annotations over two day periods. The exposed panel included a list of people tasked with annotating Flock's footage. Taking those names, 404 Media found some were located in the Philippines, according to their LinkedIn and other online profiles.

Many of these people were employed through Upwork, according to the exposed material. Upwork is a gig and freelance work platform where companies can hire designers and writers or pay for "AI services," according to Upwork's website. The tipsters also pointed to several publicly available Flock presentations which explained in more detail how workers were to categorize the footage. It is not clear what specific camera footage Flock's AI workers are reviewing. But screenshots included in the worker guides show numerous images from vehicles with US plates, including in New York, Michigan, Florida, New Jersey, and California. Other images include road signs clearly showing the footage is taken from inside the US, and one image contains an advertisement for a specific law firm in Atlanta.

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"The car-sharing company, first launched in the U.S. in 2000, has been active in the UK since 2010 and has just under half a million members," writes Slashdot reader guesstral. "'I'm writing to let you know that we are proposing to cease the UK operations of Zipcar,' wrote Zipcar UK's general manager, James Taylor, in an email to members today. He went on to say that Zipcar will temporarily suspend new bookings after December 31, pending the outcome of a consultation with its 71 staff members." From the BBC: In its most recent company accounts for 2024, Zipcar blamed the "cost of living crisis," which was affecting UK customers, for revenues falling to 46 million pounds to 53 million the year before, while its after-tax losses had widened to 11.6 million pounds. According to the same accounts, Zipcar membership fees cover the cost of fuelling or charging the vehicle and, as energy costs continued to rise last year, it has added to financial pressures on the company. The company would also be liable for the incoming congestion charge in London that is expanding to include electric vehicles from 26 December, although this was not referenced in Zipcar's email to membership or company accounts.

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iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

Stueyman has added a photo to the pool:

Wetlands, Baldivis WA.

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

Stueyman has added a photo to the pool:

Bunker, Point Peron, WA

Mijn vader noemde hagelslag consequent kwattastrôojsel. Een samentrekking van het chocolademerk Kwatta en strooisel. Die Kwatta-hagelslag is nog steeds te koop, in België.

AMSTERDAM (ANP) - Een groeiende groep Nederlanders heeft meer dan 3000 euro aan spaargeld achter de hand. Toch heeft een deel van de mensen nog steeds minder dan 500 euro op de spaarrekening en maakt nog steeds ongeveer de helft zich weleens zorgen over de hoogte van hun buffer. Dat zegt ING op basis van een onderzoek onder meer dan duizend Nederlanders.

Volgens de bank heeft drie op de vijf spaarders nu meer dan 3000 euro spaargeld. Dat was volgens het onderzoek van vorig jaar nog ruim de helft, en twee jaar terug nog iets minder dan de helft. Het aandeel met een buffer boven 10.000 euro is in twee jaar gestegen van 25 naar 34 procent. ING denkt dat dit komt doordat steeds meer mensen maandelijks meer dan 200 euro of zelfs 500 euro wegzetten.

De groep met minder dan 500 euro achter de hand is juist kleiner geworden. In 2023 ging het nog om 22 procent. Dat is nu 18 procent. Volgens ING is dat nog altijd bijna een vijfde. Met name jongeren vinden dat sparen tegenwoordig moeilijker is dan in de tijd van hun ouders. Het valt ING ook op dat steeds meer Nederlanders beleggen. Dit betrof volgens de peiling in 2023 nog 22 procent. Inmiddels is dat 31 procent.

TEGUCIGALPA (ANP) - De presidentiële verkiezingen in Honduras zijn volgens de eerste telling geëindigd in een "technische gelijkstand". Presidentskandidaat Nasry Asfura van de conservatieve Nationale Partij had 39,91 procent van de stemmen. Zijn belangrijkste rivaal Salvador Nasralla, eveneens een rechtse kandidaat, had 39,89 procent van de stemmen.

Met 1,9 miljoen getelde stembiljetten was het verschil tussen de twee koplopers slechts 515 stemmen. Daarom begint nu een stem-voor-stemtelling, die nog weken kan duren. De kiesautoriteit heeft tot 30 december om een winnaar aan te wijzen. Op 27 januari moet de nieuwe president aantreden.

De linkse presidentskandidaat Rixi Moncada, partijgenoot van de zittende president Xiomara Castro, staat op de derde plaats met 19,2 procent van de stemmen.

Asfura is voormalig burgemeester van de hoofdstad Tegucigalpa en kreeg openlijk steun van de Amerikaanse president Donald Trump. Die bemoeienis zorgde vlak voor de verkiezingen voor politieke onrust in het Centraal-Amerikaanse land. Moncada noemde het optreden van Trump "volstrekt interventionistisch". Trump dreigde eerder de Amerikaanse financiële steun aan Honduras in te trekken als Asfura zou verliezen.

Daarnaast kondigde Trump aan de voormalige president Juan Orlando Hernández, oud-partijgenoot van Asfura, onverwacht gratie te willen verlenen. Hij was eerder in de VS veroordeeld tot een jarenlange celstraf vanwege drugssmokkel.