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RCMP Cruiser Rammed By Criminal In Stolen Truck
Red Deer RCMP are searching for a suspect who rammed a police car while driving a stolen truck Monday morning, resulting in minor injuries to a Red Deer police officer.
RCMP were on patrol in an alley in the Highland Green neighbourhood at 1 am on July 17 when they intercepted a white 2006 Ford F350 in the process of being stolen. The truck fled police, driving on a walking path adjacent to 59 Avenue into the Riverside Meadows neighbourhood. RCMP located it again on Kerrywood Drive near the Taylor Drive intersection, where the truck appeared to be stuck on the median. When an RCMP officer approached in a marked police cruiser, the truck reversed at high speed toward the police car, collided with it, then fled northbound on Taylor Drive.
The police cruiser suffered severe damage to the front end, and the police officer driving it sustained minor injuries in the collision and was treated at hospital.
The driver of the truck is described as a skinny Caucasian male, early to mid-30s, with some facial hair, wearing a black hat and a black hoodie.
RCMP recovered the stolen truck abandoned in a parking lot in north Red Deer shortly before 8:30 am the same day.
“The driver of this truck showed blatant disregard for life – both for the safety of the public as he crashed through a park area and drove erratically at high speeds on city streets, and for the life of the police officer he intentionally collided with,” says Staff Sergeant Jeff McBeth of the Red Deer RCMP. “This incident highlights why RCMP strongly encourage the public not to engage with criminals. Every day, police officers deal with criminals making dangerous choices trying to avoid arrest, and we’re lucky, today, that our member wasn’t seriously injured.”
This is the second incident of damage to a Red Deer police car by a thief in a stolen vehicle attempting to evade arrest in the space of four days; the evening of July 13, a woman driving a stolen silver 2004 Ford Freestar van collided with the side of a police car while fleeing police. In that case, the police car sustained minor damage and the police officer was not injured. That van had an Alberta license plate BWW3351 at the time of its theft; it has not been recovered yet.
If you have information about either investigation, contact the Red Deer RCMP at 403-343-5575. If you wish to remain anonymous, call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or report it online at www.tipsubmit.com. If your information leads to an arrest, you could be eligible for a cash reward up to $2,000.
The OpenAI logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen displaying output from ChatGPT, on March 21, 2023, in Boston. The Italian government’s privacy watchdog said Friday March 31, 2023 that it is temporarily blocking the artificial intelligence software ChatGPT in the wake of a data breach. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)
By Frances D’emilio And Matt O’brien in Rome
ROME (AP) — The Italian government’s privacy watchdog said Friday that it is temporarily blocking the artificial intelligence software ChatGPT in the wake of a data breach.
In a statement on its website, the Italian Data Protection Authority described its action as provisional “until ChatGPT respects privacy.” The watchdog’s measure involves temporarily limiting the company from holding Italian users’ data.
U.S.-based OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT, didn’t immediately return a request for comment Friday.
While some public schools and universities around the world have blocked the ChatGPT website from their local networksover student plagiarism concerns, it’s not clear how Italy would block it at a nationwide level.
The move also is unlikely to affect applications from companies that already have licenses with OpenAI to use the same technology driving the chatbot, such as Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
The AI systems that power such chatbots, known as large language models, are able to mimic human writing styles based on the huge trove of digital books and online writings they have ingested.
The Italian watchdog said OpenAI must report to it within 20 days what measures it has taken to ensure the privacy of users’ data or face a fine of up to either 20 million euros (nearly $22 million) or 4% of annual global revenue.
The agency’s statement noted that ChatGPT faced a loss of data on March 20 “regarding the conversations of users and information related to the payment of the subscribers for the service.”
OpenAI earlier announced that it had to take ChatGPT offline on March 20 to fix a bug that allowed some people to see the titles, or subject line, of other users’ chat history.
“Our investigation has also found that 1.2% of ChatGPT Plus users might have had personal data revealed to another user,” the company said. “We believe the number of users whose data was actually revealed to someone else is extremely low and we have contacted those who might be impacted.”
Italy’s privacy watchdog lamented “the lack of a notice to users and to all those involved whose data is gathered by OpenAI” and “above all, the absence of a juridical basis that justified the massive gathering and keeping of personal data, with the aim of ‘training’ algorithms underlying the functioning of the platform.”
The agency said information supplied by ChatGPT “doesn’t always correspond to real data, thus determining the keeping of inexact personal data.”
Finally, it noted “the absence of any kind of filter to verify the age of the users, exposing minors to answers absolutely unsuitable to their degree of development and self-awareness.”
A group of scientists and tech industry leaders published a letter Wednesday calling for companies such as OpenAI to pause the development of more powerful AI models until the fall to give time for society to weigh the risks.
The San Francisco-based company’s CEO, Sam Altman, announced this week that he’s embarking on a six-continent trip in May to talk about the technology with users and developers. That includes a stop planned for Brussels, where European Union lawmakers have been negotiating sweeping new rules to limit high-risk AI tools.
Altman said his stops in Europe would include Madrid, Munich, London and Paris.
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O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island. AP Business Writer Kelvin Chan contributed from London.
QUEBEC — Authorities in the Mohawk Territory of Akwesasne say an infant is missing after the bodies of six migrants of Indian and Romanian descent were pulled from the river Thursday.
The bodies, including that of a second child under three, were found in the St. Lawrence River in the community that straddles the Canada-U.S. border.
Lee-Ann O’Brien, deputy chief of the Akwesasne Mohawk Police Service, says the victims were trying to enter the United States illegally from Canada.
She told reporters today the six people were from two families, one of Romanian descent and the other composed of Indian citizens.
O’Brien says police found a Canadian passport belonging to a missing infant with the Romanian family, adding that the deceased child was also a Canadian citizen.
She says a small boat was found near the bodies, and the search is ongoing for the missing child and any other people who may have been with the two families.
Akwesasne police say there have been 48 incidents of people trying to cross illegally into Canada or into the United States through the Mohawk territory since January, and most of them have been of Indian or Romanian descent.
This report was first published by The Canadian Press on March 31, 2023.
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