The Swift effect: US singer’s influence on the economy and politics • FRANCE 24 English

The Swift effect: US singer’s influence on the economy and politics • FRANCE 24 English

Hello and welcome to inside the Americas I’m Delano dusza coming up on the show this week Brazil’s president fires the country’s Deputy intelligence Chief the move comes following claims the agency spied on Rivals of the former president Jer bolsonaro US senators intr introduce a bill which would criminalize the spread

Of sexualized images generated through artificial intelligence it comes after AI generated images of Taylor Swift circul online and Las Vegas forced to come up with innovative ways to save water as droughts threatened the US’s West Coast but first Brazil’s president has fired the deputy director of the country’s National Intelligence Agency

The move comes following claims that the body illegally spied on enemies of former president JY bolsonaro during his Simon office earlier this week police raid a number of properties linked to Carlos bolsonaro the son of the former president Katherine Viet reports a spying Scandal involving the inner circle of Brazil’s former

President Jer bolsonaro is gripping the country on Tuesday current president Lis anaso Lula D Silva fired the deputy director of Brazil’s National Intelligence Agency while denying bonaro and his family were being persecuted by the probe what I hope is that the people who are being investigated are investigated

That these people have the right to the presumption of innocence that I didn’t have and I think people who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear early Monday morning Brazilian federal police raided the bolsonaro family Retreat one of the targets Carlos bolsonaro a son of the far-right former

President the police suspect his involvement in alleged Espionage as part of a broader investigation into the nation’s intelligence agency the objective is to investigate a criminal organization installed within the Brazilian intelligence agency with the aim of illegally monitoring public authorities and other people and using geolocation tools on mobile devices without due judicial

Authorization Carlos bolsonaro is suspected of spying on his father’s political opponents with the help of Jer bolsonaro’s Former Intelligence chief police say the agency allegedly tracked an eases dropped on hundreds of bolsonaro’s perceived opponents during his presidency including three Supreme Court Justices and a speaker of Brazil’s

Lower house of Congress the search on the family Retreat is one out of nine carried out on Monday and adds to a string of legal wos for the former president the 68-year-old has been banned from running for office for 8 years after making unfounded claims about Brazil’s voting system ahead of 2022

Election our image of the week next is of wildfires ripping through southern Argentina the Blazer spread in chibo Province experiencing Heatwave officials believe the fires are intentional and say those responsible will need to answer to the courts our number of the week next and it’s $250 million that’s the sum of

Money a super pack backing US President Joe Biden is committing to running ads in Battleground states in the runup to November’s election the future forward pack plans to begin running the largest Pro Biden adlets from the 23rd of August now a bipartisan group of senators in the United States have

Introduced a bill which would criminalize the spread of non-consensual sexualized images generated through artificial intelligence it comes after AI generated images of pop star Taylor Swift have circulated on X formerly known as Twitter for more on this story we can bring in Julia Seager Julia great

To see you uh talk us uh tell us about these these pornographic images that circulated on X well they circulated for more than 17 hours on X before anything was done some of them reaching 47 million views 24,000 uh shares and eventually their her fan community so they’re called

Swifties we all know them uh they took over and they started uh massively posting real videos of her to try to drown those fake news now X attempted in the first place to moderate that but then they decided to get uh to make Swift’s name unsearchable on the

Platform and that can seem like quite of a uh let’s say A desperate action that could show that perhaps platform just don’t know how to moderate this content and it’s quite concerning because we know that these deep fakes are just going to become more and more common

It’s happening now with a superstar a pop star but it can happen with any one of us because all of these AI generative tools are now becoming uh are open source and are available to anyone now Juliet Taylor Swift is also at the center of an electoral interference

Theory tell us more we’ll have to get into her per her personal life she’s been dating American football player Travis Kel who said to participate in the Super Bowl on February 11th it’s of course a couple that’s very much in the spotlight highly publicized and the theory that’s been circulating and

That’s supported by some Republicans is that the couple’s relationship is a fake the romance was set up to create a buzz around her so that she could then uh announce her uh her support for Democratic candidate Joe Biden now the idea here is not to know whether it’s

True or false but rather to uh to ask the question of the type of uh role celebrities can have in uh elections and we know that Taylor Swift has quite a support we talked about the Swifty’s 270 million uh followers on Instagram and recently she actually put out a tweet

Asking her followers to register on vote.org and right after that tweet there was a huge surge in the number of uh of of registered voters voters and it’s someone similar to the Elon Musk effect every time he speaks about or tweets about a company there’s going to

Be an impact on the stock market when it comes to the influence she could have in politics uh we know that it’s real we know that she also has uh an effect on the economy the US fed for instance uh spoke about the uh how much she boosted

The economy after her tour of the United States and the European commission also knows this because they recently tweeted Margarita China the vice president of the European commission he asked her uh directly if she could help uh you know rally uh European the European Youth and

Help them vote as well so in any case this story really makes us reflect on the influence that those influencers have and it seems like they they’re really starting to have it in all domain including in politics it was funny with the the Europeans uh officials asked her

To do that no response from her thank you very much for that uh Julia Seager there now the US’s city of sin has been known for its successes throughout the years but Las Vegas is facing a dilemma as it tries to reduce its water consumption the desert city forced to

Act as the climate crisis worsens droughts across the US’s West Coast Emerald Maxwell reports when you think of Las Vegas the last thing that comes to mind are restrictions but despite its giant fountains and light shows built in the middle of the inhospitable desert the city of all extravagance has emerged as

A leader in reducing ing its water use after the excesses of the night before the water cops spring into action at the crack of dawn Salvador’s job is to track down any water waste in the city’s residential neighborhoods and he doesn’t have to search for long I do have a spring flow

Violation as you can see there is some misalignments along this curve you can see here’s where the water’s running off he films and Records the infringements the owner of this house has a faulty watering system that also waters for too long they’ve been running it for now for

Uh 5 minutes um which we only recommend a 4 minute run time um and that’s because again the the soil here it doesn’t absorb it fast enough it it just runs off the property this household gets away with a warning this time but not far away another home is slapped

With an $80 fine the amount doubles for each repeat offense but it’s not excessive because its main purpose is to engage homeowners in a conversation they already got uh a warning in the past and um when it’s like that you know we we don’t give them another warning we you

Know they will have to call in to um see if they could get an educational visits raising awareness while tightening up the law that’s been Las Vegas’s approach for the last 20 years the city recently capped the size of swimming pools in private homes and with within the next 2 years all decorative

Grass will have to go that’s because the green Lawns much loved by Americans consume 65 to 70% of the city’s water so this is living grass and this is a high water user right so it uses 73 gallons per square foot per year so what

We want to do is we want to convert it to basically like this which is what we call Desert Landscaping it’s like 15 to 18 gallons a sare foot to convince homeowners to trans form their turfs the city is offering to pay around half of

The cost of the work you know you can do all the programs you can throw all the money but if people don’t believe it and they don’t want to do it and they don’t see that it’s the right thing then they won’t participate so you have to do a

Lot of communication about why it’s critical why it’s important Las Vegas has managed to reduce its water consumption by 26% since 2002 even as its population has grown it does so partly by recycling the water used in homes Casino like the Bellagio with its famous fountains are also doing their

Bit we need water here in Las Vegas to to continue to survive and thrive we need to do our part and we’ve installed water conserving fixtures in our in our guest rooms and in our facilities and our in our restaurants when we’re done with the water in Lake bagia that’s

Getting discharged to the municipal system uh as well every drop of water counts in Vegas because much of its Supply comes from the increasingly depleted Colorado River hit with prolonged drought and climate change that’s it for this edition of inside the Americas you can check out other editions on our website

France24.com from all us on the team thank you very much for Watching [Applause] Move to The rhythms of Africa the Africa Cup of Nations from January the 13th to February the 11th on France 24

A bipartisan group of US senators have introduced a bill that would criminalise the spread of non-consensual, sexualised images generated through artificial intelligence. It comes after AI-generated images of pop star Taylor Swift circulated this past week on X, formerly known as Twitter. Swift is also the target of conspiracy theories that she’s being used as part of a plot to interfere in the upcoming US presidential elections. FRANCE 24’s Julia Sieger tells us more. 

Read more about this story in our article: https://f24.my/A658.y

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