Nine more people were arrested Friday in an anti-ICE protest at a St. Paul church, according to a civil rights attorney federally indicted in the case last month.

Protesters disrupted services inside Cities Church on Summit Avenue near Snelling Avenue on Jan. 18, chanting “ICE out” amid an immigration enforcement crackdown in Minnesota. People also shouted, “Justice for Renee Good,” who was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis on Jan. 7. They said the acting field office director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minnesota serves as a pastor at the church.

Seven people were indicted last month. Nekima Levy Armstrong, a Twin Cities civil rights attorney and activist, wrote on social media that the additional nine people were arrested Friday morning and are scheduled to be in court Friday afternoon.

The nine initially arrested are charged under the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. The FACE Act prohibits interference or intimidation of “any person by force, threat of force, or physical obstruction exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.”

They have pleaded not guilty. The people charged last month were Levy Armstrong, former CNN host turned independent journalist Don Lemon, St. Paul School Board Member Chauntyll Allen, independent Twin Cities journalist Georgia Fort, Hennepin County Attorney’s Office lobbyist Jamael Lundy, St. Paul activist Trahern Crews, social media personality William Scott Kelly, along with Jerome Deangelo Richardson and Ian Davis Austin.

One of the people arrested Friday is also an independent journalist, according to Levy Armstrong.

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What are the worst tourist traps in the world? What attractions live up to the hype?

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Stasher, a company that hooks travelers up with temporary luggage storage, weighs in with its blog post, “World’s Best and Worst Tourist Attractions, Ranked.” These rankings were calculated by considering five factors: online ratings, TikTok likes, distance from an airport, the country’s safety and quality of local lodging.

Ergo, Stasher has determined the worst tourist attraction in existence is the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “Located 38.1 km from the LAX airport, this sidewalk of celebrity stars had the lowest Google rating and safety score,” it writes. Other sites that supposedly suck in terms of a visitor experience include Disneyland Paris and the Dead Sea, dinged for “accessibility challenges” and “regional instability.”

Conversely, places that scored high include Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Here are the first five from each list; check out the full post for more.

Stasher has determined the worst tourist attraction in existence is the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The rankings were calculated by considering five factors: online ratings, TikTok likes, distance from an airport, the country’s safety and quality of local lodging. (Dreamstime/TNS)

Stasher’s best and worst tourist attractions in the world

Worst:

1 Hollywood Walk of Fame, L.A.

2 The Dead Sea

3 The Grand Bazaar, Istanbul

4 Great Wall of China

5 Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong

Best:

Stasher has determined the best tourist attraction to be the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain. The rankings were calculated by considering five factors: online ratings, TikTok likes, distance from an airport, the country’s safety and quality of local lodging. (Dreamstime/TNS)

1 Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

2 Colosseum, Rome

3 Eiffel Tower, Paris

4 Milford Sound, New Zealand

5 Walt Disney World, Florida

Source: stasher.com/blog/worlds-best-and-worst-tourist-attractions-ranked

By MICHELLE CHAPMAN, AP Business Writer

ChatGPT maker OpenAI has received $110 billion in funding from Amazon, SoftBank and Nvidia, putting the technology company’s pre-money valuation at $730 billion.

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Amazon is leading the trio of tech heavyweights in commitments, putting up $50 billion, followed by $30 billion each from Nvidia and SoftBank, said OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman on Friday. Other investors are anticipated to join as the funding round progresses.

Amazon will start with an initial $15 billion investment and will invest an additional $35 billion in the coming months under preset conditions.

“These partnerships expand our global reach, deepen our infrastructure, and strengthen our balance sheet so we can bring frontier AI to more people, more businesses, and more communities worldwide,” he wrote.

Altman said that ChatGPT has more than 900 million weekly active users, and more than 50 million consumer subscribers.

“We are entering a new phase where frontier AI moves from research into daily use at global scale,” he said. “Leadership will be defined by who can scale infrastructure fast enough to meet demand, and turn that capacity into products people rely on. This funding and these partnerships let us do both, and move faster on our mission to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity.”

OpenAI and Amazon’s multiyear partnership will include bringing new advanced AI capabilities to enterprises and having Amazon Web Services serve as the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI Frontier. OpenAI and AWS will expand their current $38 billion multiyear deal by $100 billion over eight years. The companies will partner on developing customized models available to Amazon developers to power Amazon’s customer-facing applications.

OpenAI said it is also expanding its partnership with Nvidia.

OpenAI and Microsoft have had a partnership since 2019. OpenAI said in a statement that nothing about the funding or new partners announced Friday “in any way changes the terms” of its relationship with Microsoft.

“The partnership remains strong and central,” OpenAI said.

VIENNA (AP) — Iran has not allowed the United Nations nuclear watchdog to access nuclear facilities affected by the 12-day war in June, according to a confidential report by the watchdog circulated to member states and seen Friday by The Associated Press.

The report from the International Atomic Energy Agency stressed that therefore it “cannot verify whether Iran has suspended all enrichment-related activities,” or the “size of Iran’s uranium stockpile at the affected nuclear facilities.”

The IAEA also reported that it had observed, through the analysis of commercially available satellite imagery, “regular vehicular activity around the entrance to the tunnel complex at Isfahan.”

The facility in Isfahan, some 215 miles southeast of Tehran, was mainly known for producing the uranium gas that is fed into centrifuges to be spun and purified.

Israel has struck buildings at the Isfahan nuclear site, among them a uranium conversion facility. The U.S. also struck Isfahan with missiles during the war last June.

The IAEA also reported that through the analysis of commercially-available satellite imagery, it has observed “activities being conducted at some of the affected nuclear facilities, including the enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow,” but it added that “without access to these facilities it is not possible for the Agency to confirm the nature and the purpose of the activities.”