3 Jun 2024

Promoting his line of edibles, former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura says cannabis saved his family

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MOORHEAD, Minn. — He stepped out of the car in the parking lot, looking less like a politician and more like a dad running weekend errands. But even wearing a baseball cap, sneakers and a fanny pack, former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura knew how to command an audience.

Close to 100 people lined up to meet Ventura at Unwind, a Moorhead store specializing in THC and CBD products.

People came out to meet former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura at Unwind Minnesota, a family-owned THC & CBD store in Moorhead, Minn., on Saturday, June 1, 2024. Ventura was there to promote Jesse Ventura Farms, a cannabis business. (Chris Flynn / Forum News Service)

Ventura, who served as governor from 1999 to 2003, launched his own brand of cannabis edibles this spring. He partnered with Twin Cities-based Retro Bakery, which produces hemp-derived THC edibles under the Jesse Ventura Farms brand.

The products, which include chocolate bars and gummies, are now available at Unwind and other outlets in the state.

It’s been a long time coming for Ventura, who first fought for marijuana legalization during his time in office. He said, fortunately, the issue “stayed on the burner and kept smoldering.”

He said he’ll never forget last summer when Gov. Tim Walz handed him the pen he used to sign to legalize and decriminalize cannabis.

“I was very proud to be able, 25 years later, to see something that I always knew should happen, happen,” he said.

‘It was a lifesaver’

Former Minn. Governor Jesse Ventura shakes the hand of Theresa Sorenson, owner of Unwind, 3505 8th St. S. in Moorhead, Minn., where he promoted his cannabis edibles Saturday, June 1, 2024. (Tracy Briggs / Forum News Service)

Ventura’s support for cannabis legalization comes from a very personal place.

At a recent Senate hearing and again at the store, Ventura shared the story of how his wife of nearly 50 years, Terry, suffered terrible seizures. After being put on four different seizure medications, nothing worked. So, they planned a trip to Colorado, where recreational marijuana was legal.

He said after three drops of a THC tincture under her tongue, she has never had another seizure.

“If it weren’t for cannabis, I wouldn’t be standing here today. It was a lifesaver for me and my family,” he said.

Fans lined up

Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura visits with fans at Unwind Minnesota, a family-owned THC and CBD store in Moorhead, to promote Jesse Ventura Farms, a cannabis business, Saturday, June 1, 2024. (Chris Flynn / Forum News Service)

Many of those who came out to see the former professional wrestler, actor and controversial governor called themselves fans, like Melissa Niecko, who recently moved to Moorhead from Texas and hoped to reconnect with the governor.

“I met him 25 years ago. It was at a marine ball. I was in the Navy, and we met in San Diego, and I just want to see if he remembers me,” she said with a laugh.

While Niecko said she’s never tried Ventura’s products, she planned to give them a try.

That was an understatement for another Ventura fan here today.

“I bought everything — the whole line,” said a woman named Tammy, who declined to give her last name.

She said she always liked Ventura because he was never a professional politician.

“I like his attitude. He’s so real. I wish he would run for president,” she said.

But the products also brought her out. Tammy is an Air Force veteran who said she suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and cannabis products have eased her stress and helped her sleep.

Unwind

Many fans had former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura autograph their products, including this dark chocolate bar, Saturday, June 1, 2024. (Tracy Briggs / Forum News Service)

It’s an endorsement Unwind’s owner Theresa Sorenson has heard repeatedly.

“We have a lot of military people come in, and they don’t want to take the prescription drugs anymore. They want something more natural. And actually, cannabis is a natural plant. It’s not made from chemicals,” Sorenson said.

She said she heard about Ventura’s tour around the state just last week and was excited to have him in Moorhead to help educate people about the products that are so new to Minnesota.

She said their staff has been taking courses to learn about different varieties and products and how they might affect customers and their ailments.

“I don’t want my salespeople saying, ‘I’m just here to sell to you.’ I want them to feel like they’re getting a product that will help them,” she said. “You can’t always trust what you get on the streets, and so I want a safe place for people to come where products are state-compliant. It’s safe. It’s not treated with anything else. You’re going to get the real deal here.”

After Ventura’s appearance, that includes the former governor’s chocolate bars and gummies, which come in flavors like bubblegum, strawberry and berry gelato.

Hitting the road

Alex Kuchta holds a 1986 LJN Jesse the Body Ventura WWF Wrestling Superstars action figure that Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura signed for him when he met with fans at Unwind Minnesota, a family-owned THC & CBD store in Moorhead, Minn., to promote Jesse Ventura Farms, a cannabis business, on Saturday, June 1, 2024. (Chris Flynn / Forum News Service)

After taking photos with fans, Ventura signed product packages and even a few action figures.

He’s taking this show on the road all over Minnesota. He also visited Breckenridge, Minn., earlier Saturday and planned a stop at Moorhead’s Junkyard Brewing after his stop at Unwind.

He was also scheduled to make more appearances around the Twin Cities metro area on Sunday.

Ventura, an often colorful and controversial public figure for decades, told the crowd in Moorhead that even though he gets asked to make appearances elsewhere, these will be the only ones he’ll continue to do. That’s how strongly he feels about cannabis.

“I don’t want anybody’s family to have to go through what we went through,” he said. “Now, we just need to get the Dakotas on board with us.”

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3 Jun 2024

Palestinian officials apply to join South Africa’s case at top UN court accusing Israel of genocide

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By Mike Corder, Associated Press

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Palestinian officials have applied at the top U.N. court for permission to join South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.

The request published Monday alleges that Israel’s ongoing military operation is “part of a systematic effort to wipe Palestinian society and its culture and social institutions from the map.” The request to the International Court of Justice was made on behalf of the “State of Palestine” and signed by Palestinian Authority foreign ministry official Ammar Hijazi.

South Africa filed its case with the world court late last year accusing Israel of breaching the genocide convention in its military assault that has laid waste to large swaths of Gaza. Israel denies it is committing genocide in its military operation to crush Hamas triggered by the deadly Oct. 7 attacks.

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Israeli soldiers work on a tank in a staging area near the Israeli-Gaza border in southern Israel, Monday, June 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Israel is expanding its offensive in the southern city of Rafah, once the main hub of humanitarian aid operations. The Israeli invasion has largely cut off the flow of food, medicine and other supplies to Palestinians facing widespread hunger.

Israeli bombardments and ground operations in Gaza have killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The court has issued three preliminary orders in the case calling on Israel to do all it can to prevent deaths in the enclave, ramp up humanitarian aid and, most recently, halt its offensive in Rafah.

It is unclear how long the court’s judges will take to rule on the request. If granted, Palestinian officials will be able to address the court in writing and during public hearings.

In their request, the Palestinians said they are directly affected by South Africa’s case against Israel.

“The Israeli onslaught has obliterated and damaged, beyond recognition, Gaza’s hospitals, mosques, churches, universities, schools, homes, shops, and infrastructure, as part of a systematic effort to wipe Palestinian society and its culture and social institutions from the map,” the request says.

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The request adds that, Israel is violating the court’s orders and continuing with “its genocidal acts including deliberately and systematically impeding humanitarian aid, resulting in an intentionally engineered situation of starvation and a creeping famine that is increasingly imminent.”

The Palestinians have been to the court before. In 2018, The Palestinian Authority filed a case asking its judges to order Washington to remove the relocated U.S. embassy from Jerusalem. The case followed the decision of the administration of then-U.S. President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to move the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv.

That case remains before the court, where cases can take years to resolve.

The International Court of Justice rules in cases between states. The United Nations General Assembly voted last month to give Palestine some new rights and privileges, but it reaffirmed that it remains a non-member observer state without full U.N. membership and the right to vote in the General Assembly or at any of its conferences.

The United States has made clear that it will block Palestinian membership and statehood until direct negotiations with Israel resolve key issues, including security, boundaries and the future of Jerusalem, and lead to a two-state solution.

3 Jun 2024

Democrats wanted an agreement on using artificial intelligence. It went nowhere

by | posted in: Politics | 0

By DAN MERICA (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democratic National Committee was watching earlier this year as campaigns nationwide were experimenting with artificial intelligence. So the organization approached a handful of influential party campaign committees with a request: Sign onto guidelines that would commit them to use the technology in a “responsible” way.

The draft agreement, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, was hardly full of revolutionary ideas. It asked campaigns to check work by AI tools, protect against biases and avoid using AI to create misleading content.

“Our goal is to use this new technology both effectively and ethically, and in a way that advances – rather than undermines – the values that we espouse in our campaigns,” the draft said.

The plan went nowhere.

Instead of fostering an agreement, the guidelines sparked a debate about the value of such pledges, particularly those governing fast-evolving technology. Among the concerns expressed by the Democratic campaign organizations: Such a pledge might hamstring their ability to deploy AI and could turn off donors with ties to the AI industry. Some committee officials were also irked that the DNC gave them only a few days to agree to the guidelines.

The proposal’s demise highlighted internal divisions over campaign tactics and the party’s uncertainty over how to best utilize AI amid warnings from experts that the technology is supercharging the proliferation of disinformation.

Hannah Muldavin, a senior spokesperson at the Democratic National Committee, said the group is not giving up on finding a consensus.

The DNC, she said, “will continue to engage with our sister committees to discuss ideas and issues important to Democratic campaigns and to American voters, including AI.”

“It’s not uncommon for ideas and plans to shift, especially in the midst of a busy election year, and any documents on this subject reflect early and ongoing conversations,” Muldavin said, adding the “DNC and our partners take seriously the opportunities and challenges presented by AI.”

The wrangling comes as campaigns have increasingly deployed artificial intelligence — computer systems, software or processes that emulate aspects of human work and cognition — to optimize workloads. That includes using large language models to write fundraising emails, text supporters and build chatbots to answer voters’ questions.

That trend is expected to continue as November’s general election approaches, with campaigns turning to supercharged generative AI tools to create text and images, as well as clone human voices and create video at lightning speeds.

The Republican National Committee used AI-generated images in a television spot last year predicting a dystopian future under President Joe Biden.

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Much of that adoption, however, has been overshadowed by concerns about how campaigns could use artificial intelligence in ways that trick voters. Experts have warned that AI has become so powerful that it has made it easy to generate “deep fake” videos, audio snippets and other media targeting opposing candidates. Some states have passed legislation regulating the way generative artificial intelligence can be used. But Congress has so far failed to pass any bills regulating artificial intelligence on the federal level.

In the absence of regulation, the DNC sought a set of guidelines it could point to as evidence the party was taking seriously the threat and promise of AI. It sent the proposal in March to the five Democratic campaign committees that seek to elect House, Senate, gubernatorial, state legislative and state attorneys general candidates to office, according to the draft agreement.

The goal was to have each committee agree to a slate of AI guardrails and the DNC proposed issuing a joint statement proclaiming such guidelines would ensure that campaigns could use “the tools they need to prevent the spread of misinformation and disinformation, while empowering campaigns to safely, responsibly use generative AI to engage more Americans in our democracy.”

The Democratic committee had hoped the statement would be signed by Chair Jaime Harrison and the leaders of the other organizations.

Democratic operatives said the proposal landed with a thud. Some senior leaders at the committees worried that the agreement might have unforeseen consequences, perhaps constricting how campaigns use AI, according to multiple Democratic operatives familiar with the outreach.

And it might send the wrong message to technology companies and executives who work on AI, many of whom help fill campaign coffers during election years.

Some of the Democratic Party’s most prolific donors are top tech entrepreneurs and AI evangelists, including Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google.

Altman has donated over $200,000 to the Biden campaign and his aligned Democratic joint fundraising committee since the start of last year, according to data from the Federal Election Commission, and Schmidt’s contributions to those groups have topped $500,000 over the same time.

Two other AI proponents, Dustin Moskovitz, the co-founder of Facebook, and Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, donated more than $900,000 to Biden’s joint fundraising committee this cycle, according to the same data.

The DNC plan caught the committees off guard because it came with little explanation, other than a desire to get each committee to agree to the list of best practices within a few days, said multiple Democratic operatives who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter. Aides to the Democratic Congressional Campaign and Democratic Senatorial Campaign committees said they felt rushed by a DNC timeline that urged them to sign quickly.

Representatives from the Democratic Attorneys General Association did not respond to the Associated Press’ request for comment. Spokesmen from the Democratic Governors Association and Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee declined to comment.

The Republican National Committee did not respond to questions about its AI guidelines. The Biden campaign also declined to comment when asked about the DNC effort.

The four-page agreement — “Guidelines on Responsible Use of Generative AI in Campaigns” — covered everything from ensuring that artificial intelligence systems were not trusted without a human checking its work to notifying voters when they are interacting with AI-generated content or systems.

“As the explosive rise of generative AI transforms every corner of public life – including political campaigns – it’s more important than ever that we limit this new technology’s potential threat to voters’ rights, and instead leverage it to build innovative, efficient campaigns and a stronger, more inclusive democracy,” the proposal said.

The guidelines were divided into five sections that included titles such as “Offering Human Alternatives, Consideration and Fallback” and “Providing Notice and Explanation.” The proposed rules would have required the committees to ensure “a real person should be responsible for approving AI-generated content and be accountable for how, where, and to whom it is deployed.”

The directive outlined how “users should always be aware when they are interacting with an AI bot” and stressed that any images or video created by AI “should be flagged” as such. And it stressed that campaigns should use AI to assist staffers, not replace them.

“Campaigns are a human-driven and human motivated business,” read the agreement. “Use efficiency gains to teach more voters and focus more on quality control and sustainability.”

It also urged campaigns not to use “generative AI to create misleading content. Period.”

This story is part of an Associated Press series, “The AI Campaign,” exploring the influence of artificial intelligence in the 2024 election cycle.

The Associated Press receives financial assistance from the Omidyar Network to support coverage of artificial intelligence and its impact on society. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org

The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement allowing OpenAI access to part of the AP’s text archives.

3 Jun 2024

Twins: Royce Lewis’ return near; Edouard Julien appears to be odd man out

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When the Twins placed Royce Lewis on the injured list after he suffered a severe quadriceps strain on Opening Day, the thought was that the third baseman would be sidelined for a couple of months.

Just over two months later, at long last, his return is near.

Lewis appears poised to return on Tuesday when the Twins take on the Yankees in a road series that will begin at 6:05 p.m. CT in the Bronx, an exciting prospect both for Lewis and the Twins, who are more than ready to welcome back one of their most dynamic players.

To make room on the roster, it looks as if the Twins have optioned second baseman Edouard Julien to Triple-A St. Paul. While the club has not announced the move, it appears on the transition log on the Twins’ official website.

Lewis’ return comes after a rehab process he described as the most mentally challenging of his career, in part due to the uncertainty of his return timeline. Most recently, he played in a six-game rehab stint with the Triple-A Saints, going 4 for 23 in those games.

While Lewis was out, Jose Miranda saw most of the action for the Twins at third base, a position he was limited at last season because of a shoulder issue that also affected him at the plate.

Miranda, who went 2 for 4 with two RBIs in the Twins’ Sunday win at Houston, has hit .280 with a .780 OPS this season, exhibiting the same kind of productivity as he did in his rookie season in 2022. That helped him survive the roster crunch and left Julien as the odd man out.

After a highly-productive rookie season, Julien hasn’t exhibited the same success this season at the plate and said late last month that that had taken a mental toll. A trip to Triple-A should give him the opportunity to reset in a less pressure-filled environment.

“It’s been tough. Mentally you just start — not trusting your routine, trusting your approach, it’s just every day you don’t succeed as much as last year,” Julien said in May. “I expect myself to be better or the same as last year. Not doing as well, it’s a lot more pressure. You just have to be tough mentally and be stubborn. Trust that everything will work out.”

City Connect reveal plans

The Twins will hold a daylong celebration next Monday when they unveil their long-awaited City Connect uniforms. The City Connect jerseys, designed in collaboration with Nike, have been rolled out over the course of the past few seasons, and the Twins will be the last team to unveil their new look.

The day will begin at 6 a.m. with live art displays at Target Plaza. There will be photo opportunities both with current players and T.C. Bear, live music and a free lunch as long as supplies last. Fans also will have their first chance to buy City Connect merchandise.

The Twins will don the jerseys for the first time later in the week, wearing them for their June 14 and June 15 games against the Oakland Athletics.

Briefly

The Twins will send Bailey Ober to the mound against the Yankees on Tuesday night. He will face Luis Gil, who was just named the American League Pitcher and Rookie of the Month for May. The Yankees acquired Gil in a 2018 trade with the Twins for outfielder Jake Cave. … The Twins were swept by the Yankees when the two teams faced each other last month. After a leadoff home run in first inning of the first game, the Twins went 26 straight innings without scoring a run.

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