Wisconsin state girls basketball: Lena outlasts Clear Lake 53-48 in Division 5 semifinal

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GREEN BAY, Wis. — The bounce, break or big play that Clear Lake needed just never materialized.

Lena made just enough plays down the stretch for a 53-48 victory over the Warriors in the Division 5 semifinals of the Wisconsin girls state high school basketball tournament Friday.

Nora Eggert nailed a 3-pointer from the right side and Ellie Cress hit a pair of free throws to pull Clear Lake within 52-48 with 27.8 seconds left.

Lena left the door open by missing 3 of 4 free throws in the final 25 seconds, but the Warriors turned it over on their final two hurried possessions.

“They hit timely shots when they needed to, especially in that first half,” Clear Lake coach Chad Eggert said. “And then we couldn’t quite get over that hump the second half. We’d get close, they’d make another big bucket, or get out on us and get an easy transition bucket. We just couldn’t quite get there.”

Nora Eggert, the coach’s daughter, finished her high school career with 12 points, including three 3-pointers, but was the only Warrior in double figures. Brenna Peterson had a team-high 10 rebounds.

Third-seeded Clear Lake (26-4) shot just 28.6%, making 12 of 42 field goal attempts. The Warriors also turned it over 24 times, which Lena converted into 20 points.

Eva Brooks had 23 points and 14 boards for Lena, which shot 42.2%. Madi Thomson added 12 points and 11 rebounds. The Wildcats hung on despite making just 9 of 26 free throws, all in the second half.

“Even though we were maybe only five or six (down), and maybe it got to nine or so, we were the ones that seemed like we had to battle the whole game,” Chad Eggert said. “But give credit to Lena. They’re good. They’re down here, too, for a reason.”

The second-seeded Wildcats (28-2) advanced to Saturday’s title game against fourth-seeded Albany/Monticello (26-3), which upset top-ranked Argyle/Pecatonica 37-31 in the opening semifinal.

Clear Lake went almost four minutes without a field goal midway through the second half but managed to make it one-possession game when Shelby Meyer scored down low to trim the deficit to 35-32.

Clear Lake had several chances to cut into the lead but missed the front end of a bonus and its next two field-goal attempts. Thomson then went the other way with a turnover for a three-point play to make it 38-32.

The Warriors missed consecutive 3-pointers and Thomson scored on a drive to put Lena up 40-32 with 6:46 remaining.

Kali Fischer hit a pair of free throws — Lena’s first of the game — to give the Wildcats a 29-22 lead. Clear Lake scored its next four points from the line and Eggert tied it with a 3-pointer.

The Warriors hit four of their first nine shots, including 2 of 5 from beyond the arc, but also turned it over seven times over that span.

Meyer snapped a scoreless streak of almost 3 minutes with a layup to bring Clear Lake even at 20-20 with 1:24 left in the first half, but Lena scored the final five points before the break.

“I’m super proud of our team and just getting to the state tournament was super fun,” Nora Eggert said. “I’m so proud of all of us. We created really close bonds this year, which was really fun. We fought hard but just couldn’t do it. But I’m proud to make it here.”

OpenAI has ‘full confidence’ in CEO Sam Altman after investigation, reinstates him to board

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By MATT O’BRIEN and HALELUYA HADERO (AP Business Writers)

OpenAI is reinstating CEO Sam Altman to its board of directors and said it has “full confidence” in his leadership after an outside investigation into the turmoil that led the company to abruptly fire and rehire him in November.

OpenAI said the investigation by the law firm WilmerHale concluded that Altman’s ouster was a “consequence of a breakdown in the relationship and loss of trust” between Altman and the prior board.

The ChatGPT maker also said it has added three women to its board of directors: Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellman, a former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, a former Sony general counsel; and Instacart CEO Fidji Simo.

The actions are a way for the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company to show investors and customers that it is trying to move past the internal conflicts that nearly destroyed it last year and made global headlines.

For more than three months, OpenAI said little about what led its then-board of directors to fire Altman on Nov. 17. An announcement that day said Altman was “not consistently candid in his communications” in a way that hindered the board’s ability to exercise its responsibilities. He also was kicked off the board, along with its chairman, Greg Brockman, who responded by quitting his job as the company’s president.

Much of OpenAI’s conflicts are rooted in its unusual governance structure. Founded as a nonprofit with a mission to safely build futuristic AI that helps humanity, it is now a fast-growing big business still controlled by a nonprofit board bound to its original mission.

The investigation found the prior board acted within its discretion. But it also determined that Altman’s “conduct did not mandate removal,” OpenAI said.

Days after his surprise ouster, Altman and his supporters — with backing from most of OpenAI’s workforce and close business partner Microsoft — helped orchestrate a comeback that brought Altman and Brockman back to their executive roles and forced out board members Tasha McCauley, Helen Toner and Ilya Sutskever, though the latter kept his job as chief scientist.

Altman and Brockman did not regain their board seats at that time. But an “initial” new board of three men was formed, led by former Salesforce and Facebook executive Bret Taylor, who also chaired Twitter’s board before Elon Musk took over the platform. The others were former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, the only member of the previous board to stay on.

(Both Quora and Taylor’s new startup, Sierra, operate their own AI chatbots that rely in part on OpenAI technology.)

OpenAI had retained the law firm WilmerHale to investigate the events that led to Altman’s ouster. During the probe, OpenAI said WilmerHale conducted dozens of interviews with the company’s prior board, current executives, advisers and other witnesses. The company also said the law firm reviewed thousands of documents and other corporate actions.

The company still has other troubles to contend with, including a lawsuit filed by billionaire Elon Musk, who helped bankroll the early years of OpenAI and was a co-chair of its board after its 2015 founding. Musk alleges that the company is betraying its founding mission in pursuit of profits.

Legal experts have expressed doubt about whether Musk’s arguments, centered around an alleged breach of contract, will hold up in court.

But it has already forced open the company’s internal conflicts about its unusual governance structure, how “open” it should be about its research and how to pursue what’s known as artificial general intelligence, or AI systems that can perform just as well as — or even better than — humans in a wide variety of tasks.

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The AP has signed a deal with OpenAI for it to access its news archive.

Metro Transit officer strikes pedestrian with squad in downtown St. Paul

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A Metro Transit police officer struck a pedestrian with a squad car Thursday in downtown St. Paul.

Paramedics took the woman who was hit to Regions Hospital with apparent non-life threatening injuries, said Nikki Muehlhausen, Metro Transit police spokesperson.

The officer, who was not injured, reported the crash happened at Sixth and Robert streets shortly before 2 p.m. Thursday.

Metro Transit placed the officer on standard administrative leave, Muehlhausen said.

The Minnesota State Patrol is leading the investigation.

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Program that allows 30,000 migrants from 4 countries into the US each month upheld by judge

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VICTORIA, Texas (AP) — A federal judge in Texas on Friday upheld a key piece of President Joe Biden’s immigration policy that allows a limited number of migrants from four countries to enter the U.S. on humanitarian grounds, dismissing a challenge from Republican-led states that said the program created an economic burden on them.

U.S. District Judge Drew B. Tipton ruled in favor of the humanitarian parole program that allows up to 30,000 asylum-seekers into the U.S. each month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela combined. Eliminating the program would undercut a broader policy that seeks to encourage migrants to use the Biden administration’s preferred pathways into the U.S. or face stiff consequences.

Texas and 20 other states that sued argued the program is forcing them to spend millions on health care, education, and public safety for the migrants. An attorney working with the Texas attorney general’s office in the legal challenge said that the program “created a shadow immigration system.”

Advocates for the federal government countered that migrants admitted through the policy helped with a U.S. farm labor shortage.

An appeal appeared likely.

Since the program was launched more than 357,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela have been granted parole and allowed to enter the country through January. Haitians have been far been the biggest group to use the program with 138,000 people from that country arriving, followed by 86,000 Venezuelans, 74,000 Cubans and 58,000 Nicaraguans.

Tipton is an appointee of former President Donald Trump who ruled against the Biden administration in 2022 on an order that determined who to prioritize for deportation.

The program started in fall 2022. Migrants must apply online, arrive at an airport and have a financial sponsor in the U.S. If approved, they can stay for two years and get a work permit.

In an August trial, Tipton declined to issue any temporary order that would halt the parole program nationwide.

Some states said the initiative has benefited them. One Nicaraguan migrant admitted into the country through that process filled a position at a farm in Washington state that was struggling to find workers.

Tipton questioned how Texas could be claiming financial losses if data showed that the parole program actually reduced the number of migrants coming into the U.S.

When the policy took effect, the Biden administration had been preparing to end a pandemic-era policy at the border known as Title 42 that barred migrants from seeking asylum at ports of entry and immediately expelled many who entered illegally.

Proponents of the policy also faced scrutiny from Tipton, who questioned whether living in poverty was enough for migrants to qualify. Elissa Fudim, a lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, responded: “I think probably not.”

Federal government attorneys and immigrant rights groups said that in many cases, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans are also fleeing oppressive regimes, escalating violence and worsening political conditions that have endangered their lives.

The lawsuit did not challenge the use of humanitarian parole for tens of thousands of Ukrainians who came after Russia’s invasion.

The program’s supporters said each case is individually reviewed and some people who had made it to the final approval step after arriving in the U.S. have been rejected, though they did not provide the number of rejections that have occurred.

The lawsuit is among several legal challenges the Biden administration has faced over immigrations policies.