The Algorithm Age

Footage appears to show Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents urinating on the grounds of a Los Angeles public school, which they described as a “deeply disturbing” incident. Members of the El Rancho Unified School District Board wrote to the Department of Homeland Security to complain about the alleged incident and accused the ICE agents of risking “exposing themselves to minors.” It follows a period of heightened tension in LA and Southern California as communities push back against ICE and the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation agenda. The school board claimed the agents urinated against a storage container beside the playground of the Ruben Salazar High School in Pico Rivera on the morning of June 17. It was also close to where students were in session. Footage shared by the school appears to confirm the claims, as one by one the agents walk toward the storage container and stand for a few moments. The DHS did not respond to questions abo...

A teacher has been banned from classrooms in Wales after a tribunal heard she got drunk in class and started swearing at pupils during a lesson that turned into a ‘mini rave’. Alice Ashton, who taught at Ysgol Bro Caereinion near Welshpool, Powys, swigged alcohol from an Evian bottle in class on January 17 last year, a panel heard. The lesson ‘spiralled out of control’ and turned into a ‘mini rave, with loud music, shouting and dancing’, a fitness to practice tribunal was told. One 16-year-old told the hearing Ashton also swore, calling the whole class ‘little s**ts’. The Education Workforce Council panel heard the lesson took place just four months after Ashton had been convicted of drink driving. Sign up for all of the latest stories Start your day informed with 's News Updates newsletter or get Breaking News alerts the moment it happens. She was described as ‘smiley and happy’ before she s...

A nine-year-old girl died in a hot car in Texas on Monday after her mother left her there while she went to work, local officials said. Her death followed the passing of a three-month-old infant boy in Mission in the same state on Friday and the death of a four-year-old in Brownsville on Saturday, both likewise trapped in overheated vehicles. NBC’s local affiliate reports that a man in Mission is facing a charge of injury to a child causing death after admitting that he had been drinking and had forgotten the infant was in the car when he went to lie down. The same outlet reports that a woman is facing the same charge in Brownsville after a four-year-old was found unresponsive in a daycare van. In the most recent incident, cops were called to the scene in Galena Park on Monday just after 2pm, where the child was found “unresponsive” in a white Toyota Camry sedan that was backed into a parking lot and had a visor displayed on the windscreen. “Nobody would necessarily ha...

When detectives discovered a cache of child abuse material allegedly in the hands of a Melbourne childcare worker, it started the clock ticking on an unprecedented response from police and public health authorities. After raiding the home of 26-year-old Joshua Dale Brown in May, police faced the daunting and distressing task of trying to identify eight children, some as young as five months old, whom it is alleged he had abused and filmed. They also tracked Brown’s work history, fearing the allegations against him at one centre in the city’s west may be only the tip of the iceberg. They uncovered that he had worked at 20 childcare centres across the city since 2017. Sex crimes detectives have now focused their attention on Brown’s time at a centre in Essendon, where they are investigating whether abuse occurred, and police are urging anyone with further information to come forward. For weeks, police and the Health Department grappled with how to reveal the ...

When detectives discovered a cache of child abuse material allegedly in the hands of a Melbourne childcare worker, it started the clock ticking on an unprecedented response from police and public health authorities. After raiding the home of 26-year-old Joshua Dale Brown in May, police faced the daunting and distressing task of trying to identify eight children, some as young as five months old, whom it is alleged he had abused and filmed. They also tracked Brown’s work history, fearing the allegations against him at one centre in the city’s west may be only the tip of the iceberg. They uncovered that he had worked at 20 childcare centres across the city since 2017. Sex crimes detectives have now focused their attention on Brown’s time at a centre in Essendon, where they are investigating whether abuse occurred, and police are urging anyone with further information to come forward. For weeks, police and the Health Department grappled with how to reveal the ...

When Grant Stevens was confronted by waiting journalists as he left the ABC's Adelaide studios following a radio interview on Wednesday morning, he smiled wryly. "I'm not armed. It's OK," the SA Police Commissioner said. The quip was in reference to an incident from the commissioner's professional past in which he had, he said, accidentally discharged his firearm during a raid on the house of an alleged drug dealer. A recent newspaper story had drawn attention to the episode, which dates back to the early 1990s when the now-commissioner was a young criminal investigator. Here's a look at what happened, why it has now made headlines, and why an Office for Public Integrity assessment will be conducted. What's the story? Earlier this week, Adelaide's Sunday Mail newspaper published a report containing allegations relating to a "high-ranking South Australian police officer". The story claimed th...

Melbourne’s childcare system is in crisis after it was revealed a worker had been charged with abusing eight children in his care and that the Health Department had recommended more than 1200 children at centres he worked at be tested for sexually transmitted infections. Here is everything we know about the situation so far. Who is Joshua Brown, and what was he charged with? The accused man is Joshua Dale Brown , a 26-year-old man from Point Cook in Melbourne’s south-west. He was arrested on May 12 after police allegedly linked him to a cache of child abuse material. Police allege this material led them to identifying eight victims, who were between the ages of five months and two years, from the Creative Garden Early Learning Centre in Point Cook, where Brown was working at the time of his arrest. Brown was charged with more than 70 offences, including sexually penetrating a child under 12, attempting to sexually penetrate a child unde...

Eight alleged victims and 70 charges of child sexual abuse. Another 1200 children have been urged to undergo testing for sexually transmitted diseases. A childcare educator accused of abuse who worked across 20 different centres. Written like this, these alleged facts, if proven, make for sickening reading. But there are still many questions, such as whether anyone had previously noticed anything about the man – Joshua Dale Brown – now charged, what led police to raid the 26-year-old’s home in Point Cook, and what needs to happen to better protect children. Chris Vedelago , senior reporter for The Age , is among the reporting team piecing together the case for this masthead. Vedelago explains how the case unfolded in the latest episode of The Morning Edition podcast with host Samantha Selinger-Morris . Click the player below to listen, or read on for an edited extract. Selinger-Morris: So, Chris, ...

Crime really does rise when darkness falls, reveals new research. But the risk of some types of offences – including s*x attacks – does not increase at night, according to a British study of data from more than 34,000 crimes. The findings, published in the journal PLOS One, show that the overall risk of crime rises when darkness falls – but that risk varies depending on the type of crime and geographical area. Previous research has shown that darkness reduces people’s feelings of safety, and that improved street lighting can help people feel safer being out after dark. But studies on whether the risk of crime is actually higher after dark had produced inconclusive results. To help clarify the potential influence of darkness on crime risk, University of Sheffield researchers analysed data from 34,618 crimes that occurred from 2010 through 2019 in the South Yorkshire region. Some of the crimes were committed at times of the day that, because of seasonal changes, occur...