Speaking on the DAZN broadcast of the final press conference, recently retired pound-for-pound great Terence Crawford joined the panel to discuss the main event.
“Teofimo is a good fighter. He’s very talented, very athletic. He’s always rose to the occasion in big moments like this. But Shakur’s just on a whole other level. This Saturday, he’s gonna prove it.”
“To be honest, I think he’s gonna do a little bit of everything. I think we’re gonna see the best Shakur Stevenson come Saturday, and I feel like it’s gonna be too much … Teofimo has done real well against southpaws, but Shakur has done real well against orthodox fighters. Shakur is not the average southpaw that Teofimo has been fighting. That’s why I say he’s levels above.”
Finally, he relayed his words of advice to his training partner and friend.
“Just be yourself. This another day in the office. Another walk in the park. There’s no reason to put a lot of pressure in yourself, because you know what you’re capable of.”
Lopez-Stevenson tops the bill at Madison Square Garden, New York, this Saturday night, and can be streamed live on DAZN PPV worldwide.
AI has passed a new benchmark, scoring better than the average human on a recognized creativity test involving 100,000 people. But there’s more to the story than the results, underpinning how difficult it is to put “creativity” in a measurable box.
Université de Montréal researchers led a large-scale study that pit 100,000 humans against the current leading generative AI models in an attempt to assess the creative power of both. It’s the largest comparative study of its kind ever conducted.
In order to measure what most of us would instantly consider a subjective field, the team used divergent linguistic creativity tasks to score the latest LLMs including ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, as well as the humans.
“We developed a rigorous framework that allows us to compare human and AI creativity using the same tools, based on data from more than 100,000 participants,” said Professor Karim Jerbi, from the Department of Psychology at the Université de Montréal.
The first caveat should be made here: It’s obviously very hard to quantify human creativity in a way that can be compared with a LLM. So while this is a massive study, it’s still defined by the measures and constraints that the scientists employed.
The team used the Divergent Association Task (DAT), something used in psychology to measure a specific type of creativity. Essentially, it asks someone to come up with 10 words in four minutes, and the less related the words are, the more creative the list is considered to be. Then the scientists had the AI models do the same.
What they found was that while LLMs demonstrated more creativity – as measured by the DAT – than a large number of humans, around half of the participants fared better than AI, and the top 10% far exceeded the performances of their computer challengers.
So yes, while some people failed to show more “divergent creativity” than Claude, for example, a whole lot of people didn’t. And this pulls into sharp focus just how difficult it is for even today’s most advanced machines to replicate the output of the human brain – even after their creators have scraped what feels like every word in every language on Earth.
“Even though AI can now reach human-level creativity on certain tests, we need to move beyond this misleading sense of competition,” said Jerbi. “Generative AI has above all become an extremely powerful tool in the service of human creativity: It will not replace creators, but profoundly transform how they imagine, explore, and create – for those who choose to use it.”
So while LLMs are better than some humans when it comes to specific creative tasks, the same can be said when assessing a group of people. And this study highlights how complex and nuanced measuring human traits are – and how LLM benchmark scores aren’t really solid indicators to use in comparative analyses.
“Even though AI can now reach human-level creativity on certain tests, we need to move beyond this misleading sense of competition,” said Jerbi. “Generative AI has above all become an extremely powerful tool in the service of human creativity: It will not replace creators, but profoundly transform how they imagine, explore, and create – for those who choose to use it.”
The researchers also investigated how AI models compared with humans when it came to creative writing tasks, including haikus, film synopses and short stories. Once again, the most creative humans outperformed the machines – even if LLMs overall scored better than the average participant.
And it’s worth noting that the LLMs expressed the most creativity when they were guided well – by humans. So it appears we are still a long way off from being replaced. And while AI has infiltrated our daily lives, there’s a growing pushback on AI slop and using technology that exploits artists. Recently, some 800 artists have banded together to campaign against the use of AI-generated content in a broad range of creative fields.
In this study, the researchers note that rather than think of it as a “human versus machine” investigation, the work should instead highlight AI’s ability to assist people in creative endeavors.
“By directly confronting human and machine capabilities, studies like ours push us to rethink what we mean by creativity,” added Jerbi.
Lawsuit was brought before court in 2025 as US threatened to seize control of strategic waterway – Trump’s first step under plan to reassert hegemony over Western hemisphere.
Published On 30 Jan 202630 Jan 2026
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Panama’s Supreme Court has ruled that the contracts under which a Chinese company operates ports on the Panama Canal are unconstitutional.
The decision regarding the facilities run by Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison was announced late on Thursday. It comes one year after United States President Donald Trump threatened to seize control of the crucial passageway, claiming it was effectively under Chinese control and therefore a security threat.
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The court ruled that the laws and acts underpinning the concession contracts between the state and the Panama Ports Company (PPC) for the development, construction, operation and management of the two port terminals violated the country’s constitution.
The CK Hutchison subsidiary has held the contracts, which allow it to operate the container ports of Balboa on the Pacific side of the Panama Canal and Cristobal on the Atlantic side, since the 1990s.
The arrangement was automatically renewed in 2021, handing PPC a licence for another 25 years.
The Panama Canal was the first target of Trump’s aggressive push for US dominance over the Western Hemisphere when he returned to the White House [File: EPA]
However, as he returned to the White House at the start of 2025, Trump was quick to push Panama to curb Chinese influence and boost US control of the strategic canal, which the US built but handed to Panama in 1999. The waterway carries an estimated 5 percent of global maritime trade.
The lawsuit to cancel PPC’s contracts was brought before the Panamanian court last year, based on allegations that the contracts were based on unconstitutional laws and that the Hong Kong company was not paying proper taxes.
An audit of the firm was also launched and found accounting errors and other irregularities that have reportedly cost Panama about $300m since the concession was extended, and an estimated $1.2bn during the original 25-year contract.
The ruling could force Panama to restructure the legal framework needed to hold port operations contracts and potentially require new tenders to operate the terminals.
PPC has denied all allegations and was also swift to reject the court’s decision.
“The new ruling … lacks legal basis and jeopardizes not only PPC and its contract, but also the well-being and stability of thousands of Panamanian families who depend directly and indirectly on port activity,” the company said in a statement.
China was also quick to comment. A foreign ministry spokesman said: “The Chinese side will take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies.”
After Trump issued his threat last year to take control of the canal, CK Hutchison announced a proposed sale of dozens of ports worldwide, including the Panamanian terminals, to a consortium led by US investment company BlackRock, a deal valued at nearly $23bn.
However, the deal appeared to stall due to objections from the Chinese government.
Trump’s bullish approach to Panama has been repeated regarding several other nations, including Venezuela and Greenland.
Threats of economic and military action have been issued, and the Trump administration has openly declared that it demands hegemony over the Americas.
“American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,” Trump declared after US troops attacked Venezuela and kidnapped its president earlier this year.
In Minneapolis, an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good on 7 January, and a Border Patrol officer shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti on 24 January. Both killings, and the ongoing immigration operation in the state, have sparked protests around the country. The second shooting led Democrats, and some Republicans, to push back on approving DHS funding.
These are the key developments from day 1,436 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Published On 30 Jan 202630 Jan 2026
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Here is where things stand on Friday, January 30:
Fighting
A Russian drone attack killed two women and a man in Vilniansk in Ukraine’s front-line Zaporizhia region, the head of the regional military administration, Ivan Fedorov, said on the Telegram messaging app. The attack also destroyed houses after fires broke out, Fedorov said.
Russian forces launched a total of 841 attacks on 34 settlements across Zaporizhia in the past day, Fedorov said in a later post, with 16 people injured in those attacks.
Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the Kryvyi Rih regional defence council, said that a Russian attack killed an elderly woman and injured three people in Kryvyi Rih city, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown southeast of Kharkiv.
Russian attacks also killed one person in Druzhkivka, in the Donetsk region, and one person in Khatnie, in the Kharkiv region, local officials said, according to the Kyiv Independent news outlet.
The death toll from a Russian attack on Ukraine’s Odesa on Tuesday has risen to four, after a man injured in the attack died in hospital on Thursday, head of the Odesa Military Administration Serhiy Lysak said.
A Ukrainian drone attack killed a hospital employee on the grounds of the Graivoron hospital, in Russia’s Belgorod region, the regional emergency response headquarters said.
Russian forces shot down 111 Ukrainian drones in a 24-hour period, the Russian Ministry of Defence said, according to Russia’s TASS state news agency.
Energy crisis
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram that 454 residential buildings remain without heating in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, with temperatures forecast to drop to -23 degrees Celsius (-9.4 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight this week.
President Zelenskyy said on Thursday he expected the implementation of an agreement by Russia not to fire on Kyiv and other cities for a week because of the severe winter weather, and as announced by United States President Donald Trump.
“Our teams discussed this in the United Arab Emirates. We expect the agreements to be implemented,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media. “De-escalation steps contribute to real progress toward ending the war,” he added.
Trump said earlier that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed not to fire on Kyiv for a week due to freezing winter conditions.
“I personally asked President Putin not to fire into Kyiv and various towns for a week, and he agreed to do that,” Trump said at a cabinet meeting, citing the “extraordinary cold” in the region.
Ceasefire negotiations
Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War confirmed Ukraine received the bodies of 1,000 soldiers from Russia in the latest exchange of those killed during the war.
Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky also confirmed that “within the framework of the Istanbul agreements, the bodies of 1,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers have been transferred to Ukraine”.
Medinsky said the “bodies of 38 dead Russian soldiers have been transferred to Russia”.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow has not yet seen the ceasefire document that Ukraine refers to as a 20-point plan, adding that he believes it has been “reworked” by Ukraine and its allies. “We still haven’t seen it in its entirety,” he said.
Deezer is now receiving over 60,000 fully AI-generated tracks every day – and is moving to license its AI-detection technology to the wider music industry.
The Paris-headquartered streaming service revealed the new figures today (January 29), confirming that synthetic content now accounts for roughly 39% of all music delivered to the platform daily.
The 60,000 figure marks another significant jump from the 50,000 tracks Deezer reported in November, the 30,000 in September, and the 10,000 it disclosed when it first launched its AI detection tool in January 2025.
A year on from that launch, Deezer says it has detected and tagged over 13.4 million AI-generated tracks on its platform – and is now making its detection technology commercially available.
The company says it has already performed successful tests with industry partners including French collecting society Sacem.
“We’ve seen a great interest in both our approach and our tool,” said Alexis Lanternier, CEO, Deezer.
“From now on, we are licensing the tech to make it widely available. Deezer continues to lead the way in promoting a transparent experience for artists and fans, with a commitment to fight AI-music fraud across our industry.”
Deezer also revealed that up to 85% of all streams on AI-generated music were fraudulent in 2025 – up from the 70% figure it reported last year. Those streams are demonetized and removed from the royalty pool.
By comparison, streaming fraud across Deezer’s entire catalog accounted for 8% of all streams in 2025.
While AI-generated music currently makes up only a small share of total streams on Deezer ( up to 3%), the platform maintains that generating fake streams remains the primary purpose for uploading such content.
“We know that the majority of AI-music is uploaded to Deezer with the purpose of committing fraud, and we continue to take action.”
Alexis Lanternier, Deezer
“Music generated entirely by AI has become nearly indistinguishable from human creation, and with a continuous flood of uploads to streaming platforms, our approach remains crystal clear: transparency for fans and protecting the rights of artists and songwriters,” said Lanternier.
“We know that the majority of AI-music is uploaded to Deezer with the purpose of committing fraud, and we continue to take action.
“We detect and tag AI-generated music and remove it from algorithmic recommendations, so that our users have a clear choice regarding what to listen to, while making it harder for fraudsters to game the system.”
Deezer noted that it’s the only music streaming platform to explicitly tag and exclude AI-generated music from algorithmic recommendations and editorial playlists.
The company claims that its AI detection tool can identify 100% AI-generated music from generative models such as Suno and Udio, with the capability to add detection for other tools.
Deezer says it has also made progress in creating a system with increased generalizability, capable of detecting AI-generated content without a specific dataset to train on.
In December 2024, Deezer applied for two patents for its AI Detection technology, focused on methods of detecting unique signatures that distinguish synthetic content from human-made music.
The announcement comes amid growing concerns about AI’s impact on creator revenues.
According to a study conducted by CISAC and PMP Strategy, nearly 25% of creators’ revenues are at risk by 2028 – amounting to as much as €4 billion.
new video loaded: More Than 100 Deaths Confirmed Across Southern Africa From Floods
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More Than 100 Deaths Confirmed Across Southern Africa From Floods
Hundreds of thousands of people across South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique have been displaced after heavy rain brought some of the worst flooding that the region has seen in decades. Forecasters expect more rain through February.
In where we are in the Southern African region, when it rains, it’s not the same kind of rain. It’s much harsher. It’s harder. And that is what results into the extreme floods we’re seeing right now.
Hundreds of thousands of people across South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique have been displaced after heavy rain brought some of the worst flooding that the region has seen in decades. Forecasters expect more rain through February.
Fitter and Faster Swim Camps is the proud sponsor of SwimSwam’s College Recruiting Channel and all commitment news. For many, swimming in college is a lifelong dream that is pursued with dedication and determination. Fitter and Faster is proud to honor these athletes and those who supported them on their journey.
Scholastic All-American Sophia Pero has committed to continue her swimming career at Texas A&M University this fall.
A versatile swimmer, Pero is particularly strong in butterfly, sprint freestyle, and the 200 IM. She trains with SwimMAC Carolina and also competes for Hopewell High School in Huntersville, North Carolina.
“I am so excited to announce my verbal commitment to further my academic and athletic career at Texas A&M University!! I want to thank my family, friends, and coaches for all their support along the way. Lastly, I would like to thank Coach Blaire and all the coaching staff at Texas A&M for this amazing opportunity! So excited for the future and to be apart of the Aggie family! GIG’EM! 👍”
Pero was a finalist at the 2025 NCHSAA 4A State Championship (SCY) in February, representing Hopewell High School. She placed 3rd in the 100 fly with a lifetime best of 54.93 and finished 10th in the 200 free (1:50.93).
In December, Pero posted strong performances at the 2025 Speedo Winter Junior Championships – East (SCY), recording best times in the 200 fly (2:00.23) and 200 IM (2:02.71). She placed 21st in the 200 fly, touching 5th in the ‘C’ final.
Pero earned a best time in the 200 free (1:49.61) in March at the 2024 VA SRVA SwimRVA Shamrock Showdown (SCY), finishing 9th. She was also the runner-up in the 100 IM (57.96) and placed 3rd in the 200 fly (2:01.28), 4th in the 100 free (51.68), 5th in the 100 fly (55.40), and 5th in the 200 IM (2:05.74).
At the 2023 North Carolina Senior Championships (SCY), Pero posted her fastest 100 free time of 51.33 to place 3rd. The time remains her personal best.
Pero was a finalist at the 2025 U.S. Open Championships in long course events in December, finishing 17th in the 200 fly (2:16.73), 22nd in the 200 free (2:07.71), and 23rd in the 100 fly (1:02.49).
Top Yard Times
100 Free – 51.33
200 Free – 1:49.61
100 Fly – 54.93
200 Fly – 2:00.23
200 IM – 2:02.71
Texas A&M’s women’s team placed 8th out of 13 teams at the 2025 SEC Championships. The team’s fastest 200 IM (1:56.70) and 200 fly (1:54.09) times last season belonged to Olivia Theall, who has since graduated. Pero has the potential to contribute in both events, especially if she continues to drop time.
If you have a commitment to report, please send an email with a photo (landscape, or horizontal, looks best) and a quote to [email protected].
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