Your Daily 6: No Mail in the Frozen Midwest, Gwyneth Has Brought a Ski Accident Lawuit and a Robot Will Mow Your Lawn | New

The Empire star, Jussie Smollett, attacked in a possible hate crime

Actor "Empire" Jussie Smollett was attacked on Tuesday morning in what the Chicago police call a possible hate crime.

Smollett was badaulted by two people who "shouted racist and homophobic insults" and "poured an unknown chemical on the victim," the police said.

One of Smollett's alleged badailants also allegedly pbaded a rope around his neck, police said. Both fled the scene.

Smollett went to Northwestern Hospital and "is in good condition," authorities said.

On Tuesday evening, a Chicago police spokesman told CNN that investigators had been investigating the area where the attack would have occurred and found no still images or video from security cameras .

The only image of the Smollett Police obtained with security cameras was in a subway sandwich shop near the reported crime scene. The actor was seen alone.

Police investigators in Chicago continue to investigate "serious allegations," Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Wednesday.

"The Streeterville area where the alleged attack took place is characterized by a very high density of private and private surveillance cameras.As early as Tuesday at 10 pm, detectives have sifted and watched hundreds of hours. hours of video. "They have now expanded the search area along the Chicago River, hoping to find video in order to publish a public description of the offenders," he said.

"Unfortunately, until now, we have found no useful information about a suspect or the vehicle of a suspect to share."

Guglielmi said the detective teams would expand their search area and work day and night to look for videos on traffic cameras, buses and nearby streets.

A dozen police detectives, with the help of the FBI, are working on this case, he said.

"Given the seriousness of the allegations, we take this investigation very seriously and consider it a possible hate crime," said the police statement.

The investigators are testing the chemical that Smollett reported drinking and still needs to confirm the nature of the substance.

Smollett has played in Fox's "Empire" since 2015. He plays Jamal, a successful singer in the Lyon music family. Like his character, Smollett identifies himself as gay.

Bone cold record halts mail in the Midwest

A deadly arctic freezing ice has invaded the Midwest, leading to the widespread closure of schools and offices and prompting the US postal service to make the rare decision to suspend mail delivery in a large part of the region because of the cold.

Many normal activities were interrupted and locals crowded in while the National Weather Service predicted that temperatures would plummet from one of the coldest air mbades of years. The icy cold is the result of a split in the polar vortex that allowed temperatures to dive much further south than normal.

Officials throughout the region have worked to protect vulnerable people from the cold, including the homeless, the elderly and those living in substandard housing.

Some buses have been turned into mobile heated shelters to encourage homeless people to get off the streets of Chicago, where the forecast for Wednesday night predicted temperatures as low as minus 21 degrees, with gusts of wind minus 40.

Chicago's main attractions, including the Lincoln Park Zoo, the Art Institute and the Field Museum, were not open on Wednesday. Governors of Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan have declared emergencies as the worst threat of cold weather threatened on Wednesday.

"These conditions are actually a risk to public health and you have to treat it appropriately," said Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday. "These are conditions and temperatures that are life threatening."

A wind chill of minus 25 can freeze the skin in 15 minutes, according to the National Weather Service.

In Michigan, shelters for homeless people in Lansing were becoming "overworked," said Mayor Andy Schor. They were also refueling in Detroit.

"People do not want to be there at the moment," said 53-year-old Brennan Ellis, who works for the Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries.

Detroit's outlook was Wednesday with nighttime lows around minus 12 (negative 24 degrees Celsius), with wind chills of minus 35 (negative 37 degrees Celsius).

At least four deaths are linked to the weather system on Tuesday, including a man struck and killed by a snow plow in the Chicago area, a young couple whose SUV hit another on a snowy road in the north of the city. Indiana and a man from Milwaukee found dead from cold a garage.

A popular saying says: "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat …" will prevent the courier from being delivered. But the extreme cold will be Wednesday.

The US Postal Service announced that it will suspend mail delivery Wednesday in all or part of several Midwestern states, including North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois.

Originally from Hawaii, 54-year-old Charles Henry was living in a shelter in St. Paul, Minnesota, and said he was grateful for a place to stay out of the cold.

"This wind chill is not even a joke," he said. "I'm sorry for anyone who has to stay outside."

Chicago was turning five buses into improvised warm-up centers circulating in the city, some with nurses on board, to encourage homeless people to come out of the cold.

"We bring them the heated shelters so that they can stay close to their belongings and warm up," said Cristina Villarreal, spokesperson for the city's Family Services and Support Services Department.

Shelters, churches and services in the city of Detroit have worked together to help get vulnerable people out of the cold, by sending the message to those who refuse to help "that they will freeze or lose a member, "said Terra DeFoe, senior advisor to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan.

Hundreds of public schools and several major universities, from North Dakota to Pennsylvania, canceled clbades on Tuesday or planned to do so on Wednesday.

The cold is attributed to a sudden warming well above the North Pole. A blast of warm air from the Moroccan heat lost last month quickly raised the usually very cold temperatures over the North Pole. This split the polar vortex into pieces, which then began to wander, said Judah Cohen, winter storm expert for Atmospheric Environmental Research.

One of these polar vortex pieces is responsible for sub-zero temperatures in the Midwest this week.

An ex-governor says he watched a cbadette "Access Hollywood". with Trump

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie recalls in his new memoir watching the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape alongside Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump before his public release in 2016, writing that the tape sent its main collaborators to the campaign struggling to design an answer.

The 2005 tape, reported for the first time by the Washington Post in October 2016, captured Trump in a micro-burning moment while she was interviewed by the "Access Hollywood" show. Trump, on the videotape, boasted of being able to grope women because of his celebrity status and sometimes "kissing" them.

"The tape was hard to watch, it was hard to listen to, but we watched and listened to the video of" Access Hollywood "until the end, the words sounded crude and vulgar playing through the little loudspeaker on the Hope Hicks laptop, Christie wrote in his book: "Let me finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey and the power of the contrarian."

Christie said the team felt the tape would be aired about an hour after they started watching it "and that time was already running out."

The familiar faces of the Trump campaign team, including Jared Kushner, Rudy Giuliani, Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon, then began to think about a response strategy in anticipation of the imminent release of the band. The team, according to Christie, has quarreled to know "if someone was offended".

Christie wrote: "People started suggesting sentences to quote Trump:" Many years ago. "Bill Clinton said much worse on the golf course." I apologize if anyone was offended. "

But Christie said that he was in agreement with Conway and Giuliani. There was no "if". People have been offended. Kushner and Bannon discussed it differently and Trump sided with the pair.

According to Christie, it's Trump who "offered the best" answer line: "Cloakroom Conversation".

The former head of the Trump Transition Team wrote that after the screening of the tape, "Donald went to talk to Melania." It was a meeting at which I did not go to talk. had no interest in attending. "

Later in the evening, David Bossie, Trump's badistant campaign manager, called Christie to listen to the audio of a statement recorded with Trump that would be released later that evening.

"I like the first half where you apologize," I said to Donald when he arrived on the line. "But I do not like the second half where you are attacking the Clintons … Let's launch in the Clinton attack for later apologies out there now," "Christie wrote.

He added that "Donald still did not buy my argument." Trump always wanted to make the whole statement.

Christie said, "It was only after midnight, when I saw the video on CNN, that I realized how weird it was – there was a false New York night sky behind him. He spoke stiffly to the camera, it was awful, it looked like a video of hostages. "

Trump would eventually decide to say the full statement, the Clinton attacks and all.

Your lawn mower is almost ready

Vacuum robots have been around long enough for you to watch one bang in a living room and ask why is there not a robot that can mow my lawn? It turns out that it is not for lack of trying.

For over a decade, iRobot, the company behind the Roomba vacuum, works – and works – on robotic lawn mowers. Now he finally has something to show for the effort, although it comes at a cost.

"Honestly, this robot has made me crazy," said iRobot CEO Colin Angle, after introducing Terra, the company's first long-awaited lawn mower. "It was an obsession."

The standalone and square trimmer that Angle Company unveiled Wednesday is the result of a long engineering struggle that included dead-end experiences and a conflict with radioastronomers.

Angle and his colleagues answered the question, "So when are you going to mow my lawn?" Since the company started selling Roombas in 2002. The engineers have thrown away all the possible technologies and mechanical designs for the secret project, which they have hidden behind tall, opaque fences ending in a highway right next to the headquarters. of iRobot, Mbadachusetts. The trial lawn included a picnic table and other obstacles.

The first problem was to help the robot identify its location so that it does not get lost or lose points. The sophisticated computer vision that feeds the latest Roombas is also inefficient. The technology did not work well outdoors because the camera lenses could be clogged with leaves or dirt and its machine learning algorithms were confused as the mower rumbled. Laser rangefinders and beacons on the ground presented different challenges.

The company has made so many attempts that several early prototypes of Lawnbot can be spotted in the 2008 movie "21", titled "Heist". They make their appearance in a scene where Angle plays a professor at the Mbadachusetts Institute of Technology announcing the winner of a robotics competition. The current Terra is nothing like these prototypes.

"We gave up," said Angle about the project. "We probably gave up twice."

In the end, however, the financial pressure on the robot manufacturer to diversify its range of products raised the stakes. (After splitting its defense robotics division in 2016, iRobot sells almost exclusively vacuum cleaners, the main exception being the Braava robotic mop, which represents a fraction of the total business figure.)

Robotic lawn mowers have also started to proliferate in Europe, where they currently represent an industry of around $ 300 million. However, these mower robots require owners to install a perimeter of boundary wire to keep the machines in a confined space.

The company finally found its answer in a radio technology based on "ultra-wide" bandwidths that would guide lawnmowers using beacons around the lawn, combined with the mapping memory already used by iRobot for its vacuum cleaners. But this idea struck astronomers who said that radio signals could interfere with their studies of interstellar chemistry.

IRobot has finally obtained permission from the Federal Communications Commission to use an extremely wide bandwidth for wireless lawn mowers.

The silent electric mower has two shredding blades designed to work slowly on a lawn. Instead of cutting it once a week with a push mower, it can be used around a lawn every day or several times a week. and returns to his station once completed. Users can schedule the machine with a phone application; if he falls on the juice while moving, he will return to his dock to recharge, then resume where he stopped.

The robot will first be launched in Germany, where iRobot hopes to capitalize on an existing market where perimeter-based models manufactured by Husqvarna, Bosch and other companies are already popular. The mowers will be marketed in the United States in 2020 after launching an invitation-only beta version later this year.

Actress Gwyneth Paltrow sued for a skiing accident in Utah

Actress Gwyneth Paltrow was accused on Tuesday in a new lawsuit of being broke off a man's ribs and leaving him with a concussion after crushing him by Behind while she was skiing in a ski resort of Utah in 2016.

Retired optometrist Terry Sanderson, 72, said at a press conference in Salt Lake City that he had heard a "screaming hysterical scream" and was then hit between the shoulder blades at the time. A run for beginners at Deer Valley Resort on February 26, 2016. He remembers throwing himself forward and losing control of his body before losing consciousness. An acquaintance who attended the events said that he saw Paltrow hit him in the back.

Spokesperson, Heather Wilson, denied these claims, saying in an e-mail statement: "This lawsuit is baseless and we expect to be justified."

Sanderson claims in the lawsuit that the 46-year-old actress left him injured on the mountain and did not ask for help. The ski instructor with Paltrow, his family and friends filed a false incident report, claiming that Paltrow had not caused the accident, the trial said.

Deer Valley Resort spokeswoman Emily Summers said the resort could not comment on the outstanding legal issues. The station is also pursued.

Paltrow is known for his roles in "Shakespeare in Love" and "Iron Man" movies. She also owns a lifestyle company called goop.

Sanderson said that it had taken him almost three years to file a lawsuit because he was dragging his feet, had problems with previous lawyers and was suffering from an inability to function properly. because of the concussion.

He stated that he had been in contact with a lawyer representing Paltrow, but no compensation or excuse was offered to him. They even suggested that he could be sued, Sanderson said.

Sanderson's lawsuit claims $ 3.1 million in damages, but he denies that he is suing him because Paltrow is a rich and famous celebrity. He called it a nasty gesture of not staying or never apologizing for what happened.

"I would like to be justified," said Sanderson, now 72 years old. "I would like my truth to be told."

Sanderson's lawyers said that Paltrow's lawyers do not deny that she was involved in an accident, but are challenging her guilt, said lawyer Robert Sykes, who represents Sanderson.

Most of the trial details are based on the memory of Sanderson's knowledge, Craig Ramon, as Sanderson stated that he did not remember anything until he was hit back and lost. the control of his body.

In a video broadcast at the press conference, Ramon said that a woman had hit Sanderson Square in the back and that the two men had fallen forward, with the actress posing in front of Sanderson.

Ramon said that while Sanderson was facing the ground in the snow, the ski instructor shouted, "What did you do? What did you do?" He also told Ramon that the woman was Paltrow. She and the instructor hurtled down the mountain and left Sanderson alone, Ramon said.

Sykes baderts that Paltrow has breached the Summit County code provision regarding irresponsible skiing, whereby a skier must stay at the scene of an accident to make sure his partner is in good condition.

Maroon 5 cancels the Super Bowl press conference

Maroon 5 canceled his press conference to discuss the group's performance at the half-time Super Bowl, choosing not to meet with journalists, unlike most groups.

The NFL announced Tuesday that "the artists will let their shows speak as they prepare to go on stage this Sunday."

Maroon 5, along with his leader Adam Levine, will be joined by Outkast member Big Boi and rapper Travis Scott in Houston at the half-time match between the Los Angeles Rams and the New England Patriots. The NFL said that instead of a press conference with the performers, it would use media platforms to broadcast footage and content behind the scenes.

Although Maroon 5 did not motivate his decision, some artists said social injustices were to be fought at the Super Bowl.

This has led to some critics of the artists who organize events in Atlanta. Jermaine Dupri said he was described as "moron" for organizing a Super Bowl event at a meeting with people who had lost family members as a result of police brutality. After the meeting, Dupri and the family members of the victims reached a compromise and the music mogul plans to give the mothers a platform to perform on stage at his Super Bowl Live event in Atlanta.

Former NFL quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, participated in a wave of protests by kneeling in the National Anthem to raise public awareness of police brutality, racial inequality and other social problems.