Wake Up - Wednesday, September 16

Front Page · Front Page · Atlantanewsfirst

Fulton commissioners collide over AI-drafted ordinances — hours before the vote

Dana Barrett says GPTZero flagged four Wednesday docket items as machine-written. Marvin Arrington Jr. says he used AI as help, not as the author, and wants a county AI policy next meeting.

Fulton County’s AI argument is no longer theoretical. Commissioner Dana Barrett released a statement Tuesday night alleging that artificial intelligence wrote four ordinances scheduled for today’s Board of Commissioners meeting, three of them drafted by Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr.

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Front Page · MLB

Braves rally past the Cubs 6–3 and stretch the NL East lead to 5.5 games

Acuña, Albies, and Baldwin each hit two-run homers. Philadelphia lost to Washington, so Atlanta’s division magic number is now five — earliest clinch date: Saturday.

Atlanta is 89–63 after a 6–3 comeback at Wrigley Field on Tuesday night. Ronald Acuña Jr., Ozzie Albies, and Drake Baldwin each hit two-run homers, and because the Nationals beat the Phillies, the Braves now lead the NL East by 5.5 games.

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Front Page · Reuters

Anthropic signs its first Australian data-center lease — a 2.16-gigawatt campus

Reuters reports a farmland site about 250 km from Brisbane, planned to start coming online in 2027, putting Anthropic in the same Australian compute race OpenAI already entered.

Anthropic has signed its first data-center lease in Australia, two people familiar with the deal told Reuters. The campus is planned at 2.16 gigawatts — on par with some of the largest computing sites operating anywhere.

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National League East

Team	W	L	Pct	GB	Home	Away	L10
Braves	89	63	.586	-	51-27	38-36	5-5
Phillies	84	68	.553	5.0	41-34	43-34	4-6
Marlins	75	77	.493	14.0	45-33	30-44	4-6
Nationals	71	82	.464	18.5	37-41	34-41	4-6
Mets	69	83	.454	20.0	34-43	35-40	5-5

WATCHING

On the Sports feed

ESPN · Sports · Auburn Tigers Football

Mississippi State Bulldogs vs Auburn Tigers

Record 5-4 · 10th in SEC · Sat, November 14th at 12:00 PM EST

Auburn visits Mississippi State in SEC play Oregon's 'Shoe Ducks' jab at Ohio State tops college football Week 10 trolls

Technology & Making

Technology & Making · Thenextweb

SK Hynix is in talks with Intel to make memory in the U.S. for the first time

One path is leasing part of Intel’s delayed Ohio fab. Another is a venture with Intel and cloud companies hungry to lock in supply. Nothing is signed.

South Korea’s SK Hynix is talking with Intel about manufacturing memory chips on U.S. soil for the first time, three people familiar with the discussions told Reuters.

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Technology & Making · Reuters

Smaller phone and laptop makers are redesigning around a memory shortage through 2027

Reuters reports independent device makers testing incoming chips for fakes, passing on costs, and watching entry-level phones become uneconomical to build.

Independent phone and laptop makers are redesigning products, screening incoming memory for counterfeits, and raising prices as a shortage they expect to last through 2027 squeezes the low end of the device market.

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Discovery

Discovery · Science

NASA field-tested a three-robot science fleet that assigns its own work

ASTRA ran a drone and two rovers at Virginia Tech this summer, weighing science payoff against risk without real-time human joystick commands.

NASA’s ASTRA team — Adaptive Sensing Technology for Responsive Autonomy — field-tested a three-robot fleet at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute in Blacksburg. A drone chose an area of interest from human science goals; the fleet then decided…

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NASA’s Webb Reveals Dynamic Panorama of Star Formation

Discovery · Science

Webb found brown dwarfs in IC 348 as light as about two Jupiters

The least massive brown dwarfs known sit well below what star-formation theory expected in a region only 1,000 light-years away.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope looked again at IC 348, a star-forming region about 1,000 light-years away, and found brown dwarfs down to roughly twice the mass of Jupiter — about 0.19 percent of the Sun’s mass.

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Business & Economy

Business & Economy · Reuters

ByteDance’s spun-off AI drug unit raises $290 million at a $1.5 billion valuation

Shanghai’s Anew Labs closed its first external round after leaving the TikTok parent, led by HSG, IDG, and Hillhouse, people familiar with the deal told Reuters.

ByteDance has completed a $290 million fundraise for Anew Labs, the AI drug-discovery company it spun out of the group, two people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.

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Atlanta

Atlanta · Ajc

MARTA’s CEO is in Washington asking for safety dollars the state still will not send

Jonathan Hunt joined a transit safety summit, cited this summer’s fatal train stabbing, and noted Georgia is the outlier: other big systems at the table get state money. MARTA does not.

MARTA CEO Jonathan Hunt spent this week in Washington with other transit chiefs asking federal agencies for more safety and security funding after a summer in which a woman…

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Atlanta · Hoodline

Atlanta is piloting $500 zero-interest loans to stop evictions before court

No fees, no credit check, no collections. Dickens is adding a tiny repayable loan in front of the city’s larger rental-aid machine.

Atlanta renters who hit a sudden cash gap can now apply for a $500 zero-interest emergency loan with no fees, no credit check, and no collections, part of Mayor Andre Dickens’ Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative.

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Atlanta · Ajc

Dickens wants new Flock camera rules after 115,000 searches and 79 flagged queries

A departmentwide audit of Atlanta Police license-plate readers found dozens of questionable lookups. The mayor wants monthly audits, banned uses, and tighter outside-agency access.

Atlanta police have run about 115,000 Flock license-plate searches so far in 2026. A department audit flagged 79 of those lookups for investigation, and Mayor Andre Dickens said Tuesday he will work with Council to write…

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Atlanta · Wsbtv

A metro Atlanta daycare measles cluster is now 10 cases; Georgia has 16 this year

Two newly confirmed infections grew the daycare-linked outbreak. Infants too young for MMR are the immediate risk group DPH is trying to notify.

A measles outbreak tied to a metro Atlanta daycare grew on Tuesday, with two new cases bringing the daycare-linked total to 10, WSB-TV reported. The Georgia Department of Public Health has confirmed 16 measles cases statewide in…

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Atlanta · Wsbtv

City Council paused the $68 million jail sale to Fulton after a seven-day squeeze

Dickens agreed to Fulton’s offer on September 8. Council members say they will not rubber-stamp a detention-center transfer on the county’s clock.

Atlanta City Council’s public-safety committee unanimously held the proposed sale of the Atlanta City Detention Center to Fulton County, delaying a $68 million deal the mayor had accepted.

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Opportunity Radar

Opportunity Radar · Science

NASA’s robot-fleet test is really a logging-and-priority product brief

ASTRA’s useful output is not ‘robots decided.’ It is a system that can explain why a task moved, what risk was accepted, and who can override.

NASA’s ASTRA field test succeeded at the architectural level: a drone and two rovers shared goals, reassigned work, and kept the original job alive. NASA did not publish the metrics that would let an…

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Opportunity Radar · Reuters

The memory crunch is creating a market for proving a chip is real

Reuters says smaller device makers are already testing incoming memory for fakes. That inspection layer is the business, not another LLM wrapper.

When memory is scarce, counterfeits follow. Independent phone and laptop makers told Reuters they are now testing incoming chips for fakes as they redesign products around a shortage expected to last through 2027.

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Atlanta

Atlanta · Fultoncountyga

Fulton is running civic-holiday voter education across the county today

Stops include an APS family hub, Douglass High School, Morris Brown, Milton Library, Ocee Library, and Sadie G. Mays — a field operation, not a press release.

Fulton County’s elections operation is on the road today with voter-education events tied to September civic holidays, including 10 a.m. at the APS Students and Family Support Hub and 11 a.m. at Morris…

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THE LIGHTER END

The Curious Page

News of the Weird

Piddington, an Oxfordshire village of about 350 people, voted 285–26 in a symbolic independence referendum after the UK government proposed housing 1,256 asylum seekers at a nearby former military base. Turnout was nearly 92%.

Source →

Fun Fact

On this date in 1620 the Mayflower left Plymouth, England with 102 passengers bound for America, after the leaky Speedwell was left behind.

This Day in History

On September 16, 1810, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla issued the Grito de Dolores, launching Mexico’s war of independence from Spain.

♍

VIRGO

Today's horoscope

A kind tone and one thoughtful message can do more than a long debate. Slow down before answering, keep money decisions simple, and finish the work already in front of you rather than launching a new investment today.

Hindustan Times daily Virgo horoscope →

USEFUL THIS MORNING

What to Watch Today

10:00 AM

Fulton County Board of Commissioners meets at 141 Pryor St. Four ordinances drafted with AI assistance are on the docket after a public fight between commissioners overnight.

Details →

Late morning

Fulton County voter-education stops continue, including Morris Brown College (11 a.m.–2 p.m.) and the Ocee Library in Johns Creek (10 a.m.–1 p.m.).

Details →

Tonight

Braves continue the Wrigley series against the Cubs. Shota Imanaga is lined up for Chicago; J.R. Ritchie for Atlanta, with the NL East magic number at five.

Details →