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They already have the world's best e-commerce firm with a foot in their door, and so now they get to open the curtain to catch a glimpse of a sneak peek behind the scenes.

Luka Paraskevov and Aidan Benoit both graduate in days. Before that victory lap celebration, they brought the Amazon fulfillment center in Gates to an invite-only internship and scholarship that they received under the Amazon Future Engineers program.

"I have never actually seen people enjoy this sort of in these kinds of situations where there are high-level positions, you know? I'm a little curious about what is going on behind the scenes," Luka tells News 8's Mikhaela Singleton.

News 8 had interviewed the two as part of Generation ROC coverage when their acceptance was first made public. From thousands of state-wide applicants who applied for Amazon Future Engineers, only 400 succeeded and only three from upstate New York.

These two Rochesterians had plenty of questions to ask the local Amazon team and say they were deeply fascinated to see how AI, programming, and design have melded together to create a seamless flow from warehouse to your door.

“It’s not as mechanical as actual engineering, but it’s still very — you’re able to be very creative with it,” Aidan explains when asked about his passion for computer science.

The boys admit that when they reach the stand of the graduation stage, they thank the head start provided on their behalf and are ready to meet the challenge of college with valor.

"I'm really a little afraid, actually. A little anxious, but I think that I'll be okay," Luka reflects on his college experience. "I've made it through the majority of my worst yet, so I guess whatever is next, I can cope."

The initial batch of evacuation was coordinated by Indian missions in Israel and Jordan since Indian nationals present in Israel were always living in suspense with the ringing of sirens, frequently going for refuge in bunkers and safe rooms alongside Iranian missiles and drone defenses.

With Israeli airspace closed and commercial flights suspended, Indian missions in Israel and Jordan jointly evacuated 160 Indian citizens in the first flight under Operation Sindhu on Sunday, an embassy official said.

The missions organized the first batch of evacuees from Israel due to Indian citizens living in Israel never ceasing to fear that they would hear the screaming of sirens, normally fleeing to bunkers and safe and secure rooms from Iranian drones and missiles.

"First batch of 160 Indian citizens evacuated from Israel have crossed safely into the Israel-Jordan border and are in Jordan safely," authorities reported to PTI.

"Arrangements have been made for them to come back to India, special flight for early tomorrow morning," they said.

The Indian nationals had earlier reached the Jordanian border to be evacuated, sources in the Indian embassy informed PTI.

Their transit and accommodation are being arranged by the Indian embassy in Amman.

India had launched Operation Sindhu a week back to evacuate Indians from Iran and Israel as ties between the two countries soured.

The Indian mission in Tel Aviv recently installed a 24/7 control room to monitor all facets of the evacuation operation, the source added.

The control center requested Indian citizens to self-register online and created a detailed database of Indians in Israel, it added.

"Evacuation priorities were established based on medical emergencies, the presence of young children and infants, women, and students. The embassy officials took the initiative of calling registrants by phone and email to verify travel plans and allocating them to available evacuation flights," the source added.

The ground reality is being monitored closely at the highest echelons of the government, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself being kept informed on a constant basis about the safety and security of the Indian citizens in real-time, the source further added.

"This operation reflects India's unshakeable commitment to security and well-being of its nationals overseas. Operation Sindhu is another testament to India's reputation as a trustworthy 'first responder' to international crises," said a release issued by India.

The initial group of Indian citizens to be evacuated reached the pick-up points in Tel Aviv and Haifa on Sunday morning and were then transported by road to Sheikh Hussein Bridge on the Israeli-Jordanian border, about 120 kilometres from here. 

After immigration and border formalities at the Israeli-Jordanian border, the group went on to Amman Airport, another 120 kilometres of journey.

Arvind Shukla, a researcher from the Hebrew University, who left early on Sunday, described "the smooth and well planned process" of the embassy in "trying conditions" as impeccable, and said to PTI: "I have completed the visa procedure and I am already on the Jordanian side. The embassy was very helpful in ensuring that our passage was smooth, and we were taken care of."

The governments of Jordan and Israel helped ease significant aid in helping Indians pass safely and in order across the border, the Tel Aviv mission reported.

The Indian Embassy in Jordan also helped play a significant role in giving the evacuees a warm welcome at the border to enable them to proceed further to Amman Airport, it said.

Special flights from New Delhi to Amman have been organized by the Ministry of External Affairs to return Indian citizens safely home.

There are also going to be some flights that will depart from Egypt in the next few days, as there are a large number of Indians residing in the south of Israel.

Operation Sindhu is a follow-up to high-profile evacuation operations such as Operation Ganga, Operation Devi Shakti, Operation Kaveri, and Operation Ajay, where Indians were evacuated from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Israel, respectively.

"These operations are a reflection not just of India's increasing global stature but also of its operational capability and deep sense of responsibility towards its diaspora," an embassy official said.

"Indian Government always gives top priority to the safety and well-being of Indians abroad. The government will keep a close eye on the situation. The embassy keeps in constant liaison with the community all the time to give them all possible assistance," the official said.

The Indian embassy in Israel again reached out to its citizens on Sunday to register for regular updates and assistance, and provided a 24/7 helpline number.

They are over 40,000 Indian nationals living in Israel, working as caregivers, workers, students, professionals and many others.

Coastal Carolina's season was completed without its head coach on the field. Kevin Schnall was ejected from Sunday's 5-3 loss to LSU in Game 2 of the College World Series championship for disputing balls and strikes.

Schnall stepped onto the field several steps in the first inning, flashed three fingers and seemed to mouth, "You missed three pitches," before being thrown out of Omaha's elimination game by home plate umpire Angel Campos.

The theatrics were preceded by an even more heated argument on the field, in which another umpire was left on the ground. Coastal Carolina first base coach Matt Schilling was also ejected during the brawl.

They were ejected for "prolonged arguing," the NCAA stated, which has a two-game suspension attached to it. That would have left Schnall and Schilling out for a winner-take-all Game 3, too.

But sixth-seeded LSU completed the three-game best-of-series in two games to win the eighth title in program history. LSU's Game 1 victory put an end to the 26-game winning streak that 13th-seeded Coastal Carolina began in the College World Series final.

Game 2 was even when Schnall and Schilling were both ejected, Schnall's position being filled by associate head coach Chad Oxendine. The ejections drew enraged responses on social media, such as from ESPN baseball insider Jeff Passan.

"There aren't a whole lot of combinations of words in the English lexicon that require booting a coach out of an elimination game in the Men's College World Series championship finals," Passan wrote on X. "And yet Coastal Carolina's Kevin Schnall — and first-base coach Matt Schilling — just got plunked in the first inning."

The Chanticleers pursued their second title, as they won the College World Series back in 2016.

Ranging from pre-school and kindergarten kids dancing and prancing on the stage in forest animal costumes to high school students reciting long dialogues and tunes as the principal characters, the California-based Mount Madonna School's annual production Ramayana as its culmination event is a feast of a sort.

The 46th-year production is a beloved and cherished tradition by the students of the school as well as the teachers, parents, non-teaching staff, and alumni who lend their services voluntarily at the school's annual production.

The longest-running Broadway-style production in the western hemisphere, adapted from the ancient epic, was this year held at the Mexican Heritage Plaza in San Jose from 5 June to 8 June. A blend of different skills of the students, from ballet steps, classical dancing in Indian tradition and acrobatics to singing and acting, was all put on display through creatively blended dance choreographies, songs and other elements. The school show changes every year, blending the old elements with the new.

A large number of the senior high school students who have been involved in the production for years attain their peak in acting and singing as the principal characters of Lord Rama, Lord Shiva, Goddess Sita, Goddess Parvati and others. The production started with nearly 200 students taking part in the invocation to Goddess Saraswati with Jai Ma-Jai Jai Ma chanting.

"We learn more and more about the epic as we perform Ramayana each year. Our senior class of six attended India and had time in Himachal Pradesh and Haridwar at Sri Ram Ashram, which is a sister school to Mount Madonna School," adds Director Chelsea Otterness. "The seniors learned more about the character that they were playing and were immersed in the colorfulness of the Indian culture of acceptance of other cultures."

Otterness brings the depth and the learning more about the depth of the story and how Ramayana is a well, and it is possible to learn so much, including the learning of the evolution of consciousness.

I never thought that 10,000 miles away from India, I'd be able to see a play on Ramayana. Like most Indians, I too have been raised on the tales of the ancient epic, and I recall arguing and discussing with family members and friends some of the doings and judgments of the heroes of the story. I also have very fond memories attached to the stories of the scripture. I recall countless summer vacation evenings, sleeping under the refreshing night sky at my paternal grandmother's residence in Chandigarh, when my cousins and I would gather around our grandfather to listen and re-listen the innumerable stories from Ramayana. Our Pitaji's portrayal in exact details of Sitaji in her diverse jewels was so that we were transported to another world.

The eagerness with which school students in the US have embraced the Orient's ancient scripture as a topic for its performing arts program and the ultimate triumph of the exercise are fascinating. While the artistic value of the production can be improved in many ways, the presentation of the long and arduous story within less than four hours felt like a Herculean feat in itself.

On the field of set grandeur and costume sparkle, the production wanted nothing further. All the ingredients of children's entertainment had been brought together, and adults benefited from the labor and resulting delight of the juvenile artists.

The showcase of the production on the holy scripture was started by the members of the Hanuman Fellowship Centre, a non-profit organisation founded by the students of Baba Hari Dass and Mount Madonna School (an affiliation of the Hanuman Fellowship Centre).

Ramayana was introduced by teacher and Yoga Master, Baba Hari Dass. In 1972, students of the Hanuman Fellowship performed at yoga retreats and then at various venues, including universities. Initially, some children were members of the predominantly adult cast, but in 1979, the Mount Madonna School commenced a production with the students and other children making up the cast. After running parallel productions for several years, the school show evolved into an exclusive program.

The number of out-of-school people worldwide is currently estimated at 272 million, more than 21 million higher than the previous estimate, UNESCO's Global Education Monitoring Team (GEM) said.According to the team, in its recent report, it has noted that by 2025, nations will be behind by 75 million compared to their national targets.

"Two reasons underlie this rise. First, new enrollment and attendance figures explain eight million, or 38 per cent, of the increase. The prohibition on girls going to secondary school age in Afghanistan in 2021 is also responsible for this increase," the report added.

"Second, revised UN population projections cover 13 million, or the other 62 per cent, of the growth. Relative to the projections most recently used in the out-of-school model, the 2024 World Population Prospects have the number of 6- to 17-year-olds in 2025 (a proxy for the school-age group) up by 49 million (or by 3.1 per cent)," it said.

The report further added that the effects of conflicts on out-of-school population are hard to measure as conflicts impede data gathering.

The revision of the estimates of global population affects out-of-school rate and population estimates, but the size of the effect varies with the source of the data on enrolment and attendance.

"If the source is administrative data, then the entire growth of the population is transmitted to the out-of-school population since there is no new information on enrolment.".

"But if the source is survey data, then the growth of population is transmitted to the in-school and out-of-school populations proportionately. Since the model is based on survey data for the majority of countries with out-of-school populations that are large, only a portion of the added school-age population is being estimated to be out of school," it added.

Overall, approximately 11 per cent of the children of primary school age (78 million), 15 per cent of the adolescents of lower secondary school age (64 million) and 31 per cent of the young people of upper secondary school age (130 million) are not in school.

The model drew on multiple data sources (administrative, survey and census) to produce internally consistent trends of regional and global averages.

"The country-level model reconciles disparate sources, imputes values on years with no data, and uses short-term projections.

"They are thus not identical to countries' official values of out-of-school based on a single source for a particular year. It is these latter values, on which countries' out-of-school rate targets for 2025 and 2030 are based," the report added.

"Individually, as the SDG 4 Scorecard indicates, nations will cut their out-of-school number by 165 million by 2030 if targets are met.".

"Yet, it is estimated that by 2025 nations will be four percentage points off track for those of primary and lower secondary school age and six percentage points off track for those of upper secondary school age. Overall, this results in countries being already off-track by 75 million compared to their country-specific targets in 2025," it stated.

The report indicated that the contribution of conflict to out-of-school populations is underestimating.

"The out-of-school model estimates rely on assuming stable patterns of school-age population flow through the education system. This methodological rigour is turned against us in the context of emergencies and crises when school attendance shifts abruptly.".

"Not only is it impossible to assume that long-term trends will keep on going, but there is generally no data or not enough data to know how crises will affect short- and medium-term outcomes," it stated.

Conflict will make it difficult to gather data on school enrolment and hence is likely to result in an underestimate of the out-of-school groups, it added.

Meta Platforms is acquiring a 49% stake in data-labeling company Scale AI for $15 billion, valuing the company at $29 billion. The transaction, announced by both companies on Thursday, is a strategic investment for Meta as it desperately tries to catch up with artificial intelligence.

Scale AI CEO and MIT dropout Alexandr Wang, aged 28, will travel to Meta to head up its newly-established superintelligence team. This department creates systems beyond current levels of artificial intelligence—to artificial superintelligence (ASI).

"We'll expand the work we do together generating data for AI models and Alexandr Wang will come to Meta to assist our superintelligence efforts," Meta stated in a release, according to Reuters.

Though Meta won't get a board seat at Scale AI, the deal will involve some of Scale's 1,500 employees come to Meta under Wang. Wang will remain a board member at Scale.

Who is Alexandr Wang? The man Meta is putting its hopes on

Wang's own background is unconventional. Born and raised in Los Alamos, New Mexico, by Chinese immigrant physicists, Wang entered the technology world at a young age. He once worked at Quora prior to dropping out of MIT in his first year. In 2016, together with Lucy Guo, he co-founded Scale AI via startup accelerator Y Combinator.

"Long-term, we want to power any human-process-driven business for any company," Wang said to the YC blog in 2016.

Only then 24 years old and the world's youngest self-made billionaire, he was just beginning. Guo left the startup a couple of years later, but Wang founded Scale AI as a data stack for much of the world's top AI systems.

He's raised more than $680 million, including $100 million from Founders Fund co-founder Peter Thiel. Forbes now estimates his net worth at $3.6 billion.

"Focus on making the business and then all the other stuff will just kind of work itself out," he said to Business Insider in 2020.

Wang has become a familiar presence in Washington, frequently meeting with lawmakers about the national security implications of AI. A 2018 trip to China convinced him that America's future warfare would be dependent upon AI leadership.

"AI leadership globally is already in full swing, and the ability of our country to adopt and leverage AI effectively will shape the future of warfare," Wang testified at a public hearing.

Scale AI, established in 2016, assists in training edge AI models by providing large volumes of labeled data. Remotasks and Outlier, its two platforms, employ gig workers to label giant datasets. Labeled data of this nature is essential to train AI models such as ChatGPT.

It started by backing autonomous vehicle customers like Toyota, Honda, and Waymo. It has added backing for OpenAI, Microsoft, and even the US government, which uses it to process satellite imagery from Ukraine.

Scale's 2024 revenues came in at $870 million and will double more than double to reach $2 billion in 2025. Bloomberg says this would value it at $25 billion.

However, the meteoric rise of the startup hasn't all been smooth sailing. There have been reports of substandard working conditions for its offshore gig workers who earn as little as $1 per hour. They are predominantly based in nations such as Kenya, the Philippines, and India.

Meta's AI gamble: Wang bucks research wisdom

This is not just an investment—it's a statement. By doing this, Meta is making the statement that it is giving up on the antiquated research-driven strategy that it used to promote.

Internal battles, such as high-profile departures of talent and model-latency issues, have sapped Meta's AI momentum. Its open-source LLaMA models were meant to shake up the sector, but poor liftoff and talent flight have silenced momentum.

Meta's seasoned AI head Yann LeCun is back in charge. But his skepticism regarding large language models (LLMs) as a paBy hiring Wang— who scaled Scale up to a billion-dollar company without research credentials—CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now wagering on another type of leadership. A business brain like Sam Altman's, and not that of a research purist.

Meta is said to be poaching Google and OpenAI employees with seven- to nine-figure offers to man its 50-person superintelligence lab.

"This was a deeply unique moment": Wang takes new role

In an email to employees, Wang acknowledged the emotional significance of departing Scale.

"Being not a Scalien was, in short, unthinkable. But the more time I had to actually think about it, the more I came to see that this was a very idiosyncratic moment for me, but indeed for Scale," he wrote.

He promised Scale's employees that proceeds of the investment by Meta would go to shareholders and vested equity holders.

Wang will oversee a bold initiative at Meta: creating AI that not only catches up to its competitors, but surpasses them. Superintelligence is still in theory—but with Wang at the helm of the project, Meta is making a $15 billion bet that it can become a reality.to artificial general intelligence (AGI) seems to have gone out of step with traditional Silicon Valley dogma.