Open AI CEO Sam Altman denied on Tuesday allegations from his sister Annie Altman, who has filed a complaint accusing him of childhood sexual abuse.”…Annie has made deeply hurtful and entirely untrue claims about our family, especially Sam,” the boss of the California startup said in a letter co-signed by his mother and two brothers, and published on social platform X.”Our family loves Annie and is very concerned about her well-being. Caring for a family member who faces mental health challenges is incredibly difficult,” they wrote.One of Silicon Valley’s more charismatic figures, Altman shot to global fame with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, which ignited a race to advance AI research and development.A prolific entrepreneur and already a billionaire, Altman, 39, has set himself the mission of developing a so-called “general” AI, with cognitive abilities similar to those of humans and which “benefits all of humanity”.The Altman family said that they have tried to help their daughter and sister, covering her expenses and guaranteeing her “monthly financial support, which we expect to continue for the rest of her life”. “Despite this, Annie continues to demand more money from us,” they said, pointing out that they have decided to respond publicly following Anne’s legal complaint filed on Monday, and after years of tension.”The worst allegation she has made is that she was sexually abused by Sam as a child,” said the family.”Her claims have evolved drastically over time. Newly for this lawsuit, they now include allegations of incidents where Sam was over 18.”All these claims are utterly untrue.”According to the complaint, Annie — who is nine years younger than Sam Altman — alleges the assaults took place from 1997, when she was three, until 2006. In a report for New York Magazine in 2023, a journalist who met Annie in Hawaii described her as an artist suffering from depression and the growing rift with her family, and supporting herself mainly through online sex work. 

In a quiet village tucked in the shadow of India’s capital, the late US president Jimmy Carter’s name is etched for posterity.Carterpuri, or the “village of Carter” was abruptly renamed from Daulatpur Nasirabad after an hour-long visit by the Nobel laureate in 1978.The renaming was suggested by India’s then-prime minister Morarji Desai who accompanied Carter on the visit to the small hamlet, some 30 kilometres (20 miles) from New Delhi. “When the proposal was mooted, all the village elders immediately said yes,” recalled 71-year-old resident Attar Singh, who vividly remembers the January afternoon from nearly half a century ago.One of the last surviving members from the generation old enough to remember the occasion, Singh said he was “distressed” by Carter’s death last month, and played a key role in staging a small tribute ceremony. A picture of the former president was quickly downloaded from the internet, framed, garlanded and placed at a local war memorial where a group of village elders made offerings of salty porridge and a newly stitched traditional turban. Singh said the porridge and the turban, along with a condolence message, were then shipped to the US Embassy.”The entire village grieved because we considered him as one of our own,” said Rajiv Kumar, a younger resident who was a toddler when Carter visited. The body of Carter, who died at the age of 100 last month, is currently lying in state in Washington and will be buried Thursday in his home state of Georgia.- ‘Such a big man’ -Carter’s visit to the village, then home to less than 500 people, was not by chance. He was driven by a deeply personal mission: his mother Lillian had worked in the village as a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s. The dilapidated mansion where Lillian stayed during her time there no longer exists. It was torn down around 15 years ago to make way for a concrete two-storey structure with a line of tiny shops on its ground floor. Little else from that era survives in Carterpuri, which now has a population of roughly 5,000. The village council office where Carter and his wife Eleanor Rosalynn Carter were feted while bedecked in traditional headgear, is now a community health centre.Nonetheless, Carter’s visit remains firmly imprinted in the memory of Carterpuri’s old-timers. “I was a little boy then but I remember everything,” said 62-year-old Motiram, who goes by one name.His recollections include Carter smoking tobacco from a hookah and waving at the eager children who looked from the rooftops as he took a tour of the village. But Motiram’s nostalgia is tinted with disillusionment.”Despite such a lofty name, our village has seen no progress in all these years,” he said.”If they named our village after such a big man, there should have been some work done to justify it.”

The body of late US president Jimmy Carter was transferred Tuesday in a grand and solemn military ceremony to the US Capitol, where it will lie in state until a national funeral later this week.Carter, who died on December 29 at the age of 100, served a single term from 1977-1981 and was widely praised for his post-presidential humanitarian efforts, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.His body arrived at the snow-covered US Capitol, where it will remain until Thursday, after a full day of ceremonious travel that began in his native Georgia.A live feed by broadcaster PBS showed members of the public move through the building’s rotunda to pay their respects to the late president, with many stopping to take a moment of silence with their hands clasped.”I paid my respects to President Jimmy Carter as he lies in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda today,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on X. “On behalf of the entire Department of Defense, we join the Carter family and all Americans in celebrating this extraordinary life, legacy, and service to our nation.”Having been flown to Washington aboard a presidential US Air Force jet, Carter’s flag-draped casket was carried atop a gun carriage in a funeral procession from the US Navy Memorial — an ode to his military service on submarines — to Capitol Hill, tracing the opposite route he took during his inauguration parade.Hundreds of US service members accompanied the procession down Pennsylvania Avenue, which was cleared of snow from a recent winter storm that has prompted federal office and school closures in the area.Military pallbearers then carried his casket up to the Capitol Rotunda where a short service was held, with Carter’s family, members of Congress and other dignitaries including Chief Justice John Roberts and Vice President Kamala Harris in attendance.Carter is the 13th former US president to lie in state in the Capitol. Abraham Lincoln, assassinated in 1865, was the first.The ceremony has taken on added significance, coming a day after the anniversary of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, in which Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the building in an attempt to block certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.On Monday, Congress certified Trump’s win over Harris without any disruptions and with the complex under very heavy security.A state funeral service is to be held Thursday at the National Cathedral, an Episcopal church in Washington that also hosted funerals for former presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.Current President Biden is to deliver the eulogy for his fellow Democrat.All four living former presidents — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Trump — are expected to attend.Biden has declared Thursday a national day of mourning, with federal government offices to be closed for the day.He has also ordered flags to half-staff for 30 days as is customary, which means that will be the case during Trump’s January 20 inauguration, something the Republican has criticized.The first president to reach triple digits, Carter had been in hospice care since February 2023 in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, where he died and will be buried next to his late wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter.