A man who died after driving his car off a collapsed bridge was following Google Maps directions, according to a lawsuit. The family of Philip Paxson, who drowned on 30 September last year while driving home from his daughter’s ninth birthday party, is suing the technology giant for negligence, claiming that it had been informed of the collapse but failed to update its navigation system. Paxson, a medical device salesman and father of two, drove his Jeep Gladiator off the derelict bridge into Snow Creek in Hickory, North Carolina. He was driving through an unfamiliar neighbourhood when Google Maps directed him to cross a bridge that had collapsed nine years prior and was never repaired, a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Wake County Superior Court alleges. “Our girls ask how and why their daddy died, and I’m at a loss for words they can understand because, as an adult, I still can’t understand how those responsible for the GPS directions and the bridge could have acted with so little regard for human life," said his wife, Alicia Paxson. State troopers who found Paxson's body in his overturned and partially submerged truck had said there were no barriers or warning signs along the washed-out roadway. He had driven off an unguarded edge and crashed about six metres (20 feet) below, according to the lawsuit. The North Carolina State Patrol had said the bridge was not maintained by local or state officials, and the original developer’s company had dissolved. The lawsuit names several private property management companies that it claims are responsible for the bridge and the adjoining land. Multiple people had notified Google Maps about the collapse in the years leading up to Paxson's death and had urged the company to update its route information, according to the lawsuit. The Tuesday court filing includes email records from another Hickory resident who had used the map's “suggest and edit” feature in September 2020 to alert the company that it was directing drivers over the collapsed bridge. A November 2020 email confirmation from Google confirms the company received her report and was reviewing the suggested change, but the lawsuit claims Google took no further actions. A spokesperson for Google, which is headquartered in California but maintains a registered office in Raleigh, said: “We have the deepest sympathies for the Paxson family. Our goal is to provide accurate routing information in Maps and we are reviewing this lawsuit.” In a post on Facebook, Paxson’s mother-in-law wrote that it was dark and rainy on the night that he died. “He will be greatly missed by his family and friends,” she wrote. “It was a totally preventable accident. We are grieving his death.” Additional reporting from agencies Read More Google Maps prank sees school renamed 'Hell on Earth' Google’s powerful ‘Bard’ AI can now get into your email BBC reviews Russell Brand’s time at corporation as YouTube demonetises content Google announces huge breakthrough step in finding genes that cause disease

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Archaeologists in Turkey are slowly unravelling the secrets of a previously unknown ancient language. And among them are revelations that long-forgotten civilisations used language to promote multiculturalism and political stability. The ancient clay tablets unearthed from archaeologists, in the ancient capital of the Hittite Empire at Hattusa, were recently found to contain the previously unknown language. Researchers had dusted off nearly 30,000 unique tablets at the scene – a UNESCO World Heritage Site – with most written in Hittite, and a few in the brand new language. The ongoing excavations have since revealed that the imperial civil service had whole departments whose job it was to research their subject peoples’ religions. Back in the second millennium BC, Hittite leaders told their officials to record religious ceremonies and other traditions of subject peoples by writing them in their respective local languages. The idea was that the traditions would be preserved and incorporated into the wider empire, in what appears to be a push towards multiculturalism. The fact that multiculturalism was such a prominent part of Bronze Age culture certainly has resonances in the modern day, where debates around immigration and multiculturalism continue to be a hot topic. So far, experts have found at least five subject ethnic groups who have had the treatment, with the latest example unearthed two months ago. It was written in a previously unknown Middle Eastern language that had been lost for up to 3,000 years. The language is being called Kalasmaic, because it would have been spoken by a subject people in an area called Kalasma in the northwest of the empire. And while only five minority languages have so far been found on the Bronze Age tablets, the reality is that there were probably at least 30, archaeologists say. Daniel Schwemer, a Wurzburg University professor who is leading the investigation into the newly discovered texts, said: “Bronze Age Middle Eastern history is only partly understood – and discovering additional clay tablet documents is helping scholars to substantially increase our knowledge.” How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Sign up to our free indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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Ron DeSantis continues to defend newly approved curriculum guidelines in Florida instructing students to learn that enslaved people “developed skills” that could be “applied for personal benefit”. “That means they developed skills in spite of slavery, not because of slavery,” the governor told NBC News in a recent interview that aired on 7 August. “It was them showing resourcefulness and then using those skills once slavery ended,” he added. Mr DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2024, has dismissed criticism from Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic and Republican members of Congress urging Florida officials to amend the state’s African American history standards and reflect an honest history of race and racism in school curricula. The vice president has also rejected an invitation from Mr DeSantis to “discuss” the standards, telling a crowd in Orlando earlier this month that “there is no roundtable, no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact: there were no redeeming qualities of slavery.” Mr DeSantis had previously stated he “wasn’t involved” with the guidelines approved by the state’s appointed Board of Education. He said the standards are “probably going to show some of the folks” – enslaved people – “that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.” The development of such “skills” would not have benefited the millions of enslaved people in the US in the decades before slavery’s abolition. Another controversial guideline instructs high schoolers to be taught that a massacre in the state led by white supremacists against Black residents to stop them from voting in 1920 included “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.” “Adults know what slavery really was. It involved rape, it involved torture, it involved taking a baby from their mother, it involved some of the worst examples of depriving humanity of people in our world,” Ms Harris said in her remarks in Jacksonville last month. South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, echoed Ms Harris in his criticism of the standards, stressing that slavery was defined by “separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives”. “It was just devastating,” said Mr Scott, who is also seeking the 2024 Republican nomination. “So I would hope that every person in our country – and certainly running for president – would appreciate that.” Mr DeSantis told NBC in response: “Don’t take that side of Kamala Harris against the state of Florida. Don’t indulge those lies.” The new standards join the governor’s overhaul of public education and a “parents’ rights” agenda that targets honest lessons on race and racism and gender and sexuality, which the governor told NBC amounts to “indoctrination”. “Those standards were not political at all,” he added. “The legislature didn’t dictate any of that. [The] governor’s office didn’t dictate anything of that.” Last week, before thousands of high school students enrolled in advanced placement courses begin classes for the 2023-2024 school year, the DeSantis administration criticised the College Board’s warning that Florida education officials had “effectively banned” AP Psychology courses in the state under the Parental Rights in Education Act, what opponents have derided as the “Don’t Say Gay” law. Read More Ron DeSantis admits ‘of course’ Donald Trump lost the election DeSantis blasted for ‘un-American’ restrictions on AP psychology course under ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law Why Florida’s new curriculum on slavery is becoming a political headache for Ron DeSantis

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