“Doctor Strange 2” is reportedly looking to cast a Hispanic actress for the role of Miss America. Several new characters are expected to be introduced in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the Phase 4 movies while familiar characters like Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) will return.

According to new casting details obtained by The Illuminerdi, a new character that the fans will get to see in the upcoming film is America Chavez. The character was created by Jow Casey and Nick Dragotta in 2011 and is better known as Miss America.

In the comics, Miss America was seen as young and brash brawler. She has a soft side too, but she only confides in her close friends. Her superpowers include super strength, speed, flight, and the ability to create star portals. The introduction of the new hero is also significant because she is an openly gay character.

Miss America was from an alternate reality in the comics. Since Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) will be travelling to other dimensions in the upcoming film, it is possible that he will meet the new character in one of the worlds in the multiverse.

The casting details reveal Miss America to be support role. The casting team is currently looking for a “teenage Hispanic female” to play the character.

Marvel appears to be building a team of Young Avengers, and Miss America is the latest to join the team, CBR reported. Some of the other young characters that the fans may get to see on the big screen son are Hulkling, Cassie Lang, and a new Hawkeye.

Marvel will be introducing some exciting new comic book characters in “Doctor Strange 2,” but the movie has been facing some problems. Scott Derrickson has exited the movie citing creative differences, Screen Rant reported. The project hasn’t been shelved and it will be released on May 7, 2021.

“Doctor Strange 2″ will be the first scary movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. photo: Doctor Strange/Facebook

Apple’s iMac sure is a powerful tool used by many professionals who excel in their craft, but its design needs a bit of refreshing. Those who are hoping that it would be given a new look will be happy to know that according to a recently published patent application, Cupertino is already interested in creating an iMac with an all-new design.

The iMac has a long history. Earlier iMacs had bulging backs courtesy of the CRT screen they used as monitors. More recently, iMacs adopted a slimmer, sleeker profile that made the computing machine as good looking as it is powerful. A quick look at the images collected by Macworld shows just how the iMac’s design significantly changed since it was first released in in 1998.

The current iMac design, however, seems to have grown “stale” for some, Patently Apple reported. The iMac is due for a design refresh, one that will make it more appealing to existing and would-be users.

A new patent application, recently published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, reveals that Apple is actually working on creating a new design for what appears to be an all-in-one computing devicem which fans know as the iMac. This new design puts all of the iMac’s components inside a continuous chassis made of glass.

The new design has a few interesting details fans might like to see. For one, the new design has a display area in the upper portion of the glass body, and some provisions for input devices at the lower portion. The upper and lower portions have a transition portion of bent glass between them.

A screen can be coupled to the display area of the glass housing’s upper portion, which will act as a monitor just like the ones in current iMacs. Input devices such as a keyboard and two trackpads can be coupled to the lower portion of the glass housing. Some illustrations in the patent show that the keyboard can be removable, with each of the two trackpads are located at its left and right side.

Other necessary parts such as ports and speakers are located at the back of the device, illustrations reveal. Illustrations also reveal that the MacBook can be attached to the new device so as to achieve a larger display.

The patent application indicates more design ideas. However, considering that this is but a patent application, a release date seems unclear at the moment.

Pictured: An Apple Store customer carries a brand new iMac computer on January 27, 2015 in San Francisco, california. photo: Getty Images/Justin Sullivan

An incoming winter storm that will brew around the eastern half of the United States during the weekend is expected to have an impact on Americans traveling within the next two days. This is the third consecutive weekend that rain and snow will be dumped in the country.

According to CNN, weather experts said snow will continue to fall in some parts of the Midwest on Friday. While the Upper Peninsula of Michigan can see snow reaching up to six inches, chicago, Iowa, Minneapolis, and Des Moines are areas expected to get much smaller volumes of snow.

Also on the same day, Charlotte, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, and St. Louis will most likely experience travel delays due to the continuous brewing of the weekend’s winter storm.

Come Saturday, rain will fall around northern New England as well as North Carolina throughout the day. Ohio Valley will also see some snow, and only a few towns on the outskirts of New England will experience the snow storm.

Weather analysts warned that towns in higher elevations such as those in the upper regions of New England and northern Pennsylvania will see higher amounts of snow throughout the weekend.

In other U.S. regions, freezing rain is more likely than snow. The areas expected to experience sleet and freezing rain are Maine, Philadelphia, Portland, New York, Boston, and Washington.

NBC News noted that while most of the snow that will fall this weekend will be confined to parts of northern New England, temperatures are still moving to warmer levels in much of the bordering regions of the United States.

South Florida will once again see warmer temperatures in the next couple of days, following Wednesday’s record-low in Miami. This week’s phenomena in Miami marked the lowest temperature in the area for almost a decade.

In the central regions of the U.S., the situation has been just as smug since earlier this week. According to AccuWeather, accidents were reported in Omaha and Hastings due to continuous freezing rainfall on Tuesday night.

By Wednesday morning, state troopers responded to multiple accidents around Interstate 94 in Minnesota. Authorities warned of hazardous driving conditions along the area and urged drivers to be more alert.

In Missouri and Kansas City, rain and snow alternated with the other. Temperatures played around the lower and middle range of 30 degrees on Thursday.

Travelers are encouraged to stay alert and watch out for potential transportation cancelations.

Authorities have arrested a man traveling through Arizona with $3.7 million worth of drugs in his car. Thirty-year-old Utah resident Logan Lewis Pederson has been charged with six felony counts, including dangerous drug possession, dangerous drug possession for sale, transportation of dangerous drugs, narcotic drug possession, narcotic drug possession for sale and transportation of narcotic drugs.

ABC News reports that Pederson was involved in a routine traffic stop on Interstate 15, when drug-sniffing dogs helped police find a trove of substances, each of which tested positive for drugs, such as cocaine, THC, methamphetamine and MDMA. The Mohave County Sheriff’s Office has estimated the street value of the product to be $3,696,720. Pederson is being held at Mohave County Adult Detention Facility on $300,000 bail, according to court records.

In Pederson’s trunk at the time of the arrest were 66 pounds of a liquid substance in jugs that tested positive for methamphetamine, six bricks of a white powdery substance that tested positive for cocaine, 2.2 pounds worth of a substance that tested positive for MDMA and 1,000 packages of candy-infused THC products. He refused to make contact with officers during the stop and was extremely nervous, according to Mohave Sheriff’s deputies.

There is no evidence that Pederson was working with anyone else, such as a larger manufacturer or distributor of the drugs, or what he was planning to do with them when he reached his destination. Although he was anxious at the time of his arrest, authorities gave no word on whether he was intoxicated.

There is growing concern that, as the nation has become preoccupied with the opioid epidemic, the proliferation of other drugs, such as meth, coke and benzodiazepines is being overlooked. Methamphetamine use, in particular, has exploded in many parts of the country. The national Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) reports that meth deaths reached a 10-year high of over 10,300 in 2017.

Heroin has been called the most dangerous drug to an individual person’s health. photo: CC0 Creative Commons

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) recently acquired Xnor.ai, a Seattle-based start-up that develops low-power, edge-based artificial intelligence tools. Apple didn’t disclose the terms of the deal, but GeekWire claimed that the deal was worth about $200 million.

Apple reportedly paid a similar amount for Turi, another Seattle-based company that specializes in machine learning and AI, in 2016. Apple also recently acquired British AI start-up Spectral Edge for an undisclosed sum.

But those acquisitions are just the tip of Apple’s AI iceberg. Apple has acquired over 20 AI companies since 2010, according to CB Insights, surpassing the number of AI acquisitions by Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google, microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN). Apple also poached Google’s AI and Search chief John Giannandrea in 2018.

All these moves indicate that Apple is aggressively expanding its AI ecosystem, even though its applications are less visible than Google and Facebook’s implementation of AI for targeted ads, or Amazon’s use of AI for sorting product listings. Let’s delve into Apple’s AI plans and see how they could shape the tech giant’s future.

It’s all about the iPhone — for now

Over the past decade, Apple’s AI acquisitions mainly focused on improving the iPhone with new features. It acquired Siri, the core virtual assistant of iOS, in 2010. Its acquisitions of computer vision companies like RealFace — along with its development of first-party chips — led to the launch of FaceID and other face-tracking features in 2017.

Apple’s purchase of Xnor.ai complements those investments. Xnor.ai’s Edge AI engine previously enabled the Wyze camera — which competes against the pricier Amazon Ring and Google Nest Cam — to recognize people, pets, and objects. But unlike Ring and Nest Cam, which process images remotely on the cloud, the Wyze camera processes them locally inside the camera for better privacy and security.

Therefore, Xnor.ai’s tech could enhance the iPhone camera and its face-tracking capabilities without sacrificing a user’s privacy. It could also improve Siri’s capabilities, which are reportedly hobbled by Apple’s reluctance to collect as much user data as Google or Amazon.

Xnor.ai claims that its Edge AI engine runs ten times as fast with 15 times more memory than cloud-based systems. Integrating that technology with Apple’s own Bionic chips, which already process AI tasks with its Neural Engine, could enable iPhones to process Siri requests and facial recognition features offline.

Tim Cook speaks during a product launch at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, california in September 2019 photo: AFP / Josh Edelson

But it also strengthens its services ecosystem

Apple is relying heavily on the growth of its services ecosystem — which includes Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple TV, Apple Pay, and other services — to offset its slower sales of iPhones, which generated 55% of its revenue last year. Apple’s services unit only generated 18% of its revenue.

If Apple wants to lock users into those services, it should closely track their preferences. However, Apple CEO Tim Cook has also repeatedly pledged that the company wouldn’t aggressively track and mine user data like Google or Facebook.

Therefore, planting a “walled garden” for its user data, which can only be processed locally on devices or with limited support from the cloud, would enable Apple to optimize its services content for its users while keeping its promises regarding user privacy. Buying companies like Xnor.ai could enable it to achieve that goal.

Looking further ahead, Apple could apply its acquired AI technologies to healthcare apps on Apple Watch, connected vehicles via CarPlay, or the augmented reality market, where it retains a foothold with its ARKit platform for app developers. An upgraded Siri could also make the HomePod — which lags behind Amazon and Google in the smart speaker market — a worthy buy.

The key takeaways

Apple’s investments in AI won’t boost its near-term revenue growth, but they’ll strengthen its hardware devices and tether more users to its services ecosystem. Those improvements should widen Apple’s moat and give it an edge against Google’s fragmented universe of Android devices.

This article originally appeared in the Motley Fool.

Leo Sun has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A shares), Alphabet (C shares), Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft and recommends the following options: long January 2021 $85 calls on Microsoft and short January 2021 $115 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

In May 2018, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos received a video that may have allowed attackers to access his iPhone X. The video that was sent to his WhatsApp account allegedly came from the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. The discovery was made by a cybersecurity firm Bezos assigned to conduct a forensic analysis.

The alleged video file may have enabled hackers to access everything on the billionaire’s iPhone. It includes photos and private communications of the CEO, reports The New York Times. FTI Consulting, the cybersecurity company, which handled the forensic analysis of Jeff Bezos’ iPhone X, also discovered something very intriguing.

The video file sent on Bezos’ WhatsApp account was rooted with malware and was traced to the WhatsApp account of the Saudi crown prince. Prior to the incident, both had a meeting where they exchanged contact numbers. Although they communicated using the app, the CEO did not expect to receive a message from the crown prince that day, especially a video.

Amazon, whose founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is seen here, set out a series of principles on corporate responsibility, including calling for regulation of facial recogition technology Photo: AFP / Eric BARADAT

The video file that Bezos received is 4.4-megabytes equipped with a separate bit of code that possibly implanted the malware on the iPhone X. It is not known if the Amazon CEO opened the file. However, it is worth mentioning that most malware can run on a device even without the need for user interaction.

Saudi Arabia crown prince Mohammed bin Salman was alleged to be the brain responsible for the attack on the Amazon CEO. The prince allegedly shared information with the American Media, Inc, the parent company of Enquirer, to put pressure on the Washington Post’s investigation. The publication is currently looking into the potential involvement of Saudi Arabia in the murder of the journalist named Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

The forensic analysis is now included in the UN’s investigation about malware that could have been used to launch the attack. The United Nations thinks the malware may have originated in the backyard of Saudi Arabia. While officials of the Middle East country deny their participation in the issue, the UN thinks otherwise.