QUICK HITS

1 Seattle bans caste discrimination:

The Seattle City Council on Tuesday added caste to the city’s anti-discrimination laws, becoming the first U.S. city to ban caste discrimination and the first in the world to pass such a law outside South Asia.

Microsoft brings Bing chatbot 2 to phones

: Microsoft is ready to take its new Bing chatbot mainstream — less than a week after making major fixes to stop the artificially intelligent search engine from going off the rails. The company said Wednesday it is bringing the new AI technology to its Bing smartphone app, as well as the app for its Edge internet browser.

3 CNN’S Don Lemon tweets another apology:

CNN anchor Don Lemon tweeted an apology to viewers for his remarks about Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley shortly before returning to work on Wednesday, then stuck to the news. He reported on stories like President Joe Biden’s trip to Ukraine, the Ohio train derailment and winter weather.

4 Oat and soy can be called milk:

Soy, oat, almond and other drinks that bill themselves as “milk” can keep using the name, according to draft federal rules. Food and Drug Administration officials issued guidance that says plant-based beverages don’t pretend to be from dairy animals – and that U.S. consumers aren’t confused by the difference.

5 Police: Club Q shooter tried to blame man who subdued him:

The person who killed five people at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs last year had half a dozen high capacity magazines and tried to blame someone else for the shooting when police arrived at the scene, officers testified Wednesday at the start of a threeday evidentiary hearing. Anderson Lee Aldrich, who is nonbinary and uses the pronouns they and them, tried to pin the shooting on a man who subdued them while also claiming the shooter was hiding.