Latest news with #Woodlawn
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
‘Big Balls' now working at Social Security Administration after departing DOGE: report
Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old nicknamed 'Big Balls' who was working in the Department of Government Efficiency, has landed a new role at the Social Security Administration. Coristine, who was hired by Elon Musk to join the DOGE team, recently left the White House but a Social Security Administration spokesperson confirmed he has since joined the agency as a special government employee. 'Edward Coristine joined the Social Security Administration this week as a special government employee,' spokesperson Stephen McGraw told WIRED. 'His work will be focused on improving the functionality of the Social Security website and advancing our mission of delivering more efficient service to the American people.' It was not immediately clear when Coristine started his new role. Sources told the outlet that Coristine 'looked nervous' and 'almost embarrassed' after being spotted at the agency's Woodlawn headquarters in Maryland this week. He was seen with DOGE engineer Aram Moghaddassi, another Musk hire who is working for X and Neuralink. 'Coristine looked nervous, almost embarrassed,' the source told WIRED. 'Aram was on the phone with someone … then said 'Yes I'm with him right now,' gesturing to Big Balls.'' Coristine's appointment at the agency follows a recent report that Musk and allies insisted on giving a 21-year-old former Silicon Valley intern sweeping access to personal data on hundreds of millions of Americans at the Social Security Administration. Musk ordered 21-year-old Akash Bobba, a former Palantir intern who'd been hired as a programmer for DOGE, be granted access to Social Security data without proper training so he could run his own analysis, The New York Times reported. When the acting commissioner, Michelle King, declined to do so, Musk had her fired and replaced with Leland Dudek. Dudek, brought back from a suspension on the DOGE team's recommendation, got Bobba the access. Coristine was first selected to work for the Tesla boss as a technologist, and received full-time staff status at the General Services Administration last month. Coristine became well known online and among Musk's immense fanbase publicly after he was paraded on Fox News alongside his boss. 'Who is Big Balls?' host Jesse Watters asked on his program, surrounded by DOGE members and supporters at a huge oval conference table. 'I am,' piped up 19-year-old DOGE staff member Edward Coristine. 'That should be obvious,' Musk quipped to laughter. Coristine claimed to have caught the eye of the world's richest man after simply changing his name on LinkedIn to 'Big Balls.' In addition to his brief stint as a government employee, the teenage high school graduate worked at Neuralink for several months and founded a company called LLC in 2021, according to WIRED. Speaking to Fox News, Coristine stated that while working in the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Technology, he used 'computer stuff' as he claimed to ferret out 'fraud and waste,' the old mantra of his former boss. With additional reporting from Mike Bedigan
The Independent
a day ago
- Business
- The Independent
‘Big Balls' now working at Social Security Administration after departing DOGE: report
Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old nicknamed 'Big Balls' who was working in the Department of Government Efficiency, has landed a new role at the Social Security Administration. Coristine, who was hired by Elon Musk to join the DOGE team, recently left the White House but a Social Security Administration spokesperson confirmed he has since joined the agency as a special government employee. 'Edward Coristine joined the Social Security Administration this week as a special government employee,' spokesperson Stephen McGraw told WIRED. 'His work will be focused on improving the functionality of the Social Security website and advancing our mission of delivering more efficient service to the American people.' It was not immediately clear when Coristine started his new role. Sources told the outlet that Coristine 'looked nervous' and 'almost embarrassed' after being spotted at the agency's Woodlawn headquarters in Maryland this week. He was seen with DOGE engineer Aram Moghaddassi, another Musk hire who is working for X and Neuralink. 'Coristine looked nervous, almost embarrassed,' the source told WIRED. 'Aram was on the phone with someone … then said 'Yes I'm with him right now,' gesturing to Big Balls.'' Coristine's appointment at the agency follows a recent report that Musk and allies insisted on giving a 21-year-old former Silicon Valley intern sweeping access to personal data on hundreds of millions of Americans at the Social Security Administration. Musk ordered 21-year-old Akash Bobba, a former Palantir intern who'd been hired as a programmer for DOGE, be granted access to Social Security data without proper training so he could run his own analysis, The New York Times reported. When the acting commissioner, Michelle King, declined to do so, Musk had her fired and replaced with Leland Dudek. Dudek, brought back from a suspension on the DOGE team's recommendation, got Bobba the access. Coristine was first selected to work for the Tesla boss as a technologist, and received full-time staff status at the General Services Administration last month. Coristine became well known online and among Musk's immense fanbase publicly after he was paraded on Fox News alongside his boss. 'Who is Big Balls?' host Jesse Watters asked on his program, surrounded by DOGE members and supporters at a huge oval conference table. 'I am,' piped up 19-year-old DOGE staff member Edward Coristine. 'That should be obvious,' Musk quipped to laughter. Coristine claimed to have caught the eye of the world's richest man after simply changing his name on LinkedIn to 'Big Balls.' In addition to his brief stint as a government employee, the teenage high school graduate worked at Neuralink for several months and founded a company called LLC in 2021, according to WIRED. Speaking to Fox News, Coristine stated that while working in the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Technology, he used 'computer stuff' as he claimed to ferret out 'fraud and waste,' the old mantra of his former boss.
WIRED
a day ago
- Business
- WIRED
‘Big Balls' Is Now at the Social Security Administration
Edward "Big Balls" Coristine's placement at the SSA comes after a White House official told WIRED on Tuesday that the 19-year-old had resigned from his position in government. The seal of the US Social Security Administration outside the agency's headquarters in Woodlawn, Maryland, US, on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025. Photograph:Edward 'Big Balls' Coristine, one of the first young technologists brought on to Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has returned to government shortly after resigning. 'Edward Coristine joined the Social Security Administration this week as a special government employee,' Stephen McGraw, an SSA spokesperson, tells WIRED. 'His work will be focused on improving the functionality of the Social Security website and advancing our mission of delivering more efficient service to the American people.' Multiple sources at the SSA tell WIRED that Coristine has appeared in person to work on-site at the agency's Woodlawn, Maryland headquarters. One SSA employee says they saw Coristine with DOGE engineer Aram Moghaddassi, a current X and former Neuralink employee deployed at the agency. The pair was spotted at the SSA cafeteria as recently as Monday, although it's unclear what day this week Coristine's employment officially began. 'Coristine looked nervous, almost embarrassed,' the SSA source says. 'Aram was on the phone with someone … then said 'Yes I'm with him right now,' gesturing to Big Balls.'' Coristine and Moghaddassi did not immediately reply to requests for comment. Coristine's re-hiring comes after a White House official told WIRED on Tuesday that the 19-year-old had resigned from his position in government. A Trump administration official confirms to WIRED that Coristine did indeed resign on Monday, and then was brought back by the SSA later in the week. Coristine became a full-time government employee at the General Services Administration (GSA) on May 30, WIRED reported earlier this month, converting from the restricted special government employee classification, which has a time limit of 130 days. As of Tuesday afternoon, Coristine's Google Workspace account with the GSA had been disabled and his name did not appear on a list of DOGE employees on the federal payroll maintained by a senior administration official. The GSA did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Coristine was one of a handful of DOGE engineers who worked across many government agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Health and Human Services, the US Agency for International Development, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security, among others. Coristine isn't known to have previously worked at the SSA. A 19-year-old high school graduate who worked at Musk's Neuralink for several months, Coristine has gone by the handle 'Big Balls' online and joined the government with no prior experience. He has also founded a company called LLC in 2021 and worked for a startup known for hiring blackhat hackers; he was reportedly fired after being suspected of leaking internal information. Sahil Lavingia, a former DOGE member who WIRED first identified at the Department of Veterans' Affairs, told WIRED that 'it felt like there was no real connection besides Elon being in the White House.' Speaking about an all-DOGE meeting with Musk held in March, Lavingia says, 'the only person from the White House was Katie Miller.' Miller left the White House with Musk and now works for the centibillionaire. Richard Pierce, a law professor at George Washington University, tells WIRED that the White House not knowing that a recently departed employee had been rehired was 'abnormal, but it seems to be normal for this administration.'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Boy, 15, wounded in Woodlawn shooting, police say
A 15-year-old boy was expected to recover after he was shot in the left knee Wednesday night in the Woodlawn neighborhood, according to Chicago police. An unknown gunman shot the boy while inside an apartment on the 6400 block of South Ingleside Avenue just after 6 p.m., police said. The boy was taken to Comer Children's Hospital in fair condition, officials said. Police provided no further details on the shooting. No arrests had been made as Wentworth Area detectives were investigating. tkenny@
ABC News
14-06-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Australia is set to embrace energy from waste, but should it?
Overlooking the huge Woodlawn landfill about three hours from Sydney, the scale of Australia's waste challenge is laid bare. All day, every day, a procession of trucks make their way to the bottom of the former open pit mine and dump their loads of rubbish. Nearly half of Sydney's non-recyclable waste winds up here. "1,000,000 tonnes (per year) arrives here at Woodlawn on a train," CEO of Veolia Australia and NZ, Richard Kirkman told 7.30. "That's what we do with it. We put it in this landfill." Just down the road from the landfill, Veolia is proposing to build a plant that will burn rubbish in a high-tech furnace to produce electricity. The technology, known as energy from waste, is common around the world. "There's an incredible opportunity, I think, in Australia to convert from land-filling our residual waste to move to energy from waste," Mr Kirkman said. The proposed energy from waste plant at Woodlawn would burn 380,000 tonnes of rubbish a year, producing enough electricity to power about 40,000 homes. But it will also emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when rubbish is burned, and produce tens of thousands of tonnes of bottom ash — in the form of non-combustible materials like stones, grit, glass, and rocks. There are currently 11 energy from waste plants either operating or proposed across the country. In the Perth suburb of Kwinana, Australia's first energy from waste plant opened in 2024 after years of delays. Another plant, located in East Rockingham, Western Australia, is almost complete. Six energy from waste plants are planned in Victoria, two in New South Wales, and one in Queensland. Proponents have long argued that energy from waste is more sustainable than landfill because energy is created from what would otherwise be thrown away. But many critics argue that the practice should be known by what we used to call it: incineration. And they dispute that it is in any way sustainable. "I don't want my kids to grow up in a throwaway society, one that is unsustainable and where your attitude to waste is, 'I can just toss it away because we can throw it in an incinerator and burn it'," said farmer Tom Martin, part of the Longwater Agricultural Association, a local group trying to stop the Woodlawn project. For decades energy from waste plants surged in Europe. There are now 500 plants that provide electricity and heating and Denmark was a pioneer. Copenhagen's Amager Bakke plant is famed for its ski run on the roof, where visitors can enjoy downhill fun literally on top of rubbish. But University of Copenhagen researcher Stine Madsen says that recently — as Denmark focuses on its greenhouse gas emissions target — the perception of energy from waste has changed dramatically. "There's really a growing focus on the CO2 emissions that come from waste incineration. And to meet that national target, incineration is considered problematic because it leads to CO2 emissions," Ms Madsen said. Mr Kirkman says emissions from energy from waste plants are far less damaging than those from landfills. "We have to reduce the methane we emit from landfills, and it's proven that [energy from waste] is better. That's why it's public policy," he said. The emissions are just one problem Denmark has with the process. The country doesn't produce enough rubbish to keep them going and has to import waste to keep the plants running. "You have a state-of-the-art facility, but you also need to feed it with waste … and the whole narrative around waste is changing." Near the proposed Woodlawn plant in NSW, many locals are angry. State policy bans incinerators in metropolitan Sydney, but not in the areas where they live. "We feel very discriminated against," said Paige Davis from Communities Against The Tarago Incinerator (CATTI). "The NSW government has decided from a precautionary principle that incinerators can't be built in Sydney because of the risk to human health and the environment. What about us? Why don't we count?" Local farmer Tom Martin worries for the health of his livestock, with the energy from waste plant just five kilometres away. He believes if incinerating rubbish isn't suitable in Sydney, it shouldn't be suitable near his farm. In the Melbourne suburb of Hampton Park, Jill Nambu and her neighbours are opposing a new waste transfer station. Hundreds of rubbish trucks a day could be coming and going for the next 25 years. Veolia, which runs the landfill site wants to build a waste transfer station for rubbish. Trucks will then carry trash to a proposed energy from waste plant in Maryvale, 120 kilometres away in Gippsland. "It makes me want to cry," Ms Nambu said. "I don't understand why they have to put it literally right in a community residential area." Groups opposed to the waste transfer station have also protested at Victoria's parliament. Veolia's development application was refused by the state's Environmental Protection Agency, but the company is appealing the decision. Mr Kirkland says he understands why locals may object to these projects but believes they are essential. "Every week they put their bin out, and it has to be collected, and it has to go somewhere." Watch 7.30, Mondays to Thursdays 7:30pm on ABC iview and ABC TV Do you know more about this story? Get in touch with 7.30 here.
