With Twitter’s human rights team eliminated, legal experts voice alarm about what it could mean for users around the world. Tina Trinh reports. Camera: Daniel Brody.
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Qatar is preparing to welcome hundreds of thousands of visitors to the 2022 World Cup and many local businesses are eager to receive them. For many tourists, it’s a chance to see this part of the world for the first time. VOA News reporter Celia Mendoza has the story from Doha, Qatar. Camera: Celia Mendoza, Nelson Biñoles
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NASA is kicking off its new moon program with a test flight of a brand-new rocket and capsule.
Liftoff was slated for early Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The test flight aims to send an empty crew capsule into a far-flung lunar orbit, 50 years after NASA’s famed Apollo moonshots.
The project is years late and billions over budget. The price tag for the test flight: more than $4 billion.
A rundown of the new rocket and capsule, part of NASA’s Artemis program, named after Apollo’s mythological twin sister:
Rocket power
At 322 feet (98 meters), the new rocket is shorter and slimmer than the Saturn V rockets that hurled 24 Apollo astronauts to the moon a half-century ago. But it’s mightier, packing 8.8 million pounds (4 million kilograms) of thrust. It’s called the Space Launch System rocket, SLS for short, although a less clunky name is under discussion. Unlike the streamlined Saturn V, the new rocket has a pair of side boosters refashioned from NASA’s space shuttles. The boosters peel away after two minutes, just like the shuttle boosters. The core stage keeps firing before crashing into the Pacific. Less than two hours after liftoff, an upper stage sends the capsule, Orion, racing toward the moon.
Moonship
NASA’s high-tech, automated Orion capsule is named after the constellation, among the night sky’s brightest. At 11 feet (3 meters) tall, it’s roomier than Apollo’s capsule, seating four astronauts instead of three. For the test flight, a full-size dummy in an orange flight suit occupies the commander’s seat, rigged with vibration and acceleration sensors. Two other mannequins made of material simulating human tissue — heads and female torsos, but no limbs — measure cosmic radiation, one of the biggest risks of spaceflight. Unlike the rocket, Orion has launched before, making two laps around Earth in 2014. For the test flight, the European Space Agency’s service module was attached for propulsion and solar power via four wings.
Flight plan
Orion’s flight is set to last 25 days from its Florida liftoff to Pacific splashdown, about the same as astronaut trips. It takes nearly a week to reach the moon. After whipping closely around the moon, the capsule enters a distant orbit with a far point of close to 40,000 miles (64,000 kilometers). That would put Orion about 270,000 miles (435,000) from Earth, farther than Apollo. The big test comes at mission’s end, as Orion hits the atmosphere at 25,000 mph (40,000 kph) on its way to a splashdown in the Pacific. The heat shield uses the same material as the Apollo capsules to withstand reentry temperatures of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,750 degrees Celsius). But the advanced design anticipates the faster, hotter returns by future Mars crews.
Hitchhikers
Besides three test dummies, the test flight includes a slew of stowaways for deep space research. Ten shoebox-size satellites pop off once Orion is hurtling toward the moon. NASA expects some to fail, given the low-cost, high-risk nature of these mini satellites. In a back-to-the-future salute, Orion carries a few slivers of moon rocks collected by Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969, and a bolt from one of their rocket engines, salvaged from the sea a decade ago.
Apollo vs. Artemis
More than 50 years later, Apollo still stands as NASA’s greatest achievement. Using 1960s technology, NASA took just eight years to go from launching its first astronaut, Alan Shepard, and landing Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon. By contrast, Artemis already has dragged on for more than a decade, despite building on the short-lived moon exploration program Constellation. Twelve Apollo astronauts walked on the moon from 1969 through 1972, staying no longer than three days at a time. For Artemis, NASA will draw from a diverse astronaut pool and is extending the time crews spend on the moon to at least a week. The goal is to create a long-term lunar presence that will grease the skids for sending people to Mars.
What’s next
There’s a lot more to be done before astronauts step on the moon again. A second test flight will send four astronauts around the moon and back, perhaps as early as 2024. A year or so later, NASA aims to send another four up, with two of them touching down at the lunar south pole. Orion doesn’t come with its own lunar lander like the Apollo spacecraft did, so NASA has hired Elon Musk’s SpaceX to provide its Starship spacecraft for the first Artemis moon landing. Two other private companies are developing moonwalking suits. The sci-fi-looking Starship would link up with Orion at the moon and take a pair of astronauts to the surface and back to the capsule for the ride home. So far, Starship has only soared six miles (10 kilometers).
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FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Tuesday that the bureau has “national security concerns” about popular short-form video hosting app TikTok as the Chinese-owned company seeks U.S. government approval to continue operating in the country.
Speaking during a U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee hearing on “worldwide threats to the homeland,” Wray said the FBI’s concerns about TikTok include “the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users.”
There is also concern, Wray said in response to a question, that the Chinese government could “control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations … or to control software on millions of devices, which gives the opportunity to potentially technically compromise personal devices.”
In written testimony, Wray called the foreign intelligence and economic threat from China “the greatest long-term threat to our nation’s ideas, innovation, and economic security.”
But he declined to answer in an open session a lawmaker’s question about whether the Chinese government has been leveraging TikTok to collect data about U.S. citizens.
Concerns about ties to Chinese government
TikTok’s ties to the Chinese government have been a flashpoint among U.S. lawmakers and officials for years. The app grew in popularity in recent years after its parent company, ByteDance, a China-based company with suspected ties to the Chinese government, bought and later absorbed Musical.ly, which allowed users to create and share lip-sync videos.
Citing national security concerns, then-President Donald Trump issued an executive order in 2020 that would effectively ban TikTok in the United States. But the social platform sued to block Trump’s executive order.
Last year President Joe Biden revoked the Trump directive, asking the Treasury Department to examine security concerns associated with the app.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an interagency body headed by the Treasury Department that reviews the national security implications of foreign investments in U.S. companies, has been examining TikTok’s proposal to continue to remain active in the U.S. market and the risks associated with it.
Noting that the FBI’s foreign investment unit is part of the CFIUS review process, Wray said that “our input would be taken into account in any agreements that might be made to address the issue.”
U.S. lawmakers question how data used
Although TikTok has denied having ties to China’s ruling Communist Party, U.S. lawmakers have long expressed concern about the Chinese government’s ability to access U.S. user data collected by the app.
Questioning Wray during Tuesday’s hearing, Republican Representative Diana Harshbarger cited a recent Forbes article that reported ByteDance “planned to use the TikTok app to track the physical location of specific American citizens.”
TikTok later dismissed the allegation raised in the article, saying in a statement it “does not collect precise GPS location information from U.S. users.”
In a June letter, TikTok sought to reassure U.S. lawmakers about its data security, writing that it now stores “100% of US user data, by default, in the Oracle cloud environment.”
‘Spinach’ vs. ‘opium’ versions
Last week, the U.S. TV news magazine “60 Minutes” reported that TikTok has two versions — a limited, educational “spinach version” for Chinese consumers, and an addictive “opium version” for the rest of the world.
While the version used in the West “has kids hooked for hours at a time,” in China, children under 14 years can use TikTok for only 40 minutes per day and view only videos about science experiments, museum exhibits, patriotic videos and educational videos, according to “60 Minutes.”
Wray said the online “threat to our youth is something we’re always concerned about.” The FBI is just as concerned about the way the Chinese government uses its laws as “an aggressive weapon against companies, both U.S. companies and Chinese companies,” he said.
“Under Chinese law, Chinese companies are required to essentially — and I’m going to shorthand here — basically do what the Chinese government wants them to do, in terms of sharing information or serving as a tool of the Chinese government,” Wray said. “And so, that’s plenty of reason by itself to be concerned.”
Beijing has denied similar allegations in the past.
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Beyoncé has propelled herself into the highest Grammy echelon: The singer claimed a leading nine nominations Tuesday, making her tied — with her husband, Jay-Z — as the most nominated music act in the history of the awards show.
Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul” reeled in record and song of the year nominations, while “Renaissance,” which ventured into the world of dancehall music, netted an album of the year nod. With Jay-Z also earning five nods this year, each spouse now holds the record for the most-ever Grammy nominations at 88 apiece.
Kendrick Lamar came away with the second-most nominations, with eight. Adele and Brandi Carlile both received seven nods. Harry Styles, Mary J. Blige, Future, DJ Khaled, The-Dream and mastering engineer Randy Merrill each picked up six.
Nearly half of this year’s leading nominees are women and more than half are people of color, according to the recording academy. The ceremony will be held February 5 in Los Angeles.
“This makes me feel very proud, but it makes me conscious of the fact that we have to maintain the work we have done,” said Harvey Mason jr., the Recording Academy’s CEO. He said there have been strides in the peer-driven voting system and increased membership, but he still believes more progress can be made.
“We have almost 13,000 voters now.” Mason said. … “I’m pleased to think they spent the time listening to the music and evaluating. I think you see by the type of nominations that they are not only going for just popular music or music that has a lot of streams. It’s just music of high quality.”
The academy added a special song for social change and five new categories including songwriter of the year, which Harvey says will further help diversify the 65th edition of the annual awards.
The non-classical songwriter category will recognize one individual who was the “most prolific” non-performing and non-producing songwriter for a body of new work during an eligibility year. It will take a different approach than song of the year, which awards the songwriters who wrote the lyrics or melodies to one song.
Harvey said implementing the songwriter category is a significant step forward for the music industry. Last year, a rule update allowed that any songwriter, producer, engineer or featured artist on a work nominated for album of the year could ultimately earn a nomination.
“The academy and voters are placing a high importance on the craft of songwriting,” Harvey said of the new category, in which nominees include The-Dream, Amy Allen, Nija Charles, Tobias Jesso Jr. and Laura Veltz.
Harvey said it’s his priority to earn the trust from the music community including The Weeknd and Drake, who are still unwilling to submit any of their music. Drake declined to submit his album “Honestly Nevermind” for the awards, but the Canadian rapper still received four nominations, including album of the year for his co-writing efforts on Beyoncé’s “Renaissance.”
Beyoncé, the most decorated woman in Grammy history with 28 wins, could break the late Hungarian-British conductor Georg Solti’s record for most awards won if she wins four awards. Solti, who has 31 Grammys, has held on to the record since 1997.
For the first time in Beyoncé’s lauded career, she was nominated in the dance category. Her seventh studio project is up for best dance-electronic music album and “Break My Soul” is nominated for best dance-electronic recording. Other nominations include best R&B song for “Cuff It,” R&B performance for “Virgo’s Groove,” traditional R&B performance for “Plastic Off the Sofa” and song written for visual media for “Be Alive,” the Oscar-nominated song from the “King Richard” soundtrack.
Other album of the year nominees include: Adele’s “30,” ABBA’s “Voyage,” Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti,” Mary J. Blige’s “Good Morning Gorgeous” (Deluxe), Carlile’s “In These Silent Days,” Coldplay’s “Music of the Spheres,” Lamar’s “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” Lizzo’s “Special” and Styles’ “Harry’s House.” Bad Bunny made history, with his album becoming the first sung entirely in Spanish to compete in the category.
Tracks competing with “Break My Soul” for record of the year include Styles’ “As It Was,” Doja Cat’s “Woman,” Adele’s “Easy On Me,” ABBA’s “Don’t Shut Me Down,” Blige’s “Good Morning Gorgeous,” Steve Lacy’s “Bad Habit,” Lamar’s “The Heart Part 5,” Lizzo’s “About Damn Time” and Carlile’s “You and Me On the Rock” featuring Lucius.
Three of Jay-Z’s nominations came through DJ Khaled’s “God Did,” a song featuring Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, John Legend and Fridayy. The track is up for best rap performance and rap song along with song of the year, which also has Jay-Z nominated for his writing efforts on Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul.” The rapper also received a nod for album of the year for his work on his wife’s “Renaissance” album.
Young Thug and Gunna both received nominations despite being currently locked up in a racketeering criminal case. The rappers are up for best rap song and rap performance through Gunna’s “pushin P,” featuring Thug and Future.
Christina Aguilera’s comeback to Latin music with her self-titled album earned her two nominations for best Latin pop album and immersive audio album. Among the 10 nominees for best new artist are Muni Long, Latto and Eurovision winner Maneskin.
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Search giant Google has agreed to a $391.5 million settlement with 40 states to resolve an investigation into how the company tracked users’ locations, state attorneys general announced Monday.
The states’ investigation was sparked by a 2018 Associated Press story, which found that Google continued to track people’s location data even after they opted out of such tracking by disabling a feature the company called “location history.”
The attorneys general called the settlement a historic win for consumers, and the largest multistate settlement in U.S history dealing with privacy.
It comes at a time of mounting unease over privacy and surveillance by tech companies that has drawn growing outrage from politicians and scrutiny by regulators. The Supreme Court’s ruling in June ending the constitutional protections for abortion raised potential privacy concerns for women seeking the procedure or related information online.
“This $391.5 million settlement is a historic win for consumers in an era of increasing reliance on technology,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said in a statement. “Location data is among the most sensitive and valuable personal information Google collects, and there are so many reasons why a consumer may opt-out of tracking.”
Google, based in Mountain View, California, said it fixed the problems several years ago.
“Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation, which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago,” company spokesperson Jose Castaneda said in a statement.
Location tracking can help tech companies sell digital ads to marketers looking to connect with consumers within their vicinity. It’s another tool in a data-gathering toolkit that generates more than $200 billion in annual ad revenue for Google, accounting for most of the profits pouring into the coffers of its corporate parent, Alphabet — which has a market value of $1.2 trillion.
In its 2018 story, the AP reported that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store users’ location data even if they’ve used a privacy setting that says it will prevent Google from doing so. Computer-science researchers at Princeton confirmed these findings at the AP’s request.
Storing such data carries privacy risks and has been used by police to determine the location of suspects.
The AP reported that the privacy issue with location tracking affected some 2 billion users of devices that run Google’s Android operating software and hundreds of millions of worldwide iPhone users who rely on Google for maps or search.
The attorneys general who investigated Google said a key part of the company’s digital advertising business is location data, which they called the most sensitive and valuable personal data the company collects. Even a small amount of location data can reveal a person’s identity and routines, they said.
Google uses the location information to target consumers with ads by its customers, the state officials said.
The attorneys general said Google misled users about its location tracking practices since at least 2014, violating state consumer protection laws.
As part of the settlement, Google also agreed to make those practices more transparent to users. That includes showing them more information when they turn location account settings on and off and keeping a webpage that gives users information about the data Google collects.
The shadowy surveillance brought to light by the AP troubled even some Google engineers, who recognized the company might be confronting a massive legal headache after the story was published, according to internal documents that have subsequently surfaced in consumer-fraud lawsuits.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed the first state action against Google in May 2020, alleging that the company had defrauded its users by misleading them into believing they could keep their whereabouts private by turning off location tracking in the settings of their software.
Arizona settled its case with Google for $85 million last month, but by then attorneys general in several other states and the District of Columbia had also pounced on the company with their own lawsuits seeking to hold Google accountable for its alleged deception.
In a last-minute controversial move, Pakistan has banned the screening of its international award-winning movie, “Joyland” in theaters across the country for containing “highly objectionable” content.
The movie, which features a married man falling for a transgender woman, was supposed to be released in Pakistani cinemas Friday.
In May, “Joyland” became the first Pakistani feature film to win a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It is also Pakistan’s entry for the 2023 Academy Awards in the United States.
The government-led Central Board of Film Censors (CBFC) had in August formally granted the filmmaker the license to screen the movie in cinemas.
A federal information ministry statement, however, said that it had stopped the screening of the movie as the material in question does not “conform with the social values and moral stands of our society.”
The material in question is “clearly repugnant to the norms of decency and morality” in line with the relevant laws, said the statement without elaborating.
The director of “Joyland” denounced the decision as “absolutely unconstitutional and illegal.”
“We — a team — are gutted by this development but fully intend to raise our voice against this grave injustice,” Saim Sadiq said in an Instagram post late Sunday.
Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan, who represents the right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami party in the upper house of parliament, was leading the campaign against the screening of “Joyland” in Pakistan. He praised the government’s decision to revoke the license.
“Pakistan is an Islamic state where no law, no step and no ideology against Islam can work here,” Khan wrote on Twitter.
Sadiq criticized the government, saying it “caved under pressure from a few extremist factions … and made a mockery of our federal censor board.” He urged the information ministry to review its decision.
Independent critics, Pakistani show business celebrities and social media activists also questioned the movie ban in a country that recognizes and gives legal rights to transgender people.
Salman Sufi, a key government adviser, announced Monday on Twitter that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had constituted a high-level committee to “assess the complaints as well as merits to decide on its release in Pakistan.”
“I personally do not believe in banning films that highlight issues faced by marginalized segments of our society. People should be trusted to watch & make their own mind,” Sufi tweeted Sunday in response to the widespread outcry sparked by the ban.
Pakistan has in recent years taken significant legal and administrative measures in its bid to protect the rights of transgender people who are often considered outcasts in the Muslim-majority South Asian nation.
The reforms effectively started with a landmark Supreme Court ruling a decade ago, which directed authorities to register transgender people as voters and give them, among others, equal inheritance and job opportunity rights.
The government launched a hotline this past September for transgender people, estimated to number around 500,000, to protect them against discrimination and harassment.
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California is home to the largest Arab American community in the United States. That growing economic and political visibility is evident in Southern California’s newly designated “Little Arabia” neighborhood. For VOA, Genia Dulot takes us there. Videographer and producer: Genia Dulot
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Facial hair enthusiasts claimed to have set a new world record for longest beard chain during an event in Wyoming on Friday, the Casper Star-Tribune reports.
Participants gathered at Gaslight Social, a bar in Casper, where they stood side by side and clipped their beards together to create a hairy chain that was measured at 150 feet long, according to the newspaper. That’s more than double the Guinness World Record of 62 feet, 6 inches, set in Germany in 2007.
To participate, people needed to sport a beard at least 8 inches long, according to the Star-Tribune.
The event occurred on the sidelines of the National Beard and Moustache Championships, which took place Saturday at the city’s Ford Wyoming Center.
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It’s not easy being Elon Musk.
That was the message the new Twitter owner and billionaire head of Tesla and SpaceX had for younger people who might seek to emulate his entrepreneurial success.
“Be careful what you wish for,” Musk told a business forum in Bali on Monday when asked what an up-and-coming “Elon Musk of the East” should focus on.
“I’m not sure how many people would actually like to be me. They would like to be what they imagine being me, which is not the same,” he continued. “I mean, the amount that I torture myself, is the next level, frankly.”
Musk was speaking at the B-20 business forum ahead of a summit of the Group of 20 leading economies taking place on the Indonesian resort island. He joined the conference by video link weeks after completing his heavily scrutinized takeover of Twitter.
He had been expected to attend the event in person, but Indonesian government minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, who’s responsible for coordinating preparations for the summit, said Musk could not attend because he’s preparing for a court case later in the week.
He’s got plenty else to keep himself busy.
“My workload has recently increased quite a lot,” he said with a chuckle in an apparent reference to the Twitter deal. “I mean, oh, man. I have too much work on my plate, that is for sure.”
The businessman appeared in a darkened room, saying there had been a power cut just before he connected.
His face, projected on a large screen over the summit hall, appeared to glow red as it was reflected in what he said was candlelight – a visage he noted was “so bizarre.”
While Musk was among the most anticipated speakers at the business forum, his remarks broke little new ground. Only the moderator was able to ask questions.
The Tesla chief executive said the electric carmaker would consider making a much cheaper model when asked about lower-cost options for developing countries like India and G-20 host Indonesia.
“We do think that making a much more affordable vehicle would make a lot of sense and we should do something,” he said.
Musk also reiterated a desire to significantly boost the amount and length of Twitter’s video offerings, and share revenue with people producing the content, though he didn’t provide specifics.
He bought Twitter for $44 billion last month and quickly dismissed the company’s board of directors and top executives.
He laid off much of the rest of the company’s full-time workforce by email on Nov. 4 and is now eliminating the jobs of outsourced contractors who are tasked with fighting misinformation and other harmful content.
Musk has vowed to ease restrictions on what users can say on the platform.
He’s reaped a heap of complaints — much on Twitter itself — and has tried to reassure companies that advertise on the platform and others that it won’t damage their brands by associating them with harmful content.
In his appearance Monday, Musk acknowledged the criticism.
“There’s no way to make everyone happy, that’s for sure,” he said.
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Phrygian caps will be the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games mascots as organizers look to to celebrate the French revolution’s spirit.
“‘Phryges’ aim to show that sport can change everything, and that it deserves to have a prominent place in our society,” Paris 2024 brand director Julie Matikhine said on Monday.
The Phrygian caps were favored over animals, who have mostly been the first choice in other Olympics — such as the ‘Bing Dwen Dwen’ panda at the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing this year.
“We were almost ready not to make a mascot if we didn’t find a real reason to do so, and a real message to convey,” said Matikhine.
“The mascot must embody the French spirit, which is something very fine to grasp. It’s an ideal, a kind of conviction that carries the values of our country, and which has been built up over time, over history.”
The red Phrygian caps come in two versions — the Olympic and the Paralympic one — with a blade leg.
The Olympic Games will be held from July 26-Aug. 11 and the Paralympics from Aug. 28-Sept. 8.
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Art restorers in the Italian city of Florence have begun a six-month project to clean and virtually “unveil” a long-censored nude painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the most prominent women in the history of Italian art.
Swirling veils and drapery were added to the “Allegory of Inclination” some 70 years after Gentileschi painted the life-size female nude, believed to be a self-portrait, in 1616.
The work to reveal the image as originally painted comes as Gentileschi’s contribution to Italian Baroque art is getting renewed attention in the #MeToo era, both for her artistic achievements but also for breaking into the male-dominated art world after being raped by one of her art teachers.
Her work was featured in a 2020 exhibit at the National Gallery in London.
“Through her, we can talk about how important it is to restore artwork, how important it is to restore the stories of women to the forefront,” said Linda Falcone, coordinator of the Artemisia Up Close project.
“Allegory of Inclination” originally was commissioned for the family home of Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, the great-nephew of the famed artist. The building later became the Casa Buonarotti museum, and the painting was displayed until recently on the ceiling in a gilded frame. When lead conservator Elizabeth Wick removed the painting in late September, a shower of 400-year-old dust was released.
Wick’s team of restorers is using ultraviolet light, diagnostic imaging and X-rays to differentiate Gentileschi’s brush strokes from those of the artist that covered the nudity. The public can watch the project underway at the museum through April 23.
Restorers won’t be able to remove the veils because the cover-up was done too soon after the original, raising the risk that Gentileschi’s painting would be damaged in the process.
Instead, the restoration team plans to create a digital image of the original version that will be displayed in an exhibition on the project opening in September 2023.
Gentileschi arrived in Florence shortly after the trial in Rome of her rapist, during which the then-17-year-old was forced to testify with ropes tied around her fingers that were progressively tightened in a test of her honesty.
She also had to endure a physical examination in the courtroom behind a curtain to confirm that she was no longer a virgin. Eventually, her rapist was convicted and sentenced to eight months in prison.
“Somebody else would have been crushed by this experience,” Wick said. “But Artemisia bounces back. She comes up to Florence. She gets this wonderful commission to paint a full-length nude figure for the ceiling of Casa Buonarroti. So, I think she’s showing people, ‘This is what I can do.'”
While in Florence, Gentileschi also won commissions from the Medici family. Her distinctive, dramatic and energetic style emerged, taking inspiration from the most renowned Baroque painter of the time, Caravaggio. Many of her paintings featured female heroines, often in violent scenes and often nude.
She was 22 when she painted “Allegory of Inclination,” which was commissioned by Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger. Another member of the family, Leonardo Buonarroti, decided to have it embellished to protect the sensibilities of his wife and children.
“This is one of her first paintings. In the Florentine context, it was her debut painting, the same year she was then accepted into the Academy of Drawing, which was the first drawing academy in Europe at the time,” Falcone said.
With the younger Michelangelo as her patron, Gentileschi gained entry to the cultural milieu of the time.
“She was able to hobnob with Galileo and with other great thinkers. So this almost illiterate woman was suddenly at the university level, producing works of art that were then, you know, appreciated by the Grand Duke,” Falcone said. “And she became a courtly painter from then on.”
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Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk is further gutting the teams that battle misinformation on the social media platform as outsourced moderators learned over the weekend they were out of a job.
Twitter and other big social media firms have relied heavily on contractors to track hate and enforce rules against harmful content.
But many of those content watchdogs have now headed out the door, first when Twitter fired much of its full-time workforce by email on Nov. 4 and now as it moves to eliminate an untold number of contract jobs.
Melissa Ingle, who worked at Twitter as a contractor for more than a year, was one of a number of contractors who said they were terminated Saturday. She said she’s concerned that there’s going to be an increase in abuse on Twitter with the number of workers leaving.
“I love the platform and I really enjoyed working at the company and trying to make it better. And I’m just really fearful of what’s going to slip through the cracks,” she said Sunday.
Ingle, a data scientist, said she worked on the data and monitoring arm of Twitter’s civic integrity team. Her job involved writing algorithms to find political misinformation on the platform in countries such as the U.S., Brazil, Japan, Argentina and elsewhere.
Ingle said she was “pretty sure I was done for” when she couldn’t access her work email Saturday. The notification from the contracting company she’d been hired by came two hours later.
“I’ll just be putting my resumes out there and talking to people,” she said. “I have two children. And I’m worried about being able to give them a nice Christmas, you know, and just mundane things like that, that are important. I just think it’s particularly heartless to do this at this time.”
Content-moderation expert Sarah Roberts, an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles who worked as a staff researcher at Twitter earlier this year, said she believes at least 3,000 contract workers were fired Saturday night.
Twitter hasn’t said how many contract workers it cut. The company hasn’t responded to media requests for information since Musk took over.
At Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters and other offices, contract workers wore green badges while full-time workers wore blue badges. Contractors did a number of jobs to help keep Twitter running, including engineering and marketing, Roberts said. But it was the huge force of contracted moderators that was “mission critical” to the platform, said Roberts.
Cutting them will have a “tangible impact on the experience of the platform,” she said.
Musk promised to loosen speech restrictions when he took over Twitter. But in the early days after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late October and dismissed its board of directors and top executives, the billionaire Tesla CEO sought to assure civil rights groups and advertisers that the platform could continue tamping down hate and hate-fueled violence.
That message was reiterated by Twitter’s then-head of content moderation, Yoel Roth, who tweeted that the Nov. 4 layoffs only affected “15% of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to approximately 50% cuts company-wide), with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact.”
Roth has since resigned from the company, joining an exodus of high-level leaders who were tasked with privacy protection, cybersecurity and complying with regulations.
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Taylor Swift walked away with four prizes at MTV’s Europe Music Awards on Sunday, including best video for her 10-minute “All Too Well.”
Double-award winners included Nicki Minaj for best song and best hip-hop, and the French DJ and record producer David Guetta won the best electronic award and best collaboration.
The event, broadcast on MTV from Duesseldorf in western Germany, honored musicians from Brazil to South Korea.
It featured an appearance by Ukraine’s Kalush Orchestra, the winner of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, which performed “Stefania” in an arena glowing with Ukraine’s national colors of blue and yellow.
The U.S. pop singer Swift, wearing a dress of bejeweled mesh, won best artist, best pop, best video and best long form video.
“I felt like I learned so much about how making film can be a natural extension of my storytelling,” Swift said as she accepted the long form video award.
In “All Too Well,” Swift draws inspiration from 1970s Hollywood and recounts a fraying romantic relationship that disintegrates, leaving behind only a scarf and memories.
“It was rare, I was there, I remember it all too well,” Swift sings.
Minaj’s winning song “Super Freaky Girl” incorporates the 1981 hit “Super Freak” with lyrics “I can lick it, I can ride it while you slippin’ and slidin’.”
British pop star Harry Styles won in the “best live” category and the Thai-born Lalisa ‘Lisa’ Manoban won best K-pop. South Korea’s BTS, the global K-pop sensation, won the biggest fans category.
The hosts for the show were British pop star Rita Ora and the film director Taika Waititi, who married this year. Ora herself won for “best look.”
Duesseldorf has a musical heritage as home to the pioneering German electronic band Kraftwerk, which influenced generations of pop and dance musicians with mesmerizing tracks such as “Autobahn.”
The city also hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in 2011.
Screaming teens watched the stars walk down a red carpet before the event was broadcast from the PSD Bank Dome.
Julian Lennon, the son of the Beatles’ John Lennon, said as he entered that he had not seen a concert in years and was looking forward to it.
The rock band Muse, which won the best rock award, said it was dedicating its victory to the people of Ukraine and Iran.
Kalush Orchestra’s frontman Oleh Psiuk, donning a pink hat, said before the performance that he hoped more Ukrainian bands would be present next year.
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The box office roared back to life with the long-awaited release of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”
The Marvel sequel earned $180 million in ticket sales from more than 4,396 theaters in the U.S. and Canada, according to estimates from The Walt Disney Co. on Sunday, making it the second biggest opening of the year behind “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” Overseas, it brought in an additional $150 million from 50 territories, bringing its worldwide total to $330 million.
“Wakanda Forever” was eagerly anticipated by both audiences and exhibitors, who have weathered a slow spell at the box office since the summer movie season ended and there were fewer bigger budget blockbusters in the pipeline. The film got off to a mighty start a bit stronger than even the first film with an $84 million opening day, including $28 million from Thursday previews.
“Some may have hoped for $200 million like the first film, but this is solid,” said Paul Dergarabedian, Comscore’s senior media analyst. “This is the type of movie that theaters really need to drive audiences.”
The first film opened to $202 million in February 2018 and went on to gross over $1.4 billion worldwide, making it one of the highest grossing films of all time and a cultural phenomenon. A sequel was inevitable, and development began soon after with director Ryan Coogler returning, but everything changed after Chadwick Boseman’s unexpected death in August 2020. “Wakanda Forever” became, instead, about the death of Boseman’s King T’Challa/Black Panther, and the grieving kingdom he left behind. Returning actors include Angela Bassett, Lupita Nyong’o, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke and Danai Gurira, who face off against a new foe in Tenoch Huerta’s Namor. The film would face more complications too, including Wright getting injured and some COVID-19 related setbacks. All told, it cost a reported $250 million to make, not accounting for marketing and promotion.
AP Film Writer Jake Coyle wrote in his review that, “‘Wakanda Forever’ is overlong, a little unwieldy and somewhat mystifyingly steers toward a climax on a barge in the middle of the Atlantic. But Coogler’s fluid command of mixing intimacy with spectacle remains gripping.”
It currently holds an 84% on Rotten Tomatoes and, as is often the case with comic book films, the audience scores are even higher.
Superhero films have fared well during the pandemic, but none yet have reached the heights of “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which opened to $260.1 million in Dec. 2021. Other big launches include “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” ($187.4 million in May), “Thor: Love and Thunder” ($144.2 million in July) and “The Batman” ($134 million in March).
“Wakanda Forever” is the first film to open over $100 million since “Thor” in July, which has been difficult for exhibitors that are already dealing with a calendar that has about 30% fewer wide releases than in a normal year.
Holdovers populated the rest of the top five, as no film dared launch nationwide against a Marvel behemoth. Second place went to the DC superhero “Black Adam,” with $8.6 million, bringing its domestic total to $151.1 million. “Ticket to Paradise” landed in third, in weekend four, with $6.1 million. The Julia Roberts and George Clooney romantic comedy has made nearly $150 million worldwide. “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile” and “Smile” rounded out the top five with $3.2 million and $2.3 million, respectively.
Some awards hopefuls have struggled in their expansions lately, but Searchlight Pictures’ “The Banshees of Inisherin,” with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, looks like an exception. The Martin McDonagh film expanded to 960 theaters in its fourth weekend and got seventh place on the charts with $1.7 million, bringing its total to $5.8 million.
“It’s been a very interesting post-summer period for movie theaters, with some gems out there doing well like ‘Ticket to Paradise’ and ‘Smile,'” Dergarabedian said. “But movie theaters can’t survive on non-blockbuster style films. The industry needs more of these.”
After “Black Panther,” the next blockbuster on the schedule is “Avatar: The Way of Water,” arriving Dec. 16.
The weekend wasn’t completely without any other high-profile releases. Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical drama ” The Fabelmans” opened in four theaters in New York and Los Angeles with $160,000. Universal and Amblin will roll the film out to more theaters in the coming weeks to build excitement around the likely Oscar-contender. Michelle Williams and Paul Dano play parents to the Spielberg stand-in Sammy Fabelman, who is falling in love with movies and filmmaking as his parents’ marriage crumbles.
“This will be an interesting holiday season,” Dergarabedian said. “I think a lot of the dramas and independent films will have their time to shine over the next couple months.”
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
“Black Adam,” $8.6 million.
“Ticket to Paradise,” $6.1 million.
“Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile,” $3.2 million.
“Smile,” $2.3 million.
“Prey for the Devil,” $2 million.
“The Banshees of Inisherin,” $1.7 million.
“One Piece Film Red,” $1.4 million.
“Till,” $618,000.
“Yashoda,” $380,000.
Australian researchers have identified 1,500 additional locations across the country that could be used as pumped storage hydropower facilities. They have said it should reduce Australia’s reliance on fossil fuels.
Academics at the Australian National University have said pumped storage hydropower is a “low-cost, mass storage option” that could help Australia reach its emissions reduction targets.
Emeritus Professor Andrew Blakers at the university’s College of Engineering, Computing and Cybernetics told VOA the process involves transferring water between two reservoirs or lakes at different elevations.
He said water is pumped to the higher reservoir when there are plentiful supplies of wind and solar energy. The water is then released at night, or at other times when it is not windy or sunny, maximizing the use of the stored energy in the reservoirs.
“We have two reservoirs; one at the top of a hill and the other down in a valley connected with a pipe or tunnel,” he said. “On sunny and windy days, the pump turbine pumps water uphill to the upper reservoir and then in the middle of the night the water is allowed to come back down through the turbine to recover the energy that was stored. So, the same water goes up and down between the two reservoirs for 100 years. So, if you want large-scale storage, you go to pumped hydro.”
Researchers studied the area near every reservoir in Australia looking for a potential site for another reservoir that could be used as pumped storage hydropower.
They identified 1,500 locations that could help Australia store the energy it generates from wind and solar projects.
Blakers says Australia is becoming a world leader in the field.
“All Australian governments and companies are focused on very rapid construction of solar and wind, and equally rapid construction of new transmission to bring the new power to the cities, and pumped hydro and battery storage to balance the variable solar and wind. Australia is the global pathfinder. We are leading in every department,” he said.
Australia has a target of producing 82% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.
Because of the country’s heavy reliance on coal and natural gas, it has been one of the world’s worst emitters of greenhouse gases, per capita.
Those fossil fuels continue to generate much of Australia’s electricity, but researchers believe that the country’s path toward a cleaner energy future is well underway.
The Australian National University study released Friday follows the team’s identification of 530,000 potential pumped-storage hydro sites across the world.
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At first, Saskia Nino de Rivera was excited about going to Qatar for a World Cup that would mark a significant professional event for her partner, a sports agent for Mexico soccer players. She even contemplated privately proposing there during a game, and posting photos once they left the country.
But as the lesbian couple learned more about laws on same-sex relations in the conservative Gulf country, the plans no longer sounded like a good idea. Instead, Nino de Rivera proposed at an Amsterdam stadium this summer and opted to skip the World Cup altogether.
“As a lesbian woman, it’s really hard for me to feel and think that we are going to a country where we don’t know what could happen and how we could be safe,” she said. “It was a really hard decision.”
Nino de Rivera’s concerns are shared by many LGBTQ soccer fans and their allies worldwide. Some have been mulling whether to attend the tournament, or even watch it on television.
Qatar’s laws against gay sex and treatment of LGBTQ people are flashpoints in the run-up to the first World Cup to be held in the Middle East, or in any Arab or Muslim country. Qatar has said all are welcome, including LGBTQ fans, but that visitors should respect the nation’s culture, in which public displays of affection by anyone are frowned on. With his country facing criticism over a number of issues, Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, recently argued it “has been subjected to an unprecedented campaign” that no host country has ever faced.
An ambassador for the World Cup in Qatar, however, has described homosexuality as a “damage in the mind” in an interview with German public broadcaster ZDF. Aired this week, the comments by former Qatari national team player Khalid Salman highlighted concerns about the conservative country’s treatment of gays and lesbians.
Some LGBTQ rights activists are seizing the moment to draw attention, with a heightened sense of urgency, to the conditions of LGBTQ citizens and residents in Qatar. They want to raise concerns about how these people may be treated after the tournament ends and the international spotlight fades.
Dario Minden, who is from Germany, said he’s keen on soccer but won’t watch a single minute of the tournament as a show of solidarity with LGBTQ people in Qatar. Recently, he jumped at the opportunity to lobby for change.
At a human rights congress hosted by the German soccer federation in Frankfurt, Minden told the Qatari ambassador to Germany that Qatar should abolish its penalties for homosexuality.
“I happen to be a gay football fan and I thought that this is a great opportunity to … speak in front of such a high representative, to connect the topic with a face,” Minden said in an interview.
Rasha Younes, LGBTQ rights senior researcher in the Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch, said that while Qatari officials have offered some reassurances for LGBTQ fans, the possibility of stigma and discrimination remained in housing, access to health care and safely reporting potential sexual violence.
At the same time, she argued, “suggestions that Qatar should make an exception for outsiders are implicit reminders that Qatari authorities do not believe that its LGBT residents deserve basic rights or exist,” adding her organization was concerned about conditions for local LGBTQ people, including after the tournament.
Qatari law calls for a prison sentence of one to three years for whoever is “instigating” or “seducing” a male to “commit sodomy,” as well as for “inducing or seducing a male or a female in any way to commit illegal or immoral actions.”
In the run-up to the World Cup, Qatari security forces have been accused of mistreating LGBTQ people. In a statement, the Qatari government has denied those allegations: “Qatar does not tolerate discrimination against anyone, and our policies and procedures are underpinned by a commitment to human rights for all.”
Dr. Nasser Mohamed, an openly gay Qatari activist who now lives in the United States, is among those saying that international attention is disproportionately focused on visitors and not enough on LGBTQ people in Qatar. He publicly came out and has been lobbying to expand the conversation before the World Cup.
“Being in a country that has no LGBT visibility, no conversations about what it’s like to be an LGBT person, made me feel like there’s something wrong with me,” he said in an interview. With the current intense public debates, “I feel like there is a moment of urgency to … put something out there now to actually let people know that we’re not OK.”
Josie Nixon of the You Can Play Project, which advocates for LGBTQ people in sports, said the group was part of a coalition of LGBTQ rights organizations that made demands of FIFA and the Qatari organizers. These included repealing laws targeting LGBTQ people, providing “explicit safety guarantees” against harassment, arrest or detention, and working to ensure the long-term safety of LGBTQ people in the region.
“FIFA and Qatar have taken steps to make sure that LGBTQ fans are safe, but is that enough to change the way Qatar views LGBTQ citizens?” said Nixon, who lives in Colorado. “My answer is no.”
Even before the tournament kicks off, questions about what legacy it would leave behind loomed large amid intense international scrutiny over Qatar’s human rights record, including treatment of migrant workers. As the World Cup neared, Qatari officials sounded increasingly frustrated, saying their country’s achievements and progress were being overlooked and that the attacks raise questions about the motive behind them.
“Qatar believes strongly in the power of sport to bring people together and build bridges of cultural understanding,” the Qatari government said in a statement to The Associated Press in response to questions. “The World Cup can help change misconceptions, and we want fans to travel home with a better understanding of our country, culture and region. We believe this tournament … can show that people of different nationalities, religions and backgrounds in fact have more in common than they think.”
The statement added that Qatar is a country of “warm hospitality” and will continue to ensure the safety of all “regardless of background.”
FIFA’s top officials have recently urged the teams preparing for the World Cup to focus on soccer and avoid letting the game be dragged into ideological or political battles. The officials did not address or identify any specific issue in their message, which angered some human rights activists.
In soccer-crazy Argentina, Juan Pablo Morino, president of the group Gays Passionate About Soccer said he was dismayed by FIFA’s decision to organize the World Cup in Qatar.
“In the election of a host, basic parameters of coexistence should be met. It cannot be that any country is a candidate,” he said.
In Mexico, Nino de Rivera said she would be supporting her fiancée, who will attend the tournament for work, from afar. That makes her sad.
The decision to sit out the World Cup “has to do with being true to your own values and bringing a lot of money to a country where you’re not welcome because of your sexual orientation,” she said. She was scared that if they went as a couple, they might have been harassed or worse while having dinner or walking back to the hotel.
“The World Cup is normally an event that brings people together, where it doesn’t matter what part of the world you’re from … what religion you have; it doesn’t matter what community you belong to,” she said. “We all speak the same language. We all speak football.”
Twitter paused its recently announced $8 blue check subscription service Friday as fake accounts mushroomed and new owner Elon Musk brought back the “official” badge to some users of the social media platform.
The coveted blue check mark was previously reserved for verified accounts of politicians, famous personalities, journalists and other public figures. But a subscription option, open to anyone prepared to pay, was rolled out earlier this week to help Twitter grow revenue as Musk fights to retain advertisers.
The flip-flop is part of a chaotic two weeks at Twitter since Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition. Musk has fired nearly half of Twitter’s workforce, removed its board and senior executives, and raised the prospect of Twitter’s bankruptcy. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said Thursday it was watching Twitter with “deep concern.”
Several users reported Friday that the new subscription option for the blue verification check mark had disappeared, while a source told Reuters the offering has been dropped.
Twitter did not reply to a request for comment.
Fake accounts purporting to be big brands have popped up with the blue check since the new roll-out, including Musk’s Tesla TSLA.O and SpaceX, as well as Roblox, Nestle NESN.S and Lockheed Martin LMT.N.
“To combat impersonation, we’ve added an ‘Official’ label to some accounts,” Twitter’s support account – which has the “official” tag – tweeted on Friday.
The label was originally introduced Wednesday, but “killed” by Musk just hours later.
Drugmaker Eli Lilly and Co LLY.N issued an apology after an impostor account tweeted that insulin would be free, amid the political backlash and scrutiny of the high prices of the medicine.
“We apologize to those who have been served a misleading message from a fake Lilly account,” the company said, reiterating the name of its Twitter handle.
A number of misleading tweets about Tesla from a verified account with the same profile picture as the company’s official account were also being circulated on the platform.
“Twitter has over the past several years worked to try to improve that (misinformation). And it seems like Elon Musk has unraveled it within a matter of weeks,” said A.J. Bauer, a professor at the University of Alabama.
Musk had said Twitter users engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying it as a “parody” account would be permanently suspended without a warning. Several fake brand accounts, including those of Nintendo 7974.T and BP BP.L, have been suspended.
On Thursday, in his first company-wide email, Musk warned that Twitter would not be able to “survive the upcoming economic downturn” if it failed to boost subscription revenue to offset falling advertising income, three people who saw the message told Reuters.
Many companies, including General Motors GM.N and United Airlines UAL.O, have paused or pulled back from advertising on the platform since Musk took over. In response, the billionaire said Wednesday he aimed to turn Twitter into a force for truth and stop fake accounts.
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Crypto exchange FTX filed for U.S. bankruptcy proceedings on Friday and founder Sam Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO, in a stunning downfall that has sent shock waves through markets and drawn calls for better regulation of the digital industry.
The distressed crypto trading platform had been struggling to raise billions in funds to stave off collapse after traders rushed to withdraw $6 billion from the platform in just 72 hours and rival exchange Binance abandoned a proposed rescue deal.
The company said in a statement shared on Twitter on Friday that FTX, its affiliated crypto trading firm Alameda Research and about 130 other companies have commenced voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in Delaware.
FTX had raised $400 million from investors in January, valuing the company at $32 billion. It attracted money from investors such as Singapore state investor Temasek and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan as well as celebrities and sports stars.
Bankman-Fried, 30, known for his trademark shorts and T-shirt attire, has morphed from being the poster child of crypto’s successes to the protagonist of the industry’s highest-profile blowup.
“The shock was that this guy was the face of the crypto industry, and it turned out that the emperor had no clothes,” said Thomas Hayes, managing member at Great Hill Capital LLC in New York.
The week’s turmoil hit already-struggling cryptocurrency markets, sending bitcoin to two-year lows. Bitcoin dropped after FTX’s announcement and was down 4.3% at $16,803 on Friday afternoon.
Shares of cryptocurrency and blockchain-related firms also dropped on the news.
FTX’s token FTT plunged 30% on Friday to $2.57, facing an 88% weekly loss.
Bankman-Fried, whose net worth was estimated as high as $26.5 billion by Forbes a year ago, repeatedly apologized.
“I’m really sorry, again, that we ended up here,” he said in a series of tweets.
Bankman-Fried did not respond to requests for comment.
Possible contagion effect
In its bankruptcy petition, FTX Trading said it has $10 billion to $50 billion in assets, $10 billion to $50 billion in liabilities, and more than 100,000 creditors. John J. Ray III, a restructuring expert, has been appointed to take over as CEO.
“The next question is how wide of a contagion effect this is going to have on other exchanges and where the next potential losses can occur,” said John Griffin, founder of Integra FEC, which consults on financial fraud investigations.
FTX was scrambling to raise about $9.4 billion from investors and rivals, Reuters reported, citing sources as the exchange sought to save itself after customer withdrawals.
“The Chapter 11 filing is a necessary step to allow the company to assess the situation and develop plans to move forward for the benefit of stakeholders,” Ray said in a Slack memo to FTX staff seen by Reuters.
Ray, 63, oversaw the liquidation of Enron after its bankruptcy filing and served as the senior officer of what became Enron Creditors Recovery Corp. He also oversaw the bankruptcy restructuring at Nortel Networks.
He did not respond to a request for comment.
Some investors, including Sequoia and SoftBank, had already marked FTX investments to zero. SkyBridge Capital is working to buy back its FTX stake, the alternative investment firm’s founder, Anthony Scaramucci, said in an interview with CNBC on Friday.
The reverberation went beyond the financial markets where the exchange has a significant presence, with the Mercedes Formula One team suspending its partnership agreement ahead of the season’s penultimate race in Brazil.
‘The writing was on the wall’
As FTX’s troubles mounted, regulators around the world stepped in.
FTX is under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, according to a source familiar with the investigations.
“Once Binance walked away from buying FTX after only 24 hours of due diligence the writing was on the wall for FTX,” said Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of crypto lender Nexo.
“Now we enter the next phase of the fallout, where we witness the second order effects and discover which entities were exposed to FTX and Alameda.”
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Playwriting and theater production have opened a new world for a California man who spent 17 years in prison. Mike O’Sullivan reports on an arts program that teaches creative skills to former prisoners seeking new lives.
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