Earlier this year, Taiwanese semiconductor giant TSMC announced that it was delaying the opening of a computer chip plant in the U.S. state of Arizona because of a shortage of specialized workers. But during a visit to Taiwan this week, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs told officials that the project is back on schedule and should have no further delays. From Phoenix, Arizona, Levi Stallings has our story.
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When an award-winning Sudanese filmmaker documented the journey of Sudan’s martial arts team, which traveled by road to Kenya for an international championship in 2019, he did not know that four years later he would be taking a similar path as he did in the film “Journey to Kenya” but for completely different reasons. VOA Nairobi Bureau Chief Mariama Diallo recently attended the screening of his movie and those of other Sudanese filmmakers and has this story.
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The Asian Games are an attention grabber. For starters, they involve more participants than the Summer Olympics. Organizers say more than 12,000 will be entered when the opening ceremony takes place Saturday in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou. That is more than the 10,500 expected for next year’s Paris Olympics.
The giant numbers are partly due to the staggering array of events with many regional specialties, sports, and games you won’t find in the Olympics. And there’s also cricket, which appears headed to the Olympics as soon as 2028 in Los Angeles, and certainly for 2032 in Brisbane, Australia.
And there’s squash, which has tried several times for Olympic recognition.
The regional fare includes dragon boat racing, sepaktakraw — sometimes called “kick volleyball — wushu, a Chinese martial art, and kabaddi, a popular contact sport on the Indian subcontinent. There is also the non-Olympic martial art of ju-jitsu, and kurash, a form of wrestling popular in central Asia.
To this, add a long list of what organizers call “mind sports” from bridge to chess to xiangqi (Chinese chess) to esports.
Of course, there are the old standbys seen in every Olympics like track and field, swimming, or volleyball — and the usual grandiose opening and closing ceremonies. Nine sports will offer qualification spots for the Olympics — archery, artistic swimming, boxing, breaking, hockey, modern pentathlon, sailing, tennis, and water polo.
However, most of the 481 events offer a chance for smaller delegations to win medals, which is often impossible at the Olympics.
China won almost 300 overall medals at the last Asian Games in Indonesia in 2018. At the bottom of the table, Syria and Nepal won a lone medal each. Bhutan and Bangladesh were among nine delegations that didn’t win any.
China will dominate the medal table as it has for the last 40 years, followed by Japan and South Korea — Asia’s other powers. The vast region stretches from Lebanon on the Mediterranean, through central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, to North Korea with organizers saying 45 nations or territories are entered.
Organizers have said 191 participants from North Korea will be on hand. North Korea closed its border early in 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic and skipped the Tokyo Olympics, which were delayed a year until 2021. The Asian Games were also pushed back a year from 2022 because of the pandemic.
According to South Korea’s Unification Ministry, the last time North Korean athletes appeared in an international sports competition was January 2020, when North Korea competed in the Asian Football Confederation’s under-23 soccer championship.
If you like political intrigue, there may be plenty of it.
The self-governing island of Taiwan will be on hand in China, which claims the democracy as a breakaway province that it has vowed to reclaim. Known as the Republic of China, the island is officially listed as Chinese Taipei in the Olympics and Asian Games and marches under a white flag adorned with the Olympics rings. Its red, blue and white flag is not allowed.
Taiwan, with only 23.5 million, is a relative sports power in the region and finished seventh in the overall medal standings in Indonesia.
The games also begin amid an open power struggle between International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach and Kuwait’s Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, a long-time IOC member who is often described as the “kingmaker” who helped Bach win the IOC presidency in Buenos Aires in 2013.
The Switzerland-based IOC openly intervened in July to invalidate the presidential election of the Olympic Council of Asia. It has also suspended Sheikh Ahmad from the IOC.
The election was ostensibly won by Kuwait’s Sheikh Talal Fahad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, the younger brother of Sheikh Ahmad. The elder sheikh is the former 30-year president of the OCA, an organization that was created by his father.
The IOC says it will continue to recognize Randhir Singh of India as interim president of the OCA until new elections are held. Bach will attend the opening ceremony in Hangzhou and is sure to have talks with Singh.
The biggest event of the games might be a possible India vs. Pakistan gold-medal game in men’s cricket on Oct. 7, which would be one of the most-watched global sports events all year. It comes just as cricket’s world cup is also under way.
China will again dominate diving, and several of China’s top swimmers — fresh from the world championships two months ago in Fukuoka, Japan — will shine. The field in gymnastics is weakened since the world championships in Antwerp, Belgium, clash with the Asian Games.
The biggest winner at the Asian Games might be South Korea esports star Lee Sang-hyeok, who is also known as “Faker.” If he wins gold he will be granted an exemption from military service.
Tottenham Hotspur soccer forward Son Heung-min also bypassed a 21-month military stint because of a government exemption when South Korea won the gold medal in soccer at the 2018 games in Indonesia — although Son still had to do three months of basic training.
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Rupert Murdoch, the 92-year-old media magnate who created Fox News, is stepping down as leader of both Fox’s parent company and his News Corp. media holdings.
Fox said Thursday that Murdoch would become chairman emeritus of both companies. His son, Lachlan, will become News Corp. chairman and continue as chief executive officer of Fox Corp.
Lachlan Murdoch said that “we are grateful that he will serve as chairman emeritus and know he will continue to provide valued counsel to both companies.”
Besides Fox News, Murdoch started the Fox broadcast network, the first to successfully challenge the Big Three of ABC, CBS and NBC. He is owner of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.
Murdoch is a force in the conservative world, where Fox News Channel has profoundly influenced television and the nation’s politics since its start in 1996.
Murdoch vowed in a letter to employees that he would remain engaged at Fox.
“In my new role, I can guarantee you that I will be involved every day in the contest of ideas, Murdoch wrote. “Our companies are communities, and I will be an active member of our community. I will be watching our broadcasts with a critical eye, reading our newspapers and websites and books with much interest.”
There was no immediate word on why Murdoch’s announcement came now. Ironically, it is the week author and Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff is publishing a book, “The End of Fox News,” speculating on what will happen to the network when the patriarch is gone.
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Kai Koerber was a junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when a gunman killed 14 students and three staff members there on Valentine’s Day in 2018.
Seeing his peers — and himself — struggle with returning to normal, he wanted to do something to help people manage their emotions on their own terms.
While some of his classmates at the Parkland, Florida, school have worked on advocating for gun control, entered politics or simply taken a step back to heal and focus on their studies, Koerber’s background in technology — he’d originally wanted to be a rocket scientist — led him in a different direction: to build a smartphone app.
The result was Joy: AI Wellness Platform, which uses artificial intelligence to suggest bite-sized mindfulness activities for people based on how they are feeling. The algorithm Koerber’s team built is designed to recognize how people feel from the sounds of their voices — regardless of the words or language they speak.
“In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, the first thing that came to mind after we’ve experienced this horrible, traumatic event — how are we going to personally recover?” he said. “It’s great to say OK, we’re going to build a better legal infrastructure to prevent gun sales, increased background checks, all the legislative things. But people really weren’t thinking about … the mental health side of things.”
Like many of his peers, Koerber said he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder for a “very long time” and only recently has it gotten a little better.
“So, when I came to Cal, I was like, ‘Let me just start a research team that builds some groundbreaking AI and see if that’s possible,’” said the 23-year-old, who graduated from the University of California at Berkeley earlier this year. “The idea was to provide a platform to people who were struggling with, let’s say sadness, grief, anger … to be able to get a mindfulness practice or wellness practice on the go that meets our emotional needs on the go.”
He said it was important to offer activities that can be done quickly, sometimes lasting just a few seconds, wherever the user might be.
Mohammed Zareef-Mustafa, a former classmate of Koerber’s who’s been using the app for a few months, said the voice-emotion recognition part is “different than anything I’ve ever seen before.”
“I use the app about three times a week, because the practices are short and easy to get into. It really helps me quickly de-stress before I have to do things, like job interviews,” he said.
To use Joy, you simply speak into the app. The AI is supposed to recognize how you are feeling from your voice, then suggest short activities.
It doesn’t always get your mood right, so it’s possible to manually pick your disposition. Let’s say you are feeling “neutral” at the moment. The app suggests several activities, such as 15-second exercise called “mindful consumption” that encourages you to “think about all the lives and beings involved in producing what you eat or use that day.”
Yet another activity helps you practice making an effective apology. Feeling sad? A suggestion pops up asking you to track how many times you’ve laughed over a seven-day period and tally it up at the end of the week to see what moments gave you a sense of joy, purpose or satisfaction.
The iPhone app is available for an $8 monthly subscription, with a discount if you subscribe for a whole year. It’s a work in progress, and as it goes with AI, the more people use it, the more accurate it becomes.
A plethora of wellness apps on the market claim to help people with mental health issues, but it’s not always clear whether they work, said Colin Walsh, a professor of biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University who has studied the use of AI in suicide prevention. According to Walsh, it is feasible to take someone’s voice and glean some aspects of their emotional state.
“The challenge is if you as a user feel like it’s not really representing what you think your current state is like, that’s an issue,” he said. “There should be some mechanism by which that feedback can go back.”
The stakes also matter. Facebook, for instance, faced criticism for its suicide prevention tool, which used AI (as well as humans) to flag users who may be contemplating suicide, and — in some serious cases — contact law enforcement to check on the person. But if the stakes are lower, Walsh said, if the technology is simply directing someone to spend some time outside, it’s unlikely to cause harm.
Koerber said people tend to forget, after mass shootings, that survivors don’t just “bounce back right away” from the trauma they experienced. It takes years to recover.
“This is something that people carry with them, in some way, shape or form, for the rest of their lives,” he said.
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Germany’s interior ministry has proposed forcing telecommunications operators to curb their use of equipment made by China’s Huawei and ZTE, a government official said Wednesday, sparking warnings of likely disruption and possible legal action.
The interior ministry wants to impose the changes to 5G networks after a review highlighted Germany’s reliance on the two Chinese suppliers, as Berlin reassesses its relationship with a country it dubs both a partner and a systemic rival.
Telecom operators swiftly criticized the proposals, while Huawei Germany rejected what it called the “politicization” of cyber security in the country.
“Such an approach will have a negative impact on the digital transformation in Germany, inhibit innovation and significantly increase construction and operating costs for network operators,” it said in a statement.
Germany’s interior ministry has designed a staggered approach to try to limit disruption as operators remove all critical components from Chinese vendors in their 5G core networks by 2026, the government official said.
They should also reduce the share of Chinese components in their RAN and transport networks by October 1, 2026, to a maximum of 25%, said the official, who declined to be named.
The interior ministry and Chinese embassy did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
‘A major U-turn’
Deutsche Telekom called the deadline unrealistic, comparing it to Britain’s attempts to impose restrictions on Huawei, while Telefonica Deutschland said it would consider seeking damages as well as legal action.
“This represents a major U-turn,” said Paolo Pescatore, an analyst at PP Foresight. “Germany has been much slower than other countries in removing and replacing Huawei.”
Pescatore said the phaseout would take significant investment and be challenging given the ambitious timeframe.
“This will be a major headache for telcos. It could hold back 5G rollout and potentially lead to higher prices for users as well as dealing with disruption in any service issues.”
The interior ministry wants to present its approach to cabinet next week but could face resistance. A digital ministry spokesperson said no decision had been made yet.
The Huawei issue reflects a realization in Berlin that it may need tough political measures to force German companies to reduce their strategic dependencies on Asia’s rising superpower.
An analysis by the IW Institute showed German direct investment in China in the first half of this year remained close to its 2022 record high.
Chinese components not forbidden
Germany is considered a laggard in implementing the European Union’s toolbox of security measures for 5G networks, and Huawei accounts for 59% of Germany’s 5G RAN networks, according to a survey by telecoms consultancy Strand Consult.
Last week, the government said in response to a parliamentary inquiry that it had so far not forbidden the use of any new Chinese critical components in 5G networks.
While some countries like the United States have agreed to compensate telecoms operators billions of dollars for phasing out Chinese gear in 5G, Berlin has underscored that current legislation does not require it to provide compensation.
Juergen Gruetzner, managing director of the VATM industry association, told Reuters a transition period of six to eight years would be needed to avoid extra costs and achieve the phaseout.
“Simply upgrading and retrofitting tens of thousands of mobile phone masts is not technically possible. We are already working at full capacity,” he said. “All the capacity we have at the moment is needed to build 5G and fiber networks.”
The interior ministry plan foresees Chinese tech not being used at all in especially sensitive regions such as the capital Berlin, home of the federal government, the official said — a distinction that Strand Consult called “arbitrary.”
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For decades, Russian and eastern European hackers have dominated the cybercrime underworld. These days they may face a challenge from a new contender: China.
Researchers at cybersecurity firm Proofpoint say they have detected an increase in the spread of Chinese language malware through email campaigns since early 2023, signaling a surge in Chinese cybercrime activity and a new trend in the global threat landscape.
“We basically went from drought to flood here,” said Selena Larson, senior threat intelligence analyst at Proofpoint and one of the authors of a new Proofpoint report on Chinese malware.
The increase, Larson said, could be due to several factors.
“There might be increased availability, there might be an ease of access to some of this malware, (and there might be) just increased activity by Chinese-speaking cybercrime threat actors as a whole,” Larson said in an interview.
While Russian-speaking actors continue to dominate cybercrime networks, the Proofpoint report says the recent surge in Chinese language malware “may challenge the dominance that the Russian-speaking cybercrime market has on the threat landscape.”
Malware delivered via email
The hackers behind the Chinese campaigns use a type of malicious software known as a Remote Access Trojan, or RAT. This malware is delivered via email and allows the cybercriminals to access a computer from a remote location and steal data or perform other malicious actions.
The Chinese language malware, contained in fake invoices sent to unsuspecting businesses and other targets, is linked to suspected Chinese cybercrime operations, according to Proofpoint.
The cybercriminals have used several types of malware to carry out hacking operations.
One of them, called Sainbox, targeted dozens of companies, mostly in the manufacturing and technology sectors, in May. Other recently identified malware, dubbed ValleyRAT, was deployed in at least six hacking campaigns in 2023.
“Campaigns are generally low-volume and are typically sent to global organizations with operations in China,” the report says.
The email subjects and content are usually written in Chinese, and are typically related to invoices, payments, and new products, according to the report.
The targeted users have Chinese names spelled with Chinese characters, or corporate email addresses linked to businesses operating in China, the report says.
Larson said the proliferation of Chinese-language malware suggests cybercrime remains lucrative and attractive to actors beyond eastern Europe.
“It may indicate Chinese speakers who conduct cybercrime operations might want to maybe take a larger slice of the financial gain,” Larson said.
Cybercrime hurts economy
Cybercrime is a booming industry that poses a grave threat to the global economy. The FBI estimates cybercriminals inflicted potential losses of more than $10 billion in 2022, a 43% increase from the previous year.
While China is accused of carrying out state-sponsored cyberattacks against the United States, most of the ransomware attacks and other cybercrime in recent years have been chalked up to eastern European groups.
Proofpoint is not the only cybersecurity firm reporting on Chinese-language malware in recent months.
In February, digital security firm ESET said it had identified a malware campaign that targeted Chinese speakers in Southeast and East Asia by buying misleading ads that appeared in Google search results.
The campaign used the malware known as Sainbox or FatalRAT, the type that Proofpoint said it had detected in 20 campaigns this year.
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Just outside of Washington, D.C., in Northern Virginia, there is a place where anyone can release their inner painter and splatter their stress away. Maxim Adams has the story. Videographer: Sergey Sokolov; Video editor: Sergey Sokolov, Anna Rice
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Google announced Tuesday that its Bard chatbot would be integrated into Gmail, YouTube and other applications in a push to broaden Alphabet’s user experience.
Google has spent years refining its generative AI without immediate plans to release a chatbot, until OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT late last year and partnered with Microsoft to popularize the cutting-edge tool. Google scrambled to put together its response: Bard.
Google cleared hurdles earlier this year to release Bard across the globe in dozens of languages, squeaking past European regulators who raised questions about the chatbot’s effect on data security.
The search engine giant is now waging a campaign to win public support.
These new updates — Bard extensions — represent the company’s most ambitious attempt at popularizing generative AI. Going forward, Bard can work as a plug-in with Google Drive, Gmail, YouTube and more.
A user might ask Bard to distill a string of lengthy and confusing emails into a pithy summary or order the chatbot to find the quickest route to an address using Google Maps.
The plug-in can be used by students and professionals who might want Bard to scour dense PDFs and Google Docs and return a list of bullet points.
A common criticism of chatbots is their inaccuracy and apparent ability to falsify information. Computer scientists call this flaw “hallucinations.” The Bard plug-in will include a button to fact-check the chatbot’s answers against search engine results in real time to determine if Bard is “hallucinating.”
Generative AI combs vast databases for linguistic patterns and other information in a process known as data-scraping. Data-scraping is what empowers Bard and ChatGPT to create unique, humanlike answers to queries in an instant. Essentially, chatbots imitate what is already available on the internet.
Activists have long worried that companies might train their chatbots on unsuspecting users’ personal information. Google said that Bard will access private data only with permission.
Google also said that any data-scraping it might perform on what users have stored in their personal Docs, Drive or Gmail accounts would not be used in targeted advertising or training Bard. Nor would private content be accessible to Google employees.
“You’re always in control of your privacy settings when deciding how you want to use these extensions, and you can turn them off at any time,” Google said in a blog post.
The Bard extensions come after Microsoft similarly incorporated ChatGPT into Bing earlier this year but ultimately failed to gain ground in its war on Google’s search engine dominance.
According to market analytics, ChatGPT, Bard’s top competitor, has been suffering marked declines in its user base as mania over generative AI has waned in recent months. Google is hoping to capitalize on ChatGPT’s losses and for Bard to catch up.
Some information for this story came from Agence France-Presse.
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A resounding thump breaks the silence as Jaulia Land drops a lump of grey-brown clay onto the slab roller before Ned Heywood cranks it through the machine once, twice, three times, creating a rectangle about an inch thick.
Laying a pattern on top of the slab, Heywood slices through the clay to create a disc the size of an extra-large pizza that will become one of the blue plaques that dot the walls of buildings throughout London, marking the places where scientists, artists, politicians and activists have made history.
As English Heritage unveiled its 1,000th blue plaque on Tuesday, the charity was working to broaden the program to include more women, people from minority ethnic backgrounds and community groups so that it better reflects the diversity of the capital.
The latest installation marks the offices where the Women’s Freedom League “campaigned for women’s equality” in the early 20th century, satisfying at least two of those goals.
“The names are no longer just English names, which is significant because, you know, the people who’ve come to this country from all over the world have made a disproportionately large contribution,” Heywood said at his workshop, a converted 18th century pub in the Welsh town of Chepstow, 180 kilometers (110 miles) west of London. “It’s changing now, which is very much for the good.”
The blue plaque program, which began in 1866 and is believed to be the first of its kind, provides an informal historical walking tour of London that commemorates notable people and their accomplishments by highlighting the places where they lived and worked.
The honorees include famous figures from wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill to communist pioneer Karl Marx, as well as lesser-known figures such as theatrical wigmaker Willy Clarkson and civil engineer William Lindley, who built water and sewage systems around the world. There are also plaques honoring foreigners including India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and American rock star Jimi Hendrix, who lived in London only briefly.
But English Heritage, which has sponsored the program since 1986, is concerned that past honorees were overwhelmingly white and male. Just 15% of the plaques honor women and less than 5% celebrate people from Black and Asian backgrounds.
The charity, which manages some 400 monuments, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses around England, is trying to encourage more nominations of women and people from minority ethnic groups while retaining high standards for entry into the exclusive club, said Anna Eavis, the curatorial director.
Plaques unveiled recently include Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, a suffragette and critic of British rule in India; Ottobah Cugoano, a native of present-day Ghana who was enslaved in Grenada and campaigned against slavery after gaining his freedom; and Ada Salter, the first woman to be elected mayor of a London borough.
“London is hugely diverse and it has always been, hasn’t it?” Eavis said. “And so it is important to ensure that we’re reflecting that diversity, that richness of contribution on London streets.”
Diana Yeh, a senior lecturer in sociology at City University of London, said broadening the reach of programs like the blue plaques is “an essential part of remembering invisible histories.” But heritage organizations must do more to discuss the “troubling aspects” of English history, including slavery and colonialism, she added.
“In a way it’s very easy to celebrate well-known figures who are marginalized, but it’s much harder to do that difficult work of acknowledging Britain’s difficult past,” said Yeh, whose work focuses on race, racism and cultural politics. “But this needs to be done for the benefit of future generations.”
English Heritage installs a dozen blue plaques each year, selected from about 100 nominations. A committee reviews the nominees to decide which ones warrant commemoration and to ensure there is a real connection between each honoree and the site where the plaque is to be installed.
Once a decision is made, the order goes out to Heywood’s studio, which has been making plaques for English Heritage since 2016.
Over a period of six weeks, Heywood and Land roll and cut the clay, inscribe the disc with the honoree’s name and accomplishments, then apply the characteristic blue glaze and fire it in a kiln. It’s a process that creates an almost indestructible monument that should last as long as the building to which it’s attached — as long as the plaques don’t crack when they’re baked at 1,300° C (2,370° F).
“We pray to gods of the kiln,” Heywood said.
While the first plaque, honoring the poet Lord Byron, was destroyed when the building it adorned was demolished, the second, installed in 1867, still marks the house where Napoleon III, the last French emperor, lived in exile.
Plaque number 1,000 honors the Women’s Freedom League, a suffragist organization that used 1 Robert Street in central London as its base of operations during its most active period.
The group, which had the motto “Dare to be free,” aimed for total emancipation for women. It advocated nonpayment of taxes and backed a boycott of the 1911 census as ways to pressure the government to allow women to vote.
Heywood and Land feel the responsibility of the blue plaques intensely.
Heywood has a soft spot for scientists, who he says are the real heroes in improving people’s lives. Politicians? Not so much. They come and go.
“Blue plaques are carefully considered, the people are thoroughly researched, and the plaques are there for a reason,” he added. “And will be there forever.”
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Britain has invited China to its global artificial intelligence summit in November, with foreign minister James Cleverly saying the risks of the technology could not be contained if one of its leading players was absent.
“We cannot keep the UK public safe from the risks of AI if we exclude one of the leading nations in AI tech,” Cleverly said in a statement on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wants Britain to become a global leader in AI regulation and the summit on Nov. 1-2 will bring together governments, tech companies and academics to discuss the risks posed by the powerful new technology.
Britain said the event would touch on topics such as how AI could undermine biosecurity as well as how the technology could be used for public good, for example in safer transport.
Cleverly, who last month became the most senior minister to visit China in five years, has argued for deeper engagement with Beijing, saying it would be a mistake to try to isolate the world’s second largest economy and Chinese help was needed in areas such as climate change and economic instability.
“The UK’s approach to China is to protect our institutions and infrastructure, align with partners and engage where it is in the UK’s national interest,” Cleverly said on Tuesday.
London is trying to improve ties with Beijing but there has been growing anxiety about Chinese activity in Britain in recent weeks after it was revealed that a parliamentary researcher was arrested in March on suspicion of spying for China.
The Chinese embassy in London was not immediately able to say if China would attend the AI summit.
Britain has appointed tech expert Matt Clifford and former senior diplomat Jonathan Black to lead preparations for the summit.
The Financial Times reported that government officials want a less “draconian” approach to regulating the technology, compared with the European Union’s wide-sweeping AI Act.
Under the incoming EU legislation, organizations using AI systems deemed “high risk” will be expected to complete rigorous risk assessments, log their activities, and make sensitive internal data available to authorities upon request.
Clifford told Reuters last month that he hoped the UK summit would set the tone for future international debates on AI regulation.
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Hundreds of soccer fans stormed into a hotel in Tehran on Monday, hoping for a glimpse of star player Cristiano Ronaldo after he arrived with his Saudi teammates ahead of a game.
Chanting “Ronaldo, Ronaldo,” the fans pushed past police, filling the corridors and public spaces of the Espinas Palace Hotel.
Ronaldo arrived on his first visit to Iran with the Saudi football club Al-Nassr, which is set to play Iran’s Persepolis in Tehran on September 19. The return game will be played in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on November 27.
Ronaldo was the first of several big-name players to accept lavish contracts to play for Saudi teams. The oil-rich kingdom is spending billions of dollars to try to transform itself into a sports and entertainment powerhouse.
The Asian Champions League games are made possible by the restoration of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia following an agreement brokered by China earlier this year. The longtime rivals had severed ties in 2016 after an angry crowd stormed Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran to protest Saudi Arabia’s execution of a popular Shiite cleric.
The 2015 Asian Champions League edition was the last time Saudi and Iranian teams faced each other on home turf in the group stage or knockout rounds.
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Just as many in the United States are starting to explore how to use artificial intelligence to make their lives easier, U.S. adversaries and criminal gangs are moving forward with plans to exploit the technology at Americans’ expense.
FBI Director Christopher Wray issued the warning Monday, telling a cybersecurity conference in Washington that artificial intelligence, or AI, “is ripe for potential abuses.”
“Criminals and hostile foreign governments are already exploiting that technology,” Wray said, without sharing specifics.
“While generative AI can certainly save law-abiding citizens time by automating tasks, it can also make it easier for bad guys to do things like generate deepfakes and malicious code and can provide a tool for threat actors to develop increasingly powerful, sophisticated, customizable and scalable capabilities,” he said.
Wray said the FBI is working to identify and track those using AI to harm U.S. citizens but added that the bureau is being cautious about employing AI itself.
“To stay ahead of the threat at the FBI, we’re determining how we can ethically and legally leverage AI to do our jobs,” he said.
When contacted by VOA, the FBI declined to elaborate on its concerns about employing AI. Nor did the bureau say when or if it has used AI, even on a limited basis.
Other U.S. national security agencies, however, are currently making use of AI.
The Department of Homeland Security is using AI to combat fentanyl trafficking, counter child sexual exploitation and protect critical infrastructure, according to department officials, even as they roll out guidelines governing its use.
“Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement last Thursday. “Our department must continue to keep pace with this rapidly evolving technology, and do so in a way that is transparent and respectful of the privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties of everyone we serve.”
DHS has also issued directives aimed at preventing its use of AI from being skewed by biased learning models and databases, and to give U.S. citizens a choice of opting out of systems using facial recognition technology.
But across multiple U.S. departments and agencies, the fear of the potential damage AI could cause is growing.
FBI officials, for example, warned in July that violent extremists and terrorists have been experimenting with AI to more easily build explosives.
And they said a growing number of criminals appear to be gravitating to the technology to carry out everything from petty crimes to financial heists.
It is China, though, that is driving the bulk of the concern.
National Security Agency officials have warned that Beijing started using AI to disseminate propaganda via what they described as a fake news channel last year.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” David Frederick, the NSA’s assistant deputy director for China, told a cybersecurity summit earlier this month.
“[Artificial intelligence] will enable more effective malign influence operations,” he added.
Such concerns have been bolstered by private cybersecurity companies.
Microsoft, for example, warned earlier this month that Chinese-linked cyber actors have started using AI to produce “eye-catching content” for disinformation efforts that has been gaining traction with U.S. voters.
“We can expect China to continue to hone this technology over time, though it remains to be seen how and when it will deploy it at scale,” Microsoft said.
For its part, China has repeatedly denied allegations it is using AI improperly.
“In recent years, some western media and think tanks have accused China of using artificial intelligence to create fake social media accounts to spread so-called ‘pro-China’ information,” Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told VOA in an email, following the publication of the Microsoft report.
“Such remarks are full of prejudice and malicious speculation against China, which China firmly opposes,” Liu added.
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New York Fashion Week is generally known as a showcase for fashion designers, and the celebrities that wear their clothes. But several shows held on the sidelines are trying to call attention not only to fashion but to serious and difficult issues like sexual assault. VOA’s Rendy Wicaksana reports from New York
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Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction,” a biting satire starring Jeffrey Wright as a disillusioned academic, has won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, a much-watched bellwether in the Oscar race.
“American Fiction” is the directorial debut of Jefferson, the veteran TV writer of “Watchmen” and “Succession,” and an adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasure.” The film, about an author who resents that the literary industry is only interested in “Black books” that cater to the stereotypes of white audiences, emerged as a breakout hit at TIFF.
Toronto’s audience award winner, voted on by festival attendees, has historically nearly always signified a best-picture contender at the Academy Awards. Since 2012, every People’s Choice winner at TIFF has gone on to score a best-picture nod. In 2018, when “Green Book” won, it announced the film as a surprise awards contender. (Peter Farrelly’s film went on to win best picture at the Oscars.) Last year, Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” won Toronto’s top prize.
First runner-up went to Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers,” starring Paul Giamatti as a curmudgeonly boarding school teacher tasked with staying with a handful of students over Christmas break in the 1970s. Second runner-up was Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron,” the long-awaited latest Studio Ghibli film from the Japanese anime master.
“American Fiction,” which MGM will release in theaters Nov. 3, co-stars Sterling K. Brown, Issa Rae and Tracee Ellis Ross. In an interview, Jefferson said he immediately connected with Everett’s book.
“I was having the exact same conversations with Black colleagues in both professions: Why are we always writing about misery and trauma and violence and pain inflicted on Blacks?” said Jefferson. “Why is this what people expect from us? Why is this the only thing we have to offer to culture?”
The Toronto International Film Festival, which wraps Sunday, was diminished this year due to the ongoing actors and writers strikes. Red-carpet premieres were mostly without movie stars, detracting from some of the buzz that the largest film festival in North American typically generates. It followed a similarly strike-affected Venice Film Festival, where the festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, went to Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things.” (That film skipped TIFF.)
The People’s Choice winner for documentary went to Robert McCallum’s “Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe” and the midnight madness award went to Larry Charles’ “Dicks: The Musical.” The festival’s juried competition awards were given to Tarsem Singh Dhandwar’s “Dear Jassi,” winner of the Platform section, and Meredith Hama-Brown’s “Seagrass,” which took the FIPRESCI award from international critics.
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A U.N. conference voted Sunday to list ruins of the ancient West Bank city of Jericho as a World Heritage Site, a decision likely to anger Israel, which controls the territory and does not recognize a Palestinian state.
Jericho is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities on earth, and is in a part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank that is administered by the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority. The listing refers to the Tel es-Sultan archaeological site nearby, which contains ruins dating back to the 9th millennium B.C.
The decision was taken at a meeting of the U.N. World Heritage Committee in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, under the auspices of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO.
Israel quit UNESCO in 2019, accusing it of being biased against it and of diminishing its connection to the Holy Land. Israel also objected to UNESCO’s acceptance of Palestine as a member state in 2011. But Israel remains a party to the World Heritage Convention, and it sent a delegation to the meeting in Riyadh.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with Gaza and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories for their future state. Israel views the West Bank as the biblical and cultural heartland of the Jewish people.
There have been no serious or substantive peace negotiations in over a decade, and Israel is currently led by the most nationalist and religious government in its history, making any move toward Palestinian statehood nearly unimaginable.
The modern city of Jericho is a major draw for tourism to the Palestinian territories, both because of its historical sites and proximity to the Dead Sea. In 2021, the Palestinian Authority unveiled major renovations to one of the largest mosaics in the Middle East, in a Jericho palace dating back to the 8th century.
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“The Nun 2” and “A Haunting in Venice” virtually tied for the No. 1 spot in U.S. and Canadian theaters over the weekend, with a slight edge carrying the horror sequel over the Hercule Poirot mystery, according to studio estimates Sunday.
In its second weekend of release, Warner Bros.’ “The Nun 2,” a spinoff from the studio’s lucrative “Conjuring” franchise, grossed $14.7 million. If numbers hold, that will give “The Nun 2” (up to $56.5 million total and $158.8 million worldwide) the top spot at the box office for the second straight week.
Very close behind was “A Haunting in Venice,” Kenneth Branagh’s third Agatha Christie adaptation following 2017’s “Murder on the Orient Express” and 2022’s “Death on the Nile.” It opened with $14.5 million.
Final box-office figures will be released Monday.
After the successful run of “Murder on the Orient Express” ($352.8 million worldwide against a production budget of $55 million) and the less-stellar global haul of “Death on the Nile” ($137.3 million against a $90 million budget), the sluggish start for “A Haunting in Venice” may have signaled the death knell for Branagh’s detective.
The 20th Century Studios film, released by the Walt Disney Co., grossed $22.7 million internationally. And it cost less than its predecessor, carrying a production budget of about $60 million.
“The Equalizer 3,” starring Denzel Washington, dropped to third place with $7.2 million. In three weeks, it grossed $73.7 million domestically and $132.4 million worldwide. Fourth place went to “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3” with $4.7 million in its second weekend of release. It’s grossed $18.5 million domestically.
It was one of the quietest weekends in movie theaters this year, as Hollywood — which has spent much of the last two weeks promoting its films at the Venice, Telluride and Toronto film festivals — treads water in between the summer smashes of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” and awaits its top fall movies. Some of those, like “Dune: Part Two,” have already been postponed until next year due to the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes.
One anticipated fall film, Sony’s “Dumb Money,” opted for a platform release, debuting in eight theaters over the weekend before expanding next weekend and going wide Sept. 29. The film, a rollicking dramatization of the GameStop stock frenzy, grossed $217,000, for a per-location average of about $27,000.
And “Barbie” also remains in the picture. For the ninth straight weekend, Greta Gerwig’s box-office sensation ranked in the top five films. It added $4 million to bring its domestic total to $625 million and its global haul to $1.42 billion. Meanwhile, “Oppenheimer” has reached $912.7 million, making it the highest grossing biopic ever, passing “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
“The Nun II,” $14.7 million.
“A Haunting in Venice,” $14.5 million.
“The Equalizer 3,” $7.2 million.
“My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3,” $4.7million.
“Barbie,” $4 million.
“Jawan,” $2.5 million.
“Blue Beetle,” $2.5 million.
“Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story,” $2.4 million.
“Oppenheimer,” $2.1 million.
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” $2 million.
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Solar panels soak up blinding noontime rays that help power a water desalination facility in eastern Saudi Arabia, a step towards making the notoriously emissions-heavy process less environmentally taxing.
The Jazlah plant in Jubail city applies the latest technological advances in a country that first turned to desalination more than a century ago, when Ottoman-era administrators enlisted filtration machines for hajj pilgrims menaced by drought and cholera.
Lacking lakes, rivers and regular rainfall, Saudi Arabia today relies instead on dozens of facilities that transform water from the Gulf and Red Sea into something potable, supplying cities and towns that otherwise would not survive.
But the kingdom’s growing desalination needs — fueled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s dreams of presiding over a global business and tourism hub — risk clashing with its sustainability goals, including achieving net-zero emissions by 2060.
Projects like Jazlah, the first plant to integrate desalination with solar power on a large scale, are meant to ease that conflict: officials say the panels will help save around 60,000 tons of carbon emissions annually.
It is the type of innovation that must be scaled up fast, with Prince Mohammed targeting a population of 100 million people by 2040, up from 32.2 million today.
“Typically, the population grows, and then the quality of life of the population grows,” necessitating more and more water, said CEO Marco Arcelli of ACWA Power, which runs Jazlah.
Using desalination to keep pace is a “do or die” challenge, said historian Michael Christopher Low at the University of Utah, who has studied the kingdom’s struggle with water scarcity.
“This is existential for the Gulf states. So when anyone is sort of critical about what they’re doing in terms of ecological consequences, I shake my head a bit,” he said.
At the same time, he added, “there are limits” as to how green desalination can be.
Drinking the sea
The search for potable water bedeviled Saudi Arabia in the first decades after its founding in 1932, spurring geological surveys that contributed to the mapping of its massive oil reserves.
Prince Mohammed al-Faisal, a son of King Faisal whom Low has dubbed the “Water Prince,” at one point even explored the possibility of towing icebergs from Antarctica to quench the kingdom’s growing thirst, drawing widespread ridicule.
But Prince Mohammed also oversaw the birth of the kingdom’s modern desalination infrastructure beginning in 1970.
The national Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) now reports production capacity of 11.5 million cubic meters per day at 30 facilities.
That growth has come at a cost, especially at thermal plants running on fossil fuels.
By 2010, Saudi desalination facilities were consuming 1.5 million barrels of oil per day, more than 15 percent of today’s production.
The Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture did not respond to AFP’s request for comment on current energy consumption at desalination plants.
Going forward, there is little doubt Saudi Arabia will be able to build the infrastructure required to produce the water it needs.
“They have already done it in some of the most challenging settings, like massively desalinating on the Red Sea and providing desalinated water up to the highlands of the holy cities in Mecca and Medina,” said Laurent Lambert of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
Going green?
The question is how much the environmental toll will continue to climb.
The SWCC says it wants to cut 37 million metric tons of carbon emissions by 2025.
This will be achieved largely by transitioning away from thermal plants to plants like Jazlah that use electricity-powered reverse osmosis.
Solar power, meanwhile, will expand to 770 megawatts from 120 megawatts today, according to the SWCC’s latest sustainability report, although the timeline is unclear.
“It’s still going to be energy-intensive, unfortunately, but energy-intensive compared to what?” Lambert said.
“Compared to countries which have naturally flowing water from major rivers or falling from the sky for free? Yeah, sure, it’s always going to be more.”
At desalination plants across the kingdom, Saudi employees understand just how crucial their work is to the population’s survival.
The Ras al-Khair plant produces 1.1 million cubic meters of water per day — 740,000 from thermal technology, the rest from reverse osmosis — and struggles to keep reserve tanks full because of high demand.
Much of the water goes to Riyadh, which requires 1.6 million cubic meters per day and could require as much as six million by the end of the decade, said an employee who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
Looking out over pipes that draw seawater from the Gulf into the plant, he described the work as high-stakes, with clear national security implications.
If the plant did not exist, he said, “Riyadh would die.”
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A U.N. conference voted Sunday to list ruins of the ancient West Bank city of Jericho as a World Heritage Site in Palestine, a decision likely to anger Israel, which controls the territory and does not recognize a Palestinian state.
Jericho is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities on earth, and is in a part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank that is administered by the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority. The listing refers to the Tel es-Sultan archaeological site nearby, which contains ruins dating back to the 9th millennium B.C.
The decision was taken at a meeting of the U.N. World Heritage Committee in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, under the auspices of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO.
Israel quit UNESCO in 2019, accusing it of being biased against it and of diminishing its connection to the Holy Land. Israel also objected to UNESCO’s acceptance of Palestine as a member state in 2011. But Israel remains a party to the World Heritage Convention, and it sent a delegation to the meeting in Riyadh.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with Gaza and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories for their future state. Israel views the West Bank as the biblical and cultural heartland of the Jewish people.
There have been no serious or substantive peace negotiations in over a decade, and Israel is currently led by the most nationalist and religious government in its history, making any move toward Palestinian statehood nearly unimaginable.
The modern city of Jericho is a major draw for tourism to the Palestinian territories, both because of its historical sites and proximity to the Dead Sea. In 2021, the Palestinian Authority unveiled major renovations to one of the largest mosaics in the Middle East, in a Jericho palace dating back to the 8th century.
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The beer is flowing and millions of people are descending on the Bavarian capital to celebrate the official opening of Oktoberfest.
With the traditional cry of “O’zapft is” — “It’s tapped” — Mayor Dieter Reiter inserted the tap in the first keg at noon on Saturday, officially opening the 18 days of festivities.
Revelers decked out in traditional lederhosen and dirndl dresses trooped to Munich’s festival grounds Saturday morning, filling the dozens of traditional tents in anticipation of getting their first 1-liter mug of beer.
Minutes before the first keg was tapped, to cheers from the crowd, Bavarian Gov. Markus Soeder asked festivalgoers if they were ready for Oktoberfest to begin.
“I can only say one thing: This is the most beautiful, biggest, most important festival in the world,” he said.
The Oktoberfest has typically drawn about 6 million visitors every year. The event was skipped in 2020 and 2021 as authorities grappled with COVID-19, but it returned in 2022.
A 1-liter mug costs between 12.60 euros and 14.90 euros ($13.45 to $15.90) this year, an increase of around 6% from last year.
This year’s Oktoberfest, the 188th edition, runs through Oct. 3.
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