Popular Mexican actor Eugenio Derbez has successfully transitioned to Hollywood. His bilingual comedy “Acapulco” on Apple TV is critically acclaimed and has put his work in front of new audiences. The show’s star and producer spoke with Veronica Villafañe about his mission to create an authentic, family-friendly series that positively represents his home country.
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NEW YORK — The entertainment giant Paramount will merge with Skydance, closing out a decades-long run by the Redstone family in Hollywood and injecting desperately needed cash into a legacy studio that has struggled to adapt to a shifting entertainment landscape.
It also signals the rise of a new power player, David Ellison, the founder of Skydance and son of billionaire Larry Ellison, the founder of the software company Oracle.
Shari Redstone’s National Amusements has owned more than three-quarters of Paramount’s Class A voting shares through the estate of her late father, Sumner Redstone. She had battled to maintain control of the company that owns CBS, which is behind blockbuster films such as “Top Gun” and “The Godfather.”
Just weeks after turning down a similar agreement with Skydance, however, Redstone agreed to a deal on terms that had not changed much.
“Given the changes in the industry, we want to fortify Paramount for the future while ensuring that content remains king,” said Redstone, who is chair of Paramount Global.
The new combined company is valued at around $28 billion. In connection with the proposed transaction, which is expected to close in September 2025 pending regulatory approval, a consortium led by the Ellison family and RedBird Capital will be investing $8 billion.
Skydance, based in Santa Monica, California, has helped produce some major
Paramount hits in recent years, including Tom Cruise films like “Top Gun: Maverick” and installments of the “Mission Impossible” series.
Skydance was founded in 2010 by David Ellison and it quickly formed a production partnership with Paramount that same year. If the deal is approved, Ellison will become chairman and chief executive officer of what’s being called New Paramount.
Ellison outlined the vision for New Paramount on a conference call about the transaction Monday. In addition to doubling down on core competencies, notably with a “creative first” approach, he stressed that the company needs to transition into a “tech hybrid” to stay competitive in today’s evolving media landscape.
“You’ve watched some incredibly powerful technology companies move into the … media space and do so very successfully,” Ellison said. He added that it was “essential” for New Paramount to chart a similar course going forward.
That includes plans to “rebuild” the Paramount+ streaming service, Ellison noted — pointing to wider goals to expand direct-to-consumer business, such as increasing engagement time on the platform and reducing user churn. He also said that the company aims to transition to more cloud-based production and continue the use of generative artificial intelligence to boost efficiency.
Executives also outlined further restructuring plans for New Paramount on Monday’s conference call, with chairman of RedBird Sports and Media Jeff Shell noting that they had identified some $2 billion in cost efficiencies and synergies that they’ll “attempt to deliver pretty rapidly.”
Shell and others addressed the declining growth of linear TV. Flagship linear brands will continue to represent a big chunk of the company’s operations, but learning how to run this portion of business differently will be key, he said.
Paramount’s struggles
The on-again, off-again merger arrives at a tumultuous time for Paramount, which has struggled to find its footing for years and its cable business has been hemorrhaging. In an annual shareholder meeting in early June, the company also laid out a restructuring plan that included major cost cuts.
Leadership at Paramount was also volatile earlier this year after its CEO Bob Bakish, following several disputes with Redstone, was replaced with an “office of the C.E.O,” run by three executives. Four company directors were also replaced.
Paramount is one of Hollywood’s oldest studios, dating back its founding in 1914 as a distributor. Throughout its rich history, Paramount has had a hand in releasing films — from “Sunset Boulevard” and “The Godfather,” to “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Titanic.”
The studio also distributed several early Marvel Cinematic Universe films, including “Iron Man” and “Thor,” before the Disney acquisition. In addition to “Mission: Impossible” and “Top Gun,” Paramount’s current franchises include “Transformers,” “Star Trek” and “Jackass.”
While Paramount has not topped the annual domestic box office charts for over a decade, the wild box office success of “Top Gun: Maverick” in 2022 (nearly $1.5 billion worldwide) was an important boon to both movie theaters and the industry’s pandemic recovery.
Still, its theatrical output has declined somewhat in recent years. Last year it released only eight new movies and came in fifth place for overall box office at around $2 billion — behind Universal (24 films), Disney (17 films), Warner Bros. and Sony.
Movie plans
This year the release calendar is similarly modest, especially with the absence of “Mission: Impossible 8,” which was pushed to 2025 amid the strikes. The studio has had some successes, with “Bob Marley: One Love” and “A Quiet Place: Day One,” and still to come is Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator” sequel.
The National Association of Theatre Owners, a trade organization that represents over 35,000 screens in the U.S., said in a statement Monday that it plans to look closely at the details of the merger with an eye toward whether it will produce more or less theatrical releases.
“We are encouraged by the commitment that David Ellison and the Skydance Media team have shown to theatrical exhibition in the past,” said Michael O’Leary, president and CEO of the National Association of Theatre Owners. “A merger that results in fewer movies being produced will not only hurt consumers and result in less revenue, but negatively impact people who work in all sectors of this great industry — creative, distribution and exhibition.”
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JOANETES, Spain — Xavier Pallàs plants his feet on the belfry floor, grips the rope, and with one tug fills the lush Spanish valley below with the reverberating peal of a church bell.
Clang-clong! Clang-clong! Clang-CLONG! The swinging bronze bell resonates with each strike of the clapper, filling the small stone tower with an undulating hum. Once Pallàs finishes his peals, the metallic melody fades to stillness. Silence returns to the tower, giving the valley’s soundscape back to the birdsongs and rooster crows.
For most, church bells are just a quaint bit of automated background noise. But Pallàs and his 18 students at the Vall d’en Bas School of Bell Ringers are trying to change that by resuscitating the dwindling art of tolling — and communicating — by hand.
The shift to mechanical tolling devices over the past century has flattened the bells’ dynamic songs and muted their messaging powers, said Pallàs, the school’s founder and director. If played with the know-how, the sounding of church bells in various sequences, tones and rhythms can signal the time for rejoicing or mourning and when to run to the aid of a neighbor in need.
“For centuries, the tolling of church bells was our most important communication method,” said Pallàs, standing inside the belfry which doubles as his classroom.
“Machines cannot reproduce the richness of the sounds that we used to hear, so there has been a simplification and unification of bell ringing. The language has been lost little by little until now, when we are finally recognizing its worth.”
Before newspapers, radio, telephones, television and the internet, it was bellringing that transmitted important information. A physically demanding job that required long hours and complete dedication, to be a bellringer was to be a human clock and the public loudspeaker.
While manual church bell ringing has persisted in Eastern Orthodox countries, it has largely been replaced by bell ringing systems in Catholic and Protestant churches in Western Europe.
Many of Spain’s church bell towers that were automized in the 1970s and ’80s are in a dire state, said Pallàs, who witnessed widespread problems while researching the belfries of Garrotxa, a county in northeast Catalonia. The rural area is known for its verdant hills, dormant volcanoes and picturesque villages where most people speak Catalan before Spanish.
His research included the 12th century Sant Romà church in Joanetes, a tiny village about two hours north of Barcelona, where Pallàs has spent the past 10 months teaching the inaugural class one Saturday a month.
“Since the last generation of bellringers had died off, the only thing to do was to train new ones in how to toll the bells. And that’s where the idea of the school was born,” Pallàs said.
Intangible heritage
The initiative comes two years after UNESCO added manual bellringing in Spain to its compendium of humanity’s intangible cultural heritage. UNESCO described how the bells had knitted together communities even before they were functioning modern states.
“The first thing we have to do is rediscover the bells. That is why this school is so important,” said Roman Gené Capdevila, president of Catalonia’s Bell Ringers brotherhood. “There are so many ways to ring a bell, what we need are bellringers.”
The bellringing course, officially recognized by the ISCREB theology school in Barcelona, finished last week with a demonstration by the class. All drawn to the allure of the banging bells, the students were men and women with diverse professional backgrounds ranging from engineering to teaching. One was in his 20s; several were retirees.
They spent the past few months researching old chiming sequences, documenting their origins and learning to play them. That ethnographic task meant students had to search out old bellringers, or their family members, to record what they knew.
Roser Sauri jumped at the chance to reconnect with her childhood by recovering and playing the chiming sequence that had sounded in her grandfather’s village when he was baptized.
“The bells formed a part of my life,” said Sauri, who now works in artificial intelligence. She missed their constancy while studying for her computing doctorate in Boston, where she heard none.
“When I visited my family, I began to associate the sound of church bells with being back home.”
The human touch
The students took turns tolling sequences for everything from calls to Easter Mass, bad weather warnings, help for fighting a fire to orders for the village militia. They also could tell workers to get back to reaping wheat, or housewives when the fresh fish was coming to market and even how much it cost. Many of the ringers wore earplugs or headphones to muffle the deafening peals.
The students tolled a gamut of death announcements that could specify gender and social class. Juan Carles Osuna and two others tolled for the death of a woman. That meant swinging the largest bell at 429 kilos (945 pounds). It still had a clapper secured in the traditional method of using a dried skin of an ox penis.
Osuna, who paints church murals, also performed a complex sequence with all four of belfry’s bells that required him to sit in a chair with ropes looped around his hands and feet.
“Whew! It’s an emotional experience. You feel your blood pumping. You feel the strength, and how you are communicating with everyone in earshot,” he said. “For me it is an honor, it’s a way to honor both humans and God.”
The hesitation, the variation in the strength of each toll: in these details, and sometimes mistakes, the listener can hear the creator of the sound.
“The (automated) hammer will always be mathematically precise,” Osuna said. “There is emotion in the human touch. There is a human element.”
Utopian, quixotic? Maybe not
What might seem like a quixotic mission has so far had a promising start.
While admitting that his dream of having a bell ringer for every bell tower is “utopian,” Pallàs said he has a full class lined up for the fall and some 60 more people on a waiting list. Many of his graduating pupils, including Sauri and Osuna, hope to continue playing at their local parishes or help convert their belfries into systems that allow manual ringing.
Pallàs believes that a recovery of bell ringing in a neighborhood or town’s life could help strengthen communities in this dizzying age of technological, economic and political change.
“This is a means of communication that reaches everyone inside a local community and can help it come together at concrete moments,” Pallàs said. “That can include a death in the community or the celebration of a holiday. It can help mark the rituals that we need.”
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New Orleans, Louisiana — For 30 years, the Essence Festival of Culture has brought together people from all walks of life and from around the world to connect through conversation, shared experiences and, of course, music.
The nation’s largest annual celebration of Black culture was set to end Sunday with musical performances by Janet Jackson and a special tribute to Frankie Beverly & Maze, the soul band that closed the event for the festival’s first 15 years. Beverly, now 77, has said he is stepping away from performing live, and the group has been on a farewell tour.
Others scheduled to perform included Victoria Monet, Teedra Moses, Tank and the Bangas, Dawn Richard, SWV, Jagged Edge, Bilal and Anthony Hamilton.
Barkue Tubman-Zawolo, chief of staff, talent and diasporic engagement for Essence Ventures, told The Associated Press the festival helps connect the global Black community.
“Historically, as Black people, sometimes we’re not sure where our heritage comes from,” Tubman-Zawolo said. “America is just one place. But within America there’s a melting pot of different Black cultures: Africa, Latin, Europe, the Caribbean. Understanding that allows our power to be even greater.”
Tubman-Zawolo said those connections could be seen throughout this year’s Film Festival, held at the city’s convention center, where fans heard from storytellers from Nigeria, Ghana and the Caribbean “who are targeting our stories about us, for us, globally.”
She noted similar connections through the Food and Wine stage, where discussions highlighted Caribbean and African cuisine; the Soko Market Place, where vendors from all over the world shared their craft; and on the Caesars Superdome stage, which spotlighted Caribbean and African artists including Machel Montano of Trinidad and Ayra Starr of Nigeria.
“All of that occurred over four days,” Tubman-Zawolo said. “But the beauty of it is, it doesn’t stay here. (Fans) take it with them.”
New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell said this year’s “We Love Us” theme was appropriate.
“This whole ‘We Love Us’ theme brought us together to build communities,” she said.
The festival’s impact on the city and state has surpassed $300 million, with more than 500,000 people visiting since 1994.
Essence started the festival as a way to celebrate 25 years of the magazine’s history.
“The locals are being incorporated in a manner that we can see and touch and feel and smell. That has been a part of the evolution of Essence,” Cantrell said.
The event’s current contract ends in 2026, but Essence Ventures CEO Caroline Wanga has said the festival’s “forever home” is New Orleans.
“That’s what we believe as well,” Cantrell said. “We have a foundation that’s been laid over 30 years. The city is always ready and prepared to host this event and more. I think staying in New Orleans is the best fit and best marriage, the best partnership.”
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New York — After a historically bad first half of the year, the box office is suddenly booming.
“Despicable Me 4,” the Illumination Animation sequel, led the way over the holiday weekend with $75 million in ticket sales Friday through Sunday and $122.6 million since opening Wednesday, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The Independence Day holiday weekend haul for the Universal Pictures’ release further extends the considerable box-office reign of the Minions, arguably the most bankable force in movies today. And it also kept a summer streak going for Hollywood.
Though overall ticket sales were down more than 40% from levels prior to the COVID 19 pandemic, heading into the summer moviegoing season, theaters have lately seen a succession of hits. After Sony’s “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” outperformed expectations, Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” rapidly cleared $1 billion in ticket sales worldwide, making it the first release since “Barbie” to reach that mark. Last weekend, the Paramount prequel “A Quiet Place: Day One” also came in above expectations.
With “Deadpool & Wolverine” tracking for a $160 million launch later this month, Hollywood’s summer is looking up.
“If you look at the mood of the industry about eight weeks ago, very different than today,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. “The song says what a difference a day makes. What a difference a month has made.”
It helps to have the Minions at your disposal. Since first debuting in the 2010 original “Despicable Me,” each entry of the franchise — including two sequels and two “Minions” spinoffs — has seemingly guaranteed to gross around $1 billion. The four previous movies all made between $939 million (2022’s “Minions: Rise of Gru”) and $1.26 billion (2015’s “Minions”) globally.
That run has helped give Illumination founder and chief executive Chris Meledandri one of the most enviable track records in Hollywood. “Despicable Me 4,” directed by Chris Renaud and Patrick Delage, returns the voice cast led by Steve Carell and Kristen Wiig and doubles down on more Minion mayhem. Reviews (54% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) weren’t particularly good for the latest installment, which includes a witness protection plot and a group of Minions transformed into a superhero squadron. But in their 12-year run, little has slowed down the Minions.
“This is one of the most beloved franchises, quite frankly, in the history of film, and certainly animation,” said Jim Orr, distribution chief for Universal. “Chris Meledandri and Illumination have their finger on the pulse of what families and audiences around the world want to see.”
Family movies are powering the box office. “Despicable Me 4” performed strongly despite the still considerable drawing power of “Inside Out 2.” In its fourth weekend of release, the Pixar sequel added another $30 million domestically and $78.3 million overseas.
“Inside Out 2,” with $1.22 billion in ticket sales thus far, is easily the year’s biggest hit and fast climbing up the all-time ranks for animated releases. It currently ranks as the No. 5 animated release worldwide.
Instead of cannibalizing the opening weekend for “Despicable Me 4,” “Inside Out 2” may have helped get families back in the habit of heading to theaters.
“What happened, I think, is the release calendar finally settled into a nice rhythm,” said Dergarabedian, referencing the jumbled movie schedule from last year’s strikes. “It’s all about momentum.”
The continued strong sales for “Inside Out 2” were enough to put the film in second place for the domestic weekend. Last week’s top new film, “A Quiet Place: Day One,” slid to third with $21 million in its second weekend, with another $21.1 million from overseas theaters. That was a steep decrease of 60%, though the Paramount prequel has amassed $178.2 million worldwide in two weeks.
The run of hits has caused some studios to boost their forecasts for the summer movie season. Heading into the most lucrative season at theaters, analysts were predicting a $3 billion summer, down from the more typical $4 billion mark. Now, closer to $3.4 billion appears likely.
The weekend’s other top new release was Ti West’s “MaXXXine,” the third in a string of slasher films from A24 starring Mia Goth. In 2,450 locations, “MaXXXine” collected $6.7 million in ticket sales, a franchise best. The film, which follows “X” and “Pearl” (both released in 2022), stars Goth as a 1980s Hollywood starlet being hunted by a killer known as the Night Stalker.
Angel Studios, which last year released the unexpected summer hit “Sound of Freedom,” struggled to find the same success with its latest Christian film, “Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot.” It debuted with $3.2 million.
Kevin Costner’s big-budget gamble, “Horizon: An American Saga,” didn’t do much to turn around its fortunes in its second weekend. The first chapter in what Costner hopes will be a four-part franchise – including a chapter two Warner Bros. will release in August – earned $5.5 million in its second weekend. The film, which cost more than $100 million to make, has grossed $22.2 million in two weeks.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
“Despicable Me 4,” $75 million.
“Inside Out 2,” $30 million.
“A Quiet Place Day One,” $21 million.
“MaXXXine,” $6.7 million.
“Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” $6.5 million.
“Horizon: An American Saga, Chapter 1,” $5.5 million.
“Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot,” $3.2 million.
“Kaiki 2898,” $1.8 million.
“The Bikeriders,” $1.3 million.
“Kinds of Kindness,” $860,000.
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A young Frenchman who settled in Senegal a little over a year ago decided to master the local Wolof language. Now he’s teaching it to other people on social media. Allison Fernandes has the story, narrated by Michelle Joseph.
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Vatican City — Pope Francis decried the state of democracy and warned against “populists” during a short visit to Trieste in Italy’s northeast on Sunday ahead of a 12-day trip to Asia — the longest of his papacy.
“Democracy is not in good health in the world today,” Francis said during a speech at the city’s convention center to close a national Catholic event.
Without naming any countries, the pope warned against “ideological temptations and populists” on the day that France holds the second round of a snap parliamentary vote that looks set to see the far-right National Rally party take the largest share of the vote.
“Ideologies are seductive. Some people compare them to the Pied Piper of Hamelin: they seduce but lead you to deny yourself,” he said in reference to the German fairytale.
Ahead of last month’s European parliament elections, bishops in several countries also warned about the rise of populism and nationalism, with far-right parties already holding the reins to power in Italy, Hungary and the Netherlands.
Francis also urged people to “move away from polarizations that impoverish” and hit out at “self-referential power.”
After Venice in April and Verona in May, the half-day trip to Trieste, a city of 200,000 inhabitants on the Adriatic Sea that borders Slovenia, marked the third one within Italy this year for the 87-year-old pontiff, who has suffered increasing health problems in recent years.
Since travelling to the French city of Marseille in September 2023, the Argentine Jesuit has limited himself to domestic travel.
But he plans to spend nearly two weeks in Asia in September visiting Indonesia, Singapore and the islands of Papua New Guinea and East Timor.
He arrived in Trieste shortly before 9 a.m. and was due to meet with various groups from the religious and academic spheres, along with migrants and the disabled.
The papal visit is due to conclude with a Mass in the city’s main public square before he departs for the Vatican in the early afternoon.
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new york — TikTok and its bite-sized videos arrived in the United States as a global version of the Chinese app Douyin in 2018. Less than six years later, the social media platform is deeply woven into the fabric of American consumerism, having shortened the shelf life of trends and revamped how people engage with food and fashion.
The popularity of TikTok — coupled with its roots in Beijing — led the U.S. Congress — citing national security concerns, to pass a law that would ban the video-sharing app unless its Chinese parent company sells its stake. Both the company, ByteDance, and TikTok have sued on First Amendment grounds.
But while the platform faces uncertain times, its influence remains undisputed.
Interest in bright pink blush and brown lipstick soared last year, for example, after the cosmetics were featured in TikTok videos with looks labeled as “cold girl” and “latte” makeup. An abundance of clothing fads with quirky names, from “cottagecore” to “coastal grandma,” similarly owe their pervasiveness to TikTok.
Plenty of TikTok-spawned crazes last only a week or two before losing steam. Yet even mini trends have challenged businesses to decipher which ones are worth stocking up for. A majority of the more than 170 million Americans who use TikTok belong to the under-30 age group coveted by retailers, according to the Pew Research Center. Whether fans of the platform or not, shoppers may have a #tiktokmademebuyit moment without knowing the origin story behind an eye-catching product.
Platform’s algorithm is ‘secret sauce’
What made TikTok such a trendsetter compared to predecessor platforms? Researchers and marketing analysts have often described the platform’s personalized recommendation algorithm as the “secret sauce” of TikTok’s success. The company has disclosed little about the technology it employs to populate users’ “For You” feeds.
Jake Bjorseth, founder of the advertising agency Trndsttrs, which specializes in Generation Z, thinks the app’s use of an interest-based algorithm instead of personal contacts to connect like-minded people is what gave TikTok the edge.
TikTok also changed the standard for what was considered desirable in social media content. The beginner-friendly platform featured videos made without filters, lighting setups or production-level audio. TikTok creators could develop more intimate relationships with their followers because they appeared more authentic, Bjorseth said.
The platform has plenty of critics. Some experts argue that TikTok, like other social media sites, can be addictive and promote unnecessary spending. Others accuse TikTok of encouraging harmful behavior, like girls engaging in skin care rituals intended for older women.
Yet for all the detractors who won’t mourn TikTok if it goes away, a vocal base of fans hopes it doesn’t come to that.
Influencing fashion, accessories
Casey Lewis, a trend analyst based in New York, said TikTok’s clout in the fashion arena first became apparent to her when videos about Birkenstock’s Boston clogs overtook her “For You” feed in 2022.
As the number of TikTok videos exploded, creators advised their followers where they could find the suddenly sold-out clogs. Lewis thought it was odd since her brother, whom she described as a “frat boy” and not a fashionista, wore the cork-soled comfort shoes in college.
“I’m not a psychologist, but I’m sure there’s some psychology where your brain goes from thinking like, ‘How weird? Is that fashion?’ And then suddenly you’re obsessed with it,” she said.
The pace with which TikTok-shaped trends pop can be dizzying. In the last year, the hot pink ensembles of “Barbiecore” coexisted with the deliberately unsexy looks of “dadcore” — think chunky white sneakers, baggy jeans and polo shirts. The linen-draped “coastal grandma” aesthetic gave way to “eclectic grandpa.”
While the rotating cast of “cores” may not drive their adherents to buy entire wardrobes, they’re “influencing spending in small ways, and that adds up,” Lewis said.
Influencers provide tips, tricks
Daniella Lopez White, 21, a recent college graduate on a tight budget, said TikTok influencers provided tips on finding affordable clothes but also connected her to plus-size creators featuring fashions for larger-bodied women, which made her more confident.
“Those TikTok trends really helped me figure out what parts of my body I want to accentuate and feel cute in, and still incorporate my sense of style,” she said.
A go-to spot
With easy-to-follow cooking videos and clever hacks, TikTok became a go-to spot for home cooks during the COVID-19 pandemic. The platform made humble ingredients a star and earned endorsements from some of the stars of the food world.
“Every day, honestly, I am blown away by the creativity from the FoodTok community,” restaurateur and chef Gordon Ramsay said in a TikTok video late last year.
Like the clothing styles of earlier eras, foods that had fallen out of fashion were resurrected via TikTok. U.S. sales of cottage cheese jumped 34% between April 2022 and April 2024 after videos promoting cottage cheese ice cream, cottage cheese toast and other recipes racked up millions of views.
Ben Sokolsky, the general manager of sales and marketing for Dallas-based dairy company Daisy Brand, said cottage cheese is seeing its highest sustained growth in nearly 50 years. The curdled milk product used to be a “secret sensation,” but social media helped expose new customers to its benefits, Sokolsky said.
Topics that went viral on TikTok have even spawned analog equivalents. Last summer, TikToker Olivia Maher posted what she called her “girl dinner” of bread, cheese, pickles and grapes. It was a hit, with more than 1.6 million views. A handful of “girl dinner” cookbooks soon followed.
But the eagerness to try trendy foods had a downside. A 14-year-old in Massachusetts died after trying a challenge involving an extremely spicy tortilla chip that appeared on TikTok and other social media sites. An autopsy of the boy, who had a congenital heart defect, found that eating a large quantity of chile pepper extract caused his death. Paqui, the maker of the chip, pulled it off the market.
Upending cosmetic industry
TikTok has upended the cosmetics industry by causing ingredients to get labeled as the next miracle cure or to be avoided and featuring videos of people gleefully applying or panning the contents of their latest shopping hauls.
Influencers on TikTok and elsewhere have made freckles an asset with clips showing how to add faux ones with eyebrow pencils or broccoli florets. The “clean girl” aesthetic, a renamed version of the no-makeup makeup look, prompted both luxury and drugstore brands to rush out their own versions of skin tints and lip oils.
Some veteran users of TikTok have noted the platform is almost too good in its role as both a tastemaker and a shopping search engine. A popular category of beauty videos shows influencers “decluttering” drawers filled with piles of barely used lipsticks, blushes and eyeshadow palettes.
Though the desire for clicks can encourage creators to follow the same hair and makeup trends, TikTok’s defenders credit the platform with forcing brands to create products for a wider range of skin tones and hair types.
Tiffany Watson, who currently has more than 31,00 followers on TikTok and has done paid partnerships with brands like Colourpop Cosmetics, said the platform has promoted a more inclusive image of beauty compared to other sites.
“I see more diversity on TikTok because (with) every video you’re swiping, you’re seeing somebody new,” she said.
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Lausanne, Switzerland — In the battle against drug use at the Paris Olympics, the International Testing Agency plans to deploy a more streamlined, high-tech approach to identify and target potential cheats.
In an interview with Agence France-Presse, Benjamin Cohen, director general of the ITA, said potential tools at its disposal included biological and performance passports as well as a mountain of other data.
Upgraded software, possibly using artificial intelligence, could also help; an investigative unit aided by whistleblowers was making inroads; and increased cooperation with sports bodies and police was bearing fruit.
The ITA, which was founded in 2018, runs the anti-doping program for the Olympics, the Tour de France and “more than 65 international organizations,” said Cohen.
The challenge was to refine the “risk analysis” and identify athletes to monitor using as little time and resources as possible, said Cohen, a Swiss lawyer who has headed the agency since its creation.
The problem is accentuated in the run-up to the Paris Games.
“We still have 30,000 potentially qualifying athletes and we cannot wait to have the final list to focus on the 11,000 participants,” Cohen said.
“Certain doping practices enable athletes to achieve results very quickly,” he said. “Traditionally the pre-Olympic period is high-risk time … the last moment to make a difference. Athletes know that they will be very closely monitored at the Olympics, so I would hope that very few, if any, will be tempted to take drugs in the Olympic Village in Paris.”
At the Games, only medalists are automatically tested, but the ITA wants to find ways to target potential dopers before the finish.
Cohen said the ITA tries to identify patterns. It looks at the demands of each discipline and the substances it might tempt athletes to use. Then the ITA looks at delegations and “the history of doping in that country.” Finally, it scrutinizes each individual athlete and “the development of his or her performances, any suspicious biological passport profiles, suspicious anti-doping tests and so on.”
“That’s hundreds of thousands of pieces of data.”
“Risk analysis”
“Today we have our own software, and the next stage” will involve “programming computers to extract this data, because we still do a lot of this work manually.”
After that, the ITA hopes to “seize all the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence,” provided “we use these new tools ethically.”
“If it’s done properly,” he said, “AI will enable us to go much further in risk analysis and prediction.”
The ITA is developing a “performance passport” as a counterpart to the long-established biological passport.
The objective is to “predict results on the basis of what an athlete has done over the last four years,” said Cohen.
“Artificial intelligence will enable us to say: ‘This is really an unusual result, which could suggest doping,'” he said. “It could help us flag them.”
The performance passport project was initially tested in swimming and weightlifting, two indoor sports in which athletes compete in identical environments each time.
Weightlifting also is one of the sports that have returned a vast number of positive tests at Summer Olympics.
In 2021, the ITA carried out “a major investigation into weightlifting,” and that enabled them to set up a specialized unit in cooperation with the sport.
Focus on cycling
It now has more than 10 such units. “Cycling is a particular focus,” but “other sports are beginning to understand the benefits of gathering intelligence, having anonymous sources and promoting whistleblowers.”
“It’s a new method that complements traditional testing.”
Cohen said the ITA has been working to build links with law enforcement and exploit “synergies.”
“They are bearing fruit,” he said, referring to the case of 23-year-old Italian cyclist Andrea Piccolo, arrested on June 21 by the Italian Carabinieri who caught him returning to the country with growth hormones.
“ITA asked the Italian authorities to open his luggage, which would not have been possible six years ago,” Cohen said.
“We carry out the controls, we monitor the performances of these athletes, we know the networks, the doctors involved and the drugs they are taking. And they can seize and open suitcases and enter hotel rooms.”
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LONDON — A new exhibition looking at the evolution of Barbie opens in London this week as the famed Mattel doll celebrates her 65th birthday this year.
“Barbie: The Exhibition,” running at the Design Museum from July 5 to February 23, features more than 250 items from the Barbie universe, including an array of dolls showing her changing appearance, design sketches and dream houses.
On display is a first edition of the first Barbie released in 1959 with blonde hair, angled eyes, dressed in a black-and-white swimsuit, along with later models representing different races, hair textures and shapes.
Other “firsts” include a Black Barbie and one in a wheelchair. One section dedicated to careers includes a police officer, scientist, doctor, presidents and a voter, while another focuses on Barbie’s long-term companion Ken, who was introduced in 1961.
“I hope that whatever your reason for coming to this show …, whether you’re a Barbie fanatic or whether you’re a Barbie skeptic, you come away with an appreciation of detailed research and the rigorous design thinking that goes into the making of Barbie,” curator Danielle Thom said in an interview.
“I do hope that people come away having learned something about … how this brand has come into being and managed to dominate the toy market for such a long period of time.”
The exhibition coincides with Barbie’s 65th birthday this year and follows the huge success of last year’s “Barbie” movie starring Margot Robbie, which grossed $1.4 billion at the global box office.
“Barbie’s resonance and culture has never been larger, more prominent,” Kim Culmone, senior vice president of design for Mattel, said.
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KATHMANDU, Nepal — The highest camp on the world’s tallest mountain is littered with garbage that is going to take years to clean up, according to a Sherpa who led a team that worked to clear trash and dig up dead bodies frozen for years near Mount Everest’s peak.
The Nepal government-funded team of soldiers and Sherpas removed 11 tons of garbage, four dead bodies and a skeleton from Everest during this year’s climbing season.
Ang Babu Sherpa, who led the team of Sherpas, said there could be as much as 40-50 tons of garbage still at South Col, the last camp before climbers make their attempt on the summit.
“The garbage left there was mostly old tents, some food packaging and gas cartridges, oxygen bottles, tent packs, and ropes used for climbing and tying up tents,” he said, adding that the garbage is in layers and frozen at the 8,000-meter altitude where the South Col camp is located.
Since the peak was first conquered in 1953, thousands of climbers have scaled it and many have left behind more than just their footprints.
In recent years, a government requirement that climbers bring back their garbage or lose their deposits, along with increased awareness among climbers about the environment, have significantly reduced the amount of garbage left behind. However, that was not the case in earlier decades.
“Most of the garbage is from older expeditions,” Ang Babu said.
The Sherpas on the team collected garbage and bodies from the higher-attitude areas, while the soldiers worked at lower levels and the base camp area for weeks during the popular spring climbing season, when weather conditions are more favorable.
Ang Babu said the weather was a big challenge for their work in the South Col area, where oxygen levels are about one-third the normal amount, winds can quickly turn to blizzard conditions and temperatures plunge.
“We had to wait for good weather when the sun would melt the ice cover. But waiting a long time in that attitude and conditions is just not possible,” he said. “It’s difficult to stay for long with the oxygen level very low.”
Digging out the garbage is also a big task, since it is frozen inside ice and breaking the blocks is not easy.
It took two days to dig out one body near the South Col which was frozen in a standing position deep in the ice, he said. Part way through, the team had to retreat to lower camps because of the deteriorating weather, and then resume after it improved.
Another body was much higher up at 8,400 meters and it took 18 hours to drag it to Camp 2, where a helicopter picked it up.
The bodies were flown to Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu for identification.
Of the 11 tons of garbage removed, three tons of decomposable items were taken to villages near Everest’s base and the remaining eight were carried by porters and yaks and then taken by trucks to Kathmandu. There it was sorted for recycling at a facility operated by Agni Ventures, an agency that manages recyclable waste.
“The oldest waste we received was from 1957, and that was rechargeable batteries for torch lights,” said Sushil Khadga of the agency.
Why do climbers leave garbage behind?
“At that high altitude, life is very difficult and oxygen is very low. So climbers and their helpers are more focused on saving themselves,” Khadga said.
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SYDNEY — Australia said Thursday a $1.35 billion deal with U.S. technology giant Amazon to build three secure data centers for top-secret information will increase its military’s “war-fighting capacity.”
The data centers are to be built in secret locations in Australia and be run by an Australian subsidiary of the U.S. technology company Amazon Web Service, the government said.
The deal is part of Australia’s National Defense Strategy, outlining its commitment to Indo-Pacific security and maintaining “the global rules-based order.” The country has a long-standing military alliance with the United States and is a member, with the United Kingdom, U.S., Canada and New Zealand, of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.
Australian officials said the project would create a “state-of-the-art collaborative space” for intelligence and defense agencies to store and gain access to sensitive information in a centralized network.
Andrew Shearer, director-general of Australia’s Office of National Intelligence, said in a statement that the project would allow “greater interoperability with our most important international intelligence partners.”
Similar data clouds have been set up in the United States and Britain, allowing the sharing of information among agencies and departments.
Richard Marles, Australia’s deputy prime minister and defense minister, told reporters that highly sensitive national security data will be safely secured in the new system.
“If you consider that any sensor which is on a defense platform, which in turn feeds that data to a high tech capability, such as the Joint Strike Fighter, which will use that to engage in targeting or perhaps to defend itself from an in-coming threat, or … to defend another asset, such as a ship — all of that is top secret data,” Marles said.
The government said the Amazon Web Services storage system will use artificial intelligence to detect suspected intrusions and to retrieve data.
Richard Buckland, a professor in CyberCrime, Cyberwar and Cyberterror at the University of New South Wales, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the storage plan has risks.
“Putting more data together in a central spot and sharing it widely as people intend to do obviously increases the risk of a data breach,” he said.
In a statement, Amazon Web Services’ managing director in Australia, Iain Rouse, said the system would “enable the seamless sharing of classified data between Australia’s National Intelligence Community and the Australian Defense Force.”
The so-called top-secret cloud is scheduled to be in operation by 2027.
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Washington — Leading U.S. technology companies reportedly have increased security screening of employees and job applicants, which experts say is necessary to counter the cyber espionage threat from China.
While the enhanced screening is being applied to employees and applicants of all races, those with family or other ties to China are thought to be particularly vulnerable to pressure from the Beijing government.
But at least one Chinese computer science graduate student at a U.S. university is hoping to make his ties to China an asset. Zheng, who does not want to reveal his first name for fear of retaliation from the Chinese government, says he recently changed his focus to cybersecurity in hopes of improving his job prospects in the United States.
“The goal is a bit high, but I think I know more about China as a person born and raised in China. I hope to become a force with my own characteristics in cybersecurity and a role in fighting against Chinese cyber-attacks,” said Zheng, who is seeking political asylum in the United States.
While Zheng said he is not very worried that increased security checks will affect his job prospects, he said many international students in his class worry that they will be shut out from cybersecurity jobs.
Google, OpenAI and Sequoia Capital are among a number of technology and venture capital firms that have stepped up security checks on employees and potential recruits, according to a recent report by The Financial Times.
The newspaper cited sources at those companies saying they were responding to warnings from the U.S. government about a growing threat from Chinese espionage over the past two years.
Chinese cyber espionage concerns
FBI Director Christopher Wray delivered one such message in a speech in April, saying the Chinese government has tried to steal “intellectual property, technology and research” from American industries.
In response, the U.S. government has stepped up security measures over the last two years, including updating its export control regulations to restrict China’s ability to obtain advanced computing chips and artificial intelligence. The strengthened warnings to U.S. companies are part of that response.
Ivan Kanapathy, senior vice president with Beacon Global Strategies, told VOA that Silicon Valley executives share the U.S. government’s concern. “In recent years, emerging technology companies have become more wary; they don’t want to fall victim to China’s technology absorption strategy,” he said.
“Companies can’t afford to help a competitor that will put them out of business. We’ve seen that happen across many industries already. It’s only natural for American and other allied cutting-edge companies to be concerned and take steps to mitigate the risks of PRC state-sponsored espionage,” he said.
Ray Wang, CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc., said that the theft of American intellectual property has become more rampant since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and that people with ties to China were often targeted.
“During COVID, many folks with relatives in China were put in compromising positions where they were asked to do things for the Chinese government, or one’s relatives would be put at risk,” Wang said. “China has infiltrated almost every aspect of the U.S., and the U.S. is facing systemic problems.”
Kanapathy said China might also obtain American technology through talent poaching, meaning they recruit someone with experience in a particular technology and ask the person to take the technology to start a new company in China. Although it is ethically questionable, it is sometimes legal.
“China likely also tries to place its own people, including engineers, into certain companies that have desirable technologies. It’s a multipronged strategy,” he said.
In a statement to VOA, Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu acknowledged the accusations but said the U.S. government “is short on delivering solid evidence.”
“We firmly oppose to the groundless accusations and smears towards China and hope the relevant parties can view China’s development objectively and fairly,” he wrote.
Liu also pointed out that the World Intellectual Property Organization last year named China as the world’s highest ranking middle-income economy and 12th overall in terms of independently creating intellectual property rights.
“China’s scientific and technological achievements are never made through ‘stealing.’ The Chinese people, including our intellectuals, made such achievements with our talent and hard work,” he wrote.
Security screening concerns
While the enhanced security reviews usually apply to all employees, Wang said. Google and OpenAI have imposed stricter reviews for Chinese employees, and Microsoft is transferring some of its most important Chinese engineers from China to other regions of the world; NVIDIA has also been highly vigilant in screening.
Microsoft employees in China, mostly involved with cloud computing, were recently offered the opportunity to work in the United States, Australia or Ireland, among other countries, state-run outlet said in a report. The Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft asked as many as 800 employees, mostly engineers with Chinese nationality working on cloud computing and AI, to consider relocating.
He said companies should exercise caution to avoid triggering xenophobia.
“So almost every new worker, not just Chinese nationals, should undergo the same vetting process. I think it’s really important. As Asian Americans, we have to be very careful about those implications,” he said.
So far, that has not been a problem for Joey Wu, a Chinese software engineer in California. Wu told VOA he has not seen stringent measures exercised against Chinese people, nor has he been treated differently due to his Chinese citizenship.
“I think the U.S. is relatively tolerant and open,” Wu said. “It is not easy for a large technology company to have so many foreign employees. Chinese companies, such as Huawei, are full of Chinese faces, with very few foreigners, and it is unlikely that Americans will be hired to play a more important role.”
Kanapathy pointed out that the founders of many technology companies are from China or India themselves, and these are the people who request security checks on Chinese citizens.
VOA contacted Google, OpenAI and Sequoia Capital for comments but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
VOA’s Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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July 20 marks the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. An interactive exhibit at Manhattan’s Intrepid Museum reminds viewers of the enormity of that undertaking and what went into the first moon landing. Evgeny Maslov has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Videographer: Vladimir Badikov.
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Phnom Penh — Buddhist monks in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh chanted blessings and threw flowers on Thursday to welcome 14 trafficked artifacts repatriated from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The Angkorian artworks, which included a 10th century goddess sandstone statute and a large Buddha head from the 7th century, were stolen by antiquities trafficker Douglas Latchford before ending up in New York.
“I am so glad and so happy to see our ancestors back home,” Cambodian Culture Minister Phoeurng Sackona said at the repatriation ceremony.
“We have many more treasures at the Met which we also hope will be returned to Cambodia,” she added.
Sackona said more than 50 stolen artifacts would return to Cambodia from the United States in the near future.
The minister also called on private collectors and museums around the world to follow the Met and return looted artifacts.
“This return of our national treasures, held by the Met, is of utmost importance not only for Cambodia, but for all of humankind,” she said.
Latchford, who died aged 88 at his home in Bangkok, was widely regarded as a scholar of Cambodian antiquities, winning praise for his books on Khmer Empire art.
He was charged in 2019 by prosecutors in New York with smuggling looted Cambodian relics and helping to sell them on the international art market.
The Met said in December that it would return 14 antiquities to Cambodia and two to Thailand after they were linked to Latchford.
A 900-year-old statue of the Hindu god Shiva and a bronze sculpture of a female figure were returned to Thailand by the museum in May.
Thousands of statues and sculptures are believed to have been trafficked from Cambodia from the mid-1960s to the 1990s, while sites in neighboring Thailand were also hit by smugglers.
The return of the items comes as a growing number of museums worldwide discuss steps to repatriate looted artworks, particularly those taken during the colonial era.
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As Ukraine’s war against Russia’s invasion drags on, Ukrainians are fighting to preserve their history. They say Russia is deliberately attacking cultural monuments in a bid to erase the country’s history and identity as a separate nation. For VOA, Anna Chernikova reports from Kyiv. VOA footage by Eugene Shynkar, Vladyslav Smilianets.
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