Since 2004, former New York Times editor and now artist Sheryl Oring has been giving Americans a chance to speak their truth to the world. Dressed in 1950s secretary attire, she invites the public to speak their mind and records it on her vintage typewriter as part of a project called, “I Wish To Say.” Elena Wolf has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Vladimir Badikov
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has opened a broad antitrust investigation into Microsoft, including of its software licensing and cloud computing businesses, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
The probe was approved by FTC Chair Lina Khan ahead of her likely departure in January. The election of Donald Trump as U.S. president, and the expectation he will appoint a fellow Republican with a softer approach toward business, leaves the outcome of the investigation up in the air.
The FTC is examining allegations the software giant is potentially abusing its market power in productivity software by imposing punitive licensing terms to prevent customers from moving their data from its Azure cloud service to other competitive platforms, sources confirmed earlier this month.
The FTC is also looking at practices related to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence products, the source said on Wednesday.
Microsoft declined to comment on Wednesday.
Competition complains about practices
Competitors have criticized Microsoft’s practices they say keep customers locked into its cloud offering, Azure. The FTC fielded such complaints last year as it examined the cloud computing market.
NetChoice, a lobbying group that represents online companies such as Amazon and Google, which compete with Microsoft in cloud computing, criticized Microsoft’s licensing policies, and its integration of AI tools into its Office and Outlook.
“Given that Microsoft is the world’s largest software company, dominating in productivity and operating systems software, the scale and consequences of its licensing decisions are extraordinary,” the group said.
Google in September complained to the European Commission about Microsoft’s practices, saying it made customers pay a 400% mark-up to keep running Windows Server on rival cloud computing operators, and gave them later and more limited security updates.
The FTC has demanded a broad range of detailed information from Microsoft, Bloomberg reported earlier on Wednesday.
The agency had already claimed jurisdiction over probes into Microsoft and OpenAI over competition in artificial intelligence and started looking into Microsoft’s $650 million deal with AI startup Inflection AI.
Other companies faced accusations
Microsoft has been somewhat of an exception to U.S. antitrust regulators’ recent campaign against allegedly anticompetitive practices at Big Tech companies.
Facebook owner Meta Platforms, Apple and Amazon.com Inc. have all been accused by the U.S. of unlawfully maintaining monopolies.
Alphabet’s Google is facing two lawsuits, including one where a judge found it unlawfully thwarted competition among online search engines.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified at Google’s trial, saying the search giant was using exclusive deals with publishers to lock up content used to train artificial intelligence.
It is unclear whether Trump will ease up on Big Tech, whose first administration launched several Big Tech probes. JD Vance, the incoming vice president, has expressed concern about the power the companies wield over public discourse.
Still, Microsoft has benefited from Trump policies in the past.
In 2019, the Pentagon awarded it a $10 billion cloud computing contract that Amazon had widely been expected to win. Amazon later alleged that Trump exerted improper pressure on military officials to steer the contract away from its Amazon Web Services unit.
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MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA — Australia’s House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill that would ban children younger than 16 years old from social media, leaving it to the Senate to finalize the world-first law.
The major parties backed the bill that would make platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for fines of up to $33 million for systemic failures to prevent young children from holding accounts.
The legislation passed 102 to 13. If the bill becomes law this week, the platforms would have one year to work out how to implement the age restrictions before the penalties are enforced.
Opposition lawmaker Dan Tehan told Parliament the government had agreed to accept amendments in the Senate that would bolster privacy protections. Platforms would not be allowed to compel users to provide government-issued identity documents including passports or driver’s licenses. The platforms also could not demand digital identification through a government system.
“Will it be perfect? No. But is any law perfect? No, it’s not. But if it helps, even if it helps in just the smallest of ways, it will make a huge difference to people’s lives,” Tehan told Parliament.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the Senate would debate the bill later Wednesday. The major parties’ support all but guarantees the legislation will pass in the Senate, where no party holds a majority of seats.
Lawmakers who were not aligned with either the government or the opposition were most critical of the legislation during debate on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Criticisms include that the legislation had been rushed through Parliament without adequate scrutiny, would not work, would create privacy risks for users of all ages and would take away parents’ authority to decide what’s best for their children.
Critics also argue the ban would isolate children, deprive them of positive aspects of social media, drive children to the dark web, make children too young for social media reluctant to report harms they encountered and take away incentives for platforms to make online spaces safer.
Independent lawmaker Zoe Daniel said the legislation would “make zero difference to the harms that are inherent to social media.”
“The true object of this legislation is not to make social media safe by design, but to make parents and voters feel like the government is doing something about it,” Daniel told Parliament.
“There is a reason why the government parades this legislation as world-leading, that’s because no other country wants to do it,” she added.
The platforms had asked for the vote on legislation to be delayed until at least June next year when a government-commissioned evaluation of age assurance technologies made its report on how the ban could been enforced.
Melbourne resident Wayne Holdsworth, whose 17-year-old son Mac took his own life last year after falling victim to an online sextortion scam, described the bill as “absolutely essential for the safety of our children.”
“It’s not the only thing that we need to do to protect them because education is the key, but to provide some immediate support for our children and parents to be able to manage this, it’s a great step,” the 65-year-old online safety campaigner told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
“And in my opinion, it’s the greatest time in our country’s history,” he added, referring to the pending legal reform.
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November 27th marks the birthday of iconic American guitarist and songwriter Jimi Hendrix. In his hometown of Seattle, the Museum of Pop Culture, inspired by his groundbreaking music, celebrated his enduring legacy with family members, former colleagues, and fans. Natasha Mozgovaya has the story.
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SYDNEY — Google and Facebook-owner Meta Platforms urged the Australian government on Tuesday to delay a bill that will ban most forms of social media for children under 16, saying more time was needed to assess its potential impact.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left government wants to pass the bill, which represents some of the toughest controls on children’s social media use imposed by any country, into law by the end of the parliamentary year on Thursday.
The bill was introduced in parliament last week and opened for submissions of opinions for only one day.
Google and Meta said in their submissions that the government should wait for the results of an age-verification trial before going ahead.
The age-verification system may include biometrics or government identification to enforce a social media age cut-off.
“In the absence of such results, neither industry nor Australians will understand the nature or scale of age assurance required by the bill, nor the impact of such measures on Australians,” Meta said.
“In its present form, the bill is inconsistent and ineffective.”
The law would force social media platforms, and not parents or children, to take reasonable steps to ensure age-verification protections are in place. Companies could be fined up to $32 million for systemic breaches.
The opposition Liberal party is expected to support the bill though some independent lawmakers have accused the government of rushing through the entire process in around a week.
A Senate committee responsible for communications legislation is scheduled to deliver a report on Tuesday.
Bytedance’s TikTok said the bill lacked clarity and that it had “significant concerns” with the government’s plan to pass the bill without detailed consultation with experts, social media platforms, mental health organizations and young people.
“Where novel policy is put forward, it’s important that legislation is drafted in a thorough and considered way, to ensure it is able to achieve its stated intention. This has not been the case with respect to this Bill,” TikTok said.
Elon Musk’s X raised concerns that the bill will negatively impact the human rights of children and young people, including their rights to freedom of expression and access to information.
The U.S. billionaire, who views himself as a champion of free speech, last week attacked the Australian government saying the bill seemed like a backdoor way to control access to the internet.
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sydney — Australia’s Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island will be connected by subsea cable to the northern garrison city of Darwin, a project backed by Alphabet’s Google that Australia says will boost its digital resilience.
Christmas Island is 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) west of the Australian mainland, with a small population of 1,250, but strategically located in the Indian Ocean, 350 kilometers (215 miles) from Jakarta.
The cable announcement comes as the Australian and U.S. militaries upgrade airfields in Australia’s north, where a rotating force of U.S. Marines will be joined by Japanese troops next year.
Google’s vice president of global network infrastructure, Brian Quigley, said in a statement the Bosun cable will link Darwin to Christmas Island, while another subsea cable will connect Melbourne on Australia’s east coast to the west coast city of Perth, then on to Christmas Island and Singapore.
Australia is seeking to reduce its exposure to digital disruption by building more subsea cable pathways to Asia to its west, and through the South Pacific to the United States.
“These new cable systems will not only expand and strengthen the resilience of Australia’s own digital connectivity through new and diversified routes but will also complement the Government’s active work with industry and government partners to support secure, resilient and reliable connectivity across the Pacific,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said in a statement.
The other partners in the cable project include Australian data center company NextDC, Macquarie-backed telecommunications group Vocus, and SUBCO.
SUBCO previously built an Indian Ocean cable from Perth to Oman, with spurs to the U.S. military base of Diego Garcia, and Cocos Islands, where Australia is upgrading a runway for defense surveillance aircraft.
Although 900 kilometers (560 miles) apart, Christmas Island is seen as an Indian Ocean neighbor of Cocos Islands, which the Australian Defense Force has said is key to its maritime surveillance operations in a region where China is increasing submarine activity.
The new cables will also link to a Pacific Islands network being built by Google and jointly funded by the United States, connecting the U.S. and Australia through hubs in Fiji and French Polynesia.
Vocus said in a statement the two networks will form the world’s largest submarine cable system spanning 42,500 kilometers (26,408 miles) of fiber optic cable running between the U.S. and Asia via Australia.
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Alfonso Cuarón spoke with VOA at the 2024 Miami Film Festival, where the director won a lifetime achievement award from Miami Dade College for his contributions to cinema. He urged aspiring filmmakers to study the history of cinema and the development of film language.
See the full story here.
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JOHANNESBURG — South African writer and poet Breyten Breytenbach, a staunch opponent of the former white-minority government’s apartheid policy of racial oppression, has died in Paris, his family announced on Sunday. He was 85.
Breytenbach was a celebrated wordsmith, a leading voice in literature in Afrikaans — an offshoot of Dutch that was developed by white settlers — and a fierce critic of apartheid that was imposed against the country’s Black majority between 1948 and 1990.
He moved to Paris but on a clandestine trip to his home country in 1975 he was arrested on allegations that he assisted Nelson Mandela’s then-outlawed African National Congress group in its sabotage campaign against the white-minority government.
He was convicted of treason and served seven years in prison. French president Francois Mitterrand helped secure his release in 1982.
Upon his release, Breytenbach based himself in Paris, becoming a French citizen, and continued his anti-apartheid activism.
Breytenbach is best known for “Confessions of an Albino Terrorist,” his account of his imprisonment and the events leading to it.
His work addressed themes of exile, identity and justice, his family said in a statement on Sunday.
“Known for his masterful poetry collections in Afrikaans, as well as autobiographical works such as ‘The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist’ and ‘A Season in Paradise,’ he fearlessly addressed themes of exile, identity and justice,” his family said in a statement.
Breytenbach was a poet, novelist, painter and activist whose work touched on and influenced literature and the arts both domestically and abroad, his family added.
He was born in the Western Cape province in 1939 but spent much of his life abroad.
He joined Okhela, an ideological wing of South Africa’s African National Congress, in exile, but remained deeply connected to his South African roots.
He is survived by his wife, Yolande, daughter Daphnée and two grandsons.
Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse.
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New York — With a combined $270 million in worldwide ticket sales, “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” breathed fresh life into a box office that has struggled lately, leading to one of the busiest moviegoing weekends of the year.
Jon M. Chu’s lavish big-budget musical “Wicked,” starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, debuted with $114 million domestically and $164.2 million globally for Universal Pictures, according to studio estimates Sunday. That made it the third-biggest opening weekend of the year, behind only “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Inside Out 2.” It’s also a record for a Broadway musical adaptation.
Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II,” a sequel to his 2000 best picture-winning original, launched with $55.5 million in ticket sales. With a price tag of around $250 million to produce it, “Gladiator II” was a big bet by Paramount Pictures to return to the Coliseum with a largely new cast, led by Denzel Washington and Paul Mescal. While it opened with a touch less than the $60 million predicted in domestic ticket sales, “Gladiator II” has performed well overseas. It added $50.5 million internationally.
The collision of the two movies led to some echoes of the “Barbenheimer” effect of last year, when “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” launched simultaneously. The nickname this time, “Glicked,” wasn’t quite as catchy and the cultural imprint was also notably less. Few people sought out a double feature this time. The domestic grosses in 2023 – $162 million for “Barbie” and $82 million for “Oppenheimer” – were also higher.
“Glicked” falls short of “Barbenheimer”
For Universal, which distributed “Oppenheimer” last year, the weekend was more a triumph of “Wicked” than it was of “Glicked.”
“We saw an opportunity to dominate a weekend and get a very large running start into the Thanksgiving holiday,” said Jim Orr, distribution chief for Universal. “We’re very confident that it will play ridiculously well through the Christmas corridor and into the new year.”
But the counter-programming effect was still potent for “Wicked” and “Gladiator II,” which likewise split broadly along gender lines. And it was again the female-leaning release – “Wicked,” like “Barbie” before it – that easily won the weekend. About 72% of ticket buyers for “Wicked” were female, while 61% of those seeing “Gladiator II” were male.
“Standing on their own, each of these movies may have done pretty much what they did, but it’s hard to know,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. “Raising awareness can indeed lead to an increase in box office. Let’s put it this way: They didn’t hurt each other at all.”
Massive marketing campaigns paved the way for opening weekend
While “Barbenheimer” benefitted enormously from meme-spread word-of-mouth, both “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” leaned on all-out marketing blitzes.
The “Gladiator II” campaign featured everything from a much-debated Airbnb cross-promotion with the actual Colosseum in Rome to simultaneously running a one-minute trailer on more than 4,000 TV networks, radio station and digital platforms.
The “Wicked” onslaught went even further, with pink and green themed “Wickedly Delicious” Starbucks drinks, Stanley mugs and Mattel dolls (some of which led to an awkward recall ). Its stars made appearances at the Met Gala and the Olympics.
“We had roughly 400 global brand partners on ‘Wicked,’ so the campaign was inescapable, said Orr. “And our cast, led by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, worked so hard on this. They were everywhere. They did everything we asked them to do.”
Going into the weekend, box office was down about 11% from last year and some 25% from pre-pandemic times. That meant this week’s two headline films led a much-needed resurgence for theaters. With “Moana 2” releasing Wednesday, Hollywood might be looking at historic sales over the Thanksgiving holiday.
The two films boosted sluggish box office performance
“This weekend’s two strong openers are invigorating a box office that fell apart after a good summer,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter for Franchise Entertainment.
Though “Wicked” will face some direct competition from “Moana 2,” it would seem better set up for a long and lucrative run in theaters than “Gladiator II.” Though some have dinged “Wicked” for running long, at 2 hours and 40 minutes, the film has had mostly stellar reviews. Audiences gave it an “A” on CinemaScore. The reception for “Wicked” has been strong enough that Oscar prognosticators expect it to be a contender for best picture at the Academy Awards, among other categories.
Producers, perhaps sensing a hit, also took the step of splitting “Wicked” in two. Part two, already filmed, is due out next November. Each “Wicked” installation cost around $150 million to make.
“Gladiator II” has also enjoyed good reviews, particularly for Washington’s charismatic performance. Audience scores, though, were weaker, with ticket buyers giving it a “B” on CinemaScore. The film will make up for some of that, however, with robust international sales. It launched in many overseas markets a week ago, and has already accrued $165.5 million internationally.
Coming in a distant third place for the weekend was “Red One,” the Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans holiday movie turned action film. In its second week of release, the Amazon MGM Studios release grossed $13.3 million to bring its two-week global haul to $117 million. At a cost of $250 million to make, “Red One” is the season’s biggest flop, though it could recoup some value for Amazon if it’s more popular once it begins streaming.
Final domestic figures will be released Monday. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:
“Wicked,” $114 million.
“Gladiator II,” $55.5 million.
“Red One,” $13.3 million.
“Bonhoeffer: Pastor Spy Assassin,” $5.1 million.
“Venom: The Last Dance,” $4 million.
“The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” $3.5 million.
“Heretic,” $2.2 million.
“The Wild Robot,” $2 million.
“Smile 2,” $1.1 million.
“A Real Pain,” $1.1 million.
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BRISBANE, Australia — Australian Elvis Smylie shot a 4-under 67 to win the 54-hole Australian PGA on Sunday by two shots after a final round shootout with his compatriot and former mentor Cameron Smith.
Smylie finished on 14-under 199, two ahead of Smith who had a 2-under final round 69. Smith’s LIV tour teammate Mark Leishman and Australian Anthony Quayle shared third place on 11 under at the par-71 Royal Queensland.
Heavy rain showers and an unplayable course on Friday forced the second round to be abandoned and made the joint Australasian PGA and European Tour event a 54-hole tournament.
Five years ago Smylie, the son of former Australian tennis pro Liz Smylie. won the Cameron Smith Scholarship which allowed him to spend a week at Smith’s Florida home where he was able to learn to live and practice as a PGA Tour professional.
Now 22, Smylie started Sunday’s final round tied atop the leaderboard with Smith at 10 under par.
Smith was the 2022 British Open winner at St. Andrews and previously won the Australian PGA in 2017, 2018 and 2022. Smylie had a breakthrough win in last month’s West Australian Open.
The pair traded birdies until the sixth hole when there was a two-shot turnaround when Smylie birdied and Smith bogeyed. Smylie, who led after a first round 65, had four birdies in his first seven holes and played his outward nine in four-under 32, turning at 14 under.
He had good ups and downs under pressure at the par four 10th and 12th holes, using his three wood to bunt the ball onto the greens from close range.
With a bogey at the ninth hole, Smith turned in 35, having dropped back into a second place tie at 11-under with Quayle, Mark Leishman and Australia David Micheluzzi.
Smith had another bogey on the par-4 14th which dropped him back to 10 under while Quayle finished with an 8-under 63 to take an early clubhouse lead at 11-under.
Smylie was under pressure at the par-5 15th when he hit his second well to the left of the green. Again he scrambled to save par while Smith birdied to move back to 11-under, cutting the lead to three shots.
Smith trimmed Smylie’s lead to two when he holed out from off the green for birdie at the par-3 17th, winning a large cheer from the crowd on the tournament’s party hole. Smylie’s birdie putt from six feet slipped past.
Smylie held his nerve when he put his tee shot on the 18th into light rough with the broad trunk of a tree between him and the green 186 meters away. He curled his around the tree, but into a greenside bunker.
Smylie played a nerveless shot from the sand to three feet and holed out for par, finishing with 11 consecutive pars. He managed to get up and down from precarious positions six times on the back nine.
“It’s a dream come true,” Smylie said. “I won’t forget this day playing with Cam and [Leishman].
“My short game was great; I definitely saved myself.”
The Australian PGA is the first event of the 2025 European Tour season.
Next week, many of the same players will travel to Melbourne for the Australian Open, also on the European Tour. It is being played concurrently with the Women’s Australian Open at famed sandbelt courses Kingston Heath and Victoria.
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JAYAPURA, Indonesia — On the southeastern coast of the city of Jayapura, Petronela Merauje walked from house to house in her floating village inviting women to join her the next morning in the surrounding mangrove forests.
Merauje and the women of her village, Enggros, practice the tradition of Tonotwiyat, which literally means “working in the forest.” For six generations, women from the 700-strong Papuan population there have worked among the mangroves collecting clams, fishing and gathering firewood.
“The customs and culture of Papuans, especially those of us in Enggros village, is that women are not given space and place to speak in traditional meetings, so the tribal elders provide the mangrove forest as our land,” Merauje said. It’s “a place to find food, a place for women to tell stories, and women are active every day and earn a living every day.”
The forest is a short 13 kilometers away from downtown Jayapura, the capital city of Papua, Indonesia’s easternmost province. It’s been known as the women’s forest since 2016, when Enggros’ leader officially changed its name. Long before that, it had already been a space just for women. But as pollution, development and biodiversity loss shrink the forest and stunt plant and animal life, those in the village fear an important part of their traditions and livelihoods will be lost. Efforts to shield it from devastation have begun but are still relatively small.
Women have their own space — but it’s shrinking
One early morning, Merauje and her 15-year-old daughter took a small motorboat toward the forest. Stepping off on Youtefa Bay, mangrove trees all around, they stood chest-deep in the water with buckets in hand, wiggling their feet in the mud to find bia noor, or soft-shell clams. The women collect these for food, along with other fish.
“The women’s forest is our kitchen,” said Berta Sanyi, another woman from Enggros village.
That morning, another woman joined the group looking for firewood, hauling dry logs onto her boat. And three other women joined on a rowboat.
Women from the next village, Tobati, also have a women’s forest nearby. The two Indigenous villages are only 2 kilometers apart, and they’re culturally similar, with Enggros growing out of Tobati’s population decades ago. In the safety of the forest, women of both villages talk about issues at home with one another and share grievances away from the ears of the rest of the village.
Alfred Drunyi, the leader of Drunyi tribe in Enggros, said that having dedicated spaces for women and men is a big part of the village’s culture. There are tribal fines if a man trespasses and enters the forest, and the amount is based on how guilty the community judges the person to be.
“They should pay it with our main treasure, the traditional beads, maybe with some money. But the fines should be given to the women,” Drunyi said.
But Sanyi, 65, who’s been working in the forest since she was just 17, notes that threats to the space come from elsewhere.
Development on the bay has turned acres of forest into large roads, including a 700-meter bridge into Jayapura that passes through Enggros’ pier. Jayapura’s population has exploded in recent decades, and around 400,000 people live in the city — the largest on the island.
In turn, the forest has shrunk. Nearly six decades ago, the mangrove forest in Youtefa Bay was about 514 hectares. Estimates say it’s now less than half that.
“I am so sad when I see the current situation of the forest,” Sanyi said, “because this is where we live.” She said many residents, including her own children, are turning to work in Jayapura instead of maintaining traditions.
Pollution puts traditions and health at risk
Youtefa Bay, where the sea’s brackish water and five rivers in Papua meet, serves as the gathering bowl for the waste that runs through the rivers as they cross through Jayapura.
Plastic bottles, tarpaulins and pieces of wood are seen stuck between the mangrove roots. The water around the mangrove forest is polluted and dark.
After dozens of years being able to feel the clams on the bay with her feet, Sanyi said she now often has to feel through trash first. And once she removes the trash and gets to the muddy ground where the clams live, there are many fewer than there used to be.
Paula Hamadi, 53, said that she never saw the mangrove forest as bad as it is now. For years, she’s been going to the forest almost every day during the low tide in the morning to search for clams.
“It used to be different,” Hamadi said. “From 8 a.m. to 8:30 in the morning, I could get one can. But now, I only get trash.”
The women used to be able to gather enough clams to sell some at the nearest village, but now their small hauls are reserved for eating with their families.
A study in 2020 found that high concentrations of lead from waste from homes and businesses were found at several points in the bay. Lead can be toxic to humans and aquatic organisms, and the study suggests it has contaminated several species that are often consumed by the people of Youtefa Bay.
Other studies also showed that populations of shellfish and crab in the bay were declining, said John Dominggus Kalor, a lecturer on fisheries and marine sciences at Cenderawasih University.
“The threats related to heavy metal contamination, microplastics, and public health are high,” Kalor said. “In the future, it will have an impact on health.”
Some are trying to save the land
Some of the mangrove areas have been destroyed for development, leading to degradation throughout the forest.
Mangroves can absorb the shocks of extreme weather events, like tsunamis, and provide ecosystems with the needed environment to thrive. They also serve social and cultural functions for the women, whose work is mostly done between the mangroves.
“In the future people will say that there used to be a women’s forest here” that disappeared because of development and pollution, said Kalor.
Various efforts to preserve it have been made, including the residents of Enggros village themselves. Merauje and other women from Enggros are trying to start mangrove tree nurseries and, where possible, plant new mangrove trees in the forest area.
“We plant new trees, replace the dead ones, and we also clean up the trash around Youtefa Bay,” Merauje said. “I do that with my friends to conserve, to maintain this forest.”
Beyond efforts to reforest it, Kalor said there also needs to be guarantees that more of the forest won’t be flattened for development in the future.
There is no regional regulation to protect Youtefa Bay and specifically the women’s forests, but Kalor thinks it would help prevent deforestation in the future.
“That should no longer be done in our bay,” he said.
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BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA — Argentina produces some of the best football players on the planet and has three World Cup titles to prove it.
Off the field, though, a major power struggle is transpiring between Argentina President Javier Milei and Argentine Football Association president Claudio Tapia.
Tapia opposes Milei’s effort to enable football clubs to become sports limited companies, inspired by the model of the English Premier League. He wants clubs to continue to belong to members — not to private shareholders.
The government threatened to intervene in AFA due to alleged irregularities in Tapia’s reelection to a third term.
Amid this struggle, FIFA and CONMEBOL warned that any government interference in the management of AFA will result in its disaffiliation, and its teams will be marginalized from all competitions.
What did Milei’s decree say?
Milei, a libertarian economist who has pushed economic deregulation, signed a decree last December enabling football clubs organized as civil associations to transform into public limited companies. The former do not pursue a commercial purpose, while PLCs seek profit.
The government also gave sports associations, federations and confederations a period of one year from August to modify their statutes and accept this new form of organization.
The new model is optional and clubs that want to transform into sports corporations will require the vote of two-thirds of their members present at an extraordinary assembly.
Milei said that the time has come to end “poor socialism” in football and predicted a windfall of investment.
What does the federation say?
AFA says its statutes prohibit the affiliation and participation in its tournaments of sports corporations. It won a court order blocking the decree. That ruling was appealed by the government and the Supreme Court will have the last word.
“The clubs need to fulfill the function they fulfill as the civil associations that they are,” Tapia said. “I am convinced that that is its essence. Most clubs have an established statute that civil associations are not to be changed.”
If a club decides to become a public limited company, it will be disaffiliated, AFA warned.
An imperfect model?
Argentina is a renowned producer of football talent — Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona start the list.
Despite the success developing young players, most clubs are forced to let them go earlier to be able to financially sustain not only their professional team, but also other sports and social activities in the club.
In Argentine football “we are 40 years behind,” said Guillermo Tofoni, a FIFA agent who is also an adviser in Milei’s government. “It is played any day, at any time, the tournaments (formats) change, the corruption of the referees. All this combination means that the television networks do not pay what they deserve, and a vicious and non-virtuous circle is generated.”
Argentine football receives less than $100 million a year for television rights, far below the billions of dollars shared by English Premier League clubs.
According to Tofoni, with genuine private capital investment “clubs can keep their players until they are 24, 25 years old, and sell them to the European market when it is convenient, not because they need to.”
Are clubs willing to try it?
So far, Estudiantes La Plata and Talleres de Córdoba are the only clubs publicly in favor of allowing private capital to enter football.
“I am pragmatic, I understand that soccer is a business. They leave us out of business, Argentina, Argentine football is out of business,” Estudiantes president Juan Sebastián Verón said. “Let us not be afraid of growth, of the new, which can take us to a very important place in the future.”
The former Argentina midfielder recently signed a pre-agreement with the American businessman Foster Gillett, who will invest $150 million in the club.
In turn, the American investor will benefit from future sales of players, the commercial exploitation of the stadium’s name and profits from competing in international tournaments. The agreement must be endorsed by the members of “Pincha” in an extraordinary assembly.
Tapia’s reelection bad news for Milei?
Amid the dispute, Tapia called an election of new AFA authorities a year early. As the only candidate, Tapia was reelected to a third term on October 17, thus ensuring he would continue in office until 2028 — a year after the end of Milei’s term.
“It looks like Venezuela with (President Nicolás) Maduro celebrated Christmas earlier,” said Milei, who a few days later signed a decree that took away social security benefits from AFA.
In turn, the General Inspection of Justice, a body dependent on the Ministry of Justice and in charge of regulating civil associations, challenged Tapia’s reelection and threatened to intervene in the AFA.
However, a civil appeals court upheld the October vote.
What does FIFA and CONMEBOL say?
Both entities are closely following the dispute. In official notes, they indicated that only the local federation can set the statutory framework of the clubs and warned that state interference is a cause for disaffiliation.
“The AFA, and only the AFA, is, in view of the legal framework of FIFA, the only entity competent to decide, through its legitimate associative governing bodies, aspects relating to the legal nature of the clubs affiliated to the same,” FIFA said.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino also congratulated Tapia on his reelection and thanked him for “all his efforts, work and important contribution to the development of our sport.”
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NEW YORK — The brooding waltz was carefully composed on a sheet of music roughly the size of an index card. The brief, moody number also bore an intriguing name, written at the top in cursive: “Chopin.”
A previously unknown work of music penned by the European master Frederic Chopin appears to have been found at the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan.
The untitled and unsigned piece is on display this month at the opulently appointed institution, which had once been the private library of financier J. P. Morgan.
Robinson McClellan, the museum curator who uncovered the manuscript, said it’s the first new work associated with the Romantic era composer to be discovered in nearly a century.
But McClellan concedes that it may never be known whether it is an original Chopin work or merely one written in his hand.
The piece, set in the key of A minor, stands out for its “very stormy, brooding opening section” before transitioning to a melancholy melody more characteristic of Chopin, McClellan explained.
“This is his style. This is his essence,” he said during a recent visit to the museum. “It really feels like him.”
Curator finds composition in collection
McClellan said he came across the work in May as he was going through a collection from the late Arthur Satz, a former president of the New York School of Interior Design. Satz had acquired it from A. Sherrill Whiton Jr., an avid autograph collector who had been director of the school.
McClellan then worked with experts to verify its authenticity.
The paper was found to be consistent with what Chopin favored for manuscripts, and the ink matched a kind typical in the early 19th century when Chopin lived, according to the museum. But a handwriting analysis determined the name “Chopin” written at the top of the sheet was penned by someone else.
Born in Poland, Chopin was considered a musical genius from an early age. He lived in Warsaw and Vienna before settling in Paris, where he died in 1849 at the age of 39, likely of tuberculosis.
He’s buried among a pantheon of artists at the city’s famed Pere Lachaise Cemetery, but his heart, pickled in a jar of alcohol, is housed in a church in Warsaw, in keeping with his deathbed wish for the organ to return to his homeland.
Artur Szklener, director of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw, the Polish capital city where the composer grew up, agreed that the document is consistent with the kinds of ink and paper Chopin used during his early years in Paris.
Chopin expert calls piece ‘little gem’
Musically, the piece evokes the “brilliant style” that made Chopin a luminary in his time, but it also has features unusual for his compositions, Szklener said.
“First of all, it is not a complete work, but rather a certain musical gesture, a theme laced with rather simple piano tricks alluding to a virtuoso style,” Szklener explained in a lengthy statement released after the document was revealed last month.
He and other experts conjecture the piece could have been a work in progress. It may have also been a copy of another’s work, or even co-written with someone else, perhaps a student for a musical exercise.
Jeffrey Kallberg, a University of Pennsylvania music professor and Chopin expert who helped authenticate the document, called the piece a “little gem” that Chopin likely intended as a gift for a friend or wealthy acquaintance.
“Many of the pieces that he gave as gifts were short – kind of like ‘appetizers’ to a full-blown work,” Kallberg said in an email. “And we don’t know for sure whether he intended the piece to see the light of day because he often wrote out the same waltz more than once as a gift.”
David Ludwig, dean of music at The Juilliard School, a performing arts conservatory in Manhattan, agreed the piece has many of the hallmarks of the composer’s style.
“It has the Chopin character of something very lyrical and it has a little bit of darkness as well,” said Ludwig, who was not involved in authenticating the document.
But Ludwig noted that, if it’s authentic, the tightly composed score would be one of Chopin’s shortest known pieces. The waltz clocks in at under a minute long when played on piano, as many of Chopin’s works were intended.
“In terms of the authenticity of it, in a way it doesn’t matter because it sparks our imaginations,” Ludwig said. “A discovery like this highlights the fact that classical music is very much a living art form.”
The Chopin reveal comes after the Leipzig Municipal Libraries in Germany announced in September that it had uncovered a previously unknown piece likely composed by a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in its collections.
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NEW YORK — Alice Brock, whose Massachusetts-based eatery helped inspire Arlo Guthrie’s deadpan Thanksgiving standard, Alice’s Restaurant Massacree, has died at age 83.
Her death, just a week before Thanksgiving, was announced Friday by Guthrie on the Facebook page of his own Rising Son Records. Guthrie wrote that she died in Provincetown, Massachusetts, her residence for some 40 years, and referred to her being in failing health. Other details were not immediately available.
“This coming Thanksgiving will be the first without her,” Guthrie wrote. “Alice and I spoke by phone a couple of weeks ago, and she sounded like her old self. We joked around and had a couple of good laughs even though we knew we’d never have another chance to talk together.”
Born Alice May Pelkey in New York City, Brock was a lifelong rebel who was a member of Students for a Democratic Society among other organizations. In the early 1960s, she dropped out of Sarah Lawrence College, moved to Greenwich Village and married Ray Brock, a woodworker who encouraged her to leave New York and resettle in Massachusetts.
Guthrie, son of the celebrated folk musician Woody Guthrie, first met Brock around 1962 when he was attending the Stockbridge School in Massachusetts and she was the librarian. They became friends and stayed in touch after he left school, when he would stay with her and her husband at the converted Stockbridge church that became the Brocks’ main residence.
On Thanksgiving Day, 1965, a simple chore led to Guthrie’s arrest, his eventual avoidance of military service during the Vietnam War and a song that has endured as a protest classic and holiday favorite. Guthrie and his friend Richard Robbins were helping the Brocks throw out trash but ended up tossing it down a hill because they couldn’t find an open dumpster. Police charged them with illegal dumping, briefly jailed them and fined them $50, a seemingly minor offense with major repercussions.
By 1966, Alice Brock was running The Back Room restaurant in Stockbridge, Guthrie was a rising star and his breakout song was an 18-minute talking blues that recounted his arrest and how it made him ineligible for the draft. The chorus was a tribute to Alice — whose restaurant, Guthrie pointed out, was not actually called Alice’s Restaurant — that countless fans have since memorized:
You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant / You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant / Walk right in it’s around the back / Just a half a mile from the railroad track / You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.
Guthrie assumed his song was too long to catch on commercially, but it soon became a radio perennial and part of the popular culture. Alice’s Restaurant was the title of his million-selling debut album, and the basis of a movie and cookbook of the same name. Alice Brock would write a memoir, My Life as a Restaurant, and collaborate with Guthrie on a children’s book, Mooses Come Walking. At the time of her death, they had been discussing an exhibit dedicated to her at her former Stockton home, now the Guthrie Center, which serves free dinners every Thanksgiving.
Brock ran three different restaurants at various times, although she would later acknowledge she initially didn’t care much for cooking or for business. She would also cite her professional life as a cause of her marriage breaking up, while disputing rumors that she had been unfaithful to her husband. Her honor was immortalized by Guthrie, who late in Alice’s Restaurant advised: “You can get anything you want” at Alice’s Restaurant, “excepting Alice.”
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Chinese hackers are positioning themselves in U.S. critical infrastructure IT networks for a potential clash with the United States, a top American cybersecurity official said Friday.
Morgan Adamski, executive director of U.S. Cyber Command, said Chinese-linked cyber operations are aimed at gaining an advantage in case of a major conflict with the United States.
Officials have warned that China-linked hackers have compromised IT networks and taken steps to carry out disruptive attacks in the event of a conflict. Their activities include gaining access to key networks to enable potential disruptions such as manipulating heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems in server rooms, or disrupting critical energy and water controls, U.S. officials said earlier this year.
Beijing routinely denies cyber operations targeting U.S. entities. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Adamski was speaking to researchers at the Cyberwarcon security conference in Arlington, Virginia. On Thursday, U.S. Senator Mark Warner told The Washington Post a suspected China-linked hack on U.S. telecommunications firms was the worst telecom hack in U.S. history.
That cyber espionage operation, dubbed “Salt Typhoon,” has included stolen call records data, compromised communications of top officials of both major U.S. presidential campaigns before the November 5 election, and telecommunications information related to U.S. law enforcement requests, the FBI said recently.
The FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are providing technical assistance and information to potential targets, the bureau said.
Adamski said Friday that the U.S. government has “executed globally synchronized activities, both offensively and defensively minded, that are laser-focused on degrading and disrupting PRC cyber operations worldwide.”
Public examples include exposing operations, sanctions, indictments, law enforcement actions and cybersecurity advisories, with input from multiple countries, Adamski said.
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From digital passports to apps that announce air alerts or enable conscripts to update their information in the draft register, Ukraine is now a world leader in the drive to digitalize government services. From Kyiv, Lesia Bakalets reports on how Russia’s full-scale invasion has pushed Ukraine’s drive to digitalize.
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WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to propose new rules governing undersea internet cables in the face of growing security concerns, as part of a review of regulations on the links that handle nearly all the world’s online traffic.
The FCC voted 5-0 on proposed updates to address the national security concerns over the global network of more than 400 subsea cables that handle more than 98% of international internet traffic.
“With the expansion of data centers, rise of cloud computing, and increasing bandwidth demands of new large language models, these facilities are poised to grow even more critical,” FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said.
Baltic nations said this week they are investigating whether the cutting of two fiber-optic undersea telecommunication cables in the Baltic Sea was sabotage.
Rosenworcel noted that in 2023 Taiwan accused two Chinese vessels of cutting the only two cables that support internet access on the Matsu Islands and Houthi attacks in the Red Sea may have been responsible for the cutting of three cables providing internet service to Europe and Asia.
“While the details of these incidents remain in dispute, what is clear is that these facilities — with locations that are openly published to prevent damage — are becoming a target,” Rosenworcel said.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington said “turning undersea cables into a political and security issue severely disrupts international market rules, threatens global digital connectivity and cybersecurity, and denies other countries, especially developing countries, the right to develop their undersea cable industry.”
The FCC is conducting its first major review since 2001 and proposing to bar foreign companies that have been denied telecommunications licenses on national security grounds from obtaining submarine cable landing licenses.
It also proposes to bar the use of equipment or services in those undersea cable facilities from companies on an FCC list of companies deemed to pose threats to U.S national security including Huawei, ZTE 000063.SZ 601728.SS, China Telecom 0728.HK and China Mobile 600941.SS.
FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said the commission is considering whether to bar companies from getting undersea cable licenses that are on other lists like the Commerce Department’s Consolidated Screening List. “China has made no secret of its goal to control the market, and therefore the data that flows throughout the world,” Starks said.
Last month, a bipartisan group of eight U.S. senators called on President Joe Biden to undertake “a review of existing vulnerabilities to global undersea cable infrastructure, including the threat of sabotage by Russia and China.”
The United States has for years expressed concerns about China’s role in handling network traffic and potential for espionage.
Since 2020, U.S. regulators have been instrumental in the cancellation of four cables whose backers had wanted to link the United States with Hong Kong.
In June, the FCC advanced a proposal to boost the security of information transmitted across the internet after government agencies said a Chinese carrier misrouted traffic.
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NEW YORK — Nick Pickles, the former head of global affairs at Elon Musk’s social media platform X, is joining forces with one of Musk’s rivals, his fellow OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman.
Pickles, who resigned from X in September, told Reuters on Wednesday that he will serve as chief policy officer for Altman’s Tools for Humanity, the company building the technology to support World Network, formerly known as Worldcoin.
Pickles’ old boss, Musk, and his new boss, Altman, founded ChatGPT creator OpenAI in 2015 but have since fallen out in a messy legal dispute.
World Network, which has faced scrutiny over its data collection, is ramping up efforts to scan people’s irises, using its “orb” devices, to create World ID.
The ID will serve as a digital passport to prove, in the online realm, that its holder is an actual human being as opposed to an AI bot.
Pickles told Reuters that AI is “on the cusp” of overtaking traditional online defenses to determine whether a user is a real person, such as Captcha puzzles. Once AI can blow through those barriers, trust on the Web will further disintegrate.
“It’s imminent,” said Pickles. “Throughout my time at X and at Twitter, one of the consistent issues that kept coming up is, ‘Is this a real account or a bot?'” He added: “I saw every day how this issue is going to be central to the future of online interaction.”
During his 10 years at X, formerly known as Twitter, Pickles served most recently as the company’s top ambassador to heads of state across the globe. In that capacity, he worked closely with policymakers and regulators to shape regulatory proposals, negotiate compliance and represent the company in global forums.
He received a promotion at X in July.
One month later, billionaire Musk sued OpenAI and Altman for allegedly violating contract provisions that would have put the public good ahead of profits.
Pickles declined to comment on the litigation.
Pickles said he was optimistic about the new regulatory framework likely to be ushered in by the administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
His priority, he said, is hiring a lobbyist in Washington.
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A piece of art that is little more than a banana duct-taped to a wall sold at auction for $6.2 million on Wednesday to cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun, Sotheby’s said, furthering the universal conversation about what constitutes art.
“Comedian,” by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, first rocked the art world upon its debut at Miami’s Art Basel in 2019, drawing such large crowds that the exhibit had to be taken down for public safety and to protect other works on display.
At Sotheby’s in New York on Wednesday, it went from a starting price of $800,000 to $5.2 million when the hammer fell about five minutes later, plus a buyer’s premium, or fee.
Bidding soared past the pre-sale high estimate of $1.5 million, Sotheby’s said, with bidders in the room, on the phone and online.
Sun, the Chinese collector and founder of the cryptocurrency Tron, placed the winning bid over the phone. He paid in crypto and it will be the buyer’s responsibility to replace the banana as it rots, according to Artnet.com.
“This is not just an artwork,” Sun said in a statement to Sotheby’s. “It represents a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community. I believe this piece will inspire more thought and discussion in the future and will become a part of history.”
Sun said he would eat the banana, as at least two spectators have done in other galleries on the piece’s trip around the world.
Cattelan is known for other bold works such as a golden toilet and a sculpture of the pope struck down by a meteorite.
Art experts said in a Sotheby’s video about the work that it was funny, absurd and a symbol of the excess of the art market, likening it to the Banksy work “Girl with Balloon” that shredded itself during a Sotheby’s auction in London in 2018.
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Farmers in Kenya are using artificial intelligence to help them get better crop yields. An AI-powered tool – called Virtual Agronomist – engages directly with farmers to help them create tailored plans to optimize the quality and quantity of their crops. Mohammed Yusuf has more from Mwea, Kenya.
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