Generative artificial intelligence companies are racing to build on the popularity of programs like ChatGPT, but AI regulation has not kept pace with the technology. Now, an incoming administration could favor U.S. domination over risk mitigation. Tina Trinh reports.
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When Pope Francis left the Vatican earlier this month for his traditional Christmastime outing downtown, he acknowledged what many Romans have been complaining about for months: That his big plans for a Holy Year had turned their city into a giant construction pit, with traffic-clogging roadworks tearing up major thoroughfares, scaffolding covering prized monuments and short-term rentals gobbling up apartment blocks.
Francis urged Romans to pray for their mayor — “He has a lot to do” — but to nevertheless welcome the upcoming Jubilee as a time of spiritual repair and renewal. “These worksites are fine, but beware: Don’t forget the worksites of the soul!” Francis said.
When he formally opens the Holy Year next week, Francis will launch a dizzying 12-month calendar of events that include special Jubilee Masses for the faithful from all walks of life: artists, adolescents, migrants, teachers and prisoners.
And while the Jubilee’s official start means the worst of the construction headache is ending, the arrival of a projected 32 million pilgrims in 2025 is set to only increase congestion in the Eternal City and intensify a housing crunch that has been driving residents away.
Like many European art capitals, Rome has been suffering from overtourism as the Italian travel sector rebounds from COVID-19: Last year, a record high number of people visited Italy, 133.6 million, with foreign tourists pushing Italy over the EU average in growth of the travel sector, national statistics bureau ISTAT reported.
Rome, with its innumerable artistic treasures, the Vatican and Italy’s busiest airport, was the top city in terms of nights booked in registered lodging, ISTAT said.
And yet for all its grande bellezze, Rome is hardly a modern European metropolis. It has notoriously inadequate public transportation and garbage collection. For the past two post-pandemic summers, taxis have been so hard to come by that the city of Rome authorized 1,000 new cab licenses for 2025.
Rome’s growing housing crisis — rents have risen about 10% this year — has gotten so bad that vigilantes have taken to going out at night with wire cutters to snip off the keyboxes on short-term apartment rentals that are blamed in part for driving up rents and driving out residents.
“The market is out of control and has definitely gotten worse with touristification, with the additional load of the Jubilee,” said Roberto Viviani, a university researcher whose landlord recently refused to renew his lease in favor of turning the apartment over to an agency to run as a holiday rental. “The surprise was that he gave the Jubilee as the justification.”
All of which has set the stage for a Jubilee opening Dec. 24 that is being received as something of a mixed bag. For the Vatican, the Holy Year is a centuries-old tradition of the faithful making pilgrimages to Rome every 25 years to visit the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul and receiving indulgences for the forgiveness of their sins in the process.
For the city of Rome, it’s a chance to take advantage of some 4 billion euros ($4.3 billion) in public funds to carry out long-delayed projects to lift the city out of years of decay and neglect and bring it up to modern, European standards.
But for Romans who have seen the short-term rental market take over neighborhoods like Pigneto, on the eastern flank of the capital, it’s just another pressure point in a long-running battle to keep the flavor of their neighborhoods with affordable rents for ordinary Romans.
“The Jubilee has significantly worsened this phenomenon that we have seen, above all in the last months,” said Alberto Campailla, director of the association Nonna Roma, which has been slapping stickers “Your BnB, our eviction” on Pigneto keyboxes to protest the growth of tourist rentals.
Rome’s relationship with Jubilees dates to 1300, when Pope Boniface VIII inaugurated the first Holy Year in what historians say marked the definitive designation of Rome as the center of Christianity. Even then, the number of pilgrims was so significant that Dante referred to them in his Inferno.
Massive public works projects have long accompanied Holy Years, including the creation of the Sistine Chapel (commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV for the Jubilee of 1475) and the big Vatican garage (for the 2000 Jubilee under St. John Paul II).
Some works have been controversial, such as the construction of Via della Concilliazione, the broad boulevard leading to St. Peter’s Square. An entire neighborhood was razed to make it for the 1950 Jubilee.
The main public works project for the 2025 Jubilee is actually an extension of that boulevard: A pedestrian piazza along the Tiber linking Via della Conciliazione to the nearby Castel St. Angelo, with the major road that had separated them diverted to an underground tunnel.
The project, at 79.5 million euros ($82.5 million) the most ambitious of the 2025 Jubilee works, ran into a predictable glitch over the summer when archaeological ruins were discovered during the dredging of the tunnel. The artifacts were transferred to the castle museum and the digging resumed, with the grand opening scheduled for Monday, the eve of the Jubilee’s start.
Mayor Roberto Gualtieri has pointed to another feature of the 2025 projects that previous Jubilees have largely ignored, an emphasis on parks and “green” initiatives, in keeping with Francis’ focus on environmental sustainability.
But Francis himself has acknowledged the paradox of the Jubilee on the lives of everyday Romans. He wrote to Rome-area priests and religious orders earlier this year to ask them to “make a courageous gesture of love” by offering up any unused housing or apartments in their increasingly empty convents and monasteries to Romans threatened with eviction.
“I want all diocesan realities that own real estate to offer their contribution to stem the housing emergency with signs of charity and solidarity to generate hope in the thousands of people in the city of Rome who are in a condition of precarious housing,” Francis wrote.
Gualtieri has gone farther, demanding alongside other mayors that the national government pass the necessary norms to let them regulate the proliferation of short-term rentals, which have been blamed for reducing the available long-term rental stock and driving up prices.
“This for us is an emergency because we need to prevent entire blocks of the center from emptying out and turning into B&Bs, because the presence of residents in the center is fundamental,” Gualtieri said.
Just this week, Gualtieri joined nine other European mayors in urging the European Commission do more to address the overall urban housing crisis in many cities, where homelessness and rising rents are driving out students and workers and threatening the cities’ abilities to attract and retain talent.
But the Vatican’s point-man for the Jubilee, Monsignor Rino Fisichella, defended the Holy Year as part of Rome’s fabric and denied the influx of pilgrims was anything but a net gain for the city.
“As long as it has existed, Rome has always been called a ‘common home,’ a city that has always been open to everyone,” Fisichella said on the sidelines of a Jubilee promotional event. “To think that Rome might reduce the presence of pilgrims or tourists would in my opinion inflict a wound that doesn’t belong to it.”
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BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA — On Christmas Eve in 1741, Moravian settlers named this Pennsylvania city after the biblical birthplace of Jesus. Nearly 300 years later, Moravians continue celebrating their Christmas season traditions in Bethlehem.
They include the “putz,” a Nativity scene that tells the story of Christ’s birth with miniature wooden figurines, the making of thousands of beeswax candles by hand as a symbol of the light that Jesus brought to the world and a “lovefeast,” a song service where worshippers share a simple meal of sweet buns and coffee in their pews.
“Like all Moravian traditions, the importance of it is that it brings people together,” said the Rev. Janel Rice, senior pastor of Central Moravian Church — Bethlehem’s first congregation and the oldest Moravian church in North America.
“Building community, emphasizing that, over doctrine or dogma, is really the Moravian practice and tradition at our core,” she said.
Moravians relate to the story of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Rice said, because their ancestors began as a refugee church fleeing religious persecution. The Nativity is also a poignant reminder today, when the number of people fleeing their homes because of war, violence and persecution continues to rise worldwide.
“It’s so crucial because this story is not just Jesus’s story of 2,000 years ago. It’s today’s story. And we need to make sure that we’re living the word that we were told when it comes to these refugees,” said church member Sarah Wascura. “That word is to give them refuge and to take care of them and to love them as ourselves.”
A town founded on Christmas Eve
The Moravian Church is one of the world’s oldest Protestant denominations. Its name comes from the historical provinces of Bohemia and Moravia in what is now the Czech Republic.
Their beliefs of practice over dogma began with a religious reformer, John Hus, who led a protest movement against some of the practices of Roman Catholic hierarchy. Hus believed congregants in his church should listen to Mass and read the Bible in their native Czech instead of Latin. He was accused of heresy and burned at the stake in 1415.
His ideas were carried on by his supporters, who broke with Rome and founded the Moravian Church, or Unitas Fratrum (Unity of Brethren) in 1457 — decades before Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation.
Moravians facing persecution eventually fled to Herrnhut, Germany, and established the original Renewed Moravian Church settlement, according to accounts of church history.
Moravian missionaries later settled in Pennsylvania.
On Christmas Eve in 1741, their leader, Count Nicolas Ludwig von Zinzendorf, who was visiting them, led them to a stable, where they sang the hymn Jesus Call Thou Me. Its lyrics say: “Not Jerusalem — lowly Bethlehem ’twas that gave us Christ to save us.” Thus inspired, Zinzendorf named the settlement Bethlehem.
Beloved tradition retells the story of the birth of Jesus
Bethlehem’s first settlers brought with them hand-carved figures to retell the story of Christ’s birth. The tradition is known as the putz, from the German word “putzen,” meaning to clean or decorate.
“It relates back to the creches of the Middle Ages,” Rice said. “But it’s not just a creche, which would be just the one Nativity scene.”
Instead, it uses figures to tell different parts of the Gospel in miniature, including Mary’s annunciation and the visit of the three wise men to the infant Jesus.
In Victorian days, Rice said, Bethlehem’s residents would “go putzing” — visiting each other’s homes between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day to look at Nativity scenes.
In 1937, the local chamber of commerce launched a campaign promoting Bethlehem as “Christmas City USA.” As part of that promotion, they took the tradition of the putz to the historic Hotel Bethlehem on Main Street. Thousands turned up.
“The story goes that the hotel got so crowded that they couldn’t really accommodate the number of people that were coming to see it, and they asked Central Moravian Church to host it.”
For every Christmas since then, the community putz has been put together by the church’s congregants and displayed at the nearby Christian education building.
“It’s more than Christmas for four weeks a year,” said Wascura, who went to the putz on her first date with Bob Wascura, her husband of 33 years.
“The nature of the faith heritage of the city is something that is never forgotten.”
On a recent day, she led families visiting the community putz to their seats. After recounting a brief history of the Moravian Church and the Pennsylvania city, she drew a curtain to display the dozens of wooden figures — angels, shepherds, kings carrying gifts — in a tiny landscape decorated with pebbles, wood and moss.
Children and parents listened to the recorded voice of Janel Rice, who narrated the biblical story about the other Bethlehem.
“We might wonder why setting up a putz and telling the story of Jesus’ birth is so important to the Moravians, and now to the city of Bethlehem,” Rice says in the recording. “One reason has to do with the naming of the city itself.”
The church choir, after some singing, gave way to the powerful sound of the renowned Moravian Trombone Choir, known for playing its brassy tunes from the belfry of Central Moravian Church. When the lights turned on, children approached the stage to look up close at the figurines and point at surprises near the manger, including miniature zebras, lions and giraffes.
“We feel really lucky to live so close to Bethlehem with all of the history here and specifically the history pertaining to Christmas,” said visitor Kelly Ann Ryan. “It’s just something that we can’t miss every holiday season as it rolls around.”
She came to Bethlehem from a nearby town with her husband, Daniel, and their 5- and 8-year-old sons to see the community putz, in what she said has become a family tradition.
“Telling the Christmas story this way is a great way for kids to connect with it.”
Lighting candles on Christmas Eve, joining Santa for a sleigh ride
Christmas — from the Christian celebration to the secular commercial holiday — is omnipresent in Bethlehem.
On a recent day, Santa Claus checked on a red sleigh (drawn by horses instead of reindeer) outside Central Moravian before he led families who hopped on for a tour of Bethlehem and its Moravian church settlements, which were recently designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
Others strolled to nearby holiday-themed wooden huts or along Main Street with its stores decorated with Christmas globes and Moravian stars. Some stopped outside an Italian restaurant to greet Santa and Mrs. Claus, who welcomed diners and posed for photos.
Across town, vendors sold ornaments at Christkindlmarkt, in the shadow of rusting blast furnaces of Bethlehem Steel illuminated in red and green. That company once supplied steel for construction of the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge and other landmarks.
At Central Moravian, the choir sang hymns while sacristans handed out buns and mugs of coffee to families who enjoyed the sustenance in their pews at the “lovefeast.”
After Rice delivered a final blessing, Linda Thudium walked up the stairs and opened a large closet, where the congregation keeps thousands of handmade candles wrapped in red ribbons that they light during Christmas services.
“To me, this is Christmas — looking at these candles,” said Thudium. She recalled attending Christmas Eve services with lit candles since she was 5, a tradition she continued with her children and grandchildren.
“To me, this is just magical. I remember my parents doing this, my grandparents,” she said. “It’s just a wonderful warm feeling of being connected with this church.”
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The National Building Museum has unveiled a new exhibition featuring over 2,500 rare artifacts. It’s called “Visible Vault: Open Collections’ and offers a glimpse into the history of architecture and construction. Maxim Adams has the story. Camera: Sergii Dogotar
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For Ukrainian teens displaced by war, adjusting to life in a new country is a complex journey. In New York City, there’s a school helping many of these students find a second home. Johny Fernandez reports from the Big Apple.
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As new potential threats from Chinese hackers were identified this week, the federal government issued one of its strongest warnings to date about the need for Americans — and in particular government officials and other “highly targeted” individuals — to secure their communications against eavesdropping and interception.
The warning came as news was breaking about a Commerce Department investigation into the possibility that computer network routers manufactured by the Chinese firm TP-Link may pose a threat to the millions of U.S. businesses, households and government agencies that use them.
Also on Wednesday, Congress took long-awaited steps toward funding a program that will purge other Chinese technology from U.S. telecommunications systems. The so-called rip-and-replace program targets gear manufactured by Chinese firms Huawei and ZTE.
Too far behind
While experts said the recent actions are a step in the right direction, they warned that U.S. policymakers have been extremely slow to react to a mountain of evidence that Chinese hackers have long been targeting essential communications and infrastructure systems in the U.S.
The lack of action has persisted despite law enforcement and intelligence agencies repeatedly sounding alarms.
In January, while testifying before the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, FBI Director Christopher Wray said, “There has been far too little public focus on the fact that [People’s Republic of China] hackers are targeting our critical infrastructure — our water treatment plants, our electrical grid, our oil and natural gas pipelines, our transportation systems. And the risk that poses to every American requires our attention now.”
A year previously, Wray had warned lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee that his investigators were badly outnumbered.
“To give you a sense of what we’re up against, if each one of the FBI’s cyber agents and intel analysts focused exclusively on the China threat, Chinese hackers would still outnumber FBI Cyber personnel by at least 50-to-1,” Wray said.
Decades of complexity
Part of the problem, experts said, is that it is difficult for policymakers to summon the political will to make changes that could be disruptive to the lives and livelihoods of U.S. citizens in the absence of public concern about the problem.
“It still remains very, very difficult to impress upon average, typical everyday citizens the gravity of Chinese espionage, or the extent of it,” said Bill Drexel, a fellow with the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.
He contrasted the relatively muted public response to the recent revelation of a Chinese hacking operation known as Salt Typhoon, which compromised mobile telephone networks throughout the country, with the uproar that accompanied the far less serious appearance of a Chinese spy balloon over the U.S. mainland in 2023.
“That just goes to show this … problem where really grave issues that are intangible — that are just in cyberspace — are really hard to wrap our minds around,” Drexel told VOA.
“For four decades, we intertwined our supply chains very deeply with China, and our digital systems became more and more complex, allowing more and more compounding ways to be hacked, to be compromised,” Drexel said.
“We’ve just started to try to change course on this stuff,” he added. “But there’s so much momentum for so long on these issues, and they continue to compound in complexity, such that it’s just really hard to catch up.”
Warning ‘highly targeted’ Americans
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued guidance on Wednesday, reporting that it “has identified cyber espionage activity by People’s Republic of China (PRC) government-affiliated threat actors targeting commercial telecommunications infrastructure.”
It continued, “This activity enabled the theft of customer call records and the compromise of private communications for a limited number of highly targeted individuals.”
The warning appeared to be related to the Salt Typhoon hack that, according to government investigators, compromised all the major mobile phone carriers in the U.S., giving the Chinese government extraordinary access to the communications among millions of Americans.
The five-page CISA document outlines steps that the agency advises all Americans, but particularly those most likely to be targeted, to take immediately.
The first is to immediately curtail use of standard mobile communications platforms, such as voice calls and Short Message Service (SMS) texting. Instead, the agency advises Americans to restrict their communications to free messaging platforms that offer end-to-end encryption, such as Signal, which support one-on-one and group chats, as well as voice and video calls. Data sent with end-to-end encryption is extremely difficult to decrypt, even if a malicious actor is able to intercept it during transmission.
Among the other advice CISA offered was to avoid using SMS messages for multifactor authentication by switching to apps that provide authenticator codes or, where possible, adopting hardware-based security keys for highly sensitive accounts. Other recommendations included the use of complex and random passwords stored in password manager software, as well as platform-specific suggestions for iPhone and Android users.
TP-Link concerns
On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported, and other outlets subsequently confirmed, that the Commerce Department, as well as the Justice and Defense departments, are investigating reports that computer routers manufactured by the Shenzhen-based TP-Link are one vector of attack for Chinese hackers.
TP-Link currently dominates the market for computer routers in the U.S., with nearly two-thirds of total market share. In October, a report from Microsoft revealed that one Chinese hacking operation it identified as CovertNetwork-1658 has compromised thousands of TP-Link routers to create a network that is used by “multiple Chinese threat actors” to gain illicit access to computer networks around the world.
The Journal’s reporting also revealed that the Commerce Department is considering a ban on the sale of TP-Link routers in the U.S. next year, an action that could significantly disrupt the U.S. market for networking hardware.
Rip and replace
Congress on Wednesday took long-delayed action to address a different potential threat from China, allocating $3 billion to a program that will remove telecommunications equipment manufactured by Huawei and ZTE from rural telecommunications networks in the U.S.
Funding for the rip-and-replace program arrives years after the U.S. identified the two companies as posing a potential threat.
Beginning in the first Trump administration and continuing during Joe Biden’s time in office, the U.S. pressured allies around the world to block the installation of Huawei and ZTE 5G cellular communications equipment from their networks, in some cases threatening to stop sharing sensitive intelligence with allies that failed to comply.
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washington — Experts on cybersecurity and online foreign influence campaigns are urging social media company Bluesky, whose app has exploded in popularity in recent weeks, to step up moderation to counter potential state-sponsored influence efforts.
Over the past month, Bluesky, a microblogging platform with its roots in Twitter, has seen one of its biggest increases in new user registrations since it was publicly released in February. Over 25 million are now on the platform, close to half of whom joined after the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Rose Wang, Bluesky’s chief operating officer, said in a recent interview that Bluesky does not intend to push any political ideologies.
“We have no political viewpoint that we are trying to promote,” she said in early December.
Exploiting users’ political leanings
Many who joined Bluesky have cited user experience as one of the reasons for migrating from social media platform X. They also have said they joined the platform after Election Day because they are critics of Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump. Some commentators in the U.S. have questioned whether Bluesky is risking becoming an echo chamber of the left.
Some experts contend the platform’s liberal-leaning users could be exploited by foreign propagandists. Joe Bodnar, who tracks foreign influence operations for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told VOA Mandarin that Russian propaganda often appeals to the anti-establishment left in the U.S. on contentious topics, like Gaza, gun violence and America’s global dominance.
“The Kremlin wants to make those arguments even louder,” Bodnar said. “Sometimes that means they play to the left.”
So far, at least three accounts that belong to RT, a Russia-controlled media outlet, have joined Bluesky. Sputnik Brazil is also actively posting on the platform.
VOA Mandarin found that at least two Chinese accounts that belong to state broadcaster CGTN have joined the platform.
Bluesky does not assign verification labels. One way to authenticate an account is for the person or organization to link it to the domain of its official website.
There are at least four other accounts that claim to be Chinese state media outlets, including China Daily, the Global Times and People’s Daily. None of the three publications replied to VOA’s emails inquiring about these accounts’ authenticity.
Additionally, Beijing has played heavily to the Western left on certain global issues. China has consistently called for a ceasefire in Gaza and blamed the West for supporting Israel.
But those familiar with Chinese and Russian state media say the left-leaning user base on Bluesky actually could give Beijing and Moscow a hard time for pushing their narratives.
“Bluesky isn’t the most hospitable place for Russian narratives,” Bodnar said.
Sean Haines, a British national who used to work for Chinese state media outlets, shared similar opinions in a recent blog post about Bluesky.
“With its predominately Western liberal leaning, the platform also will be an uphill challenge for those looking to push overtly nationalistic viewpoints,” he wrote.
Most of the Chinese and Russian state media accounts have only hundreds of followers, with RT en Espanol at the top, with nearly 7,000.
Could ‘decentralization’ be detrimental?
China and Russia have been finding ways to reach the American public through covert disinformation operations on social media. During this year’s election, disinformation campaigns connected to China and Russia promoted claims that cast doubt on the integrity of the voting process.
Similar tactics could soon be coming to Bluesky.
“I don’t think Bluesky is more vulnerable to influence campaigns than X or other social networks,” Jennifer Victoria Scurrell, a researcher on AI-supported influence operations, told VOA Mandarin. But Scurrell, of ETH Zurich’s Center for Security Studies, said Bluesky’s decentralized moderation approach is flawed.
Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, started Bluesky as an internal project to give users more power over moderation. Bluesky then went independent in 2021.
“Our mission is to develop and drive large-scale technologies of open and decentralized public conversation,” the company says on its website.
To do that, Bluesky “decentralized” its moderation authority, giving users tools to customize their experience on the site.
Bluesky offers a universal basic moderation setting for every user, which labels content such as extremism, misinformation, fake accounts and adult content. Users can choose whether to see the content labeled by Bluesky. Users can report to Bluesky content or accounts they believe have violated Bluesky’s guidelines.
On top of that, users get to create their own moderation settings to label or filter out certain content and accounts. Other users can subscribe to these customized settings, should they choose.
Scurrell, who helps test security weaknesses for OpenAI as a contractor, told VOA Mandarin the decentralized approach to moderation could be a double-edged sword.
“Societal values are diverse, contextual and local, which makes decentralized moderation an appealing concept,” she wrote in her replies to VOA.
She warned that outsourcing content moderation to users, though, “raises serious concerns” because the approach would give bad actors the same amount of power as normal users.
“What happens if an entire node is taken over by malicious actors spreading disinformation or manipulative content,” she wrote, or “if the system gets hijacked by an army of bots?”
VOA Mandarin emailed Bluesky a list of detailed questions about its moderation policy against potential foreign influence attempts but did not receive a response.
Experts have urged Bluesky to implement measures to counter potential foreign influence campaigns.
In a recent blog post, Sarah Cook, an independent China watcher and former China director at Freedom House, urged Bluesky to label state media accounts, a practice exercised by many social media companies, so users know of these accounts’ ties to foreign governments.
Eugenio Benincasa, an expert on Chinese cyber threats at ETH Zurich, asserts that studying how Chinese tech companies help Beijing surveil social media platforms and manipulate online discussions can help Bluesky better prepare.
“It is crucial to thoroughly study the evolving influence tactics enabled by tools like public opinion monitoring systems to identify vulnerabilities that may have been overlooked or are emerging, in order to develop effective safeguards,” Benincasa said.
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. cybersecurity watchdog CISA is telling senior American government officials and politicians to immediately switch to end-to-end encrypted messaging following intrusions at major American telecoms blamed on Chinese hackers.
In written guidance released on Wednesday, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said “individuals who are in senior government or senior political positions” should “immediately review and apply” a series of best practices around the use of mobile devices.
The first recommendation: “Use only end-to-end encrypted communications.”
End-to-end encryption — a data protection technique that aims to make data unreadable by anyone except its sender and its recipient — is baked into various chat apps, including Meta Platforms’ WhatsApp, Apple’s iMessage, and the privacy-focused app Signal. Corporate offerings, which allow end-to-end encryption, also include Microsoft’s Teams and Zoom Communications’ meetings.
CISA’s message is the latest in a series of increasingly stark warnings issued by American officials in the wake of dramatic hacks of U.S. telecom companies by a group dubbed “Salt Typhoon.”
Last week, Democratic Senator Ben Ray Lujan said, “this attack likely represents the largest telecommunications hack in our nation’s history.”
U.S. officials have blamed China for the hacking. Beijing routinely denies allegations of cyberespionage.
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court decided on Wednesday to hear a bid by TikTok and its China-based parent company, ByteDance, to block a law intended to force the sale of the short-video app by January 19 or face a ban on national security grounds.
The justices did not immediately act on an emergency request by TikTok and ByteDance, as well as by some of its users who post content on the social media platform, for an injunction to halt the looming ban, opting instead to hear arguments on the matter on January 10.
The challengers are appealing a lower court’s ruling that upheld the law. TikTok is used by about 170 million Americans.
Congress passed the measure in April and President Joe Biden, a Democrat, signed it into law. The Justice Department had said that as a Chinese company, TikTok poses “a national-security threat of immense depth and scale” because of its access to vast amounts of data on American users, from locations to private messages, and its ability to secretly manipulate content that Americans view on the app. TikTok has said it poses no imminent threat to U.S. security.
TikTok and ByteDance asked the Supreme Court on December 16 to pause the law, which they said violates free speech protections under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.
TikTok on Wednesday said it was pleased the court will take up the issue. “We believe the court will find the TikTok ban unconstitutional so the over 170 million Americans on our platform can continue to exercise their free speech rights,” the company said.
The companies said that being shuttered for even one month would cause TikTok to lose about a third of its U.S. users and undermine its ability to attract advertisers and recruit content creators and employee talent.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington on December 6 rejected the First Amendment arguments by the companies.
In their filing to the Supreme Court, TikTok and ByteDance said that “if Americans, duly informed of the alleged risks of ‘covert’ content manipulation, choose to continue viewing content on TikTok with their eyes wide open, the First Amendment entrusts them with making that choice, free from the government’s censorship.”
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday, in a brief filed with the Supreme Court, urged the court to reject any delay, comparing TikTok to a hardened criminal.
A U.S. ban on TikTok would make the company far less valuable to ByteDance and its investors, and hurt businesses that depend on TikTok to drive their sales.
Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok during his first term in the White House in 2020, has reversed his stance and promised during the presidential race this year that he would try to save TikTok. Trump said on Dec. 16 that he has “a warm spot in my heart for TikTok” and that he would “take a look” at the matter.
Trump takes office on January 20, the day after the TikTok deadline under the law.
In its decision, the D.C. Circuit wrote, “The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here the government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”
TikTok has denied it has or ever would share U.S. user data, accusing U.S. lawmakers in the lawsuit of advancing speculative concerns. It has characterized the ban as a “radical departure from this country’s tradition of championing an open Internet.”
The dispute comes at a time of growing trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies after the Biden administration placed new restrictions on the Chinese chip industry and China responded with a ban on exports of gallium, germanium and antimony, metals which are used in making high-tech microchips, to the United States.
The U.S. law would bar providing certain services to TikTok and other foreign adversary-controlled apps including offering it through app stores such as Apple and Alphabet’s Google, effectively preventing TikTok’s continued U.S. use unless ByteDance divests TikTok by the deadline.
An unimpeded ban could open the door to a future crackdown on other foreign-owned apps. In 2020, Trump had also tried to ban WeChat, owned by Chinese company Tencent, but was blocked by the courts.
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A bipartisan effort to protect children from the harms of social media is running out of time in this session of the U.S. Congress. If passed, the Kids Online Safety Act would institute safeguards for minors’ personal data online. But free speech advocates and some Republicans are concerned the bill could lead to censorship. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more. Kim Lewis contributed to this story.
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Paris — The Democratic Republic of Congo has filed criminal complaints against Apple subsidiaries in France and Belgium, accusing the tech firm of using conflict minerals in its supply chain, lawyers for the Congolese government told Reuters.
Congo is a major source of tin, tantalum and tungsten, so-called 3T minerals used in computers and mobile phones. But some artisanal mines are run by armed groups involved in massacres of civilians, mass rapes, looting and other crimes, according to U.N. experts and human rights groups.
Apple does not directly source primary minerals and says it audits suppliers, publishes findings and funds bodies that seek to improve mineral traceability.
Apple last year said it had “no reasonable basis for concluding” its products contain illegally exported minerals from conflict-hit zones. The tech giant has insisted it carefully verifies the origin of materials in its output.
Its 2023 filing on conflict minerals to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said none of the smelters or refiners of 3T minerals or gold in its supply chain had financed or benefited armed groups in Congo or neighboring countries.
But international lawyers representing Congo argue that Apple uses minerals pillaged from Congo and laundered through international supply chains, which they say renders the firm complicit in crimes taking place in Congo.
In parallel complaints filed to the Paris prosecutor’s office and to a Belgian investigating magistrate’s office on Monday, Congo accuses local subsidiaries Apple France, Apple Retail France and Apple Retail Belgium of a range of offenses.
These include covering up war crimes and the laundering of tainted minerals, handling stolen goods, and carrying out deceptive commercial practices to assure consumers supply chains are clean.
“It is clear that the Apple group, Apple France and Apple Retail France know very well that their minerals supply chain relies on systemic wrongdoing,” says the French complaint, after citing U.N. and rights reports on conflict in east Congo.
Belgium had a particular moral duty to act because looting of Congo’s resources began during the 19th-century colonial rule of its King Leopold II, Congo’s Belgian lawyer Christophe Marchand said.
“It is incumbent on Belgium to help Congo in its effort to use judicial means to end the pillaging,” he said.
The complaints, prepared by the lawyers on behalf of Congo’s justice minister, make allegations not just against the local subsidiaries but against the Apple group as a whole.
France and Belgium were chosen because of their perceived strong emphasis on corporate accountability. Judicial authorities in both nations will decide whether to investigate the complaints further and bring criminal charges.
In an unrelated case in March, a U.S. federal court rejected an attempt by private plaintiffs to hold Apple, Google, Tesla, Dell and Microsoft accountable for what the plaintiffs described as their dependence on child labor in Congolese cobalt mines.
Minerals fuel violence
Since the 1990s, Congo’s mining heartlands in the east have been devastated by waves of fighting between armed groups, some backed by neighboring Rwanda, and the Congolese military.
Millions of civilians have died and been displaced.
Competition for minerals is one of the main drivers of conflict as armed groups sustain themselves and buy weapons with the proceeds of exports, often smuggled via Rwanda, according to U.N. experts and human rights organizations.
Rwanda denies benefiting from the trade, dismissing the allegations as unfounded.
Among the appendices to Congo’s legal complaint in France was a statement issued by the U.S. State Department in July, expressing concerns about the role of the illicit trade in minerals from Congo, including tantalum, in financing conflict.
The statement was a response to requests from the private sector for the U.S. government to clarify potential risks associated with manufacturing products using minerals extracted, transported or exported from eastern Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.
Congo’s complaints focus on ITSCI, a metals industry-funded monitoring and certification scheme designed to help companies perform due diligence on suppliers of 3T minerals exported from Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda.
Congo’s lawyers argue that ITSCI has been discredited, including by the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI) of which Apple is a member, and that Apple nevertheless uses ITSCI as a fig leaf to falsely present its supply chain as clean.
The RMI, whose members include more than 500 companies, announced in 2022 it was removing ITSCI from its list of approved traceability schemes.
In July, it said it was prolonging the suspension until at least 2026, saying ITSCI had not provided field observations from high-risk sites or explained how it was responding to an escalation of violence in North Kivu province, which borders Rwanda and is a key 3T mining area.
ITSCI criticized the RMI’s own processes and defended its work in Congo as reliable. It has also rejected allegations in a 2022 report by campaigning group Global Witness entitled “The ITSCI Laundromat,” cited in Congo’s legal complaint in France, that it was complicit in the false labeling of minerals from conflict zones as coming from mines located in peaceful areas.
Apple mentioned ITSCI five times in its 2023 filing on conflict minerals. The filing also made multiple mentions of the RMI, in which Apple said it had continued active participation and leadership but did not mention the RMI’s ditching of ITSCI.
In its July statement, the U.S. State Department said flaws in traceability schemes have not garnered sufficient engagement and attention to lead to changes needed.
Robert Amsterdam, a U.S.-based lawyer for Congo, said the French and Belgian complaints were the first criminal complaints by the Congolese state against a major tech company, describing them as a “first salvo” only.
Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse.
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DOHA, QATAR — It could only have been her.
Marta won the inaugural FIFA award for the best goal in women’s soccer — named after the Brazil great.
The 38-year-old was given the Marta Award at FIFA’s “The Best” awards on Tuesday for her goal for Brazil in an international friendly against Jamaica in June.
Prior to this year, the Puskas award covered all of soccer but it was decided to award it to the best goal in the men’s game — won this year by Manchester United forward Alejandro Garnacho — and create the new Marta Award for the women’s game.
“To compete against so many great players — we had some fantastic goals,” she said. “It’s been a wonderful season, too. But I’m even happier to receive an award that bears my name; this is undoubtedly the greatest honor.”
Marta is widely regarded as the greatest female soccer player of all time and had won the award for the women’s player of the year on a record six occasions.
She scored a record 119 goals for Brazil in 185 appearances for her country, spanning six World Cups and six Olympics, before retiring from international soccer after the Paris Games — where Brazil lost to the United States in the final.
Marta won the first NWSL title of her career last month when Orlando Pride beat Washington Spirit 1-0 in the final. She had scored in the semifinal.
Marta was asked the day before the title match if she thought it was possible she might give the award to herself.
“You guys need to decide, because who votes for the best goal in the year? It’s you. It’s the people in the public. So it should be really interesting, like Marta’s Award goes to Marta!” she said with a laugh.
The Marta Award was voted for by fans and a panel of FIFA legends.
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LONDON — European Union regulators said Tuesday they’re investigating whether TikTok breached the bloc’s digital rulebook by failing to deal with risks to Romania’s presidential election, which has been thrown into turmoil over allegations of electoral violations and Russian meddling.
The European Commission is escalating its scrutiny of the popular video-sharing platform after Romania’s top court canceled results of the first round of voting that resulted in an unknown far-right candidate becoming the front-runner.
The court made its unprecedented decision after authorities in the European Union and NATO member country declassified documents alleging Moscow organized a sprawling social media campaign to promote a long-shot candidate, Calin Georgescu.
“Following serious indications that foreign actors interfered in the Romanian presidential elections by using TikTok, we are now thoroughly investigating whether TikTok has violated the Digital Services Act by failing to tackle such risks,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a press release. “It should be crystal clear that in the EU, all online platforms, including TikTok, must be held accountable.”
The European Commission is the 27-nation European Union’s executive arm and enforces the bloc’s Digital Services Act, a sweeping set of regulations intended to clean up social media platforms and protect users from risks such as election-related misinformation. It ordered TikTok earlier this month to retain all information related to the election.
In the preliminary round of voting on Nov. 24 Georgescu was an outsider among the 13 candidates but ended up topping the polls. He was due to face a pro-EU reformist rival in a runoff before the court canceled the results.
The declassified files alleged that there was an “aggressive promotion campaign” to boost Georgescu’s popularity, including payments worth a total of $381,000 to TikTok influencers to promote him on the platform.
TikTok said it has “protected the integrity” of its platform over 150 elections around the world and is continuing to address these “industry-wide challenges.”
“TikTok has provided the European Commission with extensive information regarding these efforts, and we have transparently and publicly detailed our robust actions,” it said in a statement.
The commission said its investigation will focus on TikTok’s content recommendation systems, especially on risks related to “coordinated inauthentic manipulation or automated exploitation.” It’s also looking at TikTok’s policies on political advertisements and “paid-for political content.”
TikTok said it doesn’t accept paid political ads and “proactively” removes content for violating policies on misinformation.
The investigation could result in TikTok making changes to fix problems or fines worth up to 6% of the company’s total global revenue.
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Denver, Colorado — Dozens of kids cheered on a festively decked-out plane in Denver on Saturday when the pilot announced their destination for the day: the North Pole.
More than 100 children, some of whom have serious health issues, were then taken on a roughly 45-minute flight near the city before landing back at Denver International Airport and being towed to a hangar transformed by United Airlines employees and volunteers into the North Pole.
Streamers, paper snowflakes and tufts of cotton resembling feathery snow dotted the plane and seats. Flight personnel paraded a bubble machine up and down the aisle to shouts of “bubbles, bubbles, bubbles” from the excited children. Holiday songs played in the background and there were apple snacks and juice for all.
Before landing, the children were asked to close their window shades. When they opened, the kids were met by the sight of a waiting Santa and Mrs. Claus and a host of elves. An ice cream truck was on hand and the children received gifts.
Bryce Bosley, 6, was tickled to see Santa and all the North Pole had to offer.
“The North Pole is fun because there’s games, food, and all the activities are really fun,” he said.
United Capt. Bob Zimmermann, the holiday flight’s pilot, was struck by the joy and wonder of the youngsters.
“Throughout the year I’ll think of the fantasy flight,” he said. “When life seems to get tough or I want to complain about something, I remember these kids and the joy and the love and what this feels like, and it just keeps my life in perspective.”
United partnered with Make-A-Wish Colorado, Girls Inc., Children’s Hospital Colorado and Rocky Mountain Down Syndrome Association to invite Denver-area kids ages 3 to 10 years on the flight.
For more than 30 years, United has staged its annual “fantasy flights” to fictional North Poles at airports around the world to bring holiday cheer to children and their families.
This year they took place in 13 cities, starting Dec. 5 in Honolulu and then in Washington, Houston, Los Angeles, London, Chicago, San Francisco, Tokyo, Cleveland and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and on the island of Guam. Newark, New Jersey, also had a flight Saturday.
Jonna McGrath, United’s vice president for operations at its Denver hub, has participated in 29 flights and said it is one of her favorite days of the year.
“It gives them a day where they are away from some of the challenges they face in their day-to-day life,” said McGrath, who was dressed as an elf. “Bringing a little magic and some gifts to their holiday season is something they’ll never forget.”
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The Spider-Man spinoff “Kraven the Hunter” got off to a disastrous start in North American theaters this weekend.
The movie starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson earned only $11 million, according to studio estimates Sunday, making it one of the worst openings for a Marvel-adjacent property. Its box office take was even less than the film “Madame Web.”
The weekend’s other major studio release was Warner Bros.’ animated “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” which made $4.6 million. Made for about $30 million, the movie is set 183 years before the events of “The Lord of the Rings” films and was fast-tracked to ensure New Line did not lose the rights to Tolkien’s novels. Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens have been working on future live-action films for the franchise.
Meanwhile, the top of the charts again belonged to “Moana 2” and “Wicked.”
“Moana” added $26.6 million to its domestic total in its third weekend and $57.2 million internationally, bringing its global tally to $717 million. It’s now the fourth highest grossing film of the year, surpassing “Dune: Part Two.”
“Wicked,” which is in its fourth weekend, brought in another $22.5 million to take second place. The Universal musical has made over $359 million domestically and over $500 million worldwide.
“Gladiator II” also made $7.8 million, bringing its domestic total to $145.9 million in four weeks.
“Kraven the Hunter” is the latest misfire from Sony in its attempt to mine the Spider-Man universe for spin-off franchises without the lucrative web slinger himself. “Kraven” joins “Madame Web” and “Morbius” in franchise additions that fell flat with both audiences and critics. The one exception on this rollercoaster journey has been the “Venom” trilogy, which has made over $1.8 billion worldwide.
The R-rated “Kraven the Hunter” was directed by J.C. Chandor and faced a number of delays, partly due to the Hollywood strikes. It was shot nearly three years ago and originally slated to hit theaters in January 2023. The film cost a reported $110 million to produce and was co-financed by TSG. Internationally, it made $15 million, but its potential for longevity appears limited: It currently carries a 15% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes and got a C grade on CinemaScore from opening weekend audiences.
“It’s not always a guarantee that you’ll be able to connect with audiences when you have a spinoff character,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “General audiences seem to want to know exactly what they’re getting.”
Several awards contenders opened in limited release over the weekend, including Paramount’s “September 5” about ABC’s coverage of the Munich Olympics hostage crisis. Amazon MGM and Orion’s “Nickel Boys,” based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winner about an abusive reform school in Florida, opened in two theaters in New York. It averaged $30,422 per screen and will be expanding to Los Angeles before going nationwide in the coming weeks.
Some big hitters are on the way in the home stretch of the 2024 box office. “Mufasa” and “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” will hit in the coming weeks along with a bevy of arthouse and adult releases like “Babygirl,” “Nosferatu” and “A Complete Unknown.”
The box office has seen a dramatic recovery since June, when it was down nearly 28% from the previous year. The deficit now stands at 4.8%.
Final domestic figures will be released Monday. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:
“Moana 2,” $26.6 million.
“Wicked,” $22.5 million.
“Kraven the Hunter,” $11 million.
“Gladiator II,” $7.8 million.
“Red One,” $4.6 million.
“Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” $4.5 million.
“Interstellar” (rerelease), $3.3 million.
“Pushpa: The Rule — Part 2,” $1.6 million.
“The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” $1.4 million.
“Queer,” $790,954.
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President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Brendan Carr to lead the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates communications in the United States. Carr, an FCC commissioner since 2017, has taken aim at big tech and China’s influence on U.S. communications. VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports.
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ATHENS, GREECE — Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, a smile spreads across the little girl’s face. Blinking behind her glasses, she inches her wheelchair forward and gently reaches out to stroke the tiny gray horse.
Soon, 9-year-old Josifina Topa Mazuch is beaming as she leads Ivi, a specially trained miniature horse, standing no taller than her pink wheelchair, through the school hallway.
“I really want them to come again,” Josifina said of Ivi and a second miniature horse, Calypso, after a November morning visit to her Athens primary school for children with special needs. “They made me feel really happy.”
Ivi and Calypso are two of eight miniature horses from Gentle Carousel Greece, a Greek offshoot of Florida-based charity Gentle Carousel Miniature Therapy Horses offering visits to hospitals, rehabilitation centers and care homes.
Trained over two years to work comfortably in confined environments and with vulnerable children and adults, the tiny equines, which stand about 75 centimeters tall, provide a form of pet therapy that carers say offers valuable interactions and learning experiences, particularly to people confined to hospitals or care homes.
But the charity they are part of is struggling to make ends meet — run by one woman who funds the entire operation herself, with one assistant and no support team.
How it all began
Started in 2014 by Mina Karagianni, an interior architect and designer, the Athens operation is the only one affiliated with the Florida-based charity outside the United States. Karagianni came across Gentle Carousel while scouring the internet for information on caring for an abandoned Shetland pony she had rescued.
When she saw photos of the charity’s work in pediatric oncology wards, “I was touched and I was moved, and I said: ‘OK, we have to bring this to Greece,'” she said.
It took months to track down and persuade the U.S. charity to work with her, and even longer to obtain the requisite permits and arrange transport to bring the horses over. But after incessant efforts, six already trained miniature horses stepped off a flight from Florida via Frankfurt in November 2013.
Entirely self-funded through her day job, Karagianni now has a total of eight horses — the American six, one that was later born in Greece, and Billy, the rescued pony.
Karagianni transformed her family land in Rafina, a seaside area east of Athens, into Magic Garden, complete with stables, a paddock for the horses to run free every day, a small café and an area to host children’s parties and baptisms.
At the time, she was open for visits every weekend, charging a small entrance fee to help cover running costs – specialized food for the horses, wood shavings for their bedding, grooming material, veterinarian visits and transportation to and from hospitals and care homes. She also began visiting schools and setting up an education program.
From 2014 when Gentle Carousel Greece first opened until the first COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, Karagianni said her little equine team saw roughly 12,000 children.
Hard times
But the lockdowns took their toll. Karagianni had to shut down the café and hasn’t been able to reopen since.
With even the tiny income from the café drying up, and Karagianni herself facing a health issue that took her out for 1 ½ years, “we fell apart,” she said. Unable to meet utility bills, both the electricity and water companies cut off her supply, leaving her relying on neighbors for water for the horses.
“I’m just starting to get myself back together again now,” she said. “With a lot of financial difficulties. But what can I do? I’m trying.”
She’s got the utilities running again, but still owes thousands of euros. Approaches to companies and institutions for funding have been unsuccessful so far. “Maybe I just don’t know how to ask properly,” Karagianni said.
Running Gentle Carousel single-handedly is taking its toll. “I’m making super-human efforts,” said Karagianni, who at 68 wonders for how long she can go on and is searching for someone to ensure the program’s continuity.
“I’m doing what I can. But I can’t do it alone,” she said. “I can’t do it without a team.”
The joy they bring to children
Despite her financial struggles, Karagianni said seeing the horses’ effect, particularly on children, makes her determined to continue for as long as she can.
During a visit to the Athens special needs primary school, staff lined up children in wheelchairs so each could spend a few moments with the horses. Some reached out to stroke them; others bent their heads forward over the miniature horses for a kiss.
“It’s incredible, the reactions. It’s like something awakens their senses,” said special needs teacher Eleni Volikaki.
The state-run school, which shares facilities with a private charity for disabled children, ELEPAP, caters to children aged 6-14 with cognitive or mobility problems, or both. Anything that encourages the children to make even small hand gestures, such as reaching out to stroke a horse, “is very important for us. Especially when it’s spontaneous and comes directly from the child and isn’t instigated by us,” Volikaki said.
“We saw things we didn’t expect. We saw children with autism, or children who are generally afraid of animals, coming very close, letting the ponies get close to them,” Volikaki said. “And we saw … spontaneous contact that under other circumstances we wouldn’t see.”
Equines also help adults
The tiny horses don’t just enchant children.
In the seaside area of Nea Makri northeast of Athens, residents of an adult psychiatric care home gather to greet Omiros – Homer in Greek – a 12-year-old miniature gray and white stallion with a flowing mane and blue eyes.
Some show their excitement at the long-anticipated visit. Others are shyer at first, but nearly all eventually approach Omiros, leading him around the home’s recreation room or simply whispering to him.
The interaction is invaluable, said social worker Alex Krokidas, who heads the staff at the Iasis home.
“It offers, even if only briefly, the chance to create a bond that isn’t threatening, that has tenderness, quietness,” Krokidas said. “Let’s not forget, these people have faced many difficulties in their lives.”
Meeting Omiros and having a few moments each with him “gives them the opportunity to be a bit calmer, to not feel threatened, to stroke the animal,” Krokidas said. “All of that is very therapeutic, it is deeply therapeutic.”
Giorgos, one of the residents, initially kept his distance before letting Omiros come close. He leaned his head near the flowing mane.
“He gave me a beautiful feeling when he was here,” he said after Omiros headed back into the recreation room. “Now that it’s gone, I feel an absence.”
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Hundreds of thousands of Rhode Island residents’ personal and bank information, including Social Security numbers, were likely hacked by an international cybercriminal group asking for a ransom, state officials said on Saturday.
In what Rhode Island officials described as extortion, the hackers threatened to release the stolen information unless they were paid an undisclosed amount of money.
The breached data affects people who use the state’s government assistance programs and includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and healthcare purchased through the state’s HealthSource RI, Governor Dan McKee announced on Friday.
Hackers gained access to RIBridges, the state’s online portal for obtaining social services earlier this month, the governor’s office said in a statement, but the breach was not confirmed by its vendor, Deloitte, until Friday.
“Deloitte confirmed that there is a high probability that a cybercriminal has obtained files with personally identifiable information from RIBridges,” the governor’s office said in a statement on Saturday.
A representative from McKee’s office was not immediately available to Reuters for comment.
Anyone who has applied for or received benefits through those programs since 2016 could be affected.
The state directed Deloitte to shut down RIBridges to remediate the threat, and for the time being, anyone applying for new benefits will have to do so on paper applications until the system is back up.
Households believed to have been affected will receive a letter from the state notifying them of the problem and explaining steps to be taken to help protect their data and bank accounts.
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WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND — A New Zealand man playing his first-ever competitive Scrabble game in Spanish, a language he doesn’t speak, has won the board game’s Spanish-language world title.
Nigel Richards, a professional player who holds five English-language world titles, won the Spanish world Scrabble championships in Granada, Spain, in November, losing one game out of 24.
Richards started memorizing the language’s Scrabble word list a year ago, his friend Liz Fagerlund -– a New Zealand Scrabble official -– told The Associated Press.
“He can’t understand why other people can’t just do the same thing,” she said. “He can look at a block of words together, and once they go into his brain as a picture he can just recall that very easily.”
In second place was defending champion Benjamín Olaizola of Argentina, who won 18 of his games.
Nothing like the New Zealander’s feat had ever happened in Spanish Scrabble, said Alejandro Terenzani, a contest organizer.
“It was impossible to react negatively, you can only be amazed,” Terenzani said. “We certainly expected that he would perform well, but it is perhaps true that he surpassed our expectations.”
Richards has done this before. In 2015, he became the French language Scrabble world champion, despite not speaking French, after studying the word list for nine weeks. He took the French title again in 2018.
Recognized in international Scrabble over his three-decade career as the greatest player of all time, Richards’ Spanish language victory was notable even by his standards, other players said.
While compensating for different tile values in English and Spanish Scrabble, Richards also had to contend with thousands of additional seven, eight and nine letter words in the Spanish language -– which demand a different strategy.
Richards in 2008 was the first player ever to hold the world, U.S. and British titles simultaneously, despite having to “forget” 40,000 English words that do not appear in the American Scrabble word list to triumph in the U.S.
His victories are legendary in the Scrabble community, and games analyzed in YouTube videos watched by tens of thousands.
Scrabble does not require players to know the definitions of words, only what combinations of letters are allowed in a country’s version of the game, but native speakers have “a huge leg up,” American Scrabble player Will Anderson said in a video summarizing Richards’ Spanish win.
Richards’ mother, Adrienne Fischer, told a New Zealand newspaper in 2010 that he did not excel at English in school, never attended university and took a mathematical approach to the game rather than a linguistic one.
“I don’t think he’s ever read a book, apart from the dictionary,” she said.
Fagerlund said Richards impressed her when he arrived at his first Scrabble club meeting at age 28. Two years later, in 1997, he cycled 350 kilometers from Christchurch to the city of Dunedin, won the New Zealand title on his first attempt and cycled home again.
At the Spanish event he was shy and modest, organizer Terenzani said, but happily posed for photos and spoke with fans who approached him.
“Although he did so in English, of course,” Terenzani added.
What motivates Richards, who now lives in Malaysia, is a mystery. He never speaks to reporters.
“I get lots of requests from journalists wanting to interview him and he’s not interested,” Fagerlund said. “He doesn’t understand what all the hoo-ha is about.”
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NEW DELHI — A popular actor in southern India was released from jail on bail on Saturday, a day after he was arrested by police in connection with a stampede that led to the death of a woman at the premiere of his movie earlier this month.
A 35-year-old woman died and her 8-year-old son was critically injured in the stampede, which occurred during the screening of Allu Arjun’s release for Pushpa 2: The Rule in southern Telangana state’s Hyderabad city on December 4.
Arjun was arrested after the woman’s husband filed a case against him, his security team and the theater’s management for not informing police of the actor’s plan to attend the screening, which resulted in a larger-than-expected crowd. Police charged the actor, his security team and the theater’s management staff with culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
Police have already arrested the theater’s owner and two of his employees in connection with the case.
A local court on Friday ordered the actor to spend 14 days in jail, but within hours the Telangana High Court granted him bail. However, the actor had to spend the night in jail because prison authorities did not receive a copy of the bail until late Friday, the Press Trust of India reported.
The accident happened after the 41-year-old actor made a surprise appearance at a local theater where the movie was being screened. As his fans surged toward the venue, the theater’s main gate collapsed, resulting in the stampede.
The actor did not comment on the police charges or his arrest. But shortly after the accident, Arjun wrote on the social platform X that he was “heartbroken by the tragic incident.” He later announced financial assistance of $29,000 for the woman’s family and promised to take care of the medical expenses for her injured son.
Deadly stampedes are relatively common in India, where large crowds gather in small areas with shoddy infrastructure and few crowd safety measures.
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