Thousands of Ukrainians fleeing the war found refuge in the small town of Uzhhorod in Ukraine. A local theater director decided to stage the Shakespearean play, King Lear, to help refugees find some normalcy during the war. They were surprised by what happened next. Angelina Bagdasaryan has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Vazgen Varzhabetian
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Astronomers have created a stunning mosaic of baby star clusters hiding in our galactic backyard.
The montage, published Thursday, reveals five vast stellar nurseries less than 1,500 light-years away. A light-year is nearly 9.7 trillion kilometers.
To come up with their atlas, scientists pieced together more than 1 million images taken over five years by the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The observatory’s infrared survey telescope was able to peer through clouds of dust and discern infant stars.
“We can detect even the faintest sources of light, like stars far less massive than the sun, revealing objects that no one has ever seen before,” University of Vienna’s Stefan Meingast, the lead author, said in a statement.
The observations, conducted from 2017 to 2022, will help researchers better understand how stars evolve from dust, Meingast said.
The findings, appearing in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, complement observations by the European Space Agency’s star-mapping Gaia spacecraft, orbiting nearly 1.5 million kilometers away.
Gaia focuses on optical light, missing most of the objects obscured by cosmic dust, the researchers said.
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Austria, has been ranked by The Economist as the most livable city in the world and it is also the pioneer of adopting a gender-inclusive urban design. For VOA, Chermaine Lee reports from Vienna.
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The United States returned two looted antiquities to China, the latest in a wave of repatriations of artifacts stolen from more than a dozen countries, New York authorities announced Tuesday.
The two 7th-century stone carvings, currently valued at $3.5 million, had been sawn off a tomb by thieves in the early 1990s and smuggled out of China, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement.
The carvings were among 89 antiquities from 10 different countries purchased by Shelby White, a private art collector in New York.
From 1998, they were “loaned” to the Metropolitan Museum of Art until they were seized this year by the DA’s office following a criminal investigation.
“It is a shame that these two incredible antiquities were stolen and at least one remained largely hidden from the public view for nearly three decades,” Bragg said.
“While their total value is more than $3 million, the incredible detail and beauty of these pieces can never be truly captured by a price tag.”
Collectively valued at nearly $69 million, they were part of a criminal investigation by the city’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit that tracks and repatriates looted artifacts.
One of the funerary carvings was kept in the museum’s storage room and never displayed, according to the statement by Bragg’s office.
It was never cleaned and caked in dirt, another tell-tale sign of their illicit origin, the statement added.
The carvings were handed over during a repatriation ceremony at the Chinese consulate in New York.
“We regard the crackdown on crimes against cultural property a sacred mission,” Chinese Consul General Huang Ping was quoted as saying in the statement by the DA’s office.
Since January 2022, more than 950 antiquities worth over $165 million have been returned to 19 countries, including Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq, Greece, Turkey, and Italy.
In 2021, Michael Steinhardt, a private collector, returned around 180 stolen antiquities worth $70 million following an out-of-court agreement, in one of the most famous cases of art trafficking in New York.
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The growing abilities of artificial intelligence have left many observers wondering how AI will impact people’s jobs and livelihoods. One expert in the field predicts it won’t have much effect, at least in the short term.
The topic was a point of discussion at the annual TED conference held recently in Vancouver.
In a world where students’ term papers can now be written by artificial intelligence, paintings can be drawn by merely uttering words and an AI-generated version of your favorite celebrity can appear on screen, the impact of this new technology is starting to be felt in societies and sparking both wonderment and concern.
While artificial intelligence has yet to become pervasive in everyday life, the rumblings of what could be a looming economic earthquake are growing stronger.
Gary Marcus is a professor emeritus of psychology and neural science at New York University who helped ride sharing company Uber adopt the rapidly developing technology.
An author and host of the podcast “Humans versus Machines,” Marcus says AI’s economic impact is limited for now, although some jobs have already been threatened by the technology, such as commercial animators for electronic gaming.
Speaking with VOA after a recent conference for TED, the non-profit devoting to spreading ideas, Marcus said jobs that require manual labor will be safe, for now.
“We’re not going to see blue collar jobs replaced I think as quickly as some people had talked about.,” Marcus predicted. “So we still don’t have driverless cars, even though people have talked about that for years. Anybody that does something with their hands is probably safe right now. Because we don’t really know how to make robots that sophisticated when it comes to dealing with the real world.”
Another TED speaker, Sal Khan, is the founder of Khanmigo, an artificial intelligence powered software designed to help educate children. He is optimistic about AI’s potential economic impact as a driver of wealth creation.
“Will it cause mass dislocations in the job market? I actually don’t know the answer to that,” Khan said, adding that “It will create more wealth, more productivity.”
The legal profession could be boosted by AI if the technology prompts litigation. Copyright attorneys could especially benefit.
Tom Graham and his company, Metaphysic.ai, artificially recreate famous actors and athletes so they do not need to physically be in front of a camera or microphone in order to appear in films, TV shows or commercials.
His company is behind the popular fake videos of actor Tom Cruise that have gone viral on social media.
He says the legal system will play a role in protecting people from being recreated without their permission.
Graham, who has a law degree from Harvard University, has applied to the U.S. Copyright Office to register the real-life version of himself.
“We did that because you’re looking for legal institutions that exist today, that could give you some kind of protection or remedy,” Graham explained, “It’s just, if there’s no way to enforce it, then it’s not really a thing.”
Gary Marcus is urging the formation of an international organization to oversee and monitor artificial intelligence.
He emphasized the need to “get a lot of smart people together, from the companies, from the government, but also scientists, philosophers, ethicists…”
“I think it’s really important that we as a globe, think all these things through,” Marcus concluded, “And don’t just leave it to like 190 governments doing whatever random thing they do without really understanding the science.”
The popular AI website ChatGPT has gained widespread attention in recent months but is not yet a moneymaker. Its parent company, OpenAI, lost more than $540 million in 2022.
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Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who was taken off the air by the network last month, said on Tuesday he would relaunch his show on Twitter “soon.”
Fox News Media and its top-rated host agreed to part ways last month, shortly after parent company Fox Corp. settled for $787.5 million a defamation lawsuit in which Carlson played a starring role.
The outspoken Carlson embraced conservative issues and delivered his views with a style that made his prime-time show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” the highest-rated cable news program in the key 25-to-54 age demographic on the most-watched U.S. cable news network.
Ratings slumped after his departure.
“Starting soon, we’ll be bringing a new version of the show we’ve been doing for the last six and a half years to Twitter,” Carlson said in a video posted on Twitter. “We bring some other things too, which we’ll tell you about. But for now, we’re just grateful to be here.”
Carlson’s announcement comes weeks after Twitter owner Elon Musk sat for a two-part interview with Carlson on Fox News.
Musk, who has referred to himself as a “free speech absolutist,” has said his goal is to make Twitter a digital town hall where users can share diverse viewpoints.
Even as Carlson announced plans to reboot his show on social media, Axios reported that his lawyers sent a letter to Fox accusing it of fraud and breach of contract.
Carlson’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Fox Corp. declined to comment.
Fox’s lawyers have asked attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems to investigate whether they leaked controversial internal messages from Carlson that provided evidence in their recent defamation suit.
The request came after multiple news outlets published racist and sexist remarks by Carlson in the leaked communications and recordings.
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Iranian American Sanaz Toossi won the Pulitzer Prize in drama Monday for her play English.
The play takes place in 2008 near Tehran, where four Iranian adults prepare for an English proficiency test. It examines how family separation and travel restrictions push them to learn a new language and how that may change their identity.
The Pulitzer board called the play “quietly powerful.”
The award includes a $15,000 prize.
Toossi is the daughter of Iranian immigrants to the United States and grew up in the western U.S. state of California.
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Tesla Inc on Monday broke ground on a Texas lithium refinery that CEO Elon Musk said should produce enough of the battery metal to build about 1 million electric vehicles (EVs) by 2025, making it the largest North American processor of the material.
The facility will push Tesla outside its core focus of building automobiles and into the complex area of lithium refining and processing, a step Musk said was necessary if the auto giant was to meet its ambitious EV sales targets.
“As we look ahead a few years, a fundamental choke point in the advancement of electric vehicles is the availability of battery grade lithium,” Musk said at the ground-breaking ceremony on Monday, with dozers and other earth-moving equipment operating in the background.
Musk said Tesla aimed to finish construction of the factory next year and then reach full production about a year later.
The move will make Tesla the only major automaker in North America that will refine its own lithium. Currently, China dominates the processing of many critical minerals, including lithium.
“Texas wants to be able to be self-reliant, not dependent upon any foreign hostile nation for what we need. We need lithium,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said at the ceremony.
Musk did not specify the volume of lithium the facility would process each year, although he said the automaker would continue to buy the metal from its vendors, which include Albemarle Corp and Livent Corp.
“We intend to continue to use suppliers of lithium, so it’s not that Tesla will do all of it,” Musk said.
Albemarle plans to build a lithium processing facility in South Carolina that will refine 100,000 tons of the metal each year, with construction slated to begin next year and the facility coming online sometime later this decade.
Musk did not say where Tesla will source the rough form of lithium known as spodumene concentrate that will be processed at the facility, although Tesla has supply deals with Piedmont Lithium Inc and others.
‘Clean operations’
Tesla said it would eschew the lithium industry’s conventional refining process, which relies on sulfuric acid and other strong chemicals, in favor of materials that were less harsh on the environment, such as soda ash.
“You could live right in the middle of the refinery and not suffer any ill effect. So they’re very clean operations,” Musk said, although local media reports said some environmental advocates had raised concerns over the facility.
Monday’s announcement was not the first time that Tesla has attempted to venture into lithium production. Musk in 2020 told shareholders that Tesla had secured rights to 10,000 acres in Nevada where it aimed to produce lithium from clay deposits, which had never been done before on a commercial scale.
While Musk boasted that the company had developed a proprietary process to sustainably produce lithium from those Nevada clay deposits, Tesla has not yet deployed the process.
Musk has urged entrepreneurs to enter the lithium refining business, saying it is like “minting money.”
“We’re begging you. We don’t want to do it. Can someone please?” he said during a conference call last month.
Tesla said last month a recent plunge in prices of lithium and other commodities would aid Tesla’s bruised margins in the second half of the year.
The refinery is the latest expansion by Tesla into Texas after the company moved its headquarters there from California in 2021. Musk’s other companies, including SpaceX and The Boring Company, also have operations in Texas.
SEE ALSO: A related video by VOA’s Arash Arabasadi
“We are proud that he calls Texas home,” Abbott said, saying Tesla and Musk are “Texas’s economic juggernauts.”
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Mezzo-soprano Grace Bumbry, a Black opera singer who blazed trails and broke barriers, has died, her son and publicist announced Monday. She was 86.
The artist died on May 7 at a hospital in Vienna, having suffered a stroke in October, according to her adopted son David Lee Brewer, who was speaking to the press agency APA.
The decorated singer made her operatic debut in Paris in 1960, playing Amneris in Aida, and became a favorite of U.S. first lady Jackie Kennedy.
Over a nearly four-decade career, Bumbry received great acclaim for her performances in roles that showcased her wide vocal range and singular star power.
Grace-Melzia Bumbry was born in St. Louis on January 4, 1937, to parents hailing from Mississippi.
A unique talent in the church choir, she grew up in an era of profound racial segregation and was barred from entering the local music conservatory.
But she went on to study at Boston University and Northwestern University on scholarships, later going with her instructor Lotte Lehmann to the Music Academy of the West in California to hone her operatic and stage skills.
Following fellow pioneering Black artists including Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price, Bumbry was a major figure in breaking down racial barriers entrenched in classical music.
She gained international attention in 1961 when she became the first African American to perform at Germany’s Bayreuth Festival, an institution dedicated to Richard Wagner, a figure acclaimed for his music but whose antisemitism and white supremacist views have complicated his artistic legacy.
Wagnerites voiced some protest that she would perform, but the composer’s grandson, Wieland Wagner, said, “I require no ideal Nordic specimens,” arguing that his grandfather’s music was “for vocal color, not skin color.”
Across her storied career, Bumbry gained a reputation for glamour and high living, wearing dramatic gowns and jewels. She also had a penchant for show dogs and luxury cars.
In 2009 she was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor, among the highest American arts awards, in the presence of then-President Barack Obama.
She lived for years in Switzerland and later settled in Vienna, retiring from opera in 1997 after gracing the world’s most prestigious stages for decades.
Bumbry remained professionally active as a teacher and concert performer, also founding the Grace Bumbry Black Musical Heritage Ensemble.
Austria’s secretary of state, Andrea Mayer, hailed Bumbry as “a pioneer for generations of opera singers.”
“With her legendary debut at Bayreuth in the 1960s, she made a decisive contribution to equal rights in the world of opera,” Mayer said in a statement.
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Authentic Ukrainian ethnic folk attire made a recent appearance on a runway at Metropolitan Fashion Week Seattle, held in the city’s suburb of Woodinville. Natasha Mozgovaya has more.
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Most Democrats and Republicans agree that the federal government should better regulate the biggest technology companies, particularly social media platforms. But there is little consensus on how it should be done.
Concerns have skyrocketed about China’s ownership of TikTok, and parents have grown increasingly worried about what their children are seeing online. Lawmakers have introduced a slew of bipartisan bills, boosting hopes of compromise. But any effort to regulate the mammoth industry would face major obstacles as technology companies have fought interference.
Noting that many young people are struggling, President Joe Biden said in his February State of the Union address that “it’s time” to pass bipartisan legislation to impose stricter limits on the collection of personal data and ban targeted advertising to children.
“We must finally hold social media companies accountable for the experiment they are running on our children for profit,” Biden said.
A look at some of the areas of potential regulation:
Children’s safety
Several House and Senate bills would try to make social media, and the internet in general, safer for children who will inevitably be online. Lawmakers cite numerous examples of teenagers who have taken their own lives after cyberbullying or have died engaging in dangerous behavior encouraged on social media.
In the Senate, at least two bills are focused on children’s online safety. Legislation by Senators Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, and Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, approved by the chamber’s Commerce Committee last year would require social media companies to be more transparent about their operations and enable child safety settings by default. Minors would have the option to disable addictive product features and algorithms that push certain content.
The idea, the senators say, is that platforms should be “safe by design.” The legislation, which Blumenthal and Blackburn reintroduced last week, would also obligate social media companies to prevent certain dangers to minors — including promotion of suicide, disordered eating, substance abuse, sexual exploitation and other illegal behaviors.
A second bill introduced last month by four senators — Democratic Senators Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Republican Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Katie Britt of Alabama — would take a more aggressive approach, prohibiting children under 13 from using social media platforms and requiring parental consent for teenagers. It would also prohibit companies from recommending content through algorithms for users under 18.
Critics of the bills, including some civil rights groups and advocacy groups aligned with tech companies, say the proposals could threaten teens’ online privacy and prevent them from accessing content that could help them, such as resources for those considering suicide or grappling with their sexual and gender identity.
“Lawmakers should focus on educating and empowering families to control their online experience,” said Carl Szabo of NetChoice, a group aligned with Meta, TikTok, Google and Amazon, among other companies.
Data privacy
Biden’s State of the Union remarks appeared to be a nod toward legislation by Senators Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, that would expand child privacy protections online, prohibiting companies from collecting personal data from younger teenagers and banning targeted advertising to children and teens. The bill, also reintroduced last week, would create an “eraser button” allowing parents and kids to eliminate personal data, when possible.
A broader House effort would attempt to give adults as well as children more control over their data with what lawmakers call a “national privacy standard.” Legislation that passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee last year would try to minimize data collected and make it illegal to target ads to children, usurping state laws that have tried to put privacy restrictions in place. But the bill, which would have also given consumers more rights to sue over privacy violations, never reached the House floor.
Prospects for the House legislation are unclear now that Republicans have the majority.
TikTok, China
Lawmakers introduced a raft of bills to either ban TikTok or make it easier to ban it after a combative March House hearing in which lawmakers from both parties grilled TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew over his company’s ties to China’s communist government, data security and harmful content on the app.
Chew attempted to assure lawmakers that the hugely popular video-sharing app prioritizes user safety and should not be banned because of its Chinese connections. But the testimony gave new momentum to the efforts.
Soon after the hearing, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican, tried to force a Senate vote on legislation that would ban TikTok from operating in the United States. But he was blocked by a fellow Republican, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who said that a ban would violate the Constitution and anger the millions of voters who use the app.
Another bill sponsored by Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida would, like Hawley’s bill, ban U.S. economic transactions with TikTok, but it would also create a new framework for the executive branch to block any foreign apps deemed hostile. His bill is co-sponsored by Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat, and Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican.
There is broad Senate support for bipartisan legislation sponsored by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, and South Dakota Senatpr John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican, that does not specifically call out TikTok but would give the Commerce Department power to review and potentially restrict foreign threats to technology platforms.
The White House has signaled it would back that bill, but its prospects are uncertain.
Artificial intelligence
A newer question for Congress is whether lawmakers should move to regulate artificial intelligence as rapidly developing and potentially revolutionary products like AI chatbot ChatGPT begin to enter the marketplace and can in many ways mimic human behavior.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York has made the emerging technology a priority, arguing that the United States needs to stay ahead of China and other countries that are eyeing regulations on AI products. He has been working with AI experts and has released a general framework of what regulation could look like, including increased disclosure of the people and data involved in developing the technology, more transparency and explanation for how the bots arrive at responses.
The White House has been focused on the issue as well, with a recent announcement of a $140 million investment to establish seven new AI research institutes. Vice President Kamala Harris met Thursday with the heads of Google, Microsoft and other companies developing AI products.
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As teqball continues its fast growth with its debut at the Southeast Asian Games, the young sport has drawn resentful glances from similar sports in the region that feel it is treading on their turf.
Invented in Hungary in 2012, teqball is a nonmedal exhibition sport at this year’s SEA Games in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, being played over three days with the finals on Monday. It is also on the schedule for the European Games in Poland in June and July.
Teqball already has more than 140 national federations, leading its backers to call it “the fastest-growing sport in the world.”
Top international football teams, including Spain and Portugal, bond over games of teqball during downtime, and stars such as Brazilian footballer Ronaldinho have become ambassadors for the game.
Played on a curved table, teqball melds elements of football, volleyball and ping-pong. Players — alone or in pairs — trade shots without using their arms. The catch is they cannot use the same body part twice consecutively.
“In Europe, North America, South America, it’s more developed than in Asia,” said Marton Keresztury, from governing body Fiteq. “So here, it’s just starting slowly.”
On Sunday, the much-fancied Thai men’s doubles team ruthlessly saw off their Cambodian opposition, the affront to their hosts compounded by Phakpong Dejaroen’s acrobatic winning shots repeatedly bouncing up and scudding into the home fans.
That set the Thais up for a final on Monday against another Cambodian duo.
In the women’s doubles, the Thai duo of Suphawadi Wongkhamchan and Jutatip Kuntatong also swatted away the opposition on their way to the final.
One reason Thailand excels at the sport is a pre-existing love for the game of sepak takraw, a similar sport popular around the region, played on something more resembling a volleyball court.
Fahrish Khan, of the Singapore men’s doubles team that beat Brunei in their last group game, but did not progress, noted the overlap.
“We play football. So, if you see a lot of them are sepak takraw players. It’s very different,” said the 27-year-old.
“The difference is they know how to kill,” he said, referring to the bouncing winners that the Thai team reeled off with elan.
Keresztury said teqball had more tournaments coming in Asia soon, in China, Thailand, “and maybe Indonesia.”
He noted that the sport risked butting heads with sepak takraw.
“The players who are here, they come from (sepak takraw). Sometimes you have clashes with sepak takraw federations because they don’t want to let their players play teqball. That’s why it’s developing slowly in Asia,” Keresztury said. “I think 80% of the players come from sepak takraw, from all nations.”
But, he added: “It’s easy to get some skills from sepak takraw, but if you want to have all the skills you have to play more teqball.”
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Tracking down accurate information about Philadelphia’s elections on Twitter used to be easy. The account for the city commissioners who run elections, @phillyvotes, was the only one carrying a blue check mark, a sign of authenticity.
But ever since the social media platform overhauled its verification service last month, the check mark has disappeared. That’s made it harder to distinguish @phillyvotes from a list of random accounts not run by the elections office but with very similar names.
The election commission applied weeks ago for a gray check mark — Twitter’s new symbol to help users identify official government accounts – but has yet to hear back from the Twitter, commission spokesman Nick Custodio said. It’s unclear whether @phillyvotes is an eligible government account under Twitter’s new rules.
That’s troubling, Custodio said, because Pennsylvania has a primary election May 16 and the commission uses its account to share important information with voters in real time. If the account remains unverified, it will be easier to impersonate – and harder for voters to trust – heading into Election Day.
Impostor accounts on social media are among many concerns election security experts have heading into next year’s presidential election. Experts have warned that foreign adversaries or others may try to influence the election, either through online disinformation campaigns or by hacking into election infrastructure.
Election administrators across the country have struggled to figure out the best way to respond after Twitter owner Elon Musk threw the platform’s verification service into disarray, given that Twitter has been among their most effective tools for communicating with the public.
Some are taking other steps allowed by Twitter, such as buying check marks for their profiles or applying for a special label reserved for government entities, but success has been mixed. Election and security experts say the inconsistency of Twitter’s new verification system is a misinformation disaster waiting to happen.
“The lack of clear, at-a-glance verification on Twitter is a ticking time bomb for disinformation,” said Rachel Tobac, CEO of the cybersecurity company SocialProof Security. “That will confuse users – especially on important days like election days.”
The blue check marks that Twitter once doled out to notable celebrities, public figures, government entities and journalists began disappearing from the platform in April. To replace them, Musk told users that anyone could pay $8 a month for an individual blue check mark or $1,000 a month for a gold check mark as a “verified organization.”
The policy change quickly opened the door for pranksters to pose convincingly as celebrities, politicians and government entities, which could no longer be identified as authentic. While some impostor accounts were clear jokes, others created confusion.
Fake accounts posing as Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the city’s Department of Transportation and the Illinois Department of Transportation falsely claimed the city was closing one of its main thoroughfares to private traffic. The fake accounts used the same photos, biographical text and home page links as the real ones. Their posts amassed hundreds of thousands of views before being taken down.
Twitter’s new policy invites government agencies and certain affiliated organizations to apply to be labeled as official with a gray check. But at the state and local level, qualifying agencies are limited to “main executive office accounts and main agency accounts overseeing crisis response, public safety, law enforcement, and regulatory issues,” the policy says.
The rules do not mention agencies that run elections. So while the main Philadelphia city government account quickly received its gray check mark last month, the local election commission has not heard back.
Election offices in four of the country’s five most populous counties — Cook County in Illinois, Harris County in Texas, Maricopa County in Arizona and San Diego County — remain unverified, a Twitter search shows. Maricopa, which includes Phoenix, has been targeted repeatedly by election conspiracy theorists as the most populous and consequential county in one of the most closely divided political battleground states.
Some counties contacted by The Associated Press said they have minimal concerns about impersonation or plan to apply for a gray check later, but others said they already have applied and have not heard back from Twitter.
Even some state election offices are waiting for government labels. Among them is the office of Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.
In an April 24 email to Bellows’ communications director reviewed by The Associated Press, a Twitter representative wrote that there was “nothing to do as we continue to manually process applications from around the world.” The representative added in a later email that Twitter stands “ready to swiftly enforce any impersonation, so please don’t hesitate to flag any problematic accounts.”
An email sent to Twitter’s press office and a company safety officer requesting comment was answered only with an autoreply of a poop emoji.
“Our job is to reinforce public confidence,” Bellows told the AP. “Even a minor setback, like no longer being able to ensure that our information on Twitter is verified, contributes to an environment that is less predictable and less safe.”
Some government accounts, including the one representing Pennsylvania’s second-largest county, have purchased blue checks because they were told it was required to continue advertising on the platform.
Allegheny County posts ads for elections and jobs on Twitter, so the blue check mark “was necessary,” said Amie Downs, the county’s communications director.
When anyone can buy verification and when government accounts are not consistently labeled, the check mark loses its meaning, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said.
Griswold’s office received a gray check mark to maintain trust with voters, but she told the AP she would not buy verification for her personal Twitter account because “it doesn’t carry the same weight” it once did.
Custodio, at the Philadelphia elections commission, said his office would not buy verification either, even if it gets denied a gray check.
“The blue or gold check mark just verifies you as a paid subscriber and does not verify identity,” he said.
Experts and advocates tracking election discourse on social media say Twitter’s changes do not just incentivize bad actors to run disinformation campaigns — they also make it harder for well-meaning users to know what’s safe to share.
“Because Twitter is dropping the ball on verification, the burden will fall on voters to double check that the information they are consuming and sharing is legitimate,” said Jill Greene, voting and elections manager for Common Cause Pennsylvania.
That dampens an aspect of Twitter that until now had been seen as one of its strengths – allowing community members to rally together to elevate authoritative information, said Mike Caulfield, a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public.
“The first rule of a good online community user interface is to ‘help the helpers.’ This is the opposite of that,” Caulfield said. “It takes a community of people who want to help boost good information, and robs them of the tools to make fast, accurate decisions.”
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There is nothing like the promise of a chapter closing to draw people to the movie theater, especially when tied to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This weekend, ” Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” which says goodbye to this iteration of the space misfits and its driving creative voice, director James Gunn, earned $114 million in ticket sales from 4,450 locations in North America, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Internationally, where the film opened in 52 territories including China, “Vol. 3” earned $168 million, giving it a $282 million global debut.
Domestically, it’s both an impressive sum for any movie and slightly less than what we’ve come to expect from a Marvel opening. Last year on the same weekend, “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” riding on the success of “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” raked in $187.4 million in its first three days in North America. And in November, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” also opened over $181.3 million.
But things have come back to earth this year, at least by high-flying superhero standards. “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” debuted just over $106 million on its way to $474 million worldwide. At rival studio DC/Warner Bros., “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” only made $133.4 million total. The question on some analysts’ minds this weekend is whether it’s because of the specific character or a bigger issue of “superhero fatigue.”
“Guardians Vol. 3″ bumped ” The Super Mario Bros. Movie ” out of first place after four weekends atop the charts and kicked off the summer movie season, a vital and usually profitable corridor for Hollywood that runs through Labor Day and often accounts for 40% of a year’s box office.
For Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian, it’s still a solid opening for the summer season, which he said is poised to deliver the most robust profits since 2019.
“Though ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’s’ debut may reflect a bit of audience fatigue for the reliable superhero genre, this is just the beginning for what promises to be an irresistible movie marketplace with a killer combination of appealing films for every taste and every audience demographic,” Dergarabedian said.
The next major superhero movie on the schedule is DC’s “The Flash,” set for June 16, which has its own flurry of intrigue around it because of star Ezra Miller’s legal and personal troubles.
“Guardians Vol. 3” sees the return of actors Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldaña, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel. Reviews have been mostly positive, but a little more divided than previous installments. And it remains difficult to compare a pre-pandemic opening such as Vol. 2’s $146 million debut (May 2017) with a post-pandemic one.
“Vol. 3” is Gunn’s last Guardians/Marvel movie as he turns his focus to leading DC Studios.
“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” added $18.6 million in its fifth weekend to take second place, bringing its domestic total to $518.1 million. Globally, it has now surpassed $1.1 billion.
Third place went to “Evil Dead Rise” with $5.7 million, and in fourth place was “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” with $3.4 million — both were holdovers.
Studios left the weekend mostly clear for the superhero behemoth, but Screen Gems and Sony did debut their new Priyanka Chopra Jonas romantic comedy “Love Again” (featuring Celine Dion and some new songs) in 2703 locations. It made a modest $2.4 million to take the fifth place spot.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” $114 million.
“The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” $18.6 million.
“Evil Dead Rise,” $5.7 million.
“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” $3.4 million.
“Love Again,” $2.4 million.
“John Wick: Chapter 3,” $2.4 million.
“Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” $1.5 million.
“Air,” $1.4 million.
“Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant,” $1.2 million.
“Sisu,” $1.1 million.
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Newton N. Minow, who as Federal Communications Commission chief in the early 1960s famously proclaimed that network television was a “vast wasteland,” died Saturday. He was 97.
Minow, who received a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, died Saturday at home, surrounded by loved ones, said his daughter, Nell Minow.
“He wanted to be at home,” she told The Associated Press. “He had a good life.”
Though Minow remained in the FCC post just two years, he left a permanent stamp on the broadcasting industry through government steps to foster satellite communications, the passage of a law mandating UHF reception on TV sets and his outspoken advocacy for quality in television.
“My faith is in the belief that this country needs and can support many voices of television — and that the more voices we hear, the better, the richer, the freer we shall be,” Minow once said. “After all, the airways belong to the people.”
Minow was appointed as FCC chief by President John F. Kennedy in early 1961. He had initially come to know the Kennedys in the 1950s as an aide to Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson, the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956.
Minow laid down his famous challenge to TV executives on May 9, 1961, in a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, urging them to sit down and watch their station for a full day, “without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit-and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you.”
“I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland,” he told them. “You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western bad men, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials — many screaming, cajoling and offending.”
As he spoke, the three networks were just about all most viewers had to choose from. Pay television was barely in the planning stage, PBS and Sesame Street were several years away, and HBO and niche channels such as Animal Planet were far in the future.
The speech caused a sensation. “Vast wasteland” became a catch phrase. Jimmy Durante opened an NBC special by saying, “Da next hour will be dedicated to upliftin’ da quality of television. … At least, Newt, we’re tryin’.”
Minow became the first government official to get a George Foster Peabody award for excellence in broadcasting. The New York Times critic Jack Gould (himself a Peabody winner) wrote, “At long last there is a man in Washington who proposes to champion the interests of the public in TV matters and is not timid about ruffling the industry’s most august feathers. Tonight some broadcasters were trying to find dark explanations for Mr. Minow’s attitude. In this matter the viewer possibly can be a little helpful; Mr. Minow has been watching television.”
CBS President Frank Stanton strongly disagreed, calling Minow’s comments a “sensationalized and oversimplified approach” that could lead to ill-advised reforms “on the ground that any change is a change for the better.”
For the criticism over his speech, Minow said he didn’t support censorship, preferring exhortation and measures to broaden public choices. But he also said a broadcasting license was “an enormous gift” from the government that brought with it a responsibility to the public.
His daughter, Nell Minow, told The Associated Press in 2011 that her father loved television and wished he would have been remembered for championing the public interest in television programming, rather than just a few words in his much broader speech.
“His No. 1 goal was to give people choice,” she said.
Among the new laws during his tenure were the All-Channel Receiver Act of 1962, that required that TV sets pick up UHF as well as VHF broadcasts, which opened up TV channels numbered above 13 for widespread viewing. Congress also passed a bill that provided funds for educational television, and measures to foster communications satellites.
In a September 2006 interview on National Public Radio, Minow recalled telling Kennedy that such satellites were “more important than sending a man into space. … Communications satellites will send ideas into space, and ideas live longer than people.” On July 10, 1962, Minow was one of the officials making statements on the first live trans-Atlantic television program, a demonstration of AT&T’s Telstar satellite.
Children’s programming was a particular interest of Minow, a father of three, who told broadcasters the few good children’s shows were “drowned out in the massive doses of cartoons, violence and more violence. … Search your consciences and see if you cannot offer more to your young beneficiaries whose future you guide so many hours each and every day.”
Minow resigned in May 1963 to become executive vice president and general counsel for Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. in Chicago.
Nell Minow said her father also was instrumental in getting presidential debates televised, starting with Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, after watching Stevenson struggle to use the new medium during his 1956 presidential run.
“Minow was appalled by … the whole charade of having to image-make on television,” said Craig Allen, a mass communications professor at Arizona State University who wrote a 2001 book about Minow.
In 1965, Minow returned to his law practice in Chicago, and later served as board member at PBS, CBS Inc. and the advertising company Foote Cone & Belding Communications Inc. He was director of the Annenberg Washington Program in Communications Policy Studies of Northwestern University.
He also gave Barack Obama a summer job at the law firm, where the future president met his wife, Michelle Robinson. Minow also was one of Obama’s earliest supporters when the then-Illinois senator considered running for president, Nell Minow said.
Television is one of our century’s most important advances “and yet, as a nation, we pay no attention to it,” Minow said in a 1991 Associated Press interview.
He continued to push for reforms such as free airtime for political ads and more quality programming while also praising advances in diversity in U.S. television.
“In 1961, I worried that my children would not benefit much from television. But in 1991 I worry that my grandchildren will actually be harmed by it,” he said.
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The commuter trains that take wearied workers out of Moscow every day can be difficult — a long and slow trip in close quarters with strangers, some of them drinking alcohol or sprawled sleeping across the seats.
But a few days a week, riders might get a lift when Oksana comes aboard to soothe them with her violin artistry. Classics, jazz, Russian folk music and children’s songs all flow as she glides her bow across the strings.
It’s not just her repertoire that raises the passengers’ spirits, but her instruments themselves. She makes her own violins from kits and decorates them with intricate, colorful paintings of flowers and winding vines.
The 49-year-old Oksana, who did not want her surname reported out of safety concerns, once worked at a cultural center in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don but moved to Moscow after she lost that job. There was a house loan to pay off along with support for her two children, who live with their father.
At first she worked as a dishwasher. One day she fell into conversation with a street musician after giving him some money and he encouraged her to follow his example, saying it would likely pay more than her scullery job.
She took his advice, except that she chose the trains known as elektrichki as her venue rather that the street. They have been her stage for the past four years.
It’s not lucrative. In a good month she can take in 80,000 rubles ($750), but that’s enough to pay for her room on the Moscow outskirts and to send some money to her kids.
She could make more, but standing for hours on the swaying trains while playing is hard on her legs and she plays only two or three times a week.
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Tennessee organizers booked more than 50 drag entertainers for next month’s Midsouth Pride festival in Memphis now that the state’s new law placing strict limits on cabaret shows is temporarily on hold.
But they are being cautious, making adjustments to performances should the limits of the first-in-the-nation law essentially banning drag from public property or in the presence of minors kick in before June celebrations.
“As soon as this stuff started making its way, I immediately started coming out with plans to be able to counteract that,” said longtime festival organizer Vanessa Rodley. “Because, at the end of the day, we can’t put on an event that then segregates a huge portion of our community, right? We just can’t do that. So you have to find ways around it.”
The show must go on.
Organizers of Pride festivals and parades in mostly conservative states where there’s been a broader push targeting LGBTQ+ rights have been under increasing pressure to censor their events. They’re taking steps like editing acts and canceling drag shows in order to still hold their annual celebrations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer identity in today’s contentious climate.
In some cases, they are trying navigate broad legislative language that can equate drag performances and story hours with “adult-oriented performances that are harmful to minors,” as in the Tennessee law. In other places, Pride organizers have had to fight for local permits that were pro forma in past years, facing off with critics at local city council meetings who oppose drag.
Most Pride organizations are busy “doing their homework” and investigating how legislation popping up around the country may impact their events, said Ron deHarte, co-president for the U.S. Association of Prides. And in more progressive states like California, this year’s Pride events will be an opportunity to make a larger statement and raise awareness about the LGBTQ+ community, he said.
“Our members attract more than 20 million people in the United States to their events every year,” deHarte said. “So when you talk about the collective impact that Pride organizers can have, not only in their community but across the country, it is powerful.”
Bills to limit or ban drag were filed in more than a dozen states. The only other state set to enact a law is Florida, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign a bill.
Kayla Bates, a founder of ELGbtq+, an organizer of the community Pride festival and parade in Elgin, Illinois, said she expects a large turnout for the inaugural event given the legislation targeting transgender rights and drag shows elsewhere.
“I think people want to really make it known that they back us and that we should feel safe and protected in our community,” she said.
Often held in June, Pride events began as way to commemorate the uprising by New York’s LGBTQ+ communities in 1969, known as the Stonewall rebellion, and as a way to celebrate the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
In New York City, a Pride rally planned for June 17 and a parade on June 25 will have a national theme: “Strength in Solidarity.” Sue Doster, co-chairperson of NYC Pride, said they’re putting a spotlight on the transgender community and drag queens, targets of the recent legislation in conservative states.
“They’re attacking these people because they’re less likely to stand up and fight back, which is why it’s important that we all come together in solidarity and speak up when we see these injustices,” she said.
Backlash against transgender individuals, drag performances and Pride events is not new. Last year, 31 members of a white supremacist group were arrested near an Idaho Pride event after they were found packed into the back of a U-Haul truck with riot gear.
This year, the Pride Alliance of the Treasure Coast in Port St. Lucie, Florida has reacted to possible legislation, canceling a planned gay pride parade and restricting other events to people 21 years and older.
The Pride festival in Hutchinson, Kansas, has also adjusted its program and secured a new venue after losing its original one when a local business owner posted a video on social media decrying the event, which included a drag queen story hour, as depraved.
“Our event is completely family friendly,” said Hutchinson Salt City Pride chair Julia Johnson.
Meanwhile, organizers in the Nashville, Tennessee, suburb of Franklin, opted not to include drag performances in their Pride celebrations so they can work with local officials to get other events permitted.
In Naples, Florida, Pride organizers agreed they wouldn’t allow drag performers to be tipped on stage, and later announced that the drag show portion of its festival will be held at an indoor venue because of safety concerns.
In Memphis, drag entertainers plan to not change costumes mid-performance or accept tips from the audience if the limits are reinstated.
Even in progressive-leaning Massachusetts, there’s been debate about whether a drag show could be part of a Pride celebration in the small town of North Brookfield, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Boston. The three-member select board had rescinded a previous vote and determined a drag show violated restrictions on “adult entertainment.” Last week, the town’s lawyer said the event could take place on the town common as planned after the ACLU got involved.
Support for the community is also making a difference. In Iowa, the Cedar Falls Mayor Rob Green, this week reversed his controversial decision not to sign a proclamation declaring June as Pride Month. He wrote on Facebook that he signed the proclamation out of concern for the safety and health of LGBTQIA+ residents after hearing stories and receiving letters from constituents.
“I learn a lot from these kind of letters and very much appreciate the opportunity to re-examine my assumptions and thought processes,” he wrote.
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Google is planning to make its search engine more “visual, snackable, personal and human,” with a focus on serving young people globally, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing documents.
The move comes as artificial intelligence (AI) applications such as ChatGPT are rapidly gaining in popularity, highlighting a technology that could upend the way businesses and society operate.
The tech giant will nudge its service further away from “10 blue links,” which is a traditional format of presenting search results and plans to incorporate more human voices as part of the shift, the report said.
At its annual I/O developer conference in the coming week, Google is expected to debut new features that allow users to carry out conversations with an AI program, a project code-named “Magi,” The Wall Street Journal added, citing people familiar with the matter.
Generative AI has become a buzzword this year, with applications capturing the public’s fancy and sparking a rush among companies to launch similar products they believe will change the nature of work.
Google, part of Alphabet Inc., did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
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Billionaire Warren Buffett said artificial intelligence may change the world in all sorts of ways, but new technology won’t take away opportunities for investors, and he’s confident America will continue to prosper over time.
Buffett and his partner Charlie Munger are spending all day Saturday answering questions at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting inside a packed Omaha arena.
“New things coming along doesn’t take away the opportunities. What gives you the opportunities is other people doing dumb things,” said Buffett, who had a chance to try out ChatGPT when his friend Bill Gates showed it to him a few months back.
Buffett reiterated his long-term optimism about the prospects for America even with the bitter political divisions today.
“The problem now is that partisanship has moved more towards tribalism, and in tribalism you don’t even hear the other side,” he said.
Both Buffett and Munger said the United States will benefit from having an open trading relationship with China, so both countries should be careful not to exacerbate the tensions between them because the stakes are too high for the world.
“Everything that increases the tension between these two countries is stupid, stupid, stupid,” Munger said. And whenever either country does something stupid, he said the other country should respond with incredible kindness.
The chance to listen to the two men answer all sorts of questions about business and life attracts people from all over the world to Omaha, Nebraska. Some of the shareholders feel a particular urgency to attend now because Buffett and Munger are both in their 90s.
“Charlie Munger is 99. I just wanted to see him in person. It’s on my bucket list,” said 40-year-old Sheraton Wu from Vancouver. “I have to attend while I can.”
“It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity,” said Chloe Lin, who traveled from Singapore to attend the meeting for the first time and learn from the two legendary investors.
One of the few concessions Buffett makes to his age is that he no longer tours the exhibit hall before the meeting. In years past, he would be mobbed by shareholders trying to snap a picture with him while a team of security officers worked to manage the crowd. Munger has used a wheelchair for several years, but both men are still sharp mentally.
But in a nod to the concerns about their age, Berkshire showed a series of clips of questions about succession from past meetings dating back to the first one they filmed in 1994. Two years ago, Buffett finally said that Greg Abel will eventually replace him as CEO although he has no plans to retire. Abel already oversees all of Berkshire’s noninsurance businesses.
Buffett assured shareholders that he has total confidence in Abel to lead Berkshire in the future, and he doesn’t have a second choice for the job because Abel is remarkable in his own right. But he said much of what Abel will have to do is just maintain Berkshire’s culture and keep making similar decisions.
“Greg understands capital allocation as well as I do. He will make these decisions on the same framework that I use,” Buffett said.
Abel followed that up by assuring the crowd that he knows how Buffett and Munger have handled things for nearly six decades and “I don’t really see that framework changing.”
Although not everyone at the meeting is a fan. Outside the arena, pilots from Berkshire’s NetJets protested over the lack of a new contract and pro-life groups carried signs declaring “Buffett’s billions kill millions” to object to his many charitable donations to abortion rights groups.
Berkshire Hathaway said Saturday morning that it made $35.5 billion, or $24,377 per Class A share, in the first quarter. That’s more than 6 times last year’s $5.58 billion, or $3,784 per share.
But Buffett has long cautioned that those bottom line figures can be misleading for Berkshire because the wide swings in the value of its investments — most of which it rarely sells — distort the profits. In this quarter, Berkshire sold only $1.7 billion of stocks while recording a $27.4 billion paper investment gain. Part of this year’s investment gains included a $2.4 billion boost related to Berkshire’s planned acquisition of the majority of the Pilot Travel Centers truck stop company’s shares in January.
Buffett says Berkshire’s operating earnings that exclude investments are a better measure of the company’s performance. By that measure, Berkshire’s operating earnings grew nearly 13% to $8.065 billion, up from $7.16 billion a year ago.
The three analysts surveyed by FactSet expected Berkshire to report operating earnings of $5,370.91 per Class A share.
Buffett came close to giving a formal outlook Saturday when he told shareholders that he expects Berkshire’s operating profits to grow this year even though the economy is slowing down and many of its businesses will sell less in 2023. He said Berkshire will profit from rising interest rates on its holdings, and the insurance market looks good this year.
This year’s first quarter was relatively quiet compared to a year ago when Buffett revealed that he had gone on a $51 billion spending spree at the start of last year, snapping up stocks like Occidental Petroleum, Chevron and HP. Buffett’s buying slowed through the rest of last year with the exception of a number of additional Occidental purchases.
At the end of this year’s first quarter, Berkshire held $130.6 billion cash, up from about $128.59 billion at the end of last year. But Berkshire did spend $4.4 billion during the quarter to repurchase its own shares.
Berkshire’s insurance unit, which includes Geico and a number of large reinsurers, recorded a $911 million operating profit, up from $167 million last year, driven by a rebound in Geico’s results. Geico benefitted from charging higher premiums and a reduction in advertising spending and claims.
But Berkshire’s BNSF railroad and its large utility unit did report lower profits. BNSF earned $1.25 billion, down from $1.37 billion, as the number of shipments it handled dropped 10% after it lost a big customer and imports slowed at the West Coast ports. The utility division added $416 million, down from last year’s $775 million.
Besides those major businesses, Berkshire owns an eclectic assortment of dozens of other businesses, including a number of retail and manufacturing firms such as See’s Candy and Precision Castparts.
Berkshire again faces pressure from activist investors urging the company to do more to catalog its climate change risks in a companywide report. Shareholders were expected to brush that measure and all the other shareholder proposals aside Saturday afternoon because Buffett and the board oppose them, and Buffett controls more than 30% of the vote.
But even as they resist detailing climate risks, a number of Berkshire’s subsidiaries are working to reduce their carbon emissions, including its railroad and utilities. The company’s Clayton Homes unit is showing off a new home design this year that will meet strict energy efficiency standards from the Department of Energy and come pre-equipped for solar power to be added later.
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King Charles III’s coronation is a chance to unite people with the history and pageantry of the monarchy, but those traditions are also full of potential controversies as he tries to show that the monarchy still has a role to play in modern Britain.
The new king has already recognized these challenges by adjusting the coronation festivities to the realities of today.
This coronation will be shorter and more inclusive than his mother’s in 1953. Faith leaders from outside the Church of England will take an active role in the ceremony for the first time. And people from all four nations of the United Kingdom, as well as the Commonwealth, will take part.
Here are five artifacts that will play a central role in Saturday’s events.
The Coronation Chair and Stone of Scone
King Charles III will sit atop more than 1,500 years of Irish, Scottish and English history when he is crowned Saturday at Westminster Abbey.
The crown will be placed on Charles’ head as he sits in the Coronation Chair suspended over the Stone of Scone (pronounced “scoon”) — the sacred slab of sandstone on which Scottish kings were crowned. The chair has been part of every coronation since 1308.
The 2.05-meter-tall chair is made of oak and was originally covered in gold leaf and colored glass. The gold has long since worn away and the chair is now pocked with graffiti, including one message that reads “P. Abbott slept in this chair 5-6 July 1800.”
Edward I had the chair built specifically to enclose the Stone of Scone, known by Scots as the Stone of Destiny, after he forcibly took the artifact from Scotland and moved it to the abbey in the late 13th century. The stone’s history goes back much further, however. Fergus Mor MacEirc, the founder of Scotland’s royal line, reputedly brought the stone with him when he moved his seat from Ireland to Scotland around 498, Westminster Abbey said. Before that time, it was used as the coronation stone for Irish kings.
In 1996, Prime Minister John Major returned the stone to Scotland, with the understanding that it would come back to England for use in future coronations. In recent days, the stone was temporarily removed from its current home at Edinburgh Castle in a ceremony overseen by Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf, then transported to the abbey, where a special service was held to mark its return.
Coronation spoon
The gold-plated silver coronation spoon is the only piece of the coronation regalia that survived the English Civil War. After King Charles I was executed in 1649, the rest of the collection was either melted down or sold off as Parliament sought to abolish the monarchy forever.
The spoon is central to the most sacred part of the coronation ceremony, when the Archbishop of Canterbury will pour holy oil from an eagle-shaped ampulla, or flask, into the spoon and then rub it on the king’s hands, breast and head.
The ceremony has roots in the biblical story of the anointing of King Solomon and was originally designed to confirm that the sovereign was appointed directly by God. While the monarch is no longer considered divine, the ceremony confirms his status as supreme governor of the Church of England.
The 26.7-centimeter spoon is believed to have been made during the 12th century for either King Henry II or King Richard I and may have originally been used for mixing water and wine, according to the Royal Collection Trust.
The Cullinan Diamond
Two stones cut from the Cullinan Diamond — the largest rough diamond ever found — will feature prominently in the coronation, fueling controversy the royal family would rather avoid.
For many in South Africa, where the original stone was found in 1905, the gems are a symbol of colonial oppression under British rule and they should be returned.
Cullinan I, a huge drop-shaped stone weighing 530.2 carats, is mounted in the Sovereign’s Scepter with Cross. On Saturday, the scepter will be handed to Charles as a symbol of his temporal power.
Cullinan II, a cushion-shaped gem of 317.4 carats, is mounted on the front of the Imperial State Crown that Charles will wear as he leaves Westminster Abbey.
Charles sidestepped a similar controversy when Buckingham Palace announced that his wife, Camilla, wouldn’t wear the crown of Queen Elizabeth, the queen mother, on coronation day.
That crown contains the famous Koh-i-noor diamond that India, Pakistan and Iran all claim. The gem became part of the Crown Jewels after 11-year-old Maharaja Duleep Singh was forced to surrender it after the conquest of the Punjab in 1849.
St. Edward’s Crown
The crowning moment of the coronation ceremony will occur, literally, when the Archbishop of Canterbury places St. Edward’s Crown on Charles’ head.
Because of its significance as the centerpiece of the coronation, this will be the only time during his reign that the monarch will wear the solid gold crown, which features a purple velvet cap, ermine band and criss-crossed arches topped by a cross.
After the ceremony, Charles will swap the 2.08-kilogram crown for the Imperial State Crown, which weighs about half as much, for the procession back to Buckingham Palace.
Queen Elizabeth II once said that even the lighter crown was tricky because it would fall off if she didn’t keep her head upright while reading the annual speech at the state opening of Parliament.
“There are some disadvantages to crowns, but otherwise they’re quite important things,” the late queen told Sky News in 2018, flashing a smile.
The current St. Edward’s Crown was made for the coronation of King Charles II in 1661 and has been used in every coronation since then. It is a replica of the original crown, which was created in the 11th century and melted down after the execution of Charles I in 1649.
The crown glitters with stones including tourmalines, white and yellow topazes, rubies, amethysts, sapphires, garnet, peridot, zircons, spinel and aquamarines.
Until the early 20th century, the crown was decorated with rented stones that were returned after the coronation, according to the Royal Collection Trust. It was permanently set with semi-precious stones ahead of the coronation of George V in 1911.
The Gold State Coach
King Charles III and Queen Camilla will travel back to Buckingham Palace from Westminster Abbey in the Gold State Coach, a 261-year-old relic that is renowned as much for its uncomfortable ride as its lavish decoration.
The coach was built in 1762 under the reign of King George III and it has been used in every coronation since 1831.
It is made of wood and plated with gold leaf, from the cherubs on the roof to the Greek sea gods over each wheel. About the only things that aren’t gilded are the side panels painted with Roman gods and goddesses and, of course, the interior, which is upholstered in satin and velvet.
But the coach is heavy — 4 tons — and old, meaning it only ever travels at walking speed.
And while it may look luxurious, the coach features a notoriously bumpy ride because it is slung from leather straps rather than modern metal springs.
The late queen wasn’t a fan.
“Horrible! It’s not meant for traveling in at all,” she said in 2018 in an interview with Sky News. “Not very comfortable.”
That’s one reason Charles and Camilla will ride to the coronation in the Diamond Jubilee State Coach, which is equipped with hydraulic shock absorbers, as well as heat and air conditioning.
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