A growing number of startups are using artificial intelligence to replicate human voices. A company is creating synthetic voices for organizations to use for advertising, marketing and training. Phil Dierking reports.
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Apple Inc. opened its first flagship store in India in a much-anticipated launch Tuesday that highlights the company’s growing aspirations to expand in the country it also hopes to turn into a potential manufacturing hub.
The company’s CEO Tim Cook posed for photos with a few of the 100 or so Apple fans who had lined up outside the sprawling 20,000-square-foot store in India’s financial capital, Mumbai, its design inspired by the iconic black-and-yellow cabs unique to the city. A second store will open Thursday in the national capital, New Delhi.
“India has such a beautiful culture and an incredible energy, and we’re excited to build on our long-standing history,” Cook said in a statement earlier.
The tech giant has been operating in India for more than 25 years, selling its products through authorized retailers and the website it launched a few years ago. But regulatory hurdles and the pandemic delayed its plans to open a flagship store.
The new stores are a clear signal of the company’s commitment to invest in India, the second-largest smartphone market in the world where iPhone sales have been ticking up steadily, said Jayanth Kolla, analyst at Convergence Catalyst, a tech consultancy. The stores show “how much India matters to the present and the future of the company,” he added.
For the Cupertino, California-based company, India’s sheer size makes the market especially encouraging.
About 600 million of India’s 1.4 billion people have smartphones, “which means the market is still under-penetrated and the growth prospect is huge,” said Neil Shah, vice president of research at technology market research firm Counterpoint Research.
Between 2020 and 2022, the Silicon Valley company has gained some ground in the smartphone market in the country, going from just about 2% to capturing 6%, according to Counterpoint data.
Still, the iPhone’s hefty price tag puts it out of reach for the majority of Indians.
Instead, iPhone sales in the country have thrived among the sliver of upper-middle-class and rich Indians with disposable incomes, a segment of buyers that Shah says is rising. According to Counterpoint data, Apple has captured 65% of the “premium” smartphone market, where prices range up from 30,000 rupees ($360).
In September, Apple announced it would start making its iPhone 14 in India. The news was hailed as a win for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, which has pushed for ramping up local manufacturing ever since he came to power in 2014.
Apple first began manufacturing from India in 2017 with its iPhone SE and has since continued to assemble a number of iPhone models from the country.
Most of Apple’s smartphones and tablets are assembled by contractors with factories in China, but the company started looking at potentially moving some production to Southeast Asia or other places after repeated shutdowns to fight COVID-19 disrupted its global flow of products.
“Big companies got a jolt, they realized they needed a backup strategy outside of China — they couldn’t risk another lockdown or any geopolitical rift affecting their business,” said Kolla.
Currently, India makes close to 13 million iPhones every year, up from less than 5 million three years ago, according to Counterpoint Research. This is about 6% of iPhones made globally — and only a small slice in comparison to China, which still produces around 90% of them.
Last week, India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said the government was in regular touch with Apple to support their business here and that the company had plans to have 25% of their global production come out of India in the next five years.
The challenge for Apple, according to Shah of Counterpoint, is that the raw materials are still coming from outside India so the tech company will need to either find a local supplier or bring their suppliers, based in countries like China, Japan and Taiwan, closer to drive up production.
Still, he’s optimistic this target could be met, especially with labor costs being lower in India and the government wooing companies with attractive subsidies to boost local manufacturing.
“For Apple, everything is about timing. They don’t enter a market with full flow until they feel confident about their prospects. They can see the opportunity here today — it’s a win-win situation,” Shah said.
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The share of Americans who volunteer their time to help charities build houses, serve food, do environmental cleanup, and much else has been on the decline nationwide but nowhere as sharply as in Florida, where only 16% of residents donate their free hours to local organizations, according to the latest available statistics.
That’s a drop from the nearly 23% of residents who volunteered in 2017.
Florida’s volunteer rate slumped in large part because of the pandemic, which made it especially risky for older Americans — who are among the most loyal and regular part of the volunteer population in Florida and elsewhere — to interact in public settings.
The loss of those volunteers is painful for many nonprofits, which are stretched to provide needed services and programs because they face a tight job market for paid workers and increased demands for help.
“What’s happening now is actually the staff is wearing multiple hats, as many nonprofit staff members do, to make up for the gap of volunteers,” says Sabeen Perwaiz Syed, CEO of the Florida Nonprofit Alliance, which represents charitable organizations across the state.
Meanwhile, Wyoming was the only state in the country to chalk up an increase in volunteering. Nearly 40% of residents volunteer, according to the latest figures available, compared with slightly less than 33% in 2017. The growth is in part because its open spaces made it easier for volunteers to keep working safely during the pandemic, and now nonprofits are seeking to capitalize on people’s growing interest in giving their time.
Those figures are part of an AmeriCorps analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data for 2017, 2019, and 2021, the latest year available.
The challenge of finding ways to attract and keep volunteers is not a new issue facing nonprofits, although it has been worsened by the pandemic.
Nathan Dietz, a researcher at the University of Maryland’s Do Good Institute, says charities that didn’t focus on retaining volunteers during the pandemic may find it difficult to get them back.
“There were some organizations who, during the pandemic, they just said, ‘We don’t know how we’re going to do volunteer management or volunteer engagement, and we don’t really have time to figure it out because we have bigger problems,'” Dietz said. “When people disengage from that kind of regular activity, it’s hard to re-engage them even if you’re trying to actively do that.”
Wyoming, known for wide-open spaces, including Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, had fewer restrictions and closings than many states throughout Covid-19. That kept more volunteer opportunities open and minimized disruptions to volunteers’ routines.
The Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation, a conservation nonprofit near Grand Teton National Park, relies on volunteers to collect local wildlife data and remove fencing that’s harmful to animals. The organization says more people wanted to volunteer during the pandemic than in past years.
Steve Morriss, a longtime volunteer with the foundation and other local nonprofits, says volunteer work in the outdoors was especially appealing for retirees like him during the pandemic because it allowed them to socially distance but still interact with others and do good.
The Heart of Wyoming Habitat for Humanity chapter, which relies on volunteers to build homes in Natrona County, saw an uptick in volunteering interest after re-opening its construction sites during the pandemic. Companies that previously provided financial support, in particular, began to give their employees time off to volunteer at Habitat.
The Wyoming Community Development Authority, a housing lender, is one financial supporter whose employees spent two days last year working on a Habitat construction site.
“Now it was no longer enough to make a gift, which we very much appreciate,” says Tess Mittelstadt, the nonprofit’s executive director. “But they wanted to see what that gift meant, and they wanted to see what that meant for people in our community.”
Jody Shields of the Wyoming Nonprofit Network says since the pandemic, she’s noticed increased interest from companies looking for volunteer opportunities because they allow employees both to bond with one another and to support local causes.
Mittelstadt says the organization is seeking to keep volunteerism high by providing volunteers with information about the specific families they’re helping by building houses. Habitat also invites volunteers to events celebrating completed homes.
Data suggests all the effort is paying off. Volunteers spent 57% more hours building new homes during the nonprofit’s last fiscal year compared with the previous year, according to Mittelstadt.
“Everybody knows somebody in our community, and everybody’s willing to lend that helping hand,” she says.
Even as the pandemic has receded, volunteerism is not rebounding in Florida, says Perwaiz Syed of the Florida Nonprofit Alliance.
“Nonprofits have had a lot of volunteers stop,” she says. “They have not returned. Many of them are seniors. They’re putting their health first and have not re-engaged in person.”
A study of 2,300 nonprofits by the alliance found that 40% of nonprofits reported they needed more volunteers and 25% of nonprofit employees said they were feeling overworked as they took on tasks previously done by volunteers.
The Manatee Literacy Council, which provides adult literacy tutoring, employs three part-time staff members and has 60 volunteer tutors, mostly retirees, available year-round. It lost 75% of its volunteers during the height of the pandemic. The program was able to move some of its work online, but it still can’t meet demand. The center currently has a waiting list of 100 people in need of tutoring.
To recruit more volunteers, the group sends representatives to community events to talk about its work, says Michelle Deveaux McLean, the council’s CEO.
She also says she is working hard to keep volunteers returning by organizing monthly meet-ups and creating a supportive environment. It continues to be a struggle.
“I’m lucky if I have five volunteers every month. We’re just perpetually upside down,” McLean says.
Other Florida nonprofits are turning more to online volunteering and enlisting companies to urge employees to volunteer.
For instance, Office Depot, based in South Florida, includes volunteerism as part of its professional development for employees. Since 2017, the company has sent workers to help charities do landscaping, paint murals, prepare meals for youths in Florida, and more.
Even as nonprofits work on a variety of ways to try to expand the number of volunteers, doing so may take time.
“I do think that Florida’s numbers will increase over time as we stabilize a bit from the pandemic,” Perwaiz Syed says. “I don’t think you’re going to see us in the top 10 because that’s just not possible to go that far that quickly. But I do think it will increase a little bit.”
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Senegalese singer-songwriter Baaba Maal on Monday was named a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification.
Maal has long been an activist on climate change and refugees. Since 2003, he has been committed to various development challenges in Africa, working with different U.N. family organizations.
His NANN-K Trust recently opened a solar-powered irrigation project in Senegal to fight desertification, which is one of the main drivers of people leaving the country on dangerous migration routes. The project will train people to start similar projects in their own communities.
In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Maal said he is a believer in putting power in the hands of young people and women.
“We are tackling climate change impact, but also fighting desertification on the African continent, especially in my region where we are just not far away from the desert and we see it coming to us,” he said.
“And it had an impact because people who don’t get more opportunities to do agriculture, fishing and many more will have to run away from their places, go to the big cities where nothing is planned for them there, and then later on, some of the young ones will just take the boats to go to Spain or some of these places or just try to cross the desert and it’s really dangerous. We did lose a lot of lives.”
Brought up in the small town of Podor in north Senegal, which has a fishing community at its heart, Maal was born into a fisherman caste and was expected to follow that career path, but he befriended storyteller and musician Mansour Seck, and has spent his life performing, traveling and raising awareness about the issues his homeland faces.
“Our role is first to give news about what’s going on, because sometimes the local people, they don’t know what’s happening to them is the impact of climate change. They don’t know how to stand up against that. But at the same time, when they know about it, they will say what to do,” he said.
The veteran musician released his first album in seven years, “Being,” on March 31 and will headline the Barbican in London for the first time in 20 years on May 30.
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Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Monday called off a highly anticipated launch of its powerful new Starship rocket, delaying the first uncrewed test flight of the vehicle into space.
The two-stage rocketship, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty at 394 feet (120 m) high, originally was scheduled for blast-off from the SpaceX facility at Boca Chica, Texas, during a two-hour launch window that began at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT).
But the California-based space company announced in a live webcast during the final minutes of the countdown that it was scrubbing the flight attempt for at least 48 hours, citing a pressurization issue in the lower-stage rocket booster.
Musk, the company’s billionaire founder and chief executive, told a private Twitter audience on Sunday night that the mission stood a better chance of being scrubbed than proceeding to launch on Monday.
Getting the vehicle to space for the first time would represent a key milestone in SpaceX’s ambition of sending humans back to the moon and ultimately to Mars – at least initially as part of NASA’s newly inaugurated human spaceflight program, Artemis.
A successful debut flight would also instantly rank the Starship system as the most powerful launch vehicle on Earth.
Both the lower-stage Super Heavy booster rocket and the upper-stage Starship cruise vessel it will carry to space are designed as reusable components, capable of flying back to Earth for soft landings – a maneuver that has become routine for SpaceX’s smaller Falcon 9 rocket.
But neither stage would be recovered for the expendable first test flight to space, expected to last no more than 90 minutes.
Prototypes of the Starship cruise vessel have made five sub-space flights up to 6 miles (10 km) above Earth in recent years, but the Super Heavy booster has never left the ground.
In February, SpaceX did a test-firing of the booster, igniting 31 of its 33 Raptor engines for roughly 10 seconds with the rocket bolted in place vertically atop a platform.
The Federal Aviation Administration just last Friday granted a license for what would be the first test flight of the fully stacked rocket system, clearing a final regulatory hurdle for the long-awaited launch.
If all goes as planned for the next launch bid, all 33 Raptor engines will ignite simultaneously to loft the Starship on a flight that nearly completes a full orbit of the Earth before it re-enters the atmosphere and free-falls into the Pacific at supersonic speed about 60 miles (97 km) off the coast of the northern Hawaiian islands.
After separating from the Starship, the Super Heavy booster is expected to execute the beginnings of a controlled return flight before plunging into the Gulf of Mexico.
As designed, the Starship rocket is nearly two times more powerful than NASA’s own Space Launch System (SLS), which made its debut uncrewed flight to orbit in November, sending a NASA cruise vessel called Orion on a 10-day voyage around the moon and back.
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Japanese video games group Sega has offered to buy Angry Birds maker Rovio, valuing the Finnish company at over $770 million, the companies said Monday.
“Combining the strengths of Rovio and Sega presents an incredibly exciting future,” Alexandre Pelletier-Normand, CEO of Rovio, said in a statement, which added that Rovio was recommending shareholders to accept the offer.
The offer, which represents a 19% premium over Rovio’s closing share price on Friday, is part of the Sonic the Hedgehog maker’s “long-term goal” of expanding into the mobile gaming market, Sega CEO Haruki Satomi said.
“Among the rapidly growing global gaming market, the mobile gaming market has especially high potential,” he added.
In 2022, Rovio, which employs over 500 people, saw a revenue of $350 million, and an adjusted net profit of $34.5 million.
Rovio launched the bird slingshot game in 2009 and it soared rapidly to become one of the most popular games on Apple’s App Store.
In 2016, the “Angry Birds” movie, produced by Sony Entertainment, was a huge success and grossed $350 million worldwide.
Rovio also manages Angry Birds theme parks in several countries and oversees the publication of children’s books about the famous birds in a dozen languages.
Following the global success of Angry Birds, Rovio has remained heavily reliant on its flagship game, struggling to develop another similar hit.
After years of success tied to its Angry Birds mobile games, Rovio hit a rough patch in 2015 and laid off a third of its staff.
Sega is aiming to open the offer period in early May, hoping to complete the deal in the third quarter, the company said.
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The final curtain came down Sunday on New York’s production of “The Phantom of the Opera,” ending Broadway’s longest-running show with thunderous standing ovations, champagne toasts and gold and silver confetti bursting from its famous chandelier.
It was show No. 13,981 at the Majestic Theatre and it ended with a reprise of “The Music of the Night” performed by the current cast, previous actors in the show — including original star Sarah Brightman — and crew members in street clothes.
Andrew Lloyd Webber took to the stage last in a black suit and black tie and dedicated the final show to his son, Nick, who died last month after a protracted battle with gastric cancer and pneumonia. He was 43.
“When he was a little boy, he heard some of this music,” Lloyd Webber said. Brightman, holding his hand, agreed: “When Andrew was writing it, he was right there. So his son is with us. Nick, we love you very much.”
Producer Cameron Mackintosh gave some in the crowd hope they would see the Phantom again, and perhaps sooner than they think.
“The one question I keep getting asked again and again — will the Phantom return? Having been a producer for over 55 years, I’ve seen all the great musicals return, and ‘Phantom’ is one of the greatest,” he said. “So it’s only a matter of time.”
The musical — a fixture on Broadway since opening on January 26, 1988 — has weathered recessions, war, terrorism and cultural shifts. But the prolonged pandemic may have been the last straw: It’s a costly musical to sustain, with elaborate sets and costumes as well as a large cast and orchestra. The curtain call Sunday showed how out of step “Phantom” is with the rest of Broadway but also how glorious a big, splashy musical can be.
“If there ever was a bang, we’re going out with a bang. It’s going to be a great night,” said John Riddle just before dashing inside to play Raoul for the final time.
Based on a novel by Gaston Leroux, “Phantom” tells the story of a deformed composer who haunts the Paris Opera House and falls madly in love with an innocent young soprano, Christine. Webber’s lavish songs include “Masquerade,” ″Angel of Music” and ″All I Ask of You.”
In addition to Riddle, the New York production said goodbye with Emilie Kouatchou as Christine and Laird Mackintosh stepping in for Ben Crawford as the Phantom. Crawford was unable to sing because of a bacterial infection but was cheered at the curtain call, stepping to the side of the stage. The Phantom waved him over to stand beside him, Riddle and Kouatchou.
There was a video presentation of many of the actors who had played key roles in the show over the years, and the orchestra seats were crowded with Christines, Raouls and Phantoms. The late director Hal Prince, choreographer Gillian Lynne and set and costume designer Maria Björnson were also honored.
Lin-Manuel Miranda attended, as did Glenn Close, who performed in two separate Broadway productions of Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard.” Free champagne was offered at intermission and flutes of it were handed out onstage at the curtain call.
Riddle first saw “The Phantom of the Opera” in Toronto as a 4-year-old child. “It was the first musical I ever saw. I didn’t know what a musical was,” he said. “Now, 30-some odd years later, I’m closing the show on Broadway. So it’s incredible.”
Kouatchou, who became the first Black woman in the role in New York, didn’t think the show would ever stop. “I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to do my run, ‘Phantom’ is going to continue on and they’ll be more Christines of color,’” she said. “But this is it.”
The first production opened in London in 1986 and since then the show has been seen by more than 145 million people in 183 cities and performed in 17 languages over 70,000 performances. On Broadway alone, it has grossed more than $1.3 billion.
When “Phantom” opened in New York, “Die Hard” was in movie theaters, Adele was born, and floppy discs were at the cutting edge of technology. A postage stamp cost 25 cents, and the year’s most popular songs were “Roll With It” by Steve Winwood, “Faith” by George Michael and Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
Critics were positive, with the New York Post calling it “a piece of impeccably crafted musical theater,” the Daily News describing it as “spectacular entertainment,” and The New York Times saying it “wants nothing more than to shower the audience with fantasy and fun.”
Lloyd Webber’s other musicals include “Cats,” “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Evita,” “Sunset Boulevard” and “School of Rock.” The closing of “Phantom” means the composer is left with one show on Broadway, the critically mauled “Bad Cinderella.”
The closing of “Phantom,” originally scheduled for February, was pushed to mid-April after a flood of revived interest and ticket sales that pushed weekly grosses past $3 million. The closing means the longest-running show crown now goes to “Chicago,” which started in 1996. “The Lion King” is next, having begun performances in 1997.
Broadway took a pounding during the pandemic, with all theaters closed for more than 18 months. Some of the most popular shows — “Hamilton,” “The Lion King” and “Wicked” — rebounded well, but other shows have struggled.
Breaking even usually requires a steady stream of tourists, especially for “Phantom,” and visitors to the city haven’t returned to pre-pandemic levels. The pandemic also pushed up expenses for all shows, including routine COVID-19 testing and safety officers on staff. The Phantom became a poster boy for Broadway’s return — after all, he is partially masked.
Fans can always catch the Phantom elsewhere. The flagship London production celebrated its 36th anniversary in October, and there are productions in Japan, Greece, Australia, Sweden, Italy, South Korea and the Czech Republic. One is about to open in Bucharest, and another will open in Vienna in 2024.
Kouatchou, who walked the red carpet before the final show in a hot pink clinging gown with a sweetheart neckline and a cut out, said the bitterness was undercut by the big send-off. Most Broadway shows that close slink into the darkness uncelebrated.
“It kind of sweetens it, right?” she said. “We get to celebrate at the end of this. We get to all come together and drink and laugh and talk about the show and all the highs and lows. It’s ending on a big note.”
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Floating in the port of Los Angeles, a strange-looking barge covered with pipes and tanks contains a concept that scientists hope to make waves: a new way to use the ocean as a vast carbon dioxide sponge to tackle global warming.
Scientists from University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) have been working for two years on SeaChange — an ambitious project that could one day boost the amount of CO2, a major greenhouse gas, that can be absorbed by our seas.
Their goal is “to use the ocean as a big sponge,” according to Gaurav Sant, director of the university’s Institute for Carbon Management (ICM).
The oceans, covering most of the Earth, are already the planet’s main carbon sinks, acting as a critical buffer in the climate crisis.
They absorb a quarter of all CO2 emissions, as well as 90% of the warming that has occurred in recent decades due to increasing greenhouse gases.
But they are feeling the strain. The ocean is acidifying, and rising temperatures are reducing its absorption capacity.
The UCLA team wants to increase that capacity by using an electrochemical process to remove vast quantities of CO2 already in seawater — rather like wringing out a sponge to help recover its absorptive power.
“If you can take out the carbon dioxide that is in the oceans, you’re essentially renewing their capacity to take additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,” Sant told AFP.
Engineers built a floating mini-factory on a 30-meter-long boat which pumps in seawater and subjects it to an electrical charge.
Chemical reactions triggered by electrolysis convert CO2 dissolved in the seawater into a fine white powder containing calcium carbonate — the compound found in chalk, limestone and oyster or mussel shells.
This powder can be discarded back into the ocean, where it remains in solid form, thereby storing CO2 “very durably… over tens of thousands of years,” explained Sant.
Meanwhile, the pumped water returns to the sea, ready to absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Sant and his team are confident the process will not damage the marine environment, although this will require further testing to confirm.
A potential additional benefit of the technology is that it creates hydrogen as a byproduct. As the so-called “green revolution” progresses, the gas could be widely used to power clean cars, trucks and planes in the future.
Of course, the priority in curbing global warming is for humans to drastically reduce current CO2 emissions — something nations are struggling to achieve.
But in parallel, most scientists say carbon dioxide capture and storage techniques can play an important role in keeping the planet livable.
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) could help to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 as it offsets emissions from industries which are particularly difficult to decarbonize, such as aviation, and cement and steel production.
It could help to tackle the stocks of CO2 that have been accumulating in the atmosphere for decades.
Keeping global warming under control will require the removal of between 450 billion and 1.1 trillion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere by 2100, according to the first global report dedicated to the topic, released in January.
That would require the CDR sector “to grow at a rate of about 30 percent per year over the next 30 years, much like what happened with wind and solar,” said one of its authors, Gregory Nemet.
UCLA’s SeaChange technology “fits into a category of a promising solution that could be large enough to be climate-relevant,” said Nemet, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
By sequestering CO2 in mineral form within the ocean, it differs markedly from existing “direct air capture” (DAC) methods, which involve pumping and storing gas underground through a highly complex and expensive process.
A start-up company, Equatic, plans to scale up the UCLA technology and prove its commercial viability, by selling carbon credits to manufacturers wanting to offset their emissions.
In addition to the Los Angeles barge, a similar boat is currently being tested in Singapore.
Sant hopes data from both sites will quickly lead to the construction of far larger plants that are capable of removing “thousands of tons of carbon” each year.
“We expect to start operating these new plants in 18 to 24 months,” he said.
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World record-holder Eliud Kipchoge has the speed to outclass the rest of the field when he makes his Boston Marathon debut on Monday.
To win, he may have to slow things down.
The two-time Olympic gold medalist and 12-time major marathon champion knows that the 26.2-mile route from Hopkinton to Boston’s Back Bay isn’t like those flat and friendly courses where he established himself as perhaps the greatest distance runner of all time.
No matter, he said: Breaking the tape is what’s important.
Regardless of how long it takes.
“I don’t mind about time,” said Kipchoge, who set the world record of 2 hours, 1 minute, 9 seconds in Berlin in 2019 and also broke 2 hours in an exhibition in a Vienna park that year. “I trust it will be a fruitful race, a very fruitful race. But I will try to win.”
The hilly Boston course, which begins with a descent, hits Heartbreak Hill around 20 miles in and then drops down to sea level again on the way to the finish, has always rewarded smart tactics more than pure speed. Kipchoge, who had never seen the course before this week, won his majors in Berlin, London, Chicago and Tokyo — all flatter and faster.
Still, his personal best is almost 2 minutes better than the next-fastest runners in the field, defending champion Evans Chebet, also of Kenya, and Gabriel Geay of Tanzania (2:03:00).
“I trust the most prepared and planned person will take the day on Monday,” Kipchoge said. “I respect everybody. I respect the athletes, their condition. I respect their tactics. And if they are most prepared, I will shake their hands.”
In all, there are nearly a dozen runners in the field with times faster than the 2:05:52 that was the Boston record until a blistering 2011 race won by Geoffrey Mutai in 2:03:02 — at the time, the fastest marathon ever run. That year, cool temperatures and a strong tailwind helped create the perfect conditions for fast times.
“What’s capable on this course has been totally flipped upside down,” 2018 winner Des Linden said. “You can just feel the energy. You feel like something magical is going to happen. I get the vibe that something epic is going to happen.”
Monday’s weather is expected to be less cooperative, with rain and a headwind that is sure to crush anyone who gets distracted by the clock on the way to Copley Square.
Kipchoge may not have experience on the course, but Linden said he has enough experience to know it isn’t a time trial.
“He’s been out and he’s checked it out,” Linden said. “But I think there’s something about feeling your quads just being wrecked when you’re coming off of Heartbreak. That’s different. That’s a different thing that you have to experience.
“I’ve heard it described as: We know that the Boston sports is going to chew you up. It’s whether or not it spits you out,” she said. “We don’t know if it’s going to spit him out or not. We’re going to find out.”
Already a winner
No matter what, Edna Kiplagat is going home from Boston a winner.
The 2017 champion claimed her 2021 title in a brief ceremony in Copley Square on Thursday, inheriting the victory that was stripped from fellow Kenyan Diana Kipyokei after she tested positive for a banned substance. Kiplagat was given the winner’s medal and gilded olive wreath; she already had collected the first-prize money.
“It was not the same as when I won the other, but I appreciate the effort,” she said. “It was a good presentation. I was so happy about it.”
Kiplagat leads a women’s field that is also among Boston’s fastest. Amane Beriso of Ethiopia is one of three women ever to break 2:15:00, winning in Valencia, Spain, in December in 2:14:58.
Nonbinary runners
Monday’s race will see the debut of a new division for nonbinary athletes.
The Boston Athletic Association added the category when registration opened last fall. In order to enter, nonbinary athletes needed to complete a marathon as a nonbinary participant during the qualifying window. Twenty-seven runners have signed up, the BAA said.
Five of the six major marathons include a nonbinary category, with Tokyo the exception.
Bombing anniversary
The race will include 264 members of the One Fund community — survivors of the 2013 attack, along with friends and family of the victims and those raising money for related causes.
The 2013 race was interrupted when two backpack bombs exploded on Boylston Street, steps from the finish line. Three people were killed and nearly 300 injured, with 17 people losing limbs to the pressure-cooker bombs that were packed with nails and ball bearings.
The city marked 10 years since the bombing on Saturday, the calendar anniversary.
Big day in Boston
The Boston Red Sox hold their annual Patriots’ Day matinee on Monday, facing two-way Los Angeles Angels star Shohei Ohtani. First pitch is expected at around 11:10 a.m., about the time that the wheelchair racers will be zooming through Kenmore Square, the 1 Mile To Go marker.
On Monday night, the NHL-best Boston Bruins open their first-round playoff series against the Florida Panthers. (The Boston Celtics are off, with Game 2 of their series against the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday night.)
“It’s on, man,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “I mean, if we could have done this on March 17th, that’d be the only way to make it bigger. That’s the only way this place would be more lit up.”
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Information in this article is confirmed with other sources and may be used without attribution to The Associated Press in broadcasts — websites still must use the attribution. The News Center has no plans currently to match it.
(With AP Photo)
Europe’s Most Powerful Nuclear Reactor Kicks Off in Finland
Apr 16, 2023 13:05 (GMT) – 423 words |By JARI TANNER The Associated Press
FOR RADIO: HELSINKI (AP) — Finland’s much-delayed and costly new nuclear reactor, Europe’s most powerful by production capacity, has completed a test phase lasting over a year and has started regular output, significantly boosting the Nordic country’s electricity self-sufficiency. The Olkiluoto 3 reactor, which has 1,600-megawatt capacity, was connected into the Finnish national power grid in March 2022 and kicked off regular production Sunday. Operator Teollisuuden Voima, or TVO, tweeted that “Olkiluoto 3 is now ready” after a delay of 14 years from the original plan. It will help Finland achieve its carbon neutrality targets and increase energy security at a time when European countries have cut oil, gas and other power supplies from Russia, Finland’s neighbor.
FOR WEB: HELSINKI (AP) — Finland’s much-delayed and costly new nuclear reactor, Europe’s most powerful by production capacity, has completed a test phase lasting over a year and started regular output, boosting the Nordic country’s electricity self-sufficiency significantly.
The Olkiluoto 3 reactor, which has 1,600-megawatt capacity, was connected into the Finnish national power grid in March 2022 and kicked off regular production Sunday. Operator Teollisuuden Voima, or TVO, tweeted that “Olkiluoto 3 is now ready” after a delay of 14 years from the original plan.
It will help Finland to achieve its carbon neutrality targets and increase energy security at a time when European countries have cut oil, gas and other power supplies from Russia, Finland’s neighbor.
“The production of Olkiluoto 3 stabilizes the price of electricity and plays an important role in the Finnish green transition,” said TVO President and CEO Jarmo Tanhua in a statement. The company added that “the electricity production volume of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant unit is a significant addition to clean, domestic production.”
Construction of Olkiluoto 3 began in 2005 and was to be completed four years later. However, the project was plagued by several technological problems that led to lawsuits. The last time a new nuclear reactor was commissioned in Finland was over 40 years ago.
The Olkiluoto 3 is western Europe’s first new reactor in more than 15 years. It is the first new-generation EPR, or European Pressurized Reactor, plant to have gone online in Europe. It was developed in a joint venture between France’s Areva and Germany’s Siemens.
Primarily due to safety concerns, nuclear power remains a controversial issue in Europe. The launch of the Finnish reactor coincides with Germany’s move to shut down its last remaining three nuclear plants Saturday.
Experts have put Olkiluoto 3’s final price tag at some 11 billion euros ($12 billion) — almost three times what was initially estimated. Finland now has five nuclear reactors in two power plants located on the shores of the Baltic Sea. Combined, they cover more than 40% of the nation’s electricity demand.
The conservative National Coalition Party, or NCP, which won Finland’s April 2 general election, wants to increase the share of energy that the country of 5.5 million gets from nuclear power still further.
NCP leader Petteri Orpo, Finland’s likely new prime minister, said during the election campaign that the new Cabinet should make nuclear power “the cornerstone of the government’s energy policy.”
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Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in the United States. It’s simple and can be played in small spaces so popular with all age groups. But not everyone loves it. Maxim Moskalkov reports.
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Ireland’s president has led tributes to Mark Sheehan, guitarist with Irish rock band The Script, after his death at 46.
The band said Sheehan died in a hospital Friday after a brief illness. In a statement, The Script called him a “much-loved husband, father, brother, band mate and friend.”
Formed in Dublin in 2001 by Sheehan, singer Danny O’Donoghue and drummer Glen Power, The Script topped U.K. and Irish charts with its self-titled debut album in 2008. It included the hits We Cry, Breakeven and The Man Who Can’t Be Moved, which reached No. 1 in five countries.
The band’s pop-inflected rock sound made it one of Ireland’s biggest bands in the 2010s. The Script went on to have six Top 10 albums in the U.K. and one top three album in the U.S.
Irish President Michael D. Higgins praised the band’s “originality and excellence” and sent condolences to Sheehan’s family.
“Through their music, Mark and The Script have played an outstanding part in continuing and promoting this proud tradition of Irish musical success across the world,” Higgins said.
Sheehan is survived by his wife, Rina Sheehan, and their three children.
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Elon Musk’s SpaceX is about to take its most daring leap yet with a round-the-world test flight of its mammoth Starship.
It’s the biggest and mightiest rocket ever built, with the lofty goal of ferrying people to the moon and Mars.
Jutting almost 120 meters into the South Texas sky, Starship could blast off as early as Monday, with no one aboard. Musk’s company got the OK from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on Friday.
It will be the first launch with Starship’s two sections together. Early versions of the sci-fi-looking upper stage rocketed several miles into the stratosphere a few years back, crashing four times before finally landing upright in 2021. The towering first-stage rocket booster, dubbed Super Heavy, will soar for the first time.
For this demo, SpaceX won’t attempt any landings of the rocket or the spacecraft. Everything will fall into the sea.
“I’m not saying it will get to orbit, but I am guaranteeing excitement. It won’t be boring,” Musk promised at a Morgan Stanley conference last month. “I think it’s got, I don’t know, hopefully about a 50% chance of reaching orbit.”
Here’s the rundown on Starship’s debut:
Supersize rocket
The stainless-steel Starship has 33 main engines and 7.6 million kilograms of thrust. All but two of the methane-fueled, first-stage engines ignited during a launch pad test in January — good enough to reach orbit, Musk noted. Given its muscle, Starship could lift as much as 250 tons and accommodate 100 people on a trip to Mars. The six-engine spacecraft accounts for 50 meters of its height. Musk anticipates using Starship to launch satellites into low-Earth orbit, including his own Starlinks for internet service, before strapping anyone in. Starship easily eclipses NASA’s moon rockets — the Saturn V from the bygone Apollo era and the Space Launch System from the Artemis program that logged its first lunar trip late last year. It also outflanks the former Soviet Union’s N1 moon rocket, which never made it past a minute into flight, exploding with no one aboard.
Game plan
The test flight will last 1 ½ hours and fall short of a full orbit of Earth. If Starship reaches the three-minute mark after launch, the booster will be commanded to separate and fall into the Gulf of Mexico. The spacecraft would continue eastward, passing over the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans before ditching near Hawaii. Starship is designed to be fully reusable, but nothing will be saved from the test flight. Harvard astrophysicist and spacecraft tracker Jonathan McDowell will be more excited whenever Starship lands and returns intact from orbit. It will be “a profound development in spaceflight if and when Starship is debugged and operational,” he said.
Launch pad
Starship will take off from a remote site on the southernmost tip of Texas near Boca Chica Beach. It’s just below South Padre Island, and about 32 kilometers from Brownsville. Down the road from the launch pad is the complex where SpaceX has been developing and building Starship prototypes for the past several years. The complex, called Starbase, has more than 1,800 employees, who live in Brownsville or elsewhere in the Rio Grande Valley. The Texas launch pad is equipped with giant robotic arms — called chopsticks — to eventually grab a returning booster as it lands. SpaceX is retooling one of its two Florida launch pads to accommodate Starships down the road. Florida is where SpaceX’s Falcon rockets blast off with crew, space station cargo and satellites for NASA and other customers.
The odds
As usual, Musk is remarkably blunt about his chances, giving even odds, at best, that Starship will reach orbit on its first flight. But with a fleet of Starships under construction at Starbase, he estimates an 80% chance that one of them will attain orbit by year’s end. He expects it will take a couple of years to achieve full and rapid reusability.
Customers
With Starship, the California-based SpaceX is focusing on the moon for now, with a $3 billion NASA contract to land astronauts on the lunar surface as early as 2025, using the upper stage spacecraft. It will be the first moon landing by astronauts in more than 50 years. The moonwalkers will leave Earth via NASA’s Orion capsule and Space Launch System rocket, and then transfer to Starship in lunar orbit for the descent to the surface, and then back to Orion. To reach the moon and beyond, Starship will first need to refuel in low-Earth orbit. SpaceX envisions an orbiting depot with window-less Starships as tankers. But Starship isn’t just for NASA. A private crew will be the first to fly Starship, orbiting Earth. Two private flights to the moon would follow — no landings, just fly-arounds.
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this week released proposals for the most aggressive vehicle emission standards in the country’s history, with the expectation that electric cars will account for two of every three cars being produced in the U.S. by 2032. Keith Kocinski reports.
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The first image of a black hole captured four years ago revealed a fuzzy, fiery doughnut-shaped object. Now, researchers have used artificial intelligence to give that cosmic beauty shot a touch-up.
The updated picture, published Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, keeps the original shape, but with a skinnier ring and a sharper resolution.
The image released in 2019 gave a peek at the enormous black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, 53 million light-years from Earth. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. It was made using data gathered by a network of radio telescopes around the world, showing swirling light and gas.
But even with many telescopes working together, gaps remained in the data. In the latest study, scientists relied on the same data and used machine learning to fill in the missing pieces.
The resulting picture looks similar to the original, but with a thinner “doughnut” and a darker center, researchers said.
“For me, it feels like we’re really seeing it for the first time,” said lead author Lia Medeiros, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey.
Medeiros said the team plans to use machine learning on other images of celestial objects, including possibly the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.
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ChatGPT could return to Italy soon if its maker, OpenAI, complies with measures to satisfy regulators who had imposed a temporary ban on the artificial intelligence software over privacy worries.
The Italian data protection authority on Wednesday outlined a raft of requirements that OpenAI will have to satisfy by April 30 for the ban on AI chatbot to be lifted.
The watchdog last month ordered the company to temporarily stop processing Italian users’ personal information while it investigated a possible data breach. The authority said it didn’t want to hamper AI’s development but emphasized the importance of following the European Union’s strict data privacy rules.
OpenAI, which had responded by proposing remedies to ease the concerns, did not reply immediately to a request for comment Wednesday.
Concerns about boom grow
Concerns are growing about the artificial intelligence boom, with other countries, from France to Canada, investigating or looking closer at so-called generative AI technology like ChatGPT. The chatbot is “trained” on huge pools of data, including digital books and online writings, and able to generate text that mimics human writing styles.
Under Italy’s measures, OpenAI must post information on its website about how and why it processes the personal information of both users and non-users, as well as provide the option to correct or delete that data.
The company will have to rely on consent or “legitimate interest” to use personal data to train ChatGPT’s algorithms, the watchdog said.
Regulators question legal basis
The Italian regulators had questioned whether there’s a legal basis for OpenAI to collect massive amounts of data used to teach ChatGPT’s algorithms and raised concerns the system could sometimes generate false information about individuals.
San Francisco-based OpenAI also will have to carry out a publicity campaign by May 15 through radio and TV, newspapers and the internet to inform people about how it uses their personal data for training algorithms, Italy’s watchdog said.
There’s also a requirement to verify users’ ages and set up a system to filter out those who are under 13 and teens between 13 and 18 who don’t have parental consent.
“Only in that case will the Italian SA (supervisory authority) lift its order that placed a temporary limitation on the processing of Italian users’ data … so that ChatGPT will be available once again from Italy,” the watchdog said on its website.
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A Biden administration proposal would force U.S. automakers to sharply increase their production of electric cars and trucks over the next decade, lending greater urgency to the effort to build raw material supply chains that reduce the industry’s dependence on China.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced a proposed rule that would place stricter limits on the average tailpipe emissions of vehicles built in the United States. The proposal would reduce the allowable limit by so much that automakers would have no way to comply unless about two-thirds of the vehicles they produce by 2032 are emission-free electric vehicles.
Automakers have generally recognized that EVs represent the future of the industry, but Wednesday’s proposal would greatly accelerate the trend. The proposal, which will be open to public comment before it is finalized, would greatly reduce a leading cause of air pollution in the U.S., as well as the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
“By proposing the most ambitious pollution standards ever for cars and trucks, we are delivering on the Biden-Harris administration’s promise to protect people and the planet, securing critical reductions in dangerous air and climate pollution, and ensuring significant economic benefits like lower fuel and maintenance costs for families,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan.
The proposal, which would apply to new light-duty vehicles made in 2027 and beyond, would be the strictest environmental standard the federal government has ever applied to automobiles. If it does force the industry to make EVs account for two-thirds of production, it could also exceed President Joe Biden’s previously articulated target of making 50% of new cars either plug-in hybrids or completely emission-free by 2030.
Supply chain questions
Well before the EPA released its proposed rule Wednesday, the Biden administration had been moving to strengthen the EV market in the U.S. and to build a pipeline for raw materials that would reduce the auto industry’s reliance on China for key raw materials.
Accomplishing that reduction will be no small task. According to an analysis by the International Energy Agency last year, China produced three-quarters of the world’s lithium-ion batteries, the key component in the majority of EVs on the road.
China also has a dominant hold on much of the market for the components of those batteries, including lithium, cobalt and graphite. According to the IEA, more than half of the world’s capacity for processing and refining those materials is located in China.
According to the IEA, as of last year, the U.S. accounted for only 10% of EV production worldwide, and just 7% of production capacity for batteries.
Infrastructure projects
Last year’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which contained hundreds of billions of dollars in climate-related spending, included the creation of large tax breaks restricted to EVs made at least partly in the U.S. The tax breaks are meant to extend over several years, but the restrictions become tighter as time goes on, creating incentives for manufacturers to “onshore” production to the U.S.
Tax breaks specific to the batteries used in EVs require that the raw materials used to assemble them come from domestic sources or from countries with which the U.S. has existing trade agreements.
Other pieces of legislation meant to spur investment in the U.S., including a major bipartisan infrastructure bill and the CHIPS and Science Act, also contain money and incentives that will help build out electric infrastructure in the U.S.
Achievable goals
Luke Tonachel, senior director for clean vehicles and buildings with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told VOA that building an EV supply chain centered on domestic production and imports from friendly countries is ambitious, but achievable.
Tonachel said the necessary raw materials are available from U.S. allies, but that the capacity for processing them needs to be built domestically. He said the creation of that capacity is already underway.
“There are robust incentives for building out that battery manufacturing and supply chain here in the U.S.,” he said, adding that he believes the administration’s time frame is feasible, especially now that the new standards have created certainty about future demand for EVs.
“It is realistic,” he said. “These are technologies that are known. We can certainly get more economies of scale as we ramp up production.”
Automakers tentative
Industry representatives said achieving the administration’s goal will require that a lot of disparate efforts be successful at the same time, not all of which are under their control. For example, a nationwide network of charging stations and the increased capacity to meet new demand for power will be essential to driving customer demand.
“It’s aggressive, and a lot of pieces have to work perfectly together,” Genevieve Cullen, president of the Electric Drive Transportation Association, told VOA. “Aside from the technology piece, the market piece has to work, and supply chain speed is part of that. Consumer incentives are working to help bring them into the equation, and we need to keep expanding infrastructure at a pace that meets, and perhaps exceeds, the needs in the beginning so that people feel the confidence that they need to switch to battery electric.”
John Bozzella, president of the trade group Alliance for Automotive Innovation, said in a blog post Wednesday that the administration’s plan is “aggressive by any measure” and that its success would depend on more than just automakers being able to ramp up production.
“To some extent, the baseline policy framework for the transition has come into focus,” Bozzella said. “But it remains to be seen whether the refueling infrastructure incentives and supply-side provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, the bipartisan infrastructure law, and the CHIPS and Science Act are sufficient to support electrification at the levels envisioned by the proposed standards over the coming years.”
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Broadcaster National Public Radio said Wednesday it would no longer post its news content on 52 official Twitter accounts in protest of the social media site labeling the independent U.S. news agency as “government-funded media.”
NPR is the first major news organization to go silent on Twitter. The social media platform owned by entrepreneur Elon Musk at first labeled NPR as “state-affiliated media,” the same tag it applies to propaganda outlets in China, Russia and other autocratic countries.
Twitter then revised its label to “government-funded media,” but NPR said that, too, was misleading because NPR is a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence. NPR says it receives less than 1% of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
NPR chief executive John Lansing said that by not posting its news reports on Twitter, the network is protecting its credibility and would continue to produce journalism without “a shadow of negativity.”
In an email to staff explaining the decision, Lansing wrote, “It would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the federal charter for public media with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards.”
He said that even if Twitter were to drop any description of NPR, the network would not immediately return to the platform.
“At this point I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter,” Lansing said in an article posted by NPR. “I would need some time to understand whether Twitter can be trusted again.”
Twitter has also labeled Voice of America, a U.S. government-funded but independent news agency, and the BBC in Britain, as “government-funded media,” a description more commonly employed in describing state-controlled propaganda outlets. VOA has not dropped its use of Twitter but said its description of the news outlet left the impression that it was not independent.
Bridget Serchak, VOA’s director of public relations, said, “The label ‘government funded’ is potentially misleading and could be construed as also ‘government-controlled’ — which VOA is most certainly not.”
“Our editorial firewall, enshrined in the law, prohibits any interference from government officials at any level in its news coverage and editorial decision-making process,” Serchak said in an email. “VOA will continue to emphasize this distinction in our discussions with Twitter, as this new label on our network causes unwarranted and unjustified concern about the accuracy and objectivity of our news coverage.”
VOA is funded by the U.S. government and is part of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, but its editorial independence is protected by regulations and a firewall. The BBC said it “is, and always has been, independent.”
Press freedom advocates have also objected to Twitter’s labeling of NPR, VOA and the BBC.
“The confusion between media serving the general interest and propaganda media is dangerous, and is yet further proof that social media platforms are not competent to identify what is and is not journalism,” Vincent Berthier, head of the technology desk at Reporters Without Borders, said in a statement.
Liam Scott contributed to this report.
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Hundreds of thousands of Russians opposed to Putin’s war in Ukraine have left to find refuge in Baltic countries, where they have joined Belarusians who have fled Lukashenko’s repression. Ricardo Marquina has more from the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, in this report narrated by Marcus Harton.
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Billionaire Elon Musk has told the BBC that running Twitter has been “quite painful” but that the social media company is now roughly breaking even after he acquired it late last year.
In an interview also streamed live late Tuesday on Twitter Spaces, Musk discussed his ownership of the online platform, including layoffs, misinformation and his work style.
“It’s not been boring. It’s quite a rollercoaster,” he told the U.K. broadcaster at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.
It was a rare chance for a mainstream news outlet to interview Musk, who also owns Tesla and SpaceX. After buying Twitter for $44 billion last year, Musk’s changes included eliminating the company’s communications department.
Reporters who email the company to seek comment now receive an auto-reply with a poop emoji.
The interview was sometimes tense, with Musk challenging the reporter to back up assertions about rising levels of hate speech on the platform. At other times, Musk laughed at his own jokes, mentioning more than once that he wasn’t the CEO but his dog Floki was.
He also revealed that he sometimes sleeps on a couch at Twitter’s San Francisco office.
Advertisers who had shunned the platform in the wake of Musk’s tumultuous acquisition have mostly returned, the billionaire said, without providing details.
Musk predicted that Twitter could become “cash flow positive” in the current quarter “if current trends continue.” Because Twitter is a private company, information about its finances can’t be verified.
After acquiring the platform, Musk carried out mass layoffs as part of cost-cutting efforts. He said Twitter’s workforce has been slashed to about 1,500 employees from about 8,000 previously, describing it as something that had to be done.
“It’s not fun at all,” Musk said. “The company’s going to go bankrupt if we don’t cut costs immediately. This is not a caring-uncaring situation. It’s like if the whole ship sinks, then nobody’s got a job.”
Asked if he regretted buying the company, he said it was something that “needed to be done.”
“The pain level of Twitter has been extremely high. This hasn’t been some sort of party,” Musk said.
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