Comic books have often been about tackling social issues and protecting the underdog. That may be why they are attracting a wide variety of unique voices, from comic creators to cosplayers. Genia Dulot reports from Comic-Con 2023 in San Diego, California.
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Month: July 2023
Jonas King from Brooklyn, New York is among a new group of designers who focus on revitalizing pre-owned garments and textiles. As Nina Vishneva reports, King takes someone’s trash and turns it into custom pieces. Anna Rice narrates the story. (Camera: Vladimir Badikov)
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A class that teaches teenage girls how to code – or write instructions for computers – is drawing lots of interest in Mongolia. For VOA, Graham Kanwit and Elizabeth Lee have the story about a program that prepares them for jobs in technology. Camera: Sam Paakkonen
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Elon Musk has unveiled a new black and white “X” logo to replace Twitter’s famous blue bird as he follows through with a major rebranding of the social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year.
Musk replaced his own Twitter icon with a white X on a black background and posted a picture on Monday of the design projected on Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.
The X started appearing on the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday, but the bird was still dominant across the phone app.
Musk had asked fans for logo ideas and chose one, which he described as minimalist Art Deco, saying it “certainly will be refined.”
“And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk tweeted Sunday.
The X.com web domain now redirects users to Twitter.com, Musk said.
In response to questions about what tweets would be called when the rebranding is done, Musk said they would be called Xs.
Musk, CEO of Tesla, has long been fascinated with the letter. The billionaire is also CEO of rocket company Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly known as SpaceX. And in 1999, he founded a startup called X.com, an online financial services company now known as PayPal,
He calls his son with the singer Grimes, whose actual name is a collection of letters and symbols, “X.”
Musk’s Twitter purchase and rebranding are part of his strategy to create what he’s dubbed an ” everything app ” similar to China’s WeChat, which combines video chats, messaging, streaming and payments.
Linda Yaccarino, the longtime NBC Universal executive Musk tapped to be Twitter CEO in May, posted the new logo and weighed in on the change, writing on Twitter that X would be “the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.”
Experts, however, predicted the new name will confuse much of Twitter’s audience, which has already been souring on the social media platform following a raft of Musk’s other changes. The site also faces new competition from Threads, the new app by Facebook and Instagram parent Meta that directly targets Twitter users.
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Jill Biden has represented her country at the Olympics in Tokyo, a king’s coronation in London and a royal wedding in Jordan. She gets another chance to put her ambassadorial skills to work this week when the United States formally rejoins a United Nations agency devoted to education, science and culture around the globe.
Biden arrived in Paris early Monday, accompanied by her daughter, Ashley Biden, after flying overnight from Washington to join other VIPs and speak at a ceremony Tuesday at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The American flag will be raised to mark the U.S. return to UNESCO membership after a five-year absence.
UNESCO aims to foster global collaboration in education, science and culture. It also designates World Heritage sites, deeming them worthy of eternal preservation.
The agency on Sunday condemned Russia’s attack on a cathedral in Odesa and other heritage sites in Ukraine in recent days and said it will send a team to the Black Sea port city to assess damage.
In a statement, UNESCO noted that Odesa’s historic center was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site earlier this year and said attacks by Russian forces contradict recent promises by Russian authorities to take precautions to spare such sites across the country.
Before returning to Washington on Wednesday, Biden will tour a historic venue in France, Mont-Saint-Michel, a 1,000-year-old Benedictine abbey that was listed as a World Heritage site in 1979. It sits on an island in Normandy, in the north of the country.
A daughter and mother of U.S. service members, the first lady will also visit Brittany American Cemetery and Memorial to pay respects to the more than 4,400 U.S. service members buried there, most of whom died in Normandy and Brittany during World War II.
She will also stop at the Elysée Palace in Paris on Tuesday to catch up with Brigitte Macron, a former teacher and the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron. The women have met several times over the past two years, including in Washington last December when Macron was on a state visit to the U.S.
Senior Biden administration officials said returning to UNESCO fits President Joe Biden’s goal of strengthening global partnerships and recommitting to American leadership at the U.N. and other international organizations to serve as a counter to nations that do not share U.S. values.
Others said Jill Biden, who teaches English and writing at a Virginia community college, was best suited to represent the United States in Paris on Tuesday.
“The first lady, as a lifelong educator and believer in the power of educational opportunity across the world, is honored to help celebrate this important milestone,” said Elizabeth Alexander, a spokesperson. “She looks forward to raising the flag for the United States once again at the UNESCO headquarters, showing our country’s commitment to international cooperation in education, science, and culture.”
The U.S. pulled out of the Paris-based organization in 2018, under then-President Donald Trump, a Republican who claimed UNESCO was biased against Israel.
The administration of Biden, a Democrat, pushed to rejoin over concerns that China was filling the void in leadership created by the U.S. absence.
The administration announced in June that it would apply to rejoin the 193-member organization, which also plays a major role in setting international standards for artificial intelligence and technology education.
The organization’s governing board voted earlier this month to approve the Biden plan to rejoin, and the U.S. delivered a document certifying that it would accept the invitation to become the 194th member of UNESCO.
“Our organization is once again moving towards universality,” UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said at the time. She cast the U.S return as “excellent news for multilateralism as a whole. If we want to meet the challenges of our century, there can only be a collective response.”
The Trump administration in 2017 announced that the U.S. would withdraw from UNESCO, citing anti-Israel bias. That decision that took effect a year later.
The U.S. and Israel stopped financing UNESCO after it voted to include Palestine as a member state in 2011.
The Biden administration has requested $150 million for the 2024 budget to go toward UNESCO dues and arrears. The plan foresees similar requests for the ensuing years until the full debt of $619 million is repaid.
That makes up a big chunk of UNESCO’s $534 million annual operating budget. Before leaving, the U.S. contributed 22% of the agency’s overall funding.
The United States previously pulled out of UNESCO under the Reagan administration in 1984 because it viewed the agency as mismanaged, corrupt and used to advance Soviet interests. It rejoined in 2003 during George W. Bush’s presidency. Bush’s wife, Laura, a former elementary school teacher and librarian, spoke at that ceremony.
Standing in for the president at home and abroad has become a big part of a first lady’s unofficial job description, and Jill Biden travels at least several times a week to promote administration initiatives.
The trip to Paris is her fourth solo international excursion this year.
She visited Namibia and Kenya in February, followed by a trip to London in May for the coronation of King Charles III. In June, she traveled to Jordan to attend the royal wedding of a son of King Abdullah II, followed by stops in Egypt, Morocco and Portugal.
Before flying to Paris on Sunday night, she headlined fundraisers Friday and Saturday in Massachusetts for her husband’s reelection campaign.
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Researchers say the central districts in Sydney are close to becoming the first place in the world to reach the U.N.’s target for ending transmission of HIV. The city was once at the heart of Australia’s HIV epidemic but new infections among gay men have fallen by 88% between 2010 and 2022. The U.N.’s goal is a 90% reduction in cases by 2030.
In 1987, the ‘Grim Reaper’ advert warned Australians about the march of a deadly virus.
“At first, only gays and IV drug users were being killed by AIDS,” the TV spots said, “but now we know everyone one of us could be devastated by it.”
HIV attacks the body’s immune system, and if not treated, can lead to AIDS.
In the central parts of Sydney, Australia’s biggest city, thousands of gay men died in the 1980s and ’90s.
In remarkable turnaround, researchers say that only 11 new HIV cases were recorded in central Sydney last year.
Almost all HIV-positive people in Australia are on antiretroviral drugs. They suppress the level of the virus in the blood, reducing the risk of sexual transmission. There’s also the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis. These are preventative medicines taken by people who don’t have HIV to lower their chance of infection.
Gay men make up about 20% of the male population in inner Sydney, and they represent most of the city’s HIV cases.
The research confirming the change in HIV rates in Sydney was presented to the International AIDS Society’s HIV science conference being held in the Queensland city of Brisbane by Andrew Grulich, an epidemiologist at the University of New South Wales. He told the Australian Broadcasting Corp’s 7.30 program earlier this month that he’s seen HIV gradually being conquered over his academic career.
“My life in research has been over that period,” Grulich said. “So, it has been terrible, and it has been extraordinary and now it is getting close to wonderful, really, with the possibility that we have.”
However, rates of infection have fallen by only a third in some outer Sydney suburbs, where public health awareness, access to medical treatments and testing new cases are more limited.
Jane Costello, the chief executive officer of Positive Life, an organization that helps people living with HIV, told VOA about some groups still being left behind.
“Overseas-born men who have sex with men, heterosexual populations, people from culturally and linguistically-diverse backgrounds and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,” she said. “So, it is a question of equity as well.”
The AIDS conference in Brisbane has heard that parts of the United Kingdom and Western Europe have also seen rapid drops in new HIV cases. But few places, if any, can rival Sydney’s fall in infections of almost 90% over the past decade.
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“Barbenheimer” didn’t just work – it spun box office gold. The social media-fueled fusion of Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” brought moviegoers back to the theaters in record numbers this weekend, vastly outperforming projections and giving a glimmer of hope to the lagging exhibition business, amid the sobering backdrop of strikes.
Warner Bros.’ “Barbie” claimed the top spot with a massive $155 million in ticket sales from North American theaters from 4,243 locations, surpassing “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” (as well as every Marvel movie this year) as the biggest opening of the year and breaking the first weekend record for a film directed by a woman. Universal’s “Oppenheimer” also soared past expectations, taking in $80.5 million from 3,610 theaters in the U.S. and Canada, marking Nolan’s biggest non-Batman debut and one of the best-ever starts for an R-rated biographical drama.
It’s also the first time that one movie opened to more than $100 million and another movie opened to more than $80 million in the same weekend. When all is settled, it will likely turn out to be the fourth biggest box office weekend of all time with over $300 million industrywide. And all this in a marketplace that increasingly curved toward intellectual property-driven winner takes all.
The “Barbenheimer” phenomenon may have started out as good-natured competition between two aesthetic opposites, but, as many hoped, both movies benefited in the end. Internationally, “Barbie” earned $182 million from 69 territories, fueling a $337 million global weekend. “Oppenheimer” did $93.7 million from 78 territories, ranking above “Barbie” in India, for a $174.2 million global total.
The only real casualty was “Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I,” which despite strong reviews and a healthy opening weekend fell 64% in weekend two. Overshadowed by the “Barbenheimer” glow as well as the blow of losing its IMAX screens to “Oppenheimer,” the Tom Cruise vehicle added $19.5 million, bringing its domestic total to $118.8 million.
“Barbenheimer” is not merely counterprogramming either. But while a certain section of enthusiastic moviegoers overlapped, in aggregate the audiences were distinct.
Women drove the historic “Barbie” opening, making up 65% of the audience, according to PostTrak, and 40% of ticket buyers were under the age of 25 for the PG-13 rated movie.
“It’s just a joyous time in the world. This is history in so many ways,” said Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros.’ president of domestic distribution. “I think this marketing campaign is one for the ages that people will be talking about forever.”
“Oppenheimer” audiences meanwhile were 62% male and 63% over the age of 25, with a somewhat surprising 32% that were between the ages of 18 and 24.
Both “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” scored well with critics with 90% and 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, respectively, and audiences who gave both films an A CinemaScore. And social media has been awash with reactions and “takes” all weekend – good, bad, problematic and everywhere in between – the kind of organic, event cinema, watercooler debate that no marketing budget can buy.
“The ‘Barbenheimer’ thing was a real boost for both movies,” Goldstein said. “It is a crowning achievement for all of us.”
“Oppenheimer” had the vast majority (80%) of premium large format screens at its disposal. Some 25 theaters in North America boasted IMAX 70mm screenings (Nolan’s preferred format), most of which were completely sold out all weekend — accounting for 2% of the total gross. Theaters even scrambled to add more to accommodate the demand including 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. screenings, which also sold out.
“Nolan’s films are truly cinematic events,” said Jim Orr, Universal’s president of domestic distribution.
IMAX showings alone made up 26% of the domestic gross (or $21.1 million) from only 411 screens and 20% of the global gross, and “Oppenheimer” will have at least a three-week run on those high-demand screens.
“This is a phenomenon beyond compare,” said Rich Gelfond, the CEO of IMAX, in a statement. “Around the world, we’ve seen sellouts at 4:00 a.m. shows and people travelling hours across borders to see ‘Oppenheimer’ in IMAX 70mm.”
This is the comeback weekend Hollywood has been dreaming of since the pandemic. There have been big openings and successes – “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Avatar: The Way of Water” among them, but the fact that two movies are succeeding at the same time is notable.
“It was a truly historic weekend and continues the positive box office momentum of 2023,” said Michael O’Leary, President & CEO of the National Association of Theater Owners. “People recognized that something special was happening and they wanted to be a part of it.”
And yet in the background looms disaster as Hollywood studios continue to squabble with striking actors and writers over a fair contract.
“Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” were the last films on the 2023 calendar to get a massive, global press tour. Both went right up to the 11th hour, squeezing in every last moment with their movie stars. “Oppenheimer” even pushed up its London premiere by an hour, knowing that Emily Blunt, Matt Damon and Cillian Murphy would have to leave to symbolically join the picket lines by the time the movie began.
Without movie stars to promote their films, studios have started pushing some falls releases, including the high-profile Zendaya tennis drama “Challengers.”
But for now, it’s simply a positive story that could even continue for weeks to come.
“There could be a sequel next weekend,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “The FOMO factor will rachet up because of this monumental box office event centered around the movie theater experience.”
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
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“Barbie,” $155 million.
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“Oppenheimer,” $80.5 million.
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“Sound of Freedom,” $20.1 million.
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“Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part I,” $19.5 million.
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“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” $6.7 million.
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“Insidious: The Red Door,” $6.5 million.
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“Elemental,” $5.8 million.
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“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” $2.8 million.
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“Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” 1.1 million.
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“No Hard Feelings,” $1.1 million.
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British band The 1975 said on Sunday they have canceled shows in Taiwan and Muslim-majority Indonesia, a day after Malaysia banned them from performing there after their frontman kissed a bandmate on stage and criticized the country’s anti-LGBTQ laws.
“Unfortunately, due to current circumstances, it is impossible to proceed with the scheduled shows,” the pop rock group said in a statement, without elaborating.
Malaysia’s government halted a music festival in the capital Kuala Lumpur on Saturday and barred The 1975 after what it called “disrespectful actions.”
Homosexuality is a crime in Muslim-majority Malaysia. Rights groups have warned of growing intolerance against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
The events on Friday in Malaysia caused an uproar, angering not only the government, but members of the LGBTQ community, who said frontman Matty Healy’s actions could expose LGBTQ people to more stigma and discrimination.
The 1975 were due to play on Sunday in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, where homosexuality is a taboo subject, though not illegal except in sharia-ruled Aceh province.
Other LGBTQ-related events have also been canceled in Indonesia due to objections from Islamic groups, including a planned visit last December by a U.S. LGBTQ special envoy, and the scrapping this month of a Southeast Asia LGBTQ event. Both came after pressure from religious conservatives.
It was not immediately clear why the band canceled their July 25 show in Taiwan, which has a proud reputation as a bastion of LGBTQ rights and liberalism, including allowing same-sex marriage in 2019.
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Elon Musk said Sunday that he plans to change the logo of Twitter to an “X” from the bird, marking what would be the latest big change since he bought the social media platform for $44 billion last year.
In a series of posts on his Twitter account starting just after 12 a.m. ET, Twitter’s owner said that he’s looking to make the change worldwide as soon as Monday.
“And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk wrote on his account.
Earlier this month, Musk put new curfews on his digital town square, a move that came under sharp criticism that it could drive away advertisers and undermine its cultural influence as a trendsetter.
In May, Musk hired longtime NBC Universal executive Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s CEO in a move to win back advertisers.
Luring advertisers is essential for Musk and Twitter after many fled in the early months after his takeover of the social media platform, fearing damage to their brands in the ensuing chaos. Musk said in late April that advertisers had returned, but provided no specifics.
Associated Press photographer Matt York, who has covered Arizona for 23 years, recently was caught off guard by the heat wave that has shattered records in Phoenix. The 50-year-old York photographed life in the city for six of seven days as temperatures hovered above 110 Fahrenheit. On Tuesday, he went in for a medical procedure to remove a skin cancer spot and learned he was suffering from heat exhaustion and was at risk of a heart attack. He shares his story as a cautionary tale.
PHOENIX — Heat never scared me before.
I’ve spent 23 years covering Phoenix as a photographer for The Associated Press, shooting golf tournaments, baseball games and other outdoor sporting events, the city’s growing homeless population, immigration and crime.
And, of course, heat.
Like most people around here, I talk about temperatures being in the teens as if it’s a given that people know to always put a one in front of that number.
But this summer’s record-shattering heat wave has been like no other.
No amount of water or Gatorade can keep you going in these conditions without adequate cool-downs throughout the day.
My phone and cameras continually glitch out and stop working. Even my car’s air conditioning has struggled to keep up.
In my car, I keep a thermometer that I once used to check the temperature of chemicals in a darkroom. The heat inside when the air conditioner is off is way hotter than the air outside, and the thermometer often goes up to 51.6 degrees Celsius.
In recent days it blew past that, with the needle registering well beyond where the numbers stop.
On the morning of July 10, I spent more than three hours off and on photographing life outdoors. Heat features are tough in part because people aren’t stupid enough to be outside, unlike photojournalists.
When I got home, I was exhausted. But I got up the next day and went back out for another consecutive day of temperatures above 43.3 Celsius.
At one point my camera stopped working, and I had to cool it down in the car. It burned my hand to hold onto it.
On July 12, I covered a cooling shelter for homeless people and photographed a man at his tent in The Zone, an area of downtown blocks dotted by tents. The black asphalt streets were radiating heat.
I was sweating so profusely it dripped off me like a basketball player in an intense game. It wasn’t the first time this has happened and it’s why I often carry a towel to dry off and keep the sweat from dripping in my viewfinder.
But then I realized there was no need to wipe down. I was dry. I’d stopped sweating altogether. My body had no more water to give. My legs started feeling chilled, an odd sensation. Then they cramped. It was obvious I needed to get out of the heat.
But I didn’t think any more of it. That night I slept fitfully as temperatures remained high, and I had a headache.
By July 14, I was super lethargic and just wanted the work week to end. I was done with covering heat.
On July 15 I rested and thought, “I’m in Arizona. It is what it is.”
I had a dermatology appointment on July 18 to remove a spot of basal cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer. Such procedures have become almost routine after so many years working in Arizona.
That day Phoenix broke its record for the longest streak above 43.3 Celsius, marking the 19th day with such heat.
When I got checked, they told me I was a mess. My blood pressure was clocked at 178/120. After telling me that, it shot up to 200/120. The nurse wanted to send me in an ambulance to the emergency room because they thought I was going to have a heart attack.
It’s so surprising it seems funny now. I assumed I was just tired from work.
I opted to see my doctor Wednesday and was told I was suffering from heat exhaustion.
I had precautionary blood work done the next day to make sure all is normal. But not without first experiencing more heat-related fallout: they couldn’t draw blood from either arm because I was still slightly dehydrated. Unfortunately that meant they took it through my hands, which wasn’t pleasant.
The great news is, I’m fine. I spent two days inside and my blood pressure Friday was down to 128/72.
I will be more cautious going forward until this heat wave passes and have developed a plan with my fellow photographer, Ross Franklin.
In extreme heat, we will limit ourselves to 30– to 40-minute windows of photography before breaking to cool down. We’re keeping chilled, damp towels in a cooler in our cars and about two to three times as much water and Gatorade as we would have normally.
A separate cooler with plastic ice packs holds our cameras when we’re not shooting pictures. We have extra dry towels for sweat. We also plan to send all our images to the newsroom from inside a cooled building, not from our cars as we usually do.
And if we really feel bad, we promise to simply call it quits. No exceptions.
We typically fight through not feeling well on assignments — but not with heat.
It’s too risky.
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BEIJING – As China geared up for their opening Women’s World Cup fixture in Australia on Saturday, there was cause for optimism for the future back home as more and more young women take up soccer for fun.
Wang Lu, a 32-year-old screenwriter and lifelong soccer fan, is one. Last week, after some two decades of trying, she played her first ever soccer match on a small all-weather pitch on the eastern outskirts of Beijing.
“I feel so happy,” a beaming, slightly emotional-looking Wang said on the touchline afterwards. “It’s like I’ve realized my childhood dream.”
There were only boys teams at her schools, and they would not accept girls. Her home city in Shandong province had no amateur girls teams.
As a kid Wang was so desperate to play she that crafted a makeshift ball out of paper and elastic bands. She practiced, mostly alone, in the yard of her residential compound.
In addition to the lack of resources, Wang’s parents did not support the idea of her playing.
“Our family was relatively inward-looking, and they would even ask, ‘Why do girls like sports?’ And so you had to say why,” she said.
“But why do we need a reason? It’s just that they like it. There are still some stereotypes, and now slowly these stereotypes are disappearing.”
Like several other players, Wang found out about the opportunity to play from a post on Xiaohongshu, an Instagram-like app popular with young middle-class Chinese women.
She was playing with Netpals, a club of mainly novice players, so named because they came together online.
Last year Netpals had about 20 players. Now they have a community of around 150, made up of working adults and students, according to coach and founder Kidd Xu.
Several other women’s teams in Beijing have grown in a similar fashion in the last year. There are around 20 amateur teams regularly playing matches, up from five to 10 last year. There is a new league and new teams being established in other cities, he said.
The trend reflects a growing culture amongst young Chinese women of healthy living, trying out new outdoor activities or sports as a hobby. It took off last year when people could not travel because of China’s draconian zero-COVID policy. Women took up pursuits like hiking, skateboarding and the flying disc game known as “ultimate.”
Some have started playing soccer.
“Soccer has boosted my confidence,” said another Netpals player, 16-year-old high school student Jolin Liu.
“When I was young, many people believed that girls shouldn’t play soccer. But now when I play in the neighborhood, I receive praise, and people say that a girl playing soccer is cool.
“It makes me believe that girls can do it too and we shouldn’t let gender limit us. Everyone is more willing to bravely stand up, break free from constraints and be themselves.
“Additionally, with the development of social media, more people’s stories can be heard, and individuals like ‘Old Xu’ are willing to step up and provide opportunities for girls.”
Widen base
Kidd Xu got into women’s soccer in 2021 when he found himself with extra free time because he could no longer travel for his day job, teaching Western-style holistic education methods to Chinese soccer coaches.
In addition to Netpals, he has set up two other women’s teams, helped establish the league and organized several amateur women’s soccer tournaments.
The amateur women’s game has yet to go mainstream or gain a popularity akin to that in the United States. The future of the elite Chinese game is hampered by a lack of young players, who are pressured to prioritize study, as well as by strict, Soviet-style coaching methods, several former elite-level players said.
Still, unlike their male counterparts, the women’s team has a decent record. The Steel Roses are ranked 14th in the world according to FIFA and won the Asian Cup last year. But after a run of poor form and being drawn in a tough group at the World Cup, the team’s fans and even coach acknowledge they will do well just to get to the knockout stages at the tournament in Australia and New Zealand.
Their first match, against Denmark, kicks off at 1200 GMT.
Netpals defender Yin Minghua, 38, said the growing visibility of amateur players might help widen the base of the women’s game.
“In the past when people saw girls playing football, they thought it was a rare species,” said the freelance administrator, who joined Netpals last year soon after the birth of her first child.
“But now more and more people, after they see this, they think that girls playing football is also a part of football, and so this can change slightly people’s views on women.
“I feel we have at least made a little contribution to this change. So maybe I feel a little proud, a little sense of achievement.”
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Sea lions and dolphins are being sickened by toxic algae off the coast of California, where hundreds of animals have washed ashore. Mike O’Sullivan visited the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach, California, where workers are rescuing and treating the ailing animals.
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Kingston Peel, 11, and his 9-year-old brother, Wynn, got woken up early Friday at their home in the Bahamas. Their mother had a surprise for them.
In only a few hours, they’d fly to South Florida to see superstar Lionel Messi make his Major League Soccer debut with Inter Miami.
“We’re here to see Messi,” Kingston and Wynn said in unison. They arrived at DRV PNK Stadium hours before Inter Miami’s match against Mexican club Cruz Azul in the Leagues Cup.
And Friday night, Messi gave an unforgettable thrill to fans young and old who witnessed his first game, converting a free kick from about 25 yards in the 94th minute to give his new team a 2-1 victory.
Troves of fans, some from as far away as Ecuador and Messi’s native Argentina, bounced around the outskirts of the stadium ahead of Messi’s debut. Some, like Kingston and Wynn, wore black-and-pink Inter Miami jerseys with Messi’s No. 10 on the back. Others wore the 36-year-old’s Argentina jersey. Dozens stood in line for team gear. Even more waited to have their Messi flags and jerseys captured in a photo booth.
Kim Kardashian arrived at the stadium about an hour before the start of the match, with one of her children wearing Messi’s Inter Miami jersey. Serena Williams and LeBron James were there, too, and James greeted Messi before the game.
“It’s insane,” said season ticket holder Christian Zinn, who lives in nearby Parkland and attended the match with his son, Oliver. “We normally come a half hour before the game, and it’s like this. Not two hours before the game. We knew it was going to be crazy.”
Messi and fellow newcomer Sergio Busquets checked into the game in the 54th minute, with phones out all around the stadium to capture the moment. Inter Miami led 1-0 at the time, but Cruz Azul tied it shortly after he checked in, setting up the incredible finish.
After months of speculation, Messi signed a 2 1/2-year contract with the team this past weekend. Tens of thousand of people showed up to see the team introduce Messi Sunday night. Inter Miami co-owner David Beckham said online video of the event was viewed 3.5 billion times.
“That’s a gift that Leo has given the sport,” Beckham said. “He’s at the stage of his career where he’s done everything that any soccer player can do in a sport. He’s one of the greatest players if not the greatest player to ever play that game.”
Beckham, an English great who also came to MLS in 2007 after a long career in Europe, said Messi’s move has “raised the bar” for soccer in the United States.
“When I went on the journey in 2007, and when I started my Miami journey 10 years ago, my vision was exactly what we saw the moment that Leo announced,” Beckham said. “That’s what I wanted to see for the sport.”
Miami native Carlos Fierro, who said he’s been a Messi fan his whole life, said Messi’s arrival had a similar impact to James’ signing with the Miami Heat in 2010.
“It’s going to be very different because Messi’s that type of player. He’s going to bring the party,” Fierro said. “We saw it in the presentation how loud it got. I’m expecting everything to be loud and fun. Just typical Miami style.”
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The White House on Friday announced that the Biden administration had reached a voluntary agreement with seven companies building artificial intelligence products to establish guidelines meant to ensure the technology is developed safely.
“These commitments are real, and they’re concrete,” President Joe Biden said in comments to reporters. “They’re going to help … the industry fulfill its fundamental obligation to Americans to develop safe, secure and trustworthy technologies that benefit society and uphold our values and our shared values.”
The companies that sent leaders to the White House were Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI. The firms are all developing systems called large language models (LLMs), which are trained using vast amounts of text, usually taken from the publicly accessible internet, and use predictive analysis to respond to queries conversationally.
In a statement, OpenAI, which created the popular ChatGPT service, said, “This process, coordinated by the White House, is an important step in advancing meaningful and effective AI governance, both in the U.S. and around the world.”
Safety, security, trust
The agreement, released by the White House on Friday morning, outlines three broad areas of focus: assuring that AI products are safe for public use before they are made widely available; building products that are secure and cannot be misused for unintended purposes; and establishing public trust that the companies developing the technology are transparent about how they work and what information they gather.
As part of the agreement, the companies pledged to conduct internal and external security testing before AI systems are made public in order to ensure they are safe for public use, and to share information about safety and security with the public.
Further, the commitment obliges the companies to keep strong safeguards in place to prevent the inadvertent or malicious release of technology and tools not intended for the general public, and to support third-party efforts to detect and expose any such breaches.
Finally, the agreement sets out a series of obligations meant to build public trust. These include assurances that AI-created content will always be identified as such; that companies will offer clear information about their products’ capabilities and limitations; that companies will prioritize mitigating the risk of potential harms of AI, including bias, discrimination and privacy violations; and that companies will focus their research on using AI to “help address society’s greatest challenges.”
The administration said that it is at work on an executive order that would ask Congress to develop legislation to “help America lead the way in responsible innovation.”
Just a start
Experts contacted by VOA all said that the agreement marked a positive step on the road toward effective regulation of emerging AI technology, but they also warned that there is far more work to be done, both in understanding the potential harm these powerful models might cause and finding ways to mitigate it.
“No one knows how to regulate AI — it’s very complex and is constantly changing,” said Susan Ariel Aaronson, a professor at George Washington University and the founder and director of the research institute Digital Trade and Data Governance Hub.
“The White House is trying very hard to regulate in a pro-innovative way,” Aaronson told VOA. “When you regulate, you always want to balance risk — protecting people or businesses from harm — with encouraging innovation, and this industry is essential for U.S. economic growth.”
She added, “The United States is trying and so I want to laud the White House for these efforts. But I want to be honest. Is it sufficient? No.”
‘Conversational computing’
It’s important to get this right, because models like ChatGPT, Google’s Bard and Anthropic’s Claude will increasingly be built into the systems that people use to go about their everyday business, said Louis Rosenberg, the CEO and chief scientist of the firm Unanimous AI.
“We’re going into an age of conversational computing, where we’re going to talk to our computers and our computers are going to talk back,” Rosenberg told VOA. “That’s how we’re going to engage search engines. That’s how we’re going to engage apps. That’s how we’re going to engage productivity tools.”
Rosenberg, who has worked in the AI field for 30 years and holds hundreds of related patents, said that when it comes to LLMs being so tightly integrated into our day-to-day life, we still don’t know everything we should be concerned about.
“Many of the risks are not fully understood yet,” he said. Conventional computer software is very deterministic, he said, meaning that programs are built to do precisely what programmers tell them to do. By contrast, the exact way in which large language models operate can be opaque even to their creators.
The models can display unintended bias, can parrot false or misleading information, and can say things that people find offensive or even dangerous. In addition, many people will interact with them through a third-party service, such as a website, that integrates the large language model into its offering, but can tailor its responses in ways that might be malicious or manipulative.
Many of these problems will become apparent only after these systems have been deployed at scale, by which point they will already be in use by the public.
“The problems have not yet surfaced at a level where policymakers can address them head-on,” Rosenberg said. “The thing that is, I think, positive, is that at least policymakers are expecting the problems.”
More stakeholders needed
Benjamin Boudreaux, a policy analyst with the RAND Corporation, told VOA that it was unclear how much actual change in the companies’ behavior Friday’s agreement would generate.
“Many of the things that the companies are agreeing to here are things that the companies already do, so it’s not clear that this agreement really shifts much of their behavior,” Boudreaux said. “And so I think there is still going to be a need for perhaps a more regulatory approach or more action from Congress and the White House.”
Boudreaux also said that as the administration fleshes out its policy, it will have to broaden the range of participants in the conversation.
“This is just a group of private sector entities; this doesn’t include the full set of stakeholders that need to be involved in discussions about the risks of these systems,” he said. “The stakeholders left out of this include some of the independent evaluators, civil society organizations, nonprofit groups and the like, that would actually do some of the risk analysis and risk assessment.”
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Japan and India have signed an agreement for the joint development of semiconductors, in what appears to be another indication of how global businesses are reconfiguring post-pandemic supply chains as China loses its allure for foreign companies.
India’s Ashwini Vaishnaw, minister for railways, communications, and electronics and information technology, and Japan’s minister of economy, trade and industry, Yasutoshi Nishimura, signed the deal Thursday in New Delhi.
The memorandum covers “semiconductor design, manufacturing, equipment research, talent development and [will] bring resilience in the semiconductor supply chain,” Vaishnaw said.
Nishimura said after his meeting with Vaishnaw that “India has excellent human resources” in fields such as semiconductor design.
“By capitalizing on each other’s strengths, we want to push forward with concrete projects as early as possible,” Nishimura told a news conference, Kyodo News reported.
Andreas Kuehn, a senior fellow at the American office of Observer Research Foundation, an Indian think tank, told VOA Mandarin: “Japan has extensive experience in this industry and understands the infrastructure in this field at a broad level. It can be an important partner in advancing India’s semiconductor ambitions.”
Shift from China
Foreign companies have been shifting their manufacturing away from China over the past decade, prompted by increasing labor costs.
More recently, Beijing’s push for foreign companies to share their technologies and data has increased uneasiness with China’s business climate, according to surveys of U.S. and European businesses there.
The discomfort stems from a 2021 data security law that Beijing updated in April and put into effect on July 1. Its broad anti-espionage language does not define what falls under China’s national security or interests.
After taking office in 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a “Make in India” initiative with the goal of turning India into a global manufacturing center with an expanded chip industry.
The initiative is not entirely about making India a self-sufficient economy, but more about welcoming investors from countries with similar ideas. Japan and India are part of the QUAD security framework, along with the United States and Australia, which aims to strengthen cooperation as a group, as well as bilaterally between members, to maintain peace and stability in the region.
Jagannath Panda, director of the Stockholm Center for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs of the Institute for Security and Development Policy, said that the international community “wants a safe region where the semiconductor industry can continue to supply the global market. This chain of linkages is critical, and India is at the heart of the Indo-Pacific region” — a location not lost on chip companies in the United States, Taiwan and Japan that are reevaluating supply chain security and reducing their dependence on China.
Looking ahead
Panda told VOA Mandarin: “The COVID pandemic has proved that we should not rely too much on China. [India’s development of the chip industry] is also to prepare India for the next half century. Unless countries with similar ideas such as the United States and Japan cooperate effectively, India cannot really develop its semiconductor industry.”
New Delhi and Washington signed a memorandum of understanding in March to advance cooperation in the semiconductor field.
During Modi’s visit to the United States in June, he and President Joe Biden announced a cooperation agreement to coordinate semiconductor incentive and subsidy plans between the two countries.
Micron, a major chip manufacturer, confirmed on June 22 that it will invest as much as $800 million in India to build a chip assembly and testing plant.
Applied Materials said in June that it plans to invest $400 million over four years to build an engineering center in Bangalore, Reuters reported. The new center is expected to be located near the company’s existing facility in Bengaluru and is likely to support more than $2 billion of planned investments and create 500 new advanced engineering jobs, the company said.
Experts said that although the development of India’s chip industry will not pose a challenge to China in the short term, China’s increasingly unfriendly business environment will prompt international semiconductor companies to consider India as one of the destinations for transferring production capacity.
“China is still a big player in the semiconductor industry, especially traditional chips, and we shouldn’t underestimate that. I don’t think that’s going to go away anytime soon. The world depends on this capacity,” Kuehn said.
He added: “For multinational companies, China has become a more difficult business environment to operate in. We are likely to see them make other investments outside China after a period of time, which may compete with China’s semiconductor industry, especially in Southeast Asia. India may also play a role in this regard.”
Bo Gu contributed to this report.
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The World Health Organization warns dengue fever is spreading to more regions and countries around the world due to the increased movement of people, urbanization, and climate-related issues.
“About half of the world’s population is at risk of dengue,” Raman Velayudhan, a top official of the WHO’s global program on the control of neglected tropical diseases, told journalists at a briefing Friday in Geneva. “Dengue affects about 129 countries. We estimate about 100 to 400 million cases are reported every year. This is basically an estimate.”
The disease, which is spread by the Aedes species of mosquito, thrives mainly in tropical and subtropical climates. WHO reports it has grown dramatically worldwide in recent decades, with cases increasing from half a million in 2000 to more than 4.2 million in 2022.
Last year, the Latin American region reported 2.8 million cases and 1,280 deaths. Just seven months into 2023, the region has already matched those figures, with nearly three million cases and an almost equal number of deaths.
Velayudhan said dengue is a global disease, noting that the mosquito which causes dengue has been found in 24 European countries.
He said that in Africa there recently have been reports of more than 2,000 cases and 45 deaths in Sudan, as well as new reports within the past week of dengue being present in Egypt.
He said the presence of dengue in Africa is of special concern, noting that the figure of over 200,000 cases reported annually from the continent is likely an underestimate.
He added that the reporting of dengue cases in Africa must be improved.
“We know it is there,” said Velayudhan. “But it has been masked by other diseases. But now that [the battle against] malaria, in particular, has made great strides and has reduced in Africa, we have seen an increasing percent of dengue, and this is something we really encourage the governments [to address].”
He said this is already happening as the WHO is currently tracking cases of the disease reported in Sudan, Ethiopia, Senegal, Kenya, Nigeria and Sao Tome.
The monsoon season has begun in Asia, a situation that health officials find very worrying as the region accounts for about 70 percent dengue cases. The WHO has issued an alert to governments to take preventive measures to control the spread of the disease.
Velayudhan said the monsoon already has hit many of the dengue endemic regions in the Indian sub-continent, where high precipitation, increased temperature and even water scarcity favor mosquitoes and pose a real threat.
“So, we really need to be better prepared and make sure that all our health facilities are alerted and as the water recedes, we need to prevent [mosquito] breeding. And this is the key message,” he said.
He said people can protect themselves by eliminating stagnant water and other possible breeding areas around their homes.
Most people with dengue do not have symptoms and get better in one to two weeks. However, those who develop severe cases often require hospital care.
While there is no specific treatment for dengue, WHO says patients can be treated with medicines to lower the temperature and ease body pain.
The World Health Organization says new tools, such as diagnostics, antivirals, and vaccines for preventing and controlling dengue, are under development. Indeed, it notes one vaccine is in the market, and two are in the final phase three clinical trial and review.
Meanwhile, Velayudhan noted that the mosquito that transmits dengue tends to bite during the day. So, his advice to people is “to cover up during the day to lower their risk of being bitten and getting dengue.”
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Environmental activists and experts are increasingly concerned about the impact that military activity by India, China and Pakistan is having on the unique biodiversity and pristine ecosystems of Ladakh, an Indian-administered region high in the Himalayas.
Simmering tensions between India and China since a deadly border confrontation in 2020 have led to a surge in military deployment, with both sides fortifying their positions to ensure territorial security.
The influx of troops, equipment and infrastructure construction for military purposes has disrupted the fragile Himalayan ecosystem. The unchecked expansion of military bases, roads, helipads and related projects has led to deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and increased air and noise pollution, the experts say.
They point to the rapid degradation of sensitive habitats, such as alpine meadows, wetlands and high-altitude forests, which are home to several endangered species, including the elusive snow leopard, Tibetan antelope and black-necked crane.
“Rare birds such as the black neck crane face disturbances in their habitats due to the heavy military presence on both the Chinese and Indian sides,” said Sonam Wangchuk, an environmentalist and past winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award – sometimes referred to as the Nobel Prize of Asia.
He and other experts explained that the military activities disrupt the natural breeding patterns, feeding habits and migration routes of these vulnerable species, threatening their survival.
The damage caused by military activity is exacerbating degradation already underway from rising global temperatures attributed in large part to the burning of fossil fuels, which release carbon dioxide, trapping heat from the sun in Earth’s atmosphere.
Mountain regions like the Himalayas are rapidly changing because of the climate crisis, said Doug Weir, policy director at the Conflict and Environment Observatory, a U.K.-based charity working to develop policies that will reduce the environmental harm caused by conflicts and military activities.
Weir told VOA that military activity is estimated to account for 5.5% of all global carbon dioxide emissions.
“Increased military spending and activity help accelerate the climate crisis and the regional changes that are already readily apparent,” he said. “While India has begun to acknowledge a need to reduce its military emissions, efforts are in their infancy. China’s views on military emissions reductions remain unclear.”
Wangchuk argued in an interview that the military buildup in Ladakh is contributing significantly to the warming climate.
“The Indian side alone emits approximately 300,000 tons of CO2 [carbon dioxide] annually, considering the substantial amount of fuel transported and burned for military operations,” he said. “Similarly, the emissions would be slightly higher on the Chinese side and somewhat lower on the Pakistani side, resulting in nearly 1 million tons of CO2 being emitted each year in this triangular junction.
“Pollution doesn’t know borders,” Wangchuk added, urging governments to prioritize the well-being of soldiers and civilians alike, irrespective of their nationalities. He compared the disputes between nations “to squabbling neighbors fighting over a fence while an impending avalanche threatens them both.”
Not only the wildlife is threatened. A recent study indicated that if temperature trends continued, the Himalayan glaciers might disappear entirely, “having a significant impact on regional water supplies, hydrological processes, ecosystem services and transboundary water sharing.”
Ladakh is particularly vulnerable to the threat, Wangchuk said. “Its glaciers play a crucial role in sustaining not only the local population but also communities across northern India and northern Pakistan. Consequently, many villages are teetering on the brink of becoming climate refugees.”
In a media report last year, the village of Kumik witnessed residents abandoning their homes and relocating to other parts of Ladakh because of water scarcity.
On a more positive note, Wangchuk said efforts are underway to collaborate with the Indian army to introduce passive solar-heated shelters, which have proven effective in significantly reducing emissions.
“These innovative zero-emission buildings have been successfully tested during two harsh winters, ensuring soldiers’ warmth without relying on conventional fuel sources,” he said, calling for China and Pakistan to adopt similar environmentally friendly practices.
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Comic-Con 2023 is happening in San Diego — without large movie studios and high-profile stars. Some participants say the Hollywood actors and writers strikes are taking the event back to its comic book roots. For VOA, Genia Dulot has the story. Camera: Roy Kim
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Tony Bennett, the eminent and timeless stylist whose devotion to classic American songs and knack for creating new standards such as “I Left My Heart In San Francisco” graced a decadeslong career that brought him admirers from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga, died Friday. He was 96, just two weeks short of his birthday.
Publicist Sylvia Weiner confirmed Bennett’s death to The Associated Press, saying he died in his hometown of New York. There was no specific cause, but Bennett had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016.
The last of the great saloon singers of the mid-20th century, Bennett often said his lifelong ambition was to create “a hit catalog rather than hit records.” He released more than 70 albums, bringing him 19 competitive Grammys — all but two after he reached his 60s — and enjoyed deep and lasting affection from fans and fellow artists.
Bennett didn’t tell his own story when performing; he let the music speak instead — the Gershwins and Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern. Unlike his friend and mentor Sinatra, he would interpret a song rather than embody it. If his singing and public life lacked the high drama of Sinatra’s, Bennett appealed with an easy, courtly manner and an uncommonly rich and durable voice — “A tenor who sings like a baritone,” he called himself — that made him a master of caressing a ballad or brightening an up-tempo number.
“I enjoy entertaining the audience, making them forget their problems,” he told The Associated Press in 2006. “I think people … are touched if they hear something that’s sincere and honest and maybe has a little sense of humor. … I just like to make people feel good when I perform.”
Bennett was praised often by his peers, but never more meaningfully than by what Sinatra said in a 1965 Life magazine interview: “For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business. He excites me when I watch him. He moves me. He’s the singer who gets across what the composer has in mind, and probably a little more.”
He not only survived the rise of rock music but endured so long and so well that he gained new fans and collaborators, some young enough to be his grandchildren. In 2014, at age 88, Bennett broke his own record as the oldest living performer with a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart for “Cheek to Cheek,” his duets project with Lady Gaga. Three years earlier, he topped the charts with “Duets II,” featuring such contemporary stars as Gaga, Carrie Underwood and Amy Winehouse, in her last studio recording. His rapport with Winehouse was captured in the Oscar-nominated documentary “Amy,” which showed Bennett patiently encouraging the insecure young singer through a performance of “Body and Soul.”
His final album, the 2021 release “Love for Sale,” featured duets with Lady Gaga on the title track, “Night and Day” and other Porter songs.
For Bennett, one of the few performers to move easily between pop and jazz, such collaborations were part of his crusade to expose new audiences to what he called the Great American Songbook.
“No country has given the world such great music,” Bennett said in a 2015 interview with Downbeat Magazine. “Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern. Those songs will never die.”
Ironically, his most famous contribution came through two unknowns, George Cory and Douglass Cross, who in the early ’60s provided Bennett with his signature song at a time his career was in a lull. They gave Bennett’s musical director, pianist Ralph Sharon, some sheet music that he stuck in a dresser drawer and forgot about until he was packing for a tour that included a stop in San Francisco.
“Ralph saw some sheet music in his shirt drawer … and on top of the pile was a song called ‘I Left My Heart In San Francisco.’ Ralph thought it would be good material for San Francisco,” Bennett said. “We were rehearsing and the bartender in the club in Little Rock, Arkansas, said, ‘If you record that song, I’m going to be the first to buy it.'”
Released in 1962 as the B-side of the single “Once Upon a Time,” the reflective ballad became a grassroots phenomenon staying on the charts for more than two years and earning Bennett his first two Grammys, including record of the year.
By his early 40s, he was seemingly out of fashion. But after turning 60, an age when even the most popular artists often settle for just pleasing their older fans, Bennett and his son and manager, Danny, found creative ways to market the singer to the MTV Generation. He made guest appearances on “Late Night with David Letterman” and became a celebrity guest artist on “The Simpsons.” He wore a black T-shirt and sunglasses as a presenter with the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the 1993 MTV Music Video Awards, and his own video of “Steppin’ Out With My Baby” from his Grammy-winning Fred Astaire tribute album ended up on MTV’s hip “Buzz Bin.”
That led to an offer in 1994 to do an episode of “MTV Unplugged” with special guests Elvis Costello and k.d. lang. The evening’s performance resulted in the album, “Tony Bennett: MTV Unplugged,” which won two Grammys, including album of the year.
Bennett would win Grammys for his tributes to female vocalists (“Here’s to the Ladies”), Billie Holiday (“Tony Bennett on Holiday”), and Duke Ellington (“Bennett Sings Ellington — Hot & Cool”). He also won Grammys for his collaborations with other singers: “Playin’ With My Friends — Bennett Sings the Blues,” and his Louis Armstrong tribute, “A Wonderful World” with lang, the first full album he had ever recorded with another singer. He celebrated his 80th birthday with “Duets: An American Classic,” featuring Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder among others.
“They’re all giants in the industry, and all of a sudden they’re saying to me ‘You’re the master,'” Bennett told the AP in 2006.
Long associated with San Francisco, Bennett would note that his true home was Astoria, the working-class community in the New York City borough of Queens, where he grew up during the Great Depression. The singer chose his old neighborhood as the site for the “Fame”-style public high school, the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, that he and his third wife, Susan Crow Benedetto, a former teacher, helped found in 2001.
The school is not far from the birthplace of the man who was once Anthony Dominick Benedetto. His father was an Italian immigrant who inspired his love of singing, but he died when Anthony was 10. Bennett credited his mother, Anna, with teaching him a valuable lesson as he watched her working at home, supporting her three children as a seamstress doing piecework after his father died.
“We were very impoverished,” Bennett said in a 2016 AP interview. “I saw her working and every once in a while she’d take a dress and throw it over her shoulder and she’d say, ‘Don’t have me work on a bad dress. I’ll only work on good dresses.'”
He studied commercial art in high school, but had to drop out to help support his family. The teenager got a job as a copy boy for the AP, performed as a singing waiter and competed in amateur shows. A combat infantryman during World War II, he served as a librarian for the Armed Forces Network after the war and sang with an army big band in occupied Germany. His earliest recording is a 1946 air check from Armed Forces Radio of the blues “St. James Infirmary.”
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STOCKHOLM — A recent string of public desecrations of the Quran by a handful of anti-Islam activists in Sweden has sparked an angry reaction in Muslim countries and raised questions – including in Sweden – about why such acts are allowed.
In the latest such incident, an Iraqi living in Sweden on Thursday stomped on and kicked Islam’s holy book in a two-man rally outside the Iraqi Embassy in Stockholm. The protest was authorized by Swedish police, who kept a handful of agitated counterdemonstrators at a safe distance.
The same Iraqi man burned a Quran outside a Stockholm mosque last month in a similar protest that was approved by police. And at the start of the year, a far-right activist from Denmark carried out a similar stunt outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm.
Here’s a look at how Swedish authorities have been dealing with these acts.
Is desecrating the Quran allowed in Sweden?
There is no law in Sweden specifically prohibiting the burning or desecration of the Quran or other religious texts. Like many Western countries, Sweden doesn’t have any blasphemy laws.
It wasn’t always that way. As late as the 19th century, blasphemy was considered a serious crime in Sweden, punishable by death. But blasphemy laws were gradually relaxed as Sweden became increasingly secularized. The last such law was taken off the books in 1970.
Can Swedish authorities stop such acts?
Many Muslim countries have called on the Swedish government to stop protesters from burning the Quran. But in Sweden it is up to police, not the government, to decide whether to authorize demonstrations or public gatherings.
The freedom of speech is protected under the Swedish constitution. Police need to cite specific grounds to deny a permit for a demonstration or public gathering, such as risks to public safety.
Stockholm police did just that in February when they denied two applications for Quran-burning protests, citing assessments from the Swedish Security Service that such acts could increase the risk of terror attacks against Sweden. But a court later overturned those decisions, saying police need to cite more concrete threats to ban a public gathering.
Can Quran-burning be considered hate speech?
Sweden’s hate speech law prohibits incitement against groups of people based on race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity.
Some say burning the Quran constitutes incitement against Muslims and should therefore be considered as hate speech. Others say such acts are targeting the religion of Islam rather than practitioners of the faith, and that criticism of religion must be covered by freedom of speech, even when some consider it offensive.
Seeking guidance from the justice system, Swedish police have filed preliminary hate crime charges against the man who burned the Quran outside a mosque in Stockholm in June and desecrated Islam’s holy book again Thursday. It’s now up to prosecutors to decide whether to formally indict him.
Are Swedish authorities singling out Muslims and the Quran?
Some Muslims in Sweden who were deeply hurt by recent Quran burnings questioned whether Swedish police would allow the desecration of holy books from other religions.
One Muslim man apparently decided to put that to the test and applied for permission to stage a protest Saturday outside the Israeli Embassy in which he said he intended to burn the Torah and the Bible.
Though Israeli government officials and Jewish groups condemned the planned act and called on Swedish authorities to stop it, police approved the man’s request. However, once at the scene the man backed away from his plans, saying that as a Muslim he was against the burning of all religious books.
How is blasphemy viewed in other parts of the world?
Blasphemy is criminalized in many countries. A Pew Research Center analysis found that 79 countries and territories out of the 198 studied had laws or policies on the books in 2019 that banned blasphemy, defined as “speech or actions considered to be contemptuous of God or of people or objects considered sacred.” In at least seven countries – Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – it carried a potential death sentence.
In the Middle East and North Africa, 18 of the 20 countries studied had laws criminalizing blasphemy, although not in most cases punishable by death.
In Iraq, publicly insulting a symbol or a person that is held sacred, revered, or respected by a religious sect is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.
Likewise in religiously diverse Lebanon, where sectarian divisions helped fuel a 15-year civil war from 1975-90, any act “intended to or resulting in” provoking “sectarian strife” is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.
In the United States, under the freedom of speech protections in the First Amendment of the Constitution, it’s not illegal to burn copies of the Quran or other holy books.
For example, authorities were appalled by Florida pastor Terry Jones’ threat in 2010 to burn a copy of the Quran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but were unable to take legal action. Jones didn’t go through with that plan, but he led a Quran-burning in Florida the next year.
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Every few years, the Pacific Ocean gets a fever, and the symptoms spread all the way around the world. It’s happening again. El Niño is back, and it looks like it’s going to be a big one. That raises the odds of droughts in Brazil and southern Africa, and floods in East Africa and the southern United States.
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Intel Corp. has introduced a processor in China that is designed for AI deep-learning applications despite reports of the Biden administration considering additional restrictions on Chinese companies to address loopholes in chip export controls.
The chip giant’s product launch on July 11 is part of an effort by U.S. technology companies to bypass or curb government export controls to the Chinese market as the U.S. government, citing national security concerns, continues to tighten restrictions on China’s artificial intelligence industry.
CEOs of U.S. chipmakers including Intel, Qualcomm and Nvidia met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday to urge a halt to more controls on chip exports to China, Reuters reported. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, National Economic Council director Lael Brainard and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan were among other government officials meeting with the CEOs, Reuters said.
The meeting came after China announced restrictions on the export of materials that are used to construct chips, a response to escalating efforts by Washington to curb China’s technological advances.
VOA Mandarin contacted the U.S. chipmakers for comment but has yet to receive responses.
Reuters reported Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said in June that “over the long term, restrictions prohibiting the sale of our data center graphic processing units to China, if implemented, would result in a permanent loss of opportunities for the U.S. industry to compete and lead in one of the world’s largest markets and impact on our future business and financial results.”
Before the meeting with Blinken, John Neuffer, president of the Semiconductor Industry Association, which represents the chip industry, said in a statement to The New York Times that the escalation of controls posed a significant risk to the global competitiveness of the U.S. industry.
“China is the world’s largest market for semiconductors, and our companies simply need to do business there to continue to grow, innovate and stay ahead of global competitors,” he said. “We urge solutions that protect national security, avoid inadvertent and lasting damage to the chip industry, and avert future escalations.”
According to the Times, citing five sources, the Biden administration is considering additional restrictions on the sale of high-end chips used to power artificial intelligence to China. The goal is to limit technological capacity that could aid the Chinese military while minimizing the impact such rules would have on private companies. Such a move could speed up the tit-for-tat salvos in the U.S.-China chip war, the Times reported.
And The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the White House was exploring how to restrict the leasing of cloud services to AI firms in China.
But the U.S. controls appear to be merely slowing, rather than stopping, China’s AI development.
Last October, the U.S. Commerce Department banned Nvidia from selling two of its most advanced AI-critical chips, the A100 and the newer H100, to Chinese customers, citing national security concerns. In November, Nvidia designed the A800 and H800 chips that are not subject to export controls for the Chinese market.
According to the Journal, the U.S. government is considering new bans on the A800 exports to China.
According to a report published in May by TrendForce, a market intelligence and professional consulting firm, the A800, like Nvidia’s H100 and A100, is already the most widely used mainstream product for AI-related computing.
Combining chips
Robert Atkinson, founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, told VOA in a phone interview that although these chips are not the most advanced, they can still be used by China.
“What you can do, though, is you can combine lesser, less powerful chips and just put more of them together. And you can still do a lot of AI processing with them. It just makes it more expensive. And it uses more energy. But the Chinese are happy to do that,” Atkinson said.
As for the Chinese use of cloud computing, Hanna Dohmen, a research analyst at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, told VOA Mandarin in a phone interview that companies can rent chips through cloud service providers.
In practice, it is similar to a pedestrian hopping on an e-share scooter or bike — she pays a fee to unlock the scooter’s key function, its wheels.
For example, Dohman said that Nvidia’s A100, which is “controlled and cannot be exported to China, per the October 7 export control regulations,” can be legally accessed by Chinese companies that “purchase services from these cloud service providers to gain virtual access to these controlled chips.”
Dohman acknowledged it is not clear how many Chinese AI research institutions and companies are using American cloud services.
“There are also Chinese regulations … on cross-border data that might prohibit or limit to what extent Chinese companies might be willing to use foreign cloud service providers outside of China to develop their AI models,” she said.
Black market chips
In another workaround, Atkinson said Chinese companies can buy black market chips. “It’s not clear to me that these export controls are going to be able to completely cut off Chinese computing capabilities. They might slow them down a bit, but I don’t think they’re going to cut them off.”
According to an as yet unpublished report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, China is already ahead of Europe in terms of the number of AI startups and is catching up with the U.S.
Although Chinese websites account for less than 2% of global network traffic, Atkinson said, Chinese government data management can make up for the lack of dialogue texts, images and videos that are essential for AI large-scale model training.
“I do think that the Chinese will catch up and surpass the U.S. unless we take fairly serious steps,” Atkinson said.
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As the planet warms, mosquitoes are slowly migrating upward.
The temperature range where malaria-carrying mosquitoes thrive is rising in elevation. Researchers have found evidence of the phenomenon from the tropical highlands of South America to the mountainous, populous regions of eastern Africa.
Scientists now worry people living in areas once inhospitable to the insects, including the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro and the mountains of eastern Ethiopia, could be newly exposed to the disease.
“As it gets warmer at higher altitudes with climate change and all of these other environmental changes, then mosquitoes can survive higher up the mountain,” said Manisha Kulkarni, a professor and researcher studying malaria in sub-Saharan Africa at the University of Ottawa.
Kulkarni led a study published in 2016 that found the habitat for malaria-carrying mosquitoes had expanded in the high-elevation Mount Kilimanjaro region by hundreds of square kilometers in just 10 years. Lower altitudes, in contrast, are becoming too hot for the bugs.
The African region Kulkarni studied, which is growing in population, is close to the border of Tanzania and Kenya. Together, the two countries accounted for 6% of global malaria deaths in 2021.
Deaths decline, still numerous
Global deaths from malaria declined by 29% from 2002 to 2021, as countries have taken more aggressive tactics in fighting the disease. However, the numbers remain high, especially in Africa where children under 5 years old account for 80% of all malaria deaths.
The latest world malaria report from the World Health Organization recorded 247 million cases of malaria in 2021 — Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Mozambique alone accounted for almost half of those cases.
“The link between climate change and expansion or change in mosquito distributions is real,” said Doug Norris, a specialist in mosquitoes at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who was not involved in the research.
But mosquitoes are picky about their habitat, Norris added, and the various malaria-carrying species have different preferences in temperature, humidity and amount of rainfall. Combined with the use of bed nets, insecticides and other tools, it becomes hard to pin any single trend to climate change, he said.
Jeremy Herren, who studies malaria at the Nairobi-based International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, said there is evidence that climate change is affecting where mosquito populations choose to live. But, he said, it is still difficult to predict how malaria will spread.
For example, in Kenya, Herren said researchers have documented “massive shifts” in malaria in mosquitoes. A species that was once dominant is now almost impossible to find, he said. But those changes are probably not due to climate change, he said, adding that the rollout of insecticide-treated nets is one explanation for that shift.
In general, however, mosquitoes grow faster in warmer conditions, Norris said.
Pamela Martinez, a researcher at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, said her team’s findings on malaria trends in Ethiopia, which were published in 2021 in the journal Nature, lent more confidence to the idea that malaria and temperature — and, therefore, climate change — are linked.
“We see that when temperature goes down, the overall trend of cases also goes down, even in the absence of intervention,” Martinez said. “That proves the case that temperature has an impact on transmission.”
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Artificial intelligence was the dominant topic at the United Nations Security Council this week.
In his opening remarks at the session, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “AI will have an impact on every area of our lives” and advocated for the creation of a “new United Nations entity to support collective efforts to govern this extraordinary technology.”
Guterres said “the need for global standards and approaches makes the United Nations the ideal place for this to happen” and urged a joining of forces to “build trust for peace and security.”
“We need a race to develop AI for good,” Guterres said. “And that is a race that is possible and achievable.”
In his briefing, to the council, Guterres said the debate was an opportunity to consider the impact of artificial intelligence on peace and security “where it is already raising political, legal, ethical and humanitarian concerns.”
He also stated that while governments, large companies and organizations around the world are working on an AI strategy, “even its own designers have no idea where their stunning technological breakthrough may lead.”
Guterres urged the Security Council “to approach this technology with a sense of urgency, a global lens and a learner’s mindset, because what we have seen is just the beginning.”
AI for good and evil
The secretary-general’s remarks set the stage for a series of comments and observations by session participants on how artificial intelligence can benefit society in health, education and human rights, while recognizing that, gone unchecked, AI also has the potential to be used for nefarious purposes.
To that point, there was widespread acknowledgment that AI in every iteration of its development needs to be kept in check with specific guidelines, rules and regulations to protect privacy and ensure security without hindering innovation.
“We cannot leave the development of artificial intelligence solely to private sector actors,” said Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, a leading AI company. “The governments of the world must come together, develop state capacity, and make the development of powerful AI systems a shared endeavor across all parts of society, rather than one dictated solely by a small number of firms competing with one another in the marketplace.”
AI as human labor
Yi Zeng, a professor at the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, shared a similar sentiment.
“AI should never pretend to be human,” he said. “We should use generative AI to assist but never trust them to replace human decision-making.”
The U.K. holds the council’s rotating presidency this month and British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, who chaired the session, called for international cooperation to manage the global implications of artificial intelligence. He said that “global cooperation will be vital to ensure AI technologies and the rules governing their use are developed responsibly in a way that benefits society.”
Cleverly noted how far the world has come “since the early development of artificial intelligence by pioneers like Alan Turing and Christopher Strachey.”
“This technology has advanced with ever greater speed, yet the biggest AI-induced transformations are still to come,” he said.
Making AI inclusive
“AI development is now outpacing at breakneck speed, and governments are unable to keep up,” said Omran Sharaf, assistant minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation for advanced science and technology, in the United Arab Emirates.
“It is time to be optimistic realists when it comes to AI” and to “harness the opportunities it offers,” he said.
Among the proposals he suggested was addressing real-world biases that AI could double down on.
“Decades of progress on the fight against discrimination, especially gender discrimination towards women and girls, as well as against persons with disabilities, will be undermined if we do not ensure an AI that is inclusive,” Sharaf said.
AI as double-edged sword
Zhang Jun, China’s permanent representative to the U.N., lauded the empowering role of AI in scientific research, health care and autonomous driving.
But he also acknowledged how it is raising concerns in areas such as data privacy, spreading false information, exacerbating social inequality, and its potential misuse or abuse by terrorists or extremist forces, “which will pose a significant threat to international peace and security.”
“Whether AI is used for good or evil depends on how mankind utilizes it, regulates it and how we balance scientific development with security,” he said.
U.S. envoy Jeffrey DeLaurentis said artificial intelligence offers great promise in addressing global challenges such as food security, education and medicine. He added, however, that AI also has the potential “to compound threats and intensify conflicts, including by spreading mis- and disinformation, amplifying bias and inequality, enhancing malicious cyber operations, and exacerbating human rights abuses.”
“We, therefore, welcome this discussion to understand how the council can find the right balance between maximizing AI’s benefits while mitigating its risks,” he said.
Britain’s Cleverly noted that since no country will be untouched by AI, “we must involve and engage the widest coalition of international actors from all sectors.”
VOA’s Margaret Besheer contributed to this story.
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