President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Brendan Carr to lead the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates communications in the United States. Carr, an FCC commissioner since 2017, has taken aim at big tech and China’s influence on U.S. communications. VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports.
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A large number of mysterious drones have been reported flying over parts of New Jersey and the East Coast in recent weeks, sparking speculation and concern over who sent them and why.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy wrote to President Joe Biden asking for answers. New Jersey’s new senator, Andy Kim, spent Thursday night on a drone hunt in rural northern New Jersey, and posted about it on X.
Murphy and law enforcement officials have stressed that the drones don’t appear to be a threat to public safety, but many state and municipal lawmakers have nonetheless called for stricter rules about who can fly the unmanned aircraft.
The FBI is among several agencies investigating and has asked residents to share videos, photos and other information they may have about the drones.
What’s the deal with the drones in New Jersey?
Dozens of witnesses have reported seeing them in the state starting in November.
At first they were spotted flying along the scenic Raritan River, which feeds the Round Valley Reservoir, the state’s largest aquifer, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of New York City.
But soon sightings were reported statewide, including near the Picatinny Arsenal, a military research and manufacturing facility, and over President-elect Donald Trump’s golf course in Bedminster.
The aircraft have also recently been spotted in coastal areas.
Republican U.S. Rep. Chris Smith said a Coast Guard commanding officer told him a dozen drones closely followed a Guard lifeboat near Barnegat Light and Island Beach State Park in Ocean County over the weekend.
Federal officials offer assurances that drones don’t pose a threat
The growing anxiety among some residents is not lost on the Biden administration, which has faced criticism from Trump for not dealing with the matter more aggressively.
In a call with reporters Saturday that was organized by the White House, senior officials from the FBI, Pentagon, FAA and other agencies sought to assure people that the drones are not a national security or public safety threat or the handywork of a malicious foreign actor.
An FBI official, who spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House, said the public concern is understandable but added, “I think there has been a slight overreaction.”
Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Thursday that the military’s initial assessment after consulting with the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Council — that the drones are not of foreign origin — remained unchanged.
New Jersey congressman wants the military to take action
A New Jersey congressman has urged the Pentagon to authorize the use of force to bring down one or more drones to try to figure out who deployed them.
The objects could be downed over the ocean or in an unpopulated area on land, Smith said Saturday at a news conference.
“Why can’t we bag at least one of these drones and get to the bottom of it?” Smith said.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew, another Republican Jersey Shore-area congressman, has also called for the military to shoot down the drones.
Monmouth County Sheriff Shaun Golden said people should not take it into their own hands to shoot down drones, which would break state and federal laws.
Drones have been spotted over New York City
Drone sightings have now been reported in New York, where a permit is required, and Mayor Eric Adams said the city was investigating and collaborating with New Jersey and federal officials.
The runways at Stewart International Airport — about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of the city — were shut down for about one hour Friday night because of drone activity in the airspace, Gov. Kathy Hochul said.
“This has gone too far,” she said in a statement.
The governor called on Congress to strengthen the FAA’s oversight of drones and give more investigative authority to state and local law enforcement.
“Extending these powers to New York State and our peers is essential,” she said. “Until those powers are granted to state and local officials, the Biden administration must step in by directing additional federal law enforcement to New York and the surrounding region to ensure the safety of our critical infrastructure and our people.”
Are these drones dangerous?
The White House has said that a review of the reported sightings shows that many of them are actually manned aircraft being flown lawfully, echoing the opinion of officials and drone experts.
The federal Homeland Security Department and FBI also said in a joint statement they have no evidence that the sightings pose “a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus.”
Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia, who was briefed by the Department of Homeland Security, said the reported drones have been up to 6 feet (1.8 meters) in diameter and sometimes travel with their lights switched off. This is much larger than those typically flown by drone hobbyists, and she said they appear to avoid detection by traditional methods such as helicopter and radio.
Who sent the drones?
Authorities say they do not know.
The FBI, Homeland Security and state police are investigating the sightings. Authorities say they don’t know if it is one drone that has been spotted many times or if there are multiple aircraft being flown in a coordinated effort.
Speculation has raged online, with some expressing concerns that the drone or drones could be part of a nefarious plot by foreign agents.
Officials stress that ongoing state and federal investigations have found no evidence to support those concerns, but Rep. Smith on Saturday echoed such speculation.
“The elusive maneuvering of these drones suggests a major military power sophistication that begs the question whether they have been deployed to test our defense capabilities — or worse — by violent dictatorships, perhaps maybe Russia, or China, or Iran, or North Korea,” he said.
Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said Wednesday that the aircraft are not U.S. military drones.
What have officials said about the sightings?
Trump has said he believes the government knows more than it’s saying. “Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!!” he posted on his social media site.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said Thursday that the drones should be “shot down, if necessary.”
“We should be doing some very urgent intelligence analysis and take them out of the skies, especially if they’re flying over airports or military bases,” Blumenthal said.
Experts, however, warn not to shoot at anything in the sky.
Trisha Bushey, 48, of Lebanon Township, New Jersey, lives near Round Valley Reservoir where there have been numerous sightings and said she doesn’t believe the assertion that the drones aren’t a risk to public safety.
“How can you say it’s not posing a threat if you don’t know what it is?” she said. “I think that’s why so many people are uneasy.”
Are drones allowed in New Jersey?
The flying of drones for recreational and commercial use is legal in the state, but it is subject to local and Federal Aviation Administration regulations and flight restrictions.
In New York City, a permit is required to take off or land an unmanned aircraft.
Operators must be FAA-certified.
Have drones been spotted anywhere else?
Sightings also have been reported in Virginia and elsewhere.
Two people said they spotted an aircraft Thursday night near Virginia Beach that was unlike any other they’ve seen.
The object was over the ocean, and they watched as it slowly moved over an Army National Guard facility, John Knight told The Virginian-Pilot.
“It was definitely different,” said Knight, who took videos of what he thinks was a drone the size of a small truck.
“It flew like a helicopter but made no noise,” he added.
The Virginia National Guard did not have any aircraft operating in the area Thursday night, according to spokesperson A.A. “Cotton” Puryear. Its leadership is aware of the incident and it’s under investigation.
Another military installation in the area is Naval Air Station Oceana Dam Neck Annex. NAS Oceana, the East Coast master jet base in Virginia Beach, is aware of recent reports of sightings in the area and is coordinating with federal and state agencies to ensure the safety of its personnel and operations, Katie Hewett, public affairs officer, said Friday by email.
Knight submitted the videos Thursday night to the FBI tip line.
In Massachusetts, 10 to 15 drones were reported hovering over a home Thursday night in Harwich on Cape Cod. A resident told police they were bright and she observed them for more than an hour.
Earlier that evening, an off-duty police officer in the same town noticed similar activity near a public safety complex, police said. The information was forwarded to the FBI and Massachusetts State Police.
Drones were also spotted last month in the U.K. The U.S. Air Force said several small unmanned aircraft were detected near four military bases in England that are used by American forces.
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ATHENS, GREECE — Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, a smile spreads across the little girl’s face. Blinking behind her glasses, she inches her wheelchair forward and gently reaches out to stroke the tiny gray horse.
Soon, 9-year-old Josifina Topa Mazuch is beaming as she leads Ivi, a specially trained miniature horse, standing no taller than her pink wheelchair, through the school hallway.
“I really want them to come again,” Josifina said of Ivi and a second miniature horse, Calypso, after a November morning visit to her Athens primary school for children with special needs. “They made me feel really happy.”
Ivi and Calypso are two of eight miniature horses from Gentle Carousel Greece, a Greek offshoot of Florida-based charity Gentle Carousel Miniature Therapy Horses offering visits to hospitals, rehabilitation centers and care homes.
Trained over two years to work comfortably in confined environments and with vulnerable children and adults, the tiny equines, which stand about 75 centimeters tall, provide a form of pet therapy that carers say offers valuable interactions and learning experiences, particularly to people confined to hospitals or care homes.
But the charity they are part of is struggling to make ends meet — run by one woman who funds the entire operation herself, with one assistant and no support team.
How it all began
Started in 2014 by Mina Karagianni, an interior architect and designer, the Athens operation is the only one affiliated with the Florida-based charity outside the United States. Karagianni came across Gentle Carousel while scouring the internet for information on caring for an abandoned Shetland pony she had rescued.
When she saw photos of the charity’s work in pediatric oncology wards, “I was touched and I was moved, and I said: ‘OK, we have to bring this to Greece,'” she said.
It took months to track down and persuade the U.S. charity to work with her, and even longer to obtain the requisite permits and arrange transport to bring the horses over. But after incessant efforts, six already trained miniature horses stepped off a flight from Florida via Frankfurt in November 2013.
Entirely self-funded through her day job, Karagianni now has a total of eight horses — the American six, one that was later born in Greece, and Billy, the rescued pony.
Karagianni transformed her family land in Rafina, a seaside area east of Athens, into Magic Garden, complete with stables, a paddock for the horses to run free every day, a small café and an area to host children’s parties and baptisms.
At the time, she was open for visits every weekend, charging a small entrance fee to help cover running costs – specialized food for the horses, wood shavings for their bedding, grooming material, veterinarian visits and transportation to and from hospitals and care homes. She also began visiting schools and setting up an education program.
From 2014 when Gentle Carousel Greece first opened until the first COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, Karagianni said her little equine team saw roughly 12,000 children.
Hard times
But the lockdowns took their toll. Karagianni had to shut down the café and hasn’t been able to reopen since.
With even the tiny income from the café drying up, and Karagianni herself facing a health issue that took her out for 1 ½ years, “we fell apart,” she said. Unable to meet utility bills, both the electricity and water companies cut off her supply, leaving her relying on neighbors for water for the horses.
“I’m just starting to get myself back together again now,” she said. “With a lot of financial difficulties. But what can I do? I’m trying.”
She’s got the utilities running again, but still owes thousands of euros. Approaches to companies and institutions for funding have been unsuccessful so far. “Maybe I just don’t know how to ask properly,” Karagianni said.
Running Gentle Carousel single-handedly is taking its toll. “I’m making super-human efforts,” said Karagianni, who at 68 wonders for how long she can go on and is searching for someone to ensure the program’s continuity.
“I’m doing what I can. But I can’t do it alone,” she said. “I can’t do it without a team.”
The joy they bring to children
Despite her financial struggles, Karagianni said seeing the horses’ effect, particularly on children, makes her determined to continue for as long as she can.
During a visit to the Athens special needs primary school, staff lined up children in wheelchairs so each could spend a few moments with the horses. Some reached out to stroke them; others bent their heads forward over the miniature horses for a kiss.
“It’s incredible, the reactions. It’s like something awakens their senses,” said special needs teacher Eleni Volikaki.
The state-run school, which shares facilities with a private charity for disabled children, ELEPAP, caters to children aged 6-14 with cognitive or mobility problems, or both. Anything that encourages the children to make even small hand gestures, such as reaching out to stroke a horse, “is very important for us. Especially when it’s spontaneous and comes directly from the child and isn’t instigated by us,” Volikaki said.
“We saw things we didn’t expect. We saw children with autism, or children who are generally afraid of animals, coming very close, letting the ponies get close to them,” Volikaki said. “And we saw … spontaneous contact that under other circumstances we wouldn’t see.”
Equines also help adults
The tiny horses don’t just enchant children.
In the seaside area of Nea Makri northeast of Athens, residents of an adult psychiatric care home gather to greet Omiros – Homer in Greek – a 12-year-old miniature gray and white stallion with a flowing mane and blue eyes.
Some show their excitement at the long-anticipated visit. Others are shyer at first, but nearly all eventually approach Omiros, leading him around the home’s recreation room or simply whispering to him.
The interaction is invaluable, said social worker Alex Krokidas, who heads the staff at the Iasis home.
“It offers, even if only briefly, the chance to create a bond that isn’t threatening, that has tenderness, quietness,” Krokidas said. “Let’s not forget, these people have faced many difficulties in their lives.”
Meeting Omiros and having a few moments each with him “gives them the opportunity to be a bit calmer, to not feel threatened, to stroke the animal,” Krokidas said. “All of that is very therapeutic, it is deeply therapeutic.”
Giorgos, one of the residents, initially kept his distance before letting Omiros come close. He leaned his head near the flowing mane.
“He gave me a beautiful feeling when he was here,” he said after Omiros headed back into the recreation room. “Now that it’s gone, I feel an absence.”
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Hundreds of thousands of Rhode Island residents’ personal and bank information, including Social Security numbers, were likely hacked by an international cybercriminal group asking for a ransom, state officials said on Saturday.
In what Rhode Island officials described as extortion, the hackers threatened to release the stolen information unless they were paid an undisclosed amount of money.
The breached data affects people who use the state’s government assistance programs and includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and healthcare purchased through the state’s HealthSource RI, Governor Dan McKee announced on Friday.
Hackers gained access to RIBridges, the state’s online portal for obtaining social services earlier this month, the governor’s office said in a statement, but the breach was not confirmed by its vendor, Deloitte, until Friday.
“Deloitte confirmed that there is a high probability that a cybercriminal has obtained files with personally identifiable information from RIBridges,” the governor’s office said in a statement on Saturday.
A representative from McKee’s office was not immediately available to Reuters for comment.
Anyone who has applied for or received benefits through those programs since 2016 could be affected.
The state directed Deloitte to shut down RIBridges to remediate the threat, and for the time being, anyone applying for new benefits will have to do so on paper applications until the system is back up.
Households believed to have been affected will receive a letter from the state notifying them of the problem and explaining steps to be taken to help protect their data and bank accounts.
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Americans should eat more beans, peas and lentils and cut back on red and processed meats and starchy vegetables, all while continuing to limit added sugars, sodium and saturated fat.
That’s the advice released Tuesday by a panel of nutrition experts charged with counseling the U.S. government about the 2025 edition of the dietary guidelines that will form the cornerstone of federal food programs and policy.
But the 20-member panel didn’t weigh in on the growing role of ultraprocessed foods that have been linked to health problems, saying there’s not enough evidence to tell people to avoid them. And the group steered clear of updating controversial guidance on alcohol consumption, leaving that analysis to two outside reports expected to be released soon.
Overall, the recommendations for the 2025-30 Dietary Guidelines for Americans sound familiar, said Marion Nestle, a food policy expert.
“This looks like every other set of dietary guidelines since 1980: eat your veggies and reduce consumption of foods high in salt, sugar and saturated fat,” Nestle said in an email. “This particular statement says nothing about balancing calories, when overconsumption of calories, especially from ultra-processed foods, is the biggest challenge to the health of Americans.”
What the scientific panel said about healthy diets
The nutrition panel concluded that a healthy diet for people aged 2 years and older is higher in vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, whole grains, fish and vegetable oils that are higher in unsaturated fat.
It is lower in red and processed meats, sugar-sweetened foods and beverages, refined grains and saturated fat. It may also include fat-free or low-fat dairy and foods lower in sodium and may include plant-based foods.
The panel, which met for nearly two years, was the first to focus on the dietary needs of Americans through what they called a “health equity lens,” said Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, a Massachusetts General Hospital obesity expert who was part of the group. That meant considering factors such as household income, race, ethnicity and culture when recommending healthy diets. It will help ensure that the guidance “reflects and includes various population groups,” she said in an email.
The panel didn’t come to conclusions on ultraprocessed foods or alcohol
Ultraprocessed foods include the snacks, sugary cereals and frozen meals that make up about 60% of the American diet.
The panel considered more than 40 studies, including several that showed links between ultraprocessed foods and becoming overweight or developing obesity. But the nutrition experts had concerns with the quality of the research, leaving them to conclude that the evidence was too limited to make recommendations.
That decision is likely to bump up against the views of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nominee to lead the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, who has questioned potential conflicts of interest among members of the dietary guidelines panel and vowed to crack down on ultraprocessed foods that contribute to chronic disease.
The panel also didn’t revise recommendations that suggest limiting alcohol intake to two drinks or less a day for men and one drink or less a day for women.
In 2020, the last time the guidance was updated, the government rejected the advice of scientific advisers to recommend less alcohol consumption.
Two groups — the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine and a committee of the government agency that oversees substance abuse — are expected to release reports in the coming months on the effects of moderate alcohol use to inform the guidelines.
Do Americans follow dietary guidelines?
The advisory panel acknowledged that the diets of most Americans don’t meet the current guidelines. More than half of all U.S. adults have one or more diet-related chronic health conditions and 18 million U.S. households have insecure sources of food, according to the report.
“Nutrition-related chronic health conditions and their precursors continue to threaten health through the lifespan,” the report concludes. “Which does not bode well for the future of health in the United States.”
What happens next?
The scientific report informs the dietary guidelines, which are updated every five years. Tuesday’s recommendations now go to HHS and the Agriculture Department, where officials will draft the final guidance set for release next year.
Starting Wednesday, the public will have 60 days to comment on the guidance. HHS and USDA officials will hold a public meeting January 16 to discuss the recommendations.
The new guidance, which will be finalized by the incoming Trump administration, is consistent with decades of federal efforts to reduce diet-related disease in the U.S., said Dr. Peter Lurie, president of the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest.
“Broadly, I think these are well-formulated recommendations that the incoming administration would do well to adopt,” Lurie said.
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WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND — A New Zealand man playing his first-ever competitive Scrabble game in Spanish, a language he doesn’t speak, has won the board game’s Spanish-language world title.
Nigel Richards, a professional player who holds five English-language world titles, won the Spanish world Scrabble championships in Granada, Spain, in November, losing one game out of 24.
Richards started memorizing the language’s Scrabble word list a year ago, his friend Liz Fagerlund -– a New Zealand Scrabble official -– told The Associated Press.
“He can’t understand why other people can’t just do the same thing,” she said. “He can look at a block of words together, and once they go into his brain as a picture he can just recall that very easily.”
In second place was defending champion Benjamín Olaizola of Argentina, who won 18 of his games.
Nothing like the New Zealander’s feat had ever happened in Spanish Scrabble, said Alejandro Terenzani, a contest organizer.
“It was impossible to react negatively, you can only be amazed,” Terenzani said. “We certainly expected that he would perform well, but it is perhaps true that he surpassed our expectations.”
Richards has done this before. In 2015, he became the French language Scrabble world champion, despite not speaking French, after studying the word list for nine weeks. He took the French title again in 2018.
Recognized in international Scrabble over his three-decade career as the greatest player of all time, Richards’ Spanish language victory was notable even by his standards, other players said.
While compensating for different tile values in English and Spanish Scrabble, Richards also had to contend with thousands of additional seven, eight and nine letter words in the Spanish language -– which demand a different strategy.
Richards in 2008 was the first player ever to hold the world, U.S. and British titles simultaneously, despite having to “forget” 40,000 English words that do not appear in the American Scrabble word list to triumph in the U.S.
His victories are legendary in the Scrabble community, and games analyzed in YouTube videos watched by tens of thousands.
Scrabble does not require players to know the definitions of words, only what combinations of letters are allowed in a country’s version of the game, but native speakers have “a huge leg up,” American Scrabble player Will Anderson said in a video summarizing Richards’ Spanish win.
Richards’ mother, Adrienne Fischer, told a New Zealand newspaper in 2010 that he did not excel at English in school, never attended university and took a mathematical approach to the game rather than a linguistic one.
“I don’t think he’s ever read a book, apart from the dictionary,” she said.
Fagerlund said Richards impressed her when he arrived at his first Scrabble club meeting at age 28. Two years later, in 1997, he cycled 350 kilometers from Christchurch to the city of Dunedin, won the New Zealand title on his first attempt and cycled home again.
At the Spanish event he was shy and modest, organizer Terenzani said, but happily posed for photos and spoke with fans who approached him.
“Although he did so in English, of course,” Terenzani added.
What motivates Richards, who now lives in Malaysia, is a mystery. He never speaks to reporters.
“I get lots of requests from journalists wanting to interview him and he’s not interested,” Fagerlund said. “He doesn’t understand what all the hoo-ha is about.”
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NEW DELHI — A popular actor in southern India was released from jail on bail on Saturday, a day after he was arrested by police in connection with a stampede that led to the death of a woman at the premiere of his movie earlier this month.
A 35-year-old woman died and her 8-year-old son was critically injured in the stampede, which occurred during the screening of Allu Arjun’s release for Pushpa 2: The Rule in southern Telangana state’s Hyderabad city on December 4.
Arjun was arrested after the woman’s husband filed a case against him, his security team and the theater’s management for not informing police of the actor’s plan to attend the screening, which resulted in a larger-than-expected crowd. Police charged the actor, his security team and the theater’s management staff with culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
Police have already arrested the theater’s owner and two of his employees in connection with the case.
A local court on Friday ordered the actor to spend 14 days in jail, but within hours the Telangana High Court granted him bail. However, the actor had to spend the night in jail because prison authorities did not receive a copy of the bail until late Friday, the Press Trust of India reported.
The accident happened after the 41-year-old actor made a surprise appearance at a local theater where the movie was being screened. As his fans surged toward the venue, the theater’s main gate collapsed, resulting in the stampede.
The actor did not comment on the police charges or his arrest. But shortly after the accident, Arjun wrote on the social platform X that he was “heartbroken by the tragic incident.” He later announced financial assistance of $29,000 for the woman’s family and promised to take care of the medical expenses for her injured son.
Deadly stampedes are relatively common in India, where large crowds gather in small areas with shoddy infrastructure and few crowd safety measures.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday sued a New York doctor for allegedly providing a Texas woman with abortion pills by telemedicine.
The lawsuit by the Republican attorney general, which appeared to be the first of its kind, could offer a test of conservative states’ power to stop abortion pills from reaching their residents.
New York is among the Democratic-led states that have passed so-called shield laws aiming to protect doctors who provide abortion pills to patients in other states. The law says New York will not cooperate with another state’s effort to prosecute, sue or otherwise penalize a doctor for providing the pills, as long as the doctor complies with New York law.
“As other states move to attack those who provide or obtain abortion care, New York is proud to be a safe haven for abortion access,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “We will always protect our providers from unjust attempts to punish them for doing their job and we will never cower in the face of intimidation or threats.”
In the lawsuit, filed in the District Court of Collin County, Paxton said that New Paltz, New York, Dr. Margaret Carpenter prescribed and provided mifepristone and misoprostol, the two drugs used in medication abortion, to a Texas woman via telemedicine.
Medication abortion accounts for more than half of U.S. abortions. It has drawn increasing attention since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision allowing states to ban abortion, which more than 20 have done.
The woman went to the hospital after experiencing bleeding as a complication of taking the drugs, which were subsequently discovered by her partner, according to the lawsuit.
Paxton claimed that Carpenter violated Texas’s abortion law and its occupational licensing law by practicing medicine in the state despite not being licensed there. He is seeking an injunction barring her from further violations of Texas’s abortion ban and at least $100,000 in civil penalties for each past violation.
Carpenter is a member of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, which supports nationwide access to abortion through telemedicine, and helped start Hey Jane, an online telehealth clinic offering abortion pills, according to the coalition’s website. She could not immediately be reached for comment.
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ZURICH — Saudi Arabia scored a major win in its campaign to attract major sports events to the kingdom when it was formally appointed as the 2034 World Cup host on Wednesday.
Still, many questions remain about the tournament as well as the 2030 World Cup, which will be co-hosted by Spain, Portugal and Morocco, with three games in South America.
Here are some of the key issues that need to be answered over the next decade:
Where will games be played?
Saudi Arabia proposes 15 stadiums — eight still on paper — in five cities: Eight in the capital Riyadh, four in the Red Sea port city Jeddah, and one each in Abha, Al Khobar and Neom, the planned futuristic mega-project. Each would have at least 40,000 seats for World Cup games.
The opening game and final are set for a 92,000-seat venue planned in Riyadh. Some designs are vivid. In Neom, the stadium is planned 350 meters above street level and one near Riyadh is designed to be atop a 200-meter cliff with a retractable wall of LED screens.
Saudi Arabia aims to host all 104 games, though there has been speculation that some games could be played in neighboring or nearby countries.
When will the World Cup be played?
Surely not in the traditional World Cup period of June-July, when temperatures in Saudi Arabia routinely exceed 40 Celsius.
FIFA moved the Qatar-hosted World Cup to November-December 2022, though those dates were not loved by most European clubs and leagues whose seasons were interrupted. Also, that slot is complicated in 2034 by the holy month of Ramadan through mid-December and Riyadh hosting the multi-sport Asian Games.
January 2034 could be a possibility even though that would be just before the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. The International Olympic Committee has signaled it won’t be opposed to back-to-back major events.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Saudi World Cup bid official Hammad Albalawi said the precise dates of the tournament are up the world football body.
“That’s a decision by FIFA. We stand ready to be part of this conversation. But ultimately it’s a FIFA decision together with the confederations,” Albalawi said.
Will stadiums be segregated for men and women?
Giving more rights and freedoms to women in a traditionally conservative society is fundamental to Saudi messaging around the modernization program known as Vision 2030.
The kingdom decided in 2017 to let women attend sports events, initially in major cities and in family zones separate from men-only sections.
By 2034, at the promised pace of social reforms, female fans should not be restricted.
Saudi Arabia launched a women’s professional football league in 2022 with players joining from clubs in Europe. They face no restrictions playing in shorts and with hair uncovered.
Will alcohol be allowed at the venues or hotels?
The Saudi prohibition of alcohol is clear and understood before FIFA signs any sponsor deals for 2034. But will there be any exceptions?
The alcohol issue was problematic for the World Cup in Qatar because the expectation was created that beer sales would be allowed at stadiums even before Qatar won its bid in 2010. One year later, FIFA extended a long-time deal to have Budweiser as the official World Cup beer through 2022.
Qatar then backtracked on that promise three days before the first game, causing confusion and the sense of a promise broken.
In Qatar, alcohol was served only at luxury suites at the stadiums. Visitors could also have a drink in some hotel bars.
But Saudi Arabia has even stricter rules on alcohol — and there is no indication that will change.
Albalawi noted that Saudi Arabia has successfully hosted dozens of sports events where alcohol wasn’t served.
“We’re creating a safe and secure family environment for fans to bring their families into our stadiums,” he said.
How will workers rights be protected?
Saudi promises to reform and enforce labor laws, and fully respect migrant workers, have been accepted by FIFA but face broad skepticism from rights groups and trade unions. A formal complaint is being investigated by the U.N.-backed International Labor Organization.
Protecting the migrant workers needed to build stadiums and other tournament projects — a decade after it was a defining issue for Qatar — looms as a signature challenge for Saudi Arabia.
Would Israel be allowed to play if it qualified for the 2034 World Cup?
Saudi-Israeli relations had been improving when FIFA all but gave the 2034 World Cup to the kingdom on October 4 last year. Three days later Hamas attacked Israel and diplomacy got more complicated.
Any football federation bidding to host a FIFA tournament accepts a basic principle that whichever team qualifies is welcome.
That did not stop Indonesia putting up barriers last year to Israel coming for the men’s Under-20 World Cup. Indonesia does not have formal diplomatic relations with Israel which had qualified through a European tournament nine months before the issue flared.
FIFA moved the entire tournament to Argentina and the Israeli team reached the semifinals.
Israel played at the 1970 World Cup but has never advanced through qualifying in Europe, where it has been a member of UEFA for 30 years. Europe should have 16 places in the 48-team World Cup in Saudi Arabia.
Where will the final of the 2030 World Cup be played?
Most of the attention at the FIFA Congress on Wednesday was on the Saudi decision, but the football body and its members also formally approved the hosts of the 2030 World Cup — the most spread out and longest ever.
One game each in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, the original host in 1930, will be played from June 8-9. The tournament resumes four days later for the other 101 games shared between Spain, Portugal and Morocco.
Six countries, three continents, multiple languages and currencies. Fans traveling on planes, trains, automobiles and boats across about 14 kilometers of water between Spain and Morocco.
The final is due on July 21, 2030, and a decision on where it will be played could cause some tension between the host countries.
Morocco wants it in the world’s biggest football venue — the planned 115,000-seat King Hassan II Stadium in Casablanca. Spain, meanwhile, has proposed to host the final in either of the remodeled home stadiums of club giants Real Madrid or Barcelona.
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WASHINGTON — A U.S. appeals court on Friday rejected an emergency bid by TikTok to temporarily block a law that would require its Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest the short-video app by January 19 or face a ban on the app.
TikTok and ByteDance on Monday filed the emergency motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, asking for more time to make its case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Friday’s ruling means that TikTok now must quickly move to the Supreme Court in an attempt to halt the pending ban.
The companies had warned that without court action, the law will “shut down TikTok — one of the nation’s most popular speech platforms — for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users.”
“The petitioners have not identified any case in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court,” the D.C. Circuit said.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Under the law, TikTok will be banned unless ByteDance divests it by January 19. The law also gives the U.S. government sweeping powers to ban other foreign-owned apps that could raise concerns about collection of Americans’ data.
The U.S. Justice Department argues “continued Chinese control of the TikTok application poses a continuing threat to national security.”
TikTok says the Justice Department has misstated the social media app’s ties to China, arguing its content recommendation engine and user data are stored in the U.S. on cloud servers operated by Oracle while content moderation decisions that affect U.S. users are made in the U.S.
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ABUJA, NIGERIA — The World Health Organization (WHO) and public health experts are calling for increased political commitment and funding to fight malaria, especially in endemic regions like Africa. This week’s release of the 2024 World Malaria Report by the WHO said there were 11 million more malaria cases compared to the previous year and that Ethiopia and Nigeria recorded their highest death tolls from the disease since 2015.
According to Wednesday’s report, there were 263 million cases of the mosquito-borne disease and nearly 600,000 deaths worldwide last year.
The report indicates global malaria cases grew by about 11 million compared to the year prior while fatalities remained nearly the same.
The WHO report said Africa accounted for 95% of global malaria deaths. Most of the victims were children under 5 years of age.
Dr. Kehinde Ajayi, an expert on malaria epidemiology and control, said one issue is that since 2020, most developing nations have had a shortage of resources to combat the disease.
“Some of the resources like insecticide-treated nets and also funding towards the malaria control programs have been hampered because of … COVID-19 and the economic imbalance in developing countries,” Ajayi said.
Ajayi said climate change and declining effectiveness of anti-malaria drugs are threatening progress.
Nigeria bears the world’s highest burden of malaria with more than 27% of global malaria cases and 31% of deaths.
But the WHO report also showed some progress — estimating that about 2.2 billion cases of malaria and 12.7 million deaths were averted globally since 2000.
Ajayi said increased government funding for malaria interventions could change things.
“Mosquitoes thrive very well under temperatures that are more than 19 degrees Celsius, and the climate change has made [that] possible,” Ajayi said. “Also, the plasmodium parasite has gained a lot of resistance against malaria drugs. Also, the government needs to invest more in our health sector. Government also needs to fund research that will help us in discovering indigenous drugs.”
The WHO report said only about half of the $8.7 billion target for malaria intervention last year was achieved.
In Nigeria, spending on health care is about 4% of the national budget, much lower than the 15% agreed upon by the African Union in 2001 — in the so-called Abuja Declaration.
Authorities have pledged to improve spending on health. On Thursday, Nigeria signed a deal to promote local production of test kits for HIV and malaria.
Last week, Nigeria launched its malaria vaccination campaign — becoming the latest African country to provide malaria vaccines to young children.
There are now 17 countries giving new malaria vaccines.
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A landmark hearing into nation-states’ legal obligations over climate change wrapped up at the United Nations’ top court in The Hague on Friday. The outcome could have implications for the fight against global warming — and for the big polluters blamed for emitting most greenhouse gases. Henry Ridgwell has more.
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At least 2,400 children have been killed or injured since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, according to the latest UNICEF reports. The U.N. agency says the war is creating a mental health crisis among Ukrainian children. VOA Russian has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.
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The U.S. mid-Atlantic state of Maryland may seem like an odd place for hula dancing. Yet every weekend, dancers gather in downtown Silver Spring to practice the ancient form of storytelling, despite the thousands of miles between them and Hawaii, the tropical island state where hula was born. VOA’s Keith Lane has the story.
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BEIJING — The former coach of the Chinese men’s national football team has received a 20-year-prison sentence for bribery, Chinese state media reported Friday.
Liu Tie, who once played in the English Premier League as a midfielder for Everton, was found guilty of “leveraging his positions” as head coach of the national football and national selection team to receive bribes of more than 50 million yuan (about $7 million), by a court in the city of Xianning in the central Hubei province.
Liu coached the Chinese men’s team between January 2020 and December 2021. He was also charged with taking bribes between 2015 to 2019, when he worked for local football clubs.
The investigation into Liu’s conduct began in November 2022. He pleaded guilty to bribery and corruption in March of this year.
His sentencing is the latest in a series of high-profile corruption cases involving Chinese football.
In March, the former president of the Chinese Football Association, Chen Xuyuan, was sentenced to life in prison for bribery. Earlier this week, three other CFA officials received prison sentences for bribery, according to state media.
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SAN FRANCISCO — A photojournalist who captured one of the most enduring images of World War II — the U.S. Marines raising the flag on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima — had a block in downtown San Francisco named for him Thursday.
Joe Rosenthal, who died in 2006 at age 94, was working for The Associated Press in 1945 when he took the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo.
After the war, he went to work as a staff photographer for the San Francisco Chronicle, and for 35 years until his retirement in 1981, he captured moments of city life both extraordinary and routine.
Rosenthal photographed famous people for the paper, including a young Willie Mays getting his hat fitted as a San Francisco Giant in 1957, and regular people, including children making a joyous dash for freedom on the last day of school in 1965.
The 600 block of Sutter Street, near downtown’s Union Square, became Joe Rosenthal Way after a short ceremony Thursday morning. The Marines Memorial Club, which sits on the block, welcomed the street’s new name.
Aaron Peskin, who heads the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, welcomed the city’s political elite, military officials and members of Rosenthal’s family to toast the late photographer, who was born in Washington, D.C., to Russian Jewish immigrant parents.
The famous photo became the centerpiece of a war bonds poster that helped raise $26 billion in 1945. Tom Graves, chapter historian for the USMC Combat Correspondents Association, which pushed for the street naming, said the image helped win the war.
“But I’ve grown over the years to appreciate also his role as a San Francisco newspaper photographer who, as Supervisor Peskin says, went to work every day photographing the city where we all live, we all love,” he said.
Graves and others said they look forward to tourists and locals happening upon the street sign, seeing Rosenthal’s name for perhaps the first time, and then going online to learn about the photographer with the terrible eyesight but an eye for composition.
Rosenthal never considered himself a wartime hero, just a working photographer lucky enough to document the courage of soldiers.
When complimented on his Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, Rosenthal said: “Sure, I took the photo. But the Marines took Iwo Jima.”
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As tourists discover Finland’s Santa Claus Village, some locals call for rules to control the masses
Rovaniemi, Finland — Shuffling across icy ground on a cold December afternoon, lots of tourist groups poured into Santa Claus Village, a winter-themed amusement park perched on the edge of the Arctic Circle.
They frolic in the snow, take a reindeer sleigh ride, sip a cocktail in an ice bar or even meet Saint Nick himself in the capital of Finnish Lapland, Rovaniemi, which happily calls itself the “official hometown of Santa Claus.”
The Santa Claus Village theme park, which attracts more than 600,000 people annually, is especially popular during the holiday season.
“This is like my dream came true,” beamed Polish visitor Elzbieta Nazaruk. “I’m really excited to be here.”
Tourism is booming in Rovaniemi — which has hotel and restaurant owners, as well as city officials, excited as it brings lots of money to the town. However, not everyone is happy about the onslaught of visitors, 10 times the town’s population, each year at Christmas time.
“We are worried about the overgrowth of tourism. Tourism has grown so rapidly, it’s not anymore in control,” said 43-year-old Antti Pakkanen, a photographer and member of a housing network that in September organized a rally through the city’s streets.
It’s a feeling that has been echoed in other popular European travel destinations, including Barcelona, Amsterdam, Malaga and Florence.
Across the continent, locals have protested against “over-tourism” — which generally describes the tipping point at which visitors and their cash stop benefiting residents and instead cause harm by degrading historic sites, overwhelming infrastructure and making life markedly more difficult for those who live there.
Now, it seems to have spread north, all the way to the edges of the Arctic Circle.
Rovaniemi counted a record 1.2 million overnight visitors in 2023, almost 30 percent growth on 2022, after rebounding from pandemic travel disruptions.
“Nordic is a trend,” Visit Rovaniemi CEO Sanna Karkkainen, said as she stood in an ice restaurant, where snow carvers were working nearby.
“People want to travel to cool countries to see the snow, to see the Northern Lights, and, of course, to see Santa Claus,” she added.
Thirteen new flight routes to Rovaniemi Airport opened this year, bringing passengers from Geneva, Berlin, Bordeaux and more. Most tourists come from European countries like France, Germany and the UK, but Rovaniemi’s appeal has also spread further.
Hotel availability is scarce this winter, and Tiina Maatta, general manager of the 159-room Original Sokos Hotel, expects 2024 to break more records.
Local critics of mass tourism say many apartment buildings in Rovaniemi’s city center are also used for accommodation services during peak season and are thus no longer available for residential use. They say the proliferation of short-term rentals has driven up prices, squeezed out long-term residents, and turned its city center into a “transient space for tourists.”
Finnish law prohibits professional accommodation services in buildings intended for residential use, so campaigners are calling on authorities to act.
“The rules must be enforced better,” said Pakkanen.
Not everyone agrees. Mayor Ulla-Kirsikka Vainio notes some make “good money” on short-term rentals.
Either way, stricter regulations likely won’t be in place to impact this winter season, and despite the unease expressed by locals, mass tourism to Rovaniemi is probably only going to grow in 2025 — as visitors want to experience the unique atmosphere up north, especially during the holiday season.
“It’s Christmas time and we would love to see the Northern Lights,” says Joy, a visitor from Bangkok. “Rovaniemi seems to be a good place.”
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SYDNEY — Australia’s center-left government said on Thursday it planned new rules that would charge big tech firms millions of dollars if they did not pay Australian media companies for news hosted on their platforms.
The move piles pressure on global tech giants such as Facebook-owner Meta Platforms and Alphabet’s Google to pay publishers for content or face the risk of paying millions to continue operations in Australia.
“The news bargaining initiative will … will create a financial incentive for agreement-making between digital platforms and news media businesses in Australia,” Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones told a news conference.
The platforms at risk will be significant social media platforms and search engines with an Australian-based revenue in excess of $160 million, he said.
The charge will be offset for any commercial agreements that are voluntarily entered into between the platforms and news media businesses, Jones said.
Tech companies condemned the plan.
“The proposal fails to account for the realities of how our platforms work, specifically that most people don’t come to our platforms for news content and that news publishers voluntarily choose to post content on our platforms because they receive value from doing so,” a Meta spokesperson said after Jones’ remarks.
A spokesperson for Google said the government’s decision “risks ongoing viability of commercial deals with news publishers in Australia.”
The proposed new rules come as Australia toughens its approach to the mostly U.S.-domiciled tech giants.
Last month it became the first country to ban children under the age of 16 from social media, in a move seen as setting a benchmark for other governments’ handling of Big Tech.
Canberra also plans to threaten the companies with fines for failing to stamp out scams.
Google, ByteDance through TikTok, and Meta through its various platforms, would fall within the scope of the charges under the new rules. However X, formerly Twitter, would not be covered, Jones said.
Blocking news
In 2021, Australia passed laws to make the U.S. tech giants, such as Google and Meta, compensate media companies for the links that lure readers and advertising revenue.
After the move, Meta briefly blocked users from reposting news articles, but later struck deals with several Australian media firms, such as News Corp and national broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corp.
It has said since it will not renew those arrangements beyond 2024.
Meta, which also owns Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp, has been scaling back its promotion of news and political content globally to drive traffic, and says news links are now a fraction of users’ feeds.
This year it said it would discontinue the news tab on Facebook in Australia and the United States, adding that it had canceled the tab last year in Britain, France and Germany.
In 2023, Meta blocked users in Canada from reposting news content after its government took similar action.
Australia news organizations, including Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, are expected to benefit from the new rules.
Following Jones’ announcement, News Corp Australia Executive Chairman Michael Miller said he would contact Meta and TikTok immediately to seek a commercial relationship with News Corp Australia.
“I believe news publishers and the tech platforms should have relationships that benefit both parties on commercial and broader terms,” he said in a statement.
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MONTREAL — Powered by TikTok, the song Je te laisseai des mots by Quebecer Patrick Watson has become the first French-language song to surpass 1 billion listens on Spotify, the streaming platform announced Tuesday.
“It’s a dizzying number,” Canadian singer-songwriter Patrick Watson posted on Facebook on Wednesday. “It’s a huge number, almost impossible to comprehend.”
“I grew up in Montreal and am extremely proud that a French song has crossed the language barrier,” continued Patrick Watson. The Quebec artist thus ranks ahead of other French-speaking artists with global influence, such as the Belgian Stromae or the Franco-Malian Aya Nakamura.
Patrick Watson, represented by the Montreal independent label Secret City Records, composed this song almost 15 years ago, for the film Mothers and Daughters with Catherine Deneuve released in 2009.
The piano-vocal song saw renewed interest in 2019 on YouTube in a video pairing the melody with archival footage.
The melancholic anthem was then used to accompany scenes of everyday life in tens of thousands of videos on TikTok during the COVID-19 pandemic, with users adding melodrama to snippets of their everyday lives.
Celebrities like Justin Bieber also helped make the song popular among a wide audience.
“The modern pop song is now the soundtrack to people’s home movies,” Watson told the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail in 2022, speaking of its viral popularity.
“The modern hit is the song that makes your daily life more interesting and romantic” on social networks, he added.
Je te laisserai des mots was the most-streamed French-language song worldwide on Spotify over the past 12 months, the platform announced in September, surpassing tracks like Stromae’s Alors on danse.
Patrick Watson’s music has been featured in the popular American TV series Grey’s Anatomy and The Walking Dead, and he and his eponymous band won the prestigious Canadian Polaris Music Prize in 2007.
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MARONDERA, ZIMBABWE — Zimbabwean health officials said Tuesday they aim to eliminate HIV/AIDS as a public health threat by 2030, crediting the United States with making such progress possible through aid and support.
U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe Pamela Tremont and officials from PEPFAR and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention toured the HIV services area at Marondera Hospital, located some 70 kilometers east of Harare, the Zimbabwe capital, where HIV/AIDS once sickened thousands.
Speaking to journalists afterward, Dr. Delight Madoro, a district medical officer in Mashonaland East province, said PEPFAR — or the U.S. Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — enabled Zimbabwe to combat the epidemic with strategies such as blood-based self-testing and PrEP, which stands for pre-exposure prophylaxis.
“And after maybe you test positive, there are staff and support … at the facilities to help link you to other HIV services,” Madoro said.
“There is a lot that is happening on the ground in terms of [the] fight against HIV through the support that we are getting from PEPFAR,” he continued. “And in terms of human resources, we’re getting more staff. This means our clients are going to have more time with clinicians, so that we become thorough, and we get thorough with our treatment.
“So, in a nutshell, I can say the support that we have been getting from PEPFAR is of paramount importance,” he said.
Tremont said the U.S. was committed to help fight the HIV epidemic in Zimbabwe.
“We’ve made huge progress since 2006,” she said. “The number of deaths from HIV has fallen 80%, and that is something I think we should all be very proud of.”
Tremont mentioned that the U.S. provided antiretroviral treatments and many health care workers at clinics and hospitals around Zimbabwe.
“It’s great to see all that in action today and to see the dedication and stubbornness of the health care workers reaching down to those HIV patients who are scared and reluctant to undertake treatment,” she said. “Thank you to the health care workers. You are our heroes in all this.”
Haddi Cham, the Centers for Disease Control’s Zimbabwe HIV services branch chief, said the PEPFAR program made the HIV facility at Marondera Hospital possible.
“We have been supporting this facility for many, many years now, and we are really grateful for the collaboration with all the key stakeholders. Through that strong collaboration, we are able to realize these results,” Cham said.
Zimbabwe is one of the countries hit hardest by HIV/AIDS, especially before 1999, when authorities introduced an AIDS levy — a 3% tax on income and business profits that is used by the National AIDS Council for programs to combat the spread of the pandemic.
Data indicate the prevalence of HIV among adults ages 15 to 49 in Zimbabwe declined from 12.7% in 2019 to 10.5% in 2023.
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ZURICH — FIFA has confirmed Saudi Arabia as host of the 2034 World Cup in men’s soccer.
The Saudi bid was the only candidate and was acclaimed by the applause of more than 200 FIFA member federations. They took part remotely in an online meeting hosted in Zurich on Wednesday by the soccer body’s president, Gianni Infantino.
The decision was combined with approving the only candidate to host the 2030 World Cup. Spain, Portugal and Morocco will co-host in a six-nation project, with Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay each getting one of the 104 games.
The South American connection will mark the centenary of Uruguay hosting the first World Cup in 1930.
The decision announced Wednesday completes a mostly opaque 15-month bid process that FIFA president Gianni Infantino helped steer toward Saudi Arabia without a rival candidate, without taking questions, and which human rights groups warn will put the lives of migrant workers at risk.
FIFA and Saudi officials say hosting the 2034 tournament can accelerate change, including more freedoms and rights for women.
It will kick off a decade of scrutiny on Saudi labor laws and treatment of workers mostly from South Asia needed to help build and upgrade 15 stadiums, plus hotels and transport networks ahead of the 104-game tournament.
One of the stadiums is planned to be 350 meters above the ground in Neom — a futuristic city that does not yet exist — and another named for the crown prince is designed to be atop a 200-meter cliff near Riyadh.
During the bid campaign, FIFA has accepted limited scrutiny of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, which was widely criticized this year at the United Nations.
The kingdom plans to spend tens of billions of dollars on projects related to the World Cup as part of the crown prince’s sweeping Vision 2030 project, which aims to modernize Saudi society and economy. At its core is spending on sports by the $900 billion sovereign wealth operation, the Public Investment Fund, which he oversees. Critics have called it “sportswashing” of the kingdom’s reputation.
The prince, known as MBS, has built close working ties to Infantino since 2017 — aligning with the organizer of sport’s most-watched event rather than directly confronting the established system as it did with the disruptive LIV Golf project.
The result for Saudi Arabia and FIFA has been smooth progress toward the win Wednesday with limited pushback from soccer officials, although some from women international players.
The steady flow of Saudi cash into international soccer is set to increase.
FIFA created a new and higher World Cup sponsor category for state oil firm Aramco, and Saudi funding is set to underwrite the 2025 Club World Cup in the United States, which is a pet project for Infantino.
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washington — The United States is moving to grant federal protections to the monarch butterfly — a once-common species recognizable by its striking black and orange patterns that has faced a dramatic population decline in recent decades.
The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) said Tuesday it has initiated a public comment period to consider listing the insect under the Endangered Species Act.
But the looming presidency of Donald Trump, who rolled back numerous wildlife protections during his first term, casts uncertainty over the decision.
“The iconic monarch butterfly is cherished across North America, captivating children and adults throughout its fascinating lifecycle,” said FWS Director Martha Williams in a statement. “Despite its fragility, it is remarkably resilient, like many things in nature when we just give them a chance.”
The proposed listing comes at a critical time for the species, which has been designated as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature since 2022.
Monarchs are divided into two migratory populations in North America. The larger eastern group has declined by approximately 80% since the 1980s, while the western population has plummeted by 95%.
According to the FWS, the species faces a host of threats, including the loss and degradation of its breeding, migratory and overwintering habitats; exposure to insecticides; and the growing impacts of climate change.
As part of its conservation efforts, the FWS is also recommending the designation of critical habitat at specific overwintering sites along California’s coast. These habitats serve as vital winter refuges, providing monarchs the resources needed to rest and prepare for spring breeding.
“The fact that a butterfly as widespread and beloved as the monarch is now the face of the extinction crisis is a tri-national distress signal warning us to take better care of the environment that we all share,” said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.
“For 30 years, we’ve watched the population of monarch butterflies collapse. It is clear that monarchs cannot thrive — and might not survive — without federal protections,” added Dan Ritzman, director of conservation at Sierra Club.
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is widely credited with saving iconic American species such as the gray wolf, bald eagle and grizzly bear.
During Trump’s first administration, however, key provisions of the law were weakened. These changes, later reversed by President Joe Biden, included measures that allowed industrial projects such as roads, pipelines and mines in areas designated as critical habitat for vulnerable species.
Trump’s administration also removed endangered species protections for gray wolves across most of the United States and slashed critical habitat designated for northern spotted owls.
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In December, many Africans return to their ancestral homes to reconnect with their families and traditions. In South Africa, that includes traditional healers. As Zaheer Cassim reports from Johannesburg, many are finding that a new app is helping to bring this age-old practice into the digital age.
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NAIROBI, KENYA — The United Nations, Microsoft and Kenya’s Ministry of Information last week launched a digital and artificial intelligence center in Nairobi to train African public servants and accelerate the development and use of online services.
Officials said the program — the Timbuktoo GreenTech Hub and Africa Centre for Competence for AI and Digital Skilling — aims to improve the skills of 100,000 government workers.
U.N. Development Program Regional Director Ahunna Eziakonwa said at the launch that better digital skills and resources will enable Africa to achieve technological progress.
“An inclusive public sector digital transformation drives efficiency and effectiveness and helps governments to enhance coordination of resources and information and strengthen data and code policymaking and implementation,” she said.
Kenyan President William Ruto said that more than 20,000 government services can be accessed online and that the digital transformation has made government work easier.
“This will help us streamline public service delivery and enhance transparency and efficiency, minimize opportunities for corruption and maximize visibility and mobilization of public revenue,” he said. “The transformative impact of this single initiative on citizens’ experience in accessing public services, along with the government’s capacity to effectively manage public resources, clearly illustrates the immense value of digital transformation.”
Governance experts say digital services offered online have improved citizens’ trust in public services and made the work of government employees faster, more accurate and more transparent.
However, the frequent power and internet blackouts that plague some African countries sometimes force government workers to resort to traditional paper and file systems.
Some workers have little experience with computers and feel that online glitches are slowing them down.
Michael Niyitegeka, team leader at Refactory, a software academy in Uganda that prepares youth for global tech work, said authorities must push workers to use the technology.
“Leadership has to be extremely firm in knowing how they want to use these technologies and invest in ensuring that people are working with it,” Niyitegeka said.
“We need to work on the entire system so the citizens can be brought to speed, and different users of these technologies as we are building need to be brought on board so that we are building together,” he said. “Otherwise, it will probably become a white elephant.”
Tech experts say that if developed correctly and with proper investment, then digital technology and artificial intelligence can transform communities.
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