Economy

Negotiators urged to get down to business as climate talks in Baku enter second week 

BAKU, Azerbaijan — United Nations climate talks resumed Monday with negotiators urged to make progress on a stalled-out deal that could see developing countries get more money to spend on clean energy and adapting to climate-charged weather extremes.

U.N. Climate Change executive secretary Simon Stiell called for countries to “cut the theatrics and get down to real business.”

“We will only get the job done if Parties are prepared to step forward in parallel, bringing us closer to common ground,” Stiell said to a room of delegates in Baku, Azerbaijan. “I know we can get this done.”

Climate and environment ministers from around the world have arrived at the summit to help push the talks forward.

“Politicians have the power to reach a fair and ambitious deal,” said COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev at a press conference at the venue. “They must deliver and engage immediately and constructively.”

Climate cash is still a sticking point

Talks in Baku are focused on getting more climate cash for developing countries to transition away from fossil fuels, adapt to climate change and pay for damages caused by extreme weather. But countries are far apart on how much money that will require.

A group of developing nations last week put the sum at $1.3 trillion, while rich countries are yet to name a figure. Several experts estimated that the money needed for climate finance is around $1 trillion.

“We all know it is never easy in politics and in international politics to talk about money, but the cost of action today is, as a matter of fact, much lower than the cost of inaction,” said Wopke Hoekstra, the EU climate commissioner at press conference.

“We will continue to lead to do our fair share and even more than our fair share, as we’ve always done,” he said. But Hoekstra added that “others have a responsibility to contribute based on their emissions and based on their economic growth too.”

Teresa Anderson, the Global Lead on Climate Justice at ActionAid International, was skeptical about rich countries’ intentions.

“The concern is that the pressure to add developing countries to the list of contributors is not, in fact, about raising more money for frontline countries,” Anderson said. “Rich countries are just trying to point the finger and have an excuse to provide less finance. That’s not the way to address runaway climate breakdown, and is a distraction from the real issues at stake.”

Rachel Cleetus from the Union of Concerned Scientists said $1 trillion in global climate funds “is going to look like a bargain five, 10 years from now.”

“We’re going to wonder why we didn’t take that and run with it,” she said, citing a multitude of costly recent extreme weather events from flooding in Spain to hurricanes Helene and Milton in the United States.

Robert Habeck, Germany’s climate and economic affairs minister said rich nations shouldn’t try to stop developing nations from producing more energy, but it has to come from cleaner sources.

“They have the same right to create same work, same education and health system,” he said. “On other hand, if we’re they are doing the same as we did for 100 years of burning fossil energy, that is completely messed up.”

Climate watchers keep an eye on Rio and Paris

Meanwhile, the world’s biggest decision makers are halfway around the world as another major summit convenes. Brazil is hosting the Group of 20 summit, which runs Nov. 18-19, bringing together many of the world’s largest economies. Climate change — among other major topics like rising global tensions and poverty — will be on the agenda.

COP President Babayev said the world “cannot succeed” in its climate goals without G20 nations.

“We urge them to use the G20 meeting to send a positive signal of their commitment to addressing the climate crisis. We want them to provide clear mandates to deliver,” he said.

Harjeet Singh, global engagement director for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, said G20 nations “cannot turn their backs on the reality of their historical emissions and the responsibility that comes with it.”

“They must commit to trillions in public finance,” he said.

Also on Monday, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has been mulling a proposal to cut public spending for foreign fossil fuel projects. The OECD — made up of 38 member countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Japan and Germany — are discussing a deal that could prevent up to $40 billion worth of carbon-polluting projects.

At COP29, activists are protesting the U.S., South Korea, Japan, and Turkey who they say are the key holdouts preventing the agreement in Paris from being finalized.

“It’s of critical importance that President Biden comes out in support. We know it’s really important that he lands a deal that Trump cannot undo. This can be really important for Biden’s legacy,” said Lauri van der Burg, Global Public Finance Lead at Oil Change international. “If he comes around, this will help mount pressure on other laggards including Korea, Turkey and Japan.”

Chile’s ‘seed guardians’ grow and protect forgotten food varieties 

SAN VICENTE DE TAGUA TAGUA, Chile — An emerging group of farmers and growers in Chile, known as seed guardians, aim to protect the traditional crops of their ancestors, keeping them safe from industrial agriculture and genetic modification.

The guardians collect, trade and plant hundreds of seeds to preserve forgotten varieties of tomatoes, corn and other vegetables that were historically farmed by the indigenous Mapuche people.

One such guardian, Ana Yanez, said the varieties the guardians aim to save are dwindling due to changing environments or farmers opting for higher-yield varieties.

“We are rescuing the seeds and knowledge of our ancestors,” said Delfin Toro, another guardian. “How they harvested, how they sowed, the dynamics of the moon, when to plant, when to harvest.”

The guardians are finding clients at high-end restaurants.

Pablo Caceres, a seed guardian and chef at Vik Winery’s Pavilion restaurant in the Millahue Valley in central Chile, said he normally finds no more than five varieties of tomatoes at markets and fairs.

“This year we’ll have 26 varieties of tomatoes and we think that there are more than 200,” Caceres said.

This diversification could also help crops adapt to new terrain and areas affected by a changing climate. Ricardo Pertuze, an agronomist at the University of Chile, said new varieties are needed when climate change makes a crop’s current location unsuitable.

The genetic diversity the guardians are collecting are essential to find those varieties, Pertuze said.

Wilson Hugo, an official at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, said the trend of safeguarding traditional seeds exists in other nations such as India, China, sub-Saharan Africa, as well as in countries of the former Soviet Union.

“We have to congratulate them and support them and that’s probably not enough,” Hugo said. “We need more of them. We need to do more of this kind of work.”

Dwayne Johnson’s $200 million-plus Christmas pic opens to $34.1 million

Los Angeles — Moviegoers were not exactly feeling the Christmas spirit this weekend, or at least not based on their attendance at “Red One” showings. 

The big budget, star-driven action comedy with Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans sold $34.1 million in tickets in its first weekend in theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday. It easily topped a box office populated mostly by holdovers. 

For traditional studios, a $34.1 million debut against a $200 million-plus production budget would be a clear indication of a flop. Some even peg the budget closer to $250 million. But “Red One” is an Amazon MGM Studios release with the luxury of playing the long game rather than relying solely on global box office where Johnson tentpoles often overperform. The film may have a life on Prime Video for years to come. 

“Red One,” in which Johnson plays Santa’s bodyguard, was originally built to go straight-to-streaming. It was greenlit prior to Amazon’s acquisition of MGM. One interpretation of its lifecycle is that the theatrical earnings are not only just a bonus, but an additive gesture toward struggling theaters looking for a consistent stream of new films. 

“Amazon has 250 million plus worldwide subscribers to the platform. It’s similar to the way Netflix, I think, looks at stuff for their platform,” said Kevin Wilson, head of distribution for Amazon MGM Studios. “There’s a there’s a massive value for a movie like this in terms of how many eyeballs you’re going to get.” 

The first major studio holiday release since 2018, “Red One” opened on 4,032 screens, including IMAX and other large formats, on an otherwise quiet weekend for major releases. 

“We’re really happy with the results,” Wilson said. “I think when you look at the theatrical marketplace that’s sometimes unforgiving, especially for original films, this is a good result for us.” 

Since 2020, only seven films that weren’t sequels or based on another piece of intellectual property have opened over $30 million (including “Oppenheimer” and “Nope.”) 

Warner Bros. is handling the overseas release, where it has made an estimated $50 million in two weekends from 75 territories and 14,783 screens. 

Still, it’s certainly not a theatrical hit in North America. Even “Joker: Folie à Deux” made slightly more in its first weekend. “Red One,” directed by Jake Kasdan and produced by Johnson’s Seven Bucks, was roundly rejected by critics, with a dismal 33% Rotten Tomatoes score. Jake Coyle, in his review for The Associated Press, wrote that it “feels like an unwanted high-priced Christmas present.” 

Audiences were kinder than they were to “Joker 2,” giving it an A- CinemaScore, suggesting, perhaps, that the idea of it becoming a perennial holiday favorite is not so off-base. 

“Red One” is also overperforming in the middle of the country, Wilson said, and perhaps will have a nice holdover over Thanksgiving as a different option to the behemoths on the way. 

Sony’s “Venom: The Last Dance” added $7.4 million this weekend’s box office to take second place, bringing its domestic total to $127.6 million. Globally, its total stands at $436.1 million. 

Lionsgate’s “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” landed in third with $5.4 million. That much more modestly budgeted Christmas movie has already nearly doubled its $10 million production budget in two weeks. Fourth place went to A24’s Hugh Grant horror “Heretic,” with $5.2 million, bumping its total gross to $20.4 million. 

Universal and DreamWorks Animation’s “The Wild Robot” rounded out the top five in its eighth weekend in theaters with an additional $4.3 million. The animated film surpassed $300 million worldwide. 

This weekend is a bit of a stopover before the Thanksgiving tentpoles arrive. Next week, “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” face off in theaters with “Moana 2”, which also stars Johnson, sailing in the Wednesday before the holiday. 

“Gladiator II” also got a bit of a head start internationally, where it opened in 63 markets this weekend to gross $87 million. That’s a record for filmmaker Ridley Scott and for an R-rated international release from Paramount. It opens in the U.S. and Canada on Nov. 22. 

Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore, said that the “Red One” is helping set into motion a momentum leading into the Thanksgiving corridor. 

The upcoming releases, he said, “will finally bring some excitement to what has been a somewhat quiet post-Labor Day moviegoing marketplace.” 

Dergarabedian added that it could be “one of the biggest revenue generating Thanksgiving periods in box office history.” 

Final domestic figures will be released Monday. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore: 

  1. “Red One,” $34.1 million. 

  2. “Venom: The Last Dance,” $7.4 million. 

  3. “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” $5.4 million. 

  4. “Heretic,” $5.2 million. 

  5. “The Wild Robot,” $4.3 million. 

  6. “Smile 2,” $3 million. 

  7. “Conclave,” $2.9 million. 

  8. “Hello, Love, Again,” $2.3 million. 

  9. “A Real Pain,” $2.3 million. 

  10. “Anora,” $1.8 million.

Cultural experts urge UN to shield war-torn Lebanon’s heritage 

Beirut — Hundreds of cultural professionals, including archeologists and academics, called on the United Nations to safeguard war-torn Lebanon’s heritage in a petition published Sunday ahead of a crucial UNESCO meeting.

Several Israeli strikes in recent weeks on Baalbek in the east and Tyre in the south — both strongholds of Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah — hit close to ancient Roman ruins designated as UNESCO World Heritage sites.

 

The petition, signed by 300 prominent cultural figures, was sent to UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay a day before a special session in Paris to consider listing Lebanese cultural sites under “enhanced protection.”

It urges UNESCO to protect Baalbek and other heritage sites by establishing “no-target zones” around them, deploying international observers and enforcing measures from the 1954 Hague Convention on cultural heritage in conflict.

“Lebanon’s cultural heritage at large is being endangered by recurrent assaults on ancient cities such as Baalbek, Tyre and Anjar, all UNESCO world heritage sites, as well as on other historic landmarks,” says the petition.

It calls on influential states to push for an end to military action that causes destruction of damage to sites, as well as adding protections or introducing sanctions.

Change Lebanon, the charity behind the petition, said signatories included museum curators, academics, archaeologists and writers in Britain, France, Italy and the United States.

Hezbollah and Israel have been at war since late September, when Israel broadened its focus from fighting Hamas in the Gaza Strip to securing its northern border, even as the Gaza war continues.

Enhanced protection status gives heritage sites “high-level immunity from military attacks”, according to UNESCO.

“Criminal prosecutions and sanctions, conducted by the competent authorities, may apply in cases where individuals do not respect the enhanced protection granted to a cultural property,” it said.

In Baalbek, Israeli strikes on November 6 hit near the city’s Roman temples, according to authorities, destroying a heritage house dating back to the French mandate and damaged the historic site.

The region’s governor said “a missile fell in the car park” of a 1,000-year-old temple, the closest strike since the start of the war.

The ruins host the prestigious Baalbek Festival each year, a landmark event founded in 1956 and now a fixture on the international cultural scene, featuring performances by music legends like Oum Kalthoum, Charles Aznavour and Ella Fitzgerald.

‘Morphing’ wheel from South Korea may transform lives – and robots

DAEJEON, South Korea — Imagine a wheelchair equipped with wheels flexible enough to navigate all manner of obstacles from curbs to humps and even staircases.  

Or perhaps an unmanned delivery vehicle using the same wheels that takes the stairs to deliver food and groceries right to your door. 

This is what researchers from the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) envision for their “morphing” wheel, which can roll over obstacles up to 1.3 times the height of its radius.  

Inspired by the surface tension of water droplets, it goes from solid to fluid when it encounters impediments. 

Other possible applications include robots that spy on the enemy in the battlefield. 

The KIMM team also hopes that morphing wheels will eventually be used with two- and four-legged robots – currently limited in movement efficiency and susceptible to vibration – that can carry payloads that need stable movement in industrial settings. 

“The goal is to make this viable for speed up to 100 kph, or the speed of an average car,” said Song Sung-hyuk, principal researcher at KIMM. 

Wheels developed for a similar purpose such as nonpneumatic or airless tires have flexibility but are limited in their ability to overcome obstacles, said Song, who is a member of KIMM’s AI robotics research team.  

The morphing wheel consists of an outer hoop of a chain and a series of spoke wires running through the hub. The stiffness of the spokes – and hence the wheel – is automatically regulated by a sensor as it reacts to the terrain. 

Song’s team demonstrated to Reuters a prototype wheelchair mounted on morphing wheels as it climbed stairs with 18-cm steps with a life-size dummy sitting in it. The team has also tested a device mounted with the wheel at speeds of up to 30 kph. 

The morphing wheel was featured on the cover of the journal Science Robotics in August.

Chinese social media reels over woman’s illegal surrogacy case

BEIJING/HONG KONG — A 22-year-old Chinese woman’s account of how she was lured into the country’s illegal surrogacy industry before suffering a miscarriage went viral on Chinese social media this week and raised heated debates over women’s rights and social inequality. 

Surrogacy is banned in China, and authorities have vowed to severely crack down on illegal practices, including the buying and selling of sperm, egg and surrogacy services. 

The incident comes as Chinese authorities grapple with how to increase the country’s birth rate as more young couples put off having children or opt to have none. 

China’s population fell for a second consecutive year in 2023 and Beijing in October rallied local governments to direct resources towards fixing China’s population crisis to create a “birth-friendly” society.  

Zhang Jing, 22, told state-backed Phoenix TV magazine that she donated her eggs out of financial desperation and then agreed to “rent out her uterus” to be impregnated for a total of 30,000 yuan ($4,152).  

If she “successfully” delivered the baby, she would be paid a total of 240,000 yuan. At five months pregnant, she experienced severe complications and had to have an abortion.  

Zhang’s story amassed more than 86 million views and 10,000 comments on Chinese social media platform Weibo, with the hashtag “#2000s-born Surrogate Miscarriage Girl Speaks Out#.” 

The majority of comments strongly opposed surrogacy. Some warned that legalizing surrogacy in China could lead to increased competition that would lower compensation and further devalue women. 

“No woman could escape this if surrogacy were legalized,” one user wrote, while another said, “Legalizing surrogacy would drive down prices and commodify women.” 

Zhang’s story ignited calls for a more thorough crackdown on illegal surrogacy by authorities, with some commenters warning that allowing the black market to continue to operate could even normalize human organ trafficking.  

“Life should not be traded as a commodity,” one user wrote. “If this extends to the sale of organs, it will only get darker and darker, and women will have no future.” 

The incident comes a few weeks after a 28-year-old pregnant woman who acted as a surrogate in China’s southwestern city of Chengdu was allegedly abandoned by her surrogacy agency. 

Spy satellite images leads to the site of a historic battle in Iraq

BEIRUT — Declassified 1970s-era U.S. spy satellite imagery has led a British-Iraqi archeological team to what they believe is the site of a seventh-century battle that became decisive in the spread of Islam throughout the region.

The Battle of al-Qadisiyah was fought in Mesopotamia — in present-day Iraq — in the A.D. 630s between Arab Muslims and the army of the Sassanid Persian dynasty during a period of Muslim expansion. The Arab army prevailed and continued on its march into Persia, now Iran.

A joint team of archeologists from the U.K.’s Durham University and the University of Al-Qadisiyah stumbled across the site while undertaking a remote sensing survey to map the Darb Zubaydah, a pilgrimage route from Iraq’s Kufa to Mecca in Saudi Arabia built more than 1,000 years ago. The findings were published Tuesday in the journal Antiquity.

While mapping the route, the team noticed that a site some 30 kilometers south of Kufa in Iraq’s southern Najaf province — a desert area with scattered plots of agricultural land — had features that closely matched the description of the al-Qadisiyah battle site described in historic texts.

William Deadman, a specialist in archaeological remote sensing at Durham University, said the Cold War era satellite images are a commonly used tools by archeologists working in the Middle East, because the older images often show features that have been destroyed or altered and would not show up on present-day satellite images.

“The Middle East has developed so much in the last 50 years, both agricultural expansion and urban expansion,” he said. Some of the distinguishing features at the al-Qadisiyah site, such as a distinctive trench, were “much more pristine and clear” in the 1970s images, he said.

A survey on the ground confirmed the findings and convinced the team that they had correctly identified the site.

The key features were a deep trench, two fortresses and an ancient river that was reportedly once forded by elephant-mounted Persian troops, said Jaafar Jotheri, a professor of archeology at the University of Al-Qadisiyah who is part of the team that made the discovery. The survey team also found pottery shards consistent with the time period when the battle took place.

Jotheri said that Iraqis of his generation, who grew up under the rule of Saddam Hussein, were all familiar with the battle in minute detail, down to the names of the generals on both sides.

The battle at the time had political connotations — Iraq was engaged in a devastating war with Iran through much of the 1980s. Saddam pointed to the Battle of Qadisiyah as a harbinger of victory for Iraq.

Like most children growing up in that era, Jotheri said he had watched a popular movie about the battle multiple times as it was on regular rotation on television.

In the post-Saddam era, al-Qadisiyah has become something of a political litmus test. Iraqis’ views of the battle vary depending on their feelings toward Iran, which has expanded its influence in the country since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam.

“There is some political and religious context in this battle, because now, of course, we have religious differences, ethnic differences, political differences in Iraq and we read or we view everything based on our … differences,” Jotheri said. But he added, “We all agree that it is a very important battle, a decisive one, and we all know about it.”

The team plans to begin excavations at the site in the coming year, Jotheri said.

The discovery comes as part of a broader project launched in 2015 to document endangered archaeological sites in the region.

It also comes at the time of a resurgence of archeology in Iraq, a country often referred to as the “cradle of civilization,” but where archeological exploration has been stunted by decades of conflict that halted excavations and led to the looting of tens of thousands of artifacts.

In recent years, the digs have returned and thousands of stolen artifacts have been repatriated. 

Thailand’s baby pygmy hippo Moo Deng now has an official song in 4 languages

BANGKOK — In case you can’t get enough of the little pygmy hippo Moo Deng from Thailand, there’s now an official song featuring the internet’s favorite baby animal — released in four languages for her global fans.

The upbeat 50-second song Moodeng Moodeng, available in Thai, English, Chinese and Japanese versions, features simple lyrics like “Moo Deng Moo Deng, boing boing boing/ Mommy Mommy, play with me.” Its music video consists of short clips of the baby hippo bouncing, playing with her keeper or hanging out with her mom, Jona.

The catchy number was produced and written by well-known Thai composer Mueanphet Ammara, and released by one of Thailand’s largest music companies, GMM Music.

Moo Deng — the name literally means “bouncy pork,” a type of meatball, in Thai — became a global phenomenon just a month after she was unveiled on Facebook by the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand’s southern Chon Buri province.

Fans say her name compliments her chaotic personality. Moo Deng likes to “deng,” or bounce, and her giddy bouncing has appeared all over social media in countless memes. Her image has been used by sports teams and businesses.

The hippo, now 4 months old, has drawn a huge number of visitors to the zoo, which is around a two-hour drive away from the capital of Bangkok. The zoo estimated it has received 3,000 to 5,000 visitors a day on average in the past few months, and it’s selling clothes, bedding and other merchandise based on Moo Deng.

Zoo director Narongwit Chodchoi has said the increasing income from Moo Deng will help its breeding programs for many endangered species like the pygmy hippopotamus, which is threatened by poaching and loss of habitat. The species is native to West Africa and there are only 2,000-3,000 of them left in the wild.

The zoo sits on 800 hectares of land and is home to more than 2,000 animals.

All four versions of the Moo Deng song are available on YouTube and streaming platforms including Spotify and Apple Music.

Bela Karolyi, controversial Olympic gymnasts coach, dies at 82

Bela Karolyi, the charismatic if polarizing gymnastics coach who turned young women into champions and the United States into an international power in the sport, has died. He was 82.

USA Gymnastics said Karolyi died Friday. No cause of death was given.

Karolyi and wife, Martha, trained multiple Olympic gold medalists and world champions in the U.S. and Romania, including Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton.

“A big impact and influence on my life,” Comaneci, who was just 14 when Karolyi coached her to gold for Romania at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, posted on Instagram.

Yet Karolyi’s strident methods sometimes came under fire, most pointedly during the height of the Larry Nassar scandal.

When the disgraced former USA Gymnastics team doctor was effectively given a life sentence after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting gymnasts and other athletes with his hands under the guise of medical treatment, over a dozen former gymnasts came forward saying the Karolyis were part of a system that created an oppressive culture that allowed Nassar’s behavior to run unchecked for years.

While the Karolyis denied responsibility — telling CNN in 2018 they were unaware of Nassar’s behavior — the revelations led to them receding from the spotlight. USA Gymnastics eventually exited an agreement to continue to train at the Karolyi Ranch north of Houston, though only after American star Simone Biles took the organization to task for having them train at a site where many experienced sexual abuse.

The Karolyis receded from the spotlight in the aftermath after spending 30-plus years as a guiding force in American gymnastics, often basking in success while brushing with controversy in equal measure.

The Karolyis defected from Romania to the United States in 1981. Three years later Bela helped guide Retton — all of 16 — to the Olympic all-around title at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. At the 1996 Games in Atlanta, he memorably helped an injured Kerri Strug off the floor after Strug’s vault secured the team gold for the Americans.

Karolyi briefly became the national team coordinator for USA Gymnastics women’s elite program in 1999 and incorporated a semi-centralized system that eventually turned the Americans into the sport’s gold standard. It did not come without a cost. He was removed from the position after the 2000 Olympics when it became apparent his leadership style simply would not work, though he remained around the sport after Martha took over for her husband in 2001.

While the Karolyis approach helped the U.S. become a superpower — an American woman has won each of the last six Olympic titles and the U.S. women earned the team gold at the 2012 and 2016 games under Martha Karolyi’s leadership — their methods came under fire.

Dominique Moceanu, part of the “Magnificent 7” team that won gold in Atlanta, talked extensively about her corrosive relationship with the Karolyis following her retirement. In her 2012 memoir, Moceanu wrote Bela Karolyi verbally abused her in front of her teammates on multiple occasions.

“His harsh words and critical demeanor often weighed heavily on me,” Moceanu posted on X Saturday. “While our relationship was fraught with difficulty, some of these moments of hardship helped me forge and define my own path.”

Some of Karolyi’s most famous students were always among his staunchest defenders. When Strug got married, she and Karolyi took a photo recreating their famous scene from the 1996 Olympics, when he carried her onto the medals podium after she vaulted on a badly sprained ankle.

Being a gymnastics pied piper was never Karolyi’s intent. Born in Clug, Hungary, (now Romania) on September 13, 1942, he wanted to be a teacher, getting into coaching in college simply so he could spend more time with Martha.

After graduating, the couple moved to a small coal-mining town in Transylvania. Looking for a way to keep their students warm and entertained during the long, harsh winters, Karolyi dragged out some old mats and he and his wife taught the children gymnastics.

The students showed off their skills to their parents, and the exhibitions soon caught the eye of the Romanian government, which hired the Karolyis to coach the women’s national team at a time when the sport was done almost exclusively by adult women, not young girls.

Karolyi changed all that, though, bringing a team to the Montreal Olympics with only one gymnast older than 14.

It was in Montreal, of course, where the world got its first real glimpse of Karolyi. When a solemn, dark-haired sprite named Nadia Comaneci enchanted the world with the first perfect 10 in Olympic history, a feat she would duplicate six times, Karolyi was there to wrap her in one of his trademark bear hugs.

Romania, which had won only three bronzes in Olympic gymnastics before 1976, left Montreal with seven medals, including Comaneci’s golds in the all-around, balance beam and uneven bars, and the team silver. Comaneci became an international sensation, the first person to appear on the covers of Sports Illustrated, Time and Newsweek in the same week.

Four years later, however, Karolyi was in disgrace.

He was incensed by the judging at the Moscow Olympics, which he thought cost Comaneci a second all-around gold, and the Romanian government was horrified that he had embarrassed the Soviet hosts.

“Suddenly, from a position where we’ve been praised and considered the foremost athletes in the country, I was stigmatized,” he once said. “I thought they could put me away for political misconduct.”

When he and Martha took the Romanian team to New York for an exhibition in March 1981, they were tipped off that they were going to be punished upon their return. Despite not speaking any English and with their then-6-year-old daughter, Andrea, still in Romania, they decided to defect.

“We knew what kind of risks we were taking, because nobody was guaranteeing us anything,” Martha Karolyi once said. “We started out with a suitcase and a little motel room. From there, it’s gradually improved.”

The couple made their way to California, where they learned English by watching television and Bela did odd jobs. A chance encounter with Olympic gold medalist Bart Conner — who would later marry Comaneci — at the Los Angeles airport a few months later led to the Karolyis’ first coaching job in the United States.

Within a year, their daughter had arrived in the U.S. and the Karolyis had their own gym in Houston. It soon became the center of American gymnastics, turning out eight national champions in 13 years.

Three years after the Karolyis left Romania, Retton became the first American to win the Olympic all-around title, scoring a perfect 10 on vault to claim gold at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. Retton also posted the highest score in the team competition as the Americans won the silver, their first team medal since 1948.

Four years later, Phoebe Mills, another Karolyi gymnast, won a bronze on balance beam. It was the first individual medal for an American woman at a non-boycotted games. And in 1991, Kim Zmeskal — “the little Kimbo,” as Bela Karolyi called her — became the first American to win the world all-around title.

“My biggest contribution was giving the kids the faith that they can be the best among the best,” Karolyi once said. “I knew that if the Americans could understand they were not inferior … then they can be groomed like international, highly visible athletes.”

But as Karolyi’s resume grew, so did the criticism.

Other coaches were irritated by his brash personality and ability to always find his way into the spotlight. When Retton won gold, Karolyi leaped a barrier — he had an equipment manager’s credential, not a coach’s — so he could scoop Retton up in a hug — right in front of the TV cameras, of course.

He could be a harsh taskmaster, calling his gymnasts names, taunting them for their weight and pushing them to their limits.

Even those warm embraces weren’t always quite what they seemed.

“A lot of those big bear hugs came with the whisper of ‘Not so good,’ in our ears,” Retton wrote.

Yet Retton and Comaneci remained close with Karolyi, making appearances with him at gymnastics events or sitting with him at competitions. Zmeskal had her wedding at the Karolyi ranch.

Karolyi briefly retired after the 1992 Games in Barcelona, where he led the Americans to their first team medal, a bronze, at a non-boycotted Olympics in 44 years. But he kept his gym and summer camps, and by 1994 was again coaching elite-level gymnasts after Zmeskal asked him to help in her attempt to make the Atlanta Games.

Zmeskal didn’t make the Atlanta squad. But two of Karolyi’s other gymnasts, Strug and Moceanu, did, and it was Strug who provided one of the signature moments of the Olympics.

The Americans went into their final event in team finals, vault, trying to hold off Russia for their first-ever title at an Olympics or world championships. Despite injuring her left ankle when she fell on her first vault attempt, Strug went ahead with her second attempt, believing — wrongly — the Americans needed her score to clinch the gold.

With Karolyi shouting, “You can do it!” Strug sprinted down the runway, soared high above the vault and landed on both feet — ensuring it was a clean vault — before pulling her left leg up. After saluting the judges, she fell to her knees and had to be carried off the podium. Tests would later show she had two torn ligaments in her ankle.

As the rest of the Americans gathered on the podium to receive their gold medals, Karolyi carried Strug back into the arena, cradling her in his arms.

But even that drew criticism. Many said Karolyi never should have encouraged Strug to vault on her injured ankle in the first place and then should have stayed out of the spotlight rather than carrying her to the podium.

“Bela is a very tough coach and he gets criticism for that,” Strug said at the time. “But that’s what it takes to become a champion. I don’t think it’s really right that everyone tries to find the faults of Bela. Anything in life, to be successful, you’ve got to work really hard.”

The Karolyis retired again after the Atlanta Olympics. But after the U.S. women finished last in the medal round at the 1997 world championships, USA Gymnastics asked Bela Karolyi to come back.

He agreed — but only if he could implement a semi-centralized training system. Rather than a patchwork system of individual coaches who had their own philosophies, Karolyi would oversee the entire U.S. program. Gymnasts could still train with their own coaches, but there would be regular national team camps to ensure they were meeting established training and performance standards.

Though the idea was sound, Karolyi was not the right person to be in charge. Coaches who had been his equal chafed at his heavy-handedness, and were annoyed by his grandstanding. Gymnasts resented his bluster and demands.

By the time the Americans left the Sydney Olympics, about the only thing everyone agreed on was that Karolyi needed to step away.

He stepped aside and was replaced by his wife. Martha Karolyi’s standards were just as high — if not higher — than her husband’s, but on the surface, she was more willing to listen to other opinions.

“She’s more diplomatic. Absolutely,” Bela Karolyi said before the 2012 Olympics. “I’m wild. The opposite.” 

Health officials report first case of new form of mpox in US

NEW YORK — Health officials said Saturday they have confirmed the first U.S. case of a new form of mpox that was first seen in eastern Congo. 

The person had traveled to eastern Africa and was treated in Northern California upon return, according to the California Department of Public Health. Symptoms are improving and the risk to the public is low. 

The individual was isolating at home and health workers are reaching out to close contacts as a precaution, the state health department said. 

Mpox is a rare disease caused by infection with a virus that’s in the same family as the one that causes smallpox. It is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals. Milder symptoms can include fever, chills and body aches. In more serious cases, people can develop lesions on the face, hands, chest and genitals. 

Earlier this year, scientists reported the emergence of a new form of mpox in Africa that was spread through close contact including through sex. It was widely transmitted in eastern and central Africa. But in cases that were identified in travelers outside of the continent, spread has been very limited, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

More than 3,100 confirmed cases have been reported since late September, according to the World Health Organization. Most of them have been in three African countries — Burundi, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

Since then, cases of travelers with the new mpox form have been reported in Germany, India, Kenya, Sweden, Thailand, Zimbabwe, and the United Kingdom. 

Health officials earlier this month said the situation in Congo appears to be stabilizing. The Africa CDC has estimated Congo needs at least 3 million mpox vaccines to stop the spread, and another 7 million vaccines for the rest of Africa. The spread is mostly through sexual transmission as well as through close contact among children, pregnant women and other vulnerable groups. 

The current outbreak is different from the 2022 global outbreak of mpox where gay and bisexual men made up most of the cases. 

Trump chooses oil industry executive as energy secretary 

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has selected Chris Wright, the founder of an oilfield services company, to lead the Energy Department, as his new administration continues to take shape. 

The transition team officially announced the choice on Saturday afternoon. On Friday, Trump announced a new National Energy Council to be led by his Interior Department pick, former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum.

In this role, Burgum will direct a panel that crosses all executive branch agencies involved in energy permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation and transportation, Trump said in a statement. As chairman of the National Energy Council, Burgum will have a seat on the National Security Council, the president-elect said. 

Wright, the CEO of Liberty Energy based in Denver, Colorado, has no political experience. He is an advocate for the oil and gas industry, including fracking. In 2019, he drank fracking liquid to show that it was not dangerous. 

According to a March 2024 report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the U.S. has produced more crude oil than any nation at any time, according to its International Energy Statistics, for the past six years in a row. Average monthly U.S. crude oil production established a monthly record high in December 2023 at more than 13.3 million barrels per day. 

Earlier announcements 

The Trump-Vance transition team announced Steven Cheung will return to the Trump White House as communications director. He held the same position for the Trump-Vance 2024 presidential campaign and served in the White House during Trump’s first term as director of strategic response.   

On Friday evening, Trump announced that his campaign press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, would be his White House press secretary. She served as assistant press secretary in his previous term in office. 

Trump has swiftly named an array of political loyalists to key Cabinet positions. Most of them are likely to win quick Senate approval after confirmation hearings.  

 

Having won majorities in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, Republicans are set to take full control of the U.S. government by the third week in January.  

“Republicans in the House and Senate have a mandate,” newly reelected House Speaker Mike Johnson said earlier this week. “The American people want us to implement and deliver that ‘America First’ agenda.” 

Trump will be sworn in as the country’s 47th president on January 20, two weeks after the new Congress has been seated.  

The 78-year-old Trump campaigned on a sweeping agenda that Democrats will be largely powerless to stop.  

Republicans will have a 53-47 edge in the Senate, and the tie-breaking vote of Vice President-elect JD Vance in the event of a 50-50 stalemate on any legislative proposal. Republicans have secured at least 218 seats in the 435-member House, pending the outcome of seven undecided elections for two-year terms.   

During his bid to win a second, nonconsecutive four-year term, Trump called for the massive deportation of millions of undocumented migrants living in the United States to their home countries, an extension and expansion of 2017 tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of 2025, further deregulation of businesses, a curb on climate controls, and prosecution of his political opponents.  

Senator John Thune of South Dakota, newly elected by his fellow Republicans as the Senate majority leader, said, “This Republican team is united. We are on one team. We are excited to reclaim the majority and to get to work with our colleagues in the House to enact President Trump’s agenda.”  

Trump also has called on Senate Republican leaders to allow him to make “recess appointments,” which could occur when the chamber is not in session and would erase the need for time-consuming and often contentious confirmation hearings.  

Despite the likelihood that most of his nominees will be approved, Trump this week named four who immediately drew disparaging assessments from several Democrats and some Republicans for their perceived lack of credentials.  

They are former Representative Matt Gaetz as attorney general; former Democratic congresswoman turned Republican Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence; former junior military officer and Fox News host Pete Hegseth as defense secretary; and former presidential candidate and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Health and Human Services Department.  

The blowback presages tough confirmation fights for the four in the Senate, which reviews the appointments of top-level officials and then votes to confirm them or, on occasion, reject them, forcing the White House to make another choice.  

The appointment of Gaetz, 42, could prove particularly problematic, with some senators openly questioning whether he can win a 51-vote majority to assume the government’s top law enforcement position. 

A House ethics committee probe was in the final stages of investigating whether he engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use when he announced his resignation from the chamber late Wednesday, ending the probe. 

The Justice Department that Gaetz hopes to lead had decided not to pursue criminal charges. Gaetz has denied all wrongdoing. 

 

Gabbard, 43, has been criticized for her lack of direct experience in intelligence and accused of disseminating pro-Russian disinformation. If confirmed, she would be tasked with overseeing 18 U.S. intelligence agencies. She won over Trump with her switch from being a one-time Democratic House member from Hawaii to changing parties and staunchly advocating for his election. 

Critics have assailed Hegseth, a 44-year-old decorated former military officer, as someone who lacks managerial experience in the business world. A weekend anchor on Fox News, he has voiced his opinions on military operations, including his opposition to women serving in combat roles. 

A descendant of the Kennedy family political dynasty, Kennedy, 70, for years has been one of the country’s most prominent proponents of anti-vaccine views. He also opposed water fluoridation. 

On Thursday, Trump also selected former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton to be Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, and former Representative Doug Collins to be secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. 

Trump named one of his personal criminal defense attorneys, Todd Blanche, to be deputy attorney general, and another of his attorneys, D. John Sauer, to be solicitor general. 

 

The Associated Press provided some information for this report. 

G20 Social discusses goal of lifting 600 million people out of poverty by 2030

RIO DE JANEIRO — As Brazil prepares to welcome leaders from the world’s 20 largest economies for the Group of 20 summit, another event is taking place in Rio de Janeiro, one that brings global civil society to together for pivotal discussions.

The Brazil G20 Social Summit, an initiative by the Brazilian government, marks the first event at which citizens from around the world, as well as nonprofits and community organizations, are invited to participate in a series of smaller conferences.

One of the most talked-about initiatives is the launch of the Global Alliance Against Hunger — a group proposed by Brazil’s government to raise funds and implement policies aimed at reducing hunger worldwide.

Wellington Dias, Brazil’s minister of Development and Social Assistance, Family and Combating Hunger, told VOA this initiative is open to any nation. He said the G20 addressing hunger and poverty is a significant challenge and a new development.

Dias said the recent COVID pandemic and climate change created a problem for the world.

“It further disrupted the immigration process,” Dias said in an interview in Portuguese. “We also began to face situations involving climate change and people referred to as climate refugees. Hence, the need to address this issue.”

Brazil, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Chile, Indonesia and the Dominican Republic have outlined their strategies. Countries supporting these efforts include Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Norway and Spain, as well as the European Union and organizations such as the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program.

Proposed measures include expanding cash transfer programs to support 500 million people, providing school meals to an additional 150 million children and offering health services to 200 million women and children younger than 6.

“What we need to solve hunger is much less than what is allocated to wars [and conflicts]. … The goal here is to develop a solution tailored to each country’s needs. It’s not just about distributing food baskets but also about delivering a development plan,” Dias said.

Brazilian officials said this financial commitment is expected to come from about 40 nation members of the alliance, 13 international organizations and financial institutions, 19 large philanthropic foundations, civil society organizations, nongovernmental organizations and other nonprofit organizations.

Dias said the alliance is expected to reach its target of 100 countries in the coming months, with more than 50 nations preparing plans to join. However, he said to join the alliance, countries must present well-defined plans and proven projects that effectively reduce poverty.

According to the United Nations, the relationship between food insecurity, migration and displacement is heavily influenced by factors such as conflict, climate change, natural disasters and poverty.

Current projections show that by 2030, 622 million people will live below the World Bank’s extreme poverty line of $2.15 a day.

The alliance’s mission is to lift at least 600 million people out of poverty by 2030.

The G20 social proposals will be compiled into a final document to be presented at the G20 leaders’ summit on Monday and Tuesday, hosted by Brazil. The Brazilian government has prioritized the fight against world hunger, alongside addressing climate change and anti-corruption governance reform.

South African Ambassador Nosipho Jezile told VOA: “Brazil has inspired me and [other] leaders in the context of this global alliance against hunger and poverty. It’s quite a stretch goal in terms of dealing with the challenges in hand.”

But she said nations know the problem and have evidence-based solutions.

“All we have to do is collaborate and make it happen. … It needs a lot of money, but of course, the reorientation of resources that are available to enable and deal with 500 million people that are in hunger and that’s what we have in this commitment,” she said.

About 47,000 people attended the G20 Social Summit from Thursday to Saturday, engaging in discussions on inequality and climate change.

“So, beyond the immigration issue, I always argue that hunger and extreme poverty are not just problems for those experiencing them — they are problems for the middle class, for the wealthy, for rich countries, and for rich individuals. There will be no social peace in the world if we do not find a solution to this issue,” Dias told VOA.

Protesters gather at UN climate talks in ‘global day of action’

BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — Hundreds of activists formed a human chain outside one of the main plenary halls at the United Nations climate summit on what is traditionally their biggest protest day during the two-week talks.

The demonstration in Baku, Azerbaijan, will be echoed at sites around the world in a global “day of action” for climate justice that’s become an annual event.

Activists waved flags, snapped their fingers, hummed and mumbled chants, with many covering their mouths with the word “Silenced.”

Demonstrators held up signs calling for more money to be pledged for climate finance, which involves cash for transitioning to clean energy and adapting to climate change. It comes as negotiators at the venue try to hammer out a deal for exactly that — but progress has been slow, and observers say the direction of any agreement is still unclear.

‘Keep fighting’

Lidy Nacpil said protestors like her are “not surprised” about how negotiations are going. But past wins — such as a loss and damage fund that gives developing nations cash after extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change — keep organizers going, said Nacpil, a coordinator with the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development.

“The role we play is to increase the pressure,” she said of the action. “We know we’re not going to get the results that the world needs in this round of negotiations, but at least to bring us many steps closer is our hope, is our aim.

“I think we have no option but to keep fighting. … It’s the instinctive response that anyone, any living being, living creatures will have, which is to fight for life and fight for survival.”

Tasneem Essop said she was inspired by the action, which was challenging to organize. “To be able to pull off something where people feel their own power, exercise their own power and get inspired in this creative way, I’m super excited about this,” she said.

Essop said she’s “not very” optimistic about an outcome on finance but knows next week will be pivotal. “We can’t end up with a bad deal for the peoples of the world, those who are already suffering the impacts of climate change, those who need to adapt to an increasing and escalating crisis,” she said.

“We fight until the end.”

Climate cash

Negotiators at COP29, as the talks are known, are working on a deal that might be worth hundreds of billions of dollars to poorer nations. Many are in the Global South and already suffering the costly impact of weather disasters fueled by climate change. Several experts have said $1 trillion or more annually is needed both to compensate for such damages and to pay for a clean-energy transition that most countries can’t afford on their own.

Samir Bejanov, deputy lead negotiator of this year’s climate talks, said in a press conference that the climate finance talks were moving too slowly.

“I want to repeat our strong encouragement to all parties to make as much progress as possible,” he said. “We need everyone to approach the task with urgency and determination.”

Diego Pacheco, a negotiator from Bolivia, said the amount of money on the table for developing countries needs to be “loud and clear.”

“No more speeches but real money,” he said.

Observers also were disappointed at the pace of progress.

“This has been the worst first week of a COP in my 15 years of attending this summit,” said Mohamed Adow, of climate think tank Power Shift Africa. “There’s no clarity on the climate finance goal, the quality of the finance or how it’s going to be made accessible to vulnerable countries.

“I sense a lot of frustration, especially among the developing country blocs here,” he said.

Panama environment minister Juan Carlos Navarro agreed, telling The Associated Press he is “not encouraged” by what he’s seeing at COP29 so far.

“What I see is a lot of talk and very little action,” he said, noting that Panama is among the group of countries least responsible for warming emissions but most vulnerable to the damage caused by climate change-fueled disasters.

Jake Paul beats boxing legend Mike Tyson

ARLINGTON, TEXAS — Jake Paul beat boxing legend Mike Tyson by unanimous decision to win an intergenerational heavyweight battle in Texas on Friday that failed to live up to its enormous hype.

The bout between the 27-year-old social media influencer-turned-prizefighter Paul and the 58-year-old former heavyweight champion Tyson was streamed live on Netflix and played out in front of a sold-out crowd at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.

Those fans were left largely disappointed as Tyson showed his age and was never able to generate any offense against his younger opponent, landing just 18 punches to Paul’s 78.

“First and foremost, Mike Tyson — it’s an honor to be able to fight him,” said Paul. “It was as tough and hard as I thought it would be.”

Tyson, who wore a knee brace, never mounted much of a challenge after being wobbled by some left hands in the third round but did enough defensively to avoid taking any serious damage.

He acknowledged after the contest to fighting through a leg injury.

“Yeah, but I can’t use that as an excuse. If I did, I wouldn’t be in here,” Tyson said. “I knew he was a good fighter. He was prepared, I came to fight. I didn’t prove nothing to anybody, only to myself. I’m not one of those guys that live to please the world. I’m just happy with what I can do.”

Tyson, one of the most fearsome heavyweight champions during his heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was in his first professional fight in nearly 20 years. He was noncommittal when asked if he would return to the ring again.

“I don’t know. It depends on the situation,” he said.

Paul (11-1) said he can now fight anyone he wants, possibly even Mexican Canelo Alvarez, after being the main attraction in the mega event that brought out a star-studded crowd and 72,300 fight fans.

“This is the biggest event, over 120 million people on Netflix,” he said. “We crashed the site, the biggest U.S. boxing gate, $20 million, in U.S. history, and everyone is next on the list.”

Taylor beats Serrano

In the co-main event earlier in the evening, Ireland’s Katie Taylor retained her super lightweight title by beating Puerto Rico’s Amanda Serrano in a controversial unanimous decision after a violent affair.

Serrano came forward throughout the fight, but their heads crashed together hard in the early stages, resulting in a deep cut over Serrano’s right eye. The referee later took a point off Taylor for head butts.

In the end all three judges scored it 95-94 for Taylor, who denied accusations from Serrano’s corner that she was fighting dirty.

Taylor won the pair’s previous meeting, at New York’s Madison Square Garden in April 2022, and said there would be a third meeting.

Japan’s sake brewers hope UNESCO heritage listing can boost rice wine’s appeal

OME, Japan — Deep in a dark warehouse the sake sleeps, stored in rows of giant tanks, each holding more than 10,000 liters of the Japanese rice wine that is the product of brewing techniques dating back more than 1,000 years.

Junichiro Ozawa, the 18th-generation head of Ozawa Brewery, founded in 1702, hopes sake-brewing will win recognition as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, when the decision is made next month.

“We always think about the people who’re enjoying our sake when we make it. I’m now so excited, imagining the faces of all the people around the world,” he told reporters Wednesday during a tour of his brewery on the pastoral outskirts of Tokyo.

Sake, the drink of choice for the nobility in “The Tale of Genji” — Japan’s most celebrated work of literature — has been widening its appeal, boosted by the growing international popularity of Japanese cuisine.

Sake exports from Japan total more than 41 billion yen ($265 million) a year, with the biggest destinations being the U.S. and China, according to the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association.

That’s up from about 22 billion yen in 2018. But exports still make up a tiny fraction of overall sake production in Japan. Brazil, Mexico and Southeast Asia, as well as France and the rest of Europe, all places where Japanese restaurants are gaining popularity, are starting to take a liking to sake.

What’s key to sake-making, which takes about two months, including fermentation and pressing, are the rice and the water.

For a product to be categorized Japanese sake, the rice must be Japanese. The relatively soft quality of freshwater in Japan, like the supplies provided by the two wells at Ozawa Brewery, is also critical.

Among Ozawa’s sake is the full-bodied aromatic Junmai Daiginjo, one of the top offerings, with 15% alcohol content and costing about 3,630 yen ($23) for a 720-milliliter bottle.

Karakuti Nigorizake is unrefined sake, murky and not clear like usual sake, with 17% alcohol content and a rugged no-nonsense taste. It sells for 2,420 yen ($16) for a 1,800 milliliter bottle.

The religious connotations of sake are evident at the brewery. The big cedar-leaves ball hanging under the eaves is a symbol of a shrine for the god of sake-making. In Japan, sake is used to purify and to celebrate. Sips from a cup signify the sealing of a marriage.

“Sake is not just an alcoholic beverage. It is Japanese culture itself,” said Hitoshi Utsunomiya, director of the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association.

The UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage designation is given to not just historical monuments but also practices passed down generations, such as oral traditions, performing arts, rituals and festivals.

It’s not meant to be used for commercial purposes. But sake officials make no secret of their hope that it will boost global sales, helping the tradition stay alive amid competition from beer, wine and other modern beverages.

Among previous Intangible Cultural Heritage inclusions are Kabuki theater and Gagaku court music from Japan, as well as Sona, which are drawings on sand in Angola; the Chinese zither called guqin and Cremonese violin craftsmanship from Italy. Washoku, or Japanese cuisine, won the honors in 2013.

One reason for sake’s growing popularity around the world is that its smooth flavor goes well with varieties of food, including sushi, spicy Asian and Western dishes, says Max Del Vita, a certified sake sommelier and co-founder of The Sake Company, an import and distribution retailer in Singapore.

“These brewers are cultural stewards, passing down techniques through generations and blending ancient practices with quiet innovation,” he told The Associated Press. “Sake is more than a drink. It is a living embodiment of Japan’s seasonal rhythms, community values and artistic heritage.” 

UN climate chief urges G20 action to untangle COP29 talks

BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — The United Nation’s climate chief urged G20 nations on Saturday to push COP29 negotiations toward a deal to raise money for developing nations, warning there was a “long way to go.”

Negotiators worked through the night to narrow their differences at the U.N. talks in Baku before ministers arrive next week for the final days of the summit, but major differences remain.

U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell appealed for leaders of the Group of 20 nations, which includes the world’s biggest economies and top polluters, to weigh in when they meet in Brazil on Monday.

“As G20 Leaders head to Rio de Janeiro, the world is watching and expecting strong signals that climate action is core business for the world’s biggest economies,” Stiell said in a statement.

Some developing countries, which are least responsible for global greenhouse gas emissions, want an annual commitment of $1.3 trillion to help them adapt to climate impact and transition to clean energy.

The figure is over 10 times what donors including the United States, the European Union and Japan currently pay.

But the negotiations are stuck over a final figure, the type of financing and who should pay, with developed countries wanting China and wealthy Gulf states to join the list of donors.

The latest draft deal was 25 pages long and still contained a raft of options.

“Here in Baku negotiators are working around the clock on a new climate finance goal,” Stiell said.

“There is a long way to go, but everyone is very aware of the stakes, at the halfway point in the COP,” he said.

“Climate finance progress outside of our process is equally crucial, and the G20’s role is mission-critical.” 

China’s underground raves include street techno, quotes from Chairman Mao

CHANGCHUN, China — Crouch through the small metal door and walk down the dark tunnel, and even before you step into the abandoned air raid shelter, the air reverberates with pounding techno beats. Young Chinese holding booze and cigarettes shake and sway in a red-lit passageway, below a big screen rolling through quotations from Chairman Mao.

This is an underground rave in China, part of a subculture growing in hidden corners of the nation’s cities, even as its political and cultural mainstream grow increasingly controlled, staid and predictable.

For Chinese ravers, these gatherings — often called “ye di,” or “wild dances” — not only offer a rare space for unfettered fun, but signal resistance to the narrowly prescribed future a rigid society expects for them.

By day, Xing Long works in the office of a state-owned company in Changchun, an industrial city in China’s northeastern rust belt region.

By night, he’s a DJ and underground rave organizer, a side gig that offers an escape from the humdrum of reviewing corporate contracts.

“My job cannot make me feel I fulfilled my values,” he said. “Going to work is like executing a prewritten program.”

Chinese young people face intense pressure and high expectations from the society around them. In recent years, facing bleak economic prospects, Chinese youth culture has been swept by a series of viral slang terms to describe frustration and hopelessness: ” 996 ” — the brutal 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week work schedule many companies ask of employees. “Involution” — an endless treadmill of pointless competition that fresh graduates face. ” Lying flat” — the growing trend among young people of giving up all ambition and aiming to do as little as possible.

Techno dance parties are an escape from all that for people like Xing. Every time he walks into a rave, the 31-year-old said, his brain “jolts awake like a bang.”

Xing first learned about techno music from a documentary made by the American media company Vice.

“My eyes brightened up when I heard it,” he said. “I should’ve listened to this kind of music earlier.”

Xing began going to raves in Shenzhen, a southern city with a population of 17 million, but when he moved home in 2021 he realized no one else was organizing them.

“I want this city to have an underground techno music scene,” he said. “I want to listen to it myself, so I want to make it happen.”

Xing said that the underground techno scene fascinated him because it’s “real” even if not perfect, bad, not in the right order, or broken.

“It’s not a beautiful thing that was deliberately produced into a mold to present to the mainstream.”

In recent years, space for culture and creativity has been shrinking in China as the authorities have ramped up censorship of concerts, shows, and other cultural events. Comedians have been silenced after joking about topics considered politically sensitive. A growing number of independent bookstores and creative spaces have shut down under pressure, while state-sanctioned media promotes uplifting, often saccharine narratives.

Yet underground raves are free from all those limitations because they sprout in gray zones. Hidden from public view, they skirt formal approval processes, neither supported nor suppressed by the state.

Feng Zhe, 27, a rave organizer in Shenyang, a northeastern city about 400 miles from Beijing, said raves are about “refusing to be disciplined by society.”

“This is probably not how the world functions nowadays,” he said, adding that societies want to make people follow their rules and be useful but “underground culture is useless.”

“Most people are going to be repressed,” Feng said.

But for most rave organizers, the real meaning of underground rave culture is simply having fun. Loong Wu, a 26-year-old art student, started organizing raves in 2021 during COVID-19 lockdowns out of boredom.

“My original intention was just to break through the boredom,” she said. “When you are truly enjoying it, you don’t think about meanings.”

On one recent Saturday night, civil servants, students, an ex-firefighter, girls with dyed hair, and a man with a full-face mask and goggles filed into a bar tucked behind a flower shop in downtown Changchun to attend one of Xing’s raves.

They danced to fast-paced industrial techno spun by Du Jizhe, a local part-time DJ who works in HR by day.

He said it’s the natural soundtrack of auto manufacturing cities like Changchun and Detroit, which prides itself on being the birthplace of techno. For Du, techno evokes childhood memories of the auto factory where his father worked.

“Techno is basically industrial noise like hammering and mechanical sounds,” Du said “These noises exert a subtle influence on people’s ears in industrial cities.”

Chen Xiangyu, a fashion student in an oversized black T-shirt with hair dyed blond, a black leather choker, a lip piercing, and smoky eye makeup, said raves are a pure release.

“The first time I came, I thought to myself, I don’t know anyone, no one knows me, so nobody’s paying any attention to how I dance, so long as I’m happy, it’s all good,” she said. “I shouldn’t care too much about what others think.”

Even at raves, illegal drugs are rarely seen in China, but promoters still face risks from authorities who have little patience for unapproved social gatherings.

Advertisements promoting raves are often cryptic, with only a date, a DJ line-up, and the cost of admission. Sometimes, the location won’t be revealed until an hour ahead of the party. Some organizers require guests to cover their phone’s camera with a sticker.

Loong Wu said her requirements for a rave spot were no CCTV cameras, no security, and no nearby residents. Even those aren’t a guarantee — local police once busted one of her raves in an industrial port.

“It was pathetic how few such places exist in the city,” she said.

Frustrated with how hard it was to find a good rave spot, she once organized a public party where she put her DJ equipment on a cart and pushed it through city streets as revelers danced alongside.

“Restrictions exist for sure, but that’s exactly why we need to create our own scene,” she said. “We always need ‘wild dances.’ We always need to dance outside of set rules.” 

Wild deer population boom has some in England promoting venison to consumers

WINCHESTER, England — In the half-light of dusk, Martin Edwards surveys the shadows of the ancient woodland from a high seat and waits. He sits still, watching with his thermal camera.

Even the hares don’t seem to notice the deer stalker until he takes aim. The bang of his rifle pierces the stillness. He’s killed a buck, one of many wild deer roaming this patch of forest in Hampshire, southern England.

Edwards advocates humane deer management: the culling of deer to control their numbers and ensure they don’t overrun forests and farmland in a country where they no longer have natural predators. For these advocates, shooting deer is much more than a sport. It’s a necessity because England’s deer population has gotten out of control.

There are now more deer in England than at any other time in the last 1,000 years, according to the Forestry Commission, the government department looking after England’s public woodland.

That has had a devastating impact on the environment, officials say. Excessive deer foraging damages large areas of woodland including young trees, as well as the habitats of certain birds like robins. Some landowners have lost huge amounts of crops to deer, and overpopulation means that the mammals are more likely to suffer from starvation and disease.

“They will produce more young every year. We’ve got to a point where farmers and foresters are definitely seeing that impact,” said Edwards, pointing to some young hazel shrubs with half-eaten buds. “If there’s too many deer, you will see that they’ve literally eaten all the vegetation up to a certain height.”

Forestry experts and businesses argue that culling the deer — and supplying the meat to consumers — is a double win: It helps rebalance the ecosystem and provides a low-fat, sustainable protein.

While venison — a red meat similar to lean beef but with an earthier flavor — is often perceived as a high-end food in the U.K., one charity sees it as an ideal protein for those who can’t afford to buy other meats.

“Why not utilize that fantastic meat to feed people in need?” said SJ Hunt, chief executive of The Country Food Trust, which distributes meals made with wild venison to food banks.

Pandemic population boom

An estimated 2 million deer now roam England’s forests.

The government says native wild deer play a role in healthy forest ecosystems, but acknowledges that their population needs managing. It provides some funding for solutions such as building deer fences.

But experts like Edwards, a spokesman for the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, believe lethal control is the only effective option, especially after deer populations surged during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic was a boon to deer because hunters, like everyone else, stayed home and the restaurant market — the main outlet for venison in the U.K. — vanished overnight.

“There were no sales of venison and the price was absolutely on the floor,” said Ben Rigby, a leading venison and game meats wholesaler. “The deer had a chance to breed massively.”

Rigby’s company now processes hundreds of deer a week, turning them into diced venison or steaks for restaurants and supermarkets. One challenge, he said, is growing the domestic appetite for venison so it appears on more dinner plates, especially after Brexit put new barriers up for exporting the meat.

“We’re not really a game-eating nation, not like in France or Germany or Scandinavia,” he said. “But the U.K. is becoming more and more aware of it and our trade is growing.”

From the forest to the table

Shooting deer is legal but strictly regulated in England. Stalkers must have a license, use certain kinds of firearms and observe open seasons. They also need a valid reason, such as when a landowner authorizes them to kill the deer when their land is damaged. Hunting deer with packs of dogs is illegal.

Making wild venison more widely available in supermarkets and beyond will motivate more stalkers to cull the deer and ensure the meat doesn’t go to waste, Edwards said.

Forestry England, which manages public forests, is part of that drive. In recent years it supplied some hospitals with 1,000 kilograms of wild venison, which became the basis of pies and casseroles popular with patients and staff, it said.

The approach appears to have been well received, though it has attracted some criticism from animal welfare group PETA, which advocates veganism.

Hunt, the food charity chief, said there’s potential to do much more with the meat, which she described as nutritious and “free-range to the purest form of that definition.”

Her charity distributed hundreds of thousands of pouches of venison Bolognese meals to food banks last year — and people are hungry for more, she said.

She recalled attending one food bank session where the only protein available was canned sardines, canned baked beans and the venison meals.

“There were no eggs. There was no cheese. That’s all that they could do, and people were just saying, ‘Thank you, please bring more (of the venison),” she said. “That’s fantastic, because people realize they’re doing a double positive with helping the environment by utilizing the meat as well.” 

Many long COVID patients adjust to slim recovery odds as world moves on

LONDON — There are certain phrases that Wachuka Gichohi finds difficult to hear after enduring four years of living with long COVID, marked by debilitating fatigue, pain, panic attacks and other symptoms so severe she feared she would die overnight.

Among them are normally innocuous statements such as, “Feel better soon” or “Wishing you a quick recovery,” the Kenyan businesswoman said, shaking her head.

Gichohi, 41, knows such phrases are well-intentioned. “I think you have to accept, for me, it’s not going to happen.”

Recent scientific studies shed new light on the experience of millions of patients like Gichohi. They suggest the longer someone is sick, the lower their chances of making a full recovery.

The best window for recovery is in the first six months after getting COVID-19, with better odds for people whose initial illness was less severe, as well as those who are vaccinated, researchers in the United Kingdom and the United States found. People whose symptoms last between six months and two years are less likely to fully recover.

For patients who have been struggling for more than two years, the chance of a full recovery “is going to be very slim,” said Manoj Sivan, a professor of rehabilitation medicine at the University of Leeds and one of the authors of the findings published in The Lancet.

Sivan said this should be termed “persistent long COVID” and understood like the chronic conditions myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, or fibromyalgia, which can be features of long COVID or risk factors for it.

Waning attention

Long COVID, defined as symptoms persisting for three months or more after the initial infection, involves a constellation of symptoms from extreme fatigue to brain fog, breathlessness and joint pain.

It can range from mild to utterly disabling, and there are no proven diagnostic tests or treatments, although scientists have made progress on theories about who is at risk and what might cause it.

One British study suggested almost a third of those reporting symptoms at 12 weeks recovered after 12 months. Others, particularly among patients who had been hospitalized, show far lower rates of recovery.

In a study run by the UK’s Office for National Statistics, 2 million people self-reported long COVID symptoms this past March. Roughly 700,000, or 30.6%, said they first experienced symptoms at least three years previously.

Globally, accepted estimates have suggested between 65 million and 200 million people have long COVID. That could mean between 19.5 million and 60 million people face years of impairment based on the initial estimates, Sivan said.

The United States and some countries like Germany continue to fund long COVID research.

But more than two dozen experts, patient advocates and pharmaceutical executives told Reuters that money and attention for the condition is dwindling in other wealthy countries that traditionally fund large-scale studies. In low- and middle-income countries, it was never there.

“The attention has shifted,” said Amitava Banerjee, a professor at University College London who co-leads a large trial of repurposed drugs and rehabilitation programs.

He says long COVID should be viewed as a chronic condition that can be treated to improve patients’ lives rather than cured, like heart disease or arthritis.

‘Profoundly disabling’

Leticia Soares, 39, from northeast Brazil, was infected in 2020 and has battled intense fatigue and chronic pain ever since. On a good day, she spends five hours out of bed.

When she can work, Soares is a co-lead and researcher at Patient-Led Research Collaborative, an advocacy group involved in a review of long COVID evidence published recently in Nature.

Soares said she believes recovery seldom happens beyond 12 months. Some patients may find their symptoms abate, only to recur, a kind of remission that can be mistaken for recovery, she said.

“It’s so profoundly disabling and isolating. You spend every time wondering, ‘Am I going to get worse after this?'” she said of her own experience.

Soares takes antihistamines and other commonly available treatments to cope with daily life. Four long COVID specialist doctors in different countries said they prescribe such medicines, which are known to be safe. Some evidence suggests they help.

Others have less success with mainstream medicine.

Gichohi’s illness was dismissed by her doctor, and she turned to a functional medicine practitioner, who focused on more holistic treatments.

She moved out of her hectic home city of Nairobi to a small town near Mount Kenya, policing her activity levels to prevent fatigue and receiving acupuncture and trauma therapy.

She has tried the addiction treatment naltrexone, which has some evidence of benefit for long COVID symptoms, and the controversial anti-parasitic infection drug ivermectin, which does not but she says helped her.

She said shifting from “chasing recovery” to living in her new reality was important.

A piecemeal treatment approach is to be expected while research progresses, and perhaps longer-term, said Anita Jain, a long COVID specialist at the World Health Organization.

Meanwhile, long-haulers face a new challenge with each spike in COVID cases. A handful of studies have suggested re-infection can exacerbate existing long COVID.

Shannon Turner, a 39-year-old cabaret singer from Philadelphia, got COVID in late March or early April of 2020.

She was already living with psoriatic arthritis and antiphospholipid antibody syndrome, autoimmune diseases for which she regularly took steroids and an immunotherapy. Such conditions may increase the risk of developing long COVID, researchers say.

This past summer, Turner got COVID again. Once again, she is extraordinarily tired and uses a walker for mobility.

Turner is determined to pursue her music career despite ongoing pain, dizziness and a racing heart rate, which regularly land her in hospital.

“I don’t want to live my life in bed,” she said.  

Shanghai, Tokyo, New York, Houston spew most greenhouse gas of world cities

BAKU, Azerbaijan — Cities in Asia and the United States emit the most heat-trapping gas that feeds climate change, with Shanghai the most polluting, according to new data that combines observations and artificial intelligence.

Seven states or provinces spew more than 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases, all of them in China, except Texas, which ranks sixth, according to new data from an organization co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and released Friday at the United Nations climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Nations at the talks are trying to set new targets to cut such emissions and figure out how much rich nations will pay to help the world with that task.

Using satellite and ground observations, supplemented by artificial intelligence to fill in gaps, Climate Trace sought to quantify heat-trapping carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, as well as other traditional air pollutants worldwide, including for the first time in more than 9,000 urban areas.

Earth’s total carbon dioxide and methane pollution grew 0.7% to 61.2 billion metric tons with the short-lived but extra potent methane rising 0.2%. The figures are higher than other datasets “because we have such comprehensive coverage and we have observed more emissions in more sectors than are typically available,” said Gavin McCormick, Climate Trace’s co-founder.

Plenty of big cities emit far more than some nations

Shanghai’s 256 million metric tons of greenhouse gases led all cities and exceeded those from the nations of Colombia or Norway. Tokyo’s 250 million metric tons would rank in the top 40 of nations if it were a country, while New York City’s 160 million metric tons and Houston’s 150 million metric tons would be in the top 50 of countrywide emissions. Seoul, South Korea, ranks fifth among cities at 142 million metric tons.

“One of the sites in the Permian Basin in Texas is by far the No. 1 worst polluting site in the entire world,” Gore said. “And maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by that, but I think of how dirty some of these sites are in Russia and China and so forth. But Permian Basin is putting them all in the shade.”

In terms of states and provinces, seven of them emit more than 1 billion metric tons of carbon pollution, led by Shandong, China’s 1.28 billion metric tons. Other billion-ton polluters are Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Jiangsu and Guangdong, all in China, and Texas.

Which countries are going up, and which are going down

China, India, Iran, Indonesia and Russia had the biggest increases in emissions from 2022 to 2023, while Venezuela, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States had the biggest decreases in pollution.

The dataset — maintained by scientists and analysts from various groups — also looked at traditional pollutants such as carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, ammonia, sulfur dioxide and other chemicals associated with dirty air. Burning fossil fuels releases both types of pollution, Gore said.

Burning fossil fuels releases both types of pollution, said Gore, and noted the millions of people who die worldwide each year from air pollution.

This “represents the single biggest health threat facing humanity,” Gore said.

Gore criticized the hosting of climate talks, called COPs, by Azerbaijan, an oil nation and site of the world’s first oil wells, and by the United Arab Emirates last year.

“It’s unfortunate that the fossil fuel industry and the petrostates have seized control of the COP process to an unhealthy degree,” Gore said. “Next year in Brazil, we’ll see a change in that pattern. But, you know, it’s not good for the world community to give the No. 1 polluting industry in the world that much control over the whole process.”

Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has called for more to be done on climate change and has sought to slow deforestation since returning for a third term as president. But Brazil last year produced more oil than both Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 

Australia’s plan to ban children from social media proves popular, problematic

MELBOURNE, Australia — How do you remove children from the harms of social media? Politically the answer appears simple in Australia, but practically the solution could be far more difficult.

The Australian government’s plan to ban children from social media platforms including X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram until their 16th birthdays is politically popular. The opposition party says it would have done the same after winning elections due within months if the government hadn’t moved first.

The leaders of all eight Australian states and mainland territories have unanimously backed the plan, although Tasmania, the smallest state, would have preferred the threshold was set at 14.

But a vocal assortment of experts in the fields of technology and child welfare have responded with alarm. More than 140 such experts signed an open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemning the 16-year age limit as “too blunt an instrument to address risks effectively.”

Details of what is proposed and how it will be implemented are scant. More will be known when legislation is introduced into the Parliament next week.

The concerned teen

Leo Puglisi, a 17-year-old Melbourne student who founded online streaming service 6 News Australia at the age of 11, laments that lawmakers imposing the ban lack the perspective on social media that young people have gained by growing up in the digital age.

“With respect to the government and prime minister, they didn’t grow up in the social media age, they’re not growing up in the social media age, and what a lot of people are failing to understand here is that, like it or not, social media is a part of people’s daily lives,” Leo said.

“It’s part of their communities, it’s part of work, it’s part of entertainment, it’s where they watch content – young people aren’t listening to the radio or reading newspapers or watching free-to-air TV – and so it can’t be ignored. The reality is this ban, if implemented, is just kicking the can down the road for when a young person goes on social media,” Leo added.

Leo has been applauded for his work online. He was a finalist in his home state Victoria’s nomination for the Young Australian of the Year award, which will be announced in January. His nomination bid credits his platform with “fostering a new generation of informed, critical thinkers.”

The grieving mom-turned-activist

One of the proposal’s supporters, cyber safety campaigner Sonya Ryan, knows from personal tragedy how dangerous social media can be for children.

Her 15-year-old daughter Carly Ryan was murdered in 2007 in South Australia state by a 50-year-old pedophile who pretended to be a teenager online. In a grim milestone of the digital age, Carly was the first person in Australia to be killed by an online predator.

“Kids are being exposed to harmful pornography, they’re being fed misinformation, there are body image issues, there’s sextortion, online predators, bullying. There are so many different harms for them to try and manage and kids just don’t have the skills or the life experience to be able to manage those well,” Sonya Ryan said.

“The result of that is we’re losing our kids. Not only what happened to Carly, predatory behavior, but also we’re seeing an alarming rise in suicide of young people,” she added.

Sonya Ryan is part of a group advising the government on a national strategy to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse in Australia.

She wholeheartedly supports Australia setting the social media age limit at 16.

“We’re not going to get this perfect,” she said. “We have to make sure that there are mechanisms in place to deal with what we already have which is an anxious generation and an addicted generation of children to social media.”

A major concern for social media users of all ages is the legislation’s potential privacy implications.

Age estimation technology has proved inaccurate, so digital identification appears to be the most likely option for assuring a user is at least 16.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, an office that describes itself as the world’s first government agency dedicated to keeping people safer online, has suggested in planning documents adopting the role of authenticator. The government would hold the identity data and the platforms would discover through the commissioner whether a potential account holder was 16.

The skeptical internet expert

Tama Leaver, professor of internet studies at Curtin University, fears that the government will make the platforms hold the users’ identification data instead.

The government has already said the onus will be on the platforms, rather than on children or their parents, to ensure everyone meets the age limit.

“The worst possible outcome seems to be the one that the government may be inadvertently pushing towards, which would be that the social media platforms themselves would end up being the identity arbiter,” Leaver said.

“They would be the holder of identity documents which would be absolutely terrible because they have a fairly poor track record so far of holding on to personal data well,” he added.

The platforms will have a year once the legislation has become law to work out how the ban can be implemented.

Ryan, who divides her time between Adelaide in South Australia and Fort Worth, Texas, said privacy concerns should not stand in the way of removing children from social media.

“What is the cost if we don’t? If we don’t put the safety of our children ahead of profit and privacy?” she asked. 

A criticized Airbnb deal will let users play gladiator in Rome’s Colosseum

ROME — The ancient Roman Colosseum will be the venue of gladiator fights — albeit staged — for the first time in two millennia under a $1.5 million sponsorship deal with Airbnb that aims to promote “a more conscious tourism.”

But some visitors to the monument Thursday, as well as housing activists, were skeptical about the value of the arrangement, citing ongoing controversies in many cities over the role of short-term rental platforms in fueling overtourism and limiting affordable housing for residents and students.

Under the deal announced by Airbnb and the Colosseum on Wednesday, the sponsorship by the short-term rental giant will cover the renewal of an educational program inside the ancient Roman amphitheater covering the history of the structure and gladiators.

Eight of the platform’s users and their plus-ones will be able to participate in faux gladiator fights after the Colosseum’s closing time on May 7-8, taking the same underground route used by gladiators in ancient Rome to reach the arena. People can apply for the experience on November 27 at no cost, and the “gladiators” will be chosen by lottery.

The superintendent of the Colosseum Archaeological Park, Alfonsina Russo, told The Associated Press that the deal is in conjunction with the release of Ridley Scott’s new film “Gladiators II,” which opened in Italy on Thursday.

Russo characterized the sponsorship arrangement as one of the many such deals to help finance projects at the park.

The Italian fashion brand Tod’s, for example, has funded a multimillion renovation of the Roman monument, including a cleaning, replacing the locking system of arches with new gates and redoing the subterranean areas.

Alberto Campailla, the coordinator of the Nonna Roma nonprofit organization that focuses on housing and food for the poor, called the campaign with Airbnb “a disgrace,” and a form of “touristification.”

Airbnb and other platforms offering short-term rentals “are literally driving people out of not only the city center, but also the outskirts and suburban neighborhoods,” Campailla said.

Tourists from other European cities grappling with overtourism also took issue with the deal.

“It seems to me that the purpose of the Colosseum today is to be a tourist attraction, but not to create an amusement park within it,” said Jaime Montero, a tourist visiting from Madrid. “In the end, tourism eats the essence of the cities, here in Rome, as in other capitals.”

Visiting from Naples, Salvatore Di Matteo saw the deal as “yet another takeover of the territory” by big companies.

“If they start to touch sacred monuments such as the Colosseum here in Rome, it is obviously something that should make us think and is, in any case, a bit worrying,” he said.

The Colosseum is the most important and largest amphitheater constructed by the ancient Romans. Built in the 1st century, it was the center of popular entertainment, hosting hunts and gladiator games, until the 6th century.