California’s desert is drawing artists from Bangladesh and from Mexico to the Coachella Valley for an unusual exhibition called Desert X. For VOA, Genia Dulot went to see.
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Wednesday is International Women’s Day with a theme this year focusing on the need for gender equity.
The annual observance, which dates to 1911 and fights for women’s rights, is a day for people everywhere to celebrate the achievements of women across society.
The United Nations is putting the focus of its International Women’s Day programs on the importance of protecting the rights of women and girls in digital spaces and working to address gaps in access to vital technology.
The U.N. says worldwide 259 million fewer women have access to the internet than men, and that without access and the ability to feel safe online, “they are unable to develop the necessary digital skills to engage in digital spaces.”
In Washington, the International Women of Courage award ceremony is taking place at the White House for the first time. The award, which has been given to 180 women from 80 countries since 2007, “recognizes women from around the globe who have demonstrated exceptional courage, strength, and leadership in advocating for peace, justice, human rights, gender equity and equality, often at great personal risk and sacrifice,” according to the U.S. State Department.
This year’s event will feature 12 honorees, including an award for the women and girls in Iran who have led protests since the September death in police custody of Mahsa Amini.
Some information for this report came from Reuters.
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When entrepreneur Sana Bhatt decided to set up a studio, she hardly knew if people would appreciate her efforts to revive traditional music on the Indian side of Kashmir.
Prior to the launch of the studio, the 24-year-old approached many local artists to sing songs on a set that that appeared similar to that of the Pakistan-based musical show, “Coke Studio.”
“Kehwa Beats” is the name of the show streamed live on Bhatt’s YouTube channel, Kashmir Originals. It went on to become a big hit with just six tracks. Eight artists, including two women, set the stage on fire, singing songs written by local poets from the disputed Himalayan territory.
“I felt there was a need to bring out domestically produced songs so that people can consume our music,” Bhatt told VOA.
“Kashmir has a rich culture and has an outstanding heritage of producing wonderful music,” she said, adding that music helps people living in different parts of the world understand different cultures.
The task of setting up an appealing studio, according to Bhatt, was challenging in the face of what she says is a social mindset that places restrictions on women.
“I had expected a good response but had no idea that people from outside Kashmir, too, would fall in love with our music,” Bhatt told VOA. “One of our female artists was trolled because of her clothing during her performance, otherwise everything went smoothly.”
Shift to local music
For more than two decades, residents of Kashmir used to listen to music sung by well-known artists from India and Pakistan. Musicians such as Aatif Aslam, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Bohemia, Honey Singh, Neha Kakkar and Shreya Ghoshal used to reverberate in every household.
However, artists such as Mohammad Muneem and Noor Mohammad Shah, and a duo of Irfan and Bilal brought the attention of the local population back to domestically produced songs.
The revival of traditional Kashmiri music remained confined to men for several years until female singers such as Aabha Hanjura, Memet Syed, Vibha Saraf and others released their own tracks.
“There are many people who say ‘Why (do) females produce or sing songs?’ but at the same time appreciate men for doing the same,” Bhatt said. “People often relate women’s singing to religion. I ask them if it is related to the religion then both men as well as women should be targeted as religious restrictions are meant for both the genders.”
Difficult success
Nargis Khatoon, a young Kashmir-born New Delhi-based singer, believes women musicians don’t find good opportunities in the valley, unlike in other parts of India. As a result, it becomes difficult for singers like her to thrive in Kashmir.
“I live in New Delhi and find number of opportunities here, but if we speak about Kashmir we don’t have [a] commercial market to perform due to a large number of youth [who] hesitate in choosing music as a career,” Khatoon said.
Khatoon sees hope in people such as Bhatt coming forward and setting up a platform that allows musicians to present their talent in front of the world without any gender bias. But she said some broad-minded parents allow their daughters to choose their career in music only to have fears of an unstable future sometimes cause them to change their minds.
“I believe this is one of the reasons parents don’t allow girls to become singers, as they are worried about their future,” said Khatoon. “If more opportunities are provided in Kashmir, we might witness more and more female artists coming forward and joining the industry.”
‘More artists are welcome’
The Kashmir valley historically has produced many female singers who created a lasting impact on people of the region with their unique vocalization.
Years ago, the local population would be glued in front of radio and televisions for hours so that they could listen to their favorite female artists — household names such as Raj Begum, Naseema Akhther and Shameem Dev Azad.
Ishfaq Kawa, one of the popular singers in the valley, said that like men, women should work to promote traditional music because of their love for the Kashmiri language and culture.
“They [women] too love and do their bit to protect and promote our cultural music,” Kawa told VOA. “More and more artists are welcome to join this field, and everyone should respect them.”
However, Kawa disagrees with a popular notion that women singers are the only victims of abuse on social media.
“The thing is, an individual has to carry on without caring and thinking about such people,” said Kawa. “If we pay heed to what people say then we have to stop doing what we believe is good for our mother tongue.”
The show must go on
Bhatt, the entrepreneur, meanwhile is working on Season 2 of her show. Many popular as well as new faces will join Kashmir’s own “Coke Studio.”
“I and my team this year will focus folk songs of Kashmir,” Bhatt said. “Season 1 of ‘Kehwa Beats’ was the fusion of folk and hip-hop. In Season 2 we will try to give our folk music a contemporary touch which I believe would be popular among the masses, especially youth.”
Kashmir Originals, she said, not only provides a platform for singers but also for the instrumentalists, who she says add beauty to music.
“Both men and women instrumentalists are part of Kashmir Originals and ‘Kehwa Beats,'” Bhatt said. “Instrumentalists are as important as singers because they put life in the songs.”
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Add a top U.S. intelligence official to the list of Americans expressing concern about Chinese-made technology and Chinese social media platforms like TikTok.
General Paul Nakasone, who heads both the U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, told lawmakers Tuesday there are multiple reasons to be wary of China’s rapid expansion in cyberspace, calling Beijing “a very formidable foe.”
“TikTok concerns me for a number of different reasons,” Nakasone said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. “One is that the data that they have. Secondly is the algorithm and the control. Who has the algorithm?”
Third, he said, “is the broad platform” both for unleashing potential influence operations but also for the ability to give China a way to “turn off the message.”
Last month, the United States moved forward with plans to ban TikTok — a social media app used by more than 100 million Americans — from government devices. Some U.S. lawmakers have called for giving U.S. President Joe Biden the ability to ban use of the social media app nationwide.
Others, however, object to giving Biden the ability to issue a blanket nationwide ban, arguing TikTok is only a small part of a larger issue.
“The threat that everyone is talking about is TikTok, and how it could enable surveillance by the Chinese Communist Party or facilitate the spread of malign influence campaigns in the U.S,” Democratic Senator Mark Warner told reporters.”Before TikTok, however, it was Huawei and ZTE, which threatened our nation’s telecommunications networks. And before that, it was Russia’s Kaspersky Lab.”
“We need a comprehensive, risk-based approach that proactively tackles sources of potentially dangerous technology before they gain a foothold in America,” he said.
The Restrict Act, being pushed by Warner and others, would establish a rule-based process — informed by the U.S. intelligence community and directed by the Department of Commerce — to identify and address foreign technological threats.
For its part, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has dismissed concerns it would improperly use user data as “political theater.”
But concerns about Chinese companies and Chinese technology keep growing.
On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported U.S. defense officials are worried that Chinese-made ship-to-shore cranes used at many of America’s ports could be used to spy on materials being shipped in and out of the U.S.
“Communist China has monopolized the port crane industry, and I will continue to spearhead efforts to decouple from the regime in Beijing and incentivize the near-shoring and reshoring of our strategic manufacturing capabilities,” Republican Congressman Carlos Gimenez told VOA when asked about the potential for Chinese espionage at U.S. ports. “I will fight to protect our critical infrastructure from the CCP’s espionage tactics.”
Tensions also have been rising since the U.S. shot down what it identified as a Chinese spy balloon last month after it had traveled across much of the continental United States.
And Biden is expected to issue an executive order in the coming days that would tighten rules on the ability of U.S. companies to invest in China.
China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang chastised the U.S. Tuesday, telling reporters in Beijing that Washington’s China policy has “entirely deviated from the rational.”
But Nakasone told lawmakers that politicians and businesses alike would be smart to be careful about how they make use of Chinese-made platforms and technology.
“What I would do is ensure that the areas that are most sensitive to our operations are well-sensored, and I have the confidence that’s what’s being utilized there. I understand where that information may be going,” the CYBERCOM commander said.
“I would take a very, very hard look at anything that would come from an adversarial nation,” Nakasone said, though he acknowledged it would be “very difficult” to proceed with an all-out ban of Chinese products.
“So much of what we do is based upon international trade,” he said, “and China has the corner on some things.”
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France has reported an outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu among red foxes northeast of Paris, the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) said on Tuesday, as the spread of the virus to mammals raised global concerns.
After three foxes were found dead in a nature reserve in Meaux near where gulls had died, one of the foxes was collected and tested, WOAH said in a report, citing French authorities.
The World Health Organization last month described the bird flu situation as “worrying” due to the recent rise in cases in birds and mammals and that it was reviewing its global risk assessment in light of recent developments including cases of human transmission in Cambodia.
Avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, has been spreading around the world in the past year, killing more than 200 million birds, sending egg prices rocketing and raising concern among governments about human transmission.
The virus infected a cat in France in late December.
It has also been detected in minks in Spain, foxes and otters in Britain, sea lions in Peru and grizzly bears in the United States.
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Young artists everywhere struggle to earn a living but that’s especially true in South Africa, where youth unemployment is more than 43 percent. The International Public Art Festival is trying to help bridge that gap by connecting young artists with companies seeking creative marketing. Vicky Stark reports from Cape Town, South Africa.
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U.S. National Security Agency director Paul Nakasone on Tuesday expressed concern about Chinese-owned video app TikTok’s data collection and potential to facilitate broad influence operations.
In response to a lawmaker’s question about any concerns he has on the influence of TikTok on American children, Nakasone told a Senate hearing, “TikTok concerns me for a number of different reasons.”
Nakasone said his concerns include “the data that they have.”
“Secondly is the algorithm and the control of who has the algorithm,” Nakasone added.
Nakasone ended his comments by asserting that the TikTok platform could enable sweeping influence operations. Nakasone said his concern is not only the fact that TikTok can proactively influence users, but also its ability to “turn off the message,” and noted its large number of users.
The app is used by more than 100 million Americans.
The NSA, part of the Defense Department, is the agency responsible for U.S. cryptographic and communications intelligence and security.
A TikTok representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
TikTok, a unit of China’s ByteDance, has come under increasing fire over fears that user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government, undermining Western security interests. TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew is due to appear before the U.S. Congress on March 23.
A bipartisan group of 12 U.S. senators is set to introduce legislation on Tuesday that would give Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo new powers to ban TikTok and other foreign-based technologies if they are found to pose national security threats.
The U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a powerful national security body, in 2020 unanimously recommended ByteDance divest TikTok because of fears that user data could be passed on to China’s government.
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Several hundred thousand Russian citizens are thought to have fled their home country since February of last year, when the Kremlin launched its invasion of Ukraine. While no official figures exist, some estimates put the figure at close to one million people.
The exodus includes Russian citizens seeking to avoid mandated military service, as well as political activists, journalists and artists. Critics of the war face imprisonment for “discrediting” the Russian military or spreading what the Kremlin calls “unreliable information.”
Those who fled Russia’s government crackdown include Pavel Otdelnov, an artist whose works often critique Soviet and Russian history and politics. The 43-year-old found sanctuary in London and just completed an exhibition for Pushkin House, a Russian cultural center in the British capital.
‘Acting out’
Otdelnov said the exhibition, “Acting Out,” was about the humanitarian catastrophe associated with the war in Ukraine, along with an attempt to find the signs hidden in history that led to the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
One of the first works, a painting titled “Money,” showed old Soviet banknotes stored inside an unused missile silo, something that actually happened with the collapse of communism. The work is embellished with fragments of real bank notes.
“In 1991, under [then-Prime Minister Valentin] Pavlov, monetary reform led to the impoverishment of the population,” Otdelnov explained.
“Many people lost their savings as they had to exchange the old-style bank notes for the new-style bank notes within only three days, and the amount to be exchanged was very limited. All the rest [of the cash] turned into worthless paper that was stored in warehouses and bank deposits in different parts of the Soviet Union and Russia, and later in missile silos,” Otdelnov said.
‘Humiliated’
Otdelnov grew up through the collapse of communism. His art works parody Russia’s feeling of injustice at the outcome of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union broke up.
“This is a narrative that is very actively used in today’s propaganda — this conviction that we were humiliated, that we were put on our knees, and that we are now finally getting up from our knees and showing the whole world how powerful we are. Putin’s phrase that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century is very characteristic of this,” Otdelnov told VOA, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russian laws
Shortly after launching its invasion of Ukraine, Russia passed a law criminalizing dissent against the war, punishable with huge fines and imprisonment. Thousands of people have been arrested at anti-war demonstrations and for voicing their opposition.
Otdelnov has exhibited his provocative works across Russia for decades. But like hundreds of thousands of other Russians, he feared for his liberty and safety. He left Russia shortly after the invasion began last year and was given a visa to live in Britain under the country’s Global Talent program.
Another of his works in the Pushkin House exhibition showed forlorn human figures lost in a vast sea of fog, apparently mirroring his experience. Otdelnov said the exhibit, “A Generation,” was about “those people who left their country, who do not see any prospects, do not see an opportunity to continue to live and progress and work there.”
Invasion of Ukraine
The final works in the exhibition addressed Russia’s war in Ukraine. One of the most powerful, “Cargo 200,” showed a railway wagon standing in a flat, snowy field — the winter landscape of eastern Ukraine.
“This is the refrigerated railway wagon that transports the bodies of the dead,” Otdelnov said. “This is the last work for this exhibition, and I decided to paint it when Putin announced mobilization,” he said.
“I thought about the fate of those people who will go to war, who will take up arms and who will be killed.”
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Many states have enacted or contemplated limits or outright bans on transgender medical treatment, with conservative U.S. lawmakers saying they are worried about young people later regretting irreversible body-altering treatment.
But just how common is regret? And how many youth change their appearances with hormones or surgery only to later change their minds and detransition?
Here’s a look at some of the issues involved.
What is transgender medical treatment?
Guidelines call for thorough psychological assessments to confirm gender dysphoria — distress over gender identity that doesn’t match a person’s assigned sex — before starting any treatment.
That treatment typically begins with puberty-blocking medication to temporarily pause sexual development. The idea is to give youngsters time to mature enough mentally and emotionally to make informed decisions about whether to pursue permanent treatment.
Puberty blockers may be used for years and can increase risks for bone density loss, but that reverses when the drugs are stopped.
Sex hormones — estrogen or testosterone — are offered next. Dutch research suggests that most reports from doctors and individual U.S. clinics indicate that the number of youth seeking any kind of transgender medical care has increased in recent years.
How often do transgender people regret transitioning?
In updated treatment guidelines issued last year, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health said evidence of later regret is scant, but that patients should be told about the possibility during psychological counseling.
Dutch research from several years ago found no evidence of regret in transgender adults who had comprehensive psychological evaluations in childhood before undergoing puberty blockers and hormone treatment.
Some studies suggest that rates of regret have declined over the years as patient selection and treatment methods have improved. In a review of 27 studies involving almost 8,000 teens and adults who had transgender surgeries, mostly in Europe, the U.S and Canada, 1% on average expressed regret. For some, regret was temporary, but a small number went on to have detransitioning or reversal surgeries, the 2021 review said.
Research suggests that comprehensive psychological counseling before starting treatment, along with family support, can reduce chances for regret and detransitioning.
What is detransitioning?
Detransitioning means stopping or reversing gender transition, which can include medical treatment or changes in appearance, or both.
Detransitioning does not always include regret. The updated transgender treatment guidelines note that some teens who detransition “do not regret initiating treatment” because they felt it helped them better understand their gender-related care needs.
Research and reports from individual doctors and clinics suggest that detransitioning is rare. The few studies that exist have too many limitations or weaknesses to draw firm conclusions, said Dr. Michael Irwig, director of transgender medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
He said it’s difficult to quantify because patients who detransition often see new doctors, not the physicians who prescribed the hormones or performed the surgeries. Some patients may simply stop taking hormones.
“My own personal experience is that it is quite uncommon,” Irwig said. “I’ve taken care of over 350 gender-diverse patients and probably fewer than five have told me that they decided to detransition or changed their minds.”
Recent increases in the number of people seeking transgender medical treatment could lead to more people detransitioning, Irwig noted in a commentary last year in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. That’s partly because of a shortage of mental health specialists, meaning gender-questioning people may not receive adequate counseling, he said.
Dr. Oscar Manrique, a plastic surgeon at the University of Rochester Medical Center, has operated on hundreds of transgender people, most of them adults. He said he’s never had a patient return seeking to detransition.
Some may not be satisfied with their new appearance, but that doesn’t mean they regret the transition, he said. Most, he said, “are very happy with the outcomes surgically and socially.”
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Japan’s new medium-lift rocket failed on its debut flight in space on Tuesday after the launcher’s second-stage engine did not ignite as planned, in a blow to its efforts to cut the cost of accessing space and compete against Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The 57-metre tall H3 rocket lifted off without a hitch from the Tanegashima space port, a live-streamed broadcast by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) showed.
But upon reaching space, the rocket’s second-stage engine failed to ignite, forcing mission officials to manually destroy the vehicle.
“It was decided the rocket could not complete its mission, so the destruct command was sent,” a launch broadcast commentator from JAXA said. “So what happened? It’s something we will have to investigate looking at all the data.”
The failed attempt followed an aborted launch last month.
“Unlike the previous cancellation and postponement, this time it was a complete failure,” said Hirotaka Watanabe, a professor at Osaka University with expertise in space policy.
“This will have a serious impact on Japan’s future space policy, space business and technological competitiveness,” he added.
Japan’s first new rocket in three decades was carrying the ALOS-3, a disaster management land observation satellite, which was also equipped with an experimental infrared sensor designed to detect North Korean ballistic missile launches.
H3 builder Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd (MHI) said it was confirming the situation surrounding the rocket with JAXA and did not have an immediate comment.
MHI has estimated that the H3’s cost per launch will be half that of its predecessor, the H-II, helping it win business in a global launch market increasingly dominated by SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket.
A company spokesperson said earlier that it was also relying on the reliability of Japan’s previous rockets to gain business.
In a report published in September, the Center for Strategic and International Studies put the cost of a Falcon 9 launch to low Earth orbit at $2,600 per kilogram. The equivalent price tag for the H-II is $10,500.
A successful launch on Tuesday would have put the Japanese rocket into space ahead of the planned launch later this year of the European Space Agency’s new lower-cost Ariane 6 vehicle.
Powered by a new simpler, lower-cost engine that includes 3D-printed parts, the H3 is designed to lift government and commercial satellites into Earth orbit and will ferry supplies to the International Space Station.
As part of Japan’s deepening cooperation with the United States in space, it will also eventually carry cargo to the Gateway lunar space station that U.S. space agency NASA plans to build as part of its program to return people to the moon, including Japanese astronauts.
Shares of MHI fell 1.8% in morning trade, while the broader Japanese benchmark index was up 0.4%.
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A nuclear power plant in Georgia has begun splitting atoms in one of its two new reactors, Georgia Power said Monday, a key step toward reaching commercial operation at the first new nuclear reactors built from scratch in decades in the United States.
The unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co. said operators reached self-sustaining nuclear fission inside the reactor at Plant Vogtle, southeast of Augusta. That makes the intense heat that will be used to produce steam and spin turbines to generate electricity.
A third and a fourth reactor were approved for construction at Vogtle by the Georgia Public Service Commission in 2009, and the third reactor was supposed to start generating power in 2016. The company now says Unit 3 could begin commercial operation in May or June.
Unit 4 is projected to begin commercial operation sometime between this November and March 2024.
The cost of the third and fourth reactors was originally supposed to be $14 billion. The reactors are now supposed to cost more than $30 billion. That doesn’t include $3.68 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid to the owners after going bankrupt, which brings total spending to more than $34 billion.
The latest set of delays at Unit 3 included a pipe part of a critical backup cooling system that was vibrating during startup testing. Construction workers had failed to install supports called for on blueprints. The company has also said it had to repair a slowly dripping valve and diagnose a problem involving water flow through reactor coolant pumps.
Georgia Power said Unit 3 would continue startup testing to show that its cooling system and steam supply system will work at the intense heat and pressure that a nuclear reactor creates. After that, operators are supposed to link the reactor to the electrical grid and gradually raise it to full power.
“We remain focused on safely bringing this unit online, fully addressing any issues and getting it right at every level,” Chris Womack, chairman, president and CEO of Georgia Power, said in a written statement. “Reaching initial criticality is one of the final steps in the startup process and has required tremendous diligence and attention to detail from our teams.”
Georgia Power owns a minority of the two new reactors. The remaining shares are owned by Oglethorpe Power Corp., the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and the city of Dalton. Oglethorpe and MEAG would sell power to cooperatives and municipal utilities across Georgia, as well in Jacksonville, Florida, and parts of Alabama and the Florida Panhandle.
Georgia Power’s 2.7 million customers are already paying part of the financing cost, and state regulators have approved a monthly rate increase of $3.78 a month as soon as the third unit begins generating power. The elected Georgia Public Service Commission will decide later who pays for the remainder of the costs.
Vogtle is the only nuclear plant under construction in the United States. Its costs and delays could deter other utilities from building such plants, even though they generate electricity without releasing climate-changing carbon emissions.
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The Italian health minister’s proposals to extend a smoking ban include the outdoor areas of bars and parks, according to details reported by local media, drawing the ire of right-wing Cabinet colleagues who labeled him a “communist.”
Minister Orazio Schillaci, a technocrat with no party affiliation, said in January he would crackdown on smoking, including e-cigarettes, which are being widely used by teenagers.
The new rules will include the outside areas of bars and at public transport stops, La Stampa newspaper reported on Monday. The prohibition will also be extended to parks if pregnant women and children are present, it said.
Junior Culture Minister Vittorio Sgarbi, known for expressing his opinions, called Schillaci’s view “intimidating” and said such bans would instead encourage people to smoke.
“This is something typical of an authoritarian and dictatorial communist regime,” Sgarbi told AdnKronos news agency.
Italy’s top health institute (ISS) said some 24% of adult Italians were smokers last year — roughly 12.4 million people and the highest percentage recorded since 2009.
The government passed a ban on smoking indoors in 2003, which came into force two years later.
Health association Fondazione Umberto Veronesi estimates at least 43,000 people die in Italy every year for smoke-related reasons.
But the proposed clampdown also faces skepticism from Deputy Prime Minister and League party leader Matteo Salvini, who quit cigarettes four years ago but said the open-air ban on e-cigarettes was “exaggerated.”
“Electronic cigarettes are helping a lot of people to abandon regular cigarettes,” he added on Twitter.
The Health Ministry did not reply to a request for comment.
The proposals would need to be approved by the Cabinet before being passed to parliament.
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A group of attorneys general from 45 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., demanded Monday that social media app TikTok produce materials as part of an investigation into its effect on young users’ mental health.
“We know that social media is taking a devastating toll on young people’s mental health and well-being, and through our investigation we are getting a clearer sense of TikTok’s role,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.
The investigation began last year when eight states, including California, Massachusetts and Tennessee, launched a bipartisan probe of TikTok, focusing on whether the popular video-sharing app is endangering young people and violating state consumer protection laws.
On Monday, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti asked a Tennessee court to order TikTok to produce subpoenaed materials sought by the investigation. Attorneys general from across the United States filed a brief in support of the motion to compel TikTok to hand over the information.
The Tennessee court petition alleges that TikTok has failed to preserve potentially relevant evidence in the investigation, including internal employee chat messages.
It says TikTok has shared some internal messages in response to its request but said the company has rendered them “unrecognizable and nearly incomprehensible.”
TikTok has not commented on the case.
“We need to know more about the company’s business practices so we can keep our kids safe,” North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said in a statement Monday.
California’s Department of Justice said in a statement that heavy use of social media is “strongly associated with self-harm, depression, and low self-esteem in teens — and every additional hour young people spend on social media is associated with an increased severity of the symptoms of depression.”
The latest court challenge comes as TikTok, owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, faces security concerns. The United States, Canada and the European Union have all banned the use of the app on government-issued devices.
Like other social media apps, TikTok has also received criticism that it is not doing enough to protect younger users from inappropriate content.
Last week, TikTok said it was developing a tool that would allow parents to block certain content on the app. The company also said parents will now be able to set time limits on the app for their teens, depending on the day of the week.
Some information in this report came from Reuters.
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All eyes will be on Hollywood Sunday when the Academy Awards, or Oscars, will honor the best in filmmaking. From Los Angeles, Mike O’Sullivan has a preview.
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Greenhouse gas emissions from the way humans produce and consume food could add nearly 1 degree of warming to the Earth’s climate by 2100, according to a new study.
Continuing the dietary patterns of today will push the planet past the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) limit of warming sought under the Paris climate agreement to avoid the worst effects of climate change, according to the study published Monday in Nature Climate Change and will approach the agreement’s limit of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
The modeling study found that most greenhouse gas emissions come from three major sources: meat from animals like cows, sheep and goats; dairy; and rice. Those three sources account for at least 19% of each food’s contribution to a warming planet, according to the study, with meat contributing the most, at 33%.
All emit large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas with more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide, in the way they are currently farmed. The researchers calculated that methane will account for 75% of food’s share of warming by 2030, with carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide accounting for most of the rest.
“I think the biggest takeaway that I would want [policymakers] to have is the fact that methane emissions are really dominating the future warming associated with the food sector,” said Catherine C. Ivanovich, a climate scientist at Columbia University and the study’s lead author.
Ivanovich and colleagues from the University of Florida and Environmental Defense Fund calculated the three major gases produced by each type of food over its lifetime based on current consumption patterns. Then they scaled the annual emissions over time by gas based on five different population projections.
And then they used a climate model frequently used by the United Nations’ panel on climate change to model the effects of those emissions on surface air temperature change.
Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who wasn’t involved in the study, said it used well-established methods and datasets “to produce a novel, sobering conclusion.”
“The study highlights that food is absolutely critical to hitting our Paris Agreement climate targets — failure to consider food is failure to meet our climate targets globally,” said Meredith Niles, a food systems scientist at the University of Vermont who was not involved in the study.
The study offered some ways to change global food production and consumption that could limit warming.
Many of these changes are already being called for or adopted. U.S. President Joe Biden touted the climate benefits of planting cover crops that can draw down carbon from the atmosphere in an April 2021 address to Congress. Multiple recent studies and reports have recommended eating less meat in order to reduce greenhouse gas creation by animals raised for consumption. And California started a mandatory food waste recycling program in 2021 to reduce the emissions created by decaying food.
But reducing methane may be the most important goal of all. Although methane is far more potent than carbon, it also is much shorter-lived — meaning cuts in methane emissions can have a quick benefit, Ivanovich said.
“So that’s going to help us stay under the dangerous warming target,” she said, “as well as give us some time to build up resilience and adaptation to climate change in the meantime.”
A major question that remains is whether food producers and consumers can change their behavior in order to achieve the reductions in greenhouse gases laid out in the study. There’s a roadmap, but will it be followed?
“Changing behavior, especially when we are bombarded with constant media extolling the benefits of everything from Coke to French fries, from pizza to burgers, is pretty damned difficult,” said Columbia University plant physiologist Lew Ziska in an email to the AP. “So, overall, while we need to change, whether we can change is … problematic.”
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Several hundred thousand Russian citizens are thought to have fled their home country since February 2022, when the Kremlin launched the invasion of Ukraine. Critics of the war face imprisonment for “discrediting” the Russian military. Henry Ridgwell spoke to a Russian artist who has found sanctuary in London, and whose latest work addresses the war in Ukraine.
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Twitter users reported a string of problems with the social media site on Monday, including broken links and images not loading.
The company’s tech support account said in a tweet, “Some parts of Twitter may not be working as expected right now. We made an internal change that had some unintended consequences. We’re working on this now and will share an update when it’s fixed.”
Twitter’s billionaire owner, Elon Musk, tweeted Monday: “This platform is so brittle (sigh). Will be fixed shortly.”
The problems appeared to be resolved about an hour after they began.
“Things should now be working as normal,” the company tweeted around 1 p.m. Eastern time.
The glitches started around midday Monday, with users around the world saying they were unable to read links to articles from outside websites.
Internet observation group NetBlocks said the issue was also affecting image and video content.
Musk tweeted later Monday in response to another user, “A small API change had massive ramifications. The code stack is extremely brittle for no good reason. Will ultimately need a complete rewrite.”
API, or Application Programming Interface, refers to software that is made available to outside developers and defines how two software components — in this case, those of Twitter and those belonging to outside platforms — can communicate with each other.
Musk has held several rounds of layoffs at Twitter, letting go more than half of the company’s staff. Some former employees have raised concerns that the mass layoffs could lead to technical problems for the platform.
Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, following a deal to buy the company for $44 billion.
Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence-France Presse.
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In 2012, UNESCO, the U.N. body tasked with promoting arts and culture, identified the traditional xylophone known as the balafon as an important part of humanity’s cultural heritage. Today, in Ivory Coast, informal workshops with students are underway to promote the instrument and highlight its African origins. Alain Amontchi looks at this unique instrument in this story narrated by Salem Solomon. Video editor: Betty Ayoub.
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The United Nations announced Monday that it had taken a significant step towards trying to fill a key gap in the fight against climate change: standardized, real-time tracking of greenhouse gases.
The U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization has come up with a new Global Greenhouse Gas Monitoring Infrastructure that aims to provide better ways of measuring planet-warming pollution and help inform policy choices.
The WMO’s new platform will integrate space-based and surface-based observing systems, and seek to clarify uncertainties about where greenhouse gas emissions end up.
It should result in much faster and sharper data on how the planet’s atmosphere is changing.
“We know from our measurements that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are at record high,” WMO chief Petteri Taalas said.
The three major greenhouses gases are carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Of those, CO2 accounts for around 66 percent of the warming effect on the climate.
“The increase in CO2 levels from 2020 to 2021 was higher than the average growth rate over the past decade, and methane saw the biggest year-on-year jump since measurements started,” Taalas said.
The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change saw countries agree to cap global warming at “well below” two degrees Celsius above levels measured between 1850 and 1900 — and 1.5C if possible.
The WMO said there needed to be stronger scientific underpinnings of climate change mitigation actions taken under the agreement.
“There are still uncertainties, especially regarding the role in the carbon cycle of the ocean, the land biosphere and the permafrost areas,” Taalas said.
“We therefore need to undertake greenhouse gas monitoring within an integrated… framework in order to be able to account for natural sources and sinks.
“This will provide vital information and support for implementation of the Paris Agreement.”
The WMO held a symposium in late January that brought together experts from a wide range of fields to start fitting the jigsaw pieces together.
During a meeting last week, the agency’s executive council endorsed the plans they came up with, it said Monday.
Further approval will be needed from the World Meteorological Congress — the WMO’s top decision-making body — in May.
The decision to tie together WMO’s expertise in weather prediction and climate analysis “will be seen as a historic step”, said Lars Peter Riishojgaard, deputy director of the organization’s infrastructure department.
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The battle to find baseball’s global champions gets under way this week when the pandemic-delayed World Baseball Classic returns after a six-year absence with Shohei Ohtani hoping to inspire Japan to a record third title.
Teams from 20 countries are participating in the fifth edition of the tournament, with the four first round groups hosted at venues in Taiwan, Tokyo, Arizona and Florida before the bulk of the knockout rounds get under way in the United States.
The tournament was last staged in 2017, with the United States finally winning the title for the first time with victory over Puerto Rico at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic forced the postponement of the tournament in 2021, meaning the United States are only now launching their title defense with a team bristling with stars from Major League Baseball.
The American roster includes some of the biggest names in the MLB, with Los Angeles Angels slugger Mike Trout joining the likes of the Philadelphia Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber and Trea Turner, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Mookie Betts and the Colorado Rockies’ Nolan Arenado.
Team USA manager Mark DeRosa believes the American line-up is conceivably the “greatest USA team ever assembled” and is relishing the fact that the defending champions will head into the tournament as the team everyone wants to beat.
“We’ll be the hunted,” DeRosa acknowledged in a recent interview, adding that he is hoping to build an atmosphere of excitement amongst the US squad as they get the rare opportunity to join forces in an international setting.
“I want there to be a buzz,” DeRosa said. “This is an opportunity to grow, and be great, and to represent your country and get to meet some guys you may never be in a batting practice group with.”
Ohtani leads Japan challenge
The U.S. will face Mexico, Colombia, Canada and Great Britain in Pool C, with all games taking place at Chase Field in Phoenix, the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Yet the star-studded U.S. roster is by no means the only one in the tournament with box office appeal.
Japan, who won the inaugural classic in 2006 and successfully defended the title three years later, will be chasing a record third world crown with all eyes on two-way star Ohtani.
Los Angeles Angels ace Ohtani, the 2021 American League Most Valuable Player, leads a Japan team that will play all of its first-round games at the Tokyo Dome, which is hosting Pool B.
Ohtani says playing in the classic for Japan had been a dream ever since watching the tournament as a fan in 2006.
“Just watching the best players in Japan playing together as a team against the best in the world was so exciting,” he said earlier this year. “Now that I’m in that position, I want to show people what I can do.”
Other teams in the group include South Korea, Australia, China and the Czech Republic.
Ohtani, who is expected to command a record-breaking contract when he enters free agency after this season, will be playing in front of Japanese fans for the first time in more than five years.
The 28-year-old was originally due to play in the 2017 World Baseball Classic but was ruled out with an ankle injury.
The Dominican Republic, meanwhile, the 2013 champions, are also looming large as one of the favorites for the title.
The Dominicans’ largely MLB-based squad boasts the likes of San Diego Padres duo Manny Machado and Juan Soto although Toronto Blue Jays slugger Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has withdrawn from the roster. Guerrero pulled out on Saturday citing knee soreness.
The Dominican Republic head a stacked Pool D staged at Miami’s LoanDepot Park which includes a powerful Puerto Rico team, Venezuela, Israel and Nicaragua.
The tournament opens on Wednesday with Pool A games in Taiwan. Pool A includes Taiwan, Netherlands, Cuba, Italy and Panama.
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Oscar de la Renta, Calvin Klein, Alexandra Alonso Rojas and many others produce their collections with hand-knitted products made by Ukrainian women. It’s been a year since Russia invaded Ukraine, but despite the war, Ukrainian women continue to work. Nina Vishneva has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Vladimir Badikov, Natalia Latukhina.
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“Creed III” punched above its weight at the domestic box office in its first weekend in theaters. The MGM release knocked “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” out of first place and far surpassed both industry expectations and the opening weekends of the first two movies in the franchise.
Playing in 4,007 locations in North America, “Creed III” earned an estimated $58.7 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday. Going into the weekend, analysts expected the film to open in the $30 million range. The first “Creed” debuted at $29 million in 2015 and “Creed II” opened to $35 million in 2018.
Michael B. Jordan made his directorial debut with “Creed III,” which pits his character Adonis against a childhood friend, Dame, played by Jonathan Majors. It’s the first in the Rocky/Creed films to not feature Sylvester Stallone, who chose not to return because of creative differences.
“This is beyond all of our expectations. And we knew that we had something special — we tested the movie and it tested great, but the public responded so resoundingly to it,” said Erik Lomis, MGM’s head of distribution. “Everything went right here starting with the movie itself … It was just up to us not to break it when they gave it to us, and we didn’t.”
Strong reviews helped “Creed III,” which is currently sitting at an 87% on Rotten Tomatoes, while audiences gave it an A- CinemaScore. The audience was largely male (63%), diverse (36% Black, 28% Latino, 23% white and 13% Asian/other) and young (55% between 18 and 34) according to exit polls.
Over 80% of the general audience said the film was a “definite recommend.” With Black audiences, that number ballooned to 89%.
“I’ve been doing this a long time and that’s rarefied air,” Lomis said. “People love the movie.”
It’s also the most expensive “Creed” film, with a reported production budget of $75 million, compared to the others which cost $35 million and $50 million. Internationally, “Creed III” earned $41.8 million from 75 markets, making its global debut $100.4 million.
It’s a big moment for Amazon, who acquired MGM for $8.5 billion last year, and could have simply released “Creed III” on its streaming service with a limited theatrical run. But they chose theatrical, and it paid off.
“Amazon threw their weight behind this movie like only they can do,” Lomis said. “They supercharged the campaign with marketing support across all their verticals on the platform and beyond the platform. That shows a commitment to the theatrical business model from Amazon and MGM, which I think should be exciting to everybody.”
The company’s next major theatrical release is the Ben Affleck-directed “Air,” starring Matt Damon, out next month.
“Ant-Man 3″ slipped to a distant second in its third weekend in theaters with $12.5 million from North America and $22 million internationally. The Marvel and Disney film’s global cume now stands at $419.5 million.
Third place went to Universal’s ” Cocaine Bear,” which added $11 million in its second weekend in theaters to bring its domestic total to $41.3 million.
Crunchyroll’s “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba – To The Swordsmith Village” placed fourth with $10.1 million. The series is based on Koyoharu Gotouge’s manga about a boy avenging his family.
Lionsgate and Kingdom Story Company’s “Jesus Revolution” rounded out the top five with $8.7 million. The film starring Kelsey Grammer as a pastor in the 1970s has made $30.5 million in two weekends in theaters against a $15 million production budget.
Opening outside of the top five was Guy Ritchie’s “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre,” a spy caper with Jason Statham, Hugh Grant and Aubrey Plaza that made $3.2 million from 2,168 locations this weekend. The film, originally an STX release, was in distribution limbo for some time. Lionsgate recently stepped in to oversee the domestic rollout.
The success of “Creed III” bodes well for other releases coming in March, including “John Wick Chapter 4” and “Shazam! Fury of the Gods.”
“We’re going to have an incredible March,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “It’s going to feel more like summer than spring with hits coming one after the next that will create incredible momentum for the summer movie season.”
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore, with Wednesday through Sunday in parentheses. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
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“Creed III,” $58.7 million.
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“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” $12.5 million.
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“Cocaine Bear,” $11 million.
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“Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba – To The Swordsmith Village,” $10.1 million. 5. “Jesus Revolution,” $8.7 million.
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“Avatar: The Way of Water,” $3.6 million.
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“Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre,” $3.2 million.
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“Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” $2.7 million.
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“Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” $1.2 million.
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“80 for Brady,” $845,000.
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Only a third of people in the world’s poorest countries can connect to the internet, the U.N. telecoms agency said Sunday, but low-flying satellites could bring hope to millions, especially in remote corners of Africa.
Tech giants including Microsoft have pledged to help populations hobbled by poor internet services to “leapfrog” into an era of online connectivity, with satellites set to play a key role as rival firms send thousands of new generation transmitters into low level orbit.
At the moment just 36% of the 1.25 billion people in the world’s 46 poorest countries can plug into the internet, the International Telecommunication Union said. By comparison, more than 90 percent have access in the European Union.
The ITU condemned the “staggering international connectivity gap” that it said had widened over the past decade.
The divide has been a key complaint at a U.N. summit of Least Developed Countries in Doha, where UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told their leaders that “you are being left behind in the digital revolution.”
The digital dearth is particularly acute in some African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, where barely a quarter of the population of nearly 100 million can connect.
While internet access is easy in major DRC cities such as Kinshasa, huge rural zones and swathes of territory battled over by rival rebel groups for more than two decades are digital deserts.
The launch of thousands of Low-Earth Orbit satellites could bring speedy change and boost African hopes, tech experts promised at the Doha summit.
‘Leapfrog other nations’
Satellite coverage will play a key role in Microsoft’s vow to bring internet access to 100 million Africans by 2025, which was outlined ahead of the summit.
Microsoft announced a first phase for five million Africans in December and last week added a commitment to cover another 20 million people.
The initial five million will be served by Viasat, one of the companies sending constellations of satellites into space to compete with land-based fibre broadband.
Elon Musk’s Space X and Starlink are also putting thousands of satellites into an orbit between 400 and 700 kilometers (250 to 430 miles) above Earth.
Microsoft president Brad Smith told AFP that when he first saw the 20 million figure proposed by his team last year, he asked “is this real?”, but that he was now convinced it is possible.
“The technology costs have come down substantially and will continue to drop,” he said. “That is part of what makes it possible to move this fast to reach this size of population.
“Countries in Africa have the opportunity to leapfrog other nations when it comes to the regulatory structure for something like wireless communications,” he added.
“We can reach many more people than we could with fixed line technologies five or 10 or 15 years ago.”
Bandwidth bonanza
Richer countries have already largely allocated the available bandwidth for telecoms and television.
“In Africa the spectrum isn’t being used and so it is available and the governments are moving faster to bring this connectivity to more people,” Smith said.
Microsoft is working with Africa telecoms specialist Liquid Intelligent Technologies to provide internet for the second segment of 20 million people.
Providing internet and digital skills training for thousands of Africans was part of an effort to provide a private-sector alternative to “foreign aid”, Smith said, declaring that “we are bullish on what we believe digital technology can do for development.”
But the Microsoft president acknowledged that the private sector is “woefully under-developed and under-invested” in many LDC economies.
Liquid Intelligent says it has 100,000 kilometers (62,000 miles) of land fibre across Africa but is building a major satellite footprint.
“In hard-to-reach areas,” said Nic Rudnick, its deputy chief executive, “satellite is often the only technology or the most reliable technology for fast broadband that always works.”
For the first time, United Nations members have agreed on a unified treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas — nearly half the planet’s surface — concluding two weeks of talks in New York.
The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea came into force in 1994, before marine biodiversity was a well-established concept.
An updated framework to protect marine life in the regions outside national boundary waters, known as the high seas, had been in discussions for more than 20 years, but previous efforts to reach an agreement had repeatedly stalled. The unified agreement treaty was reached late Saturday.
“We only really have two major global commons — the atmosphere and the oceans,” said Georgetown marine biologist Rebecca Helm. While the oceans may draw less attention, “protecting this half of earth’s surface is absolutely critical to the health of our planet.”
Now that long-awaited treaty text has been finalized, Nichola Clark, an oceans expert at the Pew Charitable Trusts who observed the talks in New York, said, “This is a once in a generation opportunity to protect the oceans — a major win for biodiversity.”
The treaty will create a new body to manage conservation of ocean life and establish marine protected areas in the high seas. And Clark said that’s critical to achieve the U.N. Biodiversity Conference’s recent pledge to protect 30% of the planet’s waters, as well as its land, for conservation.
The treaty also establishes ground rules for conducting environmental impact assessments for commercial activities in the oceans.
“It means all activities planned for the high seas need to be looked at, though not all will go through a full assessment,” said Jessica Battle, an oceans governance expert at the Worldwide Fund for Nature.
Many marine species — including dolphins, whales, sea turtles and many fish — make long annual migrations, crossing national borders and the high seas. Efforts to protect them — and human communities that rely on fishing or tourism related to marine life — have previously been hampered by a confusing patchwork of laws.
“This treaty will help to knit together the different regional treaties to be able to address threats and concerns across species’ ranges,” said Battle.
That protection also helps coastal biodiversity and economies, said Gladys Martínez de Lemos, executive director of the nonprofit Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense focusing on environmental issues across Latin America.
“Governments have taken an important step that strengthens the legal protection of two-thirds of the ocean and with it marine biodiversity and the livelihoods of coastal communities,” she said.
The question now is how well the ambitious treaty will be implemented.
The high seas have long suffered exploitation due to commercial fishing and mining, as well as pollution from chemicals and plastics. The new agreement is about “acknowledging that the ocean is not a limitless resource, and it requires global cooperation to use the ocean sustainably,” said Malin Pinsky, a biologist at Rutgers University.
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