Month: September 2023

Virginia Visitors Splatter Stress Away in Paint Room

Just outside of Washington, D.C., in Northern Virginia, there is a place where anyone can release their inner painter and splatter their stress away. Maxim Adams has the story. Videographer: Sergey Sokolov; Video editor: Sergey Sokolov, Anna Rice     

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Musk’s Neuralink to Start Human Trial of Brain Implant

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s brain-chip startup Neuralink said on Tuesday it has received approval from an independent review board to begin recruitment for the first human trial of its brain implant for paralysis patients. 

Those with paralysis due to cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis may qualify for the study, Neuralink said, but did not reveal how many participants would be enrolled in the trial, which will take about six years to complete. 

The study will use a robot to surgically place a brain-computer interface implant in a region of the brain that controls the intention to move, Neuralink said, adding that its initial goal is to enable people to control a computer cursor or keyboard using their thoughts alone. 

The company, which had earlier hoped to receive approval to implant its device in 10 patients, was negotiating a lower number of patients with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration after the agency raised safety concerns, according to current and former employees. It is not known how many patients the FDA ultimately approved. 

Musk has grand ambitions for Neuralink, saying it would facilitate speedy surgical insertions of its chip devices to treat conditions such as obesity, autism, depression and schizophrenia.  

In May, the company said it had received clearance from the FDA for its first-in-human clinical trial, when it was already under federal scrutiny for its handling of animal testing. 

Even if the BCI device proves to be safe for human use, it would still potentially take more than a decade for the startup to secure commercial use clearance for it, according to experts. 

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Sponsor an Ocean? Tiny Island Nation of Niue Has Novel Plan to Protect Pacific

The tiny Pacific island nation of Niue has come up with a novel plan to protect its vast and pristine territorial waters — it will get sponsors to pay.

Under the plan, which was being launched by Niue’s Prime Minister Dalton Tagelagi on Tuesday in New York, individuals or companies can pay $148 to protect 1 square kilometer (about 250 acres) of ocean from threats such as illegal fishing and plastic waste for a period of 20 years.

Niue hopes to raise more than $18 million from the scheme by selling 127,000 square-kilometer units, representing the 40% of its waters that form a no-take marine protected area.

In an interview with The Associated Press before the launch, Tagelagi said his people have always had a close connection with the sea.

“Niue is just one island in the middle of the big blue ocean,” Tagelagi said. “We are surrounded by the ocean, and we live off the ocean. That’s our livelihood.”

He said Niueans inherited and learned about the ocean from their forefathers, and they want to be able to pass it on to the next generation in sustainable health.

Most fishing in Niue is to sustain local people, although there are some small-scale commercial operations and occasional offshore industrial-scale fishing, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

“Because of all the illegal fishing and all the other activities at the moment, we thought that we should be taking the lead, to teach others that we’ve got to protect the ocean,” Tagelagi said.

Unregulated fishing can deplete fish stocks, which then cannot replenish, while plastics can be ingested by or entangle marine wildlife. Human-caused climate change has also led to warmer and more acidic oceans, altering ecosystems for underwater species.

Niue is also especially vulnerable to rising sea levels threatening its land and freshwater, and the island is at risk of more intense tropical storms charged by warmer air and waters.

With a population of just 1,700 people, Niue acknowledges it needs outside help. It’s one of the smallest countries in the world, dwarfed by an ocean territory 1,200 times larger than its land mass.

Under the plan, the sponsorship money — called Ocean Conservation Commitments — will be administered by a charitable trust.

Niue will buy 1,700 sponsorship units, representing one for each of its citizens. Other launch donors include philanthropist Lyna Lam and her husband Chris Larsen, who co-founded blockchain company Ripple, and U.S.-based nonprofit Conservation International, which helped set up some technical aspects of the scheme.

Maël Imirizaldu, marine biologist and regional leader with Conservation International, said one problem with the conventional approach to ocean conservation funding was the need for places like Niue to constantly seek new funding on a project-by-project basis.

“The main idea was to try and switch that, to change the priority and actually help them have funding so they can plan for the next 10 years, 15 years, 20 years,” Imirizaldu said.

Simon Thrush, a professor of marine science at New Zealand’s University of Auckland who was not involved in the plan, said it sounded positive.

“It’s a good idea,” Thrush said, adding that as long as the plan was thoroughly vetted and guaranteed over the long term, “I’d be up for it.”

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Google Plans to Incorporate Its Bard Chatbot Into Its Apps

Google announced Tuesday that its Bard chatbot would be integrated into Gmail, YouTube and other applications in a push to broaden Alphabet’s user experience.

Google has spent years refining its generative AI without immediate plans to release a chatbot, until OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT late last year and partnered with Microsoft to popularize the cutting-edge tool. Google scrambled to put together its response: Bard.

Google cleared hurdles earlier this year to release Bard across the globe in dozens of languages, squeaking past European regulators who raised questions about the chatbot’s effect on data security.

The search engine giant is now waging a campaign to win public support.

These new updates — Bard extensions — represent the company’s most ambitious attempt at popularizing generative AI. Going forward, Bard can work as a plug-in with Google Drive, Gmail, YouTube and more.

A user might ask Bard to distill a string of lengthy and confusing emails into a pithy summary or order the chatbot to find the quickest route to an address using Google Maps.

The plug-in can be used by students and professionals who might want Bard to scour dense PDFs and Google Docs and return a list of bullet points.

A common criticism of chatbots is their inaccuracy and apparent ability to falsify information. Computer scientists call this flaw “hallucinations.” The Bard plug-in will include a button to fact-check the chatbot’s answers against search engine results in real time to determine if Bard is “hallucinating.”

Generative AI combs vast databases for linguistic patterns and other information in a process known as data-scraping. Data-scraping is what empowers Bard and ChatGPT to create unique, humanlike answers to queries in an instant. Essentially, chatbots imitate what is already available on the internet.

Activists have long worried that companies might train their chatbots on unsuspecting users’ personal information. Google said that Bard will access private data only with permission.

Google also said that any data-scraping it might perform on what users have stored in their personal Docs, Drive or Gmail accounts would not be used in targeted advertising or training Bard. Nor would private content be accessible to Google employees.

“You’re always in control of your privacy settings when deciding how you want to use these extensions, and you can turn them off at any time,” Google said in a blog post.

The Bard extensions come after Microsoft similarly incorporated ChatGPT into Bing earlier this year but ultimately failed to gain ground in its war on Google’s search engine dominance.

According to market analytics, ChatGPT, Bard’s top competitor, has been suffering marked declines in its user base as mania over generative AI has waned in recent months. Google is hoping to capitalize on ChatGPT’s losses and for Bard to catch up.

Some information for this story came from Agence France-Presse.

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London’s Historic Blue Plaques Seek More Diversity as 1,000th Marker Is Unveiled

A resounding thump breaks the silence as Jaulia Land drops a lump of grey-brown clay onto the slab roller before Ned Heywood cranks it through the machine once, twice, three times, creating a rectangle about an inch thick. 

Laying a pattern on top of the slab, Heywood slices through the clay to create a disc the size of an extra-large pizza that will become one of the blue plaques that dot the walls of buildings throughout London, marking the places where scientists, artists, politicians and activists have made history.

As English Heritage unveiled its 1,000th blue plaque on Tuesday, the charity was working to broaden the program to include more women, people from minority ethnic backgrounds and community groups so that it better reflects the diversity of the capital.

The latest installation marks the offices where the Women’s Freedom League “campaigned for women’s equality” in the early 20th century, satisfying at least two of those goals.

“The names are no longer just English names, which is significant because, you know, the people who’ve come to this country from all over the world have made a disproportionately large contribution,” Heywood said at his workshop, a converted 18th century pub in the Welsh town of Chepstow, 180 kilometers (110 miles) west of London. “It’s changing now, which is very much for the good.” 

The blue plaque program, which began in 1866 and is believed to be the first of its kind, provides an informal historical walking tour of London that commemorates notable people and their accomplishments by highlighting the places where they lived and worked.

The honorees include famous figures from wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill to communist pioneer Karl Marx, as well as lesser-known figures such as theatrical wigmaker Willy Clarkson and civil engineer William Lindley, who built water and sewage systems around the world. There are also plaques honoring foreigners including India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and American rock star Jimi Hendrix, who lived in London only briefly. 

But English Heritage, which has sponsored the program since 1986, is concerned that past honorees were overwhelmingly white and male. Just 15% of the plaques honor women and less than 5% celebrate people from Black and Asian backgrounds.

The charity, which manages some 400 monuments, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses around England, is trying to encourage more nominations of women and people from minority ethnic groups while retaining high standards for entry into the exclusive club, said Anna Eavis, the curatorial director.

Plaques unveiled recently include Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, a suffragette and critic of British rule in India; Ottobah Cugoano, a native of present-day Ghana who was enslaved in Grenada and campaigned against slavery after gaining his freedom; and Ada Salter, the first woman to be elected mayor of a London borough.

“London is hugely diverse and it has always been, hasn’t it?” Eavis said. “And so it is important to ensure that we’re reflecting that diversity, that richness of contribution on London streets.”

Diana Yeh, a senior lecturer in sociology at City University of London, said broadening the reach of programs like the blue plaques is “an essential part of remembering invisible histories.” But heritage organizations must do more to discuss the “troubling aspects” of English history, including slavery and colonialism, she added.

“In a way it’s very easy to celebrate well-known figures who are marginalized, but it’s much harder to do that difficult work of acknowledging Britain’s difficult past,” said Yeh, whose work focuses on race, racism and cultural politics. “But this needs to be done for the benefit of future generations.” 

English Heritage installs a dozen blue plaques each year, selected from about 100 nominations. A committee reviews the nominees to decide which ones warrant commemoration and to ensure there is a real connection between each honoree and the site where the plaque is to be installed.

Once a decision is made, the order goes out to Heywood’s studio, which has been making plaques for English Heritage since 2016.

Over a period of six weeks, Heywood and Land roll and cut the clay, inscribe the disc with the honoree’s name and accomplishments, then apply the characteristic blue glaze and fire it in a kiln. It’s a process that creates an almost indestructible monument that should last as long as the building to which it’s attached — as long as the plaques don’t crack when they’re baked at 1,300° C (2,370° F).

“We pray to gods of the kiln,” Heywood said.

While the first plaque, honoring the poet Lord Byron, was destroyed when the building it adorned was demolished, the second, installed in 1867, still marks the house where Napoleon III, the last French emperor, lived in exile.

Plaque number 1,000 honors the Women’s Freedom League, a suffragist organization that used 1 Robert Street in central London as its base of operations during its most active period.

The group, which had the motto “Dare to be free,” aimed for total emancipation for women. It advocated nonpayment of taxes and backed a boycott of the 1911 census as ways to pressure the government to allow women to vote.

Heywood and Land feel the responsibility of the blue plaques intensely.

Heywood has a soft spot for scientists, who he says are the real heroes in improving people’s lives. Politicians? Not so much. They come and go.

“Blue plaques are carefully considered, the people are thoroughly researched, and the plaques are there for a reason,” he added. “And will be there forever.”

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Britain Invites China to Its Global AI Summit

Britain has invited China to its global artificial intelligence summit in November, with foreign minister James Cleverly saying the risks of the technology could not be contained if one of its leading players was absent.

“We cannot keep the UK public safe from the risks of AI if we exclude one of the leading nations in AI tech,” Cleverly said in a statement on Tuesday.  

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wants Britain to become a global leader in AI regulation and the summit on Nov. 1-2 will bring together governments, tech companies and academics to discuss the risks posed by the powerful new technology.

Britain said the event would touch on topics such as how AI could undermine biosecurity as well as how the technology could be used for public good, for example in safer transport.  

Cleverly, who last month became the most senior minister to visit China in five years, has argued for deeper engagement with Beijing, saying it would be a mistake to try to isolate the world’s second largest economy and Chinese help was needed in areas such as climate change and economic instability.

“The UK’s approach to China is to protect our institutions and infrastructure, align with partners and engage where it is in the UK’s national interest,” Cleverly said on Tuesday.  

London is trying to improve ties with Beijing but there has been growing anxiety about Chinese activity in Britain in recent weeks after it was revealed that a parliamentary researcher was arrested in March on suspicion of spying for China.

The Chinese embassy in London was not immediately able to say if China would attend the AI summit.

Britain has appointed tech expert Matt Clifford and former senior diplomat Jonathan Black to lead preparations for the summit.  

The Financial Times reported that government officials want a less “draconian” approach to regulating the technology, compared with the European Union’s wide-sweeping AI Act.  

Under the incoming EU legislation, organizations using AI systems deemed “high risk” will be expected to complete rigorous risk assessments, log their activities, and make sensitive internal data available to authorities upon request.  

Clifford told Reuters last month that he hoped the UK summit would set the tone for future international debates on AI regulation.

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WHO: Hundreds of Children Die in Sudan Health Crisis

Measles, diarrhea and malnutrition, among other preventable diseases, kill about 100 children every month in Sudan where armed conflicts have uprooted more than five million people from their homes, according to the United Nations.

Between May 15 and September 14, at least 1,200 children under the age of five died from a deadly combination of a suspected measles outbreak and high malnutrition in nine camps for internally displaced people in Sudan’s White Nile state.

There have also been reports of cholera, dengue, and malaria cases emerging in various parts of the country, sparking concerns about the looming threat of epidemics.

“Children younger than five are worst impacted, accounting for nearly 70% of all cases and 76% of all deaths,” the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

The U.N. warning comes as Sudan’s health sector is teetering on the brink of collapse, crippled by a severe lack of funding and essential resources.

“Health facilities are at breaking point, due to shortages of staff, life-saving medicine and critical equipment, exacerbating current outbreaks and causing unnecessary deaths,” the WHO said.

Ongoing-armed hostilities between Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which started in April, have generated and exacerbated humanitarian crises in the African country.

The conflict has taken an immense toll on Sudan’s civilian population, with the Health Ministry acknowledging over 1,500 civilian deaths since the conflict started.

However, aid agencies contend that the actual death toll far exceeds the officially reported figures.

Both warring factions, the SAF and RSF, have faced accusations of committing egregious acts of violence against civilians, including arbitrary detentions and killings.  

“The conflict has paralyzed the economy, pushing millions to the brink of poverty,” Volker Türk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said last week.

“More than 7.4 million children are without safe drinking water and at least 700,000 are at risk of severe acute malnutrition,” he said.

Humanitarian appeal 

In May, the U.N. appealed for $2.57 billion in humanitarian assistance for 18 million people in Sudan.

However, the situation remains dire, with aid agencies estimating that more than 24 million Sudanese are in urgent need of humanitarian aid.

As of September 19, the appeal has garnered $788 million, approximately 30% of the required funds, with the United States leading the list of donors with a contribution of $472.5 million.

“The world has the means and the money to prevent every one of these deaths from measles or malnutrition,” Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said in a statement on Tuesday.

“And yet dozens of children are dying every day — a result of this devastating conflict and a lack of global attention. We can prevent more deaths, but need money for the response, access to those in need, and above all, an end to the fighting,” he said, according to the statement. 

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Climate Change Impeding Fight Against AIDS, TB and Malaria

Climate change and conflict are hitting efforts to tackle three of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, the head of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has warned.

International initiatives to fight the diseases have largely recovered after being badly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Fund’s 2023 results report released on Monday.

But the increasing challenges of climate change and conflict mean the world is likely to miss the target of putting an end to AIDS, TB and malaria by 2030 without “extraordinary steps,” said Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund.

For example, malaria is spreading to highland parts of Africa that were previously too cold for the mosquito carrying the disease-causing parasite.

Extreme weather events like floods are overwhelming health services, displacing communities, causing upsurges in infection and interrupting treatment in many different places, the report said. In countries including Sudan, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Myanmar, simply reaching vulnerable communities has also been immensely challenging due to insecurity, it added.

There are positives, Sands said. For example, in 2022, 6.7 million people were treated for TB in the countries where the Global Fund invests, 1.4 million more people than in the previous year.

The Fund also helped provide 24.5 million people with antiretroviral therapy for HIV and distributed 220 million mosquito nets.

Sands added that innovative prevention and diagnostic tools also provided hope.

This week, there is a high-level meeting on TB at the U.N. General Assembly, and advocates hope for renewed focus on the disease.

The Global Fund has faced criticism from some TB experts for not allocating more of its budget to the disease, as it is the biggest killer of the three diseases the fund focuses on.

“There’s no doubt that the world needs to devote more resources towards fighting TB… but it is not as simple as comparing annual deaths from each disease,” said Sands. For example, he said, many countries with the highest burden of TB are middle-income countries that have more capacity to fund health services domestically.

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FBI Echoes Warning on Danger of Artificial Intelligence

Just as many in the United States are starting to explore how to use artificial intelligence to make their lives easier, U.S. adversaries and criminal gangs are moving forward with plans to exploit the technology at Americans’ expense.

FBI Director Christopher Wray issued the warning Monday, telling a cybersecurity conference in Washington that artificial intelligence, or AI, “is ripe for potential abuses.”

“Criminals and hostile foreign governments are already exploiting that technology,” Wray said, without sharing specifics.

“While generative AI can certainly save law-abiding citizens time by automating tasks, it can also make it easier for bad guys to do things like generate deepfakes and malicious code and can provide a tool for threat actors to develop increasingly powerful, sophisticated, customizable and scalable capabilities,” he said.

Wray said the FBI is working to identify and track those using AI to harm U.S. citizens but added that the bureau is being cautious about employing AI itself.

“To stay ahead of the threat at the FBI, we’re determining how we can ethically and legally leverage AI to do our jobs,” he said.

When contacted by VOA, the FBI declined to elaborate on its concerns about employing AI. Nor did the bureau say when or if it has used AI, even on a limited basis.

Other U.S. national security agencies, however, are currently making use of AI.

The Department of Homeland Security is using AI to combat fentanyl trafficking, counter child sexual exploitation and protect critical infrastructure, according to department officials, even as they roll out guidelines governing its use.

“Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement last Thursday. “Our department must continue to keep pace with this rapidly evolving technology, and do so in a way that is transparent and respectful of the privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties of everyone we serve.”

DHS has also issued directives aimed at preventing its use of AI from being skewed by biased learning models and databases, and to give U.S. citizens a choice of opting out of systems using facial recognition technology.

But across multiple U.S. departments and agencies, the fear of the potential damage AI could cause is growing.

FBI officials, for example, warned in July that violent extremists and terrorists have been experimenting with AI to more easily build explosives.

And they said a growing number of criminals appear to be gravitating to the technology to carry out everything from petty crimes to financial heists.

It is China, though, that is driving the bulk of the concern.

National Security Agency officials have warned that Beijing started using AI to disseminate propaganda via what they described as a fake news channel last year.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” David Frederick, the NSA’s assistant deputy director for China, told a cybersecurity summit earlier this month.

“[Artificial intelligence] will enable more effective malign influence operations,” he added.

Such concerns have been bolstered by private cybersecurity companies.

Microsoft, for example, warned earlier this month that Chinese-linked cyber actors have started using AI to produce “eye-catching content” for disinformation efforts that has been gaining traction with U.S. voters.

“We can expect China to continue to hone this technology over time, though it remains to be seen how and when it will deploy it at scale,” Microsoft said.

For its part, China has repeatedly denied allegations it is using AI improperly.

“In recent years, some western media and think tanks have accused China of using artificial intelligence to create fake social media accounts to spread so-called ‘pro-China’ information,” Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told VOA in an email, following the publication of the Microsoft report.

“Such remarks are full of prejudice and malicious speculation against China, which China firmly opposes,” Liu added.

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Iranian Soccer Fans Flock to Ronaldo’s Hotel After Saudi Team Arrives in Tehran

Hundreds of soccer fans stormed into a hotel in Tehran on Monday, hoping for a glimpse of star player Cristiano Ronaldo after he arrived with his Saudi teammates ahead of a game. 

Chanting “Ronaldo, Ronaldo,” the fans pushed past police, filling the corridors and public spaces of the Espinas Palace Hotel. 

Ronaldo arrived on his first visit to Iran with the Saudi football club Al-Nassr, which is set to play Iran’s Persepolis in Tehran on September 19. The return game will be played in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on November 27. 

Ronaldo was the first of several big-name players to accept lavish contracts to play for Saudi teams. The oil-rich kingdom is spending billions of dollars to try to transform itself into a sports and entertainment powerhouse. 

The Asian Champions League games are made possible by the restoration of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia following an agreement brokered by China earlier this year. The longtime rivals had severed ties in 2016 after an angry crowd stormed Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran to protest Saudi Arabia’s execution of a popular Shiite cleric. 

The 2015 Asian Champions League edition was the last time Saudi and Iranian teams faced each other on home turf in the group stage or knockout rounds. 

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NY Fashion Show Aims to Educate, Dispell Stigma of Sexual Assault

New York Fashion Week is generally known as a showcase for fashion designers, and the celebrities that wear their clothes. But several shows held on the sidelines are trying to call attention not only to fashion but to serious and difficult issues like sexual assault. VOA’s Rendy Wicaksana reports from New York

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‘American Fiction’ Wins People’s Choice Award at Toronto Film Festival

Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction,” a biting satire starring Jeffrey Wright as a disillusioned academic, has won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, a much-watched bellwether in the Oscar race.

“American Fiction” is the directorial debut of Jefferson, the veteran TV writer of “Watchmen” and “Succession,” and an adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasure.” The film, about an author who resents that the literary industry is only interested in “Black books” that cater to the stereotypes of white audiences, emerged as a breakout hit at TIFF.

Toronto’s audience award winner, voted on by festival attendees, has historically nearly always signified a best-picture contender at the Academy Awards. Since 2012, every People’s Choice winner at TIFF has gone on to score a best-picture nod. In 2018, when “Green Book” won, it announced the film as a surprise awards contender. (Peter Farrelly’s film went on to win best picture at the Oscars.) Last year, Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” won Toronto’s top prize.

First runner-up went to Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers,” starring Paul Giamatti as a curmudgeonly boarding school teacher tasked with staying with a handful of students over Christmas break in the 1970s. Second runner-up was Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron,” the long-awaited latest Studio Ghibli film from the Japanese anime master.

“American Fiction,” which MGM will release in theaters Nov. 3, co-stars Sterling K. Brown, Issa Rae and Tracee Ellis Ross. In an interview, Jefferson said he immediately connected with Everett’s book.

“I was having the exact same conversations with Black colleagues in both professions: Why are we always writing about misery and trauma and violence and pain inflicted on Blacks?” said Jefferson. “Why is this what people expect from us? Why is this the only thing we have to offer to culture?”

The Toronto International Film Festival, which wraps Sunday, was diminished this year due to the ongoing actors and writers strikes. Red-carpet premieres were mostly without movie stars, detracting from some of the buzz that the largest film festival in North American typically generates. It followed a similarly strike-affected Venice Film Festival, where the festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, went to Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things.” (That film skipped TIFF.)

The People’s Choice winner for documentary went to Robert McCallum’s “Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe” and the midnight madness award went to Larry Charles’ “Dicks: The Musical.” The festival’s juried competition awards were given to Tarsem Singh Dhandwar’s “Dear Jassi,” winner of the Platform section, and Meredith Hama-Brown’s “Seagrass,” which took the FIPRESCI award from international critics.

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Bystanders Less Likely to Give Women CPR: Research

Bystanders are less likely to give life-saving CPR to women having a cardiac arrest in public than men, leading to more women dying from the common health emergency, researchers said Monday.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation combines mouth-to-mouth breathing and chest compressions to pump blood to the brain of people whose hearts have stopped beating, potentially staving off death until medical help arrives.

In research to be presented at a medical conference in Spain this week, but which has not yet been peer-reviewed, a team of Canadian doctors sought to understand how bystanders administer the procedure differently to men and women.

They looked at records of cardiac arrests that took place outside of hospitals in the United States and Canada between 2005 and 2015, which included nearly 40,000 patients. 

Overall, 54% of the patients received CPR from a bystander, the research said.

For cardiac arrests in a public place, such as in the street, 61% of women were given CPR by a bystander — compared to 68% of men. 

Alexis Cournoyer, an emergency physician at the Hopital du Sacre-Coeur de Montreal who conducted the research, told AFP that this gap “increases women’s mortality following a cardiac arrest — that’s for sure.”

Cardiac arrests are a leading cause of death, with more than 350,000 occurring in the U.S. alone every year, according to the American Heart Association.

Only around 10% of people who have a sudden cardiac arrest outside of a hospital survive, research has shown.

The researchers sought to find a reason for the gender gap.

One theory was that bystanders in public could be uncomfortable touching a women’s breast without consent, Cournoyer said.

The researchers looked into whether age could play a role, he added.

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UN Committee Votes to List Ruins of Ancient Jericho as World Heritage Site

A U.N. conference voted Sunday to list ruins of the ancient West Bank city of Jericho as a World Heritage Site, a decision likely to anger Israel, which controls the territory and does not recognize a Palestinian state.

Jericho is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities on earth, and is in a part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank that is administered by the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority. The listing refers to the Tel es-Sultan archaeological site nearby, which contains ruins dating back to the 9th millennium B.C.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the U.N. World Heritage Committee in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, under the auspices of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO.

Israel quit UNESCO in 2019, accusing it of being biased against it and of diminishing its connection to the Holy Land. Israel also objected to UNESCO’s acceptance of Palestine as a member state in 2011. But Israel remains a party to the World Heritage Convention, and it sent a delegation to the meeting in Riyadh.

Israel captured the West Bank, along with Gaza and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories for their future state. Israel views the West Bank as the biblical and cultural heartland of the Jewish people.

There have been no serious or substantive peace negotiations in over a decade, and Israel is currently led by the most nationalist and religious government in its history, making any move toward Palestinian statehood nearly unimaginable.

The modern city of Jericho is a major draw for tourism to the Palestinian territories, both because of its historical sites and proximity to the Dead Sea. In 2021, the Palestinian Authority unveiled major renovations to one of the largest mosaics in the Middle East, in a Jericho palace dating back to the 8th century.

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‘Nun 2’ Narrowly Edges ‘A Haunting in Venice’ Over Quiet Weekend in Movie Theaters

“The Nun 2” and “A Haunting in Venice” virtually tied for the No. 1 spot in U.S. and Canadian theaters over the weekend, with a slight edge carrying the horror sequel over the Hercule Poirot mystery, according to studio estimates Sunday.

In its second weekend of release, Warner Bros.’ “The Nun 2,” a spinoff from the studio’s lucrative “Conjuring” franchise, grossed $14.7 million. If numbers hold, that will give “The Nun 2” (up to $56.5 million total and $158.8 million worldwide) the top spot at the box office for the second straight week.

Very close behind was “A Haunting in Venice,” Kenneth Branagh’s third Agatha Christie adaptation following 2017’s “Murder on the Orient Express” and 2022’s “Death on the Nile.” It opened with $14.5 million.

Final box-office figures will be released Monday.

After the successful run of “Murder on the Orient Express” ($352.8 million worldwide against a production budget of $55 million) and the less-stellar global haul of “Death on the Nile” ($137.3 million against a $90 million budget), the sluggish start for “A Haunting in Venice” may have signaled the death knell for Branagh’s detective.

The 20th Century Studios film, released by the Walt Disney Co., grossed $22.7 million internationally. And it cost less than its predecessor, carrying a production budget of about $60 million.

“The Equalizer 3,” starring Denzel Washington, dropped to third place with $7.2 million. In three weeks, it grossed $73.7 million domestically and $132.4 million worldwide. Fourth place went to “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3” with $4.7 million in its second weekend of release. It’s grossed $18.5 million domestically.

It was one of the quietest weekends in movie theaters this year, as Hollywood — which has spent much of the last two weeks promoting its films at the Venice, Telluride and Toronto film festivals — treads water in between the summer smashes of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” and awaits its top fall movies. Some of those, like “Dune: Part Two,” have already been postponed until next year due to the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes.

One anticipated fall film, Sony’s “Dumb Money,” opted for a platform release, debuting in eight theaters over the weekend before expanding next weekend and going wide Sept. 29. The film, a rollicking dramatization of the GameStop stock frenzy, grossed $217,000, for a per-location average of about $27,000.

And “Barbie” also remains in the picture. For the ninth straight weekend, Greta Gerwig’s box-office sensation ranked in the top five films. It added $4 million to bring its domestic total to $625 million and its global haul to $1.42 billion. Meanwhile, “Oppenheimer” has reached $912.7 million, making it the highest grossing biopic ever, passing “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

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

  1. “The Nun II,” $14.7 million.

  2. “A Haunting in Venice,” $14.5 million.

  3. “The Equalizer 3,” $7.2 million.

  4. “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3,” $4.7million.

  5. “Barbie,” $4 million.

  6. “Jawan,” $2.5 million.

  7. “Blue Beetle,” $2.5 million.

  8. “Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story,” $2.4 million.

  9. “Oppenheimer,” $2.1 million.

  10. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” $2 million.

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Beer Flows, Crowds Descend on Munich for Oktoberfest

The beer is flowing and millions of people are descending on the Bavarian capital to celebrate the official opening of Oktoberfest.

With the traditional cry of “O’zapft is” — “It’s tapped” — Mayor Dieter Reiter inserted the tap in the first keg at noon on Saturday, officially opening the 18 days of festivities.

Revelers decked out in traditional lederhosen and dirndl dresses trooped to Munich’s festival grounds Saturday morning, filling the dozens of traditional tents in anticipation of getting their first 1-liter mug of beer.

Minutes before the first keg was tapped, to cheers from the crowd, Bavarian Gov. Markus Soeder asked festivalgoers if they were ready for Oktoberfest to begin.

“I can only say one thing: This is the most beautiful, biggest, most important festival in the world,” he said.

The Oktoberfest has typically drawn about 6 million visitors every year. The event was skipped in 2020 and 2021 as authorities grappled with COVID-19, but it returned in 2022.

A 1-liter mug costs between 12.60 euros and 14.90 euros ($13.45 to $15.90) this year, an increase of around 6% from last year.

This year’s Oktoberfest, the 188th edition, runs through Oct. 3. 

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Water-Starved Saudi Confronts Desalination’s Heavy Toll

Solar panels soak up blinding noontime rays that help power a water desalination facility in eastern Saudi Arabia, a step towards making the notoriously emissions-heavy process less environmentally taxing.

The Jazlah plant in Jubail city applies the latest technological advances in a country that first turned to desalination more than a century ago, when Ottoman-era administrators enlisted filtration machines for hajj pilgrims menaced by drought and cholera.

Lacking lakes, rivers and regular rainfall, Saudi Arabia today relies instead on dozens of facilities that transform water from the Gulf and Red Sea into something potable, supplying cities and towns that otherwise would not survive.

But the kingdom’s growing desalination needs — fueled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s dreams of presiding over a global business and tourism hub — risk clashing with its sustainability goals, including achieving net-zero emissions by 2060.

Projects like Jazlah, the first plant to integrate desalination with solar power on a large scale, are meant to ease that conflict: officials say the panels will help save around 60,000 tons of carbon emissions annually.

It is the type of innovation that must be scaled up fast, with Prince Mohammed targeting a population of 100 million people by 2040, up from 32.2 million today.

“Typically, the population grows, and then the quality of life of the population grows,” necessitating more and more water, said CEO Marco Arcelli of ACWA Power, which runs Jazlah.

Using desalination to keep pace is a “do or die” challenge, said historian Michael Christopher Low at the University of Utah, who has studied the kingdom’s struggle with water scarcity.

“This is existential for the Gulf states. So when anyone is sort of critical about what they’re doing in terms of ecological consequences, I shake my head a bit,” he said.

At the same time, he added, “there are limits” as to how green desalination can be.

Drinking the sea

The search for potable water bedeviled Saudi Arabia in the first decades after its founding in 1932, spurring geological surveys that contributed to the mapping of its massive oil reserves.

Prince Mohammed al-Faisal, a son of King Faisal whom Low has dubbed the “Water Prince,” at one point even explored the possibility of towing icebergs from Antarctica to quench the kingdom’s growing thirst, drawing widespread ridicule.

But Prince Mohammed also oversaw the birth of the kingdom’s modern desalination infrastructure beginning in 1970.

The national Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) now reports production capacity of 11.5 million cubic meters per day at 30 facilities.

That growth has come at a cost, especially at thermal plants running on fossil fuels.

By 2010, Saudi desalination facilities were consuming 1.5 million barrels of oil per day, more than 15 percent of today’s production.

The Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture did not respond to AFP’s request for comment on current energy consumption at desalination plants.

Going forward, there is little doubt Saudi Arabia will be able to build the infrastructure required to produce the water it needs.

“They have already done it in some of the most challenging settings, like massively desalinating on the Red Sea and providing desalinated water up to the highlands of the holy cities in Mecca and Medina,” said Laurent Lambert of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.

Going green?

The question is how much the environmental toll will continue to climb.

The SWCC says it wants to cut 37 million metric tons of carbon emissions by 2025.

This will be achieved largely by transitioning away from thermal plants to plants like Jazlah that use electricity-powered reverse osmosis.

Solar power, meanwhile, will expand to 770 megawatts from 120 megawatts today, according to the SWCC’s latest sustainability report, although the timeline is unclear.

“It’s still going to be energy-intensive, unfortunately, but energy-intensive compared to what?” Lambert said.

“Compared to countries which have naturally flowing water from major rivers or falling from the sky for free? Yeah, sure, it’s always going to be more.”

At desalination plants across the kingdom, Saudi employees understand just how crucial their work is to the population’s survival.

The Ras al-Khair plant produces 1.1 million cubic meters of water per day — 740,000 from thermal technology, the rest from reverse osmosis — and struggles to keep reserve tanks full because of high demand.

Much of the water goes to Riyadh, which requires 1.6 million cubic meters per day and could require as much as six million by the end of the decade, said an employee who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

Looking out over pipes that draw seawater from the Gulf into the plant, he described the work as high-stakes, with clear national security implications.

If the plant did not exist, he said, “Riyadh would die.”

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UN Committee Votes to List Ruins of Ancient Jericho as World Heritage Site in Palestine

A U.N. conference voted Sunday to list ruins of the ancient West Bank city of Jericho as a World Heritage Site in Palestine, a decision likely to anger Israel, which controls the territory and does not recognize a Palestinian state.

Jericho is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities on earth, and is in a part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank that is administered by the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority. The listing refers to the Tel es-Sultan archaeological site nearby, which contains ruins dating back to the 9th millennium B.C.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the U.N. World Heritage Committee in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, under the auspices of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO.

Israel quit UNESCO in 2019, accusing it of being biased against it and of diminishing its connection to the Holy Land. Israel also objected to UNESCO’s acceptance of Palestine as a member state in 2011. But Israel remains a party to the World Heritage Convention, and it sent a delegation to the meeting in Riyadh.

Israel captured the West Bank, along with Gaza and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories for their future state. Israel views the West Bank as the biblical and cultural heartland of the Jewish people.

There have been no serious or substantive peace negotiations in over a decade, and Israel is currently led by the most nationalist and religious government in its history, making any move toward Palestinian statehood nearly unimaginable.

The modern city of Jericho is a major draw for tourism to the Palestinian territories, both because of its historical sites and proximity to the Dead Sea. In 2021, the Palestinian Authority unveiled major renovations to one of the largest mosaics in the Middle East, in a Jericho palace dating back to the 8th century. 

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