November 27th marks the birthday of iconic American guitarist and songwriter Jimi Hendrix. In his hometown of Seattle, the Museum of Pop Culture, inspired by his groundbreaking music, celebrated his enduring legacy with family members, former colleagues, and fans. Natasha Mozgovaya has the story.
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Month: November 2024
SYDNEY — Google and Facebook-owner Meta Platforms urged the Australian government on Tuesday to delay a bill that will ban most forms of social media for children under 16, saying more time was needed to assess its potential impact.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left government wants to pass the bill, which represents some of the toughest controls on children’s social media use imposed by any country, into law by the end of the parliamentary year on Thursday.
The bill was introduced in parliament last week and opened for submissions of opinions for only one day.
Google and Meta said in their submissions that the government should wait for the results of an age-verification trial before going ahead.
The age-verification system may include biometrics or government identification to enforce a social media age cut-off.
“In the absence of such results, neither industry nor Australians will understand the nature or scale of age assurance required by the bill, nor the impact of such measures on Australians,” Meta said.
“In its present form, the bill is inconsistent and ineffective.”
The law would force social media platforms, and not parents or children, to take reasonable steps to ensure age-verification protections are in place. Companies could be fined up to $32 million for systemic breaches.
The opposition Liberal party is expected to support the bill though some independent lawmakers have accused the government of rushing through the entire process in around a week.
A Senate committee responsible for communications legislation is scheduled to deliver a report on Tuesday.
Bytedance’s TikTok said the bill lacked clarity and that it had “significant concerns” with the government’s plan to pass the bill without detailed consultation with experts, social media platforms, mental health organizations and young people.
“Where novel policy is put forward, it’s important that legislation is drafted in a thorough and considered way, to ensure it is able to achieve its stated intention. This has not been the case with respect to this Bill,” TikTok said.
Elon Musk’s X raised concerns that the bill will negatively impact the human rights of children and young people, including their rights to freedom of expression and access to information.
The U.S. billionaire, who views himself as a champion of free speech, last week attacked the Australian government saying the bill seemed like a backdoor way to control access to the internet.
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ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — The U.S. Justice Department told a federal judge that Google illegally dominated online advertising technology in seeking a second antitrust win against the company.
The closing arguments in Alexandria cap a 15-day trial held in September in which prosecutors sought to show Google monopolized markets for publisher ad servers and advertiser ad networks and tried to dominate the market for ad exchanges, which sit between buyers and sellers.
“Google rigged the rules of the road,” said DOJ lawyer Aaron Teitelbaum, who asked the judge to hold Google accountable for anti-competitive conduct and added that Google is “once, twice, three times a monopolist.”
Another DOJ lawyer, Julia Tarver Wood, compared the case to the Charles Dickens novel A Tale of Two Cities and said U.S. Judge Leonie Brinkema had to decide whether to adopt the DOJ or Google version of the state of the ad market.
Google lawyer Karen Dunn said the DOJ had not met its legal burden and was asking Brinkema to overrule key precedents. “The law simply does not support what the plaintiffs are arguing in this case,” Dunn said.
She argued the DOJ was ignoring Google’s legitimate business decisions and the robust quality of the online advertising market. The company argues the government had cherry-picked a narrow slice of the online market and did not account for aggressive competition.
Shares of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, were up 1.4% in afternoon trading.
Publishers testified at the trial that they could not switch away from Google, even when it rolled out features they disliked, since there was no other way to access the huge advertising demand within Google’s ad network.
In 2017, News Corp estimated losing at least $9 million in ad revenue that year if it had switched away, one witness said.
If Brinkema finds that Google broke the law, she would consider prosecutors’ request to make Google at least sell off Google Ad Manager, a platform that includes the company’s publisher ad server and its ad exchange.
Google offered to sell the ad exchange this year to end a European Union antitrust investigation, but European publishers rejected the proposal as insufficient, Reuters first reported in September.
Analysts view the ad tech case as a smaller financial risk than the case in which a judge ruled Google maintains an illegal monopoly in online search, and in which prosecutors have argued the company must be forced to sell its Chrome browser.
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JACKSON, Mississippi — Medical marijuana businesses in the southern U.S. state of Mississippi don’t have the right to advertise on billboards or other places because marijuana itself remains illegal under federal law, an appeals court says.
The owner of a medical marijuana dispensary argued that the First Amendment protects the right to advertise because Mississippi law permits the sale of cannabis products to people with debilitating medical conditions. The state enacted its law in 2022.
A three-judge panel of 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday rejected the arguments about advertising. They cited the federal Controlled Substances Act, which since 1970 has prohibited the manufacture, distribution, dispensing and possession of marijuana.
The federal law applies in all states, and Mississippi “faces no constitutional obstacle to restricting commercial speech relating to unlawful transactions,” the judges wrote.
The Mississippi attorney general’s office praised the court decision for upholding “Mississippi’s reasonable restrictions on advertising for medical marijuana dispensaries by print, broadcast and other mass communications,” said the office spokesperson, MaryAsa Lee.
Clarence Cocroft II operates Tru Source Medical Cannabis in the northern Mississippi city of Olive Branch. He sued the state in 2023 to challenge its ban on medical marijuana advertising on billboards or in print, broadcast or social media or via mass email or text messaging.
“Upholding this ban makes it incredibly difficult for me to find potential customers and to educate people about Mississippi’s medical marijuana program,” Cocroft said in a statement Monday. “I remain committed to continuing this fight so my business can be treated the same as any other legal business in Mississippi.”
The state allows medical marijuana businesses to have websites or social media accounts that provide information about their retail dispensing locations and a list of products available. It allows them to be listed in phone books or business directories and to display cannabis in company logos. The businesses can also sponsor not-for-profit charity or advocacy events.
Cocroft is represented by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit libertarian law firm. The firm said Monday that it was considering its next steps in the lawsuit, including possibly asking the entire appeals court to reconsider the case or an appeal to the Supreme Court.
“Mississippi cannot on the one hand create an entire marketplace for the sale of medical marijuana, and on the other hand rely on an unenforced federal law to prohibit buyers and sellers from talking about it,” said Ari Bargil, an Institute for Justice attorney.
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sydney — Australia’s Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island will be connected by subsea cable to the northern garrison city of Darwin, a project backed by Alphabet’s Google that Australia says will boost its digital resilience.
Christmas Island is 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) west of the Australian mainland, with a small population of 1,250, but strategically located in the Indian Ocean, 350 kilometers (215 miles) from Jakarta.
The cable announcement comes as the Australian and U.S. militaries upgrade airfields in Australia’s north, where a rotating force of U.S. Marines will be joined by Japanese troops next year.
Google’s vice president of global network infrastructure, Brian Quigley, said in a statement the Bosun cable will link Darwin to Christmas Island, while another subsea cable will connect Melbourne on Australia’s east coast to the west coast city of Perth, then on to Christmas Island and Singapore.
Australia is seeking to reduce its exposure to digital disruption by building more subsea cable pathways to Asia to its west, and through the South Pacific to the United States.
“These new cable systems will not only expand and strengthen the resilience of Australia’s own digital connectivity through new and diversified routes but will also complement the Government’s active work with industry and government partners to support secure, resilient and reliable connectivity across the Pacific,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said in a statement.
The other partners in the cable project include Australian data center company NextDC, Macquarie-backed telecommunications group Vocus, and SUBCO.
SUBCO previously built an Indian Ocean cable from Perth to Oman, with spurs to the U.S. military base of Diego Garcia, and Cocos Islands, where Australia is upgrading a runway for defense surveillance aircraft.
Although 900 kilometers (560 miles) apart, Christmas Island is seen as an Indian Ocean neighbor of Cocos Islands, which the Australian Defense Force has said is key to its maritime surveillance operations in a region where China is increasing submarine activity.
The new cables will also link to a Pacific Islands network being built by Google and jointly funded by the United States, connecting the U.S. and Australia through hubs in Fiji and French Polynesia.
Vocus said in a statement the two networks will form the world’s largest submarine cable system spanning 42,500 kilometers (26,408 miles) of fiber optic cable running between the U.S. and Asia via Australia.
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Alfonso Cuarón spoke with VOA at the 2024 Miami Film Festival, where the director won a lifetime achievement award from Miami Dade College for his contributions to cinema. He urged aspiring filmmakers to study the history of cinema and the development of film language.
See the full story here.
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Argentine artist Guillermina Grinbaum’s new exhibit in New York, “Hilo de Voz/Whispering Thread,” uses a range of creative materials and techniques, including painting, sculpture and interactive installations, to call attention to gender violence and human trafficking.
See the full story here.
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BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — Anger and frustration from developing nations vulnerable to climate impacts are likely to linger following the conclusion of the climate change summit in Azerbaijan, COP29, as nations adopted a $300 billion global finance target to help poorer nations cope with climate change, a deal that many recipient nations slammed as severely insufficient.
Global North countries, often historic emitters responsible for global warming, agreed on Sunday to pledge $300 billion a year until 2035 for their developing counterparts to stave off the direst effects of climate change — less than a quarter of the acknowledged $1.3 trillion needed annually to reduce emissions and build resilience in vulnerable countries.
The $300 billion figure, also, is an increase by $200 billion each year, compared to the agreement in place since 2009, which is expiring.
Spirited disappointment and rage from Global South countries was expressed at the closing plenary, with some national representatives calling adoption of the new funding package “insulting.”
“We are extremely disappointed,” said Indian negotiator Chandni Raina, who called the figure “abysmal.”
Her Cuban counterpart, Pedro Luis Pedroso, described the deal as “environmental colonialism,” pointing out that, when factoring in today’s inflation, the pledged funding is lower than the $100 billion agreed to in 2009. Bolivia’s negotiator called the deal “insulting” to developing nations.
Some Western representatives were more upbeat.
“COP29 will be remembered as a new era of climate finance,” top EU climate negotiator Wopke Hoekstra said, calling the target amount “ambitious” and “achievable.”
Some experts told VOA that the structure and composition of the $300 billion deal was more important than the actual monetary figure. The final deal allows for both public and private sources of funds to be tapped to bolster climate preparation efforts in the developing world.
Negotiators for developing countries expressed concern that private sources of funding could come in the form of more loans, which could lead to challenging debt accumulation by poorer nations, rather than funding in the preferred form of grants.
Global South countries argued for a new target for green finance and have consistently called for such climate finance to come in the form of public grants. The tense and fraught negotiations of the past week dragged on for two extra days and included at least one episode of negotiators from small island nations and some of the poorest nations in the world walking out of a meeting room with wealthy nations in protest. They asserted that their voices and perspectives were not heard.
”This COP has been a disaster for the developing world,” said Mohammed Adow, director of Kenya-based climate and energy research group Power Shift Africa. ”It’s a betrayal of both people and planet, by wealthy countries, who claim to take climate change seriously.”
The adopted finance package also stated that a further roadmap is set to be discussed at the next conference – likely COP30, set for Belem, Brazil in late 2025 — on how to reach the trillion-dollar figure.
Independent South African climate consultant Gillian Hamilton called the $300 billion core funding target “insufficient,” particularly for building resilience against climate impacts — also known as climate adaptation.
“Developed nations should have shown more leadership and transparency,” Hamilton told VOA. “The biggest emitters need to rapidly decrease their emissions so that adaptation costs for developing countries don’t increase exponentially.”
Campaigners staged multiple environmental protests each day here during the past week-plus of meetings.
Though negotiators for developing nations repeatedly asked for climate finance in the form of grants instead of loans, in the final deal, developed countries stopped short of guaranteeing that could be done.
Adaptation finance
The deal adopted Sunday acknowledges that funding sources for adaptation finance should be public and transparent.
With 2024 going down as the hottest year in history, the world has experienced a slew of climate disasters, ranging from devastating floods in Nepal and Spain, to Hurricane Helene in the Americas, droughts in the Mediterranean and typhoons in the western Pacific region.
Despite the disasters and renewed calls to finance climate-resilient infrastructure across the Global South to guard against rising sea levels and wildfires, funding has been falling short for years, according to a November report from the U.N. Environment Program.
The so-called adaptation projects include developing more advanced disaster warning systems, reforestation, and building catchment mechanisms to ensure water security in regions most affected by climate change.
At COP29, Germany pledged $62 billion, to the adaptation fund; France highlighted its 2023 pledge of $2.9 billion, in adaptation; the U.S. said it pays $3 billion into it each year. A total of 14 Global North countries including Spain, Sweden, South Korea and Switzerland promised to provide $300 million this year, according to a separate negotiation text in the conference.
Despite pledges in recent years, countries didn’t completely deliver on promises. This year, for example, more than $122 million of pledged financial support to poor nations for adapting to climate risk is still up in the air, even though this assistance has been a stated priority at recent COP meetings.
What to expect in Belem?
Countries will be tasked at the Brazil meeting next November with ironing out the details of a global carbon trade system governed by a centralized U.N. regulatory body. They also will try to find a path for wealthy, developed countries to reach the target of $1.3 trillion to support efforts in the Global South to address the consequences of climate disasters. A major component will be reviewing national climate plans, which are due to be submitted in February. Britain, Brazil and the UAE are among the nations that this past week aimed to get ahead of the February deadline and shared some of the goals in their national climate preparation plans.
Harjeet Singh, global engagement director of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, said it is likely that ‘most’ nations will not meet the February deadline to submit their updated plans to address climate change.
The future participation of Argentina is unclear, after hardline President Javier Milei — who has called climate change a hoax — reportedly told his government delegates here to pack their bags and leave the negotiations on the third day of the summit.
Singh was asked by VOA whether wealthy nations would deliver on their promises to lead the effort toward $300 billion in climate finance support, and he responded that the key lies in their ‘willingness, as the money has always been there.’
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As delegates from 175 countries gathered in Busan, South Korea, on Monday for the fifth round of talks aimed at securing an international treaty to curb plastic pollution, lingering divisions cast doubts on whether a final agreement is in sight.
South Korea is hosting the fifth and ostensibly final U.N. Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) meeting this week, after the previous round of talks in Ottawa in April ended without a path forward on capping plastic production.
Instead, the meeting issued a direction for technical groups to focus on chemicals of concern and other measures after petrochemical-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia and China strongly opposed efforts to target plastic production.
The United States raised eyebrows in August when it said it would back plastic production caps in the treaty, putting it in alignment with the EU, Kenya, Peru and other countries in the High Ambition Coalition.
The election of Donald Trump as president, however, has raised questions about that position, as during his first presidency he shunned multilateral agreements and any commitments to slow or stop U.S. oil and petrochemical production.
The U.S. delegation did not answer questions on whether it would reverse its new position to support plastic production caps. But it “supports ensuring that the global instrument addresses plastic products, chemicals used in plastic products, and the supply of primary plastic polymers,” according to a spokesperson for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, said she was confident the talks will end with an agreement, pointing to the communique from the Group of 20 nations at a summit last week calling for a legally binding treaty by the end of this year.
“This is a very powerful message,” Andersen told Reuters in Baku, on the sidelines of the UN climate negotiations, before traveling to Busan for the talks. “We know that it is often down to the wire, but if there is a will, I think we will get there.”
For a Pacific island country like Fiji, a global plastics treaty is crucial to protect its fragile ecosystem and public health, said Sivendra Michael, Fiji’s climate minister and chief climate and plastics negotiator.
He told Reuters on the sidelines of the 29th U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP29) this month that despite not producing any plastic, Fiji is bearing the brunt of its downstream pollution.
“Where do these plastics end up? It ends up in our oceans, in our landfill, in our backyards. And the impact of the plastics breaking down into little substances has detrimental effects, not only on the environment, but on us as individuals, on our health,” he said, noting studies that showed most of the fish consumed in the country was polluted with microplastics.
While supporting an international treaty, the petrochemical industry has been vocal in urging governments to avoid setting mandatory plastic production caps, and focus on solutions on reducing plastic waste, like recycling.
“We would see a treaty successful if it would really put … emphasis on ending plastic pollution. Nothing else should be the focus.” said Martin Jung, president for performance materials at chemical producer BASF.
Previous talks have also discussed searching for forms of funding to help developing countries implement the treaty.
At COP29, France, Kenya and Barbados floated setting up a series of global levies on certain sectors that could help ramp up the amount of money that could be made available to developing countries seeking support to aid their clean energy transition and cope with the increasingly severe impacts of climate change.
The proposal included a fee of $60-$70/ton on primary polymer production, which is on average around 5-7% of the polymer price, seen potentially raising an estimated $25 billion-$35 billion per year.
Industry groups have rejected the idea, saying it will raise consumer prices.
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JOHANNESBURG — South African writer and poet Breyten Breytenbach, a staunch opponent of the former white-minority government’s apartheid policy of racial oppression, has died in Paris, his family announced on Sunday. He was 85.
Breytenbach was a celebrated wordsmith, a leading voice in literature in Afrikaans — an offshoot of Dutch that was developed by white settlers — and a fierce critic of apartheid that was imposed against the country’s Black majority between 1948 and 1990.
He moved to Paris but on a clandestine trip to his home country in 1975 he was arrested on allegations that he assisted Nelson Mandela’s then-outlawed African National Congress group in its sabotage campaign against the white-minority government.
He was convicted of treason and served seven years in prison. French president Francois Mitterrand helped secure his release in 1982.
Upon his release, Breytenbach based himself in Paris, becoming a French citizen, and continued his anti-apartheid activism.
Breytenbach is best known for “Confessions of an Albino Terrorist,” his account of his imprisonment and the events leading to it.
His work addressed themes of exile, identity and justice, his family said in a statement on Sunday.
“Known for his masterful poetry collections in Afrikaans, as well as autobiographical works such as ‘The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist’ and ‘A Season in Paradise,’ he fearlessly addressed themes of exile, identity and justice,” his family said in a statement.
Breytenbach was a poet, novelist, painter and activist whose work touched on and influenced literature and the arts both domestically and abroad, his family added.
He was born in the Western Cape province in 1939 but spent much of his life abroad.
He joined Okhela, an ideological wing of South Africa’s African National Congress, in exile, but remained deeply connected to his South African roots.
He is survived by his wife, Yolande, daughter Daphnée and two grandsons.
Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse.
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New York — With a combined $270 million in worldwide ticket sales, “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” breathed fresh life into a box office that has struggled lately, leading to one of the busiest moviegoing weekends of the year.
Jon M. Chu’s lavish big-budget musical “Wicked,” starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, debuted with $114 million domestically and $164.2 million globally for Universal Pictures, according to studio estimates Sunday. That made it the third-biggest opening weekend of the year, behind only “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Inside Out 2.” It’s also a record for a Broadway musical adaptation.
Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II,” a sequel to his 2000 best picture-winning original, launched with $55.5 million in ticket sales. With a price tag of around $250 million to produce it, “Gladiator II” was a big bet by Paramount Pictures to return to the Coliseum with a largely new cast, led by Denzel Washington and Paul Mescal. While it opened with a touch less than the $60 million predicted in domestic ticket sales, “Gladiator II” has performed well overseas. It added $50.5 million internationally.
The collision of the two movies led to some echoes of the “Barbenheimer” effect of last year, when “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” launched simultaneously. The nickname this time, “Glicked,” wasn’t quite as catchy and the cultural imprint was also notably less. Few people sought out a double feature this time. The domestic grosses in 2023 – $162 million for “Barbie” and $82 million for “Oppenheimer” – were also higher.
“Glicked” falls short of “Barbenheimer”
For Universal, which distributed “Oppenheimer” last year, the weekend was more a triumph of “Wicked” than it was of “Glicked.”
“We saw an opportunity to dominate a weekend and get a very large running start into the Thanksgiving holiday,” said Jim Orr, distribution chief for Universal. “We’re very confident that it will play ridiculously well through the Christmas corridor and into the new year.”
But the counter-programming effect was still potent for “Wicked” and “Gladiator II,” which likewise split broadly along gender lines. And it was again the female-leaning release – “Wicked,” like “Barbie” before it – that easily won the weekend. About 72% of ticket buyers for “Wicked” were female, while 61% of those seeing “Gladiator II” were male.
“Standing on their own, each of these movies may have done pretty much what they did, but it’s hard to know,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. “Raising awareness can indeed lead to an increase in box office. Let’s put it this way: They didn’t hurt each other at all.”
Massive marketing campaigns paved the way for opening weekend
While “Barbenheimer” benefitted enormously from meme-spread word-of-mouth, both “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” leaned on all-out marketing blitzes.
The “Gladiator II” campaign featured everything from a much-debated Airbnb cross-promotion with the actual Colosseum in Rome to simultaneously running a one-minute trailer on more than 4,000 TV networks, radio station and digital platforms.
The “Wicked” onslaught went even further, with pink and green themed “Wickedly Delicious” Starbucks drinks, Stanley mugs and Mattel dolls (some of which led to an awkward recall ). Its stars made appearances at the Met Gala and the Olympics.
“We had roughly 400 global brand partners on ‘Wicked,’ so the campaign was inescapable, said Orr. “And our cast, led by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, worked so hard on this. They were everywhere. They did everything we asked them to do.”
Going into the weekend, box office was down about 11% from last year and some 25% from pre-pandemic times. That meant this week’s two headline films led a much-needed resurgence for theaters. With “Moana 2” releasing Wednesday, Hollywood might be looking at historic sales over the Thanksgiving holiday.
The two films boosted sluggish box office performance
“This weekend’s two strong openers are invigorating a box office that fell apart after a good summer,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter for Franchise Entertainment.
Though “Wicked” will face some direct competition from “Moana 2,” it would seem better set up for a long and lucrative run in theaters than “Gladiator II.” Though some have dinged “Wicked” for running long, at 2 hours and 40 minutes, the film has had mostly stellar reviews. Audiences gave it an “A” on CinemaScore. The reception for “Wicked” has been strong enough that Oscar prognosticators expect it to be a contender for best picture at the Academy Awards, among other categories.
Producers, perhaps sensing a hit, also took the step of splitting “Wicked” in two. Part two, already filmed, is due out next November. Each “Wicked” installation cost around $150 million to make.
“Gladiator II” has also enjoyed good reviews, particularly for Washington’s charismatic performance. Audience scores, though, were weaker, with ticket buyers giving it a “B” on CinemaScore. The film will make up for some of that, however, with robust international sales. It launched in many overseas markets a week ago, and has already accrued $165.5 million internationally.
Coming in a distant third place for the weekend was “Red One,” the Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans holiday movie turned action film. In its second week of release, the Amazon MGM Studios release grossed $13.3 million to bring its two-week global haul to $117 million. At a cost of $250 million to make, “Red One” is the season’s biggest flop, though it could recoup some value for Amazon if it’s more popular once it begins streaming.
Final domestic figures will be released Monday. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:
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“Wicked,” $114 million.
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“Gladiator II,” $55.5 million.
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“Red One,” $13.3 million.
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“Bonhoeffer: Pastor Spy Assassin,” $5.1 million.
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“Venom: The Last Dance,” $4 million.
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“The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” $3.5 million.
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“Heretic,” $2.2 million.
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“The Wild Robot,” $2 million.
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“Smile 2,” $1.1 million.
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“A Real Pain,” $1.1 million.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Planet Earth is parting company with an asteroid that’s been tagging along as a “mini moon” for the past two months.
The harmless space rock will peel away on Monday, overcome by the stronger tug of the sun’s gravity. But it will zip closer for a quick visit in January.
NASA will use a radar antenna to observe the 10-meter (33-foot) asteroid then. That should deepen scientists’ understanding of the object known as 2024 PT5, quite possibly a boulder that was blasted off the moon by an impacting, crater-forming asteroid.
While not technically a moon — NASA stresses it was never captured by Earth’s gravity and fully in orbit — it’s “an interesting object” worthy of study.
The astrophysicist brothers who identified the asteroid’s “mini moon behavior,” Raul and Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of Complutense University of Madrid, have collaborated with telescopes in the Canary Islands for hundreds of observations so far.
Currently more than 3.5 million kilometers (2 million miles) away, the object is too small and faint to see without a powerful telescope. It will pass as close as 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) of Earth in January, maintaining a safe distance before it zooms farther into the solar system while orbiting the sun, not to return until 2055. That’s almost five times farther than the moon.
First spotted in August, the asteroid began its semi jog around Earth in late September, after coming under the grips of Earth’s gravity and following a horseshoe-shaped path. By the time it returns next year, it will be moving too fast — more than double its speed from September — to hang around, said Raul de la Fuente Marcos.
NASA will track the asteroid for more than a week in January using the Goldstone solar system radar antenna in California’s Mojave Desert, part of the Deep Space Network.
Current data suggest that during its 2055 visit, the sun-circling asteroid will once again make a temporary and partial lap around Earth.
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BRISBANE, Australia — Australian Elvis Smylie shot a 4-under 67 to win the 54-hole Australian PGA on Sunday by two shots after a final round shootout with his compatriot and former mentor Cameron Smith.
Smylie finished on 14-under 199, two ahead of Smith who had a 2-under final round 69. Smith’s LIV tour teammate Mark Leishman and Australian Anthony Quayle shared third place on 11 under at the par-71 Royal Queensland.
Heavy rain showers and an unplayable course on Friday forced the second round to be abandoned and made the joint Australasian PGA and European Tour event a 54-hole tournament.
Five years ago Smylie, the son of former Australian tennis pro Liz Smylie. won the Cameron Smith Scholarship which allowed him to spend a week at Smith’s Florida home where he was able to learn to live and practice as a PGA Tour professional.
Now 22, Smylie started Sunday’s final round tied atop the leaderboard with Smith at 10 under par.
Smith was the 2022 British Open winner at St. Andrews and previously won the Australian PGA in 2017, 2018 and 2022. Smylie had a breakthrough win in last month’s West Australian Open.
The pair traded birdies until the sixth hole when there was a two-shot turnaround when Smylie birdied and Smith bogeyed. Smylie, who led after a first round 65, had four birdies in his first seven holes and played his outward nine in four-under 32, turning at 14 under.
He had good ups and downs under pressure at the par four 10th and 12th holes, using his three wood to bunt the ball onto the greens from close range.
With a bogey at the ninth hole, Smith turned in 35, having dropped back into a second place tie at 11-under with Quayle, Mark Leishman and Australia David Micheluzzi.
Smith had another bogey on the par-4 14th which dropped him back to 10 under while Quayle finished with an 8-under 63 to take an early clubhouse lead at 11-under.
Smylie was under pressure at the par-5 15th when he hit his second well to the left of the green. Again he scrambled to save par while Smith birdied to move back to 11-under, cutting the lead to three shots.
Smith trimmed Smylie’s lead to two when he holed out from off the green for birdie at the par-3 17th, winning a large cheer from the crowd on the tournament’s party hole. Smylie’s birdie putt from six feet slipped past.
Smylie held his nerve when he put his tee shot on the 18th into light rough with the broad trunk of a tree between him and the green 186 meters away. He curled his around the tree, but into a greenside bunker.
Smylie played a nerveless shot from the sand to three feet and holed out for par, finishing with 11 consecutive pars. He managed to get up and down from precarious positions six times on the back nine.
“It’s a dream come true,” Smylie said. “I won’t forget this day playing with Cam and [Leishman].
“My short game was great; I definitely saved myself.”
The Australian PGA is the first event of the 2025 European Tour season.
Next week, many of the same players will travel to Melbourne for the Australian Open, also on the European Tour. It is being played concurrently with the Women’s Australian Open at famed sandbelt courses Kingston Heath and Victoria.
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JAYAPURA, Indonesia — On the southeastern coast of the city of Jayapura, Petronela Merauje walked from house to house in her floating village inviting women to join her the next morning in the surrounding mangrove forests.
Merauje and the women of her village, Enggros, practice the tradition of Tonotwiyat, which literally means “working in the forest.” For six generations, women from the 700-strong Papuan population there have worked among the mangroves collecting clams, fishing and gathering firewood.
“The customs and culture of Papuans, especially those of us in Enggros village, is that women are not given space and place to speak in traditional meetings, so the tribal elders provide the mangrove forest as our land,” Merauje said. It’s “a place to find food, a place for women to tell stories, and women are active every day and earn a living every day.”
The forest is a short 13 kilometers away from downtown Jayapura, the capital city of Papua, Indonesia’s easternmost province. It’s been known as the women’s forest since 2016, when Enggros’ leader officially changed its name. Long before that, it had already been a space just for women. But as pollution, development and biodiversity loss shrink the forest and stunt plant and animal life, those in the village fear an important part of their traditions and livelihoods will be lost. Efforts to shield it from devastation have begun but are still relatively small.
Women have their own space — but it’s shrinking
One early morning, Merauje and her 15-year-old daughter took a small motorboat toward the forest. Stepping off on Youtefa Bay, mangrove trees all around, they stood chest-deep in the water with buckets in hand, wiggling their feet in the mud to find bia noor, or soft-shell clams. The women collect these for food, along with other fish.
“The women’s forest is our kitchen,” said Berta Sanyi, another woman from Enggros village.
That morning, another woman joined the group looking for firewood, hauling dry logs onto her boat. And three other women joined on a rowboat.
Women from the next village, Tobati, also have a women’s forest nearby. The two Indigenous villages are only 2 kilometers apart, and they’re culturally similar, with Enggros growing out of Tobati’s population decades ago. In the safety of the forest, women of both villages talk about issues at home with one another and share grievances away from the ears of the rest of the village.
Alfred Drunyi, the leader of Drunyi tribe in Enggros, said that having dedicated spaces for women and men is a big part of the village’s culture. There are tribal fines if a man trespasses and enters the forest, and the amount is based on how guilty the community judges the person to be.
“They should pay it with our main treasure, the traditional beads, maybe with some money. But the fines should be given to the women,” Drunyi said.
But Sanyi, 65, who’s been working in the forest since she was just 17, notes that threats to the space come from elsewhere.
Development on the bay has turned acres of forest into large roads, including a 700-meter bridge into Jayapura that passes through Enggros’ pier. Jayapura’s population has exploded in recent decades, and around 400,000 people live in the city — the largest on the island.
In turn, the forest has shrunk. Nearly six decades ago, the mangrove forest in Youtefa Bay was about 514 hectares. Estimates say it’s now less than half that.
“I am so sad when I see the current situation of the forest,” Sanyi said, “because this is where we live.” She said many residents, including her own children, are turning to work in Jayapura instead of maintaining traditions.
Pollution puts traditions and health at risk
Youtefa Bay, where the sea’s brackish water and five rivers in Papua meet, serves as the gathering bowl for the waste that runs through the rivers as they cross through Jayapura.
Plastic bottles, tarpaulins and pieces of wood are seen stuck between the mangrove roots. The water around the mangrove forest is polluted and dark.
After dozens of years being able to feel the clams on the bay with her feet, Sanyi said she now often has to feel through trash first. And once she removes the trash and gets to the muddy ground where the clams live, there are many fewer than there used to be.
Paula Hamadi, 53, said that she never saw the mangrove forest as bad as it is now. For years, she’s been going to the forest almost every day during the low tide in the morning to search for clams.
“It used to be different,” Hamadi said. “From 8 a.m. to 8:30 in the morning, I could get one can. But now, I only get trash.”
The women used to be able to gather enough clams to sell some at the nearest village, but now their small hauls are reserved for eating with their families.
A study in 2020 found that high concentrations of lead from waste from homes and businesses were found at several points in the bay. Lead can be toxic to humans and aquatic organisms, and the study suggests it has contaminated several species that are often consumed by the people of Youtefa Bay.
Other studies also showed that populations of shellfish and crab in the bay were declining, said John Dominggus Kalor, a lecturer on fisheries and marine sciences at Cenderawasih University.
“The threats related to heavy metal contamination, microplastics, and public health are high,” Kalor said. “In the future, it will have an impact on health.”
Some are trying to save the land
Some of the mangrove areas have been destroyed for development, leading to degradation throughout the forest.
Mangroves can absorb the shocks of extreme weather events, like tsunamis, and provide ecosystems with the needed environment to thrive. They also serve social and cultural functions for the women, whose work is mostly done between the mangroves.
“In the future people will say that there used to be a women’s forest here” that disappeared because of development and pollution, said Kalor.
Various efforts to preserve it have been made, including the residents of Enggros village themselves. Merauje and other women from Enggros are trying to start mangrove tree nurseries and, where possible, plant new mangrove trees in the forest area.
“We plant new trees, replace the dead ones, and we also clean up the trash around Youtefa Bay,” Merauje said. “I do that with my friends to conserve, to maintain this forest.”
Beyond efforts to reforest it, Kalor said there also needs to be guarantees that more of the forest won’t be flattened for development in the future.
There is no regional regulation to protect Youtefa Bay and specifically the women’s forests, but Kalor thinks it would help prevent deforestation in the future.
“That should no longer be done in our bay,” he said.
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BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA — Argentina produces some of the best football players on the planet and has three World Cup titles to prove it.
Off the field, though, a major power struggle is transpiring between Argentina President Javier Milei and Argentine Football Association president Claudio Tapia.
Tapia opposes Milei’s effort to enable football clubs to become sports limited companies, inspired by the model of the English Premier League. He wants clubs to continue to belong to members — not to private shareholders.
The government threatened to intervene in AFA due to alleged irregularities in Tapia’s reelection to a third term.
Amid this struggle, FIFA and CONMEBOL warned that any government interference in the management of AFA will result in its disaffiliation, and its teams will be marginalized from all competitions.
What did Milei’s decree say?
Milei, a libertarian economist who has pushed economic deregulation, signed a decree last December enabling football clubs organized as civil associations to transform into public limited companies. The former do not pursue a commercial purpose, while PLCs seek profit.
The government also gave sports associations, federations and confederations a period of one year from August to modify their statutes and accept this new form of organization.
The new model is optional and clubs that want to transform into sports corporations will require the vote of two-thirds of their members present at an extraordinary assembly.
Milei said that the time has come to end “poor socialism” in football and predicted a windfall of investment.
What does the federation say?
AFA says its statutes prohibit the affiliation and participation in its tournaments of sports corporations. It won a court order blocking the decree. That ruling was appealed by the government and the Supreme Court will have the last word.
“The clubs need to fulfill the function they fulfill as the civil associations that they are,” Tapia said. “I am convinced that that is its essence. Most clubs have an established statute that civil associations are not to be changed.”
If a club decides to become a public limited company, it will be disaffiliated, AFA warned.
An imperfect model?
Argentina is a renowned producer of football talent — Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona start the list.
Despite the success developing young players, most clubs are forced to let them go earlier to be able to financially sustain not only their professional team, but also other sports and social activities in the club.
In Argentine football “we are 40 years behind,” said Guillermo Tofoni, a FIFA agent who is also an adviser in Milei’s government. “It is played any day, at any time, the tournaments (formats) change, the corruption of the referees. All this combination means that the television networks do not pay what they deserve, and a vicious and non-virtuous circle is generated.”
Argentine football receives less than $100 million a year for television rights, far below the billions of dollars shared by English Premier League clubs.
According to Tofoni, with genuine private capital investment “clubs can keep their players until they are 24, 25 years old, and sell them to the European market when it is convenient, not because they need to.”
Are clubs willing to try it?
So far, Estudiantes La Plata and Talleres de Córdoba are the only clubs publicly in favor of allowing private capital to enter football.
“I am pragmatic, I understand that soccer is a business. They leave us out of business, Argentina, Argentine football is out of business,” Estudiantes president Juan Sebastián Verón said. “Let us not be afraid of growth, of the new, which can take us to a very important place in the future.”
The former Argentina midfielder recently signed a pre-agreement with the American businessman Foster Gillett, who will invest $150 million in the club.
In turn, the American investor will benefit from future sales of players, the commercial exploitation of the stadium’s name and profits from competing in international tournaments. The agreement must be endorsed by the members of “Pincha” in an extraordinary assembly.
Tapia’s reelection bad news for Milei?
Amid the dispute, Tapia called an election of new AFA authorities a year early. As the only candidate, Tapia was reelected to a third term on October 17, thus ensuring he would continue in office until 2028 — a year after the end of Milei’s term.
“It looks like Venezuela with (President Nicolás) Maduro celebrated Christmas earlier,” said Milei, who a few days later signed a decree that took away social security benefits from AFA.
In turn, the General Inspection of Justice, a body dependent on the Ministry of Justice and in charge of regulating civil associations, challenged Tapia’s reelection and threatened to intervene in the AFA.
However, a civil appeals court upheld the October vote.
What does FIFA and CONMEBOL say?
Both entities are closely following the dispute. In official notes, they indicated that only the local federation can set the statutory framework of the clubs and warned that state interference is a cause for disaffiliation.
“The AFA, and only the AFA, is, in view of the legal framework of FIFA, the only entity competent to decide, through its legitimate associative governing bodies, aspects relating to the legal nature of the clubs affiliated to the same,” FIFA said.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino also congratulated Tapia on his reelection and thanked him for “all his efforts, work and important contribution to the development of our sport.”
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