Alexey Navalny wrote he knew he would die in prison in new memoir
new york — Russian dissident Alexey Navalny, who was President Vladimir Putin’s top political opponent before his death in February, believed he would die in prison, according to his posthumous memoir, which will be released October 22.
The New Yorker published excerpts from the book Friday, featuring writing from Navalny’s prison diary and earlier.
“I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here,” he wrote on March 22, 2022.
“There will not be anybody to say goodbye to … All anniversaries will be celebrated without me. I’ll never see my grandchildren.”
Navalny had been serving a 19-year prison sentence on “extremism” charges in an Arctic penal colony.
His death on February 16 at age 47 drew widespread condemnation, with many blaming Putin.
Navalny was arrested in January 2021 upon returning to Russia after suffering a major health emergency from being poisoned in 2020.
“The only thing we should fear is that we will surrender our homeland to be plundered by a gang of liars, thieves, and hypocrites,” he wrote on January 17, 2022.
The excerpts capture the loneliness of imprisonment, but also a touch of humor.
For instance, on July 1, 2022, Navalny outlined his typical day: wake up at 6 a.m., breakfast at 6:20 a.m. and start work at 6:40 a.m.
“At work, you sit for seven hours at the sewing machine on a stool below knee height,” he wrote.
“After work, you continue to sit for a few hours on a wooden bench under a portrait of Putin. This is called ‘disciplinary activity.'”
The book, entitled Patriot, will be released by U.S. publisher Knopf, which is also planning a Russian version.
“It’s impossible to read Navalny’s prison diary without being outraged by the tragedy of his suffering, and by his death,” wrote New Yorker editor David Remnick.
In the last excerpt published in the magazine, dated January 17, 2024, Navalny responds to the question asked to him by his fellow inmates and prison guards: Why did he return to Russia?
“I don’t want to give up my country or betray it. If your convictions mean something, you must be prepared to stand up for them and make sacrifices if necessary,” he said.
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Meta removes fake accounts in Moldova ahead of presidential election
STOCKHOLM — Meta Platforms said on Friday that it had removed a network of group accounts targeting Russian speakers in Moldova ahead of the country’s October 20 election, for violation of the company’s policy on fake accounts.
Authorities in Moldova, an ex-Soviet state lying between Romania and Ukraine, said they had blocked dozens of Telegram channels and chat bots linked to a drive to pay voters to cast “no” ballots in a referendum on European Union membership held alongside the presidential election.
Pro-European President Maia Sandu is seeking a second term in the election and called the referendum on joining the 27-member bloc as the cornerstone of her policies.
The fake Meta accounts posted criticism of Sandu, pro-EU politicians and close ties between Moldova and Romania, and supported pro-Russia parties in Moldova, the company said.
The company said its operation centered on about a dozen fictitious, Russian-language news brands posing as independent entities with presence on multiple internet services, including Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram, as well as Telegram, OK.ru and TikTok.
Meta said it removed seven Facebook accounts, 23 pages, one group and 20 accounts on Instagram for violating its “coordinated inauthentic behavior policy.”
About 4,200 accounts followed one or more of the 23 pages and about 335,000 accounts followed one or more of the Instagram accounts, Meta said.
In Chisinau, the National Investigation Inspectorate said it had blocked 15 channels of the popular Telegram messaging app and 95 chat bots offering voters money. Users were told the channels “violated local laws” on political party financing.
It had traced the accounts to supporters of fugitive businessman Ilan Shor — members of the banned party bearing his name or the “Victory” electoral bloc he had set up in its place from his base of exile in Moscow.
Moldovan police said on Thursday that they searched homes of leaders linked to Shor as part of a criminal investigation into election-meddling. Police have said tens of thousands of voters were paid off via accounts in a Russian bank to derail the vote.
Shor was sentenced to 15 years in jail in absentia last year in connection with the 2014 disappearance of $1 billion from Moldovan banks. He denies allegations of trying to bribe voters.
Sandu accuses Moscow of trying to topple her government while Moscow has accused her of fomenting “Russophobia.”
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Despite tariffs, China drives toward dominating EV market all over world
washington — As China pursues tit-for-tat actions against the European Union in response to tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles, Beijing’s drive for global dominance in the automotive sector continues unabated.
Over the past year, companies such as EV giant BYD and others have made inroads in markets from Southeast Asia to Latin America and Africa, even as they face tariffs of up to 100% in Canada and the United States, and up to 45% in the European Union.
Chinese EV companies have announced plans to invest millions to build new factories in Thailand and Brazil, and they have opened showrooms in Zambia, Kenya and South Africa.
And while most Chinese EV makers say they will continue to sell cars in Europe and not boost prices to offset the tariffs, analysts say it makes sense that they are equally focused, if not more so, on markets in the developing world as well.
Ryan Berg, director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the EV market is like a balloon that is fully blown up.
“When countries like the U.S., the EU, Canada and others squeeze [the balloon], the air is going to go elsewhere. Well, the air right now is going to go to the developing world countries that haven’t put the tariffs on Chinese cars in the first place,” Berg said.
Bangkok, Brazil and Ethiopia
In Thailand, companies such as Great Wall and BYD are leading the way. BYD opened a production facility in Thailand in July and its company chairman, Wang Chuanfu, said BYD has already captured 40% of the market for EVs. Earlier this year, Great Wall became the first Chinese EV company to mass-produce electric vehicles overseas through its production facilities in Thailand.
In addition to Thailand, BYD has also captured a large market share in Singapore and Malaysia. According to government statistics, the EV behemoth ranked as Singapore’s second-most popular car brand by sales in the first half of 2024. BYD ranked among the top 10 car brands in Malaysia when compared with all registered vehicles, following BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
In Latin America, BYD plans to launch a partnership with Uber that aims to bring 100,000 Chinese-made EVs to Uber drivers globally. In addition, BYD is planning a new auto factory in eastern Brazil to come online in 2025. Both BYD and Great Wall have local R&D, production and sales centers in Brazil.
John Helveston, an assistant professor in engineering management at George Washington University, said from a business perspective, it makes sense for Chinese EV companies to move to markets where there is more room for profit.
“I mean, just like we have Toyota and GM and Ford and Volkswagen … these companies like BYD very much are also global companies,” Helveston told VOA. “They want to expand just like any other successful business.”
Paul Nantulya, a China specialist at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, said Africa provides huge market opportunities for Chinese EV companies.
That opportunity, however, comes with its challenges. As in other countries, there is still a lack of infrastructure for EVs in Africa such as charging stations.
Nantulya, who attended the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), said Beijing and Africa are building long-term relationships, particularly when it comes to green energy and EV sectors.
About “122 green energy projects have been implemented since the last FOCAC, so between 2021 and 2024, 122 green energy projects have been implemented across the African continent across 40 countries. So, the demand is huge, and it is steady,” he told VOA.
“Chinese state-owned enterprises that are in this sector have been making a very, very aggressive push in developing economies … you know, the uptick of that technology in Africa is extremely high,” he said.
In March, China partnered with Ethiopia to announce an ambitious plan to shift toward electric mobility. The plan aims to introduce nearly half a million electric vehicles in Ethiopia over the next decade.
Mutual benefits
All three analysts said Beijing’s penetration of global markets is boosted by the economic benefits that China offers in exchange. For example, Helveston said, many countries are willing to “leverage market access” in exchange for improved infrastructure and technology.
Chinese companies have built roads, trains, schools and hospitals in some of the poorest countries in the world, and developing countries see “automotive trade [as] just building on top of those relationships that have already been there a while,” he said. “It’s a very transactional relationship.”
CSIS’s Berg said countries in Latin America “have been really keen to court Chinese investment in technological industries like the EV industry.” He noted that Latin American countries see the EV industry as “reliable” and “plentiful in terms of job opportunities.”
Nantulya added that Chinese technology is seen as a way to help African countries address energy challenges such as blackouts.
“When you look at it from the African perspective, [China’s presence] is helping them diversify their energy grids, which is a significant issue. It’s also contributing to improving their energy mix,” Nantulya said.
China has taken a proactive approach by building large infrastructure projects in developing countries, whereas the United States has not yet undertaken projects of similar scale, he said.
“I think that we’re looking at some pretty big shifts in, let’s say, 10 years from now with what the global situation might be. … A lot of these countries might be much more comfortable working with China than the U.S.,” Helveston said.
Washington, however, is not sitting back. At the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in 2022, the United States committed to $55 billion in pledges over three years that included investments in renewable energy infrastructure, clean energy and efforts to mitigate climate change.
Berg said geopolitics also is a motivating factor in Beijing’s push into developing countries in South America.
“They are in their geopolitical competition with [the United States], engaging in reciprocity … showing that they can be extremely active in some ways and especially in the economic domain in our neighborhood,” he said.
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US lawmakers seek answers from telecoms on Chinese hacking report
WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers asked AT&T, Verizon Communications, and Lumen Technologies on Friday to answer questions after a report that Chinese hackers accessed the networks of U.S. broadband providers.
The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday hackers obtained information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, and said the three companies were among the telecoms whose networks were breached.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican, and the top Democrat on the committee Representative Frank Pallone along with Representatives Bob Latta and Doris Matsui asked the three companies to answer questions. They are seeking a briefing and detailed answers by next Friday.
“There is a growing concern regarding the cybersecurity vulnerabilities embedded in U.S. telecommunications networks,” the lawmakers said. They are asking for details on what information was seized and when the companies learned about the intrusion.
AT&T and Lumen declined to comment, while Verizon did not immediately comment.
It was unclear when the hack occurred.
Hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized U.S. requests for communications data, the Journal said. It said the hackers had also accessed other tranches of internet traffic.
China’s foreign ministry said on Sunday that it was not aware of the attack described in the report but said the United States had “concocted a false narrative” to “frame” China in the past.
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Taylor Swift, Hulk Hogan. Can celebrities sway US voters?
From pop superstar Taylor Swift to former wrestler Hulk Hogan, celebrity endorsements have been a feature of this year’s U.S. presidential race. But whether they will have any kind of impact on the election is difficult to predict. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
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Smithsonian and NASA present exhibit that explores ever-changing Earth
This month, [October 8] the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History opened “NASA’s Earth Information Center” an exhibition that gives visitors a firsthand look at the forces shaping our planet. Andrei Dziarkach has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Artem Kohan
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Nobel Prize winner Han Kang’s books fly off the shelves in South Korea
seoul, south korea — South Koreans flocked to bookstores Friday and crashed websites in a frenzy to snap up copies of the work of novelist Han Kang in her home country, after her unexpected win of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature.
However, the author herself was keeping out of the limelight.
The country’s largest bookstore chain, Kyobo Book Centre, said sales of her books had rocketed on Friday, with stocks almost immediately selling out and set to be in short supply for the near future.
“This is the first time a Korean has received a Nobel Prize in Literature, so I was amazed,” said Yoon Ki-heon, a 32-year-old visitor at a bookstore in central Seoul.
“South Korea had a poor achievement in winning Nobel Prizes, so I was surprised by news that (a writer of) non-English books, which were written in Korean, won such a big prize.”
Soon after Thursday’s announcement, some bookstore websites could not be accessed due to heavy traffic. Out of the current 10 bestsellers at Kyobo, nine were Han’s books on Friday morning, according to its website.
Han’s father, well-regarded author Han Seung-won, said the translation of her novel The Vegetarian, her major international breakthrough, had led to her winning the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 and now the Nobel prize.
“My daughter’s writing is very delicate, beautiful and sad,” Han Seung-won said.
“So, how you translate that sad sentence into a foreign language will determine whether you win … It seems the translator was the right person to translate the unique flavor of Korean language.”
Han’s other books address painful chapters of South Korean history, including Human Acts which examines the 1980 massacre of hundreds of civilians by the South Korean military in the city of Gwangju.
Another novel, We Do Not Part, looks at the fallout of the 1948-54 massacre on Jeju island, when an estimated 10% of the island’s population were killed in an anti-communist purge.
“I really hope souls of the victims and survivors could be healed from pain and trauma through her book,” said Kim Chang-beom, head of an association for the bereaved families of the Jeju massacre.
Park Gang-bae, a director at a foundation that honors the victims and supports the bereaved families and survivors of the Gwangju massacre, said he was “jubilant and moved ” by her win.
“The protagonists in her book (Human Acts) are people we meet and live with every day, on every corner here, so this is deeply moving,” Park said.
Han’s father told reporters on Friday that she may continue to shun the limelight after giving no separate comments or interviews and eschewing media scrutiny since Thursday’s win.
“She said given the fierce Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine wars and people dying every day, how could she celebrate and hold a joyous press conference?” her father said.
Han Kang received the news of her win about 10 to 15 minutes before the announcement, her father said, and was so surprised that she thought it might be a scam at one point.
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Hurricane Milton disrupts Yom Kippur plans for Jews in Florida
WINTER PARK, Florida — Many Jews worldwide will mark Yom Kippur in fasting and prayer at their synagogues this weekend.
But for the faithful in Florida, destructive Hurricane Milton has disrupted plans for observing the Day of Atonement — the holiest day of the year in the Jewish faith — that begins Friday evening and caps off the High Holy Days that began with Rosh Hashana on October 2.
Across the storm-threatened areas, rabbis and their congregants spent part of the Days of Awe — the span between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur — protecting their homes and synagogues as Milton churned off the coast, spiraling into a Category 5 storm. Many — though not all — evacuated, heeding the voluntary and mandatory orders, and found safekeeping for their synagogues’ Torah scrolls and themselves.
Milton hit Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday as a Category 3 cyclone, with damaging winds, heavy rains and tornadoes. By Thursday, the storm had moved eastward into the Atlantic Ocean.
Why this rabbi decided against evacuating before storm
Rabbi Yitzchok Minkowicz evacuated most of his family ahead of the storm, but chose to ride it out with his son, also a rabbi, at Chabad Lubavitch of Southwest Florida near Fort Myers. The center is hosting people displaced by the storm, including doctors, first responders and elderly who cannot evacuate.
It’s important to be “with the people and for the people,” and provide emotional and spiritual support, he said as the storm approached.
Near midnight Thursday, the Chabad center and the rest of the neighborhood lost power, said Minkowicz, making them among the millions without it. The center was spared from the storm surge, but homes and other buildings in the area were not, he said.
“Our pressing need is for Power so that we can help our community & hold Yom Kippur services,” Minkowicz told The Associated Press via email Thursday. “We’re praying for this to be resolved asap.”
The center planned to host Yom Kippur observances regardless of the storm. He said it was similar two years ago, when the holy day followed the major hurricane, Ian.
“Yom Kippur is a day that you open up your soul to God and you totally connect with God,” Minkowicz said. “When you go through a hurricane, anything materialistic is not important. They’re already in that zone where they’re totally focused on God.”
Congregation Beth Am in the Tampa Bay area also lost power and plans to hold Yom Kippur services online, said Rabbi Jason Rosenberg of the Reform synagogue.
“It’s important to keep perspective. Having a service online is not what anybody wants, but it could’ve been a lot worse,” he said. “This feels like a blessing.”
The storm underscored one of Yom Kippur’s annual reflections.
An implicit question, he said before Milton’s landfall, is “If this was going to be your last year on earth, how would you want to act differently? … When you’ve got a historical storm, a potentially life-threatening and life-altering storm bearing down on you, that message is really present.”
Milton disrupts Yom Kippur and October 7 commemoration
Like most of her congregants, Rabbi Nicole Luna had evacuated after helping secure Temple Beth El in Fort Myers, and entrusting several Torah scrolls to congregants should the threatened surge devastate the synagogue.
While the congregation braved Hurricanes Irma in 2017 and Ian in 2022, Milton’s timing hit especially hard, having already forced the postponement of community-wide commemoration of Hamas attacking Israel on October 7, 2023. The war that followed is ongoing.
“It just feels like too much for our hearts to carry right now,” Luna said from Miami ahead of the storm. “It’s all very heavy.”
After the storm passed through, Luna told her congregation that their synagogue had emerged undamaged, though it lost power.
She announced plans for a service via Zoom on Friday evening, and in-person services Saturday.
“We hope by Saturday more traffic lights will be restored but please only come if you can safely navigate the roads,” she said in her message.
Luna said she was grateful for the “big outpouring of support” she received from fellow rabbis across the East Coast of Florida, who were opening their temples for the holidays to evacuees and have emphasized they can come as they are since few grabbed “holiday-appropriate clothing” in the rush to escape Milton’s fury.
The Chabad of Southwest Broward near Fort Lauderdale is hosting several evacuees from areas most affected by the storm, ranging from a mother with her newborn to an elderly couple, said director Rabbi Pinny Andrusier. They are invited to spend Yom Kippur with the Cooper City-based group, including sharing kosher meals before and after the day of fasting.
“We were spared, thank God,” Andrusier said of the storm. “We’ve been able to open up our doors” for those in the hurricane zone.
Synagogue skips holding Yom Kippur services
Hundreds of Jewish families on Longboat Key, a barrier island off Sarasota Bay, won’t be able to observe Yom Kippur in their synagogue for the very first time in their 45-year history, said Shepard Englander, CEO of The Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee.
Access to the island, specifically the John Ringling Causeway, was closed ahead of the storm. The congregation decided it wasn’t worth risking Milton’s might for Day of Atonement services. They had celebrated Rosh Hashana in their building despite a number of nearby homes being damaged by Hurricane Helene, which made landfall last month.
Englander said he and his family evacuated from their home on a riverbank outside Sarasota and were hunkered down at a friend’s home inland. From there, he was trying to make sure community members from Longboat Key and other temples that won’t have services can say their prayers and break their daylong Yom Kippur fast at a newly constructed conference center in Sarasota with food items like blintzes, bagels, cream cheese and smoked salmon.
Ahead of the storm, people were scattered in the region at emergency shelters or staying with family or friends, Englander said.
“It’s in difficult times that you really understand the power of community,” he said. “And this is a caring, tight-knit, generous Jewish community.”
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Prayer camps in Nigeria attract ‘miracle seekers’
The power of simple prayer to heal illness is not clear, according to scientists, and is difficult to study. Whatever your faith, when you’re sick, you should seek treatment from a doctor. But in Nigeria, some people choose spiritual healers and miracle cures over orthodox medicine and hospitals. That creates some dangerous situations. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja.
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DC’s Hirshhorn Museum bustles with bright Brazilian art
The vibrant world of yellow-skinned giants, surreal landscapes and a massive mechanical zoetrope have taken over the Hirshhorn Museum in the largest U.S. showcase of work by Brazilian twin brothers OSGEMEOS. It’s the most comprehensive display of the siblings’ art ever presented in the United States. Maxim Adams has the story. Camera: Sergii Dogotar.
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South Korean author Han Kang wins Nobel literature prize for her ‘intense poetic prose’
your ad hereA rare comet brightens the night skies in October
NEW YORK — Prepare to spot a rare, bright comet.
The space rock is slinging toward Earth from the outer reaches of the solar system and will make its closest pass Saturday. It should be visible through the end of October, clear skies permitting.
Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas should be bright enough to see with the naked eye, but binoculars and telescopes will give a better view.
“It’ll be this fuzzy circle with a long tail stretching away from it,” said Sally Brummel, planetarium manager at the Bell Museum in Minnesota.
What is a comet?
Comets are frozen leftovers from the solar system’s formation billions of years ago. They heat up as they swing toward the sun, releasing their characteristic streaming tails.
In 2023, a green comet that last visited Earth 50,000 years ago zoomed by the planet again. Other notable flybys included Neowise in 2020, and Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake in the mid to late 1990s.
Where did comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas come from?
The comet, also designated C/2023 A3, was discovered last year and is named for the observatories in China and South Africa that spied it.
It came from what’s known as the Oort Cloud well beyond Pluto. After making its closest approach about 71 million kilometers of Earth, it won’t return for another 80,000 years — assuming it survives the trip.
Several comets are discovered every year, but many burn up near the sun or linger too far away to be visible without special equipment, according to Larry Denneau, a lead researcher with the Atlas telescope that helped discover the comet.
How to view the comet
Those hoping to spot comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas should venture outside about an hour after sunset on a clear night and look to the west.
The comet should be visible from both the northern and southern hemispheres.
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One in 8 girls and women raped or sexually assaulted before age 18, UNICEF says
UNITED NATIONS — More than 370 million girls and women alive today, or one in every eight worldwide, experienced rape or sexual assault before the age of 18, the United Nations children’s agency said Wednesday.
The number rises to 650 million, or one in five, when taking into account “non-contact” forms of sexual violence, such as online or verbal abuse, UNICEF reported, in what it called the first global survey of the problem.
The report said that while girls and women were worst affected, 240 million to 310 million boys and men, or around 1 in 11, have experienced rape or sexual assault during childhood.
“The scale of this human rights violation is overwhelming, and it’s been hard to fully grasp because of stigma, challenges in measurement, and limited investment in data collection,” UNICEF said in releasing the report.
It comes ahead of an inaugural Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children in Colombia next month.
UNICEF said its findings highlight the urgent need for intensified global action, including by strengthening laws and helping children recognize and report sexual violence.
UNICEF said sexual violence cuts across geographical, cultural, and economic boundaries, but sub-Saharan Africa has the highest number of victims, with 79 million girls and women, or 22% affected. Eastern and South-Eastern Asia follow with 75 million, or 8%.
In its data for women and girls, UNICEF estimated 73 million, or 9%, were affected in Central and Southern Asia; 68 million, or 14%, in Europe and Northern America; 45 million, or 18%, in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 29 million, or 15%, in Northern Africa and Western Asia.
Oceania, with 6 million, had the highest number affected by percentage, at 34%.
Risks were higher, rising to 1 in 4, in “fragile settings,” including those with weak institutions, U.N. peacekeeping forces, or large numbers of refugees, the report found.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell called sexual violence against children “a stain on our moral conscience.”
“It inflicts deep and lasting trauma, often by someone the child knows and trusts, in places where they should feel safe.”
UNICEF said most childhood sexual violence occurs during adolescence, especially between ages 14 and 17, and those who suffer it face higher risks of sexually transmitted diseases, substance abuse and mental health issues.
“(T)he impact is further compounded when children delay disclosing their experiences … or keep the abuse secret altogether,” UNICEF said.
It said increased investment in data collection was needed to capture the full scale the problem, given persistent data gaps, particularly on boys’ experiences.
UNICEF said it based its estimates of girls’ and women’s experiences on nationally representative surveys conducted between 2010 and 2022 in 120 countries and areas. It said estimates for boys and men were derived from a broader range of data sources and applied some indirect methods.
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Colombia’s Caribbean islands on front line of war on climate change
As representatives of the signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity prepare to meet in Cali, Colombia, this month, residents of some Colombian islands in the Caribbean are calling for action because rising seas are threatening their homes, families, and way of life. Austin Landis traveled to Santa Cruz del Islote to hear their story. Camera: Jorge Calle.
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Wimbledon tennis tournament replaces line judges with AI in break with tradition
LONDON — That long-held Wimbledon tradition of line judges dressed in elegant uniforms is no more.
The All England Club announced Wednesday that artificial intelligence will be used to make the “out” and “fault” calls at the championships from 2025.
Wimbledon organizers said the decision to adopt live electronic line calling was made following extensive testing at the 2024 tournament and “builds on the existing ball-tracking and line-calling technology that has been in place for many years.”
“We consider the technology to be sufficiently robust and the time is right to take this important step in seeking maximum accuracy in our officiating,” said Sally Bolton, chief executive of the All England Club. “For the players, it will offer them the same conditions they have played under at a number of other events on tour.”
Bolton said Wimbledon had a responsibility to “balance tradition and innovation.”
“Line umpires have played a central role in our officiating setup at the championships for many decades,” she said, “and we recognize their valuable contribution and thank them for their commitment and service.”
Line-calling technology has long been used at Wimbledon and other tennis tournaments to call whether serves are in or out.
The All England Club also said Wednesday that the ladies’ and gentlemen’s singles finals will be scheduled to take place at the later time of 4 p.m. local time on the second Saturday and Sunday, respectively — and after doubles finals on those days.
Bolton said the moves have been made to ensure the day of the finals “builds towards the crescendo of the ladies’ and gentlemen’s singles finals, with our champions being crowned in front of the largest possible worldwide audience.”
your ad hereBaker, Hassabis, Jumper win 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
STOCKHOLM — Scientists David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the award-giving body said on Wednesday, for their work on the structure of proteins.
The prize, widely regarded as among the most prestigious in the scientific world, is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and is worth $1.1 million.
“One of the discoveries being recognized this year concerns the construction of spectacular proteins. The other is about fulfilling a 50-year-old dream: predicting protein structures from their amino acid sequences,” the academy said in a statement.
Half the prize was awarded to Baker “for computational protein design” while the other half was shared by Hassabis and Jumper “for protein structure prediction,” the academy said.
The third award to be handed out every year, the chemistry prize follows those for medicine and physics announced earlier this week.
The Nobel prizes were established in the will of dynamite inventor and wealthy businessman Alfred Nobel and are awarded to “those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”
First handed out in 1901, 15 years after Nobel’s death, it is awarded for achievements in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace. Recipients in each category share the prize sum that has been adjusted over the years.
The economics prize is a later addition funded by the Swedish central bank.
Chemistry, close to Alfred Nobel’s heart and the discipline most applicable to his own work as an inventor, may not always be the most headline-grabbing of the prizes, but past recipients include scientific greats such as radioactivity pioneers Ernest Rutherford and Marie Curie.
Last year’s chemistry award went to Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Aleksey Ekimov for their discovery of tiny clusters of atoms known as quantum dots, widely used today to create colors in flat screens, light emitting diode (LED) lamps and devices that help surgeons see blood vessels in tumors.
Alongside the cash prize, the winners will be presented a medal by the Swedish king on Dec. 10, followed by a lavish banquet in Stockholm city hall.
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Cholera cases, deaths surge more than 200% in Nigeria
Abuja, Nigeria — Cholera is surging in Nigeria, health officials said this week, with the number of cases and deaths increasing by more than 200% this year.
The Nigerian Center for Disease Control said in this week’s epidemiological report that the country has recorded nearly 11,000 cases of cholera this year — a 220% increase compared with the same point in 2023.
The report said fatalities over the same periods have increased from 106 to 359 — a rise of 239%.
The state of Lagos accounted for 43% of the nation’s cases, while Kano, Katsina, Jigawa and Borno also recorded significant numbers.
Last month, the worst flooding in 30 years ravaged conflict-ridden Borno state, worsening an already dire humanitarian situation there. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and moved to overcrowded camps.
“We’re now facing a significant public health challenge that demands urgent attention and action,” Borno Health Commissioner Baba Mallam Gana said. “This outbreak is concerning, especially in the aftermath of a flooding incident.
“The floods have created ideal conditions for the spread of waterborne diseases like cholera by contaminating water sources and disrupting sanitation systems,” he said.
Cholera is a bacterial disease, usually spread by contaminated food or water. It causes severe diarrhea and dehydration.
The Nigerian CDC launched a national emergency response along with state authorities to bring numbers down, but the number of cases is surging, Gana said.
“We must now act swiftly to prevent further spread of this disease,” he said.
As part of the flood intervention responses, Gana said, the Borno public health emergency center was converted into a control center to coordinate surveillance, risk communication and community engagement, as well as essential health services, infection prevention, water sanitation and hygiene.
Nigeria’s Health Ministry is sending hundreds of thousands of doses of cholera vaccine to the affected areas. Borno alone received 300,000 doses, and state authorities say the vaccine has been distributed to camps for those displaced by the floods.
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US states sue TikTok, saying it harms young users
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON — TikTok faces new lawsuits filed by 13 U.S. states and the District of Columbia on Tuesday, accusing the popular social media platform of harming and failing to protect young people.
The lawsuits, filed separately in New York, California, the District of Columbia and 11 other states, expand Chinese-owned TikTok’s legal fight with U.S. regulators and seek new financial penalties against the company.
Washington is located in the District of Columbia.
The states accuse TikTok of using intentionally addictive software designed to keep children watching as long and often as possible and misrepresenting its content moderation effectiveness.
“TikTok cultivates social media addiction to boost corporate profits,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. “TikTok intentionally targets children because they know kids do not yet have the defenses or capacity to create healthy boundaries around addictive content.”
TikTok seeks to maximize the amount of time users spend on the app in order to target them with ads, the states said.
“Young people are struggling with their mental health because of addictive social media platforms like TikTok,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James.
TikTok said on Tuesday that it strongly disagreed with the claims, “many of which we believe to be inaccurate and misleading,” and that it was disappointed the states chose to sue “rather than work with us on constructive solutions to industrywide challenges.”
TikTok provides safety features that include default screentime limits and privacy defaults for minors under 16, the company said.
Washington, D.C., Attorney General Brian Schwalb alleged that TikTok operates an unlicensed money transmission business through its livestreaming and virtual currency features.
“TikTok’s platform is dangerous by design. It’s an intentionally addictive product that is designed to get young people addicted to their screens,” Schwalb said in an interview.
Washington’s lawsuit accused TikTok of facilitating sexual exploitation of underage users, saying TikTok’s livestreaming and virtual currency “operate like a virtual strip club with no age restrictions.”
Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont and Washington state also sued on Tuesday.
In March 2022, eight states, including California and Massachusetts, said they launched a nationwide probe of TikTok impacts on young people.
The U.S. Justice Department sued TikTok in August for allegedly failing to protect children’s privacy on the app. Other states, including Utah and Texas, previously sued TikTok for failing to protect children from harm. TikTok on Monday rejected the allegations in a court filing.
TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, is battling a U.S. law that could ban the app in the United States.
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Pioneers in artificial intelligence win the Nobel Prize in physics
STOCKHOLM — Two pioneers of artificial intelligence — John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton — won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for helping create the building blocks of machine learning that is revolutionizing the way we work and live but also creates new threats to humanity, one of the winners said.
Hinton, who is known as the “godfather of artificial intelligence,” is a citizen of Canada and Britain who works at the University of Toronto. Hopfield is an American working at Princeton.
“This year’s two Nobel Laureates in physics have used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today’s powerful machine learning,” the Nobel committee said in a press release.
Ellen Moons, a member of the Nobel committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said the two laureates “used fundamental concepts from statistical physics to design artificial neural networks that function as associative memories and find patterns in large data sets.”
She said that such networks have been used to advance research in physics and “have also become part of our daily lives, for instance in facial recognition and language translation.”
Hinton predicted that AI will end up having a “huge influence” on civilization, bringing improvements in productivity and health care.
“It would be comparable with the Industrial Revolution,” he said in the open call with reporters and the officials from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
“Instead of exceeding people in physical strength, it’s going to exceed people in intellectual ability. We have no experience of what it’s like to have things smarter than us. And it’s going to be wonderful in many respects,” Hinton said. “But we also have to worry about a number of possible bad consequences, particularly the threat of these things getting out of control.”
The Nobel committee that honored the science behind machine learning and AI also mentioned fears about its possible flipside. Moon said that while it has “enormous benefits, its rapid development has also raised concerns about our future. Collectively, humans carry the responsibility for using this new technology in a safe and ethical way for the greatest benefit of humankind.”
Hinton shares those concerns. He quit a role at Google so he could more freely speak about the dangers of the technology he helped create.
On Tuesday, he said he was shocked at the honor.
“I’m flabbergasted. I had, no idea this would happen,” he said when reached by the Nobel committee on the phone.
There was no immediate reaction from Hopfield.
Hinton, now 76, in the 1980s helped develop a technique known as backpropagation that has been instrumental in training machines how to “learn.”
His team at the University of Toronto later wowed peers by using a neural network to win the prestigious ImageNet computer vision competition in 2012. That win spawned a flurry of copycats, giving birth to the rise of modern AI.
Hopfield, 91, created an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data, the Nobel committee said.
Hinton used Hopfield’s network as the foundation for a new network that uses a different method, known as the Boltzmann machine, that the committee said can learn to recognize characteristic elements in a given type of data.
Six days of Nobel announcements opened Monday with Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize for their discovery of tiny bits of genetic material that serve as on and off switches inside cells that help control what the cells do and when they do it. If scientists can better understand how they work and how to manipulate them, it could one day lead to powerful treatments for diseases like cancer.
The physics prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the award’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.
Nobel announcements continue with the chemistry physics prize on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Oct. 14.
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