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Tag: AP Top News

  • Sci-fi drama ‘Westworld’ canceled by HBO after 4 seasons

    Sci-fi drama ‘Westworld’ canceled by HBO after 4 seasons

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    LOS ANGELES (AP) — HBO has pulled the plug on “Westworld,” its Emmy-winning sci-fi drama.

    The series’ cancellation came less than three months after its fourth season concluded in August. The cast included Evan Rachel Wood, Ed Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Aaron Paul and Thandiwe Newton.

    Newton earned a best supporting actress Emmy in 2018, and the series received more than 50 nominations and won nine awards from the TV academy.

    In a statement Friday, HBO thanked series creators and executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy for taking “viewers on a mind-bending odyssey, raising the bar at every step,” and saluted the “immensely talented” actors and crew.

    In October, Nolan told The Hollywood Reporter that he hoped HBO would order a fifth season to properly end the series that debuted in 2016 as a ratings success for the cable channel. Viewership fell in the third season and again in the fourth.

    Like the 1973 film that inspired it, also titled “Westworld,” the series was initially set in a Western-style amusement park that allowed guests to realize their fantasies with the help of androids. The show later broadened into a artificial intelligence vs. human global conflict.

    “We’ve been privileged to tell these stories about the future of consciousness — both human and beyond — in the brief window of time before our AI overlords forbid us from doing so,” Nolan and Joy’s Kilter Films said in a statement.

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  • Musk threatens to boot Twitter account impersonators

    Musk threatens to boot Twitter account impersonators

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    BOSTON (AP) — Elon Musk tweeted Sunday that Twitter will permanently suspend any account on the social media platform that impersonates another.

    The platform’s new owner issued the warning after some celebrities changed their Twitter display names — not their account names — and tweeted as ‘Elon Musk’ in reaction to the billionaire’s decision to offer verified accounts to all comers for $8 month as he simultaneously laid off a big chunk of the workforce.

    “Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended,” Musk wrote. While Twitter previously issued warnings before suspensions, now that it is rolling out “widespread verification, there will be no warning.”

    In fact, “any name change at all” would compel the temporary loss of a verified checkmark, the world’s richest man said.

    Comedian Kathy Griffin had her account suspended Sunday after she switched her screen name to Musk. She told a Bloomberg reporter that she had also used his profile photo.

    “I guess not ALL the content moderators were let go? Lol,” Griffin joked afterward on Mastodon, an alternative social media platform where she set up an account last week.

    Actor Valerie Bertinelli had similarly appropriated Musk’s screen name — posting a series of tweets in support of Democratic candidates on Saturday before switching back to her true name. “Okey-dokey. I’ve had fun and I think I made my point,” she tweeted afterwards.

    Before the stunt, Bertinelli noted the original purpose of the blue verification checkmark. It was granted free of charge to people whose identity Twitter employees had confirmed; with journalists accounting for a big portion of recipients. “It simply meant your identity was verified. Scammers would have a harder time impersonating you,” Bertinelli noted.

    “That no longer applies. Good luck out there!” she added.

    The $8 verified accounts are Musk’s way of democratizing the service, he claims. On Saturday, a Twitter update for iOS devices listed on Apple’s app store said users who “sign up now” for the new “Twitter Blue with verification” can get the blue check next to their names “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow.”

    It said the service would first be available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. However, it was not available Sunday and there was no indication when it would go live. A Twitter employ, Esther Crawford, told The Associated Press it is coming “soon but it hasn’t launched yet.”

    Twitter did not respond on Sunday to an email seeking comment on the verified accounts issue and Griffin’s suspension.

    Musk later tweeted, “Twitter needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world. That’s our mission.”

    If the company were to strip current verified users of blue checks — something that hasn’t happened — that could exacerbate disinformation on the platform during Tuesday’s midterm elections.

    Like Griffin, some Twitter users have already begun migrating from the platform — Counter Social is another popular alternative — following layoffs that began Friday that reportedly affected about half of Twitter’s 7,500-employee workforce. They fear a breakdown of moderation and verification could create a disinformation free-for-all on what has been the internet’s main conduit for reliable communications from public agencies and other institutions.

    Many companies have paused advertising on the platform out of concern it could become more unruly under Musk.

    Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, sought to assuage such concerns in a tweet Friday. He said the company’s front-line content moderation staff was the group least affected by the job cuts.

    Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at Twitter and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as severance.

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  • ‘The Crown’ returns to blur the line between royals, fiction

    ‘The Crown’ returns to blur the line between royals, fiction

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    LOS ANGELES (AP) — When “The Crown” returns Wednesday after a two-year absence, the splintering marriage of Charles and Diana and more woes for Queen Elizabeth II are in the drama’s elegant but intrusive spotlight.

    There’s swirling off-stage drama as well for the Netflix series that began with Elizabeth’s marriage in the late 1940s and, in its fifth season, takes on the British royal family’s turbulent 1990s. The queen famously labeled one stretch her “annus horribilis” — Latin for “horrible year.”

    The safe distance of history is gone in the 10 new episodes set within recent memory for many and whose stories, sight unseen, have been denounced. The death of Queen Elizabeth, 96, in September adds an uneasy dimension: We speculate freely about the famous before and after they’re gone, but is more owed a country’s beloved and longest-serving monarch?

    Among the prominent critics is Judi Dench, an Oscar-winner for her role as Elizabeth I in “Shakespeare in Love.” In a letter to The Times of London, the actor blasted elements of the drama as “cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent.”

    She called for each episode to carry a disclaimer labeling it as fiction. It’s a demand that Netflix has heard before and continues to resist, framing the series as drama inspired by historical events. Series creator Peter Morgan was unavailable for comment, Netflix said.

    Dench is not amused by the streaming service’s intransigence.

    “The time has come for Netflix to reconsider — for the sake of a family and a nation so recently bereaved, as a mark of respect to a sovereign who served her people so dutifully for 70 years,” she wrote.

    Her plea followed a rebuke of the series from former Prime Minister John Major, shown in the new season being lobbied by Prince Charles — now King Charles III — to help maneuver the queen’s abdication. A spokesman for Major labeled the scene as false and malicious.

    Cast members including Jonathan Pryce, who plays Elizabeth’s stalwart husband Prince Philip, beg to differ with the series’ detractors.

    “The queen is in no danger from ‘The Crown,’” Pryce told The Associated Press. He said critics are lambasting the new season despite ignorance of it, reminding him of what the British once termed “the Mary Whitehouse effect.”

    Whitehouse had “a huge following and she criticized programs she’d never seen,” he said. “I think a lot of the protests this time, people haven’t seen this series. They don’t know how these issues are treated. I have to say they’re treated with a great deal of integrity and a great deal of sensitivity.”

    Imelda Staunton, stepping in as the latest actor to play Elizabeth, defended the series, its award-winning creator and its viewers.

    “I think it’s underestimating the audience,” Staunton told AP. ”There have been four seasons where people know it’s been written by Peter Morgan and his team of writers.”

    Morgan, writer of the movie “The Queen” and play “The Audience,” both starring the Oscar- and Tony-winning Helen Mirren as Elizabeth II, has made royals a specialty. The recent criticism may suggest his winter of discontent is ahead, but Morgan has it easier than another writer who feasted on the British monarchs as material: William Shakespeare, who dramatized the reigns of seven kings.

    All were in the past, with Shakespeare treading lightly around the rulers of his time, Elizabeth I and James I.

    “We all imagine it being sort of sweetness and light, and we’ve all seen ‘Shakespeare in Love’ and everyone’s sitting around drinking. Actually, it was like Stalinist Russia in many ways,” Shakespearean expert Andrew Dickson said of the rigidly controlled society in which the bard worked circa 1585 to 1613.

    Plays were approved by the master of the revels, a sort of civil servant with the power of censorship, said Dickson, author of “Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare’s Globe” and “The Globe Guide to Shakespeare.” Authors could and were imprisoned, or worse, for transgressions, he said.

    “His very few representations of royals recent to his time were pretty flattering, and and early audiences even called them patriotic,” said Harvard teacher-scholar Jeffrey R. Wilson, author of “Shakespeare and Trump” and “Richard III’s Bodies.” Theater in general was viewed as illusory and deceptive, he said.

    “He told this politicized version that was flattering to the powers that were in his time,” Wilson said. It became the “dominant framework for telling English royal history all the way through the 18th and 19th centuries. It’s now called the ‘Tudor myth,’” he said, a reference to the House of Tudor that ruled for more than a century.

    It’s problematic if people similarly begin recounting the Netflix show’s “fictionalized version of history as fact,” he said.

    Lesley Manville, who plays the queen’s sibling Princess Margaret this season, said she defers to those in charge of “The Crown” on whether a disclaimer is or isn’t warranted.

    “For my part, I can only be crystal clear that what I’m doing is a drama,” Manville said. “We’ve never supported it to be anything other than a drama about a real family, a very world famous family.”

    Staunton said she’s grateful that the season addresses a period that was “quite tumultuous, and therefore that creates quite a good drama.” She traced the recent protests about the series directly to the queen’s death.

    “There’s no doubt that if we were releasing the series two years ago there wouldn’t be this amount of sensitivity, which again is absolutely understandable,” Staunton said. She found herself deeply affected by the queen’s death, which she learned of after a day of taping on the show’s sixth season.

    “‘Why am I feeling so distraught?’” she recalled asking herself. “But of course I’d been living with her for two and a half years” of preparation and production.

    For Pryce, working on the series has provided a better understanding of the royal family.

    “They’ve always been a part of society and it looks like they’re going to continue for some time,” he said. “I’m looking forward to King Charles’ reign, and seeing what he can do to change things.”

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  • Twitter users can soon get blue check for $7.99 monthly fee

    Twitter users can soon get blue check for $7.99 monthly fee

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    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Twitter has announced a subscription service for $7.99 a month that includes a blue check now given only to verified accounts as new owner Elon Musk works to overhaul the platform’s verification system just ahead of U.S. midterm elections.

    In an update to Apple iOS devices available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K., Twitter said users who “sign up now” for the new “Twitter Blue with verification” can receive the blue check next to their names “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow.”

    But Twitter employee Esther Crawford tweeted Saturday that the “new Blue isn’t live yet — the sprint to our launch continues but some folks may see us making updates because we are testing and pushing changes in real-time.” Verified accounts did not appear to be losing their checks so far.

    It was not immediately clear when the subscription would go live. Crawford told The Associated Press in a Twitter message that it is coming “soon but it hasn’t launched yet.” Twitter did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

    Anyone being able to get the blue check could lead to confusion and the rise of disinformation ahead of Tuesday’s elections, but Musk tweeted Saturday in response to a question about the risk of impostors impersonating verified profiles — such as politicians and election officials — that “Twitter will suspend the account attempting impersonation and keep the money!”

    “So if scammers want to do this a million times, that’s just a whole bunch of free money,” he said.

    But many fear widespread layoffs that began Friday could gut the guardrails of content moderation and verification on the social platform that public agencies, election boards, police departments and news outlets use to keep people reliably informed.

    The change will end Twitter’s current verification system, which was launched in 2009 to prevent impersonations of high-profile accounts such as celebrities and politicians. Twitter now has about 423,000 verified accounts, many of them rank-and-file journalists from around the globe that the company verified regardless of how many followers they had.

    Experts have raised grave concerns about upending the platform’s verification system that, while not perfect, has helped Twitter’s 238 million daily users determine whether accounts they get information from are authentic. Current verified accounts include celebrities, athletes and influencers, along with government agencies and politicians worldwide, journalists and news outlets, activists, businesses and brands, and Musk himself.

    “He knows the blue check has value, and he’s trying to exploit it quickly,” said Jennifer Grygiel, a social media expert and associate professor of communications at Syracuse University. “He needs to earn the trust of the people before he can sell them anything. Why would you buy a car from a salesman that you know has essentially proved to be chaotic?”

    The update Twitter made to the iOS version of its app does not mention verification as part of the new blue check system. So far, the update is not available on Android devices.

    Musk, who had earlier said he wants to “verify all humans” on Twitter, has floated that public figures would be identified in ways other than the blue check. Currently, for instance, government officials are identified with text under names stating they are posting from an official government account.

    President Joe Biden’s @POTUS account, for example, says in gray letters it belongs to a “United States government official.”

    Seven-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton, who has 7.8 million Twitter followers, told the AP, “I could actually just delete my Twitter account, I never use it. I find it really healthy to delete social media from my phone for periods of time.”

    “But it’s also a really powerful tool to connect with people, so I appreciate that and I try to use it as that and not as something that’s veering me off course of the journey that I’m on in life,” he said.

    The announcement comes a day after Twitter began laying off workers to cut costs and as more companies are pausing advertising on the platform as a cautious corporate world waits to see how the platform will operate under its new owner.

    About half of the company’s staff of 7,500 was let go, tweeted Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity.

    He said the company’s front-line content moderation staff was the group the least affected by the job cuts and that “efforts on election integrity — including harmful misinformation that can suppress the vote and combatting state-backed information operations — remain a top priority.”

    Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey took blame for the job losses.

    “I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly,” he tweeted Saturday. “I apologize for that.”

    Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at Twitter and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as severance.

    He also said Twitter has already seen “a massive drop in revenue” as advertisers face pressure from activists to get off the platform, which heavily relies on advertising to make money.

    United Airlines on Saturday became the latest major brand to pause advertising on Twitter, joining companies including General Motors, REI, General Mills and Audi.

    Musk tried to reassure advertisers last week, saying Twitter would not become a “free-for-all hellscape” because of what he calls his commitment to free speech.

    But concerns remain about whether a lighter touch on content moderation at Twitter will result in users sending out more offensive tweets. That could hurt companies’ brands if their advertisements appear next to them.

    U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Saturday urged Musk to “ensure human rights are central to the management of Twitter.” In an open letter, Türk said reports that the company’s whole human rights team and much of the ethical AI team were laid off was not “an encouraging start.”

    “Like all companies, Twitter needs to understand the harms associated with its platform and take steps to address them,” Türk said. “Respect for our shared human rights should set the guardrails for the platform’s use and evolution.”

    Meanwhile, Twitter cannot simply cut costs to grow profits, and Musk needs to find ways to raise more revenue, said Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush. But that may be easier said than done with the new subscription program for blue checks.

    “Users have gotten this for free,” Ives said. “There may be massive pushback.”

    He expects 20% to 25% of Twitter’s verified users to sign up initially. The stakes are high for Musk and Twitter to get this right early and for signups to work smoothly, he added.

    “You don’t have a second chance to make a first impression,” Ives said. “It’s been a train-wreck first week for Musk owning the Twitter platform. Now you’ve cut 50% (of the workforce). There are questions about just the stability of the platform, and advertisers are watching this with a keen eye.”

    ___

    AP Business Writer Stan Choe in New York and Associated Press Writer Jenna Fryer in Charlotte, N.C., contributed to this story.

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  • Cesspool or civility? Elon Musk’s Twitter at a crossroads

    Cesspool or civility? Elon Musk’s Twitter at a crossroads

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    The discourse was never all that civil on Twitter. The loudest voices have often drowned out softer, more nuanced takes. After all, it’s much easier to rage-tweet at a perceived enemy than to seek common ground, whether the argument is about transgender kids or baseball.

    In the chaos that has enveloped Twitter the platform — and Twitter the company — since Elon Musk took over, it has become clear this isn’t changing anytime soon. In fact, it’s likely to get much worse before it gets better — if it gets better at all.

    Musk, with his band of tech industry loyalists, arrived at Twitter just over a week ago ready to tear down the blue bird’s nest and rebuild it in his vision with breakneck speed. He quickly fired top executives and the board of directors, installed himself as the company’s sole director (for now) and declared himself “Chief Twit,” then “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” on his bio.

    On Friday, he began mass layoffs at the San Francisco-based company, letting go about half of its workers via email to return it to staffing levels not seen since 2014.

    All the while, he’s continued to tweet a mix of crude memes, half-jokes, SpaceX rocket launches and maybe-maybe not plans for Twitter that he seems to be workshopping on the site in real time. After floating the idea of charging users $20 a month for the “blue check” and some extra features, for instance, he appeared to quickly scale it back in a Twitter exchange with author Stephen King, who posted, “If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”

    “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” Musk replied. On Saturday, the company announced a subscription service for $7.99 monthly that allows anyone on Twitter to pay a fee for the check mark “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow” as well as some premium features — not yet available — like getting their tweets boosted above those coming from accounts without the blue check. It’s not clear when the fee-based verification tag will become available. It replaces what had been considered a safety feature designed to discourage counterfeit accounts.

    The billionaire Tesla CEO has repeatedly engaged with right-wing figures appealing for looser restrictions on hate and misinformation. He received congratulations from Dimitry Medvedev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top associate, and tweeted — then deleted — a baseless conspiracy theory about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, who was attacked in his home.

    More than three dozen advocacy organizations wrote an open letter to Twitter’s top 20 advertisers, calling on them to commit to halting advertising on the platform if Twitter under Musk undermines “brand safety” and guts content moderation.

    “Not only are extremists celebrating Musk’s takeover of Twitter, they are seeing it as a new opportunity to post the most abusive, harassing, and racist language and imagery. This includes clear threats of violence against people with whom they disagree,” the letter said.

    One of Musk’s first moves was to fire the woman in charge of trust and safety at the platform, Vijaya Gadde. But he has kept on Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, and has taken steps to reassure users and advertisers that the site won’t turn into a “free-for-all hellscape” that some fear it might.

    On Friday, he tweeted that “Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged. In fact, we have actually seen hateful speech at times this week decline (asterisk)below(asterisk) our prior norms, contrary to what you may read in the press.” A growing number of advertisers are nevertheless pausing spending on Twitter while they reassess how Musk’s changes might increase objectionable material on the platform.

    Musk also met with some civil rights leaders “about how Twitter will continue to combat hate & harassment & enforce its election integrity policies,” according to a tweet he sent Nov. 1.

    But representatives of the LGBTQ community were notably absent from the meeting, even though its members are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than those outside of such communities. Twitter did not respond to a message for comment on whether Musk plans to meet with LGBTQ groups.

    The mercurial billionaire has said he won’t make major decisions about content or restoring banned accounts — such as that of former President Donald Trump — before setting up a “content moderation council” with diverse viewpoints. The council, he later added, will include “the civil rights community and groups who face hate-fueled violence.” But experts have pointed out that Twitter already has a trust and safety advisory council to address moderation questions.

    “Truly I can’t imagine how it would differ,” said Danielle Citron, a University of Virginia law professor who sits on the council and has been working with Twitter since its infancy in 2009 to tackle online harms, such as threats and stalking. “Our council has the full spectrum of views on free speech.”

    Some amount of chaos is expected after a corporate takeover, as are layoffs and firings. But Musk’s murky plans for Twitter — especially its content moderation, misinformation and hate speech policies — are raising alarms about where one of the world’s most high-profile information ecosystems is headed. All that seems certain is that for now, at least, as Elon Musk goes, so goes Twitter.

    “I hope that responsibility and maturity will win the day,” said Eddie Perez, a former Twitter civic integrity team leader who left the company before Musk took over. “It’s one thing to be a billionaire troll on Twitter and to try to get laughs with memes and to yuk it up. You are now the owner of Twitter and there’s a new level of responsibility.”

    For now, though, the memes appear to be winning. This concerns experts like Perez, who worry Musk is moving too fast without listening to people who have been working to improve civility on the platform and instead using his own insular experience as one of the platform’s most popular users with millions of fawning fans who hail his every move.

    “You have a single billionaire that is controlling something as influential as a social media platform like Twitter. And you have entire nation states (whose) political goals are inimical to our own, and they are trying to create chaos and they are directly courting favor” with Musk, Perez said.

    “There’s just no world in which all of that is normal,” he added. “That should absolutely concern us.”

    Twitter didn’t start out as a cesspool. And even now there are pockets of funny, weird, nerdy subgroups on the platform that remain somewhat insulated from the messy and confrontational place it can appear to be if one follows too many hotheaded agitators. But as with Facebook, Twitter’s rise also coincided with growing polarization and a measurable decline in online civility in the United States and beyond.

    “The big understanding that occurred between 2008 and 2012 is that the way to get traction, the way to get attention on any social media, Twitter included, was to use incendiary language — to challenge the basic humanity of the opposition,” said Lee Rainie, director of internet and technology research at the Pew Research Center.

    Things continued to devolve as the 2016 U.S. presidential election approached and passed, and the new president cemented his reputation as one of Twitter’s most incendiary users. After it was revealed that Russia used social media platforms to try to influence elections in the U.S. and other countries, the platforms themselves became central figures in the political debate.

    “Do they have too much power? Do their content moderation policies privilege one side or another?” Rainie said. “The companies themselves found themselves in the thick of the most intense arguments in the culture. And so that’s the environment that Elon Musk is entering now.”

    And beyond the bluster and the outsized personality, Musk’s own description of his new job — “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” — may turn out to be his biggest challenge yet.

    ___

    AP Technology Writer Frank Bajak contributed to this story.

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  • Twitter’s blue check: Vital verification or status symbol?

    Twitter’s blue check: Vital verification or status symbol?

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    The story of Twitter’s blue checkmarks — a simple verification system that’s come to be viewed as an elite status symbol — began with some high-profile impersonations, just as the site began taking off in 2008 and ’09.

    Celebrities who saw their likeness spoofed included Kanye West, now Ye, the basketball star Shaquille O’Neil and the actor Ewan McGregor, who was also impersonated on a wildly popular website called … MySpace.

    Then, in June 2009, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa sued Twitter, claiming that a fake account, using his name to make light of drunken driving and two Cardinals pitchers who died, damaged his reputation and caused emotional distress.

    LaRussa eventually dropped his lawsuit. But in June of that year, Twitter’s then-CEO Biz Stone introduced a verification system to sort out authentic accounts from impostors. The benefit would be to the holders of the accounts, but also to everyone else on Twitter. They could be sure, if they saw the blue check next to a name, that what they were reading was authentic.

    Fast-forward to 2022. Twitter’s new owner and ruler, billionaire Elon Musk, wants to turn this verification system into a revenue source for the company he paid $44 billion to purchase. It’s a 180-degree turn from the stance he took earlier this year, before his buyout closed, when he said he wanted to “verify all humans” on Twitter.

    After floating the idea of charging users $20 a month for the “blue check” and some extra features, he appeared to quickly scale it back in a Twitter exchange with author Stephen King, who posted “If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”

    “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” Musk replied.

    Whatever the price, the idea of a paid verification system is raising some complex questions and concerns — beyond the customary cheers and jeers that have accompanied Musk’s every move since he took ownership of the social media company last week.

    “Tapping into Twitter users to make more money may be the right strategy, but verification isn’t the right feature to charge for,” said Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg. “Verification is intended to ensure the integrity of accounts and conversations on the platform, rather than a premium feature meant to elevate the experience. There is a growing appetite among some social users to pay for features that add value to their experiences.”

    Instead of charging for authentication, though, Enberg said Musk should be looking at adding features to Twitter that get people to use it more and help them grow their follower base and find a way to make money from those.

    “Turning users into customers isn’t an easy sell, and the value exchange has to be right in order for it to pay off,” she said.

    Twitter already has a subscription plan, Twitter Blue, that for $5 a month lets users access extra features, such as the ability to undo a tweet and read ad-free articles. Musk’s plan, as it appears from his tweets, seems to be expanding it to charge more money for more features — including the verification badge — and spread it to more users.

    “Of roughly 300,000 verified accounts on Twitter we would estimate only about 25% would go down this path ultimately and pay the $8 per month fee,” Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives said.

    That would mean only $7.2 million a year in extra revenue for Twitter — not enough to move the dial for a company whose last reported quarterly revenue was $1.18 billion.

    Ives expects Musk to first go after users who already have the check to charge them to keep it, then likely introduce other tiered pricing plans for other accounts.

    “The problem is with many athletes and celebrities willing to lose their coveted blue check and refusing to pay the monthly fee it would be an ominous black eye moment for Musk on his first strategic move with Twitter,” he said.

    While Musk’s exact plans are not clear, experts are raising concerns about the consequences of having a paid verification system that leaves anyone unwilling to pay vulnerable to impersonation — and anyone who does pay the ability to have their Twitter presence boosted by the platform’s algorithms.

    While many verified users on Twitter are famous, there are also community activists, journalists at small newspapers and outlets inside and outside of the U.S. — and regular people who simply find themselves in the news. For this subset, $8 a month may not be worth it, no matter how many memes Musk posts about the cost of a cup of coffee.

    The idea behind verification — which other social networks later copied — was to ensure that public figures, politicians and businesses were who they say they are. It began small at first, as things do when tech companies test out new features and functions.

    “The experiment will begin with public officials, public agencies, famous artists, athletes, and other well known individuals at risk of impersonation,” Stone wrote in 2009. He suggested that those who can’t be immediately verified put their official website in their Twitter bio to show that they are who they say they are.

    Business accounts — such as brand pages for Coca-Cola or McDonald’s — were not included in the initial verification system, nor were rank-and-file journalists. Those were added later, as misinformation from fake sites and accounts became a bigger problem on social media.

    While the “blue check” (which is actually a white checkmark in a blue frame, or black checkmark in a white frame if you are using Twitter in dark mode) has come to be viewed in some circles as an elite status symbol for the rich and famous, its purpose has always been to ensure that the people and accounts tweeting are who they say they are. As such, it benefited Twitter as much — if not more — as it benefitted the accounts that were verified, by clamping down on impersonations.

    Kelly McBride, an expert on journalism ethics for the Poynter Institute think tank, said she suspected the blue check would become less valuable if people know that it could be bought. Currently, it signifies a person with a particular position or public stature whose identity has been verified.

    “Twitter may end up being a similar story,” she said. “It may become less valuable to journalists. And that wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

    ___

    Associated Media Writer David Bauder in New York contributed to this story.

    ___

    This story has been updated to correct the spelling of actor McGregor’s first name. It’s Ewan, not Evan.

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  • EXPLAINER: Qatar’s vast wealth helps it host FIFA World Cup

    EXPLAINER: Qatar’s vast wealth helps it host FIFA World Cup

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    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Qatar is home to some 2.9 million people, but only a small fraction — around one in 10 — are Qatari citizens. They enjoy massive wealth and benefits fueled by Qatar’s shared control of one of the world’s largest reserves of natural gas.

    The tiny country on the eastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula juts out into the Persian Gulf. There lies the North Field, the world’s largest underwater gas field, which Qatar shares with Iran. The gas field holds approximately 10% of the world’s known natural gas reserves.​

    Oil and gas have made the 50-year-old country fantastically wealthy and influential. In a matter of decades, Qatar’s roughly 300,000 citizens have been pulled from the hard livelihood of fishing and pearl diving.

    The country is now an international transit hub with a profitable national airline, a force behind the influential Al Jazeera news network and is paying for the expansion of the largest U.S. military base in the Mideast.

    Here’s a look at Qatar’s economy and how this tiny country was able to spend so much to host the FIFA World Cup:

    QATAR’S ECONOMIC STRENGTH

    For most of its existence, the tribes of Qatar relied on pearl diving and fishing for survival. Like other parts of the Gulf, it was a harsh and bare existence. The discovery of oil and gas in the mid-20th century changed life in the Arabian Peninsula forever.

    While much of the world grapples with recession and inflation, Qatar and other Gulf Arab energy producers are reaping the benefits of high energy prices. The International Monetary Fund expects Qatar’s economy to grow by about 3.4% this year.

    Despite a massive spending spree to prepare for the World Cup, the country still earned more than it spent last year, giving it a cushy surplus that is continuing into 2022. Qatar’s riches are likely to grow as it expands capacity to be able to export more natural gas by 2025.

    Its sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, manages and invests the country’s financial reserves.

    QATAR’S WORLD CUP SPENDING

    Qatar has spent some $200 billion on infrastructure and other development projects since winning the bid to host the five-week long World Cup, according to official statements and a report from Deloitte.

    Around $6.5 billion of that was spent on building eight stadiums for the tournament, including the Al Janoub stadium designed by the late acclaimed architect Zaha Hadid.

    Billions were also spent to build a metro line, new airport, roads and other infrastructure ahead of the matches.

    The London-based research firm Capital Economics said ticket sales suggest that around 1.5 million tourists will visit Qatar for the World Cup. If each visitor stayed for 10 days and spent $500 a day, spending per visitor would amount to $5,000, the research firm said. That could amount to a $7.5 billion boost to Qatar’s economy this year. However, some fans may fly in just for the matches while staying in nearby Dubai and elsewhere.

    QATAR’S LAVISH BENEFITS

    Like other rich petro-states in the Gulf, Qatar is not a democracy. Decisions are made by the ruling Al Thani family and its chose advisors. Citizens have little say in their country’s major policy decisions.

    The government, however, provides citizens with vast perks that have helped to ensure continued loyalty and support. Qatari citizens enjoy tax-free incomes, high-paying government jobs, free health care, free higher education, financial support for newlyweds, housing support, generous subsidies that cover utility bills and plush retirement benefits.

    The country’s citizens rely on laborers from other countries to fill jobs in the service sector, such as drivers and nannies, and to do the tough construction work that built modern-day Qatar.

    QATAR’S MIGRANT LABOR FORCE

    The country has faced intense scrutiny for its labor laws and treatment of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, mostly from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and other South Asian countries. These men live in shared rooms on labor camps and work throughout the long summer months, with just a few hours of midday respite. They often go years without seeing their families back home.

    The work is often dangerous, with Amnesty International saying dozens may have died from apparent heat stroke.

    Rights groups have credited Qatar with improving its labor laws, such as by adopting a minimum monthly wage of around $275 in 2020, and for dismantling the “kafala” system that had prevented workers from changing jobs or leaving the country without the consent of their employers.

    Human Rights Watch, however has urged Qatar to improve compensation for migrant workers who suffered injury, death and wage theft while working on World Cup-related projects.

    ___

    Follow Aya Batrawy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ayaelb.

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  • Schools clash with parents over bans on student cellphones

    Schools clash with parents over bans on student cellphones

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    Cellphones — the ultimate distraction — keep children from learning, educators say. But in attempts to keep the phones at bay, the most vocal pushback doesn’t always come from students. In some cases, it’s from parents.

    Bans on the devices were on the rise before the COVID-19 pandemic. Since schools reopened, struggles with student behavior and mental health have given some schools even more reason to restrict access.

    But parents and caregivers who had constant access to their children during remote learning have been reluctant to give that up. Some fear losing touch with their kids during a school shooting.

    Shannon Moser, who has students in eighth and ninth grades in Rochester, New York, said she felt parents were being pushed away when the Greece Central School District this year began locking away student phones. There’s a form of accountability, she said, when students are able to record what goes on around them.

    “Everything is just so politicized, so divisive. And I think parents just have a general fear of what’s happening with their kids during the day,” Moser said. She said she generally has liberal views, but many parents on either side of the political divide feel the same way.

    Amid heightened scrutiny of topics such as race and inclusion, some parents also view cellphone restrictions as a way of keeping them out of their kids’ education.

    Over a decade ago, around 90% of public schools prohibited cellphone use, but that shrank to 65% in the 2015-2016 school year. By the 2019-2020 school year, bans were in place at 76% of the schools, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. California and Tennessee recently have passed laws allowing schools to prohibit phones.

    Now, in particular, educators see a need to keep students on task to recover from pandemic shutdowns, when many students lost the equivalent of months of learning.

    And many school officials may feel empowered to ban the devices, given growing concern among parents about pandemic-era screen time, said Liz Keren-Kolb, clinical associate professor of education technologies at the University of Michigan. But she said parent views on the debate run the gamut.

    “You still have the parents that want to have that direct line of communication and have concerns over their child not being able to have that communication,” she said. “But I do think that there’s more of an empathy and an understanding toward their child being able to put away their device so they can really focus on the learning in the classroom, and wanting that face-to-face experience.”

    Washington School District in western Pennsylvania implemented a ban this year as educators increasingly found cellphones to be an obstacle. Students were on their cellphones in the hallways and at the cafeteria tables. Some would call home or answer calls in the middle of a class, high school English teacher Treg Campbell said.

    The superintendent, George Lammay, said the ban was the right choice.

    “We’re looking to increase engagement and academic progress with kids — not try to limit their contact with families. That’s not the point,” he said.

    In some cases, pushback from parents has led to adjustments in policy.

    At the Brush School District in Colorado, cellphones were banned after teachers flagged concerns over online bullying. When parents spoke out, the district held a community meeting that lasted over two hours, with most testimony against the ban. The biggest takeaway, Superintendent Bill Wilson said, was that parents wanted their children to have access to their phones.

    The policy was adjusted to allow cellphones on campus, although they must be turned off and out of sight. The district also said it would accommodate a handful of students with unique circumstances.

    “There’s not an intention to say cell phones are evil,” Wilson said. “It’s a reset to say, ‘How do we manage this in a way that makes sense for everybody?’”

    At the Richardson Independent School District, near Dallas, student cellphone use had been prohibited during instructional time before officials proposed buying magnetic pouches to seal them away during the school day. Parent feedback around the cost of the pouches and concerns about safety in emergencies led to a scaled-back plan to pilot the pouches at one of the district’s eight middle schools, Forest Meadow Junior High.

    “We used to get in touch with our kids when we wanted to,” said Louise Boll, president of the Forest Meadow parent-teacher association. “There was a lot of pushback and a lot of concern in the beginning of what this would look like, how this would unfold, how is it going to affect us getting in touch?”

    Kids and their parents have largely adapted to the new policy, she said.

    In parent activists’ online discussions, there are plenty of defenders of cellphone bans. Some others, however, have railed against bans as efforts to keep parents from seeing “violence” and “indoctrination” inside schools.

    Legal action by parents remains rare, with one exception being an unsuccessful lawsuit by several parents against New York City’s school cellphone ban in 2006, which ultimately was lifted in 2015. Still, petitions against school cellphone bans have increased on Change.org this year, a spokesperson said.

    There’s no perfect formula for cellphones in schools, said Kolb, who said the pendulum will likely swing back away from bans depending on how attitudes change regarding technology in schools.

    “It really comes down to making sure that we’re educating students and parents about healthy habits with their digital devices,” she said.

    ___

    Brooke Schultz is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, New York, contributed to this report.

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  • Musk’s past tweets reveal clues about Twitter’s new owner

    Musk’s past tweets reveal clues about Twitter’s new owner

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    He may be good with rockets and electric cars, but don’t turn to Elon Musk for public health predictions.

    “Probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April,” the world’s richest man tweeted about COVID-19 in March 2020, just as the pandemic was ramping up.

    It’s one of many tweets that offer a glimpse into the mind of Twitter’s new owner and moderator in chief. Playful, aggressive and sometimes reckless, Musk’s past tweets show how he has used social media to tout his businesses, punch back at critics and burnish his brand as a brash billionaire who is unafraid to speak his mind.

    Musk joined Twitter in 2009 and now has more than 112 million followers — the third most of any account after former president Barack Obama and Canadian singer Justin Bieber. He had long mused about purchasing the platform before the $ 44 billion deal was finalized last week.

    Musk hasn’t detailed the changes he intends to make at Twitter, though he wasted no time in making widespread layoffs. But he has said he wants to make Twitter a haven for free speech. He’s said he disagrees with the platform’s decision to ban ex-President Donald Trump for inciting violence ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

    “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means,” Musk tweeted earlier this year when he announced his intention to buy the platform.

    As the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk uses his Twitter account to make business announcements and promote his enterprises. He muses about technology and trade, but has also posted jokes about women’s breasts and once compared Canada’s prime minister to Hitler. He regularly weighs in on global events, as he did in March 2020 when he tweeted that “The coronavirus pandemic is dumb.”

    That same month, he tweeted that children were largely immune from the virus and predicted that cases would soon disappear.

    Musk has also used his Twitter account to weigh in other big news events — with mixed results.

    This fall, Musk infuriated leaders in Ukraine when he went on Twitter to float a potential peace deal. Under Musk’s plan, Russia would get to keep Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and Ukraine would have to drop its plans to join NATO.

    Musk also suggested that people living in other areas illegally annexed by Russia should vote on whether Russia or Ukraine should get control over the territories — a move that Ukraine supporters said would reward Russia for its illegal aggression.

    “The danger here is that in the name of ‘free speech,’ Musk will turn back the clock and make Twitter into a more potent engine of hatred, divisiveness, and misinformation,” said Paul Barrett, a disinformation researcher and the deputy director of New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.

    Stern singled out Musk’s comments about Ukraine as particularly concerning. “This is not going to be pretty,” he said.

    Just days after purchasing Twitter Musk waded into yet another firestorm when he posted a link to an article advancing a bizarre conspiracy theory about the attack on the husband of U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The article suggested that Paul Pelosi and his assailant were lovers, even though authorities said the suspect confessed to targeting the speaker and did not know her husband.

    Musk later deleted the tweet without explanation.

    Musk has long used the megaphone of his Twitter account to punch back at critics or people he opposes, such as when he attacked a diver working to rescue boys trapped in a cave in Thailand by calling him a “pedo,” short for pedophile. The diver had previously mocked Musk’s proposal to use a sub to rescue the boys. Musk, who won a defamation suit filed by the diver, later said he never intended “pedo” to be interpreted as “pedophile.”

    Three days before Elon Musk agreed to buy Twitter, the world’s richest man tweeted a photo of Bill Gates and used a crude sexual term while making a joke about his belly.

    Earlier this year he criticized the Twitter executive in charge of the platform’s legal, policy and trust divisions. In response to his tweets about the executive, many of Musk’s followers piled on with misogynistic and racist attacks, in addition to calls for Musk to fire her when his purchase of Twitter was approved.

    Musk fired the executive on day one.

    Musk’s use of Twitter has at times led to problems for his own companies. In one August 2018 tweet, for instance, Musk asserted that he had the funding to take Tesla private for $420 a share, although a court has ruled that it wasn’t true. That led to an SEC investigation that Musk is still fighting.

    Last year another federal agency, the National Labor Relations Board, ordered Musk to delete a tweet that officials said illegally threatened to cut stock options for Tesla employees who joined the United Auto Workers union.

    Those tweets helped cement Musk’s reputation as a brash outsider. But that doesn’t mean he is equipped to run a social media platform with more than 200 million users, said Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University professor who studies social media. Grygiel has assigned Musk’s tweets as reading material for students.

    “Look at the feed: It’s all over the place. It’s erratic. At times it’s pretty extreme,” Grygiel said. “It paints him as some sort of rebel leader who will take control of the public square to save it. That is a myth he has constructed.”

    ___

    Follow the AP’s coverage of Elon Musk at https://apnews.com/hub/elon-musk and follow its coverage of misinformation at https://apnews.com/hub/misinformation.

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  • California tenants rise up, demand rent caps from city halls

    California tenants rise up, demand rent caps from city halls

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    ANTIOCH, Calif. (AP) — Kim Carlson’s apartment has flooded with human feces multiple times, the plumbing never fixed in the low-income housing complex she calls home in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Antioch.

    Her property manager is verbally abusive and calls her 9-year-old grandson, who has autism, a slur word, she said. Her heater was busted for a month this winter and the dishwasher has mold growing under it. But the final straw came in May: a $500 rent increase, bringing the rent on the two-bedroom to $1,854 a month.

    Carlson and other tenants hit with similarly high increases converged on Antioch’s City Hall for marathon hearings, pleading for protection. In September, the City Council on a 3-2 vote approved a 3% cap on annual increases.

    Carlson, who is disabled and under treatment for lymphoma cancer, starts to weep imagining what her life could be like.

    “Just normality, just freedom, just being able to walk outside and breathe and not have to walk outside and wonder what is going to happen next,” said Carlson, 54, who lives with her daughter and two grandsons at the Delta Pines apartment complex. “You know, for the kids to feel safe. My babies don’t feel safe.”

    Despite a landmark renter protection law approved by California legislators in 2019, tenants across the country’s most populous state are taking to ballot boxes and city councils to demand even more safeguards. They want to crack down on tenant harassment, shoddy living conditions and unresponsive landlords that are usually faceless corporations.

    Elected officials, for their part, appear more willing than in years past to regulate what is a private contract between landlord and tenant. In addition to Antioch, city councils in Bell Gardens, Pomona, Oxnard and Oakland all lowered maximum rent increases this year as inflation hit a 40-year high. Other city councils put the issue on the Nov. 8 ballot.

    Leah Simon-Weisberg, legal director for the advocacy group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, says local officials can no longer pretend supply and demand works when so many families are facing homelessness. In June, 1.3 million California households reported being behind on rent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

    The situation in working-class Antioch — where more than half the population is Black or Latino — illustrates how tenuous even a win for tenants can be.

    The two council members who voted in favor of rent stabilization are up for re-election Tuesday, with one of them, Tamisha Torres-Walker, facing a former council member she narrowly beat two years ago. The local newspaper endorsed Joy Motts and called Torres-Walker, who was homeless as a young adult, polarizing.

    Mayor Lamar Thorpe, who provided the third vote, faces sexual harassment allegations by two women, which he denies. They are part of a progressive Black majority.

    If either member loses her seat, the rent ordinance could be repealed.

    The two council members who voted no are both in the real estate industry, and not up for re-election.

    A once largely white suburb, Antioch has become more politically liberal as Black, Latino and low-income residents forced out of San Francisco and Oakland moved in. Advocates tried for years to mobilize tenants, but it took the shockingly high rent-hike notices and the expiration of a statewide eviction moratorium in June to get movement.

    Outraged tenants jammed into council chambers describing refrigerators pieced from spare parts and washing machines that reeked of rotten eggs. They spoke of skipping meals, working multiple jobs and living in constant terror of becoming homeless, sleeping in their car and washing their children with bottled water.

    “We saw a lot of fear, a lot of desperation,” said Rhea Laughlin, an organizer with First 5 Contra Costa, a county initiative that focuses on early childhood. But, she said, she also saw people summon the courage “to go before council, to rally, to march, to speak to the press and be exposed in a way that I think tenants were too afraid to do before, but now really felt they had little to lose.”

    Teresa Farias, 36, said she was terrified to speak in public but she was even more afraid that she, her husband and their three children, ages 3 to 14, would have to leave their home. When the family received a $361 rent increase notice in May, she called the East County Regional Group, a parent advocacy organization supported by First 5. They told her to start knocking on doors and talk to her neighbors.

    “I really don’t know where my strength came from, to be able to speak in public, to be able to speak in front of the City Council … to ask them to help us with this issue,” she said in Spanish outside her home at the Casa Blanca apartments.

    California’s tenant protection law limits rent increases to a maximum 10% a year. But many types of housing are exempt, including low-income complexes funded by government tax credits and increasingly owned by corporations, limited liability companies or limited partnerships.

    The tenants who flooded City Council meetings drew largely from four affordable-housing complexes, including sister properties Delta Pines and Casa Blanca, where an estimated 150 households received large rent increases in May. The properties are linked to Shaoul Levy, founder of real estate investment firm Levy Affiliated in Santa Monica.

    The rent increases never took effect, rescinded by the landlord as the City Council moved toward approving rent stabilization. Levy did not respond to emails seeking comment.

    Council member Michael Barbanica, who owns a real estate and property management company, called the rent hikes outrageous, but said the city could have worked with the district attorney’s office to prosecute price-gouging corporate landlords.

    Instead, the rent cap penalizes all local landlords, some of whom are now planning to sell, he said.

    “They’re not the ones doing 30-40-50% increases,” Barbanica said, “yet they were caught in the crossfire.”

    But, Carlson said, the city needs to pass even more tenant protections. The apartment complex is infested with roaches and her neighbors are too scared to speak up, she said.

    Her apartment has flooded at least seven times in the eight years she’s lived there, she said, flipping through cellphone photos of her toilet and bathtub filled with dark yellow-brown water. In October 2020, she slipped from water pouring down from the upstairs apartment and dislocated her hip.

    She has never been compensated, including all the gifts lost when the apartment flooded with water on Christmas Eve 2017. Two months later, in February 2018, feces and urine bubbled from the tub and toilets.

    “We got two five-gallon buckets and a bag of plastic bags brought to us and we had to (urinate and defecate) in those buckets for five days because the toilets were blown off the floor,” Carlson said.

    The toilets still gurgle, indicating blockage. That’s when she shuts off the water and waits for plumbers to clear the backup.

    Tenant organizer Devin Williams grew up in Antioch after his parents moved out of San Francisco in 2003, part of a migration of Black residents leaving city centers for cheaper homes in safer suburbs. The 32-year-old is devastated that the same opportunity is not available to tenants like Carlson now.

    “People have a responsibility to make sure people have habitable living conditions,” he said. “And their lives are just being exploited because people want to make money.”

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  • Record $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot fans ticket sales

    Record $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot fans ticket sales

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    MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Powerball jackpot has reached a record estimated high of $1.6 billion, leading longtime players and first-timers alike to flock to buy tickets ahead of Saturday night’s drawing.

    At Woodman’s Markets in Madison, Wisconsin, sisters Christy Bemis and Cherrie Spencer were among the dozens of weekend shoppers who paid for their groceries and loaded up carts before joining the line at the lottery counter to purchase their shot at the prize.

    They said they almost never buy lottery tickets, but they were lured in by the size of the jackpot.

    “My $2 has just as good a chance of winning as anyone else’s $2,” said Spencer.

    The counter was one of the busiest areas of the supermarket — so busy that employees set up stanchions to guide the queue. Like most of the players in line, Jim Olson, 78, was buying Quick Picks, randomly generated Powerball numbers, but he doesn’t always.

    Olson said he has typically bought a Powerball ticket once every drawing “virtually since they started.” When he picks his own numbers, there’s no rhyme or reason to how he does it: “They just come to you. I can’t explain it.”

    Olson’s biggest win to date? $300 about 20 years ago, he said.

    It speaks to the extremely long odds of winning the jackpot — about 1 in 292.2 million.

    Still, the chance of pocketing $782.4 million (the value of the cash option before taxes) has been enough to bring people flooding across state lines for a chance to play. Winners of massive jackpots almost always opt for cash, but some financial experts say the annuity option, which is paid out over a 30-year term, might be a safer bet.

    Many players do whatever they can to try to tip the odds in their favor. Unlike the weekend shoppers in Madison, not everyone buys their tickets at the most convenient location.

    In Los Angeles, a liquor store known for producing several winning tickets over the years gives superstitious players hope that they could be the next to strike it rich.

    Hector Solis, 35, has been coming to Bluebird Liquor to buy lottery tickets ever since he was a kid tagging along with his parents. ““Bluebird’s, you know, pretty much a hotspot that we know of,” he said.

    On Saturday, Solis purchased $140 worth of tickets on behalf of a group of 27 coworkers. He said he uses specific numbers, like the birthdays of family members he considers to have particularly good luck.

    Al Adams was also at the liquor store to buy his tickets. An experienced drug and alcohol counselor, Adams said he believes in giving back. If he were to win, he said he would give some of the money to his favorite charity for homeless and incarcerated people. “I’d use the rest to disappear somewhere,” Adams said. He also cautioned players to “play responsibly.”

    Kianah Bowman had a different message for lottery players. The 24-year-old organizer used Bluebird Liquor’s long lines as a platform for petitioning against high oil and gas prices — an issue she hopes to see on a ballot referendum in California. She was outside the liquor store for several days, gathering signatures from hundreds of players.

    Bowman also said she plans to buy a few tickets for herself.

    Back in Madison, Djuan Davis was manning the lottery counter at Pick ’n Save on Saturday morning, taking cash and handing out tickets to more weekend shoppers. “Typically there’s a lot of sales on Saturdays,” he said.

    With a record-breaking jackpot, business has picked up. Davis said he’s also seen a recent increase in players purchasing tickets online.

    As customers arrived at the counter, Davis would ask how he could help them. Almost every one answered the same: Powerball tickets.

    “Every time, it’s always that one,” Davis said.

    It was Arpad Jakab’s first time buying Powerball tickets. As Davis sold him four Quick Pick tickets, Jakab, a retired utility worker, said he probably wouldn’t buy them again unless there was another record jackpot.

    “It was just really high,” said Jakab. “Might as well join the insanity.”

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  • Deadly tornadoes hit Texas and Oklahoma, flatten buildings

    Deadly tornadoes hit Texas and Oklahoma, flatten buildings

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    IDABEL, Okla. (AP) — Residents in southeastern Oklahoma and northeastern Texas began assessing weather damage Saturday, working to recover and thankful to have survived after a storm stretching from Dallas to northwest Arkansas spawned tornadoes and produced flash flooding, killing at least two people, injuring others and leaving homes and buildings in ruins.

    Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt went to the town of Idabel to see the damage. He said on social media that all the homes had been searched and a 90-year-old man was killed. Keli Cain, spokesperson for the state’s Department of Emergency Management, said the man’s body was found at his home in the Pickens area of McCurtain County, about 36 miles (58 kilometers) north of Idabel.

    Morris County, Texas, Judge Doug Reeder said in a social media post that one person died as a result of a tornado in the far northeastern Texas County, offering no other details.

    Reeder and other county officials did not immediately return phone calls for additional comment.

    The Oklahoma Highway Patrol also reported a 6-year-old girl drowned and a 43-year-old man was missing after their vehicle was swept by water off a bridge near Stilwell, about 135 miles (217 kilometers) north of Idabel. The drowning has not been officially attributed to the storm and will be investigated by the medical examiner, Cain said.

    Saturday afternoon Stitt declared a state of emergency for McCurtain County, where Idabel is located, and neighboring Bryan, Choctaw and LeFlore counties.

    The declaration is a step in qualifying for federal assistance and funding and clears the way for state agencies to make disaster-recovery related purchases without limits on bidding requirements.

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said damage assessments and recovery efforts are under way in northeast Texas and encouraged residents to report damage to the Texas Division of Emergency Management.

    “I have deployed all available resources to help respond and recover,” Abbott said in a statement. ”I thank all of our hardworking state and local emergency management personnel for their swift response.”

    National Weather Service meteorologist Robert Darby in Tulsa said the far-reaching storm produced heavy rain in the Stilwell area at the time, around 4 inches (10.16 centimeters).

    Idabel, a rural town of about 7,000 at the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains, saw extensive damage, Cain said. “There are well over 100 homes and businesses damaged from minor damage to totally destroyed,” Cain said.

    Trinity Baptist Church in Idabel was preparing to complete a new building when the storm ripped apart their sanctuary and flattened the shell of the new structure next door, according to Pastor Don Myer.

    The 250-member congregation was to vote after the Sunday service on whether to move ahead with he final work to complete the building, Myer told The Associated Press.

    “But we didn’t get to that. Every vote counts and we had one vote trump us all,” Myer, 67, said. “We were right on the verge of that. That’s how close we were.”

    Myer said the congregation is going to pray on what happened, see how much their insurance covers and work to rebuild. On Saturday morning, a few members of the church took an American flag that had been blown over in the storm and stood it upright amid the wreckage of the original church building.

    Shelbie Villalpando, 27, of Powderly, Texas, said she was eating dinner with her family Friday when tornado sirens prompted them to congregate first in their rented home’s hallways, then with her children, aged 5, 10 and 14, in the bathtub.

    “Within two minutes of getting them in the bathtub, we had to lay over the kids because everything started going crazy,” Villalpando said.

    “I’ve never been so terrified,” she said. “I could hear glass breaking and things shattering around, but whenever I got out of the bathroom, my heart and my stomach sank because I have kids and it could have been much worse. … What if our bathroom had caved in just like everything else? We wouldn’t be here.”

    Terimaine Davis and his son were huddled in the bathtub until just before the tornado barreled through Friday, reducing their home in Powderly to a roofless, sagging heap.

    “We left like five minutes before the tornado actually hit,” Davis, 33, told The Associated Press. “Me and my son were in the house in the tub and that was about the only thing left standing.”

    In their driveway Saturday morning, a child’s car seat leaned against a dented, grey Chevrolet sedan with several windows blown out. Around back, his wife, Lori Davis, handed Terimaine a basket of toiletries from inside the wreckage of their house.

    The couple and the three kids who live with them did not have renter’s insurance, Lori Davis said, and none of their furniture survived. “We’re going to have to start from scratch,” she said.

    They hope to stay with family until they can find a place to live.

    “The next few days look like rough times,” Terimaine Davis said.

    Judge Brandon Bell, the highest elected official in Lamar County where Powderly is located, declared a disaster in that area. Bell’s declaration said at least two dozen people were injured across the county.

    Powderly is about 45 miles (72 kilometers) west of Idabel and about 120 miles (193 kilometers) northeast of Dallas and both are near the Texas-Oklahoma border.

    The National Weather Service in Fort Worth confirmed three tornadoes – in Lamar, Henderson and Hopkins counties – Friday night as a line of storms dropped rain and sporadic hail on the Dallas-Fort Worth area and continued to push eastward.

    The weather service’s office in Shreveport, Louisiana, said it was assessing the damage in Oklahoma.

    Weather service meteorologist Bianca Garcia in Fort Worth said while peak severe weather season typically is in the spring, tornados occasionally develop in October, November, December and even January.

    “It’s not very common,” Garcia said, “but it does happen across our region.”

    _____

    Miller reported from Oklahoma City. Adam Kealoha Causey in Dallas contributed to this report.

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  • Paul Pelosi attack highlights rising threats to lawmakers

    Paul Pelosi attack highlights rising threats to lawmakers

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s something that goes along with being a member of Congress, no matter your party or your status: constant threats to your life, and the unshakeable feeling that they’re only getting worse.

    In the almost two years since the Capitol insurrection, in which supporters of former President Donald Trump broke into the Capitol and hunted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and members of Congress, threats to lawmakers and their families have increased sharply. Early Friday, an assailant looking for Pelosi broke into her San Francisco home and used a hammer to attack her husband Paul, who suffered blunt-force injuries and was hospitalized.

    It is, in fact, getting worse: The U.S. Capitol Police investigated almost 10,000 threats to members last year, more than twice the number from four years earlier.

    “We are 100%, completely vulnerable and the risks are increasing,” says Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley, a Chicago-area Democrat. “If someone wants to harm you, they know where you live, they know where you work.”

    Lawmakers have pressured congressional leaders and the Capitol Police for better security, especially for their families and their homes outside of Washington. They have made some progress, with security officials promising to pay for upgrades to certain security systems and an increased Capitol Police presence outside Washington. But the vast majority of members are mostly on their own as they figure out how to keep themselves and their families safe in a country where political violence has become alarmingly frequent.

    The attack on Paul Pelosi happened when Nancy Pelosi was out of town, which meant there was less of a security presence in their home.

    “It’s attacks like this that make all of us stand back and wonder what we can do better,” says Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., who was at a baseball practice four years ago in Alexandria, Virginia, when a gunman wounded Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., and four other people.

    Davis, who was defeated for reelection in his Republican primary earlier this year, says security needs to be improved for members and their families, and “we also have to work to tone down some of the violent rhetoric that inspires some of these individuals to do what they do.”

    As have many of their colleagues, Davis and Quigley both say they have improved security at their homes in recent years. Two years after the baseball shooting, an Illinois man was arrested for threatening to shoot Davis in the head. Randall Tarr pleaded guilty to federal charges and was sentenced to probation.

    Davis has since urged his colleagues to report all threats to the police and work with local prosecutors to make sure people are charged. “You’ve got to take that threat seriously,” he says.

    Incidents like that are disturbingly common. On Friday, just hours after the assault on Pelosi, the Justice Department announced that a man pleaded guilty to making threatening telephone calls to an unidentified California congressman’s office and saying he had “a lot of AR-15s” and wanted to kill the congressman and members of his staff.

    In July, a man accosted New York Rep. Lee Zeldin, a Republican who is running for governor of New York, as he spoke at a campaign event and told Zeldin, “You’re done.” Zeldin wrestled the man to the ground and escaped with only a minor scrape.

    Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., revealed earlier this year that a man came to her house with a gun, screaming obscenities. After the incident, she wrote congressional leaders a letter and asked them to do more to keep members safe.

    Lawmakers have received some upgraded security since the Jan. 6 insurrection. In July, the House Sergeant at Arms sent a letter to all House offices saying that members could have up to $10,000 reimbursed for security upgrades in their homes, including intrusion detection systems, cameras, locks and lighting. But in reality, sophisticated security can cost much more.

    And some members do get added security, if there are serious threats. Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders have Capitol Police security with them at all times, as do members who are deemed to be most vulnerable at any given time. That security apparatus doesn’t always extend to families when the member isn’t at home, however, making spouses like Paul Pelosi more vulnerable.

    Members of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection also have round-the-clock protection. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chair of the committee, issued a statement Friday urging “federal agencies and law enforcement to redouble their efforts to protect officials, our elections, and our democracy in the days ahead.”

    Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on that committee, recently released menacing voicemails he had received threatening his wife and baby. Kinzinger tweeted Friday after Paul Pelosi’s assault that “every GOP candidate and elected official must speak out, and now.”

    Republican Rep. Davis also urged his colleagues, Democrat and Republican, to condemn the attack.

    “The attack on Paul Pelosi is not only an attack on Nancy Pelosi and her family,” Davis said. “It’s an attack on all of us.”

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  • Intruder attacks Pelosi’s husband, calling, ‘Where is Nancy’

    Intruder attacks Pelosi’s husband, calling, ‘Where is Nancy’

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    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was attacked and severely beaten with a hammer by an assailant who broke into the couple’s San Francisco home early Friday, searching for the Democratic leader and shouting, “Where is Nancy, where is Nancy?”

    The assault on the 82-year-old Paul Pelosi injected new uneasiness into the nation’s already toxic political climate, just 11 days before the midterm elections. It carried chilling echoes of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, when rioters chanted menacingly for the speaker as they rampaged through the halls trying to halt certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump.

    Speaker Pelosi, who was in Washington at the time of the California attack, arrived in San Francisco late Friday. Her motorcade was seen arriving at the hospital where her husband was being treated for his injuries.

    “This was not a random act. This was intentional. And it’s wrong,” said San Francisco Police Chief William Scott.

    At an evening news conference, Scott hailed a 911 dispatcher’s work — after Paul Pelosi called for help — as “lifesaving.” The chief appeared to hold back tears, his voice breaking at times, as he strongly rejected violence in politics.

    “Our elected officials are here to do the business of their cities and their counties and their states. Their families don’t sign up for this,” Scott said. “Everybody should be disgusted about what happened this morning.”

    Forty-two-year-old David DePape was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, elder abuse and burglary, and remained in the hospital late Friday, police said. Paul Pelosi underwent surgery to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands, and his doctors expect a full recovery, the speaker’s office said.

    Biden quickly called Speaker Pelosi with support and later delivered a full-throated condemnation of the “despicable” attack that he said had no place in America.

    “There’s too much violence, political violence. Too much hatred. Too much vitriol,” Biden said Friday night at a Democratic rally in Pennsylvania.

    “What makes us think it’s not going to corrode the political climate? Enough is enough is enough.”

    Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell tweeted he was “horrified and disgusted” by the assault.

    The nation’s political rhetoric has become increasingly alarming, with ominous threats to lawmakers at an all-time high. The House speaker and other congressional leaders are provided 24-hour security, and increasingly more other members now receive police protection. This, as crime and public safety have emerged as top issues for voters in the election.

    In San Francisco on Friday, police were called at about 2.30 a.m. to the Pelosi residence to check on Paul Pelosi, said Scott.

    Scott confirmed that the intruder gained entry through the rear door of the home, which is in the upscale Pacific Heights neighborhood. Investigators believe the intruder broke through glass-paneled doors, according to two people familiar with the situation.

    Paul Pelosi called 911 himself after telling the intruder he had to use the restroom, where his phone was charging, according to another person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it. The person said the intruder confronted the speaker’s husband shouting, “Where is Nancy?”

    Scott said the dispatcher figured out there was “something more” than she was being told, resulting in a priority dispatch and faster police response. “I think this was lifesaving,” he noted.

    Inside, police discovered the suspect, DePape, and Paul Pelosi struggling over a hammer, and told them to drop it, Scott said. DePape yanked the hammer from Pelosi and began beating him with it, striking at least one blow, before being tackled by officers and arrested, Scott said. The FBI and Capitol Police are also part of the joint investigation.

    Police said a motive for Friday’s intrusion was still to be determined, but three people with knowledge of the investigation told The Associated Press that DePape targeted Pelosi’s home. Those people were not authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing probe and spoke on condition of anonymity.

    The speaker had returned to Washington this week after being abroad and had been scheduled to appear with Vice President Kamala Harris at a fundraising event Saturday night for the LGBTQ group Human Rights Campaign. Pelosi canceled her appearance.

    On Friday, Harris said, “I strongly believe that each one of us has to speak out against hate, we have to speak out against violence obviously, and speak to our better selves.”

    An address listed for DePape in the Bay Area college town of Berkeley led to a post box at a UPS Store.

    He was known locally as a pro-nudity activist who had picketed naked at protests against laws requiring people to be clothed in public

    Gene DePape, the suspect’s stepfather, said the suspect lived with him in Canada until he was 14 and was a quiet boy.

    “He was reclusive,” said Gene DePape, adding, “He was never violent.”

    The stepfather said he hadn’t seen DePape since 2003 and tried to get in touch with him several times over the years without success.

    Lawmakers from both parties reacted with shock and expressed their well-wishes to the Pelosi family.

    “What happened to Paul Pelosi was a dastardly act,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “I spoke with Speaker Pelosi earlier this morning and conveyed my deepest concern and heartfelt wishes to her husband and their family, and I wish him a speedy recovery.”

    House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy reached out privately to the speaker “to check in on Paul and said he’s praying for a full recovery,” spokesman Mark Bednar said.

    But some Republicans declined to pause from politics.

    Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin, at a campaign stop for a congressional candidate, said of the Pelosis, “There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send her back to be with him in California.”

    In 2021, Capitol Police investigated around 9,600 threats made against members of Congress, and several members have been physically attacked in recent years. Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was shot in the head at an event outside a Tucson grocery store in 2011, and Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., was severely injured when a gunman opened fire on a Republican congressional baseball team practice in 2017.

    Members of Congress have received additional money for security at their homes, but some have pushed for yet more protection as people have shown up at their residences.

    Nancy Pelosi, who is second in line of succession to the president, has been viciously lampooned in campaign ads by Republicans and outside groups this election cycle. Her protective security detail was with her in Washington at the time of Friday’s attack in California.

    Often at her side during formal events in Washington, Paul Pelosi is a wealthy investor who largely remains on the West Coast. They have been married for 59 years and have five adult children and many grandchildren.

    Earlier this year, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor driving under the influence charges related to a May crash in California’s wine country and was sentenced to five days in jail and three years of probation.

    The Pelosi home in the wealthy neighborhood has been the scene of several protests in the past few years. After Nancy Pelosi was seen on video getting her hair done at a salon while many were shut down during the coronavirus pandemic, stylists protested outside with curling irons. Members of the Chinese community protested recently before Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan.

    During debates over the federal stimulus package, protesters scrawled anarchy signs in black paint across the garage door, along with “cancel rent,” and “we want everything.” They left a pig’s head on the driveway.

    Yet the dominant feelings Friday were of support and concern.

    “We have been to many events with the Pelosis over the last 2 decades and we’ve had lots of occasions to talk about both of our families and the challenges of being part of a political family. Thinking about the Pelosi family today,” tweeted Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

    At the Capitol, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Senate president pro tempore and third in the presidential line of succession, said he had known Paul Pelosi “forever.” He said, “It’s just horrible.”

    ___

    Congressional correspondent Lisa Mascaro and Associated Press writers Colleen Long and Michael Balsamo reported from Washington. AP writers Kevin Freking and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed from Washington, Juliet Williams from San Francisco, Stefanie Dazio from Los Angeles, Bernard Condon and News Researcher Jennifer Farrar from New York, and Seung Min Kim from Philadelphia. Michelle Smith and Ali Swanson also contributed.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

    Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections.

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  • Ye kicked out of Skechers’ headquarters in California

    Ye kicked out of Skechers’ headquarters in California

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    MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. (AP) — The rapper formerly known as Kanye West was escorted out of the California-based headquarters of athletic shoemaker Skechers after he showed up unannounced Wednesday, a day after Adidas ended its partnership with the artist following his antisemitic remarks.

    The Grammy winner, who legally changed his name to Ye, “arrived unannounced and without invitation” at Skechers corporate headquarters in Manhattan Beach, southwest of Los Angeles, the company said.

    “Considering Ye was engaged in unauthorized filming, two Skechers executives escorted him and his party from the building after a brief conversation,” according to a company statement.

    “Skechers is not considering and has no intention of working with West,” the company said. “We condemn his recent divisive remarks and do not tolerate antisemitism or any other form of hate speech.”

    The rapper’s Instagram account — which had been suspended over antisemitic comments — resumed posting Tuesday night. A new message showing a screen grab of a text message that appeared to be from a contact at a high-profile law firm spelled out when Ye could resume making apparel and new shoe designs.

    Details of the message could not be verified; email messages sent to representatives for Ye weren’t immediately returned.

    For weeks, Ye has made antisemitic comments in interviews and social media, including a Twitter post earlier this month that he would soon go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” an apparent reference to the U.S. defense readiness condition scale known as DEFCON. His posts led to his suspension from both Twitter and Instagram.

    He apologized for the tweet on Monday.

    On Tuesday, sportswear manufacturer Adidas announced that it was ending a partnership with Ye that helped make him a billionaire, saying it doesn’t tolerate antisemitism and hate speech.

    The German sneaker giant said it expected that the decision to immediately stop production of its Yeezy products would cause a hit to its net income of up to 250 million euros ($246 million).

    The company had stuck with Ye through other controversies after he suggested slavery was a choice and called the COVID-19 vaccine the “mark of the beast.”

    Other companies also have announced they were cutting ties with Ye, including Foot Locker, Gap, TJ Maxx, JPMorgan Chase bank and Vogue magazine. An MRC documentary about him was also scrapped.

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  • French TV star scrutinized in book about sex abuse, #MeToo

    French TV star scrutinized in book about sex abuse, #MeToo

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    PARIS (AP) — “At a certain level of fame, no French man has ever been convicted for sexual abuse.”

    These words are from the book “Impunity,” by Hélène Devynck, who says she was raped by France’s most famous TV presenter.

    Devynck is among dozens of women who have spoken out recently to accuse Patrick Poivre d’Arvor of rape, sexual abuse or harassment from 1981 to 2018. Her book, published last month, investigates accusations against Poivre d’Arvor, denounces France’s historically lax attitude toward sexual abuse allegations and questions why the #MeToo movement in her country has had such limited impact.

    Poivre d’Arvor, who hosted France’s most popular news program for more than two decades and remains a revered personality, denies sexual wrongdoing and insists relations with his accusers were consensual.

    Now 75 and retired, Poivre d’Arvor has sued 16 of his accusers — including Devynck — and a French newspaper that reported on the allegations.

    Most accusations are now too old to prosecute, but French magistrates opened an investigation that examines alleged abuses by Poivre d’Arvor. French media report that over 20 women have filed legal complaints, although no charges have been brought.

    In the United States, several high-profile sexual assault trials are unfolding across the country: movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, actor Danny Masterson and filmmaker Paul Haggis all face accusations linked to #MeToo. All deny wrongdoing.

    France, meanwhile, has not seen any major figure prosecuted in the #MeToo era, and has had a more fraught relationship with the movement. Even as more and more people in France are standing up against sexual misconduct, debate continues about where seduction ends and sexual harassment and abuse begins, especially in a context where the myth of the “French lover” remains popular and positively perceived.

    The book by Devynck, 55, comes after multiple recent accounts of women accusing Poivre d’Arvor in French media outlets.

    Devynck said she was raped in 1993 by Poivre d’Arvor when she was working as an assistant to him at TF1, a leading European broadcaster. At the time, Poivre d’Arvor drew in up to 10 million viewers every night.

    Poivre d’Arvor’s accusers told Devynck that his fame and power made it seem futile to speak out when he abused them because they felt nobody would believe them and it would ruin their careers.

    In an interview with The Associated Press, Devynck said the point of her book “is to show how that impunity was built, forged, maintained. And since we have spoken out… impunity continues.”

    Accusations poured in after author Florence Porcel, now 39, first filed a complaint in February 2021 against Poivre d’Arvor, accusing him of raping her in 2004 and 2009.

    The AP generally does not identify those who say they have been sexually assaulted, except when they publicly identify themselves.

    Devynck said she spoke with about 60 women accusing Poivre d’Arvor of sexual misconduct while writing the book. Since its publication, she said about 30 more women have come forward with allegations against him. Not all have spoken to police, she said, because some prefer to remain anonymous and avoid a long, difficult judicial process.

    A few of the women knew each other through work, though most did not.

    Poivre d’Arvor was the star presenter of TF1′s evening newscast “20 Heures” between 1987 and 2008 and one of the most famous people in France, where he is widely known as just “PPDA.” An author, he also used to anchor a prestigious TV literary program.

    A couple of weeks after Porcel’s complaint, in his only interview about the allegations to date, Poivre d’Arvor acknowledged “small kisses in the neck, sometimes small compliments or sometimes some charm or seduction” — things that he said are not accepted anymore by younger generations.

    “Never in my life, ever, have I accepted a relation that would not be consensual,” he added, speaking on TMC, a channel that belongs to the TF1 group.

    Devynck said she noticed strong similarities between the accounts of the women she spoke to.

    “We all tell the same story, he was using the same words. He was starting with, ‘Are you in a relationship? Are you faithful?’ And then, he was doing the same gestures and he had a very well-oiled process,” she told the AP.

    Poivre d’Arvor used to offer women to watch “20 Heures” in the television studio, then invite them into his office, Devynck said. “Not all were raped. Some were abused, others harassed. But every time, all those who speak out say he tried (sexually-oriented acts),” she said.

    That, she described in her book, is exactly what happened to her.

    “I remained silent. I did not speak while I was working at TF1. If I had spoken, it was the end of my professional life and I had absolutely no chance to make my voice heard,” she told the AP.

    Devynck decided to make her story public 28 years later. She filed a complaint to police last year after seeing Poivre d’Arvor’s interview on French television, following Porcel’s complaint.

    “The image shown by that man compared to what I knew, me, about him, was so wrong that the next day, I called investigators to give my testimony,” she recalled in her interview with the AP.

    “I spoke to defend other women,” she added.

    She argued in her book that the image of Poivre d’Arvor, often described as a charmer, helped protect him. Because he was known to try to seduce lots of women, people assumed that all relations were consensual, Devynck said.

    Poivre d’Arvor’s lawyer, Jacqueline Laffont, declined to speak to the AP about the case. She referred to previous comments she made last year after Porcel’s case was initially closed following the preliminary investigation.

    Closing the case without pressing charges was “the only possible decision” after a “thorough investigation,” Laffont said at the time. She said that Poivre d’Arvor had been able to bring “evidence” for his defense showing that Porcel “was lying.”

    Porcel then filed another complaint, leading a magistrate to reopen a judicial investigation. The Nanterre prosecutors’ office said several other accusations made more recently were combined with that investigation.

    Only 12% of alleged victims of rape or attempted rape file a complaint — and only a small proportion of those cases lead to a trial, according to French government statistics.

    The French Interior ministry said, however, that there was a 33% increase in 2021 in the number of sexual abuse complaints reported to police, a trend it partly attributes to the #MeToo movement prompting women to go public with incidents from their past.

    “Before #MeToo, women were even more afraid of saying what happened to them,” said Violaine de Filippis, a lawyer and activist who specializes in women’s rights.

    “So now, to say ‘No, it’s not meant to be, it’s not normal, it’s illegal and it’s serious,’ that’s very important,” she said.

    She did not specifically refer to Poivre d’Arvor’s case.

    France’s justice minister Eric Dupont-Moretti sent a note last year to prosecutors encouraging them to investigate sexual abuse allegations even if they appear too old to prosecute. One goal, he said, is to find other potential victims; another is for magistrates to be able to hear from the people accused.

    Devynck said she would like to see Poivre d’Arvor in a courtroom.

    “I hope there will be a trial one day, but that I don’t know,” she said.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the #MeToo movement: https://apnews.com/hub/metoo

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  • Editors at Bartlett’s work to keep up with what’s quotable

    Editors at Bartlett’s work to keep up with what’s quotable

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Books and speeches, lyrics and interviews, impulsive tweets and sworn testimony: Keeping up with all the words issued over the past decade might overwhelm anyone, but even more so if it’s your job to keep up.

    “Clearly, the speed of events meant that no matter when we went to press, we would be cutting off in the middle of the story,” says Geoffrey O’Brien, the general editor of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.

    The 19th edition of the 170-year old reference work has just been published. It’s the first volume since 2012 and the second under the guidance of O’Brien, an author, poet and cultural historian and the former editor-in-chief of the Library of America. The new book welcomes thousands to the unofficial canon of quotability, including author Ta-Nehisi Coates, the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elon Musk and President Joe Biden.

    “With the Internet and cable news, you have the constant manufacturing of statements of one kind or another,” O’Brien says, identifying his challenge as to choose quotations that have staying power beyond ephemeral news cycles.

    Among the current class, none were more obvious, more problematic and more representative than former President Donald Trump, listed straightforwardly in the index as “Trump, Donald J(ohn), 1946-”.

    Trump became a kind of test case for the proliferation of quotes in the 24/7 age and for the difficulty of sorting them. From launching his presidential campaign in 2015 through the end of his presidency and beyond, Trump has been an unending source of newsmaking words, spoken or tweeted at all hours.

    “It became clear a certain amount of culling would be involved to pick out things that seemed crucial or sufficiently memorable,” O’Brien says. “It’s guesswork at best since nobody knows how anything is going to turn out. That’s why Bartlett’s has evolved over time.”

    Trump’s quotes originate everywhere from a speech in Nevada (“I love the poorly educated!”) to one of his debates with Hillary Clinton (“Such a nasty woman”). One selection originates not directly from him, but from a conversation with then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions as documented in the Mueller Report: “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m f—ked.”

    Bartlett’s was founded in the 1850s by Cambridge, Massachusetts, bookstore owner John Bartlett. It has always been a subjective, even eccentric project. The initial editions were almost entirely dedicated to white, male English-language poets, statesmen and prose writers. The choices were unpredictable even within those limited boundaries: Bartlett included Benjamin Franklin, but not Thomas Jefferson; Thomas Paine, but not John Adams; John Keats, but not Percy Bysshe Shelley; the editor and translator “Mrs. Sarah Austin,” but not Jane Austen.

    In recent decades, O’Brien and his immediate predecessor, Justin Kaplan, have opened up Bartlett’s to voices from around the world and from a broad range of backgrounds. Bartlett’s now includes words from Beyoncé, Usain Bolt, climate activist Greta Thunberg and writer Azar Nafisi. Bartlett’s also features Russian proverbs (“Live with wolves, howl like a wolf”), sea shanties and a Navajo hunting song (“Blessed am I/In the luck of the chase”).

    O’Brien and his editorial team faced the challenge of broadening Bartlett’s while keeping its length around 1,400 pages. Some older entries — from Alfonso the Wise to Anthony Burgess — had to go and O’Brien said he was personally sorry to reduce the space for a favorite writer, English poet John Dryden.

    Former Vice President Dan Quayle’s mangling of a United Negro College Fund advertising slogan, “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind,” has, perhaps mercifully, been dropped. So has best actress winner Sally Field’s seemingly immortal soundbite from the 1985 Academy Awards: “You like me!”

    Fame does not guarantee quotability, and infamy does not lead to exclusion.

    Bob Hope, a name once seemingly universally known, is not included. Neither is Johnny Carson, a U.S. cultural touchstone for decades. Contemporary celebrities left out include Oprah Winfrey, Jimmy Fallon, Trevor Noah, Howard Stern and the late Rush Limbaugh. At the same time, Woody Allen, Garrison Keillor and others whose standing has fallen during the #MeToo era remain. Kanye West and his unusual praise for Trump (“We are both dragon energy,” he told Time magazine in 2018) make the new edition.

    O’Brien expressed regret over some of those left out, notably the late Rep. John Lewis. He explained that the goal was to be representative, but not encyclopedic. Among contemporary songwriters, for instance, Merle Haggard is in, but not Willie Nelson; Leonard Cohen, but not Randy Newman or John Prine. Dolly Parton is cited for the first time, although not for “Jolene” or any other song, but for her tagline, “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.”

    Not all of those newly included were satisfied with how the editors represented them. The longtime music critic Robert Christgau now joins such peers as Greil Marcus and Lester Bangs in Bartlett’s but personally would not have chosen a passage which begins “Punk nostalgia … is a grotesque oxymoron.”

    “I’m not crazy about that sentence, there are hundreds if not thousands better,” he told The Associated Press, preferring a sentence he wrote for the Village Voice in 1969: “In the worst of times, music is a promise that times were meant to be better.”

    Author and essayist Leslie Jamison was pleasantly surprised by the two excerpts Bartlett’s selected, calling them “central concepts” for her: one in which she refers to empathy as not “just something that happens to you” but a “choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves,” and another in which she writes ”Unconditional love was insulting, but conditional love was terrifying.”

    Author Rachel Kushner likes the idea of Bartlett’s ongoing evolution, saying to the AP that it’s a way of converting “writing into both a conversation and people talking over one another, which is true to what people do.” Her novel from 2013, “The Flamethrowers,” is listed for a passage about love and how “People who want their love easy don’t really want love.”

    For future editions, should she be included, Kushner suggested a quote from a 2021 essay: “To become a writer is to have left early no matter what time you got home.”

    She also mentioned a more urgent priority, that her “birthdate be followed in the biographical index by an em dash, and then a blank space.”

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  • Report: Global crises can speed up move to clean energy

    Report: Global crises can speed up move to clean energy

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    BENGALURU, India (AP) — Spiraling energy costs caused by various economic factors and the Ukraine war could be a turning point toward cleaner energy, the International Energy Agency said in a report Thursday. It found the global demand for fossil fuels, including coal, oil, and natural gas, is set to peak or plateau in the next few decades.

    The report looked at scenarios based on current policies and said that coal use will fall back within the next few years, natural gas demand will reach a plateau by the end of the decade and rising sales of electric vehicles mean that the need for oil will level off in the mid-2030s before ebbing slightly by mid-century. Total emissions are currently going up each year, but slowly.

    “Energy markets and policies have changed as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not just for the time being, but for decades to come,” said the IEA’s executive director Fatih Birol. A surge in demand following COVID-19 pandemic restrictions lifting and bottlenecks in supply chains have also contributed to soaring energy prices.

    “The energy world is shifting dramatically before our eyes. Government responses around the world promise to make this a historic and definitive turning point toward a cleaner, more affordable and more secure energy system,” Birol said.

    The role of natural gas as a “transition fuel” that will bridge the gap between a fossil-fuel based energy system to a renewable one has also taken a dent, the report said. Although it’s a fossil fuel, natural gas is considered cleaner than coal and oil, as burning it produces less carbon dioxide.

    But despite the largely positive outlook, the report adds that the share of fossil fuels in the global energy mix puts the world on track to a warming of 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, a whole degree (1.8 Fahrenheit) more than the target set in the Paris climate deal.

    That’s in line with a U.N. report released Wednesday that said current climate pledges are “nowhere near” where they need to be to meet the ambitious target. Top climate scientists say that to keep warming in line with the 1.5 C goal, emissions need to be slashed by 45% by 2030.

    Energy policy analysts say that while there are promising steps in the right direction, the move toward clean energy needs to be much faster.

    “Clean energy investment is delivering. It is the reason why the world is on track to peak CO2 emissions. But that’s only the first step. We need big emissions cuts, not a plateau,” said Dave Jones, an energy analyst at London-based environmental think-tank, Ember.

    The report estimated that clean energy investment will be above $2 trillion by 2030 but added it would need to double to keep the transition in line with climate goals.

    “The energy crisis has detracted from the climate crisis, but fortunately the answer is the same to both: a gigantic step up in clean energy investment,” Jones said.

    “This report makes a very strong economic case for renewable energy which is not only more cost-competitive and affordable than fossil fuel alternatives but also is proving to be much more resilient to economic and geopolitical shocks,” said Maria Pastukhova a senior policy advisor at E3G, a climate change think-tank.

    She added that leaders and negotiators at the U.N. climate conference in Egypt next month will need to “double down” on reducing the demand for energy and unlock finance for developing countries to help fund their transition to renewables which would speed up emissions cuts.

    ___

    Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

    ___

    Follow Sibi Arasu on Twitter at @sibi123

    ___

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • ‘It’s about time’: Celebrations of Diwali illuminate NYC

    ‘It’s about time’: Celebrations of Diwali illuminate NYC

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    By MALLIKA SEN

    October 24, 2022 GMT

    NEW YORK (AP) — The week dawned gloomily in New York, but the drab mist was little match for the holiday at hand: Diwali, the festival of lights that symbolizes the triumph over darkness.

    Celebrated across South Asia in some fashion by Hindus, Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists, the multi-day festival has secured a sturdy foothold far from the subcontinent in places with significant diaspora populations — like New York.

    “One thing I would say — the whole country celebrates, right? So it’s lit up,” fashion designer Prabal Gurung said of celebrations in Nepal, where Diwali is better known as Tihar. He sees signs of Diwali’s increased popularity in New York. But, he said, the whole city “is not celebrating yet — so I’m just giving them a year or two.”

    Gurung was one of the hosts of Diwali New York, a glitzy soiree held Saturday at The Pierre, fittingly a Taj Hotel. The party, now in its third year, highlights Diwali by bringing together high-powered South Asians with other New York luminaries — people who “the world saw as leaders and role models,” said host Anita Chatterjee, CEO of A-Game Public Relations.

    Five miles east of the five-star hotel, those already familiar with the holiday were embarking on preparations for their personal celebrations. Earlier Saturday, the first of the five-day celebration, the streets of Jackson Heights were replete with reminders of the festivities.

    The many sweets shops of the Queens neighborhood, known for its South Asian community, were packed to the gills with little room for movement. In the stands outside Apna Bazaar, a grocery store, a sea of small clay pots and wicks for Diwali lamps lay alongside fresh bunches of cilantro and above bags of onions. Handwritten blue signs advertised Diwali specials for everything from 40-pound bags of rice to ghee, tea and pitted dates.

    Every year, Sapna Pal comes to Butala Emporium to do her Diwali shopping. Carrying a basket brimming with tea lights and other decorations, the Delhi native said her Diwali celebrations in the United States are usually intimate family affairs because most people prefer to pray in their own homes.

    When asked if she misses Diwali in India, Pal — who has lived in Queens for almost 25 years — responded: “Yes! Every day, every year, every year.” But she nonetheless still enjoys Diwali here, looking forward to the sweets — gulab jamun, rasmalai and different types of barfi are among her favorites — and the puja ceremonies.

    Outside a Patel Brothers grocery store branch, Bhanu Shetty has run a pop-up Diwali stall for two decades. Her son Pratik says the temporary Flowers by Bhanu stall typically draws around 3,000 customers over three days. She is more circumspect: “People come.”

    “We’ve always been known for flowers, but just for these three days we showcase all the temple offerings,” Pratik Shetty said, motioning to 3D stickers, garlands, stencils for the colored powder designs known as rangoli, pictures and, naturally, flowers. Most of the flowers are locally sourced, but the Diwali specialty is the $5 lotus imported from India.

    Ratan Sharma, a manager at India Sari Palace, says sweet shops and grocery stores are the biggest beneficiaries of the Diwali shopping. But his clothing store does well, too: “Once a year we give a benefit to the customers,” she said, “and they take advantage of it.” Sharma said the silk saris — typically on the more expensive end — are the most popular item during the annual Diwali sale.

    Jackson Heights is a multiethnic, multi-religious neighborhood, and some stores still featured signs offering Eid sales. Suneera Madhani, the Pakistani American founder of Stax, attended the Diwali party at The Pierre as a gesture of South Asian solidarity. She says she would love to heighten Eid’s profile in New York in a similar manner.

    The Diwali gala was certainly high-profile: Host Radhika Jones, the top editor at Vanity Fair, mingled with Ronan Farrow and Kelly Ripa, all clad in South Asian fashions. Chatterjee said her firm helped connect some non-South Asian attendees to designers, including fellow hosts Falguni and Shane Peacock.

    The party was at time raucous, with several bear hugs that lifted grown men clear off the ground. Gurung, clad in a glittering Abu Jani-Sandeep Khosla ensemble, tore up the dance floor to the 2014 hit “Baby Doll.” He was subsequently handed blotting paper by a pink salwar kameez-clad Ripa, whose husband, actor Mark Consuelos, pat the table to the beat. Padma Lakshmi and Sarita Choudhury embraced for the camera, with the former demonstrating some hip-shaking thumkas.

    “Our generation has really embraced our culture and the expression of it,” said another host, Anjula Acharia, Priyanka Chopra Jonas’ manager.

    Normally, she’d be spending the holiday with her illustrious client. But, marveling at the progress Diwali has made outside of South Asia and its diaspora, she said she’s spending it this year with President Joe Biden.

    “A few years ago, it really occurred to me: Diwali is not on the New York social scene in a way that I felt like it deserved to be, needed to be and I wanted it to be,” said restaurateur Maneesh Goyal, another host and the mastermind of the event.

    While he said that Diwali is “personally” a day of reflection, it’s also about celebrations and “happiness, positivity, bringing people together.”

    For Diwali to really permeate American culture, Gurung said, it will take “just us showing up consistently, constantly in the most graceful, beautiful, thoughtful way.” The resonance of the holiday’s themes alone — the victory of good over evil, light over dark — should do the rest of the work.

    “It’s the right time,” he said. “And also, it’s about time.”

    ___

    Mallika Sen is the entertainment news editor for The Associated Press. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mallikavsen

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  • Meta fined $24.7M for campaign finance disclosure violations

    Meta fined $24.7M for campaign finance disclosure violations

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    SEATTLE (AP) — A Washington state judge on Wednesday fined Facebook parent company Meta nearly $25 million for repeatedly and intentionally violating campaign finance disclosure law, in what is believed to be the largest campaign finance penalty in U.S. history.

    The penalty issued by King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North was the maximum allowed for more than 800 violations of Washington’s Fair Campaign Practices Act, passed by voters in 1972 and later strengthened by the Legislature. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson argued that the maximum was appropriate considering his office previously sued Facebook in 2018 for violating the same law.

    Meta, based in Menlo Park, California, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

    Washington’s transparency law requires ad sellers such as Meta to keep and make public the names and addresses of those who buy political ads, the target of such ads, how the ads were paid for and the total number of views of each ad. Ad sellers must provide the information to anyone who asks for it. Television stations and newspapers have complied with the law for decades.

    But Meta has repeatedly objected to the requirements, arguing unsuccessfully in court that the law is unconstitutional because it “unduly burdens political speech” and is “virtually impossible to fully comply with.” While Facebook does keep an archive of political ads that run on the platform, the archive does not disclose all the information required under Washington’s law.

    “I have one word for Facebook’s conduct in this case — arrogance,” Ferguson said in a news release. “It intentionally disregarded Washington’s election transparency laws. But that wasn’t enough. Facebook argued in court that those laws should be declared unconstitutional. That’s breathtaking. Where’s the corporate responsibility?”

    In 2018, following Ferguson’s first lawsuit, Facebook agreed to pay $238,000 and committed to transparency in campaign finance and political advertising. It subsequently said it would stop selling political ads in the state rather than comply with the requirements.

    Nevertheless, the company continued selling political ads, and Ferguson sued again in 2020.

    “Meta was aware that its announced ‘ban’ would not, and did not, stop all such advertising from continuing to be displayed on its platform,” North wrote last month in finding that Meta violation’s were intentional.

    Each violation of the law is typically punishable by up to $10,000, but penalties can be tripled if a judge finds them to be intentional. North fined Meta $30,000 for each of its 822 violations — about $24.7 million. Ferguson described the fine as the largest campaign finance-related penalty ever issued in the U.S.

    Meta, one of the world’s richest companies, reported quarterly earnings Wednesday of $4.4 billion, or $1.64 per share, on revenue of nearly $28 billion, in the three month period that ended Sept. 30.

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