The Biden administration is examining the four largest U.S. airline frequent-flyer programs and how they devalue points that consumers have earned and frequently change the number of points or miles needed to book flights.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg wrote to the CEOs of American, Delta, Southwest and United on Thursday, asking each for a report on policies, fees and other features of their loyalty program.
Consumers often complain that airlines raise the number of points needed to earn a free flight and limit the number of seats that can be purchased with points.
Buttigieg said loyalty programs bring value to consumers, and people count on them to pay for vacations and trips to visit family.
“But unlike a traditional savings account, these rewards are controlled by a company that can unilaterally change their value,” he said in a statement issued by the Transportation Department. “Our goal is to ensure consumers are getting the value that was promised to them, which means validating that these programs are transparent and fair.”
Delta said loyalty of members in its frequent-flyer program “means everything to us, and providing a meaningful rewards experience is the top priority within Delta’s SkyMiles Program.” Southwest highlighted that its points never expire, and said it books more seats with points than other airlines.
Airlines for America, a trade group that represents all four carriers targeted by Buttigieg, said millions of people enjoy participating in the loyalty programs.
“U.S. carriers are transparent about these programs, and policymakers should ensure that consumers can continue to be offered these important benefits,” a spokesperson for the group said.
Frequent-flyer programs were once based on the number of flights taken or miles flown. In recent years, however, they have been fueled by spending that consumers conduct using airline-branded credit cards. Income from the credit-card issuers has become an important source of airline revenue.
The Transportation Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau held a hearing in May on the airline programs, at which they raised many of the issued covered in Buttigieg’s letter to airline CEOs. Witnesses included consumer advocates and officials from three smaller airlines, but no representatives of the big four airlines that are covered by the new inquiry.
One of the advocates who testified, Erin Witte of the Consumer Federation of America, said frequent-flyer programs started as a reward for consumers who were loyal to one airline.
“It’s ironic that many of them have morphed into programs that are anything but loyal to their customers and instead make people feel like they need an insurance policy to keep the points they have earned,” Witte said Thursday. She said she was glad the Transportation Department is examining the programs.
The consumer-protection board said in a report for the hearing that it received more than 1,200 complaints about credit card rewards last year, an increase of more than 70% from pre-pandemic levels. Many hotels, retailers and other businesses also offer loyalty programs with credit cards.
Buttigieg ordered the airlines to report within 90 days on matters including how point values are determined, any fees that consumers must pay, and details of deals with banks that buy miles from airlines and use them to encourage people to shop with their credit cards.
The order asks airlines to list any changes in their programs since July 31, 2018, including how each change affected the dollar value of reward points.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fewer adolescents are vaping this year than at any point in the last decade, government officials reported Thursday, pointing to a shrinking number of high school students who are using Elf Bar and other fruity, unauthorized e-cigarettes.
The latest survey numbers show the teen vaping rate fell to under 6% this year, down from 7.7% in 2023. More than 1.6 million students reported vaping in the previous month — about one-third the number in 2019, when underage vaping peaked with the use of discrete, high-nicotine e-cigarettes like Juul.
This year’s decline was mainly driven by a half-million fewer high school students who reported using e-cigarettes in the past month, officials said. Vaping was unchanged among middle schoolers, but remains less common in that group, at 3.5% of students.
“This is a monumental public health win,” FDA’s tobacco director Brian King told reporters. “But we can’t rest on our laurels. There’s clearly more work to do to further reduce youth use.”
King and other officials noted that the drop in vaping didn’t coincide with a rise in other tobacco industry products, such as nicotine pouches.
Sales of small, flavored pouches like Zyn have surged among adults. The subject of viral videos on social media platforms, the pouches come in flavors like mint and cinnamon and slowly release nicotine when placed along the gumline. This year’s U.S. survey shows 1.8% of teens are using them, largely unchanged from last year.
“Our guard is up,” King said. “We’re aware of the reported growing sales trends and we’re closely monitoring the evolving tobacco product landscape.”
The federal survey involved more than 29,000 students in grades 6 through 12 who filled out an online questionnaire in the spring. Health officials consider the survey to be their best measure of youth tobacco and nicotine trends. Thursday’s update focused on vaping products and nicotine pouches, but the full publication will eventually include rates of cigarette and cigar smoking, which have also hit historic lows in recent years.
Officials from the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attributed the big drop in vaping to recent age restrictions and more aggressive enforcement against retailers and manufacturers, including Chinese vaping companies who have sold their e-cigarettes illegally in the U.S. for years.
Use of the most popular e-cigarette among teens, Elf Bar, fell 36% in the wake of FDA warning letters to stores and distributors selling the brightly colored vapes, which come in flavors like watermelon ice and peach mango. The brand is part of a wave of cheap, disposable e-cigarettes from China that have taken over a large portion of the U.S. vaping market. The FDA has tried to block such imports, although Elf Bar and other brands have tried to find workarounds by changing their names, addresses and logos.
Teen use of major American e-cigarettes like Vuse and Juul remained significant, with about 12% of teens who vape reporting use of those those brands.
In 2020, FDA regulators banned fruit and candy flavors from reusable e-cigarettes like Juul, which are now only sold in menthol and tobacco. But the flavor restriction didn’t apply to disposable products, and companies like Elf Bar stepped in to fill the gap.
Other key findings in the report:
— Among students who current use e-cigarettes, about 26% said they vape daily.
— Nearly 90% of the students who vape used flavored products, with fruit flavors as the overwhelming favorite.
— Zyn is the most common nicotine pouch among teens who use the products.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
LONDON (AP) — One doesn’t need to know sign language to understand what Michael Connolly feels about his colleagues’ efforts to break down the barriers posed by his deafness.
When asked what he thought of his teammates’ decision to learn British Sign Language, the 45-year-old autoworker at the Nissan plant in Sunderland, England, grinned and flashed a universal symbol: Two thumbs up.
Connolly loves having the chance to banter with his workmates, to talk about everyday things — the kids, vacation plans, a TV program. And now he can, because the entire 25-member bumper-paint team at Sunderland started learning BSL at the beginning of the year.
“I’m glad they have all learned sign language for us because I can talk and I lipread the hearing person, but I have my limits,” Connolly signed in an interview with The Associated Press. “If you reverse the situation and the hearing person can sign and speak, they have no limits.’’
The initiative grew out of a broader effort to improve efficiency at the Sunderland plant, which makes Qashqai and Juke sport utility vehicles. While Nissan took steps to overhaul training and increase the use of visual aids during briefings, the bumper-paint team decided to go a step further and learn sign language, said supervisor John Johnson.
Connolly is one of four hearing-impaired people assigned to the team, which works in less bustling area of the plant where it is safer for workers who can’t hear the sound of an approaching vehicle.
Johnson said the thought of mastering the combination of gestures, facial expressions and body language that comprise BSL was daunting. But it helped him understand what life was like for Connolly and the other deaf workers as they tried to learn their jobs and fit into a team without having the ability to share the personal tidbits that build friendships.
“So as a team, we thought how can we knock that barrier down? And obviously sign language was the solution, or at least the start of an opportunity,’’ Johnson said.
The team’s decision is very unusual, said Teri Devine, the associate director for inclusion and employment at The Royal National Institute for Deaf People. While many employers make an effort to reach out and engage with deaf workers, few go as far as learning sign language, she said.
Research shows that many deaf people, particularly BSL users, feel isolated at work, Devine said.
Having more hearing people who understand sign language is important because even the most proficient lip readers will only pick up 30% to 40% of a conversation, she added.
“It’s absolutely crucial that deaf people are included in everyday conversations, and it’s very easy to include them in those conversations,’’ Devine said. “The fact that (workers at) Nissan have gone and learned some BSL to support their colleague is actually fantastic. I take my hat off to them.’’
There are mountains of research showing that kindness in the workplace improves productivity as well as being good for the people with their noses to the grindstone, said Cary Cooper, a professor of organizational psychology and health at the Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester.
You can see that at work on the bumper-paint team, where workers had limited ability to communicate before they learned sign language, Cooper said. But now they’ve created the opportunity for dialogue.
“You can find out: What did you do this weekend? What about the football results,” he said. “In other words, you’re cementing the relationship — the team building. And that’s important. It goes far beyond, you know, ‘you haven’t painted that bit of the bumper.’”
ROME (AP) — Italy approved new rules late Wednesday to put lucrative concessions for beach clubs up for bidding by June 2027, responding to pressing demands from the EU to open up the sector to new players.
Under the new legislation by the right-wing government led by Giorgia Meloni, existing beach licenses would remain valid until September 2027.
The deadline could be further postponed to March 2028 if there are “objective reasons” to delay the tender process, the government said.
The compromise seeks to address complaints by existing operators who risk losing their concessions and would be entitled to compensation paid by the new holders.
For almost two decades, the European Commission has been locked in a legal battle with Italy over its beach concession practices, accusing the country of lacking transparency and breaching competition rules.
Previous Italian governments, from left to right, have staunchly resisted EU directives requiring competitive tendering, persistently renewing the existing beach concessions without open procedures.
For years, many of these beach spots have been controlled by the same operators, often resulting in a lack of innovation and high prices.
Economists believe that opening the sector could bring in fresh players, potentially improving service quality and reducing costs for beachgoers.
Currently, they can pay from 25 euros to rent two chaise lounges and an umbrella for the day in the most basic establishments, to several hundred euros in fancy resorts such as Capri or Puglia’s Salento.
DOVER, Del. (AP) — A federal judge in Delaware has ruled in favor of a firm seeking assurance that it will be able to sell its minority stake in the parent company of former president Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform.
The judge on Friday granted summary judgment to Florida-based United Atlantic Ventures LLC in a lawsuit filed against Minnesota-based Odyssey Transfer and Trust Co., a business that handles securities transfers among registered shareholders.
UAV is owned by Andrew Litinsky and Wesley Moss, former contestants on Trump’s TV show, “The Apprentice” who also helped facilitate a merger that took Trump Media public in March.
Since then, UAV and Trump Media have been battling in courts in both Delaware and Florida over UAV’s stake in the company. Attorneys for Trump Media assured a state judge in Delaware earlier this year that UAV was entitled to an 8.6% stake and would suffer no merger-related dilution. They now contend, however, that UAV is not entitled to its shares because of pre-merger mismanagement by Litinsky and Moss.
Friday’s ruling involves UAV’s concerns that it will not receive its Trump Media shares, currently valued at about $350 million, from Odyssey when a post-merger lockup period expires Sept. 19. According to court filings, Odyssey told UAV earlier this year that it would be taking direction from TMTG and its lawyers.
After Odyssey filed a lawsuit, the parties appeared to have reached a resolution, with Odyssey saying it would remove transfer restrictions on the share after the lockup period expires “without preference to any TMTG shareholder.” After seeking approval from Trump Media, however, Odyssey tried to change that language to “on the same basis as other similarly situated TMTG shareholders.”
Trump holds about 115 million TMTG shares, or roughly 60% of the company’s outstanding shares.
U.S. District Judge Gregory Williams questioned Odyssey’s conduct, noting that it claimed the language change was “immaterial,” while allowing it to scuttle settlement negotiations.
“Even outside settlement negotiations, Odyssey’s conduct has been elusive,” Williams wrote.
Williams ordered that when Odyssey is notified by TMTG of the expiration of the lockup provisions, it must promptly notify UAV, remove transfer restrictions on all shares and not interfere with the delivery of the shares.
TMTG’s share price hit a high of $79.38 on its first day of trading but is now hovering around $17, closing Friday at $17.10.
“People are concerned because we realize that our rights are under attack in some cases,” said Mark Chesnut, a New York-based travel writer and speaker with 30 years of experience in the industry. “People aren’t going to stop traveling. They’re just more careful and taking precautions. They’re choosing destinations wisely.”
Read reviews. Network with locals. Know the laws and customs of a destination, Chesnut and other seasoned LGBTQ+ travelers and their allies suggest. Is it illegal there to be gay? Is it a taboo that can get you killed? Is it safe to embrace or hold hands in public? What are the ramifications for HIV-positive travelers? How about misaligned documents and security scans for trans people?
The potential pitfalls are many for LGBTQ+ travelers, especially couples looking to express their authentic selves, advocates said. But the possible dangers should be weighed against the joys of discovering new places, said Stefan Arestis and Sebastien Chaneac, the globetrotting couple behind the travel blog the Nomadic Boys.
“We as gay people have to do that extra layer of research compared to my straight friends. They can hop on a plane and go,” said Arestis, a Greek Cypriot.
He and Chaneac, who is French, left their London jobs (the former a lawyer and the latter in tech) to make Cyprus their base. They turned more than a decade of extended travel into a detail-rich website and, this year, a handbook for LGBTQ+ travelers, “Out in the World: The Gay Guide to Travelling with Pride.”
Granular due diligence will help
Arestis said it was clear in 2014, when they began blogging about their year-long sabbatical in Asia for friends and family, that LGBTQ+ travelers were hungry for information.
“After about a year, we started getting random people coming to our site. We thought who are these people? Basically, they were googling things like where are the gay bars in Bali? Are there gay hotels in Shanghai? Is it safe to go to Taiwan? They were finding our content,” he said, because at the time there was little else about the subject online.
Arestis has visited 97 countries of all sorts. Chaneac doesn’t count but does have places he wouldn’t go out of safety concerns, including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
On their site and in their book, the Nomadic Boys tell it like they see it, with practical tips and a feel for political and cultural landscapes.
They had a scare in Lebanon, for instance, when they were told they were blacklisted while trying to leave the country. And among their book’s listings are these warnings about Peru: It “lags behind its more progressive neighbors” in terms of LGBTQ+ rights but introduced anti-discrimination laws in 2017.
“We advise caution over PDAs unless you’re in a gay-friendly environment. Having said that, Peru relies heavily on tourism so gay travelers will feel comfortable and welcome,” they advise.
The couple went on to note they had no problems getting a double bed in any of the hotels they used in the Peruvian towns of Barranco, Miraflores, Cusco, Arequipa and Lake Titicaca.
That level of detail and practicality is what drew Black travelers to green books during the Jim Crow era.
Friendly locales only or venture out?
Some other LGBTQ+ travelers prefer to stick with safer and more accepting locales, for comfort and as a boycott of sorts against hostile destinations. Others travel out of their comfort zones for adventure and to support local and often suppressed gay communities.
“It’s a really robust debate,” Chesnut said. “It’s a personal judgment and a personal decision that travelers need to make.”
Traveling can be particularly fraught for trans people.
Gabrielle Claiborne in Atlanta is co-founder and CEO of Transformation Journeys Worldwide, a training and consulting firm that works with Fortune 100 companies on creating cultures of belonging for trans and gender-diverse people. She’s also the chair of the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association Foundation’s Transgender Advisory Group.
Claiborne is a trans woman who frequently travels globally. At 6-foot-2, and taller in heels, she often draws stares in security lines.
“I get a lot of people whispering and gawking, just by being present and being visible in that space,” she said. “The security checkpoint is triggering for trans people because of the experiences with TSA agents, from other people in the line.”
Some trans people have documents with photos and gender markers that don’t align. Going through security scanners can be troubling, Claiborne said. Agents must press a button designating male or female.
“If they pressed the wrong button and an area of our bodies is flagged, we have to go through a very triggering pat down,” she said.
Claiborne doesn’t support boycotts of unfriendly destinations.
“We have a long way to go, yet I’m optimistic about the progress that is being made,” she said. “The reality is we make progress when people are willing to stand up and be visible. Until we’re visible in a space where we might be the only one like us in the room or in that space, people are not going to know what they don’t know.”
BRIDGEHAMPTON, N.Y. (AP) — Ralph Lauren took to Hamptons horse country for a rollout of his signature Americana featuring first lady Jill Biden, Usher and Colman Domingo on his front row and Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington and a bevy of adorable kids on his runway.
Horses and riders meandered Thursday night in a nearby field behind a white picket fence at a tony equestrian complex in Bridgehampton as Lauren showed bright tennis whites, baby blue dresses and jackets, and bright orange, green and yellow looks for men, women and the aforementioned tots.
The sun faded as the open-air show came to a close and Lauren’s guests made their way to dinner in an on-site pop-up of his iconic Polo Bar restaurant.
Lauren, taking his bow with Biden at his side, has fond memories of the Hamptons, where he maintains a home and visited as a child. For his spring 2025 show, a day ahead of the official start of New York Fashion Week, he chose Khalily Stables, a state-of-the-art, 19-acre equestrian compound of stalls, barns, riding arenas and grassy paddocks.
Lauren mixed his Ralph Lauren Collection, Purple Label, Polo Ralph Lauren and children’s wear for an extra-long show that stressed wearability on a weather-perfect evening as summer turns to fall.
There were picnic looks in soft blue dresses, and white trousers and shorts paired with stripes and jackets. There were evening looks, including a stunning long blush pearled skirt worn by Campbell with a knotted white T-shirt.
For the men, Lauren offered skinny cuffed trousers, blue floral dinner jackets and splashes of color blocking in orange pants paired with navy nautical jackets and wide multicolored ties over pinstripe shirts.
Whites and blues dominated, with a sprinkling of crochet and khaki. He threw in some sparkle in slinky sequined evening gowns, backless white cocktail dresses and blue blouses, adding a bit of his fairy dust to a pair of torn khaki trousers and other looks.
Lauren’s young ones, from preschoolers to tweens and teens, were ready for anything.
One wore white shorts and a green slicker worthy of the U.S. Open the company just sponsored in looks for the ball crews and on-court officials. Others wore high riding boots with blue polos and matching pants. Still more were tiny prepsters in pinstripe button downs, navy jackets and cropped white pants.
The show, Usher mused afterwards, was “American life. That’s American love. That’s family.”
Another of Lauren’s guests, Tom Hiddleston, agreed. “It’s an extremely precise and intelligent vision because you sort of think, I’d like to be a part of that. I’d like to live that,” he said. “Very inspiring.”
Domingo added: “You saw literally all different colors and shapes and sizes of people and people feeling like they belong and go together.”
Fellow guest Jude Law summed it up this way: “Aspiration for a better place.”
Naomi Watts, Kasey Musgraves, Demi Singleton and Justin Theroux were also among Lauren’s guests. So was Kim Min-jeong, known as Winter, from the K-pop girl group Aespa.
In his show notes, Lauren said the Hamptons is “more than a place. It’s a natural world of endless blue skies, the ocean, green fields, and white fences, rusticity and elegance with a quality of light that drew artists here decades ago.”
He called the summer haven for New Yorkers like himself his home away from home, “my refuge and always an inspiration.” Perhaps Lauren has better luck with the travel gods overseeing New York traffic. Some of his city guests without access to helicopters for hire spent four hours fighting traffic on the way to his show.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A campaign to bring a casino to the Missouri tourist destination of the Lake of the Ozarks on Tuesday sued to get the proposal on November’s ballot.
The secretary of state’s office last week said the campaign did not collect enough voter signatures for the constitutional amendment to go before voters.
But the Osage River and Gaming Convention said it collected plenty of signatures.
“Verifying every signature on multiple initiative petitions this summer has been a very long process for election officials and we realize mistakes happen,” the group said in a statement. “However, ORGC has always been confident their initiative petition contained a sufficient number of valid signatures from legal voters to qualify for placement on the November 5, 2024, general election ballot and are now asking the Court to do so.”
The state constitution allows casinos only on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. The petition seeks authorization for one casino on the Osage River, which feeds into the Lake of the Ozarks.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The family of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice has reached an agreement with a credit collection company to avoid the foreclosure of their historic hotel as he runs for U.S. Senate, the resort announced Thursday.
The Republican governor’s family had been set to appear in court Friday to ask a judge to halt the auction of The Greenbrier resort’s hotel, which had been scheduled for Tuesday. That hearing has been canceled.
“It’s taken care of, and we move forward, and The Greenbrier is as whole as it can possibly be,” Justice said at a news briefing. “The Greenbrier is going to be in our family forevermore.”
The 710-room hotel has hosted U.S. presidents, royalty and congressional retreats. The resort held a PGA Tour golf tournament from 2010 until 2019 and has welcomed NFL teams for training camp and practices. A once-secret 112,000-square-foot (10,080-square-meter) underground bunker built for Congress at the Greenbrier in case of nuclear attack during the Cold War now hosts tours.
The hotel came under threat of auction after JPMorgan Chase sold a longstanding loan taken out by the governor to a credit collection company, McCormick 101 — a subsidiary of Beltway Capital — which declared it to be in default. In a statement, the Justice family said it had reached an agreement with Beltway Capital to “receive a specific amount to be paid in full by October 24, 2024.”
The family said it had already secured the money, although the Justices did not specify the amount.
“Beltway reserves its rights if the Justice family fails to perform,” the statement reads.
A message left with Beltway Capital wasn’t immediately returned Thursday.
Justice defended his family’s business practices at Thursday’s briefing and repeated past claims that JPMorgan Chase’s sale of The Greenbrier loan was a politically motivated effort to hurt his U.S. Senate campaign.
“We had a 14-year working relationship with JPMorgan, and then shortly after the primary where I was the winner — hands down, you’re going to the U.S. Senate, no matter what anybody says under the sun — it makes, it made, total no sense other than political, it made no sense at all,” he said.
Justice said that his family had made payments on the JPMorgan loan as recently as June and that it was notified the loan had been sold in July without prior warning. JPMorgan Chase did not respond to an email seeking comment.
If the hotel had been sold, Justice said, “there would have been carnage and devastation like you can’t imagine to the great people of The Greenbrier,” referring to jobs that could have been lost.
The auction, which had been set to occur at a courthouse Tuesday in the small city of Lewisburg, involved 60.5 acres, including the hotel and parking lot.
Justice family attorneys filed a motion this week for a preliminary injunction to try to halt the auction of The Greenbrier. They claimed that a 2014 deed of trust approved by the governor was defective because JPMorgan didn’t obtain consent from the Greenbrier Hotel Corp.’s directors or owners, and that auctioning the property violates the company’s obligation to act in “good faith and deal fairly” with the corporation.
They also argued, in part, that the auction would harm the economy and threaten hundreds of jobs.
About 400 employees at The Greenbrier hotel received notice this week from an attorney for the health care provider Amalgamated National Health Fund saying they would lose coverage Tuesday, the scheduled date of the auction, unless the Justice family paid $2.4 million in missing contributions.
Peter Bostic, a union official with the Workers United Mid-Atlantic Regional Joint Board, said that the Justice family hasn’t contributed to employees’ health fund in four months, and that an additional $1.2 million in contributions will soon be due, according to the letter the board received from Ronald Richman, an attorney with Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP, the firm representing the fund.
The letter also said some contributions were taken out of employees’ paychecks but never transferred to the fund, concerning union officials.
Justice dismissed concerns about the claims Thursday, telling reporters that “insurance payments were made and were being made on a regular basis.”
“There is no way that the great union employees at The Greenbrier are going to go without insurance,” he said. “There is no possible way.”
Justice is running for U.S. Senate against Democrat Glenn Elliott, a former mayor of Wheeling. Justice, who owns dozens of companies and had a net worth estimated at $513 million by Forbes Magazine in 2021, has been accused in court cases of being late in paying millions for family business debts and fines for unsafe working conditions at his coal mines.
He began serving the first of his two terms as governor in 2017, after buying The Greenbrier out of bankruptcy in 2009.
Justice’s family also owns The Greenbrier Sporting Club, a private luxury community with a members-only “resort within a resort.” That property was scheduled to be auctioned off this year in an attempt by Carter Bank & Trust of Martinsville, Virginia, to recover more than $300 million in business loans defaulted by the governor’s family, but a court battle delayed that process.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The golf course is not a threatened species in the Sunshine State — but the Florida scrub-jay is.
And advocates are warning that life for the small blue and gray birds and many other imperiled species could get much harder if Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration follows through on a proposal to build golf courses, pickleball courts and 350-room hotels at state parks from Miami to the Panhandle.
State parks “are the last strongholds for a lot of wildlife in rapidly urbanizing communities in Florida,” said Julie Wraithmell, executive director of Audubon Florida.
“They have an outsized importance — not just to wildlife but also as places where Floridians and visitors can continue to see what Florida was like,” she said. “It’s the best of Florida.”
DeSantis has enjoyed rock solid support from the Republicans who dominate state politics. It has been rare for DeSantis to get pushback on anything from GOP lawmakers, and he has a reputation for seeking vengeance when they do.
But it appears a political line in the sand is being drawn after DeSantis’ administration announced plans this week to carve out golf courses and pickleball courts in Florida’s beloved state parks.
Unlike the issues of abortion, LGBTQ rights, race and guns that have divided voters, state parks apparently hold a place in the hearts of Floridians regardless of party. The state park system has received national recognition for years, and people are resistant to change the protected lands they enjoy.
The proposal announced by Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection to build new sports facilities, hotels and glamping sites at nine state parks across Florida has drawn a wave of opposition, not just from nature lovers and birdwatchers but also from members of DeSantis’ Cabinet, a Republican member of Congress and conservative state lawmakers. That includes outgoing Republican Senate President Kathleen Passidomo.
“Our vision (for state parks) did not contemplate the addition of golf courses and hotels, which in my view are not in-line with the peaceful and quiet enjoyment of nature,” Passidomo posted on X. “From what I know at this time, the proposal should not move forward in its current form.”
A spokesperson for DeSantis defended the plans — which are not final — and touted the administration’s investments in protecting and conserving the state’s natural resources.
“Teddy Roosevelt believed that public parks were for the benefit and enjoyment of the people, and we agree with him,” press secretary Jeremy Redfern said. “But it’s high time we made public lands more accessible to the public.”
The Department of Environmental Protection did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.
All of the parks slated for development are located near heavily visited tourist destinations, including Miami, Tampa, Panama City and St. Augustine.
Florida’s state park system is a bastion of wildness in a state where vast stretches of sugar sand beaches and mangrove forests have long given way to condos, motels and strip mall souvenir shops.
Advocates say places like Topsail Hill Preserve State Park near Destin are literal beacons on a hill — the preserve is known for its 25-foot high sand dunes that tower over a stretch of the Panhandle known for its spring break destinations and military installations.
Eric Draper, a former head of the Florida Park Service, said Topsail is one of the last undeveloped stretches of Florida’s Gulf Coast.
In that part of the state, Draper said, “you can stand on the beach, you look right, you look left, and you just see a lot of condos and developments and houses. But this is one place that you can stand and look for three miles and not see any development.”
Under the new plans, Topsail would get up to four new pickleball courts, a disc golf course and a new hotel with a capacity of up to 350 rooms — a scale of development that Draper said is more in line with a conference center than a quiet beach retreat.
Another proposal is for a golf complex at Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Martin County on the state’s southeast coast north of West Palm Beach. Building the golf courses would entail removing a boardwalk and observation tower as well as relocating the residences and offices of park staff, as well as existing cabins for visitors.
A change.org petition targeting the would-be golf complex at Jonathan Dickinson had netted more than 60,000 signatures as of Thursday afternoon.
It is not the first time a Republican administration has raised the idea of leveraging more revenue from state parks by providing golf, lodging and other attractions. But past ideas were quickly dropped after public opposition.
In 2015, then-Gov. Rick Scott’s administration floated plans to allow cattle farmers to graze their herds and loggers to harvest timber from park lands.
Legendary former professional golfer Jack Nicklaus has long lobbied state officials to underwrite his push to build golf courses in state parks, efforts that fizzled following public pushback.
Wraithmell, the head of Audubon Florida, said she hopes state officials will listen to the Floridians who plan to pack public meetings next week to weigh in on the proposals.
“Absolutely there is demand for more people to enjoy state parks,” she said. “The solution is not to try to cram as many people into a park as we can …. The solution is to create more state parks.”
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This story was first published on Aug. 22, 2024. It was updated on Aug. 23, 2024, to correct that there are nine state parks included in the proposal, not eight.
___ Associated Press reporter Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee contributed to this story.
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Kate Payne 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.
With fewer than 100 days until the 2024 election, social media users are claiming that a lack of Google autocomplete results about former President Donald Trump and his attempted assassination is evidence of election interference.
Many posts include screenshots showing what the autocomplete feature, which predicts what users are trying to type, has generated for text such as “attempted assassination of tr” or “president donald.” Among the pictured results for the former phrase are references to other assassination attempts, including that of Harry Truman and Gerald Ford, but nothing for Trump. The latter provides two options — “president donald duck” and “president donald regan.”
Multiple high-profile figures, including Trump and sitting members of Congress, promoted the claim across social media platforms, collectively amassing more than 1 million likes and shares by Tuesday. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Google attributed the situation to existing protections against autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, noting that “no manual action was taken” to suppress information about Trump.
Search engine experts said there are many reasons that could explain why some autocomplete results concerning the former president were not appearing.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
CLAIM: Google is engaging in election interference by censoring autocomplete results about former President Donald Trump, including the assassination attempt at his Pennsylvania rally on July 13.
THE FACTS: It is true that Google’s autocomplete feature as of Monday was not finishing certain phrases related to Trump and the assassination attempt as shown in screenshots spreading online, but there is no evidence it was related to election interference.
By Tuesday, some of the same terms were providing relevant autocomplete results. The text “president donald” now also suggests “Donald Trump” as a search option. Similarly, the phrase “attempted assassination of” includes Trump’s name in autocomplete predictions. Adding “tr” to the same phrase though makes the option disappear.
Completed searches about Trump and the assassination attempt done on both Monday and Tuesday yielded extensive relevant results regardless of what autocomplete predictions came up.
Google told the AP that its autocomplete feature has automated protections regarding violent topics, including for searches about theoretical assassination attempts. The company further explained that its systems were out of date even prior to July 13, meaning that the protections already in place couldn’t take into account that an actual assassination attempt had occurred.
Additional autocomplete results now appearing about Trump are the result of systemic improvements — rather than targeted manual fixes — that will affect many other topics, according to the company.
“We’re rolling out improvements to our Autocomplete systems to show more up-to-date predictions,” Google told The Associated Press in a statement. “The issues are beginning to resolve, and we’ll continue to make improvements as needed. As always, predictions change over time and there may be some imperfections. Autocomplete helps save people time, but they can always search for whatever they want, and we will continue to connect them with helpful information.”
Search engine experts told the AP that they don’t see evidence of suspicious activities on Google’s part and that there are plenty of other reasons to explain why there have been a lack of autocomplete predictions about Trump.
“It’s very plausible that there’s nothing nefarious here, that it’s other systems that are set up for neutral or good purposes that are causing these query suggestions to not show up,” said Michael Ekstrand, an assistant professor at Drexel University who studies AI-powered information access systems. “I don’t have a reason not to believe Google’s claim that this is just normal systems for other purposes, particularly around political violence.”
Thorsten Joachims, a professor at Cornell University who researches machine learning for search engines, explained that autocomplete tools typically work by looking at queries people make frequently over a certain period of time, providing the most frequent completions of those queries. Beyond that, a search engine may automatically prune predictions based on concerns such as safety and privacy.
This means that it’s plausible that Google’s autocomplete feature wouldn’t have accounted for recent searches about the assassination attempt on Trump, especially if its systems indeed had not been updated since before the shooting.
“Depending on how big the window is that they’re averaging over, that may simply not be a frequent query,” Joachims said. “And it may not be a candidate for autocompletion.” He added that it’s typical not to update a search model on a daily basis, given the costs and technical risks involved.
A 2020 Google blog post about its autocomplete feature describes how the system reflects previous searches and why users might not see certain predictions, including those that are violent in nature. The post also explains that predictions may vary based on variables such as a user’s location, the language they speak or rising interest in a topic.
Both Ekstrand and Joachims agreed that proving bias in a complex system like Google’s search engine from the outside would be extremely difficult. It would require much more data than just a couple of searches, for example, and would risk setting off the company’s protections against data scraping, reverse engineering and fraud.
“In general, claims that platforms are taking particular targeted actions against specific people on political bases are hard to substantiate,” Ekstrand said. “They sometimes, I’m sure, happen, but there’s so many other explanations that it’s difficult to substantiate such claims.”
Joachims noted that the demographics of Google’s user base could impact the results of such a study if they skewed toward one side of the political aisle or another and therefore searched more for their preferred candidates. In other words, the way the system works would make it difficult to probe the system.
Technical issues aside, limiting autocomplete predictions as a method of political influence could simply be bad for business.
“Even if Google would like to do that, I think it would be a very bad decision because they could lose a lot of users,” said Ricardo Baeza-Yates, a professor at Northeastern University whose research includes web search and information retrieval.
Another offshore wind project in New Jersey is encountering turbulence.
Leading Light Wind is asking the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to give it a pause through late December on its plan to build an offshore wind farm off the coast of Long Beach Island.
In a filing with the utilities board made in July but not posted on the board’s web site until Tuesday, the company said it has had difficulty securing a manufacturer for turbine blades for the project and is currently without a supplier.
It asked the board to pause the project through Dec. 20 while a new source of blades is sought.
Wes Jacobs, the project director and vice president of Offshore Wind Development at Invenergy — one of the project’s partners — said it is seeking to hit the pause button “in light of industry-wide shifts in market conditions.”
It seeks more time for discussions with the board and supply chain partners, he said.
“As one of the largest American-led offshore wind projects in the country, we remain committed to delivering this critically important energy project, as well as its significant economic and environmental benefits, to the Garden State,” he said in a statement Tuesday night.
The statement added that the company, during a pause, would continue moving its project ahead with such developmental activities as an “ongoing survey program and preparation of its construction and operations plan.”
The request was hailed by opponents of offshore wind, who are particularly vocal in New Jersey.
“Yet another offshore wind developer is finding out for themselves that building massive power installations in the ocean is a fool’s errand, especially off the coast of New Jersey,” said Protect Our Coast NJ. “We hope Leading Light follows the example of Orsted and leaves New Jersey before any further degradation of the marine and coastal environment can take place.”
Nearly a year ago, Danish wind energy giant Orsted scrapped two offshore wind farms planned off New Jersey’s coast, saying they were no longer financially feasible to build.
Atlantic Shores, another project with preliminary approval in New Jersey, is seeking to rebid the financial terms of its project.
And opponents of offshore wind have seized on the disintegration of a wind turbine blade off Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts in July that sent crumbled pieces of it washing ashore on the popular island vacation destination.
Leading Light was one of two projects chosen in January by the state utilities board. But just three weeks after that approval, one of three major turbine manufacturers, GE Vernova, said it would not announce the kind of turbine Invenergy planned to use in the Leading Light Project, according to the filing with the utilities board.
A turbine made by manufacturer Vestas was deemed unsuitable for the project, and the lone remaining manufacturer, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, told Invenergy in June “that it was substantially increasing the cost of its turbine offering.”
“As a result of these actions, Invenergy is currently without a viable turbine supplier,” it wrote in its filing.
The project, from Chicago-based Invenergy and New York-based energyRE, would be built 40 miles (65 kilometers) off Long Beach Island and would consist of up to 100 turbines, enough to power 1 million homes.
New Jersey has become the epicenter of resident and political opposition to offshore wind, with numerous community groups and elected officials — most of them Republicans — saying the industry is harmful to the environment and inherently unprofitable.
Supporters, many of them Democrats, say that offshore wind is crucial to move the planet away from the burning of fossil fuels and the changing climate that results from it.
New Jersey has set ambitious goals to become the East Coast hub of the offshore wind industry. It built a manufacturing facility for wind turbine components in the southern part of the state to help achieve that aim.
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Follow Wayne Parry on X at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC
TOKYO (AP) — One by one, the students, lawyers and others filed into a classroom in a central Tokyo university for a lecture by a Chinese journalist on Taiwan and democracy — taboo topics that can’t be discussed publicly back home in China.
“Taiwan’s modern-day democracy took struggle and bloodshed, there’s no question about that,” said Jia Jia, a columnist and guest lecturer at the University of Tokyo who was briefly detained in China eight years ago on suspicion of penning a call for China’s top leader to resign.
He is one of tens of thousands of intellectuals, investors and other Chinese who have relocated to Japan in recent years, part of a larger exodus of people from China.
Their backgrounds vary widely, and they’re leaving for all sorts of reasons. Some are very poor, others are very rich. Some leave for economic reasons, as opportunities dry up with the end of China’s boom. Some flee for personal reasons, as even limited freedoms are eroded.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of the China’s New Migrants package, a look by The Associated Press at the lives of the latest wave of Chinese emigrants to settle overseas.
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Chinese migrants are flowing to all corners of the world, from workers seeking to start businesses of their own in Mexico to burned-out students heading to Thailand. Those choosing Japan tend to be well-off or highly educated, drawn to the country’s ease of living, rich culture and immigration policies that favor highly skilled professionals, with less of the sharp anti-immigrant backlash sometimes seen in Western countries.
Jia initially intended to move to the U.S., not Japan. But after experiencing the coronavirus outbreak in China, he was anxious to leave and his American visa application was stuck in processing. So he chose Japan instead.
Chinese journalist Jia Jia talks with a friend at a bookstore in Tokyo, Japan, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)
Chinese journalist Jia Jia poses for a photo in front of a bookstore in Tokyo, Japan, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)
“In the United States, illegal immigration is particularly controversial. When I went to Japan, I was a little surprised. I found that their immigration policy is actually more relaxed than I thought,” Jia told The Associated Press. “I found that Japan is better than the U.S.”
“The U.S. is shutting out those Chinese that are friendliest to them, that most share its values,” said Li Jinxing, a Christian human rights lawyer who moved to Japan in 2022.
Li sees parallels to about a century ago, when Chinese intellectuals such as Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of modern China, moved to Japan to study how the country modernized so quickly.
“On one hand, we hope to find inspiration and direction in history,” Li said of himself and like-minded Chinese in Japan. “On the other hand, we also want to observe what a democratic country with rule of law is like. We’re studying Japan. How does its economy work, its government work?”
Over the past decade, Tokyo has softened its once-rigid stance against immigration, driven by low birthrates and an aging population. Foreigners now make up about 2% of its population of 125 million. That’s expected to jump to 12% by 2070, according to the Tokyo-based National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.
Chinese are the most numerous newcomers, at 822,000 last year among more than 3 million foreigners living in Japan, according to government data. That’s up from 762,000 a year ago and 649,000 a decade ago.
A sign in Chinese says ” I miss you in Ikebukuro” at Ikebukuro district, popular among Chinese living in Japan Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
A canteen popular among Chinese living in Japan is seen Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
A commuter rides past a billboard of a Sichuan restaurant, popular among Chinese living in Japan, is seen Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
In 2022, the lockdowns under China’s “zero COVID” policies led many of the country’s youth or most affluent citizens to hit the exits. There’s even a buzzword for that: “runxue,” using the English word “run” to evoke “running away” to places seen as safer and more prosperous.
For intellectuals like Li and Jia, Japan offers greater freedoms than under Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s increasingly repressive rule. But for others, such as wealthy investors and business people, Japan offers something else: property protections.
A report by investment migration firm Henley & Partners says nearly 14,000 millionaires left China last year, the most of any country in the world, with Japan a popular destination. A major driver is worries about the security of their wealth in China or Hong Kong, said Q. Edward Wang, a professor of Asian studies at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey.
“Protection of private property, which is the cornerstone of a capitalist society, that piece is missing in China,” Wang said.
The weakening yen makes buying property and other local assets in Japan a bargain.
Du first visited Japan when he was 26. There was no intention to relocate at the time, but the doors opened when he was invited to join the Tetsuya Kumakawa’s ballet company with his wife. AP video by Mayuko Ono
“If you are just going to Japan to preserve your money,” Wang said, “then definitely you will enjoy your time in Japan.”
Dot.com entrepreneurs are among those leaving China after Communist Party crackdowns on the technology industry, including billionaire Jack Ma, a founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, who took a professorship at Tokyo College, part of the prestigious University of Tokyo.
So many wealthy Chinese have bought apartments in Tokyo’s luxury high-rises that some areas have been dubbed “Chinatowns,” or “Digital Chinatowns” — a nod to the many owners’ work in high-tech industries.
“Life in Japan is good,” said Guo Yu, an engineer who retired early after working at ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.
Guo doesn’t concern himself with politics. He’s keen on Japan’s powdery snow in the winter and is a “superfan” of its beautiful hot springs. He owns homes in Tokyo, as well as near a ski resort and a hot spring. He owns several cars, including a Porsche, a Mercedes, a Tesla and a Toyota.
Guo Yu, an engineer who retired early after working at ByteDance, the parent company of hit video-sharing app TikTok, and who lives in Japan, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Tokyo, April 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Yuri Kageyama)
Guo keeps busy with a new social media startup in Tokyo and a travel agency specializing in “onsen,” Japan’s hot springs. Most of his employees are Chinese, he said.
“It is crucial that Japan becomes an attractive country for foreign talent so they will choose to work here,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said earlier this year, announcing efforts to relax Japan’s stringent immigration restrictions.
That kind of opportunity is exactly what Chinese ballet dancer Du Hai said he has found. Leading a class of a dozen Japanese students in a suburban Tokyo studio one recent weekend, Du demonstrated positions and spins to the women dressed in leotards and toe shoes.
Du Hai, center, a Chinese ballet dancer who has made Japan his home, is reflected on a mirror as he teaches a class at a studio in Ichikawa, east of Tokyo, Japan, Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)
Du Hai, center, a Chinese ballet dancer who has made Japan his home, teaches a class at a studio in Ichikawa, east of Tokyo, Japan, Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)
Du Hai, a Chinese ballet dancer who has made Japan his home, speaks during an interview with the Associated Press, at a studio in Ichikawa, east of Tokyo, Japan, Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)
Du was drawn to Japan’s huge ballet scene, filled with professional troupes and talented dancers, he said, but worried about warnings he got about unfriendly Japanese.
That turned out to be false, he said with a laugh. Now, Du is considering getting Japanese citizenship.
“Of course, I enjoy living in Japan very much now,” he said.
NEW YORK (AP) — “Very demure, very mindful” has become the latest vocabulary defining the internet’s summer. And TikTok creator Jools Lebron is working to trademark uses of her now-viral words.
Lebron filed to trademark “very demure very mindful” for various entertainment and advertising services, including the promotion of beauty products, last week with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Two filings dated Thursday are under her legal name, a representative for Lebron confirmed to The Associated Press.
Social media’s love for “very demure” content started in early August, when Lebron took to TikTok to describe the hair and makeup she was wearing to work. Her delivery took off and she kept going, with “mindful” and “cutesy” flooding the internet as scores of fans, including big name celebrities, shared their own playful takes to describe just about any detail of day-to-day life.
Trademarks, on the other hand, can help secure rights to maintain certain business down the road. Lebron’s own trademark filings are still pending, and it could be a while before there’s a final determination. But the move is particularly notable after several other individuals with no known connection to Lebron separately tried to register demure-related trademarks in an apparent effort to capitalize on the success of those phrases, much to the dismay of Lebron’s fans.
The saga, while unfinished, has spotlighted the complex process of filing trademarks that capture a viral moment — and the battle that social media content creators face to both get credit and find protections to monetize off the trends they popularize.
Here’s what you should know.
Can you trademark a viral phrase?
Yes. But in the U.S., there needs to be an attached commercial use.
“It’s not just coming up with a phrase … (or) using it on social media and making it go viral,” said Alexandra J. Roberts, a professor of law and media at Northeastern University, explaining that there must be a connection to the sale of concrete goods or services. She calls trademarks a “source indicator,” as they help consumers understand who is producing what they’re buying now, but not necessarily who came up with a name in the first place.
The law is complicated, and trademarks are often determined on a case-by-case basis. Applications are specific to certain uses, allowing multiple brands to operate under similar names — like Dove chocolate and Dove soap, or Delta Faucet and Delta Airlines. Courts greenlight this when it’s assumed that consumers will easily be able to distinguish between such different products or services.
But a phrase or name that’s strongly associated with a particular individual can sometimes supersede that.
“Simplistically, the entire reason the trademark exists is to prevent consumer confusion,” said Casey Fiesler, an associate professor of information science at the University of Colorado Boulder. “And if (someone else) created a social media marketing service and called it ‘very demure, very mindful social media marketing,’ that would confuse consumers because they’re gonna think it’s associated with (Jools Lebron).”
Trademarks should not be mixed up with copyright. Anyone who has ever made a unique TikTok, for example, owns the copyright to that video, Fiesler explains. But there are still limitations to what’s copyrightable, and short phrases themselves almost never apply.
What options do content creators have to protect their work?
In today’s ever-digitized world of online trends, creators are increasingly expressing concerns about getting credited for their work. And for something like trademark rights, experts stress it’s a battle of both getting there first and having resources to see it through.
It’s not uncommon to see a handful of trademark applications bubble up in the midst of a viral moment. Earlier this year, for example, a handful of trademark applications were filed after Hailey Welch, also now known as “Hawk Tuah Girl,” became famous for using the phrase in a street interview.
Still, some phrases have been determined to be used too pervasively, making it harder for consumers to recognize it as a brand indicator. It can also be difficult when credit isn’t given to the creator who starts a trend in the first place — and experts note the consequences of that haven’t been felt equally in the past.
Historically, young women of color who start a viral trend or put a new phrase on the map have often seen their work get appropriated online — and potentially “get scooped” on trademark rights from someone with more resources, like connections to a lawyer, Roberts explained.
“There are a lot of stories of members of minoritized groups, and particularly women, coming up with new slang … and then seeing that get co-opted by somebody else — often a white guy, but not always … (who) gets out there as the first to register and really make money off it,” Roberts said.
Beyond trademark-specific disputes, Fiesler added that creators seeing their work stolen and reposted in other platforms for monetization continues to be a “huge problem” today, but she hopes the tide is starting to turn. That includes with Lebron, who has been so widely-credited for the “very demure” trend.
“I hope to continue to see there being very strong social norms that are enforcing this,” Fiesler said.
What’s the status of other demure-related trademark filings?
Three applications that were submitted before Lebron’s Thursday filings are still listed as live in the USPTO’s records — which would essentially make her “fourth in line” in consideration, Roberts said.
But it’s possible that others might later suspend their filings. And one of the applicants told NBC said that she filed in efforts to help Lebron hold on to trademark until she could transfer it.
What options does Lebron have?
Lebron’s legal team could potentially fight off rival filings or strengthen her own by negotiating with other applicants and updating her filing to reduce any overlap. She could also oppose a rival application down the road on the grounds of false association.
The trademark process could outlast the trend itself, taking anywhere between six to nine months, and sometimes closer to a year. And that can drag out even further with a legal battle or requested extensions.
Still, Roberts stresses that Lebron can currently “do whatever she wants in terms of use” and start selling merchandise.
There’s also nothing stopping someone from putting “very demure, very mindful” on the front of a t-shirt — as that technically qualifies as ornamental use, not trademark.
But getting those words as a brand, seen on something like an attached clothing tag, is when trademark rights would kick in.
LONDON (AP) — British regulators on Wednesday cleared Microsoft’s hiring of key staff from startup Inflection AI, saying the deal wouldn’t stifle competition in the country’s artificial intelligence market.
The Competition and Markets Authority had opened a preliminary investigation in July into Microsoft’s recruitment of Inflection’s core team, including co-founder and CEO Mustafa Suleyman, chief scientist Karen Simonyan and several top engineers and researchers.
The watchdog said its investigation found that the hirings amounted to a “merger situation” but that the “transaction does not give rise to a realistic prospect of a substantial lessening of competition.”
Big technology companies have been facing scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic lately for gobbling up talent and products at innovative AI startups without formally acquiring them.
Three U.S. Senators called for the practice to be investigated after Amazon pulled a similar maneuver this year in a deal with San Francisco-based Adept that sent its CEO and key employees to the e-commerce giant. Amazon also got a license to Adept’s AI systems and datasets.
The U.K. watchdog said Microsoft hired “almost all of Inflection’s team” and licensed its intellectual property, which gave it access to the startup’s AI model and chatbot development capabilities.
Inflection’s main product is a chatbot named Pi that specializes in “emotional intelligence” by being being “kind and supportive.”
However, the CMA said the deal won’t result in a big loss of competition because Inflection has a “very small” share of the U.K. consumer market for chatbots, and it lacks chatbot features that make it more attractive than rivals.
After a nationwide suspension of billionaire Elon Musk’s X platform in Brazil, social media users — including former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are misrepresenting a years-old video of Vice President Kamala Harris to falsely claim that the Democratic presidential nominee has threatened to censor both X and Musk.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
CLAIM: A video clip portrays Harris as saying that she will shut down X if she wins the 2024 presidential election and that Musk has “lost his privileges.”
THE FACTS: That’s false. Harris was referring to Trump long before Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it as X.
The clip is from 2019 and shows Harris speaking with CNN host Jake Tapper after a Democratic primary debate, discussing whether then-President Donald Trump’s profile should be removed from the platform, called Twitter at the time, and how there needs to be increased accountability for social media companies.
Kennedy, who on Aug. 23 suspended his presidential bid and endorsed Trump, used the clip in an X post as alleged proof that Harris was talking about Musk, stating: “Can someone please explain to her that freedom of speech is a RIGHT, not a ‘privilege’?” He also provided his own interpretation of Harris’ comments on social media sites in general as follows: “If they don’t police content to conform to government-approved narratives, they will be shut down.”
The post had been liked and shared approximately 200,300 times as of Tuesday.
Another popular X post that shared the video simply reads: “Kamala will shut down X if she wins.” It has been liked and shared approximately 105,000 times. Other social media users claimed that Harris was speaking in support of a Brazilian Supreme Court justice who made the decision last week to block X.
In extended footage of the interview, part of CNN’s post-debate analysis on Oct. 15, 2019, Tapper asked Harris: “So, one of the topics that you chose to talk a lot about, especially confronting Sen. Warren on, was your push, your call, for Twitter to suspend the account of President Trump. Why was that important?”
Tapper was referring to the moment in the debate when Harris criticized then-fellow Democratic candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren for not urging such a suspension. Twitter did eventually ban Trump’s account in January 2021, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence” after the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, with multiple other social media platforms kicking him off around the same time. Musk restored Trump’s account in November 2022 after he bought the platform.
Harris responded during the interview that Trump had “proven himself to be willing to obstruct justice” and that what he says on Twitter “impacts people’s perceptions about what they should and should not do.”
She continued: “And as far as I’m concerned, and I think most people would say, including members of Congress who he has threatened, that he has lost his privileges and it should be taken down.”
Harris did not call for the platform as a whole to be shut down. Rather, she advocated for increased accountability.
“The bottom line is that you can’t say that you have one rule for Facebook and you have a different rule for Twitter,” she stated. “The same rule has to apply, which is that there has to be a responsibility that is placed on these social media sites to understand their power. They are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation, and that has to stop.”
The Harris campaign directed an Associated Press inquiry about the false claims to a Democratic National Committee spokesperson, who declined to comment. Representatives for Trump and Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.
Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered X blocked last Friday for refusing to name a local legal representative, as required by law. His decision was unanimously upheld by a court panel on Monday. X had removed its legal representative from Brazil on the grounds that de Moraes had threatened her with arrest. The platform will stay suspended until it complies with de Moraes’ order and pays outstanding fines.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A dismissed town mayor who fled the Philippines after being accused of helping establish an illegal online gaming and scam center catering mostly to clients in China has been arrested near Indonesia’s capital, officials said Wednesday.
Indonesian authorities arrested Alice Guo at a house in Jakarta’s satellite city of Tangerang just before midnight on Tuesday, according to Khrisna Murti, chief of the international division of the National Police.
Guo was in custody and awaiting deportation to the Philippines, Murti said, adding that her arrest was the result of “cooperation between Indonesian and Filipino’s police.”
“Let this serve as a warning to those who attempt to evade justice,” Marcos said and added that arrangements were being made to bring Guo back to the Philippines where she faces a slew of criminal charges.
After Guo fled the Philippines in July, she was tracked in Malaysia and Singapore before turning up in Indonesia. Two companions, who reportedly slipped out of the Philippines with her without going through normal immigration and clearing procedures, were recently arrested in Indonesia.
Guo ran as a Filipino candidate in 2022 elections and won as mayor of the rural town of Bamban in Tarlac province north of Manila. She was accused of helping establish a massive complex with several buildings near the town hall as a hub for an illegal online gambling and scam outfit that catered mostly to clients in China, where gambling is forbidden.
A Senate committee ordered Guo arrested after she refused to appear in hearings looking into the illegal gambling business that flourished under Marcos’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, who nurtured cozy ties with Chinese President Xi Jinping while often criticizing the United States and European countries.
Guo has also been accused of concealing her Chinese nationality to run for public office, which is reserved for Filipino citizens only. At the time, a few senators suggested she may be working as a Chinese spy.
Guo has denied any wrongdoing but was dismissed from her post for grave misconduct by the Ombudsman, an agency that investigates and prosecutes government officials accused of crimes, including graft and corruption.
The crackdown on the Chinese-run online gambling outfits — estimated to number more than 400 across the Philippines and employing tens of thousands of Chinese and Southeast Asian nationals — was backed by Beijing.
It resulted in the shutdown in the Philippines of sprawling complexes, where authorities suspect thousands of Chinese, Vietnamese and other nationals mostly from Southeast Asia have been illegally recruited and forced to work in dismal conditions.
Philippine senators say the massive online gambling industry has flourished largely due to corruption in government regulatory agencies and big payoffs to officials.
Indonesia and the Philippines signed an extradition agreement in 1976.
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Gomez reported from Manila, Philippines. Associated Press writer Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.
NEW YORK (AP) — An appeals court has upheld an earlier finding that the online Internet Archive violated copyright law by scanning and sharing digital books without the publishers’ permission.
Four major publishers — Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons and Penguin Random House — had sued the Archive in 2020, alleging that it had illegally offered free copies of more than 100 books, including fiction by Toni Morrison and J.D. Salinger. The Archive had countered that it was protected by fair use law.
In 2023, a judge for the U.S. District Court in Manhattan decided in the publishers’ favor and granted them a permanent injunction. On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit concurred, asking the question: Was the Internet Archive’s lending program, a “National Emergency Library” launched early in the pandemic, an example of fair use?
“Applying the relevant provisions of the Copyright Act as well as binding Supreme Court and Second Circuit precedent, we conclude the answer is no,” the appeals court ruled.
In a statement Wednesday, the president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, Maria Pallante, called the decision a victory for the publishing community.
“Today’s appellate decision upholds the rights of authors and publishers to license and be compensated for their books and other creative works and reminds us in no uncertain terms that infringement is both costly and antithetical to the public interest,” Pallante said.
The Archive’s director of library services, Chris Freeland, called the ruling a disappointment.
“We are reviewing the court’s opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books,” he said in a statement.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration seized Kremlin-run websites and charged two Russian state media employees in its most sweeping effort yet to push back against what it says are Russian attempts to spread disinformation ahead of the November presidential election.
The measures, which in addition to indictments also included sanctions and visa restrictions, represented a U.S. government effort just weeks before the November election to disrupt a persistent threat from Russia that American officials have long warned has the potential to sow discord and create confusion among voters.
“The Justice Department’s message is clear: We will have no tolerance for attempts by authoritarian regimes to exploit our democratic systems of government,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
One criminal case disclosed by the Justice Department accuses two employees of RT, a Russian state media company, of covertly funding a Tennessee-based content creation company with nearly $10 million to publish English-language videos on social media platforms including TikTok and YouTube with messages in favor of the Russia government’s interests and agenda, including about the war in Ukraine.
The nearly 2,000 videos posted by the company have gotten more than 16 million views on YouTube alone, prosecutors said.
The two defendants, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. They are at large. It was not immediately clear if they had lawyers.
The Justice Department says the company did not disclose that it was funded by RT and that neither it nor its founders registered as required by law as an agent of a foreign principal.
Though the indictment does not name the company, it describes it as a Tennessee-based content creation firm with six commentators and with a website identifying itself as “a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues.”
That description exactly matches Tenet Media, an online company that hosts videos made by well-known conservative influencers Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and others.
Johnson and Pool both responded with posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, calling themselves “victims.” Calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “scumbag,” Pool wrote that “should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived.”
In his post, Johnson wrote that he had been asked a year ago to provide content to a “media startup.” He said his lawyers negotiated a “standard, arms length deal, which was later terminated.”
Tenet Media’s shows in recent months have featured high-profile conservative guests, including RNC co-chair Lara Trump, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake.
In the other action, officials announced the seizure of 32 internet domains that were used by the Kremlin to spread Russian propaganda and weaken international support for Ukraine. The websites were designed to look like authentic news sites but were actually fake, with bogus social media personas manufactured to appear as if they belonged to American users.
The Justice Department did not identify which candidate in particular the propaganda campaign was meant to boost. But internal strategy notes from participants in the effort released Wednesday by the Justice Department make clear that Trump was the intended beneficiary, even though the names of the candidates were blacked out.
The proposal for one propaganda project, for instance, states that one of its objectives was to secure a victory for a candidate who is currently out of power and to increase the percentage of Americans who believe the U.S. has been doing too much to support Ukraine. President Joe Biden has strongly supported Ukraine during the invasion by Russia.
Intelligence agencies have previously charged that Russia, which during the 2016 election launched a massive campaign of foreign influence and interference on Trump’s behalf, was using disinformation to try to meddle in this year’s election. The new steps show the depth of those concerns.
“Today’s announcement highlights the lengths some foreign governments go to undermine American democratic institutions,” the State Department said. “But these foreign governments should also know that we will not tolerate foreign malign actors intentionally interfering and undermining free and fair elections.”
The State Department announced it was taking action against several employees of Russian state-owned media outlets, designating them as “foreign missions,” and offering a cash reward for information provided to the U.S. government about foreign election interference.
It also said it was adding media company Rossiya Segodnya and its subsidiaries RIA Novosti, RT, TV-Novosti, Ruptly, and Sputnik to its list of foreign missions. That will require them to register with the U.S. government and disclose their properties and personnel in the U.S.
In a speech last month, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Russia remained the biggest threat to election integrity, accusing Putin and his proxies of “targeting specific voter demographics and swing-state voters to in an effort to manipulate presidential and congressional election outcomes.” Russia, she said was “intent on co-opting unwitting Americans on social media to push narratives advancing Russian interests.”
She struck a similar note Thursday, saying at an Aspen Institute event that the foreign influence threat is more diverse and aggressive than in past years.
“More diverse and aggressive because they involve more actors from more countries than we have ever seen before, operating in a more polarized world than we have ever seen before, all fueled by more technology and accelerated by technology, like AI, and that is what we have exposed in the law enforcement actions we took today,” she said.
Much of the concern around Russia centers on cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns designed to influence the November vote.
The tactics include using state media like RT to advance anti-U.S. messages and content, as well as networks of fake websites and social media accounts that amplify the claims and inject them into Americans’ online conversations. Typically, these networks seize on polarizing political topics such as immigration, crime or the war in Gaza.
In many cases, Americans may have no idea that the content they see online either originated or was amplified by the Kremlin.
Groups linked to the Kremlin are increasingly hiring marketing and communications firms within Russia to outsource some of the work of creating digital propaganda while also covering their tracks, the officials said during the briefing with reporters.
Two such firms were the subject of new U.S. sanctions announced in March. Authorities say the two Russian companies created fake websites and social media profiles to spread Kremlin disinformation.
The ultimate goal, however, is to get Americans to spread Russian disinformation without questioning its origin. People are far more likely to trust and repost information that they believe is coming from a domestic source, officials said. Fake websites designed to mimic U.S. news outlets and AI-generated social media profiles are just two methods.
Messages left with the Russian Embassy were not immediately returned.
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Associated Press writers Dan Merica and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington, Ali Swenson in New York and Alan Suderman in Richmond, Va., contributed to this report.
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland is participating in the IRS’s Direct File program, a new free service that will allow eligible taxpayers to prepare and file their tax return online, state and federal officials announced Wednesday.
Comptroller Brooke Lierman said the eligibility qualifications for the program have not yet been finalized for next year, but it’s estimated about 700,000 state residents could qualify.
The IRS experimented with the free electronic tax filing return system this year. In May, the it announced it would make the system permanent and asked all 50 states and the District of Columbia to help taxpayers file their returns through the program in 2025.
The IRS tried the Direct File project for the 2024 tax season on a limited basis in 12 states for people with very simple W-2s, an employee’s wage and tax statement.
The comptroller’s office is partnering with the nonprofit Code for America to build a platform that will securely transfer information from a federal tax return to a state tax return. The office says that will enable Maryland residents with relatively simple tax returns to save time on paperwork and get their refunds faster.
