LONDON — That long-held Wimbledon tradition of line judges dressed in elegant uniforms is no more. 

The All England Club announced Wednesday that artificial intelligence will be used to make the “out” and “fault” calls at the championships from 2025. 

Wimbledon organizers said the decision to adopt live electronic line calling was made following extensive testing at the 2024 tournament and “builds on the existing ball-tracking and line-calling technology that has been in place for many years.” 

“We consider the technology to be sufficiently robust and the time is right to take this important step in seeking maximum accuracy in our officiating,” said Sally Bolton, chief executive of the All England Club. “For the players, it will offer them the same conditions they have played under at a number of other events on tour.” 

Bolton said Wimbledon had a responsibility to “balance tradition and innovation.” 

“Line umpires have played a central role in our officiating setup at the championships for many decades,” she said, “and we recognize their valuable contribution and thank them for their commitment and service.” 

Line-calling technology has long been used at Wimbledon and other tennis tournaments to call whether serves are in or out. 

The All England Club also said Wednesday that the ladies’ and gentlemen’s singles finals will be scheduled to take place at the later time of 4 p.m. local time on the second Saturday and Sunday, respectively — and after doubles finals on those days. 

Bolton said the moves have been made to ensure the day of the finals “builds towards the crescendo of the ladies’ and gentlemen’s singles finals, with our champions being crowned in front of the largest possible worldwide audience.”

 
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Washington — Hurricane Helene’s torrential rain and powerful winds were made about 10% more intense due to climate change, according to a study published Wednesday by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group.  

Although a 10% increase “might seem relatively small… that small change in the hazard really leads to big change in impacts and damage,” said climate scientist Friederike Otto, who heads the research organization.  

The study also found that fossil fuels — the primary cause of climate change — have made hurricanes like Helene 2.5 times more likely to occur.  

In other words, storms of Helene’s magnitude were formerly anticipated once every 130 years, but now the probability is closer to once every 53 years, on average.  

To conduct the study, researchers focused on three aspects of Hurricane Helene: precipitation, winds and the water temperature of the Gulf of Mexico — a key factor in its formation.  

“All aspects of this event were amplified by climate change to different degrees,” Ben Clarke, a co-author of the study and researcher at Imperial College London, told a press conference.  

“And we’ll see more of the same as the world continues to warm,” he continued.  

The research by WWA, an international group of scientists and meteorologists who study the role of climate change in extreme weather events, comes as the southeastern US state of Florida prepares for the arrival of another major hurricane, Milton, just 10 days after it was hit by Helene.   

Destruction

Helene made landfall in northwestern Florida on September 26 as a Category 4 hurricane with winds up to 140 mph (225 kph).  

The storm then moved north, causing heavy rain and devastating floods in several states, including North Carolina, where it claimed the highest death toll.  

The authors of the study emphasized that the risk posed by hurricanes has increased in scope beyond coastal areas.  

Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist at NGO Climate Central, said Helene “had so much intensity” that it would take time for it to lose strength, but the “storm was moving fast… so it could go farther inland pretty quickly.”  

This study utilized three methodologies to examine the three aspects of the storm, and was conducted by researchers from the US, the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands.  

To study its rainfall, researchers used an approach based on both observation and climate models, depending on the two regions involved: one for coastal areas like Florida, and another for inland areas like the Appalachian mountains.  

In both cases, the study found precipitation had increased by 10 percent because of global warming, which is currently at 1.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.  

To study Helene’s winds, scientists looked at hurricane data dating back as far as 1900.  

They determined Helene’s winds were 11 percent stronger, or 13 mph (21 kph), as a result of climate change.  

Lastly, the researchers examined the water temperature in the Gulf of Mexico, where Helene formed, finding it was around 2 degrees Celsius above normal.  

This record temperature was made 200 to 500 times more likely due to climate change, the study asserts.  

Warmer oceans release more water vapor, providing more energy for storms as they form.  

“If humans continue to burn fossil fuels, the US will face even more destructive hurricanes,” Clarke warned in a statement. 
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BEIJING — China’s anti-dumping measures against brandies imported from the European Union are “legitimate trade remedy measures,” the commerce ministry said on Wednesday, a day after imposing the temporary curb.

French brands such as Hennessy and Remy Martin will face the strictures, adopted just days after the 27-nation bloc voted for tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs), sparking its biggest trade row with Beijing in a decade.

China’s commerce ministry said preliminary findings of an investigation showed that dumping of brandy from the European Union threatened “substantial damage” to domestic industry.

On Wednesday the ministry said the EU’s actions against Chinese EVs “seriously lack a factual and legal basis” and “clearly violate” World Trade Organization (WTO) rules.

China has protested strongly to the WTO, it added.

Trade tensions have surged since the European Commission said last week it would press ahead with tariffs on China-made EVs, even after Germany, the bloc’s largest economy, rejected them.

Another sign of rising trade tension was the ministry’s remarks on Tuesday that an anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigation into EU pork products would deliver “objective and fair” decisions when it wraps up.

It also said it was considering a hike in tariffs on imports of large-engine vehicles, which would hit German producers hardest. German exports to China of vehicles with engines 2.5 liters in size, or larger, reached $1.2 billion last year.
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BEIJING — Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy will visit China next week, sources familiar with the plan said, as the new Labor government seeks less confrontational ties with the world’s second-largest economy and to resume trade and investment talks.

British officials have said they want to recalibrate many of the previous Conservative Party-led government’s positions on China, which it described as an “epoch-defining challenge,” particularly around accepting Chinese job-creating investment.

But Britain is unlikely to budge on issues such as Chinese firms’ involvement in providing key infrastructure, human rights and restoring the license of state broadcaster CGTN, as it is controlled by China’s ruling Communist Party.

Lammy, who has vowed to overhaul Britain’s ties with China, will meet Chinese officials in Beijing and representatives of British firms in Shanghai, two of the four sources, who all spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.

His itinerary has not yet been finalized, however, another person familiar with the planning said.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said ministerial travel would be announced in the usual way. China’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

During a telephone call in August, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who took office the previous month, told Chinese President Xi Jinping their countries must be able to talk frankly about disagreements while pursuing closer economic ties and co-operation on global issues.

British finance minister Rachel Reeves is also considering traveling to China in the near future, said two sources.

Her visit will aim to revive trade and investment talks that are supposed to take place annually. The last round of the UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue, as it is called, was held in 2019.

China is Britain’s sixth largest trading partner, accounting for 5% of total trade, British government figures show.

But questions on Hong Kong, espionage accusations, and plans for a new Chinese embassy in London await resolution and may slow plans to resume talks and promises of fresh investment.

Last week, two Britons, including a former researcher for a senior British lawmaker, pleaded not guilty to a charge of spying for China.

That followed China’s accusation in June that British foreign intelligence service MI6 recruited two staff members from unnamed state bodies to act as spies.

Beijing is also waiting for a go-ahead on plans to build a new embassy in London after they were thrown out on security grounds in December 2022.

In recent years, the two countries have also traded barbs on Hong Kong, a former British colony handed back to Beijing in 1997.

More than 180,000 people have moved to Britain from Hong Kong under a special visa program set up in response to a crackdown on dissent in the Asian financial hub.

In September, a senior Labor lawmaker said Britain should outlaw imports of products made by forced labor in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang.
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NEW YORK — The U.S. said on Tuesday it may ask a judge to force Alphabet’s Google to divest parts of its business, such as its Chrome browser and Android operating system, that it says are used to maintain an illegal monopoly in online search.

In a landmark case, a judge in August found that Google, which processes 90% of U.S. internet searches, had built an illegal monopoly. The Justice Department’s proposed remedies have the potential to reshape how Americans find information on the internet while shrinking Google’s revenues and giving its competitors more room to grow.

“Fully remedying these harms requires not only ending Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensuring Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow,” the Justice Department said.

The proposed fixes will also aim to keep Google’s past dominance from extending to the burgeoning business of artificial intelligence, prosecutors said.

The Justice Department might also ask the court to end Google’s payments to have its search engine pre-installed or set as the default on new devices.

Google has made annual payments – $26.3 billion in 2021 – to companies including Apple and other device manufacturers to ensure that its search engine remained the default on smartphones and browsers, keeping its market share strong.

Google, which plans to appeal, said in a corporate blog post that the proposals were “radical” and said they “go far beyond the specific legal issues in this case.”

Google maintains that its search engine has won users with its quality, adding that it faces robust competition from Amazon and other sites, and that users can choose other search engines as their default.

The world’s fourth-largest company with a market capitalization of over $2 trillion, Alphabet is under mounting legal pressure from competitors and antitrust authorities.

A U.S. judge ruled on Monday in a separate case, that Google must open up its lucrative app store, Play, to greater competition, including making Android apps available from rival sources. Google is also fighting a Justice Department case that seeks the breakup of its web advertising business.

As part of its efforts to prevent Google’s dominance from extending into AI, the Justice Department said it may seek to make available to rivals the indexes, data and models it uses for Google search and AI-assisted search features.

Other orders prosecutors may seek include restricting Google from entering agreements that limit other AI competitors’ access to web content and letting websites opt out of Google using their content to train AI models.

Google said the AI-related proposals could stifle the sector.

“There are enormous risks to the government putting its thumb on the scale of this vital industry — skewing investment, distorting incentives, hobbling emerging business models — all at precisely the moment that we need to encourage investment,” Google said.

The Justice Department is expected to file a more detailed proposal with the court by Nov. 20. Google will have a chance to propose its own remedies by Dec. 20.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling in Washington was a major win for antitrust enforcers who have brought an ambitious set of cases against Big Tech companies over the past four years.

The U.S. has also sued Meta Platforms, Amazon.com and Apple claiming they illegally maintain monopolies.

Some of the ideas in the Justice Department’s proposals to break up Google had previously garnered support from Google’s smaller competitors such as reviews site Yelp and rival search engine company DuckDuckGo.

Yelp, which sued Google over search in August, says spinning off Google’s Chrome browser and AI services should be on the table. Yelp also wants Google to be prohibited from giving preference to Google’s local business pages in search results.
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Wisconsin, a Midwestern U.S. state known for its dairy farms and beer production, has emerged as a crucial battleground in the 2024 presidential election. With a history of extremely close races, Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes could determine who becomes the next president. The state’s unique mix of urban and rural voters, along with key issues like the economy and abortion rights, make it a microcosm of the nation’s political divide.
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washington — The FBI has arrested an Afghan man who officials say was inspired by the Islamic State militant organization and was plotting an Election Day attack targeting large crowds in the United States, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, told investigators after his arrest Monday that he had planned his attack to coincide with Election Day next month and that he and a juvenile co-conspirator expected to die as martyrs, according to charging documents. 

Tawhedi, who entered the U.S. in 2021 on a special immigrant visa, had taken steps in recent weeks to advance his attack plans, including by ordering AK-47 rifles, liquidating his family’s assets, and buying one-way tickets for his wife and child to travel home to Afghanistan. 

“Terrorism is still the FBI’s number one priority, and we will use every resource to protect the American people,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement. 

After he was arrested, the Justice Department said, Tawhedi told investigators he had planned an attack for Election Day that would target large gatherings of people. 

Tawhedi was charged with conspiring and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State group, which is designated by the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization. 

It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer who could speak on his behalf. 
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President Joe Biden postponed his trip to Germany and Angola Tuesday to oversee the response to Hurricane Milton, which is heading toward Florida just days after Hurricane Helene ravaged the southeastern United States. Patsy Widakuswara reports. Jose Pernalete contributed to this report.
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PARIS — France’s minority government survived a no-confidence vote on Tuesday, two weeks after taking office, getting over the first hurdle placed by left-wing lawmakers to bring down new conservative Prime Minister Michel Barnier. 

The vote was a key test for Barnier, whose Cabinet is forced to rely on the far right’s good will to be able to stay in power. 

The no-confidence motion was brought by a left-wing coalition, the New Popular Front. It received 197 votes, far from the 289 votes needed to pass. The far-right National Rally group, which counts 125 lawmakers, abstained from voting. 

Following June-July parliamentary elections, the National Assembly, France’s powerful lower house of parliament, is divided into three major blocs: the New Popular Front, French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist allies and the far-right National Rally party. None of them won an outright majority. 

The no-confidence motion was brought by 192 lawmakers of the New Popular Front, composed of the hard-left France Unbowed, Socialists, Greens and Communists. 

Barnier’s cabinet is mostly composed of members of his Republicans party and centrists from Macron’s alliance who altogether count just over 200 lawmakers. 

Left-wing lawmakers denounced the choice of Barnier as prime minister as they were not given a chance to form a minority government, despite securing the most seats at the National Assembly. This government “is a denial of the result of the most recent legislative elections,” the motion read.
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Washington — Then-president Donald Trump secretly sent COVID test kits to Vladimir Putin despite a U.S. shortage during the pandemic, and spoke multiple times with the Russian leader after leaving office, says an explosive new book by Bob Woodward. 

The upcoming opus, War, also chronicles some of President Joe Biden’s own acknowledged missteps and his struggle to prevent escalation of conflict in the Middle East, including exasperation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over futile efforts to get Israel and Hamas to reach a cease-fire. 

In excerpts published Tuesday by The Washington Post, where he is an associate editor, Woodward lays out damning details and actions by Trump, who the writer says has retained a personal relationship with Putin even as Trump campaigns for another presidential term and the Russian president conducts a war against Ukraine, a U.S. ally. 

With the coronavirus ravaging the world in 2020, Trump sent a batch of test kits to his counterpart in Moscow. Putin accepted the supplies but sought to avoid political fallout for Trump, urging that he not reveal the dispatch of medical equipment, this book says. 

According to Woodward, Putin told Trump: “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me.” 

Woodward also cites an unnamed Trump aide in the book who indicated the Republican flag bearer may have spoken to Putin up to seven times since leaving the White House in 2021.  

The Post, reporting Woodward’s account, said that at one point in early 2024, Trump ordered an aide out of his office in his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida so he could hold a private call with Putin. 

War is set for publication on Oct. 15, just three weeks before a critical U.S. election in which Trump is locked in a tight race against Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee. 

While Harris does make appearances in the book, she is seen in a supporting role to Biden “and hardly determining foreign policy herself,” the Post reported. 

Woodward has chronicled American presidencies for 50 years, and this is his fourth book since Trump’s upset victory in 2016. He began his presidential reportages with Richard Nixon, who was undone by the 1970s Watergate scandal exposed by Woodward and Post colleague Carl Bernstein. 

Woodward concluded that Trump’s interactions, detailed in the book, with an authoritarian president at war with a U.S. ally make him more unfit to be president than Nixon. 

“Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024,” Woodward wrote. 

The Trump campaign blasted the book as “trash” and “made up stories.” 

They are “the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” campaign communications director Steven Cheung told AFP. 

According to CNN, which obtained a pre-release book copy, Woodward repeatedly quotes Biden dropping F bombs as he discusses his personal and political challenges. 

Biden called Putin “the epitome of evil,” blasted Netanyahu as a “liar” and said he “should never have picked” Merrick Garland as U.S. attorney general. 

According to the book, during an April phone call Biden turned testy with Netanyahu. 

“What’s your strategy, man?” Biden asked the Israeli leader, according to Woodward. 

“We have to go into Rafah,” Netanyahu said, referring to a city in southern Gaza. 

“Bibi, you’ve got no strategy,” Biden responded.
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The European Commission has filed a lawsuit over Hungary’s Sovereignty Protection legislation, saying it violates EU law. Opponents see the law as a threat to the few remaining independent media outlets in Hungary, which rely on international funding sources. VOA’s Eastern Europe bureau chief Myroslava Gongadze reports from Budapest. VOA footage and video editing by Daniil Batushchak.
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State Department — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to visit Vientiane, Laos, later this week for meetings with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, where he is expected to engage directly with newly elected leaders from the Indo-Pacific.

Blinken will represent President Joe Biden at this year’s ASEAN-U.S. Summit and participate in the East Asia Summit, where leaders and senior officials from India, Japan, South Korea, and the People’s Republic of China are also expected to attend.

This week’s ASEAN summits will feature the debut of Paetongtarn Shinawatra, 38, who became Thailand’s prime minister in mid-August. She will make her first bilateral visit to Laos on Tuesday and will be the youngest Southeast Asian leader at the summit.

Singapore has also seen a generational shift with Lawrence Wong succeeding longtime Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in May.

Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba took office on October 1. He has pledged to strengthen his country’s alliance with the U.S. during a call with President Biden last Wednesday.

“I am grateful for the prime minister’s commitment to the U.S.-Japan Alliance and look forward to working with his government to reinforce the enduring partnership between our two nations,” Blinken said in a statement last week.

Ishiba is also in discussions with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol about holding a meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit.

Regional security, development and trade — including the creation of resilient semiconductor supply chains — are expected to be top priorities on the U.S. agenda.

In 2023, total two-way merchandise trade between the United States and ASEAN reached $395.9 billion, making the U.S. the second-largest trading partner after China. Additionally, the U.S. is ASEAN’s largest source of foreign direct investment, which amounted to $74.3 billion last year.

Susannah Patton, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Sydney-based think tank Lowy Institute, said that this year’s East Asia Summit must address contentious global issues such as the conflict in the Middle East and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The East Asia Summit comprises ASEAN’s 10 member countries and eight major dialogue partners, including the United States, China typically represented by Premier Li Qiang, and Russia represented by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

In a recent analysis published by the Lowy Institute, Patton noted that it is likely that the “ASEAN show will come to Laos and then roll on again,” adding that “concrete progress on pressing issues will be sorely lacking.”

“While the EAS is still likely to issue at least one jointly negotiated statement in 2024,” Patton wrote, “it is a reflection of global political polarization that ASEAN’s dialogue partners are no longer able to propose their own dueling statements to advance their preferred language on international issues.”
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STOCKHOLM — Two pioneers of artificial intelligence — John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton — won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for helping create the building blocks of machine learning that is revolutionizing the way we work and live but also creates new threats to humanity, one of the winners said.

Hinton, who is known as the “godfather of artificial intelligence,” is a citizen of Canada and Britain who works at the University of Toronto. Hopfield is an American working at Princeton.

“This year’s two Nobel Laureates in physics have used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today’s powerful machine learning,” the Nobel committee said in a press release.

Ellen Moons, a member of the Nobel committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said the two laureates “used fundamental concepts from statistical physics to design artificial neural networks that function as associative memories and find patterns in large data sets.”

She said that such networks have been used to advance research in physics and “have also become part of our daily lives, for instance in facial recognition and language translation.”

Hinton predicted that AI will end up having a “huge influence” on civilization, bringing improvements in productivity and health care.

“It would be comparable with the Industrial Revolution,” he said in the open call with reporters and the officials from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

“Instead of exceeding people in physical strength, it’s going to exceed people in intellectual ability. We have no experience of what it’s like to have things smarter than us. And it’s going to be wonderful in many respects,” Hinton said. “But we also have to worry about a number of possible bad consequences, particularly the threat of these things getting out of control.”

The Nobel committee that honored the science behind machine learning and AI also mentioned fears about its possible flipside. Moon said that while it has “enormous benefits, its rapid development has also raised concerns about our future. Collectively, humans carry the responsibility for using this new technology in a safe and ethical way for the greatest benefit of humankind.”

Hinton shares those concerns. He quit a role at Google so he could more freely speak about the dangers of the technology he helped create.

On Tuesday, he said he was shocked at the honor.

“I’m flabbergasted. I had, no idea this would happen,” he said when reached by the Nobel committee on the phone.

There was no immediate reaction from Hopfield.

Hinton, now 76, in the 1980s helped develop a technique known as backpropagation that has been instrumental in training machines how to “learn.”

His team at the University of Toronto later wowed peers by using a neural network to win the prestigious ImageNet computer vision competition in 2012. That win spawned a flurry of copycats, giving birth to the rise of modern AI.

Hopfield, 91, created an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data, the Nobel committee said.

Hinton used Hopfield’s network as the foundation for a new network that uses a different method, known as the Boltzmann machine, that the committee said can learn to recognize characteristic elements in a given type of data.

Six days of Nobel announcements opened Monday with Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize for their discovery of tiny bits of genetic material that serve as on and off switches inside cells that help control what the cells do and when they do it. If scientists can better understand how they work and how to manipulate them, it could one day lead to powerful treatments for diseases like cancer.

The physics prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the award’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.

Nobel announcements continue with the chemistry physics prize on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Oct. 14.
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Beijing/Paris — China imposed temporary anti-dumping measures on imports of brandy from the EU on Tuesday, hitting French brands including Hennessy and Remy Martin, days after the 27-state bloc voted for tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles, or EVs.

China’s commerce ministry said preliminary findings of an investigation had determined that dumping of brandy from the European Union threatens “substantial damage” to its own sector.

France’s trade ministry said the temporary Chinese measures were “incomprehensible” and violated free trade, and that it would work with the European Commission to challenge the move at the World Trade Organization.

In a sign of the rising trade tensions, China’s ministry added in another statement on Tuesday that an ongoing anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigation into EU pork products would make “objective and fair” decisions when it concludes.

It also said that it was considering a hike in tariffs on imports of large-engine vehicles, which would hit German producers hardest. German exports of vehicles with engines of 2.5 liters or larger to China reached $1.2 billion last year.

France was seen as the target of Beijing’s brandy probe due to its support of tariffs on China-made EVs. French brandy shipments to China reached $1.7 billion last year and accounted for 99% of the country’s imports of the spirit.

As of Oct. 11, importers of brandy originating in the EU will have to put down security deposits mostly ranging from 34.8% to 39.0% of the import value, the ministry said.

“This announcement clearly shows that China is determined to tax us in response to European decisions on Chinese electric vehicles,” French cognac producers group BNIC said in an email.

French President Emmanuel Macron said last week that China’s brandy probe was “pure retaliation,” while EV tariffs were needed to preserve a level playing field.

Shares tumble

LVMH-owned Hennessy and Remy Martin were among the brands hardest hit by the measures, with importers having to pay security deposits of 39.0% and 38.1%, respectively.

The deposits would make it more costly upfront to import brandy from the EU. However they could be returned if a deal is eventually reached before definitive tariffs are imposed.

Both the investigation and negotiations remain ongoing, said an executive at a leading cognac company, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Chinese investigators visited producers in France last month and were due to make further site visits, the executive said, while Chinese and EU officials held negotiations on Monday.

The outcome was unclear, however, and doubts around the EU’s willingness to make a deal were emerging, they added.

Shares in Pernod Ricard were down 4.2% at 0839 GMT, while Remy Cointreau’s dropped 8.7% and shares in LVMH fell 4.9%.

Companies that cooperated with China’s investigation were hit with security deposit rates of 34.8%, with that imposed on Martell the lowest at 30.6%.

Pernod Ricard, Remy Cointreau and LVMH did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The measures could mean a 20% price rise for consumers in China, said Jefferies analysts, reducing sales volumes by 20%.

Remy, with the greatest exposure to the Chinese market, could see its sales decline by 6%, with Pernod group sales seeing a 1.6% impact, they said.

China is the second largest export market for cognac after the United States but is the industry’s most profitable territory. Difficult economic conditions in both markets have already prompted a sharp decline in cognac sales.

James Sym, fund manager at Remy investor River Global, said despite this, there was no sign that demand for cognac had fundamentally changed, pointing to an uptick in cognac sales in Japan driven by Chinese tourists when the yen was weak.

“That’s obviously a sign that cognac is not out of fashion,” he said, adding volumes – and the companies’ share prices – should recover long-term, although the tariffs would likely hit volumes and margins while in place.

Talks continue

Luxury goods shares fell by as much as 7% on Tuesday, with one trader attributing this to fears that the sector, which is heavily reliant on China, could be next to see trade measures.

The brandy measures follow a vote by the EU to adopt tariffs on China-made EVs by the end of October.

Before the vote in late August, China had suspended its planned anti-dumping measures on EU brandy, in an apparent goodwill gesture, despite determining it had been sold in China at below-market prices.

At the time, the commerce ministry said its probe would end before Jan. 5, 2025, but that it could be extended.

China’s commerce ministry previously said it had found that European distillers had been selling brandy in its 1.4 billion-strong consumer market at a dumping margin in the range of 30.6% to 39% and that its domestic industry had been damaged.

In the EU’s decision to impose tariffs on China-made EVs, the bloc set tariff rates on top of the 10% car import duty ranging from 7.8% for Tesla to 35.3% for SAIC and other producers deemed not to have cooperated with its investigation.

The European Commission has said it is willing to continue negotiating an alternative, even after tariffs are imposed.
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FORT MYERS BEACH, Fla. — Florida’s Gulf Coast braced Tuesday for the impact of Hurricane Milton’s near-record winds and expected massive storm surge, which could bring destruction to areas already reeling from Helene’s devastation 12 days ago and still recovering from Ian’s wrath two years ago.

Almost the entirety of Florida’s west coast was under a hurricane warning early Tuesday as the Category 5 storm and its 265 kph winds crept toward the state at 14 kph, sucking energy from the Gulf of Mexico’s warm water. The strongest Atlantic hurricane on record is 1980’s Allen, which reached wind speeds of 306 kph as it moved through the Caribbean and Gulf before striking Texas and Mexico.

Milton’s center could come ashore Wednesday in the Tampa Bay region, which has not endured a direct hit by a major hurricane in more than a century. Scientists expect the system to weaken slightly before landfall, though it could retain hurricane strength as it churns across central Florida toward the Atlantic Ocean. That would largely spare other states ravaged by Helene, which killed at least 230 people on its path from Florida to the Appalachian Mountains.

Tampa Bay has not been hit directly by a major hurricane since 1921, and authorities fear luck is about to run out for the region and its 3.3 million residents. President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for Florida, and U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor said 7,000 federal workers were mobilized to help in one of the largest mobilizations of federal personnel in history.

“This is the real deal here with Milton,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor told a Monday news conference. “If you want to take on Mother Nature, she wins 100% of the time.”

The Tampa Bay area is still rebounding from Helene and its powerful surge — a wall of water up to 2.4 meters it created even though its eye was 160 kilometers offshore. Twelve people died there, with the worst damage along a string of barrier islands from St. Petersburg to Clearwater.

Forecasters warned that Milton could bring a possible 2.4- to 3.6-meter storm surge, leading to evacuation orders being issued for beach communities all along the Gulf coast. In Florida, that means anyone who stays is on their own and first responders are not expected to risk their lives to rescue them at the height of the storm.

Stragglers were a problem during Helene and 2022’s Ian. Many residents failed to heed ample warnings, saying they evacuated during previous storms only to have major surges not materialize. But there was evidence Monday that people were getting out before Milton arrives.

A steady stream of vehicles headed north toward the Florida Panhandle on Interstate 75, the main highway on the west side of the peninsula, as residents heeded evacuation orders. Traffic clogged the southbound lanes of the highway for miles as other residents headed for the relative safety of Fort Lauderdale and Miami on the other side of the state.

About 240 kilometers south of Tampa, Fort Myers Beach was nearly a ghost town by Monday afternoon as an evacuation order took effect. Ian devastated the 5,000-resident community two years ago, its 4.5-meter storm surge destroying or severely damaging 400 homes and businesses. Fourteen people died there as they tried to ride out the storm, and dozens had to be rescued.

On Monday, the few residents who could be found were racing against the clock to safeguard their buildings and belongings. None said they were staying.

The signs of Ian’s devastation remain visible everywhere. Rebuilt homes stand next to others in various states of construction. There are numerous vacant lots, which were once rare.

“This whole street used to be filled out with houses,” said Mike Sandell, owner of Pool-Rific Services. His workers were removing and storing pumps and heaters Monday from his clients’ pools so they wouldn’t get destroyed.

Home construction supplies like bricks, piping and even workers’ outhouses lined the streets, potential projectiles that could do further damage if a surge hits.

At the beach Monday afternoon, workers busily emptied the triple-wide trailer that houses The Goodz, a combined hardware, convenience, fishing supply, ice cream and beach goods store. Owner Graham Belger said he moved his “Your Island Everything Store” into the trailer after Ian destroyed his permanent building across the street.

“We’ll rebuild, but it is going to be bad,” he said.

Nearby, Don Girard and his son Dominic worked to batten down the family’s three-story combination rental and vacation home that’s about 30.5 meters from the water. It’s first-floor garage and entranceway were flooded by Helene last month, Hurricane Debby in August, and a tide brought by a recent supermoon.

Ian was by far the worst. Its waves crashed into the 14-year-old home’s second floor, destroying the flooring. Girard repaired the damage, and his aqua-blue and white home stands in contrast to the older, single-story house across the street. It was submerged by Ian, never repaired and remains vacant. Its once-off-white walls are now tinged with brown. Plywood covers the holes that once contained windows and doors.

Girard, who owns a banner and flag company in Texas, said that while his feelings about owning his home are mostly positive, they are becoming mixed. He said every December, his extended family gathers there for the holidays. At that time of year, temperatures in southwest Florida are usually in the low 20s Celsius with little rain or humidity. The area and its beaches fill with tourists.

“At Christmas, there is no better place in the world,” Girard said.

But flooding from Ian, the other storms and now Milton is leaving him frustrated.

“It’s been difficult, I’m not going to lie to you,” Girard said. “The last couple years have been pretty bad.”
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TALLINN, Estonia — A Belarusian-American has had his prison term extended to a total of 13 1/2 years in the latest move in a relentless crackdown on dissent by Belarus’ repressive government, rights activists said Monday.

Yuras Zyankovich, a lawyer who has dual Belarusian and U.S. citizenship, has been held behind bars since 2021. He was convicted on accusations of plotting to assassinate Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko and seize power and given an 11-year sentence in September 2022. He then had six months added to his sentence later that year.

In August, a court in Belarus handed Zyankovich, 46, an additional two-year sentence on charges of “malicious disobedience to the prison administration,” according to the Viasna human rights group, a ruling that became known only now.

The authorities have denied Zyankovich access to a lawyer since March.

Zyankovich repeatedly went on hunger strike and his health has seriously deteriorated in custody, according to Viasna, which said that he faced harassment and intimidation by prison authorities.

Last month, Zyankovich featured in a propaganda film aired by state television that described the purported plot he was convicted of.

The U.S. Embassy in Belarus condemned airing the documentary and rejected the “baseless claims” it contained in a statement in September. It emphasized that it will “continue to advocate for the improved welfare of this detained American.”

In 2020, Belarus was rocked by its largest-ever protests following an election that gave Lukashenko a sixth term in office but was condemned by the opposition and the West as fraudulent. According to Viasna, 65,000 people have been arrested since the protests began and hundreds of thousands have fled Belarus.

Belarus has more than 1,300 political prisoners in Belarus, according to Viasna, including the group’s founder and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski.
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WASHINGTON — American voters are likely about to be swamped by a flood of misinformation and influence campaigns engineered by U.S. adversaries aiming, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials, to sway the results of the upcoming presidential election and cast doubt on the process itself.

The latest assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, issued Monday, comes just 29 days before the November 5 election that will see U.S. voters choose the country’s next president and cast ballots in hundreds of other state and local races. 

“We’ve continued to see actors ramp up their activities as we get closer to Election Day,” said a senior U.S. intelligence official, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity.

“They recognize that individuals are already voting, and operations can have a greater impact as we get closer to Election Day,” the official said, noting that the election itself may just be a starting point.

“The intelligence community expects foreign influence actors to continue their campaigns by calling into question the validity of the election results after the polls close,” the official added.

A second U.S. intelligence official warned the pace of such influence efforts, especially those targeting specific races or political campaigns, has also picked up.

“We have had more than a threefold increase,” the official said, explaining that the number of private briefings to candidates and campaigns has likewise jumped.

Intelligence agencies also cautioned that U.S. adversaries will likely seize upon the damage done by Hurricane Helene and potential damage from Hurricane Milton as it strengthens off the U.S. coastline to further amplify and manufacture narratives meant to undermine confidence in the election results.

“It does take time for those types of narratives to be formed and put out into the wild, so to speak,” the first intelligence official said. “But we certainly expect foreign countries to take advantage of such situations and promote further divisive rhetoric.”

Monday’s assessment follows a series of earlier public warnings about foreign efforts to meddle in the U.S. election.

U.S. officials said Monday that Russia, Iran and China continue to be responsible for most of the influence efforts targeting U.S. voters.

And, they said, there have been no indications that any of those countries have changed their goals. 

Russia, they said, continues to run influence campaigns aimed at boosting the chances of former U.S. President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, while seeking to hurt the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.

Iran’s efforts remain focused on helping Harris by hurting Trump, they said, pointing to the ongoing hack-and-leak operation against the Trump campaign, which has been traced to three operatives working for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Targeting state, local races

U.S. intelligence agencies assess that China has yet to wade into the U.S. presidential campaign, focusing instead on persuading American voters to reject state and local candidates perceived as detrimental to Beijing’s interests, especially those voicing support for Taiwan. 

But the latest public assessment pointed to some changes.

U.S. intelligence officials on Monday warned that Russia and Cuba have joined China, in targeting congressional, state and local races.

“Moscow is leveraging a wide range of influence actors in an effort to influence congressional races, particularly to encourage the U.S. public to oppose pro-Ukraine policies and politicians,” the intelligence official said.

“Havana almost certainly has considered influence efforts targeting some candidates,” the official added. “This is consistent with what they’ve done in past cycles.”

Russia, China and Iran have all rejected previous U.S. accusations of election meddling. Russia, Iran and Cuba have yet to respond to requests from VOA for comment on the latest U.S. findings.

China late Monday again dismissed the U.S. concerns.

“China is not interested in the U.S. congressional election, and we have no intention and will not interfere in it,” Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA in an email.

“Some U.S. congressmen stick to their wrong positions on the Taiwan question,” Liu added. “China firmly defends its national sovereignty and territorial integrity, but this does not lead to the conclusion that China has interfered in the congressional elections.”

But the U.S. intelligence assessments align with concerns voiced by some lawmakers and private technology companies.

“The 48 hours after the polls close, especially if we have as close an election as we anticipate, could be equally if not more significant in terms of spreading false information, disinformation and literally undermining the tenets of our democracy,” Mark Warner, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said during a hearing last month.

‘Vigorous activity’ 

Microsoft President Brad Smith, who has warned that the most perilous moments could come in the 48 hours before the U.S. election, separately said the increase in malign cyber efforts by Russia and Iran, especially, is undeniable.

“We’re seeing vigorous activity,” Smith told a cyber conference last month. “We’re seeing the Iranians really target the Republican Party in the Trump campaign,” he said. “We’re seeing the Russians target the Democratic Party and now the Harris campaign.”

And it is unclear what impact the U.S. has made with its attempts to counter the growing number of foreign influence efforts.

Last month, the U.S. Justice Department seized 32 internet domains used by companies linked to Moscow to spread disinformation. At the same time, the department indicted employees of the state-controlled media outlet RT in connection with a plot to launder Russian propaganda through a U.S.-based media company.

U.S. intelligence officials on Monday, however, said such tactics are no longer unique to the Kremlin. 

“Foreign influence actors are getting better at hiding their hand and using Americans to do it,” said one of the U.S. intelligence officials. “Foreign countries calculate that Americans are more likely to believe other Americans compared to content with clear signs of foreign propaganda.”

Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that social media is rife with fake personas generated by U.S. adversaries.

“If you’re looking at stuff on Twitter, on TikTok, on Facebook, on Instagram, and it’s political in nature … there is a very reasonable chance — I would put it in the 20 to 30% range — that the content you are seeing, the comments you are seeing, are coming from one of those three countries: Russia, Iran, China,” he said. “It’s not going to stop on November 5.”
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