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Paris — Paralympic triathlon competitions in Paris scheduled for Sunday were postponed for a day because of concerns about water quality in the Seine River after heavy rainfall, organizers said.

The 11 para triathlon events are now scheduled for Monday, the Paris 2024 organizing committee and World Triathlon said in a joint statement.

Rainstorms hit the French capital Friday and Saturday. Heavy rains cause wastewater and runoff to flow into the river, leading to a rise in bacteria levels including E. Coli.

“It rained a lot Friday and then it also rained Saturday. So the international federation and the organizing committee … out of a principle of precaution decided to delay all of the events for a day,” Paris Deputy Mayor Pierre Rabadan told reporters.

While organizers awaited new test results, Rabadan said “the trend is actually positive to being able to have the competition tomorrow morning.”

Late Sunday night, organizers confirmed the races would go ahead Monday, saying in a statement that new water testing results and monitoring ”indicate that water quality continues to improve and will be within the World Triathlon thresholds on race day.”

This was the second scheduled change for the para triathlon events. They had initially been scheduled to take place over two days, Sunday and Monday, but were moved to Sunday because of rain forecasts.

The disruption is another hiccup for the city’s efforts to clean up the river for future public swimming, one of Paris’ most ambitious promises ahead of hosting the Olympics and Paralympics this summer. The men’s individual triathlon event during the Paris Olympics was delayed and several test swims were canceled because of high E. coli levels after rainstorms.

Lazreg Benel-Hadj, vice president of the French Swimming Federation, said that while some of the 53 athletes who took part in Olympic swimming competitions in the Seine fell ill afterward, none of those illnesses “was linked to the water in the Seine.”

Rabadan reiterated that athletic events in the river would continue past the Paralympics.

“Yes, for sure, we will continue,” he said. “We’ll continue to have competition in the river. So many reasons for that. First one because athletes are happy with that, and second one because the quality of water will permit it in the future. So we will keep going on that way. And that’s a massive legacy of the games.”
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Sacramento, California — California lawmakers approved a host of proposals this week aiming to regulate the artificial intelligence industry, combat deepfakes and protect workers from exploitation by the rapidly evolving technology.

The California Legislature, which is controlled by Democrats, is voting on hundreds of bills during its final week of the session to send to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. Their deadline is Saturday.

The Democratic governor has until Sept. 30 to sign the proposals, veto them or let them become law without his signature. Newsom signaled in July he will sign a proposal to crack down on election deepfakes but has not weighed in on other legislation.

He warned earlier this summer that overregulation could hurt the homegrown industry. In recent years, he often has cited the state’s budget troubles when rejecting legislation that he would otherwise support.

Here is a look at some of the AI bills lawmakers approved this year.

Combating deepfakes

Citing concerns over how AI tools are increasingly being used to trick voters and generate deepfake pornography of minors, California lawmakers approved several bills this week to crack down on the practice.

Lawmakers approved legislation to ban deepfakes related to elections and require large social media platforms to remove the deceptive material 120 days before Election Day and 60 days thereafter. Campaigns also would be required to publicly disclose if they’re running ads with materials altered by AI.

A pair of proposals would make it illegal to use AI tools to create images and videos of child sexual abuse. Current law does not allow district attorneys to go after people who possess or distribute AI-generated child sexual abuse images if they cannot prove the materials are depicting a real person.

Tech companies and social media platforms would be required to provide AI detection tools to users under another proposal.

Setting safety guardrails

California could become the first state in the nation to set sweeping safety measures on large AI models.

The legislation sent by lawmakers to the governor’s desk requires developers to start disclosing what data they use to train their models. The efforts aim to shed more light into how AI models work and prevent future catastrophic disasters.

Another measure would require the state to set safety protocols preventing risks and algorithmic discrimination before agencies could enter any contract involving AI models used to define decisions.

Protecting workers

Inspired by the monthslong Hollywood actors strike last year, lawmakers approved a proposal to protect workers, including voice actors and audiobook performers, from being replaced by their AI-generated clones. The measure mirrors language in the contract the SAG-AFTRA made with studios last December.

State and local agencies would be banned from using AI to replace workers at call centers under one of the proposals.

California also may create penalties for digitally cloning dead people without consent of their estates.

Keeping up with the technology

As corporations increasingly weave AI into Americans’ daily lives, state lawmakers also passed several bills to increase AI literacy.

One proposal would require a state working group to consider incorporating AI skills into math, science, history and social science curriculums. Another would develop guidelines on how schools could use AI in the classrooms.
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Vatican City — If any evidence were needed to underscore that Pope Francis’ upcoming trip to Asia and Oceania is the longest and most challenging of his pontificate, it’s that he’s bringing along his secretaries to help him navigate the four-country program while keeping up with work back home.

Francis will clock 32,814 kilometers by air during his Sept. 2-13 visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, far surpassing any of his previous 44 foreign trips and notching one of the longest papal trips ever, both in terms of days on the road and distances traveled.

That’s no small feat for a pope who turns 88 in December, uses a wheelchair, lost part of a lung to a respiratory infection as a young man and had to cancel his last foreign trip (to Dubai in November) on doctors’ orders.

But Francis is pushing ahead with this trip, originally planned for 2020 but postponed because of COVID-19. He’s bringing along his medical team of a doctor and two nurses and taking the usual health precautions on the ground. But in a novelty, he’s adding his personal secretaries into the traditional Vatican delegation of cardinals, bishops and security.

The long trip recalls the globetrotting travels of St. John Paul II, who visited all four destinations during his quarter-century pontificate, though East Timor was an occupied part of Indonesia at the time of his landmark 1989 trip.

By retracing John Paul’s steps, Francis is reinforcing the importance that Asia has for the Catholic Church, since it’s one of the few places where the church is growing in terms of baptized faithful and religious vocations. 

Here is a look at the trip and some of the issues that are likely to come up, with the Vatican’s relations with China ever-present in the background in a region where Beijing wields enormous influence.

Indonesia

Francis loves gestures of interfaith fraternity and harmony, and there could be no better symbol of religious tolerance at the start of his trip than the underground “Tunnel of Friendship” linking Indonesia’s main Istiqlal mosque to the country’s Catholic cathedral.

Francis will visit the underpass in central Jakarta with the grand imam, Nasaruddin Umar, before both partake in an interfaith gathering and sign a joint declaration.

Francis has made improving Christian-Muslim relations a priority, and has often used his foreign travels to promote his agenda of committing religious leaders to work for peace and tolerance, and renounce violence in God’s name.

Papua New Guinea

Francis was elected pope in 2013 largely on the strength of an extemporaneous speech he delivered to his fellow cardinals in which he said the Catholic Church needed to go to the “peripheries” to reach those who need God’s comfort the most. When Francis travels deep into the jungles of Papua New Guinea, he will be fulfilling one of the marching orders he set out for the future pope on the eve of his own election.

Few places are as remote and poverty wracked as Vanimo, a northern coastal town on the main island of New Guinea. There Francis will meet with missionaries from his native Argentina who are working to bring Christianity to a largely tribal people who still practice pagan traditions alongside the Catholic faith.

East Timor

When John Paul visited East Timor in 1989, he sought to console its overwhelmingly Catholic population who had suffered under Indonesia’s brutal and bloody occupation for 15 years.

“For many years now, you have experienced destruction and death as a result of conflict; You have known what it means to be the victims of hatred and struggle,” John Paul told the faithful during a seaside Mass.

East Timor emerged as an independent country in 2002, but still bears the trauma and scars of an occupation that left as many as 200,000 people dead — nearly a quarter of the population.

Francis will literally walk in John Paul’s footsteps when he celebrates Mass in Tasi-Toli, near Dili, the same seaside esplanade as that 1989 liturgy, which some see as a key date in the Timorese independence movement.

Another legacy that will confront Francis is that of the clergy sexual abuse scandal: Revered independence hero and Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo was secretly sanctioned by the Vatican in 2020 for sexually abusing young boys.

There is no word on whether Francis will refer to Belo, who is still revered in East Timor but has been barred by the Vatican from ever returning.

Singapore

Francis has used several of his foreign trips to send messages to China, be they direct telegrams of greetings when he flies through Chinese airspace or more indirect gestures of esteem, friendship and fraternity to the Chinese people when nearby.

Francis’ visit to Singapore, where three-quarters of the population is ethnically Chinese and Mandarin is an official language, will give him yet another opportunity to reach out to Beijing as the Vatican seeks improved ties for the sake of China’s estimated 12 million Catholics.

“It’s a faithful people, who lived through a lot and remained faithful,” Francis told the Chinese province of his Jesuit order in a recent interview.

The trip comes a month before the Vatican is set to renew a landmark 2018 agreement governing bishop nominations.

Just last week, the Vatican reported its “satisfaction” that China had officially recognized Tianjin Bishop Melchior Shi Hongzhen, who as far as the Vatican is concerned had taken over as bishop in 2019. The Holy See said China’s official recognition of him under civil law now was “a positive fruit of the dialogue established over the years between the Holy See and the Chinese government.”

But by arriving in Singapore, a regional economic powerhouse which maintains good relations with both China and the United States, Francis is also stepping into a protracted maritime dispute as China has grown increasingly assertive with its presence in the South China Sea.
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A Russian missile strike injures dozens in Ukraine. The news comes as Moscow claims to have intercepted 158 Ukraine-launched drones overnight. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Rome — Crew members on Mike Lynch’s yacht have spoken of the moments when a storm sank the vessel off Sicily and their efforts to help save passengers, after a disaster that killed the British tech tycoon and six other people.

Matthew Griffiths, who was on watch duty on the night of the disaster two weeks ago, told investigators that the crew members did everything they could to save those on board the Bayesian, according to comments reported by Italian news agency Ansa on Saturday.

Griffiths, the boat’s captain James Cutfield, and ship engineer Tim Parker Eaton have been placed under investigation by the Italian authorities for potential manslaughter and shipwreck. Being investigated does not imply guilt and does not mean formal charges will follow.

“I woke up the captain when the wind was at 20 knots (23 mph/37 kph). He gave orders to wake everyone else,” Ansa quoted Griffiths as saying.

“The ship tilted and we were thrown into the water. Then we managed to get back up and tried to rescue those we could,” he added, describing the events of the early hours of Aug. 19, when the Bayesian had been anchored off the Sicilian port of Porticello.

“We were walking on the walls (of the boat). We saved who we could, Cutfield also saved the little girl and her mother,” he said, referring to passenger Charlotte Golunski and her one-year-old daughter. In all there were 15 survivors of the wreck.

Cutfield exercised his right to remain silent when questioned by prosecutors on Tuesday, his lawyers said, saying he was “worn out” and that they needed more time to build a defense case.

Before this, Cutfield gave a similar description to Griffiths’ to investigators, according to comments reported on Sunday by Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera.

Cutfield said the boat tilted by 45 degrees and stayed in that position for some time, then it suddenly fell completely to the right, the newspaper reported.

Parker Eaton had not previously commented on the investigation. On Sunday, Il Corriere quoted him as saying that all doors and hatches were closed when the storm hit the boat, except one giving access to the engine room.

That door was located on the side opposite to the tilting and so could not be a factor causing the sinking, he said.

Prosecutor Raffaele Cammarano said last week that the vessel was most likely hit by a “downburst,” a very strong downward wind.

The sinking has puzzled naval marine experts, who said a vessel like the Bayesian, built by Italian high-end yacht manufacturer Perini, should have withstood the storm and, in any case, should not have sunk as quickly as it did.

Prosecutors in the town of Termini Imerese, near Palermo, have said their investigation will take time, with the wreck yet to be salvaged from the sea.
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New York — A broadening rally in U.S. stocks is offering an encouraging signal to investors worried about concentration in technology shares, as markets await key jobs data and the Federal Reserve’s expected rate cuts in September.

As the market’s fortunes keep rising and falling with big tech stocks such as Nvidia NVDA.O and Apple AAPL.O, investors are also putting money in less-loved value stocks and small caps, which are expected to benefit from lower interest rates. The Fed is expected to kick off a rate-cutting cycle at its monetary policy meeting on Sept. 17-18.

Many investors view the broadening trend, which picked up steam last month before faltering during an early August sell-off, as a healthy development in a market rally led by a cluster of giant tech names. Chipmaker Nvidia, which has benefited from bets on artificial intelligence, alone has accounted for roughly a quarter of the S&P 500’s year-to-date gain of 18.4%.

“No matter how you slice and dice it you have seen a pretty meaningful broadening out and I think that has legs,” said Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment officer at Charles Schwab.

Value stocks are those of companies trading at a discount on metrics like book value or price-to-earnings and include sectors such as financials and industrials. Some investors believe rallies in these sectors and small caps could go further if the Fed cuts borrowing costs while the economy stays healthy.

The market’s rotation has recently accelerated, with 61% of stocks in the S&P 500 .SPXoutperforming the index in the past month, compared to 14% outperforming over the past year, Charles Schwab data showed.

Meanwhile, the so-called Magnificent Seven group of tech giants — which includes Nvidia, Tesla TSLA.O and Microsoft MSFT.O — have underperformed the other 493 stocks in the S&P 500 by 14 percentage points since the release of a weaker-than-expected U.S. inflation report on July 11, according to an analysis by BofA Global Research.

Stocks have also held up after an Nvidia forecast failed to meet lofty investor expectations earlier this week, another sign that investors may be looking beyond tech. The equal weight S&P 500 index, a proxy for the average stock, hit a fresh record [last] week and is up around 10.5% year-to-date, narrowing its performance gap with the S&P 500.

“When market breadth is improving, the message is that an increasing number of stocks are rallying on expectations that economic conditions will support earnings growth and profitability,” analysts at Ned David Research wrote.

Value stocks that have performed well this year include General Electric GE.N and midstream energy company Targa Resources TRGP.N, which are up 70% and 68%, respectively. The small-cap focused Russell 2000 index, meanwhile, is up 8.5% from its lows of the month, though it has not breached its July peak.

The jobs report “tends to be one of the more market moving releases in general, and right now it’s going to get even more attention than normal.”

Investors are unlikely to turn their back on tech stocks, particularly if volatility gives them a chance to buy on the cheap, said Jason Alonzo, a portfolio manager with Harbor Capital.

Technology stocks are expected to post above-market earnings growth over every quarter through 2025, with third-quarter earnings coming in at 15.3% compared with a 7.5% gain for the S&P 500 as a whole, according to LSEG data.

“People will sometimes take a deep breath after a nice run and look at other opportunities, but technology is still the clearest driver of growth, particularly the AI theme which is innocent until proven guilty,” Alonzo said.
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Koumac, France — An alliance of parties seeking independence for New Caledonia has nominated as chief a prominent opposition leader currently jailed in France over a wave of deadly rioting in the French Pacific territory.

Christian Tein, who considers himself a “political prisoner,” was one of seven pro-independence activists transferred to mainland France in June — a move that sparked renewed violence that has roiled the archipelago and left 11 people dead.

His appointment on Saturday to lead the Socialist Kanak National Liberation Front (FLNKS) risks complicating efforts to end the crisis, sparked in May by a Paris plan for voting reforms that indigenous Kanaks fear will thwart their ambitions for independence by leaving them a permanent minority.

Laurie Humuni of the RDO party, one of four in the FLNKS alliance, said Saturday that Tein’s nomination was a recognition of his CCAT party’s leading role in mobilizing the independence movement.

It was not clear if the two other alliance members, the UPM and Palika, supported the move — they had refused to participate in the latest FLNKS meeting and indicated they would not support any of its proposals.

The alliance also said it was willing to renew talks to end the protests, but only if local anti-independence parties are excluded.

“We will have to remove some blockades to allow the population access to essential services, but that does not mean we are abandoning our struggle,” Humuni told AFP.

On Thursday, France said it had agreed to terms with Pacific leaders seeking a fact-finding mission to New Caledonia in a bid to resolve the dispute, though a date for the mission has not yet been set.

President Emmanuel Macron’s government has sent thousands of troops and police to restore order in the archipelago, almost 17,000 kilometers (10,600 miles) from Paris, and the electoral reforms were suspended in June.
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Warsaw — Poland on Sunday marked 85 years since the outbreak of World War II during annual commemoration ceremony held at dawn to remember Nazi Germany’s first attacks that triggered the deadly conflict.

Nearly six million Poles died in the conflict that killed more than 50 million people overall, including the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust, half of them Polish.

The remembrance ceremony on Sunday was traditionally held in Westerplatte, on Poland’s Baltic coast, where a Nazi German battleship had opened fire on a Polish fort 85 years ago to the day.

Speaking at Westerplatte, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the lessons of World War II were “not an abstraction” and drew parallels with the war in neighboring Ukraine.

“This war is coming again from the east,” he said.

He urged NATO member states to be “fully devoted to defense… against the aggression that we are witnessing today on the battlefields of Ukraine.”

Adolf Hitler’s attacks on Poland led Britain and France to declare war on Nazi Germany. On September 17, the Soviet Union in turn invaded Poland.

After the Nazis tore up their pact with Moscow, two alliances battled it out: the Axis powers led by Germany, Italy and Japan and the victorious Allied forces led by Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States.

Polish President Andrzej Duda took part in commemorations in the western Polish city of Wielun where Germany’s first bombs fell 85 years ago.

Duda said “sorry” from Germany was not enough and called for reparations, adding: “This issue is not settled.”

Although it has been 85 years since the war started, there are still unresolved matters according to Poland.

Poland’s current pro-EU government led by Tusk has urged Germany to provide financial compensation over losses the country sustained at the hands of Nazi troops.

It echoed an earlier similar push by the populist Law and Justice (PiS) party that lost power in October election.

During his visit to commemorate the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, a doomed revolt against occupying forces, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke of plans to establish a memorial to the Polish victims of the Nazis.

“Many other efforts are underway, including for the remaining survivors of the German occupation. Our two governments are liaising closely on this,” he said.

Steinmeier did not, however, provide any further details on the possible compensation measures.

According to Polish media, discussions between Warsaw and Berlin on financial compensation to the living victims of the Nazi Germany are underway, with Poland estimating up to 70,000 people would be eligible.
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NEW YORK — About 1,070 hotel workers in the U.S. cities of Boston and Greenwich are on strike after contract talks with hotel operators Marriott International MAR.O, Hilton Worldwide HLT.N and Hyatt Hotels H.N stalled, the Unite Here union said on Sunday.

The strikes in Boston and Greenwich will last three days, the union said, adding that more hotel workers in different cities are expected to walk off the job across the U.S. throughout the Labor Day holiday weekend.

Unite Here, which represents workers in hotels, casinos and airports across the United States and Canada, said frustrated workers may strike in major destinations including San Francisco and Seattle as they struggle to agree with hotel operators on wages and on reversing pandemic-era job cuts.

“Strikes have also been authorized and could begin at any time in Baltimore, Honolulu, Kauai, New Haven, Oakland, Providence, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle,” Unite Here said in a statement.

A total of 40,000 Unite Here hotel workers in more than 20 cities are working under contracts that expire this year. About 15,000 of those workers have authorized strikes in 12 markets from Boston to Honolulu.

Workers have been in negotiations for new four-year contracts since May.

“We’re on strike because the hotel industry has gotten off track,” Unite Here President Gwen Mills said.

“We won’t accept a ‘new normal’ where hotel companies profit by cutting their offerings to guests and abandoning their commitments to workers,” Mills added.

Unite Here workers in 2023 won record contracts in Los Angeles following rolling strikes and in Detroit after a 47-day strike.

In Las Vegas, casino operators MGM MGM.N, Caesars CZR.O and Wynn WYNN.O resorts reached an agreement in November to avert a strike with 40,000 hospitality workers days before a deadline that would have crippled the Vegas Strip.
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CHEYENNE, Wyoming — A “mega den” of hundreds of rattlesnakes in Colorado is getting even bigger now that late summer is here and babies are being born.

Thanks to livestream video, scientists studying the den on a craggy hillside in Colorado are learning more about these enigmatic — and often misunderstood — reptiles. They’re observing as the youngsters, called pups, slither over and between adult females on lichen-encrusted rocks.

The public can watch too on the Project RattleCam website and help with important work including how to tell the snakes apart. Since researchers put their remote camera online in May, several snakes have become known in a chat room and to scientists by names including “Woodstock,” “Thea” and “Agent 008.”

The live feed, which draws as many as 500 people at a time online, on Thursday showed a tangle of baby snakes with tiny nubs for rattles. They have a lot of growing to do: A rattlesnake adds a rattle segment each time it sheds its skin a couple times a year, on average.

The project is a collaboration between California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, snake removal company Central Coast Snake Services and Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

By involving the public, the scientists hope to dispel the idea that rattlesnakes are usually fierce and dangerous. In fact, experts say they rarely bite unless threatened or provoked and often are just the opposite. 

Rattlesnakes are not only among the few reptiles that care for their young. They even care for the young of others. The adults protect and lend body heat to pups from birth until they enter hibernation in mid-autumn, said Max Roberts, a CalPoly graduate student researcher.

“We regularly see what we like to call ‘babysitting,’ pregnant females that we can visibly see have not given birth, yet are kind of guarding the newborn snakes,” Roberts said Wednesday.

As many as 2,000 rattlesnakes spend the winter at the location on private land, which the researchers are keeping secret to discourage trespassers. Once the weather warms, only pregnant females remain while the others disperse to nearby territory.

This year, the scientists keeping watch over the Colorado site have observed the rattlesnakes coil up and catch water to drink from the cups formed by their bodies. They’ve also seen how the snakes react to birds swooping in to try to grab a scaly meal.

The highlight of summer is in late August and early September when the rattlesnakes give birth over a roughly two-week period.

“As soon as they’re born, they know how to move into the sun or into the shade to regulate their body temperature,” Roberts said.

There are 36 species of rattlesnakes, most of which inhabit the U.S. They range across nearly all states and are especially common in the Southwest. Those being studied now are prairie rattlesnakes, which can be found in much of the central and western U.S. and into Canada and Mexico.

Like other pit viper species but unlike most snakes, rattlesnakes don’t lay eggs. Instead, they give birth to live young. Eight is an average-size brood, with the number depending on the snake’s size, according to Roberts.

Roberts is studying how temperature changes and ultraviolet sunlight affect snake behavior. Another graduate student, Owen Bachhuber, is studying the family and social relationships between rattlesnakes.

The researchers watch the live feed all day.

“We are interested in studying the natural behavior of rattlesnakes, free from human disturbance. What do rattlesnakes actually do when we’re not there?” Roberts said.

Now that the Rocky Mountain summer is cooling, some males have been returning. By November, the camera running on solar and battery power will be turned off until next spring, when the snakes will re-emerge from their “mega den.”
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New York — Does American tennis have a pickleball problem?

Even as the U.S. Open opened this week with more than a million fans expected for the sport’s biggest showcase, the game’s leaders are being forced to confront a devastating fact — the nation’s fastest-growing racket sport (or sport of any kind) is not tennis but pickleball, which has seen participation boom 223% in the past three years.

“Quite frankly, it’s obnoxious to hear that pickleball noise,” U.S. Tennis Association President Dr. Brian Hainline grumbled at a recent state-of-the-game news conference, bemoaning the distinctive pock, pock, pock of pickleball points.

Pickleball, an easy-to-play mix of tennis and ping pong using paddles and a wiffleball, has quickly soared from nearly nothing to 13.6 million U.S. players in just a few years, leading tennis purists to fear a day when it could surpass tennis’ 23.8 million players. And most troubling is that pickleball’s rise has often come at the expense of thousands of tennis courts encroached upon or even replaced by smaller pickleball courts.

“When you see an explosion of a sport and it starts potentially eroding into your sport, then, yes, you’re concerned,” Hainline said in an interview with The Associated Press. “That erosion has come in our infrastructure. … A lot of pickleball advocates just came in and said, ‘We need these tennis courts.’ It was a great, organic grassroots movement but it was a little anti-tennis.”

Some tennis governing bodies in other countries have embraced pickleball and other racket sports under the more-the-merrier belief they could lead more players to the mothership of tennis. France’s tennis federation even set up a few pickleball courts at this year’s French Open to give top players and fans a chance to try it out.

But the USTA has taken a decidedly different approach. Nowhere at the U.S. Open’s Billie Jean King National Tennis Center is there any such demonstration court, exhibition match or any other nod to pickleball or its possible crossover appeal.

In fact, the USTA is flipping the script on pickleball with an ambitious launch of more than 400 pilot programs across the country to broaden the reach of an easier-to-play, smaller-court version of tennis called “red ball tennis.” Backers say it’s the ideal way for people of all ages to get into tennis and the best place to try it is (wait for it) on pickleball courts.

“You can begin tennis at any age,” USTA’s Hainline said. “We believe that when you do begin this great sport of tennis, it’s probably best to begin it on a shorter court with a larger, low-compression red ball. What’s an ideal short court? A pickleball court.”

And instead of the plasticky plink of a pickleball against a flat paddle, Hainline said, striking a fuzzy red tennis ball with a stringed racket allows for a greater variety of strokes and “just a beautiful sound.” Players can either stick with red ball tennis or advance through a progression of bouncier balls to full-court tennis.

“Not to put it down,” Hainline said of pickleball, “but compared to tennis … seriously?”

So what does the head of the nation’s pickleball governing body have to say about such comments and big tennis’ plans to plant the seeds of its growth, at least in part, on pickleball courts?

“I don’t like it but there is so much going on with pickleball, so many good things, I’m going to stick to what I can control, harnessing the growth and supporting this game,” said Pickleball USA CEO Mike Nealy.

Among the positive signs, Nealy said, is the continuing construction of new pickleball courts across the country, raising the total to more than 50,000. There’s also growing investment in the game at clubs built in former big-box retail stores, pro leagues with such backers as Tom Brady, LeBron James and Drake, and the emergence of “dink-and-drink” establishments that tap into the social aspect of the game by allowing friends to enjoy pickleball, beer, wine and food under the same roof.

“I don’t think it needs to be one or the other or a competition,” Nealy said of pickleball and tennis. “You’re certainly going to have the inherent frictions in communities when tennis people don’t feel that they’re getting what they want. … They’re different games but I think they are complimentary. There’s plenty of room for both sports to be very successful.”

Top-ranked American tennis player Taylor Fritz agreed. “There are some people in the tennis world that are just absolute pickleball haters, and that’s fine. But for me, I don’t really have an issue with pickleball. I like playing sometimes. … I don’t see any reason why both of them can’t exist.”
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JERUSALEM — The family of Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin announced the young man’s death early Sunday, ending a relentless campaign by his parents to rescue him that included meetings with world leaders and an address to the Democratic convention last month.

Goldberg-Polin, 23, was seized by militants at a music festival in southern Israel on October 7. The native of Berkeley, California, lost part of his left arm to a grenade in the attack. In April, a Hamas-issued video showed him, his left hand missing and clearly speaking under duress, sparking new protests in Israel urging the government to do more to secure his and others’ freedom.

Israel’s announcement is bound to bring urgent new calls for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a deal to bring home remaining hostages. The Israeli leader has taken a tough line in negotiations and repeatedly said that military pressure is needed to bring home the hostages. According to Israeli media, he has feuded with top security officials who have said a deal should be reached urgently.

President Joe Biden, who had met with the parents, said he was “devastated and outraged.”

“It is as tragic as it is reprehensible,” he said. “Make no mistake, Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes. And we will keep working around the clock for a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages.”

The family issued a statement early Sunday, hours after the Israeli army said it had located bodies in Gaza.

“With broken hearts, the Goldberg-Polin family is devastated to announce the death of their beloved son and brother, Hersh,” it said. “The family thanks you all for your love and support and asks for privacy at this time.”

There was no immediate comment from the army, details on the exact circumstances of his death or identities of other bodies recovered.

Asked about the case earlier on Saturday, Biden said bodies were still being identified and that families were being notified. But he called for an end to the war and said cease-fire efforts were progressing.

“I think we’re on (the) verge of having an agreement,” he said as he left church in Delaware. “It’s just time to end. It’s time to finish it.”

Goldberg-Polin’s parents, U.S.-born immigrants to Israel, became perhaps the most high-profile relatives of hostages on the international stage. They met with Biden, Pope Francis and others and addressed the United Nations, urging the release of all hostages.

On August 21, his parents addressed a hushed hall at the Democratic National Convention — after sustained applause and chants of “bring him home.”

“This is a political convention. But needing our only son — and all of the cherished hostages — home is not a political issue. It is a humanitarian issue,” said his father, Jon Polin. His mother, Rachel, who bowed her head during the ovation and touched her chest, said “Hersh, if you can hear us, we love you, stay strong, survive.”

Both wore stickers with the number 320, representing the number of days their son had been held. It had long become part of a morning ritual — tear a new piece of tape, write down another day.

“I find it so remarkable how nauseating it is every single time,” Rachel Goldberg-Polin told The Associated Press in January, ahead of the 100-day mark. “And it’s good. I don’t want to get used to it. I don’t want anybody to get used to the fact that these people are missing.”

She asked other people around the world to take up the ritual, too, not only for her son, who moved to Israel with his family when he was 7, but for the other hostages and their families.

She and her husband sought to keep their son and the others held from being reduced to numbers, describing Hersh as a music and soccer lover and traveler with plans to attend university since his military service had ended. At events she often addressed her son directly in the hope he could hear her, urging him to live another day.

Some 250 hostages were taken on October 7. Before the military’s announcement of the latest discovery of bodies, Israel said it believed 108 hostages were still held in Gaza and about one-third of them were dead. In late August, the Israeli military recovered the bodies of six hostages in southern Gaza.

Eight hostages have been rescued by Israeli forces, the most recent found on Tuesday. Most of the rest were freed during a weeklong cease-fire in November in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

Two previous Israeli operations to free hostages killed scores of Palestinians. Hamas says several hostages have been killed in Israeli airstrikes and failed rescue attempts. Israeli troops mistakenly killed three Israelis who escaped captivity in December.
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BOVINA, Mississippi — Seven people were killed and dozens were injured in Mississippi after a commercial bus overturned on Interstate 20 Saturday morning, according to the Mississippi Highway Patrol. 

Six passengers were pronounced dead at the scene and another died at a hospital, according to a news release. The bus was traveling west when it left the highway near Bovina in Warren County and flipped over. No other vehicle was involved. 

The crash was caused by tire failure, the National Transportation Safety Board said on the social media platform known as X. The bus was operated by Autobuses Regiomontanos based in Laredo, Texas. A woman who answered the phone at the company said it was aware of the crash, but she didn’t answer questions or provide her name. 

The transit company says it has 20 years of experience providing cross-border trips between 100 destinations in Mexico and the United States. Its website promotes “a modern fleet of buses that receive daily maintenance,” and offers “trips with a special price for workers.” 

The dead included a 6-year-old boy and his 16-year-old sister, according to Warren County Coroner Doug Huskey. They were identified by their mother. Authorities were working to identify the other victims, he said. 

Thirty-seven passengers were taken to hospitals in Vicksburg and Jackson. The department is continuing its investigation and hasn’t released the names of the deceased. No other information was immediately provided. 
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san diego, california — Arrests for illegal border crossings from Mexico during August are expected to rise slightly from July, officials said, likely ending five straight months of declines. 

Authorities made about 54,000 arrests through Thursday, which, at the current rate, would bring the August total to about 58,000 when the month ends Saturday, according to two U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss information that has not been publicly released. 

The tally suggests that arrests could be bottoming out after being halved from a record 250,000 in December, a decline that U.S. officials largely attributed to Mexican authorities increasing enforcement within their borders. Arrests were more than halved again after Democratic President Joe Biden invoked authority to temporarily suspend asylum processing in June. Arrests plunged to 56,408 in July, a 46-month low that changed little in August. 

Asked about the latest numbers, the Homeland Security Department released a statement by Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas calling on Congress to support failed legislation that would have suspended asylum processing when crossings reached certain thresholds, reshaped how asylum claims are decided to relieve bottlenecked immigration courts and added Border Patrol agents, among other things. 

Republicans including presidential nominee Donald Trump opposed the bill, calling it insufficient. 

“Thanks to action taken by the Biden-Harris Administration, the hard work of our DHS personnel and our partnerships with other countries in the region and around the world, we continue to see the lowest number of encounters at our Southwest border since September 2020,” Mayorkas said Saturday. 

The steep drop from last year’s highs is welcome news for the White House and the Democrats’ White House nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, despite criticism from many immigration advocates that asylum restrictions go too far and from those favoring more enforcement who say Biden’s new and expanded legal paths to entry are far too generous. 

More than 765,000 people entered the United States legally through the end of July using an online appointment app called CBP One and an additional 520,000 from four nationalities were allowed through airports with financial sponsors. The airport-based offer to people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela — all nationalities that are difficult to deport — was briefly suspended in July to address concerns about fraud by U.S. financial sponsors. 

San Diego, California, again had the most arrests among the Border Patrol’s nine sectors on the Mexican border in August, followed by El Paso, Texas, and Tucson, Arizona, though the three busiest corridors were close, the officials said. Arrests of Colombians and Ecuadoreans fell, which officials attributed to deportation flights to those South American countries. Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras were the top three nationalities. 
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WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee in the November 5 U.S. presidential election, on Saturday called on her Republican rival, Donald Trump, to debate her with their microphones switched on throughout the event.

Harris and the former president have agreed to a debate, hosted by ABC News, on September 10.

“Donald Trump is surrendering to his advisors who won’t allow him to debate with a live microphone. If his own team doesn’t have confidence in him, the American people definitely can’t,” Harris said in a post on social media platform X.

“We are running for President of the United States. Let’s debate in a transparent way with the microphones on the whole time.”

Trump has said that he preferred to have his microphone kept on and that he did not like it muted during the last debate against then-contender President Joe Biden.

So-called “hot mics” can help or hurt political candidates, catching off-hand comments that sometimes were not meant for the public. Muted microphones also prevent the debaters from interrupting their opponent.

A representative for ABC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The debate would be the first time Harris and Trump face off since Biden dropped out of the presidential race following a poor performance at a CNN debate in June that raised doubts about his mental acuity.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz and Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance have agreed to an October 1 debate on CBS News.
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