Category: Security

Two years ago, Adam Schneider, a longtime movie memorabilia collector, was about to retire and began the process of downsizing. That’s when he decided to sell the Wicked Witch’s hat he owned from the movie “The Wizard of Oz.”

Schneider is a prominent buyer of “Star Trek” props. In 2013 he and his wife made headlines when they restored and then donated the “Star Trek” Galileo shuttlecraft prop to NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Since Schneider had a long relationship with Heritage Auctions, known for its high-octane sales of movie and television props and memorabilia, he turned to the Dallas-based house to sell the hat and other items from his renowned “Star Trek” collection.

That is when the trouble began, according to a lawsuit filed last week in Los Angeles Superior Court.

“How do I put this?” said Schneider in an interview, “I was screwed.”

Schneider alleges in his lawsuit that Heritage Auctions failed to disclose the hat’s potential value, convincing him to sell it in a private sale in order to better position the sale of another Wicked Witch’s hat that was owned by an important collector, in a major auction held last year. He is suing the auction company, claiming constructive fraud and deceptive trade practices.

“Either, in the best case, they favored another client … and in the worst case, they bought it [the hat] for themselves which is self-dealing,” said Dale Washington, an attorney representing Schneider.

An attorney for Heritage did not respond to a request for comment.

The litigation is a window into the lucrative world of Hollywood memorabilia, where collectors bid top dollar for merchandise from classic films.

Schneider says he acquired the Wicked Witch’s hat in 2019 for $100,000, from Profiles in History, a movie memorabilia house that Heritage acquired two years later.

It was one of about three known existing hats used in filming of the 1939 classic. This one, made of a black wool fabric, had a chin strap worn during flying scenes.

Schneider had wanted to buy the hat when it first came up for sale when MGM began selling off its inventory of props in the 1970s but missed out. So, when it came up for sale six years ago, he bid on it.

In July 2023, Schneider agreed to consign his hat to Heritage and the item was given a value of $200,000 for insurance purposes, according to his lawsuit.

“Wizard of Oz” props are some of the most coveted among collectors. When Schneider approached Heritage, he said its senior director, Brian Chanes, told him that the items from the beloved film had enduring appeal, saying they are “as good as it gets,” the suit says.

Schneider alleges Heritage later began talking with one of the foremost collectors of props from the movie, an individual identified in the lawsuit as “Mr. S.” He owned three of the most iconic items from the movie: a pair of Dorothy’s ruby slippers, her broom and another of the Wicked Witch’s hats, the complaint states.

Mr. S is a former child actor named Michael Shaw, who had recently recovered ownership of the ruby slippers. In 2005, Shaw had lent his pair of Dorothy’s ruby slippers to the Judy Garland Museum in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota. It is one of four known pairs that Garland wore in the movie.

The same year that Shaw put the slippers on loan, they were stolen from the museum. A man shattered the plexiglass case holding them, leaving a single red sequin behind. At the time, the shoes were valued at $1 million.

The FBI recovered the slippers in Minnesota.

In March of last year, eight months after Schneider had already agreed to consign his witch’s hat to Heritage, Shaw announced that he planned to sell the slippers at auction through Heritage.

Soon after, Schneider contends that Heritage changed course.

In August, Chanes called Schneider and offered him a quick private sale of the hat for $250,000. Instead of taking it to auction, the hat worn by actor Margaret Hamilton would be sold directly to Shaw, who had expressed interest. The price was “more than any Hat had previously sold for,” Chanes told him, according to the complaint.

A few months later, Heritage began promoting a December auction of movie memorabilia that included Shaw’s three Oz pieces.

The sale would capitalize on the highly anticipated movie, “Wicked,” the adaptation of the hit Broadway musical that opened in November, which would certainly help boost enthusiasm.

According to the suit, Heritage launched a promotional tour of Shaw’s items, holding events in New York, London and Tokyo.

Shaw is not a defendant in the lawsuit against Heritage.

During the auction held on Dec. 7, the ruby slippers sold for a record $32.5 million and the hat hammered down for $2.93 million, which was nearly 12 times the amount Schneider received for his hat. Like other houses, Heritage receives a commission on the items sold at auction.

“It’s very unusual to have an item plucked out of an auction and get an offer like that from the auctioneer,” Schneider said. He says the house violated its fiduciary obligations to him, having failed to disclose the level of market interest in the hat or its planned roadshow for the auction.

Schneider alleges that Heritage struck the deal with him as a “device for HERITAGE or its executives to get ownership at a deep discount while also favoring Mr. S by making his Hat the only one in the auction,” states the suit.

Schneider’s complaint echoes another case brought against Heritage last year by a pair of self-described storage unit entrepreneurs, who bought the original model of the U.S.S. Enterprise used in the opening credits of the 1960s TV series “Star Trek.”

The men alleged that they agreed to consign the model to Heritage for a planned auction sale after the house gave it a value of $800,000. However, following their agreement, they claimed that the auction house falsely questioned their title to the model and then convinced them to sell it for a low-ball $500,000 to Roddenberry Entertainment Inc., a client that could potentially provide a pipeline of memorabilia to the auction house in the future.

Armen Vartian, an attorney representing Heritage, said the allegations were unfounded, calling it “an unfortunate misunderstanding.”

The case is pending.

___

© 2025 Los Angeles Times

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

CNN announced Thursday it will cut about 200 jobs from its traditional TV operations and create a comparable number of new digital roles such as data scientists and product engineers as well as different types of journalists.

The planned cuts and growth on the digital side of the business come as the cable giant is charting a course for growth in an era of cord-cutting, declining TV viewership and advertising, and a need to reach audiences in the multitude of places they’re searching for content.

The affected jobs represent about 6% of CNN’s workforce of about 3,300 employees. About 1,000 work in Atlanta out of the Midtown headquarters.

Mark Thompson, who has been running CNN for 15 months, told The New York Times half of the new jobs will be hired in the first half of this year.

“The process of change is essential if we’re to thrive in the future, but I both acknowledge and regret its very real human consequences,” he wrote in a memo to CNN staff Thursday.

The bulk of CNN’s digital operations are based in Atlanta so these changes could result in more net employees locally compared to New York or Washington, D.C. CNN was founded in Atlanta by billionaire Ted Turner in 1980, but its headquarters and leadership have been based in New York for many years, especially during Jeff Zucker’s run as chief from 2013 to 2022.

“The long-term goal appears to be reducing the New York footprint and transitioning much of the company to its Atlanta campus,” said Oliver Darcy, former CNN media writer who left last year to run Status, an independent media newsletter. He noted that Atlanta has always been a cheaper place for CNN to house its employees than New York.

In a statement provided to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, CNN said: “In order to continue to deliver journalism to our linear audiences while also serving a multiplatform and primarily digital audience, we are also shifting some resources to set us up for success and fully utilize the state-of-the-art facilities available to CNN in our original founding home of Atlanta.”

In his staff memo, Thompson noted: “Our objective is a simple one: to shift CNN’s gravity towards the platforms and products where the audience themselves are shifting and, by doing that, to secure CNN’s future as one of the world’s greatest news organizations.”

Thompson also told the Times that “if we do not follow the audiences to the new platforms with real conviction and scale, our future prospects will not be good.”

CNN’s cable network has generated most of the revenue and profits for the media organization over the past 35 years, but shifting viewership patterns are battering its bottom line. And interest in news in general has waned since the November presidential election with ratings for CNN dropping sharply for both its digital and traditional TV sides.

Thompson started signaling his plans early last year to focus more on digital operations, but he waited until after the presidential inauguration to start making bigger moves.

Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company, has offered up $70 million to help CNN make the transition, the company said. CNN said it has a goal of generating $1 billion from its digital operation annually by 2030. It did not say how much its digital side creates in revenue now.

CNN launched a paywall for much of its CNN.com content last year, costing $3.99 a month or $29.99 a year. It did not release current subscription numbers. (Readers can read a limited number of stories a month, but subscribers can get unlimited access plus bonus content.)

Thompson previously announced plans for a subscription streaming service but did not provide tangible details Thursday beyond the fact it will have both lifestyle and feature-oriented products. He ran The New York Times from 2004 to 2012 and helped it introduce moneymaking puzzle, cooking and shopping features.

CNN launched an ambitious paid streaming service in 2022 called CNN+. But that product was dismantled just weeks after CNN’s new corporate owners, Warner Bros. Discovery, took over in a cost-cutting move.

Frank Sesno, former CNN D.C. bureau chief and current media and public affairs professor at George Washington University, does not envy the difficult challenge Thompson faces.

“While the shift is absolutely necessary,” Sesno said, “it remains an untested gamble. Can they replace the audience and revenue from its heyday? And it’s more than money. When a TV is on CNN in a hotel lobby or airport lounge or family living room, it becomes a focal point, a centerpiece. Digitally, you can reach more people but does it define itself as a compelling brand?”

In addition, the digital world “is a crowded universe and CNN is a little late to the game (when it comes to streaming and subscriptions). My hope is that its Ted Turner DNA that revolutionized news can do it again. It’s a tall order and will require excellent content, real journalism and creative inspiration.”

Thompson is tweaking CNN’s daytime schedule, with veteran D.C.-based anchor Wolf Blitzer moving to mornings and Washington D.C.-based anchor Jim Acosta’s 10 a.m. show dropped. Acosta has reported aggressively about Donald Trump over the past eight years and has occasionally been a target of Trump’s ire.

“Thompson pulled Acosta from CNN’s lineup without a real explanation as to why,” Darcy said. Thompson “could have found ways to keep Acosta anchoring, especially given that he posts some of the network’s highest ratings and has been a loyal employee for nearly two decades. … It’s impossible to ignore that his inexplicable decision comes just as Donald Trump returns to power.”

___

© 2025 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 Journalist and social media influencer Yashar Ali referred to a 2021 Los Angeles Magazine profile piece about him as “defamatory” and accused the publisher and article’s author as engaging in “journalistic malpractice.”

Ali sued the publication in June 2022 for defamation and promissory fraud and asked for a trial, along with general damages, special damages, punitive damages and the cost of the lawsuit.

A Los Angeles County judge granted none of his requests, instead dismissing his lawsuit while sticking him with the defendant’s lawyer’s fee.

Last week, Judge Lynne M. Hobbs ordered Ali to pay $43,525, which includes fees and court costs.

Calls to Ali’s legal representatives were not returned nor were calls to Los Angeles Magazine or its lawyers.

Ali protested a nearly 6,000-word piece published in June 2021 by journalist Peter Kiefer.

The profile — based on multiple interviews with Ali along with former colleagues, friends and reporters, according to Kiefer — painted an unflattering image of Ali, alleged the plaintiff.

In the profile, Kiefer referred to Ali as “a force to be reckoned with” and the “scourge of the internet,” who “took down Sharon Osbourne, hobbled the White House cabinet chances of L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti, canceled food writer Alison Roman, and helped crush Harvey Weinstein.”

In 2020, Ali accused top Garcetti adviser Rick Jacobs of forcibly kissing him.

Jacobs had previously been accused of sexual harassment by Los Angeles Police Officer Matthew Garza. Garcetti said he was unaware of the allegations at the time and Garza eventually settled for $1.2 million in 2023.

The scandal may have cost Garcetti a position as secretary of Transportation in the Biden administration.

Garcetti eventually became ambassador to India.

Although Kiefer wrote about Ali’s influence, he also pointed out Ali’s alleged record of evictions, loan defaults and tax issues.

He also quoted a friend of comedian Kathy Griffin, who referred to Ali as a “grifter” for overstaying an at least six-month stay at Griffin’s Bel-Air mansion.

Ali said there were several “false and misleading statements” in the article, including paragraphs that he said “falsely characterized” him as “careless.”

He lost thousands of followers in the days following the article but currently has over 700,000 on X.

___

© 2025 Los Angeles Times

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

 TV watchers will soon have a chance to take a peek into the work of Las Vegas police as its officers will be featured on a television show.

Starting Friday, crews from “On Patrol: Live” will be embedded with Metropolitan Police Department officers to give viewers a live look at officers on patrol in Las Vegas, according to a news release.

Independent television network Reelz says the show “documents for viewers in real time the nightly work of law enforcement officers on patrol.”

The network says Metro rounds out the series’ current roster of police departments and sheriff’s offices, which also includes the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office and Richland County Sheriff’s Department in South Carolina; the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia; the Daytona Beach Police Department in Florida; the Hazen Police Department in Arkansas; the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office in California; the Knox County Sheriff’s Office in Tennessee; and the Monroe Police Department in Louisiana.

“On Patrol: Live,” which is starting its fourth season, airs live every Friday and Saturday night from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. PST on Reelz.

Las Vegas police provided the below statement on the department’s participation in “On Patrol: Live”:

“The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is proud to partner with On Patrol: Live to enhance transparency, build trust, and showcase the outstanding work of our dedicated officers. The collaboration provides the public with a real-time look at the professionalism, courage and compassion that define our department. By highlighting the daily efforts of our officers, we aim to inject humanity into policing, strengthen community relationships and reaffirm our commitment to keeping Las Vegas one of the safest communities in America.”

___

© 2025 Las Vegas Review-Journal

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A patient was airlifted from Beaver Island to be taken to a mainland hospital for more advanced medical care on Wednesday, Jan. 29.

The U.S. Coast Guard Traverse City Air Station launched a Sikorsky MH-60T Jayhawk around 5 a.m. to evacuate the patient, who was experiencing respiratory distress, the station said in a Facebook post.

A Beaver Island paramedic was onboard to assist during the flight, and the patient was successfully flown to the mainland for a higher level of medical care.

The Coast Guard’s MH-60T Jayhawk is an all-weather helicopter, similar to the Navy MH-60S Seahawk and the Army H-60 Blackhawk. At 64 feet, the chopper weighs 21,884 pounds fully loaded and can reach speeds over 160 miles per hour.

The Traverse City Air Station has had the Jayhawk helicopters since 2017, when they replaced the Coast Guard’s older Dolphin fleet.

Their arrival was celebrated because the Jayhawks have better search-and-rescue capability, a feature that’s needed for a Great Lakes station. The Jayhawks can fly twice as long as the older models before needing to refuel and can handle Michigan winters better.

___

© 2025 Advance Local Media LLC

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

I’ve been recommending “The Alabama Solution” to everyone I meet since I landed at the Sundance Film Festival last week — but only under my breath.

That’s because Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman’s bombshell investigation of the Alabama prison system, which premiered here Tuesday, was screened in advance for press under strict embargo. Understandable, once you realize that the film’s key sources are inmates themselves. Much of “The Alabama Solution,” which reports on inhumane living conditions, forced labor and widespread violence against the state’s incarcerated population, is comprised largely of footage captured by inmates using contraband cellphones, offering one of the most shocking, visceral depictions of our carceral state ever put to film.

The result, in which brave inmate activists Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council leak vital information, and the filmmakers chase down leads with shoe-leather doggedness, should outrage the nation. And encourage us to reexamine our own backyards: As co-producer Alex Duran reminded me, California voters recently rejected a ballot measure that would have banned forced prison labor, and incarcerated firefighters were instrumental to the battle against the recent L.A. wildfires.

Jarecki and Kaufman sat down with me at the L.A. Times Studios at Sundance to discuss the risks their sources face with the film’s release, what they’d like to ask Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and more. The following has been edited and condensed.

Q: Before we talk about the genesis of the film, I wanted to start with your interest in the subject matter of the film: mass incarceration, the criminal justice system, prison conditions. What was your level of interest in that topic before “The Alabama Solution”?

Andrew Jarecki: I remember going to see Jesse Friedman at Dannemora Correctional Facility when I was making “Capturing the Friedmans,” and the experience of going into a maximum-security facility in upstate New York was such a surprise to me — just the level of lockdown, the level of closure to the outside world and certainly to journalists. So it always intrigued me. And then I’d made films about various aspects of the justice system. So when I went down to Alabama in 2019, just to sort of go to Montgomery and see what I would see, I met this prison chaplain and I realized that they went into the prisons and did barbecues and revival meetings. I thought. “Maybe there’s an opportunity to go there and learn something.” And I don’t think I thought about it as a film up front. I just was curious. But then when it became clear that there was a possibility for us to film, Charlotte and I got together and and went down there and we had this really extraordinary chance to go into a place that is normally absolutely closed to the media and to the public.

Q: Charlotte, I wonder if you could talk about the story of that day at the barbecue. I’m curious, did you have a kind of vision of what you thought you were doing before you arrived that day? Obviously, once the prisoners start coming up to you and and saying, “There’s a story here that they’re not showing you,” that changed it, but did you have a different vision going in?

Charlotte Kaufman:I think we went in with open minds. You rarely get the opportunity to go into a prison facility in Alabama, and I think we saw this as a great opportunity to be able to speak with some of the men, to just observe what we could around the facility, to learn what we could. But very quickly it became clear that there were only certain conversations that we were allowed to have and that we weren’t allowed to speak to the men alone. And I think that lack of access sort of compelled us to keep investigating.

Q: After the first scene in the film, there’s a title card that explains that after your visit, you started getting outreach from inmates within the prison on contraband cellphones. And the footage from those calls that they’re sending you is at the core of the film, and it’s part of what makes it so shocking and outrageous. Take me back to the first outreach that you got. What was your reaction?

Jarecki: I mean, we were surprised when we went in there at the proliferation of cellphones. The fact that Alabama’s prisons are so extraordinarily understaffed and under-resourced means that the prisons are often operating with [a] skeleton crew of people. So you could have a 1,400-bed facility and that normally would be staffed with a few hundred officers. And maybe on a weekend there are 20 officers there. So that indicates that there’s a very low level of understanding even by correctional officers. There are large areas of the prison that they don’t spend any time in. So the ability to speak to these men on these cellphones, which are, in my view, largely brought in by the officers — there’s a big trade in cellphones — that was just a surprise to us. As much as I think it has been people seeing the film and saying, how is that even possible that they have these phones?

Q: One of the things that watching it like really disturbed, upset me were just what they would show you about what the living conditions were like. Flooded floors, overflowing toilets, rats everywhere. Were you that shocked? Was that your response when you started seeing those images coming from your sources on the inside?

Kaufman: The Department of Justice had put out a very in-depth report about their own investigation into Alabama’s prison system. But it’s a very different experience reading the facts and reading the findings, versus actually seeing it. There is something that makes you really understand what it’s like to live in that environment when you can actually see it. And I think that’s why prisons are so secret. That’s why we’re not allowed to see in. And we can only read papers about what’s actually happening. Because when you do see it, it becomes a lot less tolerable.

Q: Over the course of this six-year process, you formed relationships with your main sources inside the facilities. Now, with the film coming out — and as the film explores — they are at risk of reprisal from correctional officers and higher up. What were your ethical concerns about revealing their specific identities, and what were your conversations like with them about the risks and their ultimate willingness to undertake those risks?

Jarecki: We thought a lot about that issue, because obviously the more you get to know people that are in that situation, the more you recognize their vulnerability and the more you feel connected to them. There’s no avoiding that. And it was kind of a beautiful thing about the film that you get to see the humanity in these people who are often seen by society through a very different lens. So we always thought about it and spoke extensively to them about it. These are men who had been working on their own for many years to get the word out on the crisis in this prison system. So when we first started talking, they were very clear — we were part of their agenda, in a way. It was very important for them to do this work. And so we were kind of there to ride along. So it was a symbiotic process. They’re very well known to the authorities inside and they have been retaliated against in the past. So we’re concerned. We continue to be concerned about it. And there’s been an organization that’s created a defense committee to help them if that does come to pass.

Q: I wanted to talk a little bit about your qualitative experiences as filmmakers with this unique process where your sources are separated from you by the divide of the prison walls, but you’re talking to them regularly. This struck me during the narrative about the prison strike and then the breaking of the strike: You’re both at one level getting more information than the general public is getting through the news media, but you’re also not close enough to it to really feel like there’s any kind of control that you can exert. What is that like for you emotionally or creatively as filmmakers?

Kaufman: It’s a very intense experience to follow along and watch this incredibly inspiring and moving movement of the strike but then also watch how the state responds. It’s a privilege to be able to have these extended conversations with all of our participants. But at the same time, that’s why the film is so urgent, because they’re at risk and they’re doing their activism regardless of this film. And that’s also what puts them at risk. They’ve been retaliated against for their activism for like two decades now.

Jarecki: These are men who have been the victims of violence in the system and often violence by people who are allegedly supposed to look out for their safety. And so the ability to have that kind of up-close contact with them and recognize the bravery that they’re showing in being able to share this, it’s such a high level of trust that had to be established for them to allow us to sort of ride along and see this incredibly unique kind of protest. But it’s really important to recognize, despite the violence that they have been subjected to, all of their work is nonviolent. They’re extremely thoughtful about the importance of nonviolent action. And the fact that the state, which has all the machinery of government and all kinds of special military equipment, can’t find a way to respond to them except through violence is really an example of how the system is pretty topsy-turvy.

Q: The title of the film comes from an oft-used phrase by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who is an interviewed in the film. If you got the chance to get her on the record on camera, what would you ask her?

Jarecki: The first question I would ask her is whether she visits the prisons. And I’m quite sure that she would say, “Well, on one occasion…,” something like that. We probably would both be eager to have that conversation. But my first question would be to try to really understand how insulated she must be from what’s happening to her own citizens of her own state, for her to just keep proposing solutions that are not solutions.

Kaufman: I would ask her to give us access. We were able to make this film because we had some really brave individuals who took great risks to have conversations with us, to share material with us. But I would ask her, “What would it take for you to actually allow transparency and for the media to be able to come in and talk to the men freely and to bring cameras in freely?”

Jarecki: There’s a fact that we’ve sort of been talking about how to convey. It’s sort of an extraordinary statistic that I’m pretty sure that governor doesn’t know. Of many statistics I think the governor’s not familiar with. But when you learn about the work programs, essentially forced labor that happens inside the system, of the 20,000 men who are in that system, many of them are caused to work inside the prisons, outside the prisons, on road crews around the state and even at McDonald’s and many other companies. The state is putting them to work and the corrections department is gathering the money for that work and the men are getting a tiny sliver of that. What’s extraordinary is that the people who are allowed to work and who are considered safe enough to be in the community interacting — you see some of them in the film walking around the state fair, walking around the governor’s mansion — those people are less likely, statistically, to be paroled than the people who are at the next highest level of concern for safety. People who are considered safer are less likely to be let out, arguably because they are more valuable as people who can be put to work. … I don’t think anybody’s doing that math because I don’t think it’s of great concern to them, partly because they too are isolated from being able to see what’s happening in their own system.

___

© 2025 Los Angeles Times

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.

China’s homegrown open-source artificial intelligence model DeepSeek topped app charts in the United States and Europe on Monday, beating out U.S.-based rival ChatGPT for the most popular free app on Apple’s App Store, in what some commentators saw as a potential challenge to American dominance in the sector.

The app’s emergence has roiled financial markets, hitting tech shares and causing the Nasdaq to fall more than 2% in Monday trading.

It comes after OpenAI, which is behind the generative AI service ChatGPT, suspended services to China, Hong Kong and Macau last July amid ongoing technology wars between the United States and China.

According to the state-backed China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, there are now 1,328 AI large language models in the world, 36% of which were developed in China, placing the country second only to the United States.

DeepSeek offers a user interface much like its rivals, but, like other Chinese-developed AI, remains subject to government censorship.

It likely won’t be engaging in any kind of discussion about the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen massacre, for example, or engaging in debate about whether democratic Taiwan has a right to run its own affairs.

And there were some emerging technical glitches on Monday too, as repeated attempts to log into the app using Google were unsuccessful. The company said it was “investigating” why only users with a mainland Chinese mobile phone number could currently access the service.

Building artificial general intelligence

Developed by Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence, the app uses an R1 reasoning model, which makes it slightly slower than its competitors, but means it delivers a step-by-step breakdown showing how it arrived at its answers, according to media reports.

Founded in July 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, an alumnus of Zhejiang University with a background in information and electronic engineering, the venture was backed by the High-Flyer hedge fund also founded by Liang a decade earlier, according to a Jan. 24 report in MIT’s Technology Review journal.

It said Liang’s ultimate goal is to build artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a form of AI that can match or even beat humans on a range of tasks.

According to the article, there was a direct link between High-Flyer’s decision to venture into AI and current U.S. bans on the export of high-end semiconductor chips to China, and that Liang has a “substantial stockpile” of Nvidia A100 chips that are no longer available to China, which he used to develop DeepSeek.

While the DeepSeek app experienced a partial outage after shooting to the top of the charts on Monday, its rapid rise had already “wobbled” investors’ faith in the profitability of AI and the sector’s voracious demand for high-tech chips,” Reuters reported on Monday, adding that European Nasdaq futures and Japanese tech shares had fallen on the back of the news.

“It’s a case of a crowded trade, and now DeepSeek is giving a reason for investors and traders to unwind,” the agency quoted Wong Kok Hoong, head of equity sales trading at Maybank, as saying.

‘AI’s Sputnik moment’

While little is known about the details of DeepSeek’s development and the hardware it uses, the model has spooked investors in what venture capitalist Marc Andreessen described on X on Sunday as “AI’s Sputnik moment,” in a reference to the former Soviet Union’s surprise 1957 launch of its Sputnik satellite that triggered a space race with the United States.

“The idea that the most cutting-edge technologies in America, like Nvida and ChatGPT, are the most superior globally, there’s concern that this perspective might start to change,” Masahiro Ichikawa, chief market strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management, told Reuters on Monday, adding: “I think it might be a bit premature.”

But Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Meta, said the real story wasn’t about rivalry between two superpowers.

“To people who see the performance of DeepSeek and think: ‘China is surpassing the US in AI,’ you are reading this wrong,” Yann wrote in a Jan. 25 LinkedIn post.

Instead, the emergence of DeepSeek means that “open source models are surpassing proprietary ones,” he said.

He said DeepSeek profited from open research and open source tools like PyTorch and Llama from Meta, then “came up with new ideas and built them on top of other people’s work.”

“Because their work is published and open source, everyone can profit from it,” he said. “That is the power of open research and open source.”

Privacy concerns

Like TikTok, which is currently waiting to hear its fate under the Trump administration, DeepSeek is likely to raise privacy concerns, given its location under the jurisdiction of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

Its privacy policy warns users that it collects user information like date of birth, username, email address or phone number and password. Like other models, it also remembers what you ask it to do.

“When you use our Services, we may collect your text or audio input, prompt, uploaded files, feedback, chat history, or other content that you provide,” according to the policy, which was last updated on Dec. 5, 2024.

It also remembers your IP address, your device model and operating system and system language.

And while it doesn’t store that data alongside your name, like TikTok, the app records each user’s highly individual “keystroke patterns or rhythms.”

That information is used to protect accounts from “fraud” and other illegal activity. Similar phrasing has sparked concerns over the use of user data by TikTok, although the company has dismissed such concerns as unfounded.

The company may also use user data to allow it to “comply with our legal obligations, or as necessary to perform tasks in the public interest,” the policy states, without specifying what “the public interest” might mean.

“We store the information we collect in secure servers located in the People’s Republic of China,” the Policy states, meaning that such data could be used by the Chinese government if it saw fit.

This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.

With the war in Ukraine dominating Russia’s economy, a once-lively mortgage market has largely ground to a halt, paralyzed by soaring interest rates and a sharp curtailment of state subsidies for first-time buyers. The result: For many Russians, the dream of homeownership is now an unreachable luxury.

More than 18 months into the Russian central bank’s spree of interest-rate hikes aimed at taming accelerating inflation triggered by massive government spending on the war, market rates for home loans now hover around an eye-watering 29 percent, with a minimum down payment of 30 percent.

That has brought a hot market for new homes to a screeching halt.

“It has never been so bad from the point of view of what a normal person can afford to buy, taking into account the mortgage and all subsidies,” Mikhail Matovnikov, head of the analytical department at state-owned Sberbank, the nation’s largest lender, said in November. Affordability hit “absolute rock bottom,” he said.

The high hurdles for prospective homeowners are a potential headache for President Vladimir Putin, who frequently tells Russians the economy is in good shape and wants to ensure that persistent problems like rising prices don’t undermine support for his rule and for the war.

Mortgage volumes plummeted 40 percent in 2024, data published last week showed, and experts say they could fall a further 20 percent this year. As of September, only 13 percent of Russians could afford to borrow at market mortgage rates, and that was before the bank raised the key rate by another 2 percentage points.

“With such rates, of course there are few transactions. People who do have cash are running around, bargaining like crazy” as sellers have few options, Olga, a realtor in the western city of Voronezh, less than 200 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, told RFE/RL. She did not want her last name published.

Boom And Bust

Russia’s housing market boomed through 2023 and into 2024 as consumers burned through cash from the war-fueled economy and took advantage of a broad government program to support new housing construction.

The subsidized mortgage program, introduced in April 2020 to stave off the collapse of developers during the coronavirus pandemic, allowed buyers of new homes to borrow at a maximum rate of 8 percent, historically low by Russian standards.

The surge in demand for new homes, along with galloping inflation for everything from labor to construction material, caused the average price of new builds to nearly double between 2020 and 2023, outpacing price increases for existing homes and warping the market.

By the end of 2023, new homes were 40 percent more expensive than similar homes on the secondary market. The premium had been just 10 percent a few years earlier.

As the government prepared to end the broad subsidized housing program in July 2024 — maintaining only subsidies geared to groups like families with young children, residents of Arctic regions, or IT specialists ––people rushed to snap up homes before it was too late.

Russian banks issued more than 131,000 subsidized loans in June, totaling 690 billion rubles ($7 billion). Both figures represented records. Subsidized loans accounted for 80 percent of all home loans that month, also a record.

With buyers now facing double-digit mortgage rates, new home demand immediately plummeted across the country the following month. In the region that surrounds Moscow, one of the most active areas for new home construction, sales fell by 50 percent month over month.

Onward And Upward?

Market conditions only worsened as the central bank hiked rates by another 5 percentage points between July and October, to 21 percent, seeking to subdue inflation triggered by defense spending and prompting banks to up their market home loan rates to 29 percent.

As a result, the volume of mortgages issued last year decreased by nearly 40 percent, to $50 billion. Experts forecast mortgage volumes to decline more than 20 percent this year to between $41 billion and $36 billion.

That has rattled home builders. Shares of Samolyet, one of Russia’s largest residential developers, plunged as much as 75 percent last year on the Moscow stock exchange amid rumors that the company was running into financial problems as sales dropped.

But builders were reluctant to cut prices and start a price war, Maria, a realtor in Krasnoyarsk, told RFE/RL in November.

“Developers are trying to maintain the market, so they are in no hurry to lower [advertised] prices. They are looking for other ways to stimulate demand: for example, by offering a personal discount or an installment plan,” she said.

Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin promised in November that the state would “do everything to prevent developers from going bankrupt.”

Home-builder bankruptcies in the past have triggered localized protests by buyers stuck with unfinished apartments, in some cases after spending their life savings on down payments. With the war on Ukraine raging, Russian casualties mounting, and economic troubles increasing, the Kremlin is focused on stemming any discontent, experts say.

However, Khusnullin said that Russia would not reinstate the broad subsidized home loan program, calling it a burden for the budget in her November statement. Russia expects its fourth consecutive budget deficit this year as it ramps up spending on the war.

That continued massive military spending may end up pushing mortgage rates over 30 percent, particularly if the central bank resumes interest rate hikes in its struggle to curb inflation, a move some analysts are anticipating.

“Inflation is out of control and we think the bias will remain towards further monetary tightening” — meaning further rate increases — “in the coming months,” Liam Peach, senior emerging markets economist at London-based advisory firm Capital Economics, wrote on January 15.

British “Love Island” star Jack Fincham was released from jail on bail Wednesday after appealing a guilty plea for being in charge of a dangerously out-of-control dog.

The 32-year-old had pleaded guilty earlier on Wednesday and was sentenced to six weeks behind bars. He was also ordered to pay 3,680 pounds ($4,600) for kenneling, fines and compensation.

But according to Sky News, Fincham successfully lodged an appeal of his guilty plea shortly thereafter. He was released on conditional bail pending his appeal after being held in a cell for just a few hours.

The case against Fincham stems from two separate incidents in which his cane corso dog, Elvis, allegedly attacked someone on the street.

After Elvis bit a jogger on the arm in September 2022, Fincham was initially ordered to keep his dog muzzled and leashed in public. But when the dog had another incident in June 2024 — biting a woman’s leg while not muzzled or leashed — Fincham was eventually charged.

“On both occasions the owner was given a chance to rectify their behaviour with words of advice and a conditional caution — however failed to do so, resulting in this sentencing,” Essex Police Sergeant Alex Watkins said.

Fincham rose to fame on the fourth series of U.K.’s “Love Island” in 2018, winning the season with then-girlfriend Dani Dyer. He has since appeared on numerous British reality shows.

___

© 2025 New York Daily News

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.

Anyone desperate to leave China as part of an ongoing exodus known as the “run” movement may need to find alternate destinations, as the repatriation of Chinese migrants from the United States looks increasingly likely.

China on Monday pledged to accept the return of Chinese migrants in the United States after President Donald Trump threatened to hit Colombia with tariffs of up to 50% for refusing to take back its migrants amid an ongoing crackdown on immigration.

“China will receive people who are confirmed as Chinese nationals from the mainland after verification,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a regular news briefing in Beijing.

“The Chinese government firmly opposes any form of illegal migration,” she said.

The number of people fleeing China to seek asylum in the United States has spiked sharply since the country eased its zero-COVID travel bans in 2022.

In 2024, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol reporting encounters with more than 32,000 Chinese nationals at the southwest land border with Mexico compared with about 21,000 the previous year. The agency reported 2,395 so far this year.

Chinese nationals have had a fairly high likelihood of being accepted as political refugees in the United States in recent years, with acceptance rates of around 55%, according to statistics from the Department of Justice.

Dangerous trek

In a phenomenon known as the “run” movement, they have been fleeing the country in large numbers to make the arduous and sometimes dangerous overland journey through South and Central America to cross the border from Mexico and apply for political asylum in the United States.

A buzzword that uses the Chinese character 润 (rùn) as a wordplay on the English word “run,” it describes how large numbers of people are leaving, or researching the best way to get out of China, with the aim of settling in a more developed country with greater freedoms.

The idea of leaving really took off during the grueling lockdowns, mass incarceration in quarantine camps and compulsory testing of President Xi Jinping’s zero-COVID policy, which the government ended abruptly following nationwide protests in December 2022.

Many political dissidents, religious believers and rights activists are among the new wave of migrants, and could face official retaliation if they’re handed over to the Chinese authorities.

Trump has declared illegal immigration a national emergency, dispatching the U.S. military to help with border security and issuing a broad ban on asylum, as well as taking steps to restrict citizenship for children born on U.S. soil.

Destination Japan

That means Chinese asylum-seekers are now at risk of being sent back to China, and people may start looking at alternate destinations — and Japan is becoming a popular option.

Language student Li Bing, who hails from northwestern China, is now working in the industrial waste industry in Japan on a five-year work permit after initially traveling to the country as a language student.

“This was the only company that was pretty straightforward and gave me a job offer,” Li told RFA Mandarin. “So I figured I’d make the best of it.”

“The industry has nothing to do with my previous career in China, and it doesn’t pay well, but the most important things for Chinese overseas are role, language and money,” he said. “This company has solved the most important of those problems for me.”

Li said he plans to apply for Japanese citizenship after working out his five-year visa.

“There’s a huge drop in income and lifestyle, but … I think everyone experiences this when they move to a new environment,” he said. “My understanding of the world and of life have changed … I don’t need to turn myself into the hero guy of my own success story.”

“I have no regrets,” he said.

Chinese are the most numerous newcomers to Japan, the Associated Press reported last September, with 822,000 Chinese passport-holders among more than 3 million foreigners living in the country, up from 762,000 in 2024.

A Reddit comment as early as 2021 extolled the country as a good option for young Chinese people, saying “Japanese is relatively easy to learn … it’s easy to find a job (the birth rate is seriously declining and young people can find jobs if they want them.”

“There is almost no situation in which people are sent back home because they can’t find a job.”

Meanwhile, Taiwan’s Central News Agency quoted an immigration consultancy insider as saying that while Japan is now a likely alternate destination, Thailand and Malaysia are also popular.

Colombian face-off

Mao Ning’s comment was in response to a question about whether China would take back its nationals following a face-off between the Trump administration and Bogota, which had initially refused to accept military aircraft carrying deported migrants, according to the White House.

Colombia backed down after Trump threatened it with tariffs and sanctions for refusing to cooperate with his sweeping immigration crackdown.

“The Government of Colombia has agreed to all of President Trump’s terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on U.S. military aircraft, without limitation or delay,” the White House said in a statement on Monday.

“President Trump … expects all other nations of the world to fully cooperate in accepting the deportation of their citizens illegally present in the United States,” the statement said.