# Investigation into why a panel blew off a Boeing Max 9 jet focuses on missing bolts
By **DAVID KOENIG** and **TOM KRISHER**
January 9, 2024. 8:19 PM EST

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The extended grounding of some Boeing 737 Max jetliners is adding to pressure on Boeing and the subcontractor that made the fuselage and installed a panel that blew out leaving a gaping hole in an Alaska Airlines plane last week.

Investigators know the sequence of events that led to the blowout Friday night, but they don't know the cause. A key question is whether bolts used to help secure the panel, called a door plug, were installed. A National Transportation Safety Board investigator says the bolts have not been recovered and the agency won't know if they were even in place until the door plug is examined in a laboratory.

Adding to Boeing's problems, Alaska Airlines and United Airlines - the two U.S. carriers that fly the Max 9 - reported finding loose bolts and other hardware in other panels, suggesting quality issues with the door plugs are not limited to one plane.

The plugs are installed in Max 9 fuselages by subcontractor Spirit AeroSystems, which was spun off by Boeing in 2005. Spirit has a history of manufacturing problems, many uncovered in a U.S. House probe of two fatal crashes involving Boeing 737 Max 8 planes.

"The focus needs to turn to Spirit," said former congressman Peter DeFazio, who chaired the investigating committee. "Boeing has been happy with the crappy stuff from Spirit because it's cheap."

The company said in a statement Monday that "quality and product integrity" are a priority. "Spirit is a committed partner with Boeing on the 737 program, and we continue to work together with them on this matter," it said.

The process of inspecting Max 9s and returning them to service has been slower than Alaska and United had hoped. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all Max 9s in the United States on Saturday until they could be inspected, but Boeing didn't provide inspection instructions until Monday.

On Tuesday, the FAA said those instructions were being revised "because of feedback," and it extended the grounding of the planes.

"The safety of the flying public, not speed, will determine the timeline for returning the Boeing 737-9 Max to service," the FAA said in a statement.

However, the inspection delays threw airline schedules into turmoil.

United said it canceled another 170 flights Tuesday because of the grounding. Alaska said it scrubbed 109 flights because it couldn't fly Max 9s.

The part that failed on the Alaska flight is installed on some Boeing jets when airliners don't have enough seats to require more emergency exits. The plugs are lighter than an aircraft door, reducing the plane's weight and saving fuel. They are common on cargo planes that have been converted from passenger use.

During a briefing late Monday, NTSB officials described how the plug on Alaska flight 1282 rolled upward and flew off the jet. Four bolts and 12 connecting points between the plug and the door frame are supposed to prevent that from happening.

"We have not yet recovered the four bolts that restrain (the plug) from its vertical movement, and we have not yet determined if they existed there," said NTSB aerospace engineer Clint Crookshanks. "That will be determined when we take the plug to our lab in Washington, D.C."

It is not clear whether Spirit AeroSystems or Boeing technicians last worked on the door plug, which can be opened for maintenance. Steven Wallace, former head of accident investigations for the FAA, said it was unlikely that Alaska crews worked on the plug because the plane was only delivered to the airline in October.

That means the investigation will likely focus on manufacturing, assembly and quality control, Wallace said.

This could put more pressure on Boeing CEO David Calhoun, who was brought in to help the company get past the crisis created by the Max crashes. During his tenure, Boeing has lost $23 billion and struggled with manufacturing flaws that have at times held up deliveries of 737s and larger Boeing 787s.

Calhoun called an all-employees meeting Tuesday, hosted at the company's 737 factory in Renton, Washington.

"We're going to approach this, number one, acknowledging our mistake," Calhoun said, according to comments provided by Boeing. Reporters were not allowed to attend. The CEO said he trusts the NTSB to find the cause of the accident, and trusts the FAA to take all necessary steps "to ensure every next airplane that moves into the sky is in fact safe, and that this event can never happen again."

No one was seriously hurt Friday aboard the affected Alaska jetliner, but Ed Pierson, a former senior manager at Boeing's 737 factory, said the door plug issue is a wake-up call for Boeing and regulators to act before something worse happens.

Pierson, now the executive director of The Foundation for Aviation Safety, said Boeing assembly line workers are pressured to rush, and that the company has cut back on quality control inspections. That, he said, can lead to mistakes.

"The pressure is 'Move the plane down the line,' It's not, 'Stop, let's fix it, let's do it right,'" he said.

Other former Boeing employees and outsiders who have examined the company say its safety culture degraded after a 1997 merger that left many McDonnell Douglas leaders in charge.

"They rejected the Boeing culture, where the engineers had the final say on everything, in order to chase the stock price and their executive options," DeFazio said. "They need to go back to being what they were and could be, which is the greatest engineering aerospace company in the world."

Spirit AeroSystems' record is also likely to come under more scrutiny.

In a federal securities lawsuit filed last May in Manhattan, an investor charged that Spirit concealed widespread quality failures including defects in fuselage fittings, improperly drilled holes in bulkheads that keep planes pressurized, and missing fasteners.

The lawsuit includes an unidentified manufacturing team leader's email that said a manager told workers to falsify reports on the number of defects found on planes. The lawsuit was reported early Tuesday by The Lever, an investigative-journalism website. Spirit declined Tuesday to comment on the lawsuit.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said the NTSB must determine "whether additional inspection and maintenance should have been done before the aircraft carried passengers anywhere." He asked new FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker what the regulatory agency is doing to protect air traveler safety.

A focus on how the door plugs were installed could be the best outcome for Boeing, said John Goglia, a former member of the NTSB. He said a finding of sloppy installation work would eliminate the need for more costly, time consuming door plug redesign.

"Installation errors happen all the time," said Goglia, who started his career as an aircraft mechanic. Faulting the installation in Boeing planes "impeaches their quality system, but it doesn't impeach their design."

Shares of The Boeing Co. fell 1% Tuesday, a day after they plunged 8%. Spirit AeroSystems was nearly unchanged Tuesday but lost 11% Monday.


# Blinken urges Israel to engage with region on postwar plans that include path to Palestinian state
By **MATTHEW LEE**, **NAJIB JOBAIN**, and **SAMY MAGDY**
January 9, 2024. 7:44 PM EST

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**TEL AVIV, Israel (AP)** - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday called on Israel to work with moderate Palestinians and neighboring countries on plans for postwar Gaza, saying they were willing to help rebuild and govern the territory but only if there is a "pathway to a Palestinian state."

The U.S. and Israel are united in the war against Hamas but sharply divided over Gaza's future, with Washington and its Arab allies hoping to revive the long-moribund peace process, an idea that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition partners sharply oppose.

The war in Gaza is still raging, with no end in sight, and fueling a humanitarian catastrophe in the tiny coastal enclave. The fighting has also stoked escalating violence between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah militants that has raised fears of a wider conflict.

Speaking at a news conference after meeting with top Israeli leaders, Blinken said Israel "must stop taking steps that undercut the Palestinians' ability to govern themselves effectively."

Israel, he added "must be a partner of the Palestinian leaders who are willing to lead their people" and live "side by side in peace with Israel." Settler violence, settlement expansion, home demolitions and evictions "all make it harder, not easier, for Israel to achieve lasting peace and security."

U.S. officials have called for the Palestinian Authority, which currently administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to take the reins in Gaza. Israeli leaders have rejected that idea but have not put forward a concrete plan beyond saying they will maintain open-ended military control over the territory.

Blinken has said that Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey agreed to begin planning for the reconstruction and governance of Gaza once the war ends. The leaders of Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority are set to meet Wednesday in Jordan's southern Red Sea city of Aqaba.

## HEAVY FIGHTING IN GAZA
The United States, which has provided crucial military and diplomatic support for Israel's offensive, has pressed it to shift to more precise operations targeting Hamas. But the pace of death and destruction has remained largely the same, with hundreds killed in recent days.

Israel has vowed to keep going until it destroys Hamas, which triggered the war with its Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel. Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and abducted around 250 others, nearly half of whom were released during a weeklong cease-fire in November.

The Israeli military says it has dismantled Hamas infrastructure in northern Gaza - where entire neighborhoods have been demolished - but is still battling small groups of militants. The offensive's focus has shifted to the southern city of Khan Younis and built-up refugee camps in central Gaza.

"The fighting will continue throughout 2024," said Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, a military spokesman.

Since the war began, Israel's assault in Gaza has killed more than 23,200 Palestinians, roughly 1% of the territory's population, and more than 58,000 people have been wounded, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. About two-thirds of the dead are women and children. The death toll does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

A strike late Monday hit a house in the central town of Deir al-Balah, killing the mother, three daughters and three small grandchildren of Jamal Naeim, a well-known dentist in Gaza. Outside the hospital, Naeim cradled a small bundle of white cloth containing all that remained of one of his adult daughters, Shaimaa, who was also a dentist.

"This is what we found of her, just the skin of her head and her hair," he said, breaking into sobs. Naeim is the brother of Bassem Naeim, a political figure in Hamas, but is not a member of the group himself, residents said.

At least eight people were killed when a strike hit a five-story residential building in Rafah in southern Gaza on Tuesday, Palestinian Health officials said. Six of the bodies were taken to nearby Al-Kuwaiti Hospital and were counted by an Associated Press journalist. Two other corpses were transported to Youssef al-Najjar Hospital, also in Rafah, according to Dr. Sohaib al-Hams, who works at Al-Kuwaiti Hospital.

Monday was one of the deadliest days yet for Israeli troops in Gaza, with nine killed, according to the military. Six of them died in an accidental blast when forces were preparing a controlled demolition of a weapons production site in central Gaza, the military said.

It says 185 soldiers have been killed since the ground offensive began in late October.

## A HUMANITARIAN CRISIS
Nearly 85% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million have been driven from their homes by the fighting, and a quarter of its residents face starvation, with only a trickle of food, water, medicine and other supplies entering through an Israeli siege.

The U.N. humanitarian office, known as OCHA, warned that the fighting was severely hampering aid deliveries. Several warehouses, distribution centers, health facilities and shelters have been affected by the military's evacuation orders, it said.

The situation is even more dire in northern Gaza, which Israeli forces cut off from the rest of the territory in late October. Tens of thousands of people who remain there face shortages of food and water.

The World Health Organization has been unable to deliver supplies to the north for two weeks. OCHA said the military rejected five planned aid convoys to the north over that period, including deliveries of medical supplies and fuel for water and sanitation facilities.

Blinken said more food, water, medicine and other aid needs to enter and be distributed effectively. He called on Israel to "do everything it can to remove any obstacles from crossings to other parts of Gaza."

## FEARS OF A WIDER CONFLICT
The war in Gaza has threatened to trigger a wider conflict, with Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah trading escalating strikes following the killing of Hamas' deputy political leader in Beirut last week.

On Tuesday, Hezbollah said its exploding drones targeted the Israeli army's northern command in the town of Safed - deeper into Israel than previous fire by the group. The Israeli military said a drone fell at a base in the north without causing damage, suggesting it had been intercepted. Military officials did not identify the base.

Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon meanwhile killed at least four Hezbollah members, including one who was killed in the village where a funeral was held for a Hezbollah commander killed the day before.

Israel claimed the man killed ahead of the funeral, Ali Hussein Barji, was in charge of Hezbollah's drones in the south, but a Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance with the group's regulations, said he was only a fighter.


# Hottest year ever, what can be done? Plenty: more renewables and nuclear, less methane and meat
By **JENNIFER McDERMOTT**
January 9, 2024. 4:06 PM EST

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Whenever there is bad news about climate change, people ask: What can be done?

Tuesday's news, that 2023 shattered annual heat records, will likely prompt such questions. The European climate agency said average global temperatures were 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.66 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than pre-industrial times. That's barely within the international goal countries agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate accord to avoid a world devastated by climate change.

Scientists and energy experts have long laid out roadmaps - solutions - to reduce greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane that are heating up the planet. And there's hope for the way forward, the International Energy Agency said in its World Energy Outlook for 2023.

Led by solar and electric vehicles, investment in clean energy has risen by 40% since 2020. Proponents of nuclear power say ramping up that carbon-free source can replace fossil fuels now as a way of making electricity.

Sharp cuts in methane emissions have become a global priority, as shown by the discussions at the United Nations COP28 climate talks in Dubai last month. Each person can also reduce their impact on the environment through the choices they make, whether that's saving energy at home, switching to an electric vehicle, reducing air travel or eating less meat and more plant-based foods.

Below is a closer look at all of these solutions.

## RENEWABLES ROLLOUT
Nearly 200 countries agreed last month at COP28 to move away from fossil fuels by tripling the use of renewable energy by 2030. It was the first time they've made that crucial pledge to transition, but it will require new installations at double the current rate.

UN chief António Guterres said a fossil fuel phaseout is "inevitable." Scientists overwhelmingly agree the world needs to drastically cut the burning of coal, oil and gas to limit global warming. That's because when fossil fuels are burned, carbon dioxide forms and is released.

As an example, a 200-megawatt onshore wind project consisting of roughly 50 turbines, on average, avoids the emissions equivalent of taking 100,000 cars off the road or planting 20 million trees, according to the American Clean Power Association. The United States, which has lagged far behind Europe and Asia in building large offshore wind farms, now has two sending power to the grid that could full open early this year.

## NEW NUCLEAR
To control global warming, the IEA says global nuclear capacity needs to expand by about 3% each year. The global nuclear industry launched an initiative at COP28 for nations to pledge to triple nuclear energy by 2050. More than 20 have already signed on, including the United States and the host of the talks, the United Arab Emirates.

The World Nuclear Association says this form of electricity can be deployed on a large scale in time to combat climate change by directly replacing fossil fuel plants. Unlike fossil fuel-fired power plants, nuclear reactors do not produce carbon dioxide while operating.

U.S. nuclear companies are also working on the next generation of reactors that are far smaller and cheaper than traditional ones. These small modular reactors and microreactors in the future could power a community, campus or military complex. Skeptics, however, caution that nuclear technology still comes with significant safety, security and environmental risks that other low-carbon energy sources don't.

## LESS METHANE
Methane, or natural gas, is an extraordinarily powerful greenhouse gas, more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. It's responsible for about 30% of today's global warming.

Many nations are prioritizing bringing down methane emissions as a crucial, quick way to curb further warming, because it doesn't last as long as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere absorbing the sun's heat.

The Biden administration last month issued a final rule aimed at reducing methane emissions, targeting the U.S. oil and natural gas industry for its role.

Separately, 50 oil companies representing nearly half of global production pledged at COP28 to reach near-zero methane emissions and stop wasting natural gas by burning it off, by 2030. Environmental groups, however, called the pledge a "smokescreen to hide the reality that we need to phase out oil, gas and coal."

## PERSONAL CHOICES
Every individual can make choices that protect the environment and slow climate change, according to the United Nations' sustainable development goals.

The UN says start saving energy wherever possible - reduce heating and cooling, switch to LED light bulbs and energy-efficient electric appliances, wash laundry in cold water and hang things to dry. Improving a home's energy efficiency through better insulation or replacing an oil or gas furnace with an electric heat pump can reduce the equivalent of up to 900 kilograms of CO2 per year.

Switching from a gasoline or diesel-powered car to an electric vehicle, taking fewer flights and shifting from a diet reliant on meat to a vegetarian one can also make significant dents in one's carbon footprint, the UN said. Producing plant-based foods generally results in fewer greenhouse gas emissions and requires less energy, land and water.


# Earth shattered global heat record in '23 and it's flirting with warming limit, European agency says
By **SETH BORENSTEIN**
January 9, 2024. 4:37 PM EST

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Earth last year shattered global annual heat records, flirted with the world's agreed-upon warming threshold and showed more signs of a feverish planet, the European climate agency said Tuesday.

The European climate agency Copernicus said the year was 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.66 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. That's barely below the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit that the world hoped to stay within in the 2015 Paris climate accord to avoid the most severe effects of warming.

And January 2024 is on track to be so warm that for the first time a 12-month period will exceed the 1.5-degree threshold, Copernicus Deputy Director Samantha Burgess said. Scientists have repeatedly said that Earth would need to average 1.5 degrees of warming over two or three decades to be a technical breach of the threshold.

The 1.5 degree goal "has to be (kept) alive because lives are at risk and choices have to be made," Burgess said. "And these choices don't impact you and I but they impact our children and our grandchildren."

The record heat made life miserable and sometimes deadly in Europe, North America, China and many other places last year. But scientists say a warming climate is also to blame for more extreme weather events, like the lengthy drought that devastated the Horn of Africa, the torrential downpours that wiped out dams and killed thousands in Libya and the Canada wildfires that fouled the air from North America to Europe.

In a separate Tuesday press event, international climate scientists who calculate global warming's role in extreme weather, the group's leader, Imperial College climate scientist Friederike Otto said "we definitely see in our analysis the strong impact of it being the hottest year."

The World Weather Attribution team only looks at events that affect at least 1 million people or kill more than 100 people. But Otto said her team was overwhelmed with more than 160 of those in 2023, and could only conduct 14 studies, many of them on killer heat waves. "Basically every heat wave that is occurring today has been made more likely and is hotter because of human-induced climate change," she said.

The United States lurched through 28 weather disasters last year that caused at least $1 billion in damage, smashing the old record of 22 set in 2020, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Tuesday. The number of these costly disasters, which are adjusted to account for inflation, has soared, averaging only three per year in the 1980s and just under six per year in the 1990s.

The U.S. billion-dollar disasters last year included a drought, four floods, 19 severe storms, 2 hurricanes, a wildfire and a winter storm. They combined to kill 492 people and cause nearly $93 billion in damage, according to NOAA.

Antarctic sea ice hit record low levels in 2023 and broke eight monthly records for low sea ice, Copernicus reported.

Copernicus calculated that the global average temperature for 2023 was about one-sixth of a degree Celsius (0.3 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the old record set in 2016. While that seems a small amount in global record-keeping, it's an exceptionally large margin for the new record, Burgess said. Earth's average temperature for 2023 was 14.98 degrees Celsius (58.96 degrees Fahrenheit), Copernicus calculated.

"It was record-breaking for seven months. We had the warmest June, July, August, September, October, November, December," Burgess said. "It wasn't just a season or a month that was exceptional. It was exceptional for over half the year."

There are several factors that made 2023 the warmest year on record, but by far the biggest factor was the ever-increasing amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that trap heat, Burgess said. Those gases come from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.

Other factors including the natural El Nino - a temporary warming of the central Pacific that alters weather worldwide - other natural oscillations in the Arctic, southern and Indian oceans, increased solar activity and the 2022 eruption of an undersea volcano that sent water vapor into the atmosphere, Burgess said.

Malte Meinshausen, a University of Melbourne climate scientist, said about 1.3 degrees Celsius of the warming comes from greenhouse gases, with another 0.1 degrees Celsius from El Nino and the rest being smaller causes.

Copernicus records only go back to 1940 and are based on a combination of observations and forecast models. Other groups, including the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA, the United Kingdom's Meteorological Office and Berkeley Earth go back to the mid-1800s and will announce their calculations for 2023 on Friday, with expectations of record-breaking marks.

The Japanese Meteorological Agency, which uses similar techniques as Copernicus and goes back to 1948, late last month estimated that it was the warmest year at 1.47 degrees Celsius (2.64 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The University of Alabama Huntsville global dataset, which uses satellite measurements rather than ground data and dates to 1979, last week also found it the hottest year on record, but not by as much.

Though actual observations only date back less than two centuries, several scientists say evidence from tree rings and ice cores suggest this is the warmest the Earth has been in more than 100,000 years.

"It basically means that our cities, our roads, our monuments, our farms, in practice all human activities never had to cope with the climate this warm," Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo said at a Tuesday press conference. "There were simply no cities, no books, agriculture or domesticated animals on this planet the last time the temperature was so high."

For the first time, Copernicus recorded a day where the world averaged at least 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) more than pre-industrial times. It happened twice and narrowly missed a third day around Christmas, Burgess said.

And for the first time, every day of the year was at least one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times. For nearly half the year - 173 days - the world was 1.5 degrees warmer than the mid-1800s.

Meinshausen, the Australian climate scientist, said it's natural for the public to wonder whether the 1.5-degree target is lost. He said it's important for people to keep trying to rein in warming.

"We are not abolishing a speed limit, because somebody exceeded the speed limit," he said. "We double our efforts to step on the brakes."

But Buontempo said it's only going to get hotter: "Following the current trajectory in a few years time the record-breaking year of 2023 will probably be remembered as a cold year."


# Gabriel Attal is France's youngest-ever prime minister at age 34 and the first who is openly gay
By **SYLVIE CORBET**
January 9, 2024. 8:17 PM EST

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**PARIS (AP)** - France saw its youngest-ever prime minister and first openly gay one named Tuesday as President Emmanuel Macron seeks a fresh start for the rest of his term amid growing political pressure from the far right.

Gabriel Attal, 34, rose to prominence as the government spokesperson then education minister and had polled as the most popular minister in the outgoing government.

His predecessor Elisabeth Borne resigned Monday following political turmoil over an immigration law that strengthens the government's ability to deport foreigners.

Macron will work with Attal to name a new government in the coming days, though some key ministers are expected to stay on.

"I know I can count on your energy and your commitment," Macron posted on X in a message to Attal. The president made a reference to Attal reviving the "spirit of 2017," when Macron shook up politics and shot to a surprise victory as France's youngest-ever president on a pro-business centrist platform aimed at reviving one of the world's biggest economies.

During the handover ceremony, Attal said: "I could read and hear it: the youngest president of the Republic in history appoints the youngest prime minister in history. I want to see it only as the symbol of boldness and movement. It is also, and perhaps above all, a symbol of confidence in young people."

Attal said his goals include making security an "absolute priority" and promoting values of "authority and respect of others." He also vowed to strengthen public services including schools and the health system and push for "better controlling immigration."

Macron, 46, has shifted rightward on security and migration issues since his election, notably as far-right rival Marine Le Pen and her anti-immigration, anti-Islam National Rally have gained political influence.

The president's second term lasts until 2027, and he is constitutionally barred from a third consecutive term. Political observers have suggested that Macron, a staunch supporter of European integration, wants his new government to prepare for June's European Union elections, where far-right, anti-EU populists are expected to increase their influence.

Critics from both left and right took aim at Attal for his limited experience, his Paris upbringing seen as out of touch with people struggling in the provinces, and his loyalty to the president.

Le Pen posted on X: "What can the French expect from this 4th prime minister and 5th government in 7 years (under Macron)? Nothing," calling on voters instead to choose her party in the European elections.

In a statement, Eric Ciotti, head of the conservative party The Republicans, said, "France urgently needs action: it needs a different approach." The Republicans would remain a "responsible opposition" to the centrist government, he added.

The founder of the hard-left France Unbowed party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, writing on X, mocked Attal for "returning to his position as spokesman. The function of prime minister is disappearing. The presidential monarch alone rules his court."

Under the French political system, the prime minister is appointed by the president, accountable to the parliament and is in charge of implementing domestic policy, notably economic measures. The president holds substantial powers over foreign policy and European affairs and is the commander-in-chief of the country's armed forces.

Attal, a former member of the Socialist Party, joined Macron's newly created political movement in 2016 and was spokesperson from 2020 to 2022, a job that made him well-known to the French public. He was then named budget minister before being appointed in July as education minister, one of the most prestigious positions in government.

Attal quickly announced a ban on long robes in classrooms that took effect with the new school year in September, saying the garments worn mainly by Muslims were testing secularism in the schools.

He also launched a plan to experiment with uniforms in some public schools, as part of efforts to move the focus away from clothes and reduce school bullying.

Attal recently detailed on national television TF1 how he suffered bullying at middle school, including homophobic harassment.

Attal will face the same obstacle as his predecessor: Macron's centrists lost their majority in parliament last year, forcing the government into political maneuvering and using special constitutional powers to be able to pass laws.

The tough negotiations over the immigration bill and heated parliament debate raised questions over the ability of Borne's government to pass major legislation.

Borne also faced mass protests last year, often marred by violence, against a law to increase the retirement age from 62 to 64, and days of riots across France triggered by the deadly police shooting of a teen.

Borne left office saying she's proud of the work done over the last 20 months that allowed her government "to pass the budget, the pension reform, the immigration law and more than 50 other texts designed to meet the challenges faced by our country."

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, who championed the immigration bill, said he was ready to continue his work at the head of the country's police forces especially as the Paris Olympics are to start in less than 200 days, with major security issues at stake.


# ChatGPT-maker braces for fight with New York Times and authors on 'fair use' of copyrighted works
By **MATT O'BRIEN**
January 10, 2024. 4:05 PM EST

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A barrage of high-profile lawsuits in a New York federal court will test the future of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence products that wouldn't be so eloquent had they not ingested huge troves of copyrighted human works.

But are AI chatbots - in this case, widely commercialized products made by OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft - breaking copyright and fair competition laws? Professional writers and media outlets will face a difficult fight to win that argument in court.

"I would like to be optimistic on behalf of the authors, but I'm not. I just think they have an uphill battle here," said copyright attorney Ashima Aggarwal, who used to work for academic publishing giant John Wiley & Sons.

One lawsuit comes from The New York Times. Another from a group of well-known novelists such as John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George R.R. Martin. A third from bestselling nonfiction writers, including an author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography on which the hit movie "Oppenheimer" was based.

## THE LAWSUITS
Each of the lawsuits makes different allegations, but they all center on the San Francisco-based company OpenAI "building this product on the back of other peoples' intellectual property," said attorney Justin Nelson, who is representing the nonfiction writers and whose law firm is also representing The Times.

"What OpenAI is saying is that they have a free ride to take anybody else's intellectual property really since the dawn of time, as long as it's been on the internet," Nelson said.

The Times sued in December, arguing that ChatGPT and Microsoft's Copilot are competing with the same outlets they are trained on and diverting web traffic away from the newspaper and other copyright holders who depend on advertising revenue generated from their sites to keep producing their journalism. It also provided evidence of the chatbots spitting out Times articles word-for-word. At other times the chatbots falsely attributed misinformation to the paper in a way it said damaged its reputation.

One senior federal judge is so far presiding over all three cases, as well as a fourth from two more nonfiction authors who filed another lawsuit last week. U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein has been at the Manhattan-based court since 1995 when he was nominated by then-President Bill Clinton.

## THE RESPONSE
OpenAI and Microsoft haven't yet filed formal counter-arguments on the New York cases, but OpenAI made a public statement this week describing The Times lawsuit as "without merit" and saying that the chatbot's ability to regurgitate some articles verbatim was a "rare bug."

"Training AI models using publicly available internet materials is fair use, as supported by long-standing and widely accepted precedents," said a Monday blog post from the company. It went on to suggest that The Times "either instructed the model to regurgitate or cherry-picked their examples from many attempts."

OpenAI cited licensing agreements made last year with The Associated Press, the German media company Axel Springer and other organizations as offering a glimpse into how the company is trying to support a healthy news ecosystem. OpenAI is paying an undisclosed fee to license AP's archive of news stories. The New York Times was engaged in similar talks before deciding to sue.

OpenAI said earlier this year that access to AP's "high-quality, factual text archive" would improve the capabilities of its AI systems. But its blog post this week downplayed the importance of news content for AI training, arguing that large language models learn from an "enormous aggregate of human knowledge" and that "any single data source - including The New York Times - is not significant for the model's intended learning."

## WHO'S GOING TO WIN?
Much of the AI industry's argument rests on the "fair use" doctrine of U.S. copyright law that allows for limited uses of copyrighted materials such as for teaching, research or transforming the copyrighted work into something different.

In response, the legal team representing The Times wrote Tuesday that what OpenAI and Microsoft are doing is "not fair use by any measure" because they're taking from the newspaper's investment in its journalism "to build substitutive products without permission or payment."

So far, courts have largely sided with tech companies in interpreting how copyright laws should treat AI systems. In a defeat for visual artists, a federal judge in San Francisco last year dismissed much of the first big lawsuit against AI image-generators, though artists have since amended their complaint. Another California judge shot down part of comedian Sarah Silverman's arguments against Facebook parent Meta but her case was amended in December and joined with another one that includes writers Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michael Chabon.

The most recent lawsuits have brought more detailed evidence of alleged harms, but Aggarwal said when it comes to using copyrighted content to train AI systems that deliver a "small portion of that to users, the courts just don't seem inclined to find that to be copyright infringement."

Tech companies cite as precedent Google's success in beating back legal challenges to its online book library. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 let stand lower court rulings that rejected authors' claim that Google's digitizing of millions of books and showing snippets of them to the public amounted to copyright infringement.

But judges interpret fair use arguments on a case-by-case basis and it is "actually very fact-dependent," depending on economic impact and other factors, said Cathy Wolfe, an executive at the Dutch firm Wolters Kluwer who also sits on the board of the Copyright Clearance Center, which helps negotiate print and digital media licenses in the U.S.

"Just because something is free on the internet, on a website, doesn't mean you can copy it and email it, let alone use it to conduct commercial business," Wolfe said. "Who's going to win, I don't know, but I'm certainly a proponent for protecting copyright for all of us. It drives innovation."

## BEYOND THE COURTS
Some media outlets and other content creators are looking beyond the courts and calling for lawmakers or the U.S. Copyright Office to strengthen copyright protections for the AI era. A panel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony Wednesday from media executives and advocates in a hearing dedicated to AI's effect on journalism.

Roger Lynch, chief executive of the Conde Nast magazine chain, planned to tell senators that generative AI companies "are using our stolen intellectual property to build tools of replacement."

"We believe that a legislative fix can be simple - clarifying that the use of copyrighted content in conjunction with commercial Gen AI is not fair use and requires a license," says a copy of Lynch's prepared remarks.


# Airlines say they found loose parts in door panels during inspections of Boeing Max 9 jets
By **DAVID KOENIG**, **CLAIRE RUSH**, and **TOM KRISHER**
January 9, 2024. 5:49 AM EST

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**PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)** - Federal investigators say a door panel slid up before flying off an Alaska Airlines jetliner last week, and they are looking at whether four bolts that were supposed to help hold the panel in place might have been missing when the plane took off.

The comments Monday from the National Transportation Safety Board came shortly after Alaska and United Airlines reported separately that they found loose parts in the panels - or door plugs - of some other Boeing 737 Max 9 jets.

"Since we began preliminary inspections on Saturday, we have found instances that appear to relate to installation issues in the door plug - for example, bolts that needed additional tightening," Chicago-based United said.

Alaska said that as it began examining its Max 9s, "Initial reports from our technicians indicate some loose hardware was visible on some aircraft."

The findings of investigators and the airlines are ratcheting up pressure on Boeing to address concerns that have grown since the terrifying fuselage blowout Friday night. A plug covering a spot left for an emergency door tore off the plane as it flew 16,000 feet (4,800 meters) above Oregon.

Boeing has called an online meeting for all employees Tuesday to discuss safety.

The company, which has had problems with various planes over the years, pledged to "help address any and all findings" that airlines make during their inspections of Max 9 jets. Boeing has delivered more than 200 to customers around the world, but 171 of them were grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration on Saturday until the door plugs can be inspected and, if necessary, fixed.

The door plugs are inserted where emergency exit doors would be located on Max 9s with more than about 200 seats. Alaska and United have fewer seats in their Max 9s, so they replace heavy doors with the plugs.

The panels can be opened for maintenance work. The bolts prevent the mechanism from moving upward on rollers when the plane is in flight.

During Alaska Airlines flight 1282 on Friday night, roller guides at the top of one of the plugs broke - for reasons the investigators don't fully understand yet - allowing the entire panel to swing upward and lose contact with 12 "stop pads" that keep the panel attached to the door frame on the plane, NTSB officials said at a news briefing in Portland.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said the safety board was investigating whether four bolts that help prevent the panel from sliding up on rollers were missing when the plane took off from Portland or whether they blew off "during the violent, explosive decompression event."

The interior of the plane suffered extensive damage, but pilots were able to return to Portland and land safely. Officials say there were no serious injuries among the 171 passengers and six crew members.

The lost door panel was found Sunday near Portland in the back yard of a school teacher's home. NTSB officials said it will be sent to the agency's lab in Washington, D.C., for detailed study that might help pinpoint why the plug broke loose.

Alaska and United have canceled hundreds of flights since the weekend because of their grounded planes. Alaska has 65 Max 9s, and United has 79. The airlines waited until Monday before Boeing and the FAA completed instructions for how to inspect their planes.

The jet involved in Friday's blowout is brand-new, having been put in service in November. After a cabin-pressurization system warning light came on during three flights, the airline stopped flying it over the Pacific to Hawaii. Some aviation experts questioned why Alaska continued using the plane on overland routes until it figured out what was causing the pressurization warnings.

Homendy said Monday, however, that NTSB has seen no evidence to link the warnings with the blowout of the door plug.

The Max is the newest version of Boeing's 737, a twin-engine, single-aisle plane that debuted in the late 1960s and has been updated many times. The 737 has long been a workhorse for airlines on U.S. domestic routes.

Shares of Boeing fell 8% and Spirit AeroSystems, which installs the door plugs on Max jets, dropped 11% on Monday.


# SEC chair denies a bitcoin ETF has been approved, says account on X was hacked
By **KEN SWEET**
January 9, 2024. 11:58 PM EST

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**NEW YORK (AP)** - The Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday that a post sent from the agency's account on the social platform X announcing the approval of a long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded fund was "unauthorized," and that the agency's account was hacked.

The price of bitcoin briefly spiked more than $1,000 after the post on X, formerly known as Twitter, claimed "The SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges." Cryptocurrency investors had already driven bitcoin's price above $46,000 in anticipation of the approval.

An ETF would provide a way to invest in bitcoin without having to buy the cryptocurrency outright on a crypto exchange such as Binance or Coinbase.

But soon after the initial post appeared, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on his personal account that the SEC's account was compromised and, "The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products." Gensler called the post unauthorized without providing further explanation.

"Welp," wrote Cory Klippsten, CEO of Swan Bitcoin, on X. Like many bitcoin investors, Klippsten had been expecting the agency to approve bitcoin ETFs potentially as soon as this week.

The price of bitcoin swung from about $46,730 to just below $48,000 after the unauthorized post hit, and then dropped to around $45,200 after the SEC's denial. It was trading around $46,150 at 6:15 p.m. ET.

Shortly after Gensler's statement, it appeared that the SEC had gotten back control over the account.

It was unclear exactly how the SEC's social media account was hacked. X's @Safety account tweeted on Tuesday night that a preliminary investigation by the platform determined "an unidentified individual" got control of a phone number associated with the account "through a third party."

It did not elaborate, though it did say that the compromised SEC account, @SecGov, did not have two-factor authentication activated.

Even before that news, politicians who have long expressed frustration at how Gensler operates the SEC - Republicans in particular - expressed anger at what they suggested were lax SEC security controls over its accounts.

"Just like the SEC would demand accountability from a public company if they made a colossal market-moving mistake, Congress needs answers on what just happened," said Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, who sits on the Senate Banking Committee.

This is not the first time there has been false market-moving information about the future of bitcoin on regulated exchanges. A false report back in October implied that fund manager BlackRock had gotten approval for bitcoin ETF, causing bitcoin prices to jump sharply.

Elon Musk gutted Twitter's content moderation and security teams after taking over the platform in late 2022. And while internet watchdog groups have complained about a spike in toxic content, including antisemitic and other hate speech on X, many also worry about account integrity.

"The consequences of account takeovers could potentially be significant, and especially during an election year," said Brett Callow, an analyst with the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft.

A spokesperson for X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.


# A judge has temporarily halted enforcement of an Ohio law limiting kids' use of social media
By **JULIE CARR SMYTH**
January 9, 2024. 4:28 PM EST

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**COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)** - A federal judge issued an order Tuesday temporarily halting enforcement of a pending Ohio law that would require children to get parental consent to use social media apps.

U.S. District Court Judge Algenon Marbley's temporary restraining order came in a lawsuit brought Friday by NetChoice, a trade group representing TikTok, Snapchat, Meta and other major tech companies. The litigation argues that the law unconstitutionally impedes free speech and is overbroad and vague.

While calling the intent to protect children "a laudable aim," Marbley said it is unlikely that Ohio will be able to show the law is "narrowly tailored to any ends that it identifies."

"Foreclosing minors under sixteen from accessing all content on websites that the Act purports to cover, absent affirmative parental consent, is a breathtakingly blunt instrument for reducing social media's harm to children," he wrote.

The law is similar to those enacted in other states. It was set to take effect Jan. 15.

Besides requiring social media companies to obtain a parent's permission for children under 16 to sign up for social media and gaming apps, it also mandates that the companies provide parents with their privacy guidelines, so that families can know what content will be censored or moderated on their child's profile.

The Social Media Parental Notification Act was part of an $86.1 billion state budget bill that Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed into law in July. The administration pushed the measure as a way to protect children's mental health, with Republican Lt. Gov. Jon Husted saying at the time that social media was "intentionally addictive" and harmful to kids.

Husted expressed disappointment in the judge's action Tuesday.

"The big-tech companies behind this lawsuit were included in the legislative process to make sure the law was clear and easy to implement, but now they claim the law is unclear," he said in a statement. "They were disingenuous participants in the process and have no interest in protecting children."

The governor also lamented the decision.

"The negative effects that social media sites and apps have on our children's mental health have been well documented, and this law was one way to empower parents to have a role in their kids' digital lives," he said in a statement.

NetChoice filed suit against GOP Attorney General Dave Yost in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. The group has won lawsuits against similar restrictions in California and Arkansas.


# A fuel leak forces a US company to abandon its moon landing attempt
By **MARCIA DUNN**
January 9, 2024. 5:22 PM EST

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**CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP)** - A crippling fuel leak forced a U.S. company on Tuesday to give up on landing a spacecraft on the moon.

Astrobotic Technology's lander began losing fuel soon after Monday's launch, possibly because of a ruptured tank. The spacecraft had trouble keeping its solar panel pointed towards the sun and generating solar power, as flight controllers scrambled to salvage what they could of the mission.

"Given the propellant leak, there is, unfortunately, no chance of a soft landing on the moon," Astrobotic said in a statement.

Astrobotic had been targeting a lunar landing on Feb. 23, following a roundabout, fuel-efficient flight to the moon. It could have been the first U.S. moon landing in more than 50 years, and the first by a private company. A second lander from a Houston company is due to launch next month.

Only four countries have pulled off a successful moon landing.

Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic said the new goal was to keep the lander operating as long as possible in space, in order to avoid a similar problem on its next mission a year or so from now. Flight controllers managed to keep the spacecraft pointed toward the sun and its battery fully charged, with another 40 hours of operations anticipated.

The company said a stuck valve may have caused high-pressure helium to flood an oxidizer tank, causing it to burst just hours into the flight. A formal review board comprised of industry experts will determine the cause.

There is no indication that United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan rocket, which launched the lander, contributed to the problem, the company added.

NASA paid Astrobotic $108 million to fly its experiments to the moon on this mission, part of the agency's commercial lunar program.


# Arrest warrant issued for Montana man accused of killing thousands of birds, including eagles
By **MATTHEW BROWN**
January 8, 2024. 7:05 PM EST

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**BILLINGS, Mont. (AP)** - A federal judge issued an arrest warrant Monday for a Montana man who failed to show up for an initial court appearance on charges of killing thousands of birds, including bald and golden eagles. A second defendant pleaded not guilty.

The two men, working with others, killed about 3,600 birds on Montana's Flathead Indian Reservation and elsewhere over a six-year period beginning in 2015, according to a grand jury indictment unsealed last month. The defendants also were accused of selling eagle parts on a black market that has been a long-running problem for U.S. wildlife officials.

Magistrate Judge Kathleen L. DeSoto issued a warrant for Simon Paul, 42, of St. Ignatius, Montana, after he failed to appear at his scheduled arraignment Monday in U.S. District Court in Missoula.

Travis John Branson, 48, of Cusick, Washington, pleaded not guilty and was released pending further proceedings in the case.

The two defendants are charged with a combined 13 counts of unlawful trafficking of bald and golden eagles and one count each of conspiracy and violating wildlife trafficking laws.

Paul and Branson worked with others who were not named in the indictment to hunt and kill the birds, and in at least one instance used a dead deer to lure an eagle that was then shot, according to prosecutors. The men then conspired to sell eagle feathers, tails, wings and other parts for "significant sums of cash," the indictment said.

They face up to five years in federal prison on each of the conspiracy and wildlife trafficking violations. Trafficking eagles carries a penalty of up to one year in prison for a first offense and two years in prison for each subsequent offense.

Branson could not be reached for comment and his court-appointed attorney, federal defender Michael Donahoe, did not immediately respond to a message left at his office. Paul could not be reached for comment.

Bald eagles are the national symbol of the United States, and both bald and golden eagles are widely considered sacred by American Indians. U.S. law prohibits anyone without a permit from killing, wounding or disturbing eagles or taking any parts such as nests or eggs.

Bald eagles were killed off across most of the U.S. over the last century, due in large part to the pesticide DDT, but later flourished under federal protections and came off the federal endangered species list in 2007.

Golden eagle populations are less secure, and researchers say illegal shootings, energy development, lead poisoning and other problems have pushed the species to the brink of decline.


# Coal miners in North Dakota unearth a mammoth tusk buried for thousands of years
By **JACK DURA**
January 7, 2024. 12:28 AM EST

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**BISMARCK, N.D. (AP)** - The first person to spot it was a shovel operator working the overnight shift, eyeing a glint of white as he scooped up a giant mound of dirt and dropped it into a dump truck.

Later, after the truck driver dumped the load, a dozer driver was ready to flatten the dirt but stopped for a closer look when he, too, spotted that bit of white.

Only then did the miners realize they had unearthed something special: a 7-foot-long mammoth tusk that had been buried for thousands of years.

"We were very fortunate, lucky to find what we found," said David Straley, an executive of North American Coal, which owns the mine.

The miners unearthed the tusk from an old streambed, about 40 feet (12.1 meters) deep, at the Freedom Mine near Beulah, North Dakota. The 45,000-acre (18,210-hectare) surface mine produces up to 16 million tons (14.5 million metric tons) of lignite coal per year.

After spotting the tusk, the crews stopped digging in the area and called in experts, who estimated it to be 10,000 to 100,000 years old.

Jeff Person, a paleontologist with the North Dakota Geologic Survey, was among those to respond. He expressed surprise that the mammoth tusk hadn't suffered more damage, considering the massive equipment used at the site.

"It's miraculous that it came out pretty much unscathed," Person said.

A subsequent dig at the discovery site found more bones. Person described it as a "trickle of finds," totaling more than 20 bones, including a shoulder blade, ribs, a tooth and parts of hips, but it's likely to be the most complete mammoth found in North Dakota, where it's much more common to dig up an isolated mammoth bone, tooth or piece of a tusk.

"It's not a lot of bones compared to how many are in the skeleton, but it's enough that we know that this is all associated, and it's a lot more than we've ever found of one animal together, so that's really given us some significance," Person said.

Mammoths once roamed across parts of Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Specimens have been found throughout the United States and Canada, said Paul Ullmann, a University of North Dakota vertebrate paleontologist.

The mine's discovery is fairly rare in North Dakota and the region, as many remains of animals alive during the last Ice Age were destroyed by glaciations and movements of ice sheets, Ullmann said.

Other areas have yielded more mammonth remains, such as bonebeds of skeletons in Texas and South Dakota. People even have found frozen carcasses in the permafrost of Canada and Siberia, he said.

Mammoths went extinct about 10,000 years ago in what is now North Dakota, according to the Geologic Survey. They were larger than elephants today and were covered in thick wool. Cave paintings dating back 13,000 years depict mammoths.

Ullmann calls mammoths "media superstars almost as much as dinosaurs," citing the "Ice Age" film franchise.

This ivory tusk, weighing more than 50 pounds (22.6 kilograms), is considered fragile. It has been wrapped in plastic as the paleontologists try to control how fast it dehydrates. Too quickly, and the bone could break apart and be destroyed, Person said.

Other bones also have been wrapped in plastic and placed in drawers. The bones will remain in plastic for at least several months until the scientists can figure how to get the water out safely. The paleontologists will identify the mammoth species later, Person said.

The mining company plans to donate the bones to the state for educational purposes.

"Our goal is to give it to the kids," Straley said.

North Dakota has a landscape primed for bones and fossils, including dinosaurs. Perhaps the best known fossil from the state is that of Dakota, a mummified duckbilled dinosaur with fossilized skin, Ullmann said.

The state's rich fossil record is largely due to the landscape's "low-elevation, lush, ecologically productive environments in the past," Ullmann said.

North Dakota's location adjacent to the Rocky Mountains puts it in the path of eroding sediments and rivers, which have buried animal remains for 80 million years or more, he said.

"It's been a perfect scenario that we have really productive environments with a lot of life, but we also had the perfect scenario, geologically, to bury the remains," Ullmann said.


# Roy Calne, a surgeon who led Europe's first liver transplant, has died aged 93
By **JILL LAWLESS**
January 7, 2024. 11:47 AM EST

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**LONDON (AP)** - Roy Calne, a pioneer of organ transplantation who led Europe's first liver transplant operation in 1968, has died aged 93.

Calne's family said he died late Saturday in Cambridge, England, where he was professor emeritus of surgery at Cambridge University.

Born in 1930, Calne trained as a doctor at Guy's Hospital in London and developed an interest in organ transplantation in the 1950s - partly inspired, he later said, by his father's work as a car mechanic. At the time he was told the procedure would be impossible.

He is considered one of the fathers of organ transplantation, alongside American scientist Dr. Thomas Starzl. Their work on the surgical procedure and treatment to prevent organ rejection was done initially on dogs. In 1960, Calne's dog experiments demonstrated for the first time that a drug could fend off organ rejection. Starzl attempted the first human liver transplant in 1963. That patient died during the procedure.

The next several patients also died within weeks of their transplants, but the surgeries showed that transplanted livers could function.

"It was terrible at the beginning. We had so many dreadful complications," Calne said in 1999.

In May 1968, Calne led a transplant operation on a 46-year-old woman with liver cancer, at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. The patient died two months later of an infection resulting from the immunosuppressive drugs given to prevent rejection.

Calne focused on finding better ways to stop patients' bodies rejecting donor organs. He helped develop the breakthrough anti-rejection drug cyclosporine and was the first physician to administer it to transplant patients.

Anti-rejection drugs transformed patients' survival chances, and liver transplants have saved thousands of lives since they gained wide acceptance in the 1980s.

Calne also helped carry out the world's first triple liver, lung and heart transplant in 1986 and in 1994 led a six-organ transplant of liver, kidney, stomach, duodenum, small intestine and pancreas.

In 1974, Calne was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society, the British national academy of science, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1986.

In 2012, Calne and Starzl shared the prestigious Lasker Award for their research. In 2021, Addenbrooke's Hospital named its transplant unit, one of Britain's largest, after Calne.

Calne was also an accomplished artist who painted portraits of dozens of his patients and medical colleagues.


# 'Peach Fuzz' has been dubbed the color of the year. What does that have to do with your garden?
By **JESSICA DAMIANO**
January 9, 2024. 8:54 AM EST

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With a new year comes new trends, and the 2024 Pantone color of the year, "Peach Fuzz," will be dictating many of them. What does this have to do with your garden? Everything.

The Pantone Color Institute has been governing worldwide color trends since 2000, providing, according to its website, "a universal language of color that enables color-critical decisions through every stage of the workflow for brands and manufacturers."

That means that, come spring, you can expect to see peach-toned clothing, shoes, home furnishings and wall paints dominating their respective domains as designers scramble to satisfy a trend-hungry public. You'll also see a plethora of peachy plants at the nursery.

Breeding new plants takes much longer - at least a decade, in most cases - than making new textiles. But make no mistake: Garden centers will be stocking a dizzying array of existing peach-toned plants this spring, and many will be new to us.

Some of my favorites:

## ROSES
At Last is a beautiful light-orange shrub rose that checks all the boxes: It's highly fragrant, low-maintenance, disease-resistant, and blooms from early summer through fall in zones 5-9.

Peach Drift, too, offers disease resistance and repeat blooming from spring through frost, but with a spreading habit. This groundcover rose is ideal for hillsides or open areas in zones 4-11.

## SHRUBS
Double Take flowering quince is a long-blooming, low-maintenance, heat- and drought-tolerant spring bloomer with soft peach flowers that grows in zones 5-9. Unlike older varieties, it doesn't have thorns, so you can work around it and make bouquets without getting pricked.

Suntastic Peach abelia puts forth pretty white flowers all summer long, but the real star of the show is its bright-peach evergreen foliage. As a bonus, it offers superior drought resistance and heat tolerance and is smaller than standard abelias. Grow it in zones 6-10.

Peaches and Cream is a bushy, heat- and drought-resistant Grevillea shrub suited for zones 9-11. Its eye-catching, multi-toned flowers bloom year-round against bright green, dense, dissected foliage.

## PERENNIALS
Firefly Peach Sky yarrow flowers emerge peachy and then fade to yellow as they age, creating a kaleidoscope of peach, orange, cream and yellow interest as some flowers in different stages of maturity converge. Thrives in zones 3-8.

Pyromania Hot and Cold, a Kniphofia or red hot poker plant, has spiky flowers that are peachy at their tips and creamy at their base, making for quite the garden conversation piece. They rebloom all summer in zones 5-9 over tall, grassy foliage, and resist drought, salt, deer and rabbits.

Venti Tequila Sunrise dahlia is a showy, vigorous plant that lives up to its name. Peach-toned double flowers with coral tips and yellow bases bloom on mounded plants from early summer through frost. Hardy in-ground in zones 8-10; dig up and store tubers indoors over winter in colder zones.

Fresco Apricot is a striking plant: It's taller and narrower than most other echinaceas, and its large zinnia-like flowers are a delicious peachy-apricot shade. Expect nearly nonstop blooms from June through October in zones 4-9.

## ANNUALS
Celway Salmon cockscomb boasts velvety, spiked flower clusters, each composed of one central plume surrounded by several smaller plumes atop tall, strong stems. The salmon-colored clusters bloom from spring through late summer, and their longevity in bouquets makes them well-suited for the cutting garden.

Vivacia Orange dianthus is a low-growing, creeping plant with grass-like foliage and large, solid, light-orange blooms. Although some cultivars are perennial, this one is categorized as annual.

Superbena Peachy Keen verbena is a vigorous grower that blooms continuously from spring through fall without deadheading. It's also heat-tolerant and deer-resistant.

Toucan Coral Canna is a dramatic plant with pretty peach flowers and a strong tropical vibe. The long-blooming plant tolerates heat, humidity and drought, and deer tend to avoid it.

Begonia Cocoa Enchanted Sunrise has unusual, dark, chocolate-colored leaves with lime green veins that contrast strikingly with its large, peach-toned flowers. The shade lover is hardy in zones 8-11 and widely treated as an annual elsewhere.

## FOLIAGE PLANTS
Northern Exposure Amber coral bells is a low-growing, densely mounded plant with evergreen leaves that performs equally well in full shade as in full sun. Tall, slender stems hold up tiny, bell-shaped, green flowers in late spring for added interest.

Coleus Fancy Feathers Copper is a mounding plant with a whimsical tuft of narrow, yellow-orange and pink leaves that will brighten shady spots, whether in the ground or in a container, as well as your mood.


# A Russian billionaire blames Sotheby's for losing millions on art by Picasso and da Vinci
By **LARRY NEUMEISTER**
January 9, 2024. 11:53 AM EST

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**NEW YORK (AP)** - Sotheby's defended itself at a trial Monday against accusations that it helped defraud a Russian oligarch out of tens of millions of dollars, saying it knew nothing of wrongdoing by an art buyer who advised the billionaire on buying works by famed artists like Amedeo Modigliani and Leonardo da Vinci.

Sotheby's attorney Sara Shudofsky told a jury in an opening statement in Manhattan federal court that billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev was "trying to make an innocent party pay for what somebody else did to him."

Shudofsky said the fertilizer magnate, a savvy businessman who has run highly successful businesses, had "good reason to be angry with himself" after spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy art masterpieces without taking "the most basic steps" to protect himself from a broker who cheated him.

"Sotheby's didn't know anything about those lies," the attorney said. "Sotheby's had no knowledge of and didn't participate in any misconduct."

She spoke after Rybolovlev's lawyer, Daniel Kornstein, insisted that a London-based Sotheby's executive was part of a group of executives who were in on an elaborate fraud.

"As a result of participating in the fraud, Sotheby's made a lot of money," Kornstein said. "Sotheby's had choices, but they chose greed."

The trial is likely to provide a window into how high-stakes transactions involving art enthusiasts worldwide develop and their importance to the operations of auction houses that rely heavily on their reputations as they match up some of the world's wealthiest investors.

Rybolovlev, 57, who bought a Palm Beach mansion from Donald Trump for about $95 million in 2008, is expected to testify. In 2016, as Trump readied himself to become president, he called the deal "the closest I came to Russia" when he was questioned about his ties to the country.

In one order last March, Judge Jesse M. Furman urged lawyers to work toward a settlement to avert a trial that would be "expensive, risky, and potentially embarrassing to both sides."

The case stems from $2 billion Rybolovlev spent from 2002 to 2014 to acquire a world-class art collection through purchases by two of his companies: Accent Delight International Limited and Xitrans Finance Limited.

To carry out the purchases for Rybolovlev's home in Geneva, Switzerland, he relied heavily on Yves Bouvier, an art broker who claimed he could save Rybolovlev money by handling negotiations for art in return for a 2% commission, Kornstein said.

Before long, Bouvier became such a trusted friend of the billionaire that he attended small birthday parties for Rybolovlev and his daughter and joined him at soccer matches, the lawyer said.

"Bouvier turned out to be a con man" who bought works of art from Sotheby's and sometimes nearly doubled the price before he resold the art to Rybolovlev, Kornstein said.

"If you're the buyer and operating in darkness, you have no way of learning that unless the auction house knows about it and can help you out," he said.

In all, Bouvier pocketed $164 million through his "secret markups" and another $6.4 million by collecting his 2% commission, Kornstein said.

The lawyer told jurors to look at documents including emails that "don't lie" and would prove that auction house executives knew what was happening. He urged them to ignore what he predicted would be "fairy tales" from Sotheby's witnesses.

David Bitton and Yves Klein, Swiss lawyers for Bouvier, said in a statement Tuesday that Bouvier "strongly objects to any allegation of fraud."

They said the allegations against Bouvier in New York have been rejected "by authorities around the world," with all nine legal cases brought against him in Singapore, Hong Kong, New York, Monaco and Geneva, Switzerland, being discontinued.

They also cited a news release issued by the Office of the Attorney General in Geneva in early December in which it announced it had closed an investigation that began in 2017 after conducting hearings "which did not provide any evidence to raise sufficient suspicion against the defendants."

Also in December, Bouvier's lawyers announced that Bouvier had settled with Rybolovlev under undisclosed terms that ensure neither will comment on their past disputes.

In all, Rybolovlev had accused Bouvier of defrauding him through sales of 38 art pieces, including Picasso's "Homme Assis au Verre" and Rodin's "Le Baiser," "L'Éternel Printemps" and "Eve," but the judge last year disqualified from the trial many of the dozen or so works bought in private sales through Sotheby's on various legal grounds.

Among the four works at issue in the trial was de Vinci's "Salvator Mundi," a depiction of Christ as "Saviour of the World," which Bouvier bought from Sotheby's for $83 million, only to resell it to Rybolovlev for over $127 million, which Kornstein said was a "secret markup" of over $44 million.

In 2017, Rybolovlev arranged for Christie's to sell it and it went for a historic $450 million, becoming the most expensive painting ever sold at auction.

Other artworks that Kornstein said involved improper markups that will be addressed at the trial were a Modigliani sculpture and paintings by Gustav Klimt and Rene Magritte.

In 2018, Rybolovlev was included on a list that the Trump administration released of 114 Russian politicians and oligarchs it said were linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

However, he was not included on a list of Russian oligarchs sanctioned after Russia attacked Ukraine, and Kornstein told the jury that his client hasn't lived in Russia in 30 years.


# A man who claimed to be selling Queen Elizabeth II's walking stick is sentenced for fraud
January 9, 2024. 12:41 PM EST

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**LONDON (AP)** - A 26-year-old man who tried to sell what he claimed was a walking stick used by the late Queen Elizabeth II has been sentenced for defrauding eBay buyers.

Dru Marshall, from Hampshire in southern England, claimed he was a senior footman at Windsor Castle and that the proceeds from the sale of the "antler walking stick" would go to cancer research. The auction had reached 540 pounds ($686) before he cancelled the listing after learning police had launched an investigation, prosecutors said.

He was found guilty of fraud by false representation at Southampton Magistrates' Court and sentenced on Monday to a 12-month community order.

"Dru Marshall used the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to try and hoodwink the public with a fake charity auction - fueled by greed and a desire for attention," Julie Macey, a senior crown prosecutor, said. "Marshall's scheme was ultimately foiled before he could successfully con any unsuspecting victims."


# New rule tightens worker classification standards; Uber, Lyft say their drivers won't be affected
By **DAVID HAMILTON** and **ALEXANDRA OLSON**
January 9, 2024. 5:40 PM EST

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**NEW YORK (AP)** - The Biden administration enacted a new labor rule Tuesday that aims to prevent the misclassification of workers as "independent contractors," a step that could bolster both legal protections and compensation for millions in the U.S. workforce.

Major app-based platforms including Uber, Lyft and DoorDash expressed confidence that the new rule would not force them to reclassify their gig drivers. But business groups warned the rule creates uncertainty for employers and much depends on how the Labor Department decides to enforce it.

The Labor Department rule, which the administration proposed 15 months ago, replaces a Trump-era standard that narrowed the criteria for classifying employees as contractors. Such workers are not guaranteed minimum wages or benefits, such as health coverage and paid sick days.

Labor advocates have supported the rule, saying employers have exploited lax rules to misclassify workers and avoid properly compensating them. In a report, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said construction workers, truck drivers, cleaners, landscapers, security guards and call center workers are among the most commonly misclassified workers. It estimated that misclassified construction workers lose between $10,177 and $16,729 per year.

The rule, while will take effect March 11, directs employers to consider six criteria for determining whether a worker is an employee or a contractor, without predetermining whether one outweighs the other. That's a change from the Trump-era rule, which prioritized two criteria: how much control a company has over its workers and how much "entrepreneurial opportunity" the work provides.

Advocates say the new rule offers a more comprehensive approach to determining whether workers are truly in business for themselves. In a briefing with reporters Monday evening, Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su said misclassified workers "sometimes work side by side with individuals who are properly classified, doing the same work."

"But misclassified employees don't get paid for all of their hours," Su said. "They've seen their economic security eroded because of misclassification."

Potentially at issue for ride-hailing, delivery and other apps is a requirement that employers consider whether the jobs performed by workers are an integral part of the company's business.

Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 2 million workers, said in a statement that the new rule "takes direct aim" at the practices of corporations like Uber and Lyft that have taken "advantage of misclassifying workers to shirk accountability as employers, avoid paying their fair share and game a system already rigged in their favor."

But it's up to employers initially to decide how to weigh each criteria, which also include how much control the employer has over the worker, whether the work requires special skills, the degree of permanence of the relationship between worker and employer, and the investment a worker makes, such as car payments.

"This rule does not materially change the law under which we operate, and won't impact the classification of the over one million Americans who turn to Uber to make money flexibly," Uber's head of federal affairs, CR Wooters, said in a prepared statement.

Lyft also said the new rule will not force the company to change its business model, while warning that "this new guidance creates additional complexities and ambiguities for companies and courts alike across the country."

Flex Association, a group that represents major app-based rideshare and delivery platforms, said it will "seek to ensure implementation of this rule does not target workers who overwhelmingly turn to app-based platforms to earn supplemental income on their own terms."

The new rule comes at a time when more states are passing laws that guarantee a minimum wage and other benefits for app-based workers, including New York last year.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is considering challenging the rule in court, said Marc Freedman, the chamber's vice president of workplace policy.

Freedman said the new guidelines make it difficult for companies to know whether they are giving enough importance to any of the six criteria. He said it will depend on how aggressively the Labor Department decides to implement the rule, but the structure is biased toward classifying workers as employees.

"It leaves employers in the dark about whether they made the right decision," Freedman said in an interview with The Associated Press. "The only time they can be confident is if they call a worker an employee."

Jessica Looman, administrator of the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division, said during the briefing that the final rule isn't intended to apply specifically to certain industries or type of work. Asked about enforcement, Looman said the department will focus on the "most vulnerable workers," particularly those who are being unfairly deprived of minimum wages and overtime pay.

The rule does not carry the same weight as laws passed by Congress or state legislatures. Instead, it offers an interpretation of who should qualify for protections under the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.

Financial markets appeared to shrug off news of the new rule Tuesday. Shares of Uber gained 2.2%, while Lyft slipped about 0.5%. When the administration unveiled the proposed rules in October 2022, they dropped 10% and 12% respectively.


# Los Angeles County has thousands of 'unclaimed dead.' These investigators retrace their lives
By **STEFANIE DAZIO**
January 5, 2024. 2:19 AM EST

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**LOS ANGELES (AP)** - Arusyak Martirosyan struggles to open the door of a stranger's one-bedroom apartment overflowing with the belongings from a life lived but not claimed in death.

Wedged against the door is a giant box of Gain laundry detergent and plastic tubs piled high. Blouses and T-shirts, suspended by hangers over a living room curtain rod, block out almost all sunlight. Bins and boxes, brimming with more clothes, hide the carpet. Empty takeout containers and Tupperware, with bugs trapped inside, cover the stove.

The 74-year-old woman died in October in the hospital, and weeks later no one had come forward for her remains. Wearing a Tyvek protective suit and trailed by the building's property manager, Martirosyan hunts for a greeting card or letter sent to her that could have a family member's address on the return label - anything that would lead to a relative who could give this woman a proper burial.

Martirosyan acts as a living representative of those Los Angeles County calls "the unclaimed dead." She is one of more than a dozen investigators who work for the Public Administrator, an understaffed and little-known branch of the county's Department of the Treasurer and Tax Collector.

Her job is to unearth who the woman was beneath all her belongings and find out who she loved, who loved her and what she wanted after her death.

Martirosyan and her colleagues spend three years investigating a case before relinquishing the deceased to a communal gravesite, a last resort in the county cemetery. Similar work is done in cities across the U.S. but in Los Angeles, with one of the nation's largest homeless populations, the efforts are particularly difficult.

It is a painstaking process to retrace a life. Investigators, who handle about 200 cases yearly, are given a manila file folder containing a name, birthdate and little else for each death.

"I go through their lives in so many ways," Martirosyan said. "They do become mine."

In the beginning, it's a race against time. The person's body lays frozen in the county morgue as the investigators scramble to find family before being forced to give the go-ahead to cremate the remains.

For weeks, they call nursing homes and houses of worship, scour public records and ancestry websites and comb through homes and apartments.

"We're like stepping into the shoes of the dead person," said Dennis Cotek, one of Martirosyan's supervisors, who acknowledges he often thinks about the lives he has encountered even after going home for the day.

"I always say a little prayer for them," he said.

The deceased may not have any surviving next-of-kin, or their loved ones can't afford to pay for an individual burial. Other times, estranged relatives refuse to be involved or a friend is unable to petition a court to take possession of their remains.

Martirosyan, who has been on the job just over a year, said her work has made her keenly aware of her own mortality and spurred tearful but important conversations with her teenage son.

"This is going to happen, in one way or another, to all of us," she said.

That's also what largely drives her and the rest of the army of public servants on their quest to bring dignity to tens of thousands of people who die alone in the most populous U.S. county. Their efforts culminate with a communal burial and a multilingual, interfaith ceremony, an event that has been held annually since 1896.

The most recent ceremony on Dec. 14 recalled the universal devastation and loneliness of the pandemic. The burial of 1,937 people included for the first time those who died from the coronavirus. Among the dead were immigrants, children and homeless people.

"We don't know enough about the people we are burying today to really do them justice," county supervisor Janice Hahn said.

Several dozen people, some wiping away tears, attended the outdoor ceremony as clergy members prayed over the communal grave in the county cemetery. Each laid a white rose at the gravesite.

"I wished we could have been there for all of them when they were still alive, in a better way, so that they didn't have to die completely disconnected and alone," said Susan Rorke, a local resident who has attended the services for a decade. "I may end up in this graveyard in a ceremony when I die. So I don't miss this event."

Many people at the service were county employees like Martirosyan and Carlos Herrera, a maintenance worker who has volunteered to help dig the graves for more than 30 years.

In early December, Herrera and his team dug a 14-foot-deep (4.27 meters) plot for the 1,937 plastic boxes containing the ashes of each person and, if known, a label with their names. The site was marked by a flat gravestone. It bears no names; only the year of their deaths, which was 2020 for this group.

Cotek and Martirosyan are just beginning to retrace the life of the 74-year-old woman. The investigators searched her apartment in November, having only a few basic facts in the manila folder, including a local pastor's phone number and the date when she moved into the apartment: 1988.

Martirosyan methodically flipped through folders in a filing cabinet as Cotek pulled worn black-and-white composition notebooks off a bookshelf.

Framed Korean Bible verses hung on the walls. They found disability benefit forms, a blank U.S. citizenship application, bank statements - all potentially important clues that went into an evidence bag.

Back at their office in downtown Los Angeles, the investigators handed over the evidence bag to a colleague with a suggestion to look in Korea for potential relatives.

If no one is found after three years, the county will handle the woman's interment. If she left behind enough money in her estate, her ashes would go into an individual niche with a nameplate in a columbarium, where urns are stored.

While her possessions were not deemed to be worth selling, the county has a warehouse full of boxes of belongings, including vinyl records, Barbie doll collections, classic cars and framed artwork, that it auctions off to pay for niches for other decedents. If there's not enough to cover that, the person's ashes will be placed in the communal grave.

The woman could be buried there in 2026.

The day after searching her apartment, Martirosyan nets a breakthrough on another case. A woman cries upon learning by phone that her mother, from whom she had been estranged, has died. It's devastating news for the daughter, but it means her mother won't end up in the county's unclaimed grave.

"This is a good day for us," Martirosyan said. "At least for this portion of their lives, they're connected."

But in a county of nearly 10 million, there's always another life yet to be claimed.

Martirosyan turns to her backlog of cases and begins again.