Kari Lake wins Republican nomination for Arizona governor – The Arizona Republic

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Kari Lake declares herself winner in GOP primary for governor

Kari Lake said she won the Republican nomination for Arizona Governor's Office on Aug. 3, 2022. The race has yet to be called.

Samantha Chow, Arizona Republic

Former television news anchor Kari Lake has won the Republican nomination for Arizona governor, climbing past her opponents early lead and rounding out the victory for Trump-backed candidates in the swing state.

The Associated Press called the race for Lake just after 7 p.m. Thursday. Lakewon with a narrow advantage, just shy of 3 percentage points over opponent Karrin Taylor Robson.

Having never held elected office before, Lake turned her more than two-decade career as a newscaster for Fox 10 in Phoenix into political success in part by attacking the news industry that made her locally famous.

Lakeran a campaign that furthered stolen election lies and in many ways echoed former President Donald Trump's brash and populist approach.

Along the trail, she pledged to secure the state's southern border using an untested legal theory and eradicate homelessness through a combination of providing more resourcesand criminalizing those who didn't take advantage of them. Though Lake had already declared victory a day prior, she did so again in a statement Thursday evening, and raised further doubts about the election process.

"Though the results took longer than they should have, Arizonans who have been forgotten by the establishment just delivered a political earthquake," Lake said. It is typical that election results can take several days as counties tally mailed, dropped off and in person ballots.

Taylor Robson, the real estate developer and former member of the Arizona Board of Regents, had a commanding lead among early voters. But Lake, who has spent months lambasting early voting and believes all voting should happen on a single day, picked up two election day voters for each one that cast a ballot for Taylor Robson.

Ultimately, those voters helped push Lake to win the Republican nomination. Lake now will campaign against Democrat Katie Hobbs, Arizonas secretary of state, in the November general election. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who is in his eighth year in office, has reached a term limit and cannot run again.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, when she first declared victory, the 52-year-old Lake said she hoped Taylor Robson, who had put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into this battle," would support her bid for governor.

Asked how Lake might court Taylor Robsons support following the bitter attacks of the campaign, Lake offered a personal story from growing up as the youngest of nine siblings in Iowa.

"You have good times, you have bad times, you have fights, and you have some dysfunction, but at the end of the day, you're still brothers and sisters, and you're still family," Lake said. And we are family in this Republican Party. We don't maybe agree on every single thing. but I think we agree on the most important issues of the day. And I believe that Karrin will come in because I know for a fact Karrin loves this state.

Though she had said just a week prior that she had detected "stealing going on" in this year's election, Lake has refused to provide evidence. In declaring victory, she said her supporters "out-voted the fraud."

Lakes narrow victory comes after a 15-month campaign that saw unprecedented spending to defeat her and controversies over shadowy fundraising groups working to support her victory. The race quickly became viewed as the latest test of Trumps power within the Republican Party, and his endorsement last fall certainly helped boost Lake.

Trump-endorsed candidates seeking statewide office had a banner night in Arizona on Tuesday, with each winning their partys nomination in sometimes crowded fields.

A late-in-the-race campaign rally Trump held in Prescott Valley also helped energize support for Lake, and happened to fall on the same day Ducey and former Vice President Mike Pence held events elsewhere in the state for Taylor Robson. The duel brought more attention to Arizona, a battleground state that political observers say either party could win in November.

In nominating Lake, Republican voters showed they are still allegiant to Trump and ready for a departure from Duceys establishment arm of the party that rallied behind Taylor Robson.

While Taylor Robson painted Lake as a phony conservative because of her past support of Democratic President Barack Obama, Lake attacked Taylor Robson as akin to electing Ducey for another four years. On policy, the two leading candidates had many similar priorities, including securing the states southern border, expanding school choice and improving teacher pay.

The Republican field featured two other candidates, and a third, former Congressman Matt Salmon, who ended his bid for governor in June but did so late enough he still appeared on ballots. Salmon and Mesa businessman Scott Neely each drew votes that could have made the difference between a Lake and Taylor Robson victory. Former businesswoman Paola Tulliani-Zen of Scottsdale trailed the race leaders significantly.

With each partys nominees for governor locked in, candidates are now focusing on November and drawing in Arizonas independent and moderate voters.

Lake and Hobbs have differences that go beyond their party and policy priorities.

Lake is one of the states loudest voices furthering Trumps false claims that he won the election in 2020. Dozens of lawsuits across the nation and the Arizona Senates ballot review have found no evidence of widespread, outcome-changing fraud. Hobbs, meanwhile, has defended the election that was her constitutional duty to oversee.

Hobbs has called for Arizonans to look forward instead of staring back to 2020, but that is likely impossible given the role false claims have played in Lake's campaign.

"This race for governor isnt about Democrats or Republicans," Hobbs said in a statement late Thursday. "Its a choice between sanity and chaos. And its about electing a leader who will govern with vision and strength. Im confident Arizonans will reject Lake and her embarrassing sideshow, and we will win in November.

A lingering question is who more traditional Republicans, those who have supported the late Sen. John McCain and align with Ducey, will support or whether they will sit out the race altogether.

The Arizona Democratic Party has already signaled it will court those voters to support Hobbs, releasing a list of all the insults Lake has lobbed at her fellow Republicans, calling them Republicans in name only and lords of the swamp.

Will the same Republicans that Lakes insulted hold their noses to support her? Josselyn Berry, a party spokesperson, said.

Reach reporter Stacey Barchenger at stacey.barchenger@arizonarepublic.com or 480-416-5669. Follow her on Twitter@sbarchenger.

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Kari Lake wins Republican nomination for Arizona governor - The Arizona Republic

Arizona House and Senate lineup could impact your life more than the governor’s race – The Arizona Republic

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Opinion: The tenor and direction of the Arizona House and Senate changed in the primary, with consequences that could overshadow whatever the next governor does.

Editorial board| Arizona Republic

The spotlight remains on the November matchup for Arizona governor.

But state House and Senate races could have a more directimpact on voters lives.

Sure, the next governor can use her bully pulpit to voice an agenda.

But the Legislature will decide whether to go along with it.

And most of those races have already been decided.

Flipping the House or Senate in the general election remains a longshot. Both are likely to remain in Republican hands.

Meanwhile, primary voters sent the message that they prefer a united and far more populist GOP setting the Legislatures tenor and direction.

The America First slate of candidates was widely victorious in the House and Senate. Rusty Bowers, Joanne Osborne, Tyler Pace and Joel John, conservative lawmakers who faced these opponents because they periodically balked the party line, were resoundingly defeated.

Good for Trump, so far: What to know about Arizona's primary results

Next years Legislature also will be missing some of the lawmakers who could compel compromises including Michelle Udall, who was trounced in her bid for education superintendent, and Michelle Ugenti-Rita, who was trounced in her bid for secretary of state.

Meanwhile, Sen.-elect Jake Hoffman is pushing membership in a newly formed Arizona Freedom Caucus, a multistate effort to get lawmakers to vote as a bloc on red meat issues for populists, including election integrity and critical race theory.

Hoffman says nearly a thirdof returning House Republicans have already signed on, with more to come in the Senate. Its likely that most, if not all, of those newly elected America First candidates will join as well.

Depending on how large that caucus grows and it might be difficult to know, because members wont have to declare it publicly its likely that the next session will be like the last one on steroids (not the cross-party budget compromise that ended it, but the heavily partisanideology fest that led up to it).

Expect even more focus on what schools teach without subject matter experts like Udall, who chaired the Houses education committee, and Paul Boyer, the Senates education committee chair who, after repeatedly balking the party, figured it was safer not to run for reelection.

We already knew, no matter the outcome on Aug. 2, that there would be a giant loss of institutional knowledge in key issues like education and water, particularly among the Republicans who will be calling the shots, when the next Legislature takes its oaths of office.

But thats still a problem.

Because as tempting as it may be to distill education into a matter of what teachers can or cannot say, that oversimplifies the debate.

If the goal is to improve student achievement, especially after a pandemic that decimated the progress most schools were making …

Or to address chronic teacher shortages so all classrooms have a highly qualified instructor at the helm …

Or to revise archaic spending limits and funding formulas to ensure money gets where it is most needed, those are far more complex and nuanced issues. Ones that require deep subject-matter knowledge and a willingness to consider multiple sides, if we have any hope of tackling them.

Ditto with water policy another issue that voters say is of utmost importance to them.

And for good reason. Arizona is sitting on a ticking time bomb. Deep cuts along the Colorado River will further strain groundwater, a finite resource governed by state laws with holes so big you could wedge a troubledGlen Canyon Dam into them.

The next Legislature will be forced to do a lot more to protect this critical resource, even if its predecessors just made a major investment in water augmentation and conservation projects.

Bowers, who as House Speaker played a major role in those efforts,wont be around to shepherd negotiations, and few lawmakers that remain have the deep, nuanced knowledge necessary to make sense of competing proposals.

Add to that an expectation to vote first as a bloc and ask questions later (or, more likely, to not ask questions at all), and these could be perilous times indeed.

Not just for water and education but for other hot-button issues like abortion and voting access that could directly impact lives.

Witness what happened this past session when Republicans ram-rodded a fix on precinct committeemen that ended up angering just about everyone, putting everything else on hold while lawmakers scrambled to undo what they just did.

The legislative process is supposed to be about asking questions, about thinking critically about how bills are worded and making compromises to address constituents concerns. The bills that pass with this back-and-forth are typically stronger, better and stacked with fewer unintended consequences than those that are bulldozed through with no real debate.

But thats what we could be in for, regardless of who takes over theGovernors Office in November.

Kari Lake received top billing on the America First slate; its unlikely for her to balk her legislative compatriots. If Republican Karrin Taylor Robson wins, shed have an equally difficult time rejecting the populist playbook, particularly when all that gets you is a nasty challenge in the next primary election.

As a Democrat, Katie Hobbs might be more willing to use the power of a veto pen. But that could quickly derail the legislative session. And she doesnt have enough compatriots in the House or Senate to block bills or compel major changes before they reach her desk.

Republicans must be willing to ask questions and vote no if valid concernsare ignored.

Time will tell if anyone steps up to fill that role.

This is an opinion ofThe Arizona Republic's editorial board.

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Arizona House and Senate lineup could impact your life more than the governor's race - The Arizona Republic

Truss and Sunak face Sky grilling as Bank warns of long recession as it happened – The Guardian

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Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak are taking part in the Sky News leadership debate. Photograph: PA

Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak will take part in a live televised debate tonight at 8pm.

Sky News The Battle for Number 10 will see the two leadership hopefuls field questions from a studio audience comprising Conservative party members.

Truss and Sunak will then be interviewed by Kay Burley.

The 90-minute live broadcast can be watched on among others Sky News and viewed on Sky News YouTube channel and here.

Updated at 15.00EDT

Key events

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Here is a summary of todays events:

Also during the debate, Truss was asked whether integrity has been lost in the Westminster bubble?

Truss said: I would make sure we had zero tolerance for bad behaviour and also offer support to MPs.

She said she would look at the role of the ethics advisor.

I slightly worry about outsourcing ethics to somebody else, she added.

During the debate, there was a question on trust. Nadine Dorries says you cannot be trusted, Burley directed to Sunak.

Boris Johnson deserves enormous credit for what he achieved at the time, he replied. It got to a point when it got too difficult for me to stay. It is simply impossible for a chancellor and PM not to be on the same page on economic policy.

He added that the government was on the wrong side of an ethical problem and enough was enough.

Sunak referred to the Chris Pincher scandal.

It wasnt OK to defend it because it was wrong. We need to bring trust and integrity and decency back into politics.

George Parker, political editor of the Financial Times, has picked up on Truss response to the windfall tax.

Updated at 17.10EDT

Ian Birrell has criticised Sunak for playing the populist card during the debate.

The is Paul Waugh on Kay Burleys question: Will the real Liz Truss please stand up? It will be revisited, and often, he says.

Full Fact has posted on Twitter regarding Liz Truss comments tonight about going to fight in Ukraine.

After technology to measure who the studio audience would vote for between the two candidates crashed, Burley resorts to a show of hands. The vast majority would vote for Sunak.

Updated at 16.41EDT

Some more from tonights debate, Burley asked Sunak why so many people have come out in support of Liz Truss and not him?

Plenty of people who sat around the cabinet table are supporting me, he said.

He said the Conservative party are all one team, all one family and will come together after the leadership election.

Updated at 17.12EDT

Burley asks if he is too rich to be prime minister?

I think the British public judge people by their character and actions, not by their bank account, he says.

Updated at 16.43EDT

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Truss and Sunak face Sky grilling as Bank warns of long recession as it happened - The Guardian

The BBC is not a luxury in a cost of living crisis, it’s more essential than ever – iNews

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In the very first speech of his re-election campaign earlier this year, the French president Emmanuel Macron made a pledge to ease the countrys cost of living crisis by scrapping Frances TV licence the contribution laudiovisuel public that residents pay as part of their habitation taxes.

It may have sounded like populist electioneering, but this week, the French Senate voted to bring his promise into law, and, after 89 years, the countrys public service broadcasting will now be funded by a share of VAT receipts, rather than by individual contributions of 138 (115) a year. The Senate believed the licence fee was obsolete in the digital era, and this move, which emanated from the far right of French politics, has, unsurprisingly, been greeted warmly in Britain by those who seek to withdraw public funding from the BBC.

Nigel Farage immediately tweeted that he wished our government would have the courage to do the same, and, in different political circumstances, it is easy to imagine that those who have ideological and commercial objections to the BBC, or who want Channel 4 privatised, being emboldened by events in France. It is fairly safe to assume that, once the political leadership of this country is established, this is a subject which will return to the agenda.

At a time when families everywhere are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet, this is an easy argument to make. In Britain, putting 159 a year back in peoples pockets makes political and economic sense. But thats because the narrative has been perverted down the years by the forces of conservatism to make us believe that the BBC is a luxury item, and what we are funding through the licence fee is essentially a spendthrift, left-leaning, overblown, woke organisation which, like Channel 4, shouldnt be protected by the state against market forces, and the global streaming giants. The licence fee model is completely outdated, said Nadine Dorries, our minister of culture.

But we must be aware of the perils of allowing the debate to be framed in such a way. I would argue that in a time of national stress and political upheaval, the role of public service broadcasting is even more important. It is right that the BBC should be held to account like any public body, and its financing should be the subject of constant review given the changing nature of the media landscape, but it shouldnt be a question of whether it provides value for money (inevitably a subjective matter), and the BBC cannot be treated as a commodity, weighed against a packet of fish fingers or a gallon of petrol.

Even in France, they havent cast their public broadcasters adrift; theyve had to find an alternative funding method. The importance in a democracy of independence of information was an argument employed in the Senate debate. And, for all that, it has to be said that Frances state broadcasters cant hold a bougie to the BBC for global reach and national cultural importance.

Nevertheless, these are now dangerous times for supporters of the BBC. When the instruments of state are increasingly degraded, and when trust in the body politic is crumbling, the role of independent media whose purpose is to serve the public not its shareholders cannot be underestimated. In times of privation, it is essential that then long-term health of the nation is not sacrificed to short-term financial gain.

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The BBC is not a luxury in a cost of living crisis, it's more essential than ever - iNews

Gukesh provokes Shirov to engineer huge win – The New Indian Express

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Express News Service

MAHABALIPURAM: In one corner was Alexei Shirov, one of the most aggressive players of the modern era. Sitting opposite him, eyeball-to-eyeball length, was D Gukesh, a player in the middle of a wave. A few weeks ago, he had become one of the youngest ever to breach the 2700 club. If this match was going to be decided on experience, Shirov would win. The Spaniard had become a GM in 1990, 16 years before Gukesh was born.

Even leaving aside the aspect of experience, the Spaniard, who lost to Viswanathan Anand in the final of the World Championship in 2000, was favourite the moment the draw was made on Monday. For, the 50-year-old was playing with white. All chess engines agree that there is always an advantage when you open. So, Gukesh, playing with black for a third time in five games, at some level, would always be reacting.

So, the teenager decided to mix it up a bit. He decided to provoke Shirov from the start. Older heads may have decided to engage him in a slowburner but the kids think differently. He initiated an exchange of queens in the 23rd move knowing it would weaken the Spaniards position if the latter took up that offer. Shirov obliged and Gukesh knew all that provocation from the start had produced the desired results. I had the same (provoking him) from the start, he said after the match.

My strategy was to provoke him. He is a very aggressive player and couldnt resist. Such a calculated strategy is why many people within the game feel that he has one of the highest ceilings among this current batch of wunderkinds. Gukesh, whose live ratings (2714.1) puts him in third place among Indians (after Anand and P Harikrishna), though, is nonplussed about all the attention. I just try to play my game, he said. I am not sure if things are happening too fast. Only time will tell. For now, things are going well. Thats an understatement. He has won all five of his games.

This very clear strategy and the ability to think without worrying about opponents one of the biggest aspects of chess is playing the board and not the player is the strength of the B team that continues to lead the leaderboard in the Open section after five rounds. In relation to this Olympiad, this is the biggest win by an Indian player. Apart from Gukesh, Adhiban B won while Nihal Sarin drew. However, it wasnt all smooth sailing for the team as R Praggnanandhaa lost.

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Gukesh provokes Shirov to engineer huge win - The New Indian Express

Beyond Carlsen: the devaluation of the World Chess Championship – TheArticle

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For a number of reasons, the game of chess has become unprecedentedly popular, partly due to enthusiasts and serious players alike turning to online play on a plethora of websites that established themselves during the pandemic. In parallel, new players have also been drawn in, due to the instrumental and sensational success of Netflixs Queens Gambit series.

Another contributing element has been the creation of the AlphaZero chess-playing engine, with its amazing abilities, including an almost vertical learning curve, resulting in the strongest chess-playing entity the world has ever seen. The science has primarily been the work of Demis Hassabis, rewarded with the CBE for his efforts, and a $400 million sale to Google of his company, Deep Mind. The achievements of Demis, and the brilliantly quasi illogical strategies and tactics of AlphaZero, were likewise already covered in my column Arise Sir Demis . The games were contested against the most powerful available commercial chess programme, called Stockfish itself many times stronger than the IBM Deep Blue programme which defeated Garry Kasparov himself in 1997.

The 1993 World Title Challenger, the British Grandmaster Nigel Short,described the AlphaZero games as being of such beauty that he felt he was in the presence of God. Demis himself explained that his self-taught programme, which had already mastered the near infinite complexities of the oriental games of Shogi (Japanese Chess) and Go, was the key to understanding intelligence itself.

But the rise of the all-conquering thinking engines has been a double-edged sword, arguably undermining the prestige of the human world champion. Further recent developments have reinforced this perception and the aura of the human world chess championship has consistently declined.

This week I return to a further contributing development, the meteoricrise, lasting domination, but sudden abdication of the Norwegian World Chess Champion, Magnus Carlsen.

The culmination of a long line of champions, which stretches back into the 18th century, Carlsen is also a uniquely talented representative of the modern era. Magnus has attained the highest-ever chess rating recorded, outclassing even the mighty Kasparov.

Magnus wins virtually every competition which he enters, and has adapted seamlessly to the coronavirus crisis, which, as we have seen, has obliged chess to migrate online to a huge extent. Magnus has prudently avoided the damage to his reputation occasioned by suffering defeats against chess computers, a fate which overtook both Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik.Finally, Magnus has leveraged all the opportunities afforded by his title of World Chess Champion, adapting perfectly to the modern environment, even to the extent of floating his online chess company, Play Magnus, for $85 million dollars, while simultaneously earning a fortune as a trendy ambassador for the fashion line G-Star Raw, often appearing alongside the Hollywood superstar Liv Tyler.

The title of World Chess Champion dates to no later than 1886, when Wilhelm Steinitz defeated Johannes Zukertort in a gladiatorial contest, specifically designed to resolve the question of who was the strongest player in the world after Paul Morphys death in 1884, though Steinitz had claimed that status since 1866. Less clear is whether the great predecessors of Steinitz also merited that proud title. Part of the difficulty of authentication is lack of evidence of important contests and gaps in the record.

The story begins in the 18th century, when the French chess expertFranois-Andr Danican Philidorwon an important match in 1747 against the erudite Philip Stamma, translator of oriental languages to the court of King George II. Sadly, none of those games has survived. Following Philidor, who died in 1795, there comes a hiatus, until the brief flourishing of La Bourdonnais during the 1830s. After this, there is a further gap in the record until the 1840s, when the French heir to the Philidor tradition, Saint-Amant, was overthrown in Paris, the epicentre of European chess life at that time, by the English champion Howard Staunton.

Fortunately, from Staunton onwards, there is a relatively unbroken line of succession, with each champion being dethroned by the next in line. The exceptions are the trinity of Morphy, Fischer (both of whom simply downed tools), and Alekhine (who died in office), thus permanently preserving their hallowed nimbus of invincibility. Until the death of Alekhine, the title was in effect the personal property of the champion himself.

The first great player who could be considered a World Champion was Philidor, whodominatedthe chess scene of his day. The term World Champion was not used when describing him, with commentators preferring to employ such metaphors as wielding the sceptre. There is also the problem that very few of Philidors games on level terms have survived, his reputation largely being constructed on his blindfold simultaneous displays, which so electrified London chess enthusiasts. Philidor was able to conduct three games blindfold at once, a feat that led to a letter of admonishment from the French encyclopaedist, Denis Diderot, warning Philidor that such exploits might lead to brain damage.

It is interesting to note that Philidor was the first great apostle of pawn power in chess. According to Philidor, pawns determined the structure of thegame;they were in fact the soul of chess, not mere cannon fodder, whose sole task was to make way for the power of the pieces. In this respect his chess teachings paralleled the rise of the masses embodied in the French Revolution of 1789.

France was the dominant chess nation at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, and the next player after Philidorwho couldbe considered an early world champion was the 19th-century French master Louis-Charles Mah de La Bourdonnais. His claim to fame rests primarily on his mammoth series of matches against Alexander McDonnell, contested in London in 1834. This represented the finest corpus of games ever created up to that time and numerous generations of chess devotees learned their basic chess strategies and tactics from these ingenious and well contested battles. Both protagonists appear to have become mentally exhausted by their efforts and died shortly after their epic series.

In the panoply of proto-champions, Howard Staunton, the Victorian polymath, Shakespearean scholar, and assiduous chronicler of the English schools system, is the only English player who could legitimately be considered as world champion. In a series of matches between 1843 and 1846, Staunton defeated the French master Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant, followed closely by victories against the German master Bernhard Horwitz and Daniel Harrwitz, originally from Poland. Stauntons match against Saint-Amant was the first contest at the highest level that closely resembled the template for modern World Championship competitions. The design of chess pieces in regular use for important competitions, including the2018 Londoncontest between Carlsen and his challenger, Fabiano Caruana, are named the Staunton pattern, after Howard Staunton.

The German master Adolf Anderssen seized the sceptre from Howard Staunton when he decisively defeated the English champion in the very first international tournament in London 1851. Anderssen was one of that select group, which includes Mikhail Botvinnik and Viswanathan Anand, who initially assumed the accolade of supreme chess master from a tournament rather than a match. The London event was in fact put together by Staunton, who thereby created a perfect pretext for losing out to Anderssen in their knockout match, it being notoriously difficult to compete in an event, whilst simultaneously organising it.

Paul Morphy was the American meteor who took the world by storm over thetwo momentous, whirlwind years of 1857 and 1858. His grand tour of Europe culminated in a match victory against Adolf Anderssen, after which Morphy was universally acknowledged as the worlds greatest player. Thereafter Morphy issued a challenge to anyone in the world to take him on at odds (Morphy starting the game with a pawn handicap) but no one accepted. At this point the meteor had burnt itself out and Morphy, tragically, retired from chess, a curious forerunner of Bobby Fischers behaviour following his famous 1972 World Championship victory against Boris Spassky.

Morphy understood the principles of chess better than anyone who came before him. Anderssens tactical brilliance sprang like Athene from the head of Zeus, without necessarily having grown from regular organic pre-conditions. Morphy, on the other hand, constructed his positions along sound strategic and positional lines, before unleashing his devastating arsenal of tactical weaponry.On Morphys retirement, Anderssen resumed the position of world leadership which had belonged so fleetingly to the first great genius of American chess.

Anderssen can claim to be one of the supreme tacticians of all time. Three of his wins are of imperishable beauty. On their own they would justify anyones devotion to chess. They are his Immortal Game against Kieseritsky (played at Simpsons-in-the-Strand, not the tournament) of London, 1851; his Evergreen game against the pseudonymous Dufresne (in reality the German player E. S. Freund) of Berlin 1856, and his majestic sacrificial masterpiece against Zukertort of Breslau,1869.

Anderssen lost a match in 1866 toWilhelm Steinitz, the first player who could definitively be describedas an official World Champion. The previous wielders of the sceptre, Philidor, La Bourdonnais,Staunton, Morphy and Anderssen himself,were all, at the time, acknowledged as the leading chess practitioners of their day, but it is less clear that the title world champion had been universally accepted. Steinitz, on the other hand, insisted on this description and he himself dated his tenure from his 1866 match victory, also in London, against Anderssen. Steinitzs pre-eminence wasconfirmed 20 years later when he demolished Johannes Zukertort in their 1886 match in the US, which was the first to be specifically described as a World Championship contest.

Thus if the 18th century laid the foundations for a world championship, it was the 19th century that grounded the roots. The 20th century maintained thevolcanic procession of greats with thecolossusEmanuel Lasker spanning thefin de sicle. Capablanca, Alekhine, Botvinnik, Karpov, and Kasparov dominated nearly all of this most modern epoch, with Anand bridging the 20th and 21st centuries. In this century, there has been one singleforceirrsistiblein the form of Magnus Carlsen.

From 1946 onwards the prestige of the world title was largely upheld by the world governing body FID and partly by my own organisations, which carried the torch in 1993 (Kasparov v Short) and 2000 (Kasparov v Kramnik).

However, in recent years, primarily during the reign of Carlsen, the length of the championship match has shrunk from its traditional 24 games to a mere 12 (plusrapid play offs).The most recent world championship match, staged in Dubai last year, was run entirely under the auspices of FID, the authority of which is now universally accepted under the Presidency of the Russian Arkady Dvorkovich.

The implication is thatchess at this exalted level is a sport, both mentalandphysical an appropriately termed Mind Sport. As the Championship was in process a wonderful flash of confirmatory news emerged from the media: Magnus Carlsen was nominated, in Norway, to win the Sports Personality of the Year. This Championship had emerged as a realBattle of the Titans. Magnus had now won five world title bouts, twice versus Anand, once each against Karjakin , Caruana and Nepomniachtchi. Two ended with the tie-breaks, at which Magnus excels. On the second such occasion, Magnus praised Fabiano, as being his most difficult opponent.

With victory in Dubai, Magnus had secured his tenure as World Champion until 2023. He would then have held the title for 10 years, thus moving into an equal category of championship longevity with such greats as Capablanca, Petrosian, Karpov , Kramnik and Anand, ahead of the short-lived tenures of Euwe, Smyslov, Tal, Spassky and Fischer. Only Steinitz, Lasker, Alekhine, Botvinnik, and Kasparov held the title for significantly longer periods. In the modern world, where everything has speeded up, could Carlsen go on to outperform all these titans?

The answer we now know to be: no.

In abdicating the title Carlsen has left ambiguity over whether he will return. Had he, with Boris Johnson,mimicked the Terminators popular quip (Hastala vista, Baby), wecould still wonder whether this was just goodbye or, alternatively, see you later. Carlsens farewell, though, seems a touch more final.

This week sfinal gameexemplifies the key ingredients of a Magnus triumph. The game was the decisive win which clinched Magnus World Title defence against the notorious Putin supporter Sergei Karjakin. Just as Karjakin seemed on the point of gaining counterplay, Magnus struck his rival down with a surprise Queen sacrifice.

Unlike Karjakin and Caruana, his two previous counterparts in contesting the crown, Ian Nepomniachtchi has maintained his challengers form into a second successive cycle. He has earned his right to lay down another challenge, but should this prove unsuccessful, we must wonder what transformation would await the world of Caissa if Ding Liren (the runner-up in the qualifying tournament, pictured above) were to prove victorious in the now mandatory ersatz championship against Nepomniachtchi. Could Ding be crowned the first Chinese World Champion in classical chess ?

Raymond Keenes latest book Fifty Shades of Ray: Chess in the year of the Coronavirus, containing some of his best pieces from TheArticle, is now available from Blackwells .

We are the only publication thats committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one thats needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout the pandemic. So please, make a donation.

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Beyond Carlsen: the devaluation of the World Chess Championship - TheArticle

Inside the most important chess tournament in the world – The Australian Financial Review

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Up those stairs, in a decadent auditorium, beneath a painted ceiling, grand masters Miguel Santos and Jose Gascon provided live, Spanish-language commentary. In a room that could easily hold a hundred, perhaps two dozen spectators in gold velvet chairs listened attentively. The players had arrived and quickly began to play in a closed room down the hall.

At this level, a chessboard is a particle accelerator, powerful and productive, spitting out ideas from a violent clash.

The Candidates is a double round-robin; 14 rounds take place over 18 days, each player facing each other with both the white and black pieces.

Nepomniachtchi, the solidly built Russian, was facing Teimour Radjabov, the ruggedly handsome Azerbaijani. Caruana, the sparrow-like American, battled Jan-Krzysztof Duda, the young, clean-cut Pole (no relation to the Polish president). Ding Liren, the greatest player in the history of China, played Richard Rapport, the beguiling and creative Hungarian. And Hikaru Nakamura, the American speed-chess specialist and YouTube personality, played Alireza Firouzja, a baby-faced, 19-year-old French-Iranian prodigy.

Fittingly for this international summit, chess is at home in Spain. The game has undergone dramatic changes in its 1500-year history, some of them instigated here.

One theory holds that the queen, the most powerful piece in the modern game, got those powers in honour of Isabella of Castile. She rises in bronze monuments above Madrid. And 16th-century priest Ruy Lopez de Segura, from the south-western hills of this country, authored an influential treatise on the game, Arte del Juego del Axedrez, expounding on the best opening moves. Centuries later, the Ruy Lopez opening, also known as the Spanish Game, remains a prominent strategy.

Among many games, chess in particular is more effective than any other in many ways, Lopez wrote in 1561. It is a game of science and seems not to be a dishonest pastime.

Arkady Dvorkovich, president of FIDE, at the opening of this years Candidates tournament.Getty

The world chess champion is Magnus Carlsen, 31, of Norway. Hes held the title since 2013, has ranked No. 1 in the world since 2011 and lays a strong claim to being the greatest chess player ever. Hes the closest thing the game has to a celebrity; with strong-jawed good looks, hes modelled alongside Liv Tyler and appeared on a Cosmopolitan magazine sexiest-man list. Its Carlsen, demigod of the modern game, Mozart of chess, who the eight Candidates were striving to dethrone.

But Carlsen is bored. He is, evidently, so lonely at the top of this game that he announced in July he wont bother defending his title. He had said that he would play only if Firouzja, forerunner of the next generation, won the Candidates.

Perhaps it was an old ploy, like a prizefighter refusing to box, holding out for a bigger purse. Perhaps he was tired; the world championship, its format and the preparation it demands are a lengthy grind. Perhaps he was having a laugh. Perhaps he was trying to write history, orchestrating, at worst, a transfer of the mantle to a new wunderkind. Or perhaps Carlsen is truly happy with his achievements, content with life beyond chess.

Whatever the reason, he is not like other chess players. We are miserable, Anish Giri, a top player, told Chess.com, referring to mere mortal grand masters. Carlsen is beyond that.

With the title now vacant, Russian Nepomniachtchi will play Ding of China for the top ranking.

No one but Carlsen knew if Carlsen would play, and that uncertainty hung over the Candidates and its toiling miserables like a noxious fog. In a sense, it was unclear what they were all playing for. What good is winning the Candidates if the champion then simply steps aside, like a matador dodges a bull? By rule, if the reigning champion declines to defend his crown, the first- and second-place Candidates play for the world title.

There are metapolitics governing chess politics. The world championship and the Candidates fall under the auspices of Fide (pronounced fee-day), chesss international governing body. For more than two decades, until 2018, Fide was run by a Russian named Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the former president of the Republic of Kalmykia. Ilyumzhinov is on record saying hes been abducted by aliens and that chess is a gift from extraterrestrial civilisations. He was sanctioned by the US in 2015 and barred from entering the country for his financial support of Bashar al-Assads regime in Syria.

Nowadays, Fide is run by a Russian named Arkady Dvorkovich, a former deputy prime minister who chaired the organising committee for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. About the war, Dvorkovich told Mother Jones magazine, My thoughts are with Ukrainian civilians. He was later quoted in Russian media saying that the main thing is that a solid peace and a more just order will finally be established on our planet, where theres no place for Nazism or the domination of some countries over others, apparently adopting the Putin line that Ukraine needed to be denazified.

When asked by chess24.com, a popular news site, if he was close with the Kremlin regime, he said, I was before 2018, but not after that. I can call, but I dont use it.

Chess has long been a proud Russian national sport, right up there with ice hockey, ballet and novel writing. Soviet players dominated the game in the 20th century, comprising a string of world champions interrupted only briefly by American Bobby Fischer at the height of the Cold War in 1972.

But while one Russian was leading the Candidates, another famous Russian was missing from Madrid. Sergey Karjakin, who challenged Carlsen in 2016, was banned from chess for six months for his public support of Russias invasion into Ukraine. A Fide disciplinary commission found that his statements damage the reputation of the game of chess...The likelihood that these statements will damage the reputation of Sergey Karjakin personally is also considerable. His absence opened a spot for Ding, the Chinese world No. 2.

There will be a Fide presidential election this month. Ukrainian-born Andrey Baryshpolets is running on a ticket with Carlsens coach, Peter Heine Nielsen, a Danish grand master. Baryshpolets circulated a petition arguing that the Russian Federation has been using Fide as a soft power to whiten its reputation. It continues to do so amid its military aggression against Ukraine.

The world championship is slated for early next year. No dates or host city have yet been announced.

Only one woman, Judit Polgar, has ever played in the Candidates, most recently in 2007.Getty

Most spectators at the Candidates never see the players playing chess, at least not in person. So sensitive are the players to distraction, and so demanding of attention is their game, that they play in a sort of quarantine. The venue proved an effective barrier against all rumblings of the world outside; neither the NATO summit nor the war beyond were hot topics. The hallways leading to their sanctum were always closely guarded, and signs lining the corridors ordered silencio.

Nevertheless, devotees streamed into the palace, up the gilded stairway and through stately rooms. The commercial advertising on display spoke to a transformed game from stodgy old pastime to rising e-sport and grist for the content mill.

At a ChessKid booth, staffers were discussing outreach efforts to mommy bloggers. Chessable was hawking its online education service, which includes a $US250 ($358) video course on the intricacies of the Spanish Game. Anna Cramling, a 20-year-old internet personality with grand master parents and 217,000 followers on Twitch, was livestreaming, walking backwards to face her cameraman.

I was extended an invitation into the inner sanctum where the games are played by a Fide official. I was asked to put my phone in a lockbox before passing through a heavy curtain and a glass door. The room was surprisingly small and sparsely populated only the players, me and my Fide minder, and a couple of arbiters from Fide, immaculately suited.

On the arbiters table sat a thick stack of scoresheets, on which the players write down every move played using something called algebraic notation, and a pile of spare chess clocks. Time was ample but strictly controlled. Candidates get two hours for their first 40 moves, an hour for the next 20 and 15 minutes and 30 seconds a move for anything after that.

The room was deathly quiet, only the hum of air-conditioning and the occasional creak of very old floor. (Id already been scolded for taking a work call two floors above the playing room. At some tournaments, players sit in a soundproof glass cage.) And it was incredibly bright; a metal lattice on the ceiling supported many powerful lights. They illuminated the subtly high-tech chessboards and pieces, with electronic sensors embedded inside, which broadcast their positions live to the world.

A large black backdrop had been installed behind the four players tables, covering what appeared to be a bucolic hunting mural. It displayed the tournaments sponsors, most prominently Chess.com, El Pas and Scheinberg Family, the last of which includes the billionaire founders of PokerStars, an online card room.

Chess.com, a news site that also hosts online games, wielded an outsize influence over the proceedings, dominating the press corps, producing broadcasts on site and conducting official post-game interviews. (Many pizzas were delivered to the pressroom one afternoon; while helping myself to a slice I was told, curtly, Thats Chess.coms.)

The players came in a bold palette of dress-shirt hues, blues, purples, pinks. (Only one woman, Judit Polgar, has ever played in the Candidates, most recently in 2007.) They sat in high-back (very high-back) office chairs which were the butt of many jokes at the tournament.

The players arent constrained to their chairs; they can wander around, observe each others games, grab snacks, use the toilet. This wandering happens often, and its not uncommon for neither player to be sitting at a given game. With blazers hung on the backs of the tall chairs, this sometimes gave the impression of a match taking place between two invisible competitors.

In a dim, private side room, suitable for breaks and nervous pacing, a TV displayed the live positions of the games. Players would wander in, becoming illuminated solely by the blue glow of their own chess.

Placards were affixed to each table with players Elo ratings a statistical calculation quantifying a players strength (Caruana = 2783, Nepomniachtchi = 2766) and their national flags, except for Nepomniachtchi, who played under the generic Fide flag. (Its motto: Gens una sumus, we are one people.)

The grand masters moved their pieces with the nimble and elegant motions of a concert pianist. And while they could easily play their games blindfolded, chess positions being like language to them, their eyes darted around the board like a hawks at altitude. Occasionally, they closed their eyes, searching, it seems, for a higher dimension of thought. There is also a near-universal tendency to fiddle with captured pieces.

After a few minutes, my Fide minder left the room, leaving me alone with the Candidates. I stayed for another half-hour, staring at the pieces and the players. Occasionally, they stared back at me. It was an uncomfortably zoological experience.

Worse, as the players got stuck deep into complex middlegames and endgames, clinging to positional edges and pawns like a free-solo climber clings to a ledge, their clocks ticking and tournament lives on the line, it was like watching people being tortured.

Much of the action in the room was inscrutable, though the temptation to engage in pseudo-scientific body-language analysis was strong.

It seemed easy to tell how Caruana was playing. When things were going well, he perched above the board, perfectly still and alert. When they werent, he fidgeted, shifting from perch to perch. This day, Caruana was shifting. Nepomniachtchi, meanwhile, was unflappable, both in chess performance and demeanour. Im just trying to keep my head calm and not let any emotions drive me, hed said before the game. Im just trying to do my job, more or less.

Ding Liren, the greatest player in the history of China, left, faces Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi last year.

The octet of Candidates had been preparing for six months or more. As well as the glory, there is healthy prize money: 48,000 ($71,000) for first place, 36,000 for second, 24,000 for third and 3500 for every half-point scored. They hired coaches and seconds, chesss aides-de-camp who sharpen their strategic lances and make sure arrows are stocked in their tactical quivers. They withdrew to secluded locations with their teams and their laptops, running their engines on high-powered clusters in the cloud.

After this arms race, the Candidates is a war of attrition and, as the tournament wore on, the fatigue became obvious and mistakes more common. Rapport was asked how a previous game had gone. I dont know, he said. I dont really care any more. He was half-joking at most.

The prospect of playing elite chess, a game with far more possible positions than there are atoms in the universe, is daunting at best, especially doing so every day for weeks.

For, how should I say, normal people, its not so easy, said Radjabov after a particularly grinding game. Hed briefly delayed the press conference to check a tricky position from the game on his phone.

The American Caruana had already started showing cracks. After a promising first half in which hed won three games out of seven with no losses, hed dropped two games out of the next three.

In round 11, Caruana and Ding opened in the Spanish Game, working their way through its subspecies, the Morphy Defence, the Closed Ruy Lopez and the Anti-Marshall. (Chess players, like taxonomists, love to name things.) Caruana resigned after more than six hours of play.

Meanwhile, the Russian was running away. After Caruanas loss, Nepomniachtchi had opened a yawning 1.5-point lead over the field with three rounds to go. He quickly consolidated this edge the next day, securing a draw in a famous line in the Spanish Game against Nakamura that lasted about only eight minutes, making for a very short day at the office.

Sergey Karjakin was banned from chess for six months for his public support of Russias invasion into Ukraine.

Nepomniachtchi won the Candidates Tournament with a round to spare; he wouldnt lose a single game. For the first time, as Nepomniachtchi emerged from the sanctum and walked down the hall, the auditorium filled with applause. He smiled and clutched his hands to his chest in thanks. I dont feel anything, Nepomniachtchi said. I feel like Im extremely tired. Its an insanely difficult tournament. He was asked if he had anything to say to Carlsen. He made an obscure reference to chess positions and said nothing else on the matter.

Last year, Nepomniachtchi failed spectacularly in the world championship in Dubai, blundering repeatedly to hand the title to Carlsen for continued caretaking. But he exhibited none of those careless tendencies in Madrid. If Nepomniachtchi were to win the world championship, hed join other great Russians Vasily Smyslov, Boris Spassky and Garry Kasparov who won first world titles on second attempts.

Chess, like every other sport, has been navigating its way through the war in Ukraine. Wimbledon, which was running concurrent with the Candidates, had banned all Russian players. In March, Nepomniachtchi signed an open letter with some other Russian chess notables: We oppose military actions on the territory of Ukraine and call for an early ceasefire and a peaceful solution to the conflict through dialogue and diplomatic negotiations.

Shortly after the Candidates, Karjakin, the banned Russian, doubled down on his pro-war stance, writing on Telegram to shed light on the vicissitudes of Russian chess. He lambasted the anti-Russian views of those, like Nepomniachtchi, who opposed what Karjakin called the special operation. He dismissed the open letter as Nepomniachtchis ticket to western events... Nepomniachtchis victory shouldnt mislead anyone. Russian professional chess has been in decline lately.

Nakamura suspected that world champ Carlsen and his bluster were full of, um, baloney; lets put it that way. He added, Hes done a bit of trolling, as well. In what certainly seemed like an act of trolling, Carlsen turned up in Madrid towards the end of the Candidates. He took on all comers in speed chess on a sweltering afternoon in El Retiro Park. Then he was gone, headed to Las Vegas to play in the World Series of Poker, where he busted out on the first day.

While in Madrid, Carlsen met Dvorkovich, the Fide president, El Pas reported, and agreed to play, if the world championship format was changed. Carlsen has long called for alterations to the championship match, to include faster games alongside the slower, classical ones. That would move the match-ups closer to the modern game as it is played online and lessen players dependence on The Machine and their memorising of its lessons. In response to a report suggesting he might play, Carlsen tweeted: Fake news.

On July 20, on a podcast for his sponsor, Unibet, Carlsen announced, apparently for real this time, that he was out. I am not motivated to play another match, he said. I simply feel that I dont have a lot to gain, I dont particularly like it, and although Im sure a match would be interesting for historical reasons and all of that, I dont have any inclination to play and I will simply not play the match.

Only two previous world champions did not defend their titles: Alexander Alekhine, because he died, and Bobby Fischer, who disappeared from public life.

I watched the final games from the pressroom in a forgotten high corner of the palace. I noticed that an extra chair, the exact high-back model the Candidates had been sitting in, was stashed there. Before I left, I took a seat.

I imagined what it might be like to be a grand master, to manipulate the positions of little wooden statues just so for money and glory, to fire up this particle accelerator in search of new discoveries, to speak an ancient game like a mother tongue. I leaned back and thought it all remarkably comfortable. I closed my eyes.

Financial Times

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Inside the most important chess tournament in the world - The Australian Financial Review

Go! Guide Aug. 4 – The Republic

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Kids and teens

BARTHOLOMEW COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY, 536 Fifth St., Columbus. Scheduled: First Day of School Ice Cream Party!, 3:30 p.m., Aug. 4; French Storytime, 4 p.m., Aug. 4; American Sign Language chat/practice, 5:30 p.m., Aug. 4, 11, 18, 25 and 1:30 p.m., Aug. 5, 12, 19, 26; Teen Games, 3:30 p.m., Aug. 5; Teen Trivia: Mario Edition, 3:30 p.m., Aug. 8; Storytime, 6 p.m., Aug. 8, 22, 29; Toddler Time, 10 a.m., Aug. 9, 16, 23, 30; Kids Yoga, 10:30 a.m., Aug. 9; Storytime, 11 a.m., Aug. 9, 16, 23, 30; Patio Playdate, 11:30 a.m., Aug. 9, 16, 23, 30; Teen STEAM: Geocaching, 3:30 p.m., Aug. 9; Storytime and Playdate with the Historical Society, 11 a.m., Aug. 10; Watch-It Wednesday, 3:30 p.m., Aug. 10, 17, 24, 31; Library Babies, 10 a.m., Aug. 11, 18, 25; Storytime: Ages 1-5, 1 p.m., Aug. 11, 18, 25; Thursgame: Life-Size Clue, 3:30 p.m., Aug. 11; Teen Pizza Party Society, 3 p.m., Aug. 13; Teen Pro Gamer, 3:30 p.m., Aug. 15; Family STEAM Night, 6 p.m., Aug. 15; Teen STEAM: LEGO Bridge Competition, 4 p.m., Aug. 16; Whatever the Weather Storytime and Playdate, 10 a.m., Aug. 17, 24, 31; Teen One-Shot RPG: Marvel Multiverse, 3:30 p.m., Aug. 18; Teen DIY: Triangles on Canvas, 3:30 p.m., Aug. 19; Zine Workshop, 1 p.m., Aug. 20; Kids Yoga, 3:30 p.m., Aug. 22; Teen Games at Hope, 3 p.m., Aug. 23; Teen STEAM: Natures Notebook, 4 p.m., Aug. 23; Teen Dungeons and Dragons, 4 p.m., Aug. 25; Teen Stuffed Fables, 3:30 p.m., Aug. 26; Origami Workshop, 4 p.m., Aug. 26; Teen DIY: Triangles on Canvas, 2 p.m., Aug. 27; Builders Guild Jr., 3:30 p.m., Aug. 29; Block OClock, 3:30 p.m., Aug. 29; Teen Anime Club, 3:30 p.m., Aug. 29; Teen DIY at Hope: Triangles on Canvas, 3 p.m., Aug. 30; Teen STEAM: Digital Music Production, 4 p.m., Aug. 30.

Music and theater

AN OPRY TRIBUTE MUSIC SHOW, 5:30 p.m., Aug. 19, 20, 26, 27, 12:30 p.m., Aug. 21, Willow Leaves of Hope, 326 Jackson St., Hope. The show includes impersonations of Pasty Cline, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette, Billy Joel, The Judds, Tanya Tucker, K.T. Oslin & more (Minnie Pearl will be there). Cost is $35 per person (dinner, dessert, & show). Doors open 5:30 p.m., dinner 6 p.m., and show 7 p.m. Sunday-doors open 12:30 p.m., dinner 1 p.m., and show 2 p.m. For reservations, call 812-341-7251

THE GHOST ROSES, 6 to 7 p.m., Aug. 20, Bartholomew County Public Library, 536 Fifth St., Columbus. Join us on the Library Plaza for a concert by The Ghost Roses. Bring your own chairs. This event can also be viewed live at facebook.com/mybcpl.

STELLAR SUMMER NIGHTS, 6 p.m., Aug. 26, Stellar Plaza, downtown North Vernon. Live music, entertainment and more sponsored by North Vernon Main Street. Free and open to the public.

SOUTHERN INDIANA TAIKO, 6 to 7 p.m., Aug. 26, Bartholomew County Public Library, 536 Fifth St., Columbus. Join us on the Library Plaza for a concert by Southern Indiana Taiko. Bring your own chairs. This event can also be viewed live at facebook.com/mybcpl. Rain puts this event in the Red Room.

Educational

FOUNDERS FRIDAYS, 8 to 9 a.m., Fridays through Aug. 29, Lucabe Coffee Co., 310 4th St., Columbus. Each week, one business founder shares the ups and downs of his or her entrepreneurial journey. The free event is held in the meeting room at Lucabe Coffee Co. Coffee will be provided. The event is open to the public. Participants enjoy the opportunity for questions and answers from the areas leading innovators in a relaxed environment.

DINING WITH DIABETES, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., Aug. 9, 16, 23, 30, Mill Race Center, 900 Lindsey St., Columbus and 6 to 8 p.m., Second Baptist Church, 1325 10th St., Columbus. Do you have diabetes? Want to make the best choices for your health? Adults with type 2 diabetes (or who are at risk) are invited to participate. Family members, caregivers, and support persons, too. A set of four Tuesdays plus a three-month follow-up, are all offered at two different times. Cost is $15 per person or $20 per couple. Registration is available at cvent.me/gnO17V through Aug. 5. Call the Purdue Extension Office-Bartholomew County to receive more information, 812-379-1665, or email Harriet Armstrong at [emailprotected]

Sports, exercise, wellness

BEGINNER PICKLEBALL CLINIC, 5:30 to 7 p.m., Aug. 18, 25, Sept. 1, Richards Elementary tennis courts, Par 3 Drive, Columbus. The three-week clinic for those 18 and older will introduce the fundamentals of the game. Clinic is $45/person. Equipment will be provided. Please wear court shoes & comfortable clothing, bring plenty of water and/or sports drink, sun protection (hat, sun glasses, & sun screen), bug spray, and a camping chair to rest at breaks. Pre-registration required. To register or for more information, visit columbusparksandrec.com or call 812-376-2680.

BLACKWELL PARK STORYWALK, Blackwell Park, 1550 Whitney Court, Columbus. Enjoy some fresh air while strolling the Bartholomew County Public Librarys StoryWalk. Together with the Columbus Parks and Recreation Department, the library is excited to bring you Isabel and Her Colores Go to School by Alexandra Alessandri in August. The StoryWalk is located along the People Trail near the Pollinator Park in Blackwell Park.

LEARN TO PLAY HOCKEY, 4:15 to 5:15 p.m., most Saturdays through Oct. 1, Hamilton Community Center and Ice Arena, 2501 Lincoln Park Dr., Columbus. A noncompetitive environment in which children ages 4 to 10 can learn the basic skills of hockey without distractions that are often associated with an overemphasis on winning. Free equipment is available to use. Cost is $5 per child. Arrive 30 minutes early to get fitted for equipment.

GIRLS HOCKEY, 6 to 7 p.m., Mondays through Oct. 10, Hamilton Community Center and Ice Arena, 2501 Lincoln Park Dr., Columbus. Are you a girl interested in hockey? Come join us for a girls-only hockey class and learn the fundamentals and basic skills of hockey. For ages 7-16. $10 drop in fee.

SWIMMING FOR EXERCISE, Foundation for Youth, 405 Hope Ave., Columbus. Lap swimming, water aerobics and public swim are available. You must preregister for current swim sessions. Information: foundationforyouth.com.

Seasonal

COLUMBUS FARMERS MARKET, 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Saturdays through Sept. 17, south of Columbus City Hall, 123 Washington St., Columbus. The market averages more than 100 full- and part-time vendors offering a range of plants, made-to-order food, lotions/soaps, coffee, honey, crafts, meats, eggs, baked goods, produce and more! More details can be found at columbusfarmersmarket.org or follow on Facebook for weekly entertainment updates.

JENNINGS COUNTY FARMERS MARKET, 8 a.m.-noon, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays through mid-October, North Vernon City Park, 604 N. State St. More information is available on the Jennings County Farmers Market Facebook page.

Miscellaneous

BARTHOLOMEW COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY, 536 Fifth St., Columbus. Scheduled: Drawing as Seeing, 9:30 a.m., Aug. 4, 11, 18, 25; American Sign Language Chat/Practice, 5:30 p.m., Aug. 4, 11, 18, 25; and 1:30 p.m., Aug. 5, 12, 19, 26; Dementia Friends Information Session, 2 p.m., Aug. 5; Cbus Chess Crew, 2 p.m., Aug. 6, 20; Bartholomew County Writers Group, 6 p.m., Aug. 11; Remembering Hartsville College, 6 p.m., Aug. 11; New Adult Game Night: Stuffed Fables, 5 p.m., Aug. 15; Columbus Viewfinders, 6 p.m., Aug. 15; Zine Workshop, 1 p.m., Aug. 20; Adults Reading YA Book Club: Historical Fiction, 6 p.m., Aug. 22; All Bookd Book Club, 5:30 p.m., Aug. 30; Digital Civics Using Congress.gov, 5:30 p.m., Aug. 31.

BLUE AND WHITE NIGHT, 4 to 9:30 p.m., Aug. 6, Columbus North, 1400 25th St., Columbus. Blue and White Night is the annual athletic kickoff for Columbus North athletics. This years main attraction is the Dog Bowl, where athletes from all sports and seasons will compete in field-day-style events. Come out, cheer on your favorite teams, grab a delicious smoked pork BBQ dinner, enjoy games and prizes, and gear up for the season with official swag!

ELKS LODGE BINGO, 6:30 p.m. Fridays and 12:30 p.m. Sundays, Elks 521 Lodge Bingo Hall, 4664 Ray Boll Blvd., Columbus. Doors open at 5 p.m. on Friday and 11 a.m. on Sunday. The first game is at 6:30 p.m. on Friday and 12:30 p.m. on Sunday. Open to the public. Information: 812-379-4386.

VFW POST 1987 BINGO, 215 N. National Road, Columbus. Mondays and Wednesdays from 5 to 9:30 p.m. (doors open at 5 p.m.), Aug. 13 and the second Saturday of each month from 2 to 6 p.m. (doors open at noon). Open to the public.

AMERICAN LEGION BINGO & KARAOKE, American Legion Post 25, 2515 25th St., Columbus. Bingo is on Tuesdays starting at 6 p.m. Karaoke is on Wednesdays starting at 6 p.m.

COLUMBUS CHESS CLUB, 5 to 9 p.m., Thursdays, Lewellen Chapel, corner of Middle Road and Grissom Street, Columbus. Equipment is furnished. Open to chess players 16 and older. Information: 812-603-3893.

COLUMBUS AREA RAILROAD CLUB OPEN HOUSE, noon to 4 p.m. Aug. 20 and the third Saturday of each month. Trains will be operating layouts in four scales HO, N, O, and On30. The club is located at the Johnson County Park headquarters building adjacent to Camp Atterbury. Information: Greg Harter, 812-350-8636, columbusarearailroadclub.com, or on Facebook at Columbus Area Railroad Club.

AMERICAN SEWING GUILD NEIGHBORHOOD MEETING, 9 to 11:30 a.m., Aug. 6 and the first Saturday of each month, Bartholomew County REMC, 1697 W. Deaver Road, Columbus. Each monthly meeting focuses on learning a new sewing/creative skill or group sewing on a philanthropic project. Sewing enthusiasts of all ages and skills are welcome. Contact Marilyn at [emailprotected] with questions.

GRACES TABLE DRIVE-IN FREE MEAL, 5 p.m., Aug. 14 and the second Sunday of each month, East Columbus United Methodist Church, 2439 Indiana Ave., Columbus. Drive-in free meal as well as music and storytelling. Enter the church parking lot on Indiana Avenue. Tables are available for walk-ups.

Galleries, museums, exhibits

BARTHOLOMEW COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 524 Third St., Columbus. The museum is open Tuesday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. BCHS hosts two permanent exhibits that share the history and heritage of Bartholomew County. Learn about our county through interactive, hands-on exhibits that include a map table, notable people, county timeline, Then and Now, Did You Know, early industrialists and videos of Reeves steam engines. The historical society also hosts rotating exhibits throughout the year featuring items from their extensive collection. Information: 812-372-3541, bartholomewhistory.org.

GALLERY 506, Columbus Indiana Visitors Center, 506 Fifth St., Columbus. Open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

YELLOW TRAIL MUSEUM/VISITOR CENTER, west side of Hope Town Square, 644 Main St., Hope. The museum is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1 to 5 p.m. and Saturdays from Noon to 4 p.m. or by appointment. Cruise-ins will be on Friday, Aug. 5 and Sept. 2. The Research Center is open on Monday and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to noon or by appointment. Contact the museum at 812-546-8020. Follow the Facebook page Yellow Trail Museum/Hope Visitors Center for updated information.

ATTERBURY-BAKALAR AIR MUSEUM, located at Columbus Municipal Airport, 4742 Ray Boll Blvd., Columbus, is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Special tours may be scheduled by calling 812-372-4356. The museum preserves the history of the former Atterbury Army Air Field, later named Bakalar Air Force Base. Free admission. Visit the museum online at atterburybakalarairmuseum.org and on Facebook.

T.C. STEELE STATE HISTORIC SITE, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday, 4220 T.C. Steele Road, Nashville. Staff is offering special indoor tours each with a limited number of people. Tours are included with site admission, but preregistration is recommended by calling 812-988-2785. Information: indianamuseum.org/tcsteele.

TRI-STATE ARTISANS, 422 Washington St., Columbus. Handmade retail gallery of more than 60 local artisans. Unique gifts, fine art, art classes for youth and adults, youth art programs, art parties and home parties. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays. Information: tsartisans.com.

JENNINGS COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY AND MUSEUM, 335 Brown St., Vernon. Museum hours are Wednesday through Friday from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. or by appointment. Information: 812-346-8989, jenningscounty.org.

BROWN COUNTY ART GUILD, 48 S. Van Buren St., Nashville. Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and noon to 4 p.m. Sundays.

THE REPUBLIC BUILDING GALLERY, 333 Second St., Columbus. The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

411 GALLERY, 411 Sixth St., Columbus, noon-4 p.m. Fridays or by appointment. 411 is a community arts gallery and cultural space for exhibitions, events and collaborations with Columbus arts and cultural organizations. Learn more about the current exhibition and artists at artsincolumbus.org/411.

HOOSIER ARTIST GALLERY, 45 S. Jefferson St., Nashville. Hoosier Artist Gallery is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Masks are required. Information: hoosierartist.com.

BROWN COUNTY ART GALLERY, 1 Artist Drive, Nashville. Open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. COVID-19 protocols are in place, with masks required. Information: 812-988-4609, [emailprotected], browncountyartgallery.org.

CHARLENE MARSH STUDIO & GALLERY, 4013 Lanam Ridge Road, Nashville. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Mondays, noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. For more information, please call the studio/gallery at 812-988-4497 or visit charlenemarshstudio.com.

Ongoing

FABULOUS FIRST FRIDAYS WITH MISS POLLY, 12:15 p.m. Aug. 5 and the first Friday of each month. Viewpoint Books, 548 Washington St., Columbus. Information: 812-376-0778.

FOUNDATION FOR YOUTH BOYS & GIRLS CLUB, 405 Hope Ave., Columbus. The Boys & Girls Club is open to children ages 5-18. Information: 812-372-7867.

KIDSCOMMONS, 309 Washington St., Columbus. Ongoing activities are all free with museum admission. Information: 812-378-3046.

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Go! Guide Aug. 4 - The Republic

SpaceX’s Starlink has soared, but a course correction may be on the horizon – Fast Company

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The servicewhich advertises download speeds of 50 to 200 Mbps and uploads of 10 to 20 Mbps, and touts its absence of data capswas nearing 500,000 users worldwide in June, per a presentation that CEO Musk shared on Twitter. Among the more inspiring users: Ukrainians defending their country from Russian invaders, and rural Americans who would otherwise be bereft of broadband.

Its honestly life-changing for people like my family, emails Christina Deese, a work-from-home office manager in Cusseta, Georgia, who had previously limped along with slower broadband from a geostationary satellite that had more stringent data caps. I can now video conference with my team, my supervisors and participate in company remote functions, which I had to pass on before.

But Starlink has also seemed to struggle with demand since exiting its public beta test. Users have spent months waiting for receiver hardware to ship and reported performance slowdowns. Meanwhile, Starlink has hiked pricesin March, raising its monthly rate from $99 to $110 and bumping its hardware charge from $499 to $599also, moved to diversify its business by lining up a more lucrative customer base.

But while such clients as airlines and cruise lines may do more to cover capital costs in the billions of dollars, they also complicate SpaceXs math as it tries to balance demand with satellite capacity. Which may lead to even more rural would-be customers waiting for a Starlink box to arrive.

Deese, for example, put down a $99 deposit for Starlink in June of 2021 but did not have a Starlink kit shipped until February.

Jack Mangold, a retiree in Collettsville, North Carolina, waited even longer, having placed an order in February of 2021 that shipped this past April. He says service has been reliable but not particularly fast, writing in an email that hes only getting 25 to 50 Mbps downloads.

It can be all over the place if I test several times a day, Mangold said.

That, however, still represents a major improvement over his previous connectivity: an antiquated digital-subscriber-line service from AT&T.

In June, the network-measurement firm Ooklas Speedtest app showed that Starlinks median U.S. downloads in the first quarter of 2022 hit 90.55 Mbpsa big increase from a year ago, when Starlink downloads sat at 65.72 Mbps, but a drop from the prior quarters 104.97 Mbps. (SpaceX did not return an emailed request for comment.)

Ookla also found Starlink offered faster downloads in every other country tested, topping out at 160.08 Mbps in Lithuania. The likeliest explanation: Demand in the U.S. is outpacing demand in other countries. Its that constant race between capacity and consumption, says analyst Roger Entner, founder of Recon Analytics.

Consistency at any one location can be an issue too: The Starlink connection must be handed off from one satellite to another, and nearby obstacles can block the signals. For example, Deese says tree foliage can sometimes interrupt the connection for several seconds.

Peggy Schaffer, executive director of the ConnectMaine Authority, says Starlink users in her state often need a backup connection, such as a smartphones mobile-hotspot function.

Schaffer adds that some rural Mainers have reported an extra complication: The equipment uses more power than most off-the-grid homes with solar can manage.

With all of these obstacles to adoption in mindand with last years infrastructure law providing some $42 billion in federal funds to build out wired broadbandindustry analysts dont expect Starlink to do more than fill in gaps in coverage. For example, the market-research firm GlobalData predicts that low-Earth-orbit satellite broadband wont exceed 1% of the U.S. residential market through 2027, with fiber-optic broadband taking the biggest bite out of cables market share.

But while Starlinks most enthusiastic early adopters could resent that forecast, Musk himself might not. He has stayed uncharacteristically conservative about Starlinks possible reach, saying in June of 2021 that its really meant for sparsely populated regions.

Starlinks recent move to start selling service to recreational vehicles at much higher pricesand without a wait for hardware to shiprisks embittering the customers who need Starlink the most.

They threw a wrench in their whole effort, Entner commented, adding this option is open to queue jumping by people placing orders for Starlink RV service who dont own RVs.

In a June filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) urging the agency to deny Starlinks bid to offer service to moving vehicles, ships, and aircraft, Harold Felt, senior vice president of the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge, griped thatSpaceX has decided to give customers in rural America a back seat to gamers on mountain tops and luxury RVs.

The FCC granted Starlinks request for mobile service anyway, leading to the companys announcement of a $5,000/month maritime service for large boats. Its also signed up Hawaiian Airlines and the small regional-jet carrier JSX to start using Starlink for inflight Wi-Fi, which each airline says will be free to use.

In order to build out its constellation, it seems clear that SpaceX will need multiple revenue streams to cover costs that, according to Musks own prediction, could hit $30 billion. SpaceXs current FCC authorization allows a first-generation deployment of 4,408 satellites, but an August 2021 FCC filing envisages a second-generation system of 29,988 satellites.

That volume of satellites raises concerns over orbital congestion and interference with Earth-based astronomy, but it will also require a bigger rocket: SpaceXs not-yet-flown Starship. That two-stage, fully reusable transport could deploy many more Starlinks per launch than the 60 its Falcon 9 can deliver today.

Falcon 9 isnt going to do it, says Marco Cceres, an analyst with the Teal Group.

SpaceX also needs Starship to loft its version 2.0 Starlink satellites (larger, heavier and higher-capacity successors to the current model).

We need Starship to work and to fly frequently, or Starlink 2 will be stuck on the ground, Musk told Everyday Astronaut host Tim Dodd in a May YouTube interview in which he called those next-gen satellites much more capable.

Unlike those other providers, SpaceX builds its own rockets. And its boss has a motivation beyond money to make them work.

Ultimately, his goal is to get Starlink up, but the bigger goal is to colonize Mars, says Cceres. And for that, he needs Starship.

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SpaceX's Starlink has soared, but a course correction may be on the horizon - Fast Company

Updates: Watch as SpaceX launches a South Korean mission to the moon from Florida – Florida Today

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Space is important to us and that's why we're working to bring you top coverage of the industry and Florida launches. Journalism like this takes time and resources.Please support it with a subscription here.

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Update: Liftoff! SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 at 7:08 p.m. ET from Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station carrying a satellite to lunar orbit for South Korea. Read our full post-launch story here.

Watch live above and see real-time updates below as SpaceX targets 7:08p.m. ET Thursday, August4, for the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida forSouth Korea's first lunar mission.

After liftoff, the Falcon 9 will fly an easterntrajectory with the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, or KPLO,a satellite designed to orbit the moon with a suite of South Korean experiments and one U.S.-built instrument,according to NASA.

The Falcon 9 first stage willtarget a drone ship landing in the Atlantic Ocean about nine minutes after liftoff.

Best tweets, photos from social: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch, South Korea's first lunar mission

Thismarks SpaceX's first launch of August and the company's34thoverall mission of the year. Following this morning's successful sunrise liftoff of aUnited Launch Alliance Atlas V for the U.S. Space Force, it will also be the 34th overall launch to take place from Florida'sSpace Coast this year.

If successful this evening it will bethe quickest turnaround between rocket launches from the Space Coast sinceJames Lovell and Buzz Aldrin's Gemini 12mission lifted off on November 11, 1966, just 90 minutes after the launch of theAgena Target Vehicle.

Should SpaceX be unable to launch this evening there is a backup opportunityavailable about 24 hours later on Friday, August 5 at7:00 p.m. ET.

See real-time updates and ask questions below (give the module a few seconds to load; if it doesn't work,try thislink):

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Updates: Watch as SpaceX launches a South Korean mission to the moon from Florida - Florida Today

Intel has 500 bugs to fix in its next supercomputer chips – Digital Trends

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What do Intel and the U.S. federal government have in common? Neither of them has a supercomputer. And thats because Intels ability to build a 4th generation Xeon Sapphire Rapids super processor keeps getting set back, most recently when it was revealed the chip had 500 bugs the company needed to fix.

The Sapphire Rapids chips have been delayed several times over the past two years with no reasons given. Then, last week, computing watchdog site Igors Lab revealed Intel was working on 500 bugs that required 12 steppings to fix them. Ouch.

The Sapphire Rapids processor increases core count to 60 and brings Advanced Matrix Extensions (AME), Data Streaming Acceleration (DSA), and HBM2E memory support. Put mildly, the chip is a next-generation monster of a processor designed to work with so-called supercomputers.

But 500 bugs requiring 12 steppings is a monster of a project to fix. Steppings are a system used by Intel to identify the changes to a unit. They consist of a letter and a number, such as A2. A number change means a minor fix or adjustment was made, while a letter change means an extensive design overhaul was made. The Sapphire Rapids bugs require three letter changes and nine number changes.

Intels scalable data center CPU has been in the works for several years as part of a large contract with the United States Department of Energy (DoE) to build the Aurora supercomputer, a massive data center able to handle the governments vast computing needs without the need for third-party cloud vendors, such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. The government unveiled contracts for three supercomputers in 2019.

Two of them are hybrid computers built by AMD and HP. The Aurora is the only fully Intel-built computer in the contract. None of them are operational yet, although the AMD/HP computers have been built and are going through testing. Its the Intel-only Aurora that is holding the project back.

These Intel chips were due in the first quarter of this year after one and a half years of setbacks. It now looks as if the US government will have to wait a lot longer.

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Intel has 500 bugs to fix in its next supercomputer chips - Digital Trends

New supercomputer has predicted 2.7% chance between Liverpool and City for the PL title – Yardbarker

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Liverpool have been backed to pip Manchester City to the Premier League title ahead of the 2022/23 campaign.

This update comes from Optas predictor modelon Twitter, with the Reds having a 49.7% chance of snatching the top-flight crown away from the current incumbents who have been given a 47% chance of retaining it.

The Merseysiders came achingly close to completing a domestic treble but fell short of the league title by a point as a resurgent Sky Blues outfit completed a terrific comeback against Steven Gerrards Aston Villa on the final day of the season.

Though the use of data in football has unquestionably become more commonplace, one always has to take season predictors with a pinch of salt.

You can vaguely assume that ourselves and Pep Guardiolas men will be at the top of the pile albeit, perhaps a little less clear of the chasing pack behind following good windows for the likes of Tottenham and Co. though with such fine margins separating the two, the race could come down to injuries, silly draws or having key men at home during the winter period whilst the World Cup is on.

After what was an emotionally as well as physically draining campaign for Mo Salah in particular, the potentially positive impact of a second pre-season period, as Jurgen Klopp would refer to it, cant be discounted in what will most likely be another closely fought title race.

#Ep56 of The Empire of the Kop Podcast: Nunez silences critics! Firmino to start v Man City? & more!

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New supercomputer has predicted 2.7% chance between Liverpool and City for the PL title - Yardbarker

Taiwan dominates the worlds supply of computer chips no wonder the US is worried – The Conversation Indonesia

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One aspect of Nancy Pelosis trip to Taiwan that has been largely overlooked is her meeting with Mark Lui, chairman of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC). Pelosis trip coincided with US efforts to convince TSMC the worlds largest chip manufacturer, on which the US is heavily dependent to establish a manufacturing base in the US and to stop making advanced chips for Chinese companies.

US support for Taiwan has historically been based on Washingtons opposition to communist rule in Beijing, and Taiwans resistance to absorption by China. But in recent years, Taiwans autonomy has become a vital geopolitical interest for the US because of the islands dominance of the semiconductor manufacturing market.

Semiconductors also known as computer chips or just chips are integral to all the networked devices that have become embedded into our lives. They also have advanced military applications.

Transformational, super-fast 5G internet emerged is enabling a world of connected devices of every kind (the Internet of Things) and a new generation of networked weapons. With this in mind, US officials began to realise during the Trump administration that US semiconductor design companies, such as Intel, were heavily dependent on Asian-based supply chains for the manufacturing of their products.

In particular, Taiwans position in the world of semiconductor manufacturing is a bit like Saudi Arabias status in OPEC. TSMC has a 53% market share of the global foundry market (factories contracted to make chips designed in other countries). Other Taiwan-based manufacturers claim a further 10% of the market.

As a result, the Biden administrations 100-Day Supply Chain Review Report says, The United States is heavily dependent on a single company TSMC for producing its leading-edge chips. The fact that only TSMC and Samsung (South Korea) can make the most advanced semiconductors (known as five nanometres) puts at risk the ability to supply current and future [US] national security and critical infrastructure needs .

This means that Chinas long-term goal of reunifying with Taiwan is now more threatening to US interests. In the 1971 Shanghai Communique and the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, the US recognised that people in both mainland China and Taiwan believed that there was One China and that they both belonged to it. But for the US it is unthinkable that TSMC could one day be in territory controlled by Beijing.

For this reason, the US has been trying to attract TSMC to the US to increase domestic chip production capacity. In 2021, with the support of the Biden administration, the company bought a site in Arizona on which to build a US foundry. This is scheduled to be completed in 2024.

The US Congress has just passed the Chips and Science Act, which provides US$52 billion (43 billion) in subsidies to support semiconductor manufacturing in the US. But companies will only receive Chips Act funding if they agree not to manufacture advanced semiconductors for Chinese companies.

This means that TSMC and others may well have to choose between doing business in China and in the US because the cost of manufacturing in the US is deemed to be too high without government subsidies.

This is all part of a broader tech war between the US and China, in which the US is aiming to constrain Chinas technological development and prevent it from exercising a global tech leadership role.

In 2020, the Trump administration imposed crushing sanctions on the Chinese tech giant Huawei that were designed to cut the company off from TSMC, on which it was reliant for the production of high-end semiconductors needed for its 5G infrastructure business.

Huawei was the worlds leading supplier of 5G network equipment but the US feared its Chinese origins posed a security risk (though this claim has been questioned). The sanctions are still in place because both Republicans and Democrats want to stop other countries from using Huaweis 5G equipment.

The British government had initially decided to use Huawei equipment in certain parts of the UKs 5G network. The Trump administrations sanctions forced London to reverse that decision.

A key US goal appears to be ending its dependency on supply chains in China or Taiwan for critical technologies, which includes advanced semiconductors needed for 5G systems, but may include other advanced tech in future.

Pelosis trip to Taiwan was about more than just Taiwans critical place in the tech war. But the dominance of its most important company has given the island a new and critical geopolitical importance that is likely to heighten existing tensions between the US and China over the status of the island. It has also intensified US efforts to reshore its semiconductor supply chain.

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Taiwan dominates the worlds supply of computer chips no wonder the US is worried - The Conversation Indonesia

Supercomputer predicts where Sheffield United, Middlesbrough, Burnley, Watford, West Brom, Blackburn Rovers and others will finish in Championship…

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The Blades manager only discovered on Thursday that his first signing of the summer, Bosnian centre-back Anel Ahmedhodzic, was carrying a suspension for bookings picked up on loan at Bordeaux from Malmo. It was compounded by an "innocuous" knee injury to fellow centre-back Jack Robinson the day before the game, days after Chris Basham had injured his hamstring at Shirecliffe.

On Ahmedhodzic's ban, Heckingbottom said: "Malmo should declare it but we want the player so what do we do? We asked the FA can we push it back, it's not our fault, we got lawyers involved. We asked, they wouldn't do it."

Joao Pedro's goal condemned the Blades to defeat at Vicarage Road, leaving Hull City as the only Yorkshire side to win in the second tier on the opening weekend as they beat Bristol City 2-1 on Saturday thanks to a late goal from Jean Michal Seri.

Elsewhere on Saturday, Rotherham United claimed a 1-1 draw at home to Swansea City while it was the same scoreline for Middlesbrough in their clash with West Brom at the Riverside Stadium.

On Friday, Huddersfield Town got the 2022-23 campaign underway with a home clash against Burnley as they lost 1-0 to Vincent Kompany's side at the John Smith's Stadium.

Following the first round of action, data experts at FiveThirtyEight have crunched the numbers to give every team's probability of winning the league, being promoted and being relegated.

With an explanation of how the model works HERE, here's where data experts are tipping every team to finish and how many points they will get in the Championship this season...

End of season probabilities - Relegation: 37%. Promotion: 1%. Championship title: <1%

Photo: Getty Images

End of season probabilities - Relegation: 30%. Promotion: 2%. Championship title: <1%

Photo: Getty Images

End of season probabilities - Relegation: 25%. Promotion: 3%. Championship title: <1%

Photo: Getty Images

End of season probabilities - Relegation: 21%. Promotion: 3%. Championship title: <1%

Photo: Getty Images

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Supercomputer predicts where Sheffield United, Middlesbrough, Burnley, Watford, West Brom, Blackburn Rovers and others will finish in Championship...

Supercomputer predicts how Premier League relegation battle will unfold for Leeds United, Nottingham Forest, Everton, Newcastle United, Aston Villa…

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Gelhardt, 20, who enjoyed an outstanding breakthrough season last term, has committed his future at Elland Road until the summer of 2027.

The former Wigan Athletic player featured 22 times for the first team in the 2021-22 campaign, scoring two goals at Premier League level.

United have also secured the futures of two other rising stars in the shape of forward Sam Greenwood and winger Crysencio Summerville, who have signed contracts until June 2026.

The trio's extended deals at Elland Road are a welcome boost ahead of the 2022-23 Premier League campaign, which gets underway when Arsenal take on Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park on Friday night.

Leeds are in action against Wolves on Saturday, after a summer of change at the club under Jesse Marsch. Kalvin Phillips and Raphinha have both departed but the Whites have reinvested the fees generated from those sales and spent close to 100m on new arrivals this window.

Ahead of the upcoming campaign, data experts at FiveThirtyEight have crunched the numbers to give every team's probability of winning the league, being promoted and being relegated.

With an explanation of how the model works HERE, here's where data experts are tipping every team to finish and how many points they will get in the Premier League next season...

End of season probabilities - Relegation: <1%. Top-four finish: 91%. Premier League title: 46%.

Photo: Getty Images

End of season probabilities - Relegation: <1%. Top-four finish: 83%. Premier League title: 30%.

Photo: Getty Images

End of season probabilities - Relegation: <1%. Top-four finish: 60%. Premier League title: 11%.

Photo: Getty Images

End of season probabilities - Relegation: <1%. Top-four finish: 42%. Premier League title: 5%.

Photo: Getty Images

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Supercomputer predicts how Premier League relegation battle will unfold for Leeds United, Nottingham Forest, Everton, Newcastle United, Aston Villa...

Where to Watch and Stream Max Winslow and The House of Secrets Free Online – EpicStream

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Cast: Sydne MikelleTanner BuchananJason GenaoEmery KellyJade Chynoweth

Geners: FamilyScience FictionThriller

Director: Sean Olson

Release Date: May 29, 2020

Five teenagers compete to win a mansion owned by entrepreneur and scientist Atticus Virtue. To win the teens must face-off against a super computer named HAVEN who controls the mansion.

Unfortunately, Max Winslow and The House of Secrets is not on Netflix. But you can't go too wrong with what is still considered the most popular streaming service, though. For $9.99 per month Basic, $15.99 Standard, or $19.99 Premium, you can enjoy a huge volume of TV shows, documentaries, kids content, and more.

They're not on Hulu, either! But prices for this streaming service currently start at $6.99 per month, or $69.99 for the whole year. For the ad-free version, it's $12.99 per month, $64.99 per month for Hulu + Live TV, or $70.99 for the ad-free Hulu + Live TV.

Sorry, Max Winslow and The House of Secrets is not streaming on Disney Plus. With Disney+, you can have a wide range of shows from Marvel, Star Wars, Disney+, Pixar, ESPN, and National Geographic to choose from in the streaming platform for the price of $7.99 monthly or $79.99 annually

You won't find Max Winslow and The House of Secrets on HBO Max. But if you're still interested in the service, it's $14.99 per month, which gives you full access to the entire vault, and is also ad-free, or $9.99 per month with ads. However, the annual versions for both are cheaper, with the ad-free plan at $150 and the ad-supported plan at $100.

As of now, Max Winslow and The House of Secrets is not available to watch for free on Amazon Prime Video. You can still buy or rent other movies through their service.

Max Winslow and The House of Secrets is not available to watch on Peacock at the time of writing. Peacock offers a subscription costing $4.99 a month or $49.99 per year for a premium account. As their namesake, the streaming platform is free with content out in the open, however, limited.

Max Winslow and The House of Secrets is not on Paramount Plus. Paramount Plus has two subscription options: the basic version ad-supported Paramount+ Essential service costs $4.99 per month, and an ad-free premium plan for $9.99 per month.

No dice. Max Winslow and The House of Secrets isn't streaming on the Apple TV+ library at this time. You can watch plenty of other top-rated shows and movies like Mythic Quest, Tedd Lasso, and Wolfwalkers for a monthly cost of $4.99 from the Apple TV Plus library.

Nope. Max Winslow and The House of Secrets is not currently available to watch for free on Virgin TV Go. There are plenty of other shows and movies on the platform which may interest you!

Starz Play Amazon Channel

$8.99

Starz Roku Premium Channel

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Where to Watch and Stream Max Winslow and The House of Secrets Free Online - EpicStream

Supercomputer predicts the likely result for Grimsby Town v Northampton Town, Gillingham v Rochdale, Hartlepool United v AFC Wimbledon and every other…

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It went to plan for Northampton Town as they put last seasons pain behind them with a fine 3-2 win over Colchester United.

They head to newcomers Grimsby Town this weekend looking to make it two wins from two, with the supercomputer giving them a 47 per cent chance of doing the business.

Title favourites Salford City make the trip to Swindon in what should be a cracking fixture.

Relegation favourites Hartlepool United need a reaction against AFC Wimbledon, after being battered by Walsall last weekend.

Heres how supercomputer sees every League Two match going.

Get all the latest Cobblers news here.

Home win: 36%Draw: 29%Away win: 35%

Photo: Pete Norton

Home win: 64%Draw: 24%Away win: 12%

Photo: Pete Norton

Home win: 32%Draw: 27%Away win: 41%

Photo: JPCO Sport

Home win: 49%Draw: 25%Away win: 26%

Photo: Gareth Copley

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Supercomputer predicts the likely result for Grimsby Town v Northampton Town, Gillingham v Rochdale, Hartlepool United v AFC Wimbledon and every other...

Supercomputer predicts the likely result for Mansfield Town v Tranmere Rovers, Colchester United v Carlisle United, Crewe Alexandra v Harrogate Town…

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Mansfield and Tranmere will be looking to get up and running this weekend after suffering defeats in matchday one. It will be Stags who claim the points though, according to the supercomputer

Title favourites Salford City make the trip to Swindon in what should be a cracking fixture.

Promotion-chasing Northampton head to Grimsby Town, while relegation favourites Hartlepool United need a reaction against AFC Wimbledon, after being battered by Walsall last weekend.

Heres how supercomputer sees every League Two match going.

Get all the latest Stags news here.

Home win: 36%Draw: 29%Away win: 35%

Photo: Pete Norton

Home win: 64%Draw: 24%Away win: 12%

Photo: Pete Norton

Home win: 32%Draw: 27%Away win: 41%

Photo: JPCO Sport

Home win: 49%Draw: 25%Away win: 26%

Photo: Gareth Copley

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Supercomputer predicts the likely result for Mansfield Town v Tranmere Rovers, Colchester United v Carlisle United, Crewe Alexandra v Harrogate Town...

The power of visual influence – EurekAlert

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image:The new approach determines a users real-time reaction to an image or scene based on their eye movement, particularly saccades, the super-quick movements of the eye that jerk between points before fixating on an image or object. The researchers will demonstrate their new work titled, Image Features Influence Reaction Time: A Learned Probabilistic Perceptual Model for Saccade Latency, at SIGGRAPH 2022 held Aug. 8-11 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. view more

Credit: ACM SIGGRAPH

What motivates or drives the human eye to fixate on a target and how, then, is that visual image perceived? What is the lag time between our visual acuity and our reaction to the observation? In the burgeoning field of immersive virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), connecting those dots, in real time, between eye movement, visual targets, and decision-making is the driving force behind a new computational model developed by a team of computer scientists at New York University, Princeton University, and NVIDIA.

The new approach determines a users real-time reaction to an image or scene based on their eye movement, particularly saccades, the super-quick movements of the eye that jerk between points before fixating on an image or object. Saccades allow for frequent shifts of attention to better understand ones surroundings and to localize objects of interest. Understanding the mechanism and behavior of saccades is vital in understanding human performance in visual environments, representing an exciting area of research in computer graphics.

The researchers will demonstrate their new work titled, Image Features Influence Reaction Time: A Learned Probabilistic Perceptual Model for Saccade Latency, at SIGGRAPH 2022 held Aug. 8-11 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. The annual conference, which will be in-person and virtual this year, spotlights the worlds leading professionals, academics, and creative minds at the forefront of computer graphics and interactive techniques.

There has recently been extensive research to measure the visual qualities perceived by humans, especially for VR/AR displays, says the papers senior author Qi Sun, PhD, assistant professor of computer science and engineering at New York University Tandon School of Engineering.

But we have yet to explore how the displayed content can influence our behaviors, even noticeably, and how we could possibly use those displays to push the boundaries of our performance that are otherwise not possible.

Inspired by how the human brain transmits data and makes decisions, the researchers implement a neurologically-inspired probabilistic model that mimics the accumulation of cognitive confidence that leads to a human decision and action. They conducted a psychophysical experiment with parameterized stimuli to observe and measure the correlation between image characteristics, and the time it takes to process them in order to trigger a saccade, and whether/how the correlation differs from that of visual acuity.

They validate the model, using data from more than 10,000 trials of user experiments using an eye-tracked VR display, to understand and formulate the correlation between the visual content and the speed of decision-making based on reaction to the image. The results show that the new model prediction accurately represents real-world human behavior.

The proposed model may serve as a metric for predicting and altering eye-image response time of users in interactive computer graphics applications, and may also help to improve design of VR experiences and player performances in esports. In other sectors such as healthcare and auto, the new model could help estimate a physicians or a drivers ability to rapidly respond and react to emergencies. In esports, it can be applied to measure the competition fairness between players or to better understand how to maximize ones performance where reaction times come down to milliseconds.

In future work, the team plans to explore the potential of cross-modal effects such as visual-audio cues that jointly affect our cognition in scenarios such as driving. They are also interested in expanding the work to better understand and represent the accuracy of human actions influenced by visual content.

The papers authors, Budmonde Duinkharjav (NYU); Praneeth Chakravarthula (Princeton); Rachel Brown (NVIDIA); Anjul Patney (NVIDIA); and Qi Sun (NYU), are set to demonstrate their new method Aug. 11 at SIGGRAPH as part of the program, Roundtable Session: Perception. The paper can be found here.

About ACM SIGGRAPHACM SIGGRAPH is an international community of researchers, artists, developers, filmmakers, scientists and business professionals with a shared interest in computer graphics and interactive techniques. A special interest group of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the worlds first and largest computing society, our mission is to nurture, champion and connect like-minded researchers and practitioners to catalyze innovation in computer graphics and interactive techniques.

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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The power of visual influence - EurekAlert

Tapping HPC and AI for Global Health and Wellness – HPCwire

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Heres a look at how HPC, AI, and other technologies are being used throughout the world by organizations to enhance healthcare research, drug development, public health, and patient outcomes.

The ability to gather, process, and analyze data from genomics, bioinformatics, microscopy, medical imaging, and other areas in the life sciences has been supercharged with HPC systems and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. Researchers can sequence vast quantities of DNA data faster than ever before with supercomputer resources and use AI to identify patterns and make predictions. They can now use these available and affordable technologies to study genes and proteins, to predict health events, automate imaging analysis, and generate ideas for improving healthcare delivery. Heres a look at how HPC, AI, and other technologies are being used throughout the world by organizations to enhance healthcare research, drug development, public health, and patient outcomes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a test case for the ability of HPC to accelerate genomic sequencing as scientists around the world seek to track, understand, and combat the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In England, researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute have tracked the spread and mutations of the virus by sequencing over 300,000 coronavirus genomes. The institutes HPC cluster has 38,000 cores of compute, 23.5 petabytes of file systems, and a 30-petabyte virtualized storage repository, all supported by a 60 Gbps network backbone. Its complemented with an OpenStack private cloud with more compute and storage resources.

With HPC architectures and the use of machine learning and AI constantly evolving, the institute has worked with companies like Dell Technologies to build their HPC environment. Genomic sequencing data is stored for computational analysis on Dell PowerScale scale-out storage. Researchers use the data to determine the relatedness of different viruses and help identify chains of transmission, super-spreader events, and fast-growing variants.

A similar collaboration for genomic research between the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas and Dell Technologies spawned the Lonestar6 supercomputer, which can perform almost three quadrillion mathematical operations per second. It is being used by faculty members from throughout the University of Texas system at other universities for COVID-19 drug discovery and genomic research.

In another pandemic-related role for HPC, the staff at the Ohio Supercomputer Center at Ohio State University designed the COVID-19 Analytics and Targeted Surveillance System (CATS) to help school administrators decide whether it was safe to bring students back to classrooms or if fully remote or hybrid learning should be used instead. Supported by a HPC system with Dell PowerEdge servers with Intel Xeon processors, CATS serves 21 school districts and 238,000 students and tracks data like school nurse visits, student and teacher absences, and other metrics to watch for outbreaks and inform decision making. Sixteen different dashboards are used daily by thousands of people to provide the rationale for decisions like closing or opening schools or specific buildings on campuses.

In yet another use of HPC for COVID-19 research, Swansea University in Wales has built an open platform for mathematical modeling of disease transmission. It provides comparisons of multiple models to help researchers determine demographic, socioeconomic, and clinical risk factors for COVID-19 infection, morbidity, and mortality, among other uses. Supercomputer resources at two hubs, built by Dell Technologies and Atos, contain more than 13,000 cores, tens of terabytes of memory, and hundreds of terabytes of high-performance storage, all interconnected by low-latency, high-bandwidth networking.

The Cineca Consortium is a national supercomputing facility in Italy that supports public and industry research institutions with HPC resources. Among Cinecas 4000 projects is the Human Brain Project, which, in conjunction with 90 European research institutes, aspires to be the worlds most detailed model of the brain. A dedicated supercomputer has been built for the project with HPC technology from Dell and Intel.

To-date, researchers participating in the Human Brain Project have used HPC to explore brain mechanisms behind cognition, learning, and plasticity. Their research has led to more than 1,400 journal articles, a new treatment for spinal cord injuries, a brain prosthesis for the blind, and better modeling and understanding of epilepsy and autism.

A collaboration among researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and Temple University, the [emailprotected] distributed computing project uses HPC to simulate how proteins impact a variety of diseases. To visualize protein dynamics on a molecular level requires enormous computational power and the projects founders came up with an original HPC solution harnessing the unused processing power of PCs from volunteers around the world. Each volunteer downloads an application that runs small parts of much larger simulations for the project. On the backend servers, algorithms put the separate parts together to create composite simulations.

Today this distributed HPC network has the equivalent of 2.4 exaflops of computational power, making it the first exascale computer. Teams from Dell Technologies and VMware are part of the legions of volunteers and the [emailprotected] client software resides on a VMware vSphere appliance. In December 2020, [emailprotected] was awarded the HPCwire Readers Choice Award for Best Use of HPC in Response to Societal Plights for its simulations of SARS-CoV-2 proteins.

For more on Dell Technologies for healthcare, life sciences, and HPC, please visitDellTechnologies.com/healthcareandDellTechnologies.com/hpc.

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Tapping HPC and AI for Global Health and Wellness - HPCwire