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Letran Knights rally to beat Arellano Chiefs

PAOLO JAVILLONAR

Games on Wednesday
(Filoil EcoOil Arena)
12 p.m. – UPHSD vs CSB
2:30 p.m. – JRU vs SSC-R

COLEGIO de San Juan de Letran whipped up a devastating fourth-quarter storm as it turned back Arellano University (AU), 86-79, Monday and claimed its second win a row in NCAA Season 100 at the Filoil EcoOil Arena.

Paolo Javillonar, back after serving his two-game suspension for playing in unsanctioned leagues, poured in his best game after a long while, exploding with a game-high 28 points in leading the Letran Knights to their second win in three outings.

It was also the bullstrong Mr. Javillonar who sparked that fourth-quarter onslaught that saw the Muralla-based dribblers erase a 12-point third quarter lead and turning it into a victory.

Jimboy Estrada and James Miller also helped in the cause as they scattered 14 and 11 points, respectively.

It was a heartbreaking defeat for the Arellano Chiefs, who appeared in control when they took charge in the middle quarters to gain a 12-point lead somewhere in the third canto.

It proved to be its last hurrah as Letran took charge from there.

Five AU players headed by Maverick Vinoya’s 16 points ended up scoring in double digits but none them couldn’t find the answer when the Knights went on that decisive rampage late.

AU fell to 0-3. — Joey Villar


The scores:

Letran 86 – Javillonar 28, Estrada 14, Miller 11, Cuajao 6, Go 6, Monje 5, Dimaano 5, Jumao-as 4, Nunag 4, Montecillo 2, Delfino 1, Pradella 0, Santos 00, Tagotongan 0

AU 79 – Vinoya 16, Hernal 11, Capulong 11, Abiera 10, Ongotan 10, Geronimo 7, Valencia 6, Camay 4, Borromeo 2, Libang 2, De Leon 0, Acop 0, Miller 0, Espiritu 0

Quarter scores: 28-all; 54-46; 69-63; 86-79

UP guns for share of UAAP lead vs the dangerous NU

UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES FIGHTING MAROONS — UAAP/NICOLE HERNANDEZ

Games on Wednesday
(Smart Araneta Coliseum)
11:30 a.m. – FEU vs UE (Women)
1:30 p.m. – NU vs UP (Women)
4:30 p.m. – FEU vs UE (Men)
6:30 p.m. – NU vs UP (Men)

IN AN ARMS RACE with reigning champion and last season finals’ foe De La Salle University, host University of the Philippines (UP) wants no less than a piece of leadership with a crucial outing against the crippled but still dangerous National University (NU) in the second week of the UAAP Season 87.

And UP sports a pretty chance to achieve the mission, looming as a heavy favorite at 6:30 p.m. at the Smart-Araneta Coliseum against NU (1-1) without foreign student-athlete Mo Diassana following his ACL injury in the opening weekend. Winless Far Eastern University (0-2) and University of the East (0-2) then clash at 4:30 p.m.

UP took care of its first two assignments last week though still trailing behind La Salle, which gained an early leeway following a 3-0 start as both teams primed up for an expected finals rematch after an epic duel last season for Season 86 crown.

But the Figthing Maroons are not keen on getting ahead, taking it slowly but surely especially after a bumpy outing against the winless UE before grinding out an 81-71 win.

“Every game there’s a sense of urgency. You lose one game and it could change your fate,” said UP deputy Christian Luanzon, who spoke on behalf of head coach Goldwin Monteverde.

“With NU and coach Jeff (Napa), whether he has an import or not, obviously, We have to match their intensity or even surpass that. Hopefully, we can give them a good fight and the result will favor us.”

Coming in without an import, the Bulldogs vowed to give the Maroons a run for their own money on the heels of a 62-60 comeback win against FEU after showing their contender capability by nearly upsetting the Green Archers in a tough 78-75 loss on MVP Kevin Quiambao’s game-winner.

Against the Maroons, the Bulldogs are determined to ride on their coattails to snatch one in the end.

“We have to rely on ourselves, that’s No. 1. ‘That’s ouy battlecry this season,” vowed Napa, whose wards had to claw back from 17 points down to score breakthrough win. — John Bryan Ulanday

Facing Storm, Aces out to clinch home court for first round

A’JA WILSON broke the WNBA single-season scoring record last week.

On Sunday, the Aces star became the first player to score 1,000 points in a season.

Now, the likely league MVP and her teammates can focus on peaking for the start of the playoffs as the Aces visit the Seattle Storm on Tuesday night.

“This is when you need to start playing your best basketball because this is the rock ‘n roll time,” Wilson said. “This is the best time of the year. It’s really good to get these wins under our belt.”

The two-time defending champions (25-13), who finish the regular season at home against the Dallas Wings on Thursday, have won seven of their last eight games. Wilson reached 1,000 points in an 84-71 home victory against the Connecticut Sun on Sunday. She finished with a game-high 29 points and grabbed nine rebounds.

“There have been wins that we needed to grind out,” Wilson said. “There have been wins that we had to understand the flow of the game, and that’s what playoff basketball is going to be. We’re going to get everybody’s best shot no matter what. It helps to have these types of games so we can prep ourselves for this.”

The fourth-seeded Aces and the fifth-seeded Storm (24-14) are likely headed for a first-round playoff matchup. Las Vegas can clinch home-court advantage with a win Tuesday.

Seattle has won four consecutive games but is looking for more consistency.

Head coach Noelle Quinn said she was “befuddled” by her team as she lamented slow starts in two games last week. The Storm trailed the Los Angeles Sparks by as many as 13 points before winning by eight and trailed the Dallas Wings by 21 before winning by two.

Then, in a rematch with the last-place Sparks on Sunday in Seattle, the Storm started better and built a 16-point lead but had to hold on for a 90-87 victory.

“We know we have everything we need in that locker room,” said guard Jewell Loyd, who set the previous single-season scoring record last year. “I feel like we’re at our best when we’re playing free.”

Nneka Ogwumike led Seattle with 23 points and Skylar-Diggins Smith scored 19, including four free throws in the final minute, in the victory Sunday.

The Storm conclude the regular season on Thursday at the Phoenix Mercury. — Reuters

MLBPA files NIL suit against DraftKings, FanDuel, other sports betting companies

THE Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) filed a lawsuit against four sportsbooks on Monday, claiming that the companies were not authorized to utilize the names and likenesses of players for their brands.

DraftKings and FanDuel are at the center of the suit, and players are also hoping to receive compensatory and punitive damages from bet365 and Underdog Fantasy. DraftKings and bet365 are being sued in Philadelphia federal court, while the other two sportsbooks are set to appear in New York state court.

The MLBPA is accusing the sportsbooks of “flagrant” violations of state laws that are supposed to protect players in the public eye. Players’ images have frequently been seen on sports betting websites and mobile apps, and MLBPA said players believe that could be misleading, as sportsbook users could be under the impression that those players support wagering on games.

“For professional athletes, the ability to control the commercial use of their names, images and likenesses is a crucial return on their substantial career investment,” the players said.

ESPN reported that it was not able to reach bet365 after business hours. The other three sportsbooks have not yet responded for comment. — Reuters

Dream meet Sky with final playoff spot up for grabs

THE last remaining playoff spot will be in full view when the Atlanta Dream host the Chicago Sky on Tuesday night in College Park, Ga.

With seven postseason spots already booked, the Dream and Sky are tied with the Washington Mystics for the No. 8 berth with two games to play. All three teams have 13-25 records, with the Mystics facing the first-place New York Liberty on Tuesday.

There is a chance that the winner of the game between Atlanta and Chicago could sit alone in eighth place at the end of play Tuesday. The tiebreaker for the final postseason spot will be determined by head-to-head records, with the Sky defeating the Dream twice in three games this season.

The Dream are coming off a weekend split with the Mystics, taking Sunday’s game at Washington 76-73 in overtime after falling 72-69 at home to the Mystics on Friday.

On Sunday, the Dream’s Tina Charles scored 20 points with 10 rebounds to help stave off the Mystics, who rallied from a 12-point second-half deficit.

“Super proud of this group and the resiliency they had,” Atlanta coach Tanisha Wright said. “It wasn’t easy, but it was something that we really had to get accomplished and had to do. Three out of our last five games have gone to overtime, so it was a big-time fight from this group and I’m really proud.”

Rhyne Howard leads the team with 17.5 points per game, followed by Allisha Gray’s 15.7, while Charles contributes 15 points with 9.5 rebounds.

Chicago has limped toward the finish line with 10 losses in its last 12 games. On Sunday, the Sky dropped their third straight in a 93-88 loss to the Phoenix Mercury.

In what Chicago hopes wasn’t its last home game of the year, the Sky were held without a field goal for the final 2:30 of the game as Chennedy Carter scored 20 points in the defeat.

Chicago has dropped three of four following Angel Reese’s season-ending wrist injury. The standout rookie was averaging 13.6 points and a league-best 13.1 rebounds. Carter’s 17.5 points per game paces Chicago. — Reuters

Solheim Cup

There were no ties in the first two days of the Solheim Cup, as much a reflection of the resolute spirits of both sides as of the vagaries of golf. Still and all, the United States wound up with a commanding 10-6 lead heading into singles play. Europe’s slow start proved disastrous to its cause; the Day One morning and afternoon sessions produced 3-1 slates that highlighted the strengths of Captain Stacy Lewis’ unflinching reliance on data analytics to determine pairings. And even though Day Two proved to be a wash, the advantage was forged.

Interestingly, Lewis’ plan to inject science into the competition produced mixed results last year; it may have produced a 14-14 finish, but the trophy remained in Europe’s hands given the built-in equity of the incumbent. Still, there was reason to be optimistic; the score was the highest for the US since it claimed the Cup in 2017. The fact that the biennial meet was slated to be held at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Virginia likewise provided no small measure of optimism. The pluses of retrofitting the layout to favor the tendencies of stalwarts of the red, white, and blue — along with playing in front of partisan fans — were not lost on the hosts.

Needless to say, Day Three for the US involved keeping its date with fate and ultimately ensuring its celebration. Yet,  for a while there, it looked hard-pressed to live up to expectations. World Number One Nelly Korda faltered in the leadoff spot, triggering an afternoon of anxiety for Lewis. Meanwhile Europe counterpart Suzann Pettersen held out hope for a remarkable comeback. Six set-tos later, however, it became evident that the projected outcome was a matter of when, not if. World Number Two Lilia Vu’s tap-in birdie on the 18th for a half-point formalized the victory.

In retrospect, it was, perhaps, wishful thinking on the part of Europe to think it could upend the US given its intrinsic frailties. The final tally, a 12.5-15.5 defeat, marked the biggest difference between the contenders in seven years. That said, it deserves props for its refusal to accept defeat until the end. And, certainly, it can find solace in its apparent capacity to keep pace in singles; as in the 2019, 2021, and 2023 stagings, it managed to do at least as well on Day Three, its underdog status notwithstanding. Which is to say 2026 can’t happen soon enough.

 

Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994. He is a consultant on strategic planning, operations and human resources management, corporate communications, and business development.

AI experts ready ‘Humanity’s Last Exam’ to stump powerful technology

RAWPIXEL-FREEPIK

A TEAM of technology experts issued a global call on Monday seeking the toughest questions to pose to artificial intelligence (AI) systems, which increasingly have handled popular benchmark tests like child’s play.

Dubbed “Humanity’s Last Exam,” the project seeks to determine when expert-level AI has arrived. It aims to stay relevant even as capabilities advance in future years, according to the organizers, a nonprofit called the Center for AI Safety (CAIS) and the startup Scale AI.

The call comes days after the maker of ChatGPT previewed a new model, known as OpenAI o1, which “destroyed the most popular reasoning benchmarks,” said Dan Hendrycks, executive director of CAIS and an advisor to Elon Musk’s xAI startup.

Mr. Hendrycks co-authored two 2021 papers that proposed tests of AI systems that are now widely used, one quizzing them on undergraduate-level knowledge of topics like US history, the other probing models’ ability to reason through competition-level math. The undergraduate-style test has more downloads from the online AI hub Hugging Face than any such dataset.

At the time of those papers, AI was giving almost random answers to questions on the exams. “They’re now crushed,” Mr. Hendrycks told Reuters.

As one example, the Claude models from the AI lab Anthropic have gone from scoring about 77% on the undergraduate-level test in 2023, to nearly 89% a year later, according to a prominent capabilities leaderboard.

These common benchmarks have less meaning as a result.

AI has appeared to score poorly on lesser-used tests involving plan formulation and visual pattern-recognition puzzles, according to Stanford University’s AI Index Report from April. OpenAI o1 scored around 21% on one version of the pattern-recognition ARC-AGI test, for instance, the ARC organizers said on Friday.

Some AI researchers argue that results like this show planning and abstract reasoning to be better measures of intelligence, though Mr. Hendrycks said the visual aspect of ARC makes it less suited to assessing language models. “Humanity’s Last Exam” will require abstract reasoning, he said.

Answers from common benchmarks may also have ended up in data used to train AI systems, industry observers have said. Mr. Hendrycks said some questions on “Humanity’s Last Exam” will remain private to make sure AI systems’ answers are not from memorization.

The exam will include at least 1,000 crowd-sourced questions due Nov. 1 that are hard for non-experts to answer. These will undergo peer review, with winning submissions offered co-authorship and up to $5,000 prizes sponsored by Scale AI.

“We desperately need harder tests for expert-level models to measure the rapid progress of AI,” said Alexandr Wang, Scale’s chief executive officer.

One restriction: the organizers want no questions about weapons, which some say would be too dangerous for AI to study. — Reuters

Global index for free elections suffers biggest decline on record in 2023

PHILIPPINE STAR/KRIZ JOHN ROZALES

STOCKHOLM — Lower voter turnout and increasingly contested results globally are threatening the credibility of elections, an intergovernmental watchdog warned on Tuesday, as its sub-index for free and fair elections suffered its biggest decline on record in 2023.

In its report, the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) said 2023 was the eighth consecutive year with a net decline in overall democratic performance, the longest consecutive fall since records began in 1975.

The watchdog bases its Global State of Democracy indexes on more than 100 variables and uses four main categories — representation, rights, rule of law and participation — to categorize performance.

The category of democracy related to free and fair elections and parliamentary oversight, a sub-category of representation, suffered its worst year on record in 2023.

“This report is a call for action to protect democratic elections,” IDEA’s Secretary-General Kevin Casas-Zamora said in the report. “The success of democracy depends on many things, but it becomes utterly impossible if elections fail.”

The think tank said government intimidation and electoral process irregularities, such as fraudulent voter registration and vote-counting, were increasing. It also said that threats of foreign interference, disinformation and the use of artificial intelligence in campaigns added to challenges.

It also said that global voter participation had fallen to 55.5% of eligible voters in 2023 from 65.2% in 2008. Globally, in almost 20% of elections between 2020 and 2024, one of the losing candidates or parties rejected the results.

IDEA said that the democratic performance in the US, which holds a presidential election this year, had recovered somewhat in the past two years, but the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump in July highlighted continued risks.

“Less than half (47%) of the Americans said the 2020 election was ‘free and fair’ and the country remains deeply polarized,” IDEA said. — Reuters

Antibiotic-resistance deaths to surge from 2025-2050 — study

PXHERE.COM

BACTERIAL ILLNESSES that are resistant to available antibiotic medicines will cause more than 39 million deaths worldwide over the next 25 years and indirectly contribute to an additional 169 million deaths, according to a forecast published on Monday.

By 2050, annual death tolls attributed directly to antibiotic resistance, or associated with it, will reach 1.91 million and 8.22 million, respectively, if remediation measures are not in place, an international team of researchers reported in The Lancet.

Those annual numbers represent increases of nearly 68% and 75% per year, respectively, over death tolls directly and indirectly attributed to antibiotic resistance in 2022, the researchers with the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance Project wrote.

The increases will strain health systems and national economies and contribute to annual gross domestic product losses of $1 trillion to $3.4 trillion by 2030, they predict.

The forecast of how the antibiotic resistance burden is likely to evolve was released ahead of a Sept. 26 United Nations (UN) General Assembly High Level Meeting on the subject.

“This landmark study confirms that the world is facing an antibiotic emergency, with devastating human costs for families and communities across the world,” Dame Sally Davies, the Special Envoy on Antimicrobial Resistance for the UK and a member of the UN Interagency Coordination Group on Antimicrobial Resistance, said in a statement. She was not involved in the research.

Resistance to antimicrobials appears to pose the biggest threat to the elderly, with deaths in adults over age 70 increasing by more than 80% between 1990 and 2021, according to the report.

Low- and middle-income countries face a disproportionate burden, with the highest rates of antibiotic-resistance-related deaths occurring in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, in particular from multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, researchers said.

Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites no longer respond to drugs, either because of genetic changes in these organisms or, more often, because of the misuse and overuse of the drugs to treat, prevent or control infections in humans, animals and plants, according to the World Health Organization.

Access to better care for serious infections, new vaccines to prevent infections, and more judicious medical protocols that limit antibiotic use to appropriate cases could save a total of 92 million lives between 2025 and 2050, they also predict.

Estimates for the new study were made for 22 types of disease-causing organisms, 84 combinations of drugs vs bacteria, and 11 infectious syndromes such as meningitis and sepsis.

The estimates were based on records from 520 million people of all ages in 204 countries from a wide range of sources, including hospital data, death records, and antibiotic use data. — Reuters

COP29 leaders unveil climate funding and energy storage goals

FREEPIK

 – Less than two months ahead of the COP29 United Nations Climate Summit, the Azerbaijani leadership laid out its plans on Tuesday for what it hoped to achieve, as countries continue to wrestle with how to raise ambitions for a new financing target.

The main task for the November summit is for countries to agree on a new annual target for funding that wealthy countries will pay to help poorer nations cope with climate change. Many developing countries say they cannot upgrade their targets to cut emissions faster without first receiving more financial support to invest in doing this.

With countries remaining far from agreement on the financing goal, the COP29 presidency this week outlined more than a dozen side initiatives that could raise ambitions, but do not require party negotiation and building consensus which can hamper progress. These take the form of new funds, pledges, and declarations that national governments can adopt.

Notably, this includes a fund with voluntary contributions from fossil fuel producing countries and companies for the public and private sectors working on climate issues, as well as grants that can be doled out to assist with climate-fuelled natural disasters in developing countries.

Such side agendas use “the convening power of COP and the hosts’ respective national capabilities to form coalitions and drive progress,” said Mukhtar Babayev, who holds the rotating COP presidency, in a letter to all parties and stakeholders.

Over 120 countries pledged at last year’s COP28 summit in Dubai, for example, to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030.

The COP29 presidency also hopes to build support around a pledge to increase global energy storage capacity six times above 2022 levels, reaching 1,500 gigawatts by 2030. This would include a commitment to scale up investments in energy grids, adding or refurbishing more than 80 million km (50 million miles) by 2040.

Babayev, who is Azerbaijan’s minister of ecology and natural resources, said the agenda would “help to enhance ambition by bringing stakeholders together around common principles and goals.”

“We hope to address some of the most pressing issues while also highlighting remaining priorities,” he said.

Another declaration would see countries and companies create a global market for clean hydrogen, addressing regulatory, technological, financing and standardization barriers.

COP29 leaders have also appealed for a “COP Truce” that would highlight the importance of peace and climate action.

Despite countries’ existing climate commitments, carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels hit a record high last year, and the world just registered its hottest summer on record as temperatures climb. – Reuters

US strategy for anti-ship weapons to counter China: plentiful, mobile, deadly

An MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter launches during flight operations aboard the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan in the South China Sea, July 17, 2020. — US NAVY/MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST 2ND CLASS CODIE L. SOULE/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS.

 – The United States is amassing an arsenal of abundant and easily made anti-ship weapons as part of American efforts to deter China in the Indo-Pacific region and gear up US forces there.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed U.S. thinking toward a new philosophy – “affordable mass,” as one missile industry CEO put it, speaking on condition of anonymity, referring to having plenty of relatively cheap weapons at the ready.

“It’s a natural counter to what China has been doing,” said Euan Graham, a senior analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank, referring to the Chinese arsenal of ships and conventional ballistic missiles including those designed to attack vessels.

The Pentagon and China’s Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The United States has ramped up testing of its QUICKSINK weapon, an inexpensive and potentially plentiful bomb equipped with a low-cost GPS guidance kit and a seeker that can track moving objects. The U.S. Air Force used a B-2 stealth bomber during a test last month in the Gulf of Mexico to strike a target ship with QUICKSINK.

China will still have a large advantage in sheer numbers of anti-ship missiles, according to experts, and can base them on its home territory. But increasing U.S. production of QUICKSINK would narrow that gap by putting China’s 370 or so warships at more risk during any future conflict than they have faced since before Beijing leaned into modernizing its military in the 1990s.

QUICKSINK, still in development, is made by Boeing, with a seeker from BAE Systems. QUICKSINK can be used with the hundreds of thousands of Joint-Direct Attack Munition tail kits – systems that can be dropped from U.S. or allied warplanes and cheaply turn “dumb” 2,000-pound (900-kg) bombs into guided weapons.

The U.S. military’s Indo-Pacific Command wants thousands of the QUICKSINK weapons – and has for years – according to an industry executive, who declined to reveal the precise figure because it is classified.

With enough “affordable mass” weapons aimed at them, Chinese ship defenses would be overwhelmed, according to this executive, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In such a scenario, the U.S. military would use Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASM) or SM-6 missiles to damage a Chinese warship and its radars, then bombard the vessel with lower-cost weapons such as QUICKSINK.

 

A VARIETY OF WEAPONS

The United States has been amassing a variety of anti-ship weapons in Asia. In April, the U.S. Army deployed its new Typhon mobile missile batteries, which were developed cheaply from existing components and can fire SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles against sea targets, to the Philippines during an exercise.

Such weapons are relatively easy to produce – drawing on large stockpiles and designs that have been around for a decade or more – and could help the United States and its allies catch up quickly in an Indo-Pacific missile race in which China has a big lead.

Although the U.S. military has declined to say how many will be deployed in the Indo-Pacific region, more than 800 SM-6 missiles are due to be bought in the next five years, according to government documents outlining military purchases. Several thousand Tomahawks and hundreds of thousands of JDAMs are already in U.S. inventories, the documents showed.

“China’s game is to restrict the movement of U.S. Navy assets in the Western Pacific and First Island Chain,” Graham said, referring to the closest major archipelagos from the coast of East Asia. “This is a sort of like-minded response to make life difficult for the PLAN.”

PLAN is short for the People’s Liberation Army Navy, China’s maritime service branch.

Placing anti-ship weapons in locations such as the Philippines would put them within reach of much of the South China Sea. China claims 90% of the South China Sea as its sovereign territory, but is opposed by five Southeast Asian states and Taiwan.

Collin Koh, a scholar at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said, “In a way it is like levelling the playing field.”

Koh cited the example of Iran-aligned Houthi forces using low-tech anti-ship weapons against civilian traffic in the Red Sea, which forced the United States and others to deploy costly weapons to defend against them.

“If you look at the case of the Red Sea, clearly the cost equation (of anti-ship missiles) doesn’t fall on the side of the defender,” Koh said. “Even if you have a smaller arsenal of such offensive missile systems, you can still project some deterrence.” – Reuters

France uses tough, untested cybercrime law to target Telegram’s Durov

A PROTESTER holds a French national flag as people gather to protest against the French far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally - RN) party, at the Place de la Republique following partial results in the first round of the early 2024 legislative elections, in Paris, France, June 30, 2024. — REUTERS

 – When French prosecutors took aim at Telegram boss Pavel Durov, they had a trump card to wield – a tough new law with no international equivalent that criminalizes tech titans whose platforms allow illegal products or activities.

The so-called LOPMI law, enacted in January 2023, has placed France at the forefront of a group of nations taking a sterner stance on crime-ridden websites. But the law is so recent that prosecutors have yet to secure a conviction.

With the law still untested in court, France’s pioneering push to prosecute figures like Mr. Durov could backfire if its judges balk at penalizing tech bosses for alleged criminality on their platforms.

A French judge placed Mr. Durov under formal investigation last month, charging him with various crimes, including the 2023 offence: “Complicity in the administration of an online platform to allow an illicit transaction, in an organized gang,” which carries a maximum 10-year sentence and a 500,000 euro ($556,300) fine.

Being under formal investigation does not imply guilt or necessarily lead to trial, but indicates judges think there’s enough evidence to proceed with the probe. Investigations can last years before being sent to trial or dropped.

Mr. Durov, out on bail, denies Telegram was an “anarchic paradise.” Telegram has said it “abides by EU laws,” and that it’s “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.”

In a radio interview last week, Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau hailed the 2023 law as a powerful tool for battling organized crime groups who are increasingly operating online.

The law appears to be unique. Eight lawyers and academics told Reuters they were unaware of any other country with a similar statute.

“There is no crime in U.S. law directly analogous to that and none that I’m aware of in the Western world,” said Adam Hickey, a former U.S. deputy assistant attorney general who established the Justice Department’s (DOJ) national security cyber program.

Mr. Hickey, now at U.S. law firm Mayer Brown, said U.S. prosecutors could charge a tech boss as a “co-conspirator or an aider and abettor of the crimes committed by users” but only if there was evidence the “operator intends that its users engage in, and himself facilitates, criminal activities.”

He cited the 2015 conviction of Ross Ulbricht, whose Silk Road website hosted drug sales. U.S. prosecutors argued Ulbricht “deliberately operated Silk Road as an online criminal marketplace … outside the reach of law enforcement,” according to the DOJ. Ulbricht got a life sentence.

Timothy Howard, a former U.S. federal prosecutor who put Ulbricht behind bars, was “sceptical” Durov could be convicted in the United States without proof he knew about the crimes on Telegram, and actively facilitated them – especially given Telegram’s vast, mainly law-abiding user base.

“Coming from my experience of the U.S. legal system,” he said, the French law appears “an aggressive theory.”

Michel Séjean, a French professor of cyber law, said the toughened legislation in France came after authorities grew exasperated with companies like Telegram.

“It’s not a nuclear weapon,” he said. “It’s a weapon to prevent you from being impotent when faced with platforms that don’t cooperate.”

 

TOUGHER LAWS

The 2023 law traces its origins to a 2020 French interior ministry white paper, which called for major investment in technology to tackle growing cyber threats.

It was followed by a similar law in November 2023, which included a measure for the real-time geolocation of people suspected of serious crimes by remotely activating their devices. A proposal to turn on their devices’ cameras and mouthpieces so that investigators could watch or listen in was shot down by France’s Constitutional Council.

These new laws have given France some of the world’s toughest tools for tackling cybercrime, with the proof being the arrest of Mr. Durov on French soil, said Sadry Porlon, a French lawyer specialized in communication technology law.

Tom Holt, a cybercrime professor at Michigan State University, said LOPMI “is a potentially powerful and effective tool if used properly,” particularly in probes into child sexual abuse images, credit card trafficking and distributed denial of service attacks, which target businesses or governments.

Armed with fresh legislative powers, the ambitious J3 cybercrime unit at the Paris prosecutor’s office, which is overseeing the Durov probe, is now involved in some of France’s most high-profile cases.

In June, the J3 unit shut down Coco, an anonymized chat forum cited in over 23,000 legal proceedings since 2021 for crimes including prostitution, rape and homicide.

Coco played a central role in a current trial that has shocked France.

Dominique Pelicot, 71, is accused of recruiting dozens of men on Coco to rape his wife, whom he had knocked out with drugs. Mr. Pelicot, who is expected to testify this week, has admitted his guilt, while 50 other men are on trial for rape.

Coco’s owner, Isaac Steidel, is suspected of a similar crime as Mr. Durov: “Provision of an online platform to allow an illicit transaction by an organized gang.”

Mr. Steidel’s lawyer, Julien Zanatta, declined to comment. – Reuters