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More than 1,000 teddy bears left in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II will be donated to a children’s charity, Buckingham Palace announced. The teddy bears – some in the image of beloved British children’s character Paddington Bear – were left outside the royal residences in London and Windsor, ...
More than 1,000 teddy bears left in Queen Elizabeth tribute will be donated to children’s charity, via NCY NEWS https://ift.tt/JuZBYcK
More than 1,000 teddy bears left in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II will be donated to a children’s charity, Buckingham Palace announced.
The teddy bears – some in the image of beloved British children’s character Paddington Bear – were left outside the royal residences in London and Windsor, according to a Saturday news release from the royal family.
The bears will be professionally cleaned and donated to Barnardo’s, a British children’s charity. The organization provides support services for vulnerable children and young adults.
Queen Elizabeth II served as the charity’s patron from 1983 to 2016, according to its website. Queen Consort Camilla became the Barnardo’s patron in 2016.
Floral tributes and a Paddington teddy bear are laid at the gates of Balmoral in Scotland, following the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday. Picture date: Friday September 9, 2022.
The teddy bears are among thousands of tributes left outside the royal residences as well as at two formal tribute areas in London after the Queen died on September 8th. The Royal Parks Charity worked with a group of almost 200 volunteers to “sensitively” clear the tribute gardens later in September, says the release.
“Those involved in the project hope the teddy bears will be much loved for many years to come by children supported by Barnardo’s, whilst understanding the story behind the bears and how they came to be donated,” the release goes on.
Editor: Lana Hassen
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/16/uk/queen-elizabeth-teddy-bears-donation-trnd/index.html
More than 1,000 teddy bears left in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II will be donated to a children’s charity, Buckingham Palace announced. The teddy bears – some in the image of beloved British children’s character Paddington Bear – were left outside the royal residences in London and Windsor, ...
Putin has ‘no regrets’ over missile barrage in Ukraine, but says no need for more ‘massive’ strikes , via NCY NEWS https://ift.tt/njMvpJd
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday he had “no regrets” over his deadly missile attacks on civilian targets across Ukraine earlier this week, but said there was no need for more “massive” strikes for now.
The wave of missile attacks on cities across Ukraine began on Monday in response to a blast on a strategically vital bridge connecting the annexed Crimean Peninsula to Russia over the weekend. It’s unclear what caused the explosion, but Putin on Monday blamed it on Kyiv and called it a “terrorist attack” that could not be left unanswered.
The intense bombardment that followed over the next two days killed at least 19 people and leveled civilian targets across the country, drawing global outrage. The strikes also caused major damage to power systems across Ukraine, forcing people to reduce consumption during peak hours to avoid blackouts.
Putin said that while he did not regret the strikes and believes that Russia’s actions were correct, he did recognize that “what is happening now is unpleasant.”
Putin also defended his partial mobilization of Russians that began in September, telling reporters it is expected to end in two weeks and that some 222,000 troops had already been drafted into the army.
The mobilization got off to a chaotic start last month, sparking rare protests throughout the country. Hundreds of thousands of people – mostly fighting-age men – fled Russia, pouring into neighboring countries like Georgia and Kazakhstan to avoid conscription.
Putin also said that Russia does not seek to “destroy” Ukraine, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Western leaders have previously alleged. His comments come seven months after Russia launched a full-scale invasion and as Moscow attempts to annex four Ukrainian regions in violation of international law.
The Russian leader was speaking at a rare news conference in Astana, Kazakhstan, where Putin had traveled for a meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a regional intergovernmental organization made up of former Soviet states.
When asked if he would meet with US President Joe Biden, Putin told a reporter that he “does not see the need for negotiations.”
Biden was asked a similar question in an exclusive interview with CNN earlier this week. The US President said he did not see “any rationale” for meeting his Russian counterpart, though he said he would perhaps make an exception to discuss the fate of imprisoned American basketball star Brittney Griner.
Russian setbacks in Kherson
Russian authorities said civilian evacuations would begin Friday in the occupied southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, where the Kremlin has suffered a string of defeats at the hands of Ukrainian forces.
Further to the east, Russia’s embattled forces have managed to make some small gains in Donetsk, toward the city of Bakhmut, aided in large measure by Wagner mercenaries, or private military contractors. Moscow likely views the city a jumping-off point toward Kramatorsk and Sloviansk – the largest urban areas held by Ukraine in Donetsk, the British Defense Ministry said.
Bakhmut is currently under Ukrainian control, but it has been bombarded by Russian artillery for months. Reports from pro-Russian analysts and in Russian state media alleged that Kyiv had begun withdrawing some forces from the city, but CNN could not independently verify those claims. Ukrainian officials have not commented on them, but they have noted that Bakhmut is being fiercely contested.
Meanwhile, the outlook for Russian forces in Kherson and the northeastern region of Luhansk remain bleak. Kyiv has continued to make significant gains along the western side of the Dnipro River, a major waterway that flows across Ukraine and Eastern Europe, as they push toward the city of Kherson.
Fighting near Kherson city continued to rage on Friday. Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Russian-backed administration in Kherson, said Moscow’s forces were “courageously and professionally holding back the daily attempts of the militants of the Kyiv regime to break through the defenses.”
Though Stremousov said civilians should be at a “safe distance from the hostilities” and that Kherson residents appeared to have begun evacuating. The governor of the eastern Russian region of Rostov, Vasily Golubev, said Thursday that local authorities were preparing to receive residents of Kherson fleeing the front lines, Russian state news agency TASS reported. Golubev said the first group of evacuees would arrive on Friday.
Golubev’s comments came after Russia’s deputy prime minister confirmed Moscow would assist with evacuation efforts, heeding calls from the head of the Kremlin-backed administration in Kherson who had pleaded for help.
There is now concern that Ukrainian citizens in occupied territory may be forced to go to Russian territory against their will. Reports emerged early in the war of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians being forcibly sent to so-called “filtration centers” before being moved to Russia. Moscow denounced the claims as lies, alleging that Ukraine has hindered its efforts to “evacuate” people to Russia. But allegations of these centers stirred painful memories of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s forced deportation of millions from their homelands.
Over the summer, Ukrainian officials in the contested region of Zaporizhzhia appealed to citizens who were in Russian-occupied territory to move away from front lines and into other Ukrainian-controlled territory. If that option was not possible, they advised Ukrainians to use Crimea or Russian territory as a transit route toward Ukraine or a friendly country.
Those on the frontlines in Kherson are now being advised by Ukrainian officials to avoid traveling to Russia altogether.
“Under no circumstances should you go to the Russian Federation,” warned Oleksandr Samoylenko, a top Ukrainian official in the Kherson region, on Friday. Samoylenko said that Ukrainian forces were only targeting Russian positions and equipment using high-precision weapons.
Samoylenko’s and his deputy, Yurii Sobolevskyi, both accused Russia of trying to Ukrainian citizens out of the region so they could repopulate it with “zombies who are 100% loyal to Moscow.” Sobolevskyi alleged that a similar scheme was carried out in Crimea after Russia annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
Kherson is one of four regions Russia is now attempting to annex from Ukraine. The others are Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine and Donetsk and Luhansk, two eastern Ukrainian regions where fighting against Russian-backed breakaway republics has raged since 2014.
Editor: Lana Hassen
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/14/europe/russia-putin-ukraine-intl/index.html
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday he had “no regrets” over his deadly missile attacks on civilian targets across Ukraine earlier this week, but said there was no need for more “massive” strikes for now. The wave of missile attacks on cities across Ukraine began on Monday in respon...
NCY NEWS
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday he had “no regrets” over his deadly missile attacks on civilian targets across Ukraine earlier this week, but said there was no need for more “massive” strikes for now. The wave of missile attacks on cities across Ukraine began on Monday in respon...
NCY NEWS
The coronation of King Charles III will take place on May 6 next year at Westminster Abbey in London, Buckingham Palace announced Tuesday. The service will be a more modern affair than previous royal coronations and will “look towards the future,” the palace said in a statement. It added that th...
Coronation of King Charles III to take place in May, via NCY NEWS https://ift.tt/qBhYtbg
The coronation of King Charles III will take place on May 6 next year at Westminster Abbey in London, Buckingham Palace announced Tuesday.
The service will be a more modern affair than previous royal coronations and will “look towards the future,” the palace said in a statement. It added that the occasion will still be “rooted in longstanding traditions and pageantry.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby will conduct the ceremony, which will see Charles crowned alongside his wife Camilla, the Queen Consort.
Queen Elizabeth II, Prince George of Cambridge, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Princess Charlotte of Cambridge, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Louis of Cambridge with Prince Charles and Camilla on the balcony during the Platinum Pageant on June 5, 2022 in London, England.
As King Charles III takes the throne, big changes lie ahead for the royal family
During the event, the King will be “anointed, blessed and consecrated” by the Archbishop of Canterbury – a role which has conducted most royal coronations since 1066, according to the statement.
The palace added: “The Ceremony has retained a similar structure for over a thousand years, and next year’s Coronation is expected to include the same core elements while recognising the spirit of our times.”
Charles, 73, became Britain’s monarch last month following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.
Days after her death, Charles was formally confirmed as the new King of the United Kingdom in a ceremony at St. James’ Palace.
However, his coronation has been scheduled for next year to allow an appropriate period of time to mourn the previous sovereign and to plan the ceremony.
Charles and Camilla, Queen Consort greet wellwishers as they arrive at Hillsborough Castle in Belfast on September 13.
The palace has not revealed specific details about the coronation, but some have wondered if the King intends to make it more inclusive while reflecting his vision of the future monarchy.
Charles previously said he sees Britain as a “community of communities” and this understanding has made him realize that he has an “additional duty” to “protect the diversity of our country.”
Later this year, he is expected to sign a proclamation formally declaring the date of the coronation at a meeting of the Privy Council, which is a panel of royal advisers.
Editor: Lana Hassen
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/11/uk/king-charles-coronation-intl-gbr-scli/index.html
The coronation of King Charles III will take place on May 6 next year at Westminster Abbey in London, Buckingham Palace announced Tuesday. The service will be a more modern affair than previous royal coronations and will “look towards the future,” the palace said in a statement. It added that th...
Two teens and a child among 10 people killed in Ireland gas station explosion, via NCY NEWS https://ift.tt/jqaeHLd
Ten people, including two teenagers and a young child, were killed in Friday’s explosion at a gas filling station in the northwest of Ireland, local authorities said.
Irish police said that among the 10 dead in the blast in Donegal ere four men, three women, a teenage boy, a teenage girl, and another younger girl. Police said earlier that eight people had been injured.
The explosion happened shortly after 3 p.m. local time on Friday in County Donegal at the Applegreen petrol station on the outskirts of the village of Creeslough.
Police said they believed it was a “tragic accident,” and the largest number of civilian casualty seen in decades in the region.
Superintendent David Kelly said: “This is a tragedy for our community. There are families left devastated.
“I want to offer, on behalf of myself and my colleagues that attended the scene, our very sincere condolences.
Speaking on Saturday morning to the national broadcaster RTE, Irish Prime Minister, known as the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin expressed his condolences.
Martin said: “It is absolutely devastating and quite shocking in terms of the enormity of this tragedy, the scale of it. An explosion ripping through the normality of a community, with people going to the shop, the normal toing and froing of life.
“Community is what defines our people and we are witnessing a terrible tragedy in a wonderful community,” he said.
Editor: Lana Hassen
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/08/europe/irish-gas-explosion-intl/index.html
Ten people, including two teenagers and a young child, were killed in Friday’s explosion at a gas filling station in the northwest of Ireland, local authorities said. Irish police said that among the 10 dead in the blast in Donegal ere four men, three women, a teenage boy, a teenage girl, and anot...
NCY NEWS
Ten people, including two teenagers and a young child, were killed in Friday’s explosion at a gas filling station in the northwest of Ireland, local authorities said. Irish police said that among the 10 dead in the blast in Donegal ere four men, three women, a teenage boy, a teenage girl, and anot...
Heat killed the most people in the UK this summer since records began in 2004, via NCY NEWS https://ift.tt/pmkDtJq
England saw the highest excess mortality figure from heatwaves this year since records began in 2004, health officials said on Friday, after a hot summer that saw temperatures rise to all-time highs.
England recorded 2,803 excess deaths among those aged 65 and over during summer heat waves this year, possibly due to complications arising from extreme heat, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said in a statement. The figures exclude deaths from Covid-19.
That number rose to 3,271 when including the nation of Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland were not included in the statistics.
“These estimates show clearly that high temperatures can lead to premature death for those who are vulnerable,” UKHSA Chief Scientific Officer Isabel Oliver said.
A vehicle drives past a dry, cracked lake bed on its way to Boulder Harbour in drought-stricken Lake Mead on September 15, 2022 in Boulder City, Nevada. - Located outside of Las Vegas near the Nevada-Arizona border, Lake Mead provides electricity to several parts of Arizona, California and Nevada and is also the source of water for rural, urban and tribal lands across the southwest.
Fourth year in a row of drought is likely in Southwest after worst 3 on record
“Prolonged periods of hot weather are a particular risk for elderly people, those with heart and lung conditions or people who are unable to keep themselves cool such as people with learning disabilities and Alzheimer’s disease.”
The figures highlight just how dangerous heat can be, particularly in places like the UK, which is largely ill-equipped for long heat waves. Experts often call heat a “silent killer” because it can be just as deadly as other extreme weather events, like hurricanes, or even moreso, yet awareness of its threat level can be low.
Britain recorded its highest ever temperature, of just above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in eastern England on July 19.
The heat wave, which contributed to fires across large grass areas, destroyed property and pressured transport infrastructure, was made at least 10 times more likely because of climate change, scientists said.
The Armada gas condensate platform, operated by BG Group Plc, stands in the North Sea, off the coast of Aberdeen, U.K., on Friday, Dec. 11, 2015. Royal Dutch Shell Plc got clearance from antitrust authorities in China for the takeover of BG Group Plc, removing the final regulatory hurdle for its biggest-ever deal.
Around 1,000 excess deaths were recorded among those over 65 between July 17-20, the UKHSA said, while the Aug. 8-17 period recorded an estimated 1,458 excess deaths.
Statisticians use “excess deaths” — a term that became more commonplace during the coronavirus pandemic — to describe the number of fatalities in excess of normally observed mortality numbers for a particular time of year.
Despite peaks in mortality during heat waves, the majority of days in the winter usually show a higher number of deaths than in the summer, ONS Head of Mortality Analysis Sarah Caul said.
Editor: Lana Hassen
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/07/uk/englands-heatwaves-highest-excess-deaths-elderly-scli-intl/index.html
England saw the highest excess mortality figure from heatwaves this year since records began in 2004, health officials said on Friday, after a hot summer that saw temperatures rise to all-time highs. England recorded 2,803 excess deaths among those aged 65 and over during summer heat waves this year...
NCY NEWS
England saw the highest excess mortality figure from heatwaves this year since records began in 2004, health officials said on Friday, after a hot summer that saw temperatures rise to all-time highs. England recorded 2,803 excess deaths among those aged 65 and over during summer heat waves this year...
Covid wave looms in Europe as booster campaign makes slow start, via NCY NEWS https://ift.tt/OvzTyN4
A new Covid-19 wave appears to be brewing in Europe as cooler weather arrives, with public health experts warning that vaccine fatigue and confusion over types of shots available will likely limit booster uptake.
Omicron subvariants BA.4/5 that dominated this summer are still behind the majority of infections, but newer Omicron subvariants are gaining ground. Hundreds of new forms of Omicron are being tracked by scientists, World Health Organization (WHO) officials said this week.
WHO data released late on Wednesday showed that cases in the European Union reached 1.5 million last week, up 8% from the prior week, despite a dramatic fall in testing. Globally, case numbers continue to decline.
Hospitalization numbers across many countries in the 27-nation bloc, as well as Britain, have gone up in recent weeks.
Cathay Pacific is facing 'unprecedented staffing' shortages, warns top union in Hong Kong
In the week ending October 4, Covid-19 hospital admissions with symptoms jumped nearly 32% in Italy, while intensive care admissions rose about 21%, compared to the week before, according to data compiled by independent scientific foundation Gimbe.
Over the same week, Covid hospitalizations in Britain saw a 45% increase versus the week earlier.
Omicron-adapted vaccines have launched in Europe as of September, with two types of shots addressing the BA.1 as well as the BA.4/5 subvariants made available alongside existing first-generation vaccines. In Britain, only the BA.1-tailored shots have been given the green light.
European and British officials have endorsed the latest boosters only for a select groups of people, including the elderly and those with compromised immune systems. Complicating matters further is the “choice” of vaccine as a booster, which will likely add to confusion, public health experts said.
But willingness to get yet another shot, which could be a fourth or fifth for some, is wearing thin.
“For those who may be less concerned about their risk, the messaging that it is all over coupled with the lack of any major publicity campaign is likely to reduce uptake,” said Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “So on balance I fear that uptake will be quite a bit lower.”
False sense of security
Penny Ward, visiting professor in pharmaceutical medicine at King’s College London, said: “Another confounder is that quite a high proportion of the population might have also had a Covid episode in recent months.”
Some may erroneously feel that having had a complete primary course and then having fallen ill with Covid means they will remain immune, she added.
Since September 5, when the roll-out of new vaccines began in the European Union, about 40 million vaccine doses produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have been delivered to member states, according to data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
A man poses for a photograph with a flag of China while celebrating Chinese National Day at Tsim She Tsui in Hong Kong, China, on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022. Hong Kong is slowly unwinding some of its toughest pandemic rules, which had kept it in line with mainland Chinas Covid
Hong Kong's U-turn on quarantine is a sign Beijing still needs its gate to the West
However, weekly vaccine doses administered in the EU were only between 1 million and 1.4 million during September, compared with 6-10 million per week during the year-earlier period, ECDC data showed.
Perhaps the biggest challenge to uptake is the perception that the pandemic is over, creating a false sense of security.
“There must be some complacency in that life seems to have gone back to normal – at least with regards Covid and people now have other financial and war-related worries,” said Adam Finn, chair of ETAGE, an expert group advising the WHO on vaccine preventable diseases in Europe.
He added that some law-makers, too, were dropping the ball.
Italy’s Gimbe science foundation said the government, soon to be replaced after an election, was ill prepared for the autumn-winter season, and highlighted that a publication on the government’s management of the pandemic had been blocked.
The health ministry declined to comment.
Meanwhile, British officials last week warned that renewed circulation of flu and a resurgence in Covid-19 could pile pressure on the already stretched National Health Service.
Editor: Lana Hassen
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/07/europe/covid-wave-europe-intl-scli/index.html
A new Covid-19 wave appears to be brewing in Europe as cooler weather arrives, with public health experts warning that vaccine fatigue and confusion over types of shots available will likely limit booster uptake. Omicron subvariants BA.4/5 that dominated this summer are still behind the majority of....
NCY NEWS
A new Covid-19 wave appears to be brewing in Europe as cooler weather arrives, with public health experts warning that vaccine fatigue and confusion over types of shots available will likely limit booster uptake. Omicron subvariants BA.4/5 that dominated this summer are still behind the majority of....
How do you even cheat in chess? Artificial intelligence and Morse code, via NCY NEWS https://ift.tt/vPgD8uh
NCY NEWS
It’s the story that has rocked chess and shown no sign of abating.
The cheating scandal which has engulfed the sport, involving five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen, is all anyone is talking about.
On Monday, Carlsen explicitly accused fellow grandmaster and rival Hans Niemann of cheating for the first time in a lengthy statement on Twitter.
The accusation comes weeks after the Norwegian withdrew from the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 19 following his surprise defeat to the American.
“When Niemann was invited last minute to the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, I strongly considered withdrawing prior to the event. I ultimately chose to play,” Carlsen wrote.
“I believe that Niemann has cheated more – and more recently – than he has publicly admitted. His over the board progress has been unusual, and throughout our game in the Sinquefield Cup I had the impression that he wasn’t tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do.
“This game contributed to changing my perspective.”
Niemann, for his part, admitted to cheating at the ages of 12 and 16 and said that he had been banned from competing on Chess.com.
In a 72-page report, the website said the teenage grandmaster “likely cheated” in more than 100 online matches, including ones with prize money involved.
Niemann, however, said in an interview with the St. Louis Chess Club that he had never cheated in over-the-board games.
But for a game that seems so simple in its structure – one chess board, two players, 32 pieces in total and, theoretically, a lot of creativity – the question a lot of people are asking is: “How does someone even cheat in chess?”
The rise of technology
Despite it being an ancient sport, chess has been dragged into the modern age in recent years.
Computers and the internet have made competition more accessible and connected players around the world, and artificial intelligence now gives players the tools to plot out their moves before the match even begins.
It all really began in 1996 when grandmaster Garry Kasparov, widely recognized as one of the best players ever, faced off against an IBM supercomputer called ‘Deep Blue’ in a series of matches.
Although Kasparov won the first match, ‘Deep Blue’ won two games, becoming the first computer program to defeat a world champion in a classical game under tournament regulations.
A year later, the two faced off in a rematch with ‘Deep Blue’ defeating Kasparov, in doing so, becoming the first computer program to defeat a world champion in a full match.
Although Kasparov’s performances against ‘Deep Blue’ have been reevaluated over time, the significance of the results can’t be overstated. It was a totemic moment in the progression of technology’s ability to play the “perfect” chess match and signaled the rise of artificial intelligence’s effect on chess.
Since then, with improvements to computer hardware and software, chess engines have helped shape the sport into a 21st century game.
As defined by Chess.com, a chess engine is a program which “analyzes chess positions and returns what it calculates to be the best move options.”
Chess engines have become much stronger than humans in recent years, with many exceeding a 3,000 Elo rating – the Elo rating system measures the strength of a chess player relative to their opponents. For context, Carlsen holds the record for the highest Elo rating ever achieved by a human player when he reached 2,882 in 2014.
Stockfish is one of the most advanced chess engines with a rating of more than 3,500, which means it has a 98% probability of beating Carlsen in a match – and a 2% chance of drawing the five-time world champion, essentially rendering a Carlsen victory impossible.
Although chess engines have helped players hone their craft – training against the perfect moves to prepare themselves for every eventuality – they’ve also allowed some players to cheat more easily.
As a result, online chess sites, like Chess.com, have developed anti-cheating technology to detect when players are using outside computer software during games in an attempt to curb foul play.
Even though the anti-cheating technology has improved, Emil Sutovsky – director general of chess’ governing body FIDE – says chess needs to develop a “social contract” with online players to stop cheating.
“Now, what has happened in the past was that the culture of cheating online has been seen as much less of a crime compared to if you were trying to cheat over the board,” Sutovsky – who says cheating in online chess is a “massive problem” – told CNN Sport. “It was like you are playing a computer game, online game, online chess, so it was not taken as seriously.
“And many players suspected that other players are cheating and then they were naturally more driven to try themselves. That’s something that’s not happening in over the board chess. Now, this culture or heritage actually must change and people should realize that be it online cheating or over the board cheating, it is cheating.
“Especially now when the situation changed as there are serious prizes at stake, hosts tours like Magnus [Carlsen who] conducted his own tour, so this whole perception naturally must be replaced by understanding that online cheating is a very serious sin and the punishment should be also very serious for that.”
While FIDE is battling to combat online cheating, there has been a level of purity to over-the-board chess with cheating proving to be much more difficult.
Andy Howie, arbiter and a member of FIDE’s anti-cheating Fair Play Commission, outlined some of the measures in place to prevent over-the-board cheating such as metal detectors, signal scanners, non-linear scanners and thermal imaging.
But safety measures haven’t stopped people from attempting to cheat and the history of the game is rife with scandal.
Carlsen mulls over a move during his round 8 game against the Slovakia team at the 44th
Accusations of cheating and foul play flew back and forth during the 1978 World Chess Championship Final, which one grandmaster who was there described as “the most bewildering and dirty world championship match in the history of chess.”
At one point, the young Soviet champion Anatoly Karpov claimed Russian exile Viktor Korchnoi was trying to blind him with his mirrored sunglasses, reports El País.
Later, waiters served Karpov a blueberry yogurt and Korchnoi suggested it could be used for coded communications from his opponent’s analysts.
Karpov ultimately won the match, which is recreated in a 2021 Russian film called “The World Champion.”
More recently, FIDE stripped Georgia’s Gaioz Nigalidze of his grandmaster title and banned him from competitive chess for three years in 2015 for repeatedly visiting the bathroom in the middle of a game to check his phone to find the best move to make.
Also in 2015, an arbiter caught Italian amateur Arcangelo Riccicardi using Morse code and a camera to cheat in a competition.
Ricciardi was reportedly hiding a video camera inside a pendant around his neck, wires attached to his body and a small box under his armpit.
“I kept on looking at him. He was always sitting down, never got up,” chief arbiter Jean Coqueraut told La Stampa. “Very strange, we are talking about hours and hours of play. Above all, he always had his arms folded with his thumb under his armpit. He never took it out.
“And he blinked in an unnatural way, as if it was concentrated on the board, but lost in some other thought. Then I realized: he was deciphering the signals in Morse code. Point line point line. That was it.”
Riccicardi denied cheating.
It is uncertain whether or not Niemann did in fact cheat against Carlsen – the American vehemently denies the accusations.
In any case, theoretically, if someone were to input Carlsen’s moves into a chess engine like Stockfish, for example, they would be able to either beat or draw Carlsen with an almost 100% probability.
There has been no conclusive evidence either way, yet the five-time world champion seems convinced that there was foul play involved at the Sinquefield Cup.
It’s much tougher to cheat when you’re sitting directly across the board from your opponent, with them staring into your eyes and with an official over your shoulder, but that hasn’t stopped players trying throughout history.
Howie says top players who rely on their chess careers are less likely to cheat with more to lose on the line.
“You have someone like Hikaru Nakamura or Magnus Carlsen or Levon Aronian or Ian Nepomniatchtchi. If they were to be caught cheating, it would be devastating for them, for the careers,” he told CNN Sport. “This is their careers. They cannot afford to do that because it would be utterly devastating for them.
“They would lose all credibility, all sponsorship. They just have too much to lose. Now, that doesn’t mean we treat it as if they’re never going to cheat, far from it. When we’re dealing with their tournaments, we’re actually very, very strict, just to make sure that there’s no… I never expect to find any of these cheating.
“I would be really be shocked if I did find one of these guys cheating. But as you come down to the lower ranks, that’s when you’re more likely to find people cheating, your weaker players. People who see it as, it’s not important for them, they get banned for a couple of years. ‘So what? I’ll come and play in a couple of years’ time. I’m not too fussed about it.’ It doesn’t have the impact on them as it does on the top players. It’s not their livelihood.”
And as the Carlsen-Niemann controversy continues to dominate the sport, who knows what truth the events will bring forth.
Editor: Lana Hassen
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/28/sport/chess-how-to-cheating-explainer-spt-intl/index.html
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