Sam Hill / Digital TrendsConnections is oneof the best puzzle games from the New York Times. The game tasks you with categorizing a pool of 16 words into four secret (for now) groups by figuring out how the words relate to each other. The puzzle resets every night at midnight and each new puzzle has a varying degree of difficulty. Just like Wordle, you can keep track of your winning streak and compare your scores with friends.ContentsSome days are trickier than others just like other NYT Games favorites The Mini and Strands. If youre having a little trouble solving todays puzzle, check out our Connections tips and tricks guide for some good strategies or check out the hints for todays Connections puzzle below. And if you still cant get it, well tell you todays answers at the very end.Recommended VideosConnections is a daily game about finding common threads between words. Players must select four groups of four words without making more than three mistakes. Play now. https://t.co/YITfSnqODb pic.twitter.com/CqObVOqeUs The New York Times (@nytimes) November 3, 2024RelatedYou can play Connections on the New York Times website or with the NYT Games app on iOS or Android.In Connections, youll be shown a grid containing 16 words your objective is to organize these words into four sets of four by identifying the connections that link them. These sets could encompass concepts like titles of video game franchises, book series sequels, shades of red, names of chain restaurants, etc.There are generally words that seem like they could fit multiple themes, but theres only one 100% correct answer. Youre able to shuffle the grid of words and rearrange them to help better see the potential connections.Each group is color-coded. The yellow group is the easiest to figure out, followed by the green, blue, and purple groups.Pick four words and hitSubmit. If youre correct, the four words will be removed from the grid and the theme connecting them will be revealed. Guess incorrectly and itll count as a mistake. You only have four mistakes available until the game ends.We can help you solve todays Connection by telling you the four themes. If you need more assistance, well also give you one word from each group below.Todays themesALLIANCECLOSE-FITTINGOCCASIONS WHEN ONE MIGHT KNEELWHAT AN APOSTROPHE MIGHT INDICATEOne-answer revealsALLIANCE ASSOCIATIONCLOSE-FITTING CLINGYOCCASIONS WHEN ONE MIGHT KNEEL APOLOGYWHAT AN APOSTROPHE MIGHT INDICATE CONTRACTIONNew York TimesStill no luck? Thats OK. This puzzle is designed to be difficult. If you just want to see todays Connections answer, weve got you covered below:ALLIANCE ASSOCIATION, GUILD, LEAGUE, UNIONCLOSE-FITTING CLINGY, SLEEK, SLINKY, SNUGOCCASIONS WHEN ONE MIGHT KNEEL APOLOGY, DUBBING, PRAYER, PROPOSALWHAT AN APOSTROPHE MIGHT INDICATE CONTRACTION, FOOT, POSSESSIVE, QUOTATIONConnectionsgrids vary widely and change every day. If you couldnt solve todays puzzle, be sure to check back in tomorrow.What time does the Connections puzzle change?The puzzle changes daily at midnight local time.Who edits the NYT Connections game?Wyna Liu, who has been editing puzzles at The New York Times since 2020, edits Connections daily.A few months ago, a new assignment crossed my desk: Create the game boards for Connections, a category matching game that had recently been greenlighted and was in search of an editor, wrote Liu in an article explaining her process in June 2024. Most of my puzzle experience has been working with crosswords, and I was excited at the chance to try something different. Ive enjoyed learning how puzzle editing plays out once a game is greenlighted, and seeing how our team fits into a larger ecosystem.On the one-year anniversary of Connections launching earlier this year, Liu posted this TikTok about her favorite puzzles so far:@thegamesteam ? happy one year anniversary to connections, our newest official NYT game ? #nytgames #nytconnections #nyt The Kite Live by Luisa Marion luisa_marion_musicEditors Recommendations

The Journals Personal Tech team rounds up our favorite stuff to wear, to help us get fit and more.

Experiencing some technical difficulties OpenAI accused of trying to profit off AI model inspection in court How do you get an AI model to confess what's inside? Ashley Belanger Nov 15, 2024 8:45 am | 36 Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreSince ChatGPT became an instant hit roughly two years ago, tech companies around the world have rushed to release AI products while the public is still in awe of AI's seemingly radical potential to enhance their daily lives.But at the same time, governments globally have warned it can be hard to predict how rapidly popularizing AI can harm society. Novel uses could suddenly debut and displace workers, fuel disinformation, stifle competition, or threaten national securityand those are just some of the obvious potential harms.While governments scramble to establish systems to detect harmful applicationsideally before AI models are deployedsome of the earliest lawsuits over ChatGPT show just how hard it is for the public to crack open an AI model and find evidence of harms once a model is released into the wild. That task is seemingly only made harder by an increasingly thirsty AI industry intent on shielding models from competitors to maximize profits from emerging capabilities.The less the public knows, the seemingly harder and more expensive it is to hold companies accountable for irresponsible AI releases. This fall, ChatGPT-maker OpenAI was even accused of trying to profit off discovery by seeking to charge litigants retail prices to inspect AI models alleged as causing harms.In a lawsuit raised by The New York Times over copyright concerns, OpenAI suggested the same model inspection protocol used in a similar lawsuit raised by book authors.Under that protocol, the NYT could hire an expert to review highly confidential OpenAI technical materials "on a secure computer in a secured room without Internet access or network access to other computers at a secure location" of OpenAI's choosing. In this closed-off arena, the expert would have limited time and limited queries to try to get the AI model to confess what's inside.The NYT seemingly had few concerns about the actual inspection process but bucked at OpenAI's intended protocol capping the number of queries their expert could make through an application programming interface to $15,000 worth of retail credits. Once litigants hit that cap, OpenAI suggested that the parties split the costs of remaining queries, charging the NYT and co-plaintiffs half-retail prices to finish the rest of their discovery.In September, the NYT told the court that the parties had reached an "impasse" over this protocol, alleging that "OpenAI seeks to hide its infringement by professing an undueyet unquantified'expense.'" According to the NYT, plaintiffs would need $800,000 worth of retail credits to seek the evidence they need to prove their case, but there's allegedly no way it would actually cost OpenAI that much."OpenAI has refused to state what its actual costs would be, and instead improperly focuses on what it charges its customers for retail services as part of its (for profit) business," the NYT claimed in a court filing.In its defense, OpenAI has said that setting the initial cap is necessary to reduce the burden on OpenAI and prevent a NYT fishing expedition. The ChatGPT maker alleged that plaintiffs "are requesting hundreds of thousands of dollars of credits to run an arbitrary and unsubstantiatedand likely unnecessarynumber of searches on OpenAIs models, all at OpenAIs expense."How this court debate resolves could have implications for future cases where the public seeks to inspect models causing alleged harms. It seems likely that if a court agrees OpenAI can charge retail prices for model inspection, it could potentially deter lawsuits from any plaintiffs who can't afford to pay an AI expert or commercial prices for model inspection.Lucas Hansen, co-founder of CivAIa company that seeks to enhance public awareness of what AI can actually dotold Ars that probably a lot of inspection can be done on public models. But often, public models are fine-tuned, perhaps censoring certain queries and making it harder to find information that a model was trained onwhich is the goal of NYT's suit. By gaining API access to original models instead, litigants could have an easier time finding evidence to prove alleged harms.It's unclear exactly what it costs OpenAI to provide that level of access. Hansen told Ars that costs of training and experimenting with models "dwarfs" the cost of running models to provide full capability solutions. Developers have noted in forums that costs of API queries quickly add up, with one claiming OpenAI's pricing is "killing the motivation to work with the APIs."The NYT's lawyers and OpenAI declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.US hurdles for AI safety testingOf course, OpenAI is not the only AI company facing lawsuits over popular products. Artists have sued makers of image generators for allegedly threatening their livelihoods, and several chatbots have been accused of defamation. Other emerging harms include very visible exampleslike explicit AI deepfakes, harming everyone from celebrities like Taylor Swift to middle schoolersas well as underreported harms, like allegedly biased HR software.A recent Gallup survey suggests that Americans are more trusting of AI than ever but still twice as likely to believe AI does "more harm than good" than that the benefits outweigh the harms. Hansen's CivAI creates demos and interactive software for education campaigns helping the public to understand firsthand the real dangers of AI. He told Ars that while it's hard for outsiders to trust a study from "some random organization doing really technical work" to expose harms, CivAI provides a controlled way for people to see for themselves how AI systems can be misused."It's easier for people to trust the results, because they can do it themselves," Hansen told Ars.Hansen also advises lawmakers grappling with AI risks. In February, CivAI joined the Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute Consortiuma group including Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, nonprofits, and academic research teams that help to advise the US AI Safety Institute (AISI). But so far, Hansen said, CivAI has not been very active in that consortium beyond scheduling a talk to share demos.The AISI is supposed to protect the US from risky AI models by conducting safety testing to detect harms before models are deployed. Testing should "address risks to human rights, civil rights, and civil liberties, such as those related to privacy, discrimination and bias, freedom of expression, and the safety of individuals and groups," President Joe Biden said in a national security memo last month, urging that safety testing was critical to support unrivaled AI innovation."For the United States to benefit maximally from AI, Americans must know when they can trust systems to perform safely and reliably," Biden said.But the AISI's safety testing is voluntary, and while companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have agreed to the voluntary testing, not every company has. Hansen is worried that AISI is under-resourced and under-budgeted to achieve its broad goals of safeguarding America from untold AI harms."The AI Safety Institute predicted that they'll need about $50 million in funding, and that was before the National Security memo, and it does not seem like they're going to be getting that at all," Hansen told Ars.Biden had $50 million budgeted for AISI in 2025, but Donald Trump has threatened to dismantle Biden's AI safety plan upon taking office.The AISI was probably never going to be funded well enough to detect and deter all AI harms, but with its future unclear, even the limited safety testing the US had planned could be stalled at a time when the AI industry continues moving full speed ahead.That could largely leave the public at the mercy of AI companies' internal safety testing. As frontier models from big companies will likely remain under society's microscope, OpenAI has promised to increase investments in safety testing and help establish industry-leading safety standards.According to OpenAI, that effort includes making models safer over time, less prone to producing harmful outputs, even with jailbreaks. But OpenAI has a lot of work to do in that area, as Hansen told Ars that he has a "standard jailbreak" for OpenAI's most popular release, ChatGPT, "that almost always works" to produce harmful outputs.The AISI did not respond to Ars' request to comment.NYT nowhere near done inspecting OpenAI modelsFor the public, who often become guinea pigs when AI acts unpredictably, risks remain, as the NYT case suggests that the costs of fighting AI companies could go up while technical hiccups could delay resolutions. Last week, an OpenAI filing showed that NYT's attempts to inspect pre-training data in a very, very tightly controlled environment like the one recommended for model inspection were allegedly continuously disrupted."The process has not gone smoothly, and they are running into a variety of obstacles to, and obstructions of, their review," the court filing describing NYT's position said. "These severe and repeated technical issues have made it impossible to effectively and efficiently search across OpenAIs training datasets in order to ascertain the full scope of OpenAIs infringement. In the first week of the inspection alone, Plaintiffs experienced nearly a dozen disruptions to the inspection environment, which resulted in many hours when News Plaintiffs had no access to the training datasets and no ability to run continuous searches."OpenAI was additionally accused of refusing to install software the litigants needed and randomly shutting down ongoing searches. Frustrated after more than 27 days of inspecting data and getting "nowhere near done," the NYT keeps pushing the court to order OpenAI to provide the data instead. In response, OpenAI said plaintiffs' concerns were either "resolved" or discussions remained "ongoing," suggesting there was no need for the court to intervene.So far, the NYT claims that it has found millions of plaintiffs' works in the ChatGPT pre-training data but has been unable to confirm the full extent of the alleged infringement due to the technical difficulties. Meanwhile, costs keep accruing in every direction."While News Plaintiffs continue to bear the burden and expense of examining the training datasets, their requests with respect to the inspection environment would be significantly reduced if OpenAI admitted that they trained their models on all, or the vast majority, of News Plaintiffs copyrighted content," the court filing said.Ashley BelangerSenior Policy ReporterAshley BelangerSenior Policy Reporter Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience. 36 Comments

Open source closed garage I, too, installed an open source garage door opener, and Im loving it OpenGarage restored my home automations and gave me a whole bunch of new ideas. Kevin Purdy Nov 15, 2024 7:05 am | 118 Hark! The top portion of a garage door has entered my view, and I shall alert my owner to it. Credit: Kevin Purdy Hark! The top portion of a garage door has entered my view, and I shall alert my owner to it. Credit: Kevin Purdy Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreLike Ars Senior Technology Editor Lee Hutchinson, I have a garage. The door on that garage is opened and closed by a device made by a company that, as with Lee's, offers you a way to open and close it with a smartphone app. But that app doesn't work with my preferred home automation system, Home Assistant, and also looks and works like an app made by a garage door company.I had looked into the ratgdo Lee installed, and raved about, but hooking it up to my particular Genie/Aladdin system would have required installing limit switches. So I instead installed an OpenGarage unit ($50 plus shipping). My garage opener now works with Home Assistant (and thereby pretty much anything else), it's not subject to the whims of API access, and I've got a few ideas how to make it even better. Allow me to walk you through what I did, why I did it, and what I might do next.Thanks, Ill take it from here, GenieGenie, maker of my Wi-Fi-capable garage door opener (sold as an "Aladdin Connect" system), is not in the same boat as the Chamberlain/myQ setup that inspired Lee's project. There was a working Aladdin Connect integration in Home Assistant, until the company changed its API in January 2024. Genie said it would release its own official Home Assistant integration in June, and it did, but then it was quickly pulled back, seemingly for licensing issues. Since then, no updates on the matter. (I have emailed Genie for comment and will update this post if I receive reply.)This is not egregious behavior, at least on the scale of garage door opener firms. And Aladdin's app works with Google Home and Amazon Alexa, but not with Home Assistant or my secondary/lazy option, HomeKit/Apple Home. It also logs me out "for security" more often than I'd like and tells me this only after an iPhone shortcut refuses to fire. It has some decent features, but without deeper integrations, I can't do things like have the brighter ceiling lights turn on when the door opens or flash indoor lights if the garage door stays open too long. At least not without Google or Amazon.I've seen OpenGarage passed around the Home Assistant forums and subreddits over the years. It is, as the name implies, fully open source: hardware design, firmware, and app code, API, everything. It is a tiny ESP board that has an ultrasonic distance sensor and circuit relay attached. You can control and monitor it from a web browser, mobile or desktop, from IFTTT, MQTT, and with the latest firmware, you can get email alerts. I decided to pull out the 6-foot ladder and give it a go. Prototypes of the OpenGarage unit. To me, they look like little USB-powered owls, just with very stubby wings. Credit: OpenGarage Installing the little watching owlYou generally mount the OpenGarage unit to the roof of your garage, so the distance sensor can detect if your garage door has rolled up in front of it. There are options for mounting with magnetic contact sensors or a side view of a roll-up door, or you can figure out some other way in which two different sensor depth distances would indicatean open or closed door. If you've got a Security+ 2.0 door (the kind with the yellow antenna, generally), you'll need an adapter, too.The toughest part of an overhead install is finding a spot that gives the unit a view of your garage door, not too close to rails or other obstructing objects, but then close enough for the contact wires and USB micro cable to reach. Ideally, too, it has a view of your car when the door is closed and the car is inside, so it can report its presence. I've yet to find the right thing to do with the "car is inside or not" data, but the seed is planted. OpenGarage's introduction and explanation video. My garage setup, like most of them, is pretty simple. There's a big red glowing button on the wall near the door, and there are two very thin wires running from it to the opener. On the opener, there are four ports that you can open up with a screwdriver press. Most of the wires are headed to the safety sensor at the door bottom, while two come in from the opener button. After stripping a bit of wire to expose more cable, I pressed the contact wires from the OpenGarage into those same opener ports. The wire terminal on my Genie garage opener. The green and pink wires lead to the OpenGarage unit. Credit: Kevin Purdy After that, I connected the wires to the OpenGarage unit's screw terminals, then did some pencil work on the garage ceiling to figure out how far I could run the contact and micro-USB power cable, getting the proper door view while maintaining some right-angle sense of order up there. When I had reached a decent compromise between cable tension and placement, I screwed the sensor into an overhead stud and used a staple gun to secure the wires. It doesn't look like a pro installed it, but it's not half bad. Where I ended up installing my OpenGarage unit. Key points: Above the garage door when open, view of the car below, not too close to rails, able to reach power and opener contact. Credit: Kevin Purdy A very versatile boardIf you've got everything placed and wired up correctly, opening the OpenGarage access point or IP address should give you an interface that shows you the status of your garage, your car (optional), and its Wi-Fi and external connections. The landing screen for the OpenGarage. You can only open the door or change settings if you know the device key (which you should change immediately). Credit: Kevin Purdy It's a handy webpage and a basic opener (provided you know the secret device key you set), but OpenGarage is more powerful in how it uses that data. OpenGarage's device can keep a cloud connection open to Blynk or the maker's own OpenThings.io cloud server. You can hook it up to MQTT or an IFTTT channel. It can send you alerts when your garage has been open a certain amount of time or if it's open after a certain time of day. You're telling me you can just... see the state of these things, at all times, on your own network? Credit: Kevin Purdy You really dont need a corporate garage coderFor me, the greatest benefit is in hooking OpenGarage up to Home Assistant. I've added an opener button to my standard dashboard (one that requires a long-press or two actions to open). I've restored the automation that turns on the overhead bulbs for five minutes when the garage door opens. And I can dig in if I want, like alerting me that it's Monday night at 10 pm and I've yet to open the garage door, indicating I forgot to put the trash out. Or maybe some kind of NFC tag to allow for easy opening while on a bike, if that's not a security nightmare (it might be).Not for nothing, but OpenGarage is also a deeply likable bit of indie kit. It's a two-person operation, with Ray Wang building on his work with the open and handy OpenSprinkler project, trading Arduino for ESP8266, and doing some 3D printing to fit the sensors and switches, and Samer Albahra providing mobile app, documentation, and other help. Their enthusiasm for DIY home control has likely brought out the same in others and certainly in me.Kevin PurdySenior Technology ReporterKevin PurdySenior Technology Reporter Kevin is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering open-source software, PC gaming, home automation, repairability, e-bikes, and tech history. He has previously worked at Lifehacker, Wirecutter, iFixit, and Carbon Switch. 118 Comments

Indigenous artist KiteFlorian Voggeneder/vog.photoPST ART: Art & science collideMulti-venue, Southern CaliforniaCloses 16 February 2025The myth of the irreconcilably divided worlds of art and science is still alive. But its nonsense, says Joan Weinstein, director of the Getty Foundation the two have always been intertwined. She stresses this in her role as chief architect of PST ART: Art & science collide, a programme of over 70 exhibitions in Southern California over the next three months designed to interrogate the bonds between the two.In 2017, Weinstein began talking to museum directors about the theme. Everyone started sparking

Steve NelsonEarth isnt doing so great. Thanks to human-induced climate change, the seas are warming and rising, while the land in many places is alternately choked in drought or inundated with floods. As for us humans, we are engaged in warfare on multiple continents, far-right movements are ascendant across the world and, as of last month, dude wipes are available with a pumpkin spice scent in the United States.Meanwhile, the escape hatch to space is creaking open. Elon Musks company SpaceX has a growing fleet of cheap, reusable rockets. In October, the booster stage for its mega-rocket, Starship, was caught in the grip of a skyscraper-high tower as it descended back to Earth. It was an impressive feat. But Musks goal with these vehicles is even more audacious: to start a self-sustaining million-person city on Mars in the next 30 years.Has anyone really thought this through? Well, yes, as it happens, albeit not Musk. We are a wife-and-husband research team a biologist and cartoonist, respectively and we have spent four years looking into how humans will become space settlers for our latest book, A City on Mars. We set out to write the essential guide to a glorious off-world future. What we learned, however, made us space settlement sceptics.Heres the thing: Mars sucks. When you dig into what life would really look like on the Red Planet, in terms of the squishy details of human existence, it becomes hard to avoid an inconvenient conclusion that moving to Mars to escape Earth would be like moving

Victoria Kjr Theilvig is the first Miss Denmark to win Miss Universe. Miss Denmark 2024. Courtesy of Miss Universe During the pageant, the Miss Universe announcers said that Theilvig was the first Miss Denmark to place in the top five since 1963 and she went on to become the first from her country to win the crown.The 21-year-old pageant queen is a dancer who aspires to become a lawyer. She is also an advocate for mental health and animal rights.Ruby Pouchet was the first Miss Bonaire to compete at Miss Universe in 25 years. Miss Bonaire 2024 Courtesy of Miss Universe Pouchet, a 29-year-old communications specialist and government official, didn't place in the top 30. Marianela Ancheta brought Miss Cuba back to the Miss Universe stage for the first time since 1967. Miss Cuba 2024. Courtesy of Miss Universe Ancheta made it to the top 30 on Saturday night.The 31-year-old is a model and businesswoman. She is also an advocate for mental-health support. Miss Egypt Logina Salah was the first woman with vitiligo to compete in the pageant. Miss Egypt 2024. Courtesy of Miss Universe Salah made it to the top 30 during the Miss Universe finals.The 34-year-old is a mother, model, makeup artist, and TV presenter. She is using her current platform to destigmatize vitiligo, a condition that results in the loss of pigment in the skin. Saran Bah was the first Miss Guinea to compete at Miss Universe. Miss Guinea 2024. Courtesy of Miss Universe Bah, 29, is a master's student pursuing her degree in business administration. She also works for a government nonprofit. Miss Gibraltar Shyanne Mcintosh was the shortest contestant in the pageant's history. Miss Gibraltar 2024 Courtesy of Miss Universe Before Mcintosh won the title of Miss Gibraltar, she told the judges, "I may be small, but I stand tall," Gibraltar Chronicle reported. According to her Instagram, she is around 5-foot-1.The 25-year-old accountant was also the first Miss Gibraltar to walk across the Miss Universe stage in 34 years. Macau was represented in the Miss Universe pageant for the first time, thanks to Cassandra Chiu.Miss Macau 2024. Courtesy of Miss Universe Chiu placed in the top 30 on Saturday night. The 23-year-old is a dancer, model, and digital creator. At 40, Miss Malta Beatrice Njoya was the oldest woman to compete in the pageant. Miss Malta 2024 Courtesy of Miss Universe Njoya is a single mother of three.She's also a survivor of domestic and sexual abuse and now works with local NGOs to "advocate against all forms of violence against women," according to her Miss Universe bio. Mariyam Saina Naseem was the first Miss Maldives to compete at Miss Universe. Miss Maldives 2024. Courtesy of Miss Universe Naseem's Miss Universe appearance stirred controversy in her home country.The Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Information, and Arts in the Maldives said the pageant "fundamentally conflicts with the Islamic beliefs, cultural values, and traditions upheld by the Maldivian people," according to Ceylon Today.Miss Somalia Khadija Omar was the first woman to wear a hijab on the Miss Universe stage. Miss Somalia 2024. Hector Vivas/Getty Images Omar, 23, was also the first woman to represent Somalia at the Miss Universe competition. In 2021, she became the first pageant queen to wear a hijab at Miss World. Djulieta Calalb is the first-ever Miss Moldova to compete at Miss Universe. Miss Moldova 2024. Courtesy of Miss Universe The 20-year-old organizes fashion events in Moldova and Romania. She is also an advocate for sports development.Davin Prasath became the first Miss Cambodia to place at Miss Universe since her country's debut in 2017. Miss Cambodia 2024. Courtesy of Miss Universe Prasath made it to the top 30 in the competition. The 33-year-old spends much of her time volunteering and providing community service. Rumina Ivezaj was the first woman from Montenegro to compete in the pageant. Miss Montenegro 2024 Hector Vivas/Getty Images The 19-year-old is an environmental conservation advocate.Chelsea Manalo was the first Filipino of African descent to represent the Philippines on the Miss Universe stage. Miss Philippines 2024. Hector Vivas/Getty Images The 25-year-old began modeling at the age of 14. She has a degree in tourism management and previously competed at Miss World Philippines 2017, where she reached the top 15. Tea Gjorgievska represented North Macedonia for the country's Miss Universe debut. Miss North Macedonia 2024. Hector Vivas/Getty Images According to her Miss Universe bio, the 21-year-old's mission is "to inspire a world where every person feels valued and has a voice."Alma Cooper was the first Afro-Latina woman to represent the USA at Miss Universe. Miss USA 2024. Hector Vivas/Getty Images Alma Cooper, 22, is an Army officer and West Point graduate, where she was in the top 5% of her class. She is now a Knight-Hennessy Scholar at Stanford University, pursuing a master's degree in data science. Ava Vahneshan was the first Miss Persia to walk the Miss Universe stage. Miss Persia 2024. Hector Vivas/Getty Images The 26-year-old is a singer, model, and Chinese medicine specialist. Chidimma Adetshina was the first Miss Nigeria to place in the top five at the pageant. Miss Nigeria 2024 Hector Vivas/Getty Images It wasn't an easy journey for Adetshina to reach the Miss Universe stage. She was originally competing for Miss South Africa 2024 but decided to withdraw from the pageant following social-media attacks regarding her nationality. The Miss Nigeria competition then invited her to compete.The 23-year-old is a law student and athlete who champions "diversity, equity, and inclusion" as part of her Miss Universe platform, according to her bio for the pageant. Emilia Dobreva was the first Miss United Arab Emirates to compete at Miss Universe. Miss UAE 2024. Hector Vivas/Getty Images The 27-year-old is a mother of three and a successful model. She has walked the runway at New York Fashion Week and appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar Vietnam, according to Harper's Bazaar Arabia.Uzbekistan made its first Miss Universe appearance, with Nigina Fakhriddinova representing the country. Miss Uzbekistan 2024. Hector Vivas/Getty Images Fakhriddinova, 25, is a model.

The 73rd annual Miss Universe pageant took place in Mexico City on Saturday.Over 120 women competed for the crown, with multiple countries making a Miss Universe debut.Miss Denmark Victoria Kjr Theilvig won the Miss Universe title.Miss Denmark Victoria Kjr Theilvig has been crowned the new Miss Universe.Theilvig, 21, was named the winner of the 73rd Miss Universe competition on Saturday night in Mexico City. She was crowned by Miss Universe 2023 Sheynnis Palacios, the first woman from Nicaragua to win the title. Theilvig, 21, was named the winner of the 73rd Miss Universe competition on Saturday night. Hector Vivas/Getty Images In second place was Miss Nigeria Chidimma Adetshina, followed by Miss Mexico Mara Fernanda Beltrn Figueroa.Theilvig is the first Miss Denmark to win Miss Universe. It had been 61 years since a contestant from the country had placed in the top five of the competition. Miss Nigeria Chidimma Adetshina placed first runner-up. Hector Vivas/Getty Images During the final round, the top five contestants were all asked the same question: "Miss Universe has inspired generations of women. What is your message to the women watching you right now?""No matter where you come from, no matter your past, you can always choose to turn it into your strengths," Theilvig said in her response. "It will never define who you are. You just gotta keep fighting." Theilvig is the first Miss Denmark to win Miss Universe. Hector Vivas/Getty Images "I stand here today because I want to change, I want to make history, and that's what I'm doing tonight," she added. "So, never give up, always believe in yourself and your dreams, and that is exactly what you're going to do."Theilvig is a dancer and beauty entrepreneur who regularly advocates for mental-health support and animal rights. She aspires to become a lawyer. Miss Denmark 2024 at the National Costume Contest. Hector Vivas/Getty Images Multiple contestants made history at Miss Universe this year.Adetshina, who won first runner-up, is the first Miss Nigeria to place in the top five at Miss Universe.Miss Egypt Logina Salah was the first woman with vitiligo to compete in the pageant, while 40-year-old Miss Malta Beatrice Njoya was the oldest woman to compete in the Miss Universe pageant.

With President-elect Donald Trumps latest slate of extreme or controversial nominees Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services secretary has come the question about whether even a Republican-controlled Senate will actually confirm them all.But what if thats asking the wrong question? What if Trump has no intention of asking the Senates permission?Throughout the transition, Trump has made several references to his intent to use recess appointments to get his appointees in place more quickly. This refers to a longstanding presidential power to fill jobs that typically require Senate confirmation if Congress is in recess. The Constitution included that power in an era when reconvening a recessed Congress would take months of travel time; more recently, presidents have used it to get around Senate opposition for certain picks.Yet Trumps references to recess appointments were vague, and it was unclear exactly why he sounded so insistent on them. The new Congress would not need to recess for some time. The Senate surely would consider his top nominees quickly. The new Republican majority would likely be deferential to most of his choices, and the Democratic minority has no power to actually block any of them. So why would recess appointments be necessary so soon?We got a potential clue about what Trump may have in mind when the well-connected conservative legal activist Ed Whelan heard a rumor.Hope its wrong, Whelan wrote on X Wednesday, but Im hearing through the grapevine about this bonkers plan: Trump would adjourn both Houses of Congress under Article II, section 3, and then recess-appoint his Cabinet. This may sound technical, but it would amount to a massive power grab: Trump would be forcing the Senate into a recess. This would mean that, for many of the most important posts in the federal government, Trump could simply ignore the Senate, thumbing his nose at the body to impose everyone he wanted, no matter how corrupt, extreme, or controversial they are.Moreover, it would mean Trump would be choosing to crash headlong into one of the biggest guardrails constraining the presidents authority: the Senates confirmation powers. If Trump were to try this and get away with it, Senate confirmation powers would effectively no longer exist.Currently, this remains in the rumor stage, and if it is truly something being considered by Trump, it remains unclear whether hed go through with it. But it makes a lot of sense. It may reflect the influence of Elon Musk and the Silicon Valley right in Trumps camp its a risky, norm-shattering attempt to disrupt the way politics, governance, and presidential power work. (Musk has indeed been tweeting about recess appointments.) It would mean starting off Trumps term with a high-stakes showdown and certain litigation with no one certain about exactly how things would play out.Why this recess appointment plot would be different than past recess appointment controversiesRecess appointments have been the subject of political and legal controversy in the past.In 2012, President Barack Obama was frustrated at the Republican Senate minoritys constant filibusters of many of his key nominations. (At the time, 60 votes were needed to get nominees past a filibuster; rule changes have since lowered that threshold to a simple majority.) He wanted to use recess appointments to fill some posts, but Republicans were blocking the Senate from going into recess at all. Even though nearly everyone left town, they continued to hold pro forma sessions where nothing actually happened.So Obama decided to just do recess appointments anyway, filling three National Labor Relations Board seats and the directorship of the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The administration argued that the pro forma sessions were fake and Congress was actually in recess; therefore, Obama could do recess appointments. But the Supreme Court unanimously rejected his argument, saying it was up to Congress to determine whether it was in recess.Trumps plan would be far more brazen.The Constitution states that during a congressional session, both chambers of Congress must consent if they want to adjourn Congress for more than three days. But it also says that in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, the president may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.In laypersons terms, that would seem to say that if the House and Senate disagree on when to adjourn, the president can force them to do so. This power has never been used by the president.But according to Whelans sources in the conservative legal movement, this is the plan Trumps team is putting together. First, Trump would get the House of Representatives under Speaker Mike Johnson to propose adjourning Congress. Then, if the Senate refused to do so, President Trump would step in, saying that because the two chambers disagreed, hed use his power to force the Senate to adjourn. He would then make recess appointments to his hearts content.Such appointments would then inevitably be challenged in court, and the Supreme Court would eventually determine whether they were legal.Whelan has gone public because hes appalled by this idea. Its a fundamental general feature of our system of separated powers that the president shall submit his nominations for major offices to the Senate for approval, he wrote in National Review. That feature plays a vital role in helping to ensure that the president makes quality picks.If Trump pulled this off, it would be an utter humiliation for incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Republican senators generally it basically would be taking a wrecking ball to the power of the Senate. The scheme would also require, as Whelan points out, the cooperation of Speaker Johnson and his House majority. But it is far from clear whether Republicans in either chamber or the courts have the inclination or the spine to stand up to an unprecedented power grab by Trump. And the rumors of it bode ill for other Trumpian abuses of power that will surely lie ahead.Youve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More: Politics

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