‘I want to be buried in a land of a sovereign’ – the 95-year-old Korean POW wants to die in the North
On a blistering morning earlier this week, an unusually large crowd had gathered at Imjingang Station – the last stop on Seoul’s metropolitan subway line that inches the closest to North Korea.
There were dozens of activists and police officers, their attention fixed on one man: Ahn Hak-sop, a 95-year-old former North Korean prisoner of war who was making his way home, to the other side of the border that divides the Korean peninsula.
It was what Mr Ahn called his final journey – he wanted to return to the North to be buried there, after spending most of his life in South Korea, much of it against his will.
He never made it across: he was turned away, as was expected because the South Korean government had said they did not have enough time to make the necessary arrangements.
But Mr Ahn came as close as he could.
Weakened by pulmonary oedema (a build up of fluid on the lungs), he could not manage the 30 minute walk from the station to the Unification Bridge – or Tongil Dae-gyo – one of the few passageways connecting South Korea to the North.
So he stepped out of the car roughly 200 metres from the bridge and walked the final stretch on foot, flanked by two supporters who steadied him.
He returned holding a North Korean flag, a sight rarely seen and deeply jarring in the South, and addressed the reporters and 20 or so volunteers who had turned up in support.
“I just want my body to rest in a truly independent land,” he said. “A land free from imperialism.”
Living on the other side
Ahn Hak-sop was 23 when he was captured by the South Koreans.
Three years earlier, he had been in high school when then-North Korean ruler Kim Il-sung attacked the South. Kim, who wanted to reunify the two Koreas, rallied his countrymen by claiming that the South had initiated the 1950 attack.
Ahn was among those who believed this. He joined the North Korean People’s Army in 1952 as a liaison officer, and was then assigned a unit that was sent to the South.
He was captured in April 1953, three months before the armistice, and sentenced to life in prison the same year. He was released more than 42 years later because of a special pardon on the Korean independence day.
Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
North Korean troops being taken prisoner by US soldiers in 1953 – the same year Mr Ahn was captured
Like many other North Korean prisoners, Mr Ahn too was labelled a “redhead”, a reference to his communist sympathies, and he struggled to find a proper job.
It wasn’t easy, he told the BBC in an earlier interview in July. The government didn’t help much at first, he said, agents followed him for years. He married, and even fostered a child, but he never felt he truly belonged.
Throughout, he made his home in a small village in Gimpo, the closest a civilian can live to the border with the North.
Yet in 2000, he turned down the chance to be sent back to the North along with dozens of other prisoners who also wanted to return.
He had been optimistic then that ties between the two sides would improve, that their people would be able to travel back and forth freely.
But he chose to stay because he feared leaving would be a win for the Americans.
“At the time, they were pushing for US military governance [in the South],” he said.
“If I returned to the North, it would’ve felt like I was just handing over my own bedroom to the Americans – vacating it for them. My conscience as a human being just couldn’t allow that.”
It’s not clear what he was referring to other than growing ties between Seoul and Washington, which include a strong military alliance that guarantees South Korea protection from any attack from the North.
That relationship deeply bothers Mr Ahn, who has never stopped believing the Kim family’s propaganda – that the only thing stopping the reunification of the Korean peninsula was an “imperialist America” and a South Korean government that was beholden to them.
Fighting for North Korea
Born in 1930in Ganghwa County, Gyeonggi Province, during Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, Mr Ahn was the youngest of three brothers. He also had two younger sisters.
Patriotism took root early. His grandfather refused to let him attend school because he “didn’t want to make me Japanese”, he recalled. So he started school later than usual, after his grandfather died.
Jungmin Choi/BBC
Ahn Hak-sop believes the US alliance with Seoul has prevented Korean reunification
When Japan surrendered in 1945, bringing an end to World War Two and its colonisation of Korea, Mr Ahn and his younger brother, who had deserted the Japanese military, were hiding at their aunt’s house at the foot of Mount Mani on Ganghwa Island.
“That wasn’t liberation – it was just a transfer of colonial rule,” he said.
“A leaflet [we saw] said that Korea wasn’t being liberated, but that US military rule would be implemented instead. It even said that if anyone violated US military law, they would be strictly punished under military law.”
As the Soviet Union and the US tussled over the Korean peninsula, they agreed to to divide it. The Soviets took control of the North and the US, the South, where they set up a military administration until 1948.
When Kim attacked in 1950, a South Korean government was in place – but Mr Ahn, like so many North Koreans, believes the South provoked the conflict and that its alliance with Washington prevented reunification.
Unwavering belief
Once he was captured, Mr Ahn had several chances to avoid prison – he was asked to sign documents renouncing the North and its communist ideology, which was called “conversion”. But he refused.
“Because I refused to sign a written oath of conversion, I had to endure endless humiliation, torture, and violence – days filled with shame and pain. There’s no way to fully describe that suffering in words,” he told the crowd that had gathered near the border on Wednesday.
The South Korean government never responded to this particular charge directly, although a special commission acknowledged violence at the prison in 2004. Mr Ahn’s direct allegations were investigated by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Korea, an independent body investigating past human rights abuses, in 2009, which found that there had been a deliberate effort to force his conversion, which included acts of torture.
It has long been accepted in South Korea that such prisoners often encountered violence behind bars.
Jungmin Choi/BBC
He was turned away at the border, returning to face the cameras with a North Korean flag
“Whenever I regained consciousness, the first thing I checked was my hands – to see if there was any red ink on them,” Mr Ahn recalled in his July interview.
That usually signalled that someone had forced a fingerprint onto a written oath of ideological conversion.
“If there wasn’t, I’d think, ‘No matter what they did, I won’. And I felt satisfied.”
The North has changed remarkably since Mr Ahn left. Kim Il-sung’s grandson now runs the country – a reclusive nuclear-armed dictatorship that is richer than it was in 1950, but remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Mr Ahn was not in the North for the devastating famine in the 1990s that killed hundreds of thousands. Tens of thousands of others fled, making deadly journeys to escape their lives there.
Mr Ahn, however, dismissed the suggestion of any humanitarian concerns in the North, blaming the media for being biased and only reporting on the dark side of the country. He argues that North Korea is prospering and defends Kim’s decision to send troops to aid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The South has also changed in Mr Ahn’s time here – once a poor military dictatorship, it is now a wealthy, powerful democracy. Its relationship with the North has had its ups and downs, wavering between open hostility and hopeful engagement.
But Mr Ahn’s beliefs have not wavered. He has dedicated the last 30 years of his life to protesting a country that he believes is still colonising South Korea – the US.
“They say humans, unlike animals, have two kinds of life. One is basic biological life – the kind where we talk, eat, defecate, sleep, and so on. The second is political life, also called social life. If you strip a human being of their political life, they’re no different from a robot,” Mr Ahn told the BBC in July.
“I lived under Japanese colonial rule all those years. But I don’t want to be buried under [American] colonial rule, even in death.”
The third night of finals at the 2025 World Junior Championships was one for the books, with stars Rylee Erisman, Audrey Derivaux, Tajus Juska, and Nikita Sheremet breaking championship, world junior, and/or national records. However, SwimSwam wants to highlight a few performances that may have gone under the radar and weren’t discussed in significant detail in its own article or during the live recap:
Vasileios Kakoulakis of Greece dropped 8 seconds in the 800 free to dip under 8 minutes for the first time. His time of 7:58.90 is a continuation of the impressive meet he has had thus far, as he dropped 5 seconds in the 400 earlier this week.
Lena Ludwig popped a 1:07.75 in the 100 breast to qualify in 2nd for tomorrow night’s final. This marked the German’s first time under the 1:08 barrier in her career, who entered the meet with a time of 1:08.03.
Carlos D’Ambrosio produced the fastest split of the field in the mixed 4×100 free relay, helping Italy to a bronze medal. Despite diving into the pool in 5th place, D’Ambrosio’s 47.40 shot Italy up to first after his leg.
Jacob Millis also impressed on the mixed free relay, swimming 22.93/24.83 to split 47.76. Though the Brit has been :48 on relays four times just this meet, tonight was his first time under that 48 barrier.
Great Britain’s Theodora Taylor swam an impressive double en route to two medals tonight. She entered the meet with a best time of 54.59 in the 100 free and slowly ate at it throughout the meet, going 54.46 in prelims, 54.52 in semi-finals, before dropping to 54.20 in finals. After Erisman, she had the fastest closing split of the field, coming home in 27.90 to go from 5th at the 50 mark to secure the bronze medal. Less than 30 minutes later, Taylor anchored Great Britain to a silver medal in 54.06—the fastest non-American split of the field. In total, she had five swims in two nights and came away with three medals, a herculean effort for the 16-year-old.
Police in Florida are still investigating the death last month of professional wrestling icon Hulk Hogan from what the medical examiner concluded was a heart attack.
The Clearwater Police Department said in a statement Thursday that the “unique nature of this case has required us to interview multiple witnesses and seek medical records from a variety of providers, and our detectives continue to do that.”
Hogan, whose real name was Terry Bollea, died July 24 at age 71 at a hospital after paramedics and police rushed to his beachfront home in Clearwater following a 911 call. That call, and police body camera video of the scene, has not yet been released as the investigation continues.
“All of this takes time,” the police statement said. “Until the investigation is completed, no records related to the case, including body camera footage, can be released.”
Police have previously said there was no evidence of foul play in Hogan’s death, so it’s not clear exactly what the police probe is looking into other than medical records. Hogan previously had leukemia and atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart rhythm, according to the medical examiner’s report that concluded the cause of death was natural.
Investigators have been working with Hogan’s family, including his son Nick and daughter Brooke, the statement said.
“We plan to meet with the family and brief them on the case to this point, and we will share the results of the investigation with the family prior to closing the case and releasing it to the public and media,” the police statement added.
No timetable for public release of the findings was given.
Hogan was perhaps the biggest star in WWE’s long history, known for both his larger-than-life personality and his wrestling exploits. He was the main draw for the first WrestleMania in 1985 and was a fixture for years, facing everyone from Andre The Giant and Randy Savage to The Rock and even WWE co-founder Vince McMahon.
Hogan won at least six WWE championships and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2005 and reinstated there in 2018. He had been removed from the Hall of Fame in 2015 after he was recorded making racial slurs against Blacks, for which he apologized.
Hogan was to be cremated but it wasn’t clear Thursday if that had happened yet. A well-attended but private funeral service was held Aug. 5 at a church in Indian Rocks Beach, Florida.
Introducing the 2025 Fortune Global 500, the definitive ranking of the biggest companies in the world. Explore this year’s list.
Wind power and photovoltaics are, for the moment, the most efficient and well-established renewables. Both have made significant technological advances on the road to green power in the last decade. While wind energy has looked to the sea to increase its production capacity, solar panels have opted to improve the photosensitive layer. Today, it is not uncommon for solar panels to exceed 20% energy efficiency. MIT has just given it another twist and, in addition to achieving unprecedented efficiency, its new photovoltaic panels will be ultra-thin and able to adhere to almost any surface.
This article covers the following topics:
Ultra-thin printable solar panels
Photovoltaic cells are pretty fragile. They must therefore be protected with glass and embedded in robust metal structures. MIT, specifically its ONE Lab, has been studying new approaches for years to solve this problem. For example, in 2017, they presented a thin photovoltaic film that could be placed on a soap bubble. Unfortunately, this was a prototype with no industrial scalability. The silver lining is that it helped them advance the development of the photovoltaic inks they have just presented.
The new printable panels weigh a hundred times less than current ones and offer eighteen times greater efficiency per kilogram of weight. The secret lies in using nanomaterials that form the basis of the ink, which is printed on a peel-off film just fifteen microns thick. Subsequently, a basic screen printing technique – as used in T-shirt manufacturing – is used to apply a substrate to the film on which the photovoltaic ink is then fixed. The process is relatively simple and, above all, industrially scalable, which is a boost for the future of renewable energies.
A photovoltaic technology of unprecedented efficiency
In their tests, the ONE Lab experts have established that their new printable photovoltaic technology offers an efficiency of up to 370 watts per kilogram.
The researchers give the example of a rooftop solar installation weighing up to half a ton. If the new photovoltaic film were applied, the weight of the structure would be reduced to barely fifty pounds, although it is likely that a larger surface area would be required.
The new technique, speaking of surfaces, involves the possibility of applying the ultralight material to virtually any material, including fabrics, plastics, or metals. Best of all, in laboratory experiments, it was possible to roll and unroll the film up to five hundred times while maintaining 90% of its ability to produce electricity.
In addition to photovoltaic facades, these are some of the potential applications of the new printable technology:
Ship sails with a photovoltaic film
Electricity-generating tents
Photovoltaic clothing and wearables
Photovoltaic drone wings for increased autonomy
Electric vehicles with lower recharging requirements
Once the technology’s energy efficiency has been demonstrated, the challenge is to produce a plastic sheet that protects the nanomaterials from the elements to increase their durability. Below you can see a video from MIT on the development of the new printable photovoltaic panels and the underlying technology:
The infinite possibilities of photovoltaic panels
Today there are plenty of ways to install photovoltaic cells to advance the transition to a more sustainable economy. These are some of the more curious ones we have discussed in recent times:
Photovoltaic films for façades. In line with the MIT invention, this innovative technology consists of a polymer-based organic film just one millimeter thick. With a single gram of the new compound, up to one square meter of surface can be coated.
Photovoltaic glass. As we saw in this article, photovoltaic glass can be a great ally in urban environments where glazed skyscrapers are the norm. In addition, they can be used to filter harmful ultraviolet radiation.
Hybrid wind farms. Wind turbines require a primary power supply for their operation. In this wind farm, a hybrid model has been chosen, with organic photovoltaic panels installed around the wind turbine towers.
Solar houses. Inspired by sunflowers, this proposed house takes a step beyond solar-paneled roofs and embraces a rotating structure that follows the sun’s movement throughout the day to maximize efficiency.
If you want to learn more about the future of renewable energies, do not hesitate to subscribe to our newsletter at the bottom of this page.
Bangkok, Thailand – A court is poised to decide whether Thailand’s most consequential and controversial political figure of the past 25 years, Thaksin Shinawatra, insulted the country’s revered monarchy, a crime that can land a culprit in jail for up to 15 years.
The charge, under Thailand’s strict “lese-majeste” royal defamation law, stems from an interview the 76-year-old business tycoon and former prime minister gave to a South Korean newspaper in 2015 regarding a military coup that toppled his sister and then-Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra in 2014.
Though holding no official role in government, Thaksin remains a towering figure bearing over Thailand’s stormy politics, and the verdict on Friday will test the state of his long-fraught relationship with the country’s powerful royalist establishment.
“The prosecution is of great political significance,” said Verapat Pariyawong, a Thai law and politics scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London.
“If found innocent, Mr Thaksin would rely on the verdict as proof that he has always been a loyalist, contrary to the accusations by his political opponents which inflamed conflicts over the past two decades,” Verapat told Al Jazeera.
A guilty verdict, on the other hand, could “trigger a new round of political conflicts”, he said.
“Some would see it as a breakdown of the so-called grand compromise that paved the way for Mr Thaksin’s return to Thailand, and undoubtedly many will link the guilty verdict to other pending major court decisions not just against Mr Thaksin but also his daughter and suspended Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra,” he added.
After 15 years in self-imposed exile, Thaksin returned to Thailand in 2023.
That lengthy absence from Thailand helped him to avoid a prison sentence on a prior corruption charge, though he was still forced to complete a commuted term in custody on his return home.
His latest tribulations stem from a royal defamation charge in June 2024, and he is also on trial for allegedly faking ill health in order to serve his sentence for corruption outside of jail.
Thaksin’s daughter and currently the country’s suspended prime minister, Paetongtarn, is being prosecuted for an alleged breach of ethics over a leaked phone call with Cambodia’s former prime minister and strongman Hun Sen.
A court suspended Paetongtarn from her duties as premier on ethical grounds last month after Hun Sen leaked their phone conversation, in which the Thai prime minister spoke reverentially to the Cambodian leader.
During the call, Paetongtarn referred to Hun Sen as “uncle” and criticised a Thai army commander.
Her political adversaries and other people said it was unbecoming of a Thai premier to have addressed a foreign leader so deferentially, and criticising the military is also a red line in a country where the politically powerful armed forces are held in high esteem.
A court is due to rule in Paetongtarn’s case on August 29, a verdict which could see her removed from office permanently.
With the help of a government scholarship, he earned a master’s degree and then a doctorate in criminal justice in the United States before returning to public service in Thailand and resigning from the police force as a lieutenant colonel in 1987.
Leveraging his professional contacts, Thaksin tried his hand at a number of business ventures before striking gold in telecommunications, founding and, in time, building his Shin Corp into an industry leader.
It also launched Thaksin onto Thailand’s richest list.
Last month, Forbes ranked Thaksin 11th among the country’s wealthiest families or people, with a personal net worth of $2.1bn.
In the 1990s, Thaksin started parlaying his business success into a political career, founding his first of many parties by the end of the decade.
On the back of a populist platform that promised affordable healthcare and debt relief, he landed in the prime minister’s office with a resounding general election win in 2001 and another in 2005.
But mounting scandals cut his second four-year term short.
Amid accusations of corruption over the $1.9bn sale of Shin Corp and an unrelated land deal that prompted mass protests, the Thai military removed Thaksin and his government in a 2006 coup.
A Thai court convicted him over the land deal the next year. To avoid jail, he fled into self-imposed exile in 2008.
Wanwichit Boonprong, a Rangsit University lecturer, says Thaksin had made powerful enemies within the country’s military – a force that has grown accustomed to managing its internal affairs largely independent of the government – by trying to steer the appointment and transfer of high-ranking officers.
By seeming to meddle in the military’s work, Wanwichit told Al Jazeera, Thaksin raised fears that he was bent on both “undermining the military and weakening the monarchy”.
The military has long prided itself as the ultimate protector of the Thai monarchy, a touchstone of the country’s influential conservative movement.
Thaksin also pulled off the rare feat in 2005 of winning enough seats in the House of Representatives to form a government without the need for any coalition partners, making him uncommonly potent as a political force.
That popularity scared his critics, says Khemthong Tonsakulrungruang, an assistant professor at Chulalongkorn University.
“That popularity, combined with his quick and outspoken manner, raised a lot of people’s suspicion that he might want to or he might try to compete with King Bhumibol [Adulyadej],” he said.
While there was little, if any, proof to back that up, Khemthong said, “it became a very convenient tool to mobilise people” against Thaksin.
Army officials take pictures in front of Thailand’s then-King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s portrait as people gather to mark his 88th birthday, in Bangkok in 2015 [File: Jorge Silva/Reuters]
‘Super active’
But even in exile overseas, Thaksin continued to dominate Thai politics.
Parties tied to the Shinawatra family kept winning elections and forming governments, only to be thwarted by the military or the courts each time.
With a prison sentence hanging over him, the tech mogul stayed abroad for 15 years, until returning to Bangkok to cheering crowds on August 22, 2023.
Before leaving the airport, Thaksin ostentatiously prostrated himself before a portrait of the country’s new king, Maha Vajiralongkorn, son of the late King Bhumibol.
The very same day, the Shinawatras’s latest party, Pheu Thai, secured the premiership for its candidate, Srettha Thavisin, by backing out of a planned coalition with the more progressive Move Forward party, which had won that year’s general election.
Pheu Thai rejected speculation that it had struck a “grand bargain” with the conservative establishment by pulling away from Move Forward, which had campaigned on reining in the military and the monarchy’s powers, in exchange for Thaksin’s safe return.
However, only nine days later, King Vajiralongkorn commuted Thaksin’s prison sentence from eight years to one, and he was out on parole within months. He had also spent his entire six months in custody in a private room in the luxury wing of a state hospital.
Now, with Thaksin on the brink of another conviction that could again send him to jail, the “grand bargain” is seen to be fraying.
“A lot of people understand that when Thaksin came back he would lay low, that he was allowed to come back but he wasn’t allowed to be politically active, he should stay at home, be quiet. But instead of that he was super active,” said Chulalongkorn University’s Khemthong.
Despite having no official role in the Pheu Thai party or the government it now leads, Thaksin has spent little time out of the spotlight since returning home less than two years ago – proposing grand policy prescriptions at public fora, touring constituencies with reporters in tow, conferring with domestic and international leaders alike.
“So, a lot of people speculate that the [defamation] charge was to put more control over him, to control his behaviour, his political activism,” Khemthong said.
Thaksin’s continued high-profile lifestyle has also led to the popular belief that he, not his daughter, is still the real power behind the party, and by extension the government.
“Everyone knows that Thaksin is the spiritual leader and the real owner of the Pheu Thai Party,” said Rangsit University’s Wanwichit.
“Using this [defamation] case is akin to trying to keep Thaksin in check in the conservative power play,” and amounts to insisting that “he must obey the conservatives’ established guidelines,” Wanwichit added.
‘Court battle’
Critics of Thailand’s royal defamation law, or of how the courts use it, say it has long been swung like a cudgel against threats – real or imagined – to the conservative establishment’s political power and privilege.
The law, under Section 112 of the Criminal Code, prescribes up to 15 years in jail for anyone who “defames, insults or threatens” the king, queen, heir apparent or regent.
But Verapat, of SOAS, says many have “fallen victim” to the courts’ “expansive interpretation” of the law.
In January 2024, the country’s Constitutional Court ruled that the Move Forward party had breached the law by promoting a bill that proposed limits on how it could be used.
The panel of judges accused the party of harbouring a hidden agenda to undermine the country’s constitutional monarchy and ordered Move Forward to disband as a political movement.
When thousands of protesters took to the streets of Bangkok through much of 2020, calling on the military-aligned government at the time to step down, their list of demands grew to include reforms meant to rein in the monarchy’s alleged influence over politics in the military’s favour.
Since then, more than 280 people have been charged under Section 112, according to Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, a local advocacy group.
Among the most prominent of the 2020 protesters was lawyer Arnon Nampa, who has been sentenced to a cumulative 27 years and eight months following his 10th conviction on a royal defamation charge in July.
Thai Lawyers for Human Rights has called the use of the law “a form of violence against those who exercise their right to freedom of expression”.
The defamation case against Thaksin, which is based on a 10-year-old interview in which he criticised no one strictly covered by Section 112, fits into that same, expansive “modus operandi”, Chulalongkorn University’s Khemthong said.
Whichever way the verdict goes on Friday, analysts say the fallout for Thaksin and the Shinawatra family is unlikely to be immediately known, as either side can and probably will appeal.
Khemthong said the case against Thaksin could continue to drag out for months, if not a year or more.
Rangsit University’s Wanwichit concurred.
“The appeals court battle will likely continue regardless of the verdict,” he said.
Live music discovery platform Bandsintown has become the exclusive provider of concert listings on YouTube and YouTube Music.
Bandsintown confirmed earlier today (August 21) that YouTube users can now discover its concert listings while watching artist videos and Shorts and exploring Official Artist Channels.
Bandsintown’s platform will soon be available for music fans “while browsing the YouTube homepage“, added the concerts company. And the integration will expand to YouTube Music later this year, with Bandsintown’s live events appearing on YouTube Music home and artist pages.
In addition, the partnership with YouTube includes a new push notification feature for Bandsintown, alerting users to nearby concerts and upcoming shows.
The integration enables tour listings published by artists on Bandsintown for Artists – for free – to automatically display on YouTube.
Venues, festivals, and promoters subscribed to Bandsintown Pro will also benefit from having their events seamlessly distributed on YouTube.
Fabrice Sergent, Bandsintown co-founder and Managing Partner, said: “At a time when musicians continue to struggle to generate income, this exclusive integration with YouTube further demonstrates Bandsintown’s ethos to create value and equal opportunity for artists worldwide, of all sizes and genres, to get discovered on digital platforms and sell more tickets.”
“At a time when musicians continue to struggle to generate income, this exclusive integration with YouTube further demonstrates Bandsintown’s ethos to create value and equal opportunity for artists worldwide, of all sizes and genres, to get discovered on digital platforms and sell more tickets.”
Fabrice Sergent, Bandsintown
The first featured artist for the YouTube partnership is Sabrina Carpenter, who is fresh off a successful headlining performance at Lollapalooza.
Carpenter uses Bandsintown’s tools to showcase her tour dates on her own website, and the company says the YouTube integration will now mean her tour dates gain additional “significant visibility”.
This YouTube partnership marks the latest expansion of Bandsintown’s global distribution network across major digital platforms.
US-headquartered Bandsintown says that, over the past 18 months, it has become the “preferred live music data provider” for companies/platforms such as Google, Spotify, Apple, and Shazam.
Spotify integrated Bandsintown onto its platform in Q1 last year, which coincided with the end of the music streaming platform’s 13-year partnership with Warner Music Group-owned concert discovery platform, Songkick.
Drawing concert data from 700,000+ registered artists and 65,000 venues and promoters, Bandsintown publishes details of an estimated 2.3 million events annually.Music Business Worldwide
An appeals court has thrown out a $500m (£372m) penalty that President Donald Trump was ordered to pay in a New York civil fraud trial last year.
Judge Arthur Engoron had ordered Trump to pay the fee for massively inflating the value of the Trump Organization’s properties in order to secure favourable loans.
In the lengthy ruling released on Thursday, judges on the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division stated that while Trump was liable for the fraud, the fine of nearly half a billion dollars was excessive and probably violated constitutional protections against severe punishment.
In the case Judge Engoron had ordered Trump to pay $355m, but with interest, that grew to more than $500m.
“While harm certainly occurred, it was not the cataclysmic harm that can justify a nearly half billion-dollar award to the state,” wrote Judge Peter Moulton.
In a post on his social media site, Truth Social, Trump claimed the decision was a “total victory”.
“I greatly respect the fact that the Court had the Courage to throw out this unlawful and disgraceful Decision that was hurting Business all throughout New York State,” he said. “It was a Political Witch Hunt, in a business sense, the likes of which no one has ever seen before.”
The New York Attorney General’s Office, which brought the case against Trump, also framed the decision as a win, as it upheld Trump’s fraud liability and the judges did not throw out other penalties that were not financial. The office plans to appeal against the decision on the fine to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals.
In a statement, the attorney general’s office said the judges “affirmed the well-supported finding of the trial court: Donald Trump, his company, and two of his children are liable for fraud”.
“It should not be lost to history: yet another court has ruled that the president violated the law, and that our case has merit,” it also said.
In the case against Trump, his two adult sons, and the Trump Organization, Judge Engoron also banned Trump from serving as a company director or taking out loans from banks in the state for three years.
Thursday’s decision kept in place this and other nonmonetary penalties that Judge Engoron imposed.
The 323-page ruling, which included three lengthy opinions, revealed disagreement among the five judges on the panel.
They were primarily divided over the merits of the original lawsuit brought by Letitia James, who had accused Trump and his sons of “persistent and repeated fraud”.
While several judges said she was “within her lawful power in bringing this action”, one believed the case should have been dismissed and two said that there should be a new trial of a more limited scope.
Those two, though, joined the decision to throw out the fine “for the sole purpose of ensuring finality”, wrote Judge Moulton.
American voters had “obviously rendered a verdict” on Trump’s political career, Judge Moulton also wrote, and “this bench today unanimously derails the effort to destroy his business”.
The ruling came almost a year after the panel heard oral arguments on the appeal, during which several judges appeared skeptical of the civil fraud case.
Trump’s son, Eric Trump, who was involved in the case, celebrated the decision in a post on social media.
“After 5 years of hell, justice prevailed!” he wrote.
The ruling amounted to a “judicial version of kicking the can down the road”, said Will Thomas, an assistant professor of business law at the University of Michigan.
“By its own admission, the Appellate Courts is punting the real legal decision up to the New York Court of Appeals, noting that its unusual decision was made ‘for the sole purpose of ensuring finality,'” he said.
“It’s hard to take any conclusions from this … except that we’ll have to continue to wait that much longer to find out the ultimate outcome in James v Trump.”
In September 2023, Judge Engoron ruled Trump was liable for business fraud, finding he had misrepresented his wealth by hundreds of millions of dollars. Another trial was held in 2024 to determine the penalty.
In one instance, the judge found Mr Trump’s financial statements had wrongly claimed that his Trump Tower penthouse was almost three times its actual size.
Trump had said that the case brought by James, a Democrat, was politically motivated.
Thursday’s unusually lengthy ruling also reflected the historic predicament of how to handle a massive fraud case involving a sitting president, said Mark Zauderer, a longtime appellate attorney in New York.
“Would you have a 300-page opinion if this were Joe Smith the businessman, and not Donald Trump?” Mr Zauderer asked.
A required part of this site couldn’t load. This may be due to a browser
extension, network issues, or browser settings. Please check your
connection, disable any ad blockers, or try using a different browser.
Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Jungmin Choi/BBC
Jungmin Choi/BBC
