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-===== British musicians release a silent album to protest plans to let AI use their work =====+===== Rainbow armbands are dividing opinion at Euro 2025 =====
  
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-By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press+By CIARÁN FAHEY AP Sports Writer
  
-LONDON (AP) — A new album called "Is This What We Want?" features a stellar list of more than 1,000 musicians — and the sound of silence.+Some captains are wearing them, some are not.
  
-With contributions from artists including Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Cat Stevens and Damon Albarn, the album was released Tuesday to protest proposed British changes to artificial intelligence laws that artists fear will erode their creative control.+Rainbow armbands at the Women's European Championship are proving more divisive than perhaps intended for a symbol promoting tolerance and inclusion.
  
-The U.K. government is consulting on whether to let tech firms use copyrighted material to help train AI models unless the creators explicitly opt out.+UEFA is giving team captains the option of wearing armbands with the bright colors of the rainbow flag or plain monocolored versions with the word "respect" when they play.
  
-Critics of the idea fear that will make it harder for artists to retain control of their work and will undermine Britain's creative industries. Elton John and Paul McCartney are among those who have spoken out against the plan.+"Standard yellow and blue armbands are provided to all teams and rainbow armbands are available upon request," UEFA told The Associated Press.
  
-The protest album features recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, to show what they fear will be the fate of creative venues if the plan goes through. The titles of the 12 tracks spell out: "The British government must not legalize music theft to benefit AI companies."+Both versions have been worn so far at the tournament in Switzerland, with the captains' choices facing scrutiny for the meaning behind their decisions.
  
-Profits will be donated to the musicians' charity Help Musicians.+**What it means**
  
-"The government's proposal would hand the life's work of the country's musicians to AI companies, for free, letting those companies exploit musicians' work to outcompete them," said composer and AI developer Ed Newton-Rex, who organized the album.+The rainbow armband is intended to show solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community, while it also stands for diversity.
  
-"It is a plan that would not only be disastrous for musicians, but that is totally unnecessary," Newton-Rex said. "The U.K. can be leaders in AI without throwing our world-leading creative industries under the bus."+"UEFA is committed to making football a safe and welcoming environment for everybody, independent of who we love, our gender identification or gender expression," the governing body said before the women's Euro 2022, where it also gave team captains the option of wearing rainbow armbands.
  
-Britain's center-left Labour Party government says it wants to make the U.K. a world leader in AI. In December, it announced a consultation into how copyright law can "enable creators and right holders to exercise control over, and seek remuneration for, the use of their works for AI training" while also ensuring "AI developers have easy access to a broad range of high-quality creative content." The consultation closes on Tuesday.+UEFA faced criticism the year before when it nixed Munich's plans to illuminate its stadium in rainbow colors for Germany's game against Hungary during the men's European Championship.
  
-Publishers, artists' organizations and media companies, including The Associated Press, have banded together as the Creative Rights in AI Coalition to oppose weakening copyright protections.+The Germans wanted to protest to a law passed by Hungarian lawmakers the week before that prohibited sharing with minors any content portraying homosexuality or sex reassignment.
  
-Several U.K. newspapers ran wraparounds over their front pages on Tuesday, criticizing the government consultation and saying: "Let's protect the creative industries — it's only fair." +**Who's wearing the rainbow armbands?** 
-===== Scientists are racing to discover the depth of ocean damage sparked by the LA wildfires=====+ 
 +When Germany played France in their quarterfinal on Saturday, the German captain, Janina Minge, wore a rainbow armband while her French counterpart did not. 
 + 
 +Switzerland captain Lia Wälti wore a rainbow armband in her team's quarterfinal against Spain the day before. Her opposite, Irene Paredes, did not. 
 + 
 +Norway captain Ada Hegerberg wore a rainbow armband, as did Wales captain Angharad James, Iceland's Glódís Viggósdóttir, England's Leah Williamson and others. 
 + 
 +England defender Lucy Bronze also wore a rainbow wristband during her team's quarterfinal win over Sweden, whose captain, Kosovare Asllani, also wore a rainbow armband. 
 + 
 +Elena Linari became the first to wear a rainbow armband for Italy when she captained the side against Spain, but Cristiana Girelli wore a plain one when she returned for the quarterfinal against Norway. 
 + 
 +**France chose 'respect' armband** 
 + 
 +France captain Griedge Mbock Bathy suggested the rainbow armband's message is too restrictive because of its focus on LGBTQ+ rights. 
 + 
 +"Highlighting a single issue also potentially excludes the others," she said. "We cannot champion a single cause through our diverse group because there are so many causes to defend." 
 + 
 +Mbock said the France team is "so diverse that we cannot highlight just one cause. I think that the armband with the word 'respect' really represents what we want to convey as a message and that is the most important thing." 
 + 
 +When told that nine of the 16 countries participating at Euro 2025 wear the rainbow armband, France coach Laurent Bonadei defended his team's choice not to. 
 + 
 +"Our one has 'respect' written on it. Respect as a word gathers a lot of causes such as racism. I think the 'respect' one is really a nice one," Bonadei said. 
 + 
 +**Controversy in Qatar** 
 + 
 +Swedish player Nilla Fischer, the former Wolfsburg captain, was the first in Germany to wear the rainbow armband in the women's Bundesliga in 2017. She inspired others to follow suit, both in women's and men's sports. 
 + 
 +Germany was a strong campaigner for rainbow armbands at the men's World Cup in Qatar in 2022. That developed into a showdown with FIFA over the compromise "One Love" campaign, which featured a rainbow-type heart design that was supposed to be a symbol against discrimination. It was still largely seen as a snub to the host nation, where homosexual acts are illegal and its treatment of migrant workers was a decade-long controversy. 
 + 
 +FIFA banned the armbands and threatened to book team captains who wore them, leading the German players to cover their mouths for the team photo before their opening game, suggesting they were being silenced. 
 + 
 +Germany's interior minister at the time, Nancy Faeser, who was also responsible for sports, wore a "One Love" armband in the stands beside FIFA president Gianni Infantino. 
 + 
 +Qatari supporters later hit back by holding pictures of former Germany player Mesut Özil while covering their mouths during Germany's match against Spain. They were referring to the racist abuse in Germany of Özil, a German-born descendant of Turkish immigrants, who became a scapegoat for Germany's early World Cup exit in 2018. 
 + 
 +Germany coach Julian Nagelsmann called for an end to political statements in 2024, saying they were too distracting for his players. The German men's team ultimately failed to deliver on the field. 
 + 
 +AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer 
 +===== The risks and rewards of tokenization as crypto heavyweights push for it =====
  
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 + 
 +By ALAN SUDERMAN AP Business Writer 
 + 
 +As cryptocurrencies become more intertwined with the traditional financial system, industry heavyweights are racing for a long-sought goal of turning real-world assets into digital tokens. 
 + 
 +"Tokenization is going to open the door to a massive trading revolution," said Vlad Tenev, the CEO of the trading platform Robinhood at a recent James Bond-themed tokenization launch event in the south of France. 
 + 
 +Advocates say tokenization is the next leap forward in crypto and can help break down walls that have advantaged the wealthy and make trading cheaper, more transparent and more accessible for everyday investors. 
 + 
 +But critics say tokenization threatens to undermine a century's worth of securities law and investor protections that have made the U.S. financial system the envy of the world. And Robinhood's push into tokenizing shares of private companies quickly faced pushback from one of the world's most popular startups. 
 + 
 +**What is tokenization?** 
 + 
 +The basic idea behind tokenization: Use blockchain technology that powers cryptocurrencies to create digital tokens as stand-ins for things like bonds, real estate or even fractional ownership of a piece of art and that can be traded like crypto by virtually anyone, anywhere at any time. 
 + 
 +The massive growth of stablecoins, which are a type of cryptocurrency typically bought and sold for $1, has helped fuel the appetite to tokenize other financial assets, crypto venture capitalist Katie Haun said on a recent podcast. 
 + 
 +She said tokenization will upend investing in ways similar to how streamers radically changed how people watch television. 
 + 
 +"You used to have to sit there on a Thursday night and watch Seinfeld," Haun said. "You tune in at a specific time, you don't get to choose your program, you couldn't be watching a program like Squid Games from Korea. Netflix was market-expanding. In the same way, I think the tokenization of real-world assets will be market expanding." 
 + 
 +**Growing momentum** 
 + 
 +Robinhood began offering tokenized stock trading of major U.S. public companies for its European customers earlier this month and gave away tokens to some customers meant to represent shares in OpenAI and SpaceX, two highly valued private companies. 
 + 
 +Several other firms are diving in. Crypto exchange Kraken also allows customers outside the U.S. to trade tokenized stocks while Coinbase has petitioned regulators to open the market to its U.S. customers. Wall Street giants BlackRock and Franklin Templeton currently offer tokenized money market funds. McKinsey projects that tokenized assets could reach $2 trillion by 2030. 
 + 
 +**Crypto's golden age** 
 + 
 +The push for tokenization comes at a heady time in crypto, an industry that's seen enormous growth from the creation and early development of bitcoin more than 15 years ago by libertarian-leaning computer enthusiasts to a growing acceptance in mainstream finance. 
 + 
 +The world's most popular cryptocurrency is now regularly setting all-time highs — more than $123,000 on Monday — while other forms of crypto like stablecoins are exploding in use and the Trump administration has pledged to usher in what's been called the "golden age" for digital assets.
  
-By DORANY PINEDA Associated Press+Lee Reiners, a lecturing fellow at Duke University, said the biggest winners in the push for tokenization could be a small handful of exchanges like Robinhood that see their trading volumes and influence spike.
  
-LOS ANGELES (AP) — On a recent Sunday, Tracy Quinn drove down the Pacific Coast Highway to assess damage wrought upon the coastline by the Palisades Fire.+"Which is kind of ironic given the origins of crypto, which was to bypass intermediaries," Reiners said.
  
-The water line was darkened by ash. Burnt remnants of washing machines and dryers and metal appliances were strewn about the shoreline. Sludge carpeted the water's edge. Waves during high tide lapped onto charred homes, pulling debris and potentially toxic ash into the ocean as they receded.+**Trump bump**
  
-"It was just heartbreaking," said Quinn, president and CEO of the environmental group Heal the Bay, whose team has reported ash and debris some 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of the Palisades burn area west of Los Angeles.+Interest in tokenization has also gotten a boost thanks to the election of President Donald Trump, who has made enacting more crypto-friendly regulations a top priority of his administration and signed a new law regulating stablecoins on Friday.
  
-As crews work to remove potentially hundreds of thousands of tons of hazardous materials from the Los Angeles wildfires, researchers and officials are trying to understand how the fires on land have impacted the sea. The Palisades and Eaton fires scorched thousands of homes, businesses, cars and electronics, turning everyday items into hazardous ash made of pesticides, asbestos, plastics, lead, heavy metals and more.+"Tokenization is an innovation and we at the SEC should be focused on how do we advance innovation at the marketplace," said Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins.
  
-Since much of it could end up in the Pacific Ocean, there are concerns and many unknowns about how the fires could affect life under the sea.+**Is it legal?**
  
-"We haven't seen a concentration of homes and buildings burned so close to the water," Quinn said.+Securities law can be complex and even defining what is a security can be a hotly debated question, particularly in crypto. The crypto exchange Binance pulled back offerings of tokenized securities in 2021 after German regulators raised questions about potential violations of that country's securities law.
  
-Fire debris and potentially toxic ash could make the water unsafe for surfers and swimmers, especially after rainfall that can transport chemicals, trash and other hazards into the sea. Longer term, scientists worry if and how charred urban contaminants will affect the food supply.+Under Trump, the SEC has taken a much less expansive view than the previous administration and dropped or paused litigation against crypto companies that the agency had previously accused of violating securities law.
  
-The atmospheric river and mudslides that pummeled the Los Angeles region last week exacerbated some of those fears.+Hilary Allen, a professor at the American University Washington College of Law, said crypto companies have been emboldened by Trump's victory to be more aggressive in pushing what they can offer.
  
-When the fires broke out in January, one of Mara Dias' first concerns was ocean water contamination. Strong winds were carrying smoke and ash far beyond the blazes before settling at sea, said the water quality manager for the Surfrider Foundation, an environmental nonprofit.+"The most pressing risk is (tokenization) being used as a regulatory arbitrage play as a way of getting around the rules," she said.
  
-Scientists on board a research vessel during the fires detected ash and waste on the water as far as 100 miles (161 kilometers) offshore, said marine ecologist Julie Dinasquet with the University of California, San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Things like twigs and shard. They described the smell as electronics burning, she recalled, "not like a nice campfire."+However, the SEC has struck a cautionary tone when it comes to tokens. Shortly after Robinhood's announcement, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who has been an outspoken crypto supporter, issued a statement saying companies issuing tokenized stock should consider "their disclosure obligations" under federal law.
  
-Runoff from rains also are a huge and immediate concern. Rainfall picks up contaminants and trash while flushing toward the sea through a network of drains and rivers. That runoff could contain "a lot of nutrients, nitrogen and phosphate that end up in the ash of the burn material that can get into the water," said Dias, as well as "heavy metals, something called PAHs, which are given off when you burn different types of fuel."+"As powerful as blockchain technology is, it does not have magical abilities to transform the nature of the underlying asset," Peirce said.
  
-Mudslides and debris flows in the Palisades Fire burn zone also can dump more hazardous waste into the ocean. After fires, the soil in burn scars is less able to absorb rainfall and can develop a layer that repels water from the remains of seared organic material. When there is less organic material to hold the soil in place, the risks of mudslides and debris flows increase.+**All eyes on private companies**
  
-Los Angeles County officials, with help from other agencies, have set thousands of feet of concrete barriers, sandbags, silt socks and more to prevent debris from reaching beaches. The LA County Board of Supervisors also recently passed a motion seeking state and federal help to expand beach clean ups, prepare for storm runoff and test ocean water for potential toxins and chemicals, among other things.+One of the most closely watched areas of tokenization involves private companies, which aren't subject to strict financial reporting requirements like publicly traded ones.
  
-Beyond the usual samples, state water officials and others are testing for total and dissolved metals such as arsenic, lead and aluminum and volatile organic compounds.+Many hot startups are not going public as often as they used to and instead are increasingly relying on wealthy and institutional investors to raise large sums of money and stay private.
  
-They also are sampling for microplastics, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, that are harmful to human and aquatic life, and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a group of man-made chemicals shown to cause cancer in animals and other serious health effects. Now banned from being manufactured, they were used in products like pigments, paints and electrical equipment.+That's unfair to the little guy, say advocates of tokenization.
  
-County public health officials said chemical tests of water samples last month did not raise health concerns, so they downgraded one beach closure to an ocean water advisory. Beachgoers were still advised to stay out of the water.+"These are massive wealth generators for a very small group of rich, well-connected insiders who get access to these deals early," said Robinhood executive Johann Kerbrat. "Crypto has the power to solve this inequality."
  
-Dinasquet and colleagues are working to understand how far potentially toxic ash and debris dispersed across the ocean, how deep and how fast they sunk and, over time, where it ends up.+**"Please be careful"**
  
-Forest fires can deposit important nutrients like iron and nitrogen into the ocean ecosystem, boosting the growth of phytoplankton, which can create a positive, cascading effect across the ecosystem. But the potentially toxic ash from urban coastal fires could have dire consequences, Dinasquet said.+But Robinhood's giveaway of tokens meant to represent an investment in OpenAI immediately drew pushback from the company itself, which said it was not involved in Robinhood's plan and did not endorse it.
  
-"Reports are already showing that there was a lot of lead and asbestos in the ash," she added. "This is really bad for people so its probably also very bad for the marine organisms."+"Any transfer of OpenAI equity requires our approval—we did not approve any transfer," OpenAI said on social media. "Please be careful."
  
-A huge concern is whether toxic contaminants from the fire will enter the food chain. Researchers plan to take tissue fragments from fish for signs of heavy metals and contaminants. But they say it will take a while to understand how a massive urban fire will affect the larger ecosystem and our food supply.+Public companies have strict public reporting requirements about their financial health that private companies don't have to produce. Such reporting requirements have helped protect investors and give a legitimacy to the U.S. financial system, said Allen, who said the push for tokenized sales of shares in private companies is "eerily familiar" to how things played out before the creation of the SEC nearly a century ago.
  
-Dias noted the ocean has long taken in pollution from land, but with fires and other disasters, "everything is compounded and the situation is even more dire."+"Where we're headed is where we were in the 1920s," she said. "Door-to-door salesmen offering stocks and bonds, half of it had nothing behind it, people losing their life savings betting on stuff they didn't understand."
  
-The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP's environmental coverage, visit apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment. 
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