Tim Mulligan moved to central Manhattan so he could be closer to work and avoid a daily ordeal on the rattling, screeching subway, just one part of the urban noisescape that tests New Yorkers every day.”Even with your earbuds in, turned all the way up, you can’t hear anything for the whole commute, and you’re ruining your ears at that level,” said Mulligan, a US Marines veteran who lives with PTSD.At his home close to New York’s tourist hub Times Square, Mulligan has sealed his windows with high-density soundproof foam, draped them with double thick curtains and invested in earplugs to sleep.On the street he has resorted to noise-cancelling headphones, and he prefers bikes to the subway for getting around.New Yorkers and visitors to the megacity of 8.5 million people are bombarded with blaring sirens, loud locals, raucous bars and car horns almost constantly.A city-wide hotline received 750,000 noise complaints in 2024, the most commonly complained about quality of life issue.The city that never sleeps, perhaps because it can’t, is one of the few built up US areas with a noise code regulating sound from vehicles, construction, businesses, and recreation.It has even installed cameras with sensors to detect and penalize violators.Nine-in-ten New Yorkers are at risk of hearing loss from daily exposure to noise levels exceeding 70 decibels, the healthy average, a Columbia University study conducted between 2010 and 2012 found.The report’s author, professor Richard Neitzel, is now leading the first national study on noise in which 200,000 volunteers wear smart watches to track sound levels.”It looks like somewhere around one-in-four Americans are exposed to noise levels that could hurt their hearing over the long term,” said Neitzel, a professor at the University of Michigan.- ‘You can’t undo it’ -Among young people aged 18 to 25, the primary source of excess noise exposure comes from headphones.Overall, more people are exposed to high levels of environmental noise than to noise from their headphones, Neitzel added. Although the percentage of the population exposed to noise is similar to those exposed to air pollution, acoustic issues are not prioritized by residents and officials like air quality is, Neitzel said.There is clear evidence that excess noise is linked to poor sleep, cardiovascular issues, depression, cognitive decline, premature births and poor academic performance.Tinnitus, a permanent ringing in the ear affecting three out of 20 study participants, is increasingly prevalent.Loud music is even used to promote increased consumption, said Shane Newman, who manages a popular Mexican restaurant in Manhattan’s trendy Hudson Yards development. “You have a drink in the music, it feels like a nice vibe and… they end up staying longer,” he told AFP.Audiologist Michele DiStefano said the effects of noise on well-being have “not really been studied well enough.””The longer you have the exposure, and the higher the level, the (greater) degree of hearing loss you’ll have” — particularly for young people, she warned.”Once it does affect your hearing, you can’t undo it, but you can actually prevent it,” she said.”There’s really a push to educate the younger generations on how you don’t have to just have really loud noise at a concert — it can be cumulative.”

From a fake image of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin dancing in the snow with a polar bear to a fabricated photo of European leaders waiting somberly outside the Oval Office, AI-enabled disinformation has clouded the diplomatic push to end the war in Ukraine.The online fakery — dubbed widely as AI slop — underscores how easily artificial intelligence tools can flood the internet with false and satirical content around major global events.These creations also highlight the challenge of policing bogus content as tech platforms offer creators monetization incentives for viral posts.In hundreds of online posts mocking European leaders as powerless mediators snubbed by Trump, one such image purported to show French President Emmanuel Macron and other top officials waiting somberly in a White House corridor with their heads bowed.”This is utter humiliation of these corrupt scumbags. Absolutely beautiful,” said one post on X from a conservative political commentator that AFP has previously fact-checked for spreading misinformation about Ukraine.Such posts — in multiple languages including Greek, German and French — gained traction as European leaders joined Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House Monday for talks with Trump following the US president’s summit with Putin in Alaska. – Red carpet brawl -AFP fact-checkers identified visual inconsistencies that indicate the image including Macron was AI-generated. Some of the individuals depicted in the image also do not match those seen in official photographs from the high-stakes meeting.Macron and other European leaders represented a group of Ukraine’s allies known as the “Coalition of the Willing” for White House consultations.But multiple pro-Kremlin sources sharing the AI-generated image ridiculed them as the “coalition of those in waiting.”The image was also amplified by sites operated by the Pravda network, a well-resourced Moscow-based operation known to circulate pro-Russian narratives globally, the disinformation watchdog NewsGuard said in a report.The falsehood was an illustration of how “pro-Kremlin sources often seize on high-profile meetings involving European leaders to spread false claims,” NewsGuard said.In other viral posts, an AI-generated clip purported to show Trump and Putin skidding down snow-covered slopes, eating ice-cream beside a snowman, and waltzing with a polar bear to country music.And in another AI video, Trump and Putin were depicted brawling on a red carpet leading from an airplane staircase, trading punches and kicks as secret service agents idle in the background.The tongue-in-cheek posts offer a window into a social media landscape increasingly filled with AI-generated memes, videos and images competing for attention with — and sometimes drowning out — authentic content.As tech platforms scale back content moderation, AI videos spread rapidly, muddying the waters around serious diplomatic efforts to end the three-year war in Ukraine.Trump on Tuesday ruled out sending American troops to back up any Ukraine peace deal but suggested air support instead, as European nations began hashing out security guarantees ahead of a potential Russia summit.

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized top museums for their “woke” focus on subjects including “how bad Slavery was,” his latest attack on the cultural institutions in a country that fought a civil war over the issue.”The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” Trump wrote.He was referring to the Smithsonian Institution, an independent organization that operates 17 museums, galleries and a zoo located across the country, which receives public funding, and which he has previously accused of espousing a “corrosive ideology.”The translatlantic slave trade from Africa to the Americas spanned three centuries, and has been referred to as the United States’ “original sin.”The country’s South fought to maintain slavery in the 1861-1865 Civil War, but lost. Since then African Americans have fought for their civil rights, including in the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, which forced a new national reckoning on the darker parts of US history.”The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE’,” Trump wrote in the Truth Social post, using his shorthand for leftist social justice movements.For months now, Trump has disparaged cultural institutions, which have worked to bring more diversity to exhibits and programming in recent years, highlighting women, people of color and queer culture.Last week, the White House posted a letter to its website saying the administration plans to target eight major museums for “comprehensive internal review” in an effort to “celebrate American exceptionalism” and “remove divisive or partisan narratives.”The targeted institutions include the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the National Museum of the American Indian, the letter said.”Now museums are being targeted because they speak too openly about the horrors of slavery,” wrote prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump on X in response to Trump’s post.”If telling the truth about slavery makes a museum ‘too woke,’ then the problem isn’t the history, it’s the people who want to erase it,” he continued.In 2017, during his first term, Trump visited the National Museum of African American History — which opened the year before and which depicts the slave trade, among other historic subjects.”This museum is a beautiful tribute to so many American heroes,” Trump said after his tour, according to US media reports from the time. “It’s amazing to see.”