The owners of the Westfield San Francisco Centre mall are giving up the property to lenders, adding to deepening real estate pain in a city struggling to bring back workers and tourists after the pandemic.

The mall, co-owned by Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and Brookfield Corp., has $558 million in outstanding mortgage debt. Management will be turned over to a receiver.

The move comes a month after Nordstrom Inc. said it was closing its store at the site, citing a drop in customer traffic and the changing dynamics of the city. The mall is in the heart of San Franciscos Union Square district, one of the downtowns main shopping and tourist areas.

Given the challenging operating conditions in downtown San Francisco, which have led to declines in sales, occupancy and foot traffic, we have made the difficult decision to begin the process to transfer management of the shopping center to our lender to allow them to appoint a receiver to operate the property going forward, Molly Morse, a spokeswoman for Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, said in the statement. 

San Francisco has been among the hardest-hit cities since the pandemic as office vacancies soar, retail vacancies rise and concerns about safety deter visitors. Last week, Park Hotels & Resorts Inc. said it was stopping payments on loans tied to two downtown hotels with $725 million in outstanding debt. 

Sales at the Westfield San Francisco Centre fell to $298 million last year from $455 million in 2019, while foot traffic dropped 43%, Morse said. Traffic and sales at other Westfield properties increased during the same period.

Westfields decision to stop paying its debt was first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. 

In a statement, San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the move was coming for some time and pointed to plans by Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield to leave the US market entirely. The Paris-based company planned a radical reduction of our financial exposure to the US over the course of 2022 and 2023, Chief Executive Officer Jean-Marie Tritant has said.

With new management, we will have an opportunity to pursue a new vision for this space that focuses on what the future of downtown San Francisco can be, Breed said. Whether thats attracting new types of business or educational institutions, or creating a totally different experience, we need to be open to whats possible.

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Author Elizabeth Gilbert is delaying publication of a novel she had set in Russia, saying she had received an outpouring of anger, sorrow, disappointment and pain from Ukrainian readers. The head of PEN America, the free expression organization, called the decision regrettable.

Gilberts The Snow Forest, set in Siberia during the Soviet era and billed as a dramatic story of one wild and mysterious girl in a pristine wilderness, and of the mystical connection between humans and the natural world, had been scheduled to come out next February.

It has received hundreds of one-star reviews on the online reader site Goodreads. Many denounced the novel which has yet to come out even in advance editions as insensitive and a whitewash of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

It is not the time for this book to be published, Gilbert said in a video message posted Monday on social media. And I do not want to add any harm to a group of people who have already experienced, and who are continuing to experience, grievous and extreme harm.

A spokesperson for Gilbert at Riverhead Books confirmed the novel was being postponed indefinitely, but otherwise declined comment.

Since the Russian invasion began in February 2022, the creative community has wrestlied with how to respond. Stephen King and Linwood Barclay are among the writers who have said they would not renew Russian rights to their work, while the prize-winning Bulgarian novelist Georgi Gospodinov has said he wants his current book, Time Shelter, read in Russian because of its anti-Putin theme.

Books based in Russia have continued to be published, whether or not theyre issued in Russia. A mystery novel published last week, Paul Goldbergs The Dissident, is set in Moscow in the 1970s.

Gilberts action is unusual because she went beyond boycotting Russia and withdrew the book altogether.

PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel issued a statement Monday saying Gilberts decision was well-intended, but also wrongheaded.

The timing of the uproar, right after Gilbert announced the forthcoming publication, makes clear that those objecting have not yet had a chance to read or judge the work itself, Nossel said. The publication of a novel set in Russia should not be cast as an act exacerbating oppression. Fiction and culture are essential to supporting mutual understanding and unleashing empathy. The choice of whether to read Gilberts book lies with readers themselves, and those who are troubled by it must be free to voice their views.

Gilbert, best known for her million-selling memoir Eat Pray Love, said in announcing the new book recently that it was inspired by the spread of the coronavirus. In a video posted last week, she said she had lived in isolation during the pandemic and came to love it and crave even deeper silence. Trying to imagine how far one could remove herself from the modern world, she remembered a magazine article about a family that hid in the Siberian wilderness for half a century.

The Snow Forest tells of a girl of great spiritual and creative talent raised far, far, far from everything that we call normal, Gilbert said.

Mike Breen is currently the dean of television announcers for the NBA Finals and he is about to enter rarified air space.

The ABC/ESPN announcer will reach another milestone on Monday night in Game 5 of the Denver-Miami series. It will be Breens 100th NBA Finals broadcast, making him the third basketball announcer on radio or television to reach that mark. Hell be the sixth U.S. play-by-play voice to eclipse the mark, including the World Series and Stanley Cup Final.

Breen missed the first two games of last years series due to COVID, which briefly delayed him from reaching the century mark.

I knew how many years I had done the finals, but I never put it into a specific number of games, said Breen, who is calling his 18th championship series. I would have never said 100. For some reason, to hear that number was surprising to me, and its not something even in my wildest dreams that I thought I could do.

I take it as an honor to reach that mark that Ive been able to do that many.

Joe Buck did 135 World Series games for Fox, and Mike Doc Emrick was at the mic for 110 Stanley Cup Final contests on ESPN, Versus, NBC and NBCSN.

When including radio, Breen is the third to reach 100 NBA Finals games, joining legendary Lakers voice Chick Hearn (121) and Bostons Johnny Most (103). In baseball, Hall of Fame announcer Vin Scully had 126 World Series games on radio and television.

The ultimate longevity test for an announcer is reaching the century mark in baseball, hockey or basketball.

This is the 21st consecutive NBA Finals for ABC/ESPN. Before ABC/ESPN took over the broadcast rights, the finals were on NBC for 12 seasons (1991-2002) and 17 on CBS (1974-90). Before Breens run, CBS Dick Stockton and NBCs Marv Albert shared the TV record with nine finals.

Breens rise to prominence along with his signature Bang! call when a player knocks down a 3-pointer began in 1991 when he was hired as the New York Knicks radio announcer before he shifted to the television seven years later. He did some games for NBC for five seasons and then joined ESPN in 2003.

Breen was under contract to NBC for one more year after it lost the NBA rights. He joined ESPN in 2003 and became the top NBA voice in 2006 after Mike Tirico shifted to Monday Night Football.

I just cold-called (ESPN EVP Mark Shapiro). He asked why I had not called him earlier. And he hired me right away, Breen said. After NBC lost the NBA, I was pretty down because I wanted to do the NBA. When Mark hired me, I got to do a full slate of games and I was back in it.

Coincidentally, Breens first NBA Finals in 2006 was also the first appearance for the Miami Heat. It is the seventh time Breen has called a championship series involving the Heat.

Breen called the 06 finals with Hubie Brown, but the last 17 have been with Jeff Van Gundy at his side. Add in Mark Jackson, and it is the 15th time the trio has worked the NBA Finals together.

Before they came to ABC/ESPN, Breen had a rapport with Jackson and Van Gundy from their days with the Knicks.

To start my NBA broadcast career with the team where Jeff was assistant coach and Mark was a player, the foundation of the friendship was built early, Breen said. To have that comfort level on the air and knowing and trusting that your partners, whatever you throw at them, theyre going to be able to deal with and handle makes my job so much easier.

His job has been more difficult this year. He and his familys Long Island home was completely destroyed by fire last October. Breen said in addition to the personal loss, all of his charts, notes and statistics were destroyed. But he continues to get support from family, friends and colleagues.

Every time they find something that survived the fire, Breen said, you felt like you won the lottery because it was something you felt you lost.

The proliferation of hate and lies on digital platforms and the threat that artificial intelligence can become an uncontrolled monster demand coordinated global action starting with a code of conduct for governments, tech companies and advertisers that promotes truth and protects human rights, the U.N. chief said Monday.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he plans to appoint a scientific advisory board in a few days, and an advisory board on artificial intelligence in September to prepare initiatives that the U.N. can take. He said he would react favorably to a new U.N. agency on artificial intelligence and suggested as a model the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is knowledge-based and has some regulatory powers.

Guterres told a news conference he plans to consult widely on the just released principles for the U.N. Code of Conduct for Information Integrity on Digital Platforms, which he will issue before next years U.N. Summit of the Future.

He expressed hope that the code will be widely supported, but when asked whether governments and tech companies are willing to take steps to make digital space safer, he replied, Thats the question I ask myself.

We are dealing with a business that generates massive profits, and we are dealing also in some situations with governments that do not entirely respect human rights, so this is a constant battle and in this constant battle, we must mobilize all those that are committed to information integrity in digital platforms, he said.

Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, agreed that while its a positive step that the U.N. is calling for international solutions to this global problem, its code of conduct wont likely be sufficient to stop the torrent of false and hateful information online.

The fact of the matter is that voluntary codes, including the companies own terms of service on these issues, have failed to rein them in, Beirich said. The problem for the U.N. is they cant do what it seems is going to have to be done to deal with this problem, which is basically legislation.

Guterres said there are many initiatives underway, including a law and code of conduct in the European Union for its 27 member nations and a U.K. summit on AI safety in the autumn. Other governments also are looking into forms of regulation. But he said there is a view that regulation isnt easy because things are moving very quickly, and that therefore a global approach is needed.

Guterres said a key problem is that the tech company business model prioritizes engagement over privacy, truth and human rights. He said tech companies need to understand that massive profits cannot be created at the expense of a model of engagement that goes before any other consideration.

The U.N. chief said the code of conduct will not be a solution, but it will be global and it will enable governments, tech companies, advertisers and others to commit to what needs to be done in order to guarantee or at least to seriously promote information integrity in digital platforms.

The principles Guterres laid out for the code of conduct include commitments to refrain from using, supporting or amplifying disinformation and hate speech for any purpose. 

For governments, it seeks commitments not to respond to misinformation, disinformation and hate speech by blocking legitimate comment, shutting down the internet or banning platforms or media outlets and to guarantee protections for journalists and independent media.

For companies that control digital platforms, it seeks a pledge to be transparent about their algorithms, advertising and how they deal with misinformation, disinformation and hate speech and to eliminate double standards that allow hate speech and disinformation to flourish in some languages and countries while they are prevented more effectively in others. Tech companies are also urged to give people a greater choice over the content that they see, and how their data is used.

Guterres said a commitment sought from digital platforms includes urgent and immediate measures to ensure that all AI applications are safe, secure, responsible and ethical, and comply with human rights obligations.

He said the United Nations will try to be in the center of all the networks and movements that will be created to deal with AI technology as it develops. But he said this wont be easy because governments and international organizations havent invested sufficiently in recent decades in personnel who have the necessary scientific and technical knowledge.

It also requires the commitment of the platforms themselves, and of the AI creators themselves, Guterres said, but we will do our best to be a platform where everybody can be together in order to make this agenda advance positively.

I made the line to pay for groceries.

He made a party to celebrate his sons birthday.

These phrases might sound off to the ears of most English-speaking Americans.

In Miami, however, theyve become part of the local parlance.

According to my recently published research, these expressions along with a host of others form part of a new dialect taking shape in South Florida.

This language variety came about through sustained contact between Spanish and English speakers, particularly when speakers translated directly from Spanish.

When French collided with English

Whether youre an English speaker living in Miami or elsewhere, chances are you dont know where the words you know and use come from.

Youre probably aware that a limited number of words usually foods, such as sriracha or croissant are borrowed from other languages. But borrowed words are far more pervasive than you might think.

Theyre all over English vocabulary: pajamas from Hindi; gazelle from Arabic, via French; and tsunami from Japanese.

Borrowed words usually come from the minds and mouths of bilingual speakers who end up moving between different cultures and places. This can happen when certain events war, colonialism, political exile, immigration and climate change put speakers of different language groups into contact with one another.

When the contact takes place over an extended period of time decades, generations or longer the structures of the languages in question may begin to influence one another, and the speakers can begin to share each others vocabulary.

One bilingual confluence famously changed the trajectory of the English language. In 1066, the Norman French, led by William the Conqueror, invaded England in an event now known as the Norman Conquest.

Soon thereafter, a French-speaking ruling class replaced the English-speaking aristocracy, and for roughly 200 years, the elites of England including the kings did their business in French.

English never really caught on with the aristocracy, but since servants and the middle classes needed to communicate with aristocrats and with people of different classes intermarrying French words trickled down the class hierarchy and into the language.

During this period, more than 10,000 loanwords from French entered the English language, mostly in domains where the aristocracy held sway: the arts, military, medicine, law and religion. Words that today seem basic, even fundamental, to English vocabulary were, just 800 years ago, borrowed from French: prince, government, administer, liberty, court, prayer, judge, justice, literature, music, poetry, to name just a few.

Spanish meets English in Miami

Fast forward to today, where a similar form of language contact involving Spanish and English has been going on in Miami since the end of the Cuban Revolution in 1959.

In the years following the revolution, hundreds of thousands of Cubans left the island nation for South Florida, setting the stage for what would become one of the most important linguistic convergences in all of the Americas.

Today, the vast majority of the population is bilingual. In 2010, more than 65% of the population of Miami-Dade County identified as Hispanic or Latina/o, and in the large municipalities of Doral and Hialeah, the figure is 80% and 95%, respectively.

Of course, identifying as Latina/o is not synonymous with speaking Spanish, and language loss has occurred among second- and third-generation Cuban Americans. But the point is that there is a lot of Spanish and a lot of English being spoken in Miami.

Among this mix are bilinguals. Some are more proficient in Spanish, and others are more skilled English speakers. Together, they navigate the sociolinguistic landscape of South Florida in complex ways, knowing when and with whom to use which language and when its OK to mix them.

When the first large group of Cubans came to Miami in the wake of the revolution, they did precisely this, in two ways.

First, people alternated between Spanish and English, sometimes within the same sentence or clause. This set the stage for the enduring presence of Spanish vocabulary in South Florida, as well as the emergence of what some people refer to as Spanglish.

Second, as people learned English, they tended to translate directly from Spanish. These translations are a type of borrowing that linguists call calques.

Calques are all over the English language.

Take dandelion. This flower grows in central Europe, and when the Germans realized they didnt have a word for it, they looked to botany books written in Latin, where it was called dens lionis, or lions tooth. The Germans borrowed that concept and named the flower Löwenzahn a literal translation of lions tooth. The French didnt have a word for the flower, so they too borrowed the concept of lions tooth, calquing it as dent de lion. The English, also not having a word for this flower, heard the French term without understanding it, and borrowed it, adapting dent de lion into English, calling it dandelion.

A new lingo emerges

This is exactly the sort of thing thats been happening in Miami.

As a part of my ongoing research with students and colleagues on the way English is spoken in Miami, I conducted a study with linguist Kristen DAllessandro Merii to document Spanish-origin calques in the English spoken in South Florida.

We found several types of loan translations.

There were literal lexical calques, a direct, word-for-word translation.

For example, we found people to use expressions such as get down from the car instead of get out of the car. This is based on the Spanish phrase bajar del carro, which translates, for speakers outside of Miami, as get out of the car. But bajar means to get down, so it makes sense that many Miamians think of exiting a car in terms of getting down and not getting out.

Locals often say married with, as in Alex got married with José, based on the Spanish casarse con literally translated as married with. Theyll also say make a party, a literal translation of the Spanish hacer una fiesta.

We also found semantic calques, or loan translations of meaning. In Spanish, carne, which translates as meat, can refer to both all meat, or to beef, a specific kind of meat. We discovered local speakers saying meat to refer specifically to beef as in, Ill have one meat empanada and two chicken empanadas.

And then there were phonetic calques, or the translation of certain sounds.

Thanks God, a type of loan translation from gracias a Dios, is common in Miami. In this case, speakers analogize the s sound at the end of gracias and apply it to the English form.

The Miami-born adopt the calques

We found that some expressions were used only among the immigrant generation for example, throw a photo, from tirar una foto, as a variation of take a photo.

But other expressions were used among the Miami-born, a group who may be bilingual but speak English as their primary language.

In an experiment, we asked Miamians and people from elsewhere in the U.S. to rate local expressions such as married with alongside the nonlocal versions, like married to. Both groups deemed the nonlocal versions acceptable. But Miamians rated most of the local expressions significantly more favorably than folks from elsewhere.

Language is always changing is practically a truism; most people know that Old English is radically different from Modern English, or that English in London sounds different from English in New Delhi, New York City, Sydney and Cape Town, South Africa.

But rarely do we pause to think about how these changes take place, or to ponder where dialects and words come from.

Get down from the car, just like dandelion, is a reminder that every word and every expression have a history.

Phillip M. Carter is Associate Professor of Linguistics, Florida International University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Wall Street climbed Monday ahead of a big week for central banks around the world, vaulting the S&P 500 to its highest level in more than a year.

The benchmark index rose 40.07 points, or 0.9%, to 4,338.93 and its highest close since April 2022. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 189.55, or 0.6%, to 34,066.33, while the Nasdaq composite rallied 202.78, or 1.5%, to 13,461.92.

The U.S. stock market has been cruising on hopes the economy may avoid a recession and the Federal Reserve may soon take it easier on its hikes to interest rates. Traders are betting the Fed will hold rates steady at its next meeting, which concludes on Wednesday. That would be the first time it hasnt hiked rates at a meeting in more than a year.

Investors see high-growth stocks as some of the biggest beneficiaries of lower rates, and they led the market Monday. Tech stocks alone accounted for more than half the S&P 500s gain, powered by gains of at least 1.5% for both Microsoft and Apple.

Cruise operator Carnival, meanwhile, rode a 12.5% upswell as analysts upgraded its stock on signs demand remains steady for the industry and that pricing is holding up. It helped overshadow losses elsewhere in the market, including an 11.8% fall for Nasdaq, the exchange company thats pushing more into technology. It said it would buy Adenza, a risk management and regulatory software provider, for $10.5 billion in cash and stock.

A halt or a pause by the Fed to rate hikes would give the economy and financial markets some breathing room. The Fed has already pulled rates to their highest level since 2007 in hopes of driving down inflation, and the increases have helped cause high-profile U.S. bank failures and a monthslong contraction in the manufacturing industry.

This week will also see the latest updates on inflation across the economy. On Tuesday, economists expect a report to show prices for consumers were 4.1% higher in May than a year earlier. Thats way above the Feds target of 2% inflation, but it would be down from 4.9% in April and a peak of more than 9% last June.

Because prices were already much higher a year ago due to the worst inflation in 40 years, further increases in upcoming months may not appear quite so dramatic. Inflation could fall to 3.2% in June, and the next two months could see one of the biggest drops in inflation over a two-month period over the last 70 years, according to Jonathan Golub, chief U.S. equity strategist at Credit Suisse.

But much of that easing would simply be because of how high prices had already climbed, and Wall Street traders are still bracing for the Fed to resume hiking rates in July. The question is how much further it will go beyond that.

The Fed is in a tight spot because any increases to rates could mean more pressure on the U.S. banking system. Its still absorbing all the past rate increases, which have caused customers to yank bank deposits as they herd into higher-yielding money-market funds. Higher rates have also forced down the values of bonds banks bought when interest rates were low.

While incoming data point to resilience in activity and stickiness in inflation, the Fed appears to want additional time to monitor policy lags and regional bank stress, Michael Gapen and other economists wrote in a BofA Global Research report.

They see a June pause by the Fed as a close call. Recent surprise hikes by central banks in Canada and Australia show a move higher could still happen, but Gapen said the Fed doesnt usually hike rates when the widespread assumption on Wall Street is for a hold. That may change if Tuesdays inflation report comes in hotter than expected.

Besides the Federal Reserve, central banks in Europe and Japan will also be meeting this week on interest rates.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 3.73% from 3.74% late Friday. It helps set rates for mortgages and other important loans.

The two-year Treasury yield, which moves more on expectations for the Fed, fell to 4.57% from 4.60%.

In stock markets abroad, European indexes were modestly higher after Switzerlands UBS said it has completed its takeover of embattled rival Credit Suisse in a government-arranged rescue combining the countrys two largest banks to safeguard the countrys reputation as a global financial center and choke off market turmoil.

In Asia, stock indexes were mixed.

-

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

The Federal Trade Commission sued Microsoft in federal court Monday to block the company from closing its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

In a filing in California federal court, the FTC sought a court order blocking the transaction from going through before the deals July 18 deadline, asking for the agencys in-house court to have a chance to review. 

Microsoft shares closed 1.6% higher at $331.85 while Activision Blizzard ended 0.8% lower at $79.77.

We welcome the opportunity to present our case in federal court, Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a statement. We believe accelerating the legal process in the U.S. will ultimately bring more choice and competition to the market.

The $69 billion deal has faced tough antitrust scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic. Microsoft, which makes the Xbox console, won approval in the European Union, but the UKs Competition and Markets Authority in April ruled against the takeover, saying Activision titles like Call of Duty would bolster Microsofts edge over rivals in the small but growing cloud-gaming market. 

Microsoft is appealing the CMA decision, which is globally binding. 

Microsofts Smith met with with UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt this month to discuss the deal. When the CMA vetoed the deal in April, Smith said he was very disappointed with the decision, which he said had shaken peoples confidence in technology in the UK.

The FTC first sued to block the deal in December in its in-house court, arguing the acquisition would harm competition in the US video game market. That FTC complaint doesnt prevent Microsoft from closing the deal, leading to the FTCs move to ask a federal judge to block the transaction.

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