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The Magic Mountain is a sweeping critique of totalitarian Europe. 100 years later, its warnings about extremism feel urgentA San Fernando Valley man has agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud, after prosecutors accused him of running a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme targeting local Filipino community members, including senior churchgoers. Sylvein William Maximilian D’Habsburg XVII , 48, has been accused of taking more than $5.9 million from victims over the course of several years. It was all under the guise of investing in his two tech companies, prosecutors wrote in the plea deal, with D’Habsburg making several claims including that his technology could detect Covid-19 infection based on video. At one point in 2020, D’Habsburg convinced a victim to wire $224,378.43 to his bank account in the name of BAI intelligence, prosecutors wrote in the plea deal reached with the defendant. He then used the money to buy luxury cars like a vintage Rolls Royce and rare antiques, court documents said. D’Habsburg, who’s also of Filipino descent and changed his name from Sylvein Scalleone, is expected to face a maximum of 20 years in prison, according to the agreement filed last week for the federal felony fraud charge. In a statement to NBC News, D’Habsburg’s attorney Bryan Thomas said that his client “vehemently denies” running a Ponzi scheme. “Mr. D’Habsburg has admitted to making false statements regarding the financial status of the business and that is what he has accepted responsibility,” Bryan Thomas, D’Habsburg’s attorney, said in a statement before referencing D’Habsburg’s company BAI Intelligence, which is a company focused on experimental Covid-19 testing. “However, BAI technology is not a Ponzi scheme and he has not plead guilty to any charges regarding the performance of his company.” Licelle Cobrador, executive director of the Filipino American Legal Defense and Education Fund, called the allegations “mind-boggling,” given D’Habsburg’s shared background with his victims. “For Filipinos, when you identify as another Filipino, there’s an automatic affinity. They would just be more trusting,” Cobrador said, adding that the allegations suggest D’Habsburg “took advantage of that bond.” According to the plea agreement, the wire fraud started back around January 2018 and continued through at least June 2023. D’Habsburg appeared to target fellow Filipinos, the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Central District of California said. D’Habsburg hired recruiters to identify potential investors from the community for his business Wild Rabbit Technologies, in addition to BAI Intelligence, and marketed alleged artificial intelligence technology, prosecutors wrote in the plea deal. D’Habsburg then invited these potential investors to attend demonstrations of the technology, saying it could predict the future and detect Covid-19 infection based on video, among several other claims. During the presentations, D’Habsburg would allege that he’d already received $500 million in investments from big names including Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Joel Osteen and the Harvard University endowment, the plea agreement said. Additionally, D’Habsburg would claim that former secretaries of state, Mike Pompeo and Hillary Clinton, had consulted with him about his AI technology. While he told potential investors that their funds would go toward helping further his research, hiring personnel and obtaining patents, the plea agreement says that D’Habsburg spent the money for personal use, according to the plea deal. Beyond the two vintage Rolls Royces, D’Habsburg also splurged on a pair of Italian-carved Giltwood thrones from the 1800s, a Venetian baroque-style throne chair from around 1890, paired Italian marble columns that date back to the 12th to 13th century, along with high-end clothing and other valuables, the plea deal said. Cobrador said that D’Habsburg’s alleged targeting of parishioners is chilling, given the immense trust that many Filipino Americans have in those they worship with. The church, Cobrador said, occupies a critical space, particularly among immigrants. In the Philippines, Cobrador said, the church often helps provide basic services that the government in the developing country often cannot. When people immigrate to the U.S., they bring along their perception of churches as safe spaces to ask for help, guidance and community. So for many immigrants, she said, their fellow parishioners are often whom they turn to for networking, jobs or to find housing. “In the States, if they’re Filipino American, it’s less intimidating to approach people who are in church than approach people who are in government or other nonprofits,” she said. “People are always ready to help. But you can see how that environment could be taken advantage of by people who are unscrupulous.” D’Habsburg is expected to enter his formal guilty plea in the coming weeks.The Vikings designated tight end Nick Muse to return Wednesday, opening his 21-day practice window. The team announced Monday that it has waived Muse. Muse was placed on injured reserve Sept. 18 after he fractured his hand. The injury occurred in Minnesota’s Week 2 win over San Francisco. Muse stayed in the game and successfully fielded an onside kick by the 49ers to allow the Vikings to finish the game in victory formation. Muse, a 2022 seventh-round pick, has appeared in 14 games, playing 156 snaps on special teams and five on offense. His lone career target so far resulted in a 22-yard reception at Detroit in the 2023 regular-season finale.top 5 best online casino sites in india 。

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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas won the Big 12 title in 2023 on its way out the door to the Southeastern Conference. It was still swinging open when Arizona State waltzed in and won the league title in its debut season. And now the old Big 12 champs meet the new Big 12 champs on the path toward a potential national title. The fifth-seeded Longhorns and fourth-seeded Sun Devils play News Years Day in the Peach Bowl in the quarterfinals of the College Football Playoff . Both had their doubters they could get here. Texas (12-2) still had to prove is was “ready” for the SEC. Arizona State (11-2) was picked to finish last in the Big 12. But the Sun Devils quickly started winning and having fun in some new road environments in college towns smaller than some of their stops in the more cosmopolitan old Pac-12. All-American running back Cam Skattebo led the barnstorming tour. “We were not used to getting tortillas thrown at us at Texas Tech. You're not used to some of these environments," Sun Devils coach Kenny Dillingham said Monday. “When you're in the Pac-12, you're playing in Seattle, you're playing in L.A., you're playing in Salt Lake City. We got to face a lot more small college town football with really, really great environments. ... It was definitely fun to join a new league," Dillingham said. And Dillingham laid down some Texas roots. The Sun Devils are recruiting Texas players out of high school, and the current roster has six transfers who started their college careers in burnt orange in Austin. “The guys we’ve gotten from Texas and coach (Steve Sarkisian's) program have been unbelievable,” Dillingham said. “We know what we’re getting when we’re getting a guy from that program, and that’s a guy who has worked really hard, competed and been pushed. Those are the things that we like to bring in.” Safety Xavion Alford was named All-Big 12 . Defensive end Prince Dorbah is another Sun Devils starter. Defensive lineman Zac Swanson, who has two sacks this season, is another former Longhorn who said he relished a chance to beat his former team. Recruited by Texas out of Phoenix, Swanson was a reserve in 2022 and 2023 behind future NFL draft picks T'Vondre Sweat and Byron Murphy. “That's a team who kicked me out and said I'd never I was never going to be good enough to play there,” Swanson said last week. “That's something that has been on my agenda for a while.” Dillingham joked he'd like to get more Texas transfers this week. Sarkisian simply noted that he wished he'd signed Skattebo, a Californian who transferred from Sacramento State after the 2022 season. “I was unaware, so kudos to them. They found him, he's a heckuva player,” said Sarkisian, who also is a California native. Sarkisian said he was impressed by the Sun Devil's first-year success in the Big 12. “We were in that Big 12, what, for 27 years? We won four. This is their first year in and they won a Big 12 Championship. It’s a really hard thing to do,” Sarkisian said. “They’re playing with a ton of confidence right now. The last two months, I think they’re playing as good a football as anybody in the country.” Despite wining that last Big 12 title and a playoff appearance in 2023, Texas still faced skeptics that the Longhorns would take their lumps in the SEC this year. Texas was more than ready for the league and the Longhorns made it to the SEC championship game. Their only two losses have been to Georgia, the No. 2 seed in the playoff. Sarkisian still remembers his 5-7 Texas debut in 2021. The program wasn't ready for the SEC and the playoff back then, but it certainly is now. Texas is the only one of last year's four playoff teams to make the expanded 12-team field this year. “There’s a lot to be proud of, but mostly I’m proud of our veterans, our leaders, our seniors, because those guys went from 5-7 in year one, they went through 8-5 in year two, and they didn’t jump ship. They hung in there with us. They believed in what they were doing,” Sarkisian said. Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football

Nico Iamaleava throws 4 TD passes to lead No. 10 Tennessee over UTEP 56-0As the Biden administration winds down, the US Food and Drug Administration has submitted a proposed rule that could significantly lower the amount of nicotine in tobacco products and potentially prompt more people to quit smoking. The FDA has been signaling its intentions to limit nicotine levels at least since 2018 , during the first Trump administration. In 2022, President Joe Biden’s FDA commissioner, Dr. Robert Califf, took it a step further and announced that the agency was developing a rule that would require tobacco companies to significantly reduce the amount of nicotine in traditional cigarettes. The next regulatory step, which the FDA took Tuesday by submitting the proposal to the Office of Management and Budget , would not mean overnight change. But if the government did set a limit on nicotine levels, experts say, it could significantly improve public health. “A proposed product standard to establish a maximum nicotine level to reduce the addictiveness of cigarettes and certain combusted tobacco products, when finalized, would be among the most impactful population-level actions in the history of US tobacco product regulation,” the FDA said in a statement Wednesday. The number of people who smoke has been declining for more than a decade, but smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death, disease and disability in the country, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 16 million Americans are living with a smoking-related disease. As of 2021, about 28.3 million US adults were considered current smokers, the CDC says. Surveys show that most want to quit, but nicotine is highly addictive, changing the brain in ways that make people want to smoke more. Half of smokers say they’ve tried to quit in the past year, but fewer than 1 in 10 were successful. Studies show that when the nicotine content of cigarettes is reduced, people smoke less and make more attempts to quit. Cigarettes with lower nicotine levels seem to be effective in alleviating withdrawal, research shows. When the FDA announced its initial plans to reduce nicotine in 2022, it estimated that reducing nicotine levels could keep more than 33 million people from becoming regular smokers, that about 5 million additional smokers would quit within a year, and that 134 million years of life would be gained. In the draft proposal from 2018, which the FDA has since refined, it cited a 2013 survey that found that reducing the total nicotine content of cigarettes to 0.5 milligrams per rod would minimize addictiveness, but it also said that questions remain with respect to the precise level of nicotine in cigarettes. The agency’s proposal was met with high praise Wednesday. “Once finalized, this rule could be a game-changer in our nation’s efforts to eliminate tobacco use,” said Harold Wimmer, president and CEO of the American Lung Association. “Making tobacco products non-addictive would dramatically reduce the number of young people who become hooked when they are experimenting. To fully address the toll of tobacco on our nation’s health and across all communities, it is critical to reduce nicotine levels to non-addictive levels in all commercial tobacco products, including e-cigarettes.” Not all smokers would quit if nicotine levels were limited, experts say, nor would all smoking-related diseases disappear, since tobacco products contain other chemicals that can be harmful for health. “Certainly, there would be individuals who would benefit from substantially lower nicotine levels and find it easier to quit,” said Dr. Rose Marie Robertson, a cardiologist and chief science officer at the American Heart Association. “It’s really hard to quit. I’ve seen patients over many years who have gotten the wake-up call with a heart attack or a stroke and really want to improve their health and reduce their risk, but it’s just very, very hard to do.” There won’t be any immediate changes to tobacco products. The Office of Management and Budget’s approval process can take months. There will also be a public comment period, and the tobacco industry often sues the government to stop new regulations. It’s also unclear what the FDA will do with such a proposal under President-elect Donald Trump. During his first term, the agency signaled that it wanted to limit nicotine, but the tobacco industry donated heavily to Republicans ahead of this year’s elections, and Trump’s pick for chief of staff worked as a tobacco lobbyist . Robertson says her association wants this last-minute FDA effort to work. “We’re hopeful, but we’ll be there if it doesn’t move forward, and we’ll continue to be there,” she said. CNN’s Deidre McPhillips contributed to this report.