By SYLVIE CORBET and THOMAS ADAMSON

PARIS (AP) — Brigitte Bardot’s funeral was being held on Wednesday with a private service and a public homage in Saint-Tropez, the French Riviera resort where she lived for more than half a century after retiring from movie stardom at the height of her fame.

The animal rights activist and far-right supporter died Dec. 28 at age 91 at her home in southern France.

She died from cancer after undergoing two operations, her husband, Bernard d’Ormale, said in an interview with Paris Match magazine released Tuesday evening. “She was conscious and concerned about the fate of animals until the very end,” he said.

Residents and admirers applauded the funeral convoy as the coffin of Bardot, once one of the world’s most photographed women and a defining screen siren of the 1960s, was being carried through the town’s narrow streets.

A service started to the sound of Maria Callas’ “Ave Maria” at the Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption Catholic Church in the presence of Bardot’s husband, son and grandchildren, as well as guests invited by the family and the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the protection of animals.

“Sadness is overwhelming, and pain too,” Max Guazzini, a friend and secretary general of the Foundation, said in a speech.

“We’re going to dream about her as if we were sleeping. In our dream, Brigitte arrives in a great, white immensity and suddenly … thousands of seals arrive,” he said. “All the animals she saved and she loved form a procession behind her … Thousands of animals say: Brigitte, we will miss you, we love you so much, thank you.”

Hundreds of people gathered in the small town to follow the farewell on large screens set up at the port and on two plazas.

Bardot is to be buried “in the strictest privacy” at a cemetery overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

She had long called Saint-Tropez her refuge from the celebrity that once made her a household name.

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A public homage was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon at a nearby site for admirers of the woman whose image once symbolized France’s postwar liberation and sensuality.

“Brigitte Bardot will forever be associated with Saint-Tropez, of which she was the most dazzling ambassador,” the town hall said last week. “Through her presence, personality and aura, she marked the history of our town.”

Bardot settled decades ago in her seaside villa, La Madrague, and retired from filmmaking in 1973 at age 39, during an international career that spanned more than two dozen films.

She later emerged as an animal rights activist, founding and sustaining a foundation devoted to the protection of animals.

While she withdrew from the film industry, she remained a highly visible and often controversial public figure through decades of militant animal rights activism and links with far-right politics.

She will be buried in the so-called marine cemetery, where her parents are also interred.

The cemetery, overlooking the Mediterranean sea, is also the final resting place of several cultural figures, including filmmaker Roger Vadim, Bardot’s first husband, who directed her breakout film “And God Created Woman,” a role that made her a worldwide star.

Lawyers representing the New York Daily News and an array of news organizations suing OpenAI for allegedly stealing and distorting their reporters’ work have asked a Manhattan judge to sanction ChatGPT’s parent company, alleging the tech behemoth deleted millions of conversations they were required to hand over as evidence of copyright infringement.

OpenAI continued to destroy output logs despite orders from two judges to preserve and provide them to the news organizations, new court filings allege. More than 1 million logs that had been requested — containing information the news outlets believe was based on their journalists’ reporting — were subbed out, according to court documents.

“[A]fter this Court ordered OpenAI to produce 20 million logs over OpenAI’s vociferous and repeated objections, OpenAI substituted millions of conversations that it was ordered to produce with other conversations – seemingly because it had deleted millions of the selected logs,” attorney Steve Lieberman wrote to the court in a Monday letter.

“OpenAI has refused to answer News Plaintiffs’ questions about the deleted and substituted logs.”

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The dispute has come up amid a complex lawsuit brought by The New York Times, The New York Daily News and other outlets affiliated with Tribune Publishing and MediaNews Group. The news organizations allege OpenAI is stealing and distorting their copyrighted works, thus providing ChatGPT users stolen reporting that’s often inaccurate. They have been joined by the Authors Guild, and a litany of best-selling writers are also parties in the complex litigation.

As part of the litigation, OpenAI was required to hand over the logs per a November order by Manhattan Magistrate Judge Ona Wang, which was affirmed this week in a Jan. 5 order by Manhattan Federal Judge Sidney Stein.

The A.I. company also engaged in “hashing,” meaning they changed the ID numbers of some 20 million anonymized ChatGPT user conversations, presenting an enormous challenge for the media lawyers sorting through the immense volume of materials, attorneys for the news organizations said.

In denying OpenAI’s objections to Wang’s order, Stein on Monday wrote that her “rulings were neither clearly erroneous nor contrary to law.”

“She adequately balanced ChatGPT users’ privacy interests against the relevance of the documents in light of the privacy protections already in place,” the judge wrote.

In challenging Wang’s November order, OpenAI had argued it was “clearly erroneous” for the judge to have rejected the company’s proposal to run search terms across a sample of 20 million anonymous chats, claiming it would better protect users’ privacy.

Stein said those arguments were “largely a repackaging” of the company’s failed argument that Wang failed to account for the privacy of ChatGPT users.

Lawyers for the news outlets say OpenAI also included billions of “grossly overbroad and inappropriate” redactions in the info they handed over, blacking out the names of news outlets cited to ChatGPT, bylines and other information critical to the case.

“Since this case was about our requests for content of certain publications,” Lieberman said in an interview, “It makes it rather hard to find the evidence we’re looking for.”

The news organizations’ request to the court asks the court to order the tech company to explain why it shouldn’t be held in contempt. They’re requesting an evidentiary hearing in the coming months.

The Daily News has reached out for comment to OpenAI, which did not immediately respond.

On Friday, a company spokesperson told the legal news outlet MLex, “As we’ve made clear to the Court, this is just another example of the Times distorting the facts and misrepresenting how our technology actually works.”

When security guards in downtown St. Paul accused downtown St. Paul’s largest property owner of wage theft, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office opened an investigation, which Ellison said was slowed by the company’s refusal to hand over payroll records.

The legal back-and-forth to obtain access to the records took more than three years, but Ellison’s office eventually filed a civil enforcement action alleging violations of the state’s Fair Labor Standards Act.

Madison Equities, then led by principal Jim Crockarell, argued that the civil action was moot as a two-year statute of limitations for wage-theft claims had run out. Ramsey County District Court agreed, as did the Minnesota Court of Appeals.

On Wednesday, the Minnesota Supreme Court overruled the lower courts, reopening the case by sending it back to the district court to reinstate the wage-theft claims for further proceedings. The opinion was not unanimous, and raised concern with two dissenting justices that it effectively rewrites civil procedure, however narrowly.

Question of ‘tolling’

The question before the justices centered on “tolling,” or when to suspend a time clock around the statute of limitations. The court noted that six security guards came forward with concerns about wage theft in the fall of 2019, prompting the attorney general’s office to file a civil investigative demand for payroll records that Crockarell refused to produce until July 2022.

Madison Equities initially responded with litigation of its own calling the records request overly broad, a case that was decided by the Minnesota Supreme Court in December 2021. The court found at the time that Ellison’s office could seek payroll information related specifically to the company’s hourly workers at 10 downtown buildings, but not related to all workers within the company’s 30 or more subsidiaries.

After finally obtaining the payroll records, Ellison’s office sued Madison Equities in June 2023, arguing that the company failed to pay overtime wages to security guards working at the First National Bank Building, the Lowry Building, the U.S. Bank Center, the Alliance Center, Park Square Court and the Stadium Ramp. The attorney general’s office alleged that workers would punch in and out of the job as they moved from building to building, as if each subsidiary was a separate company.

When the security guards worked more than 48 hours, they received separate paychecks, allowing Madison Equities to avoid paying time-and-a-half, according to the attorney general’s office.

Case dismissed — and then reinstated

Madison Equities then convinced the district court that under the rules of civil procedure, the time clock on the two-year statute of limitations began in late 2019 at the latest, not late 2021, and the case should be dismissed for lack of timeliness. The Court of Appeals agreed. The Supreme Court on Monday said otherwise.

Madison Equities “produced no responsive documents until February 2022 … and did not submit its last set of responsive documents until July 2022,” wrote Justice Anne McKeig for the majority.

“We hold that the litigation over the (civil investigative demand) tolled the applicable limitations period,” she wrote. “Our holding today applies narrowly to a situation where the Attorney General exercises authority granted by the Legislature under Minnesota Statutes … to investigate and enforce … laws respecting unfair, discriminatory or other unlawful practices in business, commerce, or trade.”

Ellison’s office had expressed concern that in future cases, companies could use litigation to stall for time and likewise run out the clock. The Supreme Court clarified that the attorney general’s civil investigative demand for payroll records alone did not pause the statute of limitations, but the legal resistance to it did.

“It is the litigation over the CID that tolls the limitations period — not simply the service of the CID that triggers tolling,” McKeig wrote.

Dissenting opinion

The 23-page decision was followed by a 23-page dissent authored by Justice Paul Thissen, who was joined in dissent by Justice Sarah Hennesy.

The dissent argued that under the court decision, the statute of limitations could, in theory, be extended indefinitely based on when the attorney general arbitrarily “becomes satisfied” that enough evidence has been handed over to begin a legal claim, effectively running the clock forever. The office, he wrote, could have sued earlier.

“From where I stand, it appears the court is manufacturing a new tolling rule because the Attorney General missed a limitations period deadline in a single case,” Thissen wrote.

Crockarell, who held stakes in at least 32 buildings across the metro, died in January 2024, and several Madison Equities properties in downtown St. Paul have since fallen into foreclosure after being put up for sale en masse by his widow.

By LUIS ANDRES HENAO and GIOVANNA DELL’ORTO

Faith leaders who minister to Christians in Venezuela and the Venezuelan diaspora in the United States are urging prayers for peace as they attend to congregations roiled by uncertainty and high emotions following the U.S. capture of deposed leader Nicolás Maduro.

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In Venezuela, initial statements from the Catholic bishops’ conference and the Evangelical Council of Venezuela were cautious, appealing for calm and patience, while many pastors in the diaspora welcomed Maduro’s ouster. The Catholic archbishop of Miami, who ministers to the largest Venezuelan community in the U.S., said there is an anxiousness about what is next, but he believes the church has a key role to play in helping the Catholic-majority country move forward.

About 8 million people have  fled Venezuela  since 2014, settling first in neighboring countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. After the COVID-19 pandemic, they increasingly set their sights on the United States, walking through the jungle in Colombia and Panama or flying to the U.S. on humanitarian parole with a financial sponsor.

Many have settled in South Florida, where they make up the country’s biggest Venezuelan community. Community members took to the streets waving flags in celebration after Maduro and his wife were captured in a U.S. military operation on Saturday.

But some have mixed feelings, Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski said. Since the start of February, the Trump administration has ended two federal programs that together  allowed more 700,000 Venezuelans  to live and work legally in the U.S.

“People are happy because Maduro is out, but there’s still a lot of uncertainty,” Wenski told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

“As far as for those who are here in this country that have lost their temporary protective status, they’re anxious about returning unless there is a real change of the political and social situation in the country.”

FILE – People celebrate after President Donald Trump announced Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro had been captured and flown out of the country, in Doral, Fla., Jan. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Jen Golbeck, File)

Archbishop says the Catholic Church has a role to play

Amid the rising uncertainty in Venezuela, interim President Delcy Rodríguez has taken the place of Maduro and offered to collaborate with the Trump administration in what could be a seismic shift in relations between the adversary governments.

Wenski said he hopes conditions for the Catholic Church in Venezuela improve now that Maduro has been ousted.

“There have been over the years great tensions between the Maduro and Chavez regimes with the Catholic Church,” said Wenski, referring to Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez. “And still, in Venezuela, the church is perhaps the only institution that is independent of the government, that can speak quite courageously about the situation in the country.”

Among the tensions between the Maduro administration and the church, Wenski recalled how Cardinal Baltazar Porras, the archbishop emeritus of Caracas and a critic of the Maduro government, recently had his passport confiscated by Venezuelan immigration officials and was banned from traveling abroad.

“I think that the church should continue to speak up for democracy, but at the same time be patient, to be calm,” Wenski said. “The church is always promoting reconciliation and certainly given the polarization in Venezuela over these years … the church has to be a voice urging reconciliation between the different factions and the different political opinions or political parties in the country.”

In Doral, a Miami suburb of 80,000 that has been nicknamed “Little Venezuela” or “Doralzuela” because of its large Venezuelan population, many prayed for the future of their native country during Sunday services a day after Maduro was captured.

The Rev. Israel Mago, the Venezuelan born-pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Doral, told worshippers to pray for “a fair and peaceful transition in Venezuela, so peace and justice can reign.”

At the end of the service, he invited the congregation to join him in a special afternoon vigil to pray for justice in their countries of origin, especially, he said in Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, where human rights advocates, exiled priests and the U.S. government say the Nicaraguan government is carrying out a crackdown on religion.

Pastors and the faithful turn to prayer

Also in Doral, the Rev. Frank López of Jesus Worship Center started his Sunday sermon by “congratulating” the Venezuelan people and thanking God for President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“It’s time that in America, starting with Venezuela and may it continue with Cuba too, the glory and freedom might be manifested that Christ bought for you, for me, on the cross at Calvary,” the evangelical pastor told the cheering congregation, which counts more than 3,000 members from over 40 different nationalities.

In Philadelphia, members of the Venezuelan community gathered for a special Sunday service at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. Many carried Venezuelan flags and prayer beads or wore jerseys of the national soccer team. The gathering was organized by Casa de Venezuela and other Venezuelan nonprofits in the U.S.

“We wanted to do it at the church so people would feel comfortable, protected. And this is regarded as a space of reconciliation,” said Arianne Bracho, vice president of Casa de Venezuela Philadelphia.

As a baptized but nonpracticing Catholic, she still felt compelled to pray for her country in a service that she described as emotional. “This was a gathering to reaffirm our hope, our faith, to call on tranquility and calm. And I think the house of God, whichever religion it might be, is the right place,” she said in Spanish.

Most of her family, she said, has been living abroad across the world, from “Japan to Colombia,” due to the political and economic crises in Venezuela. Today, she feels conflicted emotions about the country’s moment.

“I’m convulsed; I have mixed feelings. It was tough seeing our country being bombed. But it was necessary to remove Maduro for his drug crimes and human rights violations,” she said.

“What was clear to me, on that day where we gathered at the church, is that we all have faith that this will end.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.