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ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s coaching search could be headed for a swift end, but the school was tight-lipped Wednesday about its progress and scheduled no announcement about who would succeed football coach Mark Richt.

ESPN and the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart was Georgia’s selection late Tuesday night. Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity did not reply to an interview request from The Associated Press on the status of the search. Smart’s agent, Jimmy Sexton, could not be reached for comment.

Alabama coach Nick Saban, meanwhile, didn’t take any questions about Smart’s future on Wednesday. However, he did address the reports after Wednesday’s practice, saying, it’s not his “position to confirm any of this stuff, and I really can’t confirm it.

“But I will say this: Kirby has done an outstanding job here for us,” Saban said. “He’s worked really hard to do a great job with our defense for nine years now. I think the guy would, and I’ve said this many times before, do a great job as a head coach.”

After his comments, Saban wanted to make it clear that he would not respond to any questions about Smart. He held up the soft drink sitting on the podium and said: “You can ask the bottle but don’t ask me.”

Saban, however, did offer a hint that Smart might be leaving.

He said he told players they should be happy for a coach who has “worked hard to create another opportunity for himself” and that they’ve been through such coaching changes before.

That group includes Florida coach Jim McElwain, who stuck around through the BCS championship game to end the 2011 season before going to Colorado State.

McGarity on Monday described the search to replace Richt as “wide open,” though Smart is widely considered the leading candidate.

Georgia announced abruptly Sunday that Richt will not return as its football coach. Richt has reached a tentative agreement to coach Miami. He coached for 15 years at Georgia will lead the team in its bowl game following a 9-3 finish to the regular season.

Smart, 39, has a background that should be appealing to Georgia fans. Smart, who grew up in Bainbridge, Georgia, was a four-year letterman as a safety at Georgia from 1995-98. He was an administrative assistant at Georgia in 1999 before returning as running backs coach under Richt for one season in 2005.

Smart was hired by Alabama in 2007 and has been defensive coordinator since 2008.

An official announcement from Georgia could come quickly after the championship game Saturday in Atlanta.

Saban has described Smart as “a good teacher” and said “players respond to him well.”

“He’s outgoing, he’s got a good personality, I think he’ll do a good job in all of the other areas that you’re talking about,” Saban said. “I don’t have any question about that at all.”

Smart would be the latest in Georgia’s tradition of hiring candidates with no experience as a head coach. Vince Dooley, Ray Goff and Richt were assistants when named Georgia’s head coach. The lone recent exception to that trend was Jim Donnan, who was Marshall’s coach when hired to replace Goff following the 1995 season. Richt replaced Donnan before the 2001 season.

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AP Sports Writer John Zenor in Montgomery, Alabama contributed to this report.

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Dollars are increasingly flowing from traditional ads to digital, as strong growth in mobile, video, and social spending continue to change the face of the US media market.

Over the next five years, marketers will especially embrace mobile. Mobile will drive up spending on video, search, display, and social, and propel the migration of ad dollars away from traditional media, including newspapers and magazines.

In this new report, BI Intelligence forecasts spending trends for the major digital ad formats — including search, display, and video — and mobile versus desktop. We also examine trajectories for social ad spending and programmatic ad buying, which cut across digital formats. Finally, we look at how spending on traditional media formats will grow or contract over the next five years, as digital, and particularly mobile, rises. 

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

• Mobile will be the fastest-growing advertising channel and buoy spending on each of the digital formats. US mobile ad revenue will rise by a 26.5% CAGR through of 2020.
• Digital-video ad spending is rising faster than search and display. US digital-video ad revenue will rise by a CAGR of 21.9% through 2020. 
• Mobile search will overtake desktop-search ad revenue by 2019. Mobile-search ad spend will rise by a 25.2% CAGR, while desktop-search ad revenue will decline during the same period.
• Mobile display ads, including banners, rich media, and sponsorships, will overtake desktop display-related spending even earlier, in 2017. 
• Social-media ads, which cut across display and video, are seeing fast adoption. US social-media ad revenue, which includes video and display ads, will grow by a CAGR of 14.9% through 2020.
• The rapid embrace of programmatic ad-buying tools is fueling a dramatic uptick in the share of digital ad spending coming through programmatic channels. Programmatic transactions will be a majority of total US digital ad spend this year. 
• Unlike digital, traditional ad revenue will remain flat overall through 2020. Total traditional ad revenue will rise by a CAGR of just 0.4% between 2015 and 2020. 

In full, the report:

• Forecasts ad revenue for emerging digital ad channels and formats like mobile, video, social, and programmatic over the next five years
• Explores why ad revenue is flowing from desktop to mobile
• Examines the stagnation of traditional advertising channels like TV, magazines, and newspapers

Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:

1. Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> Purchase & Download Now
2. Subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and over 100 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you’ll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> Learn More Now

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Our subscribers consider the INSIDER Newsletters a “daily must-read industry snapshot” and “the edge needed to succeed personally and professionally” — just to pick a few highlights from our recent customer survey.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — The dramatic contenders at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival span history, genre and setting, from the slave days in the South to the gay-sex scene today in LA’s Korean spas.

What unites them, says festival director John Cooper, is excellent storytelling and a “thorough understanding of the craft of filmmaking, especially writing.”

On Wednesday, Cooper and programming director Trevor Groth announced the slate of American and international dramas and documentaries in competition this year at the annual festival in Park City, Utah.

“Independent film is evolving right now,” Cooper said. “There seems to be a real want and need for different kinds of stories.”

Tales of a slave who helps his owner, for example, as in writer-director-actor Nate Parker’s “The Birth of a Nation”; or of a first-generation Korean-American navigating traditional cultural expectations and his own emerging identity in “Spa Night.”

Other selections include “Swiss Army Man,” starring Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe, about a hopeless loner who befriends a dead body; and “Tallulah,” starring Ellen Page and Allison Janney, about a young woman who steals a baby from a wealthy family.

While most Sundance films won’t be seen outside the festival for many months, moviegoers everywhere should be excited about what these movies say about the state of cinema, Cooper said. The 117 feature-length films showing at the January festival were culled from more than 12,700 submissions.

“It proves that there’s a choice out there, that there are other options for your entertainment,” he said. “The whole notion of discovery is big… It’s the beginning of a cultural year, and also the discovery of new talent: talent that go onto direct other films, and acting talent that go on to be in other films and really become what’s driving the film business forward.”

Recent Sundance success stories include Colin Trevorrow’s hyper-charged career trajectory, from premiering his first feature at Sundance in 2012 to directing the summer smash “Jurassic World”; and “Fruitvale Station” director Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan, who followed up their 2013 Sundance hit with this year’s “Creed.” Jennifer Lawrence also first broke out at Sundance five years ago with “Winter’s Bone,” which brought her first Oscar nod.

The festival’s domestic documentary slate features stories of unsung heroes, such as ALS advocate and former NFL star Steve Gleason, and perspectives on gun violence and social media. Titles include “Newtown,” about the community’s recovery from the 2012 mass shooting at an elementary school, and “Audrie & Daisy,” about two teenage victims of online bullying.

Cooper and Groth said there’s a sexy undercurrent to the international dramas: A group of college brainiacs try to lose their virginity in “Brahman Naman” from India; a mermaid falls in love with a man in Poland’s “The Lure”; a woman forms a relationship with a wolf in Germany’s “Wild”; and “Male Joy, Female Love” from China is described as a portrayal of “an unlimited cycle of love stories.”

The Sundance Film Festival runs from Jan. 21 to 31.

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen at http://www.twitter.com/APSandy .

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In Seattle, Uber is testing a new color-coding system to make sure you know exactly which car is yours, according to a blog post.

How does it work? Glad you asked.

When Seattleites hail a ride with select Uber drivers during this test, they’re prompted to pick a color.

A light bar on the Uber car will change colors accordingly, so you can pick your driver out of a crowd.

Uber is providing drivers with the so-called Spot bars during this test. They won’t light up until the driver is nearby.

And, apparently, a rider can hold down on their screen to make their phone light up the selected color, too.

Well, speaking as someone who’s almost gotten into a stranger’s car because I thought it was an Uber, that’s one way to make sure you know which one’s your ride. If it’s successful, presumably this Spot test will find its way beyond Seattle.

SEE ALSO: Uber is going to take over your phone

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NOW WATCH: Here’s how to find out your Uber rating

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New York (AFP) – A Luke Skywalker doll for $18,000, a Darth Vader helmet or a cuddly Yoda for $100: “Star Wars” fans will dig deep to splash their cash on some of the rarest merchandise on the planet.

More than 600 items will go on sale in an online auction organized by Sotheby’s and eBay on December 11 — one week before the release of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” the seventh movie in arguably the world’s biggest film franchise.

The space epics have grossed billions of dollars at the box office worldwide since the first film came out in 1977 and spawned a pop culture phenomenon, drawing legions of hardcore fans.

All of the items in the auction come from the private collection of Japanese designer and creative entrepreneur Nigo, who started collecting toys and figures decades ago at just six years old.

Bids are expected across the globe when the three-hour auction goes live at 10:00 am (1700 GMT), says James Gallo, Sotheby’s consultant and owner of store “Toy and Comics Heaven.”

“It’s a really large assortment of stuff. It’s an impressive auction both in rarity and scope of items,” he told AFP.

Sotheby’s, set up in 18th century London and best known for selling fine art masterpieces, called in Gallo to value the collection, which he spent a week and a half sorting through.

From the United States, to Russia, China and Saudi Arabia, “Star Wars” has a fan base spanning generations. The films’ psychology has even found its way onto university syllabuses.

“It’s by far the strongest franchise,” agreed Gallo. “It’s been around longer than most, it’s merchandised more than most… There isn’t much that can compare.”

A Luke Skywalker doll, which would have been sold in 1978 as a children’s toy, goes on sale at the auction with an estimated value of $12,000 to $18,000.

– ‘Just like fine art’ –

The figurine, with a rare two-piece telescoping lightsaber, was quickly withdrawn from the market “due to the propensity for the lightsaber to snap off,” Sotheby’s said.

Never removed from the packaging, itself in pristine condition, it is one of only 20 confirmed examples of the doll, the auction house said.

“The very high end of the market is like that,” Gallo explained.

“When you’re talking about something that there’s 20 or 30 known in the world and there’s however many millions of ‘Star Wars’ fans, when you put it in that perspective, it’s quite rare.”

Neither is there any chance that someone paying that kind of money is going to pop the doll out and play with it.

“That would not be a good idea,” said Gallo, unamused. Instead it is much more likely to go on display.

“It’s up to each individual how they enjoy the items they have. It’s just like anything else, whether it be fine art or sports collectibles — it’s kind of all the same thing,” he said.

The most expensive items are two complete sets of “Power of the Force” coins, valued at $25,000-35,000 and which were available only by special request from the manufacturer Kenner.

Highlights go on display Friday in a private exhibition at The Conde Nast Gallery at One World Trade Center in New York.

Gallo says he is tempted to bid on a couple of items himself, but that his favorite is a 42-inch (1.06 meter) hairy Chewbacca from Canada valued at $3,000 to $5,000.

“It’s a really neat item,” said the Pennsylvania-based aficionado. “It’s a rare item to find.”

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The Russian Ministry of Defense (MOD) presented “evidence” on Wednesday that ISIS had been smuggling oil onto Turkish soil to be purchased by Turkey’s president “and his family.”

The MOD highlighted three main routes the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) had allegedly been using to transport illicit oil into Turkey: via the Bab al-Hawa and Bab al-Salameh border gates in Syria’s Idlib province, Hasakah in northeastern Syria, and Zakho in Iraqi Kurdistan on the Iraqi-Turkish border.

As many analysts were quick to point out on Twitter, however, none of these routes are primarily controlled by the Islamic State. 

Bab al-Hawa and Bab al-Salameh are both dominated by rebel groups associated with the Free Syrian Army, and control over Hasakah province is divided between the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the US-backed Kurdish/Arab coalition. Zakho, Iraq, meanwhile, lies within the jurisdiction of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

“If you look at the map, it looks like ISIS is smuggling oil through Kurdish-controlled territories in both Iraq and Syria to Turkey,” Kurdish expert Wladimir van Wilgenburg, of the Jamestown Foundation, told Business Insider on Wednesday.

“Relations between the YPG and Turkey aren’t so good, to say the least, so it seems implausible,” van Wilgenburg added. “It would be more logical if the Russians would suggest ISIS is smuggling oil to Syrian-Turkish controlled IS border towns like Jarabulus.”

Jarabulus is currently the only Syrian-border crossing under full ISIS control. The crossing in Tal Abyad on the Turkish-Syrian border was re-captured from ISIS by Kurdish forces in June.

In the above map, originally created by the skillful @LCarabinier, van Wilgenburg uses arrows to show how it would make more logistical sense for ISIS to smuggle oil to Turkey through ISIS-controlled areas — shaded gray — than through Kurdish-held areas, shaded orange.

It is possible that ISIS could have smuggled oil via Sinjar before it was re-captured by US-backed Kurds last month, but that would only help the group smuggle oil to its Raqqa stronghold in Syria — not to Turkey.

In any case, the Russian MOD released additional satellite imagery that it said showed ISIS oil tankers crossing the border from Iraq and Syria into Turkey, adding that this was only the “first part” of its evidence of the Turkey-ISIS relationship and that more will be revealed next week.

Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan denounced Russia’s accusations on Wednesday, calling them “slander” and vowing to resign if Russia could provide legitimate proof that Turkey had ever dealt with the Islamic State. 

Relations between the two nations have hit an all-time low following Turkey’s downing of a Russian warplane on last week. Russia has sanctioned Turkey over the incident, and Turkey has said it will cut its imports of Russian petroleum by 25% in 2016.

Significantly, the spat has also brought both countries’ alleged ties to ISIS back into focus.

Last Wednesday, the Treasury Department sanctioned Russian-Syrian businessman George Haswani for using his firm, Hesco Engineering and Construction Co., to purchase oil from the Islamic State on behalf of the Assad regime.

Two days later, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov accused Turkey of  “playing a game where terrorists are allocated the role of secret allies,” adding that Russia was ready to block the Turkish-Syrian border to “eradicate terrorism on Syrian soil.”

It is unclear how such a blockage would be enforced, or whether it would involve stationing Russian ground troops at the border.

SEE ALSO: Russia and Turkey are accusing each other of having ties to ISIS — and evidence suggests they both do

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This massive American aircraft carrier is headed to the Persian Gulf to help fight ISIS

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The Russian Ministry of Defense (MOD) presented “evidence” on Wednesday that ISIS had been smuggling oil onto Turkish soil to be purchased by Turkey’s president “and his family.”

The MOD highlighted three main routes the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) had allegedly been using to transport illicit oil into Turkey: via the Bab al-Hawa and Bab al-Salameh border gates in Syria’s Idlib province, Hasakah in northeastern Syria, and Zakho in Iraqi Kurdistan on the Iraqi-Turkish border.

As many analysts were quick to point out on Twitter, however, none of these routes are primarily controlled by the Islamic State. 

Bab al-Hawa and Bab al-Salameh are both dominated by rebel groups associated with the Free Syrian Army, and control over Hasakah province is divided between the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the US-backed Kurdish/Arab coalition. Zakha, Iraq, meanwhile, lies within the jurisdiction of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

“If you look at the map, it looks like ISIS is smuggling oil through Kurdish-controlled territories in both Iraq and Syria to Turkey,” Kurdish expert Wladimir van Wilgenburg, of the Jamestown Foundation, told Business Insider on Wednesday.

“Relations between the YPG and Turkey aren’t so good, to say the least, so it seems implausible,” van Wilgenburg added. “It would be more logical if the Russians would suggest ISIS is smuggling oil to Syrian-Turkish controlled IS border towns like Jarabulus.”

Jarabulus is currently the only Syrian-border crossing under full ISIS control. The crossing in Tal Abyad on the Turkish-Syrian border was re-captured from ISIS by Kurdish forces in June.

In the above map, originally created by the skillful @LCarabinier, van Wilgenburg uses arrows to show how it would make more logistical sense for ISIS to smuggle oil to Turkey through ISIS-controlled areas — shaded gray — than through Kurdish-held areas, shaded orange.

It is possible that ISIS could have smuggled oil via Sinjar before it was re-captured by US-backed Kurds last month, but that would only help the group smuggle oil to its Raqqa stronghold in Syria — not to Turkey.

In any case, the Russian MOD released additional satellite imagery that it said showed ISIS oil tankers crossing the border from Iraq and Syria into Turkey, adding that this was only the “first part” of its evidence of the Turkey-ISIS relationship and that more will be revealed next week.

Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan denounced Russia’s accusations on Wednesday, calling them “slander” and vowing to resign if Russia could provide legitimate proof that Turkey had ever dealt with the Islamic State. 

Relations between the two nations have hit an all-time low following Turkey’s downing of a Russian warplane on last week. Russia has sanctioned Turkey over the incident, and Turkey has said it will cut its imports of Russian petroleum by 25% in 2016.

Significantly, the spat has also brought both countries’ alleged ties to ISIS back into focus.

Last Wednesday, the Treasury Department sanctioned Russian-Syrian businessman George Haswani for using his firm, Hesco Engineering and Construction Co., to purchase oil from the Islamic State on behalf of the Assad regime.

Two days later, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov accused Turkey of  “playing a game where terrorists are allocated the role of secret allies,” adding that Russia was ready to block the Turkish-Syrian border to “eradicate terrorism on Syrian soil.”

It is unclear how such a blockage would be enforced, or whether it would involve stationing Russian ground troops at the border.

SEE ALSO: Russia and Turkey are accusing each other of having ties to ISIS — and evidence suggests they both do

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here’s how much El Chapo’s prison escape cost the infamous drug lord

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NEW YORK (AP) — An Israeli man and a Polish woman were reunited Wednesday in New York, seven decades after her Catholic family saved him during the Holocaust.

Michael Hochberg, 77, sat holding hands with 86-year-old Krystyna Jakubowska at Kennedy International Airport, locking eyes as their relatives looked on.

“He was a very pretty boy and he was very good — no problems with him as a child,” she said with a smile, speaking in Polish through a translator. “But I was scared, because the Germans announced on the street what would happen if somebody is saving a Jew.”

The punishment was death.

On Wednesday, Jakubowska flew in from Warsaw to meet Hochberg.

The Polish woman’s family had taken in the boy at age 4 after he was literally thrown over the wall of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw by a friend so as not to fall into the hands of the Nazis who herded hundreds of thousands of Jews there, many of them then sent to an extermination camp.

For two years, the child lived with Jozef and Rozalia Jakubowski — friends of his family — and their son and three daughters including Krystyna, then a teenager. The family made sure no one discovered that he was circumcised, and therefore Jewish; most Christian babies did not undergo the procedure at that time.

Hochberg had escaped just before the 1943 uprising that sent the ghetto up in flames he could see from the balcony of the Jakubowski apartment.

The boy never again saw his parents or grandparents, who all died. And he could never venture out of the apartment except at night.

“Very few people helped the Jews,” Hochberg said on Wednesday. “In the Jewish tradition, you say, whoever saves one soul saves the whole world.”

Jozef Jakubowski, who fought against the Nazis as a member of the Polish underground, was killed in combat. The rest of the family was forced out of the city into the countryside, taking the boy along.

At the end of the war, “I just hugged everybody, and I had to leave,” said Hochberg, who grew up in a Jewish orphanage in the town of Otwock, eventually moving to Israel, where he had three sons and eight grandchildren.

The survivor and Jakubowska had previously met briefly in Poland in 2006.

Hochberg and his wife live in the Israeli city of Haifa and are now spending a month in the U.S. They also plan to visit Las Vegas and Miami.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is having trouble detecting fraud in asylum requests from immigrants seeking to stay in the United States for their protection, according to a government study released Wednesday.

The Government Accountability Office looked at asylum requests from immigrants who have already made it to the United States and are asking to stay to escape persecution. The report doesn’t address the refugee application process, which also is overseen by the Homeland Security Department but involves people not currently in the United States. The refugee process has become an issue in debate over Syrian refugees.

The 96-page report concluded that neither U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services nor the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency that oversees immigration courts, conduct regular fraud risk assessments. The GAO recommended that both do so.

At USCIS, a paper filing system that doesn’t capture key fraud-detection information electronically also is a problem, the study says.

The GAO review found that more than 4,500 people were awarded asylum in 2014 despite being associated with lawyers or document preparers arrested that same year in an immigration fraud investigation in New York.

USCIS reviews cases when there is a connection to someone implicated in an immigration fraud case. It is unclear if any of the approved cases involved fraud.

USCIS does have the authority to revoke asylum and did so in the cases of 374 people from 2010 to 2014, the GAO said.

USCIS spokesman Joseph Holstead said the agency agrees with the recommendations and has already completed two. But he said the report doesn’t take into account recent improvements in the agency’s fraud detection efforts, including the creation of a dedicated Fraud Detection and National Security branch within the agency’s asylum division.

The number of asylum requests has more than doubled in the last several years. During the 2010 budget year, 47,118 asylum requests were made. That number rose to 108,152 in 2014. By 2015, the study found, there was a backlog of 106,121 pending cases.

That backlog includes thousands of asylum requests made by Central American children traveling alone and families caught at the border in the last few years.

The GAO made 10 recommendations for improving fraud detection at the USCIS, including hiring and training more asylum officers.

Both Homeland Security and the immigration court agency agreed with the recommendations.

Juan Osuna, who oversees the immigration court system, is expected to be pressed about fraud during a House oversight hearing Thursday morning.

“This new GAO report adds to mounting evidence that the Obama administration refuses to take the steps necessary to crack down on asylum fraud and protect the integrity of our immigration system,” said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the Virginia Republican who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The House has voted overwhelmingly to sharply scale back the federal role in American education. But the legislation would retain the testing requirement in the 2002 No Child Left Behind law that many parents, teachers and school districts abhor.

The bill, approved 359-64, would return to the states the decision-making power over how to use students’ test performance in assessing teachers and schools. The measure also would end federal efforts to encourage academic standards such as Common Core guidelines.

The legislation still would require states to intervene in the nation’s lowest-performing 5 percent of schools, in high school “dropout factories” and in schools with persistent achievement gaps.

The Senate is to vote on the measure next week, and President Barack Obama is expected to sign it.

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