Month: November 2023

Shane MacGowan, Lead Singer of The Pogues, Dies at 65

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Shane MacGowan, the boozy, rabble-rousing singer and chief songwriter of The Pogues, who infused traditional Irish music with the energy and spirit of punk, died Thursday, his family said. He was 65.

MacGowan’s songwriting and persona made him an iconic figure in contemporary Irish culture, and some of his compositions have become classics — most notably the bittersweet Christmas ballad “Fairytale of New York,” which Irish President Michael D. Higgins said “will be listened to every Christmas for the next century or more.”

“It is with the deepest sorrow and heaviest of hearts that we announce the passing of our most beautiful, darling and dearly beloved Shane MacGowan,” his wife Victoria Clarke, his sister Siobhan and father Maurice said in a statement.

The singer died peacefully with his family by his side, the statement added.

The musician had been hospitalized in Dublin for several months after being diagnosed with viral encephalitis in late 2022. He was discharged last week, ahead of his upcoming birthday on Christmas Day.

The Pogues melded Irish folk and rock ‘n’ roll into a unique, intoxicating blend, though MacGowan became as famous for his sozzled, slurred performances as for his powerful songwriting.

His songs blended the scabrous and the sentimental, ranging from carousing anthems to snapshots of life in the gutter to unexpectedly tender love songs. The Pogues’ most famous song, “Fairytale of New York” is a tale of down-on-their-luck immigrant lovers that opens with the decidedly unfestive words: “It was Christmas Eve, babe, in the drunk tank.” The duet between the raspy-voiced MacGowan and the velvet tones of the late Kirsty MacColl is by far the most beloved Pogues song in both Ireland and the U.K.

Singer-songwriter Nick Cave called Shane MacGowan “a true friend and the greatest songwriter of his generation.”

Higgins, the Irish president, said “his songs capture within them, as Shane would put it, the measure of our dreams.”

“His words have connected Irish people all over the globe to their culture and history, encompassing so many human emotions in the most poetic of ways,” Higgins said.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said MacGowan’s songs “beautifully captured the Irish experience, especially the experience of being Irish abroad.”

Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald said: “Nobody told the Irish story like Shane — stories of emigration, heartache, dislocation, redemption, love and joy.”

Born on Christmas Day 1957 in England to Irish parents, MacGowan spent his early years in rural Ireland before the family moved back to London. Ireland remained the lifelong center of his imagination and his yearning. He grew up steeped in Irish music absorbed from family and neighbors, along with the sounds of rock, Motown, reggae and jazz.

He attended the elite Westminster School in London, from which he was expelled, and spent time in a psychiatric hospital after a breakdown in his teens.

MacGowan embraced the punk scene that exploded in Britain in the mid-1970s. He joined a band called the Nipple Erectors, performing under the name Shane O’Hooligan, before forming The Pogues alongside musicians including Jem Finer and Spider Stacey.

The Pogues — shortened from the original name Pogue Mahone, a rude Irish phrase — fused punk’s furious energy with traditional Irish melodies and instruments including banjo, tin whistle and accordion.

“It never occurred to me that you could play Irish music to a rock audience,” MacGowan recalled in “A Drink with Shane MacGowan,” a 2001 memoir co-authored with Clarke. “Then it finally clicked. Start a London Irish band playing Irish music with a rock and roll beat. The original idea was just to rock up old ones but then I started writing.”

The band’s first album, “Red Roses for Me,” was released in 1984 and featured raucous versions of Irish folk songs alongside originals including “Boys from the County Hell,” “Dark Streets of London” and “Streams of Whisky.”

Playing pubs and clubs in London and beyond, the band earned a loyal following and praise from music critics and fellow musicians from Bono to Bob Dylan.

MacGowan wrote many of the songs on the next two albums, “Rum, Sodomy and the Lash” (1985) and “If I Should Fall from Grace with God” (1988), ranging from rollicking rousers like the latter album’s title track to ballads like “A Pair of Brown Eyes” and “The Broad Majestic Shannon.”

The band also released a 1986 EP, “Poguetry in Motion,” which contained two of MacGowan’s finest songs, “A Rainy Night in Soho” and “The Body of an American.” The latter featured prominently in early-2000s TV series “The Wire,” sung at the wakes of Baltimore police officers.

“I wanted to make pure music that could be from any time, to make time irrelevant, to make generations and decades irrelevant,” he recalled in his memoir.

The Pogues were briefly on top of the world, with sold-out tours and appearances on U.S. television, but the band’s output and appearances grew more erratic, due in part to MacGowan’s struggles with alcohol and drugs. He was fired by the other band members in 1991 after they became fed up with a string of no-shows, including when The Pogues were opening for Dylan. The band briefly replaced MacGowan with Clash frontman Joe Strummer before breaking up.

MacGowan performed with a new band, Shane MacGowan and the Popes, with whom he put out two albums: “The Snake” in 1995 and “The Crock Of Gold” in 1997. He reunited with The Pogues in 2001 for a series of concerts and tours, despite his well-documented problems with drinking and performances that regularly included slurred lyrics and at least one fall on stage.

MacGowan had years of health problems and used a wheelchair after breaking his pelvis a decade ago. He was long famous for his broken, rotten teeth until receiving a full set of implants in 2015 from a dental surgeon who described the procedure as “the Everest of dentistry.”

MacGowan received a lifetime achievement award from the Irish president on his 60th birthday. The occasion was marked with a celebratory concert at the National Concert Hall in Dublin with performers including Bono, Nick Cave, Sinead O’Connor and Johnny Depp.

Clarke wrote on Instagram that “there’s no way to describe the loss that I am feeling and the longing for just one more of his smiles that lit up my world.”

“I am blessed beyond words to have met him and to have loved him and to have been so endlessly and unconditionally loved by him and to have had so many years of life and love and joy and fun and laughter and so many adventures,” she wrote.
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Iranian Rapper Toomaj Salehi Arrested Again

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Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi, who had been previously detained for showing support to anti-government protests and was released on bail earlier this month, was arrested again, Iran’s state media reported on Thursday.

“Salehi has been arrested for publishing false information and disturbing public opinion, after being released upon an order by Iran’s supreme court to revise his case,” the judiciary news agency said.

Following the death in custody of 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in September 2022, Iran has seen months of nationwide protests that represented one of the fiercest challenges to the Islamic Republic since its establishment in 1979.

Salehi, who wrote songs about the protests, was initially sentenced to six years in prison on multiple charges, including “corruption on earth,” a ruling that was then rejected by Iran’s supreme court.

The 33-year-old rapper spent one year and 21 days in prison, including 252 days in solitary confinement, during which he sustained physical injuries, according to his official page on the social media website X, formerly known as Twitter.
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Vietnam’s Rare Earth Sector on the Rise

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Vietnam, with the world’s second-largest reserves of the rare earths used in such modern devices as electric vehicle batteries and smart phone screens, is intensifying mining of the critical minerals. The industry, though, faces high processing costs, environmental concerns, and the takedown of industry leaders for illegal mining and mineral sales.

Vietnam’s rare earth resources are second only to those of China, which has held a tight monopoly since the 1980s. With Chinese relations with the West becoming more volatile, many countries are looking for other sources for the elements.

“China produces about 60% of the world’s rare earths but what they process is over 90%,” Louis O’Connor, CEO of Strategic Metals Invest, an Irish investment firm, told VOA.

“It was not a good idea to allow one country to dominate critical raw materials that are critical to all nations’ economic prosperity and increasingly military capability,” he said.

O’Connor added that while China has the world’s majority of raw materials, its dominance over technical expertise in the complex and costly process of rare earth refining is even greater. China has 39 metallurgy universities and approximately 200 metallurgists graduate weekly in the country, he said.

“The ability to go from having the potential to end product — that’s the most challenging, complicated, and expensive part,” O’Connor said. “For Vietnam, even if they have the deposits, what they don’t have is the human capital, or the engineering expertise.”

Vietnam increased rare earth mining tenfold with its output hitting 4,300 tons last year, compared to 400 tons in 2021.  according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Vietnam said in July it plans to process 2 million tons of rare earth ores by 2030 and produce 60,000 tons of rare earth oxides annually starting in 2030. This year, China’s mining quota is set at 240,000 tons to meet the demand for the electric vehicle industry, according to Chinese government data.

The United States and other countries are interested in Vietnam increasing its production of rare earths.

“The U.S. wants Vietnam to become a more important supplier and perhaps replace China, if possible, because of the risk that the U.S. may face in relying on rare earth supplies from China,” Le Hong Hiep, senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore told VOA.

“Not only the U.S., but also other partners like Korea, Japan, and Australia also are working with Vietnam to develop the rare earth industry,” he said.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol signed a memorandum of understanding in Vietnam in June to establish a joint supply chain center for rare earth minerals.

“We reached an agreement that there is more potential to develop rare earths together, as they are abundant in Vietnam,” Yoon said in a June 23 statement with Vietnam’s president Vo Van Thuong.

The United States signed such a memorandum on cooperation in the rare earths sector during President Joe Biden’s visit to Hanoi on September 9.

“We see Vietnam as a potential critical nexus in global supply chains when it comes to critical minerals and rare earth elements,” Marc Knapper, U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, said on September 13 during a digital press briefing. “We certainly want to work together to ensure that Vietnam is able to take advantage of its rich resources in a way that’s also sustainable.”

Scandal

However, a handful of Vietnam’s key rare earth enterprises have become entangled in scandal. On October 20, police arrested six individuals for mining and tax violations.

Police arrested Doan Van Huan, chairman of the Hanoi-based Thai Duong Group that operates a mine in Yen Bai province, and its chief accountant, Nguyen Van Chinh, for violating regulations on the exploration and exploitation of natural resources and accounting violations, the Public Security Ministry said. The two were accused of making $25.5 million from the illegal sale of rare earth ore and iron ore. Police raided 21 excavation and trading sites in Yen Bai province and three other locations. Authorities seized an estimated 13,700 tons of rare earth and more than 1,400 tons of iron ores, according to local publication VnExpress.

Although government statements did not state what made Thai Duong’s rare earth sales illegal, a source told Reuters raw Yen Bai mine ore had been exported to China to avoid high domestic refining costs, in violation of Vietnamese rules.

The chairman, Luu Anh Tuan, and accountant, Nguyen Thi Hien, of the country’s primary rare earth refining company, Vietnam Rare Earth JSC, were also arrested for violating accounting regulations in trading rare earth with Thai Duong Group. Dang Tran Chi, director of Hop Thanh Phat, and his accountant Pham Thi Ha were arrested on the same charge.

Looking at corruption in Vietnam’s rare earth industry will be “top of the list” for future investors, O’Connor said.

“Corruption levels would have to be looked at,” he said. “If you’re buying a metal that’s going to need to perform in a jet engine, for example or a rocket … they have to be sure of the purity levels. The chain of custody of these, it’s more important really than gold.”

Vietnam committed to industry

Hanoi is committed to developing the rare earths industry even though economic gains are limited by environmental and production costs, Hiep told VOA.

“Vietnam is now interested in promoting this industry mainly because of the strategic significance,” Hiep told VOA. “If you can grow this industry and become a reliable supplier of rare earth products for the U.S. and its allies, Vietnam’s strategic position will be enhanced greatly.”

“Whether that will be successful, we have to wait and see,” he added.

There are also environmental concerns for the growing industry, particularly as a crackdown on Vietnam’s environmental organizations and civil society leaves little room for public speech.

“The biggest challenge is going to be how do you handle the waste process from the mining,” said Courtney Weatherby, deputy director of the Southeast Asia Program at Washington’s Stimson Center told VOA.

“Ensuring that development happens in a sustainable way takes a lot of different actors,” she said.

But Duy Hoang, executive director of unsanctioned political party Viet Tan, said the room for outside actors to express concern over environmental and labor practices is narrowing.

“What we’re seeing is sort of a shrinking space for civil society to speak out and a number of the leading environmental activists are now in jail. We don’t have their voices which are very needed and I think there may be self-censorship going on by other activists,” he said. “There has to be accountability.”
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White House Hopes to Lead Global Charge in ‘Promise, Peril’ of Emerging Tech Like AI

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American leadership is essential in establishing norms and laws to “determine how we both glean the promise and manage the peril” of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and digital economic and social platforms used to connect billions of people around the world, a White House adviser told VOA.

The Biden administration has rolled out a number of initiatives on the topic — most recently, an executive order that aims to set new AI safety and security standards. That order relies on cooperation from private developers and other countries, “because the attackers are in one set of countries, the infrastructure is in another and the victims are global,” said Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology at the National Security Council.

Neuberger sat down with VOA White House Correspondent Anita Powell to explain these complex, compelling technologies and how she thinks they have exposed the worst but also the best in humanity.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

VOA: Thank you so much for sitting down with VOA today. Can you walk us through the concrete outcomes of the recent meeting between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the areas you cover — cybersecurity, AI and the digital economy?

Anne Neuberger, White House deputy national security adviser: Of course, strategic technologies are very important to both of our countries’ growth and national security — and we’re global players on a global stage. The most important part of the discussion was two leaders coming together to say: While we are in competition, we’re committed to working together on areas where we can collaborate – areas like climate change, like discussions of what are the rules for artificial intelligence.

VOA: Would you assess that the meeting made any progress, especially on AI regulation?

Neuberger: Certainly very good discussions related to an agreement for the countries to sit down and establish a working group on AI [about] appropriate guardrails and guidelines in this area.

VOA: I’m going to stick with AI and the administration’s recent moves, like the AI Bill of Rights and also the attempt to set some norms at the recent London summit on AI. Why does the administration think U.S. leadership matters so much here?

Neuberger: For two reasons. First, the United States is a committed democracy and AI is a major technology that brings both promise and peril. It is up to us to determine how we both glean the promise and manage the peril. President Biden has made that clear in his game-changing executive order that, as a country, we must manage the perils in order to glean the promise.

VOA: Speaking of the perils of AI, what is the administration doing to prevent the malicious use of generative AI in both conflicts and contests? I’m talking about conflicts like Israel and Ukraine, but also contests like the upcoming elections in Congo, in Taiwan and here in the United States.

Neuberger: We’ve seen new AI models that generate very realistic videos, very realistic images. In terms of generative AI related to elections, I want to lift up one of the voluntary commitments that the president negotiated, which was around watermarking: having a visible and potentially invisible mark on an AI-generated image or video that notes that this is AI-generated, to alert a viewer. An invisible mark could be used so that, even if there are attempts to remove this mark, the platforms themselves can still be able to portray that message and help educate individuals. This is still an area of evolving technology. It’s getting better and better. But companies made commitments to start marking content that they generate. And I know a number of social media platforms are also making commitments to ensure that they display messages to help consumers who see such content know that it is generated by artificial intelligence.

VOA: Moving on to cybersecurity and malign actors like North Korea and Russia, what is the administration doing to curb their work in this area?

Neuberger: We see North Korea really using cyberattacks as a way to get money because they’re such a heavily sanctioned regime. So North Korea moved from targeting banks to targeting … cryptocurrency infrastructure around the world. And the White House has had a focused effort to bring together all elements we have to fight that with Treasury Department designations.

There’ll be further designations coming up for the cryptocurrency mixers that launder funds stolen from those cryptocurrency infrastructures. We also have been working with the industry to press them to improve the cybersecurity of their systems as well as law enforcement. U.S. law enforcement has been cooperating with partners around the world to take down that server infrastructure and to arrest the individuals who are responsible for some of this activity.

VOA: Tell us a little bit about the counter-ransomware initiative you’re working on.

Neuberger: Absolutely. Essentially, criminal groups, many of which are based in Russia with infrastructure operating from around the world, are locking systems … in order to request that the system owners pay ransom. In the United States alone in the last two years, $2.3 billion was paid in ransom. It’s a fundamentally transnational fight. … What we’ve done is assemble 48 countries, Interpol [and] the European Union to take this on together, because we know that the attackers are in one set of countries, the infrastructure is in another, and the victims are global. As the White House built this initiative, we ensure that the leadership is diverse.

So, for example, the leaders of the effort to build capacity around the world are Nigeria and Germany — intentionally, a country from Africa and a country from Europe, because their needs are different. And we wanted to ensure that as we’re helping countries build the capacity to fight this, we’re sensitive to the different needs of a country like Nigeria, like Rwanda, like South Africa, like Indonesia. Similarly, there’s an effort focused on exercising information, sharing information together.

You asked about the key deliverables from this most recent meeting. I’ll note three big ones. First, we launched a website and a system where countries can collaborate when they’re fighting a ransomware attack, where they can ask for help [or] learn from others who fought a similar attack. Second, we made the first ever joint policy statement — a big deal — 48 countries committing that countries themselves will not pay ransoms, because we know this is a financially driven problem. And third, the United States committed that we would be sharing bad wallets [that] criminals are using to move money around the world so other countries can help stop that money as it moves as well. So that’s an example of three of the many commitments that came out of the recent meeting.

VOA: Let’s talk about the Global South, which has pioneered development of really interesting digital economic technologies like Kenya’s M-PESA, which was rolled out in, like, 2007. Now the U.S. has Venmo, which is modeled on that. How is the U.S. learning from the developing world in the development of these projects and also the perils of these products?

Neuberger: M-PESA is a fantastic example of the promise of digital tech. Essentially, Kenya took the fact that they had a telecom infrastructure, and built their banking infrastructure riding on that, so they leapt ahead to enable people across the country to do transactions online. When you look at Ukraine in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine quickly moved their government online, really building on lessons learned from Estonia, to enable Ukrainians — many who are in Poland and Hungary — to continue to engage with their government in a digital way.

The U.S. Agency for International Development is tremendously proud of that Ukrainian project and is using it as a model as we look to other countries around the world. So we’re learning a lot from the creativity and innovation; what we want to bring to that is American development, skill and aid, and also plugging in American tech companies who can accelerate the rollout of these projects in countries around the world, because we still believe in the promise of digital. But you mentioned the peril, and that’s where cybersecurity comes in.

VOA: This lines us up perfectly for my final question, about the promise and the peril. In the digital world, people can hide behind anonymity and say and do awful things using tools that were meant to improve the world. How do you keep your faith in humanity?

Neuberger: It’s a tremendously important question. It’s one that’s personally important to me. My great-grandparents lost their lives in Nazi death camps. And those members of my family who survived — some survived through the horrors of the camp, some managed to hide out under false identities. And I often think that the promise of digital has also made our identities very evident. Sometimes when I’m just browsing Amazon online, and it recommends a set of books, I think to myself: I wonder how I’d hide if what happened to my grandparents came for me. So as a result, I think that even as we engage with these technologies, we have to ensure that vulnerable populations are protected.

So, the president’s working with AI companies to say companies have an obligation to protect vulnerable populations online, to ensure that we’re using AI to detect where there’s bullying online, where there’s hate speech that goes against common practices that needs to be addressed; where there are AI-generated images related to children or women or other vulnerable populations, that we use AI to find them and remove them; and certainly use law enforcement and the power of law enforcement partnerships around the world to deter that as well. Freedom of speech is a part of free societies. Freedom from harm needs to be a fight we take on together.

VOA: Thank you so much for speaking to our audience.

Neuberger: Thank you.
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Ukraine Businesses Pivot to New Military Technology Production

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Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, drone production in the country has surged. Ukrainian businesses have shifted from manufacturing products for peacetime to producing equipment for wartime. From Kyiv, Myroslava Gongadze explains how Ukrainian ingenuity is altering the course of the war. Camera: Eugene Shynkar.
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British PM Accuses Greek Leader of ‘Grandstanding’ Over Parthenon Marbles 

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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has accused his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis of public “grandstanding” over the ownership of Parthenon sculptures. 

The two leaders have been at odds with one another after Sunak canceled a scheduled meeting between the two just hours before it was set to take place. 

In a weekly question period with the house of commons, Sunak told parliament that Mitsotakis had broken a promise that he would not publicly bring up the sculptures.

“Specific assurances on that topic were made to this country and then were broken,” Sunak said. “When people make commitments, they should keep them.” 

Greek officials denied that any such promise had been made.

In an interview with British television on Sunday, Mitsotakis called for the return of the sculptures so they could be displayed beside the rest of the sculptures still in Athens. He also said that removing them was like cutting the “Mona Lisa” in half.

Athens has long urged the British Museum to return 2,500-year-old sculptures, known in Britain as the Elgin Marbles. The Marbles were taken from the Parthenon temple by British diplomat Lord Elgin in 1806, when Greece was under Ottoman Turkish rule.

Greek officials have said Mitsotakis only promoted a longstanding position, and he called Sunak’s cancelation of the meeting disrespectful.

Mitsotakis said the cancelation was “an unfortunate event,” but he added that “the move will not hurt relations between Greece and Britain in the longer term.”

The Greek leader also went on to say the cancelation of the meeting had a positive side to it and that his calls for reunification of the sculptures have gained more attention.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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US Imposes Sanctions on Cryptocurrency Mixer Sinbad Over Alleged North Korea Links

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The United States on Wednesday imposed sanctions on a virtual currency mixer the Treasury Department said has processed millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency from major heists carried out by North Korea-linked hackers.

The U.S. Treasury Department in a statement said virtual currency mixer Sinbad, hit with sanctions on Wednesday, processed millions of dollars worth of virtual currency from heists carried out by the North Korea-linked Lazarus Group, including the Axie Infinity and Horizon Bride heists of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Lazarus, which has been sanctioned by the U.S., has been accused of carrying out some of the largest virtual currency heists to date. In March 2022, for example, they allegedly stole about $620 million in virtual currency from a blockchain project linked to the online game Axie Infinity.

“Mixing services that enable criminal actors, such as the Lazarus Group, to launder stolen assets will face serious consequences,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in the statement on Wednesday.

“The Treasury Department and its U.S. government partners stand ready to deploy all tools at their disposal to prevent virtual currency mixers, like Sinbad, from facilitating illicit activities.”

A virtual currency mixer is a software tool that pools and scrambles cryptocurrencies from thousands of addresses.

Sinbad is believed by some experts in the industry to be a successor to the Blender mixer, which the U.S. hit with sanctions last year over accusations it was being used by North Korea.

The Treasury said Sinbad is also used by cybercriminals to obscure transactions linked to activities such as sanctions evasion, drug trafficking and the purchase of child sexual abuse materials, among other malign activities. 

Wednesday’s action freezes any U.S. assets of Sinbad and generally bars Americans from dealing with it. Those that engage in certain transactions with the mixer also risk being hit with sanctions. 
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America House Opens in Odesa Despite Ongoing War in Ukraine 

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A new America House is celebrating its opening in Odesa, making it the third major cultural and educational center in Ukraine supported and financed by the U.S. Embassy. America House Odesa was supposed to open in early 2022, but Russia’s invasion changed those plans. Anna Kosstutschenko visited the center and found out how the war altered its program. Camera — Pavel Suhodolskiy.
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Is AI About to Steal Your Job?

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Almost all U.S. jobs, from truck driver to childcare provider to software developer, include skills that can be done, or at least supplemented, by generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), according to a recent report.

GenAI is artificial intelligence that can generate high-quality content based on the input data used to train it.

“AI is likely to touch every part of every job to some degree,” says Cory Stahle, an economist with Indeed.com, which released the report.

The report finds that almost one in five jobs (19.7%) — like IT operations, mathematics and information design — faces the highest risk of being affected by AI because at least 80% of the job skills those positions require can be done reasonably well by GenAI.

But that doesn’t mean that those jobs will eventually be lost to robots.

“It’s important to recognize that, in general, these technologies don’t affect entire occupations. It actually is very rare that a robot will show up, sit in somebody’s seat to do everything that someone does at their job,” says Michael Chui of the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), who researches the impact of technology and innovation on business, the economy and society.

Indeed.com researchers analyzed more than 55 million job postings and found that GenAI can perform 50% to almost 80% of the skills required in 45.7% of those job listings. In 34.6% of jobs listed, GenAI can handle less than 50% of the skills.

Jobs that require manual skills or a personal touch, such as nursing and veterinary care, are the least likely to be hard hit by AI, the report says.

In the past, technological advances have mostly affected manual labor. However, GenAI is expected to have the most effect on so-called knowledge workers, generally defined as people who create knowledge or think for a living.

But, for now, AI does not appear poised to steal anyone’s job.

“There are very few jobs that AI can do completely. Even in jobs where AI can do many of the skills, there are still aspects of those jobs that AI cannot do,” Stahle says.

Rather than replace workers, researchers expect GenAI to enhance the work people already do, making them more efficient.

“This is something that, in many ways, we believe is going to unlock human potential and productivity for many workers across many different sectors of the economy,” Stahle says.

“There are a number of things that can happen,” Chui adds. “One is, we simply do more of something we were already doing, and so imagine if you’re a university professor or a teacher, and the grading can be done by machine rather than you. You can take those hours and, instead of grading, you can actually start tutoring your students, spending more time with your students, improving their performance, helping them learn.”

American workers need to begin using the new technology if they hope to remain competitive, according to Chui.

“Workers who are best able to use these technologies will be the most competitive workers in the workforce,” he says. “It was true before, but it’s more true than ever, that we’re all going to have to be lifetime learners.”

A survey developed by Chui finds that almost 80% of workers have experimented with AI tools.

“One of the great powers of these generative AI tools, so far, is they’ve been designed in such a way to make it easy for really anybody to use these types of tools,” Stahle says. “I really believe that people should be looking to embrace these tools and find ways to incorporate them into the work that they’re already interested in doing.”

Ultimately, could one of the unexpected benefits of AI be more efficient employees who work less?

“In general, Americans work a lot,” Chui says. “Maybe we don’t have to work so long. Maybe we have a four-day work week … and so you could give that time back to the worker.”
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‘Hunger Games’ Feasts, ‘Napoleon’ Conquers, ‘Wish’ Disappoints at Box Office

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The Walt Disney Co.’s “Wish” had been expected to rule the Thanksgiving weekend box office, but moviegoers instead feasted on leftovers, as “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” led ticket sales for the second weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. 

Neither of the weekend’s top new releases — “Wish” and Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” — could keep up with Lionsgate’s “Hunger Games” prequel. After debuting the previous weekend with $44.6 million, the return to Panem proved the top draw for holiday moviegoers, grossing $28.8 million over the weekend and $42 million over the five-day holiday frame. 

In two weeks of release, “Songbirds and Snakes” has grossed nearly $100 million domestically and $200 million globally. 

The closer contest was for second place, where “Napoleon” narrowly outmaneuvered “Wish.” Scott’s epic outperformed expectations to take $32.5 million over the five-day weekend and an estimated $20.4 million Friday through Sunday. The film, starring Joaquin Phoenix as the French emperor and Vanessa Kirby as his wife Joséphine de Beauharnais, was also the top movie globally with $78.8 million. 

Reviews were mixed (61% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and ticket buyers were non-plussed (a “B-” CinemaScore), but “Napoleon” fared far better in theaters than its subject did at Waterloo. 

“Napoleon,” like Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” is a big-budget statement by Apple Studios of the streamer’s swelling Hollywood ambitions. With an estimated budget of $200 million, “Napoleon” may still have a long road to reach profitability for Apple, which partnered with Sony to distribute “Napoleon” theatrically. But it’s an undeniably strong beginning for an adult-skewing 168-minute historical drama. 

“Wish,” however, had been supposed to have a more starry-eyed start. Disney Animation releases like “Frozen II” ($123.7 million over five days in 2019), “Ralph Breaks the Internet” ($84.6 million in 2018) and “Coco” ($71 million in 2017), have often owned Thanksgiving moviegoing. 

But “Wish” wobbled, coming in with $31.7 million over five days and $19.5 million Friday through Sunday. It added $17.3 million internationally. It had been forecast to debut closer to $50 million. 

“Wish,” at least, is faring better than Disney’s Thanksgiving release last year: 2022’s “Strange World” bombed with a five-day $18.9 million opening. But hopes had been higher for “Wish,” co-written and co-directed by the “Frozen” team of Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee and featuring the voices of Ariana DeBose and Chris Pine. “Wish,” a fairy tale centered around a wished-upon star, is also a celebration of Disney, itself, timed to the studio’s 100th anniversary and rife with callbacks to Disney favorites. 

Critics weren’t impressed, saying “Wish” felt more like marketing than movie magic. So instead of righting an up-and-down year for Disney, “Wish” is, for now, adding to some of the studio’s recent headaches, including the underperforming “The Marvels.” The Marvel sequel has limped to $76.9 million domestically and $110.2 million overseas in three weeks. 

“Wish” also faced direct competition for families in “Trolls Band Together.” The DreamWorks and Universal Pictures release opened a week prior and took in $17.5 million in its second frame ($25.3 million over five days). 

“‘Wish’ ran into a much more competitive market than what Disney might normally see in the Thanksgiving corridor,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for data firm Comscore. “We’re accustomed to seeing those Disney films at the top of the chart. They kind of had to split the audience with ‘Trolls.’” 

Still, the storybook isn’t written yet on “Wish.” It could follow the lead of Pixar’s “Elemental,” which launched with a lukewarm $29.6 million in June but found its legs, ultimately grossing nearly $500 million worldwide. 

Also entering wide-release over the holiday weekend was Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn,” the writer-director’s follow-up to 2020’s “Promising Young Woman.” After debuting in seven packed theaters last weekend, “Saltburn” grossed $3.1 million over five days for Amazon and MGM. Barry Keoghan stars as an Oxford student befriended by a rich classmate (Jacob Elordi) and invited to his family’s country manor. 

As Hollywood’s award season accelerates (Netflix debuted Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro” in select theaters but didn’t report grosses), Focus Features’ “The Holdovers” continues to be one of the top choices in cinemas. Alexander Payne’s film starring Paul Giamatti as a boarding school instructor made $3.8 million over the five-day weekend. In five weeks, it grossed $12.9 million. 

Ticket sales overall reached $172 million in U.S. and Canada theaters over the five-day holiday weekend, according to Comscore. That’s up significantly from recent years but well behind the typical pre-pandemic Thanksgiving weekends. (In 2019, sales boosted by “Frozen 2” surpassed $262 million.) 

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday. 

  1. “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” $28.8 million. 

  2. “Napoleon,” $20.4 million. 

  3. “Wish,” $19.5 million. 

  4. “Trolls Band Together,” $17.5 million. 

  5. “Thanksgiving,” $7.2 million. 

  6. “The Marvels,” $6.4 million. 

  7. “The Holdovers,” $2.8 million. 

  8. “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” $2.3 million. 

  9. “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” $1.8 million. 

  10. “Saltburn,” $1.7 million. 
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Cambodia’s Dragon Boat Races Make a Welcome Return

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Cambodians are celebrating the return of dragon boat races at this year’s Water Festival after a three-year absence amid hopes it will bolster the tourism industry and an economy struggling to recover in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Luke Hunt reports. Camera: Luke Hunt, David Brown, Vicheka Kol
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Greek PM to ‘Persist’ With UK Over Parthenon Marbles

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Greece’s prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Sunday he would push for the return of the Parthenon Marbles when he meets UK leader Rishi Sunak in Britain this week.

The sculptures, also known as the Elgin Marbles, were taken from the Parthenon temple at the Acropolis in Athens in the early 19th century by British diplomat Thomas Bruce, the earl of Elgin.

Greece maintains the marbles were stolen, which Britain denies, and the issue has been a source of contention between the countries for decades.

Mitsotakis, who is due to see Sunak on Monday, likened the collection being held at the British Museum in London to the Mona Lisa painting being cut in half.

“They do look better in the Acropolis Museum, a state-of-the-art museum that was built for that purpose,” he told the BBC.

“It’s as if I told you that you would cut the Mona Lisa in half, and you will have half of it at the Louvre and half of it at the British Museum, do you think your viewers would appreciate the beauty of the painting in such a way?”

Mitsotakis added that “this is exactly what happened with the Parthenon sculptures”.

“That is why we keep lobbying for a deal that would essentially be a partnership between Greece and the British Museum but would allow us to return the sculptures to Greece and have people appreciate them in their original setting,” he told the Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme.

The 2,500-year-old collection has been on display at the British Museum since 1817.

In January, the UK government ruled out a permanent return after media reported the British Museum was close to signing a loan agreement that would see the marbles back in Athens.

Mitsotakis, who won a second term in June, said his government “had not made as much progress as I would like in the negotiations”.

But added: “I’m a patient man and we’ve waited for hundreds of years, and I will persist in these discussions.”

Mitsotakis said he would also raise the issue with UK opposition leader Keir Starmer, who — if opinion polls are believed — is set to be Britain’s next prime minister after an election expected next year.

The Parthenon temple — built in the 5th century BCE to honor the goddess Athena — was partially destroyed during a Venetian bombardment in 1687, then looted.

Its fragments are scattered throughout many renowned museums.

Earlier this year, three marble fragments of the Parthenon temple that had been held by the Vatican for centuries were returned to Greece.

 
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Meals To Woof Down at Italy’s First Dog Restaurant

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Pepe’s meal is so good he licks the plate clean. In any other Rome establishment, slobbering on one’s chicken and mashed potato would be frowned upon — but this is “Fiuto”, Italy’s first dogs’ restaurant.

The lighting is soft, lounge music plays in the background, attentive staff show people and pets to their tables and ask whether furry, four-legged customers might fancy a boiled egg with pureed peas and fontina cheese? Or perhaps a simple fish with ricotta and courgettes?

Thirsty pups can opt for a green apple and watermelon juice, or go wild and have a pear, strawberry or banana one instead.

“We drew up the menu with a veterinary nutritionist with whom I determined the ingredients, taking allergies into account, because dogs have many more allergies than humans,” said head chef Luca Grammatico, who previously worked as a dog trainer.

Pepe, a four-year-old Bichon with a naughty face, licks every last crumb off his elegant black bowl, almost taking the geometric patterns off too.

Pets “are part of our family, so why not treat them like family?” says Sara Nicosanti, as she takes a selfie with Mango, her five-year-old Jack Russell, in the mirror-lined area designed especially for this purpose.

There is not a bark to be heard: guests focus on their designer bowls, sitting on fleece blankets next to their owners’ tables.

Nicosanti, a 36-year-old real estate agent, says she is “very happy” with the choice at the restaurant, which opened just a month ago, because the dogs “can have a balanced diet too”, with “suitable ingredients”.

“No spices, no salt and no oils,” insists Grammatico. Food for canine customers is prepared in a separate kitchen to that of their human owners.

Portions are tailored to the dogs’ size — S (for those weighing two to 10 kilograms), M (11-20 kg), L (21-30 kg) and even XL (over 30 kg).

“Fish is very popular because it is a different flavor to their usual food,” Grammatico said.

Birthday cake

The mood is festive as Romina Lanza, a 40-year-old lawyer, celebrates her dog Rudy’s fourth birthday.

She sees “Fiuto” (Sense of Smell) as “a very welcome initiative” and brushes off questions as to whether it is right to wait hand and paw on pets, serving them freshly prepared, costly dishes, while people in other parts of the world go hungry.

“It’s a personal choice, I don’t see anything wrong with it,” she said.

Neither does Maria Gliottone, a 20-year-old student who discovered the restaurant on TikTok and came with Nala, her two-year-old dog, and Nala’s friend Douglas, a four-month-old Corsican puppy.

“Those who don’t have a dog think that, but those who do (have one) are more than happy to come here with their companion,” she said.

Since it opened, the restaurant has welcomed an average of six to 10 dogs every evening during the week and 10 to 15 at weekends, for a price per head of between eight and 20 euros (around $22), depending on the size of the dog.

“We’ve installed screens (between tables) so that when the dogs eat, they can’t see each other or disturb each other by invading each other’s spaces,” said Marco Turano.

The restaurant’s three co-founders did not expect the establishment in the heart of Rome’s Ponte Milvio district to be so successful.

“We are obviously super happy,” said Turano, 33, as he wrapped up a surprise present — a detangling conditioner — for Rudy.

And while there won’t be candles, he will get a birthday cake of sorts: “a cheese biscuit with ricotta cheese and an end note of green apple”.
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In US, Hmong ‘New Year’ Means Recalling Old Spirits, Teaching New Generations

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For the annual fall renewal of her shaman spirit, Mee Vang Yang will soon ritually redecorate the tall altar in her living room where she keeps her father’s ring-shaped shaman bells.

She carried them across the Mekong River as the family fled the communist takeover of her native Laos four decades ago. Today, they facilitate the connection to the spiritual world she needs to help fellow refugees and their American-raised children who seek restoration of lost spirits.

“Like going to church, you’re giving beyond yourself to a greater power,” said the mother of six through a translator in Hmong.

It’s the language spoken for the most important spiritual celebration in the Hmong calendar, the “Noj Peb Caug” — translated as “new year,” but literally meaning “eat 30,” because the ceremonies traditionally were tied to the fall’s post-harvest abundance shared with the clan and offered to spirits.

During new year, which is celebrated mostly in November and December among Hmong Americans, shamans send off their spirit guides to regenerate their energy for another season of healing. Male heads of households who embrace traditional animist practices perform soul-calling ceremonies, venerate ancestor spirits and invoke the protection of good spirits.

“A traditional Hmong home is not just a home, but also a place of worship,” said Tzianeng Vang, Vang Yang’s nephew, who came to Minnesota as a teen and grew up a Christian. He’s among the community leaders trying to share knowledge of these animist traditions so they won’t be lost for his children’s generation.

“You preserve it here or you have nowhere,” he said.

Moving from east to west

Persecuted as an ethnic minority in their ancestral lands in China, the Hmong fled first to the mountains of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. There, tens of thousands fought for the United States in the Vietnam War. When communist regimes swept the region, they escaped to refugee camps in neighboring Thailand and, starting in the mid-1970s, resettled largely in California farm country and Minnesota’s capital city.

The majority of the estimated 300,000 Hmong in the United States are animists and believe that spirits live throughout the physical world. That includes multiple souls in a person — any of which can leave and needs to be ceremonially called back, said Lee Pao Xiong, director of the Center for Hmong Studies at Concordia University in St. Paul.

But many younger Hmong haven’t learned the spiritual significance of cultural traditions, even popular ones like the Thanksgiving weekend dance, music and craft performances in one of St. Paul’s largest entertainment venues, Xiong said.

“It’s intricate, it’s not just ‘go to church and pray.’ There are all these spirits to atone to. It’s about spirits that you have to appease,” said Xiong, who teaches classes about these traditions, which often include the ritual slaughter of cows, pigs or chickens as an offering or an exchange of spirits.

Educating youth in ancestral culture is a crucial aim of the Hmong Cultural Center just down the street from St. Paul’s capitol, said its director, Txongpao Lee.

“They need to learn from parents and prepare for when they have children,” said Lee, who estimates about one-third of young Hmong have converted to Christianity. Acceptance of ancestral customs differs among church denominations, he added — his family’s Lutheran and Catholic members vary in participation in new year rituals.

Lee leads them for his household, though his wife, Hlee Xiong Lee, has been a shaman since she fell ill when pregnant with the fourth of her seven children. Shamans, like other traditional healers across cultures, often associate the revelation of their gift with life-threatening sickness and believe they could die if they refuse the call.

Xiong Lee’s path to shamanism has been arduous, entailing rigorous training with a shaman mentor to learn how to communicate with the spirit world. But so was her journey to the United States, arriving in a small Minnesota town as a 14-year-old refugee with no English-speaking skills, too embarrassed to ask for help getting a lunch ticket on her first day of school.

She’s proud of how her own children wear string bracelets and effortlessly explain to inquisitive teachers or classmates they’re meant to tie the family to protecting spirits.

“They’re good at adapting to my tradition and American tradition,” she said.

Connecting with spirits

Kevin Lee, a shaman’s son who says he also first started experiencing spiritual energies when he was 5, similarly has had to navigate a regular childhood in St. Paul with his ability to connect with good and bad spirits “on the other side.”

“Kids would be like, ‘this guy is weird.’ For me, it was just another day,” he said in front of the three living-room altars in the house he shares with his parents and brother.

They will be redecorated with new paper designs for the new year after his father, Chad Lee, finishes helping his shaman mentees and has time to send off his shaman spirit for a much-deserved break — short, though, because up to half a dozen people call for his help each day. Last year, his “angel” only got three days off, the older Lee said.

“Spiritual world is confusing, but once you find a path, everything is natural,” Chad Lee said.
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New York City Hosts Its 97th Thanksgiving Parade

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New York City on Thursday hosted its 97th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, featuring 48 character and novelty balloons, 26 floats, 12 marching bands and more than 700 clowns. Aron Ranen reports.
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A Chicken Inside a Duck Inside a Turkey

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In most of the United States, November and December are prime time for turkey lovers. The U.S. Poultry and Egg Association says 46 million turkeys are eaten on Thanksgiving, with another 22 million consumed on Christmas.

But in the Southern state of Louisiana, known for its decadence and creative cuisine, turkey has a competitor. For people in and around cities including New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Lafayette, it’s turducken that is the talk of the town.

“Turducken is a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey,” said Ellis Lanaux, chief executive officer of Langenstein’s, the oldest full-service grocery store in New Orleans, open since 1922.

“It’s part of this unique culinary culture we have down here,” Lanaux told VOA. “There’s nothing like our food elsewhere in America, and you see that uniqueness on our Thanksgiving table. In addition to mainstream staples like mashed potatoes and green beans, you also find Cajun dishes like chargrilled oysters, oyster dressing, cornbread and crawfish stuffing, mirliton casserole, and — if you’re lucky — a turducken.”

In addition to the trio of birds, dressing (a term in some parts of the U.S. often used interchangeably with stuffing) is added between each layer. Some turducken creators ask shoppers to choose a single dressing, with oyster dressing and cornbread and crawfish dressing among the most popular.

Others, including Hebert’s Specialty Meats, allow as many as three dressings, with alligator, boudin sausage, shrimp etouffee and rice, crawfish jalapeno cornbread, jambalaya, and wild rice and pecan among the many possibilities between layers of poultry.

When sliced, the creation presents almost like a layered French terrine.

“Eating turducken isn’t for the faint of heart, and neither is preparing one,” laughed restaurateur Brenda Prudhomme. “It takes forever. You have to prepare your dressing, you have to get your birds, you have to debone each of them, you have to stuff them and layer the dressings, you have to season them, and then you basically have to become a seamstress and sew them in together. It isn’t easy, but it brings a lot of people joy so we do it!”

Part of a long tradition

Hebert’s Specialty Meats sells thousands of turduckens each year, with spikes at both Thanksgiving and Christmas. At Chris’s Specialty Foods, the Turducken Roll Package is advertised as “enough turducken for a small banquet,” while its Holiday Turducken Feast serves even more.

The words “banquet” and “feast” aren’t accidental: Turducken is part of a larger, and older, tradition known as engastration, a cooking technique in which the remains of one animal are stuffed into another.

“It’s a tradition that reaches back to the Middle Ages, and even has roots in ancient Rome,” said Liz Williams, founder of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans. “It’s a culinary practice that would show up at feasts for royalty and enjoyed by the wealthy. Compared to what they were stuffing back then, filling a turkey with a duck and a chicken, quite frankly, is chump change.”

The famed Trojan Boar from the Roman Empire, for example, was a 1,000-pound hog stuffed with game birds and other small animals.

The Roti Sans Pareil, or the Roast Without Equal, was a 19th-century dish created by French gastronomist Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de la Reyniere. The creation included an extraordinary 17 stuffed birds: bustard, chicken, duck, garden warbler, goose, guinea fowl, lapwing, lark, ortolan bunting, partridge, pheasant, plover, quail, teal, thrush, turkey and woodcock.

And, still today, the Inuits of Greenland are known to enjoy kiviak, a traditional winter community dish of seal stuffed with as many as 500 birds.

While turducken is far more modest, Lenore Newman, author of Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food, said this Louisiana Thanksgiving feast food likely comes from a similar tradition.

“It’s a dish intended to impress,” she told VOA. “That’s a commonality among dishes using engastration: They are meant to wow.”

Debated origin

Turducken most definitely wows – so much so that there are competing claims to its origin.

Many say it was Paul Prudhomme, who popularized Cajun cuisine on a national stage with his catalog of successful cookbooks and his public television show, “Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Always Cooking!” Prudhomme copyrighted the name in 1986, but others believe it was Hebert’s that created the dish a year earlier.

“A farmer walked into our store carrying a turkey, a duck and a chicken, and they asked our owners to stuff them into each other,” said Scott Catlett, the owner of several Hebert’s locations. “We thought it was a little weird, but we’re always willing to try anything once and thankfully we did!”

Some even credit turducken’s invention to New Orleans surgeon Gerald R. LaNasa. As early as the 1960s, he was locally known to use his scalpel while deboning the three birds before stuffing them — sometimes adding pork or veal roasts, andouille sausage or foie gras into the final hen’s cavity.

“I think it’s usually impossible to pin food down to one inventor because cuisine evolves and people build off of each other’s ideas,” said Williams from the Southern Food and Beverage Museum. “But the fact that there are so many competing popular stories shows just how beloved turducken has become.”

Though the debate over who created the trilogy of birds continues, there is no dispute about when the dish rose to national prominence.

That was in 1997 when American football television announcer John Madden carved into a turducken during a Thanksgiving game hosted by the New Orleans Saints. Turducken became a regular part of his Thanksgiving broadcasts, with Madden handing out turkey legs to that game’s best players.

Despite its popularity, with thousands now shipped annually from Louisiana, not everyone is impressed.

“I call it a medieval pile of poo!” laughed Poppy Tooker, host of a weekly radio show, “Louisiana Eats!” “If you’re hoping for the familiar flavor of a turkey breast, or a rich duck, or a delicious chicken, I’m afraid you’re not going to get any of that because it all gets jumbled together into a mess.”

Still, Tooker acknowledged there is something about turducken that captures the spirit of the region from which it came.

“Louisianians — men and women — aren’t afraid to roll their sleeves up in the kitchen and take on a complicated dish,” she said. “This is definitely one of them. It might not be a recipe that came from your grandmother, but it’s a newer tradition that says something about our culture, for sure. People are wild about it here.”

To find out what side of the turducken debate you fall on — delicious or not — Prudhomme advised in his 1987 “The Prudhomme Family Cookbook” to try making one yourself.

“Each time you do a turducken, it will become easier,” he wrote. “It doesn’t take magical cooking ability; it just takes care. What is magical is the way people who eat it will feel about your cooking.”
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Balloons, Bands and Santa: Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Ushers in Holiday Season in New York

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Beloved characters like Snoopy and SpongeBob SquarePants soared through the skies above New York City Thursday while bands marched along the streets below as the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade ushered in the holiday season.

The parade started on Manhattan’s Upper West Side making its way alongside Central Park in front of big crowds and a national television audience before ending in front of Macy’s flagship store on 34th Street.

Among the big names performing is Cher, who just released her first Christmas album. The Oscar-, Emmy- and Grammy Award-winner has a prime spot — performing just before the arrival of Santa Claus, which marks the end of the parade.

Other celebrities and musical groups taking part include Jon Batiste, Bell Biv DeVoe, Brandy, Jessie James Decker, Pentatonix and Miss America 2023 Grace Stanke. The parade also includes performances from the casts of some Broadway shows.

New balloons debuting this year include Leo the lizard, a character from a Netflix film, who is more than 40 feet (12.5 meters) tall, as well as ones that have been there before — like SpongeBob, coming in at 44 feet (13.4 meters).

Some characters, like Snoopy, have been in the parade for many years, but this year’s balloon is a new Beagle Scout Snoopy version — celebrating the 50th anniversary of his first appearance in the Peanuts comics.

The parade isn’t just about what’s going on in the skies, though. At street level, the procession includes more than two dozen floats, interspersed with marching bands from around the country and a number of clown crews among the 8,000 people participating, organizers said.

Thousands lined the streets in coats on a sunny morning. Children were on the shoulders of their parents, shouting as Snoopy and SpongeBob and Leo the Lizard went by.

Terri Brown, her husband and their children, ages 3, 5 and 8, were groggy after the 30-mile (50-kilometer) drive from Westfield, New Jersey. But their faces lit up as the parade started.

“I’ve always wanted to bring them here since I used to come as a kid,” Brown said. “I’m happy it’s good weather.”

Ross Greenstein drove 10 hours from Michigan to catch the parade with his daughter, who is studying law in New York, as well as his wife and two other children. Before Thursday, he had only seen the parade on TV.

“I grew up every Thanksgiving, waking up and jumping on the couch and watching the parade,” Greenstein said. “We came to see the parade for the first time in my life and it feels very surreal.”

This is the 97th time the parade has been held since 1924.

President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, called NBC during the parade. The president told Al Roker that people should take a moment to be thankful to live in a country with so much.

“We’re the greatest nation in the world. We should focus on that. We should focus on dealing with our problems and stop the rancor,” Biden said.
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Kashmir Artisans Turn Paper Into Christmas Treasures

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The Indian side of Kashmir is home to very few Christians, but people from the region put their blood and sweat into preparing gifts for Christmas celebrations. For VOA, Muheet Ul Islam has more from Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir. Camera: Wasim Nabi
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US Envoy Focuses on Cyberscams During Cambodia Visit 

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Cindy Dyer, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for monitoring and combating trafficking, is planning to push Cambodia’s new government to ramp up its efforts to crack down on cyberscam operations that trap many trafficking victims in slavelike conditions.

A recently completed visit to Phnom Penh by Dyer “will serve as an opportunity for information sharing and coordination on anti-trafficking efforts,” the State Department said last week in a release.

Dyer met with a range of officials “with the objective of building a relationship with the new government for future coordination and advocating for progress in the most critical areas, including increased investigations and prosecutions of cyberscam operations,” said the November 15 release.

Cambodia’s role as host of cybercriminals has been in an international spotlight. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) released a report this summer estimating that the industry has victimized 100,000 people in Cambodia.

Lured by promise of jobs

Operators of these scamming networks recruit unwitting workers from across Asia, often with the promise of well-paying tech jobs, and then force them to attempt to scam victims online while living in slavelike conditions, according to the report.

Countries including Indonesia, Taiwan and China have urged countries like Cambodia and Laos to crack down on the industry, while warning their own citizens of the dangers in traveling to these countries, according to the UNHCHR report.

The U.S. State Department’s annual report on global human trafficking, released in June, placed Cambodia in Tier 3, meaning the government has made insufficient efforts to address human trafficking and does not meet the minimum standards.

During her two-day visit to Cambodia that began November 15, Dyer met with officials from the ministries of justice, labor and social affairs, as well as representatives of the National Police and the National Committee for Counter Trafficking (NCCT) within the Ministry of Interior, according to an email from the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh. Dyer also held discussions with civil society groups working on combating human trafficking.

The discussions focused “on Cambodia’s efforts to protect trafficking victims, including providing protection assistance services for victims of trafficking and vulnerable migrants, capacity building for service providers and government officials to improve victim identification and referral, and addressing emerging trends in forced criminality,” the State Department release said.

More training urged

Am Sam Ath, operations director at the Cambodian rights group Licadho, told VOA Khmer that Dyer’s visit highlighted the need for Cambodia to tackle human trafficking and online scams.

“We see that the United States … ranks Cambodia third in the blacklist of human trafficking. It also has a lot of impact on our country, and if Cambodia does not make an effort further in the prevention of human trafficking or online scams, the ranking cannot be improved,” he said by telephone from the group’s Phnom Penh office.

He called on the Cambodian government to strengthen the capacity of officials and authorities to crack down on online crime.

“This crime problem is technologically modern, so the authorities involved in it have to get more training to keep up with the situation, as well as the timing of the crime,” Am Sam Ath added.

National Police spokesperson Chhay Kim Khoeun and Justice Ministry spokesperson Chin Malin declined to comment on Dyer’s visit, referring questions to Chou Bun Eng, permanent deputy chairman of the National Committee for Counter Trafficking. VOA Khmer called Chou Bun Eng, but she did not respond to a request for comment.

U.S. Embassy spokesperson Katherine Diop told VOA Khmer that Dyer’s visit to Cambodia was part of a U.S. effort across the world to encourage governments to take responsibility for preventing human trafficking and protecting victims.

“The United States stands with the Cambodian people to identify, support and seek justice for human trafficking victims,” she wrote in an email.

The UNHCHR report released in late August said the online scams were occurring in five countries in Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar and the Philippines.

“People who have been trafficked into online forced criminality face threats to their right to life, liberty and security of the person,” said the U.N. report. “They are subject to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, arbitrary detention, sexual violence, forced labor and other forms of labor exploitation as well as a range of other human rights violations and abuses.”

Cambodia first acknowledged the issue last year when Interior Minister Sar Kheng said in August that officials were being deployed across the country to check hotels, casinos and other establishments for potential trafficking victims.

The government has since announced sporadic operations to free victims and arrest traffickers. However, experts recently told VOA Khmer that these efforts have not noticeably curbed the illegal operations or caught ringleaders of the trafficking networks.
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Altman Back as OpenAI CEO Days After Being Fired

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The ousted leader of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI is returning to the company that fired him late last week, culminating a days-long power struggle that shocked the tech industry and brought attention to the conflicts around how to safely build artificial intelligence.

San Francisco-based OpenAI said in a statement late Tuesday, “We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board.”

The board, which replaces the one that fired Altman on Friday, will be led by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, who also chaired Twitter’s board before its takeover by Elon Musk last year. The other members will be former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo.

OpenAI’s previous board of directors, which included D’Angelo, had refused to give specific reasons for why it fired Altman, leading to a weekend of internal conflict at the company and growing outside pressure from the startup’s investors.

The chaos also accentuated the differences between Altman — who’s become the face of generative AI’s rapid commercialization since ChatGPT’s arrival a year ago — and members of the company’s board who have expressed deep reservations about the safety risks posed by AI as it becomes more advanced.

Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI and has rights to its current technology, quickly moved to hire Altman on Monday, as well as another co-founder and former president, Greg Brockman, who had quit in protest after Altman’s removal.

That emboldened a threatened exodus of nearly all of the startup’s 770 employees who signed a letter calling for the board’s resignation and Altman’s return.

One of the four board members who participated in Altman’s ouster, OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, later expressed regret and joined the call for the board’s resignation.

Microsoft in recent days had pledged to welcome all employees who wanted to follow Altman and Brockman to a new AI research unit at the software giant. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also made clear in a series of interviews Monday that he was still open to the possibility of Altman returning to OpenAI, so long as the startup’s governance problems are solved.

“We are encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board,” Nadella posted on X late Tuesday. “We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance.”

In his own post, Altman said that “with the new board and (with) Satya’s support, I’m looking forward to returning to OpenAI, and building on our strong partnership with (Microsoft).”

Co-founded by Altman as a nonprofit with a mission to safely build so-called artificial general intelligence that outperforms humans and benefits humanity, OpenAI later became a for-profit business but one still run by its nonprofit board of directors. It’s not clear yet if the board’s structure will change with its newly appointed members.

“We are collaborating to figure out the details,” OpenAI posted on X. “Thank you so much for your patience through this.”

Nadella said Brockman, who was OpenAI’s board chairman until Altman’s firing, will also have a key role to play in ensuring the group “continues to thrive and build on its mission.”

Hours earlier, Brockman returned to social media as if it were business as usual, touting a feature called ChatGPT Voice that was rolling out to users.

“Give it a try — totally changes the ChatGPT experience,” Brockman wrote, flagging a post from OpenAI’s main X account that featured a demonstration of the technology and playfully winking at recent turmoil.

“It’s been a long night for the team and we’re hungry. How many 16-inch pizzas should I order for 778 people?” the person asks, using the number of people who work at OpenAI. ChatGPT’s synthetic voice responded by recommending around 195 pizzas, ensuring everyone gets three slices.

As for OpenAI’s short-lived interim CEO Emmett Shear, the second interim CEO in the days since Altman’s ouster, he posted on X that he was “deeply pleased by this result, after ~72 very intense hours of work.”

“Coming into OpenAI, I wasn’t sure what the right path would be,” wrote Shear, the former head of Twitch. “This was the pathway that maximized safety alongside doing right by all stakeholders involved. I’m glad to have been a part of the solution.”
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