A growing number of startups are using artificial intelligence to replicate human voices. A company is creating synthetic voices for organizations to use for advertising, marketing and training. Phil Dierking reports. Videographer and video editor: Philip Dierking
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When COVID-19 hit in 2020, Ghenya Grondin of Waltham, Massachusetts, was a postpartum doula – a person charged with helping young couples navigate the first weeks of their newborn child’s life at home.
Grondin, now aged 44, was infected with SARS-CoV-2 in mid-March of that year – before there were tests, before social distancing or masks, and many months before the medical community recognized long COVID as a complication of COVID-19.
She is part of a community of first-wave long-haulers who faced a new disease without a roadmap or support from the medical establishment.
Three years later, at least 65 million people worldwide are estimated to have long COVID, according to an evidence review published last month in Nature Reviews Microbiology. More than 200 symptoms have been linked to the syndrome – including extreme fatigue, difficulty thinking, headaches, dizziness when standing, sleep problems, chest pain, blood clots, immune dysregulation, and even diabetes.
There are no proven treatments but research is underway.
People infected later in the pandemic had the benefit of vaccination, which “protects at least to some degree” from long COVID, said Dr. Bruce Levy, a Harvard pulmonologist and a co-principal investigator of the National Institute of Health’s $1.15 billion U.S. RECOVER trial, which aims to characterize and find cures for the disease.
“The initial variant of the virus caused a more severe illness than we’re seeing currently in most patients,” he said.
According to the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, in the first two years of the pandemic women were twice as likely as men to develop long COVID, and 15% of all of those affected at three months continued to experience symptoms beyond 12 months.
An analysis of thousands of health records by the RECOVER trial found that non-Hispanic white women in wealthier areas were more likely than others to have a long COVID diagnosis. Researchers said that likely reflected disparities in access to health care, and suggests that many cases of long COVID among people of color are not being diagnosed.
Grondin grew concerned when she continued to have symptoms three months after her initial infection – but there was no name for it then.
“I just kept saying to my husband, something isn’t right,” she said.
Like her fellow long-haulers, she has experienced a host of symptoms, including fatigue, sleep apnea, pain, cognitive dysfunction, and in her case, a brain aneurysm. She described a frightening moment when she was driving a car with her toddler in the back and had a seizure that left her in the path of oncoming traffic.
She has since been diagnosed with long COVID and can no longer work.
“It just feels like a constant punch in the face,” said Grondin.
Scientists are still working out why some people infected with COVID develop long-term symptoms, but syndromes like this are not new. Other infections such as Lyme disease can result in long-term symptoms, many of which overlap with long COVID.
Leading theories of the root causes of long COVID include the virus or viral proteins remaining in the tissues of some individuals; the infection causing an autoimmune response; or the virus reactivating latent viruses, leading to inflammation that damages tissue.
Kate Porter, 38, of Beverly, Massachusetts, a project manager for a financial services company, believes she was infected on a flight back from Florida in late March of 2020.
She had daily fevers for seven months, muscle weakness, shortness of breath, and excruciating nerve pain.
“I don’t think people realize how brutal physically everything was,” she said. In one of her darker moments, Porter recalled, “I cried on the floor begging for something to take me peacefully. I’ve never been like that.”
Frustrated by the lack of answers from a list of 10 specialists she has seen, Porter has explored alternative medicine. “It has opened me up to other remedies,” she said.
Although her health is much improved now, she still suffers from near daily migraines and neck pain she fears may never go away.
Genie Stevens, 65, a director of climate education, got infected while traveling from her home in Santa Fe to Cape Cod in late March 2020 to visit her mother, and never left. “It completely upended my life,” she said.
She went to an emergency department seeking tests and was told there were none – the typical answer in the spring of 2020, when scientists were scrambling to understand the nature of the virus and tests were being rationed. She was sent home to manage on her own.
A lifelong practitioner of meditation, Stevens took solace there, finding it eased her symptoms.
Confined to her bed that spring, she focused on an ancient crabapple tree outside her room. “I watched every bud unfurl.”
Although largely recovered, Stevens still has flare-ups of brain fog, exhaustion and high-pitched ringing in her ears when she pushes too hard. “This is the astoundingly maddening part of the illness. I feel totally fine, and then bam.”
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Two 16th-century sculptures, jewels of French Renaissance art, have been on display since 1908 at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
But thanks to modern technology and an unusual agreement, precise 3D copies will be made and installed in the French castle where the originals long resided.
The facsimiles plan is the fruit of a rare partnership between the Met, as the New York museum is known, and the Dordogne department in southwestern France.
The statues, both from the early 1500s and by an anonymous sculptor, represent Biblical scenes entitled “Entombment of Christ” and “Pieta With Donors.”
A tourism promotion agency in the Dordogne, Semitour, will be working with the Atelier of Fac-Similes Perigord (AFSP) to make the replicas over the coming months.
For nearly 400 years, the originals graced the chapel of the Biron chateau in the Dordogne.
Built on a strategic promontory, the sprawling fortress comprises buildings from different eras, including a dungeon dating to the 12th century.
Damaged and rebuilt repeatedly through the centuries, the chateau has belonged since 1978 to the Dordogne department, which declared it a historic monument, Dordogne president Germinal Peiro said during a visit to the Met.
Digital copy
The technology to be employed in copying the sculptures was described to AFP by Francis Rigenbach, who heads the Perigord atelier, and C. Griffith Mann, the Met’s medieval art curator.
Using 3D scanners to make digital images of the sculptures, artisans will be able to create replicas without having to move or disturb the monumental originals.
“By making a digital ‘cast,'” said Rigenbach, “we can employ non-invasive techniques” to produce identical copies.
He added that “90 percent of the artistic work” will involve reproducing signs of wear, such as the patina on the ageing marble originals — though both statues are considered exceptionally well-preserved.
The replicas, to be returned to their original spots in the Biron chapel, will cost around 350,000 euros ($375,000), Rigenbach added.
His atelier is famed for having copied the celebrated Lascaux cave — including its prehistoric wall art — for a museum in Montignac, in northern Perigord.
That allows visitors to feel as if they were visiting the cave itself, which was closed 60 years ago to avoid damage to the fragile site, said Sebastien Cailler, who manages the Biron chateau.
“And when you see these facsimile sculptures in Biron, you’ll surely feel the same emotion as if you were standing before the originals,” he told AFP in New York.
The two statues, whose value was recognized by historians and collectors in the late 18th century, were sold in 1907 by the last marquis of Biron to wealthy American banker John Pierpont Morgan, who was then president of the Met board.
In the 1950s, Dordogne and the Biron castle negotiated with the Met for four years in a vain effort to recover the statues.
In 2018, Perigord officials revived talks with the Met; four years later, technological tests were undertaken, and then on February 15, the agreement was signed in New York.
This type of unusual deal ensures that art works can exist in two places, Mann said, while adding that his museum, with its millions of annual visitors, “seems like the safest place to have the sculptures for their long-term preservation.”
United Nations members gather Monday in New York to resume efforts to forge a long-awaited and elusive treaty to safeguard the world’s marine biodiversity.
Nearly two-thirds of the ocean lies outside national boundaries on the high seas where fragmented and unevenly enforced rules seek to minimize human impact.
The goal of the U.N. meetings, running through March 3, is to produce a unified agreement for the conservation and sustainable use of those vast marine ecosystems. The talks, formally called the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, resume negotiations suspended last fall without agreement on a final treaty.
“The ocean is the life support system of our planet,” said Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Canada’s Dalhousie University. “For the longest time, we did not feel we had a large impact on the high seas. But that notion has changed with expansion of deep-sea fishing, mining, plastic pollution, climate change,” and other human disturbances, he said.
The U.N. talks will focus on key questions, including: How should the boundaries of marine protected areas be drawn, and by whom? How should institutions assess the environmental impacts of commercial activities, such as shipping and mining? And who has the power to enforce rules?
“This is our largest global commons,” said Nichola Clark, an oceans expert who follows the negotiations for the nonpartisan Pew Research Center in Washington. “We are optimistic that this upcoming round of negotiations will be the one to get a treaty over the finish line.”
The aim of the talks is not to designate marine protected areas, but to establish a mechanism for doing so.
“The goal is to set up a new body that would accept submissions for specific marine protected areas,” Clark said.
Marine biologist Simon Ingram at the University of Plymouth in England says there’s an urgent need for an accord.
“It’s a really pressing time for this — especially when you have things like deep-sea mining that could be a real threat to biodiversity before we’ve even been able to survey and understand what lives on the ocean floor,” Ingram said.
Experts say that a global oceans treaty is needed to enforce the U.N. Biodiversity Conference’s recent pledge to protect 30% of the planet’s oceans, as well as its land, for conservation.
“We need a legally binding framework that can enable countries to work together to actually achieve these goals they’ve agreed to,” said Jessica Battle, an expert on oceans governance at World Wide Fund for Nature
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs Monica Medina said the treaty is a priority.
“This agreement seeks to create, for the first time, a coordinated approach to establishing marine protected areas on the high seas,” she said. “It’s time to finish the job.”
Officials, environmentalists and representatives of global industries that depend on the sea are also watching negotiations closely.
Gemma Nelson, a lawyer from Samoa and an Ocean Voices fellow at the University of Edinburgh, said that small Pacific and Caribbean island countries were “especially vulnerable to global ocean issues,” such as pollution and climate change, which generally they did not cause nor have the resources to easily address.
“Getting the traditional knowledge of local people and communities recognized as valid” is also essential to protect both ecosystems and the ways of life of Indigenous groups, she said.
With nearly half the planet’s surface covered by high seas, the talks are of great importance, said Gladys Martínez de Lemos, executive director of the nonprofit Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense focusing on environmental issues across Latin America.
“The treaty should be strong and ambitious, having the authority to establish high and fully protected areas in the high seas,” she said. “Half of the world is at stake these weeks at the United Nations.”
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Antiwar German movie “All Quiet on the Western Front” won seven prizes, including best picture, at the British Academy Film Awards on Sunday, building the somber drama’s momentum as awards season rolls toward its climax at next month’s Oscars.
Irish tragicomedy “The Banshees of Inisherin” and rock biopic “Elvis” took four prizes each.
“All Quiet,” a visceral depiction of life and death in the World War I trenches, based on Erich Maria Remarque’s classic novel, won Edward Berger the best director award. Its other trophies included adapted screenplay, cinematography, best score, best sound and best film not in English.
Austin Butler was a surprise best actor winner for “Elvis.” Baz Lurhmann’s flamboyant musical also won for casting, costume design and hair and makeup. Cate Blanchett won the best actress prize for orchestral drama “Tár.”
Martin McDonagh’s “Banshees,” the bleakly comic story of a friendship gone sour, was named best British film.
“Best what award?” joked McDonagh of the film, which was shot in Ireland with a largely Irish cast and crew. It has British funding, and McDonagh was born in Britain to Irish parents.
“Banshees” also won for McDonagh’s original screenplay, and awards for Kerry Condon as best supporting actress and Barry Keoghan for best supporting actor.
The prizes — officially the EE BAFTA Film Awards — are Britain’s equivalent of Hollywood’s Academy Awards and are watched closely for hints of who may win at the Oscars on March 12.
Madcap metaverse romp “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the Academy Awards front-runner, was the night’s big loser, winning just one prize from its 10 BAFTA nominations, for editing.
Actor Richard E. Grant was a suave and self-deprecating host — with support from TV presenter Alison Hammond — for the ceremony at London’s Royal Festival Hall, where the U.K.’s movie academy heralded its strides to become more diverse but said there was more to be done.
Grant joked in his opening monologue about the infamous altercation between Will Smith and Chris Rock at last year’s Oscars.
“Nobody on my watch gets slapped tonight,” he said. “Except on the back.”
Guests and presenters walking the red carpet on the south bank of the River Thames included Colin Farrell, Ana de Armas, Eddie Redmayne, Brian Cox, Florence Pugh, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Cynthia Erivo, Julianne Moore and Lily James.
Heir to the throne Prince William, who is president of Britain’s film and television academy, was in the audience alongside his wife, Kate.
Helen Mirren paid tribute to William’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, who died in September. Mirren, who portrayed the late monarch onscreen in “The Queen” and onstage in “The Audience,” called Elizabeth “the nation’s leading lady.”
Britain’s film academy introduced changes to increase the awards’ diversity in 2020, when no women were nominated as best director for the seventh year running and all 20 nominees in the lead and supporting performer categories were white.
This year there were 11 female directors up for awards across all categories, including documentary and animated films. But just one of the main best-director nominees was female: Gina Prince-Bythewood for “The Woman King.”
BAFTA chair Krishnendu Majumdar said the “vital work of levelling the playing field” would continue.
Writer-director Charlotte Wells won the prize for best British debut for the affecting father-daughter drama “Aftersun.” Three-time Oscar winner Sandy Powell became the first costume designer to be awarded the academy’s top honor, the BAFTA fellowship.
The harsh world outside showbiz intruded on the awards when Bulgarian journalist Christo Grozev, who works for investigative website Bellingcat, said he was not allowed to attend the awards because of a risk to public security. He features in “Navalny,” a film about jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny that won the best documentary BAFTA.
“Navalny” producer Odessa Rae dedicated the award to Grozev, “our Bulgarian nerd with a laptop, who could not be with us tonight because his life is under threat by the Russian government and Vladimir Putin.”
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Richard Belzer, the longtime stand-up comedian who became one of TV’s most indelible detectives as John Munch in “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “Law & Order: SVU,” has died. He was 78.
Belzer died Sunday at his home in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, in southern France, his longtime friend Bill Scheft said. Scheft, a writer who had been working on a documentary about Belzer, said there was no known cause of death, but that Belzer had been dealing with circulatory and respiratory issues. The actor Henry Winkler, Belzer’s cousin, tweeted, “Rest in peace Richard.”
For more than two decades and across 10 series — even including appearances on “30 Rock” and “Arrested Development” — Belzer played the wise-cracking, acerbic homicide detective prone to conspiracy theories. Belzer first played Munch on a 1993 episode of “Homicide” and last played him in 2016 on “Law & Order: SVU.”
Belzer never auditioned for the role. After hearing him on “The Howard Stern Show,” executive producer Barry Levinson brought the comedian in to read for the part.
“I would never be a detective. But if I were, that’s how I’d be,” Belzer once said. “They write to all my paranoia and anti-establishment dissidence and conspiracy theories. So it’s been a lot of fun for me. A dream, really.”
From that unlikely beginning, Belzer’s Munch would become one of television’s longest-running characters and a sunglasses-wearing presence on the small screen for more than two decades. In 2008, Belzer published the novel “I Am Not a Cop!” with Michael Ian Black. He also helped write several books on conspiracy theories, about things like President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
“He made me laugh a billion times,” his longtime friend and fellow stand-up Richard Lewis said Sunday on Twitter.
Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Belzer was drawn to comedy, he said, during an abusive childhood in which his mother would beat him and his older brother, Len. He would do impressions of his childhood idol, Jerry Lewis.
“My kitchen was the toughest room I ever worked,” Belzer told People magazine in 1993.
After he was expelled from Dean Junior College in Massachusetts, Belzer embarked on a life of stand-up in New York in 1972. At Catch a Rising Star, Belzer became a regular performer and an emcee. He made his big-screen debut in Ken Shapiro’s 1974 film “The Groove Tube,” a TV satire co-starring Chevy Chase, a film that grew out of the comedy group Channel One that Belzer was a part of.
Before “Saturday Night Live” changed the comedy scene in New York, Belzer performed with John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray and others on the National Lampoon Radio Hour. In 1975, he became the warm-up comic for the newly launched “SNL.” While many cast members quickly became famous, Belzer’s roles were mostly smaller cameos.
But Belzer became one of the era’s top stand-ups. Belzer often played a stand-up comic in film, including in 1980’s “Fame” and 1983’s “Scarface.” But Munch would change Belzer’s career.
“Munch was based on a real guy in Baltimore who was a star detective, in a way. He would come onto grisly murder scenes, start doing one-liners, because someone had to break the tension,” Belzer told the AV Club. “So Munch served a very important function. Not only was he a dissident who said what was on his mind, he kind of had the gallows humor that’s needed in a homicide squad.”
Belzer is survived by his third wife, the actress Harlee McBride, whom he married in 1985. For the past 20 years, they lived mostly in France.
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The prospect of large-scale mining to extract valuable minerals from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, once a distant vision, has grown more real, raising alarms among the oceans’ most fervent defenders.
“I think this is a real and imminent risk,” Emma Wilson of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, an umbrella organization of environmental groups and scientific bodies, told AFP.
“There are plenty of stakeholders that are flagging the significant environmental risks.”
And the long-awaited treaty to protect the high seas, even if it is adopted in negotiations resuming on Monday, is unlikely to alleviate risks anytime soon: it will not take effect immediately and will have to come to terms with the International Seabed Authority (ISA).
That agency, established under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, has 167 member states.
It has authority over the ocean floors outside of member states’ Exclusive Economic Zones (which extend up to 200 nautical miles, or 370 kilometers, from coastlines).
But conservation groups say the ISA has two glaringly contradictory missions: protecting the sea floors under the high seas while organizing the activities of industries eager to mine untapped resources on the ocean floor.
For now, some 30 research centers and enterprises have been approved to explore — but not exploit — limited areas.
Mining activities are not supposed to begin before negotiators adopt a mining code, already under discussion for nearly a decade.
Making waves
But the small Pacific island nation of Nauru, impatient with the plodding pace of progress, made waves in June 2021 by invoking a clause allowing it to demand relevant rules be adopted within two years.
Once that deadline is reached, the government could request a mining contract for Nori (Nauru Ocean Resources), a subsidiary of Canada’s The Metals Company.
Nauru has offered what it called a “good faith” promise to hold off until after an ISA assembly in July, in hopes it will adopt a mining code.
“The only thing we need is rules and regulations in place so that people are all responsible actors,” Nauru’s ambassador to the ISA Margo Deiye told AFP.
But it is “very unlikely” that a code will be agreed by July, said Pradeep Singh, a sea law expert at the Research Institute for Sustainability, in Potsdam, Germany.
“There’s just too many items on the list that still need to be resolved,” he told AFP. Those items, he said, include the highly contentious issue of how profits from undersea mining would be shared, and how environmental impacts should be measured.
NGOs thus fear that Nori could obtain a mining contract without the protections provided by a mining code.
Conservation groups complain that ISA procedures are “obscure” and its leadership is “pro-extraction.”
The agency’s secretary-general, Michael Lodge, insists that those accusations have “absolutely no substance whatsoever.”
He noted that contracts are awarded by the ISA’s Council, not its secretariat.
“This is the only industry…that has been fully regulated before it starts,” he said, adding that the reason there is no undersea mining “anywhere in the world right now is because of the existence of the ISA.”
Target: 2024
Regardless, The Metals Company is making preparations.
“We’ll be ready, and aim to be in production by the end of 2024,” chief executive Gerard Barron told AFP.
He said the company plans to collect 1.3 million tons of material in its first year and up to 12 million tons by 2028, all “with the lightest set of impacts.”
Barron said tons of polymetallic nodules (rich in minerals such as manganese, nickel, cobalt, copper and rare earths), which had settled to the ocean floor over the centuries, could easily be scraped up.
This would occur in the so-called Clipperton Fracture Zone, where Nori in late 2022 conducted “historic” tests at a depth of four kilometers (2.4 miles).
But Jessica Battle of the WWF conservation group said it is not that simple. Companies might, for example, suck up matter several yards (meters) down, not just from the seabed surface.
“It’s a real problem to open up a new extractive frontier in a place where you know so little, with no regulations,” she told AFP. “It will be a disaster.”
Scientists and advocacy groups say mining could destroy habitats and species, some of them still unknown but possibly crucial to food chains; could disturb the ocean’s capacity to absorb human-emitted carbon dioxide; and could generate noises that might disrupt whales’ ability to communicate.
Moratorium calls
“The deep ocean is the least known part of the ocean,” said deep-sea biologist Lisa Levin of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “So change might take place without anybody ever seeing it.”
She has signed a petition calling for a moratorium on mining. Some companies and about a dozen countries support such a call, including France and Chile.
With its slogan, “A battery in a rock,” The Metals Company emphasizes the world’s need for metals used in electric-vehicle batteries; Nauru makes the same case.
But while island nations are among the first to feel the impact of global warming, Nauru says it can’t wait forever for the funds rich countries have promised to help it adapt to those impacts.
“We’re tired of waiting,” said Deiye, the Nauru ambassador.
And Lodge says people should keep the anti-extraction arguments in perspective.
Of the 54 percent of seabeds under ISA jurisdiction, he said, “less than half a percent is under exploration… and of that half a percent, less than one percent is likely ever to be exploited.”
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Andrew Lloyd Webber, the English composer who created the scores for blockbuster musicals such as “Cats,” “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Evita,” has written the anthem for King Charles III’s coronation, adapting a piece of church music that encourages singers to make a “joyful noise.”
The work by Webber is one of a dozen new pieces Charles commissioned for the grand occasion taking place May 6 at Westminster Abbey. It includes words adapted from Psalm 98 and is scored specifically for the abbey’s choir and organ.
“I hope my anthem reflects this joyful occasion,” Webber said in a statement distributed by Buckingham Palace.
The program for the king’s coronation ceremony includes older music and new compositions as the palace seeks to blend traditional and modern elements that reflect the realities of modern Britain. New pieces were composed by artists with roots in all four of the United Kingdom’s constituent nations, as well as in the Commonwealth and foreign countries that have sent so many people to its shores.
The service will include works by William Byrd (1543–1623), George Frideric Handel (1685–1759), Edward Elgar (1857–1934), Henry Walford Davies (1869–1941), William Walton (1902–1983), Hubert Parry (1848–1918) and Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), whose music has featured in previous coronations, along with a piece from the contemporary Welsh composer Karl Jenkins.
There will also be new works by Sarah Class, Nigel Hess, Paul Mealor, Tarik O’Regan, Roxanna Panufnik, Shirley J. Thompson, Judith Weir, Roderick Williams and Debbie Wiseman.
“The decision to combine old and new reflects the cultural breadth of the age in which we live,” said Andrew Nethsingha, the organist and master of choristers at Westminster Abbey.
“Coronations have taken place in Westminster Abbey since 1066. It has been a privilege to collaborate with his majesty in choosing fine musicians and accessible, communicative music for this great occasion,” Nethsingha said.
In all, six orchestral commissions, five choral commissions and one organ commission — spanning the classical, sacred, film, television and musical theater genres — were created for the coronation.
The program will also include personal touches, including a musical tribute to Charles’ late father, Prince Philip, who was born a Greek prince. The new monarch requested Greek Orthodox music, which will be performed by the Byzantine Chant Ensemble.
Though specifics on some of the material are being kept under wraps, one hymn will definitely be part of the service: Handel’s “Zadok the Priest.”
The hymn, with its robust chorus of “God Save the King,” has been played at every coronation since it was commissioned for the coronation of King George II in 1727.
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The career of Boris Beecker, whose thunderous delivery earned him the nickname “Boom Boom” as a young tennis player, took him from the greatest heights of sporting achievement aged 17 to prison at 54, and he is unsure if it could have gone any other way.
“It’s very difficult to win Wimbledon at 17,” the German former tennis champion said ahead of the premiere on Sunday at the Berlin Film Festival of a documentary on his life.
“You have to be a bit crazy to cross the line and do things nobody else has ever achieved before.”
One of the greatest tennis players in history who won six Grand Slam titles, Becker’s on-court brilliance was matched by an inability to manage his affairs off it, that saw him pile up personal disasters from sleeping pill addictions to a prison sentence.
“You expect world champions in a sport to be like everyone else but we aren’t,” he told a news conference. “To have that mindset … in real life that’s a problem.”
Alex Gibney’s “Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker” is the work of an unashamed fan, blending court highlights with interviews with a stellar cast of tennis greats, including current number one Novak Djokovic, Ion Tiriac, the Romanian who discovered him, and rivals John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg.
“What I liked about Boris is that unlike many athletes he is a great storyteller,” Gibney said. To convey that sense of drama he envisioned the film as a “docu-western”, he said, setting match points to the music of Ennio Morricone.
The last interview was conducted two days before a London court sent him to prison last April for concealing assets from his bankruptcy proceedings. “I didn’t know what the rest of my life would look like,” said Becker, who served eight months of a two-year term.
Becker, a self-described film fan with a weakness for bad-boy actors such as Sean Penn, Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando, could hardly hide his glee at moonlighting as a film star but confessed he could no longer hit the ball as he once could.
“I played it very physically and had many injuries. I can’t say how many parts of my body have been replaced,” said the erstwhile king of the powerful serve. “Life as a tennis-winning machine is a lot harder than it looks.”
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Under the fluorescent lights of a fifth grade classroom in Lexington, Kentucky, Donnie Piercey instructed his 23 students to try and outwit the “robot” that was churning out writing assignments.
The robot was the new artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, which can generate everything from essays and haikus to term papers within seconds. The technology has panicked teachers and prompted school districts to block access to the site. But Piercey has taken another approach by embracing it as a teaching tool, saying his job is to prepare students for a world where knowledge of AI will be required.
“This is the future,” said Piercey, who describes ChatGPT as just the latest technology in his 17 years of teaching that prompted concerns about the potential for cheating. The calculator, spellcheck, Google, Wikipedia, YouTube. Now all his students have Chromebooks on their desks. “As educators, we haven’t figured out the best way to use artificial intelligence yet. But it’s coming, whether we want it to or not.”
One exercise in his class pitted students against the machine in a lively, interactive writing game. Piercey asked students to “Find the Bot:” Each student summarized a text about boxing champion and Kentucky icon Muhammad Ali, then tried to figure out which was written by the chatbot.
At the elementary school level, Piercey is less worried about cheating and plagiarism than high school teachers. His district has blocked students from ChatGPT while allowing teacher access. Many educators around the country say districts need time to evaluate and figure out the chatbot but also acknowledge the futility of a ban that today’s tech-savvy students can work around.
“To be perfectly honest, do I wish it could be uninvented? Yes. But it happened,” said Steve Darlow, the technology trainer at Florida’s Santa Rosa County District Schools, which has blocked the application on school-issued devices and networks.
He sees the advent of AI platforms as both “revolutionary and disruptive” to education. He envisions teachers asking ChatGPT to make “amazing lesson plans for a substitute” or even for help grading papers. “I know it’s lofty talk, but this is a real game changer. You are going to have an advantage in life and business and education from using it.”
ChatGPT quickly became a global phenomenon after its November launch, and rival companies including Google are racing to release their own versions of AI-powered chatbots.
The topic of AI platforms and how schools should respond drew hundreds of educators to conference rooms at the Future of Education Technology Conference in New Orleans last month, where Texas math teacher Heather Brantley gave an enthusiastic talk on the “Magic of Writing with AI for all Subjects.”
Brantley said she was amazed at ChatGPT’s ability to make her sixth grade math lessons more creative and applicable to everyday life.
“I’m using ChatGPT to enhance all my lessons,” she said in an interview. The platform is blocked for students but open to teachers at her school, White Oak Intermediate. “Take any lesson you’re doing and say, ‘Give me a real-world example,’ and you’ll get examples from today — not 20 years ago when the textbooks we’re using were written.”
For a lesson about slope, the chatbot suggested students build ramps out of cardboard and other items found in a classroom, then measure the slope. For teaching about surface area, the chatbot noted that sixth graders would see how the concept applies to real life when wrapping gifts or building a cardboard box, said Brantley.
She is urging districts to train staff to use the AI platform to stimulate student creativity and problem solving skills. “We have an opportunity to guide our students with the next big thing that will be part of their entire lives. Let’s not block it and shut them out.”
Students in Piercey’s class said the novelty of working with a chatbot makes learning fun.
After a few rounds of “Find the Bot,” Piercey asked his class what skills it helped them hone. Hands shot up. “How to properly summarize and correctly capitalize words and use commas,” said one student. A lively discussion ensued on the importance of developing a writing voice and how some of the chatbot’s sentences lacked flair or sounded stilted.
Trevor James Medley, 11, felt that sentences written by students “have a little more feeling. More backbone. More flavor.”
Next, the class turned to playwriting, or as the worksheet handed out by Piercey called it: “Pl-ai Writing.” The students broke into groups and wrote down (using pencils and paper) the characters of a short play with three scenes to unfold in a plot that included a problem that needs to get solved.
Piercey fed details from worksheets into the ChatGPT site, along with instructions to set the scenes inside a fifth grade classroom and to add a surprise ending. Line by line, it generated fully formed scripts, which the students edited, briefly rehearsed and then performed.
One was about a class computer that escapes, with students going on a hunt to find it. The play’s creators giggled over unexpected plot twists that the chatbot introduced, including sending the students on a time travel adventure.
“First of all, I was impressed,” said Olivia Laksi, 10, one of the protagonists. She liked how the chatbot came up with creative ideas. But she also liked how Piercey urged them to revise any phrases or stage directions they didn’t like. “It’s helpful in the sense that it gives you a starting point. It’s a good idea generator.”
She and classmate Katherine McCormick, 10, said they can see the pros and cons of working with chatbots. They can help students navigate writer’s block and help those who have trouble articulating their thoughts on paper. And there is no limit to the creativity it can add to classwork.
The fifth graders seemed unaware of the hype or controversy surrounding ChatGPT. For these children, who will grow up as the world’s first native AI users, their approach is simple: Use it for suggestions, but do your own work.
“You shouldn’t take advantage of it,” McCormick says. “You’re not learning anything if you type in what you want, and then it gives you the answer.
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When Microsoft’s nascent Bing chatbot turns testy or even threatening, it’s likely because it essentially mimics what it learned from online conversations, analysts and academics said.
Tales of disturbing exchanges with the artificial intelligence chatbot, including it issuing threats and speaking of desires to steal nuclear code, create a deadly virus, or to be alive, have gone viral this week.
“I think this is basically mimicking conversations that it’s seen online,” Graham Neubig, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s language technologies institute, said Friday.
A chatbot, by design, serves up words it predicts are the most likely responses, without understanding meaning or context.
However, humans taking part in banter with programs naturally tend to read emotion and intent into what a chatbot says.
“Large language models have no concept of ‘truth,’ they just know how to best complete a sentence in a way that’s statistically probable based on their inputs and training set,” programmer Simon Willison said in a blog post. “So they make things up, and then state them with extreme confidence.”
Laurent Daudet, co-founder of French AI company LightOn, said that the chatbot seemingly gone rogue was trained on exchanges that themselves turned aggressive or inconsistent.
“Addressing this requires a lot of effort and a lot of human feedback, which is also the reason why we chose to restrict ourselves for now to business uses and not more conversational ones,” Daudet told AFP.
The Bing chatbot was designed by Microsoft and the startup OpenAI, which has been causing a sensation since the November launch of ChatGPT, the headline-grabbing app capable of generating all sorts of written content in seconds on a simple request.
Since ChatGPT debuted, the technology behind it, known as generative AI, has been stirring fascination and concern.
“The model at times tries to respond or reflect in the tone in which it is being asked to provide responses (and) that can lead to a style we didn’t intend,” Microsoft said in a blog post, noting the bot is a work in progress.
The Bing chatbot said in some shared exchanges that it had been codenamed Sydney during development, and that it was given rules of behavior.
Those rules include “Sydney’s responses should also be positive, interesting, entertaining and engaging,” according to online posts.
Disturbing dialogues that combine steely threats and professions of love could be the result of dueling directives to stay positive while mimicking what the AI mined from human exchanges, Willison said.
Chatbots seem to be more prone to disturbing or bizarre responses during lengthy conversations, losing a sense of where exchanges are going, eMarketer principal analyst Yoram Wurmser told AFP.
“They can really go off the rails,” Wurmser said.
Microsoft announced on Friday it had capped the amount of back-and-forth people can have with its chatbot over a given question, because “very long chat sessions can confuse the underlying chat model in the new Bing.”
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The little-noticed program that led to a Chinese spy balloon drifting across the United States this month has been discussed in China’s state-controlled media for more than a decade in articles extolling its potential military applications.
The reports, dating back to at least 2011, focus on how best to exploit what is known as “near space” – that portion of the atmosphere that is too high for traditional aircraft to fly but too low for a satellite to remain in orbit. Those early articles may offer clues to the capabilities of the balloon shot down by a U.S. jet fighter on Feb. 4.
“In recent years, ‘near space’ has been discussed often in foreign media, with many military commentators pointing out that this is a special sphere that had been neglected by militaries but now has risen to hotspot status,” reads a July 5, 2011, article in the People’s Liberation Army Daily titled Near Space – A Strategic Asset That Ought Not to be Neglected.
The article quoted Zhang Dongjiang, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences, discussing the potential applications of flying objects designed for near space.
“This is an area sitting in between ‘air’ and ‘space’ where neither the theory of gravity nor Kepler’s Law is independently applicable, thus limiting the freedom of flight for both aircraft that are designed based on the theory of gravity and spacecraft that follow Kepler’s Law,” Zhang was quoted as saying.
He noted that near space lacks the atmospheric disturbances of aeronautical altitudes, such as turbulence, thunder and lightning, yet is cheaper and easier to reach than the altitudes where satellites can remain in orbit.
“At the same time,” he added, near space is “much higher than ‘sky,’ hence holding superb prospects and potential for intelligence collection, reconnaissance and surveillance, securing communication, as well as air and ground warfare.”
Zhang suggested that near space can be exploited with “high-dynamic” craft that travel faster than the speed of sound, such as hypersonic cruise vehicles and sub-orbital vehicles, which “can arrive at target with high speed, attack with both high speed and precision, [and] can be deployed repeatedly.”
But he said near space also can provide an environment for slower vehicles, which he called “low-dynamic” craft, such as stratospheric airships, high-altitude balloons and solar-powered unmanned vehicles.
These, he said, “are capable of carrying payloads capable of capturing light, infrared rays, multispectral, hyper-spectral, radar, and other info, which can then be used to increase battlefield sensory and knowledge capability, support military operations.”
They also “can carry various payloads aimed at electronic counter-battle, fulfilling the aim of electronic magnetic suppression and electronic magnetic attack on the battlefield, damage and destroy an adversary’s information systems.”
Four years after the PLA Daily article, images were published in the military pages of Global Times, a state-controlled outlet, of two small-scale stratospheric vehicles identified as KF13 and KF16.
The vehicles were developed by the Opto-Electronics Engineering Institute of Beijing Aeronautics and Aerospace University, China’s main aeronautical and aerospace research university, according to an explanatory note published alongside the model shown in the Global Times. The institution is now known as Beihang [Beijing-Aero] University.
The explanatory note said a key feature of the vehicles was their unmanned and remote-control dual capability. Work was being done in Beijing and Shanghai, as well as in Shanxi province, on seeing the vehicles evolve from concept to production, according to the October 2015 article.
Other images of near space objects that surfaced the same month featured variously shaped aircraft whose features and functions included high-functioning surface materials, emergency control mechanisms, precise flight control technology, high-efficiency propeller technology, high-efficiency solar technology and ground operation integration technology.
An image of a blimp-like near space flying object called the Yuan Meng, literally “fulfilling dream,” was also posted to the internet in October 2015. It was described as having a flying altitude of 20-24 kilometers, a flight duration of six months and a payload of 100-300 kilograms.
Rick Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center in Washington, told VOA that China’s interest in the exploitation of near space actually began long before the PLA Daily article.
“Since the late 1990s, the PLA has been devoting resources for research and development for preparing for combat in ‘near space,’ the zone just below Low Earth Orbit (LEO) that is less expensive to reach than LEO [itself], and offers stealth advantages, especially for hypersonic platforms,” he said in an exchange of emails.
In addition to round balloons such as the one shot down by U.S. aircraft on Feb. 4, he said, “the PLA is also developing much larger blimp or airship stratospheric balloons that have solar powered engines driving large propellers that enable greater maneuverability.”
Fisher said Chinese state-owned conglomerates such as China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) “have full-fledged near space programs like their Tengyun to produce very high-altitude UAV and hypersonic vehicles” for the purpose of waging combat in near space.
Tengyun literally means “riding above clouds.”
In September 2016, Chinese official media reported that Project Tengyun, initiated by CASIC, was expected to be ready for a test flight in 2030. The so-called “air-spacecraft” is designed to serve as a “new-generation, repeat-use roundtrip flying object between air and space,” a deputy general manager of CASIC told the 2nd Commercial Aeronautical Summit Forum held in Wuhan that month.
Another four projects proposed by CASIC also bore the concept of “cloud” in their names: Feiyun, meaning “flying cloud,” focuses on communication relay; Xingyun, meaning “cloud on the move,” would enable users to send text or audio messages even “at the end of the earth or edge of the sky”; Hongyun, meaning rainbow cloud, would be able to launch 156 satellites in its first stage; and Kuaiyun, meaning “fast cloud,” would be tasked with formulating a near space spheric network.
While China’s openness about its near space ambitions may be debatable, the speed with which it has made advances in related R&D appears to be indisputable.
“Throughout my career that was focused on the PLA, I do not recall anything about the PLA having a balloon program, let alone to have balloons operating over U.S. territory,” U.S. Navy Captain (retired) James Fanell, who retired as [a former] director of intelligence for the U.S. Pacific Fleet in 2015, told VOA in a written interview.
U.S. official now say they are aware of at least 40 incidents, however, in which Chinese surveillance balloons have passed over countries on as many as five continents. Those presumably included an incident last December in which a high-altitude airship was photographed near the northern Philippine Island of Luzon bordering the South China Sea.
“The object would look to be a teardrop-shaped airship with four tail fins. It’s not entirely clear from the images whether it might have a translucent exterior or a metallic-like one,” wrote Joseph Trevithick, deputy editor of The War Zone, a specialized website dedicated to developments in military technology and international security.
“Overall, the apparent airship’s general shape has broad similarities to a number of high-altitude, long-endurance types that Chinese companies are known to have been working on,” he wrote, including “at least two uncrewed solar-powered designs, the Tian Hang and Yuan Meng, with external propulsion and other systems intended primarily for operations at stratospheric altitudes, both of which have reportedly been test flown at least once.”
Fisher said the United States would be well advised to emulate China in enhancing its capabilities in near space.
The American aerospace company Lockheed Martin “tested a technology demonstrator in 2011 [but] there has been no further development of operational stratospheric airships for the U.S.” since then, Fisher said.
“The PLA is correct to invest in stratosphere balloons and airships; the U.S. must do more to develop these assets as well.”
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Ghanaian footballer Christian Atsu has been found dead under the building where he lived in southern Turkey after last week’s massive earthquake, the ex-Chelsea winger’s Turkish agent said.
“Atsu’s lifeless body was found under the rubble,” Murat Uzunmehmet told reporters in Hatay, where the athlete’s body was found. “Currently, more items are still being taken out. His phone was also found.”
Atsu had been scheduled to fly out of southern Turkey hours before the quake, but Hatayspor’s manager said on Friday the Ghanaian opted to stay with the club after scoring the game-winning goal in a Feb. 5 Super Lig match.
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World health officials warn the war in Ukraine is taking a heavy toll on the mental health condition of millions of people, requiring an urgent increase in mental health and psychological support.
“An estimated almost 10 million people may currently have a mental health condition, of whom about 4 million may have conditions which are moderate or severe,” said Hans Kluge, World Health Organization regional director for Europe.
Speaking in the Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr, Kluge said he met Thursday with first lady Olena Zelenska, who summed up the prevailing situation in the country by telling him that “everyone in society has to become a psychologist.”
Managing the critical situation, he said, “requires an all-government and all-society effort.”
Data and evidence gathered by Ukraine’s Ministry of Health and WHO in recent months show the major priorities and challenges that need to be addressed are mental health, rehabilitation, and community access to health services.
The latest estimate by the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights finds more than 7,000 civilians have been killed and nearly 12,000 injured since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly one year ago.
Kluge said rehabilitation of victims of the war must not be delayed but made available now.
“We are doubling the support on rehabilitation,” he said, “including treatment for war-related injuries, which are often horrific for adults and children alike.”
The latest WHO needs assessment survey finds that one in 10 people express difficulty in accessing medicine for various reasons, including damaged or destroyed pharmacies and the unavailability of supplies. One-third of those surveyed said they could not afford to pay for the medicine they need.
The survey also highlighted the need to pay more attention to the treatment of people with non-communicable diseases. Kluge noted that 44% of those surveyed said they had difficulty receiving care for chronic conditions.
“The most common were cardiovascular diseases, notably hypertension, but also diabetes and kidney disease, and then, of course, there is routine immunization that is weak,” he said.
The carpet bombing of Ukrainian cities, missile strikes and artillery fire by Russian forces has put much of Ukraine’s health care system out of commission.
In a media interview a few days ago, Ukraine’s minister of health, Viktor Liashko, said 1,218 health care institutions have been damaged, including 540 hospitals, 173 of which were completely destroyed.
Kluge said the WHO has verified nearly 780 attacks on health care services, calling it “unforgivable.” He said, “Any attack on any health and health care is clearly a breach of international humanitarian law.”
Speaking from Poltava Oblast, Jarno Habicht, WHO representative for Ukraine, said the health system was functional depending on the region. For example, in areas regained from Russia, such as Bucha, Irpin and Kharkiv, “access to health care is more difficult.”
“Primary health care centers, which have been attacked — more than 780 attacks —need to be rebuilt. These centers need water, these centers need electricity, these centers need health care workers to come back,” he said.
There were, however, hopeful signs of recovery, Habicht added, noting that 20% of health facilities have been rebuilt by charities and private-sector investments.
“So, that means that the health system is also healing itself,” he said.
The U.N. refugee agency estimates more than 8 million Ukrainians have fled to neighboring European countries as refugees, and an estimated 7 million are displaced inside Ukraine.
Habicht also said the WHO’s latest “health survey shows that the internally displaced people have more barriers to access to care” than those who have left the country.
Overall, he said, Ukraine’s health system is under stress but working, and in regained areas, rebuilding infrastructure and attracting more health care workers is critical.
As the war enters its second year, he said, “We need new specialists, we need to do faster training for nurses as well for the doctors.
“We need more mental health specialists … and physiotherapists to ensure that children have enough support that they can move around, they can go to school, and their life can go on.”
Kluge, who is on his fifth visit to Ukraine within the past year, noted the need for continued international humanitarian support. “Unfortunately, after what I saw, I cannot tell that the impact of the war on the health of the people in this country is going to diminish.
“I am very concerned it will in the coming months actually increase,” he said.
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U.S. safety regulators have pressured Tesla into recalling nearly 363,000 vehicles with its “Full Self-Driving” system because it misbehaves around intersections and doesn’t always follow speed limits.
The recall, part of a larger investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration into Tesla’s automated driving systems, is the most serious action taken yet against the electric vehicle maker.
It raises questions about CEO Elon Musk’s claims that he can prove to regulators that cars equipped with “Full Self-Driving” are safer than humans, and that humans almost never have to touch the controls.
Musk at one point had promised that a fleet of autonomous robotaxis would be in use in 2020. The latest action appears to push that development further into the future.
The safety agency says in documents posted on its website Thursday that Tesla will fix the concerns with an online software update in the coming weeks. The documents say Tesla is recalling the cars but does not agree with an agency analysis of the problem.
The system, which is being tested on public roads by as many as 400,000 Tesla owners, makes such unsafe actions as traveling straight through an intersection while in a turn-only lane, failing to come to a complete stop at stop signs, or going through an intersection during a yellow traffic light without proper caution, NHTSA said.
In addition, the system may not adequately respond to changes in posted speed limits, or it may not account for the driver’s adjustments in speed, the documents said.
“FSD beta software that allows a vehicle to exceed speed limits or travel through intersections in an unlawful or unpredictable manner increases the risk of a crash,” the agency said in documents.
Musk complained Thursday on Twitter, which he now owns, that calling an over-the-air software update a recall is “anachronistic and just flat wrong!” A message was left Thursday seeking further comment from Tesla, which has disbanded its media relations department.
Tesla has received 18 warranty claims that could be caused by the software from May 2019 through Sept. 12, 2022, the documents said. But the Austin, Texas, electric vehicle maker told the agency it is not aware of any deaths or injuries.
In a statement, NHTSA said it found the problems during tests performed as part of an investigation into Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” and “Autopilot” software that take on some driving tasks. The investigation remains open, and the recall doesn’t address the full scope of what NHTSA is scrutinizing, the agency said.
Despite the names “Full Self-Driving” and “Autopilot,” Tesla says on its website that the cars cannot drive themselves and owners must be ready to intervene at all times.
The recall announced Thursday covers certain 2016-23 Model S and Model X vehicles, as well as 2017 through 2013 Model 3s, and 2020 through 2023 Model Y vehicles equipped with the software, or with installation pending.
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Bruce Willis has been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, his family said on Thursday, nearly a year after the “Die Hard” franchise star retired from acting because of aphasia that had hampered his cognitive abilities.
“Since we announced Bruce’s diagnosis of aphasia in spring 2022, Bruce’s condition has progressed, and we now have a more specific diagnosis: frontotemporal dementia (known as FTD),” his family said in a statement posted on The Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration website.
“Unfortunately, challenges with communication are just one symptom of the disease Bruce faces. While this is painful, it is a relief to finally have a clear diagnosis.”
The statement, to which the family attached a photo of a smiling Willis at the beach, said there are no current treatments for the disease. The family members said they hoped Willis’ diagnosis at age 67 would bring more focus to battling FTD.
“As Bruce’s condition advances, we hope that any media attention can be focused on shining a light on this disease that needs far more awareness and research,” the statement said.
Frontotemporal degeneration is caused by progressive nerve cell loss in the brain’s frontal lobes or its temporal lobes.
Willis’ family believes that if the retired actor were able, he would use his voice to raise awareness about dementia and how to help others with it.
Journalist Maria Shriver tweeted her “gratitude for shining a much needed light on this disease,” adding that “when people step forward it helps all of us.”
The actor’s oldest daughter, actor Rumer Willis, also posted the announcement on Instagram and received support from others in the entertainment industry.
“Love you so much my friend. Sending hugs to you and that beautiful family of yours. Your pops is such a damn legend,” “Breaking Bad” star Aaron Paul said on Instagram.
Willis rose to fame in the 1980s comedy-drama TV series “Moonlighting,” and has appeared in about 100 films across his four-decade career, garnering acclaim for his roles in “Pulp Fiction” and “The Sixth Sense,” and winning a Golden Globe Award and two Emmys.
But Willis is perhaps best known for playing the tough-as-nails New York cop who pursued bad guys in the five “Die Hard” movies, released from 1988 to 2013.
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A top U.S. law enforcement official on Thursday unveiled a new “disruptive technology strike force” tasked with safeguarding American technology from foreign adversaries and other national security threats.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, the No. 2 U.S. Justice Department official, made the announcement at a speech in London at Chatham House. The initiative, Monaco said, will be a joint effort between her department and the U.S. Commerce Department, with a goal of blocking adversaries from “trying to siphon our best technology.”
Monaco also addressed concerns about Chinese-owned video sharing app TikTok.
The U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a powerful national security body, in 2020 ordered Chinese company ByteDance to divest TikTok because of fears that user data could be passed on to China’s government. The divestment has not taken place.
The committee and TikTok have been in talks for more than two years aiming to reach a national security agreement.
“I will note I don’t use TikTok, and I would not advise anybody to do so because of these concerns. The bottom line is China has been quite clear that they are trying to mold and put forward the use and norms around technologies that advance their privileges, their interests,” Monaco said.
The Justice Department in recent years has increasingly focused its efforts on bringing criminal cases to protect corporate intellectual property, U.S. supply chains and private data about Americans from foreign adversaries, either through cyberattacks, theft or sanctions evasion.
U.S. law enforcement officials have said that China by far remains the biggest threat to America’s technological innovation and economic security, a view that Monaco reiterated on Thursday.
“China’s doctrine of ‘civil-military fusion’ means that any advance by a Chinese company with military application must be shared with the state,” Monaco said. “So if a company operating in China collects your data, it is a good bet that the Chinese government is accessing it.”
Under former President Donald Trump’s administration, the Justice Department created a China initiative tasked with combating Chinese espionage and intellectual property theft.
President Joe Biden’s Justice Department later scrapped the name and re-focused the initiative amid criticism it was fueling racism by targeting professors at U.S. universities over whether they disclosed financial ties to China.
The department did not back away from continuing to pursue national security cases involving China and its alleged efforts to steal intellectual property or other American data.
The Commerce Department last year imposed new export controls on advanced computing and semiconductor components in a maneuver designed to prevent China from acquiring certain chips.
Monaco said on Thursday that the United States “must also pay attention to how our adversaries can use private investments in their companies to develop the most sensitive technologies, to fuel their drive for a military and national security edge.”
She noted that the Biden administration is “exploring how to monitor the flow of private capital in critical sectors” to ensure it “doesn’t provide our adversaries with a national security advantage.”
A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers last year called on Biden to issue an executive order to boost oversight of investments by U.S. companies and individuals in China and other countries.
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Imagine if your dog or cat could use words to let you know when they’re angry, lonely or in pain. Well now they can, thanks to an innovative communication tool that’s helping them express themselves more effectively. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
Camera: Adam Greenbaum
Produced by: Julie Taboh, Adam Greenbaum
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Avian flu has reached new corners of the globe and become endemic for the first time in some wild birds that transmit the virus to poultry, according to veterinarians and disease experts, who warn it is now a year-round problem.
Reuters spoke to more than 20 experts and farmers on four continents who said the prevalence of the virus in the wild signals that record outbreaks will not abate soon on poultry farms, ramping up threats to the world’s food supply. They warned that farmers must view the disease as a serious risk all year, instead of focusing prevention efforts during spring migration seasons for wild birds.
Outbreaks of the virus have widened in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa, undefeated by summer heat or winter cold snaps, since a strain arrived in the United States in early 2022 that was genetically similar to cases in Europe and Asia.
On Wednesday, Argentina and Uruguay each declared national sanitary emergencies after officials confirmed the countries’ first infections. Argentina found the virus in wild birds, while dead swans in Uruguay tested positive.
Egg prices set records after the disease last year wiped out tens of millions of laying hens, putting a staple source of cheap protein out of reach to some of the world’s poorest at a time the global economy is reeling from high inflation.
Wild birds are primarily responsible for spreading the virus, according to experts. Waterfowl like ducks can carry the disease without dying and introduce it to poultry through contaminated feces, saliva and other means.
Farmers’ best efforts to protect flocks are falling short.
In the United States, Rose Acre Farms, the country’s second-largest egg producer, lost about 1.5 million hens at a Guthrie County, Iowa, production site last year, even though anyone who entered barns was required to shower first to remove any trace of the virus, Chief Executive Marcus Rust said.
A company farm in Weld County, Colorado, was infected twice within about six months, killing more than 3 million chickens, Rust said. He thinks wind blew the virus in from nearby fields where geese defecated.
“We got nailed,” Rust said. “You just pull your hair out.”
The United States, Britain, France and Japan are among countries that have suffered record losses of poultry over the past year, leaving some farmers feeling helpless.
“Avian flu is occurring even in a new poultry farm with modern equipment and no windows, so all we could do now is ask God to avoid an outbreak,” said Shigeo Inaba, who raises chickens for meat in Ibaraki prefecture near Tokyo.
Poultry in the Northern Hemisphere were previously considered to be most at risk when wild birds are active during spring migration. Soaring levels of the virus in a broad range of waterfowl and other wild birds mean poultry now face high risks year round, experts said.
“It’s a new war,” said Bret Marsh, the state veterinarian in the U.S. state of Indiana. “It’s basically a 12-month vigil.”
In a sign the threat is expected to persist, Marsh is seeking funds from Indiana’s lawmakers to hire an additional poultry veterinarian and poultry health-specialist. Indiana lost more than 200,000 turkeys and other birds over the past year, while total U.S. deaths top 58 million birds, according to U.S. government data, surpassing the previous 2015 record.
The virus is usually deadly to poultry, and entire flocks are culled when even one bird tests positive.
Vaccinations are not a simple solution: they may reduce but not eliminate the threat from the virus, making it harder to detect its presence among a flock. Still, Mexico and the EU are among those vaccinating or considering shots.
Global problem
Wild birds have spread the disease farther and wider around the world than ever before, likely carrying record amounts of the virus, said Gregorio Torres, the head of the science department at the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health, an intergovernmental group and global authority on animal diseases. The virus changed from previous outbreaks to a form that is probably more transmissible, he told Reuters.
“The disease is here to stay at least in the short term,” Torres said.
Torres could not confirm the virus is endemic in wild birds worldwide, though other experts said it is endemic in certain birds in places like the United States.
While the virus can infect people, usually those who have contact with infected birds, the World Health Organization says the risk to humans is low.
The form of the virus circulating is infecting a broader range of wild birds than previous versions, including those that do not migrate long distances, said David Suarez, acting laboratory director of the U.S. government’s Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory in Georgia.
Such infections of “resident” birds are helping the virus to persist throughout the year when it didn’t previously, he said.
Black vultures, which inhabit the southern United States and previously avoided infections, are now among the species suffering, said David Stallknecht, director of the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study at the University of Georgia.
The virus has also infected mammals like foxes, bears and seals.
“We all have to believe in miracles,” Stallknecht said, “but I really can’t see a scenario where it’s going to disappear.”
Crossing borders
High virus levels in birds like blue-winged teal, ducks that migrate long distances, helped spread the virus to new parts of South America, Stallknecht said.
Countries including Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia in recent months reported their first cases.
Ecuador imposed a three-month animal-health emergency on Nov. 29, two days after its first case was detected, the country’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock said. So far, more than 1.1 million birds have died, the ministry said.
Infections in Uruguay and Bolivia put the disease close to top global chicken exporter Brazil, which has never confirmed a case. Brazilian Agriculture Minister Carlos Favaro said on Wednesday the country investigated three suspected cases, but test results came back negative.
“Everyone is focused on preventing the flu from reaching our country,” said Gian Carlos Zacchi, who raises chickens for processor Aurora in Chapecó in Brazil’s Santa Catarina state.
Some experts suspect climate change may be contributing to the global spread by altering wild birds’ habitats and migratory paths.
“The wild bird dynamics have shifted, and that’s allowed the viruses that live in them to shift as well,” said Carol Cardona, an avian flu expert and professor at the University of Minnesota.
Farmers are trying unusual tactics to protect poultry, with some using machines that make loud noises to scare off wild birds, experts said.
In Rhode Island, Eli Berkowitz, an egg producer and chief executive of Little Rhody Foods, sprayed the disinfectant Lysol on goose poop on a walkway of his farm in case it contained the virus. He also limits visitors to the farm, a more traditional precaution.
Berkowitz said he is bracing for March and April when migration season will pose an even greater risk to poultry.
“You’d better buckle up and hold on for your dear life,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will join Hollywood actor Sean Penn by video link on Thursday at the opening of the Berlinale, Europe’s first major film festival of the year, as it spotlights the fight for freedom in Ukraine and Iran.
The 73rd annual event, traditionally the most politically minded of the three big European cinema showcases, will mark the Russian invasion’s first anniversary as well as anti-regime protests in Iran with new feature films and documentaries.
U.S. actor Kristen Stewart (“Spencer”), head of the jury for the Golden and Silver Bear top prizes, told reporters it was “an enormous opportunity to have a hand in highlighting beautiful things” in the face of global turmoil.
“It’s the job of an artist to take a disgusting and ugly thing and sort of transmute it and put it through your body and pump out something more beautiful…in response to the world that’s falling apart around us,” she said.
Artistic director Carlo Chatrian said the festival stood with “the suffering population, the millions who left Ukraine and the artists (who) have remained defending the country and continue filming the war,” adding that it was a “special honour” to welcome Zelenskyy digitally.
Penn will appear on stage at the opening gala in the German capital and introduce Zelenskyy who will speak via video stream, organizers said.
The two-time Oscar winner, who was filming in Kyiv at the start of the Russian onslaught, will on Friday premiere “Superpower”, tracking Zelenskyy’s transformation from comedian to president to war hero.
“Zelenskyy was two completely different creatures from one day to the next,” Penn told entertainment industry magazine Variety this week about the impact of the invasion. “He was a spirit in waiting.”
Beyond movie screenings, the Berlinale plans panel discussions with embattled directors and red-carpet protests in a show of “solidarity” with the people of Iran and Ukraine.
Animation back in force
The Berlinale has barred filmmakers, companies and reporters with direct ties to the Russian or Iranian governments from taking part in the event, including its sprawling European Film Market, a key movie rights exchange for the industry.
Hollywood actors Peter Dinklage, Anne Hathaway and Marisa Tomei will later Thursday present romantic comedy “She Came to Me”, the first of nearly 300 new movies from around the world to screen during the 11-day event.
Nineteen films will vie for the main awards, including British-U.S. co-production “Manodrome” featuring Jesse Eisenberg and Adrien Brody in a thriller about an Uber driver who is lured into a cult while he is expecting his first child.
Two Asian animated pictures will also join the running, “Art College 1994” by China’s Liu Jian and Makoto Shinkai’s “Suzume”, the first Japanese anime to compete at the Berlinale since Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away” clinched the Golden Bear in 2002.
Gold for Spielberg
Three-time Academy Award winner Steven Spielberg is to collect an honorary Golden Bear for his life’s work, spotlighted in a retrospective.
British actor Helen Mirren will unveil the keenly awaited “Golda” in which she stars as Israel’s only female prime minister, Golda Meir.
And Vicky Krieps, the acclaimed Luxembourg-born actor from “Phantom Thread” and “Corsage”, will present her turn as renowned Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann in a biopic by veteran German director Margarethe von Trotta.
One-third of the films in competition are by women, who make up 40 percent of all directors represented at the festival.
“Love to Love You”, a documentary about disco queen Donna Summer, who defined an era on the dance floor and helped inspire Beyonce’s latest album “Renaissance”, will have its world premiere.
The film was co-directed by Summer’s daughter, Brooklyn Sudano, and features never-before-seen home videos.
The Berlinale ranks with Cannes and Venice among Europe’s top film festivals. It will hand out the top prizes on February 25 before wrapping up the next day with screenings of popular movies from this year’s selection.
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The UK is working on a new arrangement with Greece through which the Parthenon Sculptures could be seen both in London and in Athens, British Museum chair George Osborne said on Thursday, describing it as a win-win situation.
Osborne, a former finance minister, reiterated that the museum was having constructive talks with the Greek government about the marbles which have been a source of dispute between the two European countries for centuries.
“It’s a very hard problem to solve,” Osborne told BBC Radio. “But I think there is a way forward where these sculptures, the Elgin Marbles, the Parthenon Sculptures, could be seen both in London and in Athens, and that will be a win-win for Greece and for us.”
When asked if that meant loans, he said: “we’re talking to the Greek government about that, about a new arrangement and what I didn’t want to do is force the Greeks to accept things that they find impossible, and equally they can’t force on us things that we would find impossible.”
The Greek government has said it was in talks over repatriation of the sculptures, which were removed by British diplomat Lord Elgin from the imposing Parthenon temple in Athens in the early 19th century.
But Osborne ruled out a scenario where the sculptures could be handed over permanently, saying it would need a change of UK law.
“If we wanted to send all the Elgin Marbles back then that would require an act of parliament, and that would be beyond my authority,” he said. “But what the museum can do is try and form a new relationship with Greece.”
“I’m reasonably optimistic.”
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The confirmation of more bird flu cases in South America raised alarm bells in Brazil, which remains free of contagion even after its close neighbors Argentina and Uruguay confirmed cases there on Wednesday.
In a press conference to discuss the global sanitary hazard, Brazilian Agriculture Minister Carlos Favaro said Brazil, the world’s biggest chicken exporter, would bolster measures to prevent outbreaks as the virus continued to spread.
Until now, bird flu cases had been detected in commercial farms in Bolivia, which borders Brazil, and in Peru and Ecuador, Favaro said.
On Wednesday, cases in wild birds were confirmed in Uruguay and Argentina, sparking a health emergency in both.
In recent days, Brazil also investigated suspected cases of the highly pathogenic bird flu.
The suspect cases occurred in wild birds in Rio Grande do Sul state, where many Brazilian meatpackers operate, and in domestic birds, ducks and chickens with bird flu symptoms in Amazonas state, according to the minister.
None of the suspect cases turned out to be avian influenza, he said.
Avian flu, which has reached new corners of the globe, has become endemic for the first time in some wild birds that transmit the virus to poultry, experts said.
The virus has spurred import bans in some countries and pushed egg prices to record highs in some parts of the world.
Brazil is home to some of the world’s biggest meatpackers. It has never registered a bird flu case.
But since late last year, the Brazilian meat industry has been on high alert. Most of Brazil’s chicken processors operate in southern states, making the discoveries in Uruguay and Argentina worrisome.
“It should be remembered that the situation in Uruguay (affecting wild birds) is an example of a case that would not suspend trade and exports of poultry products, in accordance with recommendations established by the World Organization for Animal Health,” Brazil’s meat lobby ABPA said in a statement.
The Uruguayan government declared a state of national sanitary emergency after detecting bird flu in five dead black neck swans between the departments of Maldonado and Rocha.
“It’s very important to isolate wild birds from domestic birds, especially sources of food and water,” Virginia Russi, a technician from the agriculture ministry of Uruguay told a news conference.
Argentina’s Agriculture Secretary Juan Jose Bahillo also confirmed its first cases of bird flu in wild birds, leading it to declare a sanitary emergency and reinforce measures against the disease.
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This year’s New York Fashion Week is wrapping up after featuring genderless style, throwback 1990s fashion and colorful knitwear to fight sadness. Nina Vishneva has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Producer: Anna Rice. Camera: Vladimir Badikov.
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When Raquel Welch donned a deerskin bikini for a 1966 caveman screen epic, she became one of the hottest sex symbols of her time, a role she never felt able to escape.
The film was mediocre, but the poster for “One Million Years BC” went round the world, taking her with it and making both of them an indelible part of cinema history.
“With the release of that famous movie poster, in one fell swoop, everything in my life changed and everything about the real me was swept away,” Welch wrote in her 2010 autobiography Beyond the Cleavage.
“All else would be eclipsed by this bigger-than-life sex symbol.”
With an auburn mane and lauded for her famous figure, Welch took over from the late Marilyn Monroe to become the universal sex goddess of the 1960s and 1970s.
The New York Times described her in 1967 as “a marvelous breathing monument to womankind” while Playboy magazine said she was “the most desired woman of the 1970s.”
Walk-on parts
Welch, who died Wednesday after a brief illness, was born Jo Raquel Tejada on September 5, 1940, in Chicago to a Bolivian aeronautical engineer and his American wife.
Growing up in California, she took ballet lessons and won the first of several teen beauty titles at the age of 14.
She married her high school sweetheart, James Welch, before she was 20, having two children with him before moving to Dallas to take on jobs as a model and barmaid.
Seeking stardom, she returned to Los Angeles in 1963, where she met her agent and next husband Patrick Curtis.
Her never-illustrious acting career started with a string of walk-on parts in minor films, including the 1964 musical feature “Roustabout” starring Elvis Presley.
But a break came when she was picked by the 20th Century Fox studio to star in the 1966 science fiction film, “Fantastic Voyage.”
Typecast
The same year she had a leading role in “One Million Years BC,” a fantasy film forgettable except for its bikini-clad cavewoman.
In 1967 Welch married Curtis in Paris in a famously skimpy white crochet dress, living it up in a lavish Beverly Hills villa with black marble swimming pool and Rolls-Royce.
However, by then she was typecast, and struggled to prove herself as an actress.
“Americans have always had sex symbols. It’s a time-honored tradition and I’m flattered to have been one,” she once said.
“But it’s hard to have a long, fruitful career once you’ve been stereotyped that way.”
Welch clocked up a series of films in the late 1960s and 1970s but remained restricted by her status as a beauty.
Titles included the western “Bandolero!” (1968), detective movie “Lady in Cement” (1968) and comedy “Animal” (1977).
In 1969 she was in Hollywood’s first interracial sex scene with Jim Brown in “100 Rifles.” Then came her most controversial role — a transsexual heroine in the explicit “Myra Breckinridge” (1970).
The swashbuckling “The Three Musketeers” (1973), in which she played the queen’s dressmaker, won her the Golden Globe for best actress.
While filming “Cannery Row” in 1982, Welch was fired for insisting on doing her hair and make-up at home. She sued MGM studios for breach of contract, ultimately winning a $15 million settlement.
Later roles
A lover of yoga, Welch later launched herself into the business of wellbeing, publishing her “Total Beauty and Fitness” program in 1984.
Having long hidden her Latino origins, as an elegant 60-something she took on Hispanic roles in the “American Family” series on PBS in 2002 and “Tortilla Soup” in 2001.
In 2008 at age 68, she divorced her fourth husband, Richard Palmer, who was 14 years her junior.
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