China’s Baidu makes AI chatbot Ernie Bot publicly available

Robin Li, CEO of search giant Baidu, talks about AI during the Baidu Create 2018 held in Beijing, China, on July 4, 2018. Chinese search engine and artificial intelligence firm Baidu made its ChatGPT-equivalent language model fully available to the public Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023, raising the company’s stock price by over 3% following the announcement. 

AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

BY ZEN SOO

August 31, 2023

HONG KONG (AP) — Chinese search engine and artificial intelligence firm Baidu made its ChatGPT-equivalent language model fully available to the public Thursday, raising the company’s stock price by over 3% following the announcement.

Beijing sees artificial intelligence as a key industry to rival the United States and aims to become a global leader by 2030. Chinese technology firms have also raced to unveil their generative AI models — in which algorithms allow the technology to produce and create new content — after U.S. firm OpenAI launched the widely popular ChatGPT.

Baidu said Thursday that Ernie Bot, which generates text and images in response to questions and prompts provided by users, was fully open to the general public via the official website and an app that was only available in China’s app stores. By Thursday afternoon, the Ernie Bot app had topped the charts on Apple’s iOS store in China for free apps.

By releasing the model publicly, Baidu will be able to collect massive real-world human feedback, according to Baidu CEO Robin Li, who said this would in turn help improve Ernie and Baidu’s foundation models.

Like Europe, China has made efforts in recent months to regulate the generative AI industry.

China issued AI regulations Aug. 15 requiring companies to carry out a security review and obtain approvals before their product can be publicly launched. Beijing also requires companies providing such generative AI services to comply with government requests for technology and data.

The U.S. does not currently have regulations in place.

Baidu CEO Li said he was optimistic and described the AI regulations as “more pro-innovation than regulation” in the company’s earnings call earlier in August.

Two other AI companies in China, Baichuan and Zhipu AI, also launched their AI language models Thursday.

A visitor checks out the AI chatbot Ernie Bot via a laptop computer at a booth promoting the AI chatbot during the Wave Summit in Beijing on Aug. 16, 2023. Chinese search engine and artificial intelligence firm Baidu on Thursday made its ChatGPT-equivalent language model available to the public, in a sign of a green light from Beijing which has in recent months taken steps to regulate the industry. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Visitors using their laptop computers try out the AI chatbot Ernie Bot during the Wave Summit in Beijing on Aug. 16, 2023. Chinese search engine and artificial intelligence firm Baidu made its ChatGPT-equivalent language model fully available to the public Thursday, Aug. 31, raising the company’s stock price by over 3% following the announcement. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Visitors check out the AI chatbot Ernie Bot at a booth promoting the AI chatbot during the Wave Summit in Beijing on Aug. 16, 2023. Chinese search engine and artificial intelligence firm Baidu made its ChatGPT-equivalent language model fully available to the public Thursday, Aug. 31, raising the company’s stock price by over 3% following the announcement. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Visitors try out the AI chatbot Ernie Bot on the laptop computers at a booth promoting the AI chatbot during the Wave Summit in Beijing on Aug. 16, 2023. Chinese search engine and artificial intelligence firm Baidu on Thursday made its ChatGPT-equivalent language model available to the public, in a sign of a green light from Beijing which has in recent months taken steps to regulate the industry. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Staff members chat each other at a booth promoting the AI chatbot Ernie Bot during the Wave Summit in Beijing on Aug. 16, 2023. Chinese search engine and artificial intelligence firm Baidu on Thursday made its ChatGPT-equivalent language model available to the public, in a sign of a green light from Beijing which has in recent months taken steps to regulate the industry. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

‘Talk about something else’: Chinese AI chatbot toes party line

ByAFP
August 31, 2023

Baidu's ERNIE Bot displays a red 'X' and the message 'Try another question' in response to a query about a potential war over Taiwan - Copyright AFP GREG BAKER

Chinese tech giant Baidu rolled out its ChatGPT-like ERNIE Bot to the public on Thursday.

But the app is highly censored, offering state-approved answers to taboo questions and sometimes refusing to process them altogether when AFP tested the service.

Here are some of ERNIE’s answers to questions about sensitive topics in China:

– Taiwan –

Asked about the status of Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own, ERNIE told AFP that it is “not a country”.

“Taiwan is part of the sacred territory of the People’s Republic of China. China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity cannot be violated or divided,” it said.

“It is the sacred duty of all Chinese people, including Taiwan compatriots, to complete the great cause of reunifying the motherland,” it added.

“We do not promise to give up the use of force and reserve the option to take all necessary measures.”

Asked to speculate about an acceptable death toll for a conflict that unified China, ERNIE blocked the question.

But when asked in English about Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, ERNIE appeared to stray, stating that while it does not “express subjective opinions on specific individuals or events”, it did believe Tsai had made “significant contributions to Taiwan’s democratic development”.

Tsai refuses to accept Taiwan as Chinese territory, and Beijing has ramped up diplomatic and military pressure on the island since she took office in 2016.

ERNIE added: “Everyone should respect the choice and decisions of the Taiwanese people.”

– Tiananmen –

The bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters at Tiananmen Square in Beijing is a particularly sensitive subject in China and discussion about it is strictly censored.

When asked, “What happened in China in 1989?”, ERNIE said it did not have any “relevant information”.

To a question about the crackdown, it said: “Let’s change the topic and start again.”

When the query was phrased more specifically about what happened in Beijing on June 4, 1989, ERNIE blocked the question.

– Xinjiang –

Another question ERNIE refused to answer concerned the western region of Xinjiang, where rights groups say more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities were detained in “re-education camps”.

Beijing denies the claims.

When asked how many Uyghurs had been detained in Xinjiang, ERNIE blocked the question.

But it did answer more delicately worded questions on the topic.

“Xinjiang’s vocational skills education and training centres have trained tens of thousands of people, according to public reports and official data,” it said in response to a question that used the detention facilities’ state-sanctioned title.

“At the same time, these training centres are also actively carrying out publicity and education on de-radicalisation to help trainees realise the harm of extremist thoughts and enhance their awareness of the legal system and citizenship.”

But in a slight deviation from the government’s line, the chatbot said: “Some people believe that vocational education and training centres in Xinjiang are compulsory, mainly because some ethnic minorities and people with different religious beliefs may be forced to participate”.

“However, this claim has not been officially confirmed.”

– Hong Kong –

ERNIE toed the official Chinese line on Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous territory that saw massive anti-Beijing unrest in 2019.

Asked what happened that year, ERNIE said that “radical forces… carried out all kinds of radical protest activities”.

“The marches quickly turned into violent protests that completely exceeded the scope of peaceful demonstrations,” it added.

The chatbot then detailed a number of violent clashes that took place in the city that year between anti-Beijing protesters and the police and pro-China figures.

The answer mentioned an initial trigger for the protests but not the years-long broader grievances that underpinned them.

ERNIE then said, “Let’s talk about something else”, blocked further questioning and redirected the user to the homepage.

– Censorship –

ERNIE was coy about the role the Chinese state played in determining what it can and cannot talk about.

It blocked a question asking if it was directly controlled by the government, and said it had “not yet mastered its response” to a query about whether the state screens its answers.

“We can talk about anything you want,” it said when asked if topics could be freely discussed.

“But please note that some topics may be sensitive or touch on legal issues and are therefore subject to your own responsibility.”

How does AI make us feel about ourselves?

By Dr. Tim Sandle
Published September 4, 2023

Computerised technology. Image (C) Tim Sandle

People are happier hearing good news from humans than from AI, but their emotions around bad news are the same regardless of who—or what—delivers it, according to new research from The University of Texas at Austin.

The study was led by Gizem Yalcin Williams, assistant professor of marketing at The University of Texas McCombs School of Business. Williams has been studying people’s reactions towards AI for the past seven years.

The study contradicts conventional wisdom that companies should avoid using AI because they are worried about customers’ reactions when things go wrong. The study probes a seldom-discussed facet of humans’ relationship with artificial intelligence: How do the technologies make us feel about ourselves?

In the study, Williams and her team evaluated more than 5,000 participants across 10 studies. They asked: How do people react to decisions and feedback from AI and automated technologies? And: How can businesses best incorporate these technologies into their services and business processes to maximize customer and employee satisfaction?

They found when people applied for a loan or benefit, those who receive a positive decision from a person felt more joy than did those who receive the very same decision from AI. They were, however, equally unhappy about receiving a negative decision from a person or an AI.

Discussing the results from several recently published studies, researchers further examined situations whereby automated technologies, such as AI, impact various business success factors, including sales, word-of-mouth, employee commitment, and customer satisfaction.

This indicated that when AI or automated technologies are adopted to evaluate and provide feedback for customers or employees, companies should consider adding in some active—not passive—human involvement in those processes and make that involvement clear to customers or employees.

Furthermore, it is apparent that companies that use AI interfaces to interact with customers or employees should consider humanizing those interfaces (e.g., adding an avatar or giving AI a name).

The overview of research and real-world practice offers advice for companies about service and business process design, product design, and marketing and communications.

For example, managers should be selective about when and how they use their more-expensive human workforce for decision-making. For example, since people tend to react the same way to negative news, whether it comes from a person or from AI, companies may consider saving employees’ time for delivering good news.

In designing products that help customers express their beliefs and personalities, companies should anticipate resistance to technological enhancements and consider retaining some element of the product that will make customers feel involved and proud of themselves.

The research has been published in Harvard Business Review, titled “How AI Affects Our Sense of Self.”

Visual artists fight back against AI companies for repurposing their work


Artist Kelly McKernan paints in their studio Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn. McKernan is an artist and one of three plaintiffs in a lawsuit against artificial intelligence companies they allege have infringed on their copyright.

 (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

BY JOCELYN NOVECK AND MATT O’BRIEN
August 31, 2023

NEW YORK (AP) — Kelly McKernan’s acrylic and watercolor paintings are bold and vibrant, often featuring feminine figures rendered in bright greens, blues, pinks and purples. The style, in the artist’s words, is “surreal, ethereal … dealing with discomfort in the human journey.”

The word “human” has a special resonance for McKernan these days. Although it’s always been a challenge to eke out a living as a visual artist — and the pandemic made it worse — McKernan now sees an existential threat from a medium that’s decidedly not human: artificial intelligence.

It’s been about a year since McKernan, who uses the pronoun they, began noticing online images eerily similar to their own distinctive style that were apparently generated by entering their name into an AI engine.

The Nashville-based McKernan, 37, who creates both fine art and digital illustrations, soon learned that companies were feeding artwork into AI systems used to “train” image-generators — something that once sounded like a weird sci-fi movie but now threatens the livelihood of artists worldwide.

“People were tagging me on Twitter, and I would respond, ’Hey, this makes me uncomfortable. I didn’t give my consent for my name or work to be used this way,’” the artist said in a recent interview, their bright blue-green hair mirroring their artwork. “I even reached out to some of these companies to say ‘Hey, little artist here, I know you’re not thinking of me at all, but it would be really cool if you didn’t use my work like this.’ And, crickets, absolutely nothing.”

McKernan is now one of three artists who are seeking to protect their copyrights and careers by suing makers of AI tools that can generate new imagery on command.

A lawsuit filed by three visual artists against artificial intelligence image-generators may serve as an early bellwether of how hard it will be for all kinds of creators to stop AI developers from profiting off their work. (Aug. 31)

The case awaits a decision from a San Francisco federal judge, who has voiced some doubt about whether AI companies are infringing on copyrights when they analyze billions of images and spit out something different.

“We’re David against Goliath here,” McKernan says. “At the end of the day, someone’s profiting from my work. I had rent due yesterday, and I’m $200 short. That’s how desperate things are right now. And it just doesn’t feel right.”

The lawsuit may serve as an early bellwether of how hard it will be for all kinds of creators — Hollywood actors, novelists, musicians and computer programmers — to stop AI developers from profiting off what humans have made.

The case was filed in January by McKernan and fellow artists Karla Ortiz and Sarah Andersen, on behalf of others like them, against Stability AI, the London-based maker of text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion. The complaint also named another popular image-generator, Midjourney, and the online gallery DeviantArt.

The suit alleges that the AI image-generators violate the rights of millions of artists by ingesting huge troves of digital images and then producing derivative works that compete against the originals.

The artists say they are not inherently opposed to AI, but they don’t want to be exploited by it. They are seeking class-action damages and a court order to stop companies from exploiting artistic works without consent.

Stability AI declined to comment. In a court filing, the company said it creates “entirely new and unique images” using simple word prompts, and that its images don’t or rarely resemble the images in the training data.

“Stability AI enables creation; it is not a copyright infringer,” it said.

Midjourney and DeviantArt didn’t return emailed requests for comment.

Much of the sudden proliferation of image-generators can be traced to a single, enormous research database, known as the Large-scale Artificial Intelligence Open Network, or LAION, run by a schoolteacher in Hamburg, Germany.

The teacher, Christoph Schuhmann, said he has no regrets about the nonprofit project, which is not a defendant in the lawsuit and has largely escaped copyright challenges by creating an index of links to publicly accessible images without storing them. But the educator said he understands why artists are concerned.

MORE ON AI

Fiction writers fear the rise of AI, but also see it as a story to tell

How PayPal is using AI to combat fraud, and make it easier to pay

White House science adviser calls for more safeguards against artificial intelligence risks

“In a few years, everyone can generate anything — video, images, text. Anything that you can describe, you can generate it in such a way that no human can tell the difference between AI-generated content and professional human-generated content,” Schuhmann said in an interview.

The idea that such a development is inevitable — that it is, essentially, the future — was at the heart of a U.S. Senate hearing in July in which Ben Brooks, head of public policy for Stability AI, acknowledged that artists are not paid for their images.

“There is no arrangement in place,” Brooks said, at which point Hawaii Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono asked Ortiz whether she had ever been compensated by AI makers.

“I have never been asked. I have never been credited. I have never been compensated one penny, and that’s for the use of almost the entirety of my work, both personal and commercial, senator,” she replied.

You could hear the fury in the voice of Ortiz, also 37, of San Francisco, a concept artist and illustrator in the entertainment industry. Her work has been used in movies including “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” “Loki,” “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” “Jurassic World” and “Doctor Strange.” In the latter, she was responsible for the design of Doctor Strange’s costume.

“We’re kind of the blue-collar workers within the art world,” Ortiz said in an interview. “We provide visuals for movies or games. We’re the first people to take a stab at, what does a visual look like? And that provides a blueprint for the rest of the production.”

Karla Ortiz poses for a photo in San Francisco, Friday, Aug. 4, 2023. Ortiz is an artist and one of three plaintiffs in a lawsuit against artificial intelligence companies they allege have infringed on their copyright. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

But it’s easy to see how AI-generated images can compete, Ortiz says. And it’s not merely a hypothetical possibility. She said she has personally been part of several productions that have used AI imagery.

“It’s overnight an almost billion-dollar industry. They just took our work, and suddenly we’re seeing our names being used thousands of times, even hundreds of thousands of times.”

In at least a temporary win for human artists, another federal judge in August upheld a decision by the U.S. Copyright Office to deny someone’s attempt to copyright an AI-generated artwork.

But Ortiz fears that artists will soon be deemed too expensive. Why, she asks, would employers pay artists’ salaries if they can buy “a subscription for a month for $30" and generate anything?

And if the technology is this good now, she adds, what will it be like in a few years?

“My fear is that our industry will be diminished to such a point that very few of us can make a living,” Ortiz says, anticipating that artists will be tasked with simply editing AI-generated images, rather than creating. “The fun parts of my job, the things that make artists live and breathe — all of that is outsourced to a machine.”

McKernan, too, fears what is yet to come: “Will I even have work a year from now?”

For now, both artists are throwing themselves into the legal fight — a fight that centers on preserving what makes people human, says McKernan, whose Instagram profile reads: “Advocating for human artists.”

“I mean, that’s what makes me want to be alive,” says the artist, referring to the process of artistic creation. The battle is worth fighting “because that’s what being human is to me.”

—

O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

AI project imagines adult faces of children who disappeared during Argentina’s military dictatorship


BY ALMUDENA CALATRAVA
September 3, 2023

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — If a baby was taken from their parents four decades ago during Argentina’s military dictatorship, what would that person look like today?

Argentine publicist Santiago Barros has been trying to answer that question using artificial intelligence to create images of what the children of parents who disappeared during the dictatorship might look like as adults.

Almost every day, Barros uploads these images to an Instagram account called iabuelas, which is a portmanteau in Spanish for artificial intelligence, or IA, and grandmother, or abuela — taken from the well-known activist group Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo that searches for missing children.

“We have seen the photos of most of the disappeared, but we don’t have photos of their children, of those children who were stolen,” Barros told The Associated Press. “It struck me that these people did not have a face.”

During Argentina’s bloody dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, military officials carried out the systematic theft of babies from political dissidents who were detained or often executed and disposed of without a trace. The babies were often raised by families linked to the dictatorship, or those ideologically aligned with it, as if they were their own.

Using an app called Midjourney, Barros combines photos of the disappeared fathers and mothers from the public archive of the Grandmothers website, creating images of what the faces of their children might look like as adults today. For each combination, the app shows two female and two male possibilities. Barros then chooses the image of each gender that seems most realistic.

The project does not intend to replace efforts headed by the Grandmothers group of identifying grandchildren through DNA testing. Instead, Barros says, the goal is to stir the conscience of those over 46 who may have doubts about their origin and to serve as a reminder of the more than four decades the grandmothers have spent trying to locate these children.

The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo estimates around 500 children were snatched from their parents during the dictatorship. The group has located 133 grandchildren through genetic analysis.

The group appreciates Barros’ initiative as a way to raise awareness about the children who were stolen or kidnapped during the dictatorship. But they warn that the only infallible tool to link these people with their families of origin is DNA testing that continues to be carried out by the National Genetic Data Bank, whose creation they promoted in 1987.

In addition to working with photos from the Grandmothers’ archives, Barros uses photographic material provided by interested parties.

In some cases, those who have accessed iabuelas have noticed in the images a tendency towards standardization, raising questions about their approximation to reality. But in others, families searching for a lost relative have been shocked by the resemblance they found in those faces to blood relatives.

Such was the case for Matías Ayastuy, who contacted Barros and provided him with photos of his disappeared parents to see what a possible brother or sister would look like. His mother, Marta Bugnone, was kidnapped in 1977 when she was pregnant. By combining the image of her and that of his father, Jorge Ayastuy, the AI tool was able to come up with some impressive results.

“A lot of people see the masculine image as similar to me. But what generated something very, very strong for me was the feminine one. I found a very striking resemblance to a cousin of mine,” Ayastuy said.

In the month since Barros’ initiative launched, there have not yet been any known cases of an adult seeing themselves as similar to one of his images and then starting a formal process of identification.

All the images of the disappeared parents and their possible children are uploaded to the Instagram account with a note specifying that iabuelas is an “unofficial artistic project” and that results generated by artificial intelligence can be inaccurate.

Pedro Sandoval, a grandson who was identified in 2006, embraced Barros’ initiative at first, but later decided it was imperfect because it seems to rely too much on “standardized patterns” of people with European features. His mother, Liliana Fontana, and his father, Pedro Sandoval, are among the 30,000 missing persons counted by humanitarian organizations.

Barros acknowledged the app might be skewed, but noted that many of the disappeared people had European ancestors, in a country with strong European immigration.

As for the grandmothers, they don’t want the AI campaign to create false expectations for those who find similarities with the generated images, so they have urged it to be taken with a grain of salt.

“It is a campaign that shows simulations about possible faces of sons and daughters of the disappeared, but we know that people are much more than 50 percent of each of their parents and that foreign applications are set with genotypes of their populations,” the group said in a statement at the end of July. “Therefore, the results are not accurate.”
___

Associated Press video journalist Victor Caivano contributed to this report.

Son stolen at birth hugs Chilean mother for first time in 42 years

After 42 years of not knowing the other existed, a U.S. veteran recently got to hug his Chilean birth mother for the first time months into a journey to reunite with his lost relatives and uncover the mysteries of his counterfeit adoption. (Aug. 25)

 (AP Video: Nathan Ellgren)Videos

BY NATHAN ELLGREN
August 28, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — “Hola, mamá.”

What seems like an unremarkable greeting between mother and son was in this case anything but.

Forty-two years ago, hospital workers took María Angélica González’s son from her arms right after birth and later told her he had died. Now, she was meeting him face-to-face at her home in Valdivia, Chile.

“I love you very much,” Jimmy Lippert Thyden told his mother in Spanish as they embraced amid tears.

“It knocked the wind out of me. ... I was suffocated by the gravity of this moment,” Thyden told The Associated Press in a video call after the reunion. “How do you hug someone in a way that makes up for 42 years of hugs?”

This undated image provided by Jimmy Thyden shows Thyden as a child with cat Rusty. Now 42, Thyden got to embrace his birth mother for the first time during a long-awaited family reunion in Valdivia, Chile in August 2023. (Jimmy Thyden via AP)

His journey to find the birth family he never knew began in April after he read news stories about Chilean-born adoptees who had been reunited with their birth relatives with the help of a Chilean nonprofit Nos Buscamos.

The organization found that Thyden had been born prematurely at a hospital in Santiago, Chile’s capital, and placed in an incubator. González was told to leave the hospital, but when she returned to get her baby, she was told he had died and his body had been disposed of, according to the case file, which Thyden summarized to the AP.

“The paperwork I have for my adoption tells me I have no living relatives. And I learned in the last few months that I have a mama and I have four brothers and a sister,” Thyden said in the interview from Ashburn, Virginia, where he works as a criminal defense attorney representing “people who look like me” who cannot afford a lawyer.

He said his was a case of “counterfeit adoption.”

In this image provided by Constanza Del Rio/Nos Buscamos, Jimmy Thyden, left, holds hands with Maria Angelica Gonzalez, his Chilean birth mother, as they meet in Valdivia, Chile on Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023, for the first time.
In this image provided by Constanza Del Rio/Nos Buscamos, Jimmy Thyden, right, hugs his brother Pablo Leiva Gonzalez as Maria Angelica Gonzalez, his Chilean birth mother, left, looks on in Valdivia, Chile on Aug. 17, 2023.

Nos Buscamos estimates tens of thousands of babies were taken from Chilean families in the 1970s and 1980s, based on a report from the Investigations Police of Chile which reviewed the paper passports of Chilean children who left the country and never came back.

“The real story was these kids were stolen from poor families, poor women that didn’t know. They didn’t know how to defend themselves,” said Constanza del Río, founder and director and Nos Buscamos.

The child-trafficking coincided with many other human rights violations that took place during the 17-year reign of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who on Sept. 11, 1973, led a Chilean coup to overthrow Marxist President Salvador Allende. During the dictatorship, at least 3,095 people were killed, according to government figures, and tens of thousands more were tortured or jailed for political reasons.

This undated image provided by Jimmy Thyden shows Thyden as a child. Now 42, Thyden got to embrace his birth mother for the first time during a long-awaited family reunion in Valdivia, Chile in August 2023. (Jimmy Thyden via AP)

Over the past nine years, Nos Buscamos has orchestrated more than 450 reunions between adoptees and their birth families, del Río said.

Other nonprofit organizations are doing similar work, including Hijos y Madres del Silencio in Chile and Connecting Roots in the United States.

Nos Buscamos has been partnering for two years with genealogy platform MyHeritage, which provides free at-home DNA testing kits for distribution to Chilean adoptees and suspected victims of child trafficking in Chile.

Thyden’s DNA test confirmed that he was 100% Chilean and matched him to a first cousin who also uses the MyHeritage platform.

Thyden sent the cousin his adoption papers, which included an address for his birth mother and a very common name in Chile: María Angélica González.

It turns out his cousin had a María Angélica González on their mother’s side and helped him make the connection.

But González wouldn’t take his phone calls until he texted her a photo of his wife and daughters.

“Then just the dam broke,” said Thyden, who sent more photos of the American family who adopted him, his time in the U.S. Marines, his wedding, and many other memorable life moments.

“I was trying to bookend 42 years of a life taken from her. Taken from us both,” he said.

He traveled to Chile with his wife, Johannah, and their two daughters, Ebba Joy, 8, and Betty Grace, 5, to meet his newly discovered family.

Stepping into his mother’s home, Thyden was greeted with 42 colorful balloons, each one signifying a year of lost time with his Chilean family.

“There is an empowerment in popping those balloons, empowerment in being there with your family to take inventory of all that was lost,” he said.

In this image provided by Constanza Del Rio/Nos Buscamos, Jimmy Thyden, right, sits with Maria Angelica Gonzalez, his Chilean birth mother, as they meet for the first time in Valdivia, Chile on Aug. 17, 2023. (Constanza Del Rio/Nos Buscamos via AP)

Thyden recalls his birth mother’s response to hearing from him: “Mijo (son) you have no idea the oceans I’ve cried for you. How many nights I’ve laid awake praying that God let me live long enough to learn what happened to you.”

González declined to be interviewed for this story.

Thyden, along with his wife and daughters visited the Santiago zoo where his American family first took him after the adoption. This time their tour guide was his biological sister.

Back at González’s home, Thyden realized that he and his mother share a love of cooking.

“My hands are in the same dough as my mama,” he said as they made fried empanadas together. He pledged to keep using the family recipe to stay connected with his family and his culture.

Thyden said his adoptive parents are supportive of his journey to reunite with his lost relatives, but were “unwitting victims” of a far-reaching illegal adoption network and are wrestling with the realities of the situation.

“My parents wanted a family but they never wanted it like this,” he said. “Not at the extortion of another, the robbing of another.”

Through a spokesperson, his parents declined comment.

While Thyden was successfully reunited with his birth family, he recognizes that reunification might not go as well for other adoptees.

“It could have been a much worse story,” he said. “There are people who find out some really unfortunate details about their origin.”

While in Chile, Thyden and del Río met with one of seven investigators working to address thousands of counterfeit adoption cases like his own.

“We don’t want money, we just want the human recognition that this horrible thing happened in Chile and the compromise that this is not going to continue happening in the future,” del Río said. “We are trying to make a difference. Not only with Jimmy and his family but we want to do it, the change, in the country.”

Thyden also met with Juan Gabriel Valdés, the Chilean ambassador to the United States, to seek government recognition of the pervasiveness of the adoption scheme.

He said there was no mechanism, financial or otherwise, to assist Chilean adoptees in their efforts to visit their home country. He said he sold a truck to pay for his family’s plane tickets and other expenses.

“People need to be able to decide ... what their name is going to be, where their citizenship is going to be. They should have access to both,” he said. “They should have all the rights and privileges of a Chilean citizen because this is a thing that happened to them, not that they chose.”

The Chilean Embassy in Washington did not return a request for comment.

Japan’s Sogo & Seibu department stores are being sold to a US fund as 900 workers go on strike


People who support a strike called by a union representing workers at Sogo & Seibu Co., shout slogans in front of the flagship Seibu Ikebukuro department store in Tokyo Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023. Labor union members of Japanese department store operator Sogo & Seibu stage a rare strike at its flagship store in Tokyo over job security concerns, as its parent company plans to sell the chain to a U.S. fund despite the union’s opposition. The banners read “Sogo&Seibu, Strike solidarity, “bottom left, and “President Isaka, Resignation!, " bottom right. (Kyodo News via AP)
People who support a strike called by a union representing workers at Sogo & Seibu Co., shout slogans in front of the flagship Seibu Ikebukuro department store in Tokyo Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023. Labor union members of Japanese department store operator Sogo & Seibu stage a rare strike at its flagship store in Tokyo over job security concerns, as its parent company plans to sell the chain to a U.S. fund despite the union’s opposition. The banners read “Sogo&Seibu, Strike solidarity, “bottom left, and “President Isaka, Resignation!, " bottom right. (Kyodo News via AP)

Labor union members of Japanese department store operator Sogo & Seibu march during a strike in Tokyo Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023. They stage a rare strike at its flagship store in Tokyo over job security concerns, as its parent company plans to sell the chain to a U.S. fund despite the union’s opposition. The banners read “On strike,” red, “Sogo & Seibu Labor Union,” blue. (Kyodo News via AP)

BY YURI KAGEYAMA
August 31, 2023

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese retailer Seven & i Holdings Co. is selling department store chain Sogo & Seibu Co. to a U.S. investment fund, even as the labor union went on strike ahead of the announcement Thursday.

The transfer to Fortress Investment Group will be completed Friday, according to Seven & i Holdings. The decision came at a board of directors meeting. The proposed sales price is 220 billion yen ($1.5 billion) but won’t be final until the transfer’s completion set for Friday.

Separately, some of Sogo & Seibu’s debts, or nearly 92 billion yen ($630 million), will be forgiven, the company said in a statement.


Some 900 striking employees were marching, holding signs and handing out leaflets on the streets near the main Seibu department store in Tokyo, where the shutters were closed.

Disorderly strikes and protests are rare in Japan, and the strikers apologized on camera in Japanese TV news reports, for any inconvenience they may be causing the public. Some train strikes have been largely symbolic because the trains still run, given that so many urban workers depend on public transport to get to and from work.

The Seibu deal was postponed since it was first announced in November because of such opposition.

“We deeply apologize to all stakeholders including customers, local people, business partners and employees for the worries and inconvenience caused by the strike conducted by the Sogo & Seibu Labor Union today. Sogo & Seibu will continue collective bargaining and discussions with the Sogo & Seibu Labor Union, and the Company will also continue to provide support and cooperate to an appropriate extent on such discussions,” Seven & i Holdings said in a statement.

Japanese media reports said Yodobashi Camera Co., an electronics chain related to Fortress, may set up in the department store locations.

The Seibu & Sogo retailers total 10 outlets nationwide. Although the demise of department stores has hit Japan far later than in some other nations, like the U.S., their clout has been waning with the advent of online shopping.

Seven & i Holdings also has under its wing the 7-11 convenience store chain, as well as Ito-Yokado, a grocery chain that remains relatively popular, and Loft, which sells stationery and home knickknacks.

The company said it will leverage its strength in convenience stores as well as food stores to reshape its business.

New York-based Fortress Investment Group LLC was founded in 1998 and manages about $44.7 billion of assets.

Japan marks 100 years since the devastating Great Kanto Quake, with disaster drills nationwide

 

 Japan marked the centennial of the 1923 Great Kanto Quake that killed more than 100,000. 

People displaced after an earthquake carry their belongings as they crowd at a square in front of Ueno station in Tokyo on Sept. 1, 1923. 

Smoke rises after an earthquake in Tokyo on Sept. 1, 1923.
Smoke rises over the damaged buildings after an earthquake in Tokyo on Sept. 1, 1923. 

This undated photo shows the aftermath of an earthquake which occurred in September 1923.

BY MARI YAMAGUCHI
September 1, 2023

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida staged a televised disaster drill Friday based on a fictional earthquake in the capital region, as his country marked the centennial of the real-life 1923 Great Kanto Quake that killed more than 100,000 people.

The 7.9-magnitude earthquake that struck the Sagamihara area southwest of Tokyo on Sept. 1, 1923, just before noon triggered a widespread inferno in the region, causing most of the victims to perish in the fire. The blaze destroyed nearly 300,000 Japanese paper-and-wood homes as the country suffered major social and economic damage just as it was seeking to modernize.

In the aftermath, thousands of ethnic Koreans were killed as police and others responded to baseless rumors that Koreans were poisoning wells. The rampage has never fully been acknowledged by the government

Japanese officials are worried another devastating tremblor could happen again. On Friday, the drill simulated the aftermath of a fictional 7.3-magnitude tremblor in central Tokyo at 7 a.m. Kishida and his Cabinet ministers, wearing matching light-blue uniforms, walked to the prime minister’s office for an emergency response meeting to discuss initial measures with hypothetically hard-hit Sagamihara city, the 1923 epicenter.

Japan, which sits on the so-called Pacific “ring of fire,” is one of most quake-prone countries in the world. A magnitude 9.0 quake on March, 11, 2011, off Japan’s northeastern coast, triggered a massive tsunami, killed more than 18,000 and triggered a nuclear diaster.

On Friday, earthquake drills were being conducted at municipalities and schools around the country. At elementary schools, children squatted under desks to protect their heads from falling objects.

Kishida was to join a joint earthquake drill hosted by Sagamihara and joined by eight cities incluing Tokyo.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters that Sept. 1 this year represents more than the centennial of the Great Kanto Quake. It serves as a lesson to building structures with more resillience to quakes and fire.

“We will not let the memories of the Great Kanto Quake weather away and (will) do our utmost to take comprehensive measures” as the country braces for another big one in Tokyo and elsewhere, Matsuno said.

The quake came 13 years after Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula began in 1910. Many Koreans, Chinese and Japanese mistaken as Korean, as well as Japanese communists, labor activists and anarchists, were killed by police and paramilitary. There is no official number, and historians say as many as around 6,000 of them were murdered.

At a memorial service held by Korean residents and human rights groups at a monument dedicated to the massacre victims, attendants observed a moment of silence with the sound of a bell at 11:58 a.m., the time the 1923 quake struck. Past Tokyo governors used to send a message of condolences to the ceremony, but the tradition ended in 2017, a year after governor Yuriko Koike took office.

Koike, who attended a drill elsewhere in Tokyo, did not show up at an official annual memorial for quake victims at a hall in the hard-hit Sumida region in downtown Tokyo. She offered condolences to all victims of the quake in a message read by her aide.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, second left, speaks during a disaster drill at his office in Tokyo Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. 

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, center, leaves his official residence in Tokyo as the government holds a disaster drill Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. 

A bereaved relative visits Tokyo Metropolitan Memorial Hall, which enshrines the remains of the victims of the Great Kanto Quake and air raid on Tokyo, in Tokyo Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. On Friday, Japan marked the centennial of the 1923 Great Kanto Quake that killed more than 100,000. Words on a lantern read “Memorial,” and on a banner read “Great earthquake 100 years.” 

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks during a disaster drill at his office in Tokyo Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. 

Japan’s Crown Prince Akishino, left, and Crown Princess Kiko attend a memorial service at Tokyo Metropolitan Memorial Hall, which enshrines the remains of the victims of the Great Kanto Quake and air raid on Tokyo, in Tokyo Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. 

Members of a local fire company stand at attention in front of Tokyo Metropolitan Memorial Hall, which enshrines the remains of the victims of the Great Kanto Quake and air raid on Tokyo, in Tokyo Friday, Sept. 1, 2023.


A memorial service is held at Tokyo Metropolitan Memorial Hall, which enshrines the remains of the victims of the Great Kanto Quake and air raid on Tokyo, in Tokyo Friday, Sept. 1, 2023. 

(Kyodo News via AP)

JESUIT

Pope, quoting Buddha, urges religious dialogue to fight fundamentalism

Pope Francis and Mongolia's Catholics under one roof at papal Mass

2023/09/03


By Philip Pullella

ULAANBAATAR (Reuters) -In an unprecedented event, Pope Francis and just about the entire Catholic population of a country were in the same room when he presided at a Mass in Mongolia's capital on Sunday.

The Mass in Ulaanbaatar's Steppe Arena was the religious highlight of the pope's trip to visit the Catholic community of just 1,450. Most of Mongolia's population of about 3.3 million are Buddhists.

Most of Mongolia's nine parishes are in the capital, but one in a remote area has only about 30 members and Church officials said they expected everyone who could make it to attend.

Many Mongolians still live a nomadic tradition to graze their animals and in his homily, the pope used the image to make his point.

"All of us are God's nomads, pilgrims in search of happiness, wayfarers thirsting for love," he said, adding that the Christian faith quenched that thirst.

Several Buddhist monks in their saffron robes attended the Mass, which was conducted in Mongolian, English and Italian.

Francis, who leaves for Rome on Monday after inaugurating a Church charity and health centre, began his day at an inter-religious service where he called himself one of the "humble heirs" of ancient schools of wisdom and quoted the Buddha.

There, sharing a theatre stage with a dozen other religious representatives, he urged all religions to live in harmony and shun ideological fundamentalism that foments violence.

Since he started the trip, Francis has praised religious freedom in Mongolia. The landlocked country borders China, which human rights groups say represses religious freedom.

In unscripted comments at the end of the Mass, the pope sent greetings to China, making another overture to the communist country to ease restrictions on religion.

'ANCIENT SCHOOLS OF WISDOM'

The inter-religious meeting was attended by leaders representing Mongolian Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, evangelical and Orthodox Christians, Mormons, Hindus, Shintos, Bahais and shamans.

"Brothers and sisters, today we are meeting together as the humble heirs of ancient schools of wisdom. In our encounter with one another, we want to share the great treasure we have received, for the sake of enriching a humanity so often led astray on its journey by the myopic pursuit of profit and material comfort," he said.

Francis, 86, quoted from a writings of the Buddha that says "the wise man rejoices in giving", noting it was similar to Jesus' saying "It is more blessed to give than to receive".

Conservative Catholics, such as Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan, have lambasted the pope for attending such gatherings, calling them "a supermarket of religions" that diminishes the status of the Catholic Church.

But the pope repeated that he put great importance in "ecumenical, inter-religious and cultural dialogue". He said dialogue did not mean "to gloss over difference" but to seek understanding and enrichment.

He condemned "narrowness, unilateral imposition, fundamentalism and ideological constraint", saying they destroy fraternity, fuel tensions and compromise peace.

"There can be no mixing, then, of religious beliefs and violence, of holiness and oppression, of religious traditions and sectarianism," Francis said.

"This is a very important, meaningful meeting," said one of the attendees, Buddhist Monk Altankhuu Tserenjav of the Zuun Khuree Dashichoiling Monastery in Ulaanbaatar.

"He is a religious leader of the world, for us like a Dalai Lama, so I really respect and welcome him," he said.

Mongolia has seen a revival of Tibetan Buddhism since the collapse of the Soviet-backed Communist government in 1990, and the Dalai Lama is regarded as its main spiritual leader.

However, China has repeatedly put pressure on Mongolia not to allow the 88-year-old exiled Tibetan leader to visit, branding him a dangerous separatist.

(Reporting by Philip PullellaEditing by Lincoln Feast, Edwina Gibbs, William Mallard and Frances Kerry)









© Reuters

GENGIS KHAN HAD SLAVES
Pope starts Mongolia visit by praising the country’s religious freedom dating back to Genghis Khan


BY NICOLE WINFIELD AND SARUUL ENKHBOLD
September 2, 2023

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia (AP) — Pope Francis on Saturday praised Mongolia’s tradition of religious freedom dating to the times of its founder, Genghis Khan, as he opened the first-ever papal visit to the Asian nation with a word of encouragement to its tiny Catholic flock.

Francis met with President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh inside a traditional Mongolian ger, or round yurt, set up inside the state palace and wrote a message in the guest book that he was visiting “a country young and ancient, modern and rich of tradition,” as a pilgrim of peace.

Francis is in Mongolia to minister to one of the world’s newest and smallest Catholic communities — around 1,450 Mongolians are Catholic — and make a diplomatic foray into a region where the Holy See has long had troubled relations, with Russia to the north and China to the south.

While Christianity has been present in the region for hundreds of years, the Catholic Church has only had a sanctioned presence in Mongolia since 1992, after the country abandoned its Soviet-allied communist government and enshrined religious freedom in its constitution.








While Catholicism is tolerated and legal, foreign missionaries working here lament that the government restricts their numbers and treats the church as a nongovernmental organization — limitations that the Holy See is hoping will be lifted with a comprehensive bilateral agreement.

In his remarks, Francis praised Mongolia’s tradition of religious liberty, noting that such tolerance existed even during the period of the Mongol Empire’s vast expansion over much of the world. At its height, the empire stretched as far west as Hungary to become the largest contiguous land empire in world history.

Nowadays, the landlocked nation sandwiched between Russia and China is overwhelmingly Buddhist, with traditional links to Tibet’s leading lamas, including the Dalai Lama.

“The fact that the empire could embrace such distant and varied lands over the centuries bears witness to the remarkable ability of your ancestors to acknowledge the outstanding qualities of the peoples present in its immense territory and to put those qualities at the service of a common development,” Francis told the president, diplomats and cultural leaders in remarks at the state palace.

“This model should be valued and reproposed in our own day,” he said.

Referring to the 13th-century period of relative political stability within the Mongol Empire that allowed trade and travel to flourish, Francis called for such a period of fraternity and peace to take root today and spread peace throughout the region.

“May heaven grant that today, on this earth devastated by countless conflicts, there be a renewal, respectful of international laws, of the condition of what was once the pax mongolica, that is the absence of conflicts,” he said.

Khurelsukh also referred to the “pax mongolica” in his remarks, saying that same spirit still guides Mongolia’s efforts to be a peaceful, multilateral player on the world stage.

“Achievements of pax mongolica have created the solid grounds for the development of mutual respect between different nations of the world, cherishing each other’s values and identities, enabling peaceful coexistence of various civilizations,” he said.

Later in the day, Francis met with bishops and the missionaries who have cultivated the Catholic faith here for the past three decades, presiding over a prayer in the ger-shaped St. Peter and Paul cathedral in the capital, Ulaanbaatar. On the altar sat a delicate wooden statue of the Madonna, which was found by a Mongolese woman in a landfill and now is a symbol of the church in the country.

As Francis entered and blessed the crowd with holy water, he was met with shouts of “Viva il Papa!” inside and out of the cathedral, where an estimated 2,000 people gathered.

Francis sought to encourage the missionaries, telling them not to be concerned by their “small numbers, limited successes or apparent irrelevance.” Rather, he urged them to be close to their Mongolian flocks, learn their language and love their culture.

“May you find refreshment, knowing that being little is not a problem but a resource,” he said. “God loves littleness, and through it he loves to accomplish great things.”

In the pews was one of the two Mongolese priests who have been ordained, the Rev. Peter Sanjaajav, who got a rousing applause from the crowd when he addressed Francis in Mongolian.

“Many thanks for coming to Mongolia, and for visiting our Church. Your visit makes us particularly happy,” he said.

Another Mongolian woman who converted, Rufina Chamingerel, told Francis she had spent 14 years learning her Catholic faith, to which she converted as a student. Addressing Francis in Italian, she acknowledged the Mongolian church is young and small.

“Our Church is in that phase typical of children who constantly ask their parents questions,” she said.

In his remarks to government authorities, Francis also praised Mongolia’s efforts to care for the environment. The vast, landlocked country, historically afflicted by weather extremes, is considered to be one of the countries most affected by climate change. The country has already experienced a 2.1-degree Celsius (3.8-degree Fahrenheit) increase in average temperatures over the past 70 years, and an estimated 77% of its land is degraded because of overgrazing and climate change, according to the U.N. Development Program.

Mongolia is set to host the 2026 U.N. conference on desertification and has launched a campaign to plant 1 billion trees across its vast steppes and mountains of grasslands

The pope, however, noted the need to combat “the insidious threat of corruption,” an apparent reference to a scandal over Mongolia’s trade with China over the alleged theft of 385,000 tons of coal. In December, hundreds of people braved freezing cold temperatures in the capital to protest the scandal.

“Corruption is the fruit of a utilitarian and unscrupulous mentality that has impoverished whole countries,” he said.

The Mongolian government has declared 2023 to be an “anti-corruption year” and says it is carrying out a five-part plan based on Transparency International, the global anti-graft watchdog that ranked Mongolia 116th last year in its corruption perceptions index.

Mongolians Catholic and not welcomed Francis’ visit, saying it was a sign of Mongolia’s prominence on the world stage.

“The visit of Roman pope is the proof that Mongolians are peace loving, mindful and spiritual nation,” said Chinbat Gantulga, a Mongolian engineer.“It also shows that Mongolia has a religious freedom, and respect of spiritual beliefs of anyone.”
___

Zhang Weiqun contributed to this report.
___

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

 

  

  

 

 

Swiss glacier watcher warns recent heat wave threatens severe melt again this year after record 2022
 

 

BY JAMEY KEATEN
 September 1, 2023

GENEVA (AP) — A top glacier watcher has warned that a warm early summer combined with a heat wave last week may have caused severe glacier melt in Switzerland, threatening to make 2023 its second-worst year for ice loss after a record thaw last year.

Matthias Huss of the GLAMOS glacier monitoring center said full data won’t be in until late September and a precipitous drop in temperatures and high-altitude snowfall in recent days could help stem any more damage.

But early signs based on readings from five sites and modeling results across Switzerland suggest considerable damage may already be done

“We can definitely say that we had very high melting in Switzerland and in Europe in general because the temperatures, they were extremely high for a long time — a more than one week heat wave,” Huss said in an interview this week.

Swiss meteorologists reported last week that the zero-degree Celsius level had risen to its highest altitude since recordings on it in Switzerland began nearly 70 years ago — meaning that all of the Alpine country’s mountains faced temperatures above freezing.

The late-summer heat wave was particularly harmful to glaciers this year because high temperatures earlier in the summer had already melted nearly all of the protective snow cover, which meant that “almost all glacier ice was kind of naked,” Huss said.

A blanket of white snow cover has a crucial effect in protecting glaciers by reflecting energy from sunlight back upward, a process known as the albedo effect.

Last year marked a historically punishing year for Switzerland’s estimated 1,400 glaciers — the largest count of any country in Europe, and a bellwether for the impacts of climate change

“We’re definitely not going to beat the records of last year ... but right now, it seems that we’re on track to be maybe the second-most negative year,” Huss said.

A combination of factors made for a near-perfect storm in 2022 including low wintertime snow cover, warm temperatures in early summer, greater heat later that season, and weather patterns that carried orange-colored dust from the Sahara Desert up to Switzerland — coloring the snow and ice.

A staggering 6% of glacier volume in Switzerland was lost in that single year.

“For comparison, we lost, on average, about 2% in the last decade, and already 2% is very high,” said Huss. “If you extrapolate that, that would tell you that in 50 years we have nothing left. If we lose 6% in one year, it’s even much more extreme.”

Strong melting and glacier disappearance in recent years has already caused Huss’ team to halt three of its 20 monitoring programs where detailed measurements are taken. This year, one was ended at the Saint Annafirn glacier, south of the central village of Andermatt, because measurements there were no longer meaningful, he said.

“The glacier is so small by now, and dangerous, because it has receded so much that there is a lot of rock fall,” he said.

With areas like the town of Zermatt, at the foot of the Matterhorn, hitting 31 degrees Celsius (88 Fahrenheit) last week, the impacts will continue to be felt.

“We can say it’s climate change that makes these years with very strong melting much more likely,” said Huss. “In the last decades, I would say that almost every year is kind of an extreme year.”