Kamala Harris says hip-hop is ‘the ultimate American art form*’ as she hosts a 50th anniversary party


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Vice President Kamala Harris is seen on a video monitor as she speaks at a 50th anniversary celebration of hip-hop at the Vice President’s residence, Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023, in Washington.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a 50th anniversary celebration of hip-hop at the Vice President’s residence, Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023, in Washington.

Comedian Deon Cole speaks during a 50th anniversary celebration of hip-hop at the Vice President’s residence, Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023, in Washington. 

Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of The Recording Academy, speaks during a 50th anniversary celebration of hip-hop at the Vice President’s residence, Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023, in Washington.

AP Photos/Manuel Balce Ceneta

 September 9, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday hosted a celebration of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary with appearances by some of the music genre’s pioneers and stars.

Common, Jeezy, MC Lyte and Roxanne Shante were among the hip-hop artists invited to join Harris for the party at the vice presidential residence.

Hip-hop’s 50th birthday has inspired a host of anniversary events this year. Many trace the genre’s creation to an Aug. 11, 1973, back-to-school party where 18-year-old Clive Campbell, also known as DJ Kool Herc, deejayed at a Bronx apartment building in New York City.

Harris said hip-hop is “the ultimate American art form” that “shapes every aspect of America’s popular culture.”

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“Hip-hop culture is American culture,” she told the crowd.

Hip-hop has grown into a global artform, becoming one of the world’s most influential cultural forces, an integral part of social and racial justice movements and a multibillion-dollar industry built on generations of rapping, emceeing, deejaying, breaking and graffiti.

Harris noted that Public Enemy rapper Chuck D has described rap as “Black America’s CNN.”

“It has always channeled the voices of the people. It tells the stories that don’t make the news,” she said before joining her husband, Doug Emhoff, to watch musicians’ performances.

Saturday’s celebration was a collaboration with Recording Academy’s Black Music Collective and Live Nation Urban.

“This is a hip-hop household!” Emhoff said.

* THAT WOULD BE JAZZ

TIFF

Vicky Krieps on the feminist Western ‘The Dead Don’t Hurt’ and how she leaves behind past roles


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Vicky Krieps poses for a portrait to promote the film " The Dead Don’t Hurt” during the Toronto International Film Festival, Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023, in Toronto. 

(Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

BY JAKE COYLE
September 9, 2023

TORONTO (AP) — Vicky Krieps noticed that while there’s plenty of instruction for getting into a role, there’s curiously little about getting out of one.

For Krieps, the disarmingly natural Luxembourgish actor of “Phantom Thread,”“Corsage” and “Bergman Island,” it’s not a small issue. It may even be the most important part of the process. If she’s still stuck the headspace of a character, she can’t keep moving forward.

After struggling in the aftermath of her breakthrough in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread,” in which she starred opposite Daniel Day-Lewis, Krieps found a solution. She could put a capstone on the character through music.

“I have to leave my characters in a peaceful way and say: Now she lives in song,” says Krieps.

Krieps, 39, has since followed every performance by writing a song for the character. She sings and plays acoustic guitar. She’s currently recording an album of those songs but she took a break to travel to the Toronto International Film Festival for the premiere of her latest film, “The Dead Don’t Hurt,” directed by Viggo Mortensen.

The film, Mortensen’s second and most accomplished directing effort, is a Western from a different, more feminist perspective. Mortensen plays a Danish immigrant named Holger who meets the French-Canadian Vivienne (Krieps) in San Francisco. They soon settle down in a corrupt Nevada town, but Holger is compelled to join the Union Army. Vivienne is left in their remote cabin, and is brutally raped while Holger is away.

Vivienne’s song, Krieps says, is sad and dark.

“It starts as a lullaby of a woman singing her child to sleep,” Krieps says, sipping tea in a hotel restaurant. “And it always breaks off when she says, ‘I can’t sleep. I can’t close my eyes.’ There’s the hope of him coming back. At the same time, this is something that’s been done to women over centuries.”

“The Dead Don’t Hurt,” one of the highlights among the films on sale in Toronto, received an interim agreement for promotion from the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Radio and Television Artists since it was an independent production and doesn’t yet have a distributor. Krieps is also to receive a tribute award at the festival.

The film is the latest in a naturally evolving project for Krieps of playing women throughout history who reject the social conventions of their times. In last year’s acclaimed “Corsage,” she played the much constricted, independently minded 19th century Austrian Empress Elisabeth. In the ’50s-set “Phantom Thread,” only her Alma is capable of countering a battle of wills with Day-Lewis’s fastidious couturier Reynolds Woodcock. In “The Dead Don’t Hurt,” Vivienne packs her bags to flee after the assault, then puts them down and resolves to stay.

“At one point you have to ask yourself: What are you living for? I do believe that something is changing for women and I’m part of this. I can tap into my grandmothers and great-grandmothers and also try to connect with who’s coming and who was before,” says Krieps. “I don’t really know why. I just know that’s how it feels. I think the dialogue is broken between men and women because women learned to hide the wound.”

Since 2017’s “Phantom Thread,” Krieps has emerged as one the movies’ most authentic, instinctive and defiant screen presences. It’s not an act, either. Krieps, who lives in Berlin with her partner and two children, is herself a force of stubborn independence.

She doesn’t like to rehearse. Every take she does differently. She’s willing, she says, to risk a scene being bad in order to make it real.

“And I believe inside: They can’t tell me what to do,” says Krieps, smiling. “I was working with Gabriel Garcia Bernal, and he was like, ‘I think this director really wants us to say the lines.’ And I said, ‘I don’t care. They cannot tell me what to do.’ And he looked at me rather impressed.

“For me, art is like a wild creature,” she adds. “To tame it, you pretend that you’re not seeing it. But, of course, I want it to come to me so badly.”

This rebellious streak in Krieps is clearly present in other parts of her life. She describes being resentful of a streaming service that, after she had played Hitchcock, would recommend only things like “Tomb Raider.”

“You’re trying to (expletive) influence me!” she says. “And by chance, it’s made by you as well. What a coincidence! That’s why the system is (expletive). It’s hiding good cinema.”

Krieps, a deeply anti-algorithm actor, has sensed that her progress in the film industry, too, could become its own construct. She has, she says, tried to work frequently with first or second-time directors. She’s turned down many more Hollywood offers than she’s accepted.

“If I get too comfortable, then I might be led into superficial things as well,” Krieps says. “As an actor, you could be easily led into some life that’s not your life. You start thinking of who you are as an actor. ‘Oh, I’m this guy,’ or ‘I’m this woman. That’s what they like me for.’ All this stuff and the gifts and the parties, the ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you too!’ It’s like foam. It goes up and up and then there’s nothing left that’s actually real.”
___

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

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U$

Schools are cutting advisers and tutors as COVID aid money dries up. Students are still struggling

BY HANNAH DELLINGER, MATT BARNUM OF CHALKBEAT AND COLLIN BINKLEY OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

September 5, 2023

DETROIT (AP) — Davion Williams wants to go to college. A counselor at his Detroit charter school last year helped him visualize that goal, but he knows he’ll need more help to navigate the application process.

So he was discouraged to learn the high school where he just began his sophomore year had laid off its college transition adviser – a staff member who provided extra help coordinating financial aid applications, transcript requests, campus visits and more.

The advisers had been hired at 19 schools with federal pandemic relief money. In June, when Detroit’s budget was finalized, their jobs were among nearly 300 that were eliminated.

“Not being able to do it at this school is kind of disappointing,” Williams said in August at a back-to-school event at Mumford High School.

An unprecedented infusion of aid money the U.S. government provided to schools during the pandemic has begun to dwindle. Like Williams’ school, some districts already are winding down programming like expanded summer school and after-school tutoring. Some teachers and support staff brought on to help kids through the crisis are being let go.

The relief money, totaling roughly $190 billion, was meant to help schools address needs arising from COVID-19, including making up for learning loss during the pandemic. But the latest national data shows large swaths of American students remain behind academically compared with where they would have been if not for the pandemic.

Montgomery County schools, the largest district in Maryland, is reducing or eliminating tutoring, summer school, and other programs that were covered by federal pandemic aid. Facing a budget gap, the district opted for those cuts instead of increasing class sizes, said Robert Reilly, associate superintendent of finance. The district will focus instead on providing math and reading support in the classroom, he said.

But among parents, there’s a sense that there remains “a lot of work to be done” to help students catch up, said Laura Mitchell, a vice president of a districtwide parent-teacher council.

Mitchell, whose granddaughter attends high school in the district, said tutoring has been a blessing for struggling students. The district’s cuts will scale back tutoring by more than half this year.

“If we take that away, who’s going to help those who are falling behind?” she said.

Districts have through September 2024 to earmark the last of the money provided by Congress in three COVID relief packages. Some schools have already started pulling back programming to soften the blow, and the next budget year is likely to be even more painful, with the arrival of what some describe as a “funding cliff.”

In a June survey of hundreds of school system leaders by AASA, The School Superintendents Association, half said they would need to decrease staffing of specialists, such as tutors and reading coaches, for the new school year. Half also said they were cutting summer-learning programs.

As the spending deadline looms, the scope of the cuts is not yet clear. The impact in each district will depend on how school officials have planned for the aid’s end and how much money they receive from other sources.

State funding for education across the country has been generous of late. But states may soon face their own budget challenges: They also received temporary federal aid that is running out.

Many school officials are bracing for the budget hit to come. In Shreveport, Louisiana, officials say next year they might have to cut some of the 50 math teachers they added to double up on math instruction for middle schoolers.

Schools there added the teachers after identifying deep learning gaps in middle school math, and there’s evidence it helped, with a 4-point increase in math scores, officials say. But at a cost of $4 million, the program will be in jeopardy.

“Our money practically is gone,” Superintendent T. Lamar Goree said.

Some researchers have questioned whether the money was sufficient or sustained enough to address the deep declines in learning. But with a recent deal limiting federal spending increases in education, more money from Congress will not be forthcoming.

Meanwhile, some lawmakers and commentators have pointed to anemic academic recovery to suggest schools didn’t spend the COVID relief money wisely in the first place.

Experts district officials had wide discretion over how to spend the money, and their decisions have varied widely, from HVAC upgrades to professional development. “Some of the spending was very wise, and some of it looks, in hindsight, to have been somewhat foolish,” said Lori Taylor, an education finance researcher at Texas A&M University.

To date, there is limited research on whether the federal money has helped address learning loss. One recent study of eight districts’ summer school programs found no impact on reading scores but improvements in math. Since only a fraction of students in each district attended, this made only a small contribution to learning recovery, though.

School officials insist the money has made a difference.

“I wonder what the counterfactual would have been if we didn’t have the money,” said Adriana Publico, the project manager for COVID relief funds at Washoe County School District in Reno, Nevada. “Would students have been even worse off? I think so.“

The Washoe system has cut hours for after-school tutoring in half this year and eliminated teacher coaches from many elementary schools. The district just finished a dramatically expanded summer school program, but officials aren’t sure if they’ll be able to afford to continue it next summer.

Some school systems are trying to maintain COVID-era additions. In Kansas City, Missouri, district officials say they’re planning to keep a number of the positions that were added with federal money, including intervention teachers and clinicians who work with students who have experienced trauma. The district will be able to do so, said CFO Erin Thompson, because of higher property tax revenue.

“This might not be as bad as what we thought,” she said. “We’re optimistic at this point.”

In Detroit, which received a windfall of federal COVID money, district officials say they budgeted carefully to avoid steep cuts when the money runs out. This included earmarking more than half of their federal relief — some $700 million — for one-time building renovations to aging campuses across the city.

But ultimately, officials said some reductions were necessary. Expanded summer and after-school programs have been phased out, in addition to the hundreds of staff positions, like the college advisers.

“In an ideal world, I would rather have college transition advisers,” said Superintendent Nikolai Vitti. “But it’s another example of making hard decisions.”
___

Barnum reported from New York and Binkley reported from Washington, D.C.
___

The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.


by Taboola You May Like

Artificial intelligence technology behind ChatGPT was built in Iowa — with a lot of water


Traffic on Interstate 35 passes a Microsoft data center, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2023, in West Des Moines, Iowa. Microsoft has been amassing a cluster of data centers to power its cloud computing services for more than a decade. Its fourth and fifth data centers in the city are due to open later this year. 

AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

A Microsoft data center is seen near Interstate 35, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2023, in West Des Moines, Iowa. Microsoft has been amassing a cluster of data centers to power its cloud computing services for more than a decade. Its fourth and fifth data centers in the city are due to open later this year.

 (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

BY MATT O’BRIEN AND HANNAH FINGERHUT
, September 9, 2023


DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The cost of building an artificial intelligence product like ChatGPT can be hard to measure.

But one thing Microsoft-backed OpenAI needed for its technology was plenty of water, pulled from the watershed of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers in central Iowa to cool a powerful supercomputer as it helped teach its AI systems how to mimic human writing.

As they race to capitalize on a craze for generative AI, leading tech developers including Microsoft, OpenAI and Google have acknowledged that growing demand for their AI tools carries hefty costs, from expensive semiconductors to an increase in water consumption.

But they’re often secretive about the specifics. Few people in Iowa knew about its status as a birthplace of OpenAI’s most advanced large language model, GPT-4, before a top Microsoft executive said in a speech it “was literally made next to cornfields west of Des Moines.”

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Building a large language model requires analyzing patterns across a huge trove of human-written text. All of that computing takes a lot of electricity and generates a lot of heat. To keep it cool on hot days, data centers need to pump in water — often to a cooling tower outside its warehouse-sized buildings.

In its latest environmental report, Microsoft disclosed that its global water consumption spiked 34% from 2021 to 2022 (to nearly 1.7 billion gallons, or more than 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools), a sharp increase compared to previous years that outside researchers tie to its AI research.

“It’s fair to say the majority of the growth is due to AI,” including “its heavy investment in generative AI and partnership with OpenAI,” said Shaolei Ren, a researcher at the University of California, Riverside who has been trying to calculate the environmental impact of generative AI products such as ChatGPT.

In a paper due to be published later this year, Ren’s team estimates ChatGPT gulps up 500 milliliters of water (close to what’s in a 16-ounce water bottle) every time you ask it a series of between 5 to 50 prompts or questions. The range varies depending on where its servers are located and the season. The estimate includes indirect water usage that the companies don’t measure — such as to cool power plants that supply the data centers with electricity.

“Most people are not aware of the resource usage underlying ChatGPT,” Ren said. “If you’re not aware of the resource usage, then there’s no way that we can help conserve the resources.”

Google reported a 20% growth in water use in the same period, which Ren also largely attributes to its AI work. Google’s spike wasn’t uniform -- it was steady in Oregon where its water use has attracted public attention, while doubling outside Las Vegas. It was also thirsty in Iowa, drawing more potable water to its Council Bluffs data centers than anywhere else.

In response to questions from The Associated Press, Microsoft said in a statement this week that it is investing in research to measure AI’s energy and carbon footprint “while working on ways to make large systems more efficient, in both training and application.”

“We will continue to monitor our emissions, accelerate progress while increasing our use of clean energy to power data centers, purchasing renewable energy, and other efforts to meet our sustainability goals of being carbon negative, water positive and zero waste by 2030,” the company’s statement said.

OpenAI echoed those comments in its own statement Friday, saying it’s giving “considerable thought” to the best use of computing power.

“We recognize training large models can be energy and water-intensive” and work to improve efficiencies, it said.

Microsoft made its first $1 billion investment in San Francisco-based OpenAI in 2019, more than two years before the startup introduced ChatGPT and sparked worldwide fascination with AI advancements. As part of the deal, the software giant would supply computing power needed to train the AI models.

To do at least some of that work, the two companies looked to West Des Moines, Iowa, a city of 68,000 people where Microsoft has been amassing data centers to power its cloud computing services for more than a decade. Its fourth and fifth data centers are due to open there later this year.

“They’re building them as fast as they can,” said Steve Gaer, who was the city’s mayor when Microsoft came to town. Gaer said the company was attracted to the city’s commitment to building public infrastructure and contributed a “staggering” sum of money through tax payments that support that investment.

“But, you know, they were pretty secretive on what they’re doing out there,” he added.

Microsoft first said it was developing one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers for OpenAI in 2020, declining to reveal its location to AP at the time but describing it as a “single system” with more than 285,000 cores of conventional semiconductors, and 10,000 graphics processors — a kind of chip that’s become crucial to AI workloads.

Experts have said it can make sense to “pretrain” an AI model at a single location because of the large amounts of data that need to be transferred between computing cores.

It wasn’t until late May that Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, disclosed that it had built its “advanced AI supercomputing data center” in Iowa, exclusively to enable OpenAI to train what has become its fourth-generation model, GPT-4. The model now powers premium versions of ChatGPT and some of Microsoft’s own products and has accelerated a debate about containing AI’s societal risks.

“It was made by these extraordinary engineers in California, but it was really made in Iowa,” Smith said.

In some ways, West Des Moines is a relatively efficient place to train a powerful AI system, especially compared to Microsoft’s data centers in Arizona that consume far more water for the same computing demand.

“So if you are developing AI models within Microsoft, then you should schedule your training in Iowa instead of in Arizona,” Ren said. “In terms of training, there’s no difference. In terms of water consumption or energy consumption, there’s a big difference.”

For much of the year, Iowa’s weather is cool enough for Microsoft to use outside air to keep the supercomputer running properly and vent heat out of the building. Only when the temperature exceeds 29.3 degrees Celsius (about 85 degrees Fahrenheit) does it withdraw water, the company has said in a public disclosure.

That can still be a lot of water, especially in the summer. In July 2022, the month before OpenAI says it completed its training of GPT-4, Microsoft pumped in about 11.5 million gallons of water to its cluster of Iowa data centers, according to the West Des Moines Water Works. That amounted to about 6% of all the water used in the district, which also supplies drinking water to the city’s residents.

In 2022, a document from the West Des Moines Water Works said it and the city government “will only consider future data center projects” from Microsoft if those projects can “demonstrate and implement technology to significantly reduce peak water usage from the current levels” to preserve the water supply for residential and other commercial needs.

Microsoft said Thursday it is working directly with the water works to address its feedback. In a written statement, the water works said the company has been a good partner and has been working with local officials to reduce its water footprint while still meeting its needs.

—-

O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

——

The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing agreement that allows for part of AP’s text archives to be used to train the tech company’s large language model. AP receives an undisclosed fee for use of its content.

Polish Family killed by Nazis to be beatified in Catholic first


By AFP
September 10, 2023

Children and granddaughters of Jewish survivor Abraham Segal paid respect in a 2016 ceremony to the Ulma family, who hid Jews during Holocaust and WWII 

- Copyright POOL/AFP Kenny HOLSTON

A Polish couple and their seven children, killed by Nazis during World War II for hiding Jews, will be beatified Sunday, the first time an entire family is given one of Catholicism’s highest honours.

The ceremony in the family’s hometown of Markowa in south-east Poland will be attended by over 30,000 people, including 80 bishops, 1,000 priests, the country’s chief rabbi and an Israeli delegation.

It was there, on March 24, 1944, that German police acting on a tip-off shot dead Jozef Ulma and his wife Wiktoria, who was seven months pregnant and partially gave birth during the execution.

Their children, Stanislawa, Barbara, Wladyslav, Franciszek, Antoni and Maria, aged between two and eight, were killed too, along with the eight Jews the family had been hiding in the attic.

The eight — Shaul Goldmann and his five children, including his daughter Lea Didner and her five-year-old daughter, and Golda Gruenfeld — were also shot, before the family farmhouse was looted and set on fire.

The police fired up into the attic from the floor below, “and the blood of the victims began to drip from the ceiling… onto a photograph of two Jewish woman lying on a table below”, Vatican News said.

That photograph “has been preserved as a ‘relic'”, it said.

– Baptism of blood –

The massacre followed “a story of love and friendship”, said Italian journalist Manuela Tulli, who has written a book on the family along with Polish historian and priest Pawel Rytel-Andrianik.

“When the Jews asked for help, they opened their doors. They lived together for a year and a half, cooking and eating together”, Tulli told AFP.

Jozef Ulma was a keen photographer as well as a farmer, and photographs he took that survive reveal the family’s life through simple, everyday scenes.

“We see the children running barefoot in the grass, doing their homework, the mother hanging out the washing,” Tulli said.

The families were denounced by a Polish policeman. And after they were executed, 24 Jews in Markowa were murdered by their Polish neighbours.

The Ulma family will be the first ever to be beatified, a key step on a possible path to sainthood in the Catholic Church.

And in a rare move, the Ulmas’ newborn seventh child will also earn the title of “blessed”.

The child is eligible for beatification through the concept of “baptism of blood”, having been born “at the time of the mother’s martyrdom”, according to the Vatican’s department for saints.

Usually people need to have performed a miracle to be eligible for beatification, but martyrs are exempt.

Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma were recognised by Israel in 1995 as members of the “Righteous among the Nations”, an honour for non-Jews who tried to save Jews from Nazi extermination.

The family also has a museum dedicated to it in Markowa and in 2018 Poland decreed 24 March — the date of the massacre — a day of remembrance for Poles who rescued Jews during the German occupation.

The Vatican beatifies a Polish family of 9 killed by the Nazis for sheltering Jews


Crowd attending a Mass in which the Vatican beatified the Polish Ulma family, including small children, who were killed by the Nazis in 1944 for having sheltered Jews, in the Ulmas’ home village of Markowa Poland, on Sunday, Sept. 10, 2023. The Vatican beatified also the Ulmas’ unborn child, saying it was born during the killings and was baptized in the martyred mother’s blood. (AP Photo)

Crowd attending a Mass in which the Vatican beatified the Polish Ulma family, including small children, who were killed by the Nazis in 1944 for having sheltered Jews, in the Ulmas’ home village of Markowa Poland, on Sunday, Sept. 10, 2023. The Vatican beatified also the Ulmas’ unborn child, saying it was born during the killings and was baptized in the martyred mother’s blood. 

This undated photo shows Polish farmer Jozef Ulma with his pregnant wife Wiktoria and their six children. The Ulmas were killed with their children by the Nazis in 1944 for having sheltered Jews during World War II. The Ulma family, including the child that Wiktoria was pregnant with, are being beatified by the Vatican in a ceremonious Mass in their home village of Markowa, Poland, on Sunday, Sept. 10, 2023. 

(Mateusz Szpytma, Deputy head of Poland’s IPN history institute via AP)

This undated photo shows Polish farmer Jozef Ulma with his wife Wiktoria. The Ulmas were killed with their seven children by the Nazis in 1944 for having sheltered Jews during World War II. The Ulma family, including a child that Wiktoria was pregnant with, are being beatified by the Vatican in a ceremonious Mass in their home village of Markowa, Poland, on Sunday, Sept. 10, 2023.

 (Mateusz Szpytma, Deputy head of Poland’s IPN history institute via AP)

BY MONIKA SCISLOWSKA
September 10, 2023

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — In an unprecedented move, the Vatican on Sunday beatified a Polish family of nine — a married couple and their small children — who were executed by the Nazis during World War II for sheltering Jews.

During a ceremonious Mass in the village of Markowa, in southeastern Poland, papal envoy Cardinal Marcello Semeraro read out the Latin formula of the beatification of the Ulma family signed last month by Pope Francis.

In his homily Semeraro noted that for their “gesture of hospitality and care, of mercy” the Ulmas “paid the highest price of martyrdom.”

A contemporary painting representing Jozef and a pregnant Wiktoria Ulma with their children was revealed near the altar. A procession brought relics taken from their grave to the altar. It was the first time that an entire family has been beatified.

At the Vatican, speaking to the public from a window in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis said the Ulmas “represented a ray of light in the darkness” of the war and should be a model for everyone in “doing good and in the service of those in need.”

The pope then invited the crowd below to applaud the family, and he clapped his hands.

 Those gathered in Markowa watched Francis’ address on giant screens placed by the altar.

Last year, Francis pronounced the deeply Catholic Ulma family, including the child that Wiktoria Ulma was pregnant with, martyrs for the faith. The Ulmas were killed at home by German Nazi troops and by Nazi-controlled local police in the small hours of March 24, 1944, together with the eight Jews they were hiding at their home, after they were apparently betrayed.

Jozef Ulma, 44, was a farmer, Catholic activist and amateur photographer who documented family and village life. He lived with his 31-year-old wife Wiktoria; their daughters Stanislawa, 7; Barbara, 6; Maria, 18 months; and sons Wladyslaw, 5; Franciszek, 3; and Antoni, 2.

With them were killed 70-year-old Saul Goldman with his sons Baruch, Mechel, Joachim and Mojzesz, along with Golda Grunfeld and her sister Lea Didner with her little daughter Reszla, according to Poland’s state Institute of National Remembrance, IPN, which has meticulously documented the Ulmas’ story.

Giving the orders was Lt. Eilert Dieken, head of the regional Nazi military police. After the war he served in the police in Germany. Only one of his subordinates, Josef Kokott, was convicted in Poland over the killings, dying in prison in 1980. The suspected betrayer was Wlodzimierz Les, a member of the Nazi-controlled local police. Poland’s wartime resistance sentenced him to death and executed him in September 1944, according to IPN.

The Catholic Church had faced a dilemma in beatifying Wiktoria’s unborn child and declaring it a martyr because, among other things, it had not been baptized, which is a requirement for beatification.

The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints issued a clarification saying the child was actually born during the horror of the killings and received “baptism by blood” of its martyred mother.

The clarification was issued Sept. 5 by Cardinal Semeraro, who is the prefect of the Vatican’s saint-making office.

Polish President Andrzej Duda along with the ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, as well as Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, attended the celebration in Markowa, and thousands of pilgrims came from across Poland to take part.

Poland’s conservative ruling party has been stressing family values and also the heroism of Poles during the war and the beatification ceremony added to its intense political campaigning ahead of the Oct. 15 parliamentary elections in which the Law and Justice party wants to win an unprecedented third term.

After the Mass, Duda, who is the ruling party’s ally, spoke to thank Francis for beatifying the Ulmas. He also stressed that the ceremony had a political dimension because it “told the truth about the Nazi German occupation” of Poland during the war. Poland’s government is seeking reparations from Germany for wartime damages, but Berlin says the matter had been closed.

The Ulma beatification poses several new theological concepts about the Catholic Church’s ideas of saints and martyrs that also have implications for the anti-abortion movement because of the baby in the mother’s womb, said the Rev. Robert Gahl, a professor of ethics at the Catholic University of America and Rome’s Pontifical Holy Cross University.

The Vatican stated that the child was “born” at the moment the mother was executed. In doing so, the Vatican also affirmed that the killers intended to kill the child out of hatred for the faith, a requirement for a martyrdom and beatification declaration, Gahl told The Associated Press.

After beatification, a miracle attributed to the Ulmas’ intercession would be necessary for their eventual canonization, as the church’s sainthood process is called.

Israel’s Yad Vashem Institute in 1995 recognized the Ulmas as Righteous Among Nations who gave their lives trying to save Jews during the Holocaust.

In Poland, they are a symbol of the bravery of thousands of Poles who took the utmost risk while helping Jews. By the occupying Nazis’ decree, any assistance to Jews was punished with summary execution. A Museum of Poles Saving Jews During World War II was opened in Markowa in 2016.

Poland was the first country to be invaded by Nazi Germany, on Sept. 1, 1939. Around 6 million of its citizens were killed during the war, half of them Jews.
___

Nicole Winfield and Frances D’Emilio contributed to this report from Rome.

BRING BACK THE PIE

Ryanair boss gets pied in Brussels

EURACTIV.com with AFP
Sep 7, 2023

Activists throw cream pie on Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary as he is on his way to deliver the 'Protect Overflights: Keep EU Skies Open' petition to EU Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen’s office in Brussels, Belgium, 7 September 2023.

 [EPA-EFE/OLIVIER HOSLET]

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary got a rude welcome in Brussels on Thursday (7 September) when he received two cream pies to the face while standing next to a cardboard cutout of EU chief Ursula von der Leyen.

The tarts were landed by two women environmental activists as O’Leary was holding a one-man protest outside the European Commission against repeated air traffic controllers’ strikes in the EU impacting his low-cost Irish airline, Europe’s biggest by passenger numbers.

“Welcome in Belgium,” said one of the activists as she planted her pie, according to video of the scene broadcast by Belgian news channels LN24 and RTL Info.

“Stop the pollution” from planes said the other activist as she smeared her pastry on O’Leary before both walked off.

The Ryanair chief, who regularly courts publicity, laughed off the stunt, calmly telling an assistant to take his soiled jacket away to be cleaned.

Ryanair’s feed on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, later posted that O’Leary got a “warm welcome in Brussels”.

“Passengers so happy with our routes and petition that they’re celebrating with cake,” it said.

Another post says “Instead of buying cream pies, could have bought a flight from Belgium for the same price”.



The activists’ pie protest came as Ryanair pilots in Belgium announced a new strike on 14 and 15 September — their fourth stoppage in two months — over pay and working conditions.

Biden to pay tribute to McCain in Hanoi to boost unifier image

ByAFP
September 9, 2023


Joe Biden will visit the memorial marking where McCain's plane was shot down in October 1967 

- Copyright AFP Nhac NGUYEN

Aurélia END

US President Joe Biden will use a visit to Hanoi to boost his image as a unifier by saluting the memory of John McCain — Vietnam War hero, Republican stalwart, and serial antagonist of Donald Trump.

Biden begins a two-day visit to Vietnam on Sunday to deepen diplomatic and economic ties with the communist state in the face of growing Chinese assertiveness and concerns about supply chain vulnerabilities.

But with the 2024 election rapidly approaching, Biden is keeping one eye on the campaign even while abroad.

The 80-year-old, gunning for a second term, will Monday visit the memorial to McCain marking where his plane was shot down on October 26, 1967.

Seriously wounded, fighter pilot McCain — the son and grandson of admirals — was taken prisoner of war, incarcerated for more than five years and tortured.

After the war he became involved in politics for the Republican party, serving as a US senator for several decades and running for president in 2008, when he was defeated by Barack Obama — and his running mate Biden.

McCain also earned great respect from people in Vietnam for his work in building bridges between the former foes.

– Friendship –

It was on the Senate benches that McCain, known for his independent spirit, became friends with Biden, a Democrat with a very different background from his own.

Biden did not fight in Vietnam, having been exempted from the draft because of his studies and asthma — but he also did not protest against the war as so many young Americans of his generation did.

Already a centrist at heart, and respectful of institutions, the student Biden was the type to wear a jacket rather than the tie-dye T-shirts emblematic of the hippie movement, he told reporters in 1987.

“Other people marched. I ran for office,” he added, according to The Washington Post. In 1972 he was elected to the Senate at the age of 30.

By paying tribute to McCain, the president is marking a difference with the man who could well be his opponent again next year: his predecessor Trump.

When McCain died of brain cancer in 2018, Biden delivered an emotional eulogy at his funeral, stressing that their friendship transcended political differences.

“My name is Joe Biden. I’m a Democrat. And I loved John McCain,” he said, praising McCain’s “ageless” code of honour.

He hailed him as an example of “the American story, grounded in respect and decency, basic fairness, the intolerance of the abuse of power”.

– Trump on the golf course –

Biden had already privately decided to run against Trump and his eulogy denounced — if not explicitly — the mercurial billionaire, whom McCain despised.

Trump — who was similarly open in his dislike of McCain — played golf on the day of his funeral.

Later McCain’s widow urged voters to back Biden, further fuelling Trump’s resentment.

“I never was a fan of John McCain, and I never will be,” Trump said in March 2019.

In paying tribute to the former war hero on September 11 — a date etched in the American consciousness because of the terror attacks of 2001 — Biden will also be looking to burnish his patriotic credentials.

After leaving Vietnam, the president will go to a military base in Alaska to commemorate the attacks. An unusual choice of location, if not completely unprecedented — more usually the “Commander in Chief” visits New York or one of the other sites hit on 9/11.

Palestinian water woes highlight dashed hopes of Oslo Accords

By AFP
September 9, 2023

Water flows from irrigation pipes in the Palestinian village of al-Auja in the occupied West Bank - 

Copyright AFP HAZEM BADER

Rosie Scammell

Thirty years after the landmark Oslo Accords, Palestinian hopes for statehood seem as remote as ever and popular frustration is rife — nowhere more than over access to water.

The Israeli-Palestinian dispute centres on land but also on the water resources that sustain life in the sun-parched land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan river.

Hopes for peace were high when then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat shook hands with Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993, watched by US president Bill Clinton.

The historic deal they struck created a limited degree of Palestinian self-rule and was intended as a first step toward resolving the status of Jerusalem and the plight of Palestinian refugees.

The ultimate goal for many was the creation of a Palestinian state whose people would one day live freely and peacefully alongside Israel.

Instead, three decades on, Israeli settlements have mushroomed across the occupied West Bank, deadly violence has flared, and the blockaded Gaza Strip is littered with the ruins of several wars.

For Palestinian farmer Bassam Dudin, the most immediate concern is that he can no longer draw water from his wells, since Israeli forces came in July and poured cement into them.

“They didn’t give me any advance warning,” said Dudin, 47, standing amid sun-scorched vegetables on his field at Al-Hijra village in the West Bank’s southern Hebron area.

“We are living in a very, very difficult situation.”

Israeli military authorities argued that Dudin, who holds a land title dating back to the era of Ottoman rule over historic Palestine, had tapped the groundwater illegally.

The body running civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, COGAT, argued that the wells were “drilled in violation of the construction agreement, harmed the natural water sources and posed a risk of contamination of the aquifer”.

– ‘Mickey Mouse forum’ –

The peace push of 1993 was meant to secure both Israelis and Palestinians fair access to water from the Jordan river, the Sea of Galilee, and the Mountain and Coastal Aquifers that stretch below the divided land.

But today, Palestinians complain of unequal access to clean water, even as Israel boasts a world-class system with vast underground tunnels and pipes, coastal desalination plants, high-efficiency water usage and wastewater recycling.

Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since the Six-Day War of 1967, now controls its water infrastructure through the national water company Mekorot.

The Israeli firm also supplies 22 percent of water used by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, according to Palestinian data.

Dudin is not allowed to dig for water on his land without permission, under rules that were cemented by the Oslo Accords of the 1990s and follow-up agreements.

His farm lies in the 60 percent of the West Bank that was declared “Area C” and placed under Israeli army control. (Area A is administered by the Palestinians and Area B is under mixed Israeli and Palestinian control.)

Area C residents must seek Israeli permits for any construction, including wells, but in practice these are almost impossible to obtain.

This is despite the establishment of a Joint Water Committee under the Accords.

Palestinian former water negotiator Shaddad Attili ridiculed the committee as a “Mickey Mouse forum” in which, he said, Israel often rejects projects or stalls them for years.

“Whenever we say no to an Israeli project, they implement it anyway, because they do have the power,” he charged.

Israel’s Water Authority declined to be interviewed and directed AFP to COGAT, which also refused repeated requests to discuss the topic.

– Dusty water pipes –

Rows of date palms and banana plants ring vegetable fields near the West Bank city of Jericho in the verdant Jordan Valley, seen as the Palestinian breadbasket.

Birdsong is interrupted by the occasional roar of Israeli warplanes above in the area from which, as well as from parts of the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces were meant to withdraw under the Oslo Accords.

But in many villages in the Jericho area too, water scarcity is an urgent problem, the result of what residents describe as unfair distribution of resources.

Looking at his dusty water pipes, farmer Diab Attiyyat said his farmland in Israeli-controlled Area C receives water just once a week, pumped from the Al-Auja spring a few kilometres away.

Attiyat harnesses drip irrigation to use the water sparingly.

“The situation is really miserable,” said the 42-year-old, who receives support from the UN World Food Programme.

“You live in difficulty and stagnation. Sometimes the Al-Auja spring is operational and sometimes it’s cut off.”

In Palestinian-controlled Jericho city, part of Area A, there is water aplenty. Springs feed several water parks and palatial villas boast private swimming pools.

But Attili, the former negotiator, said the costs of pumping water to even nearby communities, and the difficulty of obtaining permissions, make it impossible to fairly distribute the water.

Daily water use around Jericho is about 183 litres per person — more than double the average 86 litres elsewhere in the Palestinian territories excluding annexed east Jerusalem, according to 2021 data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

Attiyyat, the farmer, is galled too: “This bothers me, when I see others wasting water.”

– ‘Not fit for consumption’ –

Water scarcity is no problem in the Israeli settlement bloc of Gush Etzion, said its spokesman Josh Hasten.

The Gush Etzion settlements, like other ones across the West Bank, are deemed illegal under international law and have expanded massively since the 1990s.

Excluding east Jerusalem, the occupied territory is now home to around 490,000 Israeli settlers.

Hasten praised the massive investments in seawater desalination, which now supplies 63 percent of Israeli domestic usage, and other “advancements and improvements”.

He slammed the Oslo Accords as “a complete disaster in every which way, shape or form” and accused the Palestinian Authority of mismanaging natural resources.

Water scarcity suffered by Palestinians is most acute in Gaza, the crowded and impoverished coastal enclave blockaded by Israel that is home to around 2.3 million people.

Past wars and restrictions on imports of construction materials, spare parts and fuel have devastated much of Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure, driving a public health crisis.

“Water in Gaza isn’t fit for human consumption,” said water plant technician Zain al-Abadeen, who blamed high salinity from seawater intrusion into the depleted aquifer.

In some districts, children bring plastic bottles to free drinking water stations run by charities, while wealthier residents pay private companies who deliver water by truck.

“Water is life” reads a slogan on the wall of one of Gaza’s three small desalination plants, where Abadeen works.

The EU-funded plants now serve some 40 percent of the domestic needs of Gaza’s people, according to the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility, but Abadeen said their expansion is urgently needed.

Access to safe water is a basic human right and the issue must be decoupled from politics, campaigners argue.

Nada Majdalani, Palestine director of the group EcoPeace, said that, three decades after the Oslo Accords, “there needs to be a holistic mechanism of managing water resources that would meet all needs.”

Her Israeli counterpart Gidon Bromberg said it is “madness” that the water issue is still tied to a broader peace deal.

“We need the political will from both governments, both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, to recognise that the underlying rationale no longer holds water,” he said.

Robot fried chicken: entrepreneur seeks to improve S. Korea’s favourite food

By AFP
September 11, 2023

Kang's robot, composed of a simple, flexible mechanical arm, is capable of frying 100 chickens in two hours - Copyright AFP Anthony WALLACE

Claire LEE

In fried-chicken-obsessed South Korea, restaurants serving the nation’s favourite fast-food dish dot every street corner. But Kang Ji-young’s establishment brings something a little different to the table: a robot is cooking the chicken.

Eaten at everything from tiny family gatherings to a 10-million-viewer live-streamed “mukbang” — eating broadcast — by K-pop star Jungkook of BTS fame, fried chicken is deeply embedded in South Korean culture.

Paired with cold lager and known as “chimaek” — a portmanteau of the Korean words for chicken and beer — it is a staple of Seoul’s famed baseball-watching experience.

The domestic market — the world’s third largest, after the United States and China — is worth about seven trillion won ($5.3 billion), but labour shortages are starting to bite as South Korea faces a looming demographic disaster due to having the world’s lowest birth rate.

Around 54 percent of business owners in the food service sector report problems finding employees, a government survey last year found, with long hours and stressful conditions the likely culprit, according to industry research.

Korean fried chicken is brined and double-fried, which gives it its signature crispy exterior, but the process — more elaborate than what is typically used by US fast food chains — creates additional labour and requires extended worker proximity to hot oil.

Enter Kang, a 38-year-old entrepreneur who saw an opportunity to improve the South Korean fried chicken business model — and the dish itself.

“The market is huge,” Kang told AFP at her Robert Chicken franchise.

Chicken and pork cutlets are the most popular delivery orders in South Korea, and the industry could clearly benefit from more automation to “effectively address labour costs and workforce shortages”, she said.

Kang’s robot, composed of a simple, flexible mechanical arm, is capable of frying 100 chickens in two hours — a task that would require around five people and several deep fryers.

But not only does the robot make chicken more efficiently — it makes it more delicious, says Kang.

“We can now say with confidence that our robot fries better than human beings do,” she said.

– Investing in ‘foodtech’ –

Already a global cultural powerhouse and major semiconductor exporter, South Korea last year announced plans to plough millions of dollars into a “foodtech” fund to help startups working on high-tech food industry solutions.

Seoul says such innovations could become a “new growth engine”, arguing there is huge potential if the country’s prowess in advanced robotics and AI technology could be combined with the competitiveness of Korean food classics like kimchi.

South Korea’s existing foodtech industry — including everything from next-day grocery delivery app Market Kurly to AI smart kitchens to a “vegan egg” startup — is already worth millions, said food science professor Lee Ki-won at Seoul National University.

Even South Korea’s Samsung Electronics — one of the world’s biggest tech companies — is trying to get in on the action, recently launching Samsung Food, an AI-personalised recipe and meal-planning platform, available in eight languages.

Lee predicted South Korea’s other major conglomerates are likely to follow Samsung into foodtech.

“Delivering food using electric vehicles or having robots directly provide deliveries within apartment complexes, known as ‘metamobility’, could become a part of our daily lives,” he said.

“I am confident that within the next 10 years, the food tech industry will transform into the leading sector in South Korea.”

– ‘Initially struggled’ –

Entrepreneur Kang now has 15 robot-made chicken restaurants in South Korea, and one branch in Singapore.

During AFP’s visit to a Seoul branch, a robot meticulously handled the frying process — from immersing chicken in oil, flipping it for even cooking, to retrieving it at the perfect level of crispiness, as the irresistible scent of crunchy chicken wafted through the shop.

Many customers remained oblivious to the hard-working robotic cook behind their meal.

Kim Moon-jung, a 54-year-old insurance worker, said she was not sure how a robot would make the chicken differently from a human “but one thing is certain — it tastes delicious”.

The robot can monitor oil temperature and oxidation levels in real time while it fries chicken, ensuring consistent taste and superior hygiene.

When Kang first started her business she “initially struggled” to see why anyone would use robots rather than human chefs.

But “after developing these technologies, I’ve come to realise that from a customer’s perspective, they’re able to enjoy food that is not only cleaner but also tastier”, she told AFP.

Her next venture is a tip-free bar in Koreatown in New York City, where the cocktails will feature Korea’s soju rice wine — and will be made by robots.

The personal details people have found available online — and wish they hadn’t


ByDr. Tim Sandle
DIGITAL JOURNAL 
September 10, 2023

Social media. — © AFP/File Denis Charlet

A recent study from Uswitch Broadband asked people to conduct an online search of themselves. Looking at the elements of a ‘digital footprint’ – websites, personal details – there were different reactions from people as to how they felt about the information they found. The data has been shared with Digital Journal.

The review found that over one-third of adults were surprised by information they found out about themselves after conducting a search of their own name online. As to how welcome this disclosure was, 40 percent of those aged 18 – 34 indicated that they wished content about themselves found online was not available.

Furthermore, three out of ten people discovered online information that they believed could negatively impact their future job prospects. This extended to photographs, home addresses, and date of birth being among the personal details found available online through search engines.

Have you “Googled” yourself?

While the majority of people can attest to having searched for information on someone else online, how many of us know what’s out there about ourselves? From the survey, those most intrigued by what information can be found online about themselves are those aged 25-34 with 63 percent having performed a search. Whereas only a third of those aged 55 and over have done so.

Social media sites and personal information found

The top three sites that displayed personal information were Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Almost 30 percent of people had their Facebook profile appear when inputting their name into a search engine such as Google. This was by far the most common social media site, with Instagram appearing for 12 percent and LinkedIn for 11 percent of people.

More alarmingly 5 percent found their home address to be in the public domain, with 4 percent finding their date of birth when inputting their name into an online search.

Unhappy with information found available online

Over one-third of those asked to perform a search of their name found information that surprised them, with almost a quarter wishing that certain information they found wasn’t available online. For those between the ages of 18 – 34, this figure was much higher with almost 40% wishing that certain online content wasn’t publicly available.

Long-term implications and employment prospects

As the Internet has evolved, many people are beginning to understand how permanent our online actions are, and that everything we do adds to their “digital footprint”.

One important impact to consider is on future employment and education prospects. Industries, where a person may only want to show their formal self, may in fact do some “Googling” of a person’s name.

Regrets and cleaning up your online presence

Almost a quarter of all respondents have regrets over posting things online in the past, with 25 – 34-year-olds being the most regretful age group. However, only 7 percent of people have made attempts to clear-up their online presence.

Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok were the three most popular social media accounts to make more private in an attempt to clean up an online presence.

Learning from past mistakes

Despite these generational findings, Gen Z and millennials are much more likely to consider the long-term impact before posting online. Over eight out of ten Gen Z and Millennials consider the long-term impact before sharing something online, compared to only 58 percent of Baby Boomers.

This could be evidence that the younger generations are now learning from past mistakes having been exposed to online culture from a much earlier age.