World Briefs
By NewsPress Now
Polish radio station replaces journalists with AI ‘presenters’
WARSAW, Poland | A Polish radio station has triggered controversy after dismissing its journalists and relaunching this week with AI-generated “presenters.”
Weeks after letting its journalists go, OFF Radio Krakow relaunched this week, with what it said was “the first experiment in Poland in which journalists … are virtual characters created by AI.”
The station in the southern city of Krakow said its three avatars are designed to reach younger listeners by speaking about cultural, art and social issues including the concerns of LGBTQ+ people.
“Is artificial intelligence more of an opportunity or a threat to media, radio and journalism? We will seek answers to this question,” the station head, Marcin Pulit, wrote in a statement.
The change got nationwide attention after Mateusz Demski, a journalist and film critic who until recently hosted a show on the station, published an open letter Tuesday protesting “the replacement of employees with artificial intelligence.”
“It is a dangerous precedent that hits us all,” he wrote, and argued it could open the way “to a world in which experienced employees associated with the media sector for years and people employed in creative industries will be replaced by machines.”
More than 15,000 signed the petition by Wednesday morning, Demski told The Associated Press. He said he has also gotten calls from hundreds of people, many of them young people who do not want to be the subject of such an experiment.
Demski worked at OFF Radio Krakow from February 2022, carrying out interviews with Ukrainians fleeing war, until August, when he was among about a dozen journalists who were let go. He said the move was especially shocking because the broadcaster is a taxpayer-supported public station.
Pulit insisted that no journalists were fired because of AI but because its listenership “was close to zero.”
Krzysztof Gawkowski, the minister of digital affairs and a deputy prime minister, weighed in on Tuesday, saying he had read Demski’s appeal and that legislation is needed to regulate AI.
“Although I am a fan of AI development, I believe that certain boundaries are being crossed more and more,” he wrote on X. “The widespread use of AI must be done for people, not against them!”
On Tuesday the station broadcast an “interview” conducted by an AI-generated presenter with a voice pretending to be Wisława Szymborska, a Polish poet and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature who died in 2012.
Michał Rusinek, the president of the Wisława Szymborska Foundation, which oversees the poet’s legacy, told the broadcaster TVN that he agreed to let the station use Szymborska’s name in the broadcast. He said the poet poet had a sense of humor and would have liked it.
Mexico announces food
and agriculture plan that
could take the country back
MEXICO CITY | Mexico’s new president announced an agriculture plan Tuesday that could make the country’s food production and distribution look a lot more like it did in the 1980s, when meals in Mexico were dominated by tortillas, beans, instant coffee and cheap hot chocolate.
Four decades ago, the ingredients for those meals were often bought at government stores that stocked a few basic goods.
President Claudia Sheinbaum pledged Tuesday to revive those often shabby, limited government stores and continue efforts to achieve “food sovereignty.”
“It is about producing what we eat,” Sheinbaum said of her policy, whose main focus will be on increasing bean and corn production.
Sheinbaum appears to have a deep interest in boosting beans. On Monday, she said, “It is much better to eat a bean taco than a bag of potato chips.”
Agriculture Secretary Julio Berdegué said the focus would be on guaranteeing prices for farmers who grow corn used for tortillas and lowering tortilla prices by 10% after prices jumped a couple of years ago.
The government aims to boost bean production by about 30% in six years to replace imports of beans, and will set up research centers to supply higher-yielding bean seeds.
“Self-sufficiency in beans is a goal the president has set for us,” Berdegué said.
The government will also focus on supporting coffee production, but mainly for instant coffee, which it claims is used by 84% of Mexican households. The plan will also seek to support cocoa production, but mainly for powdered baking and hot chocolate, not fine chocolate bars.
The policies appear to run counter to market trends and what Mexican food sales look like today, when consumption of most of the old basics has fallen.
Most Mexicans today shop at modern grocery stores, and consumption of fresh ground coffee, not instant, has increased enormously, accompanied by a boom in specialized coffee chains and shops.
Meanwhile, bean consumption has been dropping precipitously for decades in Mexico. According to the government’s “2024 Agricultural Panorama” report, Mexicans consume only about 17 pounds (7.7 kilograms) of beans annually. That’s less than half of the 35.2 pounds (16 kilograms) consumed per year in 1980.
A combination of factors, including the time it takes to cook dried beans, may be behind this. Amanda Gálvez, a researcher at Mexico’s National Autonomous University, wrote that “we look down at beans because it is considered ‘the food of the poor,’ and we are making a serious mistake,” because beans are a good source of protein.
However, the health benefits aren’t clear: The most common bean recipe in Mexico — refried beans — often contains a considerable dose of lard.
Tortilla consumption has also fallen from nearly 220 pounds per capita annually in 2000 to about 165 pounds in 2024. Consumers have increasingly taken to buying bread and other bakery products instead of tortillas.
Apart from the challenge of trying to change consumer habits, the policy also runs counter to market trends. While some countries are trying to encourage high-value varietal and specialized chocolate strains, Mexico is focusing on the cheapest products.
While chocolate was first exported to the rest of the world from Mexico, Mexico’s own production has fallen dramatically because of plant diseases and a lack of investment. It dropped from almost 50,000 tons in 2003 to about 28,000 tons in 2022.
And while most Mexican homes may have a jar of instant coffee in their cupboards, that’s not where the tendency — or consumer spending — is headed. According to a Technavio industry report, instant products accounted for only about 37% of the sales value of coffee in Mexico.
Sheinbaum’s focus on self-sufficiency in oil, energy and foodstuffs is a holdover from her predecessor and political mentor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who left office on Sept. 30.
López Obrador also appears to have passed on his nostalgia for a 1970s-style Mexico — including passenger rail service, state-owned industries, tight-knit families and small corner stores — to Sheinbaum.
The agriculture plan comes one day after Sheinbaum announced a complete “junk food” ban on salty, fried, processed snacks or sweetened beverages and soft drinks in schools, starting within six months.
But the government’s track record in actually changing consumer behavior is poor, columnist Javier Tejado wrote Tuesday in the newspaper El Universal. He reminded readers that the government banned junk food advertisements aimed at children in 2014.
“The result after ten years of prohibitions?” Tejado wrote. “Things are worse than when they started in 2014; Mexicans have decided to keep consuming things they like.”
A New Zealand airport wants
you to hug goodbye faster
WELLINGTON, New Zealand | Emotional farewells are a common sight at airports, but travelers leaving the New Zealand city of Dunedin will have to be quick. A new three-minute time limit on goodbye hugs in the airport’s drop-off area is intended to prevent lingering cuddles from causing traffic jams.
“Max hug time three minutes,” warn signs outside the terminal, adding that those seeking “fonder farewells” should head to the airport’s parking lot instead.
The cuddle cap was imposed in September to “keep things moving smoothly” in the redesigned passenger drop-off area outside the airport, CEO Dan De Bono told The Associated Press on Tuesday. It was the airport’s way of reminding people that the zone was for “quick farewells” only.
The signs had polarized social media users, De Bono said.
“We were accused of breaching basic human rights and how dare we limit how long someone can have a hug for,” he said, adding that others had welcomed the change.
The signs were meant as an alternative to those at other airports warning of wheel clamping or fines for drivers parked in drop-off areas. Some in Britain have imposed fees for all drop-offs — however brief.
Dunedin’s airport — a modest terminal serving a city of 135,000 people on New Zealand’s South Island — preferred a “quirky” approach, De Bono said.
Three minutes was “plenty of time to pull up, say farewell to your loved ones and move on,” he said. “The time limit is really a nicer way of saying, you know, get on with it.”
A 20-second hug is long enough to release the wellbeing-boosting hormones oxytocin and serotonin, De Bono said. Anything longer was “really awkward.”
But passengers need not worry unduly about enforcement. “We do not have hug police,” De Bono said.
Visitors might, however, be asked to move their lingering embraces to the parking lot, where they can cuddle free of charge for up to 15 minutes.
Indigenous Australian who confronted King Charles III
says she won’t be ‘shut down’
CANBERRA, Australia | An Indigenous senator has intensified her criticism of King Charles III, again accusing the British monarch of complicity in the “genocide” against Australia’s First Nations peoples and declaring on Wednesday she will not be “shut down.”
Sen. Lidia Thorpe’s comments followed an encounter with the monarch at a parliamentary reception Monday where she was escorted out after shouting at him for British colonizers taking Indigenous land and bones.
Despite facing political and public backlash, Thorpe was resolute in a television interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and said she would continue to press for justice.
“The colonial system is all about shutting black women down in this country,” Thorpe said from Melbourne. “For those that don’t agree with what I have said and what I have done, I can tell you now there are elders, there are grassroots Aboriginal people across this country and Torres Strait Islander people who are just so proud.”
“I have decided to be a Black sovereign woman and continue our fight against the colony and for justice for our people,” she added.
Thorpe particularly highlighted the ongoing harm to Australia’s First Nations peoples, including holding on to the remains of Indigenous ancestors.
“I’m sorry, Charlie, but you can’t come here and think you can say a few nice words about our people while you still have stolen goods. You are in receipt of stolen goods, which makes you complicit in theft,” she said.
Thorpe also pressed on the endemic social disadvantage that Indigenous Australians continue to experience and that it was being papered over by platitudes that fail to address the systemic issues.
At the parliamentary reception, Charles spoke quietly with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese while security officials stopped Thorpe from approaching and ushered her from the hall.
Charles concluded his visit to Australia and traveled Wednesday to Samoa, where he will open the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
—From AP reports
