Reuters World News - US funding fight, Ukraine’s wartime symphonies and how to teach with AI

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

The clock starts ticking to prevent a partial government shutdown as Congress returns. Teachers tackle the advance of AI in the classroom. The Ukrainian orchestra vowing to keep on playing as missiles rain down. Plus, 22 years in jail for the former leader of the Proud Boys group, Washington warning to North Korea and Spain sacks the coach of its World Cup winning women’s soccer team. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, lawmakers scramble as Congress once again faces the threat of a government shutdown. With the school year upon us, academics grapple with the new reality of generative AI. And we visit an orchestra in Ukraine fighting to retain the nation's cultural identity. It's Wednesday, September 6th. This is Reuters World News, with everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, every weekday. I'm Jonah Green in New York. And I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. First, the headlines making news around the world.

Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the right-wing Proud Boys Group, has been sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in the attack on the US Capitol in January 2021. Tarrio's conviction for his role in the riot by then President Donald Trump's supporters is the longest in the case so far. His lawyers said he would appeal. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has landed in the Ukrainian capital Kiev for a two-day visit.

He's expected to announce over $1 billion of new funding. for the country. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has warned North Korea that they would pay a price for supplying Russia with weapons to use in Ukraine. This is not going to reflect well on North Korea and they will pay a price for this in the international community. The Kremlin has said it had nothing to say

about statements by US officials that North Korea's Kim Jong-un plans to travel to Russia to discuss weapons supplies. Intense rain from the remnants of Typhoon Haiku has lashed southeastern China, forcing cities in Fujian province to halt subway services, shut schools and evacuate tens of thousands of people. The rain shattered records in the provincial capital. Spain has sacked the coach of its World Cup winning women's team, Jorge Bilda,

after months of complaints from players who accused him of outdated methods. Bilda is a close ally of Luis Rubiales, Spain's Soccer Federation chief, who has been suspended for kissing a player on the mouth in celebration of their World Cup victory. The Soccer Federation gave no reason for Bilda's dismissal. He's been replaced by his assistant, Monsei Tome, who becomes the first woman to to manage the women's team. Burkina Faso says more than 50 soldiers and volunteers have been killed in clashes with militants. The West African country has been battling armed groups, some with links to al-Qaeda and Islamic State, in its desert north, since 2015. It's time now for markets, and the dollar is at six-month highs. Why? A variety of reasons. Firstly, concerns about growth in Europe and

Asia are boosting appetite for the greenback. Second, there's been the traditional rush of companies tapping U.S. debt markets for financing after the Labor Day holiday. And finally, a jump in oil prices after Saudi Arabia and Russia extended supply cuts means investors are back worried about how much higher the Fed will have to keep rates to deal with energy costs. In the U.S., as both houses of Congress reconvened for the fall, federal spending is back in the spotlight, and the country once again faces the threat of an embarrassing government shutdown.

David Morgan is in the Capitol building in Washington, Washington, D.C. David, why is funding the government up for debate this time? It's up for debate mainly because Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in the 2022 election. That means that no funding packages can pass Congress and get on to President Joe Biden's desk to be signed into law without Republican approval. And in the House of Representatives, there's a group of maybe three. three dozen hardline conservative legislators, many of whom are pressing for spending cuts that go beyond the funding agreement that President Biden reached with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy back in May.

Further complicating the matter is the health of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, after he froze up again while talking to reporters last week. How might this impact negotiations over the budget? Well, it's difficult to say whether it, impact negotiations at all. But Senator McConnell has played a key role in getting funding measures through Congress in the past. And questions remain about how robust his health is. He has returned to work after a long Senate summer recess. And so what's the timeline here? How long do we have until we enter a sort of crisis mode? Well, the current federal fiscal year,

expires on September 30th, at midnight on September 30th, and after that, if there is not funding in place, then parts of the federal government will shut down. That is, parts of the government that are subject to discretionary spending. Ever since the arrival of ChatGBTGBT, debates have raged over the dangers and merits of generative AI. Among those facing an existential threat from the technology are academics. On Thursday, UNESCO is expected to release guidelines on the use of AI in education. And educators are now preparing for how to live with it. Barbara Lewis has the story.

So Barbara, what sort of conversations are happening right now in academia? I would sum it up as they're doing their best not to panic because they were hit by a steamroller in November last year when CHATGBT sprang from nowhere. They had no warning. The academic year had already started. Now, they've had several months to process, and they've given up on the idea of a ban. So what they need are clear rules, and they're trying to come up with them.

So AI is here to stay. How are educators planning on integrating it? So it depends on the age group. If you're still dealing with fairly young students, they can quickly get the kind of summary that is superficially helpful. But there are many problems attached, such as data privacy and also what exactly schools are getting hold of. The kind of content that you can get from generative AI, it's anything that's on the net. So it could be really harmful. If you're talking about older students, there is much more of a view that you've really got to embrace this.

Because it could accelerate the most brilliant students. And it could make them very quickly get to whether. want to be by synthesizing huge amounts of data and then they analyze it. What are the threats with AI is that it may widen the economic gap between the haves and the haves-nots, right? It's definitely a threat and I don't think anybody's got an easy answer to that. We saw it in pandemic when I think about a third of the world's students could not access online learning because they didn't have Wi-Fi, they didn't have electricity, all these

things. This is yet again a concentration of Welton privilege. In the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv, an orchestra is trying to keep Ukrainian cultural works alive. It's also hoping to give war-weary residents a bit of peace. Andrea Yanita was recently in Lviv and visited Organ Hall to attend one of these performances. Andrea, you spoke with the creators behind this program. What are they hoping to achieve here? When I spoke with the Hall's co-director, Teros Demko, he told me that it's never been more important to stage Ukrainian music, both to provide relief and comfort to the audience, but also to promote Ukrainian culture as a distinct national identity. A third of the audience at these performances are internally displaced Ukrainians who can request for,

free tickets ahead of the performances. What are some of the challenges of putting on a show like this during wartime? There are often air raids that can interrupt performances. Sometimes the audience and the musicians have to shelter for up to hours before restarting their concerts. They began hosting candlelit performances during power outages, which ended up being so popular that they've continued even now that the power is back. And the pieces they're performing have a special significance. Is that right?

Yeah. One recent opera that they performed was a satirical one-act opera that Ivan Ostapovic found in archives. It's almost unknown in Ukrainian history, but it's poking fun at the treatment of artists under Soviet rule. Ivan noted that performing a piece like this in the 1960s when it was written could have led to the musicians being thrown in jail. What's the reaction been to the program? They've already outsold the number of tickets this year that they did in all of 2022. And this is part of a larger story of just this real resurgence of interest in Ukrainian culture, in music, in language throughout the country. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. We'll be back with our daily headline show on Thursday.

To make sure you know what's going on in the world, listen in for 10 minutes every weekday. And don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast player or download the Reuters app.