The floor in front of the stage at Robert’s Western World, a beloved honky-tonk on Broadway in Nashville, was packed Thursday afternoon.

But even with country superstar Luke Bryan and several other musicians on hand, the center of attention was Governor Bill Lee and his Elvis Act.

And Mr. Lee did not disappoint, signing the Ensuring Likeness, Voice and Image Security Act, a bill that aims to protect musicians from artificial intelligence by imposing penalties for copying an artist’s “voice” without permission . .

“There are certainly a lot of things that are positive about what AI is doing,” Mr Lee told the crowd. But, he added, “if it falls into the hands of bad actors, it could destroy this industry.”

The use of AI technology – and its rapid improvement in impersonating public figures – has led several lawmakers to move to tighten regulations on AI, especially when it comes to election advertising. The White House imposed a sweeping executive order late last year to push for more guardrails as Congress grapples with federal regulations.

But this being Tennessee, the focus has unsurprisingly been on the toll it could take on musicians in Nashville, Memphis and beyond. Mr Lee’s office said the music industry generates billions of dollars for the state and supports more than 61,000 jobs and more than 4,500 venues.

Several leading musicians, record industry groups and artist alliances rallied around the bill this year, warning of the dire consequences of AI

“I’ve just gotten to the point where things are coming into my voice, on my phone, and I can’t say it’s not me,” Mr. Bryan said Thursday, adding that “hopefully this will curb it and slow it down. ”

Chris Janson, a country singer and songwriter who talked about time spent performing on Lower Broadway, the downtown area where many of the city’s honky-tonks are concentrated, told lawmakers and supporters that “we’re grateful that you protect us, and you ladies protect our community, our artist community.”

Tennessee intervened for the first time to protect an artist’s name, image and likeness with a 1984 lawwhich came as the Presley Estate fought in court to determine how the musical legend’s name and likeness could be used commercially after his death. The version signed into law on Thursday adds to that measure and will come into effect on July 1.

The new law passed the legislature unanimously, a remarkable achievement for a vindictive body that spent weeks fighting — at one point almost literally – over the smallest slights and policy changes.

The decision to have a bill signed at a honky-tonk was a first for many there, and it was an unusual scene for Mr. Lee, a more reserved public figure whose appropriate security details visibly startled a few tourists outside the venue.

Inside, the fried bologna rolls — the cornerstone of the $6 Robert’s recession special — sizzled on the stove as Mr. Lee spoke. Both Republicans and Democrats wore “ELVIS Act” pins and applauded as Mr. Lee and top Republicans received framed platinum plaques recognizing the bill’s signing.

State Senator Jack Johnson, the majority leader, reminisced about celebrating his bachelor party at Robert’s, while Mr. Lee described a penchant for incognito date nights with his wife to listen to some music. And state Rep. Justin Jones, a top Democratic foe of the Republican supermajority, later posted photos of the event on Instagram commenting that it feels good to have a bill “that’s not complete nonsense.”

However, the legislation’s broad definitions have led some advocates to question whether it could inadvertently restrict certain performances, including when an actor plays a well-known performer. The law also makes a person liable for civil action if an audio recording or reproduction of a person’s likeness is knowingly published without permission.

Voice is defined by law as a sound in a recording or other medium that is “readily identifiable and attributable to a particular individual,” regardless of whether the record contains the voice of a person or a simulation.

These concerns led to some changes in the bill to create an exception for such audiovisual representations unless they “give the false impression that the work is an authentic recording.”

And given the broad definition of voice, one legal expert wondered: What would this mean for tribute bands, or for the men who perfected an Elvis impersonation?

“It’s not the intent of the bill, but if a law is written in a way that allows people to cause mischief, mischief will often result,” said Joseph Fishman, a law professor at Vanderbilt University.

But Mr. Fishman emphasized that even if the measure requires some more tailoring in the coming years, it “remains a well-intentioned bill that does a lot of good.”

Ben Sisario reporting contributed.

The Biden administration on Thursday proposed plans to save the greater sage-grouse, a move that could tighten restrictions on drilling, mining and other commercial activities on public lands in the West.

The wise grouse, a ground-nesting bird known for the males’ flamboyant mating dance, is at the center of a decade-long battle between the industry and conservationists. The new plan, issued by the Bureau of Land Management, is expected to spark a new round of debate and legal challenges.

The agency manages the majority of the nation’s sage-grouse habitat, nearly 70 million acres across 11 western states. That amounts to almost half of the bird’s habitat.

In recent decades, the population of sage grouse has declined dramatically due to habitat loss, which has been exacerbated by forest fires fueled by climate change.

Throughout their range, greater grouse populations have declined by about 80 percent since 1965, and by almost 40 percent since 2002, according to research. a report from the US Geological Survey.

The proposal, which offers six alternatives, is an attempt to keep the sage grouse off the endangered species list. That would lead to much greater restrictions on activities within the bird’s range, while balancing the use of public lands for energy development, mining and grazing.

“The majesty of the West and its way of life are at stake,” Bureau of Land Management Director Tracy Stone-Manning said in a statement.

She noted that states and the federal government had worked together to conserve the bird, and said the new plan built on that work.

The six alternatives are now open for public comment. Each measure would entail a number of restrictions on commercial activities, affecting different amounts of land. The agency’s preference is number 5 on the list, a compromise between more restrictive and more permissive proposals from previous administrations.

For example, compared to the status quo, it would place an additional 2.5 million acres under the most restrictive sage-grouse protection, bringing the total to nearly 35 million acres, agency officials said. It would also move renewable energy away from sensitive sage-grouse habitat and streamline management of the birds across state lines.

The immediate response from conservation groups was mixed.

“This plan represents the last, best hope to save the sage grouse and prevent it from being listed under the Endangered Species Act,” said Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, an environmental group, in a statement.

Other conservation groups sounded the alarm.

“The draft proposal simply isn’t enough for the sage grouse,” said Vera Smith, senior federal land policy analyst at Defenders of Wildlife. “The draft proposal still allows oil and gas drilling, mining and other activities – some of the biggest threats to the bird’s habitat.”

Oil industry executives, concerned about the plan, took a cautious approach. Kathleen Sgamma, president of Western Energy Alliance, an association of independent oil and gas companies, said she was concerned the Biden administration was taking a “one-size-fits-all” approach to states with different needs.

But Ms Sgamma said in a statement: “It is positive that the preferred alternative appears to be a mix between the other approaches and previous plans.” She added that this indicated the Bureau of Land Management is “trying to find a workable balance.”

The federal battle for the greater sage-grouse began when the Obama administration issued a land-use plan to protect the bird’s habitat from mining and energy development. That plan was considered strong enough to keep the sage grouse off the endangered species list.

But it was sharply criticized by the oil and gas industry, and in 2017 the Trump administration issued a new plan that weakened protections and made it easier for states to approve drilling, pipelines and other activities in sage-grouse breeding areas.

A federal court blocked progress on the Trump plan in 2019, so the agency never implemented any of the proposed management plans.

According to the agency, the birds rely on sagebrush to meet their food and reproductive needs, and a local population could need as much as 40 square kilometers of intact landscape to stay healthy. Other western species also depend on healthy sagebrush, including mule deer, pronghorn and pygmy rabbits.

The head of Brazil’s state oil company looked out at the cluttered landscape of Rio de Janeiro through his office window. Looking back, he saw, on the other side of the city’s dilapidated apartment buildings, the looming statue of Christ the Redeemer. Hawks circled an overflowing garbage dump. Plumes of smoke rose from a fire in a hillside slum.

His company, Petrobras, plans such a rapid increase in oil production that it could become the world’s third-largest producer by 2030, a transformation he believes could play a role in reducing the poverty he sees lies on. This, even as his country positions itself as a leader in the fight against climate change, which is of course primarily driven by the burning of oil and other fossil fuels.

Petrobras pumps about as much crude oil annually as ExxonMobil, according to market research firm Rystad Energy. Oil is expected to surge past the national oil companies of China, Russia and Kuwait in the coming years, leaving only Saudi Arabia and Iran to surpass Petrobras by 2030.

It’s a huge predicament for Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, better known as Lula, who has molded himself into the pre-eminent global leader on climate issues. By all accounts, Mr. Lula has come to believe in recent years that climate change is a major cause of poverty and inequality, which he has vowed to eradicate in his decades-long political career.

Since his election in 2022, Mr. Lula has dramatically reduced deforestation in the Amazon and overseen a significant build-out of renewable energy. But he will also preside over Petrobras’ oil boom and a period of growing gas imports, both of which will facilitate Brazil’s growing appetite for cheap flights, meatier diets and air-conditioned homes.

As counterintuitive as that may seem, it’s only fair, said Petrobras CEO Jean Paul Prates, high up in his company’s gleaming headquarters.

“We will not give up that privilege,” he said, “because others do not also make their own sacrifices.”

It’s an argument that’s hampering global efforts to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Industrialized countries such as the United States, which have become economic superpowers by emitting enormous amounts of greenhouse gases, are still the world’s largest producers and consumers of fossil fuels per capita.

And if they don’t want to stop, why would Brazil?

Lula’s chief adviser on climate change, Ana Toni, a longtime director of several nonprofits, said Petrobras would ideally cut oil production and invest more heavily in renewables, essentially transforming itself into a new kind of company. But she echoed Mr Prates, saying developing countries would hesitate to make their own sacrifices until the whole world stood together, with the richest leading the way.

Like many in Brazil, Ms. Toni pointed to the cautionary example of neighboring Colombia, whose president laid out an ambitious plan, the first for any oil-producing country, to phase out fossil fuel production.

“Colombia’s courageous decision is being interpreted by the market as creating economic uncertainty. It really is the worst-case scenario,” she said. “I wish countries richer than ours would have a real conversation about taking such steps, and not leave it to us vulnerable ones.”

That tension has dominated years of climate negotiations and will take center stage again this year at the United Nations-sponsored summit to be held in Azerbaijan in November. There, negotiators from almost every country in the world hope to tackle the thorny issue of how richer countries can funnel more money to poorer countries to help them adopt cleaner energy sources and adapt to the effects of climate change.

After Azerbaijan, Brazil itself will be the next host of the UN climate summit. The summit will take place in Belém, a city on the edge of the Amazon, near a place where Petrobras had proposed to explore for oil. But in one of the few cases where the Brazilian government restricted the oil industry, this idea was blocked. Mr Prates said Petrobras was appealing the decision.

Meanwhile, Petrobras plans to spend more than $7 billion over the next five years exploring potential offshore drilling sites along other parts of Brazil’s coast to boost its already growing output.

Petrobras, like many other oil and gas companies, internally expects demand for its products to remain stubbornly high. Accordingly, the company is making a very different set of assumptions than those of the International Energy Agency and others who say oil demand has already peaked or is close to peaking.

That leaves countries like Brazil in a kind of do-it-all gray area, says Mercedes Bustamante, a professor and ecologist at the University of Brasilia, and a member of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, an independent group of scientists.

Brazil grows both renewable energy sources and fossil fuels. This year it joined OPEC, the global oil cartel, as an observer, while next year it also plans to host the UN’s global climate negotiations. According to Rystad data, the country will become the world’s fifth largest oil producer by 2030.

This dynamic is also reflected in forests, Ms. Bustamante said. Land clearing in the Amazon has been restricted, but at the same time it is increasing in the Cerrado, a vast savannah that covers much of central Brazil.

“Working both ways is very much part of Brazil’s policy DNA,” says Oliver Stuenkel, professor at the Fundação Getulio Vargas School of International Relations in São Paulo. “We are becoming a green superpower, yes, but we are not going to take unnecessary risks. This means that we must prepare for a world in which oil will play an important role for a long time and the transition will take longer than expected.”

Mr. Prates said he spoke to Mr. Lula every two weeks and pushed him to understand that a transition away from fossil fuels must be “sensibly slow.”

“That doesn’t mean slow because we don’t want to make a transition, but slow because we have to meet the expectations of the market for oil, gas and its derivatives,” he said. “Petrobras will rise to the end of the last drop of oil, just as Saudi Arabia or the Emirates will do the same.”

Petrobras has some serious long-term upside, even if oil demand peaks. The cost of producing oil from Brazil’s offshore locations near Rio and São Paulo is roughly $35 per barrel, well below the international benchmark of $90. That’s partly because its production is less energy intensive, making it marginally cleaner and more desirable for some emissions-conscious buyers.

Lula’s government also faces a polarized electorate that, according to recent surveys, generally does not view climate change as a voting issue. “Half the population does not have access to treated sewage,” Mr. Stuenkel said. “Brazil has very different public demands than richer countries. There is still a long way to go to convince Brazilian voters that a painful reorganization of society is needed to avert climate change.”

Nevertheless, Mr. Lula is deeply concerned, said Ms. Toni, his climate adviser.

The world is looking to Brazil for leadership in this area, and the country has made ambitious pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Those promises are more ambitious, she noted, than those of the United States or many other countries that have higher living standards than Brazil.

She believes it is a good sign that Brazil is under pressure to reconsider its oil expansion. To her, this means that they have been so successful at deforestation that people are holding them to a higher standard.

But it’s all in vain if the biggest players don’t match that ambition. “Even if Brazil stops oil production tomorrow,” she said. “The US, Russia and others will not stop.”

Alabama lawmakers on Wednesday passed legislation to protect in vitro fertilization providers from civil and criminal liability, ending their fight to allow the fertility treatment after a state Supreme Court ruling ruled that frozen embryos as children should be considered.

But it was unclear whether the protections would be enough for the state’s major fertility clinics to resume treatments. Doctors at one clinic said they were ready to start again as early as the end of this week, while another clinic said they were unsure of the scope of protection and would wait for “legal clarification.”

As the measure went to Governor Kay Ivey, a Republican, for her signature, lawmakers and legal experts acknowledged that the court’s existential questions about the definition of personhood were left unanswered, leaving open the prospect of legal challenges in the future.

The overwhelming vote of support – 81 to 12 with nine abstentions in the House of Representatives and 29 to 1 in the Senate – came just two weeks after the ruling. It showed the intense urgency among Republicans to protect IVF treatments, even if that meant sidestepping the thorny contradictions between their pledge to protect unborn life and fertility treatment practices.

“They’re happy tears, it’s a sigh of relief, just because we know we’re protected,” said Stormie Miller, a Hoover, Ala., mother who had twins through IVF and still has two frozen embryos. Speaking about the future of those embryos, she added: “We can make that decision for ourselves and not let someone make that decision for us.”

Reproductive medicine in the state was thrown into turmoil by the court’s ruling, which applied to a group of families who filed a wrongful death claim over the accidental destruction of their embryos at a clinic in Mobile in 2020. But the interpretation the court’s ruling on Alabama’s statute requiring frozen embryos to be considered children — coupled with an impassioned, theology-driven opinion by the chief justice — sowed fear of civil and criminal liability among doctors and clinics, and raised concerns about the consequences of other states that would take a similar position.

At least three major clinics stopped providing IVF treatments, and an embryo transport company stopped operating in the state. Patients, who said they were already exhausted by the financial, physical and emotional toll of the treatment, begged lawmakers to preserve their chance to grow their families.

And from Montgomery to Washington, Republicans suddenly found themselves rushing to publicly endorse IVF treatments, with some lawmakers sharing their own fertility stories and others calling for a quick legislative fix. The party has already struggled to respond to voters’ concerns about tough anti-abortion laws in a hotly contested presidential year, with President Biden and Democrats pointing to the ruling as yet another sign of Republican domination of women’s lives.

But Alabama Republicans did not address the question of whether a frozen embryo conceived outside the womb should be considered a person. Instead, they quickly negotiated a measure that largely shields clinics and IVF providers from civil and criminal liability and limits shipping companies’ liability to damages to cover “the price paid for the affected in vitro cycle.”

“The problem we’re trying to solve now is getting these families back on track so they can move forward in their effort to have children,” said state Rep. Terri Collins, the lead sponsor of the measure in the House of Representatives . “Should we address that problem? Probably.”

“I don’t want to define life – that’s too important to me, to my faith,” added Ms Collins, who previously led the House of Representatives’ 2019 abortion ban. “But we do have to decide where to start with protection, and I think we need to talk about that.”

Infirmary Health Systems and the Center for Reproductive Medicine, the clinic and doctors involved in the wrongful death lawsuit, said it would not yet resume IVF treatments.

“At this time, we believe the law falls short in addressing the fertilized eggs currently being stored in the state and presents challenges for physicians and fertility clinics trying to help deserving families have children of their own,” the statement said.

Some lawmakers opposed the bill, expressing reservations about whether patients would be able to file negligence lawsuits against doctors and clinics. And some conservatives wondered whether it went too far in supporting a treatment rejected by the Catholic Church and other religious organizations.

“I’m for IVF – it’s just about the treatment of embryos and how we deal with that, and I feel like we need more time to process this,” said Senator Dan Roberts, one of two Republicans who joined on Tuesday abstained from a committee vote. He asked, “Does that embryo have a soul or does it not have a soul?”

Ms. Collins and other senior Republicans suggested a task force could be formed to discuss the issue further. But it was unclear whether that would be enough to clear the murky legal and largely unregulated landscape for IVF treatments.

“The question this bill answers is: Are our fertility clinics liable?” said Clare Ryan, a family law professor at the University of Alabama. “It doesn’t address the bigger questions of: What is the child? When does the act of conception take place? What is the role of uterine implantation?”

Leaders of conservative, religious and anti-abortion groups, including the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America group and the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm, signed on a letter urging Ms. Ivey to veto the bill to avoid “a knee-jerk reaction to a troubling situation.”

Lawmakers, the groups wrote, “must oppose an ideology that treats people as expendable commodities” and “take into account the millions of human lives that suffer the fate of being discarded or frozen indefinitely, violating the inherent dignity that they possess by virtue of being human.”

The state Supreme Court’s ruling was also based on a constitutional amendment approved by Alabama voters in 2018 to “recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children,” which reflects language that is defended by groups opposed to abortion rights. Because that language is now woven into Alabama’s 1901 Constitution, some experts said the bill was likely to face further legal challenges this week.

“Republicans created this mess for themselves, and now they are trying to limit its damage without addressing the mess itself,” said Susan Pace Hamill, a law professor at the University of Alabama who specializes in the Alabama Constitution. She added, “They’re doing somersaults to avoid directly disrupting something the Alabama Supreme Court has said.”

Democrats had proposed both a constitutional amendment and a measure that explicitly contradicted the ruling’s definition of personality. But Republicans, who have a supermajority, instead focused on their measure, slipping in a clause that would make immunity retroactive to any case or situation that wasn’t already in litigation when the law was passed.

“We’re creating more problems — we need to confront the elephant in the room,” said Rep. Chris England, a Democrat from Tuscaloosa.

But for the women and some doctors who have been in limbo for two agonizing weeks, the passage of the bill was a welcome relief, with some people in the gallery applauding as the bill passed the House.

Three doctors from the provider Alabama Fertility sat in a row Tuesday at a key Senate committee hearing and reflected on what the past two weeks have been like since they halted IVF treatments at their clinics across the state. They had spent hours deciphering the latest legislative developments and having heartbreaking conversations with their patients.

“She just sobs, ‘I want my baby,'” Dr. recalled. Mamie McLean turns from a conversation. “I usually have something to say. I had nothing to say because we feel that.”

But the bill before them, the doctors said, meant they could resume all their work on Thursday. And the experience made them realize that perhaps they should spend more time talking to lawmakers about their work.

“We must now see this as an extension of our duty to our patients,” said Dr. Michael C. Allemand, adding that “this has opened our eyes.”

Jan Hofman And Sarah Cliff reporting contributed.

Samsung phones. Hyundai cars. LG TVs. South Korean exports are available in almost every corner of the world. But the nation is more dependent than ever on imports to keep its factories and farms running: foreign labor.

This shift is part of the fallout from a demographic crisis that has left South Korea with a shrinking and aging population. Data released this week shows that the country broke its own record last year – again – for the lowest total fertility rate in the world.

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s government has responded by more than doubling quotas for low-skilled workers from less developed countries, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Nepal, the Philippines and Bangladesh. Hundreds of thousands of them now toil in South Korea, mostly in small factories, or on remote farms or fishing boats – jobs that locals consider too dirty, dangerous or too low-paid. With little say in choosing or changing employers, many foreign workers face predatory bosses, inhumane housing, discrimination and other forms of abuse.

One of them is Chandra Das Hari Narayan, born in Bangladesh. Last July, while working in a wooded park north of Seoul, he was assigned to cut down a tall tree. Although the law requires him to wear a safety helmet when doing such work, he was not given one. A falling branch hit his head, knocking him unconscious and causing blood to flow from his nose and mouth.

After his bosses refused to call an ambulance, a fellow migrant worker rushed him to a hospital, where doctors found internal bleeding in his head and his skull fractured in three places. His employer reported only minor bruises to authorities, according to a document he filed for workers’ compensation for Mr. Chandra without his approval.

“They wouldn’t have treated me like that if I was South Korean,” says 38-year-old Chandra. “They treat migrant workers as disposable.”

The work can be deadly, foreign workers were too almost three times as likely deaths in work-related accidents compared to the national average, according to a recent study. Such findings have alarmed rights groups and foreign governments; the Philippines in January forbade its citizens from taking seasonal jobs in South Korea.

But South Korea remains an attractive destination, with more than 300,000 low-skilled workers on temporary work visas here. (These figures do not include the tens of thousands of ethnic Korean migrants from China and former Soviet republics, who tend to face less discrimination.) About 430,000 more people have overstayed their visas and are working illegally, according to government data.

Migrant workers often land in places like Pocheon, a city northeast of Seoul where factories and greenhouses rely heavily on foreign labor. Sammer Chhetri, 30, arrived here in 2022 and sends $1,500 of his $1,750 monthly salary to his family in Nepal.

“You can’t make this kind of money in Nepal,” said Mr. Chhetri, who works from dawn to dusk in long, tunnel-shaped plastic greenhouses.

Another Nepalese worker, Hari Shrestha, 33, said his earnings from a South Korean furniture factory helped his family build a house in Nepal.

Then there’s the appeal of South Korean pop culture, globally popular TV dramas and music.

“Every time I call my teenage daughter at home, she always asks, ‘Dad, have you met BTS yet?’” says Asis Kumar Das, 48, originally from Bangladesh.

For nearly three years, Mr. Asis worked 12 hours a day, six days a week, in a small textile factory for a monthly salary of about $2,350, which he did not receive regularly.

“They never paid me on time or in full,” he said, showing an agreement his former employer signed with him promising to pay a portion of his back wages by the end of this month.

Mr. Asis is far from alone. According to government data, migrant workers report $91 million in unpaid wages annually.

The Ministry of Labor said it is making “every effort” to improve the working and living conditions of these workers. It sends inspectors to more workplaces, hires more translators and imposes fines on employers who abuse workers, the report said. Some cities are building public dormitories after local farmers complained that the government was importing foreign workers without adequate housing plans.

The government has also offered “exemplary” worker visas that will allow them to bring their families. Officials have said that South Korea plans to “bring in only those foreigners who are essential to our society” and “strengthen the crackdown on those staying here illegally.”

But authorities – which plan to issue a record 165,000 temporary work visas this year – have also cut back on some services, for example by stopping funding for nine migrant support centres.

In the decades after the Korean War, South Korea exported construction workers to the Middle East and nurses and miners to Germany. As it emerged as an economic powerhouse producing electronics and cars in the early 1990s, it began importing foreign workers to fill jobs shunned by the increasingly wealthy local workforce. But these migrants, classified as ‘industrial trainees’, were not protected by labor law despite their harsh working conditions.

The government introduced the Work permit system, or EPS, in 2004, eliminating middlemen and becoming the sole job broker for low-skilled migrant workers. It recruits workers on three-year visas from 16 countries, and also started offering seasonal work to foreigners in 2015.

But serious problems remain.

“The biggest problem with EPS is that it has created a master-servant relationship between employers and foreign workers,” said Kim Dal-sung, a Methodist minister who heads the Pocheon Migrant Worker Center.

That can mean inhumane conditions. The “housing” promised to Mr Chhetri, the farm worker, turned out to be a used shipping container hidden in a torn greenhouse-like structure covered in black plastic blinds.

During a bitter cold snap in December 2020, Nuon Sokkheng, a Cambodian migrant, died in a heatless hut. The government has introduced new safety regulations, but in Pocheon many workers still live in substandard facilities.

When EPS workers have abusive employers, they often have only two choices: endure the ordeal, hoping their boss will help them renew or renew their visa, or work illegally for someone else and live in constant fear. immigration raidssaid Rev. Kim.

In December 2022, 32-year-old Ray Sree Pallab Kumar lost most of the sight in his right eye after a metal piece thrown by his manager bounced off a steel cutting machine and hit him. But his employers, in southern Seoul, tried to blame him for the accident. According to a Korean-language statement, they tried to get him to sign even though he didn’t understand it.

Migrants also say they face racist or xenophobic attitudes in South Korea.

“They treat people differently based on skin color,” said Mr. Asis, the textile worker. “In the crowded bus they prefer to stand rather than take a seat next to me. I ask myself, ‘Do I smell?’”

Biswas Sree Shonkor, 34, a worker at a plastics factory, said his wages remained the same while his employer gave raises and promoted the South Korean workers he helped train.

Mr Chandra said even worse than the workplace injuries such as those he suffered at the arboretum was the way managers insulted foreign workers, but not locals, over similar mistakes.

“We don’t mind working hard,” he says. “It is not our body, but our mind that gets tired.”

Alabama lawmakers on Thursday overwhelmingly proposed legislation that would protect doctors, clinics and hospitals that offer in vitro fertilization treatments. This cleared a major hurdle in their race to enshrine protections for reproductive medicine into law.

The battle comes after a state Supreme Court ruling this month ruled that frozen embryos must be considered children under Alabama law, disrupting IVF treatment across the state and prompting several clinics to stop offering offering the treatments to avoid possible liability.

The Senate unanimously approved its version of the measure, while the House approved its bill by a 94-6 margin, with some lawmakers abstaining. Final approval is expected in the coming days, and Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, has indicated she would support such a proposal.

The rapid pace of legislation underscores how most Alabama Republicans are eager to demonstrate to their voters that they will not stand in the way of the many families turning to IVF as a way to have a child.

National Republicans — including former President Donald J. Trump, the frontrunner for the party’s presidential nomination — have also been quick to emphasize their support for reproductive medicine and encouraged Alabama lawmakers to take action.

But Thursday’s debate also made clear that the Supreme Court’s ruling has raised complex and uncomfortable questions for Republicans, who must reconcile a long-held belief that life begins at conception with the science of IVF treatment.

Notably, the measures proposed Thursday do not address the court’s claim that frozen embryos should be considered children, but instead aim to protect the treatment providers from civil or criminal liability. It remains unclear, as some lawmakers noted during the debate, whether the legislation will spark new lawsuits or do enough to ensure the continuation of IVF treatments in the state.

And while the votes were overwhelmingly in favor, both Republicans and Democrats expressed frustration with the scope of the legislation. Some Republicans in the House of Representatives objected to a clause that would allow the measure to take effect retroactively for potential cases outside the lawsuit that led to the ruling. They also questioned why lawmakers dropped a bid to end the law in June 2025, which some saw as a possible deadline to force lawmakers to act further.

Representative Terri Collins, the lead Republican author of the legislation in the House of Representatives, framed the measure as a way to ensure clinics can safely reopen in the state as lawmakers grapple with the moral, legal and theological questions surrounding it. granting the rights of a person to an embryo.

“We will have to continue to work together to solve the problem,” she said. “But right now we wanted to get the clinics open so the families could use them, and we did.”

Democrats, who largely joined Republicans in supporting the measures, also questioned whether they were doing enough to protect not only doctors but also parents receiving IVF treatment. Top Democrats have introduced separate bills — including a constitutional amendment — explicitly stating that embryos should not be considered children, but these have been largely ignored by the Republican supermajority.

State Rep. Chris England, a Democrat from Tuscaloosa, said the Republican-drafted bill “requires us to be morally ambiguous and intellectually dishonest at the same time.”