Director Asghar Farhadi, left, and actress Lily-Rose Depp pose for photographers upon arrival at the opening ceremony and the screening of the film Ismael's Ghosts at the 70th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Wednesday, May 17, 2017. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
CANNES, France (AP) --
Iranian director Asghar Farhadi has finally received his Oscar for best foreign language film, nearly three months after boycotting the Academy Awards ceremony.
Farhadi received the statuette during the opening ceremony at the Cannes Film Festival in France on Wednesday.
Farhadi boycotted the ceremony in February over President Donald Trump's proposed travel ban on people from several majority-Muslim countries, including Iran.
In his acceptance speech Wednesday, Farhadi praised Cannes as a "place where cultures speak to one another."
Farhadi won for "The Salesman," a drama centered around the story of a married couple who performed Arthur Miller's play "Death of a Salesman" on stage.
Suchir Balaji poses for a photo in Hawaii in 2018. Balaji was a former OpenAI engineer and whistleblower who died in November 2024. (Balaji Ramamurthy via AP)
Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI engineer and whistleblower who helped train the artificial intelligence systems behind ChatGPT and later said he believed those practices violated copyright law, has died, according to his parents and San Francisco officials. He was 26.
Balaji worked at OpenAI for nearly four years before quitting in August. He was well-regarded by colleagues at the San Francisco company, where a co-founder this week called him one of OpenAI's strongest contributors who was essential to developing some of its products.
"We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news and our hearts go out to Suchir's loved ones during this difficult time," said a statement from OpenAI.
Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on Nov. 26 in what police said "appeared to be a suicide. No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation." The city's chief medical examiner's office confirmed the manner of death to be suicide.
His parents Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy said they are still seeking answers, describing their son as a "happy, smart and brave young man" who loved to hike and recently returned from a trip with friends.
Balaji grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and first arrived at the fledgling AI research lab for a 2018 summer internship while studying computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He returned a few years later to work at OpenAI, where one of his first projects, called WebGPT, helped pave the way for ChatGPT.
"Suchir's contributions to this project were essential, and it wouldn't have succeeded without him," said OpenAI co-founder John Schulman in a social media post memorializing Balaji. Schulman, who recruited Balaji to his team, said what... Read More
