The United States is seeking a swift extradition from Mexico of Nestor Isidro Perez Salas, or “El Nini,” who is accused of heading security for the faction of the Sinaloa cartel headed by the sons of founder Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said  Thursday. 

The Mexican National Guard on Wednesday captured Perez Salas. Viewed by U.S. anti-narcotics agents as one of the most ruthless Mexican drug figures, Perez Salas was detained in Culiacan, the Sinaloa cartel’s heartland, and was taken to Mexico City, according to government detention records. 

“Shortly after the apprehension of El Nini, I spoke with Mexican Attorney General [Alejandro] Gertz to thank him for the extraordinary efforts of the Mexican authorities who made the arrest,” Garland said in a statement. 

“We are now seeking El Nini’s swift extradition from Mexico to face justice here in the United States,” the statement said. 

The capture came less than a week after U.S. President Joe Biden met with his Mexican counterpart, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. 

The U.S. State Department has accused Perez Salas of working under Ivan Archivaldo Guzman to lead the “Ninis,” a violent group of security personnel for the Guzman brothers, also known as “Los Chapitos.” 

U.S. courts have indicted Perez Salas on a number of charges in relation to his alleged role at the helm of the Chapitos’ security apparatus, including cocaine and methamphetamine trafficking, conspiracy, possession of machine guns and witness retaliation. 

The State Department had offered up to $3 million for information leading to his arrest. 

In January, Mexican authorities captured Ovidio Guzman in Sinaloa and extradited him to the United States in September. The three other Guzman brothers who are suspected of leading Los Chapitos, including the figurehead, Ivan, remain free. 
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New York City on Thursday hosted its 97th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, featuring 48 character and novelty balloons, 26 floats, 12 marching bands and more than 700 clowns. Aron Ranen reports.
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In most of the United States, November and December are prime time for turkey lovers. The U.S. Poultry and Egg Association says 46 million turkeys are eaten on Thanksgiving, with another 22 million consumed on Christmas.

But in the Southern state of Louisiana, known for its decadence and creative cuisine, turkey has a competitor. For people in and around cities including New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Lafayette, it’s turducken that is the talk of the town.

“Turducken is a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey,” said Ellis Lanaux, chief executive officer of Langenstein’s, the oldest full-service grocery store in New Orleans, open since 1922.

“It’s part of this unique culinary culture we have down here,” Lanaux told VOA. “There’s nothing like our food elsewhere in America, and you see that uniqueness on our Thanksgiving table. In addition to mainstream staples like mashed potatoes and green beans, you also find Cajun dishes like chargrilled oysters, oyster dressing, cornbread and crawfish stuffing, mirliton casserole, and — if you’re lucky — a turducken.”

In addition to the trio of birds, dressing (a term in some parts of the U.S. often used interchangeably with stuffing) is added between each layer. Some turducken creators ask shoppers to choose a single dressing, with oyster dressing and cornbread and crawfish dressing among the most popular.

Others, including Hebert’s Specialty Meats, allow as many as three dressings, with alligator, boudin sausage, shrimp etouffee and rice, crawfish jalapeno cornbread, jambalaya, and wild rice and pecan among the many possibilities between layers of poultry.

When sliced, the creation presents almost like a layered French terrine.

“Eating turducken isn’t for the faint of heart, and neither is preparing one,” laughed restaurateur Brenda Prudhomme. “It takes forever. You have to prepare your dressing, you have to get your birds, you have to debone each of them, you have to stuff them and layer the dressings, you have to season them, and then you basically have to become a seamstress and sew them in together. It isn’t easy, but it brings a lot of people joy so we do it!”

Part of a long tradition

Hebert’s Specialty Meats sells thousands of turduckens each year, with spikes at both Thanksgiving and Christmas. At Chris’s Specialty Foods, the Turducken Roll Package is advertised as “enough turducken for a small banquet,” while its Holiday Turducken Feast serves even more.

The words “banquet” and “feast” aren’t accidental: Turducken is part of a larger, and older, tradition known as engastration, a cooking technique in which the remains of one animal are stuffed into another.

“It’s a tradition that reaches back to the Middle Ages, and even has roots in ancient Rome,” said Liz Williams, founder of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans. “It’s a culinary practice that would show up at feasts for royalty and enjoyed by the wealthy. Compared to what they were stuffing back then, filling a turkey with a duck and a chicken, quite frankly, is chump change.”

The famed Trojan Boar from the Roman Empire, for example, was a 1,000-pound hog stuffed with game birds and other small animals.

The Roti Sans Pareil, or the Roast Without Equal, was a 19th-century dish created by French gastronomist Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de la Reyniere. The creation included an extraordinary 17 stuffed birds: bustard, chicken, duck, garden warbler, goose, guinea fowl, lapwing, lark, ortolan bunting, partridge, pheasant, plover, quail, teal, thrush, turkey and woodcock.

And, still today, the Inuits of Greenland are known to enjoy kiviak, a traditional winter community dish of seal stuffed with as many as 500 birds.

While turducken is far more modest, Lenore Newman, author of Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food, said this Louisiana Thanksgiving feast food likely comes from a similar tradition.

“It’s a dish intended to impress,” she told VOA. “That’s a commonality among dishes using engastration: They are meant to wow.”

Debated origin

Turducken most definitely wows – so much so that there are competing claims to its origin.

Many say it was Paul Prudhomme, who popularized Cajun cuisine on a national stage with his catalog of successful cookbooks and his public television show, “Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Always Cooking!” Prudhomme copyrighted the name in 1986, but others believe it was Hebert’s that created the dish a year earlier.

“A farmer walked into our store carrying a turkey, a duck and a chicken, and they asked our owners to stuff them into each other,” said Scott Catlett, the owner of several Hebert’s locations. “We thought it was a little weird, but we’re always willing to try anything once and thankfully we did!”

Some even credit turducken’s invention to New Orleans surgeon Gerald R. LaNasa. As early as the 1960s, he was locally known to use his scalpel while deboning the three birds before stuffing them — sometimes adding pork or veal roasts, andouille sausage or foie gras into the final hen’s cavity.

“I think it’s usually impossible to pin food down to one inventor because cuisine evolves and people build off of each other’s ideas,” said Williams from the Southern Food and Beverage Museum. “But the fact that there are so many competing popular stories shows just how beloved turducken has become.”

Though the debate over who created the trilogy of birds continues, there is no dispute about when the dish rose to national prominence.

That was in 1997 when American football television announcer John Madden carved into a turducken during a Thanksgiving game hosted by the New Orleans Saints. Turducken became a regular part of his Thanksgiving broadcasts, with Madden handing out turkey legs to that game’s best players.

Despite its popularity, with thousands now shipped annually from Louisiana, not everyone is impressed.

“I call it a medieval pile of poo!” laughed Poppy Tooker, host of a weekly radio show, “Louisiana Eats!” “If you’re hoping for the familiar flavor of a turkey breast, or a rich duck, or a delicious chicken, I’m afraid you’re not going to get any of that because it all gets jumbled together into a mess.”

Still, Tooker acknowledged there is something about turducken that captures the spirit of the region from which it came.

“Louisianians — men and women — aren’t afraid to roll their sleeves up in the kitchen and take on a complicated dish,” she said. “This is definitely one of them. It might not be a recipe that came from your grandmother, but it’s a newer tradition that says something about our culture, for sure. People are wild about it here.”

To find out what side of the turducken debate you fall on — delicious or not — Prudhomme advised in his 1987 “The Prudhomme Family Cookbook” to try making one yourself.

“Each time you do a turducken, it will become easier,” he wrote. “It doesn’t take magical cooking ability; it just takes care. What is magical is the way people who eat it will feel about your cooking.”
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The Gershkovich family is accustomed to having Thanksgiving without their son, journalist Evan Gershkovich, since he has lived abroad as a reporter for several years. But this year, his absence at the Thanksgiving table weighs particularly heavily because Gershkovich is jailed in a Russian prison.

“Having a Thanksgiving with Evan there would have been a huge treat. But, of course, this Thanksgiving, it’s just hard,” Danielle Gershkovich, Evan’s sister, told VOA. There’s “a literal, physical darkness,” she said.

As millions of people across the United States and the world celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday, two American journalists — Gershkovich, as well as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Alsu Kurmasheva — are spending the holiday jailed in Russia on charges that are widely viewed as groundless and politically motivated.

“It is shameful these Americans are spending Thanksgiving in a Russian prison, rather than celebrating at home with their families,” Daniel Kanigan, deputy spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, told VOA in a statement.

Gershkovich, a Russia correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, has been detained since March on espionage charges that he, his employer and the U.S. government vehemently deny. The U.S. government has declared Gershkovich wrongfully detained.

Gershkovich’s pretrial detention is set to expire on November 30. Originally set to expire in May, his pretrial detention has already been extended twice. 

Paul Beckett, an assistant editor at The Wall Street Journal who is leading the newspaper’s effort to secure Gershkovich’s release, predicts his colleague’s pretrial detention will be extended for another three-month period.

Alsu Kurmasheva

Meanwhile, Kurmasheva, an editor with the Tatar-Bashkir Service of VOA’s sister outlet RFE/RL, has been detained since mid-October on charges of failing to register as a “foreign agent.” She and her employer reject the “foreign agent” charges, which are often used to target the Kremlin’s critics.

Based in Prague, the dual U.S.-Russian national traveled to Russia in May for a family emergency. Kurmasheva’s passports were confiscated when she tried to leave the country in June, and she was waiting for her passports to be returned when she was detained last month. She will be held in pretrial detention until at least December 5.

Russia’s Washington embassy did not reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.

On a typical Thanksgiving, Kurmasheva joins her family and friends “for a bountiful meal with gratitude for the love and support we’ve experienced throughout the year,” her husband, Pavel Butorin, told VOA in a statement.

“This Thanksgiving, jailed in Russia, Alsu will be receiving prison food through a small window in her cell,” said Butorin, who is the director of Current Time TV, a Russian-language TV and digital network led by RFE/RL in partnership with VOA.

“Alsu is not a criminal. She deserves to be with family and friends on her favorite American holiday, not confined in a prison cell,” Butorin said. “We love her and miss her at our Thanksgiving table.”

Butorin has previously called on the U.S. government to declare Kurmasheva wrongfully detained, which would open additional government resources to help secure her release.

“We are also closely following the detention of Alsu Kurmasheva and remain deeply concerned about the extension of her pretrial detention,” said Kanigan, from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. “The Department of State continuously reviews the circumstances surrounding the detentions of U.S. nationals overseas, including those in Russia, for indicators that they are wrongful.”

In his statement, Kanigan also renewed calls for Russian authorities to immediately release Gershkovich, as well as Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine serving a 16-year sentence for espionage. Like Gershkovich, Whelan has been declared wrongfully detained.

A different Thanksgiving

For the Gershkovich family, Thanksgiving is usually a casual affair, according to Danielle Gershkovich, who said they focus on spending time together as a family, especially when her brother managed to travel home from work for the holiday.

“Especially the more time we were apart from one another in college and Evan being abroad, it was an excuse to have family dinner together,” she said.

Evan is an amazing cook, she said, so he and their dad would “do something extravagant,” Danielle said. “My mom and I got to reap the rewards and clean up after.”

This Thanksgiving, some of Gershkovich’s journalist friends, whom he met while working in Russia, are traveling from Europe to the Gershkovich home in New Jersey to celebrate the holiday together, she said.

Danielle said her family is able to stay in touch with Evan through letters. Their correspondence is full of jokes, she said, adding that she has also taken to giving her brother tarot card readings through their letters in an effort to keep him entertained.

“He’s working really hard to keep himself in good spirits. I’m just so amazed by him,” she said. “I don’t think I could be staying as strong as I am — or my parents either — if it weren’t for seeing him. If he can do it, so can we.”

As part of The Wall Street Journal’s campaign to secure Gershkovich’s release, assistant editor Beckett said the outlet is asking people to save a seat at their Thanksgiving table “to remember Evan and what he is going through in Lefortovo Prison.”

“It’s always tough when you have a colleague in such dire straits. I think it’s going to be more poignant, more immediate and more moving to know that he’s there on a holiday,” Beckett told VOA. “There are no holidays in Russian jail.”
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Every year, on the fourth Thursday in November, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. It’s a commemoration of the 1621 harvest feast when the colonists, who came from England, shared a friendly meal with the land’s Native people. But how much of the Thanksgiving story is true? VOA’s Dora Mekouar visited Plymouth, Massachusetts, the site of the first Thanksgiving, to separate fact from fiction. Producers: Dora Mekouar, Adam Greenbaum. Camera: Adam Greenbaum.
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President Joe Biden was “personally involved” in the deal to secure the release of about 50 hostages held in Gaza by Hamas, John Kirby, the National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, said in an interview Wednesday.

The release, which has now been pushed back to at least Friday, is to be accompanied by Israel’s release of 150 Palestinian prisoners, a days-long temporary cease-fire and the delivery of more humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Kirby, who spoke to Paris Huang, the VOA Mandarin White House correspondent, also dismissed recent diplomatic efforts by China to broker an end to the Israel-Hamas conflict. Analysts have described the attempt as a bid by Beijing to position itself as a more credible peacemaker in the Middle East than the United States.  

The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. 

VOA: What was President Biden’s role in the Israel-Hamas hostage deal? 

NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL COORDINATOR FOR STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS JOHN KIRBY: The president was personally involved at the leader level to see if we can get this deal done. In fact, he was speaking to the emir of Qatar just last week while we were in San Francisco for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. So he was personally engaged and involved. He’s been updated, sometimes multiple times a day, on how things were going with a negotiation. And of course, he directed the entire national security team to work hard on this outcome as well, from the CIA director to the secretary of state and national security adviser. … And of course, special envoy on the ground David Satterfield was pivotal, as was our coordinator for the Middle East Brett McGurk. So it really was a team effort. 

VOA: A delegation of Arab and Muslim countries had a meeting on Gaza in Beijing this Monday. Do you believe that meeting could be constructive, and did President Xi promise to help on this issue when he met with President Biden last week? 

KIRBY: I’ll let President Xi speak for himself on what he will or won’t do. The president did raise the issue of what’s going on in the Middle East with President Xi and we certainly urge President Xi to use his influence in Tehran to make sure that we were communicating to the supreme leader how seriously we take what’s going on and that we don’t want to see this war widen or escalate. And of course, Tehran can have a role in that or not. And so that was certainly a message to President Xi. But China has interest in the region too. Our strong desire would be that they would use their influence in the region to that larger effect. 

VOA: The delegation, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Indonesia, plans to also travel to Washington. What would be your message? 

KIRBY: I’m not going to get ahead of a discussion that hasn’t happened. I think you can expect that our message will be the same as it has been; that that we want to continue to work with our partners in the region and many of these partners have been enormously helpful so far. Jordan, Egypt, certainly, in their communications with Hamas helped broker this deal. They have all been helpful in their own way. And I think what you can see us continue to do in our discussions with them is talk about ways in which they can be more helpful going forward. 

There are so many countries that have an interest in what’s going on in the region writ large, and certainly have an interest in what’s going on between Israel and Hamas. Every nation is a sovereign state. They can all speak for themselves on how they want to pursue their interests.  

What we want to make sure is a few things: Number one, that Israel has the tools and capabilities it needs to go after this very viable threat by Hamas, an existential threat to Israel. Number two, that all of us with interest in the region and obviously people that live in the region, do whatever we can to continue to help the people of Gaza through humanitarian assistance, medical assistance, food, water, medicine and fuel. The United States is leading the world in trying to get that kind of humanitarian assistance in and we’re certainly going to be looking for additional contributions that can be made by our partners who actually live in the neighborhood. 

VOA: Are you concerned that China might gain a better hand dealing with Arab and Muslim countries right now? 

KIRBY: We’re comfortable with our relationships. We’re comfortable with American leadership in the region. We’re comfortable that we have the ability to work through partners in the region to achieve outcomes and results that are beneficial to all of us. So I’ll let China speak for themselves. President Biden is comfortable with our leadership on the world stage and particularly there in the region. 

VOA: There’s an open letter signed by the international aid organization overseeing the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza accusing President Biden of destroying international rules [that civilians and hospitals should be protected] and hurting humanitarian values in his support of Israel. What is your response? 

KIRBY: President Biden has made it clear that we’re going to continue to support Israel as they conduct these operations against Hamas. They have a right and a responsibility to do it. No nation should have to suffer the attacks that they suffered on Oct. 7, and we’re going to continue to stand with Israel, and we’re going to do so in a steadfast way.

At the same time, we’re going to continue to urge Israel to be as careful and deliberate and cautious in their targeting and in their operations as possible so that an impact on civilian life can be minimized, civilian casualties can be reduced. Obviously, many, many thousands of innocent people in Gaza have been killed as a result of this conflict. And certainly, we don’t want to see any more killed. We don’t want to see any more wounded, and we’ll continue to work with Israel to that effect. 

But I also think it’s important to remember who’s putting these people in harm’s way and that’s Hamas. Hamas started this on the seventh of October by slaughtering innocent Israelis, some of them in their homes, some of them in front of their kids, and then they go back to Gaza. And what do they do? They hide in tunnels, they hide in hospitals. They put innocent people of Gaza in the crossfire between the Israel Defense Forces and themselves. That itself is a war crime. That itself is a violation of international law. That’s abominable. And that’s the kind of threat that the Israelis are facing. 

VOA: You mentioned the administration hopes President Xi will use his influence on Iran. At this moment, do you believe that Iran is still heeding U.S.’s message to not widen the war in Gaza? 

KIRBY: We haven’t turned a blind eye to Iran’s destabilizing behavior and the support that they have given to Hezbollah, the support that they’ve given to Hamas, the support that they give to the Houthis in Yemen, the attacks on maritime shipping, I could go on and on and on. The support that they’re given Mr. Putin in Ukraine. We haven’t turned a blind eye to any of that. And our message to Iran today is the same as it was yesterday, the day before that. This is not the time to be thinking about escalating or widening or deepening this conflict. Now, again, we haven’t seen any actor in the region jump all in with both feet and try to do that. Our message to anybody thinking about that, including Iran: Don’t do it. 

 
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