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General Motors announced last week that it's closing its auto plant in St. Petersburg, and Volkswagen says it will lay off workers and reduce shifts at a plant in central Russia.

The latest auto industry troubles highlight a dismal picture for foreign investment in Russia, which could see a 35 percent drop in sales this year.

Seven years ago, GM was looking at a bright future in the Russian market. Cars sales were taking off and would eventually grow at a rate more than 10 percent a year.

The company promoted its newest auto plant with a video that praised Russian government cooperation with the industry, which had already attracted companies such as Ford, Nissan and Toyota.

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Now, GM has announced that it will close that plant and take a $600 million charge to pay for the restructuring. Like many foreign automakers in Russia, GM is facing a car market that's near collapse.

Low oil prices and Western sanctions, imposed on Russia for its annexation of Crimea last year, drove the ruble down by 40 percent, and with it, consumer buying power, says Mark Adomanis, an analyst who has covered the subject for Forbes.

"Given what Russians' average incomes are," he says, "big-ticket items like cars have never been easy to afford. But if all of a sudden, you make that car 50 percent more expensive, 30 percent more expensive, it's just beyond people's reach."

GM's costs rose more than many other automakers in Russia because the company imported many of its parts, Adomanis says, instead of sourcing them locally.

GM workers in St. Petersburg say the company failed to address a problem that many people saw coming.

Pyotr Letkeman, chairman of the union shop committee, say the workers feel they are being made to pay for management's mistakes.

"As far back as 2013, it was clear that sales were declining in Russia," Letkeman says. "GM had very little localization of production in Russia, so foreign parts became expensive when the ruble lost value. GM couldn't compete."

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A security guard at the General Motors factory outside St. Petersburg. Opel, the European arm of GM, announced last week it was withdrawing from the Russian market, where sales are falling. Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images

A security guard at the General Motors factory outside St. Petersburg. Opel, the European arm of GM, announced last week it was withdrawing from the Russian market, where sales are falling.

Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images

But GM isn't the only foreign carmaker having problems in Russia. Volkswagen announced that it's cutting back. The Korean company Ssangyong says it didn't ship any cars to Russia in January and February, because there simply wasn't a market for them.

The Russia government announced plans to provide carmakers with $166 million in subsidies to help tide them over.

Letkeman says the workers are angry and scared by a closure that will affect thousands of people.

"It's very painful," he adds. "People are calling me, asking 'what should I do? How will I feed my kids? How will I pay my mortgage?' "

Adomanis, the analyst, says that although it's very hard on people who lose their jobs, the overall job loss probably won't be felt in an economy where many people are employed by the government.

He says the real danger is the signal this sends to potential foreign investors.

"The automobile industry is one of the very few where they did a good job of attracting foreign investment," he says, "and to see one of the few industries where they have some real success stories to tell — to see people slashing production or in GM's case, pulling out entirely — is very worrying."

Adomanis says it's a sign that foreign investors no longer see the costs of doing business in Russia as being worth the benefits.

GM's plant closure will stop production of Chevrolets in Russia and wind down production of its German-designed Opel brand.

During its hot-selling days in Russia, Opel hired supermodel Claudia Schiffer to appear in an ad touting the car's engineering.

The ad closes with Schiffer speeding down a ramp in a parking garage.

These days, that downward spiral could just as well represent the auto market in Russia.

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Russia

It might not sound newsworthy that Charleston, S.C. is getting a new mayor next year. But the last time the city elected a new mayor was 40 years ago, in December 1975.

That mayor is Joe Riley; He's been re-elected nine times since, and now, at 72, has decided to retire. During his tenure, he has palpably changed the look and feel of Charleston and has been praised for taking a stand on racial issues. In 2000, he led a five-day march of hundreds from to Columbia, S.C. to demand that the Confederate flag stop being flown above the state Capitol. Riley spoke recently to NPR's Robert Siegel about that march, urban design and and how he feels about having the city's new baseball park named after him.

Interview Highlights

On changing the look of Charleston

What I saw [in Europe] was that the average person loved and was grateful for a quality public realm in their city. And that is the essence of a city — the buildings, the streets, the squares, the parks, the institutions. It is the duty of the mayor of being the urban designer for his city. The mayor has the power to affect people generations away.

And if you think about it, a society is more healthy when the things we love the most are the things we share ownership with. When the public has a park that the richest and the poorest own alike. Or a main street that's lively and safe and healthy and everyone owns, then we're all better off.

On marching to urge removal of the Confederate flag over the state Capitol

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In 2000, Mayor Joe Riley, right, led hundreds of marchers 120 miles to the Columbia, S.C. demanding that the Confederate flag to be removed from the top of the state Capitol. Mary Ann Chastain/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Mary Ann Chastain/AP

In 2000, Mayor Joe Riley, right, led hundreds of marchers 120 miles to the Columbia, S.C. demanding that the Confederate flag to be removed from the top of the state Capitol.

Mary Ann Chastain/AP

I sought this job ... mainly to help build a bridge between the African-American and the white community. Charleston's a deep Southern city, the Civil War was started here, the 60s and 70s time of change, and that was what brought me to this job.

So having the Confederate battle flying atop the state Capitol, it made no sense and it was an affront to many people in our state. And so I led the march, and it came down. And that was a very important experience for me, and I think it helped our state move forward.

On having the city's new ballpark named after him

I never wanted that. I worked hard to get a baseball park built ... and there was a lot of controversy, and why not put it in the outskirts of town where the land is cheap and all of that. So the city council demanded, against my vote that they name it after me.

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Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park in Charleston, home of the RiverDogs. Streeter Lecka/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park in Charleston, home of the RiverDogs.

Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

[When the season starts] I will throw out my last opening day pitch, and work very hard to get it over the plate.

On deciding to retire

It's an intense job, you give it all, everyday, and I just don't want to get into another term where I say 'gee, it would be nice to take it a little bit easier.' So my goal is to finish the last day in office, mentally, like running through the finish line of a road race with a good kick. I've got about 50 active projects I'm working on right now and probably never worked harder in my life.

Looks like it took a 36-year-old comic actor from a small British town no one has heard of to bring back the oldest of old-school American TV talk show traditions.

That's how television fans with long memories may feel after watching James Corden's winning debut Monday as the new host of CBS' The Late Late Show — a program once known for its eagerness to dismantle old talk show formulas under previous host Craig Ferguson.

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Reggie Watts, left, and James Corden tape the opening sequence for "The Late Late Show with James Corden." Neil Jacobs/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Neil Jacobs/AP

Reggie Watts, left, and James Corden tape the opening sequence for "The Late Late Show with James Corden."

Neil Jacobs/AP

Instead, Corden pivoted back to stuff we've seen on chat shows since the 1950s: a live band, led by a tuxedo jacket-wearing Reggie Watts; an introduction of celebrity guests as they exit their dressing rooms, bringing everyone out to trade banter at the same time; a skit with guest Tom Hanks featuring the two re-enacting his entire film career in hastily-thrown on wigs, beards and makeup; and a pre-taped bit with a cavalcade of stars explaining how he somehow wound up with a U.S. TV show, starring ex-Tonight Show host Jay Leno as an abusive, Whiplash-style mentor.

Stitched together with Corden's considerable charm and gee-whiz sincerity – he repeated in his monologue Monday a line he told me in January, "believe me, however shocked you are that I am doing this job, you will never be as shocked as I am" – Monday's show was exactly the unexpectedly entertaining romp you would want at the end of a very long broadcast day.

It was also a coming-out of sorts for Corden, a British celebrity who us Yanks mostly know as the pudgy guy from Into the Woods. But he's also a Tony-award winning actor who co-created a popular sitcom in England, Gavin & Stacey, and built his fame across the pond in a series of TV jobs that included hosting awards shows and sports talk shows.

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The audience didn't get much of that backstory Monday from Corden, who nevertheless introduced himself to viewers in the same way Jimmy Fallon did when he took over the Tonight Show. Instead, Corden talked about his wife and young kids, introducing his parents in the audience and joking that his mom liked Los Angeles so much that she was getting a boob job and eating kale.

But in a debut that nodded to talk show tradition, the new Late Late Show also checked all the boxes necessary for success in today's Internet-fueled late night TV climate.

The filmed piece with Leno, featuring a who's who of guest stars looking for a Willy Wonka-style golden ticket to host the show, highlighted boldfaced names like Meryl Streep, Chris Rock, Billy Crystal and CBS chairman Les Moonves. (am I the only one who thinks Leno is way funnier and more interesting as an ex-Tonight Show host than he was in the actual job?)

James Corden shows how he got 'Late Late Show' hosting job Willy Wonka-style.

That much star power was sure to spark viral video play the next day – as was the bit with Tom Hanks, featuring the two running through the coolest lines from all his movies, whipping on wigs, makeup and, in the case of Castaway, the scraggliest fake beard on late-night TV.

It helps that competitors like Fallon on NBC and Jimmy Kimmel on ABC have shown celebrities how much fun it can be to play on late-night TV. Getting Hanks to plop on a cowboy hat and spout lines from Toy Story has to be easier after Barack Obama broke the Internet reading Kimmel's mean tweets and slow jamming the news with Fallon.

Speaking of headline-grabbing moments, Corden also got guest Mila Kunis to admit she had married longtime boyfriend Ashton Kutcher, in an exchange that felt like something you might see on Graham Norton's British chat show. But Corden was a bit too wired Monday to really put his guests at ease; like many talk show hosts, he may find talking up guests on the couch the most challenging part of the gig.

Corden's Late Late Show debut gave audiences a glimpse of good times to come. Bandleader Watts, one of the most inventive and musical comedic voices from the podcast-turned-TV show Comedy Bang! Bang!, mostly showed off his awesome vocal chops in Monday's show, though he did contribute a deliberately awkward Question of the Day for Hanks that felt cribbed from his Bang! Bang! days. I'm hoping he gets a little more space to shine in shows to come.

As I've written before, success in talk show TV-land largely comes down to two things: the format of the show and the way in which the host inhabits that format. Monday's debut showed Corden has a well-tuned format that showcases his charm and talent. He's just got to figure out what he wants to do with it.

It's not the kind of show that will transform late night TV, at least not yet.

But for the third white guy named James hosting a talk show on network television, it wasn't bad.

Move over, cooking shows. In Korea, the big food fad is eating shows, or mukbang. Korean viewers are so glued to watching strangers binge-eating that the live-streamers consuming calories in front of webcams are becoming minor celebrities in Korean culture.

Rachel Ahn, who goes by "Aebong-ee" on her broadcasts, is kind of a big deal in the mukbang world. In fact, when we went to meet her, she wore a mask for fear fans would recognize her on the street.

Every weeknight at 9 p.m., Ahn sits down with enough food to feed a family of six. The night we visit, it was spicy noodles, spicy shrimp, steamed dumplings, fried dumplings and another platter of even spicier noodles, called fire zha jiang myeon.

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She carefully displays the platters so they all fit in the frame, turns up lights and her mic and when she goes live, about 200 of her fans are already chatting in a box next to her video stream. As she begins tearing into the food, the number of simultaneous viewers swells above 1,000.

The demands on Ahn and other mukbang stars like her are high — she can't just eat, she must eat ferociously. As she devours noodles, loud slurping is a must. Audiences offer feedback on a livestream, asking how spicy the noodles are, suggesting she move dumplings closer to the camera or do a dance in excitement. The stream continues for three hours, every night.

Korean mukbang star Aebong-ee demonstrates her eating prowess with some American classics, like crinkle cut fries and ice cream.

This fad hasn't just made Ahn a brand, it makes her a living.

"In the beginning I earned nearly nothing. It started out really slow, but now I'm earning more than my salary at my actual job," she says.

For eating lots, and eating loudly, the audience rewards mukbang jockeys with virtual balloons that can be converted into cash. On the night we visit, in the first half-hour of her three-hour netcast, Ahn collected the equivalent of $200.

She and other prolific Korean eaters now have fan clubs, thanks to their copious consumption.

Ahn's fan club manager, Min Bo-ram, moderates the chat room during the nightly mukbangs, helping Ahn rise to the ranks of the 100 most-popular hosts. She tells NPR she won't stop until "Aebong-ee" is ranked No. 1 among the estimated 3,000 mukbang broadcast jockeys in South Korea.

The tech company supporting this trend is Afreeca TV, which provides the platform these broadcasters use to stream their live eating, and the cash converter that gets them paid. Even the Afreeca's managers are surprised this particular trend took off.

At dinnertime hours, 45,000 Korean viewers watch mukbang at the same time, a three-fold growth since this emerged in 2013. The top-ranked stars make as much as $10,000 a month, and that's not counting sponsorships from food and drink brands.

But what compels so many Koreans to tune in?

For Ahn, she explains that her mostly female fan base gets to eat vicariously through her.

"Viewers who watch my mukbang are on a diet," she says. "So you call this a sort of gratification through others."

Afreeca's digital media manager, Hahn Yeh Seul, suspects the growth of Koreans living alone gives mukbang a boost, since there's a sense of community in coming together at a dinner table, even if it's only virtually.

Kyung Kim, professor of East Asian studies at University of California-Irvine, suggests the audience hunger for mukbang is a yearning for something besides connection — it's a desire for something real.

"Eating is something one activity that is strongly identified as being natural, and spontaneous," Kim says. "You think about K pop or K drama [and] they're very artificial, they're all about makeup and plastic surgeries. And a lot of people find this — mukbang — to be the exact opposite of all the things right now Korean popular culture really stands for."

You could argue whether eating two extra-large pizzas in one sitting, or a punch bowl full of ramen, is really natural. But Korean viewers? They can't look away.

For behind-the-scenes with Aebong-ee, check out our new East Asia tumblr.

Hae Ryun Kang contributed to this story.

food fad

korean viewers

mokbang

mukbang

Korean food

South Korea