Counting the climate cost of AI
[unable to retrieve full-text content] What’s the hidden climate cost of AI?
Video: Military plane crashes in Sudan
[unable to retrieve full-text content] Sources in Sudan say several people have been killed after a military plane crashed into a residential area.
Israel bombs ‘military targets’ in southern Syria, outside Damascus
The Israeli military conducts air raids on what it described as military bases and command centres. The Israeli military has conducted air raids targeting what it described as military bases and command centres in southern Syria and outside the capital, Damascus. Israeli warplanes hit the town of Kisweh, approximately 20km (12 miles) south of Damascus, as well as the southern province of Deraa late on Tuesday, residents, security sources and local broadcaster Syria TV said. The Israeli army said it struck “military targets in southern Syria, including command centres and multiple sites containing weapons”, without specifying exact locations. Residents of Damascus reported hearing the sound of planes flying several low passes over the capital and a series of blasts. “The Air Force is attacking strongly in southern Syria as part of the new policy we have defined of pacifying southern Syria – and the message is clear: we will not allow southern Syria to become southern Lebanon,” Defence Minister Israel Katz’s spokesperson said in a statement. “Any attempt by the Syrian regime forces and the country’s terrorist organisations to establish themselves in the security zone in southern Syria will be met with fire,” the statement added. Advertisement The bombardment came hours after Syria condemned Israel’s incursion into the country’s south and demanded it withdraw, according to the closing statement of a national dialogue summit. The summit, organised by Syria’s new government, aimed to outline the country’s political roadmap after the toppling of President Bashar al-Assad in December. Israel moved forces into a United Nations-monitored demilitarised zone within Syria after al-Assad’s removal, a move that violated the 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria. On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for the “demilitarisation” of southern Syria, saying Israel “will not allow the new Syrian army to move into territory south of Damascus”. Palestinian group Hamas condemned the air strikes in the “strongest terms”, calling them “a blatant attack on Syrian sovereignty” and a continuation of Israel’s aggression against Arab nations. The attacks complicate efforts by Syria’s new administration to reunify the country, said Qutaiba Idlbi, a resident senior fellow for Syria at the Atlantic Council. He said the air raids coincided with the national dialogue summit on Syria’s political transition, which has already faced challenges, particularly in negotiations with the Druze community in the south and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the northeast. “The strikes on Damascus are only going to serve to delay such agreement, as the powers in northeast and southern Syria will feel more empowered to seek deals and perhaps military support from external actors to increase their leverage in negotiations with Damascus,” Idlbi told Al Jazeera. Advertisement Adblock test (Why?)
US judge issues deadline for Trump administration to pay foreign aid funds
The judge said that the administration had failed to comply with earlier orders that the funds be unfrozen. A federal judge has ordered the administration of US President Donald Trump to pay foreign aid funds to contractors and grant recipients by the end of Wednesday. The order marks the third time the judge in the case, Amir Ali, has ruled that officials must release funds that were frozen after Trump ordered a 90-day pause on all foreign aid. In Tuesday’s ruling, Judge Ali noted there is no indication the administration has taken any steps to comply with his earlier orders. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit — which include nonprofits and businesses with government contracts — have argued they may have to shutter their organisations if the agreed-upon funds are not paid. They also allege that the administration has violated federal law and the United States Constitution by refusing to pay out the funds, which were allocated by Congress. The complaint also points out that the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) might run afoul of the constitutional separation of powers, since Congress created the independent agency in 1961. Advertisement The court order applies to payments for work done before February 13, when the judge issued the earlier temporary restraining order. On Sunday, USAID said that all of its staff, except certain essential workers, would be put on paid administrative leave starting on Sunday. In addition, 1,600 positions were eliminated. “Individuals that are impacted will receive specific notifications on February 23, 2025, with further instructions and information about their benefits and rights,” a notice from the Trump administration said the next day. Led by tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Trump administration has moved to effectively dismantle the agency. Musk — who has called USAID a “criminal organisation” and a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America” — has claimed the agency is rife with waste and fraud and pursues an ideological agenda. Former USAID officials and humanitarian workers have condemned Trump’s move, warning that the demise of the aid agency will harm millions of vulnerable people worldwide and weaken US soft power. “Eliminating US unique response capacity of crisis experts who help contain disease outbreaks, stabilise displaced populations – a shortsighted, high risk and frankly, stupid act,” Marcia Wong, a former deputy assistant administrator for USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, wrote on the social media platform X. Last week, a judge also cleared the way for the Trump administration to push ahead with its plans to call back thousands of USAID staffers from overseas within 30 days. Advertisement “For overseas personnel, USAID intends a voluntary, Agency-funded return travel program and other benefits,” USAID’s website said in its notice. “USAID is committed to keeping its overseas personnel safe. Until they return home, personnel will retain access to Agency systems and to diplomatic and other resources. In the coming week, we will provide details on how to retrieve personal items from the former USAID workspaces and return government issued devices.” Adblock test (Why?)
Apple shareholders vote against pressure to scrap diversity policies
The proposal urged Apple to follow a litany of high-profile companies that have recently rolled back diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Apple shareholders have rebuffed an attempt to pressure the technology trendsetter into joining President Donald Trump’s push to scrub corporate programmes designed to diversify the workforce. The proposal drafted by the National Center for Public Policy Research — a self-described conservative think tank — urged Apple to follow a litany of high-profile companies that have retreated from diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives currently in the Trump administration’s crosshairs. After a brief presentation about the anti-DEI proposal, Apple announced shareholders had rejected it without disclosing the vote tally. The preliminary results will be outlined in a regulatory filing later Tuesday. The outcome vindicated Apple management’s decision to stand behind its diversity commitment even though Trump asked the US Department of Justice to look into whether these types of programmes have discriminated against some employees whose race or gender aren’t aligned with the initiative’s goals. Advertisement But Apple CEO Tim Cook has maintained a cordial relationship with Trump since his first term in office, an alliance that so far has helped the company skirt tariffs on its iPhones made in China. After Cook and Trump met last week, Apple on Monday announced it will invest $500bn in the US and create 20,000 more jobs during the next five years — a commitment applauded by the president. Tuesday’s shareholder vote came a month after the same group presented a similar proposal during Costco’s annual meeting, only to have it overwhelmingly rejected. That snub didn’t discourage the National Center for Public Policy Research from confronting Apple about its DEI programme in a pre-recorded presentation by Stefan Padfield, executive director of the think tank’s Free Enterprise Project, who asserted “forced diversity is bad for business”. In the presentation, Padfield attacked Apple’s diversity commitments for being out of line with recent court rulings and said the programmes expose the Cupertino, California, company to an onslaught of potential lawsuits for alleged discrimination. He cited the Trump administration as one of Apple’s potential legal adversaries. “The vibe shift is clear: DEI is out and merit is in,” Padfield said in the presentation. ‘Culture of belonging’ The spectre of potential legal trouble was magnified last week when Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a federal lawsuit against Target alleging the retailer’s recently scaled-back DEI programme alienated many consumers and undercut sales to the detriment of shareholders. Advertisement Just as Costco does, Apple contends that fostering a diverse workforce makes good business sense. But Cook conceded that Apple may have to make some adjustments to its diversity programme “as the legal landscape changes” while still striving to maintain a culture that has helped elevate the company to its current market value of $3.7 trillion — greater than any other business in the world. “We will continue to create a culture of belonging,” Cook told shareholders during the meeting. In its last diversity and inclusion report issued in 2022, Apple disclosed that nearly three-fourths of its global workforce consisted of white and Asian employees. Nearly two-thirds of its employees were men. Other major technology companies for years have reported employing mostly white and Asian men, especially in high-paid engineering jobs — a tendency that spurred the industry to pursue largely unsuccessful efforts to diversify. Adblock test (Why?)
Barcelona and Atletico Madrid share eight-goal Copa del Rey thriller
Barcelona and Atletico Madrid draw 4-4 in the first leg of their Copa del Rey semifinal. Barcelona and Atletico Madrid both rallied from two goals down in a frantic 4-4 draw in the first leg of the Copa del Rey semifinal at Estadi Olimpic Lluis Companys in Catalonia, Spain. Atletico scored twice in the first six minutes before conceding four unanswered goals and coming back to even the match with goals in the final 10 minutes, including the equaliser by substitute Alexander Sorloth three minutes into stoppage time on Tuesday. Barcelona saw Atletico jump to an early lead, with goals by Julian Alvarez in the first minute and Antoine Griezmann in the sixth, but the hosts tied the game by the 21st minute thanks to goals two minutes apart by Pedri and Pau Cubarsi. The Catalan club took a 3-2 lead into halftime after Iñigo Martínez scored in the 41st. Robert Lewandowski increased the lead in the 74th. Atletico Madrid’s Julian Alvarez opened the scoring on the night [Albert Gea/Reuters] Atletico pulled closer with Marcos Llorente in the 84th and Sorloth got the equaliser from close range. Advertisement The second leg will be at Atletico’s Metropolitano Stadium in April. The winner will play either Real Madrid or Real Sociedad, which will play their first-leg match on Wednesday in Basque Country. Barcelona last won the competition in 2021, and Atletico in 2013. Atletico had beaten Barcelona 2-1 in the Spanish league when the teams last met in December. Until the semifinal stage, the Copa’s knockout rounds were played in single-elimination games. Barcelona’s Robert Lewandowski looked to have sealed the match with his side’s fourth goal [Joan Monfort/AP] Adblock test (Why?)
The lived experiences of communism should serve as a cautionary tale
In Sunday’s general elections in Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) came second for the first time since World War II. Its electoral success is part of a Europe-wide trend of far-right resurgence that has worried many. As a university lecturer, I have observed that as a reaction to this phenomenon, many young people are becoming interested in far-left ideologies, such as communism. Students study Karl Marx as a key political thinker and often admire the old ideas of Marxism and the writings of other communist ideologues for their critique of class relations and capitalism. As young people engage with these ideologies, it is important for them to be aware that they did not remain just theories. Communism was applied as a political ideology of the Marxist-Leninist parties in dozens of countries in Europe and Asia, which resulted in repressive totalitarian regimes. The communist regime in my country, Czechia, which in the 1940s was part of an entity called Czechoslovakia, has left a horrific legacy. Today, on the 77th anniversary of the election that brought the communists to power in Prague, I cannot help but think about how the regime scarred the lives of many families, including my own. Advertisement I was born soon after the 1989 Velvet Revolution and grew up hearing about what it was like to live under communism for Czechoslovaks. It was a bleak and oppressive world in which the nationalisation of the means of production in reality meant stealing factories and homes from wealthier citizens so that the state could turn them into farmhouses or residences for top communist state officials. The concepts of fair elections and freedom of speech were mere dreams. In that world, individuals’ opportunities to study, travel, or secure good jobs were often determined by their “unblemished political profile” rather than their abilities. As a result, it was common to find qualified people who disagreed with the regime working in poorly paid and stigmatised jobs, while active members of the Communist Party, despite poor academic performance or lack of experience, occupied top positions. “This all became normal for us. No one believed the totalitarian regime would fall,” my mother told me recently. Those who disagreed with or confronted the regime paid a heavy price. There are many accounts in academia and the media of the brutal practices of the State Security (StB) directed at Czechoslovak citizens deemed “enemies of the state”: mass surveillance, blackmail, arrests, torture, execution, and forced emigration. The stories of high-profile dissidents, such as the executed lawyer Milada Horakova or the imprisoned writer Vaclav Havel, who became the first democratically elected Czech president, are well known. Advertisement But there are many other stories of people who faced repression that remain unknown to the public. The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes has documented the cases of about 200,000 people arrested in communist Czechoslovakia due to their social class, status, opinions, or religious beliefs. Of these, 4,495 died during their time in prison. My father belongs to this mass of prisoners who are largely unknown. He was labelled “dangerous to communist society” in 1977 and sentenced to 18 months in prison. When I was in my 20s, I found an old, yellowed paper file hidden in a drawer of the living room table, with the title “Verdict in the Name of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic”. The fading typewritten text revealed that my father, along with his friend, was found guilty of avoiding military service and spreading negative political opinions. My father strongly disagreed with the Communist Party leading the country, and he refused to serve in the army because it had failed in its primary duty to protect the country and its civilians during the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In the summer of that year, 200,000 soldiers from the Soviet Union and other communist European countries invaded to suppress the democratic reform movement that was emerging – what came to be known as the Prague Spring. By the end of the year, 137 Czechs and Slovaks were killed. To maintain control in Prague, the Soviet Union permanently stationed troops as an occupying force in the country. Until they withdrew in 1991, Soviet soldiers killed 400 people and raped hundreds of women. Advertisement Despite the brutal violence and crimes, the Communist Party still considered the Warsaw Pact armies to be Czechoslovakia’s allies. So the court condemned my father for “being against the Communist Party and society, damaging relations between the Czechoslovak Army and the Warsaw Pact forces due to his selfish reasons, and being a huge disappointment, given his promising working-class background”. He was just 22 years old and was about to get married to my mother. When I asked my father about the document and his time in prison, he fell silent. Only my mother shared a few insights: “I was heavily pregnant and lost the baby. Your dad came to see me at the hospital and said he would be leaving for work for some time. Later, I found out he was in prison.” My mother sent my father dozens of letters, but the prison guards did not deliver them. She tried to visit him several times but was not allowed to see him. She would wait outside the prison, hoping to catch a glimpse of him when the prisoners returned from their forced labour. “I saw him once for a few seconds. He was just a thin figure with no hair. He looked exhausted. We waved at each other,” my mother recalled. My father was released after 10 months for good behaviour. Recently, I finally managed to persuade my father to visit, with me, the National Security Archive in Prague. We hoped to find more information about who had led his case and who had spied on him – perhaps a friend or even a family member? To our disappointment, the staff handed us a thin file with a note: “The majority of the documents with your father’s name were destroyed by the State Security.”
Ukraine reconstruction costs cross half-trillion-dollar mark: Report
The $524bn estimate marks growing needs provoked by Russia’s bombardment of Ukrainian cities and infrastructure as the war moves into a fourth year. The estimated cost of reconstructing Ukraine has risen to more than half a trillion US dollars, according to a new report. The cost of rebuilding the country and reviving its economy has risen to $524bn currently, predicted a study by the World Bank, United Nations, European Commission (EC) and Ukrainian government that was released on Tuesday. The total is nearly three times Ukraine’s expected 2024 economic output. The estimate marks an increase of more than 7 percent compared with the institutions’ last report, which pitched the cost at $486bn a year ago. The data, which covers damages incurred from the date of Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022 to December 31, 2024, quantified the direct physical damage to buildings and other infrastructure, the effect on people’s lives and livelihoods, and the cost to “build back better”, the institutions said in a joint press release. Housing, transport, energy, commerce and education were the most affected sectors. This included a 70 percent increase in damages to Ukraine’s energy infrastructure from Russian attacks. Advertisement About 13 percent of Ukraine’s total housing stock has been damaged or destroyed, affecting more than 2.5 million households. The housing sector accounts for about $84bn of the total long-term needs, followed by transport at almost $78bn, energy and mining at close to $68bn, commerce and industry at more than $64bn, and agriculture, which has needs of $55bn. The cost of debris clearance and management alone is pegged at almost $13bn, the report said. The estimate excluded more than $13bn in needs across eight sectors that have already been met by Ukraine through the state budget and donor funds. EC Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos said “the assessment highlights the extraordinary damage Russia has inflicted on Ukraine” and stressed that Ukraine’s economy must be integrated deeper into the EU single market to facilitate recovery. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said “recovery needs have continued to grow due to Russia’s ongoing attacks,” adding that his government would prioritise rebuilding and repairing energy infrastructure and housing. Daily air attacks Ukraine marked three years of all-out war with Russia on Monday, with the two countries now swapping almost daily drone and missile attacks, many hitting vital infrastructure. Air alerts were sounded across the whole of Ukraine early on Tuesday, as the air force warned of a huge spate of missile attacks. The Ukrainian military said Russia launched seven missiles and 213 drones overnight. The airforce said it shot down six missiles and 133 drones, while another 79 drones did not reach their targets, likely due to electronic warfare. Advertisement A 44-year-old woman was injured and several houses damaged in the Kyiv region, Governor Mykola Kalashnyk said. Amid the barrage, neighbouring Poland – a NATO member and base for planes belonging to allies in the military alliance – said it had scrambled aircraft to ensure its security. Russia’s Ministry of Defence said air defence units intercepted and destroyed 19 Ukrainian drones overnight. Adblock test (Why?)
Music stars release silent album in protest against UK AI copyright plans
Is This What We Want features recordings of empty studios, performance spaces, highlighting danger to creative trade. More than 1,000 musicians, including Kate Bush, Cat Stevens and Annie Lennox, have released a silent album in protest of the proposed changes to British copyright laws around artificial intelligence (AI), which they warned could lead to legalised music theft. The album, titled Is This What We Want, was launched on Tuesday and features recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, as backlash against the plan grows in the United Kingdom. The proposed changes would allow AI developers to train their models on any material to which they have lawful access, and would require creators to proactively opt out to stop their work from being used. Critics, including the artists participating in the silent album, say it would reverse the principle of copyright law, which grants exclusive control to creators over their work. The emergence of AI has posed a threat to the creative industry, including music, raising legal and ethical questions on a new technological platform that could produce its own output without paying creators of original content. Advertisement Bush and other writers and musicians denounced the proposals in UK law as a “wholesale giveaway” to Silicon Valley in a letter to The Times newspaper. Ed Newton-Rex, organiser of the project, said musicians were “united in their thorough condemnation of this ill-thought-through plan”. In a very rare move, UK newspapers also highlighted their concerns, launching a campaign featuring wrap-around advertisements on the front of almost every national daily, with an inside editorial by the papers’ editors. A public consultation on the legal changes will close later on Tuesday. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer wants to become a superpower in the AI industry. Responding to the album, a government spokesperson said the current copyright and AI regime was holding back the creative industries from “realising their full potential”. Adblock test (Why?)
Trump: Putin has ‘no problem’ with European peacekeepers in Ukraine
[unable to retrieve full-text content] Donald Trump told reporters he thinks Vladimir Putin would have “no problem” with European soldiers as peacekeepers.