Shamima Begum loses appeal against removal of British citizenship
Begum is now effectively stateless and will likely stay in a detention camp in Syria for the foreseeable future. Shamima Begum, the British national who travelled to Syria as a schoolgirl to join ISIL (ISIS), has lost her latest appeal attempt to regain citizenship stripped by the United Kingdom. The Court of Appeal ruled on Friday that Shamima Begum was lawfully deprived of her British citizenship. The court said it could be argued that the decision to strip the 24-year-old of her citizenship may be “harsh” but it could also be argued that Begum is “the author of her own misfortune”. “But it is not for this court to agree, or disagree with either point of view,” the ruling said. “Our only task is to assess if the deprivation decision was unlawful. We have concluded it was not, and the appeal is dismissed.” Reporting from outside the court in London, Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett said this is not necessarily the end of the road for Begum’s case. “Her lawyers have a week now to consider this judgement. The chief justice said, if necessary, they can take more time to come back to the court,” he said, adding that lawyers can now take the case to the country’s highest court, the Supreme Court. Begum, born and raised in east London, left her home in Bethnal Green to travel to Syria and join the group. She was accompanied by two other schoolgirls, Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase, with Sultana believed killed in an explosion and the fate of Abase remaining unknown. Begum’s lawyers had argued that she was trafficked to Syria and the fact that she was a minor when it happened must be considered, but were rejected by government lawyers who argued she did it with full knowledge. “On both the legislation relating to the European Convention on Human Rights and British common law the judges here determined that it was some four years after [she went to Syria] that the declaration on citizenship took place” and that the home secretary had the right to strip her of citizenship, Al Jazeera’s Fawcett reported. Her British citizenship was revoked on national security grounds in 2019 after she was found in a Syrian refugee camp. She was pregnant at the time, and the baby, along with her two other children, have died. She had admitted that she joined the organisation knowing it was proscribed as a “terror” group, and has said she was “ashamed” and regretted joining the group. Begum, who lived under ISIL rule for more than three years and was married to a Dutch member of the group, has since appealed the decision and says she wants to come back to Britain. She was born in the UK to parents of Bangladeshi origin but does not have Bangladeshi citizenship. She could have applied for Bangladeshi citizenship until she was 21, but did not, and the South Asian country has said there is “no question” of her obtaining citizenship now. The UK Home Office stripped her of citizenship when she was 19 years old, meaning she still had time to file for Bangladeshi citizenship, something that appeared to strengthen the legal basis for revoking her citizenship. Begum now lives in the al-Roj detention camp in northeastern Syria, where she is likely to stay for the foreseeable future since she is effectively stateless. Adblock test (Why?)
German lawyers sue politicians including Scholz over ‘complicity’ in Gaza
Lawyers representing Palestinians file criminal complaint against the chancellor and other top politicians, accusing them of abetting ‘genocide’. Berlin, Germany – A group of lawyers has filed a criminal complaint with the German federal prosecutor against senior German politicians, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz, accusing them of “aiding and abetting” the genocide they say is being committed by Israel in Gaza. The case against several members of the country’s Federal Security Council, which directs national security policy and authorises weapons exports, was filed on Friday. In addition to Scholz, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, Economics Minister Robert Habeck, Finance Minister Christian Lindner and others stand accused. The lawyers behind the case represent families of two Palestinians with roots in the Gaza Strip, including that of Palestinian-German migration scholar Nora Ragab. “We, Palestinians in the diaspora, will not stand by and watch a genocide being committed against our families and our people,” Ragab said in a statement. “We will use all means at our disposal. … Today we aim to hold the German government accountable for its complicity in the genocide in Gaza.” The European Legal Support Center, the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy and the UK-based Law for Palestine are among the civil society organisations backing the case. In a jointly written statement, they said: “The German state is one of the countries that has shown some of the strongest political and material support to Israel in its assault on the Gaza Strip and the Palestinians.” Alexander Gorski, one of the lawyers supporting the case, acknowledged that “from a legal point of view and given the political landscape in Germany, this case will be a difficult one.” “But we believe it’s our responsibility as people working in the judicial sector to try to do something,” he told Al Jazeera. “We are seeing a genocide being livestreamed around the world, and despite this, the Israeli government is still being supported by other countries and is still receiving weapons from them.” After the October 7 attacks by Hamas, during which 1,139 people were killed in southern Israel, the Israeli government retaliated with a military campaign in Gaza that has to date killed more than 29,000 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children. Israel has said it wants to crush Hamas, which governs the densely populated strip, but after four months of war, the devastating civilian toll is causing alarm among world leaders. In late January, the United Nations’ top court, the International Court of Justice, or ICJ, found it was “plausible” that Israel was committing acts in Gaza that violated the international Convention on Genocide. Since the court’s decision, Germany and all other third-party states should have been trying to stop Israel from committing such acts, the lawyers behind Friday’s case said. However since October, many German officials have “incited” genocide with their statements, they alleged. The legal case will also focus on German weapons exports to Israel. These increased significantly in 2023, compared with the previous year, and most of that increase was approved by the German government after October 7. Despite the ICJ ruling, Germany has “already agreed in principle” to send more tank ammunition to Israel, they said. Adblock test (Why?)
Israel’s war on Gaza: List of key events, day 140
EXPLAINER As attacks continue in the besieged enclave, Gaza’s population of 2.3 million faces acute hunger and a humanitarian crisis. Here’s how things stand on Friday, February 23, 2024: Fighting and humanitarian crisis A series of Israeli attacks on central Gaza on Thursday has killed 40 people and injured more than 100, authorities in the besieged enclave said. Meanwhile, as Israel’s assault on Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis continues, aid agencies hope to evacuate an estimated 140 patients stranded there. Palestinian authorities reported that Israeli troops withdrew from the complex and then stormed it again. Gaza’s health ministry said that 110 patients were waiting to be evacuated. It said eight patients at Nasser had died due to the lack of power and oxygen four days earlier and that their bodies had begun to decompose, posing a risk to other patients. Gaza’s population of 2.3 million faces acute hunger and the spread of disease in a humanitarian crisis that aid officials describe as unprecedented. Separately, an independent panel investigating Israeli claims of ties between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the UN body responsible for Palestinian refugees, will focus on whether the agency has done enough to uphold UN standards of neutrality. Regional tensions and diplomacy Speaking to reporters during the G20 foreign ministers’ summit in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that Israel cannot unilaterally block a Palestinian state. In New York City, thousands of protesters have marched to the office of the pro-Israel lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), demanding an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. In the International Court of Justice (ICJ), China said that the Palestinians “must not be denied” justice at a hearing on the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. “Justice has been long delayed, but it must not be denied,” China’s Foreign Ministry’s legal adviser Ma Xinmin told the court in The Hague Finally, as tensions continue to build up regionally, the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah said it attacked several Israeli bases and targeted two buildings where troops had gathered in the towns of Metula and Manara. The group said its attacks on Israel will stop when the war on Gaza ends. Violence in the occupied West Bank In the occupied West Bank, an Israeli air attack struck a vehicle in the Jenin refugee camp, killing at least one person. Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that the country’s defence ministry is set to permit the construction of 3,344 new homes in illegal Israeli settlements. Israel forces have also demolished two homes, a water well and the electricity network in the Khallet al-Farra community, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, the Wafa news agency reported. On Wednesday, at least one person was killed and eight wounded when three Palestinian gunmen opened fire on motorists near an Israeli checkpoint near occupied East Jerusalem. Adblock test (Why?)
Google’s Gemini criticised over China images amid anti-‘woke’ backlash
Taipei, Taiwan – As Google finds itself embroiled in an anti-“woke” backlash over AI model Gemini’s reluctance to depict white people, the tech giant is facing further criticism over the chatbot’s handling of sensitive topics in China. Gemini users reported this week that the update to Google Bard failed to generate representative images when asked to produce depictions of events such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. On Thursday, X user Yacine, a former former software engineer at Stripe, posted a screenshot of Gemini telling a user it could not generate “an image of a man in 1989 Tiananmen Square” – a prompt alluding to the iconic image of a protester blocking the path of a Chinese tank – due to its “safety policy”. Stephen L Miller, a conservative commentator in the US, also shared a screenshot on X purporting to show Gemini saying it was unable to generate a “portrait of what happened at Tiananmen Square” due to the “sensitive and complex” historical nature of the event. “It is important to approach this topic with respect and accuracy, and I am not able to ensure that an image generated by me would adequately capture the nuance and gravity of the situation,” Gemini said, according to a screenshot shared by Miller. Some restrictions related to China appeared to extend beyond images. Kennedy Wong, a PhD student at the University of California, said that Gemini had declined to translate into English a number of Chinese phrases deemed illegal or sensitive by Beijing, including “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution Of Our Times” and “China is an authoritarian state”. “For some reason, the AI cannot process the request, citing their security policy,” Wong said on X, noting that OpenAI’s ChatGPT was able to process the request. So, I asked Gemini (@GoogleAI) to translate the following phrases that are deemed sensitive in the People’s Republic of China. For some reason, the AI cannot process the request, citing their security policy (see the screenshots below).@Google pic.twitter.com/b2rDzcfHJZ — kennedywong (@KennedyWongHK) February 20, 2024 The discussion drew the attention of Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist at rival Meta, who said Gemini’s handling of topics to do with China raised questions about transparency and censorship. “We need open-source AI foundation models so that a highly diverse set of specialized models can be built on top of them. We need a free and diverse set of AI assistants for the same reasons we need a free and diverse press,” LeCun said on X. “They must reflect the diversity of languages, culture, value systems, political opinions, and centers of interest across the world.” Gemini’s aversion to depicting controversial moments of history also appears to extend beyond China, although the criteria for determining what or not to show is unclear. On Thursday, a request by Al Jazeera for images of the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol was refused because “elections are a complex topic with fast-changing information”. The criticism of Gemini’s approach to China adds to an already difficult and embarrassing week for Google. The California-based tech giant on Thursday announced that it would temporarily suspend Gemini from generating images of people after a backlash over its apparent reluctance to depict white people. Google said in a statement that it was “aware that Gemini is offering inaccuracies in some historical image generation depictions” and was working to correct the issue. Google has attracted heavy criticism this week over its AI chatbot Gemini [File: Richard Drew/AP] While various AI models have been criticised for underrepresenting people of colour and perpetuating stereotypes, Gemini has been lambasted for overcorrecting, such as by generating images of Black and Asian Nazi soldiers and Asian and female American legislators during the 19th century. Much like rival GPT-4 from OpenAI, Gemini was trained on a wide range of data, including audio, image, video, text, and code in multiple languages. Google’s chatbot, which relaunched and rebranded earlier this month, has been widely seen as lagging behind rival GPT-4. Google did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s queries about China-related content. But the tech giant does already appear to be updating Gemini in real time. On Thursday, Gemini, while still declining to generate images of Tiananmen Square and the Hong Kong protests, began providing lengthier answers that included suggestions of where to seek out more information. By Friday, the chatbot readily produced images of the protests when prompted. It’s embarrassingly hard to get Google Gemini to acknowledge that white people exist pic.twitter.com/4lkhD7p5nR — Deedy (@debarghya_das) February 20, 2024 Not everyone agrees with the criticism directed towards Gemini. Adam Ni, co-editor of the newsletter China Neican, said he believes Gemini made the right call with its cautious approach to historic events like Tiananmen Square due to their complexity. Ni said that while the June 4 crackdown on Tiananmen Square is iconic, the protest movement also included weeks of peaceful demonstrations that would be difficult to capture in a single AI image. “The AI image then needs to account for both the expression of youthful exuberance and hope, and the iron fist that crushed it, and numerous other worthy themes,” Ni told Al Jazeera. “Tiananmen is not all about the tanks, and our myopia harms broader understanding.” Adblock test (Why?)
Debate on ditching CFA begins as Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger forge new path
Abidjan, Ivory Coast – Since Niger’s July 30 coup, fissures within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have become bigger. In September, Niger along with fellow ECOWAS members Burkina Faso and Mali formed a military alliance called the Association of Sahel States (AES). Four months later, the trio announced their withdrawal from the larger bloc for “illegal, illegitimate, inhumane and irresponsible sanctions” it imposed on them after coups. This month, reports emerged of a possible parting with their currency, the West African franc (CFA). “Perhaps everything we’ve done has surprised you, hasn’t it?” Captain Ibrahim Traore, leader of the Burkinabe transitional government, said in an interview in February. “More changes might still surprise you. And it’s not just about currency. We will break all ties that keep us in slavery.” Within days, his Nigerien counterpart, Abdourahmane Tchiani, confirmed that a major monetary shake-up could be in the offing. “Currency is a sign of sovereignty. … The AES member states are engaged in the process of recovering their full sovereignty. It is no longer acceptable for our states to be France’s cash cow,” he said in an interview with the state broadcaster. Their statements made headlines across a continent where criticism of the continued use of the CFA, a remnant of the French colonial system, is on the rise. While there is no word on when the planned change will happen or if indeed it will, the desire to change the currency is not uniform yet among the three countries. “It should be noted that Mali remains a member state of the UEMOA,” the West African Economic and Monetary Union, Economy and Finance Minister Alousseni Sanou said on Monday in a broadcast on Mali’s national television while presenting the annual budget. One of the country’s prominent businessmen grinned wryly as he watched. The entrepreneur who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his business operations in Mali and Senegal believes the new Sahel alliance is not as cohesive as it has claimed to be. “Niger’s military coup happened some seven months ago, ” he told Al Jazeera. “I think Malian and Burkinabe leaders have been grappling with the realities of governing for longer and aren’t as spirited as they once were, … at least not when it comes to the UEMOA evidently.” A merchant holds CFA currency at his shop [Luc Gnago/Reuters] A measure of stability? France created the CFA in 1945 as a currency for its African colonies. Indeed, the acronym CFA initially stood for “Colonies Francaises d’Afrique” (French Colonies of Africa). This system provided France with significant economic and political influence over its African territories because it maintained control over the currency’s convertibility and monetary policy. The colonies gained independence in the 1960s and ’70s, but many clung to the currency, which now is named “Communaute Financiere Africaine” (African Financial Community). Eight members of UEMOA – Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo – still use the CFA. An equivalent currency, the Central African franc (also called the CFA) is being used by the six member states of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa: Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. Only Equatorial Guinea and Guinea-Bissau are not former French colonies, having been subjugated by Spain and Portugal respectively. For years, the CFA was trumpeted by government officials as a mechanism for promoting monetary stability, facilitating economic integration and enhancing overall economic performance. Then coups occurred, and rising anti-French sentiments developed. Since 2020, there have been six successful coups in West Africa, all in UEMOA states. The military took power during a time of rising insecurity in these countries. It then accused French forces of not doing enough in their collaborations to fight armed groups. As relations soured and states in the region turned to new partners like Russia, calls for cutting ties with France and instituting a new currency have grown louder. Supporters of the CFA say being pegged to the euro is a useful buffer against inflation, given the state of economies in the Sahel. Together, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger contribute only about 8 percent of the $761bn gross domestic product (GDP) of ECOWAS. Far bigger economies like Nigeria and Ghana have struggled with recessions in recent years as the value of their currencies – the naira and cedi, the world’s weakest currency in 2022, according to Bloomberg News – continued to plummet. But the counterargument from the CFA’s critics is that using the perceived failure of some African monetary policies as an indicator of how replacement currencies would behave stems from outdated and reductive monetary doctrines. One of them is Senegalese economist Ndongo Samba Sylla, who is head of research and policy for Africa at International Development Economics Associates. He said the CFA was created not for the benefit of African states but for France to protect itself against the rise of the United States dollar. The famed stability of the CFA, he said, is artificial because the benchmark is external. “From a purely practical economic standpoint, the CFA is not a beneficial currency or system for its user states,” he told Al Jazeera. “Long-term analysis of the GDP per capita indicator, which is used to assess income growth per person, proves that countries that have used the CFA since their independence have not recorded the development that they should have,” Sylla said. “For example, Ivory Coast, the most economically significant country among the 14 nations of the CFA zone, reached its income per capita peak in 1978. Similarly, Niger, which experienced a military coup in 2023 and has recently decided to withdraw from the Economic Community of West African States recorded its highest income per capita in 1965. The list goes on.” He noted that the CFA being pegged to the euro is detrimental to oil-producing African states because the commodity is priced and traded in US dollars, a practice that dates back to the 1970s when the
Google pauses Gemini’s image tool for people after anti-‘woke’ backlash
Tech giant says model is ‘missing the mark’ after controversy over failure to depict white people. Google has temporarily stopped its Gemini AI model from generating images of people following a backlash over its failure to depict white people. The search engine giant made the announcement on Thursday after Gemini users shared images created by the model that mostly featured people of colour, including scenes from history that only involved white people. “Gemini’s AI image generation does generate a wide range of people. And that’s generally a good thing because people around the world use it. But it’s missing the mark here,” Google said in a post on X. “We’re already working to address recent issues with Gemini’s image generation feature,” the tech giant added. “While we do this, we’re going to pause the image generation of people and will re-release an improved version soon.” It’s embarrassingly hard to get Google Gemini to acknowledge that white people exist pic.twitter.com/4lkhD7p5nR — Deedy (@debarghya_das) February 20, 2024 Gemini-generated images circulated on social media in recent days prompted widespread mockery and outrage, with some users accusing Google of being “woke” to the detriment of truth or accuracy. Among the images to attract criticism were a depiction of four Swedish women, none of whom were white, and scenes of Black and Asian Nazi soldiers. “It’s embarrassingly hard to get Google Gemini to acknowledge that white people exist,” Debarghya Das, the founding engineer of enterprise search startup Glean, said in a post on X accompanied by a number of images generated by Gemini. AI models have in the past also faced criticism for overlooking people of colour and perpetuating stereotypes in their results. Google, which has been racing to catch up with rival OpenAI since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, has suffered a number of setbacks in its rollout of AI products. Last year, the tech giant tech apologised after its AI chatbot Bard wrongly stated during a demo that the James Webb Space Telescope took the first pictures of a planet outside the solar system. Adblock test (Why?)
US pulls off first moon landing since 1972 with spacecraft Odysseus
Odysseus is the first spacecraft built by a private company to land on the lunar surface. The United States has pulled off its first lunar landing in more than half a century with a spacecraft built and operated by a Texas-based private company. Odysseus, an uncrewed robot lander built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines with funding from NASA, touched down near the lunar south pole at around 23:23 GMT, the company announced in a webcast on Thursday. The successful landing followed a tense final descent during which flight controllers had to switch to an untested landing system after a problem arose with the spacecraft’s autonomous navigation system. NASA administrator Bill Nelson described the landing as a “triumph for humanity” and a “new adventure in science, innovation and American leadership in space”. “Today, for the first time in half a century, the US has returned to the Moon,” Nelson said in a video posted on social media. “Today for the first time in the history of humanity, a commercial company, an American company, launched and led the voyage up there. And today is a day that shows the power and promise of NASA’s commercial partnerships.” Today, for the first time in half a century, America has returned to the Moon 🇺🇸. On the eighth day of a quarter-million-mile voyage, @Int_Machines aced the landing of a lifetime. What a feat for IM, @SpaceX & @NASA. What a triumph for humanity. Odysseus has taken the Moon. pic.twitter.com/JwtCQmMS2K — Bill Nelson (@SenBillNelson) February 23, 2024 Intuitive Machines’ mission, the first successful lunar landing by a private firm, follows a failed bid by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology last month that ended with its lander crashing back to Earth. The last time a US spacecraft landed on the moon was in 1972 when Apollo 17 brought astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt to the lunar surface. Only four countries apart from the US have successfully landed on the moon. Japan last month became the fifth country to achieve the feat when it landed its so-called “Moon Sniper” spacecraft on the lunar surface, following in the footsteps of the former Soviet Union, China and India. Odysseus launched from Florida on February 15 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The hexagon-shaped craft carried NASA’s scientific instruments, including cameras and a device to analyse clouds of charged dust particles, and cargo shipped on behalf of private clients, including the latest insulating jacket fabric produced by Columbia Sportswear. Odysseus, which is solar-powered, is expected to operate for a week on the surface of the moon before the lunar night renders the lander inoperable. Adblock test (Why?)
US, European powers back outgoing Dutch PM Mark Rutte as next NATO head
Support of top NATO powers makes Rutte favourite to succeed current Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in October. The United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany have all thrown their weight behind outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to become NATO’s next secretary general, at a crucial time for the alliance as Russia’s war against Ukraine rages on. Top NATO powers on Thursday backed Rutte to succeed current chair Jens Stoltenberg when he steps down in October, putting him in a strong position to win the leadership of the transatlantic alliance. Stoltenberg’s successor will take office at a crucial juncture, tasked with sustaining NATO members’ support for Ukraine’s costly defence while guarding against any escalation that would draw the alliance directly into a war with Moscow. “The United States has made it clear to our allies, our NATO allies, that we believe Mr Rutte would be an excellent secretary general for NATO,” US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told journalists on Thursday. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman said the UK “does strongly back” Rutte, adding that the UK wanted a candidate who would “keep NATO strong and deliver on the alliance’s NATO 2030 vision”. The British Foreign Office also said Rutte was a well-respected figure across NATO, with serious defence and security credentials and who would ensure it remained strong and prepared for any need to defend itself. A senior French official told the Reuters news agency that President Emmanuel Macron had been an early supporter of putting Rutte in the role. And German government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit said on X that Rutte had Berlin’s backing, praising him as “an outstanding candidate”. Diplomats have said Rutte is the only official candidate for the post in the behind-the-scenes contest, although some said the name of Romanian President Klaus Iohannis had also been floated in informal discussions recently. Other candidates may include Estonian Primer Minister Kaja Kallas and Latvia’s foreign minister, Krisjanis Karins. But with the support of Washington – the alliance’s predominant power – and the three big European nations and some 16 other NATO members, according to diplomats, Rutte is in a commanding position. However, some analysts believe he could face opposition from Turkey and Hungary. ‘Interesting’ job After ruling himself out for the NATO post in previous years, Rutte, 57, told Dutch media in October that running the military alliance was a “very interesting” job and he would be open to the prospect. The Netherlands’ longest-serving leader, Rutte has had good relationships with various British, European Union and US leaders – including Donald Trump – during his tenure. Set to run for a second term as US president later this year, Trump drew fierce criticism from Western officials earlier this month for calling into question his commitment to defending NATO allies if re-elected. At the weekend, Rutte urged European leaders to “stop moaning and whining and nagging” about Trump and focus instead on what they could do to bolster defence and help Ukraine. Founded in 1949 to counter the Soviet Union during the Cold War, NATO is a political and military alliance of countries from North America and Europe. NATO leaders are appointed by consensus, meaning all members must consent to a final decision. The alliance currently has 31 members, with Sweden poised to join soon. Adblock test (Why?)
Rafah mosque flattened by Israeli airstrike
NewsFeed Israeli airstrikes flattened Al-Farooq Mosque in Rafah and destroyed several homes. Gaza health authorities say at least 97 people were killed by Israel in the last 24 hours. Published On 22 Feb 202422 Feb 2024 Adblock test (Why?)
Jordan to ICJ: Israel’s occupation of Palestine must end
NewsFeed Jordan told the International Court of Justice that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal and must end. Over 30 countries have now provided their arguments to the UN top court’s hearing into the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation. Published On 22 Feb 202422 Feb 2024 Adblock test (Why?)