Biden and Trump set for election rematch after securing party nominations
US President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump have both passed the delegate thresholds to clinch their parties’ nominations for the election in November.
Four states, one American territory and Democrats living abroad held their primaries on Tuesday.
The result means US voters face a rematch of the 2020 presidential election in eight months’ time.
The nominations will be made official at party conventions this summer.
The 81-year-old president said on Tuesday evening that he was “honoured” voters had backed his re-election bid “in a moment when the threat Trump poses is greater than ever”.
Citing positive economic trends, he asserted the US was “in the middle of a comeback” but faced challenges to its future as a democracy, as well as from those seeking to pass abortion restrictions and cut social programmes.
“I believe that the American people will choose to keep us moving into the future,” Mr Biden said in a statement from his campaign.
Incumbency gave Mr Biden a natural advantage and he faced no serious challengers for the Democratic nomination.
Despite persistent concerns from voters that his age limits his ability to perform the duties of the presidency, the party apparatus rallied around him.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump, 77, remains very popular with the Republican voter base, which has propelled him to victory in primary after primary over well-funded rivals.
His campaign for a second term in the White House has zeroed in on stricter immigrations laws, including a pledge to “seal the border” and implement “record-setting” deportations.
Mr Trump has also vowed to fight crime, boost domestic energy production, tax foreign imports, end the war in Ukraine and resume an “America first” approach to global affairs.
Tuesday night’s results do not come as a shock, as both men have dominated their races so far.
Both their re-nominations seemed all but predetermined, despite polling that indicates Americans are dissatisfied with the prospect of another showdown between Mr Biden and Mr Trump in November.
The US presidential primaries and caucuses are a state-by-state competition to secure the most party delegates.
The Democrats and the Republicans have slightly different rules for their primaries, but the process is essentially the same.
Each state is allocated a certain share of party delegates, which are awarded either as a whole to the winning candidate or proportionally, based on the results.
A Republican candidate must secure at least 1,215 of their party’s delegates during the primary season to win their presidential nomination, while a Democrat must secure 1,968.
On Tuesday, Republicans held primaries in Mississippi, Georgia and Washington State, and a caucus in Hawaii.
Democrats, meanwhile, held primaries in the states of Georgia, Washington and Mississippi, as well as in the Northern Mariana Islands and for Democrats living abroad.
Mr Biden and Mr Trump’s main competitors had dropped out before Tuesday’s primary contests, so the results had been all but certain.
Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, Mr Trump’s last remaining rival, dropped out earlier this month after losing 14 states to Mr Trump on Super Tuesday.
Though several more states have yet to hold their primary contests, with Mr Trump and Mr Biden over the delegate threshold, the 2024 general election is now effectively under way.
The US presidential election will be held on 5 November 2024.
White House to send new $300m weapons package to Ukraine
The US will send $300m (£234m) in military weapons to Ukraine, including ammunition, rockets and anti-aircraft missiles, the White House has said.
The surprise announcement comes as a bill in Congress to send further aid to Ukraine stalls amid partisan debate.
The US shipment, the first in nearly three months, is intended to prevent Ukraine from losing ground to Russia.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said this aid “is nowhere near enough to meet Ukraine’s battlefield needs”.
“This ammunition will keep Ukraine’s guns firing for a period, but only a short period,” Mr Sullivan told reporters on Tuesday, adding that “it will not prevent Ukraine from running out of ammunition.”
The White House has been appealing to Congress for months to pass a budget that sends aid to Ukraine, as well as Israel and Taiwan.
A $60bn aid bill has already passed the Senate, but has yet to face a vote in the House of Representatives.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has so far refused to consider the Senate bill. Mr Johnson, an ally of Donald Trump, has said the House will vote on its own aid bill, but only after Congress passes a budget that overhauls the US immigration system.
On Tuesday, a group of bipartisan lawmakers in the House launched a longshot petition – an attempt to force the House to vote on the Senate bill – using a rare procedural tactic that hasn’t been successfully employed since 2015.
Tuesday’s emergency package of weapons and equipment comes from cost savings made in earlier Ukraine weapon contracts.
The aid announcement came as President Joe Biden hosted Poland’s president and prime minister at the White House in a show of support for Ukraine.
Following the meeting, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters that he hopes Mr Johnson “is already aware that, on his individual decision, depends the fate of millions of people”.
“This is not some political skirmish that only matters here in America,” he said.
“The absence of this positive decision of Mr Johnson will really cost thousands of lives [in Ukraine]. Children. Women. He must be aware of his personal responsibility.”
Also on Tuesday, Denmark announced that it would ship around $336m in ammo and artillery to Ukraine.
Ukraine has lost ground in recent months due an “artificial shortage” of weapons, the country’s president, Volodymr Zelensky, said last month.
Ghislaine Maxwell appeals sex abuse conviction
Lawyers for Ghislaine Maxwell have argued that she should be set free under the terms of a previous deal with federal prosecutors.
Maxwell, 62, was found guilty of helping disgraced financier Jeffery Epstein sexually abuse young girls.
She was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2022.
Her lawyer, Diane Fabi Samson, told a court in New York on Tuesday that the British socialite was covered by a previous deal with prosecutors.
But US government attorneys say that deal, which saw her boyfriend Epstein serve a light sentence for sex crimes, should not allow Maxwell to walk free.
Maxwell’s appeal does not relate to the facts laid out at her trial but instead on the legal issues surrounding the agreement struck nearly 20 years ago.
The crimes of Epstein, who mixed with some of the world’s most famous people, were first reported in the media in 2005.
In 2008, he made a deal with federal prosecutors that allowed him to plead guilty to state charges in Florida of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution and served 13 months in prison.
As part of his plea agreement, which was later criticised by a Justice Department internal report, prosecutors agreed not to pursue his alleged co-conspirators.
Following numerous lawsuits, Epstein was arrested again in 2019 in a federal case in New York. He was found dead in his jail cell before he could be tried on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Ms Fabi Samson called the Florida plea deal “weird” and “unusual” but argued that it should have halted any further action against Maxwell.
Prosecutors, however, have called the defence arguments “cursory and undeveloped” and say that the deal has no bearing on Maxwell’s case.
During the hearing they argued that the agreement was limited to the Florida district where Epstein pleaded guilty. Maxwell was convicted in New York, where Tuesday’s appeal hearing was held.
Throughout the course of Maxwell’s 2022 trial, four women testified that they had been abused as minors at Epstein’s homes in Florida, New York, New Mexico and the Virgin Islands.
They recounted how Maxwell had talked them into giving Epstein massages which turned sexual, luring them with gifts and promises about how Epstein could use his money and connections to help them.
During her trial, a judge rejected attempts to throw out the case, including an argument by Maxwell’s lawyers that a juror had failed to inform the court that he had been abused as a child.
The judge also rejected arguments that Maxwell had not been allowed to prepare adequately for her trial, and that prosecutors had waited too long to bring their case against her.
The appeals court judgement will be handed down at a later date.
Outside the court, Maxwell’s lawyers told the reporters that they were “cautiously optimistic” about their prospects of winning the appeal.
Huge China restaurant explosion kills at least one, injures 22
A deadly suspected gas explosion ripped through a residential neighborhood in northern China on Wednesday, leaving a scene of devastation and multiple people wounded.
The powerful blast occurred just before 8 a.m. at a ground-floor restaurant in a residential area of Sanhe city, Hebei province, east of the capital Beijing, state broadcaster CCTV said.
It destroyed the four-story building, and rescuers were searching the rubble for anyone trapped inside, according to CCTV.
The explosion killed one person and injured 22 others, the city government said in a statement Wednesday morning, adding that the venue was a fried chicken restaurant.
The dramatic blast and its aftermath were captured in footage circulating on Chinese social media site Weibo, which showed a large fireball exploding from a multistory building, crumbling its walls and ceiling and sending huge plumes of smoke high into the sky.
At least three buildings were severely damaged, with one of them left in a skeletal state. Firefighters were seen putting out the blaze, surrounded by crushed cars and piles of debris, according to videos and photos on Weibo.
Local residents said on social media they heard a loud bang in the early morning and felt their buildings trembling.
Buildings across the street from the blast site were also impacted, with glass shattered and shop signs damaged, footage aired on CCTV showed.
China has seen a series of deadly incidents caused by gas leaks in recent years. Last June, a gas explosion at a barbecue restaurant in northwest Ningxia region killed 31 people.
Elderly retirees face big losses after Chinese trust goes bust, reflecting turbulent economy
Some investors in a troubled trust fund in China are facing financial ruin under a government plan to return a fraction of their money, casualties of a slump in the property industry and a broader economic slowdown.
Sichuan Trust, headquartered in the southwest city of Chengdu, announced it was insolvent in 2020, stricken by sketchy accounting and failed investments in shopping malls and other projects. A deadline earlier this month to accept a 20%-60% “haircut” or loss on their investments has left some investors in deep financial trouble, according to public announcements and AP interviews with five people affected.
China’s economy, the world’s second largest, depends heavily on real estate development to drive growth and create jobs. Property prices and sales have languished after a crackdown on what leaders viewed as dangerous levels of borrowing, causing dozens of developers to default on their debts.
At the National People’s Congress session in Beijing last week, officials pledged to do more to protect investors. Premier Li Qiang said China would work to control risks and resolve the property crisis.
For the people who put their life savings into Sichuan Trust and similar entities, it’s likely too late. Around 300 of more than 8,000 investors refused to accept a government plan and are looking for legal help, a relative of one investor said. A few who attempted to come to Beijing during the congress to air their grievances were blocked by police, the relative said.
The ruling Communist Party faces a dilemma: Debt is a problem, but falling home prices lead people to scrimp on spending. That squeezes companies’ sales, so they lay off workers and cut back on investment. The result: slowing growth and less wealth to go around.
Inevitably, someone will end up losing out as China’s debt crisis unwinds, said Tsinghua University finance professor Michael Pettis.
“Nobody wants to absorb the loss. If you assign it to households, you weaken consumption even more,” Pettis said. “It’s got to be assigned. And that’s the political problem.”
Trusts are a cross between a bank and an investment fund. Some advertised their offerings as reliable, high interest government-backed accounts. They’re actually private entities that fund projects like factories and shopping malls. Weak disclosure requirements allowed them to use money from new investors to pay what they owed earlier ones, a set-up somewhat like a Ponzi scheme.
“Financial supervision was relatively loose in the past, so the design of these products, including systems for protecting investors’ rights and interests, had serious issues,” said Zhu Zhenxin, chief analyst at Rushi Finance Institute in Beijing. “If underlying assets of financial products won’t generate enough returns to pay such high interest rates, default is inevitable.”
The troubles at Sichuan Trust first surfaced when the government began restricting new sales of trust products in 2020. Without revenue from new investors, it couldn’t pay its outstanding debts.
That summer, Sichuan Trust announced it had 25.3 billion RMB ($3.5 billion at the time) in debts it couldn’t repay. The provincial government and banking regulators took control, ousting the management, reorganizing its books and launching an investigation.
Hundreds of investors staged weekly protests outside the company’s headquarters and their losses became a political issue.
In 2021, police detained Sichuan Trust’s majority shareholder Liu Canglong, a mining and real estate tycoon who was once the richest man in Sichuan, a province of more than 80 million people. He is accused of embezzling trust funds.
In December, the trust announced it would return investors’ funds according to a sliding scale of the original investment. The larger the investment stake, the larger the loss.
That sparked more protests.
“We’re extremely anxious,” one investor who asked not to be named told The AP. “It’s so cruel, the amount of money they’re giving us is so little.”
A person answering Sichuan Trust’s hotline said the company does not take interviews and would not provide comment. Sichuan Trust, the Sichuan provincial government and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission did not respond to faxed and emailed requests for comment.
The plan to return funds “appropriately favors small and medium-sized investors,” Sichuan Trust said earlier in a public statement, calling it “fair.”
Those protesting fear say they’ve been harassed and intimidated, subjected to police interrogations and threats from their children’s employers. They’ve been barred from leaving Chengdu or, at times, their housing compounds.
On a recent visit to the company’s headquarters, dozens of uniformed officers, half a dozen police vehicles and an empty bus were parked outside. More than a dozen plainclothes agents who refused to identify themselves followed two AP journalists around.
Earlier, a Dutch journalist was shoved to the ground and forced into a police vehicle when he attempted to approach protesting investors.
“They abduct you, they threaten your children,” said another investor, who also did not want to be identified due to fears of more police harassment. “They have so many dirty tricks.”
Analysts say investors were bound to suffer big losses given the size of Sichuan Trust’s debts. Chinese media have reported on the problem, but focused on alleged wrongdoing by those who ran the trust, presenting the repayment plan as a fair solution.
Some of the more than 95% of investors who signed off on the plan said they agreed under duress and were threatened with bigger losses if they didn’t meet a March 5 deadline.
Trusts have a high minimum investment — for Sichuan Trust it was generally 300,000 yuan ($42,000) — and many people believed mostly the relatively well-off were affected.
However, some investors were retirees who said they met the investment threshhold by collecting money from friends and relatives who now want their money back. For them, Sichuan Trust’s default is a calamity.
“They’re so poor, they don’t have money to spend,” said a relative of investors who lost money to the trust. “They don’t have money for medical treatment. They have to borrow money to survive.”
Those interviewed said the name Sichuan Trust led them to believe it was a trustworthy financial institution like a bank, with a steady, fixed interest rates, rather than a risky investment fund. They were attracted by the 8% or 9% interest rates it promised – multiple times higher than traditional savings accounts. Some financially unsophisticated retirees invested large chunks of their life savings.
“The country said trusts are very safe, like banks,” one of the people said. “We didn’t think there would be problems.”
Instead of enjoying their retirements, two of the people said, they’ve had to borrow money from relatives and cut back on their expenses.
“We ordinary people are miserable,” another investor said. “The corruption is so serious.”
China’s roughly $3 trillion trust sector is part of a large “shadow banking” industry in the country, which for decades supplied credit to entrepreneurs and households not served by the state-run banking system. Concerned over speculation and illegal practices, authorities have tightened controls. In 2020, regulators declared victory in cleaning up China’s online peer-to-peer lending industry, or P2P.
Wealth management companies also have gotten into trouble.
“We believe risks could increase, potentially affecting more financial-sector entities, if China’s economic recovery continues to lose momentum and the property sector’s distress is sustained,” Fitch Ratings said in a report after the collapse of another big trust company, Zhengrong.
Officials and analysts say crackdowns have been necessary, but investors footing the bill are questioning how they’ve been carried out.
“I support the Communist Party very much,” one of the investors said. “But some people are blackening the Party’s name.”
How key issues in Russia will be affected by the election set to give Putin 6 more years in power
Vladimir Putin is poised to sweep to another six-year term in this week’s presidential election, even though Russians are dying in Ukraine in a war grinding through its third year and his country is more isolated than ever from the rest of the world.
The all-but-certain outcome comes through his rigid control of Russia established during his 24 years in power — the longest Kremlin tenure since Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
Putin, 71, has silenced virtually all dissent through harsh new laws that impose heavy fines or prison on independent voices. Critics have succumbed to unexplained deaths or fled abroad. The ballot features three other token candidates who publicly support his policies.
Putin has focused his campaign on a pledge to fulfill his goals in Ukraine, describing the conflict as a battle against the West for the very survival of Russia and its 146 million people.
In a state-of-the-nation address last month, he charged that the U.S. and its NATO allies “need a dependent, waning, dying space in the place of Russia so that they can do whatever they want.”
Putin has repeatedly argued that he sent in the troops in February 2022 to protect Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine and prevent Kyiv from posing a major security threat to Moscow by joining NATO. Ukraine and its allies describe the Russian invasion — the largest conflict in Europe since World War II — as an unprovoked act of aggression by the major nuclear power.
He says Russian forces have the upper hand after the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive last year, arguing that Ukraine and the West will “sooner or later” have to accept a settlement on Moscow’s terms. Putin praised his troops fighting in Ukraine and promised to make them Russia’s new elite.
Ordinary Russians know little of their military’s many setbacks in the war, with casualties out of view and state-run media carrying accounts only of Moscow’s successes.
The economy’s resilience in the face of bruising Western sanctions is a big factor behind Putin’s grip on power in Russia, a major player in the global energy sector. The economy is expected to grow 2.6% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, compared with the 0.9% expansion predicted in Europe. Inflation is forecast at more than 7% but unemployment remains low.
Military industries have become a key growth engine, with defense plants churning out missiles, tanks and ammunition. Hefty payments to hundreds of thousands of men who signed contracts with the military have helped boost consumer demand, contributing to economic growth.
In his campaign, Putin has promised to extend cheap mortgages subsidized by the government to help young families, particularly those with children, boosting his popularity and energizing the booming construction sector.
He also pledged to pour more government funds into health care, education, science, culture and sports, while continuing efforts to eradicate poverty.
Putin has methodically tightened control on Russian politics since becoming president in 2000, pushing through constitutional changes that can keep him in power until 2036.
The Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent reached unprecedented heights after the invasion of Ukraine, leaving a scorched-earth political landscape ahead of the vote.
A repressive new law approved days after the invasion criminalized any public criticism of the war, and protests have become effectively impossible with police swiftly dispersing unauthorized gatherings. The number of arrests, criminal cases and trials has soared, and long prison terms are more common.
Putin has denigrated opposition activists and war critics as spoiled Western stooges, once describing them as “foam washed away” by his “special military operation.”
His biggest critic, Alexei Navalny, was serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges when he died at age 47 in an Arctic penal colony. Other leading opposition figures also got long prison terms comparable to those given to “enemies of the people” during Stalinist repressions. Prominent Kremlin foe, Vladimir Kara-Murza got the harshest sentence of 25 years on treason charges over an anti-war speech.
But even minor critics were muzzled. A St. Petersburg artist got seven years for replacing supermarket price tags with anti-war slogans, while a Moscow poet was sentenced to seven years for reciting verses against the war in public.
Most independent news outlets were shut and many moved their operations abroad, while the state-controlled media relentlessly hammered home the Kremlin’s narratives.
Putin will likely use his predictable victory as proof of overwhelming public support for the war.
Many observers expect him to toughen his course and escalate the war. Some say the Kremlin could launch another round of mobilizing reservists to swell the military’s ranks and try to extend its gains in a big, new offensive.
The Kremlin is set to ramp up its war rhetoric, casting the country as a besieged fortress facing Western aggression. Repression against opposition activists and war critics is likely to expand, with authorities abandoning any semblance of decorum in their ruthless efforts to eradicate signs of dissent.
Moscow’s foreign policy is likely to become even more aggressive, and Russian authorities may increasingly try to deepen divides in the West with disinformation and propaganda, as well as appealing to conservative circles in the West by promoting the image of Russia as a bulwark of traditional values.
In Moscow’s relations with China, India and countries of the Global South, Putin’s election victory will help cement existing alliances by reinforcing the message of his firm control over Russian politics.
Europe’s world-first AI rules are set for final approval. Here’s what happens next
European Union lawmakers are set to give final approval to the 27-nation bloc’s artificial intelligence law Wednesday, putting the world-leading rules on track to take effect later this year.
Lawmakers in the European Parliament are poised to vote in favor of the Artificial Intelligence Act five years after they were first proposed. The AI Act is expected to act as a global signpost for other governments grappling with how to regulate the fast-developing technology.
“The AI Act has nudged the future of AI in a human-centric direction, in a direction where humans are in control of the technology and where it — the technology — helps us leverage new discoveries, economic growth, societal progress and unlock human potential,” said Dragos Tudorache, a Romanian lawmaker who was a co-leader of the Parliament negotiations on the draft law.
Big tech companies generally have supported the need to regulate AI while lobbying to ensure any rules work in their favor. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman caused a minor stir last year when he suggested the ChatGPT maker could pull out of Europe if it can’t comply with the AI Act — before backtracking to say there were no plans to leave.
Here’s a look at the world’s first comprehensive set of AI rules:
Like many EU regulations, the AI Act was initially intended to act as consumer safety legislation, taking a “risk-based approach” to products or services that use artificial intelligence.
The riskier an AI application, the more scrutiny it faces. Low-risk systems, such as content recommendation systems or spam filters, will only face light rules such as revealing that they are powered by AI. The EU expects most AI systems to fall into this category.
High-risk uses of AI, such as in medical devices or critical infrastructure like water or electrical networks, face tougher requirements like using high-quality data and providing clear information to users.
Some AI uses are banned because they’re deemed to pose an unacceptable risk, like social scoring systems that govern how people behave, some types of predictive policing and emotion recognition systems in school and workplaces.
Other banned uses include police scanning faces in public using AI-powered remote “biometric identification” systems, except for serious crimes like kidnapping or terrorism.
The law’s early drafts focused on AI systems carrying out narrowly limited tasks, like scanning resumes and job applications. The astonishing rise of general purpose AI models, exemplified by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, sent EU policymakers scrambling to keep up.
They added provisions for so-called generative AI models, the technology underpinning AI chatbot systems that can produce unique and seemingly lifelike responses, images and more.
Developers of general purpose AI models — from European startups to OpenAI and Google — will have to provide a detailed summary of the text, pictures, video and other data on the internet that is used to train the systems as well as follow EU copyright law.
AI-generated deepfake pictures, video or audio of existing people, places or events must be labeled as artificially manipulated.
There’s extra scrutiny for the biggest and most powerful AI models that pose “systemic risks,” which include OpenAI’s GPT4 — its most advanced system — and Google’s Gemini.
The EU says it’s worried that these powerful AI systems could “cause serious accidents or be misused for far-reaching cyberattacks.” They also fear generative AI could spread “harmful biases” across many applications, affecting many people.
Companies that provide these systems will have to assess and mitigate the risks; report any serious incidents, such as malfunctions that cause someone’s death or serious harm to health or property; put cybersecurity measures in place; and disclose how much energy their models use.
Brussels first suggested AI regulations in 2019, taking a familiar global role in ratcheting up scrutiny of emerging industries, while other governments scramble to keep up.
In the U.S., President Joe Biden signed a sweeping executive order on AI in October that’s expected to be backed up by legislation and global agreements. In the meantime, lawmakers in at least seven U.S. states are working on their own AI legislation.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has proposed his Global AI Governance Initiative, and authorities have issued “ interim measures ” for managing generative AI, which applies to text, pictures, audio, video and other content generated for people inside China.
Other countries, from Brazil to Japan, as well as global groupings like the United Nations and Group of Seven industrialized nations, are moving to draw up AI guardrails.
The AI Act is expected to officially become law by May or June, after a few final formalities, including a blessing from EU member countries. Provisions will start taking effect in stages, with countries required to ban prohibited AI systems six months after the rules enter the lawbooks.
Rules for general purpose AI systems like chatbots will start applying a year after the law takes effect. By mid-2026, the complete set of regulations, including requirements for high-risk systems, will be in force.
When it comes to enforcement, each EU country will set up their own AI watchdog, where citizens can file a complaint if they think they’ve been the victim of a violation of the rules. Meanwhile, Brussels will create an AI Office tasked with enforcing and supervising the law for general purpose AI systems.
Violations of the AI Act could draw fines of up to 35 million euros ($38 million), or 7% of a company’s global revenue.
Evangelical Christians are fierce Israel supporters. Now they are visiting as war-time volunteers
When Shawn Landis, an evangelical Christian from Pennsylvania, heard about the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, he knew he would come to Israel to volunteer as soon as it was safe.
Five months later, he was chopping vegetables in a Tel Aviv kitchen, preparing meals for Israeli soldiers.
Evangelicals have been among Israel’s fiercest foreign supporters for years, particularly in the United States, where their significant political influence has helped shape the Israel policy of recent Republican administrations.
They believe Israel is key to an end-times prophecy that will bring about the return of the Christian Messiah. Many of these Christians support Israel due to Old Testament writings that Jews are God’s chosen people and that Israel is their rightful homeland.
“In the Scripture it instructs us to support Israel, and sometimes the best time to support someone is when they’re grieving,” said Landis, who has been on four previous faith-based trips to Israel. “Friendship is not just about being there for the good times, it’s also about the rough times.”
Landis is part of a wave of religious “voluntourism” to Israel, organized trips that include some kind of volunteering aspect connected to the war in Gaza.
Israel’s Tourism Ministry estimates around one-third to half of the approximately 3,000 daily visitors expected to arrive in March are part of faith-based volunteer trips. Before the fighting, around 15,000 visitors arrived in Israel per day, about half of whom were Christian, according to Tourism Ministry statistics. In 2019, the latest tourism statistics available that were not impacted by COVID-19, about 25% of visitors arrived on organized trips, according to the Tourism Ministry.
A study by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that almost half of Israelis volunteered in some capacity during the early weeks of the war. But many Israeli volunteers have returned to work and school, and now international visitors are filling the gaps.
In the U.S., support for Israel has become a top priority for evangelical Christians during a presidential election year. They are among the most outspoken backers of Israel’s handling of the conflict, and Republicans have faced pressure to hew not just to traditional Republican support for Israel but to beliefs rooted in the Bible.
The war began with Hamas’ attack in southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage. Israel responded with an invasion of the Gaza Strip that so far has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians.
On Oct. 11, dozens of leading evangelicals signed a statement of support for Israel organized by the public policy wing of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelical faith group in the U.S.
One of the key pro-Israel groups in the U.S. is Christians United for Israel, founded and led by evangelical pastor John Hagee. CUFI says it has raised and dispersed more than $3 million to support Israeli first responders, health care workers, and survivors of the Oct. 7 attack.
Landis was part of a two-week volunteer trip organized by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. The evangelical group has put together five volunteer trips since January and expects to bring half a dozen more in the coming month. Normally, ICEJ brings about 6,000 Christian visitors to Israel annually.
Like Landis, Claudio Pichardo, a 37-year-old from Colombia studying business in Holland, was inspired by Scripture to join the ICEJ trip. “This is the best way I can help, because posting on Facebook doesn’t help,” he said.
When the war started, many international airlines suspended flights and tourism stopped, aside from a handful of Jewish and Christian solidarity missions. Some major airlines resumed flights to Israel in recent weeks, and others plan to soon.
Peleg Lewi, the foreign affairs adviser to the Tourism Ministry, said the faith-based solidarity missions boost morale. The can also kick-start overall tourism to Israel after a cycle of war or violence, he said.
With the war in its sixth month, Israel is under growing international pressure to do more to end the suffering of civilians in Gaza, including allowing in more aid. Aid groups say the fighting has displaced most of the territory’s population and pushed a quarter of the population to the brink of famine. Hospitals have reported that some children have died of hunger.
Many Israelis fear the world is forgetting about Oct. 7.
Elizabeth Ødegaard, a trip participant from Norway, said she was surprised by how emotional Israelis get when they meet international visitors who have come to support them.
“Many people tell us, `The whole world hates us. Everyone is against us,’ so I want to say to them, `You’re not alone,’” she said. “I know the people of Israel are important to God. These are my brothers and sisters, and when they attack Israel, they attack me too.”
ICEJ trip participants visited hard-hit communities in southern Israel, including the site where the shells of hundreds of burned-out cars are being stored, many from the Tribe of Nova music festival, where 364 people were killed.
“It was humbling and sobering to be there, to know what happened a few months ago and to see Israeli resilience,” said Landis.
During such trips, visitors join volunteer initiatives that sprang up in Israel over the past five months, providing extra hands for farmers struggling to harvest crops, cooking meals for families who have a parent serving in the reserves or sorting donations for evacuees still living in hotels.
One initiative is Citrus & Salt, which previously hosted cooking classes and tours of Tel Aviv’s markets for tourists. When the war started, it pivoted to making more than 35,000 donated meals.
“It really helps boost morale for people to come from abroad to Israel in a time of conflict, to physically say, ‘I’m here to help. What do you need?’” said Aliya Fastman, a native of Berkeley, California, who has lived in Israel for over a decade and runs Citrus & Salt with her sister. “Chopping onions is no small thing when you fly across the world to do it.”
Japan’s first private-sector rocket launch attempt ends with explosion shortly after takeoff
A rocket that was supposed to become Japan’s first from the private sector to put a satellite into orbit exploded shortly after takeoff Wednesday, livestreamed video showed.
Online video showed the rocket called Kairos blasting off from Wakayama Prefecture, in central Japan, a mountainous area filled with trees, but exploding midair within seconds.
A huge plume of smoke engulfed the area, and flames shot up in some spots. The video then showed spurts of water trying to put out the blaze.
There were no reports of injuries, and the fire has been brought under control, according to the fire department in Kushimoto city, Wakayama,
Tokyo-based startup Space One, behind the rocket launch, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Live footage on public broadcaster NHK relayed a voice announcing to the crowd gathered to watch the takeoff from a safe distance. NHK showed debris scattering from the sky, and later charred pieces strewn about on the ground. The cause of the problems was still under investigation, according to NHK.
The launch was already delayed several times, with the last postponement coming Saturday, after a ship was spotted in a risk area, according to Japanese media reports.
If it had succeeded, Space One would have been the first private company to put a rocket into orbit.
Tokyo-based Space One was set up in 2018, with investments from major Japanese companies, including Canon Electronics, IHI, Shimizu and major banks.
Japan’s main space exploration effort has been led by the government’s NASDA, which stands for The National Space Development Agency of Japan, this nation’s equivalent of NASA of the U.S. The agency is now called JAXA, or Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
Wednesday’s failure is likely to work as a setback for such private sector efforts. The rocket was supposed to have sent a satellite into orbit around earth to gather various information.
India’s Modi government rushes to regulate AI ahead of national elections
The Indian government has asked tech companies to seek its explicit nod before publicly launching “unreliable” or “under-tested” generative AI models or tools. It has also warned companies that their AI products should not generate responses that “threaten the integrity of the electoral process” as the country gears up for a national vote.
The Indian government’s efforts to regulate artificial intelligence represent a walk-back from its earlier stance of a hands-off approach when it informed Parliament in April 2023 that it was not eyeing any legislation to regulate AI.
The advisory was issued last week by India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) briefly after Google’s Gemini faced a right-wing backlash for its response over a query: ‘Is Modi a fascist?’
It responded that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was “accused of implementing policies some experts have characterised as fascist”, citing his government’s “crackdown on dissent and its use of violence against religious minorities”.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, junior information technology minister, responded by accusing Google’s Gemini of violating India’s laws. “‘Sorry ‘unreliable’ does not exempt from the law,” he added. Chandrashekar claimed Google had apologised for the response, saying it was a result of an “unreliable” algorithm. The company responded by saying it was addressing the problem and working to improve the system.
In the West, major tech companies have often faced accusations of a liberal bias. Those allegations of bias have trickled down to generative AI products, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.
In India, meanwhile, the government’s advisory has raised concerns among AI entrepreneurs that their nascent industry could be suffocated by too much regulation. Others worry that with the national election set to be announced soon, the advisory could reflect an attempt by the Modi government to choose which AI applications to allow, and which to bar, effectively giving it control over online spaces where these tools are influential.
‘Feels of licence raj’
The advisory is not legislation that is automatically binding on companies. However, noncompliance can attract prosecution under India’s Information Technology Act, lawyers told Al Jazeera. “This nonbinding advisory seems more political posturing than serious policymaking,” said Mishi Choudhary, founder of India’s Software Freedom Law Center. “We will see much more serious engagement post-elections. This gives us a peek into the thinking of the policymakers.”
Yet already, the advisory sends a signal that could prove stifling for innovation, especially at startups, said Harsh Choudhry, co-founder of Sentra World, a Bengaluru-based AI solutions company. “If every AI product needs approval – it looks like an impossible task for the government as well,” he said. “They might need another GenAI (generative AI) bot to test these models,” he added, laughing.
Several other leaders in the generative AI industry have also criticised the advisory as an example of regulatory overreach. Martin Casado, general partner at the US-based investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, wrote on social media platform X that the move was a “travesty”, was “anti-innovation” and “anti-public”.
Bindu Reddy, CEO of Abacus AI, wrote that, with the new advisory, “India just kissed its future goodbye!”
Amid that backlash, Chandrashekar issued a clarification on X adding that the government would exempt start-ups from seeking prior permission for deployment of generative AI tools on “the Indian internet” and that the advisory only applies to “significant platforms”.
But a cloud of uncertainty remains. “The advisory is full of ambiguous terms like ‘unreliable’, ‘untested’, [and] ‘Indian Internet’. The fact that several clarifications were required to explain scope, application, and intent are tell-tale signs of a rushed job,” said Mishi Choudhary. “The ministers are capable folks but do not have the necessary wherewithal to assess models to issue permissions to operate.”
“No wonder it [has] invoked the 80s feelings of a licence raj,” she added, referring to the bureaucratic system of requiring government permits for business activities, prevalent until the early 1990s, which stifled economic growth and innovation in India.
At the same time, exemptions from the advisory just for handpicked start-ups could come with their problems — they too are vulnerable to producing politically biased responses, and hallucinations, when AI generates erroneous or fabricated outputs. As a result, the exemption “raises more questions than it answers”, said Mishi.
Harsh Choudhry said he believes that the government’s intention behind the regulation was to hold companies that are monetising AI tools accountable for incorrect responses. “But a permission-first approach might not be the best way to do it,” he added.
Shadows of deepfake
India’s move to regulate AI content will also have geopolitical ramifications, argued Shruti Shreya, senior programme manager for platform regulation at The Dialogue, a tech policy think tank.
“With a rapidly growing internet user base, India’s policies can set a precedent for how other nations, especially in the developing world, approach AI content regulation and data governance,” she said.
For the Indian government, dealing with AI regulations is a difficult balancing act, said analysts.
Millions of Indians are scheduled to cast their vote in the national polls likely to be held in April and May. With the rise of easily available, and often free, generative AI tools, India has already become a playground for manipulated media, a scenario that has cast a shadow over election integrity. India’s major political parties continue to deploy deepfakes in campaigns.
Kamesh Shekar, senior programme manager with a focus on data governance and AI at The Dialogue think tank, said the recent advisory should also be seen as a part of the ongoing efforts by the government to now draft comprehensive generative AI regulations.
Earlier, in November and December 2023, the Indian government asked Big Tech firms to take down deep fake items within 24 hours of a complaint, label manipulated media, and make proactive efforts to tackle the misinformation — though it did not mention any explicit penalties for not adhering to the directive.
But Shekar too said a policy under which companies must seek government approvals before launching a product would inhibit innovation. “The government could consider constituting a sandbox – a live-testing environment where AI solutions and participating entities can test the product without a large-scale rollout to determine its reliability,” he said.
Not all experts agree with the criticism of the Indian government, however.
As AI technology continues to evolve at a fast pace, it is often hard for governments to keep up. At the same time, governments do need to step in to regulate, said Hafiz Malik, a professor of computer engineering at the University of Michigan with a specialisation in deepfake detections. Leaving companies to regulate themselves would be foolish, he said, adding that the Indian government’s advisory was a step in the right direction.
“The regulations have to be brought in by the governments,” he said, “but they should not come at the cost of innovation”.
Ultimately, though, Malik added, what is needed is greater public awareness.
“Seeing something and-believing it is now off the table,” said Malik. “Unless the public has awareness, the problem of deepfake cannot be solved. Awareness is the only tool to solve a very complex problem.”
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