Israel Uses Starvation As ‘War Arm’ – EU

The European Union foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, has told the United Nations Security Council that “starvation is being used as a war arm” by Israel.

“This humanitarian crisis is manmade,” he said, noting that “the natural way of providing support through roads is being closed, artificially closed.”

“It is not a flood; it is not an earthquake. It is a man-made humanitarian disaster,” Borrell told reporters at the UN.

Borrell added the EU is increasing its humanitarian assistance. “We have to mobilise the international community, but it is urgent that Israeli authorities stop impeding humanitarian access.”

Israel’s war on Gaza has driven most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people from their homes. A quarter of Gaza’s population is starving, according to the United Nations, because they cannot find enough food due to curbs and sieges imposed by Israel.

Death toll rises to 31,272

Meanwhile, Palestine’s Health Ministry in Gaza has stated that Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours have killed 88 Palestinians and injured 135 others in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

Israel’s new wave of attacks brings the death toll to 31,272 Palestinians and 73,024 injured since the beginning of Israel’s military onslaught on Gaza on October 7.

The situation continues to deteriorate as Israel has sealed the coastal enclave, leaving Gaza to starve.

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Nigerians lambast accountant general, commissioners over UK workshop

Civil society and rights groups have lambasted the Accountant General of the Federation, commissioners of finance of the 36 states of the federation and other government officials for choosing to hold a workshop in the United Kingdom at a time when the economy is experiencing a major downturn.

The Office of the AGF reportedly held a workshop on Public Financial Management and International Public Sector Accounting Standards in London, UK.

Findings showed that the workshop was held at Copthorne Tara Hotel, Kensington London, from March 4 to March 9, 2024.

The workshop, titled “Public Financial Management and IPSAS,” brought together state commissioners of finance and officials from the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation.

Over the course of five days, participants engaged in discussions related to IPSAS and its impact on accountability.

The workshop delved into other critical areas such as accounting and reporting in a hyperinflationary economy, as well as the challenges faced in public financial management implementation in Nigeria. Budget implementation challenges were also discussed.

Nigeria is grappling with a persistent foreign exchange crisis, which is worsening the challenges faced by businesses, especially manufacturers. This crisis has been prolonged, stemming from the government’s decisions to remove petrol subsidies and allow the naira to float.

The country is battling with high inflation that has eroded the purchasing power of consumers, aside from food shortage that has led to hunger protests in pockets of the state.

As part of his cost-cutting strategy, President Bola Tinubu recently reduced the size of his entourage and encouraged his team to do the same.

As part of the UK workshop activities, participants had the opportunity for a courtesy visit to the Nigerian High Commissioner in London. The sessions commenced daily at 10:00 am and concluded at 2:30 pm, with participants departing for their respective destinations on March 9, 2023.

However, some Nigerians and rights groups have criticised the AGF and the commissioners for being insensitive to the mood of the nation, saying such a workshop should have been held within the country to save costs.

A human rights group, the International Society for Social Justice and Human Rights, described the travel embarked upon by the Office of the AGF as needless and a waste of the country’s financial resources.

The Chancellor of the group, Jackson Omenazu, told the PUNCH on Wednesday that the decision to move about 36 members of the implementation committee of the agency who are also commissioners of finance for the 36 states to London showed how insensitive the public servants were to the economic plight of the country.

“This is the height of financial recklessness and insensitivity to the economic situation of Nigeria today. If it is a workshop as they have claimed, the accountant general can go for the workshop and come back to replicate the knowledge here to the other commissioners,” he said.

Jackson added that the journey was absolutely unnecessary and wasteful.

He said, “The journey is absolutely unnecessary for him to travel with the 36 commoners of finance. Looking at the cost of the travel and the economic situation Nigeria has found itself in today, there is no prudence in such a decision. We need public servants who will key into the situation of this country and salvage the country.

“It is cheaper to bring the facilitators to Nigeria to train the participants looking at the high exchange rate. The accountant general and the approving agency that approved the trip need to be cautioned.”

The Chairman of the Centre for Anti-corruption and Open Leadership and the President, Centre for the Defence of Human Rights, Debo Adeniran, said it was important to know the content of the courses the OAGF and his team had travelled to London to ascertain if they were readily available in the country.

While he did not chide the accountant general for the trip, he noted that the accountant general should have embraced a cheaper option of ‘training the trainers’ where if necessary only few principal officers of the agency would travel for the training and return to train others.

“Determining whether the journey was frivolous depends on the availability and accessibility of the courses they travelled for in Nigeria. The world is a global village and we want to know if the course can be readily assessed online here in the country. However, to save the cost of foreign exchange needed to travel to London, it would have been cheaper to go for ‘training of the trainers’ depending on the institution’s mobility,” he said

However, the Director of Press at the Office of the AGF, Bawa Mokwa, defended the trip, explaining the reason behind hosting the workshop in the United Kingdom.

In a conversation with the Newsmen on Wednesday, he emphasised that the workshop was an annual event held regularly.

According to him, the event was held in London because the facilitators are based in the UK.

He also stated that the event was approved by the National Economic Council.

“It is an annual event. The OAGF members present at the meeting are sub-committees of Federal Allocation Account Committee. Members of the implementation committee are commissioners of finance of the 36 states,” he said.

“They usually go to the UK to do it annually because the resource persons are resident in the UK and they implement it to the letter,” he added.

Also, an economist at Lotus Beta Analytics, Shedrach Israel, said it was not economically wise to spend the country’s scarce forex on such travels, noting that the AGF should have either opted for a virtual study for the team.

“The government has said it will cut down cost of governance but what has happened is contrary to the initiative of reducing the cost of governance. We are living in a digital world. Do people have to travel to workshops? they don’t need to necessarily travel to be trained.

“The problem with most of our government agencies is that they budget more for recurrent expenditure instead of capital.

“It is not economically wise to transport such a high number of people to London to-and-fro looking at the high exchange rate. We must do all we can to make the naira improve its value,” he said.

 

 

Patriarch Neophyte, leader of Bulgaria’s Orthodox Church, dies at 78

Patriarch Neophyte of Bulgaria, who was the first elected head of the Orthodox Church in the post-communist Balkan country, died at a hospital in Sofia. He was 78.

The Orthodox Holy Synod said Wednesday in a statement that the patriarch had been hospitalized for four months for lung ailments.

The Holy Synod of 15 senior clergy will choose an interim patriarch until a larger church council picks Patriarch Neophyte’s successor within the next four months, church officials said.

Orthodox Christianity is Bulgaria’s dominant religion, followed by some 85 percent of the country’s 6.7 million people. Patriarch Neophyte was the church’s leader for 11 years succeeding his predecessor Maxim, who was at the helm of Bulgaria’s dominant Orthodox Church during the turbulent transition period from communism to democracy.

Born in Sofia on Oct. 15, 1945, as Simeon Nikolov Dimitrov, he graduated from the Theological Academy in Sofia in 1971. He took the name Neophyte and was sworn in as a monk in the Troyan Monastery in 1975. He taught church singing at the Theological Academy, led its choir and was its rector before becoming a bishop in 1994.

Patriarch Neophyte welcomed Pope Francis during the pontiff’s visit to Sofia in 2019, a trip seen as warming the frosty relationship between the Orthodox Church and the Vatican.

 

 

North Korea’s Kim drives new-type tank during drills and calls for efforts to prepare for war

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un joined his troops in training to operate newly developed battle tanks as he called for bigger efforts to prepare for war, state media reported Thursday.

The North’s tank training was seen as a response to the annual 11-day South Korean-U.S. military drills that are to end later Thursday. The North views its rivals’ exercises a rehearsal for invasion.

The North’s training on Wednesday was designed to inspect tankmen’s combat capabilities and involved the new-type main battle tank that Kim called “the world’s most powerful,” the official Korean Central News Agency.

During the training, heavy tanks moved around various simulated harsh combat circumstances and fired rounds at targets. Kim mounted one of the new-type tanks and drove it himself, “adding to the high militant spirit of the tankmen of our army,” KCNA said.

North Korea’s Defense Ministry earlier vowed to carry out “responsible military activities” in reaction to the ongoing South Korea-U.S. military exercises in the South. Kim later supervised artillery firing drills.

The South Korean-U.S. training involve a computer-simulated command post training and 48 kinds of field exercises, twice the number conducted last year.

North Korea has dialed up its weapons testing activities since early 2022 in a bid to modernize and enlarge its nuclear and missile arsenals. The U.S. and South Korea have expanded their training exercises and a trilateral drill involving Japan in response.

Experts say Kim likely wants to use his upgraded weapons arsenal to win U.S. concessions like extensive relief of international sanctions on North Korea. They say North Korea is expected to extend its testing activities and ramp up warlike rhetoric this year as both the United States and South Korea hold major elections.

 

 

Falling rocks in Australian gold mine kill 1 miner and severely injure another while 29 reach safety

Falling rocks inside a gold mine in Australia killed one worker and left another with life-threatening injuries, rescuers said.

Another 29 workers inside the mine when the collapse happened Wednesday took refuge in a safety pod and later returned to the surface, Victoria state police said.

The two miners were trapped by the falling rocks late in the afternoon about 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) underground in the Ballarat Gold Mine, northwest of Melbourne.

A 21-year-old worker needed emergency medical treatment for lower body injuries before he could be removed from the mine about four hours later and was airlifted to a hospital, police said in a statement. The body of the 37-year-old man who died was recovered by mine rescue personnel about 5:15 a.m. Thursday.

The mine has been shut down, and the state police said they would prepare a report for the coroner, while the local safety regulator also will investigate. Federal Minister for Resources Madeleine King told ABC Radio it was too early to know what happened.

The union that represents the miners said some of its members had previously voiced safety concerns.

“Our members have raised concerns about this style of mining and it seems to have fallen on deaf ears,” Australian Workers Union Victoria state secretary Ronnie Hayden said.

The two workers were drilling into the rock manually using an “air legging” technique that was new to the site and were on unsupported ground, he said. Air legging is a method of drilling that penetrates the rock with air and water.

“This form of air legging should not be used to do this type of work,” he said.

The mine’s owner Victory Minerals, which took ownership of the mine in December of last year, said it was a “safety-first mine operator” and was working closely with emergency authorities and safety regulators.

“Right now our priority is the safety and well-being of our mining workers and their families,” it said in a statement.

At the same mine in 2007, a rock collapse trapped 27 miners underground for several hours before they were rescued.

 

 

Women blast through gender barriers in Colombia’s emerald mines, but struggle to emerge from poverty

Deep inside mountain tunnels where the heat is so intense it causes headaches, women with power tools are chipping away at boulders in search of gems. They have opened a difficult path for themselves in Colombia’s emerald industry, a sector long dominated by men.

The lack of job opportunities, combined with the hope of a find that will make them rich, has pushed the women into mining. Colombian emeralds are known around the world for their quality and the best can be sold for thousands of dollars, though most people in the industry aren’t wealthy.

“There are months or years in which I don’t even make $250” from the emerald mines, said Yaneth Forero, one of the women at a small, informal mine near the town of Coscuez, where production has long been centered.

“But we continue to struggle here for the dream of having a home with tiles on the floors, a place that smells good and where no one can kick me out,” she said. She lives in a precarious hillside house where the walls are unpainted and the floor is made of cement.

Some of the biggest emeralds in the world have been mined in Colombia, including one weighing 3 pounds (1.36 kilograms) that broke the world record in 1995. In Coscuez, rumors circulate that one miner recently found an emerald that sold for $177,000, and left the ramshackle town forever.

In 2022, Colombian emerald exports were worth $122 million, according to the national federation of emerald companies. The gems are one of the nation’s most iconic products, and are sold in jewelry shops in cities like Cartagena and Bogotá.

But most emerald profits go to merchants and large companies that have invested millions of dollars in technologies that help them find the most valuable stones.

Workers at small, unregulated mines like Forero, who still use dynamite sticks to open tunnels, have a slim chance of finding the emeralds that can change someone’s destiny.

In her home outside Coscuez, Forero keeps some small, opaque emeralds that she has gathered over the past three months. She reckons that they are not worth more than $76 in all.

Her earnings are not enough to maintain her four children or help her father, who has developed a respiratory illness after working in emerald mines for decades and needs an oxygen tank to breathe.

So she also works random jobs to make ends meet like washing uniforms, ironing clothes and cleaning homes.

The 52-year-old said she has struggled to leave this way of life because the economy in Coscuez revolves around mining, and there are few other opportunities.

Working in the mines is tougher for women. Once they are done drilling in deep tunnels and sifting through rocks, they must care for their children and do domestic tasks that men are often reluctant to do.

Flor Marina Morales said she started to work in the mines around Coscuez because she needed to provide for her kids.

She said she used to arrive home from the mines at 3 a.m. and stay awake to make breakfast for her children and send them to school.

Morales’ children are now in university studying psychology and law.

“I’m glad they have a different outlook,” she said. “Mining is exhausting, and in this job you put up with a lot of hunger, cold and lack of sleep.”

To enter the small mines around Coscuez, women wear rubber boots and helmets and carry drills just like the men.

After they enter in a single file, they branch off in different directions and head into tunnels where each person has a designated area to drill. The rocks that break off the walls are carried outside in carts, washed and sifted through.

This kind of involvement by women was unthinkable a few decades ago in Colombia. Older villagers said that men previously barred women from approaching the mines because they believed that if women were around, the emeralds would hide.

“That was pure machismo, they just didn’t want us to work,” said Carmen Alicia Ávila, a 57-year-old miner who has been in the industry for almost four decades.

She said that between the 1960s and 1990s, when miners attacked each other for control of the area in a period known as the “green wars,” women who attempted to work in mines were threatened, and some were raped.

Ávila said she started to work at the mines when she was 19, but she was not allowed to enter the shafts. Instead, she sifted through rocks picked by the men.

“Women were only allowed into the shafts two decades ago” she said.

The area has become less violent after a series of peace deals brokered by the Catholic church. Many miners who were behind the violence have died. Some sold off their properties to international companies as finding valuable emeralds became tougher and required more money.

Currently there are 200 women working in the mines around Coscuez, according to the local association of female miners. Some work alongside men, while others work in five small mines owned by women, where only female miners are allowed.

Because the tunnels are so small, the women take turns working inside them.

Like others who work in small mines, they are trying to get the government to officially recognize them as artisanal miners. That would give them the right to legally exploit the mines. It would also give them more stability and make it easier to get loans.

Colombia’s government has already granted more than 900 titles to companies and individuals to exploit emerald mines. But according to the National Mining Agency, 576 requests are still under review, including those from small-scale miners.

Luz Myriam Duarte Ramírez, president of the National Federation of Mines, said that her organization is backing the efforts of the Coscuez miners to be registered as artisanal miners, as well as the legalization of the five mines owned by women.

Despite these efforts to improve conditions, Forero said she doesn’t want to stay in the industry for long. She said that if she gets lucky and finds a valuable gem, she will buy a house and set up a small business to keep her away from the hot, dark tunnels where she has labored for years.

“Life is tough in these mines, even if some people have found emeralds that were sold in Dubai,” Forero said. “Sometimes I sit in those tunnels and talk to God. But unfortunately, it seems like we haven’t had a good connection.”

 

 

Former Thai leader Thaksin makes first public appearances after release from detention

Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra began his first public appearances since leaving detention, with an early morning visit to a shrine in Bangkok on Thursday before flying to his home province of Chiang Mai in the country’s north.

The controversial billionaire, a longtime rival of the country’s conservative elite who was toppled in a coup in 2006 but remains influential in politics, arrived before dawn at the capital’s City Pillar, accompanied by his youngest daughter Paetongtarn, the leader of governing Pheu Thai party.

Thaksin spent years in exile to avoid a jail term for corruption, a charge he always denied, but returned to Thailand as his allies in parliament formed a coalition government with military parties associated with the coups that repeatedly drove him and his allies out of power.

He was immediately sent to prison but within hours was moved to a city center hospital after he was diagnosed as being seriously ill. Soon afterwards, his eight-year sentence was commuted to one year. He was released on parole last month and left the hospital after six months without having spent a single night behind bars.

This lenient approach provoked claims of preferential treatment. It was widely speculated he benefited from a political deal struck with his former enemies in the military and conservative royalist establishment to block the progressive Move Forward Party from forming a government following last year’s general election.

His appearances Thursday were his first in public since leaving hospital.

On Thursday morning, 74-year-old Thaksin wore a neck brace but otherwise appeared to move easily as he lit candles and sat to pray. He made no comment to the media gathered outside the city shrine’s gates. He’s announced a busy schedule of public appearances during his return to Chiang Mai, where Pheu Thai lost seats to rival Move Forward last year.

 

 

The drama in Russia’s election is all about what Putin will do with another 6 years in power

As Vladimir Putin heads for another six-year term as Russia’s president, there’s little electoral drama in the race. What he does after he crosses the finish line is what’s drawing attention and, for many observers, provoking anxiety.

The voting that concludes on Sunday is all but certain to allow Putin to remain in office until 2030, giving him a full three decades of leading Russia as either president or prime minister.

The heft of that long tenure and the thorough suppression of effective domestic opposition voices gives Putin a very strong — and perhaps unrestrained — hand.

That position is bolstered by the Russian economy’s surprising resilience despite wide-ranging Western sanctions following the invasion of Ukraine.

It’s also strengthened by Moscow’s incremental but consistent battlefield advances in recent months, flagging support for military aid to Kyiv from the United States and other quarters, and growing skepticism in some Western countries over more progressive social attitudes that echoes Putin’s push for “traditional values.”

Putin, in short, would head into a new term with few obvious restraints, and that could manifest itself quickly in major new actions.

“Russia’s presidential election is not so important as what will come after. Putin has often postponed unpopular moves until after elections,” Bryn Rosenfeld, a Cornell University professor who studies post-Communist politics, said in a commentary.

Probably the most unpopular move he could make at home would be to order a second military mobilization to fight in Ukraine; the first, in September 2022, sparked protests, and a wave of Russians fled the country to avoid being called up. However unpopular a second mobilization might be, it could also mollify relatives of the soldiers who were drafted 18 months ago.

Some in Russia believe it could happen.

“Russian leaders are now talking of ‘consolidating the whole of Russian society around its defense needs,’” Brian Michael Jenkins, a senior adviser at the RAND Corporation think tank told The Associated Press.

“The precise meaning of this phrase is not entirely clear, but it suggests that Russia’s leadership understands that the war Putin describes will go on for a long time, and therefore resources must be mobilized,” he added. “In other words, Russian society must be organized for perpetual warfare.”

But Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, says Putin doesn’t need a mobilization partly because many Russians from poorer regions have signed up to fight in order to get higher pay than what they can earn in their limited opportunities at home.

In addition, Putin’s apparent confidence that the war is turning in Russia’s favor is likely to make him continue to insist that the only way to end the conflict is for Ukraine to sit down at the negotiating table, she said. “Which, in fact, means capitulation.”

While support for Ukraine lags in Washington, both French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski have said recently that sending troops to back Kyiv is at least a hypothetical possibility.

With those statements in mind, Putin may be motivated to test the resolve of NATO.

Alexandra Vacroux, executive director of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, posits that Russia within several years will make an attempt to assess NATO’s commitment to Article 5, the alliance’s common defense guarantee under which an attack on one member is considered an attack on all.

“I don’t think that Putin thinks that he needs to be physically, militarily stronger than all of the other countries. He just needs them to be weaker and more fractured. And so the question for him is like … instead of worrying so much about making myself stronger, how can I make everyone else weaker?” she said.

“So in order to do that, it’s like you have to find a situation where you could test Article 5,” and if the response is mild or uncertain “then you’ve shown that, like NATO is just a paper tiger,” Vacroux said.

Russia could run such a test without overt military action, she said, adding, “You could imagine, like, one of the big questions is what kind of cyberattack constitutes a threat to attack?”

Although it is not a NATO member, the country of Moldova is increasingly worried about becoming a Russian target. Since the invasion of Ukraine, neighboring Moldova has faced crises that have raised fears in its capital of Chisinau that the country is also in the Kremlin’s crosshairs.

The congress in Moldova’s separatist Transnistria region, where Russia bases about 1,500 soldiers as nominal peacekeepers, have appealed to Moscow for diplomatic “protection” because of alleged increasing pressure from Moldova.

That appeal potentially leaves “a lot of room for escalation,” said Cristain Cantir, a Moldovan international relations professor at Oakland University. “I think it’s useful to see the congress and the resolution as a warning to Moldova that Russia may get more involved in Transnistria if Chisinau does not make concessions.”

On the Russian home front, more repressive measures could come in a new Putin term, even though opposition supporters and independent media already are cowed or silenced.

Stanovaya suggested that Putin himself does not drive repressive measures but that he approves such actions that are devised by others in the expectation that these are what the Kremlin leader wants.

“Many players are trying to survive and to adapt, and they compete against each other and often they have contradictory interests,” she said. “And they are trying all together in parallel to secure their own priorities and the stability of the regime.”

Russia last year banned the notional LGBTQ+ “movement” by declaring it to be extremist in what officials said was a fight for traditional values like those espoused by the Russian Orthodox Church in the face of Western influence. Courts also banned gender transitioning.

Ben Noble, a lecturer on Russian politics at University College London, said he believes that the LGBTQ+ community could face further repression in a new Putin term.

They “can be held up as an import from the decadent West,” he said.

 

 

Despair deepens for families of hostages in Gaza as Ramadan cease-fire deadline passes

A brother contemplated suicide. A sister stopped going to school. A father barely speaks. With each passing day, the relatives of hostages held in Gaza since Oct. 7 face a deepening despair.

Their hopes were raised that a cease-fire deal was near to bring some of their loved ones home by the start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that began Monday. But that informal deadline passed without any agreement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promise of “total victory” in the war against Hamas now rings hollow for many hostages’ families after five emotionally draining months.

“We are reading the news every single minute. Egypt says something, the Qataris say something different, the Americans say a deal is close, Israel says it’s not,” said Sharon Kalderon, whose brother-in-law, Ofer, remains in captivity. “We try to read between the lines, but we haven’t heard anything about Ofer for months. Nothing that can help us breathe.”

When Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, they killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 hostages. Since then, Israel’s offensive has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, and driven hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation.

About 120 hostages were freed during a November cease-fire that also led to the release of hundreds of Palestinians from Israeli prisons; three hostages were accidentally killed by Israeli forces during an attempted rescue mission. Now families are focused on bringing home the remaining hostages, at least 34 of whom are dead, according to the Israeli government.

Some families channel their desperation into unrelenting advocacy — traveling to the U.N. in New York, marching to Jerusalem from southern Israel, or wearing red shirts emblazoned with the words “Bring them Home” while running the Jerusalem marathon.

But for other families, a quieter suffering has taken hold.

“You see some of the families running around, going on the TV, making noise. These are the ones that are holding on,” said Ricardo Grichener, the uncle of Omer Wenkert, a 22-year-old hostage. “The ones that are not leaving the houses, they are in a really bad situation.”

Since their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz was destroyed Oct. 7, Sharon Kalderon and her husband, Nissan, have stayed on the 12th floor of an apartment building in the Israeli city of Ramat Gan. Ofer, Nissan’s only brother, remains in captivity.

Nissan said he’s recently thought about killing himself.

“This situation is hard. I don’t sleep, I don’t eat. Not working. Nothing. I lose my mind. That’s all. It’s too much,” said Nissan.

“Whenever he goes out to the balcony, I get scared,” Sharon said.

International mediators had been optimistic they could broker a pre-Ramadan deal by bundling a six-week cease-fire with the release of dozens of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and the entry of a large amount of humanitarian aid into Gaza. But Hamas wanted assurances of a longer-term end to the fighting, which Israel refused.

“We don’t see a prospect for a deal unless (U.S. President Joe) Biden does a miracle. We don’t see any way out. We don’t see any reason why Hamas would be flexible. They gain nothing,” said Grichener. “We are pressing the (Israeli) government, but I think their mistakes have already been made.”

His nephew in captivity, Omer, needs medication to treat his digestive disease. His family doubts the medical aid for hostages that entered Gaza in January ever made it to him.

Meetings between the families and war cabinet officials are ongoing, but families feel powerless to change the sweep of negotiations. Many have received no official updates on the status of their loved ones, clinging instead to snippets conveyed by hostages released in November.

Shlomi Berger, the father of 19-year-old Agam Berger, said he last heard that she was alive in November. A hostage released during the cease-fire, Agam Goldstein-Almog, told him that his daughter — one of 19 women hostages, according to Israel — was alive and had wished him a happy birthday.

“You can imagine what it was like to get a sign of life from my daughter for the first time,” said Berger.

But months later that excitement is tempered by considerable anxiety and uncertainty — and by some former hostages’ accounts of harrowing conditions.

“Nobody knows her situation. If she has air, if she has water, if she has bandages for her period. It’s crazy. I don’t know if somebody has sexually abused her.” said Berger. “We don’t know if she’s alive or dead. We just don’t know.”

Israel’s National Insurance pays for mental health counseling for parents, spouses, and children of hostages. Still, the situation has paralyzed Berger’s family.

One of his three daughters, a senior in high school, has not gone to school since Oct. 7. One of his young daughters has stopped eating. His wife, an industrial engineer, does not go to work. He tries to avoid the news, to save himself the daily roller coaster.

“One minute you read the news and say, okay, it’s close, and another minute it’s not. Nobody really knows what’s happening,” he said.

Overnight, the parents of 33-year-old Or Levy became caretakers to Levy’s 2-year-old son, Almog. Hamas militants killed Almog’s mother, Eynav, and took Levy hostage on Oct. 7. The family had to explain to young Almog that his mother is dead and his father missing.

“Most days I don’t even recognize my parents. My dad barely talks. Before Oct. 7, the last thing you could say about him was that he was a fragile man and now everybody who sees him is afraid to hug him,” said Michael Levy, Or’s brother. Levy said he’s lost 9 kilos (20 pounds) and barely sleeps.

Going forward, relatives said their strategies won’t change. They will continue to meet with the war cabinet, continue hoping for an eventual release.

On Monday, Sharon and Nissan Kalderon watched the sun set on the first full day of Ramadan.

“We really thought, today is the day,” Sharon said. “But unfortunately, this is just another day.”

 

 

AI supercharges threat of disinformation in a big year for elections globally

Artificial intelligence is supercharging the threat of election disinformation worldwide, making it easy for anyone with a smartphone and a devious imagination to create fake – but convincing – content aimed at fooling voters.

It marks a quantum leap from a few years ago, when creating phony photos, videos or audio clips required teams of people with time, technical skill and money. Now, using free and low-cost generative artificial intelligence services from companies like Google and OpenAI, anyone can create high-quality “deepfakes” with just a simple text prompt.

A wave of AI deepfakes tied to elections in Europe and Asia has coursed through social media for months, serving as a warning for more than 50 countries heading to the polls this year.

“You don’t need to look far to see some people … being clearly confused as to whether something is real or not,” said Henry Ajder, a leading expert in generative AI based in Cambridge, England.

The question is no longer whether AI deepfakes could affect elections, but how influential they will be, said Ajder, who runs a consulting firm called Latent Space Advisory.

As the U.S. presidential race heats up, FBI Director Christopher Wray recently warned about the growing threat, saying generative AI makes it easy for “foreign adversaries to engage in malign influence.”

With AI deepfakes, a candidate’s image can be smeared, or softened. Voters can be steered toward or away from candidates — or even to avoid the polls altogether. But perhaps the greatest threat to democracy, experts say, is that a surge of AI deepfakes could erode the public’s trust in what they see and hear.

Some recent examples of AI deepfakes include:

— A video of Moldova’s pro-Western president throwing her support behind a political party friendly to Russia.

— Audio clips of Slovakia’s liberal party leader discussing vote rigging and raising the price of beer.

— A video of an opposition lawmaker in Bangladesh — a conservative Muslim majority nation — wearing a bikini.

The novelty and sophistication of the technology makes it hard to track who is behind AI deepfakes. Experts say governments and companies are not yet capable of stopping the deluge, nor are they moving fast enough to solve the problem.

As the technology improves, “definitive answers about a lot of the fake content are going to be hard to come by,” Ajder said.

Some AI deepfakes aim to sow doubt about candidates’ allegiances.

In Moldova, an Eastern European country bordering Ukraine, pro-Western President Maia Sandu has been a frequent target. One AI deepfake that circulated shortly before local elections depicted her endorsing a Russian-friendly party and announcing plans to resign.

Officials in Moldova believe the Russian government is behind the activity. With presidential elections this year, the deepfakes aim “to erode trust in our electoral process, candidates and institutions — but also to erode trust between people,” said Olga Rosca, an adviser to Sandu. The Russian government declined to comment for this story.

China has also been accused of weaponizing generative AI for political purposes.

In Taiwan, a self-ruled island that China claims as its own, an AI deepfake gained attention earlier this year by stirring concerns about U.S. interference in local politics.

The fake clip circulating on TikTok showed U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, vice chairman of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, promising stronger U.S. military support for Taiwan if the incumbent party’s candidates were elected in January.

Wittman blamed the Chinese Communist Party for trying to meddle in Taiwanese politics, saying it uses TikTok — a Chinese-owned company — to spread “propaganda.”

A spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, Wang Wenbin, said his government doesn’t comment on fake videos and that it opposes interference in other countries’ internal affairs. The Taiwan election, he stressed, “is a local affair of China.”

Audio-only deepfakes are especially hard to verify because, unlike photos and videos, they lack telltale signs of manipulated content.

In Slovakia, another country overshadowed by Russian influence, audio clips resembling the voice of the liberal party chief were shared widely on social media just days before parliamentary elections. The clips purportedly captured him talking about hiking beer prices and rigging the vote.

It’s understandable that voters might fall for the deception, Ajder said, because humans are “much more used to judging with our eyes than with our ears.”

In the U.S., robocalls impersonating U.S. President Joe Biden urged voters in New Hampshire to abstain from voting in January’s primary election. The calls were later traced to a political consultant who said he was trying to publicize the dangers of AI deepfakes.

In poorer countries, where media literacy lags, even low-quality AI fakes can be effective.

Such was the case last year in Bangladesh, where opposition lawmaker Rumeen Farhana — a vocal critic of the ruling party — was falsely depicted wearing a bikini. The viral video sparked outrage in the conservative, majority-Muslim nation.

“They trust whatever they see on Facebook,” Farhana said.

Experts are particularly concerned about upcoming elections in India, the world’s largest democracy and where social media platforms are breeding grounds for disinformation.

Some political campaigns are using generative AI to bolster their candidate’s image.

In Indonesia, the team that ran the presidential campaign of Prabowo Subianto deployed a simple mobile app to build a deeper connection with supporters across the vast island nation. The app enabled voters to upload photos and make AI-generated images of themselves with Subianto.

As the types of AI deepfakes multiply, authorities around the world are scrambling to come up with guardrails.

The European Union already requires social media platforms to cut the risk of spreading disinformation or “election manipulation.” It will mandate special labeling of AI deepfakes starting next year, too late for the EU’s parliamentary elections in June. Still, the rest of the world is a lot further behind.

The world’s biggest tech companies recently — and voluntarily — signed a pact to prevent AI tools from disrupting elections. For example, the company that owns Instagram and Facebook has said it will start labeling deepfakes that appear on its platforms.

But deepfakes are harder to rein in on apps like the Telegram chat service, which did not sign the voluntary pact and uses encrypted chats that can be difficult to monitor.

Some experts worry that efforts to rein in AI deepfakes could have unintended consequences.

Well-meaning governments or companies might trample on the sometimes “very thin” line between political commentary and an “illegitimate attempt to smear a candidate,” said Tim Harper, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington.

Major generative AI services have rules to limit political disinformation. But experts say it remains too easy to outwit the platforms’ restrictions or use alternative services that don’t have the same safeguards.

Even without bad intentions, the rising use of AI is problematic. Many popular AI-powered chatbots are still spitting out false and misleading information that threatens to disenfranchise voters.

And software isn’t the only threat. Candidates could try to deceive voters by claiming that real events portraying them in an unfavorable light were manufactured by AI.

“A world in which everything is suspect — and so everyone gets to choose what they believe — is also a world that’s really challenging for a flourishing democracy,” said Lisa Reppell, a researcher at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems in Arlington, Virginia.

 

 

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