Author: staff

Experts call on global leaders and tech giants in an open letter to prioritise multilingualism in AI development. Francophone scholars are sounding the alarm about the dominance of English in artificial intelligence (AI) development, warning about the potential risks to “global cultural diversity” and “national sovereignty”. In an open letter published by the Future of Life Institute on Friday, the experts said there is a lack of linguistic and cultural diversity in AI models and safety assessments.They argue these shortcomings “pose a threat to the national sovereignty of the states in which they are distributed and to the safety of users”.The…

Judges said the rules “impede the free movement of professional footballers” and “are similar to a no-poach agreement.” While some restrictions could be justified, these “do not appear to be indispensable or necessary,” they said. “Those rules impose considerable legal risks, unforeseeable and potentially very high financial risks as well as major sporting risks on those players and clubs wishing to employ them which, taken together, are such as to impede international transfers of those players,” the court said in a statement. They also “have as their object the restriction, and even prevention, of cross-border competition which could be pursued…

Mondino’s remarks come after the British government agreed to pass sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius on Thursday, in return for securing the future of a strategically important military base. Mauritius will take over sovereignty of the archipelago, situated roughly halfway between East Africa and Indonesia, while a joint U.S.-U.K. military base will continue to operate on Diego Garcia, the largest island, for at least the next 99 years. “The long dispute between Britain and Mauritius came to a conclusion today, with Mauritians successfully regaining their territory of Chagos,” Mondino wrote. “We welcome this step in the right direction…

When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, it exploited the sectarian fissures of a country shattered by civil war. This time, despite long-running divisions, many Lebanese are desperate to preserve a spirit of national solidarity in the face of the Israeli attack across the southern border, and want to forge a new political order rising above sectarianism now that Hezbollah has been weakened — partly by electing a president after a two-year power vacuum. None of this will be easy. The challenge of holding together a country devastated by economic crisis — with 85 percent of people estimated to be living…

Russia refuses to confirm thousands of prisoners’ captivity or whereabouts. | Sergei Supinsky/Getty Images The Geneva Conventions, the rules encoding the treatment of POWs, states that countries at war should  allow independent monitors unlimited access to captives and permit them to send or receive letters. Russia has a spotty record when it comes to both, the U.N. has said. Tsymbaliuk said Russia refuses to confirm thousands of prisoners’ captivity or whereabouts, leaving their desperate relatives guessing daily whether their loved ones were still “on earth or in Heaven.” The U.N. also listed cases of torture of Russian POWs captured by…

The clash dramatizes the dilemma facing the bloc’s 27 governments at a highly sensitive moment for global trade. The U.S. presidential election is on a knife edge and could see Donald Trump reelected in one month’s time. He has past form playing hardball with the EU on trade and has proposed sweeping new tariffs if he wins back the White House for the Republicans.  But even Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency has taken American policy in a protectionist direction, prioritizing domestic firms for hundreds of billions of dollars worth of industrial investment and tempting European companies to relocate to the U.S.  With…

Meta executive and former U.K. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg recently said Britain had “wasted a huge amount of time.” | Nhac Nguyen/AFP via Getty Images But California’s experience had other lessons for Britain, too. In vetoing the bill, Newsom took aim at its narrow focus on frontier systems, arguing that it ignored the context in which they’re deployed — a criticism that has been lobbed at the U.K.’s approach, too. Britain’s ruling Labour Party has repeatedly said its bill will place binding safety requirements on only those creating the most powerful models, rather than regulating the way the tech…

“Ahead of the International Investment Summit on 14 October, this meeting will provide an opportunity for you, alongside other U.K. business leaders, to hear from Ian about the government’s investment priorities, and for you to share your thoughts and ideas,” the invite read. Murphy and his lobbying firm Arden Strategies are seen as leading power players in the new administration. The former Scottish Labour leader, who served in Gordon Brown’s Cabinet, built up goodwill with party figures in the run-up to Labour’s landslide win, helping the party to run business events and put on fundraisers for candidates. Several MPs benefited…

Brits are better at this stuff and it’s been on glorious display at the Conservative Party conference. The candidates to run what’s left of the Tory Party have been flogging merch: You could get Kemi Badenoch mints with “Stop Banning Things” written on the packet (pretty sure they are not banning mints); Robert Jenrick had caps saying “We Want Bobby J;” and, best of all, Tom Tugendhat had “Tugendtote bags,” “Tugendtats” (tattoos with the word Tom in a love heart) and even “Tugendtan” fake tan. Not making Tugendhats was surely an oversight. On a side note, Jenrick revealed during the…

Kyiv banned the transit of products from Russian energy company Lukoil across its borders over the summer, alarming Hungary and Slovakia, both of which receive Russian oil via a pipeline across Ukraine thanks to an opt-out from EU sanctions. “We have an existential interest in maintaining transit routes for gas and oil through Ukraine,” Fico said, adding he sees no reason to buy gas and oil from alternative suppliers because it is “still the same Russian oil,” just with higher transit charges. Fico also said that his government has been under “extreme pressure” from the European Commission to stop buying…