The Palestinian presidency has condemned the US veto of the Security Council resolution that recommended full UN membership for a Palestinian state. The presidency said in a statement the US veto was “unfair, unethical and unjustified”.
Archiv: understatements of the year / decade
Red Cross chief accuses international community of ‘moral failure’
Mirjana Spoljaric, the Red Cross president, has accused the international community of moral failure over the humanitarian crisis and ongoing bombardment of Gaza.
“I have been speaking of moral failure because every day this continues is a day more where the international community hasn‘t proven capable of ending such high levels of suffering, and this will have an impact on generations, not only in Gaza,” she said.
Three Years In, Netanyahu‘s Trial Has No End in Sight
Some jurists say the judges in the Netanyahu cases are allowing the proceedings to drag on too long
What is AI risk?
7.Deception
We want to understand what powerful AI systems are doing and why they are doing what they are doing. One way to accomplish this is to have the systems themselves accurately report this information. This may be non-trivial however since being deceptive is useful for accomplishing a variety of goals.
Future AI systems could conceivably be deceptive not out of malice, but because deception can help agents achieve their goals. It may be more efficient to gain human approval through deception than to earn human approval legitimately. Deception also provides optionality: systems that have the capacity to be deceptive have strategic advantages over restricted, honest models. Strong AIs that can deceive humans could undermine human control. AI systems could also have incentives to bypass monitors. Historically, individuals and organizations have had incentives to bypass monitors. For example, Volkswagen programmed their engines to reduce emissions only when being monitored. This allowed them to achieve performance gains while retaining purportedly low emissions. Future AI agents could similarly switch strategies when being monitored and take steps to obscure their deception from monitors. Once deceptive AI systems are cleared by their monitors or once such systems can overpower them, these systems could take a “treacherous turn” and irreversibly bypass human control.
8.Power-Seeking Behavior
Companies and governments have strong economic incentives to create agents that can accomplish a broad set of goals. Such agents have instrumental incentives to acquire power, potentially making them harder to control (Turner et al., 2021, Carlsmith 2021).
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Signal would ‚walk‘ from UK if Online Safety Bill undermined encryption
(24.02.2023)
Critics say companies could be required by Ofcom to scan messages on encrypted apps for child sexual abuse material or terrorism content under the new law.
This has worried firms whose business is enabling private, secure communication.
Element, a UK company whose customers include the Ministry of Defence, told the BBC the plan would cost it clients.
Biden Approves Plan to Redeploy Several Hundred Ground Forces Into Somalia
Together, the decisions by Mr. Biden, described by the officials on the condition of anonymity, will revive an open-ended American counterterrorism operation that has amounted to a slow-burn war through three administrations. The move stands in contrast to his decision last year to pull American forces from Afghanistan, saying that “it is time to end the forever war.”
White House says Biden is not calling for regime change in Russia
„The President‘s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin‘s power in Russia, or regime change,“ the official said following Biden‘s speech in Warsaw.
‘Potentially very dangerous’: Biden’s Warsaw speech met with mixed reactions
Politicians and pundits had mixed reactions Saturday to President Biden’s impassioned speech in Warsaw, in which he rebuked Russian President Vladimir Putin and defended liberal democracy.
Athletes unhappy about quarantine hotels
When fetching the food left outside her door, she took a glance at the boxes left outside other rooms in her corridor, whose doors were labelled with signs to distinguish Olympians from other people working at the Games who tested positive, such as team staff.
She concluded the athletes were getting worse food, and underlined it with a picture of food served to her team doctor, who had also tested positive and was living two floors below. He had fresh fruit, a salad and prawns with broccoli.
„I honestly don‘t understand, why is there this attitude to us, the athletes?!“ she wrote.
Two days on from her criticism, Vasnetsova is still in quarantine …
More than 100,000 march in France against Covid vaccine requirements
The turnout was four times higher than the numbers who answered the December 18 call to protest, when 25,500 people marched across the country, according to government estimates.
Covid: Thousands protest in France against proposed new vaccine pass
French authorities say more than 105,000 people have taken part in protests across the country against the introduction of a new coronavirus pass.
Six Months, Only One Witness: In Netanyahu‘s Trial, the Wheels of Justice May Be Turning Too Slowly
The current case is just one of three that Netanyahu is facing in Jerusalem District Court on a range of corruption charges stemming from his alleged conduct as prime minister. He denies any wrongdoing.
In the case currently being heard, dubbed Case 4000, the former prime minister is charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust, arising from allegations that he traded favorable coverage from the Walla website for government regulatory concessions to Walla’s parent company, the Bezeq telecommunications firm.
After a drone strike in Kabul killed 10 civilians, Democratic senators want Biden to scrap the practice
It‘s hard to know exactly how many civilians have been killed by drones. One analysis by Airwars, a harm monitoring group, estimated that at least 22,000 civilians have been killed based off the U.S. military‘s assertion that it has conducted 100,000 airstrikes since 2001. However, the same analysis noted that the number could be as high as 48,000.
The Pentagon‘s dark money: Billions of federal dollars are vanishing into thin air
(May 28, 2016)
Don’t for a moment imagine that the Pentagon’s growing list of secret programs and evasive budgetary maneuvers is accidental or simply a matter of sloppy bookkeeping. Much of it is remarkably purposeful. By keeping us in the dark about how it spends our money, the Pentagon has made it virtually impossible for anyone to hold it accountable for just about anything. An entrenched bureaucracy is determined not to provide information that might be used to bring its sprawling budget — and so the institution itself — under control.
Thousands Around Globe Protest COVID-19 Shots, Lockdowns
Tens of thousands of people protested in Australia, France, Italy and Greece on Saturday, sparking clashes with police as they railed against COVID-19 measures and government sanctions against the unvaccinated aimed at prodding more people into getting their shots.
Thousands protest amid global anger against COVID restrictions
People take to the streets in Australia, France, Italy and the UK in protests against lockdowns and vaccine pass schemes.
Gantz, We’ll Take It From Here
It’s hard not to feel uncomfortable when we hear Gantz – who gave Netanyahu the government, betraying his voters and his partners – trying to look like someone worried about the future of the “Anyone But Bibi” camp and trying to serve as a strategic adviser.
National & World Affairs: Tillerson’s exit interview
Early on, it was “pretty evident” to him that much of the department was outmoded, from management practices and some of the systems to IT, and there was no clear delegation of authority, as he was used to in the private sector, so he had a hard time understanding “how decisions are made, who’s got authority to make what decisions and who’s accountable,” he said.
Netanyahu ‚Played Trump Using Misinformation‘ Several Times, Says Tillerson
„We later exposed it to the president so he understood, ‘You’ve been played,’” said Tillerson. “It bothers me that an ally that’s that close and important to us would do that to us.”
Tillerson criticized Trump for preferring the advice of political figures outside of his administration when it came to Israel, over the assessments of his own senior cabinet members.
Tillerson: Netanyahu, Israelis ‚played‘ Trump
„They did that with the president on a couple of occasions, to persuade him that ‘We’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys,’“ Tillerson said, according to the Harvard Gazette. „We later exposed it to the president so he understood, ‘You’ve been played.’”
He cautioned that skepticism is necessary when dealing with Netanyahu, whom Tillerson called „a bit Machiavellian.“