Month: November 2023
X sues advocacy group
Firms including Apple, Disney, IBM and Comcast have paused adverts on X since the watchdog released its analysis. Elon Musk’s social media platform X has sued a left-leaning pressure group that accused the site of allowing antisemitic posts next to advertising. After Mr Musk threatened the lawsuit, Media Matters called him a bully. The advocacy
Sam Altman reinistated as the CEO of OpenAI
AI is evolving rapidly, growing ever more powerful – and that makes it potentially more of a threat. In a very recent speech Mr Altman himself said what was coming next year from OpenAI would make the current ChatGPT look like “a quaint relative” – and we know the existing model is able to pass
DR Congo indiscriminate bombing at North Kivu
Over the last quarter century, hundreds of thousands of Congolese Tutsi have fled to neighbouring countries, such as Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda. In Rwanda alone, there are at least 80,000 of Congolese refugees, most of them living in camps. As fighting continues in eastern DR Congo, the M23 rebel group has accused the government coalition
Moscow might win the war in Ukraine
The pervasiveness of drones on the battlefield coupled with Moscow’s electronic warfare and prepared defensive networks have turned the war into a positional one, especially in light of Ukraine’s major shortcomings. Ukraine’s limited air defenses and lack of long-range strike capabilities paired with Kyiv’s small numbers of tanks and armored vehicles have created a situation
Call to lift sanctions against Niger
Military officers, led by the former Presidential Guard Commander, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, seized power in the Niger Republic in a forceful takeover back in July 2023.In protest against this coup, the Heads of State inECOWAS imposed sanctions on the nation, resulting in a range of adverse effects on the populace. The Economic Community of West
Argentina bail out
Yet Argentina is pushing the model to its breaking point. In 2018 the imf took a gamble and offered the country a bail-out worth $57bn, the fund’s biggest ever. At the time, many observers thought it was too much for a country with Argentina’s patchy track record. It turned out also to be far too
IDF in control north of Wadi Gaza
Israel must also consider what comes next in Gaza, something Mr Netanyahu has so far refused to do. For now, Hamas has lost its ability to rule. It may also have lost the support of the people it once governed. After six weeks of war and three weeks of ground fighting, Israel now has effective
Gaza after the war
The humanitarian crisis afflicting Gaza’s 2.2m people is stark. Food, clean water and medicine are scarce and patients are dying in hospitals that have run out of fuel. The southern half of the enclave is bursting at the seams, swollen to twice its pre-war population after an influx of displaced Palestinians, while the north is
Revolt at OpenAI
After a few years Openai realised that in order to attain its goal, it needed cash to pay for expensive computing capacity and top-notch talent not least because it claims that just $130m or so of the original $1bn pledge materialised. So in 2019 it created a for-profit subsidiary. On November 17th, seemingly out of
Hamas’s sprawling financial empire
Hamas has three sources of power: its physical force inside Gaza, the reach of its ideas and its income. Since Hamas’s attacks on October 7th, Israel has killed more than 12,000 Palestinians in Gaza in seeking to wreck the first. But Israel’s declared goal of destroying Hamas for good requires its financial base to be