03 World

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Excerpt from thepeninsulaqatar.com

France’s President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech at New Caledonia’s High Commissioner residency in Noumea on May 22, 2024, during his trip to the Pacific archipelago in an attempt to resolve a political crisis. Photo by Ludovic MARIN / POOL / AFP.

Noumea: President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday more talks were needed on proposed voting reforms that triggered over a week of deadly riots in New Caledonia, as he made a high-stakes visit to the French Pacific territory in a bid to ease tensions.

Since May 13, looting, arson and clashes have left six people dead and hundreds injured.

The unrest erupted over a French voting reform plan that indigenous Kanaks say will dilute their voice.

“I have pledged that this reform will not be forced through in the current context,” Macron told reporters in New Caledonia’s capital Noumea.

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Excerpt from www.nytimes.com

President Emmanuel Macron of France has a lot to manage. The European elections are fast approaching, and his party is predicted to lose. There are the frenzied preparations for the Olympic Games in Paris. A manhunt is underway for a convict whose brazen and deadly jailbreak shocked the country.

The last place many expected Mr. Macron to be was on a plane to one of France’s territories in the Pacific, where riots have been exploding all week. But there he was in New Caledonia on Thursday, with three ministers in tow, on a mission to heal and listen in a territory where many hold him personally responsible for the unrest.

Whether Mr. Macron’s hastily arranged visit will accomplish that is unclear.

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Excerpt from www.freemalaysiatoday.com

Poland backs two-state solution for Israel, Palestine  Free Malaysia Today

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Excerpt from www.rt.com

The bloc is trying to intimidate Georgia over its foreign agents law, Irakli Kobakhidze has said

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has claimed that a European commissioner told him he could end up suffering the same fate as Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who survived an assassination attempt last week.

In a Facebook post on Thursday, Kobakhidze said that the unnamed commissioner warned him during a recent phone call that the West would take “a number of measures” against him if his government pressed ahead with a law requiring foreign NGOs in Georgia to disclose their funding.

“While listing these measures, he mentioned: ‘you see what happened to Fico, and you should be very careful’,” he wrote.

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Excerpt from abcnews.go.com

Spanish emergency services say 4 people have died after a building collapsed on the island of Mallorca

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Excerpt from www.aei.org

Spectacular video of a comet fragment exploding in the nighttime skies over Spain and Portugal made me think of America’s environmental review process. This bureaucratic procedure usually makes news when it involves some sort of infrastructure project, such as expanding an interstate highway or building an electrical transmission line. But as space enthusiasts know, these reviews are playing a big role in America’s New Space Age.

In a new Ars Technica piece looking at SpaceX’s latest launch plans for its powerful Starship rocket, reporter Stephen Clark points out that the environmental reviews demanded by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) significantly impact SpaceX’s Florida plans. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and US Space Force are conducting these reviews for two Cape Canaveral launch sites in response to SpaceX’s updated plans, which include higher launch rates and infrastructure changes not covered by previous assessments. (Currently, Starship launches happen at SpaceX Stabase in south Texas.) The environmental impact statement process, the most thorough review under NEPA, can take a long time and potentially delay SpaceX’s goal of having Florida launch sites ready by 2025. George Nield, an aerospace industry consultant and former head of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, states in the piece that “a couple of years would not be a surprise” for these environmental reviews.

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Excerpt from www.marktechpost.com

 

The rapid advancement of AI has revolutionized various industries, from healthcare to finance, by enabling sophisticated data analysis and predictive modeling. However, the traditional approach to AI, which involves centralizing vast amounts of data for training models, raises significant privacy and security concerns. Federated learning has emerged as a promising field that addresses these issues by decentralizing the training process, thus enhancing privacy and security. Let’s delve into the principles of federated learning, its benefits, challenges, and future directions, drawing insights from recent research papers.

Understanding Federated Learning

Federated learning is an ML approach in which multiple devices collaboratively train a model while keeping their data localized. Instead of sending raw data to a central server, devices compute model updates locally and only share these updates. The central server aggregates these updates to improve the global model. This decentralized approach contrasts with traditional centralized training, where data from all sources is aggregated in a single location.

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Excerpt from orthodoxtimes.com

A same-sex couple held a private civil partnership ceremony at Tirana City Hall, sparking significant controversy despite the ceremony having no legal standing.

The Orthodox Church of Albania issued a statement expressing its strong disapproval:

“Regarding the same-sex ‘marriage’ performed at the Municipality of Tirana on May 19, 2024, the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Albania maintains the position previously stated in January 2024:

It is well known that the perpetuation of humanity has been based on the existence of two sexes and their union.

No culture, religion, or system of laws (Solon, Plato, etc.) has institutionalized homosexual cohabitation as marriage.

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Excerpt from chinadigitaltimes.net

Last week, Weibo censors took down a post by a popular food blogger describing how all her bank accounts were frozen due to a local police department’s arbitrary and unprofessional “anti-fraud” case work. Her Kafka-esque account described how her accounts were shut down without any explanation, leaving her forced to “do all of the detective work” herself—only to learn that she was under investigation for fraud under the barest of pretenses. Her account is but the latest example of anti-fraud overreach. In April, CDT published a translation of a man’s account of being threatened by anti-fraud police who also froze his accounts. CDT has translated an archived version of this latest incident in full:

For the first time in my life, I’ve had all my bank accounts frozen. The absurdities I’ve witnessed during the past three days have made me realize just how amateurish and unsafe our society is!

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Excerpt from anfenglishmobile.com

“FREEDOM FOR ÖCALAN” CAMPAIGN

The “Syrian Initiative for the Freedom of Leader Abdullah Öcalan”, based in North and East Syria, met with the Soraya Democratic Party within the scope of the “Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan and political solution to the Kurdish question” campaign launched globally in October 2023.

Speaking at the meeting, Soraya Democratic Party Co-Chair Madlîn Xemîs emphasised that the Assyrian party supports the freedom campaign.

Madlîn Xemîs stated that they also took part in protests against the absolute isolation imposed on Abdullah Öcalan and added: “Aggravated isolation is a red line for us and all the components in Northern and Eastern Syria.”

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Excerpt from finimize.com

What’s going on here?

Power Corporation of Canada has closed its China investment unit, Power Sustainable Shanghai, laying off all 17 staff members in a strategic shift.

What does this mean?

Power Sustainable, managing $4.5 billion globally, is dropping its China public equity strategy due to the economic slowdown and rising geopolitical risks. Launched in 2019, the Shanghai unit served onshore and offshore clients through public equity investments. Despite the shutdown, Power Corp holds onto China’s public equity market via its Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) license, enabling offshore investments without local operations. Plus, Power Corp retains a 27.8% stake in China

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Excerpt from globalnews.ca

Globally, an estimated 37 million children aged 13 to 15 years use tobacco, the WHO said in a report released Thursday, laying out how the industry lures young people.

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Excerpt from www.news24.com

South Africa is considering lodging a formal complaint at the World Trade Organisation against the European Union’s “protectionist” carbon border levy, Trade Minister Ebrahim Patel said on Wednesday.

The EU’s proposed carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), which will impose charges on imports of carbon-intensive goods like steel and cement into Europe, has faced criticism from some developing nations and sectors including China’s steel industry.

In October, the EU launched a trial phase of the world’s first carbon border levy, which from 2026 will impose costs on imports of steel, cement, aluminium, fertilisers, electricity, and hydrogen.

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Excerpt from www.civilnet.am

Armenia’s economy grows by 9.2% in first quarter – CIVILNET  CivilNet English

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Excerpt from www.theafricareport.com

How the lack of formal land ownership in Zimbabwe could cripple agriculture sector  The Africa Report

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Excerpt from ifpnews.com

Mokhber made the remarks in a phone conversation with Assad on Thursday as the latter offered his condolences to the Iranian government and nation over the martyrdom of President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and their companions in a helicopter crash in the northeastern province of East Azarbaijan on Sunday.

Mokhber thanked Syria’s move to declare three days of mourning and the presence of the country’s prime minister and his accompanying delegation in Tehran to take part in the funeral processions held for the Iranian martyrs.

“Syria is a strategic partner and a constant friend of the Iranian nation,” he added.

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Excerpt from www.aljazeera.com

Weeks before elections, ID group says it does not want to be associated with incidents involving AfD’s Maximilian Krah.

The far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group in the European Parliament says it has decided to expel the Alternative for Germany (AfD) delegation weeks before elections for the assembly.

The decision follows comments that Maximilian Krah, the AfD’s lead candidate in the elections, made to an Italian newspaper at the weekend that the members of the Nazi paramilitary SS force were “not all criminals”.

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Excerpt from www.bbc.com

When one top defence official is arrested in Russia, that’s interesting.

When four senior defence figures are handcuffed in less than a month, that’s more than a pattern. It’s a purge.

The latest senior military man to be locked up is Lt Gen Vadim Shamarin, deputy chief of the army’s general staff and head of the Main Communications Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces.

Accused of large-scale bribe-taking, he’s been placed in pre-trial detention for two months.

The roll-call of Russian defence figures who have fallen from grace on corruption charges includes Deputy Defence Minister Timur Ivanov and Lieutenant-General Yuri Kuznetsov, head of the defence ministry’s personnel directorate.

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Excerpt from timesofindia.indiatimes.com

 

NEW DELHI: A day after UK PM Rishi Sunak announced the date of general elections to be held on July 4, a pre-poll survey indicated that 43% of the respondents feel that Labour leader Keir Starmer would make a better prime minister than Rishi Sunak.
The online Survation poll on voting intentions conducted on Wednesday and Thursday with 1000 participants showed Labour on 48 points, its best since November 2022, and 21 points ahead of the Conservatives on 27.
With the announcement of the general elections date, political parties were quick to come out with Starmer vowing to “rebuild Britain” and Sunak promising to “fight for every vote”.
‘Rebuild Britain’: Starmer promises economic stability

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Excerpt from english.almayadeen.net

The junta chief Mahamat Idriss Deby, who took power following his father’s death in 2021, won the presidential vote on May 6 with 61% of the ballot based on the final results.

Over two weeks following his defeat to junta chief Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno in the presidential elections, Chadian Prime Minister Succes Masra revealed today that he submitted his resignation.

On his Facebook page, in a message authenticated by his team to AFP, Masra said, “I’ve just submitted my resignation and that of the transition government, which became irrelevant with the end of the presidential election.”

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Excerpt from www.reddit.com

submitted by /u/Sage_Powers99 [comments]

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Excerpt from www.aljazeera.com

China has started military drills surrounding the self-governing island of Taiwan, according to Chinese state media.

The state-run Xinhua news agency said the Eastern Theatre Command of the People’s Liberation Army started the drills at 7:45am (23:45 GMT) on Thursday in the Taiwan Strait, the north, south and east of Taiwan, as well as areas around the islands of Kinmen, Matsu, Wuqiu and Dongyin.

It did not say how long the drills would last.

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Excerpt from www.army-technology.com

At Future Artillery 2024 in Paris, Swedish Army Colonel Stephan Sjöberg discussed the growth and recovery of the Swedish artillery, which has ambitious plans to expand this function as part of the lastest defence bill.

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Excerpt from apnews.com

MOSCOW (AP) — A deputy chief of the Russian military general staff has been arrested on charges of large-scale bribery, Russian news reports said Thursday, the latest in a series of bribery arrests of high-ranking military officials.

The arrest of Lt. Gen. Vadim Shamarin followed the arrest earlier in the week of Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, a former top commander in Russia’s offensive in Ukraine, also on bribery charges.

In April, Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov was arrested for bribery. Ivanov was a close associate of Sergei Shoigu, whom President Vladimir Putin dismissed as defense minister soon after Putin’s inauguration to a new term in May. Lt. Gen. Yury Kuznetsov, head of the Defense Ministry’s personnel directorate, was arrested on bribery charges two days after Shoigu was replaced.