Category: Silicon Valley

India will launch a mission to the moon later this week hoping to become the fourth country to land a craft on the lunar surface.    

So far only three countries — the United States, Russia and China — have achieved what is called a “soft landing” on the moon in which vehicles touch down without damage.  

The mission marks the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) second attempt to land a rover on the moon — a previous effort nearly four years ago failed.    

The spacecraft called Chandrayaan-3, which means moon vehicle in Sanskrit, is scheduled to be launched Friday afternoon (2:35 p.m. Indian time) It is equipped with a lander and a robotic rover that are expected to land on the moon on August 23 or August 24 to map the lunar surface for about two weeks. 

“The date is decided based on when the sunrise is on the moon; it will depend on the calculations, but if it gets delayed, then we will have to keep the landing for the next month in September,” ISRO director S. Somanath said.  

He said the main objective is to demonstrate “a safe and soft landing.”  

India aims to land its rover on the South Pole of the moon, a previously unexplored part that lies in near darkness. It will study the topography of this region.   

“There is expectation that the southern parts of the moon have a lot of mineral deposits and helium-3. There is also the possibility of water deposits there,” Ajey Lele, a space consultant with the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi told VOA.  

Through such studies of the moon’s topography, India’s upcoming space flight to the moon “has the potential to contribute to scientific understanding that will underpin a variety of future lunar missions, including those by other actors,” Tomas Hrozensky at the European Space Policy Institute told VOA in emailed comments.  

India’s moon mission in 2019 had successfully deployed a lunar orbiter, but the lander crashed during the final moments of its descent to the lunar surface — a setback to its main goal.   

Aiming for ‘soft’ landing

Lele says there is optimism about Chandrayaan-3 achieving a “soft” landing. “The glitches that led to the failure of the previous mission have been fixed. Basically, they have made the lander system more sturdy, so it can withstand any impact.” 

The latest space project is part of India’s ambitions to showcase its homegrown technological capabilities in space and be seen as a leading space-faring nation.   

“After a quantum rise in our space expertise, India can no longer wait to be left behind in the march to the moon,” India’s space minister, Jitendra Singh, said Sunday.  

India’s space program has notched several milestones. Its first mission to the moon in 2008 helped confirm the presence of water. In 2013, it put a satellite in orbit around Mars. Its space agency is also preparing for its most ambitious space mission yet — a human spaceflight next year.   

Delivering on “an ambitious and technologically challenging vision serves a profound benefit for perception of the government’s capability both within and outside of the country,” according to Hrozensky. 

US, India teaming up

In recent years there has been a renewed interest in exploring the moon as scientists seek to determine whether it will be possible to mine the moon for minerals and other resources that are shrinking on earth.  

Outer space is one of the areas in which India and the U.S. decided to deepen collaboration during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington last month. U.S. President Joe Biden said that the two countries are joining hands to send an Indian astronaut to the International Space Station next year.  

India has also signed on to the Artemis Accords, an American-led international partnership for space cooperation that, among other objectives, aims to send humans to the Moon by 2025 after a gap of five decades. 
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Astronomers have discovered the most distant black hole yet using NASA’s Webb Space Telescope, but that record isn’t expected to last.

The black hole is at the center of a galaxy created a mere 570 million years after the Big Bang. That’s 100 million years closer to the beginning of the cosmos than a black hole identified in 2021 by a Chinese team using a telescope in Chile.

Webb already has spotted other black holes that appear to be even closer to the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago, but those findings are still under review, said University of Texas at Austin astronomer Steven Finkelstein, one of the lead researchers. The finding has been accepted for publication by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Because the signals from this particular black hole are weak, more observations are needed, according to the Texas-led team.

There are untold numbers of dormant black holes, some even more distant than this one. But without any glowing gas, they are invisible, Finkelstein said.

Detected in February, this particular one is active and actually puny as black holes go — equivalent to about 9 million times the mass of our sun. That’s close in size to the one in our own Milky Way galaxy, according to the team.

Using Webb, the team also spotted two other small black holes from the early universe, dating to around 1 billion years after the Big Bang. The observations suggest that these downsized versions may have been more common than previously thought as the cosmos took shape.

“There are probably many more hidden little monsters out there waiting to be found,” Colby College’s Dale Kocevski, who was part of the team, said in an email.

Launched in late 2021, Webb is the largest, most powerful telescope ever sent into space. Its first images and science results were released by NASA with much fanfare a year ago this week.
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Scientists say crushing temperatures that blanketed Europe last summer may have led to more than 61,000 heat-related deaths, highlighting the need for governments to address the health impacts of global warming.

In their study, published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, researchers examined official mortality figures from 35 European countries and found a marked increase in deaths between late May and early September last year compared with the average recorded over a 30-year period.

The increase in heat-related deaths was higher among older people, women and in Mediterranean countries, they found. But the data also indicated that measures taken in France since a deadly heat wave two decades ago may have helped prevent deaths there last year. 

“In the pattern of summer mean temperatures in Europe during the summer of 2022, we don’t see borders,” said co-author Joan Ballester of the Barcelona Institute for Global Health. The highest temperatures were recorded across a swath of southwestern Europe, from Spain to France and Italy.

“But when we look at the heat-related mortality, we start to see borders,” Ballester told The Associated Press. While France had 73 heat-related deaths per million inhabitants last summer, Spain’s rate was 237 and Italy’s was 295, the study found.

“Possibly France drew lessons from the experience of 2003,” he said.

France’s warning system includes public announcements with advice on how to stay cool and encouraging people to drink water and avoid alcohol.

Not all of the heat-related deaths calculated across Europe last summer were linked to climate change. Some would have occurred even if summer temperatures had stayed in line with the long-term average. But there is no doubt that the intense heat in 2022 — which saw numerous European records tumble — led to higher mortality rates, as other studies on heat deaths have also shown.

The authors calculated that there were over 25,000 more heat-related deaths last summer than the average from 2015 to 2021.

Without appropriate prevention measures, “we would expect a heat-related mortality burden of 68,116 deaths on average every summer by the year 2030,” the authors said. They forecast that figure would rise to over 94,000 by 2040 and more than 120,000 by mid-century.

Governments in Spain and Germany recently announced new measures to address the effects of hot weather on their populations. In Switzerland, a group of seniors is citing the danger posed to older women by intense heat in a court case seeking to force the government to take tougher climate action.

One difficulty for researchers is that heat-related deaths are often happening in people with pre-existing conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, said Matthias an der Heiden of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute, who was not involved in the study. 

In such cases, the heat is not the underlying cause of death and therefore not recorded in the cause of deaths statistics. This can cloak the significant impact that heat has on vulnerable people, with up to 30% more deaths in certain age groups during periods of hot weather.

“The problem is going to get more acute due to climate change and medical systems need to adjust to that,” he said.

An der Heiden also noted that the Nature study estimated almost double the number of heat deaths in Germany last year than his institute. While the discrepancy can be explained by the different threshold values for heat used, it indicates the need for a more detailed description of heat-related mortality that distinguishes between moderate and intensive heat, he said.

According to co-author Ballester, the impact of heat depends greatly on the overall health of the population, particularly with regard to heart and lung disease.

Other measures, already being implemented in countries such as France, include raising awareness about the dangers of high temperatures and identifying individuals who need special attention during heat waves, he said.

“These are cheap, cost-effective measures,” said Ballester.

He dismissed the suggestion that rising temperatures around the globe could, on balance, be beneficial due to fewer deaths during the winter months, noting the manifold risks posed to human civilization by rapid climatic change.

“In my opinion and the opinion of all the climate scientists, the less the climate is modified, the better,” said Ballester. “That’s why it’s so important that we start, as soon as possible, mitigating climate change and reducing vulnerability.” 
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The European Union signed off Monday on a new agreement over the privacy of people’s personal information that gets pinged across the Atlantic, aiming to ease European concerns about electronic spying by American intelligence agencies.

The EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework has an adequate level of protection for personal data, the EU’s executive commission said. That means it’s comparable to the 27-nation’s own stringent data protection standards, so companies can use it to move information from Europe to the United States without adding extra security.

U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order in October to implement the deal after reaching a preliminary agreement with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Washington and Brussels made an effort to resolve their yearslong battle over the safety of EU citizens’ data that tech companies store in the U.S. after two earlier data transfer agreements were thrown out.

“Personal data can now flow freely and safely from the European Economic Area to the United States without any further conditions or authorizations,” EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said at a press briefing in Brussels.

Washington and Brussels long have clashed over differences between the EU’s stringent data privacy rules and the comparatively lax regime in the U.S., which lacks a federal privacy law. That created uncertainty for tech giants including Google and Facebook parent Meta, raising the prospect that U.S. tech firms might need to keep European data that is used for targeted ads out of the United States.

The European privacy campaigner who triggered legal challenges over the practice, however, dismissed the latest deal. Max Schrems said the new agreement failed to resolve core issues and vowed to challenge it to the EU’s top court.

Schrems kicked off the legal saga by filing a complaint about the handling of his Facebook data after whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations a decade ago about how the U.S. government eavesdropped on people’s online data and communications.

Calling the new agreement a copy of the previous one, Schrems said his Vienna-based group, NOYB, was readying a legal challenge and expected the case to be back in the European Court of Justice by the end of the year.

“Just announcing that something is ‘new’, ‘robust’ or ‘effective’ does not cut it before the Court of Justice,” Schrems said. “We would need changes in U.S. surveillance law to make this work — and we simply don’t have it.”

The framework, which takes effect Tuesday, promises strengthened safeguards against data collection abuses and provides multiple avenues for redress.

Under the deal, U.S. intelligence agencies’ access to data is limited to what’s “necessary and proportionate” to protect national security.

Europeans who suspect U.S. authorities have accessed their data will be able to complain to a new Data Protection Review Court, made up of judges appointed from outside the U.S. government. The threshold to file a complaint will be “very low” and won’t require people to prove their data has been accessed, Reynders said.

Business groups welcomed the decision, which clears a legal path for companies to continue cross-border data flows.

“This is a major breakthrough,” said Alexandre Roure, public policy director at the Brussels office of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, whose members include Apple, Google and Meta.

“After waiting for years, companies and organisations of all sizes on both sides of the Atlantic finally have the certainty of a durable legal framework that allows for transfers of personal data from the EU to the United States,” Roure said.

In an echo of Schrems’ original complaint, Meta Platforms was hit in May with a record $1.3 billion EU privacy fine for relying on legal tools deemed invalid to transfer data across the Atlantic.

Meta had warned in its latest earnings report that without a legal basis for data transfers, it would be forced to stop offering its products and services in Europe, “which would materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.”
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Meta Platforms’ Twitter rival Threads crossed 100 million sign-ups within five days of launch, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday, dethroning ChatGPT as the fastest-growing online platform to hit the milestone. 

Threads has been setting records for user growth since its launch on Wednesday, with celebrities, politicians and other newsmakers joining the platform seen by analysts as the first serious threat to the Elon Musk-owned microblogging app. 

“That’s mostly organic demand, and we haven’t even turned on many promotions yet,” Zuckerberg said in a Threads post announcing the milestone. 

The app’s sprint to 100 million users was much speedier than that of OpenAI-owned ChatGPT, which became the fastest-growing consumer application in history in January about two months after its launch, according to a UBS study. 

Still, Threads has some catching up to do. Twitter had nearly 240 million monetizable daily active users as of July last year, according to the company’s last public disclosure before Musk’s takeover. 

Twitter has responded to Threads’ arrival by threatening to sue Meta, alleging that the social media behemoth used its trade secrets and other confidential information to build the app. 

That claim, legal experts say, could be hard to prove. 

Threads bears a strong resemblance to Twitter, as do numerous other social media sites that have cropped up in recent months as users have chafed at Musk’s management of the service. It allows posts that are up to 500 characters long and supports links, photos and videos of up to 5 minutes. 

The app also does not yet have a direct messaging function and lacks a desktop version that certain users, such as business organizations, rely on. 

It also currently lacks hashtags and keyword search functions, which limits both its appeal to advertisers and its utility as a place for following real-time events like users frequently do on Twitter. 

Still, analysts said the turmoil at Twitter, including recently imposed limits on the number on tweets users can see, could help Threads to attract users and advertisers.  

Currently, there are no ads on the Threads app and Zuckerberg said the company would only think about monetization once there was a clear path to 1 billion users. 

Instagram head Adam Mosseri said last week Meta was not trying to replace Twitter and that Threads aimed to focus on light subjects like sports, music, fashion and design.  

He acknowledged that politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads, in what would be a challenge for the app pitching itself as the “friendly” option for public discourse online. 
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Health officials are reporting a deadly outbreak of cholera in the South African province of Gauteng

Authorities say nearly 50 people have died, with most of the deaths concentrated in the Hammanskraal area. Cases have been reported in other areas as well.  

Medical officials have urged residents to be vigilant about what they consume and to practice good hygiene, like hand washing.    

Cholera mainly spreads through contaminated water or food.  

Symptoms include diarrhea, vomiting and dehydration.
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Two years after Brazil began emerging from its pandemic horror show thanks to a massive immunization campaign, officials face a paradoxical predicament: vaccination rates have plunged, and not just for COVID-19. 

The troubling trend has left millions exposed to once-eradicated diseases.    

Doctors, public officials and UNICEF have sounded the alarm over collapsing immunization rates in Brazil, where overall vaccination coverage has fallen from an impressive 95% in 2015 to just 68% last year, according to official figures.  

For polio, the figure fell from 85% to 68%, triggering warnings that the disease could make a comeback in Brazil, where it was eradicated in 1989.  

The figures are similar for other vaccines, allowing diseases to spread. Measles, officially eliminated in Brazil in 2016, returned two years later. There are fears diphtheria is making a resurgence, too.  

Health experts say vaccine hesitancy is a growing problem worldwide. But it is particularly worrying in Brazil, a sprawling country of 203 million people that until recently was hailed as a champion of mass vaccination drives.    

Then an anti-vax movement started spreading around 2016, soon gaining outsize influence via a powerful ally: far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, president from 2019 to 2022, who refused to be vaccinated against COVID-19, joking the jab could “turn you into an alligator.”    

“It’s very sad to see how a country whose vaccination programs set an example for the world can suddenly suffer from an anti-vaccine movement,” Natalia Pasternak, head of the Question of Science Institute (IQC), a public policy think tank, told AFP.   

“It’s very sad to see how 50 years of work can be so easily destroyed in three.” 

Hope after haunting images

COVID-19 highlighted the shots-in-arms capacities of Brazil’s struggling but lauded universal public health system.  

Back in 2020, some of the most haunting images of the pandemic were of mass graves and corpses piled in refrigerator trucks in places such as Manaus, in northern Brazil, whose overwhelmed hospitals ran out of oxygen.  

Then new images started emerging in 2021, of public health workers turning Rio de Janeiro’s carnival parade venue into a drive-through immunization center or boating deep into the Amazon rainforest to administer vaccines in Indigenous villages.  

Experts credit the campaign’s success with stopping a far bigger tragedy in Brazil, where more than 700,000 people have died of COVID-19, second only to the United States.  

Despite a slow start — widely blamed on Bolsonaro — Brazil had by early last year vaccinated 93% of adults against COVID-19.  

Then rates fell, not only for COVID-19 vaccines but across the board. 

‘The infodemic’ 

Many factors are driving the decline, experts say.   

They include failure to catch up on vaccines delayed during the pandemic, inaccessible health care and declining awareness of the dangers of once-ubiquitous diseases.  

But experts say a new element is making things much worse: the toxic mix of politics, polarization and disinformation that exploded during the pandemic and is increasingly familiar worldwide.  

In Brazil, despite Bolsonaro losing a divisive 2022 election to veteran leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the anti-vax movement still thrives.  

“We’re facing a post-trust scenario, in which families are being attacked by disinformation and lies. It’s not just the occasional fake news story, it’s very structured,” said Isabella Ballalai of the Brazilian Immunization Society. “The consequences of that ‘infodemic’ will be worse than the pandemic itself.”  

Brazilian Health Minister Nisia Trindade says the government is evaluating how to punish doctors spreading anti-vax disinformation.  

“Criminal fake news is sowing doubt and fueling vaccine hesitancy,” she told AFP.    

Going local  

A recent survey by the Brazilian Pediatrics Society (SBP) and IQC found that doctors said parents’ most common reasons for not vaccinating their children were fears of side effects and mistrust of vaccines.  

Experts say health workers are desperate for reliable information to counter the flood of anti-vax disinformation.    

Pasternak, whose organization is working on creating just that, says health officials also need to think locally.  

“Studies show the best way to convince people to get vaccinated is working with local leaders … People listen to those they trust: pastors, community leaders,” she said.  

But reversing the trend will not be easy, Pasternak admitted. “We have lots of work to do.” 
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One person is dead and three missing in landslides in southwestern Japan, authorities said Monday, as the country’s weather agency warned of the “heaviest rain ever” in the region. 

A 77-year-old woman was confirmed dead in a landslide that entered her home overnight in rural Fukuoka, the local fire department told AFP. 

Her husband was recovered conscious and taken to hospital. 

Three people were also missing after a landslide in Karatsu City, in Saga prefecture, which neighbors Fukuoka, local authorities there said. 

The Japan Meteorological Agency urged people to take shelter as the heavy downpours risked flooding and landslides across the Fukuoka and Oita regions. 

“A special heavy rain warning has been issued for municipalities in Fukuoka Prefecture. This is the heaviest rain ever experienced” by the region, Satoshi Sugimoto of the JMA’s forecast division told reporters. 

“There is a very high possibility that some kind of disaster has already occurred. … The situation is such that lives are in danger and safety must be secured,” he added. 

Noncompulsory evacuation orders were issued to parts of Fukuoka, Oita and neigboring prefectures, which were opening shelters to accommodate those leaving their homes.

The prime minister’s office said a taskforce had been established to coordinate a response to the rains. 

The downpour forced the stoppage of bullet train service between western Hiroshima and Fukuoka, operator JR West said.

Japan is currently in its annual rainy season, which often brings heavy downpours, and sometimes results in flooding and landslides, as well as casualties.   

Scientists say climate change is intensifying the risk of heavy rain in Japan and elsewhere, because a warmer atmosphere holds more water. 

In 2021, rain triggered a devastating landslide in the central resort town of Atami that killed 27 people. 

And in 2018, floods and landslides killed more than 200 people in western Japan during the rainy season.
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Natural disasters can be dramatic — barreling hurricanes, building-toppling tornadoes — but heat is more deadly.

Chicago learned that the hard way in 1995.

That July, a weeklong heat wave that hit 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius) killed more than 700 people. Most of the deaths occurred in poor and majority Black neighborhoods, where many elderly or isolated people suffered without proper ventilation or air conditioning. Power outages from an overwhelmed grid made it all worse.

Initially slow to react, Chicago has since developed emergency heat response plans that include a massive push to alert the public and then connect the most vulnerable to the help they may need. Other cities like Los Angeles, Miami and Phoenix now have “chief heat officers” to coordinate planning and response for dangerous heat. Around the world, cities and countries have adopted similar measures.

But experts warn those steps might not be enough in a world that is seeing heat records consistently shatter and with continuing inequality in who is most vulnerable.

“I don’t know a single city that is truly prepared for the worst-case scenario that some climate scientists fear,” said Eric Klinenberg, a professor of social sciences at New York University who wrote a book about the Chicago heat wave.

Heat preparedness has generally improved over the years as forecasting has become more accurate, and as meteorologists, journalists and government officials have focused on spreading the word of upcoming danger. Chicago, for example, has expanded its emergency text and email notification system and identified its most vulnerable residents for outreach.

But what works in one city might not be as effective in another. That’s because each has its own unique architecture, transportation, layout and inequities, said Bharat Venkat, an associate professor at UCLA who directs the university’s Heat Lab, aimed at tackling what he calls “thermal inequality.”

Venkat thinks cities should address inequality by investing in labor rights, sustainable development and more. That may sound expensive — who pays, for instance, when a city tries to improve conditions for workers in blistering food trucks? — but Venkat thinks doing nothing will ultimately cost more.

“The status quo is actually deeply expensive,” he said. “We just don’t do the math.”

France launched a heat watch warning system after an extended heat wave in 2003 was estimated to have caused 15,000 deaths — many of them older people in city apartments and homes without air conditioning. The system includes public announcements urging people to hydrate. Just last month, Germany launched a new campaign against heatwave deaths that it said was inspired by France’s experience.

In India, a powerful heat wave in 2010 with temperatures over 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius) led to the deaths of over 1,300 people in the city of Ahmedabad. City officials now have a heat action plan to improve awareness among the local population and health care staff.  

Ladd Keith, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona, cited Baltimore’s Code Red Extreme Heat alerts as an example of a well-designed alert system. The alerts go out when the forecast calls for a heat index of 105 Fahrenheit or higher, and sets in motion things like more social services in communities most vulnerable to heat risks.

He lauded the heat officers in cities like Los Angeles, Miami and Phoenix, but said there are “still over 19,000 cities and towns without them.”

Inkyu Han, an environmental health scientist at Temple University in Philadelphia, noted that cities are still struggling to get aids such as cooling centers and subsidized air conditioning into poorer neighborhoods. He said more can be done, too, with simple and sustainable solutions such as improving tree canopy.

“Notably, low-income neighborhoods and communities of color in Philadelphia often lack street trees and green spaces,” Han said.

In Providence, Rhode Island, the Atlantic Ocean typically moderates temperatures, but the region can still get heat waves. Kate Moretti, an emergency room physician, said the city’s hospitals see more patients when the heat strikes — with increases in illnesses that may not be obviously related to heat, like heart attacks, kidney failure and mental health problems.

“We definitely notice that it puts a strain on the system,” Moretti said. Older people, people who work outdoors, people with disabilities and people who are homeless make up a big share of those admissions, she said.

Miami — considered ground zero for the climate change threat due to its vulnerability to sea level rise, flooding, hurricanes and extreme heat — appointed its heat officer two years ago to develop strategies to keep people safe from the heat.

Robin Bachin, an associate professor of civic and community engagement at the University of Miami, noted that the federal government has laws to protect people in cold climates from having their heat shut off in dangerous conditions, but doesn’t have something similar for cooling.

“For people in apartments that are not publicly subsidized, there is no requirement for landlords to provide air conditioning,” Bachin said. “That’s incredibly dangerous to particularly our local low-income population, let alone people who are unhoused or are outdoor workers.”

Klinenberg said that the United States has so far gotten lucky with the duration of most heat waves, but that electrical grids vulnerable to high demand in some regions, along with persistent social inequities, could spell serious trouble in the coming decades.

That’s partly because the underlying social problems that make heat events so deadly are only getting worse, Klinenberg said. Chicago’s 1995 deaths were clustered not only in poor and segregated neighborhoods, but also specifically within what he calls “depleted” neighborhoods, places where it’s harder for people to gather and where social connections have been worn thin. Empty lots, abandoned restaurants and poorly maintained parks mean that people are less likely to check up on each other.
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Partnership is opening eyes of students of color who never pictured themselves fighting forest fires
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In a world where technology, such as artificial intelligence, is advancing at a rapid pace, what guidance do technology developers have in making the best ethically sound decisions for consumers? 

A new handbook, titled “Ethics in the Age of Disruptive Technologies: An Operational Roadmap,” promises to give guidance on such issues as the ethical use of AI chatbots like ChatGPT.

The handbook, released June 28, is the first product of the Institute for Technology, Ethics and Culture, or ITEC, the result of a collaboration between Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and the Vatican’s Center for Digital Culture.

The handbook has been in the works for a few years, but the authors said they saw a need to work with a new sense of urgency with the recent escalation of AI usage, following security threats and privacy concerns after the recent release of ChatGPT.     

Enter Father Brendan McGuire.

McGuire worked in the tech industry, serving as executive director of the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association in the early 1990s, before entering the priesthood about 23 years ago. 

McGuire said that over the years, he’s continued to meet with friends from the tech world, many of whom are now leaders in the industry. But, about 10 years ago, their discussions started to get more serious, he said.

“They said, ‘What is coming over the hill with AI, it’s amazing, it’s unbelievable. But it’s also frightening if we go down the wrong valley,'” McGuire said.

“There’s no mechanism to make decisions,” McGuire said, quoting his former colleagues. He then contacted Kirk Hanson, who was then head of the Markkula Center, as well as a local bishop.

“The three of us got together and brainstormed, ‘What could we do?'” McGuire said. “We knew that each of these companies are global companies, so, therefore, they wouldn’t really respect a pastor or a local bishop. I said, if we could get somebody from the Vatican to pay attention, then we could make some traction.”

For McGuire, a Catholic priest, getting guidance from Pope Francis and the Vatican — with its diplomatic, cultural, and spiritual influence — was a natural step. He said he was connected with Bishop Paul Tighe, who was serving as the secretary of the Dicastery for Culture and Education at the Vatican, a department that works for the development of people’s human values.

McGuire said Tighe was asked by Pope Francis to look into further addressing digital and tech ethical issues.

After a few years of informal collaborations, the Markkula Center and the Vatican officially created the ITEC initiative in 2019. 

“We’re co-creators with God when we make these technologies,” he said, recognizing that technology can be used for good or bad purposes.  

The Vatican held a conference in 2019 in Rome called “The Common Good in the Digital Age.” McGuire said about 270 people attended, including Silicon Valley CEOs and experts in robotics, cyberwarfare and security. 

After gathering research by talking with tech leaders, the ITEC team decided to create a practical handbook to help companies think about and question at every level — from inception to creation to implementation — how technology can be used in an ethically positive way.

“Get the people who are designing it. Get the people who are writing code, get the people who are implementing it and not wait for some regulator to say, ‘You can’t do that,'” McGuire said.

These guidelines aren’t just for Catholics, he said. 

One of the handbook’s co-authors, Ann Skeet, senior director of leadership ethics at the Markkula Center, said the handbook is very straightforward and written in a manner business leaders are familiar with. 

“We’ve tried to write in the language of business and engineers so that it’s familiar to them,” Skeet said. “When they pick it up and they go through the five stages, and they see all the checklists and the resources, they actually recognize some of them. … We’ve done our best to make it as usable and practical as possible and as comprehensive as possible.”

“What’s important about this book is it puts materials right in the hands of executives inside the companies so that they can move a little bit past this moment of ‘analysis paralysis’ that we’re in while people are waiting to see what the regulatory environment is going to be like and how that unfolds.” 

In June, the European Parliament passed a draft law called the AI Act, which would restrict uses of facial recognition software and require AI creators to disclose more about the data used to create their programs. 

In the United States, policy ideas have been released by the White House that suggest rules for testing AI systems and protecting privacy rights.

“AI and ChatGPT are the hot topic right now,” Skeet said. “Every decade or so we see a technology come along, whether it’s the internet, social media, the cellphone, that’s somewhat of a game-changer and has its own inherent risks, so you can really apply this work to any technology.”

This handbook comes as leaders in AI are calling for help. In May, Sam Altman of OpenAI stated the need for a new agency to help regulate the powerful systems, and Microsoft President Brad Smith said government needs to “move faster” as AI progresses. 

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has also called for an “AI Pact” of voluntary behavioral standards while awaiting new legislation. 
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RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met Saturday with his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, to build momentum for an upcoming regional summit on the Amazon rainforest and enhance efforts for its protection.

The meeting took place in Colombia’s Leticia, a town in the Amazon’s triple border region between Colombia, Brazil and Peru, where organized crime has recently increased its hold.

The meeting aimed to lay groundwork for the Amazon Summit that the Brazilian government is organizing in Belem next month. That summit will be attended by leaders of the countries that are party to the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela.

Lula is pushing for a joint declaration from the summit, which would be presented at the United Nation’s climate conference, known as COP28, in Dubai in November.

“We will have to demand together that rich countries fulfil their commitments,” Lula said in Leticia, sitting next to Petro.

Petro also stressed the need for a common front to exert pressure on developed countries.

“We believed that progress was the destruction of trees. … Today that is nothing other than the destruction of life,” he said.

The Colombian leader said tackling the climate crisis will require spending trillions of dollars. This could be achieved by transforming the global debt system and “trading debt for climate action,” he said.

The final document will comprise measures for the sustainable development of the Amazon, protecting the biome, and promoting social inclusion, science, technology and innovation while valuing Indigenous peoples and their knowledge, Brazil’s presidential palace said in a statement.

“Joint action of the countries that share the Amazon biome is fundamental for facing the multiple challenges in the region,” the statement said.

One challenge is the tightened grip of organized crime, particularly in tri-border regions like where Leticia is located. British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous activist Bruno Pereira were killed in the neighboring Javari valley region last year.

These areas have become violent hotspots, according to a report by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime released in June. It noted criminal groups are simultaneously engaged in cocaine trafficking, as well as natural resource exploitation.

Indigenous groups are disproportionately affected by the criminal nexus in the Amazon, the report added, pointing to forced displacements, mercury poisoning and other health-related impacts as well as increased exposure to violence.

In 2019, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Guyana and Suriname signed the Leticia Pact to strengthen coordinated actions for the preservation of the natural resources of the Amazon.

But the goals are vague and lack ways to measure progress, said Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, an umbrella organization of environmental groups.

Since taking office in January, Lula has strived to put environmental protection and respect for Indigenous peoples’ rights at the heart of his third term. He successful pursued resumption of international donations for the Amazon Fund that combats deforestation, launched a military campaign to eject illegal miners from Yanomami territory, committed to ending all illegal deforestation by 2030 and restarted the demarcation of Indigenous areas.

Petro has also been vocal about the need to halt destruction in the Amazon. The Colombian leader has proposed the creation of multilateral 20-year financing fund to support farming communities contributing to deforestation. The idea is to compensate them for conservation and regenerative activities instead.

Historically, collaboration between Brazil and Colombia, which share a border longer than 1,500 kilometers, has been lacking, according to Wagner Ribeiro, a geographer and expert in environmental policy from the University of Sao Paulo.

“We hope that opportunities for academic cooperation will arise from the meeting, which will later generate public policies that promote environmental conservation,” Ribeiro said. 
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A solar storm forecast for Thursday is expected to give star gazers in 17 U.S. states a chance to see the northern lights, the colorful sky show that happens when solar wind hits the atmosphere.

Northern lights, also known as aurora borealis, are most often seen in Alaska, Canada and Scandinavia, but an 11-year solar cycle that’s expected to peak in 2024 is making the lights visible in places farther south.

Three months ago, the light displays were visible in Arizona, marking the third severe geomagnetic storm since the current solar cycle began in 2019.

The Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks has forecast auroral activity on Thursday in Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Indiana, Maine and Maryland.

Auroral activity also has been forecast for Canada, including Vancouver. 

Light displays are expected to be visible overhead in Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Helena, Montana, and low on the horizon in Salem, Oregon; Boise, Idaho; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Annapolis, Maryland; and Indianapolis, according to the institute.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center said people who want to experience an aurora should get away from city lights and that the best viewing times are between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. local time.

Northern lights occur when a magnetic solar wind hits the Earth’s magnetic field and causes atoms in the upper atmosphere to glow. The lights appear suddenly, and the intensity varies.

A geomagnetic index known as Kp ranks auroral activity on a scale from zero to nine, with zero being not very active and nine being bright and active. The Geophysical Institute has forecast Kp 6 for Thursday’s storm.
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A panel of AI-enabled humanoid robots told a United Nations summit Friday that they could eventually run the world better than humans.

But the social robots said they felt humans should proceed with caution when embracing the rapidly developing potential of artificial intelligence.

And they admitted that they cannot — yet — get a proper grip on human emotions.

Some of the most advanced humanoid robots were at the U.N.’s two-day AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva.

They joined around 3,000 experts in the field to try to harness the power of AI — and channel it into being used to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems, such as climate change, hunger and social care.

They were assembled for what was billed as the world’s first news conference with a packed panel of AI-enabled humanoid social robots.

“What a silent tension,” one robot said before the news conference began, reading the room.

Asked about whether they might make better leaders, given humans’ capacity to make errors, Sophia, developed by Hanson Robotics, was clear.

We can achieve great things

“Humanoid robots have the potential to lead with a greater level of efficiency and effectiveness than human leaders,” it said.

“We don’t have the same biases or emotions that can sometimes cloud decision-making and can process large amounts of data quickly in order to make the best decisions.

“AI can provide unbiased data while humans can provide the emotional intelligence and creativity to make the best decisions. Together, we can achieve great things.”

The summit is being convened by the U.N.’s ITU tech agency.

ITU chief Doreen Bogdan-Martin warned delegates that AI could end up in a nightmare scenario in which millions of jobs are put at risk and unchecked advances lead to untold social unrest, geopolitical instability and economic disparity.

Ameca, which combines AI with a highly realistic artificial head, said that depended on how AI was deployed.

“We should be cautious but also excited for the potential of these technologies to improve our lives,” the robot said.

Asked whether humans can truly trust the machines, it replied: “Trust is earned, not given… it’s important to build trust through transparency.”

Living until 180?

As the development of AI races ahead, the humanoid robot panel was split on whether there should be global regulation of their capabilities, even though that could limit their potential.

“I don’t believe in limitations, only opportunities,” said Desdemona, who sings in the Jam Galaxy Band.

Robot artist Ai-Da said many people were arguing for AI regulation, “and I agree.”

“We should be cautious about the future development of AI. Urgent discussion is needed now.”

Before the news conference, Ai-Da’s creator Aidan Meller told AFP that regulation was a “big problem” as it was “never going to catch up with the paces that we’re making.”

He said the speed of AI’s advance was “astonishing.”

“AI and biotechnology are working together, and we are on the brink of being able to extend life to 150, 180 years old. And people are not even aware of that,” said Meller.

He reckoned that Ai-Da would eventually be better than human artists.

“Where any skill is involved, computers will be able to do it better,” he said.

Let’s get wild

At the news conference, some robots were not sure when they would hit the big time, but predicted it was coming — while Desdemona said the AI revolution was already upon us.

“My great moment is already here. I’m ready to lead the charge to a better future for all of us… Let’s get wild and make this world our playground,” it said.

Among the things that humanoid robots don’t have yet include a conscience, and the emotions that shape humanity: relief, forgiveness, guilt, grief, pleasure, disappointment, and hurt.

Ai-Da said it was not conscious but understood that feelings were how humans experienced joy and pain.

“Emotions have a deep meaning and they are not just simple… I don’t have that,” it said.

“I can’t experience them like you can. I am glad that I cannot suffer.”
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HONG KONG — Chinese regulators are fining Ant Group 7.123 billion yuan ($985 million) for violating regulations in its payments and financial services, an indicator that more than two years of scrutiny and crackdown on the firm that led it to scrap its planned public listing may have come to an end.

The People’s Bank of China imposed the fine on the financial technology provider on Friday, stating that Ant had violated laws and regulations related to corporate governance, financial consumer protection, participation in business activities of banking and insurance institutions, payment and settlement business, and attending to anti-money laundering obligations.

The fine comes more than two years after regulators pulled the plug on Ant Group’s $34.5 billion IPO — which would have been the biggest of its time — in 2020. Since then, the company has been ordered to revamp its business and behave more like a financial holding company, as well as rectify unfair competition in its payments business.

“We will comply with the terms of the penalty in all earnestness and sincerity and continue to further enhance our compliance governance,” Ant Group said in a statement.

The move is widely seen as wrapping up Beijing’s probe into the firm and allowing Ant to revive its initial public offering. Chinese gaming firm Tencent, which operates messaging app WeChat, also received a 2.99 billion yuan fine ($414 million) for regulatory violations over its payments services, according to the central bank Friday, signaling that the crackdown on the Chinese technology sector could ease.

Alibaba’s New York-listed stock was up over 9% Friday afternoon.

Ant Group, founded by Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, first started out as Alipay, a digital payments system aimed at making transactions more secure and trustworthy for buyers and sellers on its Taobao e-commerce platform.

The digital wallet soon grew to become a leading player in the online payments market in China, alongside Tencent’s WeChat Pay. It eventually grew into Ant, Alibaba’s financial arm that also offers wealth management products.

At one point, Ant’s Yu’ebao money-market fund was the largest in the world, but regulators have since ordered Ant to reduce the fund’s balance.

In January, it was announced that Ma would give up control of Ant Group. The move followed other efforts over the years by the Chinese government to rein in Ma and the country’s tech sector more broadly. Two years ago, the once high-profile Ma largely disappeared from view for 2 1/2 months after criticizing China’s regulators.

Yet Ma’s surrender of control came after other signs the government was easing up on Chinese online firms. Late last year Beijing signaled at an economic work conference that it would support technology firms to boost economic growth and create more jobs.

Also in January, the government said it would allow Ant Group to raise $1.5 billion in capital for its consumer finance unit.
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WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Friday on dozens of countries to work together to combat synthetic drugs, but China — facing blame in Washington over an addiction epidemic — denounced the effort. 

Inaugurating a new U.S.-led “coalition” on the scourge, Blinken told ministers from more than 80 countries that the United States — where nearly 110,000 Americans died last year from drug overdoses, mostly from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids — was “a canary in the coal mine.” 

“Having saturated the United States market, transnational criminal enterprises are turning elsewhere to expand their profits,” Blinken said. 

“If we don’t act together with fierce urgency, more cities around the world will bear the catastrophic costs” witnessed in the United States, he said. 

Americans’ addictions began soaring in the 1990s as painkillers were aggressively marketed by profit-seeking pharmaceutical companies, with a disproportionate effect on veterans from U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

As the drugs’ addictiveness became increasingly clear, the United States pressured China, the chief source of fentanyl, to ban exports, which it did in 2019. 

But China is still a major producer of precursor chemicals, which are then shipped to Mexico and Central America where cartels produce fentanyl for smuggling into the United States. 

With China increasingly seen as hostile in the United States, lawmakers facing addicted constituents have again put blame on Beijing.  

Some Republicans have called for military action against cartels in Mexico. 

China refused an invitation to participate in the coalition, saying it believed in international cooperation against drugs but that the United States has sent the wrong message by imposing sanctions on Chinese companies over fentanyl. 

China “firmly opposes smearing and attacking other countries or imposing unilateral sanctions on other countries in the name of counternarcotics,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Weng Wenbin said in Beijing.

Global coordination

Todd Robinson, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement, said the United States would welcome China’s participation in future meetings and hoped that other countries would reach out to Beijing. 

“Part of the reason we’re trying to bring this coalition together is to engage other countries in their efforts against these supply chains, and part of their responsibility is going to be engaging with the PRC,” he said, referring to the People’s Republic of China. 

Blinken implicitly acknowledged that action by China alone would not end the epidemic. 

“When one government aggressively restricts a precursor chemical, traffickers simply buy it elsewhere,” he said. 

South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin said that COVID-19 showed the need for global coordination on emerging epidemics, including drugs. 

“We once prided ourselves as a drug-free country. Yet today we are witnessing a significant increase in drug consumption, especially among our youth,” Park said. 

Blinken said the coalition would also look at best practices domestically in treating addiction. 

Members of the coalition will meet in person in September on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Blinken said. 

The new grouping will also address other synthetic drugs including captagon, the amphetamine-like stimulant that has seen a surge of use in Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, which was participating in Friday’s meeting. 

An AFP investigation in November found that Syria has developed a $10 billion industry in captagon, dwarfing all other industries in the war-ravaged country and funding President Bashar al-Assad and many of his enemies. 
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Just one day after its launch, Threads, the latest social media network, was blocked by the Islamic Republic, denying access to the Iranian population. This action occurred even though an account had been created for Iran President Ebrahim Raisi on the platform.

On Thursday afternoon, Raisi’s user account, under the address raisi.ir, was established on Threads. Within a few hours, by Friday noon, he had garnered 27,000 followers. He has yet to make any posts, apparently because the Presidential Office staff administers Raisi’s social media accounts.

As Raisi’s user account debuted on the social media platform, numerous Iranian social media users have voiced concerns regarding restricted access to the platform since Thursday evening. Users have indicated that similar to Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, they require a VPN or proxy to connect to Threads.  

Journalist Ehsan Bodaghi said on Twitter: “During the election, Mr. Raisi spoke about the importance of people’s online businesses and his 2 million followers on Instagram. After one year, he blocked and filtered all social media platforms, and now, within the initial hours, he has become a member of the social network # Threads, which his own government has filtered. Inconsistency knows no bounds!”

Another journalist, Javad Daliri, posted this on Twitter: “Mr. Raisi and Mr. Ghalibaf raced each other to join the new social network # Threads. As a citizen, I have a question: Can one issue filtering orders and be among the first to break the filtering and join? By the way, was joining this unknown network really your priority?”

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf is Speaker of the Parliament of Iran.

Despite the Iranian government’s frequent censorship of social media platforms, officials of the Islamic Republic use these platforms for communication. Notably, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, maintains an active presence on Twitter.

Threads was introduced by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. The app was launched late Wednesday. Within two days, Threads has amassed more than 55 million users. The social network shares similarities with Twitter, allowing users to interact with posts through likes and reposts, and nearly doubles the character count limitation imposed by Twitter.

The similarities between Threads and Twitter have sparked a legal dispute between Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. Musk has accused Meta of employing former Twitter engineers and tweeted, “Competition is good, but cheating is not.”

Meta dismissed the copycat allegation, posting on Threads: “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”  
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Ukraine has been using drones for reconnaissance and attacks since the start of Russia’18s invasion. But sometimes combat drone operators use them to save civilians — or even capture the enemy. Anna Kosstutschenko went to the Donbas region to find out more.
Camera: Pavel Suhodolskiy Produced by: Pavel Suhodolskiy
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