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HaaretzHealth AlertsIslamic World

Erased Israeli Settlers' Brutal War on Palestinian Communities in the West Bank

Erased Israeli Settlers' Brutal War on Palestinian Communities in the West BankScroll downCredit: Avishay Mohar, B'TselemHagar ShezafShare on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on WhatsAppThese images appear again and again – from the ground, from the air, and on maps: dozens of Palestinian communities wiped off the landscape, while illegal Israeli settler outposts continue to spread across the West Bank.Since October 7, 2023, this phenomenon has intensified significantly. Unlike the war in Gaza, there is no discussion in Israel about ending this parallel campaign of dispossession.

Last updated 58m ago
The TelegraphScandalEurope

Zelensky angers Warsaw by naming unit after group that killed Poles

Volodymyr Zelensky’s decree renaming a Ukrainian unit after a group from the Second World War has sparked a bitter row between Kyiv and Warsaw. The unit, called the Separate Special Operations Center North, would become the “Heroes of the UPA” after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) that fought in the Second World War, the Ukrainian president announced on Wednesday.

Last updated 1h ago
The GuardianAIUSA

Our tech overlords are planning for conscious AI to conquer the cosmos. What could go wrong? | Eduardo Porter

A new belief set is uniting some of the wealthiest men in the world around a ‘transhuman’ future – actual humanity be damnedSam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, took to the Internet a few years ago that homo sapiens would be the first species “to design our own descendants”. In his best case scenario, the “merge” between humans and artificial intelligence occurs at some point over the next 50 years. The alternative, where we remain simply human and the machines follow their own path, is more ominous. “If two different species both want the same thing and only one can have it – in this case, to be the dominant species on the planet and beyond – they are going to have conflict,” he wrote.More recently, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who at one point last year was granted the power to reconfigure the US federal government, argued that “it increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence” – our role in the history of the cosmos reduced to that of the low level code that boots up a computer before you can run sophisticated programs on it.

Last updated 4h ago
The GuardianWar & ConflictIsrael

Israel seizes strategic castle in deepest incursion into Lebanon in 26 years

Experts say capture is largely symbolic, but it complicates efforts to extent ceasefire between US and IranIsraeli troops have captured a clifftop castle as they made their deepest incursion into Lebanon in more than 26 years, further shattering a nominal US-brokered ceasefire and complicating efforts to extend the separate truce between the Washington and Tehran.After days of intense fighting and airstrikes in nearby villages, the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said the military had captured Beaufort Castle, also known as Qalaat al-Shaqif, which it had used as a base during its previous occupation of southern Lebanon between 1982 and 2000.

Last updated 56m ago
The GuardianHumanityUSA

‘Dire’ conditions at ICE facility severely violate human rights, lawsuit claims

At US’s largest immigration center, Texas’s Camp East Montana, plaintiffs allege ‘dangerous and abusive’ situationThe first relating to the largest immigration detention facility in the US was filed early on Saturday against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (), accusing the agency of “dire” conditions that severely violate the human and constitutional rights of those locked up at the camp in .A clutch of legal organizations is suing via a class-action complaint, listing four detainees as plaintiffs for themselves and on behalf of all those currently held as civil detainees at Camp East Montana or who will be held there in the future.“[a]bhorrent medical and mental health care”;“inappropriate use of force”;“indiscriminate use of solitary confinement”;“terrible, rotten, spoiled and inadequate” food;“outbreaks of disease”;“unsanitary living conditions”;“sexual harassment by guards”.

Last updated 20h ago
The GuardianElectionsColombia

Colombia goes to polls in election pitting outgoing leader’s ally against pro-Trump candidates

Ballots are being cast in the first round of the South American nation’s presidential electionsColombians are casting ballots in the first round of the South American nation’s presidential election, choosing between candidates with radically diverging visions for the future of peace in a country haunted by decades of armed conflict.The vote on Sunday, seen as a referendum on outgoing President Gustavo Petro’s policies, comes 10 years after Colombia signed a historic peace pact with guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

Last updated 5h ago
The IndependentDiplomacy

US strikes Gambia-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman after ‘20 warnings’

Download our app US forces attacked the Gambia-flagged cargo ship Lian Star in the Gulf of Oman, claiming it had ignored over 20 warnings before striking its engine room, as Tehran awaits a response to a proposed peace deal. A senior Iranian official accused Trump of "betraying diplomacy for the third time," blaming the White House for stalled peace efforts due to the ongoing naval blockade and what he called excessive demands in negotiations.

Last updated 8h ago
The TelegraphHealth AlertsBrazil

Brazil monitors two patients for Ebola amid fears of spread from Africa

Brazil is monitoring two patients for possible Ebola infection, officials said, prompting further concern of the deadly virus outbreak in central Africa spreading abroad. A 37-year-old man from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where the outbreak has been concentrated, “exhibited symptoms such as fever, meeting the definition of a suspected case [of Ebola]”, the São Paulo state government said in a statement on Saturday.

Last updated 58m ago
The GuardianDiplomacy

Could Trump’s Iran ‘excursion’ be a bigger global turning point than Vietnam?

The far shorter Middle East war has rapidly revealed the strategic weakness of US firepower in an interconnected worldIn a 1965 speech justifying the war in Vietnam, Lyndon B Johnson argued that the goal was to ensure “every country can shape its own destiny” since only in such a world could the US secure its own freedom. However, he also admitted “such were infirmities of man that force must often precede reason, and the waste of war, the works of peace”.It was the kind of elegant justification of the country’s moral mission to which successive US presidential speechwriters have turned at times of war.

Last updated 5h ago
The GuardianEconomyLondon

Supplier of housing for homeless linked to faith group tax avoidance scheme

Midos Management denies ties to property group accused of making millions from bogus prayer roomsA property investor who sells temporary accommodation to local councils is part of a family accused of avoiding tax by hosting bogus prayer sessions, a Guardian investigation can reveal.Publicly available records raise questions about the business interests of members of the Schreiber dynasty, who preside over a nationwide commercial property portfolio via a “family-owned” investment vehicle, Midos Group.

Last updated 6h ago
The GuardianHumanityAustralia

Six-year-old Sienna’s parents have fought the NDIS every year of her life for funding that keeps her alive

Sienna has cerebral palsy, cannot talk and needs her lungs suctioned every few minutes. Her mother June ‘can tell you exactly what every cent’ in her NDIS plan is forGet our , or June’s six-year-old daughter Sienna* is one of the more profoundly disabled people on the national disability insurance scheme.Sienna has cerebral palsy and a number of comorbidities. She cannot talk, she cannot sit unassisted, she is fed through a tube, she is incontinent. She has two types of lung disease and is on oxygen 24/7.

Last updated 21h ago
The GuardianCultural EventsLondon

‘In a crowd, it feels good when we do bad to our enemies’: how anger becomes contagious

Usually, individuals don’t want to be angry. In a group, however, negative emotions can rile the tribe. On the streets of London, Ed Coper felt it first handBack before 9/11 and the wars it precipitated, the big global focus for protest was globalisation itself. Things came to a head in Seattle in November 1999 when 50,000 protesters crashed the World Trade Organization’s party. The ensuing “Battle of Seattle”, as it came to be known, brought unprecedented attention to the growing disquiet over the inequalities of unregulated free market excesses. That’s how, a few months later, I found myself smack bang in the middle of the next big anti-neoliberal flashpoint, the “MayDay 2K” protests in London.My experience of protest throughout high school had been pretty tame, more likely to take the form of defiance than demonstration. Socks down, shirt untucked – take that, sir! But then again times were good, even for a ratbag. I didn’t have many grievances. At least, none that could be solved by collective protest against powerful institutions that weren’t my parents.

Last updated 2h ago