United States news
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EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. — With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of U.S. airpower. But the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence, not a human pilot. And riding in the front seat was Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning for an AI-enabled fleet of more than 1,000 unmanned warplanes, the first of them operating by 2028. It was fitting that the dogfight took place at Edwards Air Force Base, a vast desert facility where Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound and the military has incubated its …
NAIROBI, Kenya — When Ademola Adesina founded a startup to provide solar and battery-based power subscription packages to individuals and businesses in Nigeria in 2015, it was a lot harder to raise money than it is today. Climate tech was new in Africa, the continent was a fledgling destination for venture capital money, there were fewer funders to approach and less money was available, he said. It took him a year of “running around and scouring” his networks to raise his first amount — just under $1 million — from VC firms and other sources. “Everything was a learning experience,” he said. But the ecosystem has since changed, and Adesina’s Rensource Energy has raised about $30 million over the years, mostly from VC firms. Funding for climate tech startups in Africa from the private sector is growing, with businesses raising more than $3.4 billion since 2019. But there’s still a long …
omaha, nebraska — Warren Buffett cautioned the tens of thousands of shareholders who packed an arena for his annual meeting that artificial intelligence scams could become “the growth industry of all time.” Doubling down on his cautionary words from last year, Buffett told the throngs he recently came face to face with the downside of AI. Someone made a fake video of Buffett, apparently convincing enough that Buffett himself said he could imagine it tricking him into sending money overseas. The billionaire investing guru predicted scammers will seize on the technology and may do more harm with it than good. “It has enormous potential for good and enormous potential for harm and I just don’t know how that plays out,” he said. Earnings The day started early Saturday with Berkshire Hathaway announcing a steep drop in earnings as the paper value of its investments plummeted and it pared its Apple holdings. …
Sulaimaniyah, Iraq — Floods caused by torrential rainstorms have killed four hikers in the Sulaimaniyah region of northern Iraq, local officials told AFP. “Four members of a hiking team drowned because of heavy rains and flooding in Awaspi village” in the Qaradah district, local official Rouf Kamal said. Civil defense spokesperson Aram Ali confirmed the toll and said eight other hikers survived the incident south of Sulaimaniyah on Friday, the autonomous Kurdistan region’s second city. He said a weather warning was issued Thursday, with hikers particularly urged to avoid mountainous areas. Heavier than usual rainfall has caused flooding in several parts of Iraq, especially the north, and some roads in Kurdistan region capital Arbil were blocked. Iraq has suffered four consecutive years of drought, with irregular rainfall badly affecting water resources, forcing many farmers to abandon their land. But Ammer al-Jabiri, spokesperson for the weather service in Iraq, where the rainy …
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan has recorded its wettest April since 1961, with more than double the usual rainfall for the month, the national weather center said. The country experienced days of extreme weather in April that killed scores of people and destroyed property and farmland. Experts said Pakistan witnessed heavier rains because of climate change. Last month’s rainfall for Pakistan was a 164% increase from the usual level for April, according to a report published Friday by Pakistan’s national weather center. The intense downpours affected the country’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the southwestern Baluchistan provinces the most. Devastating summer floods in 2022 killed at least 1,700 people, destroyed millions of homes, wiped out swaths of farmland and caused billions of dollars in economic losses in a matter of months. At one point, a third of the country was underwater. Pakistani leaders and many scientists worldwide blamed climate change for the unusually early …
MEXICO CITY — If a woman wins Mexico’s presidency on June 2, would she rule with gender in mind? The question has been raised by academics, humans rights organizations and activists ahead of the voting that will likely elect Mexico’s first female president for the term 2024-30. Out of three candidates, the frontrunner is Claudia Sheinbaum, who has promised to keep President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s legacy on track. Next comes Xóchitl Gálvez, representing several opposition parties, one of which is historically conservative. The triumph of Sheinbaum or Gálvez, however, would not guarantee their support for certain gender-related policies. In a country of more than 98 million Catholics, neither of the two leading candidates has shared specific proposals on abortion. Both have suggested equality and protection measures for women amid a wave of violence and femicide. Here’s a look at some of the challenges that Mexico’s next president would face regarding …
DUESSELDORF, Germany — Herbert Rubinstein was 5 years old when he and his mother were taken from the Jewish ghetto of Chernivtsi and put on a cramped cattle wagon waiting to take them to their deaths. It was 1941, and Romanians collaborating with Germany’s Nazis were rounding up tens of thousands of Jews from his hometown in what is now southwestern Ukraine. “It was nothing but a miracle that we survived,” Rubinstein told The Associated Press during a recent interview at his apartment in the western German city of Duesseldorf. The 88-year-old Holocaust survivor is participating in a new digital campaign called #CancelHate. It was launched Thursday by the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also referred to as the Claims Conference. It features videos of survivors from around the globe reading Holocaust denial posts from different social media platforms. Each post illustrates how denial and distortion can …
islamabad — Pakistan on Friday witnessed the launch of its first lunar satellite aboard China’s historic mission to retrieve samples from the little explored far side of the moon in a technologically collaborative mission that signals deepening ties between the countries. China’s largest rocket, a Long March-5, blasted off from the Wencheng Space Launch Center on Hainan Island at 09:27 UTC, ferrying China’s 8-metric-ton Chang’e-6 probe. If successful, the uncrewed mission will make China the first country to retrieve samples from the moon’s largely unexplored South Pole, also known as the “far side” of the moon that is not visible from Earth. Chang’e-6 will spend 48 hours digging up 2 kilograms of surface samples before returning to a landing spot in Inner Mongolia. In 2018, China achieved its first unmanned moon landing on the far side with the Chang’e-4 probe, which did not retrieve samples. India became the first country to …
TAIPEI, Taiwan — China is preparing to launch a lunar probe Friday that would land on the far side of the moon and return with samples that could provide insights into geological and other differences between the less-explored region and the better-known near side. The unprecedented mission would be the latest advance in the increasingly sophisticated and ambitious space exploration program that is now competing with the U.S., still the leader in space. China already landed a rover on the moon’s far side in 2019, the first country to do so. Free from exposure to Earth and other interference, the moon’s somewhat mysterious far side is ideal for radio astronomy and other scientific work. Because the far side never faces Earth, a relay satellite is needed to maintain communications. The Chang’e lunar exploration probe is named after the Chinese mythical moon goddess. The probe is being carried on a Long March-5 …
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Kyiv, Ukraine — Ukraine has an AI-generated spokesperson called Victoria who will make official statements on behalf of its foreign ministry. The ministry said on Wednesday that it would “for the first time in history” use a digital spokesperson to read its statements, which will still be written by humans. Dressed in a dark suit, the spokesperson introduced herself as Victoria Shi, a “digital person,” in a presentation posted on social media. The figure gesticulates with her hands and moves her head as she speaks. The foreign ministry’s press service told AFP that the statements given by Shi would not be generated by AI but “written and verified by real people.” “It’s only the visual part that the AI helps us to generate,” it said. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the new spokesperson was a “technological leap that no diplomatic service in the world has yet made.” The main reason …
phoenix — Democratic Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has relegated a Civil War-era ban on most abortions to the past by signing a bill Thursday to repeal it. Hobbs said the move was just the beginning of a fight to protect reproductive health care in Arizona. The repeal of the 1864 law that the state Supreme Court recently reinstated won’t take effect until 90 days after the legislative session ends, which typically happens in June or July. Abortion rights advocates say they’re hopeful a court will step in to prevent what could be a confusing landscape of access for girls and women across Arizona as laws are introduced and then reversed. The effort to repeal the long-dormant law, which bans all abortions except those done to save a patient’s life, won final legislative approval Wednesday in a 16-14 vote of the Senate, as two GOP lawmakers joined with Democrats. Hobbs denounced “a …
NASA may soon have another way to get astronauts into space. Plus, the agency reconnects with an old friend and how to train a dog for a walk … on the moon. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. …
STAVANGER, Norway — A convicted sex offender is asking the Norwegian Supreme Court to declare social media access is a human right. The case before the court Thursday involves a man who molested a minor and used the Snapchat messaging app to connect with young boys. The unnamed offender was sentenced last year to 13 months in prison and banned from using Snapchat for two years. His lawyers argue that depriving him of his account is unlawful under the European Convention on Human Rights. The case turns on how vital social media has become for freedom of expression, even though the court must decide the case through laws that predate such sites. “The case raises important questions about the extent to which the state can restrict access to social media platforms, which are significant tools for exercising the right to freedom of expression and maintaining social connections,” defense lawyer John Christian …
WASHINGTON — Hackers who breached UnitedHealth’s tech unit in February potentially stole data from a third of Americans, the largest U.S. health insurer’s CEO told a congressional committee on Wednesday. Two congressional panels grilled CEO Andrew Witty about the cyberattack on the company’s Change Healthcare unit, which processes around 50% of all medical claims in the U.S. The breach has caused widespread disruptions in claims processing, impacting patients and providers across the country. Witty fielded heated questions from House Energy and Commerce Committee members about the company’s failure to prevent the breach and contain its fallout. Pressed for details on the data compromised, Witty said protected health information and personally identifiable information pertaining to “maybe a third” of Americans was stolen. “We continue to investigate the amount of data involved here,” he added. “We do think it’s going to be substantial.” The cybercriminal gang AlphV hacked into Change on Feb. 12 using stolen …
The U.S. state of Florida has a new law banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. In this presidential campaign, Donald Trump is defending the right of states to regulate reproductive rights. Joe Biden says that decentralized authority threatens women’s lives. VOA correspondent Scott Stearns has the story …
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London — Climate change will cut the average income of people around the world by one-fifth by 2050, according to a new report published in the journal Nature by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. As many parts of the world experience extreme weather, the global impacts of a changing climate are set to cost $38 trillion a year by the middle of the century, the report warns — a reduction in the world’s average income of some 19%. The losses are already locked in, independent of future emission choices, the report says. Maximilian Kotz, co-author of the report, told VOA there is little the world can do to mitigate the impact. “What we find is that over the next 25 to 30 years, impacts on the economy are consistent across different emissions scenarios, regardless of whether we enter a high-emission or low-emission world,” he said. Climate change, and especially …
The average income of people around the world will be cut by one-fifth because of climate change by the middle of the century, according to a new report by Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, published in the journal Nature. Henry Ridgwell has more. …
Washington — A majority of Americans believe that China uses TikTok to shape U.S. public opinion, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted as Washington moves closer to potentially banning the Chinese-owned short-video app. Some 58% of respondents to the two-day poll, which closed on Tuesday, agreed with a statement that the Chinese government uses TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, to “influence American public opinion.” Some 13% disagreed, and the rest were unsure or didn’t answer the question. Republicans were more likely than Democrats to see China as using the app to affect U.S. opinions. TikTok says it has spent more than $1.5 billion on data security efforts and would not share data on its 170 million U.S. users with the Chinese government. The company told Congress last year that it does “not promote or remove content at the request of the Chinese government.” TikTok did not immediately respond to …
Mai Mahiu, Kenya — Kenyan President William Ruto on Tuesday deployed the military to evacuate everyone living in flood-prone areas in a nation where 171 people have been killed since March by torrential rains. Seasonal rains, amplified by the El Nino weather pattern, have devastated the East African nation, with floodwaters engulfing villages and threatening to unleash even more damage in the weeks to come. In the worst incident, which killed nearly 50 villagers, a makeshift dam burst in the Rift Valley before dawn Monday, sending a torrent of water and mud gushing down a hill and swallowing everything in its path. The tragedy in Kamuchiri village, Nakuru county, was the deadliest episode in the country since the start of the March-May rainy season. Ruto, who visited the victims of the Kamuchiri deluge after chairing a Cabinet meeting in Nairobi, said his government had drawn up a map of neighborhoods at …
Paris, France — G7 environment ministers committed on Tuesday to ramp up the production and deployment of battery storage technology, an essential component for increasing renewable energy and combating climate change. Here is how and why batteries play a vital role in the energy transition: Growing demand Batteries have been central to the rise of electric vehicles (EVs) but are also critical to wind and solar power because of the intermittent nature of these energy sources. Surplus electricity must be stored in batteries to stabilize distribution regardless of peaks in demand, or breaks in supply at night or during low winds. Battery deployment in the energy sector last year increased more than 130 percent from 2022, according to a report released last week by the International Energy Agency (IEA). The main markets are China, the European Union and the United States. Following closely are Britain, South …
