DUBAI: The Chinese state news media Xinhua has been slammed by Indians after publishing a video that some say is racist.
The video, tagged the “7 Sins of India” is presented by an English-speaking Chinese woman who opens with the comment: “It’s been two months since Indian troops illegally crossed the China-India boundary, but so far India has shown no sign of withdrawal at all.”
She is referring to the dispute between the two countries which has led to a standoff at the Doklam plateau, from where, recently, video footage was shared showing troops throwing stones at each other.
The woman goes on to claim: “On June 18 Indian border troops carrying weapons and driving bulldozers illegally crossed the delimited boundary into the undisputed Chinese territory.”
The Xinhua video published online shows an actor in a turban with fake facial hair and speaking in what appears to be a pretend Indian accent.
Reacting to the video the national daily, the Indian Express, slammed the portrayal of an Indian as derogatory and said the rhetoric had reached “alarming levels and crossed every line of decency.”
Meanwhile the Hindustan Times describe the content as a “racist video parodying Indians,” which particularly targeted the Sikh minority.
But both China and Bhutan – an ally of India – claim the territory as their own, although in the video the female presenter says Bhutan does not dispute China’s claim on the land.
China has demanded the withdrawal of the Indian troops before agreeing to any talks between the two countries.
The standoff began two months ago when Indian troops confronted Chinese military working on a road in the area which is deemed strategically important as it is where Tibet, India and Bhutan meet.
India believes the road that is being built by the Chinese poses a “serious security concern.”
There has already been some suggestion that the situation could escalate into an armed conflict.
Reporting on the standoff between the two super powers, the South China Morning Post quoted sources close to the Chinese military as saying the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had plans to deploy aircraft and strategic missiles against India’s troops in the event of conflict breaking out, in order to limit the action to skirmishes.
“The PLA will not seek to fight a ground war with Indian troops early on. Instead it will deploy aircraft and strategic missiles to paralyze Indian mountain divisions stationed in the Himalayas on the border with China,” the anonymous source told the newspaper.
Indians say Chinese state media video is racist
Indians say Chinese state media video is racist
Social media platform X outage appears to ease, Downdetector shows
Social media platform X is down for thousands of users in the US and the UK, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.
There were more than 16,000 incidents of people reporting issues with the platform as of 6:02 a.m. ET, according to Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources.
X did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Downdetector's numbers are based on user-submitted reports. The actual number of affected users may vary.
Journalist quits broadcaster after comparing French actions in Algeria to Nazi massacre
- Historians from both sides have over the last years documented numerous violations including arbitrary killings and detention carried out by French forces and the history still burdens French-Algerian relations to this day
PARIS: A prominent French journalist on Sunday announced he was stepping down from his role as an expert analyst for broadcaster RTL after provoking an uproar by comparing French actions during colonial rule in Algeria to a World War II massacre committed by Nazi forces in France.
Jean-Michel Aphatie, a veteran reporter and broadcaster, insisted that while he would not be returning to RTL he wholly stood by his comments made on the radio station in late February equating atrocities committed by France in Algeria with those of Nazi Germany in occupied France.
“I will not return to RTL. It is my decision,” the journalist wrote on the X, after he was suspended from air for a week by the radio station.
On February 25 he said on air: “Every year in France, we commemorate what happened in Oradour-sur-Glane — the massacre of an entire village. But we have committed hundreds of these, in Algeria. Are we aware of this?“
He was referring to the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, where an SS unit returning to the front in Normandy massacred 642 residents on June 10, 1944. Leaving a chilling memorial for future generations, the village was never rebuilt.
Challenged by the anchor over whether “we (the French) behaved like the Nazis,” Aphatie replied: “The Nazis behaved like us.”
On X, he acknowledged his comments had created a “debate” but said it was of great importance to understand the full story over France’s 1830-1962 presence in Algeria, saying he was “horrified” by what he had read in history books.
After being suspended for a week by the channel it means that “if I come back to RTL I validate this and admit to making a mistake. This is a line that cannot be crossed.”
His comments had prompted a flurry of complaints to audio-visual regulator Arcom which has opened an investigation.
France’s conduct in Algeria during the 1954-1962 war that led to independence and previous decades remain the subject of often painful debate in both countries.
Historians from both sides have over the last years documented numerous violations including arbitrary killings and detention carried out by French forces and the history still burdens French-Algerian relations to this day.
The far-right in France has long defended French policies in those years with Algeria War veteran Jean-Marie Le Pen, who co-founded the National Front (FN) party and died earlier this year, drawing much support from French settlers who had to return after independence.
Apple adds new Syrian flag emoji
- New flag is part of latest iOS, macOS updates
DUBAI: Apple has added the new flag of the Syrian Arab Republic to its emoji keyboard in the latest beta update to its operating system, replacing the one used by former Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.
The new flag emoji is part of Apple’s iOS and macOS 18.4 beta 2 update and is therefore unavailable to those who have not signed up for beta updates.
Apple will roll out the new updates to users in April, according to a company statement.
The old flag featured three stripes: red at the top, black at the bottom and white in the middle with two green stars.
The new flag features green at the top, black at the bottom and white in the middle with three red stars.
For many Syrians the new flag represents freedom and independence from Assad’s dictatorial regime.
The country has a long history with the current flag, which was first adopted when Syria gained independence from France in 1946.
It was replaced in 1958 by the flag of the United Arab Republic to represent the political union between Egypt and Syria.
It was adopted again for a short time when Syria left the United Arab Republic in 1961, only to be replaced in 1963 when the Baath Party took control of the country.
Newspaper in Syrian Arab Republic resumes circulation in Damascus after fall of Assad regime
- Media organization hails ‘victory for free journalism’
DUBAI: The Syrian newspaper Enab Baladi has resumed distribution in the streets of Damascus and its suburbs after more than a decade-long ban under Bashar Assad’s regime.
The newspaper, which dubs itself as “an independent Syrian media organization,” documented the Syrian regime’s violations during the revolution when it launched in 2012.
The newspaper’s distribution was limited to opposition-controlled northern areas until 2020 after Assad’s brutal crackdown on dissent.
Its editorial stance led to the arrest of many staff members, while others were tortured to death in prisons or killed by shelling and military operations in Daraya.
The media organization said: “The first copies were printed through self-funding and the efforts of its founding staff using a home printer, distributed secretly by volunteers in the neighborhoods of Daraya and Damascus.”
The organization relied on expanding its digital and visual content to reach audiences online, or through printed copies that were smuggled within Syria.
With the fall of the Assad regime on Dec. 8 last year after a 12-day blistering campaign led by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, Enab Baladi resumed distribution in Damascus after a newsroom was established in the capital.
It said the move was aimed at “ensuring freedom of expression during an ambiguous transitional phase.”
The media organization added: “The return of printing inside Syria represents a victory for free journalism and an opportunity to reconnect with the audience inside Syria.”
Israeli military creating ChatGPT-like AI tool targeting Palestinians, says investigation
- Tool being built by Israeli army’s secretive cyber warfare unit
DUBAI: Israel’s military is developing an advanced artificial intelligence tool, similar to ChatGPT, by training it on Arabic conversations obtained through the surveillance of Palestinians living under occupation.
These are the findings of a joint investigation by The Guardian, Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call.
The tool is being built by the Israeli army’s secretive cyber warfare Unit 8200. The division is programming the AI tool to understand colloquial Arabic by feeding it vast amounts of phone calls and text messages between Palestinians, obtained through surveillance.
Three Israeli security sources with knowledge of the matter confirmed the existence of the AI tool to the outlets conducting the investigation.
The model was still undergoing training last year and it is unclear if it has been deployed and to what end. However, sources said that the tool’s ability to rapidly process large quantities of surveillance material in order to “answer questions” about specific individuals would be a huge benefit to the Israeli army.
During the investigation, several sources highlighted that Unit 8200 had used smaller-scale machine learning models in recent years.
One source said: “AI amplifies power; it’s not just about preventing shooting attacks. I can track human rights activists, monitor Palestinian construction in Area C (of the West Bank). I have more tools to know what every person in the West Bank is doing. When you hold so much data, you can direct it toward any purpose you choose.”
An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson declined to respond to The Guardian’s question about the new AI tool, but said the military “deploys various intelligence methods to identify and thwart terrorist activity by hostile organizations in the Middle East.”
Unit 8200’s previous AI tools, such as The Gospel and Lavender, were among those used during the war on Hamas. These tools played a key role in identifying potential targets for strikes and bombardments.
Moreover, for nearly a decade, the unit has used AI to analyze the communications it intercepts and stores, sort information into categories, learn to recognize patterns and make predictions.
When ChatGPT’s large language model was made available to the public in November 2022, the Israeli army set up a dedicated intelligence team to explore how generative AI could be adapted for military purposes, according to former intelligence officer Chaked Roger Joseph Sayedoff.
However, ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI rejected Unit 8200’s request for direct access to its LLM and refused to allow its integration into the unit’s system.
Sayedoff highlighted another problem: existing language models could only process standard Arabic, not spoken Arabic in different dialects, resulting in Unit 8200 needing to develop its own program.
One source said: “There are no transcripts of calls or WhatsApp conversations on the internet. It doesn’t exist in the quantity needed to train such a model.”
Unit 8200 started recruiting experts from private tech companies in October 2023 as reservists. Ori Goshen, co-CEO and co-founder of the Israeli tech company AI21 Labs, confirmed that his employees participated in the project during their reserve duty.
The challenge for Unit 8200 was to “collect all the (spoken Arabic) text the unit has ever had and put it into a centralized place,” a source said, adding that the model’s training data eventually consisted of about 100 billion words.
Another source familiar with the project said the communications analyzed and fed to the training model included conversations in Lebanese and Palestinian dialects.
Goshen explained the benefits of LLMs for intelligence agencies but added that “these are probabilistic models — you give them a prompt or a question, and they generate something that looks like magic, but often the answer makes no sense.”
Zach Campbell, a senior surveillance researcher at Human Rights Watch, called such AI tools “guessing machines.”
He said: “Ultimately, these guesses can end up being used to incriminate people.”
Campbell and Nadim Nashif, director and founder of the Palestinian digital rights and advocacy group 7amleh, also raised concerns about the collection of data and its use in training the AI tool.
Campbell said: “We are talking about highly personal information, taken from people who are not suspected of any crime, to train a tool that could later help establish suspicion.”
Nashif said: “Palestinians have become subjects in Israel’s laboratory to develop these techniques and weaponize AI, all for the purpose of maintaining (an) apartheid and occupation regime where these technologies are being used to dominate a people, to control their lives.
“This is a grave and continuous violation of Palestinian digital rights, which are human rights.”
