ROSEAU: The tiny Caribbean island of Dominica appealed for desperately-needed aid and helicopters following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria, which left the country struggling to survive without water or electricity.
The island largely lost communications with the outside world after Maria plowed into it on Monday as a maximum-strength Category Five hurricane packing winds of 257 km per hour.
At least 15 people were killed on the island, with six deaths elsewhere in the Caribbean as the storm continued its destructive path north on Friday.
“For now our urgent, urgent matter is to get supplies to the affected people. We’re going to need all of the helicopter help we can get, because we need to ferry the supplies to people,” Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said Thursday.
AFP aerial footage showed debris from damaged buildings scattered across the island of 72,000 people and many structures with their roofs ripped off. Trees were snapped in half or ripped out of the ground.
Some streets were so filled with debris — including splintered tree branches and sheets of corrugated metal — that they were impassable.
Residents were busy shoveling mud out of their homes and businesses, while laundry was hung out to dry on the frames of half-destroyed homes and along downed utility cables.
In a neighborhood of candy-colored houses, families were cooking on makeshift stoves fashioned out of cinder blocks and rocks, fueled by wood scraps.
The neighboring French island of Martinique and the South American country of Guyana have dispatched a team of 68 firefighters to Dominica, said Patrick Amoussou-Adeble, secretary-general of Martinique.
“We have carried out a survey by helicopter to assess the situation. We have a naval ship that will supply 40 tons of water to the victims,” he said.
Skerrit said that with hurricanes becoming ever stronger, “we really need, all of us, to understand that these issues are of greater concern to small islands like ours.”
“We are very very vulnerable,” he said.
Tiny Dominica calls for help after Hurricane Maria
Tiny Dominica calls for help after Hurricane Maria
15 dead in India after stampede at Hindu mega-festival
- The six-week festival is the single biggest milestone on the Hindu religious calendar, and millions of people were expected to be present on Wednesday for a sacred day of ritual bathing at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers
PRAYAGRAJ, India: A stampede at the world’s largest religious gathering in India killed at least 15 people with many more injured, a doctor at the Kumbh Mela festival in Prayagraj told AFP Wednesday.
“At least 15 people have died for now. Others are being treated,” said the doctor in Prayagraj city, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to media.
An AFP photographer saw rescuers and worshippers evacuating victims from the scene and people climbing over a barrier.
Deadly crowd crushes are a notorious feature of Indian religious festivals, and the Kumbh Mela, with its unfathomable throngs of devotees, already had a grim track record of deadly crowd crushes before the latest incident overnight.
Local government official Akanksha Rana told the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency that the stampede began after crowd control barriers “broke.”
The six-week festival is the single biggest milestone on the Hindu religious calendar, and millions of people were expected to be present on Wednesday for a sacred day of ritual bathing at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.
Algeria blasts European Parliament for condemning a French-Algerian author’s arrest
- The 76-year-old is among several imprisoned writers mentioned in the European Parliament’s resolution last week, which also references journalist Abdelwakil Blamm and poet Mohamed Tadjadit
ALGIERS, Algeria: Algerian lawmakers condemned the European Parliament for a resolution criticizing the arrest of French-Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal.
Lawmakers from both chambers of the North African nation’s parliament on Monday signed a statement rebuking the European Parliament’s resolution for “misleading allegations with the sole aim of launching a blatant attack against Algeria.”
Since his Nov. 16 arrest, Sansal’s cause has been taken up by European writers, artists and politicians, particularly those on the French right sympathetic to his criticism of Islam.
Sansal has been charged with violating an anti-terrorism statute that rights groups say Algeria uses to target activists and dissidents and quiet criticism of the government. The 76-year-old is among several imprisoned writers mentioned in the European Parliament’s resolution last week, which also references journalist Abdelwakil Blamm and poet Mohamed Tadjadit.
Algerian lawmakers accused the European Parliament of political inference and cast doubt on whether their motivations had to do with Sansal’s well-being or “harming the image of Algeria.”
The back-and-forth mirrors similar spats between Europe and nations that were once colonized by some members of the 27-nation bloc and see such criticism as paternalistic. In 2023, Moroccan lawmakers blasted the European Parliament for passing a resolution that implored Morocco to respect press freedoms and grant fair trials to three imprisoned journalists.
The clash over the resolution is the latest rupture between Algeria and France. The countries have for nearly a year sparred over immigration and repatriation issues, the disputed Western Sahara and the legacy of French nuclear testing in Algeria’s Sahara Desert, which lawmakers passed a resolution addressing last week.
Sarkozy’s son signs up for French far-right magazine
- Louis Sarkozy, born to Sarkozy’s second wife Cecilia Attias, spent most of his childhood in the United States but has appeared on French television recently as a commentator on American politics
- Valeurs Actuelles, which is hoping to shed its association with the far-right, backed virulently anti-Islam politician Eric Zemmour in France’s 2022 presidential election and regularly focuses on immigration and crime
PARIS: The third son of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been unveiled as a surprise columnist for far-right news magazine Valeurs Actuelles, reinforcing speculation about his possible political ambitions.
The first contribution from Louis Sarkozy, 27, is set to appear in a relaunched edition of the magazine on Wednesday and will be devoted to “the values of the right.”
“He’s ebullient, cultured, creative: it’s the perfect combination for a column at the end of the magazine,” director Tugdual Denis told AFP.
Valeurs Actuelles, which is hoping to shed its association with the far-right, backed virulently anti-Islam politician Eric Zemmour in France’s 2022 presidential election and regularly focuses on immigration and crime.
Louis Sarkozy, born to Sarkozy’s second wife Cecilia Attias, spent most of his childhood in the United States but has appeared on French television recently as a commentator on American politics.
He raised eyebrows with a speech last month at a meeting in Paris of the youth wing of his father’s Republicans party — and was invited to Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president in Washington last week.
Nicolas Sarkozy, who is now married to former supermodel Carla Bruni, remains mired in legal problems since his single 2007-2012 term in office.
Already convicted in two cases, he is currently on trial over allegations he and his entourage conspired with late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi to receive millions of euros in illegal campaign financing.
Sarkozy’s eldest son Pierre has become a DJ and hip hop producer, while his second son Jean briefly entered politics before becoming embroiled in a favoritism scandal.
Asked about Louis’s growing presence in the media, Sarkozy told the CNews channel last month that he was “proud of him and his courage.”
Ukraine drone attacks target Russian power, oil facilities, officials and media say
Debris from a destroyed drone sparked a fire at an industrial facility in Kstovo, in Nizhny Novgorod, governor of the region that lies east of Moscow said on the Telegram messaging app.
“According to preliminary data, there are no casualties,” Gleb Nikitin, the governor, said.
He did not disclose further detail. Baza, a Russian Telegram news channel, which is close to Russia’s security services, reported that an oil refinery in Kstovo was on fire.
In the western Russia region of Smolensk, which borders Belarus, air defense systems destroyed a drone attempting to attack a nuclear power facility, Governor Vasily Anokhin said. He added that parts of the region were under a “massive” drone attack.
“According to preliminary information, one of the drones was shot down during an attempt to attack a nuclear power facility,” Anokhin said on the Telegram messaging app. “There were no casualties or damage.”
Another 26 drones were downed over the Bryansk region that borders Ukraine, and 20 drones over the Tver region that borders the Moscow region to its south, regional governors said. There were no damage or casualties, they said.
Russian aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia said on Telegram that in order to ensure safety it was halting all flights at the Kazan airport. Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, lies some 830 km (516 miles) east of Moscow.
The full scale of attacks was not immediately known. Reuters could not independently verify the reports and there was no comment from Ukraine.
Both sides deny targeting civilians in their attacks in
the war
that Russia started with a full-scale invasion in February 2022. Kyiv says that its attacks inside Russia aim to destroy infrastructure key to Moscow’s war efforts.
OpenAI tailors version of ChatGPT for US government
- The new ChatGPT Gov version of OpenAI’s popular chatbot provides a tailored AI tool to assist the work of US government agencies and their employees
SAN FRANCISCO: OpenAI on Tuesday launched a bespoke version of its ChatGPT artificial intelligence tool for use by the United States government.
Big money government contracts are often tech firm targets, and OpenAI already boasts some 90,000 users of ChatGPT across federal, state and local governments in the United States.
The new ChatGPT Gov version of OpenAI’s popular chatbot provides a tailored AI tool to assist the work of US government agencies and their employees.
“By making our products available to the US government, we aim to ensure AI serves the national interest and the public good, aligned with democratic values, while empowering policymakers to responsibly integrate these capabilities to deliver better services to the American people,” OpenAI said in an online post.
The cost of ChatGPT Gov, if any, was not disclosed.
ChatGPT Gov builds on an enterprise version of the chatbot designed for use by businesses and can run on Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, according to OpenAI.
“Self-hosting ChatGPT Gov enables agencies to more easily manage their own security, privacy, and compliance requirements,” OpenAI said.
The company believes the new offering will speed up authorization for OpenAI tools to be used to handle sensitive non-public data in government agencies, according to the post.
In his first full day in the White House, US President Donald Trump announced a major investment to build infrastructure for artificial intelligence led by Japanese giant SoftBank and OpenAI.
Trump said the venture, called Stargate, “will invest $500 billion, at least, in AI infrastructure in the United States.”
