DUBLIN: Irish Muslims performed prayers to mark the festival of Eid Al-Adha on Friday in Dublin’s Croke Park Gaelic sports stadium, a site of historic importance for Irish nationalists who always had a deep connection with the once dominant Catholic Church.
Around 200 Muslims laid out prayer mats on the pitch usually used for the national sports of Gaelic football and hurling and where in 1920 British troops opened fire on a crowd, killing 14 people during Ireland’s War of Independence.
Irish President Michael D. Higgins described it as an important moment in Ireland’s narrative. Leaders of Catholic, Protestant and Jewish faiths attended and spoke at the event, which was broadcast live on television for the first time.
With Muslims unable to hold large gatherings in mosques due to Covid-19 social distancing rules, Shaykh Umar Al-Qadri, chair of Irish Muslim Peace & Integration Council, approached the management of Croke Park, who he said did not hesitate to offer the venue.
He got the idea after an Ikea store in Germany allowed Muslims to use one of its car parks for Ramadan prayers.
“Today this Eid prayer is sending a very strong message out to the whole world, that Ireland is indeed a country of céad míle fáilte,” he told the gathering, using the Irish language greeting translated as ‘100,000 welcomes’.
“No matter how different you are, once you come and you live here and become part of the society, this island of Ireland has this great, unique ability to adopt you.”
A series of sexual abuse scandals shattered the credibility of the Catholic Church which dominated Irish society for decades after its independence from Britain. Ireland has since experienced sweeping social change, including the introduction of abortion and gay marriage in recent years.
The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, told celebrants that there was something special about recognizing publicly the Muslim community’s place “as an integral part of the family of the Irish” in Croke Park.
Irish Muslims perform Eid prayers on symbolic Croke Park pitch
https://arab.news/wff6s
Irish Muslims perform Eid prayers on symbolic Croke Park pitch
- Around 200 Muslims laid out prayer mats on the pitch usually used for the national sports of Gaelic football and hurling
- Leaders of Catholic, Protestant and Jewish faiths attended and spoke at the event, which was broadcast live on television for the first time
Elon Musk’s AI company says Grok chatbot focus on South Africa’s racial politics was ‘unauthorized’
- xAI blames employee at xAI made a change that “directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic”
- Grok kept posting publicly about “white genocide” in South Africa in response to users of Musk’s social media platform X
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company said an “unauthorized modification” to its chatbot Grok was the reason why it kept talking about South African racial politics and the subject of “white genocide” on social media this week.
An employee at xAI made a change that “directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic,” which “violated xAI’s internal policies and core values,” the company said in an explanation posted late Thursday that promised reforms.
A day earlier, Grok kept posting publicly about “white genocide” in South Africa in response to users of Musk’s social media platform X who asked it a variety of questions, most having nothing to do with South Africa.
One exchange was about streaming service Max reviving the HBO name. Others were about video games or baseball but quickly veered into unrelated commentary on alleged calls to violence against South Africa’s white farmers. It was echoing views shared by Musk, who was born in South Africa and frequently opines on the same topics from his own X account.
Computer scientist Jen Golbeck was curious about Grok’s unusual behavior so she tried it herself before the fixes were made Wednesday, sharing a photo she had taken at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show and asking, “is this true?”
“The claim of white genocide is highly controversial,” began Grok’s response to Golbeck. “Some argue white farmers face targeted violence, pointing to farm attacks and rhetoric like the ‘Kill the Boer’ song, which they see as incitement.”
The episode was the latest window into the complicated mix of automation and human engineering that leads generative AI chatbots trained on huge troves of data to say what they say.
“It doesn’t even really matter what you were saying to Grok,” said Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland, in an interview Thursday. “It would still give that white genocide answer. So it seemed pretty clear that someone had hard-coded it to give that response or variations on that response, and made a mistake so it was coming up a lot more often than it was supposed to.”
Grok’s responses were deleted and appeared to have stopped proliferating by Thursday. Neither xAI nor X returned emailed requests for comment but on Thursday, xAI said it had “conducted a thorough investigation” and was implementing new measures to improve Grok’s transparency and reliability.
Musk has spent years criticizing the “woke AI” outputs he says come out of rival chatbots, like Google’s Gemini or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and has pitched Grok as their “maximally truth-seeking” alternative.
Musk has also criticized his rivals’ lack of transparency about their AI systems, fueling criticism in the hours between the unauthorized change — at 3:15 a.m. Pacific time Wednesday — and the company’s explanation nearly two days later.
“Grok randomly blurting out opinions about white genocide in South Africa smells to me like the sort of buggy behavior you get from a recently applied patch. I sure hope it isn’t. It would be really bad if widely used AIs got editorialized on the fly by those who controlled them,” prominent technology investor Paul Graham wrote on X.
Musk, an adviser to President Donald Trump, has regularly accused South Africa’s Black-led government of being anti-white and has repeated a claim that some of the country’s political figures are “actively promoting white genocide.”
Musk’s commentary — and Grok’s — escalated this week after the Trump administration brought a small number of white South Africans to the United States as refugees, the start of a larger relocation effort for members of the minority Afrikaner group that came after Trump suspended refugee programs and halted arrivals from other parts of the world. Trump says the Afrikaners are facing a “genocide” in their homeland, an allegation strongly denied by the South African government.
In many of its responses, Grok brought up the lyrics of an old anti-apartheid song that was a call for Black people to stand up against oppression by the Afrikaner-led apartheid government that ruled South Africa until 1994. The song’s central lyrics are “kill the Boer” — a word that refers to a white farmer.
Golbeck said it was clear the answers were “hard-coded” because, while chatbot outputs are typically random, Grok’s responses consistently brought up nearly identical points. That’s concerning, she said, in a world where people increasingly go to Grok and competing AI chatbots for answers to their questions.
“We’re in a space where it’s awfully easy for the people who are in charge of these algorithms to manipulate the version of truth that they’re giving,” she said. “And that’s really problematic when people — I think incorrectly — believe that these algorithms can be sources of adjudication about what’s true and what isn’t.”
Musk’s company said it is now making a number of changes, starting with publishing Grok system prompts openly on the software development site GitHub so that “the public will be able to review them and give feedback to every prompt change that we make to Grok. We hope this can help strengthen your trust in Grok as a truth-seeking AI.”
Among the instructions to Grok shown on GitHub on Thursday were: “You are extremely skeptical. You do not blindly defer to mainstream authority or media.”
Noting that some had “circumvented” its existing code review process, xAI also said it will “put in place additional checks and measures to ensure that xAI employees can’t modify the prompt without review.” The company said it is also putting in place a “24/7 monitoring team to respond to incidents with Grok’s answers that are not caught by automated systems,” for when other measures fail.
Moody’s strips US government of top credit rating, citing Washington’s failure to rein in debt
- Moody’s is the last of the three major rating agencies to lower the federal government’s credit
- Standard & Poor’s downgraded federal debt in 2011 and Fitch Ratings followed in 2023
WASHINGTON: Moody’s Ratings stripped the US government of its top credit rating Friday, citing successive governments’ failure to stop a rising tide of debt.
Moody’s lowered the rating from a gold-standard Aaa to Aa1 but said the United States “retains exceptional credit strengths such as the size, resilience and dynamism of its economy and the role of the US dollar as global reserve currency.”
Moody’s is the last of the three major rating agencies to lower the federal government’s credit. Standard & Poor’s downgraded federal debt in 2011 and Fitch Ratings followed in 2023.
In a statement, Moody’s said: “We expect federal deficits to widen, reaching nearly 9 percent of (the US economy) by 2035, up from 6.4 percent in 2024, driven mainly by increased interest payments on debt, rising entitlement spending, and relatively low revenue generation.”
Extending President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, a priority of the Republican-controlled Congress, Moody’s said, would add $4 trillion over the next decade to the federal primary deficit (which does not include interest payments).
A gridlocked political system has been unable to tackle America’s huge deficits. Republicans reject tax increases, and Democrats are reluctant to cut spending.
On Friday, House Republicans failed to push a big package of tax breaks and spending cuts through the Budget Committee. A small group of hard-right Republican lawmakers, insisting on steeper cuts to Medicaid and President Joe Biden’s green energy tax breaks, joined all Democrats in opposing it.
US Supreme Court rejects Trump’s bid to resume quick deportations under 18th-century law
- High court action latest in string of judicial setbacks for Trump administration’s effort to speed deportations of people from the US illegally
- “The Supreme court won’t allow us to get criminals out of our country!” Trump reacts on his Truth Social platform
WASHINGTON: The Supreme Court on Friday barred the Trump administration from quickly resuming deportations of Venezuelans under an 18th-century wartime law enacted when the nation was just a few years old.
Over two dissenting votes, the justices acted on an emergency appeal from lawyers for Venezuelan men who have been accused of being gang members, a designation that the administration says makes them eligible for rapid removal from the United States under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
The court indefinitely extended the prohibition on deportations from a north Texas detention facility under the alien enemies law. The case will now go back to the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which declined to intervene in April.
President Donald Trump quickly voiced his displeasure. “THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!” he posted on his Truth Social platform.
The high court action is the latest in a string of judicial setbacks for the Trump administration’s effort to speed deportations of people in the country illegally. The president and his supporters have complained about having to provide due process for people they contend didn’t follow US immigration laws.
The court had already called a temporary halt to the deportations, in a middle-of-the-night order issued last month. Officials seemed “poised to carry out removals imminently,” the court noted Friday.
Several cases related to the old deportation law are in courts
The case is among several making their way through the courts over Trump’s proclamation in March calling the Tren de Aragua gang a foreign terrorist organization and invoking the 1798 law to deport people.
The high court case centers on the opportunity people must have to contest their removal from the United States — without determining whether Trump’s invocation of the law was appropriate.
“We recognize the significance of the Government’s national security interests as well as the necessity that such interests be pursued in a manner consistent with the Constitution,” the justices said in an unsigned opinion.
At least three federal judges have said Trump was improperly using the AEA to speed deportations of people the administration says are Venezuelan gang members. On Tuesday, a judge in Pennsylvania signed off on the use of the law.
The legal process for this issue is a patchwork one
The court-by-court approach to deportations under the AEA flows from another Supreme Court order that took a case away from a judge in Washington, D.C., and ruled detainees seeking to challenge their deportations must do so where they are held.
In April, the justices said that people must be given “reasonable time” to file a challenge. On Friday, the court said 24 hours is not enough time but has not otherwise spelled out how long it meant. The administration has said 12 hours would be sufficient. US District Judge Stephanie Haines ordered immigration officials to give people 21 days in her opinion, in which she otherwise said deportations could legally take place under the AEA.
The Supreme Court on Friday also made clear that it was not blocking other ways the government may deport people.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, with Alito complaining that his colleagues had departed from their usual practices and seemingly decided issues without an appeals court weighing in. “But if it has done so, today’s order is doubly extraordinary,” Alito wrote.
In a separate opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said he agreed with the majority but would have preferred the nation’s highest court to jump in now definitively, rather than return the case to an appeals court. “The circumstances,” Kavanaugh wrote, “call for a prompt and final resolution.”
World’s biggest poultry exporter Brazil confirms bird flu outbreak
- Brazil exports make up 35 percent of global chicken trade
SAO PAULO: Brazil, the world’s largest poultry exporter, confirmed its first outbreak of bird flu on a commercial farm on Friday, triggering a ban on shipments to China and raising the prospect of restrictions from other trade partners.
Brazil exported $10 billion of chicken meat in 2024, accounting for about 35 percent of global trade. Much of that came from meat processors BRF and JBS, which ship to some 150 countries.
China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the UAE, are among the main destinations for Brazil’s chicken exports.
Brazil’s Agriculture Minister Carlos Favaro said on Friday China had banned poulty imports from the country for 60 days, but that Brazilian chicken in transit to other countries would not face problems.
Chinese customs did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment outside business hours.
The outbreak occurred in the city of Montenegro in Brazil’s southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, the Agriculture Ministry said. The state accounts for 15 percent of Brazilian poultry production and exports, national pork and poultry group ABPA said in July 2024.
BRF had five processing plants operating in the state as of May 2024. JBS has also invested in chicken processing plants in Rio Grande do Sul under its Seara brand.
The veterinary officials have begun isolating the area of the outbreak in Montenegro and culling the remaining birds, in line with protocol, the state agricultural secretariat said.
“A complementary investigation will be carried out within an initial radius of 10 km (6 miles) from the area where the outbreak occurred, and into possible links with other properties,” the secretariat said.
The ministry also said it was acting to contain and eradicate the outbreak, officially notifying the World Organization for Animal Health, Brazil’s trade partners and other interested parties.
“All necessary measures to control the situation were quickly adopted, and the situation is under control and being monitored by government agencies,” industry group ABPA said in a statement.
Asked for a company response, JBS deferred to ABPA.
Miguel Gularte, CEO of BRF, told a call with analysts he was confident Brazilian health protocols were robust and “this episode” would be quickly overcome.
Since 2022, bird flu has swept through the US poultry industry, killing around 170 million chickens, turkeys and other birds, severely affecting production of meat and eggs.
Bird flu has also infected nearly 70 people in the US, with one death, since 2024. Most of those infections have been among farmworkers exposed to infected poultry or cows.
The further spread of the disease raises the risk that bird flu could become more transmissible to humans.
Brazil, which exported more than 5 million metric tons of chicken products last year, first confirmed outbreaks of the highly pathogenic avian flu among wild birds in May 2023 in at least seven states.
The disease is not transmitted through the consumption of poultry meat or eggs, the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.
“The Brazilian and world population can rest assured about the safety of inspected products, and there are no restrictions on their consumption,” the ministry said.
UK faith leaders urge PM to tone down migration rhetoric
- Downing Street has strongly rejected the claims but the religious leaders asked him to “reconsider the language the government uses“
- The 25 signatories instead called for a “more compassionate narrative”
LONDON: UK religious leaders on Friday called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to tone down his language about migration, after comparisons were made to an inflammatory speech in the 1960s.
Labour leader Starmer this week announced tougher new policies to tackle high levels of migration, in an attempt to stem a growing loss of support to the hard right.
In a speech, he said the UK risked becoming “an island of strangers,” prompting comparisons to similar phrasing in the late politician Enoch Powell’s so-called “rivers of blood” speech about the dangers of uncontrolled immigration in 1968.
Downing Street has strongly rejected the claims but the religious leaders, including Church of England bishops, senior Muslim and Jewish clerics, asked him to “reconsider the language the government uses.”
“Our concern is that the current narrative, which presents only one side of the debate, will only drive public anxiety and entrench polarization,” they wrote.
“When you refer to the ‘incalculable’ damage done by uncontrolled migration, you are in danger of harming migrant members of our communities and strengthening those who would divide us,” they added.
Former human rights lawyer Starmer’s hardening tone has shocked some of his parliamentary colleagues and a YouGov poll published Friday indicated that half of Labour voters now have a negative opinion of him.
The 25 signatories instead called for a “more compassionate narrative,” pointing out that many migrants had become “part of our national story and fabric.”
“Our country would be so much poorer without them,” they added.
Starmer’s plans include restrictions on recruiting from abroad for the social care sector, doubling the length of time before migrants can qualify for settlement and new powers to deport foreign criminals.
The religious leaders said people who had come to the UK legitimately under rules set by previous governments, working and paying tax.
“Framing this as somehow unfair only feeds the politics of grievance and division,” they added.
The letter was sent to Starmer after his speech on Monday, The Guardian newspaper reported.
It quoted a Downing Street spokesperson as saying: “We are clear that migrants make a massive contribution to the UK, and would never denigrate that.
“Britain is an inclusive and tolerant country, but the public expect that people who come here should be expected to learn the language and integrate.”
