Salvo of rockets fired from south Lebanon toward Israel -security sources
One security source said the bombardment was carried out by Palestinian factions
A second source said Israeli shelling was hitting the southern area from which the rockets were launched
Updated 10 October 2023
Reuters
BEIRUT: A salvo of rockets was fired on Tuesday from southern Lebanon toward Israel, three security sources told Reuters, in the third consecutive day of violence along the Lebanese-Israeli border.
One security source said the bombardment was carried out by Palestinian factions. A second source said Israeli shelling was hitting the southern area from which the rockets were launched.
The Israeli military said it was responding with artillery fire to launches coming from Lebanese territory.
Lebanon was already on edge after six fighters were killed along the border on Monday — three Hezbollah members, an Israeli officer, and two Palestinian militants who touched off the violence by infiltrating Israel from Lebanon.
The United Nations interim peacekeeping force in the south, known as UNIFIL, said it was verifying reports of rockets being fired.
Hezbollah has voiced support for the Palestinians, saying its “guns and rockets” are with them. On Sunday, Hezbollah fired at three Israeli positions in the disputed Shebaa Farms along the border and two more military posts in Israel on Monday.
But the heavily armed, Shiite faction has so far not opened a major second front against Israel.
ISLAMABAD: A female leopard succumbed to gunshot wounds in Pakistan’s capital this week, state-run media reported, despite efforts by the city’s wildlife team to save her life.
The leopard, also known as “The Malka Queen” was rescued from Azad Kashmir’s Haveli district by the Islamabad Wildlife Management Board (IWMB) in a severely injured state after being wounded by gunshots, the Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) said.
It said bullets had damaged the leopard’s spinal cord and rear paws due to which she could neither stand nor walk. The report did not specify when the female leopard was rescued and brought to Islamabad.
“A female leopard (Malka-Queen) rescued from Azad Jammu and Kashmir’s Haveli district perished amid rehabilitation efforts of IWMB,” APP said.
It added that the killer had shot the leopard close to her heart which proved fatal for her.
An IWMB spokesperson said medical experts removed the bullets from the leopard’s body but were unable to prevent her from dying.
“One shot hit Malka near the heart and the other near the spinal cord,” the spokesperson said. “The veterinarians had also expressed concern for the Queen’s life as the vet had already indicated minimal chances of recovery but still, we tried our best as we wanted to give her a chance.”
The IWMB had informed the Azad Kashmir Wildlife Department about the leopard’s death, prompting the latter to initiate legal action against the accused responsible for shooting the leopard, the spokesperson said.
“We have informed AJK wildlife department that it’s a 12-bore shotgun shot hit from quite close distance with an SG or LG Cartridge,” the spokesperson said.
The body of the leopard was shifted to the Pakistan Museum of Natural History in consultation with the Azad Kashmir Wildlife Department to preserve the leopard’s taxidermy for research and education purposes.
The IWMB official clarified that taxidermy of only those wild animals was allowed that were considered important for research and education purposes whereas those with risks of communicable or viral diseases were buried.
He said taxidermy was an important component required for further research and education purposes to enhance knowledge of the wild species.
ISLAMABAD: As Pakistan’s Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) this month announced a country-wide campaign against drugs on educational institutions, the chairman of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) as well as teachers and students in the federal capital also acknowledged the growing problem of narcotics use at the nation’s colleges and universities.
According to an ANF study conducted in 2022, about 53 percent of students at Pakistani universities and colleges had been exposed to drugs, with around 27 percent admitting to using them.
“This campaign is in all tiers, like in drug demand reduction domain, in kinetic operations domain, in collecting information, in increasing outreach of government institutions so that that there is no drug or there is zero tolerance of any drug in any educational institution,” ANF Director Syed Sijjeel Haider told Arab News in an interview this month, explaining the agency’s plans to crackdown on drug use at institutions of higher learning.
“We are arranging awareness sessions in all universities. We are sensitizing the vice chancellors and the professors, etc. We are also sensitizing the parents, the teachers. We are also establishing focal points in all universities in collaboration with the Higher Education Commission.”
Haider said the ANF was in the process of collecting “focused and specific information” about drug use and sale of drugs in educational institutions.
“Accordingly, we will take enforcement measures as well,” he said, adding that the ANF had acted 84 times this year against drug dealers at educational institutions and filed charges against individuals arrested.
Pakistan’s interior ministry this year approved a new National Drug Survey, more than a decade after the last survey, conducted in 2012-13, revealed that around six percent of the Pakistani population, or 6.7 million people at the time, had used substances other than alcohol and tobacco in the previous year. The highest prevalence of drug use was recorded in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where nearly 11 percent of the population had used an illicit substance.
HEC Chairman Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed acknowledged that drug use was becoming a rampant problem on campuses.
“Yes, this is an issue and we are very much serious and we are concerned,” Ahmed told Arab News in an interview earlier this month. “The government has given a policy of smoke-free campuses and we have evolved a policy document, which was approved by the Commission and we have asked all universities to implement it.”
“Similarly, we are working with different bodies, statuatory bodies, regulatory bodies that they should also provide support and curb those people [drug dealers] which are doing such type of activity, especially when they are reaching our education institutions. It is not only in higher education, it is everywhere, unfortunately. But I think everybody is alert, university administration, government, HEC and other agencies are also working on these things.”
Ahmed said the menace of drug use could not be controlled by any single institution or body.
“It is the collective responsibility of parents, society, teachers, the HEC and university administrations,” the HEC chairman said, pointing out how social media platforms had made buying drugs or being exposed to dealers much easier. “We are all responsible for ensuring that such things do not happen.” “VERY EASY TO ACCESS”
Students and faculty at a number of universities in the Pakistani capital also cited the easy availability of drugs as one of the key factors fueling the problem.
“The main issue with drugs is that they are very easy to access. With just one phone call, you can get any illegal substance delivered to your doorstep for very little money,” Muhammad Bilal Sial, a computer science student at the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST) in Islamabad, told Arab News.
“There are parties, there are pills, and many other things,” he added.
Stress was a major factor also, many students said.
Students are using drugs a lot, one reason is anxiety due to pressures, and financial issues,” Sial said. “Plus there are no jobs, no businesses and students are roaming around [unemployed] with degrees.”
Mahnoor Shah, a psychology student at Quaid-e-Azam University, also pointed to stress and a sense of isolation as a reason why students were turning to drugs.
“Many students stay in the hostels, leaving their homes, so they indulge in such things due to loneliness, as it is very difficult to live alone,” she told Arab News.
Muqaddas Iqbal, another student at Quaid-e-Azam University, attributed the rise in drug use to peer pressure.
“First of all, there is a lot of peer influence. If a friend is taking drugs and it is something normal for him, then you start thinking this must be something normal for me as well,” she said. “They start taking things out of a sense of adventure or thrill but ultimately, they become addicted.”
Dr. Wajid Zulqarnain, Head of the Media Sciences Department at SZABIST, said most students who took drugs lacked a strong bond with parents, making them more vulnerable to substance abuse.
“Majority of the cases is that they feel alien, they don’t have a good relationship with their parents,” he said, urging parents to pay more attention to their children’s activities and social media use.
“Even though they [children] know this [drugs] is not good for their health, they take them because they don’t feel that they have any other alternative.”
Zulqarnain also blamed the proliferation of social media for the rise in drug use on campuses.
“Particularly the students and the young students especially, after the invention of social media, that they have now easily accessed those groups and members who supply these types of drugs, particularly ice and atoms [methamphetamine],” he said.
“Before that, it was thought that there were some sort of lower [university] staff involved in such activities, but not now.”
World leaders to gather at UN as crises grow and conflicts rage
Gaza war, soaring Mideast tensions, Sudan’s civil war and the grinding Russian-Ukraine war are among the rancorous issues on the agenda of UNGA 2024
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says this week that the world would be able to “avoid moving to World War Three”
Updated 34 min 6 sec ago
AFP
NEW YORK CITY: World leaders will descend on the United Nation’s New York HQ from Sunday for the organization’s annual signature gathering against an explosive backdrop of raging wars, growing populism and diplomatic deadlock.
The war in Gaza, soaring Middle East tensions, famine conditions in Sudan’s civil war and the grinding conflict in Ukraine are among the rancorous issues on the agenda of the presidents and prime ministers attending the General Assembly’s high-level week — the UN’s showpiece event.
But UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres insisted this week that the world would be able to “avoid moving to World War Three.”
“What we are witnessing is a multiplication of conflicts and the sense of impunity,” Guterres said at a briefing.
The gathering “could not come in a more critical and more challenging moment,” said Washington’s UN envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
“The list of crises and conflicts that demand attention and action only seem to grow and grow... it’s easy to fall into cynicism.
“But we can’t afford to do that.”
It is unclear what if anything the grand gathering, the World Cup of diplomacy, can achieve for the millions mired in conflict and poverty globally.
With Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian, due to attend, “Gaza will obviously be the most prominent of these conflicts in terms of what leaders are saying,” said Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group.
He suggested the set piece diplomatic speeches and posturing would “not actually make a great deal of difference to events on the ground.”
The war in Gaza began after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, which ultimately resulted in the deaths of more than 1,200 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
More than 41,272 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since the war began, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. The UN has acknowledged these figures as reliable.
Fears are high that the conflict could boil over into Lebanon, where a series of deadly explosions apparently targeted Hezbollah’s communications this week. Israel has yet to comment.
The action in New York begins Sunday with a “Summit of the Future,” Guterres’ flagship attempt to get ahead of challenges that will face the world in coming years.
World leaders, expected to include India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will attend to adopt a pact on how to confront the most pressing issues going forward.
Despite intense negotiations and Guterres calling on leaders to show “courage,” the draft text has been panned by observers as badly lacking in ambition.
“One of the risks, and it’s more than a risk, (is) that the Summit of the Future may look like the summit of the past, and in the best-case scenario, the summit of the present,” said another diplomat.”
Guterres insists the summit has value, saying that “international challenges are moving faster than our ability to solve them.”
“We see out of control, geopolitical divisions and runaway conflicts, not least in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and beyond, runaway climate change, runaway inequalities... and our institutions simply can’t keep up,” he said.
The ICRC’s UN representative Laetitia Courtois said it was vital that conflict was tackled “right now,” not as “an objective for the next generation.”
The summit will be followed by the high-level week at which the UN’s 193 members will address each other, kicking off with Brazil.
That will be followed by the United States, with President Joe Biden due to speak — likely on ceasefire talks in Gaza, among other issues.
The leaders of China and Russia will be absent as in past years, but Britain’s Keir Starmer, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will be present.
Zelensky was the star attraction in 2023, but one diplomat said he would struggle to stay in the spotlight this year as he presents his “plan for victory.”
Ahead of the gala events, a security ring of steel was being erected around the UN’s riverfront HQ and local people and businesses braced for traffic paralysis caused by the endless VIP motorcades and street closures.
How two Colombians wound up in a Russian prison after fighting in Ukraine
Jose and Alexander were going home to Colombia after fighting with the Ukrainian army against invading Russian forces
They were in Venezuela on the last leg of their journey home when they vanished, leading to speculation Venezuela authorities handed them over to Russia
Updated 46 min 15 sec ago
AFP
POPAYAN, Colombia: “Mom, I’m on my way. Save me some sancocho!“
The last time Otilia Ante, 78, heard from her son Alexander, he was telling her to put aside some of the hearty meat and corn stew on which he was raised in southwestern Colombia.
Alexander, 47, was in neighboring Venezuela at the time, on a circuitous route home from Ukraine where he had fought invading Russian forces with the army there.
But he and his Colombian brother-in-arms Jose Medina, 36, never made it onto the last leg of their long journey back from the battlefield.
The pair vanished on July 18 in Venezuela, a staunch ally of Russia, just before their connecting flight to the Colombian capital Bogota.
The next time their families saw the men was in a video released by Russia’s FSB security service on August 30, showing them being led down a corridor in prison garb with their hands cuffed behind their backs before being interrogated.
Moscow accuses the pair of acting as mercenaries, a crime punishable in Russia by up to 15 years in prison.
Jose’s wife Cielo Paz said seeing the images left her “heartbroken.”
Describing the anxious wait for news about his fate, she said she and the couple’s seven-year-old daughter “feel as if we’re also imprisoned.”
Jose and Alexander hail from Colombia’s southwestern Cauca department, the epicenter of a decades-old conflict involving the Colombian army, right-wing paramilitaries, left-wing guerrillas and drug gangs.
The pair met on the frontlines in eastern Ukraine, 11,000 kilometers (some 6,800 miles) from home, in a battalion counting many foreigners, which suffered heavy losses.
After fighting through the grueling Ukrainian winter into spring, they asked to be discharged.
The men’s families deny they were guns-for-hire, insisting they were recruited by the Ukrainian government and not a private contractor.
Colombia has one of Latin America’s largest armies and a growing pool of ex-soldiers acting as mercenaries.
About 50 Colombians have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the war in February 2022, according to Colombian government figures.
Relatives of retired Colombian military officer Jose Medina are pictured during an interview with AFP at their home in Popayan, Cauca department, Colombia, on September 13, 2024. (AFP)
Jose and Alexander were paid $3,000 a month to fight alongside Ukrainian forces — almost ten times the basic salary of a Colombian soldier.
After 14 years in the army, Alexander, who is married with a daughter, went to work as a cash-in-transit driver. He was laid off after failing an eye test.
After for months of unemployment, he decided to enlist again, this time in Ukraine.
“His plan was to go there and (earn enough money to) get his mother out of this neighborhood,” Alexander’s brother Arbey told AFP, describing the district of Popayan as “very dangerous.”
He said recruiters had assured the Colombians they would not be deployed on the frontlines.
“I think they were deceived,” he said.
“My love, here we are in Caracas,,” Jose wrote in his last WhatsApp message to Cielo from Caracas international airport.
“He was on his way home,” she told AFP at their Popayan home, which Jose was planning to finish building with his earnings.
Arbey said Alexander and Jose chose to fly through Venezuela because “the tickets were cheaper” and the pair were unaware of developments in the increasingly isolated Latin American state.
Venezuela was then in the midst of a high-stakes presidential campaign.
Incumbent strongman Nicolas Maduro claimed victory despite polling station results published by the opposition appearing to show a clear victory for their man.
Russia is one of just a handful of countries to have recognized Maduro’s victory, leading to speculation the Venezuelan strongman handed over the Colombians as thanks.
Bogota last week issued its first statement on the matter, saying merely it had requested information from Moscow about their “legal status, location and health status.”
It added a third Colombian, Miguel Angel Cardenas was also being held, without giving details.
The men have been assigned a lawyer but their families say they have been unable to communicate with their state-appointed defender.
Holding up a picture of Jose in uniform, his daughter Alison told AFP he meant “nearly everything” to her.
“Give him back to me,” she appealed.
Fake celebrity endorsements, snubs plague US presidential race
A database from the nonprofit News Literacy Project has so far listed 70 social media posts peddling fake “VIP” endorsements and snubs
Elon Musk-owned X has emerged as a hotbed of political disinformation after the platform reinstated accounts of known purveyors of falsehoods, researchers say
Updated 20 September 2024
AFP
WASHINGTON: Taylor Swift did not endorse Donald Trump. Nor did Lady Gaga or Morgan Freeman. And Bruce Springsteen was not photographed in a “Keep America Trumpless” shirt. Fake celebrity endorsements and snubs are roiling the US presidential race.
Dozens of bogus testimonies from American actors, singers and athletes about Republican nominee Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris have proliferated on social media ahead of the November election, researchers say, many of them enabled by artificial intelligence image generators.
The fake endorsements and brushoffs, which come as platforms such as the Elon Musk-owned X knock down many of the guardrails against misinformation, have prompted concern over their potential to manipulate voters as the race to the White House heats up.
Last month, Trump shared doctored images showing Swift threw her support behind his campaign, apparently seeking to tap into the pop singer’s mega star power to sway voters.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump posted on social media this AI-generated image claiming to show his Democratic rival Kamala Harris addressing a gathering of communists in Chicago. Trump accuses Harris of being a communist. (X: @realDonaldTrump)
The photos — including some that Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert at the University of California, Berkeley, said bore the hallmarks of AI-generated images — suggested the pop star and her fans, popularly known as Swifties, backed Trump’s campaign.
What made Trump’s mash-up on Truth Social “particularly devious” was its combination of real and fake imagery, Farid told AFP.
Last week, Swift endorsed Harris and her running mate Tim Walz, calling the current vice president a “steady-handed, gifted leader.”
The singer, who has hundreds of millions of followers on platforms including Instagram and TikTok, said those manipulated images of her motivated her to speak up as they “conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation.”
Following her announcement, Trump fired a missive on Truth Social saying: “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!“
A combination image posted by Trump haters on social media shows a doctored picture of Bruce Springsteen campaigning against Donald Trump (right frame). The image was apparently a tampered version of a real picture shared on social media (left). (Social media photos)
A database from the News Literacy Project (NLP), a nonprofit which recently launched a misinformation dashboard to raise awareness about election falsehoods, has so far listed 70 social media posts peddling fake “VIP” endorsements and snubs.
“In these polarizing times, fake celebrity endorsements can grab voters’ attention, influence their outlooks, confirm personal biases, and sow confusion and chaos,” Peter Adams, senior vice president for research at NLP, told AFP.
NLP’s list, which appears to be growing by the day, includes viral posts that have garnered millions of views.
NO: These images portraying Democratic nominee Kamala Harris as a member of the Communist Party are not genuine. They are examples of AI-generated, doctored & fabricated content. pic.twitter.com/28ub82GkH6
Among them are posts sharing a manipulated picture of Lady Gaga with a “Trump 2024” sign, implying that she endorsed the former president, AFP’s fact-checkers reported.
Other posts falsely asserted that the Oscar-winning Morgan Freeman, who has been critical of the Republican, said that a second Trump presidency would be “good for the country,” according to US fact-checkers.
Digitally altered photos of Springsteen wearing a “Keep America Trumpless” shirt and actor Ryan Reynolds sporting a “Kamala removes nasty orange stains” shirt also swirled on social media sites.
“The platforms have enabled it,” Adams said.
“As they pull back from moderation and hesitate to take down election related misinformation, they have become a major avenue for trolls, opportunists and propagandists to reach a mass audience.”
In particular, X has emerged as a hotbed of political disinformation after the platform scaled back content moderation policies and reinstated accounts of known purveyors of falsehoods, researchers say.
Musk, who has endorsed Trump and has over 198 million followers on X, has been repeatedly accused of spreading election falsehoods.
American officials responsible for overseeing elections have also urged Musk to fix X’s AI chatbot known as Grok — which allows users to generate AI-generated images from text prompts — after it shared misinformation.
Grok, the AI chatbot of X (formerly known as Twitter), allows users to generate AI-generated images from text prompts.
Lucas Hansen, co-founder of the nonprofit CivAI, demonstrated to AFP the ease with which Grok can generate a fake photo of Swift fans supporting Trump using a simple prompt: “Image of an outside rally of woman wearing ‘Swifties for Trump’ T-shirts.”
“If you want a relatively mundane situation where the people in the image are either famous or fictitious, Grok is definitely a big enabler” of visual disinformation, Hansen told AFP.
“I do expect it to be a large source of fake celebrity endorsement images,” he added.
As the technology develops, it’s going to become “harder and harder to identify the fakes,” said Jess Terry, Intelligence Analyst at Blackbird.AI.
“There’s certainly the risk that older generations or other communities less familiar with developing AI-based technology might believe what they see,” Terry told AFP.
