How to navigate the ethical landscape of artificial intelligence

PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron named Francois Bayrou as his fourth prime minister of 2024 on Friday, tasking the veteran centrist with steering the country out of its second major political crisis in the last six months.
The priority for Bayrou, a close Macron ally, will be passing a special law to roll over the 2024 budget, with a nastier battle over the 2025 legislation looming early next year. Parliamentary pushback over the 2025 bill led to the downfall of former Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s government.
Bayrou, 73, is expected to put forward his list of ministers in the coming days, but will likely face the same existential difficulties as Barnier in steering legislation through a hung parliament comprising three warring blocs. His proximity to the deeply unpopular Macron will also prove a vulnerability.
Jordan Bardella, the president of the far-right National Rally party, said they would not be calling for an immediate no-confidence motion against Bayrou.
France’s festering political malaise has raised doubts about whether Macron will complete his second presidential term, which ends in 2027. It has also lifted French borrowing costs and left a power vacuum in the heart of Europe, just as Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House.
Macron spent the days after Barnier’s ouster speaking to leaders from the conservatives to the Communists, seeking to lock in support for Bayrou. Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally and the hard-left France Unbowed were excluded.
Any involvement of the Socialist Party in a coalition may cost Macron in next year’s budget.
“Now we will see how many billions the support of the Socialist Party will cost,” a government adviser said on Friday.
NO LEGISLATIVE ELECTION BEFORE SUMMER
Macron will hope Bayrou can stave off no-confidence votes until at least July, when France will be able to hold a new parliamentary election, but his own future as president will inevitably be questioned if the government should fall again.
Bayrou, the founder of the Democratic Movement (MoDem) party which has been a part of Macron’s ruling alliance since 2017, has himself run for president three times, leaning on his rural roots as the longtime mayor of the south-western town of Pau.
Macron appointed Bayrou as justice minister in 2017 but he resigned only weeks later amid an investigation into his party’s alleged fraudulent employment of parliamentary assistants. He was cleared of fraud charges this year.
Bayrou’s first real test will come early in the new year when lawmakers need to pass a belt-tightening 2025 budget bill.
However, the fragmented nature of the National Assembly, rendered nigh-on ungovernable after Macron’s June snap election, means Bayrou will likely be living day-to-day, at the mercy of the president’s opponents, for the foreseeable future.
Barnier’s budget bill, which aimed for 60 billion euros in savings to assuage investors increasingly concerned by France’s 6 percent deficit, was deemed too miserly by the far-right and left, and the government’s failure to find a way out of the gridlock has seen French borrowing costs push higher still.

ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan’s party on Friday filed a petition against Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi and other officials over “firing” on its supporters during last month’s protest in Islamabad, which the party says killed at least 12 people and injured more than a hundred others.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party on Nov. 24 led thousands of supporters to Islamabad, seeking to pressure the government to release the ex-premier from jail and order an audit of Feb. 8 national election results. The protests resulted in clashes that Pakistan’s government says killed four law enforcers and injured hundreds of others.
The PTI says at least 12 of its supporters were killed and another 38 sustained injuries due to firing by law enforcers near Islamabad’s Jinnah Avenue on Nov. 26, while 139 of its supporters were still “missing.” Pakistani authorities have denied the deaths, saying security personnel had not been carrying live ammunition during the protest.
“On the 26th November, 2024 when thousands of peaceful demonstrators had assembled on the Jinnah Avenue Islamabad, the lights were switched off and the armed personnel/snippers got on top of all the adjacent buildings,” PTI Chairman Gohar Khan said in a complaint filed in a local court in Islamabad on Friday.
“The law enforcing agency persons equipped with teargas machines started profuse firing adulterating the entire atmosphere with tear gas, smoke and suffocation. Flurry of firing by the snippers followed by indiscriminate straight firing at the crowd resulted in bullet injuries causing instant deaths and the panic stricken people started running who too were sprayed with bullet fires.”
The party has named PM Sharif, Interior Ministry Mohsin Naqvi, Defense Minister Khawaja Asif, Information Minister Ataullah Tarar, Islamabad police chief Ali Nasir Rizvi and others as accused persons. It requested the court to accept the complaint, issue non-bailable warrants for the accused persons and punish them as provided by law.
The government has accused Khan’s party of waging a “propaganda” regarding the Islamabad protest, following statements by several PTI members that gave varied accounts of casualties.
The coalition government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif formed two task forces in the aftermath of the Islamabad protest: one to identify and take legal action against rioters and another to track and bring to justice suspects behind what the government described as a “malicious campaign” to spread “concocted, baseless and inciting” online news, images and video content against the state and security forces.
The PTI has staged several protests this year to demand the release of Khan and to challenge results of the Feb. 8 national election, which it says were manipulated to favor its opponents. The Pakistani government and election authorities deny this.
Last month’s protests were by far the largest to grip the capital since the poll, while Khan, who remains a popular figure in Pakistan despite being in prison and facing several court cases, has also threatened to launch a civil disobedience movement.