Globe Unleashed (2025)

08/09/2022

Queen Elizabeth, Britain's longest-reigning monarch and the nation's figurehead for seven decades, has died aged 96, Buckingham Palace said on Thursday.

"The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon," Buckingham Palace said in a statement.

"The King and The Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow."

Her eldest son Charles, 73, automatically becomes king of the United Kingdom and the head of state of 14 other realms including Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Queen Elizabeth II, who was also the world's oldest and longest-serving head of state, came to the throne following the death of her father King George VI on Feb. 6, 1952, when she was just 25.

17/08/2022

Alphabet Inc's Google is combining the eyes and arms of physical robots with the knowledge and conversation skills of virtual chatbots to help its employees fetch soda and chips from breakrooms with ease.

The mechanical waiters, shown in action to reporters last week, embody an artificial intelligence breakthrough that paves the way for multipurpose robots as easy to control as ones that perform single, structured tasks such as vacuuming or standing guard.

Google robots are not ready for sale. They perform only a few dozen simple actions, and the company has not yet embedded them with the "OK, Google" summoning feature familiar to consumers.

While Google says it is pursuing development responsibly, adoption could ultimately stall over concerns such as robots becoming surveillance machines, or being equipped with chat technology that can give offensive responses, as Meta Platforms Inc and others have experienced in recent years.

When asked to help clean a spill, Google's robot recognizes that grabbing a sponge is a doable and more sensible response than apologizing for creating the mess.

The robots interpret naturally spoken commands, weigh possible actions against their capabilities and plan smaller steps to achieve the ask.

13/08/2022

Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born novelist who spent years in hiding because of writing blasphemous against Islam, was stabbed in the neck and torso, onstage at a lecture in New York state on Friday and airlifted to a hospital, police said.

After hours of surgery, Rushdie was on a ventilator and unable to speak on Friday evening after an attack.

Rushdie, 75, was being introduced to give a talk to an audience of hundreds on artistic freedom at western New York's Chautauqua Institution when a man (identified as Hadi Matar, 24) rushed to the stage and lunged Rushdi.

Stacey Schlosser, who witnessed the attack, told The Associated Press news agency that Rushdie was stabbed six to eight times before the attacker was restrained.

“A man jumped up on the stage from I don’t know where and started what looked like beating him on the chest, repeated fist strokes into his chest and neck,” said Bradley Fisher, who was in the audience.

Andrew Wylie, his book agent, wrote in an email. "Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged."

12/08/2022

The Ministry of Interior has cancelled the no-objection certificate (NOC) of ARY Communications Private Ltd, citing "adverse reports from agencies" as the reason behind the decision, it emerged on Friday.

The notification issued by the ministry, dated August 11, to the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) reads: "The NOC issued in favour of M/S ARY Communications Private (Ltd). is cancelled with immediate effect and until further orders on the basis of adverse reports from agencies."

Reporting on the development, ARY News' English website called the cancellation by "the coalition government led by PML-N" an "economic murder of more than 4,000 media workers associated with the news channel". The report also called it a "a new move against the journalist fraternity", saying this was done without any notice.

12/08/2022

Australia's competition watchdog said on Friday that Alphabet Inc's Google unit was ordered by the country's Federal Court to pay A$60 million ($42.7 million) in penalties for misleading users on collection of their personal location data.

The court found Google misled some customers about personal location data collected through their Android mobile devices between January 2017 and December 2018.

Google misled users into believing "location history" setting on their android phones was the only way location data could be collected by it, when a feature to monitor web and applications activity also allowed local data collection and storage, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) said.

The watchdog, which estimates that 1.3 million Google account users in Australia may have been affected, had started the proceedings against the company and its local unit in October 2019.

12/08/2022

Russia and Ukraine accused each other of shelling Europe's biggest nuclear power plant, compounding fears of a disaster as the U.N. chief said it should be made a demilitarised zone and Ukraine demanded that Russian forces withdraw from it.

Ukraine's Energoatom agency said the Zaporizhzhia complex in south-central Ukraine was struck five times on Thursday, including near where radioactive materials are stored. Russian-appointed officials said Ukraine shelled the plant twice, disrupting a shift changeover, Russia's TASS news agency said.

The U.N. Security Council met on Thursday to discuss the situation and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on both sides to stop all fighting near the plant.

Russia seized Zaporizhzhia in March after invading Ukraine on Feb. 24. The plant, near the front line in the fighting, is held by Russian troops and operated by Ukrainian workers.

At the Security Council meeting, the United States backed the call for a demilitarised zone and urged the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit the site.

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said the world was being pushed "to the brink of nuclear catastrophe, comparable in scale with Chornobyl". He said IAEA officials could visit the site as soon as this month.

11/08/2022

The first grain ship to depart from Ukraine under a U.N.-brokered deal docked in Turkey on Thursday after 11 days at sea, Refinitiv data showed, and the ship's agent in Turkey said it would continue to Egypt after unloading part of its cargo.

The Razoni set sail from Ukraine's Odesa port on Aug. 1 under a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey between Russia and Ukraine. Eleven other ships have left since then.

While the Razoni was initially headed to Lebanon's Tripoli, Ukraine's embassy in the country said the buyer had refused delivery due to a five-month delay and the ship was looking for a new customer.

The ship, which had since been at anchor off Turkey's southern coast, entered the port in Mersin Thursday afternoon, Refinitiv ship tracker data showed.

Kadir Soyer, agency director at Mersin-based shipping agent Toros, said the ship would offload 1,500 tonnes of corn in Turkey and later continue to Egypt with the rest of its 26,527-tonne load.

Toros was only handling the docking and offloading in Turkey and would not be involved in the ship's trip to Egypt, he said.

11/08/2022

Former U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he declined to answer questions during an appearance before New York state's attorney general in a civil investigation into his family's business practices, citing his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and daughter Ivanka Trump had fought unsuccessfully to avoid appearing for testimony in state Attorney General Letitia James's probe into whether the Trump Organization inflated real estate values to obtain favorable loans and understated asset values to get tax breaks.

James has said her investigation has uncovered significant evidence that the Trump Organization, which manages hotels, golf courses and other real estate, gave banks and tax authorities misleading financial information to obtain benefits.

Trump left her office about six hours after arriving, suggesting he faced questioning for much of the day. In a social media post after the deposition, Trump called it a "very professional meeting," while boasting about his company.

He also attempted to link James's investigation to Monday's FBI search of his Florida home Mar-a-Lago, which represented an escalation of a federal probe into whether he illegally removed records from the White House as he left office in January 2021.

10/08/2022

China, which Russia has sought as an ally since being cold-shouldered by the West over its invasion of Ukraine, has called the United States the "main instigator" of the crisis.

In an interview with the Russian state news agency TASS published on Wednesday, China's ambassador to Moscow, Zhang Hanhui, accused Washington of backing Russia into a corner with repeated expansions of the NATO defence alliance and support for forces seeking to align Ukraine with the European Union rather than Moscow.

"As the initiator and main instigator of the Ukrainian crisis, Washington, while imposing unprecedented comprehensive sanctions on Russia, continues to supply arms and military equipment to Ukraine," Zhang was quoted as saying.

"Their ultimate goal is to exhaust and crush Russia with a protracted war and the cudgel of sanctions."

The ambassador's reasoning closely followed one of Russia's own justifications of its invasion of Ukraine, which has resulted in thousands of deaths and the devastation of entire cities, as well as driving more than a quarter of the population to flee their homes.

10/08/2022

Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk sold $6.9 billion worth of shares in the electric vehicle maker, saying the funds could be used to finance a potential Twitter deal if he loses a legal battle with the social media platform.

"In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close *and* some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock," he said in a tweet late on Tuesday.

Musk also said he would buy Tesla stock again if the Twitter deal does not close.

09/08/2022

Russia unleashed ground forces, air strikes and artillery as it pressed ahead with a grinding offensive designed to complete its capture of eastern Ukraine, but Kyiv said its troops were putting up fierce resistance and holding the line.

Heavy fighting was reported on Tuesday in frontline towns near the eastern city of Donetsk, where Ukrainian officials said Russian troops were launching waves of attacks as they tried to seize control of the industrialised Donbas region.

The Ukrainian military said it had repelled ground assaults in the direction of the cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka and had wiped out Russian reconnaissance units, including near Bakhmut.

Russia gave a different assessment. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov claimed his forces had captured a factory for Moscow on the edge of the eastern town of Soledar, other Russian-backed forces said they were in the process of "clearing out" the heavily fortified village of Pisky, and Russian media reported that a group of mercenaries from the Wagner Group had dug in near the city of Bakhmut.

Some of the places Russia is targeting like Pisky are heavily fortified settlements crisscrossed with tunnels and trenches where Ukrainian forces have long been dug in.

British military intelligence, which is helping Ukraine, said that Russia's push towards the city of Bakhmut had been its most successful operation in the Donbas in the last 30 days, but said it had still only managed to advance around 10 km (6 miles). It said Russian forces in other areas had not gained more than 3 km over the same period.

09/08/2022

Snap Inc, owner of the popular messaging app Snapchat, rolled out its first parental control tools on Tuesday, which will allow parents to see who their teens are talking to, but not the substance of their conversations.

The new feature called Family Center is launching at a time when social media companies have been criticized over a lack protection for kids. In October, Snap and its tech peers TikTok and YouTube testified before U.S. lawmakers accusing the companies of exposing young users to bullying or steering them toward harmful content.

Parents can invite their teens to join Family Center on Snapchat, and once the teens consent, parents will be able to view their kids’ friends list and who they have messaged on the app in the past seven days. They can also confidentially report any concerning accounts.

However, parents will not be able to see private content or messages sent to and from their teens, said Jeremy Voss, Snap's head of messaging products, in an interview.

Snap said it plans to launch additional features in the coming months, including notifications to parents when their teen reports abuse from a user.

08/08/2022

Elon Musk on Saturday challenged Twitter Inc Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal to a public debate about the percentage of bots on the social media platform.

"Let him prove to the public that Twitter has
He also started a poll asking users whether less than 5% of Twitter daily users are fake/spam.

Twitter on Thursday dismissed a claim by Musk that he was hoodwinked into signing a $44 billion agreement to buy the company.

Musk filed a countersuit against Twitter on July 29, escalating his legal fight against the company over his bid to walk away from the purchase agreement.

Earlier on Saturday, Musk said that if Twitter could provide its method of sampling 100 accounts and how it confirmed that the accounts are real, his deal to buy the company should proceed on its original terms.

08/08/2022

China's military announced fresh military drills on Monday in the seas and airspace around Taiwan - a day after the scheduled end of its largest ever exercises to protest against last week's visit to Taipei by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

China's Eastern Theatre Command said it would conduct joint drills focusing on anti-submarine and sea assault operations - confirming the fears of some security analysts and diplomats that Beijing would continue to maintain pressure on Taiwan's defences.

Pelosi's visit to Taiwan last week infuriated China, which regards the self-ruled island as its own and responded with test launches of ballistic missiles over Taipei for the first time, as well as ditching some lines of dialogue with Washington.

The duration and precise location of the latest drills is not yet known, but Taiwan has already eased flight restrictions near the six earlier Chinese exercise areas surrounding the island.

Beyond the firing of 11 short-range ballistic missiles during the four earlier days of exercises, Chinese warships, fighter jets and drones manoeuvred extensively around the island.

Shortly before those drills ended on Sunday, about 10 warships each from China and Taiwan manoeuvred at close quarters around the unofficial median line of the Taiwan Strait, according to a person familiar with the situation who is involved with security planning.

05/08/2022

Russia and the United States said on Friday they were ready to discuss a prisoner swap, a day after a Russian court sentenced basketball star Brittney Griner to nine years in prison for a drugs offence.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden had previously agreed on a diplomatic channel that should be used to discuss potential prisoner exchanges.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington was prepared to engage with Moscow through diplomatic channels established to handle the issue and Griner's conviction had further compounded the injustice that had been done to her.

The United States has already made what Blinken called a "substantial offer" to secure the release of Americans detained in Russia, including Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan.

Washington has offered to exchange Russian arms trafficker 𝐕𝐢𝐤𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐁𝐨𝐮𝐭 (𝐌𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡) for Griner and Whelan, sources familiar with the situation have told Reuters. Russia had tried to add convicted murderer 𝐕𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐦 𝐊𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐤𝐨𝐯, imprisoned in Germany, to the proposed swap, a source familiar with the proceedings also told Reuters.

04/08/2022

A group of MNAs associated with the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) — a multi-party alliance with representation of ruling PML-N — on Thursday filed a reference with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) seeking the disqualification of former prime minister Imran Khan from holding public office for allegedly receiving prohibited funding from a number of foreign donors.

The reference was submitted by MNA Barrister Mohsin Nawaz Ranjha to Chief Election Commissioner Sikander Sultan Raja, carrying signatures of lawmakers Agha Hassan Baloch, Salahudeen Ayubi, Ali Gohar Khan, Syed Rafiullah Agha and Saad Waseem Sheikh.

In its verdict on Tuesday, the election watchdog ruled that PTI had “wilfully” and “knowingly” received prohibited funding from a number of foreign donors. In its order, the commission had also said that it was “constrained to hold that Imran Khan failed to discharge his obligations as mandated under the Pakistani statutes”.

The ruling coalition began demanding disqualification of and strict legal action against the PTI chief soon after the ECP announced its verdict in the case.

04/08/2022

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits increased last week, suggesting some softening in the labor market, though overall conditions remain tight.

That was underscored by other data on Thursday showing a sharp decline in layoffs announced by U.S.-based companies in July. The still-low level of unemployment claims and brisk pace of hiring support views that the economy is not in recession despite GDP contracting in the first half.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 6,000 to a seasonally adjusted 260,000 for the week ended July 30, the Labor Department said.

Unadjusted claims fell 9,825 to 205,587 last week. A big jump in filings in Connecticut was offset by notable decreases in Massachusetts, Kentucky and Ohio.

Seasonally adjusted claims broke above 230,000 at the beginning of June, hitting an eight-month high of 261,000 in mid-July. However, they remain below the 270,000-300,000 range that economists say would signal a slowdown in the labor market.

The number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid increased 48,000 to 1.416 million during the week ending July 23. The so-called continuing claims, a proxy for hiring, were the highest in three months.

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04/08/2022

A Russian court sentenced U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner to nine years in prison on Thursday after finding her guilty of deliberately bringing cannabis-infused v**e cartridges into Russia, a ruling that President Joe Biden called "unacceptable."

Griner was arrested in mid-February, and her case threw the Texan athlete into the geopolitical maelstrom triggered when President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, propelling U.S.-Russian relations to a new post-Cold War low.

Griner's sentencing could now pave the way for a U.S.-Russia prisoner swap that would include the 31-year-old athlete and an imprisoned Russian who was once a prolific arms dealer.

Griner had admitted having the v**e cartridges containing hashish oil but said it was an honest mistake. Before the verdict, she pleaded with a Russian judge not to "end her life" with a harsh prison sentence, before breaking down in tears in court. The court also fined her 1 million roubles ($16,990).

Globe Unleashed

08/09/2022

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