Worlds Best High News

Petr Pavel claims a deputy prime minister is “intimidating” him over a blocked nomination Czech President Petr Pavel has accused a senior member of the country’s new Euroskeptic government of attempting to intimidate him into approving a controversial cabinet appointment. The incident is the latest clash between Pavel – a former NATO general – and the government led by Prime Minister Andrej Babis. Pavel said Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Petr Macinka crossed the line in text messages to a presidential aide while trying to overcome resistance to the nomination of lawmaker Filip Turek. Macinka leads the Motorists for Themselves party, part of the ruling coalition, where Turek serves as honorary president and regional head. Turek is accused by critics of Nazi sympathies and was recently alleged by the media to have deleted racist Facebook posts – claims he denies. “I can say for myself that I am not subject to any intimidation and I will continue to be guided primarily b...

A 19-year-old plaintiff alleges the platforms fueled depression and suicidal thoughts Global social media giants Meta, TikTok, and YouTube are facing their first-ever product liability trial starting Tuesday in Los Angeles over claims they knowingly designed their platforms to addict and harm children, according to court filings. The plaintiff, a 19-year-old California woman identified as K.G.M., says she became addicted to the companies’ platforms at a young age due to their attention-grabbing design. She alleges the apps contributed to her depression and suicidal thoughts and is seeking to hold the companies liable. Jury selection is set to begin on Tuesday. Her lawsuit is the first of several cases expected to go to trial this year focusing on what plaintiffs describe as “social media addiction” among children. It marks the first time the tech companies will have to defend themselves at trial over alleged harm caused by their products, the plaintiff’s lawyer Matthew Bergman said...

There is no certainty that MEPs will move forward despite Trump revoking his tariffs threat European Parliament lawmakers have declined to resume ratifying a key trade agreement with the US, which they suspended last week amid the dispute over Greenland. The decision on whether to unfreeze the Turnberry Agreement was postponed until next Wednesday, trade committee chair Bernd Lange said after a closed-door debate on Monday. Lange cited lingering uncertainty about a NATO “framework” for US access to the Danish autonomous island and its mineral resources, which has eased but not resolved tensions with Washington. US President Donald Trump withdrew his threat of trade tariffs against nations opposing his bid to acquire Greenland following a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte last Wednesday. In response to Trump’s earlier pressure, MEPs had shelved ratification of the trade deal initially unveiled by Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Turnberry,...

Russia and other states are tightening regulation of deepfakes as they become a national security issue rather than a technological curiosity For most of modern history, “big politics” operated in conditions of information scarcity and an excess of interpretation. The digital age has flipped that equation. Today we face a scarcity of authenticity and an excess of content. Deepfakes – fabricated videos and images, often with audio, generated by artificial intelligence – are cheap and capable of undermining the most basic foundation of social interaction: trust in public speech and visual evidence. The internet is now saturated with such material. Surveys suggest that roughly 60% of people have encountered a deepfake video in the past year. Some of these creations are harmless or absurd, like exaggerated AI images of nine-story snowdrifts in Kamchatka that even circulated in the United States. But the technology is increasingly feeding serious political tension. The Indo-Pakistan...

The Pentagon now views the alleged danger from Moscow as “manageable” The Pentagon has downgraded the alleged threat level from Russia in its newly released US National Defense Strategy. A similar document issued under the previous administration of President Joe Biden in October 2022, less than a year after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, described Moscow as an “acute threat.” But the updated defense strategy, published by the War Department on Friday, referred to Russia as “a persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members for the foreseeable future.” The document also stressed that Moscow “possesses the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, which it continues to modernize and diversify, as well as undersea, space, and cyber capabilities that it could employ against the US Homeland.” It said the fighting between Moscow and Kiev has proven that Russia “retains deep reservoirs of military and industrial power,” as well as “national resolve required to sustain a prot...