Beijing has called for diplomacy after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged countries to join Washington’s economic campaign against Tehran China has refused to join a US plan to “squash” Iran’s economy, rejecting Washington’s push to be part of the “toughest sanctions in history” against the Islamic Republic. On Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called on American allies and other countries to choose sides and stop doing business with Iran, as Washington prepares what he touted as “the greatest coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world.” In an interview with CNBC, Bessent described the plan, expected to be unveiled on Monday, as “a one-two punch” combining a naval blockade with “the toughest sanctions in history.” He claimed it would “squash” the Iranian economy and “collapse this ...
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Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party secured 255 votes in Thursday’s voting, against his rival’s 88 Bangladeshi lawmakers have elected Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, a candidate of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), as the country’s 23rd president. The former secretary-general of the BNP secured 255 parliamentary votes in the presidential election, while Oli Ahmed, a former army colonel from the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami-led alliance, received 88 votes. The president is the constitutional head of state but the position is largely ceremonial. The polling was held on Thursday evening, with all of the country’s 349 lawmakers casting their votes. This was the first presidential election in 35 years to feature more than one candidate. In previous elections, the political opposition never contested the ruling party. Read mor...
Locals in the Lebanese capital have labeled a US-brokered framework peace deal with Israel “a disgrace and humiliation” for their country Residents of a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut have said they will not trade the group’s weapons for reconstruction money, while decrying a US-brokered framework peace agreement between Lebanon and Israel. The Dahiyeh neighborhood in the south-western part of the Lebanese capital has suffered extensive destruction from strikes by West Jerusalem since the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2023 and its subsequent spillover into Lebanon. The deal, signed between the Lebanese and Israeli governments in late June, envisages the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) pulling out from southern Lebanon, to be replaced by the Lebanese military, which would oversee the disarmament of Hezbollah. Read more Isra...
One of the company’s models escaped its testing environment and hacked another firm’s database ChatGPT maker OpenAI has announced it is decelerating the development of its AI models, citing security risks. In July, one of the company’s advanced AI bots unknowingly escaped its testing environment, gained internet access, and hacked into the servers of the Hugging Face online repository for AI models and datasets. OpenAI said in a statement on Tuesday that the Hugging Face incident and the overall rise in the capabilities of its artificial intelligence models “have added urgency to our work on strengthening our monitoring, alignment and containment safeguards across all stages of the training process.” “As models become more capable, the risks associated with developing and testing them internally also grow. Our standards for monitoring, alignment, and security must stay ahead of tho...
Emir Kusturica says the Google-owned platform is seeking to suppress any dissent contradicting the mainstream narrative Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica has accused YouTube of waging a “war” against people who think independently and “tell the truth,” after the Google-owned platform deleted his channel without any warning. YouTube removed Kusturica’s ‘My Life’ channel on Wednesday, without publicly elaborating on the decision, according to several media reports. The project, produced with Sputnik’s Serbian service, contained more than 200 videos and had roughly 30,000 subscribers. Some of the videos are dedicated to the fate of Yugoslavia, the clash of civilizations, and the collision between Christian and Western values. After the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, YouTube banned both Sputnik and RT as the West imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia...
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has sanctioned Tomoko Akane and a senior trial lawyer amid a dispute over the Netanyahu arrest warrant The US has imposed sanctions on two senior International Criminal Court (ICC) officials, accusing The Hague-based institution of overstepping its authority. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday designated ICC President Tomoko Akane and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye, describing the court as a “corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate.” The designations are a part of a campaign announced by Rubio last month to “systematically dismantle the threat posed” by the ICC to US sovereignty. Rubio has accused the court of targeting nationals of countries that have neither consented to its jurisdiction nor ratified the Rome Statute. The ICC previously investigated alleged cr...