Day: September 18, 2023

Florida is such a gorgeous place to be. But right now, Florida is in danger — it is in danger from evil under its Sun. Let’s start at the beginning. All over, many are asking a simple question: Where’s Ron?

DeSantis and his collapsing campaign have not been seen much lately. That might be because Ron has other things on his mind – like evil. The food and Drug Administration has been recommending people get updated vaccines.

DeSantis is telling many of these people not to. I’d say that’s evil under the sun — wouldn’t you?

USA Today put it best: “Hello, and welcome to the great state of Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis is responsible for telling residents under 65 years old to defy the advice of the Food and Drug admission and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and not get the updated COVID-19 vaccine. LIVE FREE AND DIE, BABY!”

It’s true. Just WHAT does this evil piece of human waste think he’s doing? DeSantis (psycho, insurrection party, poor Florida) is pure evil incarnate. I like to call him Medusa’s brother, but that is actually an insult to Medusa.

DeSantis is losing his primary. He will never be President. He likely knows that. So, in his warped mind, he’s become MORE evil under the sun, more indifferent to the lives of his Florida constituents.

DeSantis has the distinction of being an unsociable, non-charismatic imp besides being a lousy governor and awful Presidential contender. But I shudder to think of anyone who heeds his words. We have already had so much DEATH and DESTRUCTION because of this man. We do not need more.

Ron’s term as Governor cannot end soon enough for me. And hopefully, when it does, we will never have to hear that whiny and insufferable voice again. So tell your Florida friends to please — for their own safety — turn away from DeSantis and his monstrous and evil actions.

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Just as many in the United States are starting to explore how to use artificial intelligence to make their lives easier, U.S. adversaries and criminal gangs are moving forward with plans to exploit the technology at Americans’ expense.

FBI Director Christopher Wray issued the warning Monday, telling a cybersecurity conference in Washington that artificial intelligence, or AI, “is ripe for potential abuses.”

“Criminals and hostile foreign governments are already exploiting that technology,” Wray said, without sharing specifics.

“While generative AI can certainly save law-abiding citizens time by automating tasks, it can also make it easier for bad guys to do things like generate deepfakes and malicious code and can provide a tool for threat actors to develop increasingly powerful, sophisticated, customizable and scalable capabilities,” he said.

Wray said the FBI is working to identify and track those using AI to harm U.S. citizens but added that the bureau is being cautious about employing AI itself.

“To stay ahead of the threat at the FBI, we’re determining how we can ethically and legally leverage AI to do our jobs,” he said.

When contacted by VOA, the FBI declined to elaborate on its concerns about employing AI. Nor did the bureau say when or if it has used AI, even on a limited basis.

Other U.S. national security agencies, however, are currently making use of AI.

The Department of Homeland Security is using AI to combat fentanyl trafficking, counter child sexual exploitation and protect critical infrastructure, according to department officials, even as they roll out guidelines governing its use.

“Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement last Thursday. “Our department must continue to keep pace with this rapidly evolving technology, and do so in a way that is transparent and respectful of the privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties of everyone we serve.”

DHS has also issued directives aimed at preventing its use of AI from being skewed by biased learning models and databases, and to give U.S. citizens a choice of opting out of systems using facial recognition technology.

But across multiple U.S. departments and agencies, the fear of the potential damage AI could cause is growing.

FBI officials, for example, warned in July that violent extremists and terrorists have been experimenting with AI to more easily build explosives.

And they said a growing number of criminals appear to be gravitating to the technology to carry out everything from petty crimes to financial heists.

It is China, though, that is driving the bulk of the concern.

National Security Agency officials have warned that Beijing started using AI to disseminate propaganda via what they described as a fake news channel last year.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” David Frederick, the NSA’s assistant deputy director for China, told a cybersecurity summit earlier this month.

“[Artificial intelligence] will enable more effective malign influence operations,” he added.

Such concerns have been bolstered by private cybersecurity companies.

Microsoft, for example, warned earlier this month that Chinese-linked cyber actors have started using AI to produce “eye-catching content” for disinformation efforts that has been gaining traction with U.S. voters.

“We can expect China to continue to hone this technology over time, though it remains to be seen how and when it will deploy it at scale,” Microsoft said.

For its part, China has repeatedly denied allegations it is using AI improperly.

“In recent years, some western media and think tanks have accused China of using artificial intelligence to create fake social media accounts to spread so-called ‘pro-China’ information,” Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told VOA in an email, following the publication of the Microsoft report.

“Such remarks are full of prejudice and malicious speculation against China, which China firmly opposes,” Liu added.

New York Fashion Week is generally known as a showcase for fashion designers, and the celebrities that wear their clothes. But several shows held on the sidelines are trying to call attention not only to fashion but to serious and difficult issues like sexual assault. VOA’s Rendy Wicaksana reports from New York

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in the U.S. Monday for a meeting later in the week with President Joe Biden amid unprecedented demonstrations in Israel against a planned overhaul of Israel’s judicial system. Also on the agenda is a possible U.S.-brokered deal for normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Thousands of protesters flocked to the airport Sunday night as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left for the U.S. for nearly a week-long visit.

“I am here along with thousands of other people who are all very worried about the democracy of our country and the place, our government, the actions of our government which are risking everything that has been built here over the past 70 years,” said Anat Refaeli, one of the protesters at the airport.

The demonstrators, who have been protesting in Israel for 37 consecutive weeks, vowed to follow Netanyahu everywhere he went in the U.S., starting with a meeting with business magnate Elon Musk.

Netanyahu further angered the protesters when he accused them of — in his words — “joining forces with the Palestine Liberation Organization, PLO, and Iran” in their activities, an accusation that the protesters are undermining Israel’s security and showing that Israel as weak and divided.

In a later statement, the Prime Minister’s office noted the anti-overhaul protesters would be demonstrating at the same time as pro-PLO activists who want President Biden to pressure Netanyahu to stop expanding settlements in the West Bank and take moves toward establishing a Palestinian state.

As he left for the U.S., Netanyahu said he would meet many world leaders — but first and foremost — President Biden on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

The prime minister said it was “heartwarming” to see how many requests for meetings with world leaders he had received, and he said he would try to meet as many of them as he could. The most important one is with President Biden it’s a meeting Netanyahu has been waiting for since his current government took office in late December.

Just a week later, his Justice Minister, Yariv Levin, introduced the plan for the judicial overhaul — a series of changes that would take power away from the Supreme Court and give more power to the Israeli parliament. One of the laws, called the Reasonableness clause, which takes away one of the Supreme Court’s tools to overrule government decisions, has already passed.

Supporters say it redresses a situation that had given Israel’s Supreme Court too much power. Opponents say it threatens Israeli democracy.

Aside from the judicial overhaul, Israeli analysts say the U.S. president will use his meeting with Netanyahu to gauge how far Israel is willing to go for a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia.

According to Israeli media reports citing unidentified American and Israeli sources, under an agreement, Saudi Arabia would get a defense deal with the U.S., including permission for a civilian nuclear program.

Israel would have normalized relations with the Arab country it sees as one of the most important in the Middle East and a gateway to peace agreements with other Arab states. The Palestinians would also get significant concessions from Israel.

It is this last part that President Biden wants to discuss with Netanyahu amid statements by Netanyahu’s cabinet ministers that Israel is not prepared to make deep concessions to the Palestinians.

Botswana has put restrictions on the movement of cloven-hoofed animals in the northeast of the country after an incursion of buffalo from Zimbabwe put cattle at risk of contracting possible foot-and-mouth disease.

Zimbabwe National Parks reports that more than 500 buffalo recently crossed into Botswana from the Hwange National Park in search of water and food.

Botswana authorities fear the buffalo could spread foot-and-mouth disease to the country’s cows, sheep and goats.

Botswana’s director of veterinary services, Kefentse Motshegwa, says movement restrictions have been imposed on cattle in the affected areas in an effort to stop the possible spread of the ailment. 

Veterinarians are testing cattle for foot-and-mouth disease, and farmers will be informed within 30 days of the outcome.

Last year, following an outbreak of the disease, the government culled more than 10,000 cattle to stop its spread.

Botswana’s acting agriculture minister, Karabo Gare, says it is important to fight the spread of the disease, but there is also a need to safeguard humans from the buffalo, which are dangerous animals. 

Wildlife management expert Erik Verreynne says buffalo are able to enter Botswana because of another large beast, elephants.

“We see more and more animals coming in as the government is battling to maintain the fences as elephants keep breaking them,” Verreynne said.

Local veterinarian and farmer Mbatshi Mazwinduma says there is a need to take quick steps to avoid the spread of foot-and-mouth disease. 

“The implications are that in these times of drought and in this time of lack of water resources, the buffaloes were hungry and thin; there is a risk that they may be shedding more virus and the government is doing all it can to round them up humanely, offer them water, and the ones that are depilated, to dispose of them humanely while also concurrently doing the necessary measures to make sure that the possibility of foot and mouth does not spread,” Mazwinduma said.

Buffalo are often linked with the sporadic outbreaks of foot and mouth in Botswana, affecting beef exports.

Botswana, one of Africa’s top beef producers, exports about 10,000 tons of beef annually to the European Union, where the country enjoys duty- and quota-free access. 

Ovidio Guzman, one of the sons of incarcerated Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, pleaded not guilty to U.S. fentanyl trafficking charges on Monday in federal court in Chicago, prosecutors said, three days after his extradition from Mexico.

Guzman, 33, is one of El Chapo’s four sons, known as “Los Chapitos,” who inherited their father’s trafficking empire after his conviction on U.S. murder and drug charges in 2019. “El Chapo” Guzman is serving a life sentence in a maximum-security prison in Colorado.

U.S. officials said Ovidio Guzman’s arrest and extradition represents a significant victory in the Biden administration’s campaign to stem the deadly flow of fentanyl across the southern border.

During a brief hearing under tight security, Guzman, wearing an orange jumpsuit with his ankles shackled, listened to the proceeding through a Spanish interpreter, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Guzman was briefly arrested in Culiacan in the northern state of Sinaloa in 2019. But President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador ordered him released after hundreds of Sinaloa Cartel gunmen overwhelmed security forces in the city.

Guzman was captured again in January after an intense firefight. The U.S. requested his extradition in February.

Two of the six counts Guzman faces carry a mandatory life sentence, prosecutors said, according to the Tribune. The U.S. agreed not to pursue the death penalty as part of its extradition negotiation with Mexico, the newspaper reported.

Guzman waived his right to a detention hearing and will be held without bail until trial, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago said. His next court date is scheduled for November.

Fentanyl, a highly addictive synthetic opioid, is responsive for nearly 200 American deaths a day, a toll that has strained U.S.-Mexico relations and put domestic pressure on the Biden administration to slow the spread of the deadly drug.

The Sinaloa Cartel is primarily responsible for manufacturing and exporting fentanyl across the border, according to U.S. officials.

In court papers, prosecutors said Ovidio Guzman and his brothers operated an international trafficking operation that transported drugs to the U.S. using airplanes, submarines, fishing boats and rail cars and reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.

The State Department has offered rewards worth millions of dollars for information leading to the capture of the Guzman brothers.

“El Chapo” Guzman rose to prominence at the helm of the Sinaloa Cartel and added to his infamy by escaping Mexican prisons not once but twice. He was extradited to the U.S. in 2017 and convicted in federal court in Brooklyn.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Elon Musk to strike a balance between protecting free expression and fighting hate speech at a meeting on Monday after weeks of controversy over antisemitic content on Musk’s social media platform X.

Earlier this month, Musk attacked the Anti-Defamation League, accusing the nonprofit that works to fight antisemitism of primarily causing a 60% decrease in U.S. ad revenue at X, without providing evidence.

Musk bought the platform, then known as Twitter, in October.

Musk previously joined a conversation on X with the hashtag #BantheADL, engaging with users who expressed white supremacist views, and asked followers whether he should poll the platform about banning the ADL.

“I hope you find within the confines of the First Amendment, the ability to not only stop antisemitism … but any collective hatred of a people,” Netanyahu said during the meeting that was broadcast live on X from Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California.

“I know you’re committed to that … but I encourage and urge you to find a balance,” Netanyahu said.

Musk responded by saying he was against antisemitism and against anything that “promotes hate and conflict,” repeating his previous statements that X would not promote hate speech.

Musk has said X should be a platform for people to post diverse viewpoints, but the company will limit the distribution of certain posts that may violate its policies, calling the approach “freedom of speech, not reach.”

The billionaire, who also runs Tesla and SpaceX, noted that he received more pushback from Tesla employees about the meeting with Netanyahu than “anything else I’ve ever done.”

Netanyahu and his nationalist-religious coalition are trying to limit some of the Israeli Supreme Court’s powers, arguing it is necessary to prevent political overreach by unelected judges.

Opponents say the changes could encourage corruption and abuses of power by removing effective oversight, and the issue has split Israeli society and raised concerns over Israel’s democratic health.

About 200 people protesting the judicial overhaul gathered outside Tesla’s California factory, where the event was held.

Musk and Netanyahu also discussed how to harness the benefits of the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, while limiting the risks to society, a concern Musk and others in the tech industry have raised in recent months.

“We stand today at a juncture for all humanity, where we have to choose between a blessing and a curse,” Netanyahu said, adding that AI could advance medicine but lead to risks like disrupting democracy.

Israel is considered a world-leader in AI, thanks to burgeoning computing and robotics industries that draw on talent developed in the technologically advanced conscript military.

Foreign investment in Israeli tech startups has plunged in the last year, partly due to a global slowdown and exacerbated by investor fears that the push to trim the Supreme Court’s powers would remove a key check and balance.

With foreign flows down sharply, the shekel has weakened by more than 8% versus the dollar this year.

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