The AI Threat We’re Not Talking About
By Sam Hunter and Seamus Hughes September 28, 2026 AI employees are raising concerns about an extinction-level event. But there’s a more immediate threat. Large language models. Artificial general intelligence. Sentience. The singularity. All terms that a few years ago were barely in the lexicon. Now that they’re becoming commonplace in discussions about artificial intelligence (AI), it's important to introduce one more. Abliterated AI. The word combines “ablate,” meaning
Lawfare
5 hours ago
Country report: syria
September, 2026 By: Burit Boonpirom © Timothy A Clary, AFP Syria has long struggled with instability driven by extremism and sectarian violence. From 1970 to 2024, Syria was ruled by a regime dominated by a religious minority group known as the Alawites, an offshoot of Shia Islam. This minority-led regime, run by the dictatorship of Hafez al-Assad and later his son Bashar al-Assad, was characterized by mass killings and repression of the population, laying the groundwork for
Genocide Watch
9 hours ago
Egypt shuts down one of the last independent news outlets
By The Associated Press October 27, 2026 Credit: Roger Anis/AP An Egyptian court ordered the closure of one of Egypt’s last independent news outlets Tuesday after convicting its editor-in-chief of operating a website without a license, a major blow to the country’s shrinking press freedom. The publication, Mada Masr, said its editor-in-chief and founder, Lina Attalah, was released after paying a fine equivalent to about $53,400. She had been detained for seven hours after the
Associated Press
10 hours ago
Court Verdicts for Wartime Sexual Violence Show Disparities
By Selma Melez-Pezo October 27, 2026 Credit: BIRN An analysis of Bosnian court verdicts in cases of wartime sexual violence shows deep inconsistencies in sentencing, a tendency to give more weight to mitigating circumstances, and a failure to recognise the long-term impact on survivors. The woman was 26 years old when she was raped in wartime Sarajevo in 1992. She lived in the Grbavica neighbourhood, which was controlled by Serb forces. Heading to the market one day, she and
Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN)
14 hours ago
The Problem of Political Advertising on Social Media
By Sue Halpern October 24, 2019 At a House Financial Services Committee hearing, on Wednesday, Facebook’s C.E.O., Mark Zuckerberg, struggled to elucidate his company’s political-advertising policy.Photograph by Al Drago / Getty In the course of the 2016 Presidential election, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton spent eighty-one million dollars on Facebook ads. With a little more than a year to go until the next election, candidates have already spent more than sixty-three millio
The New Yorker
14 hours ago
Child Recruitment and Militarization in MENA and West Africa (Part 1)
By Elisabeth Lucetta A boy poses with a Kalashnikov assault rifle during a gathering of newly-recruited Houthi fighters in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa on 16 July 16, 2017 (AFP/Getty Images) Summary: Armed conflicts across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and West African regions have exposed millions of CAAFAG to violence, displacement, and prolonged social instability. In many conflict-affected communities, CAAFAG becomes involved with armed groups through coercion, e
Genocide Watch
14 hours ago
