Latest news with #spheres
Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
250 years ago, religion played a pivotal role in the American Revolution. Today, clergy are resuming the fight
'All of us are deeply concerned about the preservation of democracy, because without democracy, faith cannot flourish,' said Reverend Fred Small, a community minister at Arlington Street Church in Boston. 'Christian nationalism is not a future that any of us embrace, although there are many — the majority of us — are Christians.' The group was specifically protesting the Trump administration's Advertisement Among all Christians, 51 percent disapproved of Trump's job as president in an April Advertisement The march drew inspiration from religious leaders' prominent involvement in the American Revolution and the Civil Rights movement, Lerner said. Specifically, the group called for legislative protections for vulnerable communities as the Trump administration intensifies its 'In our country, having people taken off the streets and no opportunity to defend themselves — that is not an America we have been working on for thousands of years,' Lerner said. In the American Revolution, parishioners across religious sects used scripture to 'Clergymen were using their churches to talk about how this struggle against Britain was not just a political battle over taxes and tariffs,' Lerner said. 'It was one they saw through a moral lens, a religious lens, a spiritual lens.' Churches in the South also played a Clergy drew On Friday, the group of clergy stopped several times along the 12-mile route, drawing more than 300 people throughout its march, said Rabbi David Lerner, senior rabbi at Temple Emunah. Some joined for a few miles while others committed to the long walk. Advertisement While resting in Cambridge, Small, who walked all 12-miles, said he was feeling the exhaustion. He has arthritis in one knee and was wearing a knee race under his black clerical suit. 'It is a trivial sacrifice that I'm making compared to people who are presently incarcerated in an ICE facility, or worse yet, a Gulag in El Salvador,' he said. Speakers at the march cited scripture in their speeches and said Trump's actions are antithetical to their religions. Small held a sign reading reading 'Welcome the stranger,' referencing Matthew 25:35. 'The reason we have separation of church and state is not that they should live in separate spheres, but we can do our thing — worship, have integrity — and have a moral voice and stand up for justice,' said Willie Barnett, a pastor at Great Road Church in Acton. Barnett said his participation in the march doesn't indicate partisanship, but having 'a moral voice for liberty.' Small said it was important to him to not only confine his religion to a place of worship but practice it in the world. 'Universally, all faith traditions call for justice — visiting the prisoner, comforting and uplifting those who are suffering,' he said. 'The current administration seems to preach and live a gospel of cruelty.' As the group walked toward the Longfellow Bridge to enter Boston, cars honked and people rolled down their windows, cheering. As the group approached Boston Common, rain started to drizzle. It gave way to the sun as about 100 people gathered in front of the Embrace statue, praying and listening to speeches. Advertisement Mariama White Hammond, the founding pastor of New Roots AME Church in Dorchester and former chief of energy, environment, and open space under Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, led the protesters in several songs. Barnett said the walk was encouraging. 'A lot of us as ministers right now can be discouraged about the state of the world and also what it means to lead our congregations in these times,' he said. 'There's a great community coming together, sharing experiences as we walk, and finding hope.' Emily Spatz can be reached at
The Print
7 days ago
- Business
- The Print
India, Maldives share longstanding relationship built on mutual trust and confidence: Indian envoy
Talking about India's contributions to the Maldives' development, he highlighted the Greater Male Connectivity Project, aimed at enhancing regional infrastructure. In an interview with PSM News, Balasubramanian described bilateral ties as a 'deep-rooted and enduring partnership' and underscored the strength of diplomatic and economic cooperation between the two countries. Male, May 27 (PTI) India and the Maldives share a longstanding relationship built on mutual trust and confidence, Indian High Commissioner G Balasubramanian has said, expressing hope that their ties will continue to strengthen. 'Within this project, the Thilamalé Bridge, set to link Malé with Thilafushi, stands out as a major undertaking,' he said, reaffirming India's role in advancing economic growth through large-scale infrastructure investments. He recalled President Mohamed Muizzu's visit to India last year and said his historic trip laid the groundwork for closer bilateral cooperation, with ongoing efforts to translate the 'vision documents' signed between President Muizzu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi into actionable policies. 'These agreements are designed to deepen strategic ties and drive joint initiatives forward,' he added. The ties between India and the Maldives came under severe strain after Muizzu, known for his pro-China leanings, took charge of the top office in November 2023. Within hours of his oath, he had demanded the withdrawal of Indian military personnel from his country. Subsequently, the Indian military personnel were replaced by civilians. There was a thaw in the relations as Muizzu vowed to boost the bilateral ties with India during his visit to Delhi in October last year. Balasubramanian expressed confidence that Maldives-India relations will continue to strengthen, with collaboration expanding across diplomatic, economic, and educational spheres. India has offered 300 scholarships to Maldivian students, supporting skill enhancement and educational opportunities in diverse sectors, he said, adding that these initiatives underscores India's broader commitment to fostering growth through knowledge and expertise. India has recently signed 13 MoUs with the Maldives for enhancing ferry services in the island nation, with an MVR 100 million grant, expanding maritime connectivity and uplifting community livelihoods. Earlier this month, India extended crucial financial support to the Maldives through the rollover of the USD 50 million Treasury Bill for one more year, a move the Maldivian government said will support its ongoing efforts to implement fiscal reforms for economic resilience. India has maintained that the Maldives is its key maritime neighbour and an important partner in the 'Neighbourhood First' policy and Vision 'MAHASAGAR' i.e. Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions. PTI RD ZH ZH This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.
The Citizen
21-05-2025
- Business
- The Citizen
All eyes on 17:30 White House meeting between Ramaphosa and Trump
All eyes on 17:30 White House meeting between Ramaphosa and Trump President Cyril Ramaphosa is scheduled to meet with US President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington DC today, in a high-stakes engagement aimed at easing diplomatic tensions and reaffirming South Africa's economic ties with its largest trading partner outside the continent. According to The Witness, the meeting, which is set to begin at 17:30 South African time (11:30 EDT), marks a significant moment in bilateral relations between the two nations, following months of strain fuelled by false claims of targeted persecution of Afrikaners in South Africa. Ramaphosa is expected to use the opportunity to set the record straight on South Africa's transformation policies and to reassure US leadership of the country's commitment to democratic values and inclusive economic growth. What to expect According to a programme advisory from the Presidency, Ramaphosa's day at the White House will unfold as follows: 17:30 (11:30 EDT) – President Trump formally receives President Ramaphosa 17:35 (11:35 EDT) – Ramaphosa signs the visitors' book 17:45 (11:45 EDT) – Working lunch with President Trump 18:45 (12:45 EDT) – Bilateral meeting between the two heads of state, including interaction with the media 19:30 (13:30 EDT) – Ramaphosa departs the White House The South African delegation includes high-ranking Cabinet ministers and prominent figures from the country's business and sporting spheres. South African delegation joining the president: Minister of International Relations and Co-operation Ronald Lamola Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition Parks Tau Minister of Agriculture John Steenhuisen Business leaders Johann Rupert and Adrian Gore Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi South African golf legends Ernie Els and Retief Goosen US representation On the American side, President Trump will be accompanied by: Vice President JD Vance Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau Elon Musk, in his capacity as special government employee for the Department of Government Efficiency Senior advisors Susie Wiles and Dr Massad Boulos Focus of the talks The talks are expected to cover a range of critical issues, including trade, geopolitical cooperation, and correcting recent misunderstandings in the diplomatic space. South Africa remains a key strategic partner for the United States, with more than $20b (approximately R358.4b) in annual trade and over 600 US companies operating in the country. Ramaphosa, speaking ahead of the meeting, said he was hopeful about the outcome. 'I'm looking forward to a very good outcome for our country, for our people, for jobs in our country, good trade relations, and to normalise relations between the two countries.' Also read: [Videos] Minister highlights strategic importance of Ramaphosa's meeting with Trump Breaking news at your fingertips… Follow Caxton Network News on Facebook and join our WhatsApp channel. Nuus wat saakmaak. Volg Caxton Netwerk-nuus op Facebook en sluit aan by ons WhatsApp-kanaal. Read original story on At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Grok's ‘white genocide' meltdown nods to the real dangers of the AI arms race
A version of this story appeared in CNN Business' Nightcap newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here. It's been a full year since Google's AI overview tool went viral for encouraging people to eat glue and put rocks on pizza. At the time, the mood around the coverage seemed to be: Oh, that silly AI is just hallucinating again. A year later, AI engineers have solved hallucination problems and brought the world closer to their utopian vision of a society whose rough edges are being smoothed out by advances in machine learning as humans across the planet are brought together to… Just kidding. It's much worse now. The problems posed by large language models are as obvious as they were last year, and the year before that, and the year before that. But product designers, backed by aggressive investors, have been busy finding new ways to shove the technology into more spheres of our online experience, so we're finding all kinds of new pressure points — and rarely are they as fun or silly as Google's rocks-on-pizza glitch. Take Grok, the xAI model that is becoming almost as conspiracy-theory-addled as its creator, Elon Musk. The bot last week devolved into a compulsive South African 'white genocide' conspiracy theorist, injecting a tirade about violence against Afrikaners into unrelated conversations, like a roommate who just took up CrossFit or an uncle wondering if you've heard the good word about Bitcoin. XAI blamed Grok's unwanted rants on an unnamed 'rogue employee' tinkering with Grok's code in the extremely early morning hours. (As an aside in what is surely an unrelated matter, Musk was born and raised in South Africa and has argued that 'white genocide' was committed in the nation — it wasn't.) Grok also cast doubt on the Department of Justice's conclusion that ruled Jeffrey Epstein's death a suicide by hanging, saying that the 'official reports lack transparency.' The Musk bot also dabbled in Holocaust denial last week, as Rolling Stone's Miles Klee reports. Grok said on X that it was 'skeptical' of the consensus estimate among historians that 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis because 'numbers can be manipulated for political narratives.' Manipulated, you say? What, so someone with bad intentions could input their own views into a data set in order to advance a false narrative? Gee, Grok, that does seem like a real risk. (The irony here is that Musk, no fan of traditional media, has gone and made a machine that does the exact kind of bias-amplification and agenda-pushing he accuses journalists of doing.) The Grok meltdown underscores some of the fundamental problems at the heart of AI development that tech companies have so far yada-yada-yada'd through anytime they're pressed on questions of safety. (Last week, CNBC published a report citing more than a dozen AI professionals who say the industry has already moved on from the research and safety-testing phases and are dead-set on pushing more AI products to market as soon as possible.) Let's forget, for a moment, that so far every forced attempt to put AI chatbots into our existing tech has been a disaster, because even the baseline use cases for the tech are either very dull (like having a bot summarize your text messages, poorly) or extremely unreliable (like having a bot summarize your text messages, poorly). First, there's the 'garbage in, garbage out' issue that skeptics have long warned about. Large language models like Grok and ChatGPT are trained on data vacuumed up indiscriminately from across the internet, with all its flaws and messy humanity baked in. That's a problem because even when nice-seeming CEOs go on TV and tell you that their products are just trying to help humanity flourish, they're ignoring the fact that their products tend to amplify the biases of the engineers and designers that made them, and there are no internal mechanisms baked into the products to make sure they serve users, rather than their masters. (Human bias is a well-known problem that journalists have spent decades protecting against in news by building transparent processes around editing and fact-checking.) But what happens when a bot is made without the best of intentions? What if someone whats to build a bot to promote a religious or political ideology, and that someone is more sophisticated than whoever that 'rogue employee' was who got under the hood at xAI last week? 'Sooner or later, powerful people are going to use LLMs to shape your ideas,' AI researcher Gary Marcus wrote in a Substack post about Grok last week. 'Should we be worried? Hell, yeah.'
Indian Express
28-04-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
Opinion In trade war with the US, China's strong language hides its frailties
'If war is what the US wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we're ready to fight till the end'. So declared a Chinese Foreign Ministry tweet in March when the Donald Trump administration raised tariffs over China's lack of cooperation in stemming the illegal flow of the opioid, fentanyl, into the US. The strong language coming out of Beijing coupled with the general perception of American policy being unstable or reversible, has allowed a narrative to quickly gain ground – including not least in India – that American President Donald Trump is the one most likely to blink first. However, while China certainly has the state capacity to not just weather the storm but to exploit it to advantage, its frailties are no less significant. Never waste a crisis The Trump tariffs are certainly an opportunity for Beijing to make a case for global leadership in the face of an unreliable and isolationist US. By describing Trump as 'a businessman by nature', used to cost-benefit analyses but incapable of long-term strategic planning, the Chinese are doing two things. One, running down Trump the individual and, by extension, the American system that produced him. Two, making a case for a strategy of responding to pressure with pressure and arguing that showing weakness will only invite further pressure. In the bilateral context, Beijing is thus using the Trump tariffs to legitimise and bring out in the open its decades-long strategy of countering American ingress into the Chinese market and to strengthen its policies of self-reliance. At the global level, Beijing is also trying to create the impression that it is both capable and willing to stand up to the US and trying to get other countries to do the same in the hope that the more countries there are that are unwilling to compromise with the US, the stronger China's own resistance. Chinese diplomats and commentators have particularly targeted American allies and partners – directly warning the Europeans against 'appeasement' of the US while promoting talks about 'regional economic integration' and restarting negotiations on a trilateral free trade agreement with Japan and South Korea. The Chinese have argued that Trump's tariff rollback on the rest of the world is an attempt to revive economic blocs and spheres of influence. While China professes its opposition to this and proclaims itself a champion of globalisation, a world divided into blocs is not necessarily a bad thing. To try and take over global hegemony from the US even as it preserves authoritarian rule at home was always going to be a long shot for China's rulers. Therefore, a world divided, where it is clearly the leader of one bloc, is the next best option for China. Tall talk In April, a Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesperson while stating explicitly that 'China and the US are not in talks on tariffs', also said that 'the US needs to show sincerity if it wants to talk…The US should revoke all unilateral tariffs on China if it wants to solve problems.' That Beijing should at all refer to talks with the US suggests that the assertive language masks other concerns. The Communist Party of China (CPC) general secretary and Chinese President Xi Jinping's meeting at the end of March with the heads of over 40 global corporations including American ones as well as Premier Li Qiang's announcement in mid-April of measures to support exporters and incentivise MNCs to keep investing in China might suggest an attempt to make use of opportunities created by the trade war. This also explains Xi's visits to Southeast Asia and, no doubt, the sudden desire to improve India-China ties with references to a 'dragon-elephant tango'. Other measures, however, suggest concerns about the fallout of the trade war domestically – steps have been announced, for example, to help businesses keep workers on their payroll and stimulate private sector investment. It is not surprising then that a Chinese White Paper on the trade war and other statements have been at pains to portray how useful bilateral trade has been for the American economy and consumers. Clearly, for the Chinese, as everywhere else, external challenges take a distant second place to more immediate domestic concerns. Youth unemployment has hit historic highs in China. The Covid pandemic was a spectacular failure of political accountability. The continuing anti-corruption campaign, meanwhile, suggests that the Augean stables of China's administration are far from being cleansed. It has not been easy for the CPC to get its people, particularly, the youth on board its domestic projects of 'national rejuvenation'. Consider such trends as tang ping or 'lying flat' – a reaction against the long hours of work expected from young Chinese for ever decreasing monetary returns or job satisfaction – or the lack of consumer confidence that continues to prevent the Chinese economy from executing a full post-pandemic economic recovery. Resilience or deflecting blame? Before the Trump tariffs, most Chinese possibly blamed the CPC and its leadership for their problems. The Chinese leadership might now be trying to use the opportunity to spin a narrative of standing up to what it has called bullying behaviour by the US. However, political exhortation and attempts to milk the tariff war with the US, whether for external or domestic political objectives, will have its limits. Eventually, they will reflect not so much China's resilience, as much as the Chinese leadership's ability to deflect blame.
