Latest News
Israeli strikes kill 14 in Lebanon as Pentagon holds security talks
State-run media reported at least 14 people were killed in Israeli air attacks on villages in southern Lebanon. Lebanese and Israeli military delegations are holding security talks at the Pentagon.
The Friday assaults came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israeli forces had crossed the Litani River in Lebanon, which runs about 30 kilometres (about 19 miles) north of their shared border, in an extended ground incursion.
The “ceasefire” that came into effect on April 17 and was extended for 45 days on May 17 after indirect discussions mediated by the United States, failed to prevent Israel’s current military operation from beginning.
ISRAEL-LEBANON NEGOTIATIONS
Lebanon was expected to urge Israel to halt its continuous attacks, which have accelerated in recent days, during Friday’s talks at the Pentagon.
The Lebanese delegation comprises six officers, headed by the army’s director of operations, Georges Rizkallah.
Brigadier General Amichai Levin, head of the strategic division in the army’s planning directorate, is in Washington for the negotiations on the Israeli side, an Israeli military official said.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun informed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that a ceasefire with Israel is vital. Aoun “emphasised the need to exert all efforts to reach a ceasefire, considering it an essential gateway to moving on to any other step”, said a statement from his office, referring to a phone call.
The statement noted that Rubio repeated the US administration’s commitment to building on the results of earlier ambassador-level conversations between Israel and Lebanon in Washington, and expressed his support for Lebanon’s stability, independence and sovereignty.
During the call, Rubio praised Aoun’s “courage and vision in pursuing direct negotiations with Israel”, Tommy Pigott, a spokesperson for the US Department of State, told reporters.
Hezbollah “is fully responsible for the ongoing fighting,” Rubio said, adding that the armed group must immediately cease its attacks.
‘KILLING OR INJURING THE EQUIVALENT OF 11 KIDS EVERY 24 HRS’
In Friday’s attacks on southern Lebanon, four persons were killed in an Israeli hit on a building in the village of Abbasiyeh, near the city of Tyre, the National News Agency (NNA) said. NNA claimed that another individual was killed in a separate strike on Deir Qanoun en-Nahr.
Eight Syrians were killed in attacks on the al-Harthiyeh region on the fringes of the town of Adloun in Lebanon’s Sidon district.
Earlier on Friday, an Israeli drone strike on the town of Aba in Nabatieh province killed a Lebanese police officer.
Israeli forces also carried out a new wave of air strikes on the cities of as-Sarafand and Khirbet Selm, NNA stated. Israeli aeroplanes also bombed a house in the town of Harayib, wounding a number of people. And Israel launched further strikes, targeting the towns of Gandouriyeh, Froun and al-Mansouri in southern Lebanon.
The United Nations reported 15 children had been killed and 62 injured in Lebanon during the past week.
The UN children’s agency, UNICEF, called the findings “staggering”, and highlighted that children must be safeguarded at all times during conflict under international humanitarian law.
The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health has said that 77 children have been murdered or injured in the last week alone, UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires told a media briefing in Geneva.
“Seven days, 15 kids dead 62 hurt. This is an average of 11 youngsters every single day. Most of these children were hit by air attacks in south Lebanon, we understand. “Yesterday seven children were killed and 30 injured,” he stated.
A HUMANITARIAN DISASTER
Several relief agencies are concerned that they would be forced to withdraw from southern Lebanon due to continuous attacks.
Since March 2, Israel’s military has displaced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese from their homes and they need urgent humanitarian aid.
“If the security situation worsens, we might have to evacuate some areas. “There are some red lines that we cannot cross for the security of our teams,” Jeremy Ristord, with medical NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF), told Al Jazeera.
“Some 40 hospitals in the south are already closed,” he said.
“On top of that, rescue teams are already under a lot of strain as they adapt their interventions to the degrading security situation,” said Ristord, adding that rescuers are worried about “double-tap strikes” by Israel.
“Sometimes they can’t even get in.”
He said 126 civil defence workers have been killed and 310 wounded during the fighting since March – “that’s four casualties a day.”
ISRAELI MILITARY ‘FIRING HEAVY ARTILLERY’ AT HEZBOLLAH
The Israeli military also issued compulsory evacuation warnings Friday for seven more towns in southern Lebanon, two of them roughly 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited troops along the border, his office said in a video.
He said Israeli forces had crossed the Litani River in Lebanon and advanced, and were also acting in Beirut and the Bekaa Valley as part of efforts against Hezbollah across the Lebanese front.
“Netanyahu made a surprise visit to the Lebanese border on Friday confirming that Israeli troops are now positioned north of the Litani River; there has been a focus of Israeli firepower … throughout Nabatieh district,” said Al Jazeera’s Obaida Hitto reporting from Tyre in Lebanon.
Israeli troops have breached Hezbollah’s second lines of security, and are currently “heavily bombarding” the armed group’s third lines of defence, Hitto added.
Latest News
Amazon raised worries about Anthropic AI models before US crackdown, source says
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was among tech titans who raised security concerns to senior Trump administration officials this week over Anthropic’s most advanced AI models, a person familiar with the subject told Reuters.
Jassy’s presence underscores the dramatic step taken by Anthropic on Friday to shut down its newest models worldwide under national security demands from the administration of President Donald Trump.
The San Francisco-based AI startup, which has confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering, had previously warned about hacking capabilities of its Mythos model and held it back from wide release, but earlier this week, Anthropic rolled out a public version, called Fable, with what it described as cybersecurity safeguards.
That brief release was over Friday. In a blog post, Anthropic said the U.S. government notified the company it believes there is a way to bypass, or “jailbreak,” a protection against using the model to uncover cybersecurity flaws.
In a blog post, Anthropic said the bypass only revealed “minor” security weaknesses that other publicly available models may find.
The Trump administration told the business to prevent any foreign nationals, inside or outside the U.S., from utilising both its latest models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, Anthropic stated. Anthropic responded by saying it would block access to the models worldwide.
Amazon will not say if it had spoken to government officials regarding Anthropic’s models.
“It is not unusual for governments to ask us for advice about potential security issues because we are a leading cloud provider serving a large number of customers in the public and private sectors,” an Amazon spokeswoman said. “When they happen, we don’t disclose the details of these discussions.”
EXPORT RESTRICTIONS
Earlier Saturday, tech news site The Information highlighted Jassy’s concerns. The Information later reported, citing a U.S. official, that the administration was unlikely to require other AI companies to adhere to limits comparable to those placed on Anthropic.
Reuters could not immediately confirm plans by the Trump administration to regulate other corporations.
The U.S. government’s prohibitions were an export control, Anthropic stated in its blog post. The Bureau of Industry and Security of the U.S. Commerce Department, which supervises export controls, did not react right away to a request for comment.
Officials issued the export control “reluctantly” after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei “refused” to “fix the jail break or de-deploy the model”, White House adviser David Sacks stated in a social media post on Saturday.
“The hope now is that Anthropic remediates the safety issue, the export control is lifted, and Fable goes back into general release,” wrote Sacks, co-chair of Trump’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and once the White House’s AI czar.
Some advocates of export limits were puzzled by the Trump administration’s move because it also applies to allied nations, not only rivals.
“This wasn’t thought out very well,” said Jimmy Goodrich, a senior scholar at the University of California’s Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation. “It even prohibits Canadians and Brits working at Anthropic from doing research and development.”
The directive came as a previous fight between Trump administration officials and Anthropic was simmering down among portions of the U.S. government.
Latest News
Met Office forecasts windy weather in Karachi
The weather report said that the port city will have hot and humid weather with cloudy sky and maximum temperatures will hover between 34 and 36 Celsius.
Humidity ratio remained 66% in the air in morning which is predicted to remain between 55 to 75% during day, Met Office stated.
After days of searing hot weather with excessive humidity, Karachi reverted to Seabreeze on Saturday.
The sea wind, a critical factor that controls coastal temperatures, returns, making the usually heat-beaten metropolis more bearable. The influx of humid air from the Arabian Sea provides a relief to residents.
Health officials are urging the public to keep taking measures, particularly during the high afternoon hours. Still, it’s best to stay hydrated, not to get direct sun and use sun protection.
Karachi, being coastal, generally depends on the sea wind to keep the excessive heat at bay. The recent interruption of the breeze had sent temperatures soaring and the city was humid enough to feel considerably hotter.
Business
Aurangzeb says IMF had not asked for a tariff on solar panels
He disputed allegations that the government had considering taxing solar panels before the budget. ‘There was never any such demand from the IMF and the topic was never discussed,’ he said.
Aurangzeb stated in a media interaction that the government is working on a set of structural reforms in the energy sector to bring down electricity rates, improve the business environment and increase the competitiveness of major industries, according to a federal minister.
In reply to questions on the high energy costs and capacity charges carried over by successive governments, the minister said expensive power continues to pose a serious problem to industry including manufacturing, information technology, mining and other energy-intensive industries.
He said the government, in partnership with Energy Minister Awais Leghari, had already taken steps to remove cross-subsidies for industry and was pursuing changes through wheeling policy and other measures to increase efficiency in the electricity sector.
Read More : Solar panels, inverters, lithium batteries’ prices soar ahead of budget
The government is moving from short-term relief to more extensive, long-term structural reforms, the minister said. These efforts are to be expected to bear fruit in the coming years rather than immediately, he said.
Privatisation of energy distribution companies (DISCOs) is a crucial part of the reform agenda. The minister said three DISCOs had already been awarded expression of interest (EOI) and two more EOIs will soon be awarded. He said he was certain that the first batch of distribution businesses would be handed over to private sector management by the end of the year, with the rest to follow in phases.
There would need to be more regulatory control to accompany privatisation and work was beginning to ensure the regulatory system would be robust and effective, he said.
He also emphasised the ambitions to shift away from the existing single-buyer energy market model, controlled through the Central Power Purchasing Agency (CPPA), to a competitive multi-buyer system. “The change will help dismantle existing monopolistic structures and improve market efficiency,” he said.
-
Latest News4 weeks agoICC board meeting in India: Mohsin Naqvi gets invitation
-
Business1 month agoThe IMF mission has arrived in Pakistan for discussions regarding the budget.
-
Business4 weeks agoOil hits 2-week high following drone strike on UAE nuclear power facility
-
Business1 month agoIn the open market, flour prices increase by Rs 700 per mound.
-
Latest News4 weeks agoThis week is anticipated to see a decision about Mohsin Naqvi’s journey to India.
-
Entertainment4 weeks agoG7 finance leaders look to address inequities as trade tensions fray unity
-
Latest News5 days agoShehbaz, Zardari discuss key issues as PPP hints at budget support
-
Latest News1 month agoFazlur Rehman declares nationwide demonstrations in response to the assassination of Maulana Idrees.
