الكاتب: kafej

Drones and explosives have targeted a convoy and two airbases.

United States troops in Iraq have been targeted in new attacks using drones and explosives, according to military and security sources.

Three attacks took place on Thursday, the sources said, adding to the more than 40 assaults that US and allied troops based across the Middle East have come under since the Israel-Hamas war started on October 7.

As well as two drone assaults at bases, a US-led coalition convoy was hit by an improvised explosive device (IED) blast in the vicinity of Mosul Dam.

The security sources said the patrol was accompanied by Iraqi counterterrorism forces and that a vehicle in the patrol was damaged. Three US troops sustained minor injuries but had returned to duty, the official added.

Drone attacks targeted American and coalition forces at the Ain al-Asad airbase west of Baghdad and al-Harir airbase in Erbil. Both drones were destroyed before reaching their target, the sources said.

A statement from Iraqi Kurdistan’s counterterrorism service added that the attack at al-Harir had caused a fire at one of its fuel depots, but added that US-led coalition forces had evacuated the airbase on October 20.

Since the war between Israel and Hamas began, US and coalition troops have been attacked at least 40 times in Iraq and Syria. So far, 56 American personnel have been injured in these attacks, although all have returned to duty, according to the Pentagon.

The US has accused Iran of “actively facilitating” rocket and drone attacks by Iranian-backed proxy groups on its forces in Iraq and Syria.

Tehran denies these claims, saying groups engaging in the attacks were doing so on their own accord.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian has said that Tehran “neither gives orders to the resistance groups across the region, nor stop them from taking decisions in their own countries based on their own interests”.

On Friday, he stated that it is “inevitable” that the scope of the war in Gaza will expand.

The groups in Iraq who have targeted US military assets say the attacks will continue as long as the US supports Israel in its war on Gaza.

The US has occasionally retaliated against Iranian-backed forces in the region, including a strike on October 26 in Syria.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin asserted in a statement that Washington “does not seek conflict and has no intention nor desire to engage in further hostilities”.

But he added that “these Iranian-backed attacks against US forces are unacceptable and must stop”.

Surgeons have performed the world’s first ever whole-eye transplant, a feat hailed as a breakthrough despite the patient not yet regaining his sight.

Doctors “never expected it to work at all”, patient Aaron James said, but the eye has shown signs of health, such as functioning blood vessels and a promising retina.

It has been six months since the 21-hour surgery, performed during a partial face transplant in New York, but the surgeon who led the procedure said Mr James, 46, may yet see out of his left eye again.

Warning: This article contains a graphic picture of the patient

“I don’t think anyone can claim that he will see. But by the same token, they can’t claim that he will not see,” Dr Eduardo Rodriguez said.

“The mere fact that we transplanted an eye is a huge step forward, something that for centuries has been thought about, but it’s never been performed.”

Mr James, a military veteran from Arkansas, survived a work-related high-voltage electrical accident that destroyed the left side of his face, his nose, his mouth and his left eye in June 2021.

He said he knew he might not regain his vision, but he had hoped that surgeons could “learn something to help the next person”.

“Hopefully this opens up a new path,” he said.

“It feels good. I still don’t have any movement in it yet. My eyelid, I can’t blink yet. But I’m getting sensation now,” he added.

Until now, doctors have only been able to transplant the cornea, the clear front layer of the eye.

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Initially, doctors were just planning to include the eyeball as part of the face transplant for cosmetic reasons, Dr Rodriguez said.

“If some form of vision restoration occurred, it would be wonderful, but… the goal was for us to perform the technical operation,” Dr Rodriquez said, adding they aimed to have the eyeball survive.

“At this point, I think we’re pretty happy with the result that we were able to achieve with a very technically demanding operation.”

Mr James’s eye will continue to be monitored, but right now it is not communicating with the brain through the optic nerve.

To encourage connection between the donor and recipient optic nerves, surgeons harvested adult stem cells and injected them into the optic nerve during the transplant, hoping they would replace damaged cells.

Transplantation of a viable eye opens many new possibilities, Dr Rodriguez said, even if sight is not restored in this case.

Other research teams are developing ways to connect nerve networks in the brain to sightless eyes through insertion of electrodes, for example, to allow vision, he said.

“If we can work with other scientists that are working on other methods of restoring vision or restoring images to the visual cortex, I think we’re one step closer,” he added.

Three years ago in Detroit, Robert Williams arrived home from work to find the police waiting at his front door, ready to arrest him for a crime he hadn’t committed.

Facial recognition technology used by officers had mistaken Williams for a suspect who had stolen thousands of dollars worth of watches.

The system linked a blurry CCTV image of the suspect with Williams in what is considered to be the first known case of wrongful arrest owing to the use of the AI-based technology.

The experience was “infuriating”, Mr Williams said.

“Imagine knowing you didn’t do anything wrong… And they show up to your home and arrest you in your driveway before you can really even get out the car and hug and kiss your wife or see your kids.”

Mr Williams, 45, was released after 30 hours in custody, and has filed a lawsuit, which is ongoing, against Detroit’s police department asking for compensation and a ban on the use of facial recognition software to identify suspects.

There are six known instances of wrongful arrest in the US, and the victims in all cases were black people.

Artificial intelligence reflects racial bias in society, because it is trained on real-world data.

A US government study published in 2019 found that facial recognition technology was between 10 and 100 times more likely to misidentify black people than white people.

This is because the technology is trained on predominantly white datasets. This is because it doesn’t have as much information on what people of other races look like, so it’s more likely to make mistakes.

There are growing calls for that bias to be addressed if companies and policymakers want to use it for future decision-making.

One approach to solving the problem is to use synthetic data, which is generated by a computer to be more diverse than real-world datasets.

Chris Longstaff, vice president for product management at Mindtech, a Sheffield-based start-up, said that real-world datasets are inherently biased because of where the data is drawn from.

“Today, most of the AI solutions out there are using data scraped from the internet, whether that is from YouTube, Tik Tok, Facebook, one of the typical social media sites,” he said.

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As a solution, Mr Longstaff’s team have created “digital humans” based on computer graphics.

These can vary in ethnicity, skin tone, physical attributes and age. The lab then combines some of this data with real-world data to create a more representative dataset to train AI models.

One of Mindtech’s clients is a construction company that wants to improve the safety of its equipment.

The lab uses the diverse data it has generated to train the company’s autonomous vehicles to recognise different types of people on the construction site so it can stop moving if someone is in their way.

Toju Duke, a responsible AI advisor and former programme manager at Google, said that using computer-generated, or “synthetic,” data to train AI models has its downsides.

“For someone like me, I haven’t travelled across the whole world, I haven’t met anyone from every single culture and ethnicity and country,” he said.

“So there’s no way I can develop something that would represent everyone in the world and that could lead to further offences.

“So we could actually have synthetic people or avatars that could have a mannerism that could be offensive to someone else from a different culture.”

The problem of racial bias is not unique to facial recognition technology, it has been recorded across different types of AI models.

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The vast majority of AI-generated images of “fast food workers” showed people with darker skin tones, even though US labour market figures show that the majority of fast food workers in the country are white, according to a Bloomberg experiment using Stability AI’s image generator earlier this year.

The company said it is working to diversify its training data.

A spokesperson for the Detroit police department said it has strict rules for using facial recognition technology and considers any match only as an “investigative lead” and not proof that a suspect has committed a crime.

“There are a number of checks and balances in place to ensure ethical use of facial recognition, including: use on live or recorded video is prohibited; supervisor oversight; and weekly and annual reporting to the Board of Police Commissioners on the use of the software,” they said.

Australia has committed to offering refuge to residents of Tuvalu who are displaced by climate disaster – in what has been hailed as a landmark agreement.

Tuvalu – a tiny group of low-lying islands in the remote Pacific Ocean, located midway between Australia and Hawaii – is one of the most at-risk nations in the world from climate change.

The Australian government announced on Friday that it would provide assistance in response to a major natural disaster, health pandemic or military aggression.

Residents of the islands will be allowed to live, work and study in Australia.

Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, signed a bilateral agreement with Tuvalu covering climate change, security and mobility, which he said makes Australia Tuvalu’s “partner of choice”.

The union will be regarded as a “significant day in which Australia acknowledged that we are part of the Pacific family,” Mr Albanese told a news conference in the Cook Islands, where he has been attending a meeting of Pacific leaders.

He shared a picture of himself and Tuvalu prime minister, Kausea Natano, holding the signed agreements, on X, formerly known as Twitter, adding the caption: “Australia and Tuvalu are family. And today we are elevating our relationship to a more integrated and comprehensive partnership.”

The treaty – which will safeguard Tuvalu’s future while respecting its sovereignty – will be known as the ‘Falepili Union’, Mr Albanese said.

He explained Falepili is a Tuvaluan word for the “traditional values of good neighbourliness, care and mutual respect”, adding: “Put simply, it means being a good neighbour”.

Another post, showing a picture of the two men shaking hands, added: “This new partnership recognises climate change as the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of Tuvalu.

“We will be working together on climate adaptation, work arrangements and security.”

Initially, Australia will create a special visa for up to 280 Tuvaluans each year – equating to 2.5% of its population of just over 11,000.

Funds will also be earmarked for land reclamation in Tuvalu, in order to expand land in the capital, Funafuti, by around 6%.

The full text of the agreement has not yet been released – but the Sydney Morning Herald reported that all 11,200 residents would be offered refuge if climate change made the islands uninhabitable.

Tuvalu’s former foreign minister, Simon Kofe, told the COP27 climate summit last year that it plans to build a digital version of itself – replicating islands and landmarks to preserve its history and culture – as fears grow about the impact of climate disaster.

By 2050, it is estimated that half the land area of the capital, Funafuti, will be flooded by tidal waters daily.

Agreement to limit China’s influence in Pacific

The pact will require the parties to consult each other before signing security or defence agreements with third parties.

Under the deal, Australia will be given an effective veto over the establishment of any security pact or defence partnership between Tuvalu and China, in a major win for the government’s efforts to limit Beijing’s military influence in the Pacific.

Tuvalu is one of just 13 nations to maintain an official diplomatic relationship with Taiwan.

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There are already several independent Pacific states that have associations or “compacts” with larger outside countries.

Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Marshall Islands all have a Compact of Free Association with the United States, giving Washington authority over their defence issues in return for US government services and the right to live in the US.

Similarly, New Zealand has arrangements with Niue and Cook Islands, which gives Wellington responsibility for their defence.

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Israeli leader says ‘civilian government’ should rule enclave after Hamas is defeated.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country does not intend to occupy or govern Gaza after the end of its war with Hamas, but the enclave must be “demilitarised, deradicalised and rebuilt”.

In an interview with Fox News aired on Thursday, Netanyahu said that Israel would need to find a “civilian government” to govern the enclave, which has been run by Hamas since 2006, without specifying who would form such a body.

“We don’t seek to govern Gaza, we don’t seek to occupy it. But we seek to give it and us a better future… and that requires defeating Hamas,” he said. “I’ve set goals, I didn’t set a timetable because it can take more time.”

Netanyahu said that a “credible force” would be needed to enter Gaza as necessary to “kill the killers” and “prevent the re-emergence of a Hamas-like entity.”

Netanyahu’s comments come days after he said Israel would take responsibility for Gaza’s security for an “indefinite period” after the end of its war with Hamas, prompting pushback from the United States.

On Tuesday, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said that President Joe Biden did not believe that reoccupying Gaza would be the “right thing to do”.

Israel withdrew its soldiers and Israeli settlers from Gaza in 2005, but continues to maintain a blockade that controls almost all access to the Hamas-governed enclave by land, air and sea.

US officials have previously suggested that the Palestinian Authority should govern Gaza after the war, which Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said would only be possible under a political solution that returns territory captured by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Netanyahu on Thursday reiterated his opposition to a ceasefire with Hamas, as the Biden administration announced that its ally had agreed to daily four-hour pauses in fighting to allow civilians to flee hostilities.

“A ceasefire with Hamas means a surrender to Hamas, surrender to terror,” Netanyahu said, adding that Israel’s military was performing “exceptionally well” and would continue its campaign “however long it takes.”

Israel has promised to eliminate Hamas in response to the armed group’s October 7 attacks on the country, which Israeli officials say killed 1,405 people, mostly civilians.

Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has killed at least 10,569 Palestinians, including 4,324 children, according to the health ministry in the enclave.