News
Hard Numbers: Colombia's grim record, Ukraine reconstruction planning, Chinese beach tourists, India's strong arm
Colombian President Gustavo Petro
GZERO Media
215: At least 215 community leaders and human rights activists were assassinated in Colombia last year, the highest level ever recorded, according to the government’s human rights ombudsman. Following the historic peace deal with FARC rebels in 2016, activists have been caught in the crossfire of power struggles over land vacated by the rebels. Leftist President Gustavo Petro took office last August pledging to quell the violence.
300 billion: Where should the money come from for Ukraine’s reconstruction? From the people who started the war, says European Council President Charles Michel. He wants to discuss a proposal to use $300 billion in assets seized from the Russian central bank for the purpose. Critics fear it would set a risky precedent and diminish the safety of central bank assets around the globe.
3: For the first time in three years, Chinese tourists are back on the beaches of Thailand to celebrate the new year, after President Xi Jinping recently dropped his zero-COVID travel restrictions. Before the pandemic, visitors from China normally accounted for a third of all visitors to tourism-dependent Thailand.
50: India has successfully forced Twitter to remove as many as 50 tweets referring to a new BBC documentary that blames PM Narendra Modi for his role in the deadly communal violence that wracked Gujarat when he led the Western Indian state in 2002. Delhi has also strongarmed YouTube into removing posts about the program. Free speech activists are crying “censorship,” while close watchers of Twitter CEO Elon Musk — who pledged to make the platform a bastion of free speech — ask “bro, really?”In this episode of ask ian, Ian Bremmer explains why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky enters his latest White House meeting with President Trump in a stronger position than he did just a few months ago.
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US consumers have spent nearly $74 billion more on gasoline and diesel since the war in Iran began in February
Last week, Microsoft joined more than 100 companies to publish an open letter on the importance of open-weight AI models in expanding access to AI and giving organizations greater control over the technology they use. The paper draws parallels to the open-source software movement, positioning open-weight models as an important foundation for a broad and competitive AI ecosystem while emphasizing the need for responsible safeguards. Read the letter here.