The UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said on Saturday that the world waited far too long to respond to the refugee crisis sparked by the wars in Syria and elsewhere, though rich nations now appear to understand the scale of the problem.
“Unfortunately only when the poor enter the halls of the rich do the rich notice that the poor exist,” Guterres said in an interview on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly.
“Until we had this massive movement into Europe, there was no recognition in the developed world of how serious this crisis was,” he said. “If, in the past, we had more massive support to those countries in the developing world that have been receiving them and protecting them, this would not have happened.”
The sudden arrival in Europe of tens of thousands refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, many abandoning refugee camps in Turkey, Jordan or Lebanon, has stirred sharp disagreement between EU members on how to “process” and accommodate them.
While governments such as Germany have proven more welcoming, eastern European countries have resisted plans for quotas to disperse refugees.
For years, Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan have struggled to cope with millions of refugees from Syria’s 4.5-year civil war.
“The refugees are living worse and worse,” Guterres said. “They’re not allowed to work, the overwhelming majority of them live below the poverty line. It’s more and more difficult for them to have any hope in the future.”
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
RSS