Author: Steven Sahiounie

The US State Department on Wednesday said it is working to forge an international consensus behind the need for an Afghanistan peace accord. US State Department Spokesperson, Ned Price, said that the “Taliban” is violating “the letter and the spirit” of the February 2020 US-Taliban deal for a withdrawal of all US troops from the United States’ longest war. Price said, the “Taliban” committed to intra-Afghan talks on a peace accord that lead to a “permanent and comprehensive ceasefire,” pointing out that “all indications at least suggest the Taliban are instead pursuing a battlefield victory.” An American source familiar with…

France has donated 670,000 coronavirus jabs to Vietnam as part of the COVAX international vaccine-sharing program, French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Thursday. “To win this fight in the face of the epidemic, access to the vaccine must be global and equitable,” Macron wrote on Twitter, explaining the gesture. Vietnam, which used to be among the world leaders in containing Covid-19 when the pandemic started in early 2020, is now seeing a rise in cases, as the country has been hit hard by a global shortage in vaccine supply and slow vaccination rates. The Southeast-Asian state, which has a population of over 96…

The Taliban have reportedly seized Ghazni, located 150km (95 miles) from Kabul, making it the group’s 10th claim of a key Afghan provincial city this week as the insurgents push closer to the capital. The provincial capital fell on Thursday, according to reports from the head of the regional council, alongside a statement from the militants’ spokesperson on social media. Nasir Ahmad Faqiri, a local lawmaker, told AFP news agency that “The Taliban took control of the key areas of the city – the governor’s office, the police headquarters and the prison.” A video posted on Twitter purports to show the…

The Chinese foreign ministry has hit back at the Canadian prime minister as the countries bicker over the sentencing of two Canadian citizens in China. Beijing has reminded Ottawa that foreigners are not above the law. Speaking on Thursday, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told gathered press that Canada’s opposition to Beijing’s sentencing of Canadians Robert Lloyd Schellenberg and Michael Spavor infringed China’s sovereignty. Hua urged Canada not to engage in microphone diplomacy, a strategy that has been proven to fail, and to refrain from publishing their opinions. She claimed that while Canada advertises itself as a country that respects…

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan criticized major oil producers for the insufficiency of oil productions, claiming it could threaten the global economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. In his statement, Sullivan said: “At a critical moment in the global recovery, this is simply not enough,” noting that the US is “engaging with relevant OPEC+ members on the importance of competitive markets in setting prices. Competitive energy markets will ensure reliable and stable energy supplies.” He added, “Higher gasoline costs, if left unchecked, risk harming the ongoing global recovery. OPEC+ must do more to support the recovery.” The White House…

A bipartisan trio of US senators proposed a bill that would rein in app stores of companies they claim exert too much market control, including Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google, according to The Washington Post. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Amy Klobuchar collaborated with Senator Marsha Blackburn to introduce legislation that would prohibit app stores from requiring app providers to use their payment system. It would also prohibit them from penalizing apps that offer different prices or terms through a different app store or payment system. Blumenthal stated that the legislation reflects deep concern that these tactics amount to “predatory power”…

The Indonesian military’s chief of staff has confirmed that the country’s armed forces will no longer conduct virginity tests on female recruits after criticism that the practice is cruel, degrading and has no scientific validity. “There’s no more of that,” Army Chief of Staff Andika Perkasa declared, discussing the so-called ‘two-finger’ virginity tests which had examined “whether the hymen was ruptured or partially ruptured” before female cadets could be admitted. Addressing concerns raised by Human Rights Watch (HRW), which investigated the process in 2014 and 2015, Perkasa made it clear that the selection process going forward will be equal for male and female…

A Swiss university student has won Twitter’s first bug bounty competition, revealing that the algorithm is flawed and biased toward young, ‘beautiful,’ and light-skinned faces. Bogdan Kulynych, a swiss university student, demonstrated the bias in the Twitter saliency cropping algorithm, which crops images for previews by focusing on the most interesting parts of the image. In 2020, Twitter came under fire for its faulty image cropping algorithm when users discovered that the algorithm was highlighting white faces over black ones when it came to image previews, such as in this tweet: The algorithm even preferred white dogs over black ones,…

NASA has spent nine years and almost $2 billion on its mission to drill and store Martian rock samples. The Perseverance rover robot was ready to make it happen on Friday but came up empty-handed. What happened? The Perseverance rover’s robot appeared to function flawlessly, but when the metal tube which was supposed to hold the sample was inspected, it was discovered to be empty. The rover chose a rock in an old Mars lake bed that may have previously harbored alien life and attempted to drill into it. But then something odd happened: the sample disappeared. The mission team…