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theintercept.com Israel Falsely Warned It Would Bomb a Media Office. The Actual Airstrike Killed Journalists on a Nearby Street.

A monthslong investigation unpacks a false warning and an Israeli airstrike in the deadliest war for journalists on record.

The clock had not yet struck midnight on October 9, when Said Al-Taweel fell into a deep sleep in his office in al-Ghefari Tower, Gaza City’s tallest building. Alaa Abu Mohsen, Al-Taweel’s colleague, heard him snoring.

More than an hour after Al-Taweel drifted off to sleep, sometime after 1 a.m., word began to spread that Haji Tower, another high-rise near the al-Ghefari building, was going to be attacked by the Israelis. Haji Tower is home to local and international media offices, including Agence France-Presse. The rush of people leaving the 12-story tower came after an Israeli military officer spoke by phone to at least four people to order the evacuation of Haji Tower, according to the accounts of two direct recipients of warnings as well as video of a call.

As people streaming from the building scrambled to get into their cars and flee, several of the journalists in the area instead drew nearer to Haji Tower. They wanted to get the story: An Israeli attack on a building known to house so many reporters would resonate internationally.

When the airstrike finally came, it did not hit al-Ghefari nor Haji Tower. Instead, it destroyed a third structure: a six-story residential building called Babel that lay directly on the road between the two towers. As Babel collapsed into rubble, at least nine people were killed, including three journalists who had moved into the building’s vicinity to report on Haji Tower from a safe distance.

“The bodies of the journalists flew into the air from the intensity of the bombing,” said Mansour Khalaf, the owner of Babel, who witnessed the attack from the street.

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www.theguardian.com Pro-Palestinian athletes could show ‘solidarity’ in Olympics opening ceremony

Team Israel say none of its athletes have opted out of the opening ceremony convoy despite a high-profile pro-Palestine demonstration being discussed

Pro-Palestinian athletes could show ‘solidarity’ in Olympics opening ceremony

Around 90 vessels carrying 10,500 athletes and officials are due to float in convoy through Paris on Friday night, including a delegation from Israel. Pro-Palestine organisers said discussions were taking place about a high-profile demonstration.

A “show of solidarity” could involve some unnamed national delegations flying the Palestinian flag or wearing messages on clothing, sources said, as part of a policy of those opposed to Israel’s involvement in the Games to target open-air events over the next three weeks. Paris 2024 Olympics: first world record falls; Spain beat Japan in women’s football – live Read more

A spokesman for Team Israel said that none of their athletes had opted out of taking part in the convoy down the river but he declined to comment on the number of individuals that will be boarding for the 6km (3.7 miles) trip.

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theintercept.com It’s Time for Democrats to Break With Biden’s Addled Gaza Policy

Biden’s approach to Gaza isn’t just immoral, it’s incoherent. A new candidate could break with his confused course for good.

It’s Time for Democrats to Break With Biden’s Addled Gaza Policy

Joe Biden will not be the Democratic nominee in November’s presidential election, thankfully. He is not withdrawing because he’s being held responsible for enabling war crimes against the Palestinian people (though a recent poll does have nearly 40 percent of Americans saying they’re less likely to vote for him thanks to his handling of the war). Yet it’s impossible to extricate the collapse in public faith in the Biden campaign from the “uncommitted” movement for Gaza. They were the first people to refuse him their votes, and defections from within the president’s base hollowed out his support well in advance of the debate.

The Democrats and their presumptive nominee Kamala Harris are faced with a choice: On the one hand, they can continue Biden’s monstrous support for Netanyahu, the brutal IDF, and Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. That would help allow the party to cover for Biden and put a positive spin on a smooth handoff, even though we all know this would mainly benefit the embittered president himself and his small coterie of loyalists. Such a choice would confirm that the institutional rot that allowed the current situation to develop still characterizes the party.

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www.engadget.com Llama 3.1 is Meta's latest salvo in the battle for AI dominance

Meta said that the new model, called Llama 3.1 405B, is the first openly available model that can compete available rivals in general knowledge, math skills and translating across multiple languages.

Llama 3.1 is Meta's latest salvo in the battle for AI dominance

Meta on Tuesday announced the release of Llama 3.1, the latest version of its large language model that the company claims now rivals competitors from OpenAI and Anthropic. The new model comes just three months after Meta launched Llama 3 by integrating it into Meta AI, a chatbot that now lives in Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp and also powers the company's smart glasses. In the interim, OpenAI and Anthropic already released new versions of their own AI models, a sign that Silicon Valley’s AI arms race isn’t slowing down any time soon.

Meta said that the new model, called Llama 3.1 405B, is the first openly available model that can compete against rivals in general knowledge, math skills and translating across multiple languages. The model was trained on more than 16,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs, currently the fastest available chips that cost roughly $25,000 each, and can beat rivals on over 150 benchmarks, Meta claimed.

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www.theguardian.com Blair government accused IDF of acting like Russian army in West Bank

Tensions over Palestinian death toll have eerie parallels to western concerns about current Israeli operations

Blair government accused IDF of acting like Russian army in West Bank

Tony Blair’s government accused Israeli forces of acting more like the “Russian army than that of a civilised country” during a major military incursion into the occupied West Bank, newly released official files show.

The tensions, which have eerie parallels to western concerns over current Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip, are laid bare in papers released by the National Archives.

The documents show the exasperation of western allies at the mounting Palestinian death toll as the Israel Defense Forces laid siege to the headquarters of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, in 2002.

“If some of the reports we were receiving were credible, the IDF’s behaviour was more worthy of the Russian army than that of a supposedly civilised country,” Cowper-Coles told the adviser, according to his report of the meeting.

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www.techzine.eu Local AI is one step closer through Mistral-NeMo 12B

Running LLMs outside a datacenter is usually not a realistic prospect. Nvidia and Mistral are letting PC users run a new model that does work locally.

Local AI is one step closer through Mistral-NeMo 12B

Mistral NeMo 12B is the name of the new AI model, presented this week by Nvidia and Mistral. “We are fortunate to collaborate with the NVIDIA team, leveraging their top-tier hardware and software,” said Guillaume Lample, cofounder and chief scientist of Mistral AI. “Together, we have developed a model with unprecedented accuracy, flexibility, high-efficiency and enterprise-grade support and security thanks to NVIDIA AI Enterprise deployment.”

The promise of the new AI model is significant. Whereas previous LLMs were tied to datacenters, Mistral NeMo 12B moves to workstations. And it does this without sacrificing performance, or well, that’s the promise.

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www.dropsitenews.com Israel Is Reviewing a Proposal to Install a “Moderate Muslim” Puppet Regime in Gaza

The plan, which Israeli officials have called “brilliant,” calls for re-educating Palestinians, destroying UNRWA, and razing refugee camps

Israel Is Reviewing a Proposal to Install a “Moderate Muslim” Puppet Regime in Gaza

Israeli security officials praised the recent academic paper recommending the elimination of democracy in Gaza and the rebuilding of Gazan society into a “moderate Muslim entity” in the mold of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. In the plan are several ideas for entirely remaking Gazan society, including razing refugee camps, banning “every existing” schoolbook, and establishing total control of the media.

The proposal also calls for the elimination of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and shutting down the social and humanitarian programs run by Hamas and replacing them with an alternative Israeli-controlled structure

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Heavy shooting from the Israeli Forces at a UN convoy heading to Gaza City

Heavy shooting from the Israeli Forces at a UN convoy heading to Gaza City.

While there are no casualties, our teams had to duck and take cover.

This took place yesterday. The teams were traveling in clearly marked UN armoured cars & wearing UN vests.

One vehicle received at least five bullets while waiting just ahead of the Israeli Forces’ checkpoint south of Wadi Gaza.

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Hong Kong journalist says Wall Street Journal fired her for leading press advocacy group

The new head of a Hong Kong journalists’ association has claimed she was fired by The Wall Street Journal soon after being elected to the post.

Selina Cheng was told her job with the American newspaper had been terminated due to restructuring in the company.

She, however, said she believed the termination was linked to her supervisor’s request to withdraw from the election to chair the Hong Kong Journalists Association, or HKJA, a trade union that also advocates for press freedom.

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Palestinian Islamic Jihad: "Oslo Is Over"
  • I think the reason for the resolution Israel is getting pressured heavily into accepting the 2 state solution with the West Bank. Israel always claimed to support and work towards it. But this was a ruse, only used to mislead people with false claims of Israeli goodwill.

    My guess is that now that even Hamas said they were open to a 2state solution, Israel has to admit they never wanted to agree with a two state solution. Else a two state solution might start to be implemented.

    This is not a Netanyahu problem. Every Israeli politician voted in favor of blocking Palestinian statehood. Only the Arabs in the Knesset voted against the resolution.

  • Palestinian Islamic Jihad: "Oslo Is Over"
  • This is true but the Oslo accords were always under the guise that negotiation is possible.

    But Israel yesterday passed a resolution fully rejecting a Palestinian state, even in the West Bank.

    With that Israel rejects a peaceful resolution option to the conflict for Palestinians.

  • www.tinderpressroom.com Tinder® Unveils 'Photo Selector' AI: Feature to Make Choosing Profile Pictures Easier

    LOS ANGELES, July 17, 2024 — Tinder, the dating app that revolutionized how people meet, announces the release of ‘Photo Selector’— an AI-powered feature that empowers users to...

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    www.theguardian.com US military to dismantle ill-fated Gaza aid pier, saying it is ‘mission complete’

    Although Central Command praises operation, scheme announced by Biden cost $230m and only operated 25 days

    US military to dismantle ill-fated Gaza aid pier, saying it is ‘mission complete’

    Vice Adm Brad Cooper, deputy commander at US Central Command, told reporters in a Pentagon briefing on Wednesday that the pier had achieved its intended effect in what he called an “unprecedented operation”.

    Critics call the pier a $230m boondoggle that failed to bring in the level of aid needed to stem a looming famine. The US military, however, has maintained that it served as the best hope as aid only trickled in during a critical time of near-famine in Gaza and that it got close to 20m lbs (9m kgs) of desperately needed supplies to Palestinians.

    Aid groups slammed the US military pier as a distraction, saying the US should have instead pressured Israel to open more land crossings and allow the aid to flow more quickly and efficiently through them.

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    'Zionist-free zone': Israelis are increasingly unwanted at global tourism sites
  • It makes things very complicated.

    Recently Israel bombed a medic and claimed he was a combatant. They had a picture of someone that looked like the man sitting in a military uniform in 2019. However that person was not an active combatant at all.

    Their only intelligence to designate him as Hamas was a deep learning match on the picture and the man's face.

    Assuming it was realy the medic in the picture, If any person that was ever affiliated with Hamas is a valid target the same would count for the IDF.

    Meaning all Israeli civilians that ever served in the IDF suddenly count as military targets.

  • www.theverge.com Google tests out Gemini AI-created video presentations

    Is the result more engaging than yet another PowerPoint?

    Google tests out Gemini AI-created video presentations

    Google is launching its new Vids productivity app in Workspace Labs with the idea that “if you can make a slide, you can make a video in Vids.” Announced in April, Vids allows users to drop docs, slides, voiceovers, and video recordings into a timeline to create a presentation video to share with coworkers. Making it available in the Workspace Labs preview allows Workspace admins to opt in users to try out the AI-powered video maker.

    While you can generate video in Vids, it’s not to be confused with AI tools like OpenAI’s Sora, which can create lifelike footage from a prompt. Instead, Vids is about generating a presentation by describing what you want Gemini to create and then letting you alter the video afterward.

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    www.politico.eu Trump’s VP pick J.D. Vance called U.K. ‘Islamist country’

    New Labour government figures had made overtures to Donald Trump’s running mate — and have rejected his suggestion.

    Trump’s VP pick J.D. Vance called U.K. ‘Islamist country’

    LONDON — Labour ministers have rejected a suggestion by Donald Trump’s new running mate that the U.K. is an “Islamist country.”

    J.D. Vance, named Monday as the Republican vice presidential nominee, described Britain under the new Labour government as the world’s first “truly Islamist country” to have a nuclear weapon.

    It was a claim which came as a blow to Labour ministers, in office for less than a fortnight, who have been keen to curry favor both with Trump and Vance.

    Labour’s Deputy PM Angela Rayner told ITV: “Look, I don’t recognize that characterization, I’m very proud of the election success that Labour had recently. I think he said quite a lot of fruity things in the past as well.”

    Speaking days before being adopted by Trump as his vice-presidential pick, Vance, a junior senator from Ohio, told the National Conservatism Conference: “I was talking with a friend recently and we were talking about [how] one of the big dangers in the world, of course, is nuclear proliferation, though the Biden administration doesn’t care about it.

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    From a hotel in Kyoto to a sandwich joint in Edinburgh, the world is becoming hostile toward Israelis who are learning that a vacation won't shield them from the Gaza war.

    During the nine months of war the Israeli tourist experience abroad has been marked by fears of antisemitism and efforts to avoid pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

    According to reports by Israeli media and posts online, some of those worries have recently turned real for a number of Israeli tourists.Anecdotal incidents at touristic locations around the world are making it clear that even though there is no official policy of excluding Israelis, that is sometimes the situation on the ground.

    An especially bumpy week began on June 17 at the Material Hotel in Kyoto, Japan, when an Israeli named Alex was informed that his reservation had been canceled due to the allegations of Israeli war crimes in Gaza. The Material told Alex that it was "not able to accept reservations from persons we believe might have ties to the Israeli army," as reported by Israeli website Ynet.

    The story made the rounds on social media, produced a stern protest letter from Israel's ambassador in Tokyo, and led to a rebuke by the Kyoto municipality that the hotel had breached Japanese business law and must ensure that such a transgression won't happen again.

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    www.972mag.com Israel ordered thousands to ‘safe’ areas in Gaza City — then bombed them

    After fleeing west at the Israeli army’s instruction, Palestinians quickly found themselves encircled and under fire from tanks, drones, and snipers.

    Israel ordered thousands to ‘safe’ areas in Gaza City — then bombed them

    On Sunday, July 7, the Israeli army ordered residents of three neighborhoods in eastern Gaza City to immediately evacuate toward the west, ahead of a new ground invasion. Thousands of displaced families abandoned their shelters and searched desperately for a place to stay the night in the city’s western neighborhoods. Within hours, however, Israeli forces attacked those very areas.

    The evacuation order came less than two weeks after Israeli forces reinvaded the Shuja’iya neighborhood in the east of Gaza City. Amid continuing displacement and ground incursions in the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah, and bombing throughout the Strip — including in designated “safe zones” — there is nowhere for Palestinians to find reprieve from Israel’s onslaught.

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    www.ghacks.net Microsoft is not done yet: more ads spotted in latest Windows 11 build - gHacks Tech News

    Microsoft is testing ads (recommendations) in yet another location of its Windows 11 operating system.

    Microsoft is not done yet: more ads spotted in latest Windows 11 build - gHacks Tech News

    When is an ad an advertisement and not a recommendation? Microsoft clearly likes to use the term recommendation for what others may see as an advertisement.

    There are recommendations in the Start menu, Settings app, Lock screen, File Explorer, Get Help app, and other areas of the operating system already. These are often not that useful. App recommendations in the Start menu are limited to Microsoft Store apps.

    Now, Microsoft is testing recommendations in the Microsoft Store app. If you never use the app, you won't be exposed to these. If you do, you may notice recommendations popping up when you try to use the built-in search.

    First spotted by phantomofearth on X, two or three recommendations are shown whenever search is activated in the official Microsoft Store app.

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    cpj.org Media organizations urge Israel to open access to Gaza - Committee to Protect Journalists

    New York, July 11, 2024—More than 60 media and civil society organizations have signed an open letter urging Israel to give journalists independent access to Gaza. The organizations—which include the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, BBC, CNN, The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Washingt...

    Media organizations urge Israel to open access to Gaza - Committee to Protect Journalists

    New York, July 11, 2024—More than 60 media and civil society organizations have signed an open letter urging Israel to give journalists independent access to Gaza.

    The organizations—which include the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, BBC, CNN, The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Washington Post—point out that no independent media access to Gaza has been permitted since the start of the war, increasing the pressure on domestic journalists, and creating a space for mis- and disinformation to flourish.

    “More than 100 journalists have been killed since the start of the war and those who remain are working in conditions of extreme deprivation. The result is that information from Gaza is becoming harder and harder to obtain and that the reporting which does get through is subject to repeated questions over its veracity,” the organizations say in the letter, which was coordinated by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

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    www.bleepingcomputer.com Microsoft fixes Windows 11 bug causing reboot loops, taskbar freezes

    Microsoft has fixed a known issue causing restart loops and taskbar problems on Windows 11 systems after installing the June KB5039302 preview update.

    Microsoft fixes Windows 11 bug causing reboot loops, taskbar freezes

    Microsoft has fixed a known issue causing restart loops and taskbar problems on Windows 11 systems after installing the June KB5039302 preview update.

    "This issue was resolved in updates released July 9, 2024 (KB5040442) and later," the company said in an update added to the Windows release health page on Tuesday.

    "We recommend you install the latest security update for your device. It contains important improvements and issue resolutions, including this one."

    The known issue only impacts systems running Windows 11 23H2 and Windows 11 22H2, with users of Windows Home edition less likely to experience it because virtualization is less common in home environments.

    This fix comes after Redmond was forced to pull the update on June 27 after reports that it was causing some Windows devices to restart repeatedly while others failed to start altogether.

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    www.washingtonpost.com U.S. to again ship 500-pound bombs to Israel, reversing suspension

    The Biden administration will send 500-pound bombs to Israel that had been held up since May over concerns about the Rafah invasion. But 2,000-pound bombs are still under review.

    The United States is resuming a shipment of 500-pound bombs to Israel that had been held up since May, when the Biden administration suspended delivery of two types of large, airdropped weapons amid concerns about the ballooning scale of civilian casualties in Gaza, said U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

    The paused delivery included 1,800 2,000-pound bombs, which remain on hold, U.S. officials said. But the supply of 1,700 500-pound bombs will move forward.

    The U.S. decision followed a pressure campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and pro-Israel lobbyists in the United States, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, demanding the resumption of all weapons shipments regardless of their lethality.

    Despite the pressure campaign and initial hold, the U.S. officials said the 500-pound bombs were never a serious concern for the Biden administration.

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    www.theguardian.com Internal memo reveals Anti-Defamation League surveillance of leftwing activist

    Self-styled anti-hate group tracked Black organizer who opposed links between US police and Israeli military

    Internal memo reveals Anti-Defamation League surveillance of leftwing activist

    The Anti-Defamation League has surveilled leftwing activists and “regularly tracks, profiles and sends threat assessments of individuals” it perceives as a problem, according to an internal email obtained by the Guardian. The memo shows the ADL collected information on a Black Indianapolis activist, Tatjana Rebelle, who worked on Deadly Exchange, a national campaign against an ADL-backed program to send US police officials for training with the Israeli military.

    In the email, which included a picture and personal information about Rebelle, ADL head of security Chris Delia concluded Rebelle was “a radical with antisemitic and hateful views” but was “not a threat” to the organization. Still, he recommended the file be referred to the organization’s Center on Extremism, which tracks, in its words, “extremist trends, ideologies and groups across the ideological spectrum”.

    The memo is the latest evidence that the ADL has spied on, surveilled or tracked its opponents on the left and right. In 1993, the ADL faced multiple lawsuits and an FBI investigation over a nationwide intelligence network it developed over the span of several decades with an investigator on its payroll, Roy Bullock.

    Bullock was alleged to have infiltrated or kept files on the United Auto Workers union, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, neo-Nazi groups, Mother Jones magazine, the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP and many more. He also allegedly sold personal information on US politicians and others to the apartheid South African government at the ADL’s behest. The ADL initially backed the apartheid regime, labeling Nelson Mandela’s party “totalitarian, anti-humane, anti-democratic, anti-Israel, and anti-American”.

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