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Subscribe Search Search Sort by Relevance Title Date Subscribe ALBAWABA - The London Metropolitan Police Service (Met) said on Friday that it has arrested more than 500 individuals in 2024 over offenses ranging from assault to theft using advanced Live Facial Recognition (LFR) technology. Also Read Japan unveils AI plan to tackle Anime and Manga piracy LFR works by placing cameras in specific areas, like vans parked in public spaces. These cameras record individuals as they pass by and compare their photos to a watchlist of those who are wanted, the system then sends out an alert when a match is found, allowing cops to take immediate action. Facial Recognition vans are being used in London to help tackle crime. The vans scan people’s faces as they walk by and check them against a “watchlist” of wanted people. Good or bad idea? 🤔 Credit: 🎥 salomonweil pic.twitter.com/12QHejMNBl — HOW THINGS WORK (@HowThingsWork_) March 13, 2024 According to the Met, LFR is a crucial development in their toolkit for combating crime, “This technology is helping us keep our communities safe,” said Lindsey Chiswick, Director of Performance at the Met, adding “It allows officers to focus on individuals who present the greatest risks and might otherwise remain undetected.” More than 50 of the 540 total arrests were for serious offenses related to violence against women and girls, including assault, strangling, stalking, and domestic abuse. Furthermore, over 400 suspects have been charged or cautioned, demonstrating the system’s potential ability to deliver justice. Despite its achievements, civil liberties groups like Big Brother Watch have criticized LFR, claiming the technology violates privacy as a “dangerously authoritarian” type of monitoring, AFP reports. The organization cautions that face recognition uses biometric information akin to fingerprints, often without the public's knowledge or agreement. The Met claims to have put strong measures in place to mitigate these worries; if someone who is not on a watchlist is scanned, their biometric information is instantly and permanently purged. Additionally, police officers examine the matches produced by the system to make sure that no actions are done without doing proper inspections. A passionate about the Gaming Industry with a career of over 5 years in the field, I write about current trends and news in the Game Development business and how it impact the industry and players. Laith has recently started a new position at Al Bawaba as a freelance business writer. Subscribe Sign up to our newsletter for exclusive updates and enhanced content Subscribe Now Subscribe Sign up to get Al Bawaba's exclusive celeb scoops and entertainment news Subscribe to our newsletter for exclusive updates and enhanced content Subscribe

NoneLondon’s Metropolitan Police used facial recognition technology to make 540 arrests in 2024 for offences ranging from shoplifting to rape. LONDON - London’s Metropolitan Police force said on Dec 6 that it had used facial recognition technology to make more than 500 arrests in 2024 for offences ranging from shoplifting to rape. The force uses live facial recognition in specific areas of the UK capital, positioning a van equipped with cameras in a pre-agreed location. The cameras capture live footage of passers-by and compare their faces against a pre-approved watchlist, generating an alert if a match is detected. Civil liberties campaigners have criticised the use of such technology, and advocacy group Big Brother Watch has launched legal action to stop its expansion. “The technology works by creating a ‘faceprint’ of everyone who passes in front of camera – processing biometric data as sensitive as a fingerprint, often without our knowledge or consent,” the group says on is website. “This dangerously authoritarian surveillance is a threat to our privacy and freedoms - it has no place on the streets of Britain,” it adds. The Met says it is a “forerunner” in using the technology, adding that it helps “make London safer” by helping detect “offenders who pose significant risks to our communities”. Of the 540 arrests, more then 50 were for serious offences involving violence against women and girls, including offences such as strangulation, stalking, domestic abuse and rape. More than 400 of those arrested have already been charged or cautioned. “This technology is helping us protect our communities from harm,” said Ms Lindsey Chiswick, the Met’s director of performance. “It is a powerful tool that supports officers to identify and focus on people who present the highest risk that may otherwise have gone undetected,” she added. Responding to privacy fears, police said that the biometric data of any passer-by not on a watchlist is “immediately and permanently deleted”. AFP Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you. Read 3 articles and stand to win rewards Spin the wheel now

OTTAWA—The Liberal government’s decision to cleave its controversial online harms legislation into two on Wednesday was framed by the federal justice minister as the quickest way to prioritize child safety in a Parliament he says the opposition Conservatives have plunged into paralysis. The widespread calls from civil liberties, human rights and religious minority groups to split up the bill were not one of the primary reasons Arif Virani said was behind the decision, though he acknowledged that some had been “suggesting” he make the move. “What we looked at in September was a parliamentary calendar that had three months’ worth of time. In three months’ worth of time, we’ve had exactly one day of debate dedicated to this bill. Is that frustrating for me? You’re absolutely right, that’s frustrating for me,” Virani told reporters. The legislation has been fraught with controversy from its earliest stages of development over The legislation at issue is the Trudeau Liberals’ proposed solution to dangerous content on the internet: a sweeping bill that has drawn praise for its efforts to hold social media platforms accountable for the content they host, and criticism for changes to the Criminal Code and Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) that some say polices free speech. On Wednesday, Virani announced that all four parts of the bill will be split into two groups. One legislative track will deal with the parts of the bill that mostly address harmful content directed at children. The first of those parts is the Online Harms Act, which would require social media platforms — including livestreaming and adult-content services — to minimize exposure to seven types of harmful content. Three of those categories focus on children: content used to bully a child, content that induces children to harm themselves, and content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor of child abuse. The remaining four deal with other harms: content in which intimate images (including deepfakes) are shared without consent, content that incites violent extremism or terrorism, content that incites violence and content that promotes hatred. That entire part of the legislation will be combined with another part of the original bill that proposes changes to how child pornography on the internet is reported and how those offences are handled. Those two sections of the bill have been widely viewed as the more acceptable parts of the legislation, by experts and opposition parties alike. But the decision means that the bill’s remaining two parts — proposed changes to the Criminal Code and the CHRA that have been deemed “ ” and poorly thought out — will be combined into one. The legislation had proposed creating a stand-alone hate crime offence that could be applied to every offence in the Criminal Code, and could come with a maximum penalty of life in prison. Other changes involved upping penalties for hate propaganda offences, such as increasing the maximum penalty for advocating for or promoting genocide from five years to life imprisonment. Ottawa has previously said the legislation is not intended to put people behind bars for life for expressing opinions, but instead would twin the new hate crime offence with existing Criminal Code offences already punishable by a maximum of life in prison. The new offence was partly meant, government officials have said, to improve how hate-motivated offences are tracked and prosecuted. The CHRA changes, meanwhile, would allow people to file online hate speech complaints — which could be enormous in volume — to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which could result in financial penalties or content being removed. Virani justified the split as necessary in a House of Commons that has been waylaid by debate on a single issue — whether the Liberals should pony up more unredacted documents tied to a scandal-plagued green technology funding agency — for more than two months. The original legislation was tabled in late February, missing the deadline by which the Liberals promised to initially introduce the bill by two years. Virani said the parliamentary impasse made the Liberals “rethink” how they should use their time to get parts of the bill past the legislative finish line. “I’m not going to look at the face of Canadian parents, of Canadian children, and tell them that I’m not going to do everything I can to protect those kids,” Virani said. Angus Lockhart, a senior analyst with Toronto Metropolitan University’s policy institute, the Dais, said the move is a positive step forward, even if it’s indicative of “the time pressure of a government that’s running out of time.” The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) welcomed the decision, saying in a statement that the more contentious parts of the legislation can now undergo the “focused scrutiny it deserves.” The CCLA was one of more than 20 groups and experts who , back in May, for the legislation to be split in two over free speech and other concerns. In spite of the criticism, particularly due to the Israel-Hamas war and its ripple effects in Canada, the federal government has insisted the changes on Canadians’ freedoms. Conservative justice critic Larry Brock told the Star in a statement that Virani was “desperately trying to salvage his deeply flawed legislation.” “We will repeal Trudeau’s draconian censorship laws and bring home protection of children and Canadians online while protecting the rights and freedoms of Canadians,” the statement read. It is not yet clear how the separation of a singular bill into two tracks will be handled by the House of Commons. Virani’s spokesperson said the minister was in talks with his opposition counterparts to determine how the bill already before the House, and whose text remains unchanged, could proceed through the remainder of the legislative process.

By LOLITA C. BALDOR and MATTHEW LEE WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is expected to announce that it will send $1.25 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, U.S. officials said Friday, as the Biden administration pushes to get as much aid to Kyiv as possible before leaving office on Jan. 20. The large package of aid includes a significant amount of munitions, including for the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems and the HAWK air defense system. It also will provide Stinger missiles and 155 mm- and 105 mm artillery rounds, officials said. The officials, who said they expect the announcement to be made on Monday, spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details not yet made public. The new aid comes as Russia has launched a barrage of attacks against Ukraine’s power facilities in recent days, although Ukraine has said it intercepted a significant number of the missiles and drones. Russian and Ukrainian forces are also still in a bitter battle around the Russian border region of Kursk, where Moscow has sent thousands of North Korean troops to help reclaim territory taken by Ukraine. Earlier this month, senior defense officials acknowledged that that the Defense Department may not be able to send all of the remaining $5.6 billion in Pentagon weapons and equipment stocks passed by Congress for Ukraine before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in. Trump has talked about getting some type of negotiated settlement between Ukraine and Russia, and spoken about his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin . Many U.S. and European leaders are concerned that it might result in a poor deal for Ukraine and they worry that he won’t provide Ukraine with all the weapons funding approved by Congress. The aid in the new package is in presidential drawdown authority, which allows the Pentagon to take weapons off the shelves and send them quickly to Ukraine. This latest assistance would reduce the remaining amount to about $4.35 billion. Officials have said they hope that an influx of aid will help strengthen Ukraine’s hand, should Zelenskyy decide it’s time to negotiate. One senior defense official said that while the U.S. will continue to provide weapons to Ukraine until Jan. 20, there may well be funds remaining that will be available for the incoming Trump administration to spend. According to the Pentagon, there is also about $1.2 billion remaining in longer-term funding through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which is used to pay for weapons contracts that would not be delivered for a year or more. Officials have said the administration anticipates releasing all of that money before the end of the calendar year. If the new package is included, the U.S. has provided more than $64 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022.Oklahoma's Zac Alley joins Rich Rodriguez's West Virginia staff as defensive coordinator

By BILL BARROW, Associated Press PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Newly married and sworn as a Naval officer, Jimmy Carter left his tiny hometown in 1946 hoping to climb the ranks and see the world. Less than a decade later, the death of his father and namesake, a merchant farmer and local politician who went by “Mr. Earl,” prompted the submariner and his wife, Rosalynn, to return to the rural life of Plains, Georgia, they thought they’d escaped. The lieutenant never would be an admiral. Instead, he became commander in chief. Years after his presidency ended in humbling defeat, he would add a Nobel Peace Prize, awarded not for his White House accomplishments but “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” The life of James Earl Carter Jr., the 39th and longest-lived U.S. president, ended Sunday at the age of 100 where it began: Plains, the town of 600 that fueled his political rise, welcomed him after his fall and sustained him during 40 years of service that redefined what it means to be a former president. With the stubborn confidence of an engineer and an optimism rooted in his Baptist faith, Carter described his motivations in politics and beyond in the same way: an almost missionary zeal to solve problems and improve lives. Carter was raised amid racism, abject poverty and hard rural living — realities that shaped both his deliberate politics and emphasis on human rights. “He always felt a responsibility to help people,” said Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend of Carter’s in Plains. “And when he couldn’t make change wherever he was, he decided he had to go higher.” Carter’s path, a mix of happenstance and calculation , pitted moral imperatives against political pragmatism; and it defied typical labels of American politics, especially caricatures of one-term presidents as failures. “We shouldn’t judge presidents by how popular they are in their day. That’s a very narrow way of assessing them,” Carter biographer Jonathan Alter told the Associated Press. “We should judge them by how they changed the country and the world for the better. On that score, Jimmy Carter is not in the first rank of American presidents, but he stands up quite well.” Later in life, Carter conceded that many Americans, even those too young to remember his tenure, judged him ineffective for failing to contain inflation or interest rates, end the energy crisis or quickly bring home American hostages in Iran. He gained admirers instead for his work at The Carter Center — advocating globally for public health, human rights and democracy since 1982 — and the decades he and Rosalynn wore hardhats and swung hammers with Habitat for Humanity. Yet the common view that he was better after the Oval Office than in it annoyed Carter, and his allies relished him living long enough to see historians reassess his presidency. “He doesn’t quite fit in today’s terms” of a left-right, red-blue scoreboard, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who visited the former president multiple times during his own White House bid. At various points in his political career, Carter labeled himself “progressive” or “conservative” — sometimes both at once. His most ambitious health care bill failed — perhaps one of his biggest legislative disappointments — because it didn’t go far enough to suit liberals. Republicans, especially after his 1980 defeat, cast him as a left-wing cartoon. It would be easiest to classify Carter as a centrist, Buttigieg said, “but there’s also something radical about the depth of his commitment to looking after those who are left out of society and out of the economy.” Indeed, Carter’s legacy is stitched with complexities, contradictions and evolutions — personal and political. The self-styled peacemaker was a war-trained Naval Academy graduate who promised Democratic challenger Ted Kennedy that he’d “kick his ass.” But he campaigned with a call to treat everyone with “respect and compassion and with love.” Carter vowed to restore America’s virtue after the shame of Vietnam and Watergate, and his technocratic, good-government approach didn’t suit Republicans who tagged government itself as the problem. It also sometimes put Carter at odds with fellow Democrats. The result still was a notable legislative record, with wins on the environment, education, and mental health care. He dramatically expanded federally protected lands, began deregulating air travel, railroads and trucking, and he put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy. As a fiscal hawk, Carter added a relative pittance to the national debt, unlike successors from both parties. Carter nonetheless struggled to make his achievements resonate with the electorate he charmed in 1976. Quoting Bob Dylan and grinning enthusiastically, he had promised voters he would “never tell a lie.” Once in Washington, though, he led like a joyless engineer, insisting his ideas would become reality and he’d be rewarded politically if only he could convince enough people with facts and logic. This served him well at Camp David, where he brokered peace between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Epypt’s Anwar Sadat, an experience that later sparked the idea of The Carter Center in Atlanta. Carter’s tenacity helped the center grow to a global force that monitored elections across five continents, enabled his freelance diplomacy and sent public health experts across the developing world. The center’s wins were personal for Carter, who hoped to outlive the last Guinea worm parasite, and nearly did. As president, though, the approach fell short when he urged consumers beleaguered by energy costs to turn down their thermostats. Or when he tried to be the nation’s cheerleader, beseeching Americans to overcome a collective “crisis of confidence.” Republican Ronald Reagan exploited Carter’s lecturing tone with a belittling quip in their lone 1980 debate. “There you go again,” the former Hollywood actor said in response to a wonky answer from the sitting president. “The Great Communicator” outpaced Carter in all but six states. Carter later suggested he “tried to do too much, too soon” and mused that he was incompatible with Washington culture: media figures, lobbyists and Georgetown social elites who looked down on the Georgians and their inner circle as “country come to town.” Carter carefully navigated divides on race and class on his way to the Oval Office. Born Oct. 1, 1924 , Carter was raised in the mostly Black community of Archery, just outside Plains, by a progressive mother and white supremacist father. Their home had no running water or electricity but the future president still grew up with the relative advantages of a locally prominent, land-owning family in a system of Jim Crow segregation. He wrote of President Franklin Roosevelt’s towering presence and his family’s Democratic Party roots, but his father soured on FDR, and Jimmy Carter never campaigned or governed as a New Deal liberal. He offered himself as a small-town peanut farmer with an understated style, carrying his own luggage, bunking with supporters during his first presidential campaign and always using his nickname. And he began his political career in a whites-only Democratic Party. As private citizens, he and Rosalynn supported integration as early as the 1950s and believed it inevitable. Carter refused to join the White Citizens Council in Plains and spoke out in his Baptist church against denying Black people access to worship services. “This is not my house; this is not your house,” he said in a churchwide meeting, reminding fellow parishioners their sanctuary belonged to God. Yet as the appointed chairman of Sumter County schools he never pushed to desegregate, thinking it impractical after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board decision. And while presidential candidate Carter would hail the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed by fellow Democrat Lyndon Johnson when Carter was a state senator, there is no record of Carter publicly supporting it at the time. Carter overcame a ballot-stuffing opponent to win his legislative seat, then lost the 1966 governor’s race to an arch-segregationist. He won four years later by avoiding explicit mentions of race and campaigning to the right of his rival, who he mocked as “Cufflinks Carl” — the insult of an ascendant politician who never saw himself as part the establishment. Carter’s rural and small-town coalition in 1970 would match any victorious Republican electoral map in 2024. Once elected, though, Carter shocked his white conservative supporters — and landed on the cover of Time magazine — by declaring that “the time for racial discrimination is over.” Before making the jump to Washington, Carter befriended the family of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., whom he’d never sought out as he eyed the governor’s office. Carter lamented his foot-dragging on school integration as a “mistake.” But he also met, conspicuously, with Alabama’s segregationist Gov. George Wallace to accept his primary rival’s endorsement ahead of the 1976 Democratic convention. “He very shrewdly took advantage of his own Southerness,” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor and expert on Carter’s campaigns. A coalition of Black voters and white moderate Democrats ultimately made Carter the last Democratic presidential nominee to sweep the Deep South. Then, just as he did in Georgia, he used his power in office to appoint more non-whites than all his predecessors had, combined. He once acknowledged “the secret shame” of white Americans who didn’t fight segregation. But he also told Alter that doing more would have sacrificed his political viability – and thus everything he accomplished in office and after. King’s daughter, Bernice King, described Carter as wisely “strategic” in winning higher offices to enact change. “He was a leader of conscience,” she said in an interview. Rosalynn Carter, who died on Nov. 19 at the age of 96, was identified by both husband and wife as the “more political” of the pair; she sat in on Cabinet meetings and urged him to postpone certain priorities, like pressing the Senate to relinquish control of the Panama Canal. “Let that go until the second term,” she would sometimes say. The president, recalled her former aide Kathy Cade, retorted that he was “going to do what’s right” even if “it might cut short the time I have.” Rosalynn held firm, Cade said: “She’d remind him you have to win to govern.” Carter also was the first president to appoint multiple women as Cabinet officers. Yet by his own telling, his career sprouted from chauvinism in the Carters’ early marriage: He did not consult Rosalynn when deciding to move back to Plains in 1953 or before launching his state Senate bid a decade later. Many years later, he called it “inconceivable” that he didn’t confer with the woman he described as his “full partner,” at home, in government and at The Carter Center. “We developed a partnership when we were working in the farm supply business, and it continued when Jimmy got involved in politics,” Rosalynn Carter told AP in 2021. So deep was their trust that when Carter remained tethered to the White House in 1980 as 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, it was Rosalynn who campaigned on her husband’s behalf. “I just loved it,” she said, despite the bitterness of defeat. Fair or not, the label of a disastrous presidency had leading Democrats keep their distance, at least publicly, for many years, but Carter managed to remain relevant, writing books and weighing in on societal challenges. He lamented widening wealth gaps and the influence of money in politics. He voted for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and later declared that America had devolved from fully functioning democracy to “oligarchy.” Yet looking ahead to 2020, with Sanders running again, Carter warned Democrats not to “move to a very liberal program,” lest they help re-elect President Donald Trump. Carter scolded the Republican for his serial lies and threats to democracy, and chided the U.S. establishment for misunderstanding Trump’s populist appeal. He delighted in yearly convocations with Emory University freshmen, often asking them to guess how much he’d raised in his two general election campaigns. “Zero,” he’d gesture with a smile, explaining the public financing system candidates now avoid so they can raise billions. Carter still remained quite practical in partnering with wealthy corporations and foundations to advance Carter Center programs. Carter recognized that economic woes and the Iran crisis doomed his presidency, but offered no apologies for appointing Paul Volcker as the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate hikes would not curb inflation until Reagan’s presidency. He was proud of getting all the hostages home without starting a shooting war, even though Tehran would not free them until Reagan’s Inauguration Day. “Carter didn’t look at it” as a failure, Alter emphasized. “He said, ‘They came home safely.’ And that’s what he wanted.” Well into their 90s, the Carters greeted visitors at Plains’ Maranatha Baptist Church, where he taught Sunday School and where he will have his last funeral before being buried on family property alongside Rosalynn . Carter, who made the congregation’s collection plates in his woodworking shop, still garnered headlines there, calling for women’s rights within religious institutions, many of which, he said, “subjugate” women in church and society. Carter was not one to dwell on regrets. “I am at peace with the accomplishments, regret the unrealized goals and utilize my former political position to enhance everything we do,” he wrote around his 90th birthday. The politician who had supposedly hated Washington politics also enjoyed hosting Democratic presidential contenders as public pilgrimages to Plains became advantageous again. Carter sat with Buttigieg for the final time March 1, 2020, hours before the Indiana mayor ended his campaign and endorsed eventual winner Joe Biden. “He asked me how I thought the campaign was going,” Buttigieg said, recalling that Carter flashed his signature grin and nodded along as the young candidate, born a year after Carter left office, “put the best face” on the walloping he endured the day before in South Carolina. Never breaking his smile, the 95-year-old host fired back, “I think you ought to drop out.” “So matter of fact,” Buttigieg said with a laugh. “It was somehow encouraging.” Carter had lived enough, won plenty and lost enough to take the long view. “He talked a lot about coming from nowhere,” Buttigieg said, not just to attain the presidency but to leverage “all of the instruments you have in life” and “make the world more peaceful.” In his farewell address as president, Carter said as much to the country that had embraced and rejected him. “The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color, nation or language,” he declared. “Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity and who suffer for the sake of justice — they are the patriots of this cause.” Carter pledged to remain engaged with and for them as he returned “home to the South where I was born and raised,” home to Plains, where that young lieutenant had indeed become “a fellow citizen of the world.” —- Bill Barrow, based in Atlanta, has covered national politics including multiple presidential campaigns for the AP since 2012.[Source: Supplied] A border management information system launched at the Nausori International Airport recently will play a key role in boosting Fiji’s border screening processes. The Migration Information and Data Analysis System (MIDAS) pilot project was launched by the Fiji Immigration Department, in collaboration with the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Speaking at the launch event, Ambassador of Japan to Fiji Rokuichiro Michii , reflected on Japan’s commitment to supporting regional development initiatives through technical assistance and capacity-building efforts. “The soft-launch of MIDAS enhances Fiji’s border security and immigration systems. This initiative not only helps protect Fiji’s population from transnational crime and diseases but also elevates Fiji’s position as a sovereign nation, better protecting its borders while advancing cross-border trade and travel. Japan is proud to have contributed to this project, which strengthens the friendship between our two nations.” IOM Fiji Officer in Charge Matthew Bidder said the launch of MIDAS in Fiji marked a critical advancement in modernizing border management systems to meet evolving global and regional challenges. “This system will not only enhance security but also improve service delivery and contribute to the country’s broader digital transformation goals. We are proud to support the Fiji Immigration Department in this pioneering initiative.” The pilot launch at Nausori International Airport marked the first step toward a full-scale implementation of MIDAS across Fiji’s key international gateways, including Nadi International Airport and major seaports. This initiative follows IOM’s 2021 gender-sensitive rapid assessment of Fiji’s border management during the COVID-19 pandemic, which identified critical areas for improvement in policy, governance, and technology. The MIDAS pilot addresses these recommendations, enabling Fiji to lead by example in adopting cutting-edge border management solutions in the Pacific region.