A Mount Everest trekking guide has called for "strict rules" imposed by Nepal's government to combat the "huge problem" of trash on Mount Everest, including banning litterers from all mountains for "a lifetime." Officials of Nepal’s Mountaineering Association are warning that climbers leaving human waste on Mount Everest are causing real health issues. The problem is deemed to be so serious that it could even lead to the spread of diseases. So, how much poopy and other garbage calls the planet's highest mountain home? A Tech Times story describes the mountain as "the world's highest garbage dump." But Alton Byers, a mountain geologist at the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado Boulder, said this description is not entirely accurate. The problem, he told Live Science, is worse in areas off the mountain than on it. In surrounding areas, you'll find dozens of landfills at various lodges and villages throughout Sagarmatha National Park, where Mount Everest resides. The peak of Mount Everest rests at 29,029 feet (8,848 meters) above sea level, on the northern edge of Sagarmatha National Park, within the Khumbu region of Nepal. Everest is part of the Himalayas, a mountain range in Asia stretching about 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) across the countries of Bhutan, India, Nepal, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The range resulted from the Indian subcontinent crashing into the Tibetan plateau 40 million to 50 million years ago, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. In 1922, several mountaineers and others who were part of the British Mount Everest expedition made the first attempt to reach the top of the world, but were unsuccessful. In 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to successfully reach the summit. Since then, thousands of adventurers have followed in the expedition's footsteps. In the late 1990s, Everest became a major destination for adventure tourists. More recently, Sagarmatha National Park has seen upwards of 150,000 visitors every year, with several hundreds attempting an Everest climb, according to Byers. [Photos: The World's Tallest Mountains] Climbers traveling to the bottom of the majestic mountain for the first time might be surprised to find half-buried fluorescent tents, fuel bottles and other miscellaneous pieces of old camp sites strewn about the base camps. For the most part, other climbers and porters will clean up the camp sites before the climbing season ends, Byers said. "It's remarkable how clean they've been able to keep it of litter," he said. The real problem is what happens with that litter. Many (selfish) climbers believe that harsh weather, the monsoon snows, or disposal in a crevasse will keep the mountain clean—that the crap they leave will somehow harmlessly dissolve into the mountain. This may have been true during the first four decades after Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay achieved the first summit, in 1953, when only a handful of climbers attempted the summit each year. But traffic has dramatically increased with the emergence of commercial guided trips in the past 20 years, and so has the amount of human waste we’ve left on the mountain. Decades worth of shit is just sitting up there. As 700 climbers and Sherpas gear up to attempt the mountain over the next six weeks of the climbing season, now is an appropriate time to ask: How much longer can we ignore Everest’s waste problem?
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Former US President Donald Trump is now richer than billionaire financier George Soros, after his social media company’s successful debut on Nasdaq this week added billions of dollars to his fortune.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Trump’s net worth has soared by more than $4 billion this year to an estimated $7.8 billion. Trump ranked 328th on the list at Wednesday’s market close, while the 93-year-old Soros was down in 375th with an estimated $7.2 billion net worth. A hedge fund manager, Soros shot to infamy for crashing the British pound in 1992. Meanwhile, Trump’s increased wealth also placed him above the likes of billionaire entrepreneur and ABC ‘Shark Tank’ star Mark Cuban ($7.3 billion), Home Depot cofounder Bernie Marcus ($6.9 billion), oil-dynasty heir Gordon Getty ($6.2 billion), and Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings ($5.9 billion). The former US president’s net worth more than doubled this year thanks to his 58% stake in Trump Media & Technology Group, which effectively went public this week after merging with Digital World Acquisition Corp. Trump Media stock, whose new ticker corresponds to the former president’s initials, has attracted significant attention, gaining nearly 60% in the first half hour of trading on Monday. This comes as Trump faces hundreds of millions of dollars in growing legal fees and penalties as a result of numerous lawsuits, which the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has denounced as spurious and politically motivated. As part of a process in which New York State Attorney General Letitia James accused Trump’s business of fraud, Judge Arthur Engoron last month demanded a $454 million bond for the former president to even file an appeal. James was preparing to seize Trump’s Manhattan properties when an appeals court announced on Monday that it would reduce the bond to $175 million and extend the filing deadline by ten more days. Earlier this month, Trump was forced to raise a bond of $91.6 million to appeal a defamation judgment against E. Jean Carroll. Trump is still appealing the $5 million judgment a jury awarded to Carroll last May after determining the former president had sexually abused her. What will happen when Russia destroys US-made F-16 fighter jets that eventually made it to Ukraine, just as it has other Western equipment?
Several NATO member states have promised to donate their F-16s to Kiev and have trained Ukrainian pilots to fly them, but no deliveries have been made yet. Russia has warned the West that fielding the nuclear-capable jets will represent an unacceptable escalation of the Ukraine conflict. “ If they deliver the F-16s, I think you know better than others that this will not change the situation on the battlefield,” the president said. “And we will destroy these planes just as we have destroyed tanks, armored vehicles, and other equipment, including multiple launch rocket systems.” The comments came during Putin’s visit to Torzhok air base in Tver Region, home of the 344th Training Center for Russian combat pilots, including personnel being trained to take part in the Ukraine conflict. F-16s flown by Ukrainian pilots but based in third countries will nevertheless be legitimate targets for Russia, Putin added. “Of course, if they are used from airfields of third countries, they become a legitimate target for us, wherever they are located,” he said. Russia is well aware that the 1970s jet can potentially carry nuclear weapons, and this will be taken into account in combat operations, Putin noted. Kiev has lost much of its air force over the past two years, including Soviet-era jets donated by several NATO members as replacements. The Ukrainian government eventually asked the US-led bloc for F-16s. The single-engine fighter is a late 1970s design, originally manufactured by General Dynamics before it was acquired by Lockheed Martin. It requires pristine runways, which are in short supply in Ukraine, prompting speculation that Ukrainian-operated jets might be stationed in nearby NATO countries instead. Ukraine can use Telegram for influence operations but the messaging application still represents a threat, the head of the Ukrainian military intelligence service (GUR), Kirill Budanov, said on Wednesday.
In comments sent to the media by Kiev’s Center for Strategic Communications, Budanov admitted the wide reach of the encrypted instant-messaging platform, calling it both an opportunity and a problem. “From the viewpoint of national security, Telegram is definitely a problem,” Budanov said. “Anyone can create a channel, start writing whatever he wants, and – when someone tries to do something about it – hides behind freedom of the press.” “I am absolutely against the suppression of freedom of speech. But this is too much,” Budanov added. “This is not freedom of the media, it is something else.” Telegram was created as an instant-messaging platform by Russian entrepreneurs Pavel and Nikolay Durov in 2013. What sets it apart from similar applications, such as WhatsApp and Viber, is the ability to create public broadcast channels and discussion groups. It is currently the number one messaging app in Ukraine. “The most interesting thing is that everyone reads Telegram,” Budanov said. While this may have a “destructive effect” inside Ukraine, it also allows Kiev to spread its message in the Russian-controlled territories, he added. His comments come two days after several Ukrainian lawmakers proposed a bill to “regulate” Telegram. The proposal defines messaging platforms as a separate legal category and creates reporting requirements for “providers of information” using them. If passed, it would require any messaging platforms operating in Ukraine to have a registered office in the country – unless they are headquartered in the EU – and disclose their ownership structure and funding to the government. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has consolidated all media outlets under the state’s umbrella, citing martial law imposed due to the conflict with Russia. Officials in Kiev have repeatedly lamented the fact that Telegram has enabled citizens to bypass government censorship. Last month, a parliamentary committee agreed that the platform should be banned in Ukraine. This prompted criticism from a National Security and Defense Council official in charge of “countering disinformation,” who argued that Ukraine was using the platform to “strangle the pro-Russian segments of the media field” and that banning it would be “impossible.” Ukraine is not the first country in Europe to ban the Telegram App. Also the Spain National Court ordered to suspend the use of the App last week. India has “firmly reiterated” its support for the Philippines and its “national sovereignty,” as Manila remains locked in a territorial dispute with Beijing in the South China Sea. Tensions have further increased amid a pivot by the Philippines back towards the US.
Speaking on Tuesday alongside Philippines Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo after bilateral talks in Manila, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar stated “it is essential” that nations such as theirs “cooperate more closely to shape the emerging order.” “Every country has the right to uphold and enforce its national sovereignty,” the Indian diplomat added. Responding to Jaishankar’s remarks, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian declared that “any third party is not in a position to interfere” in the maritime dispute between Beijing and Manila. Tensions have been running high in the South China Sea since Manila allowed the US greater access to four more military bases in 2023, as part of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) signed in 2014. Beijing claims almost the entire South China Sea, brushing off rival claims from other countries, including the Philippines. Last week, Manila summoned Beijing’s envoy after accusing Chinese vessels of damaging a Philippines supply ship and injuring a crew close to a disputed shoal. Jaishankar’s comments also come in the wake of New Delhi’s own border tensions with Beijing over India’s Arunachal Pradesh state. China also claims the area, which it calls 'Zangnan’. Earlier this month, Beijing criticized Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the region. During his visit, Modi inaugurated a tunnel that could hasten a military deployment to forward areas near the contested border with China. Reacting to Chinese comments, the Indian Foreign Ministry called Beijing’s claims over the region “absurd” and insisted that “repeating baseless arguments… does not lend such claims any validity.” Meanwhile, the US has sought to weigh in, stating that it recognizes Arunachal Pradesh as part of India and “strongly opposes” China’s “unilateral attempts to advance territorial claims.” Beijing responded by accusing Washington of interference. “China strongly deplores and firmly opposes this,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin said at a press conference in Beijing last week. “The China-India boundary question is a matter between the two countries and has nothing to do with the US side.” Police in China are stepping up spot searches of people’s phones for apps enabling them to bypass the Great Firewall of government internet censorship, residents told Radio Free Asia in recent interviews. A resident of the southwestern province of Sichuan who gave only the surname Huang for fear of reprisals said he had recently been stopped on the subway in the provincial capital, Chengdu. “This happened to me in Chengdu,” Huang said. “A police officer stopped me on the subway and wanted to check my phone, but I didn't allow him to.” “I told him he had no law enforcement powers and he let it go,” he said. Chinese authorities have stepped up spot checking operations on the streets and on public transport in the years since the “white paper” protest movement of 2022, which the government blamed on infiltration by “foreign forces,” and have been forcing people to download an “anti-fraud” app that monitors their phone usage, according to recent interviews. Huang said he has also seen police checking people’s phones on the streets of Shanghai and Beijing.
He said anyone who gets hauled in to “drink tea” with the feared state security police will have their phone checked as a matter of routine, meaning that people need to delete such software or reset to factory settings to avoid discovery. He said that while some uncensored content occasionally gets through, there isn’t as much as before the current crackdown. According to Huang, the current crackdown was sparked by the “white paper” protests, after which the authorities have targeted university students to crack down on people going “over the wall” to get content that hasn’t been censored by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
‘You have to be especially careful’ A mobile phone repair specialist in the southern province of Guangdong who declined to be named for fear of reprisals said the police-approved “anti-fraud” app can also detect the presence of circumvention tools on any phone where it has been installed. “As long as your phone has the anti-fraud app installed, they will know what you are doing,” she said. “You have to be especially careful now if you want to get around the Wall.” A screenshot provided by a resident of the central province of Hubei showed an SMS alert from the provincial police department warning them that circumvention software had been detected on their phone, in violation of the Online Security Law The user was ordered to cease and desist or report to the local police station, on pain of further “enforcement measures,” according to the text message. According to the X citizen journalist account “Mr Li is not your teacher,” a student at the School of Electronic Information and Computer Engineering at Sichuan’s Institute of Industrial Technology was recently disciplined for “ignoring online security regulations” and using software to bypass the Great Firewall on many occasions between Feb. 29 and March 11, according to a photo of the school’s disciplinary announcement. They had accessed content on overseas websites and reposted it to two WeChat groups, which “violates the school’s student regulations,” the notice said. The student was given a warning under the college’s disciplinary code, it said. Last month, China’s state security police started combing through the account’s follower list and putting pressure on people living in China to unfollow it, the journalist reported. China’s Cyberspace Administration has also been stepping up its campaign to remove unapproved content from Chinese social media platforms, reporting that it revoked the licenses of more than 10,000 websites in 2023, and hauled in more than 10,000 “for interviews.” The websites were being targeted for “spreading false information, incitement of confrontation and other harmful content,” state news agency Xinhua reported on Jan. 31. Former US President Donald Trump has warned that Israel is “losing a lot of support” and must “finish up” its war in Gaza before its reputation declines any further. The comments represented a rare moment of criticism of the Jewish state by Trump.
In an interview with Israel Hayom partially published on Monday, Trump said that he would have acted “very much the same way as you did” if the US was attacked like Israel was by Hamas in October. “Only a fool would not do that,” Trump added. However, Trump called Israel’s wholesale destruction of civilian homes in Gaza “a very big mistake.” “It’s a very bad picture for the world. The world is seeing this…every night, I would watch buildings pour down on people,” Trump continued. “Go and do what you have to do. But you don’t do that,” he told the Israeli newspaper. “And I think that’s one of the reasons that there has been a lot of kickback. If people didn’t see that, every single night I’d watch and every single one of those... And I think Israel wanted to show that it’s tough, but sometimes you shouldn’t be doing that.” Trump was a close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his term in the White House, and described himself as “history’s most pro-Israel US president.” He imposed sanctions on Iran at Netanyahu’s request, moved the US embassy in Israel to West Jerusalem, and brokered the Abraham Accords, which saw Israel normalize relations with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan. However, this relationship soured after Netanyahu congratulated US President Joe Biden on his electoral victory over Trump in 2020. Speaking to Fox News in October, Trump claimed that Netanyahu was “not prepared” for Hamas’ attack. At a campaign event later that day, Trump declared that Netanyahu needed to “straighten out” his intelligence apparatus. With the war in Gaza approaching the six-month mark, the former president urged Netanyahu to bring it to a swift conclusion, telling his Israeli interviewers that “you’re losing a lot of support” internationally. “You have to finish up your war,” he said. “You gotta get it done. And, I am sure you will do that. And we gotta get to peace, we can’t have this going on.” Netahyahu has vowed to continue fighting until Israel achieves “total victory over Hamas,” and has promised to invade the city of Rafah – currently home to more than a million displaced Gazan civilians – in defiance of the White House’s pleas. The Israeli leader on Monday canceled a visit to Washington by an Israeli delegation to discuss the planned Rafah operation, after the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The resolution passed thanks to the US abstaining from the vote. Given Washington’s typically unconditional support for Israel at the UN, the abstention and failure to veto by the US was seen by pundits as an historic show of dissatisfaction with Netanyahu’s conduct in Gaza. Israel declared war on Hamas on October 7, after the militants carried out a cross-border raid, killing more than 1,100 people and taking at least 250 hostages. Israeli forces have killed more than 32,000 Palstinians in the time since, according to the enclave’s health authorities. In a pivotal development for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the High Court in London granted him the opportunity on Tuesday to continue his legal battle against extradition to the United States. The decision comes amid ongoing international scrutiny over the implications of Assange's potential trial in the US.
Assange, 52, has been embroiled in a legal saga for years, with US prosecutors seeking his extradition to face 18 charges, primarily related to espionage. However, the High Court ruled that the US must provide "satisfactory assurances" regarding Assange's rights, including the ability to invoke the First Amendment and clarity on whether he could face the death penalty if convicted. The latest ruling stems from Assange's legal team's efforts in February to challenge Britain's approval of his extradition to the US, arguing that his prosecution was politically motivated. In a significant turn, two senior judges acknowledged Assange's realistic prospect of successfully challenging extradition on multiple grounds, setting the stage for a prolonged legal battle. While the US has accused Assange of "indiscriminately and knowingly" publishing the names of sources, rather than merely expressing his political views, his defense team has vehemently contested these allegations. Assange's case has drawn widespread attention from human rights advocates, free speech proponents, and legal experts, who argue that his extradition could set a dangerous precedent for journalistic freedom and whistleblowing. As the legal proceedings unfold, Assange remains confined in the high-security Belmarsh prison in London, where he has spent years fighting extradition and facing numerous legal challenges. The decision by the High Court to allow Assange to continue his appeal underscores the complex legal and ethical dilemmas surrounding his case, with implications that extend far beyond his individual fate. AI fakery is quickly becoming one of the biggest problems confronting us online. Deceptive pictures, videos and audio are proliferating as a result of the rise and misuse of generative artificial intelligence tools.
With AI deepfakes cropping up almost every day, depicting everyone from Taylor Swift to Donald Trump, it's getting harder to tell what's real from what's not. Video and image generators like DALL-E, Midjourney and OpenAI’s Sora make it easy for people without any technical skills to create deepfakes -- just type a request and the system spits it out. These fake images might seem harmless. But they can be used to carry out scams and identity theft or propaganda and election manipulation. Here is how to avoid being duped by deepfakes: How to Spot Deepfake In the early days of deepfakes, the technology was far from perfect and often left telltale signs of manipulation. Fact-checkers have pointed out images with obvious errors, like hands with six fingers or eyeglasses that have differently shaped lenses. But as AI has improved, it has become a lot harder. Some widely shared advice -- such as looking for unnatural blinking patterns among people in deepfake videos -- no longer holds, said Henry Ajder, founder of consulting firm Latent Space Advisory and a leading expert in generative AI. Still, there are some things to look for, he said. A lot of AI deepfake photos, especially of people, have an electronic sheen to them, “an aesthetic sort of smoothing effect” that leaves skin “looking incredibly polished,” Ajder said. He warned, however, that creative prompting can sometimes eliminate this and many other signs of AI manipulation. Check the consistency of shadows and lighting. Often the subject is in clear focus and appears convincingly lifelike but elements in the backdrop might not be so realistic or polished. Look at the Faces Face-swapping is one of the most common deepfake methods. Experts advise looking closely at the edges of the face. Does the facial skin tone match the rest of the head or the body? Are the edges of the face sharp or blurry? If you suspect video of a person speaking has been doctored, look at their mouth. Do their lip movements match the audio perfectly? Ajder suggests looking at the teeth. Are they clear, or are they blurry and somehow not consistent with how they look in real life? Cybersecurity company Norton says algorithms might not be sophisticated enough yet to generate individual teeth, so a lack of outlines for individual teeth could be a clue. Think About the Bigger Picture Sometimes the context matters. Take a beat to consider whether what you're seeing is plausible. The Poynter journalism website advises that if you see a public figure doing something that seems “exaggerated, unrealistic or not in character,” it could be a deepfake. For example, would the pope really be wearing a luxury puffer jacket, as depicted by a notorious fake photo? If he did, wouldn't there be additional photos or videos published by legitimate sources? Using AI to Find the Fakes Another approach is to use AI to fight AI. Microsoft has developed an authenticator tool that can analyze photos or videos to give a confidence score on whether it's been manipulated. Chipmaker Intel's FakeCatcher uses algorithms to analyze an image's pixels to determine if it's real or fake. There are tools online that promise to sniff out fakes if you upload a file or paste a link to the suspicious material. But some, like Microsoft's authenticator, are only available to selected partners and not the public. That's because researchers don't want to tip off bad actors and give them a bigger edge in the deepfake arms race. Open access to detection tools could also give people the impression they are “godlike technologies that can outsource the critical thinking for us" when instead we need to be aware of their limitations, Ajder said. The Hurdles to Finding Fakes All this being said, artificial intelligence has been advancing with breakneck speed and AI models are being trained on internet data to produce increasingly higher-quality content with fewer flaws. That means there’s no guarantee this advice will still be valid even a year from now. Experts say it might even be dangerous to put the burden on ordinary people to become digital Sherlocks because it could give them a false sense of confidence as it becomes increasingly difficult, even for trained eyes, to spot deepfakes. Asymmetric warfare refers to conflicts between two parties where there is a significant disparity in their military power, resources, and strategies. In such conflicts, one party typically possesses much greater military strength, technology, and resources compared to the other, often referred to as the weaker party.
Key characteristics of asymmetric warfare include
Examples of asymmetric warfare include insurgencies against occupying forces, such as the Vietnam War or the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, as well as acts of terrorism carried out by non-state actors against more powerful state entities. Additionally, cyber attacks and hybrid warfare tactics are becoming increasingly prevalent forms of asymmetric warfare in the modern era. |
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