It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Ukraine prepared to swap territory with Russia in peace negotiations, Zelensky says
Kyiv would be prepared to exchange Russian territory seized in its Kursk offensive last year in return for Ukrainian land under Russian control, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday. He also told the UK's Guardian newspaper that security guarantees that did not involve the US would not be "real" guarantees.
Ukraine will offer to swap territory with Russia in any potential peace negotiations, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview published Tuesday, adding that Europe alone would not be able to shoulder Kyiv's war effort.
Vance has been a frequent critic of US support that has been vital to Ukraine's war effort.
"There are voices which say that Europe could offer security guarantees without the Americans, and I always say no," Zelensky told the Guardian newspaper in an interview published on the UK newspaper's website on Tuesday.
"Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees," he said.
Trump is keen for both sides to reach a deal, the terms of which are a source of concern in Ukraine.
Zelensky told the Guardian he would offer Russian President Vladimir Putin territory that Ukraine seized in Russia's Kursk region six months ago.
"We will swap one territory for another," he said, adding that he did not know which territories he would ask for in return.
"I don't know, we will see. But all our territories are important, there is no priority," he said.
Russia says it has annexed five regions of Ukraine – Crimea in 2014 and then Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia in 2022 – though it does not have full control over them.
Contracts for US firms
Trump confirmed Monday that he would soon dispatch his special envoy Keith Kellogg, who is tasked with drawing up a proposal to halt the fighting, to Ukraine.
The US president is pressing for a swift end to the conflict, while Zelensky is calling for tough security guarantees from Washington as part of any deal.
Kyiv fears that any settlement that does not include hard military commitments, such as NATO membership or the deployment of peacekeeping troops, will allow the Kremlin time to regroup and rearm for a fresh attack.
Zelensky has said he would offer US companies lucrative reconstruction contracts in a bid to win over Trump.
"Those who are helping us to save Ukraine will renovate it, with their businesses together with Ukrainian businesses. All these things we are ready to speak about in detail," he told the Guardian.
Ukraine has some of the biggest mineral reserves in Europe and it is "not in the interests of the United States" for those to fall into Russian hands, he said.
"Valuable natural resources where we can offer our partners possibilities that didn't exist before to invest in them. For us it will create jobs, for American companies it will create profits," he added.
The Munich meeting comes with Russia advancing across Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, where over the past year it has captured several settlements, most completely flattened by months of Russian bombardments.
(AFP)
'Majority' of Ukrainians want ceasefire with Russia, Zelensky's ex-spokesperson says
FRANCE 24 spoke to Iuliia Mendel, who was the spokesperson for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from 2019 to 2021. She is the author of "The Fight of Our Lives: My Time with Zelenskyy, Ukraine's Battle for Democracy, and What It Means for the World". In an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan on Tuesday, the Ukrainian president said he was ready to negotiate directly with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Mendel called this a "very realistic approach", saying that "continuing this war of attrition actually is making us weaker". Mendel added that the "majority of the people [in Ukraine] definitely agree [on the need for a] ceasefire".
In the Piers Morgan interview on Tuesday, Zelensky estimated Ukrainian casualties in the nearly three-year-old war against Russia at 45,100, with the number of injured at 390,000.
"We perhaps cannot win this war just militarily and we need to think about our people," Mendel said of Zelensky's apparent willingness to go to the negotiating table.
Mendel cautioned that "negotiations [with Russia] will be very difficult". Among these difficulties: Russian President Vladimir Putin's red lines in any peace talks include prohibiting Ukraine from ever joining NATO.
The 'illusion' of NATO membership?
Is Ukraine ready to give up on NATO membership? "We have been negotiating the invitation to NATO for the last three years," Mendel noted. However, she admitted that "there is definitely an opposition from many members from NATO", calling this "understandable because NATO is afraid to escalate the war further".
She added: "I don't think that it is realistic to exchange so many lives of Ukrainians and actually to put under existence the Ukrainian nation for [the] illusion that NATO will invite us at some point."
"Russia is occupying around 20 percent of Ukraine, but it's actively shelling around eight or nine regions of Ukraine every day, hugely with artillery, with a drone safari on civilians, with aerial- guided bombs, with missiles, with everything that Russia has," Mendel noted. "You cannot imagine what it means living in those territories."
Mendel said that those Ukrainians who are living under shelling are the most eager for a ceasefire. "I'm talking here to different people, including from those regions that I mentioned that are under shelling. And I hear only one thought there: that people are eager to have [a] ceasefire under any circumstances."
The "majority of the people [in Ukraine] definitely agree [on the need for a] ceasefire," she concluded.
Trump envoy sees 'goodwill' over Ukraine Russia on Tuesday freed a US national imprisoned on drug charges following a visit by Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump's Middle East envoy. The White House described Marc Fogel's release as "an exchange" without giving further details.
Moscow on Tuesday freed an American prisoner after the first-known visit by a member of President Donald Trump's administration to Russia, in a deal the White House called a positive sign for ending the Ukraine war.
The White House said Trump secured the release of Marc Fogel, an American jailed since 2021 on drug charges, as part of an "exchange," without offering further details.
Steve Witkoff, a property developer and friend of Trump who serves as his Middle East envoy, held talks and was "leaving Russian airspace" with Fogel, the White House said.
The US envoy in charge of hostages, Adam Boehler, later posted a picture of Vogel that appeared to show him savoring a stiff drink on a jet home, his other hand clasping both his passport and a plate of food.
"President Trump, Steve Witkoff and the President's advisors negotiated an exchange that serves as a show of good faith from the Russians and a sign we are moving in the right direction to end the brutal and terrible war in Ukraine," US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said in a statement.
There was no immediate comment from Russia, where state-run news agencies quoted the White House announcement.
Russia's Supreme Court in December refused to consider an appeal Fogel made against his 14-year sentence.
Witkoff, who earlier played a key role in pushing forward a fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire, would be the first senior US official known to have traveled to Russia in recent years.
Former president Joe Biden shut off most contact, although intelligence chiefs and others still met quietly in third countries, after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Ahead of Ukraine talks
The announcement on Fogel came hours after Trump announced a visit to Ukraine by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent -- another official in his cabinet on a mission unrelated to his primary job.
Trump took office vowing to end the war in Ukraine, possibly by leveraging billions of dollars in US assistance sent by Biden, to force Kyiv into territorial concessions.
Trump in a Fox News interview aired Monday floated that Ukraine "may be Russian someday," words quickly welcomed by Moscow.
"The fact that a significant part of Ukraine wants to become Russia, and has already, is a fact," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, referring to Moscow's 2022 annexation of four Ukrainian regions after referendums widely criticized internationally as fraudulent.
'Russians prefer to sit at negotiating table and deal with Trump directly without involving Ukraine' 04:32
Ukrainians reacted with scorn to Trump's remarks, with some questioning the Republican mogul's grasp of the situation.
"It is some kind of senile insanity," Kyiv resident Daniil told AFP. A Ukrainian soldier on a street in central Kyiv, who only gave the name Mykola, said of Trump: "He can think anything and say anything, but Ukraine will never be Russia."
Trump in the past has voiced admiration for Putin and notoriously backed his denial of the US intelligence community's finding of Russian interference in the Republican's 2016 election victory.
But Trump in recent weeks has also called on Russia to compromise, saying that Putin needs to cut heavy losses both in personnel and costs.
Both armies are trying to secure an advantage on the battlefield ahead of possible talks.
Russia's defence ministry said Tuesday its troops had captured the small village of Yasenove in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region.
Overnight the two sides also traded long-range attacks on each other's energy infrastructure. Ukraine's General Staff said its forces had struck an oil refinery in Russia's Saratov region, sparking a fire.
In Ukraine's northern Sumy region, regional prosecutors said that afternoon Russian bombing killed a 40-year-old man and a 30-year-old woman. Considered wrongfully detained
Biden, despite his refusal to engage with Putin since the invasion, negotiated through aides swaps that freed the most prominent Americans jailed by Russia – basketball player Britney Griner, journalist Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan.
Among the Russians released in return were Viktor Bout, an arms deal convicted of funneling weapons around the world until his 2008 arrest in Thailand.
Fogel, 63, was teaching at the Anglo-American School in Moscow when he was arrested in August 2021 over 21 grams of cannabis and cannabis oil allegedly found with him at the Moscow airport.
A Pennsylvania native, Fogel has taught English overseas for more than 25 years and had been living in Russia since 2012. He was reported to have been teaching English to Russians at his penal colony.
His family voiced regret that he was not part of previous prisoner swaps. Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor under Biden, in August said for the first time that the United States considered him "wrongfully detained."
(AFP)
Paris AI Summit: Canadian fund Brookfield to invest €20 billion in France
As Paris prepares to host a global artificial intelligence (AI) summit next week, Canadian fund Brookfield is set to invest €20 billion ($21 billion) by 2030 to help build data centres in France, according to a French media report.
Canadian fund Brookfield will invest 20 billion euros ($21 billion) by 2030 to help build data centres crucial to artificial intelligence development in France, a source close to the deal told AFP on Saturday.
Confirming reports in the La Tribune Dimanche newspaper, the announcement comes as Paris prepares to play host to a global summit of political and tech industry leaders on the technology on Monday and Tuesday.
With the world hurrying to stay abreast of the AI race dominated by the United States and China, countries are competing to build the vast buildings housing the swathes of data needed to train AI models up.
According to La Tribune Dimanche, 15 of the 20 million euros are earmarked for erecting new centres, with a "mega-project" in the northern city of Cambrai as its crown jewel.
That deal was inked in on January 31 by French President Emmanuel Macron and Brookfield's CEO Bruce Flatt, the paper reported.
The other five million euros are to be spent on "associated infrastructure", notably the energy generators needed for the data centres, which consume massive amounts of electricity.
01:32
Already on Thursday, the French presidency said that the United Arab Emirates would build a giant data centre in France for a total outlay of between 30 and 50 billion euros.
Once built, that AI "campus" would be the largest in Europe, but its location is yet to be set out.
France currently boasts more than 300 data centres.
That would make it the world's sixth-largest host country, after the United States, Germany, Britain, China and Canada, according to a report by the French Economic, Social and Environmental Council.
The summit Monday and Tuesday comes weeks after US President Donald Trump's administration trailed a $500-billion plan for investment into AI infrastructure led by OpenAI and its backer SoftBank.
(AFP) Macron announces €100 billion investment in AI with deepfake video blitz France will see €109 billion ($113 billion) invested in AI projects, President Emmanuel Macron announced Sunday, calling it a game-changer ahead of a global AI summit in Paris. To promote the event, he posted AI-generated fake videos of himself in various roles, showcasing the technology's potential.
Investors will pump 109 billion euros into artificial intelligence (AI) projects in France in the coming years, President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday ahead of a two-day global summit on the technology in Paris.
He described the investment as "the equivalent for France of what the US has announced with 'Stargate'," referring to OpenAI’s $500-billion programme.
To promote the summit, Macron posted a series of AI-generated fake videos featuring himself in various roles.
In one scene, Macron dances to a 1980s hit song "Voyage Voyage" by French singer Desireless.
In another, he is inserted in a spy comedy film about the exploits of a French secret agent played by Jean Dujardin.
In a third, he sings a rap song and shows off his moves, channelling French performer Nekfeu.
"Nicely done," the real Macron, who sported a suit and tie, said in the video.
"It's pretty well done, it made me laugh," Macron added, referring to the videos created over the years and featured in his Instagram post.
"More seriously, with artificial intelligence, we can do some very big things: change healthcare, energy, life in our society", the 47-year-old president said.
"France and Europe must be at the heart of this revolution to seize every opportunity and also to promote our principles," he added.
The clip ends with one of the most famous parodies in which Macron is depicted as US television action hero MacGyver, known for his looks and resourcefulness.
"There, that's definitely me," quipped Macron.
By Sunday afternoon, the post has racked up more than 73,000 likes on Instagram.
Some people said they thought that Macron's Instagram account had been hacked.
"A cool president," said one comment.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen unveils €200 bn boost for AI at Paris summit
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen Tuesday announced a push to channel €200 billion euros in public and private investments into Europe's nascent artificial intelligence (AI) industry. This comes as world leaders and experts wrap up a two-day summit in Paris.
Issued on: 11/02/2025 -
A copy of "The European Union Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act".
"We aim to mobilise a total of 200 billion euros for AI investments in Europe," the European Commission president told a Paris AI summit, saying the EU would contribute €50 billion with the rest pledged by "providers, investors and industry."
Europe faces an uphill challenge as the United States and China charge ahead in the AI field, but von der Leyen insisted "the AI race is far from over".
"We want to accelerate innovation," she told the gathering of leaders and tech executives, declaring that "global leadership is still up for grabs".
The EU investment push would include €20 billion to finance four AI gigafactories, "to allow open, collaborative development of the most complex AI models," a commission statement said.
The initial EU funding will be drawn from existing programmes with a digital component.
Von der Leyen said the European funds would "top up" pledges announced Monday by a group of more than 60 European companies such as Airbus, Volkswagen and Mistral AI.
Champions Initiative
The firms said they aimed to stimulate the emergence of new companies, with €150 billion "earmarked" by international investors for AI-related opportunities in Europe over five years as part of the "EU AI Champions Initiative".
Von der Leyen also announced that the EU would be putting its public supercomputers "at the service of our best startups and scientists."
"We want AI to be a force for good," she said. "AI needs competition, but AI also needs collaboration."
The EU chief took the stage in Paris immediately after US Vice President JD Vance who took aim at the bloc in warning that "excessive regulation" could kill the emerging AI sector.
"AI needs the confidence of people and has to be safe," von der Leyen said, in defending the bloc's landmark AI Act regulating the technology – which includes curbs on uses deemed too dangerous.
"Safety is in the interest of business," said the EU chief, while also acknowledging that "we have to make it easier, we have to cut red tape".
Streamlined procedures
French President Emmanuel Macron, who is hosting the Paris summit with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi agreed on reducing administration.
He vowed Monday to blast through red tape to build AI infrastructure in his bid to keep Europe competitive.
"We will adopt the Notre Dame de Paris strategy" of streamlined procedures that saw France rebuild the landmark cathedral within five years of its devastation in a 2019 fire, he said.
Macron's push to highlight French competitiveness saw him repeatedly trumpet €109 billion to be invested in French AI in the coming years.
He has also hailed France's extensive fleet of nuclear plants as a key advantage providing clean, scalable energy supply for AI's vast processing needs.
(with AFP)
Ally or threat? Paris summit weighs AI's impact on democracy
Drawing world leaders, top tech executives and policymakers from across the globe – the AI summit in Paris aims to lay the groundwork on how to govern the budding sector. But during a roundtable discussion on how to use AI and uphold democratic principles, key players from the sector failed to make an appearance.
The Artificial Intelligence Action Summit at the Grand Palais in Paris on February 10, 2025.
Under the striking glass vaults of the Grand Palais in Paris, world leaders and tech titans gathered for a two-day summit dedicated to artificial intelligence. The heart of the event space, tucked in between the Seine and the iconic Champs-Élysées, was organised like an exhibition hall packed with dozens of stands showcasing the various ways AI can be used.
Climbing up the stairs in the building’s majestic nave, a display of flags decorated the railing, boasting the different nationalities taking part in the summit. At the top, a handful of key players gathered on Monday afternoon in the VIP lounge to discuss the impact AI could have on democracies.
But a few VIPs were missing. Representatives from some of the most influential companies in the sector including Open AI, Google and Microsoft played hooky.
Roundtable discussion on how to leverage AI to protect democracy at the Paris AI summit on February 10, 2025.
Their absences were criticised by Meredith Whittaker, president of the end-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal who worked at Google for over a decade and helped organise mass walkouts, partly fuelled by the company’s handling of AI ethics, before resigning in July 2019.
“The large-scale approach to AI is damaging [societies],” she said.
Security threats
“AI has profound consequences on our private lives,” Whittaker continued. To illustrate her point, Whittaker referred to the handful of telecoms companies in the US including Verizon and AT&T who fell victim to a sweeping Chinese-linked espionage operation known as Salt Typhoon in December last year. A vast amount of US users had their metadata taken as a result, and officials associated with both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s campaign ahead of the November presidential elections were targeted.
“From a security standpoint, what happened was a disaster. And it was made possible by backdoors [programmes that allow hackers to access a computer system or encrypted data remotely] being installed by authorities who were meant to be the only ones to access them,” the Signal president explained.
Meredith Whittaker, president of encrypted messaging app Signal.
For Whittaker, AI was “born from the business model of surveillance”. And when it comes to hacking, “data can be used as a weapon” against US democracy.
The threat is undeniable for Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics, who shares Whittaker’s views. Rinkevics explained how, “due to the geopolitical and geographical situation” of his country, “Latvia has been exposed to cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns” in recent years. With Russia as its neighbour, Latvia and the other Baltic countries Estonia and Lithuaniabore the brunt of cyber-attacks in recent years. EU member states have repeatedly been the target of Russian cyber-attacks in 2024.
Before he went into detail about the specific threats Latvia faces, Rinkevics stressed that “the priority is to protect critical infrastructure and monitor the situation in the Baltic Sea", where several undersea telecoms, power and data cables were sabotaged in recent months.
Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics
“With regards to democracy, AI has been used to meddle in elections, especially in Romania,” Rinkevics added. “In Latvia, we passed a law that requires [all content created by] AI to be labelled” so that people can identify when it has been used. Rather than being wary of the technology, Rinkevics believes “we need more expertise to understand exactly where cyber-attacks come from and how to better protect our democracies".
In a leap of faith, Latvia signed an agreement with Microsoft in December last year to develop a National Center for Artificial Intelligence. Its aims include promoting AI and other digital solutions to modernise the country’s administrative processes.
Need for global AI safeguards
From eerily accurate deep-fakes to social media accounts usurped by scammers for money, artificial intelligence has many faces. And that is partly why it is such a threat to democracies. “AI can make it easier to carry out cyber-attacks, which have become more sophisticated now that tools generating complex code can be used to this end,” warned Marie-Laure Denis, President of the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL).
Marie-Laure Denis, President of the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL)
Denis believes that solutions to protect democracies should stem from a diverse range of safeguards, starting with the general data protection regulation (GDPR), implemented in the EU since 2018 that sets out guidelines on how to collect and process personal information from people both within and outside of the continent. “We should develop a trusted AI tool to strengthen the protection of our rights,” she added. “Without guarantees, we can’t have trust. And without trust, we can’t develop AI in the long-run.”
But when it comes to AI and democracy, not all countries feel equally included in the conversation on regulations. Pakistani lawyer and online rights activist Nighat Dad intervened to point out global disparities. “Are our exchanges at this roundtable democratic? Are we talking about the whole world or just the democracies of the Global North?” Dad asked. She founded the Digital Rights Foundation in 2012, an NGO focused on protecting human rights defenders in digital spaces. “Moving forward without diverse voices is unimaginable. All democracies must be able to express themselves.”
Nighat Dad, founder of the Digital Rights Foundation.
Mathias Cormann, secretary-general of the OECD, echoed Dad’s remarks when he spoke of the need for “more effective international cooperation on AI”.
“We need a generalised governance framework to help us develop safe AI,” he said. “But right now, we are a long way from that.”
“At this stage, we don’t know exactly where we’re headed when it comes to AI,” Latvian President Rinkevics concluded. “The priority for companies is to reap the benefits [of AI]. And the priority for countries is likely a little different. But in any case, we are a long way from having a global AI agreement.”
JD Vance warns against 'excessive regulation' of AI at Paris summit
THAT MEANS ANY REGULATION IS EXCESSIVE
U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday warned against the “excessive regulation” of AI, which he says could curb the growth of the industry. The U.S., along with Britain, was also noticeably absent from a joint statement signed by more than 60 nations pledging to ensure AI is “open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy.”
U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday warned global leaders and tech industry executives that “excessive regulation” could cripple the rapidly growing artificial intelligence industry in a rebuke to European efforts to curb AI’s risks.
The speech underscored a widening, three-way rift over AI.
The United States, under President Donald Trump, champions a hands-off approach to fuel innovation, while Europe is tightening the reins with strict regulations to ensure safety and accountability. Meanwhile, China is rapidly expanding AI through state-backed tech giants, vying for dominance in the global race.
The U.S. was noticeably absent from a joint statement signed by more than 60 nations, pledging to “promote AI accessibility to reduce digital divides” and “ensure AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy.”
The agreement also called for “making AI sustainable for people and the planet” and protecting “human rights, gender equality, linguistic diversity, protection of consumers and of intellectual property rights.”
In a surprise, China — long criticized for its human rights record — signed the declaration, leaving the U.S. as the outlier.
At the summit, Vance made his first major policy speech since becoming vice president last month, framing AI as an economic turning point but cautioning that “at this moment, we face the extraordinary prospect of a new industrial revolution, one on par with the invention of the steam engine."
"But it will never come to pass if overregulation deters innovators from taking the risks necessary to advance the ball,” Vance added.
The 40-year-old vice president, leveraging the AI summit and a security conference in Munich later this week, is seeking to project Trump’s forceful new style of diplomacy.
The Trump administration will “ensure that AI systems developed in America are free from ideological bias,” Vance said and pledged the U.S. would “never restrict our citizens’ right to free speech.”
Vance also took aim at foreign governments for “tightening the screws” on U.S. tech firms, saying such moves were troubling. His remarks underscored the growing divide between Washington and its European allies on AI governance.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed that, “AI needs the confidence of the people and has to be safe″ and detailed EU guidelines intended to standardize the bloc’s AI Act but acknowledged concerns over regulatory burden.
“At the same time, I know that we have to make it easier and we have to cut red tape and we will,” she added.
She also announced that the “InvestAI” initiative had reached a total of €200 billion in AI investments across Europe, including €20 billion dedicated to AI gigafactories.
The summit laid bare competing global AI strategies — Europe pushing to regulate and invest, China expanding AI through state-backed giants, and the U.S. doubling down on an unregulated, free-market approach.
French President Emmanuel Macron positioned Europe as a “third way” in the AI race, one that avoids dependence on major powers like the U.S. and China.
“We want a fair and open access to these innovations for the whole planet,” he said in his closing speech, arguing that the AI sector “needs rules” on a global scale to build public trust and urging greater “international governance.”
Macron also hailed newly announced investments in France and across Europe, underscoring the continent’s ambitions in AI. “We’re in the race,” he said.
Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, special envoy of Xi Jinping, reinforced Beijing’s intent to shape global AI standards.
Vance, a vocal critic of European content moderation policies, has suggested the U.S. should reconsider its NATO commitments if European governments impose restrictions on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X. His Paris visit was also expected to include candid discussions on Ukraine, AI’s role in global power shifts, and U.S.-China tensions.
Concerns over AI’s potential dangers have loomed over the summit, particularly as nations grapple with how to regulate a technology that is increasingly entwined with defense and warfare.
"I think one day we will have to find ways to control AI or else we will lose control of everything,” said Admiral Pierre Vandier, NATO’s commander who oversees the alliance’s modernization efforts.
Beyond diplomatic tensions, a global public-private partnership is being launched called “Current AI,” aimed at supporting large-scale AI initiatives for the public good.
Analysts see this as an opportunity to counterbalance the dominance of private companies in AI development. However, it remains unclear whether the U.S. will support such efforts.
Separately, a high-stakes battle over AI power is escalating in the private sector.
A group of investors led by Musk — who now heads Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency — has made a $97.4 billion bid to acquire the nonprofit behind OpenAI. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, attending the Paris summit, swiftly rejected the offer on X.
In Beijing, officials on Monday condemned Western efforts to restrict access to AI tools, while Chinese company DeepSeek’s new AI chatbot has prompted calls in the U.S. Congress to limit its use over security concerns. China promotes open-source AI, arguing that accessibility will ensure global AI benefits.
French organizers hope the summit will boost investment in Europe’s AI sector, positioning the region as a credible contender in an industry shaped by U.S.-China competition.
French President Emmanuel Macron, addressing the energy demands of AI, contrasted France’s nuclear-powered approach with the U.S.‘s reliance on fossil fuels, quipping: France won't “drill, baby, drill,” but "plug, baby, plug.”
Vance’s diplomatic tour will continue in Germany, where he will attend the Munich Security Conference and press European allies to increase commitments to NATO and Ukraine. He may also meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Vance will discuss Ukraine and the Middle East over a working lunch with Macron.
Like Trump, he has questioned U.S. aid to Kyiv and the broader Western strategy toward Russia. Trump has pledged to end the war in Ukraine within six months of taking office.
Vance is also set to meet separately with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
(AP)
Consumers need to think before buying clothes: worker rights activist Kalpona Akter tells France 24
With one of the longest and most complex supply chains, the fashion industry faces challenges in ensuring fair and ethical practices in the manufacturing process. As a major meeting on due diligence in the sector takes place at the OECD, Kalpona Akter, founder of the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity, speaks to France 24 about how working conditions have changed since the days she was working in a garment factory at age 12, what still needs to change, and what consumers need to do.
EURO SKEPTICS TRANSFORM INTO EURO PATRIOTS
EU far-right parties rally in Madrid behind slogan 'Make Europe Great Again'
After last year's European Parliament elections, in which far-right parties performed strongly in several countries, a rally Saturday in Madrid was a meant as a show of force by the EU parliament's biggest far-right bloc. The rally adopted the slogan "Make Europe Great Again", a nod to US President Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again".
Patriots for Europe has realigned extreme-right forces in the European Union. It became the European Parliament's third-largest force after Orban helped launch it last year to pull the bloc towards the far right.
"Yesterday we were the heretics. Today we are the mainstream... We are the future," proclaimed Orban, sharing the stage with other leading extreme-right nationalists including Dutch anti-Islam firebrand Geert Wilders, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and former Czech premier Andrej Babis.
Both Orban and Le Pen hailed Trump's "tornado" as showing the way forward for the EU, which the parties had condemned in a joint statement as riven with "climate fanaticism", "illegal immigration" and "excessive regulation".
"We're facing a truly global tipping point. Hurricane Trump is sweeping across the United States," Le Pen said.
"For its part, the European Union seems to be in a state of shock."
Spanish party Vox, who hosted the rally, said around 2,000 people attended the event, following a dinner on Friday for Patriots leaders and Kevin Roberts, head of ultra-conservative US think tank The Heritage Foundation. 'Make Europe Great Again'
The summit in the Spanish capital has adopted the slogan "Make Europe Great Again", a nod to Trump's rallying cry "Make America Great Again".
Orban is seen as one of Trump's closest EU allies, while Vox leader Santiago Abascal has highlighted the ideological affinity between the group and Trump, especially on immigration.
"President Trump, to us, is like a brother in arms," said Wilders, who called for a "reconquista" of Europe, like the wars waged by Spanish Christian monarchs to retake the Iberian peninsula from Muslim kingdoms between the eighth and 15th centuries.
But Trump's threats, from slapping prohibitive tariffs on European goods to annexing Denmark's gigantic Arctic territory of Greenland, could embarrass nationalist parties in Europe.
"Liking Donald Trump's patriotism does not mean being the vassal of the United States," Jordan Bardella, leader of France's National Rally (NR), said last month.
The NR, whose figurehead is Le Pen, leads the Patriots group in the European Parliament. 'Show of force'
After last year's European Parliament elections, in which far-right parties performed strongly in several countries, Saturday's gathering was designed to be "a show of force", said Steven Forti, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
It would also serve to promote the Patriots turf war with other far-right groups in the EU assembly, he said.
The European elections saw the Patriots win 86 of the parliament's 720 seats.
It overtook the European Conservatives and Reformists group, led by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's neo-Fascist Brothers of Italy party, which won 80 seats.
Patriots for Europe is seeking to "show its central place in the competition" with rival extreme-right groups, Forti told AFP.
Neither Meloni, nor AfD representatives attended Saturday's rally.
Forti said the Patriots wanted "to take advantage of the wave triggered by Trump's victory and the shock in the European Union" his measures have caused in order to reshape the balance in Europe.
They shared with Trump a wish to weaken the EU, Forti said.
Denmark stays in top spot as US, France slide in Transparency corruption index
Transparency International released its annual corruption index on Tuesday with Denmark remaining in the top spot as the least corrupt nation while France, Germany and the United States all fell in the rankings, with
Transparency notably citing "serious questions" about the ethics rules for the US Supreme Court.
Many countries had their worst showing in more than a decade in an index released Tuesday that serves as a barometer of public sector corruption worldwide, from leading powers such as the United States and France to authoritarian nations such as Russia and Venezuela.
Transparency International, which compiles the annual Corruption Perceptions Index, found that 47 countries out of the 180 it surveyed had their lowest score last year since it started using its current methodology for its global ranking in 2012. It said of its 2024 survey that “global corruption levels remain alarmingly high, with efforts to reduce them faltering.”
The group also pointed to worldwide risks from corruption to efforts to combat climate change. It said that a lack of transparency and accountability mechanisms increases the risk of climate funds being embezzled or misused, while “undue influence,” often from the private sector, obstructs the approval of ambitious policies.
The organization measures the perception of public sector corruption according to 13 data sources, including the World Bank, the World Economic Forum and private risk and consulting companies. It ranks 180 countries and territories on a scale from a “highly corrupt” 0 to a “very clean” 100.
The global average remained unchanged from 2023 at 43, with more than two-thirds of countries scoring under 50, Transparency International said. Denmark held on to first place with an unchanged 90 points, followed by Finland with 88 and Singapore with 84. New Zealand dropped from third to fourth, shedding two points to 83.
South Sudan slid to the bottom of the index with just eight points, displacing Somalia although the latter country's score dropped to nine. They were followed by Venezuela with 10 and Syria with 12.
The U.S. slid from 69 points to 65 and from 24th place to 28th. Transparency International pointed to criticism of its judicial branch. It noted that the U.S. Supreme Court adopted its first code of ethics in 2023, “but serious questions remain about the lack of meaningful, objective enforcement mechanisms and the strength of the new rules themselves.”
Other Western nations on the decline included France, which dropped four points to 67 and five places to 25th; and Germany, down three points to 75 and six places to 15th. It tied with Canada, which was down one point and three places.
Mexico dropped five points to 26 as the judiciary failed to take action in major corruption cases, Transparency International said.
“Despite former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s promises to tackle corruption and return stolen assets to the people, his six-year term ended without any convictions or recovered assets,” it added.
In Europe, Slovakia dropped five points to 49 in the first full year of Prime Minister Robert Fico's government, “as numerous reforms erode anti-corruption checks and bypass public consultation.”
Russia, which already declined significantly in recent years, shed another four points to 22 last year. Transparency International noted that Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has “further entrenched authoritarianism.” It said that Ukraine, while its score dipped one point to 35, “is making strides in judicial independence and high-level corruption prosecutions.”
In the Middle East and North Africa, the situation of anti-corruption efforts “remains bleak” as political leaders exert near-absolute control while benefiting from wealth and clamping down on dissent, the group said. But it said that “unforeseen opportunities are also emerging,” for example in the wake of the fall of President Bashar Assad's government in Syria. Sub-Saharan Africa had the lowest average score of any region, at 33.
In Asia and the Pacific, governments “are still failing to deliver on anti-corruption pledges,” Transparency International said.
(AP)
Drone warfare: US Army looks to learn lessons from Ukraine
Cheaper and more plentiful than in the past, drones are changing the face of modern warfare, particularly in Ukraine where they have been used extensively by both sides for both attacks and surveillance. Now, the US Army is hoping to put the lessons learned in Ukraine into practice, training its troops on the latest in drone tech and tactics. But the country could find producing drones in large numbers on a scale similar to rivals such as China a tough challenge.
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FASCIST REVISIONISM
AP reporter barred from White House over refusal to use 'Gulf of America'
The Associated Press said Tuesday that the White House barred its reporter from an event with US President Donald Trump after the news agency refused to adopt his executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America." The AP condemned the move as a violation of press freedom, while the White House Correspondents' Association called it "unacceptable."
The Associated Press said Tuesday that its White House reporter was barred from an event with President Donald Trump over the top US news agency's refusal to follow his order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
"We were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump's executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office," AP Executive Editor Julie Pace said.
"This afternoon AP's reporter was blocked from attending an executive order signing," Pace said in a statement.
In another executive order after taking office last month, Trump declared that the Gulf of Mexico would henceforth be called the "Gulf of America."
In the past the body of water, which also borders Mexico, has always been known by both governments as the Gulf of Mexico.
Trump called it an "indelible part of America" critical to US oil production and fishing and "a favorite destination for American tourism and recreation activities."
Pace, in her statement, said "it is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism."
"Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP's speech not only severely impedes the public's access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment," she said.
In a style note last month, AP said Trump's executive order "only carries authority within the United States." "Mexico, as well as other countries and international bodies, do not have to recognize the name change," the AP said, adding that "the Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years."
"The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen," the news agency said.
"As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences," it added.
The White House Correspondents' Association, which advocates for the media covering the US presidency, branded the barring of AP "unacceptable" and called on the Trump administration to "immediately change course." "The White House cannot dictate how news organizations report the news, nor should it penalize working journalists because it is unhappy with their editors' decisions," WHCA head Eugene Daniels said in a statement.
Along with the Gulf of America, Trump also signed an executive order changing the name of the highest mountain in North America, Denali in Alaska, to Mount McKinley.
In that case, the AP said it would refer to Mount McKinley since it "lies solely in the United States and as president, Trump has the authority to change federal geographical names within the country."
The AP is the biggest US news agency and for years its Stylebook -- a compendium of the organization's rules for correct usage of grammar and language -- has been a go-to reference for newsrooms and corporate offices.
(AFP)
Trump’s Goal of Burying History Won’t Work If Teachers Refuse to Stop Teaching
Trump wants education to become indoctrination, and the Democratic Party isn’t fighting back. But we can.
They fear students who read Frederick Douglass and Thomas Paine and aren’t afraid to consider what their ideas mean for our society today.
Great Oak High School students leave campus in protest of the district's ban of critical race theory curricula, at Patricia H. Birdsall Sports Park in Temecula, California, on December 16, 2022.Watchara Phomicinda / The Press-Enterprise via Getty Images
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President Donald Trump is waging an all-out assault on education by issuing executive orders designed to privatize schooling, attack immigrant and transgender students, prohibit solidarity with Palestine, chill dissent on college campuses and censor discussions of race, gender, sexuality and systemic oppression in schools.
One of his latest orders, misnamed Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling, threatens federal funding for schools that teach truthfully about Black, Indigenous, and people of color’s history or structural inequality, while also banning discussions of gender identity. These actions are about indoctrinating young people with what I call “uncritical race theory” — an ideology that denies systemic racism, either dismissing it altogether or reducing it to nothing more than isolated individual bias.
As if this wasn’t enough, Trump is preparing to escalate his assault on education by issuing an executive order to abolish the Department of Education (DOE). While only Congress has the legal authority to completely end the DOE, The Washington Post reports that Trump’s order “directs the agency to begin to diminish itself. …The new administration has been trying to reduce the workforce by putting scores of employees on administrative leave and pressuring staff to voluntarily quit.”
Let’s call this move what it is: an extremist power grab designed to dismantle public schools and enforce ideological conformity. If successful, this order would gut $18.4 billion in Title I funding, which provides crucial support to high-poverty schools, and strip $15.5 billion from disability education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), leaving millions of students without legally required accommodations. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which protects students from racial, gender and disability discrimination, would be hollowed out, further fueling the school-to-prison pipeline and allowing systemic inequities to go unchecked. And Trump’s attack on the DOE isn’t just about K-12 education — it also threatens the federal student loan system, throwing $1.6 trillion in student debt into chaos and potentially stripping away protections that prevent borrowers from being preyed upon by private lenders. This isn’t about “local control” or efficiency; it’s a direct attack on public education, paving the way for corporate profiteering and right-wing ideological supremacy.
Let’s call this move what it is: an extremist power grab designed to dismantle public schools and enforce ideological conformity.
Trump’s Executive Order Is Illegal
Trump’s executive order to defund schools that allow students to investigate aspects of history and identity he doesn’t want them to learn about is not only immoral — it’s illegal. Title 20, Section 1232a of the United States Code (20 U.S.C. § 1232a) explicitly prohibits the federal government from directing or controlling school curricula — a provision that directly contradicts Trump’s attempt to ban discussions of equity, making his executive order not only authoritarian but also unlawful — stating:
No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system…
This law, first enacted in 1970 as part of the General Education Provisions Act (GEPA) and later amended, was designed to ensure that education remains under local and state control, preventing federal overreach in dictating what schools can and cannot teach. Even when federal funds are allocated to education programs, they cannot be used as a mechanism for controlling school curricula. Yet, in a staggering display of hypocrisy, Trump and the GOP — who endlessly champion “states’ rights” and “local control” when it suits their agenda — are now using federal power to dictate school curricula and punish educators who refuse to comply.
Trump’s Order and the Tradition of Hiding History
The attack on truthful education is part of a long history of erasing Black resistance and maintaining white supremacy in schools. From the United Daughters of the Confederacy’s efforts to rewrite textbooks and glorify the Confederacy; to the Dunning School at Columbia University that promoted a white supremacist interpretation of Reconstruction, portraying it as a tragedy of corrupt Black rule to justify Jim Crow laws; to the Florida Board of Education today whose official state curriculum proclaims slavery to have been of “personal benefit” to Black people; reactionary forces have always sought to control historical memory.
Trump’s policies are a continuation of these efforts. Through executive order, he has reestablished the 1776 Commission, a body designed to promote a sanitized, celebratory version of American history while discrediting historical truths about oppression and struggle. The Commission is tasked with implementing a “Presidential 1776 Award” to recognize students for their “knowledge of the American founding.” But what does it mean to truly understand the founding of the United States?
This isn’t about “local control” or efficiency; it’s a direct attack on public education, paving the way for corporate profiteering and right-wing ideological supremacy.
When I teach high school students about the American War for Independence, I introduce my students to Thomas Paine, the English-born writer whose best-selling pamphlet Common Sense helped galvanize the colonies to break from British rule. But Paine did more than advocate for independence — he also exposed the hypocrisy of revolutionaries who fought for liberty while enslaving Black people. In March 1775, he published African Slavery in America, one of the earliest antislavery articles in the colonies, and excoriated his peers by asking, “With what consistency, or decency, they complain so loudly of attempts to enslave them, while they hold so many hundred thousands in slavery, and annually enslave many thousands more…?” Paine’s words anticipated the powerful critique Frederick Douglass would later make in What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?:
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. … Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
This is the history that Trump and his fellow uncritical race theorists don’t want you to learn. For all their braying about patriotism and the importance of 1776, it’s doubtful that a student in my class who knows the truth about Fredrick Douglass or about Thomas Paine — one of the most influential of the American revolutionaries — would be eligible for the “Presidential 1776 Award.”
Yet as the right escalates its war on history, the Democratic Party has largely refused to mount a meaningful defense of antiracist education or a serious opposition to Trump. The February 2 New York Times headline captures this reality: “‘We Have No Coherent Message’: Democrats Struggle to Oppose Trump.”
The subheading continues, “More than 50 interviews with Democratic leaders revealed a party struggling to decide what it believes in, what issues to prioritize and how to confront an aggressive right-wing administration.”
While Democrats often offer rhetorical opposition to book bans and curriculum censorship, they have refused to take bold, structural action to protect educators, students and schools from these attacks. The Biden administration, for example, did condemn Republican efforts to censor history but did little to enforce federal protections against racial discrimination in education. As book bans escalated and states prohibited teaching about Black history, the Democratic Party never launched a national campaign to combat these laws, and certainly never supported the annual Teach Truth Day of Action organized by the Zinn Education Project and supported by educators, students and families all over the country.
As the right escalates its war on history, the Democratic Party has largely refused to mount a meaningful defense of antiracist education or a serious opposition to Trump.
When confronted by conservatives on education, Democratic politicians often respond by insisting that Critical Race Theory (CRT) isn’t being taught in K-12 schools. While it’s true that most educators had little familiarity with CRT before Republicans launched their crusade against it, the right — amplified by media outlets — successfully rebranded any form of antiracist teaching as CRT. Instead of challenging this false narrative head-on, liberal politicians largely relied on denial, repeatedly insisting that CRT wasn’t in schools, without addressing the deeper question of whether teaching about systemic racism belonged in the curriculum at all. This defensive strategy backfired, making it seem as though they were evading the issue rather than standing up for the right of students to learn about racism, oppression and history. The reality is that many Democrats feared that openly defending antiracist education — whether Black studies, ethnic studies, or CRT — would cost them politically. Their reluctance to take a principled stance left them vulnerable to right-wing attacks and signaled a broader unwillingness to fight for a truthful education system. As professors Daniel Kreiss, Alice Marwick and Francesca Bolla Tripodi argued in an article for Scientific American:
Rather than dismissing manufactured concerns over CRT as fake, Democrats should embrace the robust teaching of America’s racial history in our public schools and make an affirmative case for why it matters for American values of fairness, equality and justice. Democrats should then focus on articulating how attacks on CRT are meant to divide people of all races who otherwise share interests. Rather than dismissing these attacks as isolated incidents, Democrats should mount their own sustained and coherent campaign to argue affirmatively for diversity, equity and inclusion programs and for complementary efforts such as the 1619 Project.
The refusal of the Democrats to defend honest education about race has been so flagrant that it has angered or demoralized wide swaths of its base in the wake of the 2024 presidential election. The evidence of this is abundant. As Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent argued in a column for The Washington Post, “When Republicans turned an obscure academic topic known as critical race theory into a national boogeyman supposedly poisoning the minds of our youth, Democrats were caught flat-footed. They weren’t sure how to react: Debate what it actually means? Explain that it isn’t something that gets taught to kids? In the face of relentless conservative demagoguery, they were flummoxed. … And Democrats still seem uncertain how to respond.”
The way to respond was clear to many millions of educators, students and families around the country: banning history and books are the marks of despotic regimes and should be forcefully opposed. Yet even in the face of intensifying authoritarian policies that have led to many teachers being targeted, being fired, or receiving death threats for teaching about race or gender, Democratic Party politicians have largely refused to passionately defend teaching honestly about history and identity — a result of their obsequiousness to the same billionaire class that funds the Republican Party.
In the wake of Trump’s presidential victory, many Democratic Party establishment figures blamed their loss on the party being too “woke” and pontificated that if they had just further abandoned trans people and communities of color, in favor of advancing arguments to defend the working class, they could have won the election. It is true that the Democrats’ failure to fight for working class issues like raising the minimum wage, curbing inflation, fighting for affordable housing or taxing the rich to pay for education contributed to their defeat. But the truth is that trans people and communities of color are part of the working class — and as long as the wealthiest one percent can convince people that trans people, immigrants, or Black people are the problem in our society, various sections of the working class will be fighting each other in a squid game while the rich look on in amusement. That is why honest education that helps the young see each other’s humanity is so important.
Resisting the Truthcrime Laws
Trump and his allies certainly fear the power of an informed generation. Unfortunately, too many corporate Democrats also subscribe to uncritical race theory and too often would rather accommodate Trump than risk the upheaval and potential shift in power that can occur from young people learning — and acting on — historical lessons of social movements.
For all their bravado, the uncritical race theorists are terrified of youth who are armed with the lessons of history and ready to act — as the 2020 uprising for Black lives, largely led by young people, exposed. They fear students who read Frederick Douglass and Thomas Paine and aren’t afraid to consider what their ideas mean for our society today. They fear the hundreds of students in Los Angeles who recently walked out of school in protest of Trump’s latest attacks on immigrants. They fear the thousands of educators around the country participating in the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action, defiantly teaching the lessons that Trump and his enforcers want banned.
And most of all, they fear an education that exposes young people to a wide range of ideas and teaches students not what to think, but how to think critically and question everything.
As Jason Stanley explains in Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, “If we are to stop the United States’ drift toward fascism, we must recognize the nature of the challenge facing our educational institutions. Schools and universities are indeed on the front lines of the multi-decade far-right effort to reinforce anti-democratic myths.”
The difficult truth is no one is coming to save us from the banning of history and this slide into fascism — including the Democratic Party. But once we understand this, our task becomes clear. We must build robust, independent, social movements and fight to teach the truth — because no executive order, no political intimidation, and no forced ignorance can erase history, so long as we refuse to stop teaching it.
This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks during the briefing with European Investment Bank President Nadia Calvino in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, February 10, 2025. © Efrem Lukatsky, AP
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