The question that wiped $120bn off Google’s valuation

Gareth Corfield
Wed, 8 February 2023 

Google Bard offers an incorrect answer to a questions about the James Webb Space Telescope - NASA TV/AFP via Getty Images

More than $120bn was wiped off Google’s market value after its new AI search assistant gave a wrong answer that was featured in promotional material.

Parent company Alphabet’s share price dropped 8pc after the Google Bard tool’s launch got off to a rocky start following its misleading response to a question about a NASA telescope.

At its lowest point on Wednesday Alphabet was trading at $98.08 (£81.16), a fall of 8.1pc on the previous day’s price of $106.77 (£88.35).

It marked the biggest one-day fall in Alphabet’s value since October 2022, when the company shed 9pc of its value in one day after unveiling a big slowdown in sales, profits and growth.

Bard, its AI search assistant, is used by Google to generate text summaries of search results.

Yet in an animated image of Google Bard in action distributed by the company to mark the new feature’s launch, it gives a wrong answer.

The falsehood will raise further questions about the accuracy of search engines and of AI-generated answers to humans’ questions.

In an animated GIF showing how Bard works, a user types in the search query “what new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9 year old about?”

The NASA telescope was made operational in December 2021 and has been used by scientists to make several discoveries of new planets outside the Solar System.

One of the responses generated by Bard says: “JWST took the very first pictures of a planet outside of our own solar system.”

This is not accurate. The first picture ever taken of a planet outside the solar system – an exoplanet – was captured in 2004 by the Very Large Telescope array in Chile.

Google Bard needs to swot up on its space knowledge

The exoplanet is called 2M1207b, is around five times the size of Jupiter and is located about 170 light-years away from Earth.

Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Bard’s tall tale.

Fears have been raised about inaccuracies generated by artificial intelligence systems which are not easily spotted by humans.

OpenAI, makers of chatbot rival ChatGPT, have been open about the limitations of their technology and have admitted it can sometimes write plausible-sounding but incorrect, or nonsensical, answers to humans’ questions.

The company is owned by Microsoft, whose share price has grown 6pc over the past week. Market analysts believe its recent growth is down to the launch of ChatGPT.

Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities said in a client note on Tuesday, referring to Microsoft’s chief executive: “This OpenAI investment/strategic partnership which is likely in the $10 billion range is a game changer in our opinion for Nadella & Co.”

John Kleeman, founder of online exam website Questionmark, told The Telegraph in December: “As a technology, it is fantastically impressive, really showing us how AI is going to change the world.”

Some of OpenAI’s training data for ChatGPT include the entire English-language contents of Wikipedia, eight years’ worth of web pages scraped from the public internet, and scans of English-language books.

It is thought that Google has used similar data sources to develop Bard, although the company has not yet disclosed how the software was trained to generate its answers and summaries of search results.

UK

New department ‘puts science at the heart of government’

Nina Massey, PA Science Correspondent
Tue, 7 February 2023 

Michelle Donelan
British politician

The creation of a new Government department with a focus on science has been welcomed by experts from across the sector.

Many UK scientists had been calling for a dedicated department for a number of years, and say the announcement puts science at the heart of government.

Downing Street said having a single department focused on turning scientific and technical innovations into practical, applicable solutions will help make sure the UK is the most innovative economy in the world.

The new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology will drive the innovation that will deliver improved public services, create new and better-paid jobs and grow the economy, it added.



Michelle Donelan has moved from culture to be named Secretary of State for the new department.

Dr Tim Bradshaw, chief executive of the Russell Group, an association of 24 public research universities, said: “The decision to create a dedicated department for science, innovation and technology recognises the value of our sector and its importance to growing the economy, creating jobs and solving major challenges such as energy security, inequalities and net zero.”

Sir Adrian Smith, president of the Royal Society, said: “A dedicated Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and Secretary of State with a seat in Cabinet is a clear signal that research and innovation sit at the heart of the Prime Minister’s productivity and growth agenda.

“The Royal Society has long called for such a Cabinet-level position.

“Michelle Donelan’s first job must be to secure association to Horizon Europe and other EU science programmes.

“These schemes support outstanding international collaboration and without being part of them we are undermining the Prime Minister’s stated ambition for the UK to be at the forefront of science and technology globally.”

Commenting on the establishment of the new department, Tom Grinyer, chief executive of the Institute of Physics, said: “The new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology with a Cabinet seat is very good news for the UK and puts science and innovation exactly where they should be – right at the heart of government.

“We are entering an exciting new era powered by science, engineering and technology at a time when there are great opportunities and important choices facing the country.”

While Professor Dame Anne Johnson, president of the Academy of Medical Sciences, said placing science at the heart of Government “is an important step in realising the UK’s ambitions to become a science superpower”.

Stian Westlake, chief executive of the Royal Statistical Society, said it was encouraging to see science, technology and innovation represented at the top table of British politics.

Ten deadliest quakes of the 21st century

Wed, 8 February 2023 


With the death toll rising by the hour, the massive earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6 is already among the ten deadliest of the 21st century.

- 2004: 230,000 dead, southeast Asia -

On December 26, a massive earthquake measuring 9.1 on the Richter scale strikes off the coast of Sumatra, triggering a tsunami that kills more than 230,000 throughout the region, including 170,000 in Indonesia alone.

Huge waves of 700 kph (around 435 mph) reach heights of 30 metres (100 feet).

- 2010: 200,000 dead, Haiti -

A magnitude 7 quake on January 12 devastates the capital Port-au-Prince and the surrounding region.

The quake cuts the country off from the rest of the world for 24 hours, killing over 200,000 people, leaving 1.5 million homeless and shattering much of its frail infrastructure.

In October the same year Haiti is also hit by a cholera epidemic introduced by Nepalese peacekeepers who had come after the quake. It kills more than 10,000 people.

- 2008: 87,000 dead, Sichuan -

More than 87,000, including 5,335 school pupils, are left dead or missing when a 7.9-magnitude quake strikes southwestern Sichuan province on May 12.

Outrage erupts after it emerges 7,000 schools were badly damaged by the quake, triggering accusations of shoddy construction, corner-cutting and possible corruption, especially as many other buildings nearby held firm.

- 2005: 75,000 dead, Kashmir -

An October 8 earthquake kills more than 73,000 people, the vast majority of them in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province and the Pakistani-administered zone of Kashmir state. Some 3.5 million people are displaced.

- 2003: 31,000 dead, Bam (Iran) -

A 6.6-magnitude quake on December 26 in southeastern Iran destroys the ancient mud-brick city of Bam, killing at least 31,000 people.

Nearly 80 percent of Bam's infrastructure is damaged, and the desert citadel, once considered the world's largest adobe building, crumbles.

- 2001: 20,000 dead, India -

A massive 7.7 earthquake on January 26 hits the western Indian state of Gujarat, killing more than 20,000 people.

The quake levelled buildings across the state, with many fatalities in the town of Bhuj near the Pakistan border.

- 2011: 18,500 dead, Japan -

On March 11, Japan is struck by an enormous 9.0-magnitude earthquake, unleashing a towering tsunami that levels communities along the country's northeastern coast.

Around 18,500 people are left dead or missing as the terrifying wall of water travelling at the speed of a jet plane swallows up everything in its path.

The ensuing nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant blankets nearby areas with radiation, rendering some towns uninhabitable for years and displacing tens of thousands of residents.

- 2023: 11,200 dead, Turkey and Syria -

On February 6, a 7.8 magnitude quake strikes near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, home to around two million people.

Followed by a slightly smaller 7.5 magnitude tremor and many aftershocks, the quakes devastate entire sections of major cities in southeastern Turkey and the north of war-ravaged Syria.

The death toll reaches more than 11,200 three days after the disaster.

- 2015: 9,000 dead, Nepal -

A 7.8-magnitude earthquake on April 25 strikes in central Nepal, triggering avalanches and landslides across the Himalayan nation, destroying schools and hospitals.

The massive quake kills almost 9,000 people and renders millions homeless, while also reducing more than a hundred monuments to rubble, including centuries-old temples and royal palaces in the capital's Kathmandu valley.

- 2006: 6,000 dead, Java -

On May 26, a 6.3-magnitude quake rocks the southern coast of the Indonesian island of Java, near the city of Yogyakarta, killing around 6,000 people.

More than 420,000 are left homeless and some 157,000 houses are destroyed.

jah-eab/fb

Hefty fines could halt US-backed anti-abortion groups from breaching buffer zones


David Bol
Tue, 7 February 2023 

Abortion protesters (Image: PA)

HEFTY fines could be thrown at American anti-abortion groups to ensure police can enforce breaching new laws, the architect of plans to roll out buffer zones outside heath facilities has suggested.

A new offence or aggravator could be established to allow police to enforce buffer zones that would prohibit protests outside abortion clinics taking place.

The Scottish Government held a summit in Edinburgh yesterday on the plans to role out buffer zones on a national scale – after the Supreme Court ruled last year that similar plans in Northern Ireland were competent.

Read more: Scottish buffer zones to be rolled out 'as quickly as possible'

Greens MSP Gillian Mackay, who is proposing a members’ bill at Holyrood for the proposals, said that this year’s summit showed “it’s not now if it will happen, it’s when it’s going to happen”.

But Ms Mackay and the Scottish Government said they would not put a date on when the scheme will be rolled out, despite insiders suggesting it could be fast-tracked and in place by the summer.

SNP Public Health Minister Maree Todd stressed that the legislation will be brought forward to Holyrood “as fast as we possibly can“.

Read more: Supreme Court ruling paves way for Scottish abortion buffer zone plans

Ms Mackay, in partnership with the Back Off Scotland campaign, is to put forward a Members’ Bill in Holyrood to roll out protections across Scotland for women attending medical appointments after receiving thousands of responses to her consultation on the plans.

It comes after patients were routinely intimidated attending appointments at medical facilities by anti-abortion protesters.

Speaking after the summit, Ms Mackay said that there was “a consensus around an automatic approach across all sites, not necessarily a uniform approach”.

But she warned that a 150m buffer zone, as had been previously touted, may not be appropriate for some sites which are bigger in size.

The Greens MSP stressed that it was more likely the police would enforce any breach of the rules, instead of local authorities.

She said: “Police Scotland has a much more natural ability to share information of where laws are broken.

Read more: 'I thought abortion protests only happened in America'

“And I think certainly for me, that's my preference just for ease and ease of tracking where this behaviour is happening and who's moving around to different sites.”

Asked if a separate offence or aggravation would need to be established, Ms Mackay said: “Potentially.”

She added: “Further engagement with legal professionals, court services, police and all those sorts of things will be really instrumental in making sure that whatever crafted is enforceable as well as something that they can defend if and when a prosecutions are challenged by people who are breaching.”

Ms Mackay said that the scale of the penalties was “not settled on yet”, but suggested they would need to be substantial to put off big American anti-abortion groups of gaming the system.

She said: “Obviously, a lot of these groups have been deep pockets.

“So there have been some concerns raised by stakeholders about potentially someone who's almost being in a situation of paying to breach the rule, which is absolutely not what we want.

“We need a level of personal accountability for the people who are breaching the zones, and how we balance that proportionality in particular, and it's avoiding any ECHR challenge is where that difficulty lies.”

Ms Mackay said politicians are “acting on the presumption that there will be a legal challenge to this bill in some way, shape, or form, if not repeated the challenges to this”.

She said: “I have no doubt that when the first prosecution or the first fixed penalty notice or whatever mechanism we used, when that first one is delivered, I think we're going to see a legal challenge.”

The Public Health Minister warned that “it's not acceptable for women to have to run the gauntlet past protests or face intimidation or harassment as they access health care in Scotland”.

Asked when the plans could become law, Ms Todd said: “It might surprise you to hear that I don't have a timescale goal.

“The outcome that I'm looking for is effective legislation that effectively provides safe access to healthcare for women in Scotland, that is robust, that passes through the parliamentary process and is able to withstand the scrutiny involved in the parliamentary process.

“We are working as fast as we possibly can to introduce the legislation.

“There is no sense of dragging our heels on this. We have worked really hard on this. We've built a momentum. And we're making progress and everybody wants to see this happen quickly.”

Nicola Sturgeon, who also took part in the summit, said: “If women are suffering harassment and intimidation when they are seeking access to abortion services, which let’s remember are health services that women have a right within the law to access, then we’re not doing everything we need to do to ensure the access that I think everybody in this room thinks is important.”

She added that an “immense” amount of work is underway.

Nasa’s Mars rover finds mysterious metallic object on Red Planet

Vishwam Sankaran
Wed, 8 February 2023 

Nasa’s Mars rover finds mysterious metallic object on Red Planet

Nasa’s Curiosity rover has stumbled upon a strange metallic rock on Mars that may allow scientists to gain insights on the Red Planet’s ancient past.

The rock, dubbed Cacao, measures about a foot across and appears to be an iron-nickel meteorite, according to the American space agency.

It was discovered in the “sulfate-bearing unit” – a region on Mars’ Mount Sharp, the agency noted in a blog post on the discovery.


Nasa shared a high-resolution image of the rock that was stitched together from about 20 different individual photos taken by the rover.

One of the images is a close-up of Cacao as viewed through Curiosity’s ChemCam instrument.

This reveals a part of the meteorite that was targeted by the ChemCam instrument’s laser.

Nasa noted that this laser analysis involves zapping rocks and studying the resulting vapour to learn about the rock’s composition.

The rock’s metallic hue can be seen as it stands out in contrast to the Red Planet’s barren rust-coloured landscape.

“Rock. Rock. Rock. Rock. Rock. Rock. METEORITE! “It’s not uncommon to find meteorites on Mars – in fact, I’ve done it a few times! But a change in scenery’s always nice,” said the Curiosity rover’s official Twitter handle.

Nasa suspects the rock’s site likely had a “big crater” in the ancient past.

“Over time, erosion and other forces flatten the area around it, carving away everything but the hardest material,” said another tweet in reply to a user who asked about any evidence of impact.

The Curiosity rover has reportedly come across several such strange rocks in its decade-long exploration of the Red Planet.

In 2016, it found the “Egg Rock” also dubbed the “golf ball” and in 2014 it stumbled upon another 7-foot-long meteorite the Curiosity team named “Lebanon”.

Earlier in 2005, the Opportunity rover made the discovery of the Heat Shield Rock, a meteorite that was the first such rock to ever be identified on the surface of another planet.

Generally such metallic meteorites landing on Earth’s surface tend to rust away in a short span of geologic time, but due to little oxygen and moisture on Mars, these space rocks can remain lusturous for millions of years.

“There’s no way to date these. But it could have been here millions of years!” pointed out the Curiosity rover’s Twitter account on the new discovery.

Rise in space tourism, rocket launches pose new threat to ozone layer, researchers warn

Joanna YORK
Tue, 7 February 2023 

© Craig Bailey, AP

New research shows that increased space travel could undo efforts to repair the hole in the ozone layer. Successful global coordination to ban harmful chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gasses and restore the ozone was a rare climate triumph – but can it be replicated in the face of a potential new threat?

Researchers in New Zealand have warned that expected increases in space travel are likely to damage the Earth’s ozone layer if coordinated action is not taken.

Although emissions from rocket launches are currently relatively small compared to other human activities, they could grow to rival emissions from the aviation industry in coming decades, researchers from the University of Canterbury wrote in a new article published in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

“Many emissions products from rocket launches are ozone-depleting, and the threat to the ozone layer could be significant,” they wrote.

The ozone is a protective layer of the atmosphere that sits 15 to 50km above the Earth’s surface and absorbs almost all of the sun’s UV light, which can be harmful to humans and wildlife.

Rocket launches pose a danger to the Earth’s protective layer as they emit damaging gasses and particles “directly into the middle and upper atmosphere, where the protective ozone layer resides”, the researchers wrote.

There is strong precedent for introducing regulatory framework to protect the atmosphere.

The Last of Us ‘minus the zombie part’: How fungi could become supercharged by climate change

Angela Symons
Tue, 7 February 2023 


Rising temperatures may cause fungi to be more dangerous to our health, a new study reveals.

While bacteria and viruses are well known drivers of infection and disease, pathogenic fungi have so far only caused minor problems for healthy people.

This is usually because the human body temperature is typically too hot for infectious fungi to survive.

But that might be about to change, researchers at Duke University in North Carolina warn.

This may ring alarm bells for fans of the hit dystopian HBO series, ‘The Last of Us’, in which a heat-adapted fungus takes over humans.

“That’s exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about - minus the zombie part!” says study co-author Asiya Gusa.
What are pathogenic fungi?

Pathogenic fungi are fungi that cause disease in humans and other organisms.

Among the approximately 300 fungi known to be pathogenic to humans, Candida, Aspergillus and Cryptococcus are some of the most well known.

They are currently most dangerous to immunocompromised people who lack the defences to prevent their spread.

Climate extremes: Could high heat and humidity take a toll on mental health?

Most diseases worsened by climate change, new research reveals. Here’s what we can do about it

How could rising temperatures make fungi more dangerous?

Rising global temperatures are predicted to increase fungal diseases in humans, but they could also make those diseases more serious.

Studying the impact of heat stress on fungi, researchers found that higher temperatures led to rapid genetic changes in the human fungal pathogen Cryptococcus.

Higher temperatures were found to stimulate the fungus’s transposable ‘jumping genes’, accelerating the number of mutations and leading to adaptations in the way the genes are used and regulated.

“These mobile elements are likely to contribute to adaptation in the environment and during an infection,” says Gusa. “This could happen even faster because heat stress speeds up the number of mutations occurring.”

This could lead to higher heat resistance, drug resistance and disease-causing potential, according to the research published in the science journal PNAS.

“This is a fascinating study, which shows how increasing global temperature may affect the fungal evolution in unpredictable directions… One more thing to worry about with global warming,” says Dr Arturo Casadevall, chair of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins University.

Voices: Make no mistake, the Chinese spy balloon incident cannot be ignored


Skylar Baker-Jordan
Tue, 7 February 2023 

The suspected Chinese spy balloon drifts to the ocean after being shot down off the coast in Surfside Beach, South Carolina on 4 February (Reuters)

On Saturday night, my dog peed in my apartment game room. “Don’t you do it,” I said tersely when I caught him lifting a leg. He looked me in the eye, raised his leg further, and peed all over a cornhole sack. He knew he was being a bad boy, and he wanted me to know he knew.

The Chinese spy balloon is kind of like my dog peeing in the game room. Last summer, General Mark Milley – chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – warned that “China’s increasing in their aggressiveness in their rhetoric, but also in their activity,” noting that Chinese intercepts in the air and at sea have increased drastically over the past five years. The spy balloon, which we’ve now learned is not the first to violate US airspace, is part of that escalating bellicosity.

Xi Jinping, China’s increasingly authoritarian leader, has weathered several incidents which could jeopardize his still-tight grip on absolute power. There were protests against the nation’s restrictive Covid policies, which impeded citizens’ access to healthcare, food, and other basic human rights. The Chinese economy has slowed, with 2022 being one of the worst years for growth the nation has faced in 50 years. The Belt and Road Initiative, a drive by China to build infrastructure in more than 100 countries in an attempt to grow its influence but which has been characterized as “colonialism with Chinese characteristics has slowed. This is, of course, a play on “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” which is ostensibly the ideology of the capitalistic and authoritarian Chinese Communist Party.

It makes sense, then, that Xi would act out in order to demonstrate to those at home and abroad that he is still a force to be reckoned with. Just like my dog was trying to tell me he wasn’t getting enough attention while I played board games with my friends, China was using the balloon to communicate to the Americans that it is not to be taken lightly. “Beijing is probably trying to signal to Washington: ‘While we want to improve ties, we are also ever ready for sustained competition, using any means necessary,’ without severely inflaming tensions,” air-power analyst He Yuan Ming said in an interview with the BBC. “And what better tool for this than a seemingly innocuous balloon?”

The American people certainly seemed to find the balloon innocuous, even entertaining. The hashtag #chinesespyballoon has more than 90 million views on TikTok. Folks across the country flocked to social media, tracking the balloon as it floated from Montana to the eastern seaboard. Crowds gathered in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, cheering as the balloon was shot down over the Atlantic. Even Republicans, while throwing a temper tantrum over Biden letting the Chinese spy on us, are largely ignoring sightings of a spy balloon over Hawaii and Florida during the Trump administration.

All of this feels like the wrong reaction. There was a time when politics stopped at the shore, and Democrats and Republicans would unite against a common threat. Now, however, Republicans have spent more time criticizing Biden than China. Marjorie Taylor Greene is calling for an inquiry into why former President Donald Trump was unaware of the previous spy balloons – at least three separate incidents in his administration, we now know – instead of the fact that China is sending spy balloons in the first place.

When a dog pees on the floor, you scold him and you clean it up. You don’t focus on what his previous owner knew about his urinary habits.

Likewise, when a foreign adversary is caught brazenly spying on your homeland, you retaliate. Just as you don’t physically hurt your dog – I used my tone of voice to express my disappointment – you don’t overreact in your retaliation. But you do make it clear that spy balloons over the American heartland will not be tolerated under any circumstances.

The Biden administration, for its part, seems to understand this. Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed his trip to China over the incident. Biden himself has adopted a more muscular foreign policy towards China than Trump ever did. He has effectively warned off China from backing Putin’s illegal war in Russia. He has promised to intervene militarily should Beijing attack the island nation of Taiwan. In October, he warned that we face a “descisive decade” in our rivalry with China.

Indeed, we do. That should be the lesson every single American takes from the spy balloon saga. China is a fast-rising power with eyes on building a global empire. Xi is “deadly earnest on becoming the most significant, consequential nation in the world,” President Biden said in a speech to Congress in 2021. “He and others – autocrats – think that democracy can’t compete in the 21st century with autocracies.” Beijing’s increasingly belligerent attitude towards Taiwan, its continued crackdown on human and civil rights at home, its imperial designs on Africa and central Asia, and its flagrant violation of U.S. sovereignty with the spy balloon all point to Biden being correct.

This is not just a rivalry between two nations, but two competing ideologies – that of a free and open society verses a repressive and closed state. It isn’t even communist verses capitalist, or left verses right in the way Americans are used to thinking. It is liberty verses tyranny, democracy verses autocracy.

That is why the spy balloon is no mere social media meme or Saturday Night Live sketch (funny as Bowen Yang was and always is). This is why my dog metaphor only works to a point. While useful in discussing deliberate bad behavior as a way of communicating a message and how to proportionally respond, it works. The difference, of course, is that my dog peeing on a cornhole bag is something my friends and I could laugh about.

China openly spying on and antagonizing the United States by violating its sovereignty, on the other hand, is deadly serious. The 21st century will be a contest between democracy and autocracy. Republicans who haven’t embraced the latter – and let’s be clear, here: many have – need to put politics aside and stand with President Biden. Democrats need to welcome their support. And the American people need to start taking this threat seriously.

This time it may have been a spy balloon. Who knows what it will be next time

There’s no cycle of violence in Jerusalem – only Israel’s lethal oppression of my people


Jalal Abukhater
Tue, 7 February 2023 

Photograph: Sinan Abu Mayzer/Reuters

Almost every day, the bulldozers are on the move. In the Palestinian neighbourhoods of Jerusalem, my city, Israeli forces are demolishing homes on an almost daily basis. Dispossession and discrimination have been a longstanding reality here in the eastern part of the city, under Israeli military occupation for 56 years, but under the new far-right Israeli government, Jerusalem has seen a spike in demolitions – more than 30 structures were destroyed in January alone.

The news from our region in western capitals and media outlets tends to be dominated by bloodshed – and the Palestinian people are going through some of the most violent, destructive and lethal days in recent memory. The year 2022 was the deadliest in nearly two decades in the occupied West Bank. In January a further 31 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire. Hopelessness, frustration and despair hover over us all like a dark cloud. But the numbers alone do not express the extent of this cruelty.

Death tolls and cliched phrases in an ill-informed, biased or unquestioning media about cycles of violence are not appropriate or sufficient for relaying the power imbalance of an occupier and occupied. The violence we Palestinians are exposed to on a daily basis is not just from the Israeli army’s weapons but is also deep and structural.


There are no “cycles of home demolitions” or “tit-for-tat expulsions” – Palestinians are not confiscating Israeli properties or detaining thousands of Israelis through military courts. Any approach that suggests symmetry of power – or responsibility – is analytically and morally flawed.

A microcosm of this structural violence can be found right here in the city of my birth, Jerusalem. Last month, a Palestinian gunman killed seven Israelis in the Neve Yaakov settlement in occupied East Jerusalem. Israel’s minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, subsequently pledged to intensify the demolitions of Palestinian homes built without permits, framing the move as a response to the attack.

Most Palestinian homes are targeted for lacking a permit; indeed, in my city, at least a third of Palestinian structures lack an Israeli-issued permit, putting 100,000 residents of occupied East Jerusalem at risk of forcible displacement at any given moment.

In fact, since Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem began in 1967, virtually no public planning was conducted at all for Palestinian neighbourhoods. Fifty-five thousand homes have been built for Jewish Israelis in the eastern part of the city, while fewer than 600 homes were built for Palestinians with any kind of government support. This policy has ensured not only poor housing for Palestinians, but also that they remain a minority in the city.

Despite Palestinians comprising over 37% of Jerusalem’s residents, only 8.5% of the land in the city is designated for their residential purposes (and even there the potential to build is restricted). Between 1991 and 2018, only 16.5% of all housing construction permits issued by the Jerusalem municipality were for Palestinian neighbourhoods in the occupied and illegally annexed east. So-called illegal or unsanctioned construction by Palestinians is a response to the chronic, discrimination-based housing shortage.

Most recently, Ben-Gvir and Jerusalem’s deputy mayor, Aryeh King, announced the imminent demolition of a residential building in Wadi Qaddum, Silwan, on the basis it was built on land designated for “sports and leisure”, rather than residential use. When it goes ahead, this will be a large-scale demolition, displacing about 100 residents. In the past 10 years alone, 1,508 Palestinian structures have been demolished in East Jerusalem, rendering 2,893 people homeless, half of whom were minors.

The occupied West Bank has also been marked by a violent reality. Nearly no Palestinian construction is permitted in so-called Area C (60% of the West Bank). Israeli authorities constantly demolish Palestinian homes, roads, cisterns, solar panels and more. Settlements considered illegal under international law expand, while Palestinians are restricted to fragmented enclaves.

With the number of demolitions and displacements in Jerusalem and the West Bank increasing, entire communities are under threat. But we should remember the cost is most obvious on an individual level: the one family who lose all they have in the world. Walls crumble, children cry and parents scramble to figure out what to do or where to go next. It is a catastrophe, and it is constant.

Lacking an impossible-to-obtain permit is not the only context for demolishing Palestinian property; the Israeli occupation authorities are also destroying or sealing homes as a form of collective punishment, strictly prohibited under international law. Acts of forcible displacement of an occupied population constitute a war crime. The cruelty is astonishing.

These demolitions and displacements are one part of the structural violence we as Palestinians face every day. This Israeli government may pursue new cruel manifestations of occupation, but the foundations were laid by successive coalitions since 1967 from Labor to Likud.

That is why there is no consolation for us Palestinians in the crowds of Israelis protesting against proposed judicial reforms. For decades our lands have been confiscated and people displaced by elected Israeli politicians of various parties, rubber-stamped by every tier of the court system. Occupation and racist policies have been imposed on us by those within the current coalition – and many currently on the outside.

This violence is our reality – and confronting such a reality is a necessary first step in our fight for dignity and justice. Blaming the victim or shutting down the conversation will only prolong our suffering. It’s not a cycle of violence, it’s a system of apartheid – and must be treated as such by the outside world.

Jalal Abukhater is a writer from Jerusalem

I have seen race hate in the US and UK and the message is the same: no one is free until we are all free


Al Sharpton
Tue, 7 February 2023 

I came to London more than 30 years ago to protest against the vicious murder of 15-year-old Rolan Adams. He and his younger brother were waiting at a bus stop when they were chased by a gang of white teenagers, many yelling racial epithets. Adams was stabbed in the neck with a butterfly knife and died.

The white mobs here were eerily similar to the white mobs we witnessed while protesting in places like Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Similar stares, similar hate, similar use of the “N-word”, similar unease, similar tension and a similar lack of justice. More than three decades later, I return to share my film, Loudmouth, which chronicles my lifelong journey advocating and fighting for civil rights. While there has been progress that I have witnessed first-hand, both the US and the UK are still dealing with an excessive amount of police brutality. Whether it is back home or across the pond, the need for effective, thorough police reform is long overdue and we are here to demand it in unison.

As I left the US, my thoughts were still with the family of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man who was beaten to death by officers according to videotape footage. I delivered the eulogy at his funeral and stood alongside his grieving mother, stepfather and loved ones. The pain that they will carry for the rest of their lives is just like the grief and agony that every family member of victims of police brutality endures whether in the US, the UK or elsewhere. Back home, there is case after case of officers killing unarmed Black and Brown folks in disproportionate numbers, as well as profiling, arresting, incarcerating and just plain targeting them. In the Nichols case, the accused officers are Black. This abuse is a systemic problem, just as it is a systemic problem in the UK.

Last September, the Metropolitan police shot and killed unarmed 24-year-old Chris Kaba. Police followed his vehicle and Kaba died from a single shot by an officer, according to reports. He was about to become a father. His family, members of the community, activists and even some politicians have called for accountability in the case. Similar to protests in the US, many on the ground in the UK have led rallies for reform. The Independent Office for Police Conduct said that it is conducting an investigation, but it may take anywhere from six to nine months. That is simply too long. This heartbroken family must receive answers and justice.

The problems with policing, whether here or in the states, often begin with dehumanising and devaluing Black and Brown lives. At an early age, our children are criminalised, perceived to be older than their age and treated harshly and unfairly. We saw that in the UK in a case in 2020 that garnered international outrage when a 15-year-old Black girl was strip-searched by female officers without the presence of her parents or another adult. The young girl was taken to the school’s medical room and strip-searched (while she was menstruating) by officers reportedly looking for cannabis. No drugs were found. This was not an isolated incident. According to the children’s commissioner for England, 650 children were strip-searched by police in London from 2018-2020. The majority were boys, and about 58% were Black. Simply unacceptable.

Al Sharpton delivers a eulogy for Tyre Nichols. Photograph: Getty Images

Impacts from systemic racism and a police culture that does not view us as deserving of basic human rights has detrimental reverberations. In June 2020, two sisters, Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, were murdered and their bodies discovered in a park. Two Met police officers took pictures of their bodies, circulated them to others and made crass comments. The family also learned that a missing person log was incorrectly closed, and police failed to take any real action on the day the young women went missing. Not only was this gross negligence, but it again highlights the lack of care, respect and treatment that our communities receive. Those officers may not have killed them, but they caused further harm by their utter disregard and reprehensible behaviour.

Related: I’m tired of watching Black men like Tyre Nichols die. This shouldn’t be normal | Tayo Bero

These are just a few of the cases in recent years that have rocked neighbourhoods and communities in the UK, along with many others. It is similar to the pattern and practice misconduct we have been dealing with in the US for years and years. That’s the bad news. There is, however, a glimmer of hope and some good news. Many who’ve fought for justice in the UK are having their voices heard. Stephen Lawrence’s mother, Doreen, is a respected peer. Simon Woolley, the activist I came to protest with in 1991, is now Lord Simon Woolley and the principal of Homerton College, Cambridge. In the US, we elected our first Black president, Barack Obama, and now our first Black vice-president, Kamala Harris, who just gave a moving statement at Tyre Nichols’s funeral.

So yes, we have gained, but many things sadly remain the same. We have gained because it has not been in vain. The struggle continues as we fight for civil rights, police reform, equal treatment and justice. After all, whether in the US, the UK or around the world, none of us are free, until we are all free.

Rev Al Sharpton is an American Baptist minister, civil rights activist and radio talkshow host