Researcher Who Just Won the Nobel Prize Quit Google to Warn About Evil AI Coming for Us All

Noor Al-Sibai
Wed, October 9, 2024 



Both of the men who won this year's Nobel Prize in Physics are artificial intelligence pioneers — and one of them is considered the technology's "godfather."

As Reuters reports, American physicist John Hopfield and AI expert Geoffrey Hinton were awarded the coveted prize this week. Considered the "godfather of AI," Hinton's research in 2012 laid the groundwork for today's neural networks — but in 2023, he quit his job at Google to join a chorus of critics sounding alarm bells about the technology.

In an interview with the New York Times last year about leaving his job as a vice president and engineering fellow at the tech giant, Hinton said he'd previously thought of Google as a "proper steward" of the powerful technology. That's until Microsoft partnered with OpenAI to unleash the latter's GPT-4 large language model (LLM), which powers ChatGPT, onto the masses.


Though he didn't believe that AI was anywhere near its zenith at the time, the 76-year-old computer scientist suggested he saw the writing on the wall with the Microsoft-OpenAI deal.

"Most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off," Hinton told the newspaper at the time. "I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away."

"Obviously," he continued, "I no longer think that."

Prior to leaving Google and joining the likes of Elon Musk and other luminaries in signing an open letter calling for a pause on AI development, Hinton took to CBS News to warn that the world had reached a "pivotal moment" in terms of the technology.

"I think it's very reasonable for people to be worrying about these issues now," he told CBS at the time, "even though it's not going to happen in the next year or two."

Now a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, Hinton has made it abundantly clear in the roughly 18 months since his Google departure that he thinks that AI may escape human control at any time — and once it does, all hell may break loose.

"Here we’re dealing with something where we have much less idea of what’s going to happen and what to do about it," the computer scientist said during a conversation with the Nobel committee. "I wish I had a sort of simple recipe that if you do this, everything’s going to be okay. But I don’t."

Considered the leading AI "doomer" for his grim outlook on the technology he helped birth, Hinton said when speaking to the Nobel committee that he was very surprised to learn he'd won the award and had been unaware that he'd even been nominated.

"Hopefully it’ll make me more credible," he said of winning the Nobel, "when I say these things really do understand what they’re saying."

More on AI doomers: AI Researcher Slams OpenAI, Warns It Will Become the "Most Orwellian Company of All Time"


AI is having its Nobel moment. Do scientists need the tech industry to sustain it?

MATT O'BRIEN
Updated Fri, October 11, 2024 




 Computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, who studies neural networks used in artificial intelligence applications, poses at Google's Mountain View, Calif,. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

Hours after the artificial intelligence pioneer Geoffrey Hinton won a Nobel Prize in physics, he drove a rented car to Google's California headquarters to celebrate.

Hinton doesn't work at Google anymore. Nor did the longtime professor at the University of Toronto do his pioneering research at the tech giant.

But his impromptu party reflected AI's moment as a commercial blockbuster that has also reached the pinnacles of scientific recognition.

That was Tuesday. Then, early Wednesday, two employees of Google's AI division won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for using AI to predict and design novel proteins.

“This is really a testament to the power of computer science and artificial intelligence,” said Jeanette Wing, a professor of computer science at Columbia University.

Asked about the historic back-to-back science awards for AI work in an email Wednesday, Hinton said only: “Neural networks are the future.”

It didn't always seem that way for researchers who decades ago experimented with interconnected computer nodes inspired by neurons in the human brain. Hinton shares this year's physics Nobel with another scientist, John Hopfield, for helping develop those building blocks of machine learning.

Neural network advances came from “basic, curiosity-driven research,” Hinton said at a press conference after his win. “Not out of throwing money at applied problems, but actually letting scientists follow their curiosity to try and understand things.”

Such work started well before Google existed. But a bountiful tech industry has now made it easier for AI scientists to pursue their ideas even as it has challenged them with new ethical questions about the societal impacts of their work.

One reason why the current wave of AI research is so closely tied to the tech industry is that only a handful of corporations have the resources to build the most powerful AI systems.

“These discoveries and this capability could not happen without humongous computational power and humongous amounts of digital data,” Wing said. “There are very few companies — tech companies — that have that kind of computational power. Google is one. Microsoft is another.”

The chemistry Nobel Prize awarded Wednesday went to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of Google’s London-based DeepMind laboratory along with researcher David Baker at the University of Washington for work that could help discover new medicines.

Hassabis, the CEO and co-founder of DeepMind, which Google acquired in 2014, told the AP in an interview Wednesday his dream was to model his research laboratory on the “incredible storied history” of Bell Labs. Started in 1925, the New Jersey-based industrial lab was the workplace of multiple Nobel-winning scientists over several decades who helped develop modern computing and telecommunications.

“I wanted to recreate a modern day industrial research lab that really did cutting-edge research,” Hassabis said. “But of course, that needs a lot of patience and a lot of support. We’ve had that from Google and it’s been amazing.”

Hinton joined Google late in his career and quit last year so he could talk more freely about his concerns about AI’s dangers, particularly what happens if humans lose control of machines that become smarter than us. But he stops short of criticizing his former employer.

Hinton, 76, said he was staying in a cheap hotel in Palo Alto, California when the Nobel committee woke him up with a phone call early Tuesday morning, leading him to cancel a medical appointment scheduled for later that day.

By the time the sleep-deprived scientist reached the Google campus in nearby Mountain View, he “seemed pretty lively and not very tired at all” as colleagues popped bottles of champagne, said computer scientist Richard Zemel, a former doctoral student of Hinton’s who joined him at the Google party Tuesday.

“Obviously there are these big companies now that are trying to cash in on all the commercial success and that is exciting,” said Zemel, now a Columbia professor.

But Zemel said what’s more important to Hinton and his closest colleagues has been what the Nobel recognition means to the fundamental research they spent decades trying to advance.

Guests included Google executives and another former Hinton student, Ilya Sutskever, a co-founder and former chief scientist and board member at ChatGPT maker OpenAI. Sutskever helped lead a group of board members who briefly ousted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman last year in turmoil that has symbolized the industry's conflicts.

An hour before the party, Hinton used his Nobel bully pulpit to throw shade at OpenAI during opening remarks at a virtual press conference organized by the University of Toronto in which he thanked former mentors and students.

“I’m particularly proud of the fact that one of my students fired Sam Altman,” Hinton said.

Asked to elaborate, Hinton said OpenAI started with a primary objective to develop better-than-human artificial general intelligence “and ensure that it was safe.”

"And over time, it turned out that Sam Altman was much less concerned with safety than with profits. And I think that’s unfortunate,” Hinton said.

In response, OpenAI said in a statement that it is “proud of delivering the most capable and safest AI systems” and that they “safely serve hundreds of millions of people each week.”

Conflicts are likely to persist in a field where building even a relatively modest AI system requires resources “well beyond those of your typical research university,” said Michael Kearns, a professor of computer science at the University of Pennsylvania.

But Kearns, who sits on the committee that picks the winners of computer science's top prize — the Turing Award — said this week marks a “great victory for interdisciplinary research” that was decades in the making.

Hinton is only the second person to win both a Nobel and Turing. The first, Turing-winning political scientist Herbert Simon, started working on what he called “computer simulation of human cognition” in the 1950s and won the Nobel economics prize in 1978 for his study of organizational decision-making.

Wing, who met Simon in her early career, said scientists are still just at the tip of finding ways to apply computing's most powerful capabilities to other fields.

“We’re just at the beginning in terms of scientific discovery using AI,” she said.

——

AP Business Writer Kelvin Chan contributed to this report.




How a subfield of physics led to breakthroughs in AI – and from there to this year’s Nobel Prize

Veera Sundararaghavan, University of Michigan
Wed, October 9, 2024 

Neural networks have their roots in statistical mechanics. BlackJack3D/iStock via Getty Images Plus


John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton received the Nobel Prize in physics on Oct. 8, 2024, for their research on machine learning algorithms and neural networks that help computers learn. Their work has been fundamental in developing neural network theories that underpin generative artificial intelligence.

A neural network is a computational model consisting of layers of interconnected neurons. Like the neurons in your brain, these neurons process and send along a piece of information. Each neural layer receives a piece of data, processes it and passes the result to the next layer. By the end of the sequence, the network has processed and refined the data into something more useful.

While it might seem surprising that Hopfield and Hinton received the physics prize for their contributions to neural networks, used in computer science, their work is deeply rooted in the principles of physics, particularly a subfield called statistical mechanics.

As a computational materials scientist, I was excited to see this area of research recognized with the prize. Hopfield and Hinton’s work has allowed my colleagues and me to study a process called generative learning for materials sciences, a method that is behind many popular technologies like ChatGPT.
What is statistical mechanics?

Statistical mechanics is a branch of physics that uses statistical methods to explain the behavior of systems made up of a large number of particles.

Instead of focusing on individual particles, researchers using statistical mechanics look at the collective behavior of many particles. Seeing how they all act together helps researchers understand the system’s large-scale macroscopic properties like temperature, pressure and magnetization.

For example, physicist Ernst Ising developed a statistical mechanics model for magnetism in the 1920s. Ising imagined magnetism as the collective behavior of atomic spins interacting with their neighbors.

In Ising’s model, there are higher and lower energy states for the system, and the material is more likely to exist in the lowest energy state.

One key idea in statistical mechanics is the Boltzmann distribution, which quantifies how likely a given state is. This distribution describes the probability of a system being in a particular state – like solid, liquid or gas – based on its energy and temperature.

Ising exactly predicted the phase transition of a magnet using the Boltzmann distribution. He figured out the temperature at which the material changed from being magnetic to nonmagnetic.

Phase changes happen at predictable temperatures. Ice melts to water at a specific temperature because the Boltzmann distribution predicts that when it gets warm, the water molecules are more likely to take on a disordered – or liquid – state.


In materials, atoms arrange themselves into specific crystal structures that use the lowest amount of energy. When it’s cold, water molecules freeze into ice crystals with low energy states.

Similarly, in biology, proteins fold into low energy shapes, which allow them to function as specific antibodies – like a lock and key – targeting a virus.
Neural networks and statistical mechanics

Fundamentally, all neural networks work on a similar principle – to minimize energy. Neural networks use this principle to solve computing problems.

For example, imagine an image made up of pixels where you only can see a part of the picture. Some pixels are visible, while the rest are hidden. To determine what the image is, you consider all possible ways the hidden pixels could fit together with the visible pieces. From there, you would choose from among what statistical mechanics would say are the most likely states out of all the possible options.

In statistical mechanics, researchers try to find the most stable physical structure of a material. Neural networks use the same principle to solve complex computing problems. Veera Sundararaghavan

Hopfield and Hinton developed a theory for neural networks based on the idea of statistical mechanics. Just like Ising before them, who modeled the collective interaction of atomic spins to solve the photo problem with a neural network, Hopfield and Hinton imagined collective interactions of pixels. They represented these pixels as neurons.

Just as in statistical physics, the energy of an image refers to how likely a particular configuration of pixels is. A Hopfield network would solve this problem by finding the lowest energy arrangements of hidden pixels.

However, unlike in statistical mechanics – where the energy is determined by known atomic interactions – neural networks learn these energies from data.

Hinton popularized the development of a technique called backpropagation. This technique helps the model figure out the interaction energies between these neurons, and this algorithm underpins much of modern AI learning.
The Boltzmann machine

Building upon Hopfield’s work, Hinton imagined another neural network, called the Boltzmann machine. It consists of visible neurons, which we can observe, and hidden neurons, which help the network learn complex patterns.

In a Boltzmann machine, you can determine the probability that the picture looks a certain way. To figure out this probability, you can sum up all the possible states the hidden pixels could be in. This gives you the total probability of the visible pixels being in a specific arrangement.

My group has worked on implementing Boltzmann machines in quantum computers for generative learning.

In generative learning, the network learns to generate new data samples that resemble the data the researchers fed the network to train it. For example, it might generate new images of handwritten numbers after being trained on similar images. The network can generate these by sampling from the learned probability distribution.

Generative learning underpins modern AI – it’s what allows the generation of AI art, videos and text.

Hopfield and Hinton have significantly influenced AI research by leveraging tools from statistical physics. Their work draws parallels between how nature determines the physical states of a material and how neural networks predict the likelihood of solutions to complex computer science problems.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Veera Sundararaghavan, University of Michigan

Read more:


What is a neural network? A computer scientist explains


A new type of material called a mechanical neural network can learn and change its physical properties to create adaptable, strong structures


Neuroscience and artificial intelligence can help improve each other

Veera Sundararaghavan receives external funding for research unrelated to the content of this article.

Opinion

"The righteous hate what is false": Mike Johnson betrays his faith by lying about immigrants voting

Charles R. Davis
Wed, October 9, 2024 

Mike Johnson Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images


House Speaker Mike Johnson is a man of faith — a “Bible-believing Christian,” as he puts it, who by his own account does his best to reflect the fact that God is love, not hate.

“If you truly believe in the Bible’s commands,” the Louisiana Republican told Fox News last year, “and you seek to follow those, it’s impossible to be a hateful person because the greatest command in the Bible is that you love God with everything you had, and you love your neighbor as well.”

But Johnson is also a loyal ally of Donald Trump, a man who has repeatedly made false, outlandish and blatantly offensive claims in pursuit of political power, and has spent the last nine years blaming people born elsewhere for almost every problem facing America. But Johnson is far more than a modest disciple of a 78-year-old demagogue who hawks his own sacrilegious version of Christianity's sacred text, nor is he just another Republican who swallows his unease over the racist invective in order to get lower corporate taxes.


No, Mike Johnson is also in it for power. Like his party’s leader, he's given to self-aggrandizement (“entire industries,” he has claimed, are trying “to take down … effective political leaders like me”). In his uphill quest to preserve the Republicans' slender House majority and hold onto the speaker's chair, Johnson is participating — and even leading — a campaign of demonization directed at immigrants, one that he either knows is false or has somehow willed himself to believe is true. (Neither is an excuse, according to the dictates of Johnson's faith, that is likely to satisfy St. Peter).

Speaking to Politico while on the campaign trail in Texas, Johnson this week reiterated a false GOP talking point he has echoed many times before.

“We know that states are not requesting proof of citizenship … so there's going to be thousands upon thousands of noncitizens voting,” he claimed. “If you have enough noncitizens participating in some of these swing areas, you can change the outcome of the election in the majority.”

He made much the same fanciful claim in July, when the House passed legislation requiring states to ask for proof of citizenship from anyone filling out a voter registration form. To be clear, it's already a felony for any noncitizen to vote, but voting-rights advocates believe that requiring a passport or a birth certificate — documents many citizens do not possess — amounts to voter suppression.

At the risk of tiresome repetition, these claims that thousands of noncitizens are voting are simply not true. Don’t take the liberal media’s word for it: Consider the audits of voter rolls conducted by Republican politicians.

In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffenseperger found that, over 25 years, roughly 1,600 noncitizens had attempted to file voter registrations; none of the 65 or so who attempted it every year were successful. In Ohio, GOP Secretary of State Frank LaRose uncovered a grand total of 137 “suspected” noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls. In Kentucky, another red state with free rein to out any “illegals” voting in elections, Secretary of State Michael Adams was forced to concede, “We don’t really have a problem with this.”

Donald Trump already had four years in the White House to address this allegedly massive issue, but rapidly disbanded his own “Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity” after it failed to uncover any of the “millions” of illegal votes he claimed were cast in 2016.

It stands to reason, of course, that most people who are in the country without authorization would prefer to avoid deportation proceedings, and are not eager to jeopardize the lives they have built here in order to cast one of the 160 million or so ballots likely to be cast in this year's presidential election.

In the absence of literally any evidence, Johnson has invoked his gut feeling. At a press conference on the steps of the U.S. Capitol earlier this year, standing behind a podium with a sign declaring, “Americans decide American elections,” the speaker was asked by a reporter if he could estimate the scale of this so-called problem.

“We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections,” he replied. “But it's not been something that's easily provable. We don't have that number."

Salon asked Johnson’s office for any data that would support his "intuitive" insight into widespread illegal voting. His staff failed to provide any, but shared a report citing another Republican-drafted report based on sketchy anecdotes, including one from a 1996 congressional race in California, where defeated Republican incumbent Bob Dornan blamed "pervasive" fraud for losing his seat. In fact, while a GOP-led task force claimed to have uncovered several hundred illegal votes, Republican leaders at the time conceded it wasn't enough to change the results.

The report from Johnson's office also alluded to a study that had concluded "the outcome in certain races was determined by the votes of noncitizens." That report was based on a small internet survey, however, and its author says that even if its findings are accurate, there's no possibility they could impact a presidential election. ("I can't quite account for the math being so badly wrong in their analyses," the author told Wired, when asked about Trump and his allies citing his work.)

The lack of hard data after all these decades of extravagant claims about massive fraud points toward an inescapable conclusion: “Illegal” voting is not a real issue but rather an attempt by Republicans to explain away their losses and delegitimatize any Democratic victories, past or future. A study by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice found just 30 incidents of “suspected” noncitizen voting in 2016, which would account for 0.0001% of all votes cast (a finding backed by the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute).

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told Salon that his own research suggests that noncitizen voting is a total red herring. Based on his own review of the evidence, including a database of alleged voter fraud put together by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, Reichlin-Melnick said that any noncitizen who votes "is highly likely to be a person with a green card making a good-faith mistake, as those account for the vast majority of criminal noncitizen voting cases brought in the past few decades."

Johnson, who has introduced legislation on this issue, is surely not ignorant of such data, and knows perfectly well that there is no evidence to support his own sweeping claims that America's elections are fraudulent (yet somehow, most recently, delivered a Republican majority in the House of Representatives). It’s possible he's a true believer in this nonsense, but Occam's razor suggests that when politicians tell lies they do so for their own benefit.

Perhaps it's useful to turn to a text Mike Johnson undoubtedly knows well, and consider what it has to say about the relationship between truth and dishonor: “The righteous hate what is false,” Proverbs 13:5 tells us, “but the wicked make themselves a stench and bring shame on themselves.”

How the 'right to switch off' can benefit mental health

Kate Ng
·Trending Lifestyle Reporter
Wed, October 9, 2024 

People should be able to come home from work and unwind properly. (Getty Images)


Wave goodbye to the feeling of dread that comes when you see your boss or co-worker’s name flash up on your phone screen outside your working hours, as the UK government is set to introduce the "right to switch off" as part of the new Employment Rights Bill.

The bill will be announced on Thursday 10 October and is expected to offer a number of entitlements for workers in the UK, including more rights around sick pay, maternity leave and zero-hours contracts.

In a statement earlier this year, Downing Street said it wants to make sure people’s homes do not become "24/7 offices" and ensure workers "have some time to rest" when they are not within their contracted working hours.


The prime minister’s deputy spokesperson said: "Good employers understand that for workers to stay motivated and productive, they do need to be able to switch off, and a culture of presenteeism can be damaging to productivity."

‘Presenteeism’ is defined as the act or culture of continuing to work for more hours than is required even though this might actually reduce productivity or have negative effects on an employee’s personal life.

The new plans come after research published earlier this year revealed that more than half (51%) of UK employees regularly exceed their contracted hours, with 17% clocking at least two hours of overtime every day.

UK employees often display 'presenteeism', which sees them working through sick days and even when their mental health is poor. (Getty Images)

The survey, carried out by Canada Life, also found the employees feel under increasing pressure to keep their jobs, particularly amid the cost of living crisis. 16% said they check emails and online chats more regularly outside working hours, while 12% take fewer breaks and 11% start their work day earlier.

However, recent research also suggests that British workers are at high risk of burnout, with one in four at the brink. The study, published by the charity MQ Mental Health, Peopleful and the Workwell Institute at Northwest University, found that a further 22% of workers showed signs of stress-related ill health.

The charity welcomed the government’s plans, adding that it can "help to counteract the growing issue of burnout among UK workers" - but only if it is "implemented well".

"Last year, one in five employees in the UK took time off due to stress and mental ill health," MQ tells Yahoo UK. "But despite this, nearly half of all workers report that their employer doesn’t have a plan to spot signs of burnout or stress-related ill health.

"Employers have a duty of care to create mentally healthy workplaces and allowing staff to ‘switch off’ fully when they are not at work or on call is an important part of that."

Why is it important to ‘switch off’ from work?

Before the advent of smartphones, most people used to be able to go home after work and unwind without too much worry that their boss or colleagues might get in touch. However, communication has become a lot faster and more convenient - and while this is great for keeping in touch with loved ones, it also means the line between work and home has become more blurred.

The increase in working from home, largely due to the Covid pandemic, has further confused things. More than half of British workers worked longer hours when working from home compared to before the pandemic, a 2021 poll found.

A quarter reported that they were working more than 10 extra hours a week, while 41% said they worked between five and 10 extra hours a week.

Psychotherapist and author Eloise Skinner tells Yahoo UK that, according to research, being able to switch off from work and disconnect from our professional lives after the working day is important for overall stress levels and wellbeing.

"In particular, studies have demonstrated that leaders who disconnected from work were able to return feeling recharged, with more energy and engagement," she says. "Switching off can also help us reduce feelings of overwhelm, enable us to gather a greater sense of perspective, and allow us to manage the time we have at work more efficiently.

The new policy suggested by the government would give employees the right not to be contacted by their employers outside of working hours. (Getty Images)

"On a more personal level, switching off from work can help us protect our sense of personal identity, allowing us to appreciate all the aspects of ourselves, our lives and our interests - without associating everything with our working lives."

The government's plans could improve people's wellbeing, but this depends on how it is implemented and observed by companies and businesses.

Skinner adds: "It might also be the case that different approaches work for different people - some people might feel they genuinely feel more immersed, focused and fulfilled if they're able to work for longer durations at work, and then take longer breaks (instead of disconnecting every evening) - so I think it will be important to allow for some level of flexibility to protect personal preferences and patterns."

Dr Sandi Mann, senior lecturer in Occupational Psychology at University of Central Lancashire, also tells Yahoo UK: "The importance of work-life balance on employee mental health has become a hot topic in recent years. The workplace can have many potential stressors. Work overload, unrealistic deadlines, and bureaucracy are just some of them. Ensuring employee wellbeing through being able to step away from it all is paramount for a healthy and effective workforce.

"If we don’t ever switch off and leave our work at the desk, we can find ourselves in a constant state of worry and stress. It can be especially difficult to set and stick to boundaries when more people have the option to work from home, meaning the office exists only a few feet away.

"When we’re in the habit of fixating on our to-do list, it can put a lot of pressure on us mentally. This significantly increases our chance of burnout and poor mental health.

"Employers should encourage workers to make healthy choices when it comes to their work-life balance. The introduction of a ‘right to switch off’ will make it easier for both employers and employees to respect boundaries. And by encouraging these healthy limits, organisations can promote and nurture healthy environments in which everyone can perform to the best of their ability."

Elon Musk unveils the Robovan: the biggest surprise from Tesla's We, Robot event

Rebecca Bellan and Maxwell Zeff
Thu, October 10, 2024


Elon Musk unveiled a prototype of Tesla's Robovan on Thursday night during the company's We, Robot event in Los Angeles. The Robovan will be an electric, autonomous vehicle roughly the size of a bus, designed for transporting people around high density areas. It will carry up to 20 people at a time and also transport goods, according to Musk.


"We're going to make this, and it's going to look like that," said Musk on Thursday night as the Robovan rolled towards center stage. That's about as much as Musk was willing to say, and we're not even sure that much is true.

Musk didn’t mention how much the Robovan would cost, how Tesla would produce it, or when it will come out. However, it does look pretty cool.

Elon Musk unveiling the Robovan at Tesla's We, Robot event. (Image credit: Tesla)Image Credits:Tesla

The Robovan has a retro-futuristic look – somewhere between a bus from The Jetsons and a toaster from the 1950s. It features silver metallic sides with black details, and strips of light running parallel to the ground along its sides, with doors that slide out from the middle. Inside, there are seats and room to stand, with tinted windows throughout. There is no steering wheel, since it’s autonomous.

"One of the things we want to do – and we've done this with the Cybertruck – is we want to change the look of the roads," said Musk. "The future should look like the future," he said, repeating an old line.

The inside of the Robovan prototype. (Image credit: Tesla)

It looks similar to other purpose-built robotaxis, like those designed by Zoox and Cruise. Only Tesla’s van is much bigger. In China, WeRide has built a similar Robobus.

That said, the Robovan showed on Thursday is only a prototype. Despite what Musk says, there's no telling what the real thing will look like or when it will actually come out.

Tesla had kept the design of the vehicles it introduced on Thursday pretty close to the chest. The only real hint we had was from Tesla’s 2023 Investor Day, when the automaker teased a couple of new vehicles that appeared to be designed for volume production: One smaller vehicle that appears now to be the Cybercab, and a larger one that we can now say is likely the Robovan.

The stated goal at the time was to produce 20 million vehicles per year by 2030. That would mean that Tesla needs to increase production and sales by about 15 times from 2022.

During Thursday’s event, Musk did not outline any plans for building new production facilities or retooling existing facilities to accommodate either the Cybercab or the Robovan. He also didn’t provide much in the way of timelines for the Robovan, though he predicted the Cybercab would start production in 2026 or 2027.

Tesla's Cybercab robotaxi is finally here, with a $30K price tag — plus a surprise Robovan



Pras Subramanian · Senior Reporter
Fri, October 11, 2024 

Tesla (TSLA) and its CEO Elon Musk finally revealed the electric vehicle maker's long-awaited driverless robotaxi on Thursday night, alongside a surprise — a larger autonomous Robovan designed to transport a lot more people.

After a nearly one-hour delay, attendees at the “We, Robot” event in Los Angeles were given an up-close introduction to two of Tesla's latest creations, a key strategic focus for the EV pioneer.

Musk arrived via the robotaxi — dubbed "Cybercab" — which featured a Cybertruck-like light bar in the front, an small angular profile, scissor-like doors, and a minimalist interior. The Cybercab appeared to navigate the Warner Brothers Studios closed-course lot on the way to the event stage.

The Tesla Cybercab robotaxi (credit: Tesla) · Tesla

As expected, the Cybercab features no steering wheels or pedals, so is designed to be fully autonomous.

“We’ll move from supervised full self-driving, to unsupervised full self-driving,” Musk said, meaning the cars using this latest software will no longer need humans to interact if need be.

Musk said he expects the small EV to cost less than $30,000 when it arrives some time in 2026, but before 2027. The Cybercab will charge up via wireless induction technology, possibly using mats or tracks on roads.
A Tesla Cybercab robotaxi (credit: Tesla) · Tesla

Tesla will start unsupervised full self-driving (FSD) trials in Texas and California next year, with Model 3 and Model Y test vehicles. Musk said further unsupervised FSD trials will take place wherever regulators allow them.

Wall Street analysts envision owners of the existing fleet of Teslas out on the road will be able to put those models on the company's rideshare service, once the EVs are combined with FSD and Tesla’s upcoming rideshare mobility app. That would unlock a tremendous amount of value and would be a true game-changer, the analysts believe.

Elon Musk at the "We, Robot" event (credit: Tesla) · Tesla

Tesla did not reveal its upcoming lower-cost “next-gen” model, which many analysts had expected. Though it is possible the Cybercab is essentially sharing the same chassis as the new passenger vehicle, as the car maker has suggested in the past. The sub-$30K next-gen EV will arrive later this year, Tesla has previously confirmed.
Surprise reveal

In an unexpected move, Tesla debuted the Robovan — a much larger EV with hidden wheels and no real windshield. The Robovan's design had echoes of the science-fiction movie Blade Runner, with wide light bars across the front facade and monolithic design. Musk said the Robovan is designed to transport up to 20 people, or a large amount of cargo, and can be adapted for commercial or personal use, according to Tesla.


No date of service or pricing was given for the Robovan.

The Tesla Robovan EV (credit: Tesla) · Tesla

Finally Musk brought out a group of Optimus robots, walking on their own into the event space. Musk said the robots would likely cost between $20,000 and $30,000 when they eventually go on sale years from now — a claim he has made in the past.

Musk said the robots would mingle with attendees at the event, and even serve drinks to them at the bar.

In addition to interacting to the robots, attendees were offered rides in the Cybercabs and Model 3 and Model Y EVs operating autonomously.

Optimus robots dancing at the "We, Robot" event (credit: Tesla) · Tesla

Pras Subramanian is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on Twitter and on Instagram.

Tesla reveals 20 Cybercabs at We, Robot event, says you'll be able to buy one for less than $30,000

Image Credits:Tesla

Rebecca Bellan

TECH CRUNCH
Thu, October 10, 2024


Tesla has finally revealed its Cybercab, and it looks like a smaller, sleeker, two-seater Cybertruck. And while many were expecting there to be at least one prototype of a robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals, Tesla CEO Elon Musk delighted his fans with a lineup of 20 vehicles.

The flashy “We, Robot” event took place at Warner Bros. Discovery studio on Thursday. Before walking on stage, Musk walked over to a robotaxi, which opened its gullwing doors, and did a short demo around the well-maintained streets of the Hollywood studio.


Musk repeated previous claims that the cost of autonomous transport will be so low, it will be akin to "individualized mass transit." He said he believed the average operating cost of the Cybercab will be over time around $0.20 per mile.

"And you will be able to buy one," Musk said, adding that the cost of the vehicle would be below $30,000.

Musk also noted he expects Tesla to start doing "unsupervised FSD in Texas and California next year" with the Model 3 and Model Y. He acknowledged that he's too optimistic about timelines, but said he expects the Cybercab to be in production by 2026 or "before 2027."

Fans cheered when Musk said they would be able to test out the Cybercabs themselves at the event.

"They have like 20 of them driving around the entire lot totally unsupervised," one event-goer told TechCrunch.

The robotaxi also doesn't have a plug in charger, and instead has "inductive charging," which is a sort of wireless charging, according to Musk.
Robovan and Optimus
Image Credits:Tesla

Tesla unveiled a surprise Robovan at the event, a sleek-looking autonomous bus that can carry up to 20 people and also transport goods. No timelines were revealed for this vehicle — only a hand-waving of a future that could "change the look of the roads."

Musk also introduced roughly a dozen Optimus humanoid robots, sharing his vision for a future where robots act as friend and helper for the low price of around $20,000 to $30,000. Those bots were walking among the humans at the event, dancing like go-go dancers, and even mixing drinks.

They also appeared to be speaking to the guests, and could do different accents and voice personas on command. Though it's not clear whether those capabilities, and the bots' movements, were being remote controlled by a human.
Robotaxi history and context

Image Credits:Tesla

Tesla was originally slated to reveal its Robotaxi or Cybercab in August, but delayed the unveiling after the executive requested an “important design change to the front.”


The Robotaxi unveiling is part of Tesla’s push to go “balls to the wall for autonomy” this year after pivoting from prioritizing the production of a $25,000 EV and laying off 10% of staff, including most of the charging team. But Musk’s vision of an autonomous driving future has been in play for years, and a large part of the reason why investors price Tesla’s stock not as an automaker, but as a technology company.


The Cybercab prototype represents one half of the business concept Musk has set forth since at least 2019, wherein the automaker would run its own fleet of dedicated robotaxis on a Tesla ride-hail app, which Tesla teased during its first quarter investor call.

Musk has described the other half of the strategy as similar to Uber or Airbnb, where Tesla owners will be able to add their properly equipped vehicles to Tesla’s ride-hailing app to make extra money when the cars are not in use, and Tesla will take 25% to 30% of the revenue (similar to Apple’s App Store take rate). Musk also said that Tesla projected that robotaxi rides would cost less than public transportation, but he didn’t say by when.

“By the middle of next year, we’ll have over a million Tesla cars on the road with Full Self-Driving hardware, feature complete, at a reliability level that we would consider that no one needs to pay attention, meaning you could go to sleep,” Musk said at Tesla’s 2019 Autonomy Day. “From our standpoint, if you fast forward a year, maybe a year and three months, but next year for sure, we will have over a million robotaxis on the road. The fleet wakes up with an over the air update. That’s all it takes.” That, of course, didn't happen by 2020.


Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software, which is on hundreds of thousands of vehicles today, relies only on cameras to perceive the environment around it. Industry experts say this vision-only approach is the reason why the software is still not actually fully self-driving, despite its name. FSD can perform many automated driving tasks, but still requires a human behind the wheel to stay attentive and take over if needed.

Lineup of 20 Cybercabs at Tesla's 'We, Robot' eventImage Credits:Tesla

It’s also not clear that existing Teslas even have the right hardware to get to this full self-driving future that Musk has been promising for years. As Musk posted on X in July, the roughly 5x increase in parameter count needed to power Tesla’s next-gen AI “is very difficult to achieve without upgrading the vehicle inference computer.”

Regardless, if Tesla wants to commercialize Level 4 autonomous driving – which means the vehicle can drive itself under certain conditions without needing a human to take over – it will need to prove the safety case. Tesla has been under numerous federal investigations for fatal crashes that happened while Autopilot, Tesla’s lower level advanced driver assistance system, was in place. California has the most rigorous permitting process for testing and deployment of autonomous vehicles, but in most other states, Tesla would have to show at a minimum that its vehicles are capable of pulling themselves over safely.

Then there’s the matter of the Cybercab’s lack of steering wheels or pedals, which would put it out of compliance with federal vehicle safety laws. GM’s Cruise had previously tried to bring its purpose-built robotaxi, the Origin, to production, but failed to gain the necessary approvals from the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration before scrapping the project.

Volkswagen's deliveries drop, highlighting Europe's car industry challenges

Volkswagen’s Golf VIII and Tiguan production in Wolfsburg 

Fri, October 11, 2024 

(Reuters) -Volkswagen Group on Friday reported a 7% decline in third-quarter global deliveries, showing how Europe's car industry is facing tough challenges, including weak demand from China and high production costs at home.

Europe's car companies also have to contend with the impact of a potential trade war between Beijing and the European Union as the EU presses ahead with import tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, imposed over alleged subsidies.


VW, Europe's biggest automaker is undergoing a major revamp as it considers German plant closures for the first time due to weak European demand, competition from China, challenges presented by vehicle electrification, and high costs in Germany.

"A better cost base, particularly in Germany, is essential to remain successful in this environment in the future," VW executive committee member Marco Schubert said in a statement.

Volkswagen's deliveries to China, the world's biggest car market, fell by 15% to 711,500 vehicles. This dragged down the global figure, which dropped to 2.176 million vehicles.

Rivals BMW and Mercedes said on Thursday that sluggish demand and stiff competition in China hit third quarter sales.

Schubert said the situation in China, where Volkswagen is being squeezed by local competitors offering cheaper electric models, was "particularly intense".

VW has cut costs for fully electric vehicle production in China, a spokesperson for the group said in the statement, adding that the company will not sacrifice profitability for market share.

The cost cuts have resulted in fully battery electric vehicle sales growth in China, adding 5.2% in the quarter to 57,500 cars.

But on a global scale, fully battery electric deliveries fell by 9.8% to 189,400 vehicles, weighed down by a 41% drop in the U.S.

The automaker has cut its annual outlook for a second time in less than three months and expects to deliver around 9 million cars this year, representing an annual decline.

(Reporting by Andrey Sychev, Editing by Friederike Heine and Jane Merriman)

Russian Attacks Spark Surge in War Insurance for Ukraine Grains

Áine Quinn and Alex Longley
Thu, October 10, 2024 



(Bloomberg) -- The cost of insuring vessels that transit Ukraine’s shipping corridor in the Black Sea jumped this week after Russia ramped up attacks on key ports.

Coverage has now surged to above 1% of the value of a ship, according to two people involved in the market, who asked not to be named because the information isn’t public. That’s up from around 0.75% last week. For a $50 million ship, that would be an increase of $125,000 per voyage.

While ships sailing to and from Odesa have faced a risk of being targeted ever since Ukraine launched its shipping corridor last year, in recent days Russian attacks have intensified. So far traffic is resilient, but continued attacks could make shipowners more wary of sailing through the corridor, which has successfully exported large volumes.

Wheat futures traded in Chicago have risen about 2.5% so far this week, as risks to Black Sea exports have added to concerns over the weather in key producers.

Russia hit three vessels with missiles within four days, according to Ukrainian officials. An attack on Wednesday killed at least eight people and damaged a container vessel with a humanitarian cargo ordered by the United Nations for Palestine, Agriculture Minister Vitaliy Koval said. Russia also hit two ships loaded with grain in attacks on Sunday and Monday.

Ukraine is a major grain exporter, with agricultural commodities earning vital revenues for Kyiv. Over the last three months, Russia delivered more than 60 attacks to cripple Ukraine’s export capacity, said Infrastructure Minister Oleksiy Kuleba. That included 300 port infrastructure targets, 177 vehicles and 22 commercial vessels, while 79 civilians were wounded, including port employees, and crews from logistic companies and vessels, he said.

To be sure, the coverage rates are still fluid given the number of attacks, two underwriters said. The rates also vary from one insurer to another. Vessels can often get cheaper rates than market ones thanks to no-claims discounts.

One broker said that, since the attacks, traders have shown more interest in insuring their cargoes, which are covered separately from the ships themselves.

“This morning there have been new requests from clients for war risk insurance in Ukraine, and these are the clients to whom we previously offered this coverage and were not interested in it,” Maksym Dubovoy, co-owner of Atria Insurance Brokers, said.

--With assistance from Daryna Krasnolutska.

US calls out Israel at UN for 'catastrophic conditions' in Gaza

Michelle Nichols
Wed, October 9, 2024 

Palestinians walk past a house hit in an Israeli strike, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Bureij refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip


By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Israel needs to address urgently "catastrophic conditions" among Palestinian civilians in the besieged Gaza Strip and stop "intensifying suffering" by limiting aid deliveries, its ally the United States told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday.

Referring to reports of squalid conditions in south and central Gaza, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said: "These catastrophic conditions were predicted months ago, and yet, have still not been addressed. That must change, and now."


"We call on Israel to take urgent steps to do so," she said in a blunt statement.

The 15-member Security Council met over the humanitarian crisis a year after a deadly attack by Palestinian militants Hamas on southern Israel sparked the war in Gaza. Israel has since laid to waste much of the enclave and almost the entire population of 2.3 million has been displaced.

Israel says Hamas militants killed some 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023, while health authorities in Gaza say nearly 42,000 people have been killed so far during Israel's retaliation.

Thomas-Greenfield also addressed a recent Israeli order for civilians in Gaza's north to evacuate again, saying they must be able to return to communities to rebuild.

"There must be no demographic or territorial change in the Gaza Strip, including any actions that reduce the territory of Gaza," Thomas-Greenfield said.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, told the Security Council: "Hundreds of thousands of people are again being pushed to move to the south, where living conditions are intolerable.

"Yet again, Gazans are teetering on the edge of a man-made famine," he said.

'NO RESTRICTIONS'

The U.N. has long complained of obstacles to getting aid into Gaza and distributing it during the war.

Reuters reported last week that food supplies to Gaza have fallen sharply in recent weeks because Israeli authorities have introduced a new customs rule on some humanitarian aid and are separately scaling down deliveries organized by businesses.

"We need to see fewer barriers to the delivery of aid, not more of them," Thomas-Greenfield said.

Israel's U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon defended his country's record: "Israel imposes no restrictions on humanitarian aid. In fact, 82% of all requests for humanitarian coordination have been approved and implemented."

He accused Hamas of diverting aid from those in Gaza who need it.

Britain's U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward told the council that Israel "must do much more" to avoid civilian casualties and ensure the U.N. and aid groups can operate safely and effectively in Gaza.

"Delivery of humanitarian assistance is being hindered, and humanitarian workers are constantly under threat," French U.N. Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere said.

More than 300 humanitarian aid workers, most of them UNRWA staff, have been killed.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

US incredibly concerned about humanitarian situation in Gaza, State Department says

Simon Lewis and Daphne Psaledakis
Wed, October 9, 2024 



By Simon Lewis and Daphne Psaledakis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is incredibly concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, particularly in northern Gaza, the State Department said on Wednesday, adding it is the subject of very urgent discussions between Washington and Israel.

"It has been the subject of some very urgent discussions between our two governments," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters.

"We have been making clear to the government of Israel that they have an obligation under international humanitarian law to allow food and water and other needed humanitarian assistance to make it into all parts of Gaza, and we fully expect them to comply with those obligations."

The United Nations World Food Program on Wednesday said that aid entering the Gaza Strip has plummeted to its lowest level in months, forcing the agency to stop the distribution of food parcels this month.

"If the flow of assistance does not resume, one million vulnerable people will be deprived of this lifeline," it said, adding that the closure of crossing points, security issues and disruptions to routes at crossings were limiting aid delivery.

Reuters reported last week that food supplies to Gaza have fallen sharply in recent weeks because Israeli authorities have introduced a new customs rule on some humanitarian aid and are separately scaling down deliveries organized by businesses, according to people involved in getting goods to the war-torn territory.

Miller on Wednesday was separately asked about reports, including from CNN and Al Jazeera, that some Palestinians fleeing sites of Israel’s renewed military operation in northern Gaza were shot at as they fled.

"We have seen those reports. I can't speak to the details of them, but obviously that would be unacceptable. If they were Palestinian civilians that were fleeing that were being shot by Israeli forces, that would be unacceptable. We would expect the government of Israel to investigate it, and, if appropriate, we'd expect them to hold people fully accountable," he said.

(Reporting by Simon Lewis, Humeyra Pamuk, Kanishka Singh and Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Chris Reese and Jonathan Oatis)


UN inquiry accuses Israel of ‘crime of extermination’ through deliberate destruction of Gaza’s health care system

Niamh Kennedy and Muhammad Darwish, CNN
Fri, October 11, 2024 


A United Nations inquiry has accused Israel of carrying out a “concerted policy” of destroying the health care system in Gaza during its year-long conflict with Hamas in attacks it said amount to war crimes.

Israel’s actions in the besieged Palestinian enclave “constitute the war crimes of willful killing and mistreatment and the crime against humanity of extermination,” the commission said in a statement Thursday.

“Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles” in Gaza, according to the report by the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.

The Israeli attacks resulted in “fuel, food, water, medicines and medical supplies not reaching hospitals, while also drastically reducing permits for patients to leave the territory for medical treatment,” it said.

The Israeli foreign ministry called the accusations “outrageous” and said they were “another blatant attempt by the (commission) to delegitimize the very existence of the State of Israel and obstruct its right to protect its population while covering up the crimes of terrorist organizations.”

“This report shamelessly portrays Israel’s operations in terror-infested health facilities in Gaza as a matter of policy against Gaza’s health system, while entirely dismissing overwhelming evidence that medical facilities in Gaza have been systematically used by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad for terrorist activities.”

Hamas, it said, uses medical facilities to conceal operatives, store weapons, conduct attacks and hide hostages. Hamas has repeatedly denied that it uses hospitals for military activity.

The UN report also accused Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups of committing war crimes of “torture, inhuman or cruel treatment, rape and sexual violence” for their treatment of Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza. It also investigated “institutionalized mistreatment” of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons.

The Israeli foreign ministry rejected “accusations of widespread ill-treatment and torture of detainees,” saying Israel is “fully committed to international legal standards” on treatment of detainees.

In a statement accompanying the 24-page report, which does not have the force of law, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said Israel “must immediately stop its unprecedented wanton destruction” in Gaza.

“Children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system,” she said.

As part of the report, UN experts investigated the killing of 5-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, who made headlines in late January after a recording emerged of her pleading to emergency workers to rescue her and her family after they became trapped in their car due to Israeli shelling.

Despite an ambulance arriving at the scene while the girl was still alive, the presence of Israeli security forces effectively “prevented access,” meaning the bodies of Rajab’s relatives “could not be retrieved from their bullet-ridden car until 12 days after the incident,” the report said.

The report “determined on reasonable grounds that the Israeli Army’s 162nd Division” which operated in the area at the time is “responsible for killing the family of seven, shelling the ambulance and killing the two paramedics inside.”

The incident was just one of several alleged attacks on health care in Gaza, amid broader wartime conditions.

The report will be presented to the UN General Assembly on October 30.

The commission previously alleged that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes in the early stages of the Gaza war, and that Israel’s actions also amounted to crimes against humanity.

CNN’s Dana Karni contributed to this report.


UN agency for Palestinians warns Gaza aid work may 'disintegrate' if Israeli legislation passes

EDITH M. LEDERER
Wed, October 9, 2024 

Tents are crammed together as displaced Palestinians camp along the beach of Deir Al Balah, central Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)


UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees warned Wednesday that if pending Israeli legislation is adopted, all humanitarian operations in Gaza and the West Bank may “disintegrate,” leaving hundreds of thousands of people in dire need as war rages.

Philippe Lazzarini told the U.N. Security Council that senior Israeli officials are bent on destroying the U.N. body known as UNRWA, which is the main provider of humanitarian aid in Gaza, the Palestinian territory rocked by a year of war between Israel and Hamas.

An Israeli parliamentary committee approved a pair of bills this week that would ban UNRWA from operating in Israeli territory and end all contact between the government and the U.N. agency. The bill needs final approval from the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

Lazzarini said in a video briefing that “legally, the Knesset legislation violates Israel’s obligation under the United Nations Charter and international law.’

Israel has alleged that some of UNRWA’s thousands of staff members participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas' attacks that sparked the war in Gaza. The U.N. has fired more than a dozen staffers after internal investigations found they may have participated in the attacks that killed 1,200 people in Israel.

Israeli U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon told the Security Council that UNRWA has allowed Hamas to infiltrate its ranks and that “this infiltration is so ingrained, so institutional, that the organization is simply beyond repair.”

Danon noted that the head of Gaza’s teachers union was recently killed in Lebanon and revealed as a Hamas commander, saying this showed that UNRWA has been infiltrated “to the point where terrorists are running classrooms, indoctrinating future generations and hiding in plain sight under the banner of the United Nations.”

UNRWA had suspended the union leader in March when allegations of his ties to Hamas emerged and launched an investigation.

Lazzarini urged the Security Council to shield the agency “from efforts to end its mandate arbitrarily and prematurely in the absence of a long-promised political solution.”

When UNRWA was created by the U.N. General Assembly in 1949, it was meant to provide health care, education and welfare services to about 700,000 Palestinian refugees from the 1948 conflict with Israel. Today, it provides such services to about 6 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

Lazzarini stressed that the entire humanitarian response in Gaza rests on UNRWA’s infrastructure and that it “may disintegrate” if the Israeli legislation is adopted.

The halt to coordination with Israel, he said, would further disrupt the provision of shelter, food and health care to Palestinians as winter approaches. More than 650,000 children would lose any hope of resuming their education “and an entire generation would be sacrificed,” Lazzarini said.

In the West Bank, he said, “the delivery of education, primary health care and emergency aid to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees would grind to a halt.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters Tuesday that he has written to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to express “profound concern” about the legislation.

Lisa Doughten, a director in the U.N. humanitarian office, told the council that “few times in recent history have we witnessed suffering and destruction of the size, scale and scope that we see in Gaza.”

Israel’s offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters. It has said women and children make up over half of the dead.

Doughten said “nearly every one of the more than 2 million people in Gaza receives some form of aid or service provision from UNRWA.”

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield expressed concern at recent Israeli government actions limiting the delivery of goods into Gaza. These restrictions, combined with new bureaucratic limits on humanitarian goods arriving from Jordan and the closure of most border crossings in recent weeks, will only intensify the suffering in Gaza, she said.

Thomas-Greenfield said the United States, a close ally of Israel, is following “with deep concern” Israel’s proposed legislation, saying it reflects “the significant distrust between Israel and UNRWA.”

UN accuses Israel of war crimes over attacks on Gaza hospitals

Imogen Foulkes - Geneva correspondent
Thu, October 10, 2024

The Al-Salam hospital in Khan Yunis is one of several healthcare facilities which has been ruined by the ongoing Israeli campaign in Gaza [Getty Images]


A United Nations commission of inquiry has accused Israel of carrying out a “concerted policy to destroy Gaza's healthcare system" during its ongoing war with Hamas.

The commission said Israeli attacks on Gaza’s healthcare facilities and Israel’s treatment of Palestinian detainees amounted to war crimes, as well as the crime against humanity of “extermination”.

Hamas and other Palestinian groups are also accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their treatment of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

Israel is yet to comment, but has long accused the UN of bias and dismissed previous critical reports.

The report, which will be presented to the UN General Assembly on 30 October, was led by Navi Pillay, the South African former UN human rights chief.

Israeli security forces have “deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel”, the report said, while children have “borne the brunt” of “the collapse of the health system".

The commission cites the case of five-year-old Hind Rajab, whose car was hit as she and her family tried to flee bombing. Several family members were killed, but Hind managed to phone the Palestinian Red Crescent for help. The ambulance trying to reach her was also shelled, and Hind, her family, and the ambulance crew all died.

The commission says the attacks on the healthcare system have “inflicted conditions of life resulting in the destruction of generations of Palestinian children and, potentially, the Palestinian people as a group”.

The report alleges Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas, have subjected Israeli hostages to "physical violence, abuse, sexual violence, forced isolation, limited access to hygiene facilities, water and food, threats and humiliation".

It calls for the immediate and unconditional release of the remaining hostages.

The report also expresses concern about the treatment of thousands of Palestinian detainees, some of them children.

Israeli security forces have subjected them to systematic abuse, including torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, the reports alleges.

It directly names Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, saying the abuse took place “under direct orders” from him.

The report contains detailed evidence and adds to growing concerns, reflected in a case at the International Court of Justice and investigations by the International Criminal Court, at the conduct of the widening war in the Middle East.

The war began after Hamas’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 42,060 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.


UN Security Council members warn Israel over laws curbing UNRWA

AFP
Wed, October 9, 2024 

All UN Security Council members that spoke were unanimous in calling for Israel to respect UNRWA's work and to protect its staff (Eyad BABA) (Eyad BABA/AFP/AFP)


Members of the United Nations Security council warned Israel on Wednesday against proceeding with a law aimed at curbing the UN's Palestinian refugees agency.

Israel has long been at odds with the agency known as UNRWA and alleged that some of its employees were involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks that triggered the war in Gaza.

The Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, approved two bills on Sunday essentially aimed at ending UNRWA's activity and privileges in Israel. These bills were quickly condemned by UN chief Antonio Guterres.

Washington's envoy to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said Wednesday that the United States was "following with deep concern the Israeli legislative proposal that could alter UNRWA's legal status."

She said it risked "hindering its ability to communicate with Israeli officials and removing privileges and immunities afforded to UN organizations and personnel around the globe."

Algeria, which along with Slovenia called the emergency Security Council meeting on the crisis in the Palestinian territories, said "for years, the Israeli authorities has made clear its desire, its will to dismantle UNRWA."

"It symbolizes the Palestinian refugees and their inviolable rights. We reiterate that the rights of Palestinian refugees are not subject to statutes of limitation," said Amar Bendjama, ambassador of non-permanent Security Council member Algeria.

- UN's 'greatest success'? -

All UN Security Council members that spoke were unanimous in calling for Israel to respect UNRWA's work and to protect its staff.

"Senior Israeli officials have described destroying UNRWA as a war goal," UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini warned the Security Council, noting that 226 UNRWA personnel have been killed in 12 months.

"Legislation to end our operations is ready for final adoption by the Israeli Knesset.

"It seeks to ban UNRWA's presence and operations in the territory of Israel, revoking its privileges and immunities, in violation of international law.

"If the bills are adopted, the consequences will be severe. Operationally, the entire humanitarian response in Gaza -- which rests on UNRWA's infrastructure -- may disintegrate."

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday that he had written to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning the legislation "could prevent UNRWA from continuing its essential work in the Occupied Palestinian Territory."

The Palestinian ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour told the Security Council that "we totally support UNRWA and what Lazzarini said and take it very seriously, and honor what is a very indispensable organization that should be protected by all means."

"It is the greatest success story in the history of the United Nations," Mansour said.

UNRWA was created in 1949 to support Palestinian refugees across several countries.

An internal probe published in August found that nine employees "may have been involved in the armed attacks of 7 October" on Israel.

"Yes we work with UN agencies," Israel's ambassador to the UN Danny Danon told the security council.

"We are willing and able to work on the ground.

"Compare our efforts to the failures of UNRWA... UNRWA Gaza has allowed Hams to infiltrate its ranks.

"The organization is beyond repair."

Lebanon envoy urges pressure on Israel to end military campaigns, allow humanitarian relief

Emma Farge
Thu, October 10, 2024

FILE PHOTO: Scenes of destruction in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip


By Emma Farge

GENEVA (Reuters) - Lebanon and other states called for more pressure on Israel to end its military campaigns in the Middle East at a meeting at the U.N. in Geneva on Thursday, saying that it was repeating its Gaza methods in Lebanon with catastrophic consequences.

Pakistan, as head of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, hosted the meeting to examine the humanitarian situation a year into the Gaza war, triggered by the Hamas-led attack in which 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

Addressing assembled U.N. officials and ambassadors, the Palestinian ambassador said the pain of a year of conflict in Gaza was "indescribable", while Lebanon's envoy accused Israel of using the "same sinister playbook" in his country as in Gaza.

Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed over 42,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities, and reduced much of the coastal enclave to rubble.

Since Israel intensified its military actions against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah last month, more than 1,000 people have been killed and one million have fled their homes, Lebanon authorities say.

Israel says it targets military capabilities in Lebanon and Gaza and takes steps to mitigate the risk of harm to civilians in both places. It accuses Hezbollah and Hamas of hiding among civilians, which they deny.

Its campaign against the more heavily-armed Hezbollah aims to secure the return home of Israelis evacuated from areas near the border as a result of nearly a year of Hezbollah rocket fire into northern Israel in support of Hamas.

"As these atrocities keep unfolding we have the right to ask ourselves after one year: what is the real and ultimate goal of this?," Lebanon's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva Salim Baddoura said.

"There is a pressing necessity for the international community to forcibly push for a ceasefire and uninhibited humanitarian relief," he added, warning of the risk of all-out war in the region.

South Africa's envoy Mxolisi Nkosi described Gaza as an "apocalyptic humanitarian catastrophe", echoing remarks by U.N. agencies who decried safety risks and difficulties delivering aid there. Turkey's ambassador Burak Akçapar called for a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel. "We cannot see the Israeli (military) objectives being clearly defined," he added.

The meeting was also attended by many Western ambassadors, including from the U.S. and Britain. Israel did not attend.

Several countries called for a two-state solution after the Israel-Hamas conflict, an outcome that Turkey and Spain said was unworkable as long as many countries refuse to recognise Palestine.

(Reporting by Emma Farge, Editing by William Maclean)