MP wants AI 'nudifying' tool banned
MP Maria Miller wants a parliamentary debate on banning digitally generated nude images. The nudifying service allows users to undress women in photos, using Artificial intelligence. They had over five million visits in June. ‘Parliament needs an opportunity to debate whether nude and sexually explicit images generated digitally without consent should be outlawed. I believe if this happened the law would change. It should be an offence to distribute sexual images online without consent. It severely impacts on people's lives. Software providers developing this technology are complicit in a very serious crime and should be required to design their products to stop this happening.’ At present making, taking, or distributing without consent intimate images online or through digital technology falls outside the law. Nudifier tools are not new. DeepNude was launched in 2019, but the creators quickly withdrew the service and offered refunds following a backlash.
Decisions on vaccinating children
Paul Whiteman of the school leaders' union says UK policy on jabs for children should be led by clinicians. Schools should not be responsible for promoting, enforcing, or policing pupil vaccinations. A record 1.13 million children in England were out of school for Covid-19 related reasons towards the end of term. Pupils will return to schools next month, and the Government needs to take every possible step to prevent transmission of the virus amongst people in school communities, no matter what their age. Vaccine decisions for teenagers will be guided by data from other countries. The reason to roll out the vaccine to children is to break the transmission chains in households and in schools for the autumn term, while we know the winter is going to be especially difficult with seasonal respiratory infections. Mr Whiteman recommends everyone over 12 should get the Covid vaccination, which is safe and effective. Israel is vaccinating 12- to 15-year-olds, feeling that protection from vaccination outweighs the risks.
Greece: 100+ fires, evacuations, monks refuse to leave
‘We’re waging a battle of the titans! - and the hardest is still to come,’ said the Greek deputy minister for civil protection. Wildfires in Athens suburbs mean that residents must shut windows against thick smoke containing harmful particles. Over 150 houses were destroyed by a fire that surrounded a monastery and twelve villages on the island of Evia, one of over 100 blazes in the country. The mayor of Olympia, birthplace of the Olympic Games, pleaded for help as flames threatened the site. Three monks from St David Monastery refused to leave. ‘We’re suffocating due to the smoke’, said one monk, describing flames 100 to 130 feet high surrounding them. Police will force them to evacuate if their lives are in danger. Villagers gathered on a beach to be evacuated on boats. Firefighters, helicopters and water-bombing planes were fighting the blazes. Blazes have also broken out in Turkey, Italy, Israel, Spain, North Macedonia and Albania: see
Portugal: drug trafficking
A 79-year-old Spanish woman has been arrested in Portugal over suspicions of leading a drug ring. The 78-year-old woman, who was heading a smuggling group, was arrested in Vila Real, in northern Portugal, along with two other Spaniards, aged 26 and 60, as part of an operation carried out by Spanish and Portuguese police. They were bringing in cocaine through Portuguese ports using a legal company importing coral from the Dominican Republic. The woman was the head of the group as well as the manager and owner of the front company. The group was a wholesaler for other traffickers who then sold the cocaine on the black market in southern Spain.
Afghanistan: Christians told - convert, flee or die
Barnabas Fund reports, ‘Afghan Christians are at huge risk. As American troops leave the country, Taliban fighters are expanding their area of control, especially in rural areas, and re-imposing their ultra-strict form of sharia as they go. By the end of August the last Americans will have gone, but in mid-July the Taliban already claimed to control 85% of the country. What is certain is that Afghan Christians, as converts from Islam, will be even more vulnerable under Taliban rule than under the Afghan government. The Taliban has publicly announced that Christians must convert, leave, or be killed.'
Turkey: torture in prisons
‘Because my surgery was delayed while I was in prison, my left upper tooth, palate, cheekbone and lymph nodes were removed. The bottom of my left chin is now empty. Bone was taken from my leg and placed on my face. According to an MRI, the tumor has spread to the back of my eye’, said Ayşe Özdoğan, whose ‘crime’ was working at a dormitory affiliated with the Gülen movement. She was jailed for nine years for being ‘a member of a terrorist organisation’. Torture, ill-treatment, and lack of medical care for sick prisoners, are widespread in Turkish jails. Rooms are arranged with no security cameras. No torture detection can be made. When prisoners filed a criminal complaint about being beaten, a disciplinary investigation was launched against them for insulting the officer and the president.
Building peace in Haiti
15,500+ have fled Port-au-Prince. Homes, churches, businesses and schools have been burnt down or occupied by gangs. Haiti’s president was attacked in his home and killed. Tearfund works closely with the League of Pastors, a network of church leaders in Port-au-Prince. As soon as the violence escalated, they set up shelters for those who had fled, and Tearfund provided food, hygiene kits, and cash assistance for other essential needs. The shelters were soon overcrowded, so church leaders opened their homes. They also wanted to help the gang members. So the League of Pastors nominated leaders in their churches to be trained in peacebuilding and conflict-resolution skills. It is hoped this will lead to community dialogues with gang members and bring about healing and restoration in their communities and peace for Haiti. The church continues to be a refuge and a hope to people during this crisis, but the situation remains critical.
Japan: Tokyo’s hidden homeless
When a country holds the Olympic Games, there is often a redevelopment of parts of the host city. Hundreds of homeless people in Tokyo were given eviction notices even though they have nowhere to go. Metropolitan officials cleared the area of homeless people before the Olympics, and are still doing it during the games. A 62-year-old homeless man said an official approached him on 8 July to tell him, ‘Remove your belongings by 21 July; they are creating obstacles for the Olympics’. According to a Tokyo-based support group, authorities have taken tougher approaches against homeless people since Tokyo was named the host city of 2020 Olympics. Parks are now locked and lit up at night to discourage the homeless from sleeping there. There were 1,126 homeless living in parks in Tokyo in January 2019, but only 862 in 2020. The whereabouts of the 264 is unknown. Tokyo's homeless are experiencing extreme pressure to hide.
Gulf of Oman: two tankers attacked in one week
The Asphalt Princess tanker was hijacked and boarded by nine armed men and ordered to sail to Iran through the congested approach to the Strait of Hormuz. Israel's prime minister Naftali Bennett said there was ‘evidence’ that its long standing foe Iran was responsible. Iran's Revolutionary Guards dismissed the reports as a pretext for ‘hostile action’ against Tehran. The tanker is owned by a Dubai-based company that had one of its ships hijacked two years ago by the revolutionary guards. The following day the hijackers left the tanker. A week earlier the Israeli-owned Mercer Street was attacked by a drone, killing two security guards. The US, UK and Israel blamed Iran for the attack - a claim it strongly denies. These attacks appear to be the latest escalation in an undeclared ‘shadow war’ between Israel and Iran. For months there have been several attacks on both Israeli- and Iranian-operated vessels, which are seen as tit-for-tat incidents. See
Lebanon: Beirut marches and Israeli attack
Israeli fighter jets have launched air raids on neighbouring Lebanon following a second day of rocket fire from Lebanon into Israeli territory. Fighter jets struck the launch sites and infrastructure from which the rockets were launched. Israeli aircraft routinely target Palestinian armed groups in Gaza and suspected Hezbollah or Iranian targets in Syria, but this was the first time since 2014 that they had hit targets in Lebanon. Previous acknowledged military actions mostly involved artillery shelling. Israel fought a 2006 war against Iran-backed Hezbollah, which is the dominant force in southern Lebanon. The border has been mostly quiet since then. The escalation came as thousands of grief-stricken Lebanese took part in a protest march on the first anniversary of a devastating explosion in Beirut that killed over 200. Lebanon’s situation has worsened since then - economic crisis, poverty, increasing, Covid, no hospital beds, no medicine, no electricity, no fuel - people feel that the government has forgotten they exist.