Sorry if you weren’t invited to the White House for dinner last week
Politico, 9/21–OpenAI President Greg Brockman is expected to attend President Donald Trump’s state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House this week…Brockman was not included on an initial, partial list of tech and business leaders that a senior U.S. official provided to reporters on Friday. That list of expected attendees included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser and former Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Immigrants in South Africa await deadline with unease
Al Jazeera, 9/28–Bishop Raphael Bahebwa is in hiding, afraid he could be attacked for speaking out for the rights of foreigners in South Africa. “I am in hiding now because they say they are going to kill me for speaking about the rights of foreigners,” he told Al Jazeera. Bahebwa has lived in South Africa for 26 years, after arriving as a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In that time, he has watched antiforeigner sentiment flare repeatedly in the country he came to call home. But he says this year feels different. A September 30 deadline declared by March and March, an anti-immigration movement that has led protests across South Africa this year, has renewed fears of violence among migrant communities.
War in Ethiopia and Tigray restarts
France24, 9/28–Ethiopia’s army commander on Sunday accused Eritrea and Sudan of backing armed groups fighting its troops in the north of the country. Heavy clashes have resumed between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the federal government since Wednesday, raising fears of a return to a 2020-2022 civil war in which an estimated 600,000 people died. The TPLF has seized airports and launched attacks into the neighbouring states of Afar and Amhara, saying they were engaged in a “defensive war” against the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
Gates calls for what capitalists always need: regulation
The Guardian, 9/28–Bill Gates has called on the U.S.’s federal legislators and law enforcers to regulate the development of artificial intelligence (AI), saying in an interview airing on Sunday that the technology left unchecked could cause “a billion deaths” and “no one thinks self-regulation is enough.” “You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like,” the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist said to Kristen Welker, the NBC Meet the Press host. “And that has to be a required thing.”
Pakistan’s bosses find ways to limit protests
New York Times, 9/27–[In] Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad…police sealed off the city with more than 1,500 shipping containers ahead of a protest planned by the main opposition party. Two rows of colorful containers snake along the road leading to the prime minister’s house and Parliament, pushing the representatives of the Pakistani people out of sight and out of reach. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the opposition party, had called on its supporters to march peacefully on Islamabad to demand the release of its leader…prime minister Imran Khan. He has been imprisoned since 2023 on corruption charges that he and his party describe as politically motivated…The government has not yet said how long it will keep Islamabad in a state of quasi lockdown. But the containers have so far been the most visible sign of the government’s effort to quell widespread discontent over the repression of dissent and the crackdown on Mr. Khan’s party.
Protesters demand reinstatement of protections for Haitian workers
LA Progressive, 9/27– “Going back to Haiti means a very likely death sentence. The U.S. State Department itself says if you’re going to Haiti, before you go, you should make out your will and register your DNA, just in case we just have a body and we have to identify it,” said Stephanie, one of 13 speakers protesting the forced deportation of 350,000 Haitians on the National Day of Protest on September 24 in support of the Temporary Protection Status (TPS) for Haitians by demanding the reestablishment of the program that has been terminated by the Trump administration…Haitians were initially granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the aftermath of a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in January 2010 that saw over 200,000 people killed and more than 300,000 people injured. The program offers survivors safe shelter allowing them to remain temporarily in the United States until conditions in their home country make a return safe…
