No pause for food delivery riders during Pakistan’s monsoon
Abdullah Abbas waded through Lahore’s flooded streets, struggling to push his motorcycle and deliver a food order on time. The water had risen to his torso, his jeans soaked and rolled up over sandals, leaving him vulnerable to electrocution and infectious diseases.Even as monsoon rains deluge Pakistan’s cities, food and grocery orders on the Singapore-based delivery platform Foodpanda pour in.”If I don’t deliver the orders, my Foodpanda account will get blocked, which would leave me without money,” Abbas told AFP in the old quarter of Lahore, known for its narrow, congested streets.”I need this money to pay my high school fees,” added the 19-year-old, who is completing his last year of secondary school. Since June, monsoon rains in Pakistan have killed more than 1,000 people, swelling major rivers and devastating rural communities along their banks.Urban centres such as Lahore, a city of more than 14 million people, and Karachi, the country’s largest city with more than 25 million people, have also suffered urban flooding in part because of poorly planned development.Abbas earns around $7 a day, above the average salary, but only when the sun is shining.To meet the average monthly pay of around $140, he was to work seven days a week for over 10 hours fitted around his studies. “Customers behave rudely and you have to handle all the stress,” added Muhammad Khan, a 23-year-old Foodpanda rider, as he carefully navigated his motorbike through Karachi’s muddy, pothole ridden roads.Pakistan, where 45 percent of people live under the poverty line, is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change, with limited resources dedicated to adaptation.- ‘Stressful’ – By the middle of August, Pakistan had already received 50 percent more monsoon rainfall than last year, according to disaster authorities, while in neighbouring India, the annual rains kill hundreds every year.While South Asia’s seasonal monsoon brings rainfall that farmers depend on, climate change is making the phenomenon more erratic.A report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said brown water inundating city streets is not only the result of climate change but “clogged drains, inadequate solid waste disposal, poor infrastructure, encroachments, elitist housing societies.”Doctors warn that working repeatedly in damp conditions can cause fungal infections and flu, while exposure to dirty water can spread eye and skin infections. Gig economy workers attached to delivery apps such as Foodpanda and ride hailing apps Bykea and InDrive, made up nearly two percent of Pakistan’s labour force or half a million people in 2023, according to Fairwork, a project by the University of Oxford.Fairwork rated six digital labour platforms in the country and all of them have the “minimum standards of fair work conditions”.International Labour Organization meanwhile says gig workers lack government protection and face systemic violations of international labour standards.Motorbike rider Muneer Ahmed, 38, said he quit being a chef and joined Bykea to become “his own boss”.”When it rains, customers try to take rickshaws or buses, which leaves me with no work,” said Ahmed, waiting anyway on the side of the flooded street.”Rain is a curse for the poor,” he said, watching the screen of his phone for a new customer. Daily wage labourers, often working in construction, also see their work dry up. It hs been nearly four days since labourer Zahid Masih, 44, was hired, he told AFP while taking refuge under a bridge with other masons in Karachi.”Jobs do come up, but only after the rain stops. There is no work as long as it is raining,” says the father of three.”Sitting idle at home is not an option, as our stoves won’t be lit.”
France to host DR Congo emergency conference as Kinshasa calls for aidWed, 24 Sep 2025 03:20:43 GMT
The leader of the Democratic Republic of the Congo asked UN member states on Tuesday to recognize a “silent genocide” in his country, as France announced it will host an emergency conference on the conflict there next month. “All the signs of planned extermination are present… This is not just a conflict, it is a silent …
YouTube va réintégrer des créateurs bannis pour désinformation
YouTube s’apprête à réintégrer des créateurs jusqu’ici bannis de la plateforme pour avoir diffusé des informations erronées sur le Covid-19 et les élections américaines, d’après une lettre envoyée mardi par la société mère Alphabet à un législateur républicain.Ce revirement de politique représente une victoire pour les alliés conservateurs du président américain Donald Trump, qui accusent depuis longtemps les plateformes en ligne et les vérificateurs d’informations professionnels d’avoir un parti pris de gauche et d’utiliser les politiques de lutte contre la désinformation comme prétexte pour censurer.”Conformément à l’engagement de l’entreprise en faveur de la liberté d’expression, YouTube offrira à tous les créateurs la possibilité de revenir sur la plateforme si l’entreprise a supprimé leurs chaînes pour violations répétées des politiques relatives au Covid-19 et à l’intégrité des élections, politiques qui ne sont plus en vigueur”, a indiqué le conseiller juridique d’Alphabet dans une lettre de cinq pages adressée à Jim Jordan, président républicain de la commission judiciaire de la Chambre des représentants des Etats-Unis.”YouTube attache de l’importance aux voix conservatrices sur sa plateforme et reconnaît que ces créateurs ont une large audience et jouent un rôle important dans le débat civique”, dit encore le courrier, sans préciser quels créateurs seront concernés ni quand ils pourront revenir.Ces dernières années, le directeur adjoint du FBI Dan Bongino, le chef de la lutte antiterroriste à la Maison Blanche Sebastian Gorka ou l’animateur de podcast Steve Bannon figuraient parmi les personnes bannies de YouTube, selon les médias américains.Dans la lettre, Alphabet a également accusé l’administration de l’ancien président Joe Biden d’avoir “fait pression sur l’entreprise” pour qu’elle impose ces interdictions.L’administration Biden avait exhorté les plateformes à supprimer ce qu’elle considérait comme des informations fausses et préjudiciables, comme les contenus encourageant à ingérer de l’eau de Javel pour guérir du Covid-19, une théorie reprise par Donald Trump.Jim Jordan, attentif à cette question depuis plusieurs années, a salué sur X l’annonce d’Alphabet comme une “victoire dans la lutte contre la censure”.”Plus personne ne dira plus aux Américains ce qu’ils doivent croire ou ne pas croire”, a-t-il ajouté.Après avoir racheté Twitter, rebaptisé X, en 2022, le milliardaire américain Elon Musk avait également permis la réintégration sur le réseau social de comptes véhiculant de la désinformation.
Asia markets waver after Wall St retreats from record
Equities wavered Wednesday following a down day on Wall Street, where worries about high valuations were compounded by mixed messaging from the Federal Reserve on its plans for interest rates.Investors have enjoyed a months-long rally that has pushed some markets to record highs but the run-up took a pause Tuesday amid talk that the gains may have gone too far.All three main indexes in New York were dragged down from peaks by tech titans including Nvidia and Amazon, which have been at the forefront of the global surge owing to huge bets on artificial intelligence.Another key driver of the gains has been expectations that the Fed will cut borrowing costs several times this year, with last week’s reduction followed by forecasts that two more were in the pipeline.However, comments from key officials stoked uncertainty among investors.Boss Jerome Powell warned there was “no risk-free path”.”If we ease too aggressively, we could leave the inflation job unfinished and need to reverse course later to fully restore two-percent inflation,” he said at an event in Rhode Island.But he added: “If we maintain restrictive policy too long, the labour market could soften unnecessarily.”The remarks came as Atlanta Fed chief Raphael Bostic and Chicago counterpart Austan Goolsbee warned of more inflation.However, governor Michelle Bowman called on her colleagues to slash rates amid fears they were “at serious risk of already being behind the curve in addressing deteriorating labor market conditions”.”Now that we have seen many months of deteriorating labour market conditions, it is time for the committee to act decisively and proactively to address decreasing labor market dynamism and emerging signs of fragility,” she said in prepared remarks ahead of an event in Kentucky.Investors are now awaiting the release Friday of the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) index, the Fed’s favoured gauge of inflation, and key jobs figures the week after.New governor Stephen Miran, who was appointed by Donald Trump, also called for more reductions.Pepperstone’s Chris Weston wrote: “One assumes that if we see US core PCE inflation print at 0.2 percent month-on-month, followed by a tick higher in the layoff rate… and another weak non-farm payrolls release, Bowman may conclude the time for insurance cuts has passed and revert back to a 50-basis-point dissent.”In Asian trade, Tokyo fell along with Sydney, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei and Wellington, though there were small gains in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Manila.- Key figures at around 0230 GMT -Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 0.4 percent at 45,300.30 (break)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 0.2 percent at 26,223.11 Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.3 percent at 3,832.38Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.1802 from $1.1816 on TuesdayPound/dollar: DOWN at $1.3514 from $1.3524Dollar/yen: UP at 147.74 yen from 147.66 yenEuro/pound: DOWN at 87.33 pence from 87.37 penceWest Texas Intermediate: UP 0.3 percent at $63.58 per barrelBrent North Sea Crude: UP 0.2 percent at $67.08 per barrelNew York – Dow: DOWN 0.2 percent at 46,292.78 (close)London – FTSE 100: FLAT at 9,223.32 (close)
Climat: le monde répond à Trump à New York, la Chine en tête
118 pays mais pas les Etats-Unis: de nombreux dirigeants défendront mercredi lors d’un mini-sommet à New York la poursuite de la lutte contre le dérèglement du climat, fustigée par Donald Trump, même si beaucoup continuent à produire plus de pétrole ou se focalisent sur d’autres crises.”C’est la plus grande arnaque jamais menée contre le monde”, a déclaré le président américain mardi à l’ONU. Les prévisions climatiques viennent de “gens stupides qui ont fait dépenser des fortunes à leurs pays”.Mercredi, le Premier ministre chinois Li Qiang sera le premier dirigeant à la tribune pour offrir un contrepoint. Son pays, dont les usines, les centrales, les véhicules et autres activités rejettent 30% des gaz à effet de serre de l’humanité, est attendu sur un chiffre crucial: son engagement de réduction des émissions d’ici 2035.Jamais la Chine ne s’est engagée à ce jour à réduire ses émissions de CO2. Elle promettait jusqu’à présent d’atteindre un pic avant 2030, ce qu’elle semble en voie de réaliser avec cinq ans d’avance grâce à l’essor formidable du solaire et des voitures électriques. La plupart des pays riches ont passé leur pic depuis des décennies mais n’ont pas de plan crédible pour aller jusqu’à zéro dans 25 ans.”Tous les regards sont tournés vers la Chine”, dit à l’AFP Li Shuo, expert au centre de réflexion Asia Society, bien renseigné à Pékin.Lui s’attend à un objectif de réduction conservateur, autour voire en dessous de -10% sur les dix prochaines années, inspiré de ce qu’Américains et Européens ont réussi à leur époque. Une trajectoire qui décevra par rapport à l’effort général requis, mais aura le mérite de démontrer l’attachement de Pékin au multilatéralisme climatique.Li Shuo préfère se focaliser sur un fait plus majeur: “La Chine est désormais la superpuissance des technologies vertes”.- COP30 difficile -Le secrétaire général Antonio Guterres n’a convié à ce sommet que les pays prêts à présenter un nouvel engagement pour 2035. C’est une obligation de l’accord de Paris de 2015: les pays membres, soit la quasi-totalité de la planète sauf une poignée dont l’Iran, la Libye et bientôt les Etats-Unis, fixent librement leurs objectifs mais doivent les rehausser tous les cinq ans. Mais pour beaucoup, les engagements s’annoncent insuffisants. Et la plupart ont du retard, le plus spectaculaire étant celui de l’Union européenne, où France et Allemagne notamment ont bloqué un accord à temps.Ce qui renforce l’attente pour la feuille de route chinoise. Elle permettra de recalculer la trajectoire mondiale avant la conférence climatique de l’ONU en novembre au Brésil (COP30), qui s’annonce difficile.- “La courbe s’améliore” -“Les COP ne sont pas des événements isolés. Elles reflètent les tensions géopolitiques”, dit à l’AFP la directrice générale de la COP30, Ana Toni.L’ONU tâche de maintenir l’équilibre entre catastrophisme et foi dans la diplomatie.D’un côté, Antonio Guterres a admis, dans un entretien à l’AFP, que l’espoir de limiter le réchauffement à 1,5°C par rapport au XIXe siècle était “sur le point de s’effondrer”. Le réchauffement du climat est en effet actuellement déjà estimé à environ 1,4°C.De l’autre, le chef de l’ONU Climat, Simon Stiell, répète que l’accord de Paris fonctionne. “Sans la coopération climatique à l’ONU, nous nous dirigerions vers 5°C de réchauffement, un avenir impossible. Aujourd’hui, nous allons plutôt vers 3°C. C’est encore trop haut, mais la courbe s’améliore”, a-t-il dit lundi à New York.Une partie de l’amélioration vient de Chine. La moitié de l’électricité chinoise est certes encore générée en brûlant du charbon, mais c’était les trois quarts il y a une décennie.
In just one year, Google turns AI setbacks into dominance
Caught off guard by ChatGPT and mocked for early blunders with its own generative artificial intelligence efforts, Google has pulled off a dramatic turnaround in just one year, becoming a major player in consumer-facing AI.”The market had written off Alphabet in the AI race,” Matt Britzman, analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said of Google’s parent company. “That was short-sighted.”In March 2023, Google hastily launched its version of ChatGPT, called Bard, four months after the original shook the world.During its launch event, Bard made an error answering a question about the James Webb telescope, drawing ridicule from viewers tuning in from around the world.Several analysts subsequently downgraded their recommendations of Alphabet, worried that ChatGPT would eat into the Google search engine’s generation-long dominance of the internet.A year later, in May 2024, the Mountain View, California giant unveiled AI Overviews, a feature integrated into Google Search that again caused online ridicule after recommending a glue pizza recipe and eating a rock a day in answers to queries.Despite massive investments in AI technology for over a decade — acquiring the DeepMind lab in 2014 and producing high-level research publications that inspired the ChatGPT phenomenon — Google kept stumbling.Much of Google’s AI development “focused on powering its platforms rather than delivering services directly to consumers,” said Ben Wood, an analyst at CCS Insight.Ted Mortonson, an analyst at financial services firm Baird, said Google leadership was caught “flat-footed” and had grown “too complacent” about their AI advantage.- Turnaround trajectory -Amid the crisis, change was afoot. Google co-founder Sergey Brin was seen back at the Googleplex, and the company undertook a drastic internal reorganization.In spring 2024, AI developers were consolidated under a single Google DeepMind banner with Nobel Prize winner Demis Hassabis put in charge.”It took us time to bring these teams together,” CEO Sundar Pichai explained on the “Lex Fridman Podcast” in early June.Google also needed time to deploy its new in-house AI chips, the TPUs (Tensor processing units), essential to the company’s ambitions.But “I could see, internally, the trajectory we were on,” he said.Despite the “glue pizza” missteps, or hallucinations in AI parlance, Overviews marked the first step in Google’s turnaround.Next came the commercial launch of NotebookLM — a digital document tool that can synthesize uploaded content into easy-to-understand writing or even a chatty podcast.At Google’s developer conference in May 2025, the company unveiled video generation tool Veo 3, whose precision and consistency made a big splash, along with AI Mode, a feature that completed the transformation of search engine into ChatGPT-style chatbot.August brought a new version of the Pixel smartphone, whose AI enables 100x zoom and real-time translation. Mid-September saw the launch of video generation on YouTube.”Today’s tools, especially from Google, can be used in the real world, as opposed to just being developer conference demos,” emphasized Avi Greengart of Techsponential.With Pixel, “Google is in pole position in AI equipment,” said Wood.Google drove the point home with its image editing program integrated into Gemini, informally called Nano Banana, which became such a sensation that Gemini topped ChatGPT in iPhone downloads for the first time earlier this month.The outlook brightened further for Google when it avoided having to sell its Chrome browser — a government demand in its search monopoly trial that was rejected by a federal judge in early September.Signaling the shift, Apple is reportedly considering using Gemini for its overhaul of AI voice assistant Siri, according to Bloomberg.A partnership with the iPhone giant would hand Google a new revenue stream, though monetizing its AI “is still somewhat of a question mark,” said Greengart.”Google is playing the long game,” said Wood. “It knows that right now, it needs to offer free services to get consumers engaged with Gemini. However, in the longer term, it’s hoping this can be turned into a substantial revenue stream.”