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China’s push to develop top-end artificial intelligence microchips is gaining momentum, but analysts say it will struggle to match the technical might of US powerhouse Nvidia within the current decade.Ramping up its chip industry is a way for Beijing to beat restrictions imposed by Washington on exports of the most advanced chips — used to …

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The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Monday hands down its verdict on a feared Sudanese militia chief accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity during brutal attacks in Darfur.Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, also known by the nom de guerre Ali Kushayb, faces 31 counts of crimes including rape, murder and torture allegedly carried out in Darfur between August 2003 and at least April 2004.Prosecutors say he was a leading member of Sudan’s infamous Janjaweed militia, who participated “enthusiastically” in multiple war crimes.But Abd-Al-Rahman, who was born around 1949, has denied all the charges, telling the court they have got the wrong man.”I am not Ali Kushayb. I do not know this person… I have nothing to do with the accusations against me,” he told the court at a hearing in December 2024.Abd-Al-Rahman fled to the Central African Republic in February 2020 when a new Sudanese government announced its intention to cooperate with the ICC’s investigation.He said he then handed himself in because he was “desperate” and feared authorities would kill him.”I had been waiting for two months in hiding, moving around all the time, and I was warned that the government wanted to arrest me, and I was afraid of being arrested,” he said.”If I hadn’t said this, the court wouldn’t have received me, and I would be dead now,” added the suspect.Fighting broke out in Sudan’s Darfur region when non-Arab tribes, complaining of systematic discrimination, took up arms against the Arab-dominated government.Khartoum responded by unleashing the Janjaweed, a force drawn from among the region’s nomadic tribes.The United Nations says 300,000 people were killed and 2.5 million displaced in the Darfur conflict in the 2000s.- ‘Severe pain’ -During the trial, the ICC chief prosecutor said Abd-Al-Rahman and his forces “rampaged across different parts of Darfur”.He “inflicted severe pain and suffering on women, children and men in the villages that he left in his wake”, said Karim Khan, who has since stepped down as he faces allegations of sexual misconduct.Abd-Al-Rahman is also thought to be an ally of deposed Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the ICC on genocide charges.Bashir, who ruled Sudan with an iron fist for nearly three decades, was ousted and detained in April 2019 following months of protests in Sudan.He has not, however, been handed over to the ICC, based in The Hague, where he also faces multiple charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.ICC prosecutors are hoping to issue fresh arrest warrants related to the current crisis in Sudan.Tens of thousands have been killed and millions displaced in a war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which grew out of the Janjaweed militia.The conflict, marked by claims of atrocities on all sides, has left the northeast African country on the brink of famine, according to aid agencies.Local leaders in the Kalma camp in South Darfur are renting a Starlink satellite internet connection on Monday to let survivors watch the verdict.The area is under RSF control, and the camp is facing a cholera outbreak and a severe hunger crisis.

Delegations from Hamas, Israel and the United States are due to convene in Egypt for talks on Monday, with US President Donald Trump calling on negotiators to “move fast” to end the nearly two-year war in the Gaza Strip.The envoys are set to meet in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh, on the eve of the second anniversary of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that sparked the war.Both Hamas and Israel have responded positively to Trump’s roadmap to end the fighting and release captives in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails, though the details still need to be ironed out.A senior Hamas official told AFP that the group was “very keen to reach an agreement to end the war and immediately begin the prisoner exchange process in accordance with the field conditions”.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said he hoped the hostages could be released within days.Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday that “there have been very positive discussions with Hamas” and other parties over freeing the captives and ending the war.The talks were “proceeding rapidly”, he said, adding that “the first phase should be completed this week, and I am asking everyone to MOVE FAST”.Trump has sent two emissaries to help finalise the deal: his special envoy Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.Hamas’s chief negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya, arrived in Egypt late on Sunday at the head of the delegation, the group said in a statement.The Israeli delegation will depart for Egypt on Monday, according to Netanyahu.After months of stalled mediation efforts by the United States, Egypt and Qatar aimed at ending the devastating war, foreign ministers from several countries expressed optimism at the latest diplomatic push in a joint statement, calling the negotiations a “real opportunity” to achieve a sustainable ceasefire.On Sunday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged Israel to stop bombing Gaza ahead of the discussions, saying “you can’t release hostages in the middle of strikes”.Israel’s continued attacks on Sunday killed at least 20 people across the Palestinian territory, according to Gaza’s civil defence agency.Cairo has said the new talks will aim to lay “the ground conditions and details of the exchange of all Israeli detainees and Palestinian prisoners”.- Hostage-prisoner exchange -Hamas fighters are ready to “halt their military operations” once Israel halts theirs, according to a Palestinian source close to the group.Trump has said that once the hostage-prisoner exchange is complete, “we will create the conditions for the next phase of withdrawal”.In addition to a halt to hostilities, the US plan calls for the release of hostages, both living and dead, within 72 hours.Palestinian militants seized 251 hostages during their October 7 attack, 47 of whom are still in Gaza. Of those, the Israeli military says 25 are dead.In return for the hostages, Israel is expected to release 250 Palestinian prisoners with life sentences and more than 1,700 detainees from the Gaza Strip who were arrested during the war.The next step of the plan would be a gradual Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and Hamas’s disarmament — something the group has frequently described as a red line in the past.Hamas has insisted it should have a say in the territory’s future, though Trump’s plan stipulates that it and other factions “not have any role in the governance of Gaza”.Under the proposal, administration of the territory would be taken up by a technocratic body overseen by a post-war transitional authority headed by Trump himself and including former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.burs-bha/smw/mjw

Local committees in Syria cast their ballots for members of a transitional parliament in a process criticised as undemocratic, with a third of the new lawmakers to be appointed directly by interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.The assembly’s formation is expected to consolidate the power of Sharaa, whose Islamist forces led a coalition that toppled longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December after more than 13 years of civil war.Members of the local committees queued up to vote at Syria’s National Library, formerly the Assad National Library, with the electoral commission saying in the evening that “the voting has ended and the counting is underway”. A member of the Damascus elections committee told AFP that while some early results could trickle in Sunday night, the final list of winners was not due until Monday.Around 6,000 people took part in Sunday’s selection process.According to the commission, more than 1,500 candidates — just 14 percent of them women — are running for the assembly, which will have a renewable 30-month mandate.Sharaa is to appoint 70 representatives to the 210-member body.The other two-thirds are being selected by local committees appointed by the electoral commission, which itself was appointed by Sharaa.But southern Syria’s Druze-majority Sweida province, which suffered sectarian bloodshed in July, and the country’s Kurdish-held northeast are excluded from the process for now as they are outside Damascus’s control, and their 32 seats will remain empty.”I support the authorities and I’m ready to defend them, but these aren’t real elections,” said Louay al-Arfi, 77, a retired civil servant sitting with friends at a Damascus cafe. “It’s a necessity in the transitional phase, but we want direct elections” to follow, he told AFP.The new authorities dissolved Syria’s rubber-stamp legislature after taking power.Under a temporary constitution announced in March, the incoming parliament will exercise legislative functions until a permanent constitution is adopted and new elections are held.Sharaa has said it would be impossible to organise direct elections now, pointing to the large number of Syrians who lack documentation after millions fled abroad or were displaced internally during the civil war.Speaking from the National Library on Sunday, Sharaa appeared to acknowledge criticism of the process, saying that while “it is true that the electoral process is incomplete… it is a moderate process that is appropriate for the current situation and circumstances in Syria”.- ‘Not elections’ -Under the rules of the selection process, candidates must not be “supporters of the former regime” and must not promote secession or partition.Those running include Syrian-American Henry Hamra, the first Jewish candidate since the 1940s.”The next parliament faces significant responsibilities, including signing and ratifying international agreements. This will lead Syria into a new phase, and it is a major responsibility,” said Hala al-Qudsi, a member of Damascus’s electoral committee who is running for a seat herself.Rights groups have criticised the selection process, saying it concentrates power in Sharaa’s hands and lacks representation for the country’s ethnic and religious minorities.In a joint statement last month, more than a dozen groups said the process means Sharaa “can effectively shape a parliamentary majority composed of individuals he selected or ensured loyalty from”.”You can call the process what you like, but not elections,” said Bassam Alahmad, executive director of the France-based Syrians for Truth and Justice, one of the groups that signed the statement.At a meeting in Damascus this week, candidate Mayssa Halwani, 48, said such criticism was normal.”The government is new to power and freedom is new for us,” she said.Nishan Ismail, 40, a teacher in the Kurdish-controlled northeast, said “elections could have been a new political start” after Assad’s fall, but “the marginalisation of numerous regions shows that the standards of political participation are not respected”.Negotiations on integrating the Kurds’ civil and military institutions into the new central government have stalled, with Damascus rejecting calls for decentralisation.Badran Jia Kurd, an official with the Kurdish administration in the northeast, argued on X on Sunday evening that the selection process “aims to legitimise a temporary authority that does not represent the entire population, risking further divisions and fragmentation of the country”.In southern Syria’s Druze-majority city of Sweida, activist Burhan Azzam, 48, also took issue with the process.The authorities “have ended political life” in Syria, he said, adding that the selection process “doesn’t respect the basic rules of democracy”.

Two Australian doctors returning from Gaza told AFP they had witnessed “slaughterhouse” scenes in the devastated territory, describing children torn apart by relentless Israeli bombardments and hospitals overwhelmed by the dead and wounded.Saya Aziz, an anaesthetist, said that while images of the destruction in Gaza have flooded global media, they still fail to capture the full reality on the ground.”The things that you didn’t get through the video was the smell, the wailing, the distress of the parents crying, witnessing their children dying, suffering in pain,” Aziz said on Saturday.What Gaza was witnessing, she added, was “mass casualty after mass casualty”.”Torn, disintegrated bodies, blood, broken heads, broken arms, chopped limbs — not just chopped, like disintegrated,” she said. “You would never see such scenes in your life, blood everywhere… It’s like a slaughterhouse.”Aziz and fellow doctor Nada Abu al-Rub, a Palestinian-Australian, had been on a four-week mission to Gaza. They left the territory on Sunday morning.Over the past two years, the devastation in Gaza has been vast, with entire neighbourhoods flattened and millions of tonnes of rubble now covering areas where families once lived.Residential buildings, hospitals, schools, and water and sanitation systems have been hit hard by Israeli attacks, and the humanitarian consequences for the territory’s more than two million people have been severe.Hundreds of thousands of homeless Gazans have crowded into shelters, makeshift camps and open areas, lacking even basic protections.According to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, at least 67,139 people — mostly civilians — have been killed since Israel launched its military campaign following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks.The United Nations considers the ministry’s figures reliable.The October 7 attacks on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, also mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.- Children hit hardest -While the Gaza health ministry does not specify how many of those killed were Hamas militants, a vast number of the victims are women and children, as seen from video footage and pictures.The territory’s children were suffering the most, Aziz said.”The hardest has been for the children who are unwell, unconscious, bleeding — you’re having to anaesthetise them knowing they’ve got no surviving family members left,” she said.”Who’s going to tell them, who’s going to look after them?”Rub said Israeli authorities had restricted the entry of essential supplies, including baby formula and nutritional products for children.”They basically threatened that any organisation that brings baby formula will be completely closed and no doctors” from that organisation would be allowed to enter Gaza again, Rub said.”What is scary about baby formula?”Peanut butter and total parenteral nutrition (TPN), which is critical for children recovering from major bowel surgeries, were also blocked, Rub said.”Those bottles they broke and didn’t let us bring it in.”Rub described the scenes she witnessed as “horrific”.”People are dying from explosions, their bodies shredded into pieces, whole families wiped out or having one survivor (left) with severe injuries,” she said.Every colleague she worked with had lost many family members, she added, along with their homes, personal possessions and cars.”Everything they have is just lost, nothing is left here in Gaza to survive on.”

Like many in Morocco, Abdelkabir Oubella had been watching videos of protests unfold across the country, but nothing could prepare him for the shock of discovering that his son was among three shot dead in the unrest.For more than a week, Morocco has been shaken by daily protests led mostly by young people demanding reforms in the North African country’s struggling health and education systems.The unprecedented movement erupted after the deaths of eight pregnant women admitted for Caesarean sections at a public hospital in Agadir, sparking outrage over deteriorating public services.Abdessamad Oubella, a 25-year-old film student, was killed overnight Wednesday to Thursday in Lqliaa, near Agadir in southern Morocco. Two other people were also shot dead by police.Authorities said a group had tried to attack the security forces to “steal” ammunition and weapons.”I came across a video where my son appeared — I didn’t even know it was him,” Abdelkabir Oubella told AFP.Surrounded by men from his village of Adouz Oussaoud, near Lqliaa, the 51-year-old day labourer had just buried his son in a wooden coffin.”We never imagined this could happen,” said Ayoub, Abdessamad’s brother.”My brother was there to document what was happening,” he said. “He didn’t throw stones, he didn’t take part in the unrest.”According to his father, Abdessamad was struck by a bullet to the head.The protests have been organised through a newly formed collective on the Discord web platform called GenZ 212, which has again called for rallies on Sunday night in 22 cities.- ‘Troublemakers’ -Life is modest and many people are day labourers in Lqliaa and in nearby Adouz Oussaoud, which lie in one of Morocco’s main agricultural regions and are known for tomato cultivation.In Adouz Oussaoud, a wall bears a large mural reading “Don’t open, dead inside” — a reference to the hit zombie TV series “The Walking Dead”.Among residents, sadness and disbelief prevail after the violence.Those interviewed by AFP said they supported calls for reforms in health and education — sectors that reflect Morocco’s deep inequalities — but condemned the unrest.”Health and education services here are not adequate for the size of the population. We need more support in both sectors,” said Hassan Garir, 39, of Lqliaa.”But when I saw what was happening on social media, I couldn’t sleep that night.”It’s tragic,” he said.”What those troublemakers did has nothing to do with expressing legitimate demands.”Abdessamad’s father agreed, saying “we are against vandalism and ignorance”.That night, CCTV footage released by authorities showed masked youths armed with iron bars and stones trying to force open a door.Security forces fired tear gas to disperse them, but the attackers returned and set fire to bins and tyres at the entrance of the building.The GenZ 212 collective says it only calls for non-violent protests.On Sunday, it urged supporters to speak with “one voice” and maintain “peaceful and responsible behaviour”.