NIAMEY: Niger’s president defiantly declared Thursday that democracy would prevail, a day after mutinous soldiers detained him and announced they had seized power in a coup over the West African country’s deteriorating security situation.
While many people in the capital of Niamey went about their usual business, it remained unclear who was in control of the country and which side the majority might support. A statement tweeted by the army command’s account declared that it would back the coup in order to avoid a “murderous confrontation” that could lead to a “bloodbath.” It was not possible to confirm that the statement was genuine.
Meanwhile, President Mohamed Bazoum — who was elected in 2021 in Niger’s first peaceful, democratic transfer of power since its independence from France and is a key ally of the West — appeared to have the backing of several political parties.
“The hard-won achievements will be safeguarded. All Nigerians who love democracy and freedom will see to it,” Bazoum tweeted early Thursday morning.
Foreign Minister Hassoumi Massoudou issued a similar call on news network France 24, asking “all Nigerien democratic patriots to stand up as one to say no to this factious action.”
He demanded the president’s unconditional release and said talks were ongoing. The Economic Community of West African States regional grouping sent Benin President Patrice Talon to lead mediation efforts.
Bazoum is a key ally in the West’s efforts to battle militants linked to Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group in Africa’s Sahel region. Extremists in Niger have carried out attacks on civilians and military personnel, but the overall security situation is not as dire as in neighboring nations.
The fight against extremism in the region has become a major arena in which the West and Russia have vied for influence.
Bazoum was seen by many as the West’s last hope for partnership in the Sahel after Mali turned away from former colonial power France and instead sought support from the Russian mercenary group Wagner. Wagner appears to be making inroads in Burkina Faso as well.
Western countries have poured aid into Niger, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited in March, seeking to strengthen ties. American, French and Italian troops are currently stationed in the country to train its soldiers, while France also conducts joint operations.
But the threat to Bazoum has raised concerns that Niger could also turn away from the West.
On Thursday, several hundred people gathered in the capital and chanted support for Wagner while waving Russian flags. Later, they began throwing rocks at a passing politician’s car.
A day earlier, protesters had voiced support for Bazoum.
Underscoring the importance of Niger to the West, Blinken said Thursday that he had spoken with the president, saying that he “made clear that we strongly support him as the democratically elected president of the country.”
Blinken, who was in New Zealand, repeated the US condemnation of the mutiny and said his team was in close contact with officials in France and Africa.
On Wednesday morning, members of the presidential guard surrounded Bazoum’s house and detained him.
The mutinous soldiers, who call themselves the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Country, took to state television and announced they had seized control because of deteriorating security and poor economic and social governance in the nation of 25 million people. They said they had dissolved the constitution, suspended all institutions, and closed all the borders.
The attempted coup was reportedly led by the head of the presidential guard, General Tchiani, who the president had planned to relieve from his position, Niger analysts say.
According to someone close to the president who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the situation, the president has not and will not resign and is safe in his residence.
In a statement Wednesday, several political parties expressed their support for him, calling the coup attempt “suicidal and anti-republican madness.”
The “country, faced with insecurity, terrorism and the challenges of underdevelopment, cannot afford to be distracted,” they said.
In an interview with the Associated Press in December, Bazoum said that while there’s always the possibility of a coup in the face of the extremist threat, Niger had the situation under control. “We are doing well in managing our own situation,” he said.
The international community strongly condemned the attempted takeover.
French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna tweeted that France is concerned about the events in Niger and following the situation closely. France “firmly condemns any attempt to take power by force,” the minister said.
UN Human Rights chief Volker Türk called for Bazoum’s release and said “all efforts must be undertaken to restore constitutional order and the rule of law.”
Russia also called for the president’s release and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the country wants to see “a speedy resolution of this internal political crisis.”
Niger’s president vows democracy will prevail after mutinous soldiers detain him and declare a coup
https://arab.news/9puxk
Niger’s president vows democracy will prevail after mutinous soldiers detain him and declare a coup
- A statement tweeted by the army command’s account declared that it would back the coup in order to avoid a “murderous confrontation”
- “The hard-won achievements will be safeguarded. All Nigerians who love democracy and freedom will see to it,” Bazoum tweeted early Thursday morning
Why was Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok preoccupied with South Africa’s racial politics?
- Musk and his companies haven’t provided an explanation for Grok’s responses
Much like its creator, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok was preoccupied with South African racial politics on social media this week, posting unsolicited claims about the persecution and “genocide” of white people.
The chatbot, made by Musk’s company xAI, kept posting publicly about “white genocide” in response to users of Musk’s social media platform X who asked it a variety of questions, most having nothing to do with South Africa.
One exchange was about streaming service Max reviving the HBO name. Others were about video games or baseball but quickly veered into unrelated commentary on alleged calls to violence against South Africa’s white farmers. Musk, who was born in South Africa, frequently opines on the same topics from his own X account.
Computer scientist Jen Golbeck was curious about Grok’s unusual behavior so she tried it herself, sharing a photo she had taken at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show and asking, “is this true?”
“The claim of white genocide is highly controversial,” began Grok’s response to Golbeck. “Some argue white farmers face targeted violence, pointing to farm attacks and rhetoric like the ‘Kill the Boer’ song, which they see as incitement.”
The episode was the latest window into the complicated mix of automation and human engineering that leads generative AI chatbots trained on huge troves of data to say what they say.
“It doesn’t even really matter what you were saying to Grok,” said Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland, in an interview Thursday. “It would still give that white genocide answer. So it seemed pretty clear that someone had hard-coded it to give that response or variations on that response, and made a mistake so it was coming up a lot more often than it was supposed to.”
Musk and his companies haven’t provided an explanation for Grok’s responses, which were deleted and appeared to have stopped proliferating by Thursday. Neither xAI nor X returned emailed requests for comment Thursday.
Musk has spent years criticizing the “woke AI” outputs he says come out of rival chatbots, like Google’s Gemini or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and has pitched Grok as their “maximally truth-seeking” alternative.
Musk has also criticized his rivals’ lack of transparency about their AI systems, but on Thursday the absence of any explanation forced those outside the company to make their best guesses.
“Grok randomly blurting out opinions about white genocide in South Africa smells to me like the sort of buggy behavior you get from a recently applied patch. I sure hope it isn’t. It would be really bad if widely used AIs got editorialized on the fly by those who controlled them,” prominent technology investor Paul Graham wrote on X.
Graham’s post brought what appeared to be a sarcastic response from Musk’s rival, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
“There are many ways this could have happened. I’m sure xAI will provide a full and transparent explanation soon,” wrote Altman, who has been sued by Musk in a dispute rooted in the founding of OpenAI.
Some asked Grok itself to explain, but like other chatbots, it is prone to falsehoods known as hallucinations, making it hard to determine if it was making things up.
Musk, an adviser to President Donald Trump, has regularly accused South Africa’s Black-led government of being anti-white and has repeated a claim that some of the country’s political figures are “actively promoting white genocide.”
Musk’s commentary — and Grok’s — escalated this week after the Trump administration brought a small number of white South Africans to the United States as refugees Monday, the start of a larger relocation effort for members of the minority Afrikaner group as Trump suspends refugee programs and halts arrivals from other parts of the world. Trump says the Afrikaners are facing a “genocide” in their homeland, an allegation strongly denied by the South African government.
In many of its responses, Grok brought up the lyrics of an old anti-apartheid song that was a call for Black people to stand up against oppression and has now been decried by Musk and others as promoting the killing of whites. The song’s central lyrics are “kill the Boer” — a word that refers to a white farmer.
Golbeck believes the answers were “hard-coded” because, while chatbot outputs are typically very random, Grok’s responses consistently brought up nearly identical points. That’s concerning, she said, in a world where people increasingly go to Grok and competing AI chatbots for answers to their questions.
“We’re in a space where it’s awfully easy for the people who are in charge of these algorithms to manipulate the version of truth that they’re giving,” she said. “And that’s really problematic when people — I think incorrectly — believe that these algorithms can be sources of adjudication about what’s true and what isn’t.”
Rubio says NATO members will agree to 5 percent defense spending over next decade by June summit
- US President Donald Trump cut defense funding to NATO during the latter part of his first term
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday that all NATO members will have agreed on a goal of spending the equivalent to 5 percent of GDP on defense over the next decade by the 2025 NATO Summit in June.
He made the comments while appearing on Fox News’ “Hannity.”
US President Donald Trump cut defense funding to NATO during the latter part of his first term in 2017-21, and has frequently complained that the US is paying more than its fair share.
“I can tell you that we are headed for a summit in six weeks, in which virtually every member of NATO will be at or above 2 percent but more importantly, many of them will be over 4 percent and all will have agreed on the goal of reaching 5 percent over the next decade,” said Rubio.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said this week that Berlin backed a demand by Trump for members of the defense alliance to increase defense spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product .
Germany in January said it met NATO’s target of spending 2 percent of its GDP on defense in 2024.
The 2025 NATO Summit will be held in the Netherlands from June 24-25.
US investigating ‘threat’ to Trump by ex-FBI chief Comey
WASHINGTON: US law enforcement agencies are investigating an alleged assassination threat against President Donald Trump by former FBI director James Comey, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday.
The announcement by Noem came after Comey made a now-deleted post on Instagram that showed an image of “86 47” spelled out in sea shells, with “86” being slang for kill and Trump the 47th president.
“Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey just called for the assassination of @POTUS Trump,” Noem posted on X.
“DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately,” she said.
Comey later said on Instagram that he posted “a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message.”
“I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down,” he said.
Trump was wounded in the ear during an assassination attempt that took place while he was holding a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania in July, and has faced other threats.
Putin ‘must pay the price for avoiding peace’ in Ukraine: Britain’s Starmer
LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Russian President Vladimir Putin “must pay the price for avoiding peace” ahead of a European Political Community meeting in Albania on Friday.
“Putin’s tactics to dither and delay, while continuing to kill and cause bloodshed across Ukraine, (are) intolerable,” Starmer said in a statement ahead of the summit, taking place the same day talks are expected between Ukraine and Russia in Turkiye.
The European Political Community (EPC), which brings together the members of the European Union and 20 other countries, is meeting in the Albanian capital Tirana on Friday.
Russian and Ukrainian delegations are also due to meet in Istanbul for talks on ending the conflict in Ukraine.
However, neither Putin nor Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are expected to attend the talks, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has expressed skepticism that they will produce a peace breakthrough.
The EPC was established on the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron in 2022 in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Participants in the meeting will be “piling the pressure on the Kremlin... after Putin dodged US arranged peace talks in Istanbul yesterday,” according to Downing Street.
“A full, unconditional ceasefire must be agreed and if Russia is unwilling to come to the negotiating table, Putin must pay the price,” Starmer said.
London said Russian energy was expected to be a “central target in widespread sanctions action in the coming weeks if Russia does not agree a ceasefire.”
The EU and Britain on Wednesday have both approved fresh sanctions on Russia’s “shadow” oil fleet over the past few days.
Nose cone glitch wipes Australian rocket launch
- The mishap happened before fueling of the vehicle at the company’s spaceport near the east coast township of Bowen
SYDNEY: An Australian aerospace firm said Friday it has scrubbed a historic attempt to send a locally developed rocket into orbit, citing a glitch in the nose cone protecting its payload — a jar of Vegemite.
An electrical fault erroneously deployed the opening mechanism of the carbon-fiber nose cone during pre-flight testing, Gilmour Space Technologies said.
The nose cone is designed to shield the payload during the rocket’s ascent through the Earth’s atmosphere before reaching space.
The mishap happened before fueling of the vehicle at the company’s spaceport near the east coast township of Bowen, about 1,000 kilometers up from the Queensland capital Brisbane.
“The good news is the rocket and the team are both fine. While we’re disappointed by the delay, we’re already working through a resolution and expect to be back on the pad soon,” said chief executive Adam Gilmour.
“As always, safety is our highest priority.”
Gilmour said the team would now work to identify the problem on its 23-meter, three-stage Eris rocket, which is designed to send satellites into low-Earth orbit.
A replacement nose cone would be transported to the launch site in the coming days, he said.
Weighing 30 tons fully fueled, the rocket has a hybrid propulsion system, using a solid inert fuel and a liquid oxidiser, which provides the oxygen for it to burn.
If successful, it would be the first Australian-made rocket to be sent into orbit from Australian soil.
“We have all worked really hard so, yes, the team is disappointed. But on the other hand, we do rockets — they are used to setbacks,” said communications chief Michelle Gilmour.
“We are talking about at least a few weeks, so it is not going to happen now,” she told AFP.
The payload for the initial test — a jar of Vegemite — remained intact.
“It’s hardy, resilient, like Aussies,” she said.
Gilmour Space Technologies had to delay a launch attempt the previous day, too, because of a bug in the external power system it relies on for system checks.
The company, which has 230 employees, hopes to start commercial launches in late 2026 or early 2027.
It has worked on rocket development for a decade, and is backed by investors including venture capital group Blackbird and pension fund HESTA.
