Microsoft has fired two employees who interrupted the company’s 50th anniversary celebration to protest its work supplying artificial intelligence technology to the Israeli military, according to a group representing the workers.
Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
The protests began Friday when Microsoft software engineer Ibtihal Aboussad walked up to a stage where an executive was announcing new product features and a long-term vision for Microsoft’s AI ambitions.
“You claim that you care about using AI for good but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military,” Aboussad shouted at Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. “Fifty-thousand people have died and Microsoft powers this genocide in our region.”
The protest forced Suleyman to pause his talk, which was livestreamed from Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington. Among the participants at the 50th anniversary of Microsoft’s founding were co-founder Bill Gates and former CEO Steve Ballmer.
“Thank you for your protest, I hear you,” Suleyman said. Aboussad continued, shouting that Suleyman and “all of Microsoft” had blood on their hands. She also threw onto the stage a keffiyeh scarf, which has become a symbol of support for Palestinian people, before being escorted out of the event.
A second protester, Microsoft employee Vaniya Agrawal, interrupted a later part of the event.
Aboussad was invited on Monday to a video call with a human resources representative at which she was told she was being terminated immediately. Agrawal was notified over email, according to the advocacy group No Azure for Apartheid, which has protested the sale of Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform to Israel.
An investigation by The Associated Press revealed earlier this year that AI models from Microsoft and OpenAI had been used as part of an Israeli military program to select bombing targets during the recent wars in Gaza and Lebanon. The story also contained details of an errant Israeli airstrike in 2023 that struck a vehicle carrying members of a Lebanese family, killing three young girls and their grandmother.
In February, five Microsoft employees were ejected from a meeting with CEO Satya Nadella for protesting the contracts.
“We provide many avenues for all voices to be heard,” said a statement from the company Friday. “Importantly, we ask that this be done in a way that does not cause a business disruption. If that happens, we ask participants to relocate. We are committed to ensuring our business practices uphold the highest standards.”
Microsoft had declined to say Friday whether it was taking further action. Aboussad told the AP she lost access to her work accounts shortly after the protest and had not been able to log back in.
Dozens of Google workers were fired last year after internal protests surrounding a contract that the technology company has with the Israeli government. Employee sit-ins at Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California were targeting a $1.2 billion deal known as Project Nimbus providing AI technology to the Israeli government.
The Google workers later filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board in an attempt to get their jobs back.
Microsoft workers fired after 50th anniversary protest over Israel contract
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Microsoft workers fired after 50th anniversary protest over Israel contract
- Among the participants at the 50th anniversary of Microsoft’s founding were co-founder Bill Gates and former CEO Steve Ballmer
- AI models from Microsoft and OpenAI had been used as part of an Israeli military program to select bombing targets during the recent wars in Gaza and Lebanon
Britain’s King Charles highlights interfaith values in Easter message
- Monarch praised Islam’s ‘deep human instinct’
LONDON: Britain’s King Charles has praised the ethics of Judaism and the human instinct of Islam in his Easter message, calling for greater love and understanding across all faiths.
In a message issued on Maundy Thursday, the King wished the public a “blessed and peaceful Easter,” reflecting on the enduring importance of compassion. “The greatest virtue the world needs is love,” he said.
In his Easter message, the King said: “On Maundy Thursday, Jesus knelt and washed the feet of many of those who would abandon him.
“His humble action was a token of his love that knew no bounds or boundaries and is central to Christian belief.
“The love he showed when he walked the Earth reflected the Jewish ethic of caring for the stranger and those in need, a deep human instinct echoed in Islam and other religious traditions, and in the hearts of all who seek the good of others.”
Since becoming monarch, King Charles has made interfaith dialogue one of his key priorities, often highlighting his admiration for the values found across different religions and encouraging greater communication between faiths.
While he has issued Easter messages in previous years, including during his time as Prince of Wales, this year’s message marks one of his clearest acknowledgements yet of the shared principles across Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and other traditions.
’Defend ourselves’: Refugee girls in Kenya find strength in taekwondo
Taekwondo black-belt teacher Caroline Ambani, who travels sporadically from Nairobi, pushes the sport’s discipline in each lesson
KAUMA, Kenya: Along one of the many dirt tracks leading into Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp there is a large hidden compound, where inside, twice a week, adolescent girls gather to learn taekwondo, the martial arts lessons offering a safe space in the often chaotic settlement.
Kakuma is Kenya’s second-largest refugee camp, home to over 300,000 people — from South Sudan, Somalia, Uganda and Burundi — and managed by the Kenyan government and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) since its establishment in 1992.
The camp endured protests last month when rations were reduced after the announcement of the USAID cuts, with President Donald Trump’s decision to slash aid funding impacting many within the area.
But the compound — on the outskirts of the camp proper, down ‘New York City’ lane — was calm when AFP visited.
Roughly 80 teenage girls crammed into an open-sided room, their raucous chatter bouncing off the corrugated metal structure.
Fifteen-year-old twins Samia and Salha are among them, Samia explaining they joined because they live in the camp’s dangerous Hong Kong district.
“In the past when we were beaten up, we couldn’t defend ourselves but now we are able to defend ourselves,” Samia told AFP.
Her twin, Salha — who can neither speak nor hear — is just as fiery as her sister, their father Ismail Mohamad said with a grin.
The 47-year-old, who fled Burundi 15 years ago, was initially hesitant about letting his daughters join, but the difficulties that Salha faces in the camp changed his mind.
“I thought it would be good if I brought her here so she could defend herself in life,” he said.
“Now, I have faith in her because even when she’s in the community she no longer gets bullied, she can handle everything on her own.”
Taekwondo black-belt teacher Caroline Ambani, who travels sporadically from Nairobi, pushes the sport’s discipline in each lesson.
Yelling through the chatter, she tried to bring the excitable girls to order: “Here we come to sweat!“
But her affection and pride in her students is evident, particularly girls like Salha.
“Some of these girls have been able to protect themselves from aggressors,” she told AFP.
However, the three-year program, run by the International Rescue Committee and supported by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), is coming to the end of its funding.
Instructors hope the skills they have imparted will be enough to see the girls through the coming years.
One of the captains, 18-year-old Ajok Chol, said she will keep training.
She worries about violence in the camp — like what she fled in South Sudan aged 14.
“We were so scared about that,” she told AFP. “We came here in Kakuma to be in peace.”
Now she wants to become an instructor herself, “to teach my fellow girls... to protect the community.”
Karachi mob kills member of Ahmadi minority
- The mob of 100-200 people beat a 47-year-old owner of a car workshop to death
KARACHI: A mob attacked a place of worship of Pakistan’s Ahmadi minority community in Karachi on Friday, killing at least one man, police and a community spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for the Ahmadi community, Amir Mahmood, said the mob of 100-200 people beat a 47-year-old owner of a car workshop to death with bricks and sticks and was still surrounding the building, with around 30 people trapped inside.
The superintendent of police for Karachi’s Saddar neighborhood, Mohammad Safdar, confirmed the death and told Reuters that police were mobilizing efforts to subdue the crowd.
Ahmadis are a minority group considered heretical by some orthodox Muslims.
Pakistani law forbids them from calling themselves Muslims or using Islamic symbols, and they face violence, discrimination and impediments blocking them from voting in general elections.
Kyiv receives 909 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers
- The exchange of prisoners and war dead is one of the few areas of cooperation
- Russia has not commented on the latest patriation
KYIV: Kyiv said Friday it had received the bodies of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers killed during battles with Russia, the second such patriation in the space of three weeks.
The exchange of prisoners and war dead is one of the few areas of cooperation between the two sides since Russia invaded Ukraine more than three years ago.
“As a result of repatriation activities, the bodies of 909 fallen Ukrainian defenders were returned to Ukraine,” the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, a government agency, said in a statement on social media.
On 28 March, the two countries conducted a similar exchange, with Kyiv receiving the same number of bodies, 909, and Moscow 43, according to Russian state media.
Russia has not commented on the latest patriation.
In mid-February, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky told US broadcaster NBC News that more than 46,000 of his soldiers had been killed and some 380,000 wounded.
Russia has not reported on its losses since autumn 2022, when it acknowledged fewer than 6,000 soldiers killed.
An ongoing investigation by Mediazona and BBC News Russian has identified the names of around 100,000 dead Russian soldiers since the beginning of the war, based on information from publicly available sources.
US Vice President says he is ‘optimistic’ Russia-Ukraine war can be ended
- Vance saw Meloni in Washington on Thursday
- “We do feel optimistic that we can hopefully bring this war, this very brutal war, to a close”
ROME: The United States is optimistic it can put an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, Vice President JD Vance said on Friday as he met Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for the second time in 24 hours.
Vance saw Meloni in Washington on Thursday and the two have since flown to the Italian capital ahead of the Easter holidays.
“I want to update the prime minister on some of the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine ... even in the past 24 hours, we think we have some interesting things to report on,” Vance told reporters sitting alongside Meloni.
“Since there are the negotiations I won’t prejudge them, but we do feel optimistic that we can hopefully bring this war, this very brutal war, to a close,” he added.
Hours earlier, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said US President Donald Trump would walk away from trying to broker a Russia-Ukraine peace deal within days unless there were clear signs that a deal could be done.
