World’s teenage students tackle 21st-century challenges at robotics contest

The Ukraine team, Danylo, Zakhar, and Artem compete during the sixth edition of the First Global Robotics Challenge in Geneva, Switzerland, Saturday. (AP)
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Updated 17 October 2022
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World’s teenage students tackle 21st-century challenges at robotics contest

  • Nearly all the 180-odd teams, from countries across the world, had had months to prepare their robots

GENEVA: For their first trip to a celebrated robotics contest for high school students from scores of countries, a team of Ukrainian teens had a problem.

With shipments of goods to Ukraine uncertain, and Ukrainian customs officers careful about incoming merchandise, the group only received a base kit of gadgetry on the day they were set to leave for the event in Geneva.

That set off a mad scramble to assemble their robot for the latest edition of the “First Global” contest, a three-day affair that opened on Friday, in-person for the first time since the pandemic. Nearly all the 180-odd teams, from countries across the world, had had months to prepare their robots.

“We couldn’t back down because we were really determined to compete here and to give our country a good result — because it really needs it right now,” said Danylo Gladkyi, a member of Ukraine’s team. He and his teammates are too young to be eligible for Ukraine’s national call-up of all men over 18 to take part in the war effort.

Gladkyi said an international package delivery company wasn’t delivering into Ukraine, and reliance on a smaller private company to ship the kit from Poland into Ukraine got tangled up with customs officials. That logjam got cleared last Sunday, forcing the team to dash to get their robot ready with adaptations they had planned — only days before the contest began.

The event, launched in 2017 with backing from American innovator Dean Kamen, encourages young people from all corners of the globe to put their technical smarts and mechanical knowhow to challenges that represent symbolic solutions to global problems.

This year’s theme is carbon capture, a nascent technology in which excess heat-trapping CO2 in the atmosphere is sucked out of the skies and sequestered, often underground, to help fight global warming.

Teams use game controllers like those attached to consoles in millions of households worldwide to direct their self-designed robots to zip around pits, or “fields,” to scoop up hollow plastic balls with holes in them that symbolically represent carbon.

Each round starts by emptying a clear rectangular box filled with the balls into the field, prompting a whirring, hissing scramble to pick them up.

The initial goal is to fill a tower topped by a funnel in the center of the field with as many balls as possible. Teams can do that in one of two ways: Either by directing the robots to feed the balls into corner pockets, where team members can pluck them out and toss them by hand into the funnel or by having the robots catapult the balls up into the funnels themselves.

By meshing competition with common interest, the “First Global” initiative aims to offer a tonic to a troubled world, where kids look past politics to help solve problems that face everybody.

Past winners of such robotics competitions include “Team Hope” — refugees and stateless others — and a team of Afghan girls.


Indonesian NGOs demand Israel be held accountable over atrocities in Gaza

Updated 31 May 2025
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Indonesian NGOs demand Israel be held accountable over atrocities in Gaza

  • No health facility operational in northern Gaza as of Friday
  • Palestinians receiving inadequate aid after prolonged blockade

JAKARTA: Indonesian civil society organizations are urging the international community to hold Israel accountable for its attacks on Gaza, as Tel Aviv’s latest military onslaught on the besieged enclave pushed the territory’s healthcare system to the brink of collapse.

All hospitals in northern Gaza were out of service as of Friday, according to Jakarta-based NGO Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, which funds the Indonesia Hospital located in the Gazan city of Beit Lahiya.

Al-Awda Hospital — the only remaining facility providing health services in north Gaza — evacuated its patients on Thursday following orders from the Israeli military, which launched a wave of new attacks earlier this month across the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds of people and forcing most public facilities in the area to close.

“Even after various condemnations and warnings, Israel the colonizer continues to commit crimes across the Gaza Strip,” said Dr. Hadiki Habib, chairman of MER-C’s executive committee.

“MER-C’s stance is in line with the Indonesian constitution, in which we do not recognize colonization in any shape or form … Israel’s colonization and crimes against humanity (in Gaza) must be held accountable at the international level.”

Indonesia is a staunch supporter of Palestine, and sees Palestinian statehood as being mandated by its own constitution, which calls for the abolition of colonialism.

The Indonesia Hospital was one of the first targets hit when Israel began its assault on Gaza, in which it regularly targets medical facilities.

Attacks on health centers, medical personnel and patients constitute war crimes under the 1949 Geneva Convention.

Israel’s latest offensive comes after a two-month blockade on the enclave after Tel Aviv unilaterally broke a ceasefire with the Palestinian group Hamas in March.

It is a continuation of Israel’s onslaught of Gaza that began in October 2023 and has killed more than 54,300 Palestinians and wounded more than 124,000. The deadly attacks have also put 2 million more at risk of starvation after Israeli forces destroyed most of the region’s infrastructure and buildings and blocked humanitarian aid.

Aid only recently began to enter the besieged territory, although only in limited quantities.

“The suffering of the people is massive due to starvation, and there is limited aid because of the blockade,” Habib said. “A humanitarian crisis must not be used as a transactional tool. Stop this war and open the food blockade in Gaza. We will continue to voice this demand.”

Various scholars and human rights organizations have said that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, including Amnesty International and the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention.

“Zionist Israel’s crimes in Gaza must be held accountable. They must be put on trial and punished for genocide. There is no longer doubt that their crimes constitute genocide,” Muhammad Anshorullah, who heads the executive committee of the Jakarta-based Aqsa Working Group, told Arab News on Saturday. “Netanyahu’s regime must be arrested, tried and punished, just like how the Allied powers arrested, tried and punished Nazi elites through the Nuremberg Trials. There is nothing more urgent globally aside from stopping the genocide in Gaza.”


A small plane crashes into the terrace of a house in Germany. 2 people are dead

Updated 31 May 2025
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A small plane crashes into the terrace of a house in Germany. 2 people are dead

  • The plane hit the terrace of the building and a fire broke out

BERLIN: A small plane crashed into the terrace of a residential building in western Germany on Saturday and two people were killed, police said.

The crash happened in Korschenbroich, near the city of Mönchengladbach and not far from the Dutch border.

The plane hit the terrace of the building and a fire broke out. Police said two people died and one of them was probably the plane’s pilot, German news agency dpa reported.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the other person had been on the plane or on the ground.

Officials had no immediate information on the cause of the crash.


Georgia’s foreign-agents act ‘a serious setback’: EU officials

Updated 31 May 2025
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Georgia’s foreign-agents act ‘a serious setback’: EU officials

  • Georgia’s law is inspired by US legislation which makes it mandatory for any person or organization representing a foreign country, group or party to declare its activities to authorities

BRUSSELS: A new law in Georgia that from Saturday requires NGOs and media outlets to register as “foreign agents” if they receive funding from abroad is a “serious setback,” for the country, two top EU officials said.

Alongside other laws on broadcasting and grants, “these repressive measures threaten the very survival of Georgia’s democratic foundations and the future of its citizens in a free and open society,” EU diplomatic chief Kaja Kallas and EU enlargement commissioner Marta Kos said in a joint statement.

They stressed that the law, which they dubbed a tool “by the Georgian authorities to suppress dissent (and) restrict freedoms,” jeopardized the country’s ambitions of one day joining the European Union.

“Georgia’s Foreign Agents Registration Act marks a serious setback for the country’s democracy,” they said.

Georgia’s law is inspired by US legislation which makes it mandatory for any person or organization representing a foreign country, group or party to declare its activities to authorities.

But NGOs believe it will be used by Georgia’s illiberal and Euroskeptic government to further repression of civil society and the opposition.

The Black Sea nation has been rocked by daily demonstrations since late last year, with protesters decrying what they see as an increasingly authoritarian and pro-Russia government.

Tensions escalated in November when Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced that Georgia would postpone EU membership talks until 2028.

“The EU is ready to consider the return of Georgia to the EU accession path if the authorities take credible steps to reverse democratic backsliding,” Kallas and Kos said in their statement.


France’s prison population reaches all-time high

Updated 31 May 2025
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France’s prison population reaches all-time high

  • Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin, who has called the overcrowding crisis “unacceptable,” has suggested building new facilities to accommodate the growing prison population

PARIS: France’s prison population hit a record high on May 1, with 83,681 inmates held in facilities that have a capacity of just 62,570, justice ministry data showed on Saturday.
Over the past year, France’s prison population grew by 6,000 inmates, taking the occupancy rate to 133.7 percent.
The record overcrowding has even seen 23 out of France’s 186 detention facilities operating at more than twice their capacity.
Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin, who has called the overcrowding crisis “unacceptable,” has suggested building new facilities to accommodate the growing prison population.
The hard-line minister announced in mid-May a plan to build a high-security prison in French Guiana — an overseas territory situated north of Brazil — for the most “dangerous” criminals, including drug kingpins.
Prison overcrowding is “bad for absolutely everyone,” said Darmanin in late April, citing the “appalling conditions” for prisoners and “the insecurity and violence” faced by prison officers.
A series of coordinated attacks on French prisons in April saw assailants torching cars, spraying the entrance of one prison with automatic gunfire, and leaving mysterious inscriptions.
The assaults embarrassed the right-leaning government, whose tough-talking ministers — Darmanin and Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau — have vowed to step up the fight against narcotics.
And in late April, lawmakers approved a major new bill to combat drug-related crime, with some of France’s most dangerous drug traffickers facing detention in high-security prison units in the coming months.
France ranks among the worst countries in Europe for prison overcrowding, placing third behind Cyprus and Romania, according to a Council of Europe study published in June 2024.


Ukraine expands evacuations in Sumy region amid offensive fears

Updated 46 min 41 sec ago
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Ukraine expands evacuations in Sumy region amid offensive fears

  • Authorities in Ukraine’s Sumy region said Saturday they were evacuating 11 villages
  • “The decision was made in view of the constant threat to civilian life,” the regional administration said

KYIV: Ukraine ordered the evacuation of 11 more villages in its Sumy region bordering Russia on Saturday amid fears Moscow was gearing up for a fresh ground assault.

Russia claims to have captured several villages in the northeastern region in recent weeks, and has massed more than 50,000 soldiers on the other side of the border, according to Kyiv.

The evacuations came just two days before a possible meeting between the two sides in Istanbul, as Washington called on both countries to end the three-year war.

Russia has confirmed it will send a delegation to the Turkish city, but Kyiv has yet to accept the proposal, warning the talks would not yield results unless the Kremlin provided its peace terms in advance.

On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of doing “everything” it could to sabotage the potential meeting by withholding its peace terms.

Authorities in Ukraine’s Sumy region said Saturday they were evacuating 11 villages within a roughly 30-kilometer (19-mile) range from the Russian border.

“The decision was made in view of the constant threat to civilian life as a result of shelling of border communities,” the regional administration said on social media.

A spokesman for Ukraine’s border guard service, Andriy Demchenko, said Thursday that Russia was poised to “attempt an attack” on Sumy.

In total, 213 settlements in the region have been ordered to evacuate.

Russia’s defense ministry said Saturday that its forces had taken another Sumy region village, Vodolagy.

Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, launched in February 2022, has resulted in tens of thousands of
deaths and the destruction of towns and villages across parts of the east and south of the country.

The Kremlin’s army now controls around a fifth of the country and claims to have annexed five Ukrainian regions as its own, including Crimea, which it seized in 2014.

US President Donald Trump has spearheaded diplomatic efforts to bring an end to the fighting, but Kyiv and Moscow have both accused each other of not wanting peace.

The Kremlin has proposed further negotiations in Istanbul on Monday, after a May 16 round of talks that yielded little beyond a large prisoner-of-war exchange.

Kyiv has not yet said whether it will attend the Monday meeting, and said Friday it did not expect any results from the talks unless Moscow provided its peace terms in advance.

Russia says it will provide its peace memorandum in person on Monday.

But Ukraine suspects it will contain unrealistic demands that Kyiv has already rejected, including that Ukraine cede territory still under its control and abandon its NATO ambitions.

In a statement to the United Nations on Friday, Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia suggested the memorandum might call for Western countries to halt arm supplies to Kyiv and for Ukraine to abandon its military mobilization.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has fostered warm relations with both Zelensky and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, has become a key mediator amid efforts to end the conflict.

In a call with Zelensky late Friday, the Turkish leader urged both sides to send “strong delegations” to ensure momentum toward peace, according to Turkish state news agency Anadolu.

Turkiye has offered to host a summit between Putin, Zelensky and Trump, but the Kremlin has turned down the offer.

Putin has consistently rebuffed calls for a 30-day, unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine.