Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has lashed out at US Secretary of State Antony Blinken after the diplomat lamented the suffering of the Japanese people from atomic bombings while failing to mention that his country had carried out the attacks.
Following a summit of G7 foreign ministers in the Japanese town of Karuizawa on Tuesday, Blinken was asked if there was “tangible progress” towards the idea of a world free of nuclear weapons.
Japan is the current chair of the G7 and is set to host a summit of leaders in Hiroshima in May.
Blinken remarked that Hiroshima and Nagasaki offer “the most powerful reminder of unprecedented devastation and immense human suffering that the people of Japan experienced as a result of the atomic bombings of 1945.”
The US dropped nuclear bombs on the two cities in the latter stages of World War II, paving the way for the full occupation of Japan by American troops and undercutting military action by the USSR.
Blinken “did not mention his nation, which committed this crime,” former Russian leader Medvedev noted in response to the remarks.
“What deceitful creatures they are. They use nuclear weapons, but don’t repent for it,” added the official, who currently serves as deputy chair of the Russian National Security Council.
In his remarks in Japan, Blinken explained that G7 foreign ministers had discussed nuclear non-proliferation and arms control on the last day of their summit.
He criticized nations which he claimed posed “nuclear threats,” including North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China. Moscow was targeted by the US diplomat for its suspension of the New START treaty and supposedly “irresponsible nuclear rhetoric,” while Beijing was condemned for allegedly conducting an “opaque and rapid buildup of its own nuclear arsenal.”
New START is the last surviving Cold War-era treaty between Washington and Moscow on nuclear arms control. Moscow suspended its participation in February, claiming that the US had barred Russian inspectors from visiting nuclear sites and that Washington was using Ukraine to attack Russia’s nuclear forces.
Russian President Vladimir Putin noted that the treaty had been signed at a time when the US and its allies, including nuclear powers France and the UK, were not attempting to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Moscow.
Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud arriving at Damascus International Airport. (Twitter/@KSAMOFA)
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan arrived Tuesday in Syria’s Damascus on an official visit, Saudi state TV al-Ekhbariya reported.
Prince Faisal was received by the Minister of Presidential Affairs of Syria, Mansour Fadlallah Azzam, at Damascus International Airport.
Last week, the Saudi prince held talks with his Syrian counterpart, Faisal al-Miqdad, in Jeddah.
A joint statement was issued confirming that the talks discussed achieving a settlement in Syria due to its return to its Arab surroundings, as well as ways to find a political solution that preserves the unity of Syria.
The joint statement stressed the importance of resolving the humanitarian difficulties in Syria, and finding appropriate means to deliver humanitarian aid.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has met with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, Syrian state media reported, in the most significant step yet towards ending Syria’s decade-long regional isolation.
Bin Farhan landed in Damascus on Tuesday, a week after his Syrian counterpart visited Saudi Arabia. The two countries agreed to re-establish diplomatic ties last month.
The visit comes days after Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad visited the Kingdom, on the first such trip since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011.
Foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Egypt, Jordan and Iraq held a summit in Jeddah to discuss Syria’s possible return to the Arab fold following the Syrian official’s visit.
Saudi Arabia and Syria have agreed to resume diplomatic ties, where the flurry of political activity comes ahead of Arab League’s next summit in Riyadh on May 19.
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Swiss bank Credit Suisse is seen in front of a branch office in Bern, Switzerland November 29, 2022. REUTERS/Arnd WiegmannREUTERS
Credit Suisse (CSGN.S) will bring forward its first-quarter earnings by three days to April 24, it said on Tuesday, a move that could allow UBS (UBSG.S) to speak more freely at its earnings the following day.
The bank is being taken over by UBS in a government organised deal that will create a lender with more than $5 trillion in invested assets.
Credit Suisse and UBS both declined to comment on the change.
The U.S. Federal Reserve has approved the deal and European Union antitrust regulators granted it a temporary approval this month.
The Bank of England has approved the takeover in the United Kingdom, people familiar with the process have told Reuters.
UBS plans to acquire Credit Suisse. The combination is expected to create a business with more than USD 5 trillion in total invested assets and sustainable value opportunities. It will further strengthen UBS’s position as the leading Swiss-based global wealth manager with more than USD 3.4 trillion in invested assets on a combined basis, operating in the most attractive growth markets.
The transaction reinforces UBS’s position as the leading universal bank in Switzerland. The combined businesses will be a leading asset manager in Europe, with invested assets of more than USD 1.5 trillion.
UBS Chairman Colm Kelleher said: “This acquisition is attractive for UBS shareholders but, let us be clear, as far as Credit Suisse is concerned, this is an emergency rescue. We have structured a transaction which will preserve the value left in the business while limiting our downside exposure. Acquiring Credit Suisse’s capabilities in wealth, asset management and Swiss universal banking will augment UBS’s strategy of growing its capital-light businesses. The transaction will bring benefits to clients and create long-term sustainable value for our investors.”
UBS Chief Executive Officer Ralph Hamers said: “Bringing UBS and Credit Suisse together will build on UBS’s strengths and further enhance our ability to serve our clients globally and deepen our best-in-class capabilities. The combination supports our growth ambitions in the Americas and Asia while adding scale to our business in Europe, and we look forward to welcoming our new clients and colleagues across the world in the coming weeks.”
The discussions were initiated jointly by the Swiss Federal Department of Finance, FINMA and the Swiss National Bank and the acquisition has their full support.
Under the terms of the all-share transaction, Credit Suisse shareholders will receive 1 UBS share for every 22.48 Credit Suisse shares held, equivalent to CHF 0.76/share for a total consideration of CHF 3 billion. UBS benefits from CHF 25 billion of downside protection from the transaction to support marks, purchase price adjustments and restructuring costs, and additional 50% downside protection on non-core assets. Both banks have unrestricted access to the Swiss National Bank existing facilities, through which they can obtain liquidity from the SNB in accordance with the guidelines on monetary policy instruments.
The combination of the two businesses is expected to generate annual run-rate of cost reductions of more than USD 8 billion by 2027.
UBS Investment Bank will reinforce its global competitive position with institutional, corporate and wealth management clients through the acceleration of strategic goals in Global Banking while managing down the rest of Credit Suisse’s Investment Bank. The combined investment banking businesses accounts for approximately 25% of Group risk weighted assets.
UBS anticipates that the transaction is EPS accretive by 2027 and the bank remains capitalized well above its target of 13%.
Colm Kelleher will be Chairman and Ralph Hamers will be Group CEO of the combined entity.
The transaction is not subject to shareholder approval. UBS has obtained pre-agreement from FINMA, Swiss National Bank, Swiss Federal Department of Finance and other core regulators on the timely approval of the transaction.
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Vostok National Guard staff in the Lugansk People's Republic (LPR), the Kremlin said in a statement.
"Vladimir Putin visited the Vostok National Guard staff in the Lugansk People's Republic, where he received reports from Col Gen Alexander Lapin and other senior officers on the situation in that area," the statement said.
Putin's visits to the staff of the Dnepr grouping of troops in the Kherson Region and to the Vostok National Guard staff in the Lugansk People's Republic were quite impromptu, the Kremlin press service said.
This was Vladimir Putin's first visit to the LPR and the Kherson Region, which joined Russia after 2022 referendums.
Earlier in the day, Vladimir Putin visited the staff of the Dnepr grouping of troops in the Kherson Region.
"Vladimir Putin, at the staff of the Dnepr grouping of troops in the Kherson Region, listened to reports from the commander of the Airborne Troops, Col Gen Mikhail Teplinsky, the commander of the Dnepr grouping of troops, Col Gen Oleg Makarevich and other military leadership," the Kremlin press service said.
"The head of state wished officers a Happy Easter and presented them with a copy of an icon that had belonged, Putin said, to 'one of the most successful defense ministers of the Russian Empire'," according to the President's press service.
In March, Putin paid a surprise visit to Mariupol, inspecting the city infrastructure and talking to local residents. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin accompanied the president during the visit and reported on the progress of construction and restoration work in the city and its environs, discussing new residential micro-districts, social, educational and health facilities
In mid-December 2022, Vladimir Putin visited the joint headquarters of the forces involved in the special military operation.
On 30 September 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the heads of the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, signed agreements on the accession of these territories to Russia, after referendums were held that showed that an overwhelming majority of the local population supported becoming part of Russia.
Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022 in response to calls by the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics for protection from Ukrainian troops. The Russian Defense Ministry said the operation, which targets Ukrainian military infrastructure, aims to "demilitarize and de-Nazify" Ukraine, and to liberate Donbass.
The artificial intelligence behind ChatGPT, the homework-drafting chatbot that some schools have banned, is coming to more students via the company Chegg Inc.
The US educational software maker has combined its corpus of quiz answers with the chatbot's AI model known as GPT-4 to create CheggMate, a study aide tailored to students, CEO Dan Rosensweig told Reuters last week.
"It's a tutor in your pocket," he said ahead of its announcement of CheggMate on Monday.
The software will adapt to students by processing data on what classes they are taking and exam questions they have missed, personalizing practice tests and guiding study in a way generalist programs like ChatGPT cannot, Rosensweig said.
It will be available next month for free initially, Chegg said.
The release is poised to widen what pupils do with AI just as educators are grappling with its consequences. Last year's launch of ChatGPT led students to turn in assignments written coherently by the chatbot, letting some sidestep coursework and forcing faculty to vet their integrity.
FILE - The OpenAI logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen displaying output from ChatGPT, on March 21, 2023, in Boston.
The Los Angeles Unified School District has blocked access to ChatGPT on its devices and networks pending more analysis, it told Reuters, while institutions such as France's Sciences Po banned it out of concern it plagiarized sources. Still other teachers have encouraged ChatGPT's usage if disclosed, for purposes such as critique.
Rosensweig said Chegg focuses on math and the sciences, not the essay drafting that has challenged schools. It also lets teachers restrict review of answers to questions on current exams.
Accuracy remains a problem for AI models, which predict what to say next without a grasp of facts. Rosensweig said Chegg has structured and checked its answers to ensure accuracy.
Asked if AI will prompt Chegg to shrink its pool of 150,000 experts contributing to its content, he said the company already balances humans with technology. CheggMate likely will decrease its cost of content and boost profitability over time, he said.
Analysts in recent months have questioned whether Chegg can grow its base of 8 million subscribers as students embrace the largely free ChatGPT software, created by the startup OpenAI. Chegg's stock has fallen 28% this year as of Friday, making its market capitalization about $2.3 billion.
OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman said in a Monday press release that the startup eagerly partnered with Chegg to "improve the way people around the world learn."
Rosensweig said Chegg's proprietary data showed its relevance. "That's why they're working with us," he said.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Nasser Kanaani, a spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said the time had ended in which the United States was the global hegemon, calling the shots the world over.
“We are witnessing a change in the balance of power in the globe and there is no unipolar world anymore. The issue of the US being a superpower has been over,” Kanaani said at a news conference.
He noted that despite Western attempts to isolate Iran and turn it into a global pariah, the southwest Asian state has always been “influential.” He added that going forward, “Iran won’t limit its foreign relations to a specific region.”
Last year, Iran finalized its membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a Eurasian bloc for coordinating trade, security, and political cooperation between nine major countries, with more than a dozen other observer and partner nations. Together, the SCO members constitute over 40% of the world’s population and more than 30% of global gross domestic product (GDP).
More recently, Iran has patched up relations with its regional rival, Saudi Arabia, thanks to both nations growing friendship with China, another SCO member. The BRICS bloc of rapidly developing non-
Western nations has also weighed expanding its ranks, with China and Brazil recently voicing support for the effort; Iran is one of the contenders for membership.
All this has happened as US sanctions on Iran have continued to grow and Israeli threats of military action against the Islamic Republic have continued to mount.
The sanctions were reimposed in 2018 after a three-year hiatus created by the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Washington claimed without evidence that Tehran had secretly violated the terms of the deal, which included abandoning any kind of nuclear weapons program and accepting strict limitations on the quality and quantity of uranium the country could refine and store.
While the Biden administration has claimed a desire to restore the agreement, two years of talks have so far failed to do so, and sanctions have remained.
While before 2015 those sanctions had been effective and destructive, after they were reimposed in 2018, many nations refused to abide by them except under threat of US action, and Iran had secured a lifeline via Russia and China that has only grown stronger as US sanctions have expanded to include both nations as well. However, in the shorter term, US sanctions did cause acute economic problems and made addressing the COVID-19 pandemic much more difficult.
The Pentagon has claimed in its recent strategy documents that Russia and China pose a threat to the “rules-based international order,” or the US-led global order that emerged after World War II, and identifies Iran and North Korea as nations cooperating with that effort. These claims have underpinned a marked shift in US strategic thinking toward what Washington calls “great power competition,” justifying an even more massive military buildup amid plans for war on multiple fronts.
While the US sanctions are ostensibly being used to try and isolate those nations and others from the global community, they are having the opposite effect, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, noted last November.
“The dimensions and nature of the new order are not exactly known, but its layout can be drawn,” he said. “The first basic line of the new order is ‘the isolation of the US’. Unlike in the past, when the Americans considered themselves the only dominant power in the world, the US does not have an important position in the new order and is isolated. It will have no choice but to stop interfering in various parts of the world.”
Changing Global Dynamics
Kanaani's comments reflect the shifting power dynamics in today's world, as the US no longer dominates global politics as it did in the past. The rise of countries like China, Russia, and India has led to a more multipolar world, where power is distributed among multiple nations, rather than concentrated in one superpower.
Implications for International Relations
The move away from a unipolar world has significant implications for international relations, as countries navigate a more complex global landscape. The shift has led to increased cooperation among nations in various regions, as well as the emergence of new regional powers. It has also prompted some countries to reevaluate their relationships with the United States and seek new alliances to protect their interests.
Highlighting the Iranian administration’s efforts to make the most of the new conditions to fulfill its national interests and strengthen regional convergence, the spokesman added, “Iran won’t limit its foreign relations to a specific region.”
Dismissing the notion that Tehran has connected its foreign policy to the 2015 nuclear deal, Kanaani explained that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is only one of the subjects in Iran’s foreign policy agenda.
The Iranian administration will not tie the economy and the livelihood of people to the fate of the JCPOA although it remains committed to the negotiating table, he added, stressing that Iran has great capacities for the promotion of foreign relations in various fields.
In remarks in November 2022, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei highlighted the signs of change in the world order and the emergence of a new world order. “The dimensions and nature of the new order are not exactly known, but its layout can be drawn. The first basic line of the new order is ‘the isolation of the US’. Unlike in the past, when the Americans considered themselves the only dominant power in the world, the US does not have an important position in the new order and is isolated. It will have no choice but to stop interfering in various parts of the world.”
Sudan's top army General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan [File: Ashraf Shazly/AFP]
General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan is the military commander leading the army against the RSF. But who is the man who has for years been the de facto leader of Sudan?
Darfur days
Although al-Burhan did not rise to prominence until 2019, he had an active role in the country’s military long before that, with a posting to Darfur in the early 2000s during the conflict there, in which he rose to become a regional commander by 2008.
While former President Omar al-Bashir and other top Sudanese officials have been charged with genocide and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court for what happened in Darfur, al-Burhan has not. Neither has Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, head of the RSF, his former ally and current rival.
Over the years, al-Burhan distanced himself from the atrocities committed there, where the army, backed by the RSF, crushed a rebellion in a conflict that killed some 300,000 people and displaced another 2.7 million.
Uprisings, coups and a derailed civilian transition
By 2019, al-Burhan had travelled to Jordan and Egypt for further military training and had become chief of staff of the Sudanese army – a position to which he was promoted in February 2018.
When the uprising that toppled al-Bashir took place in April 2019, ending his nearly 30-year rule, al-Burhan was inspector general of the army and Sudan’s third-most senior general.
Amid popular protests against the Bashir-era defence minister leading the post-removal Transitional Military Council (TMC), al-Burhan was made the head of the TMC.
A few months later, international pressure led to the formation of the Sovereign Council (SC), a civilian-military partnership to steer the country towards elections this year, in place of the TMC.
As head of the SC, al-Burhan became the de facto head of state, working alongside the civilian pro-democracy forces in the country.
In 2021, however, al-Burhan and his second-in-command Hemedti led a coup, seizing power and derailing Sudan’s short-lived path to democracy.
As de facto head of state, al-Burhan has forged closer ties with the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, states that had encouraged the general and Hemedi, the head of the RSF, to support the removal of al-Bashir.
The Gulf states in particular gave significant amounts of aid to Sudan as Sudanese troops were deployed in the Saudi-led coalition to fight against Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen
Al-Burhan also has close relations with Egypt, with the two armies staging joint military exercises and al-Burhan himself having trained with many Egyptian generals at its military college.
Relations between the army and the RSF have been deteriorating for a while as parties have jockeyed for power, and the latest crop of violence seems to be an articulation of that friction.
Under a framework reached last December between the army, the RSF and Sudan’s civilian pro-democracy forces, the army had agreed to return to its barracks and the RSF to be absorbed into its ranks, the two forces brought together under army leadership.
As the time drew nearer for the signature of a subsequent agreement to begin implementing these agreements, alliances seemed to be shifting and the public discourse became tenser.
The recent outbreak of violence has crushed many hopes for the restoration of civilian rule in Sudan.
