B’Tselem details Israeli ‘elimination’ of Palestinian life in West Bank
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei publicly appealed for the artificial intelligence industry to “slow down,” with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk backing the call to pause what they described as “reckless” development, citing fears the technology could soon run out of control. AI-linked stocks tumbled after the joint statement.
The Guardian’s Robert Booth detailed Amodei’s three-part proposal: first, each US AI company would grant access to third-party evaluators; second, all companies in democratic countries would establish common safety standards; and third, the world’s democratic AI powers would coordinate with autocracies — notably China — to control the race. Separately, a former Anthropic employee warned last week that AI could precipitate human extinction by 2030.
President Donald Trump, on a visit to his golf course in Ireland, played down the warnings. Trump said “very negative forces” were “bringing up things that won’t happen.” Former US President Barack Obama made a direct appeal to Democrats to coalesce around a unified AI safety policy, arguing that waiting for voluntary compliance from tech firms was a recipe for “governance failure.”
Israel is working toward the systematic “elimination” of the conditions that sustain Palestinian collective life in the occupied West Bank, according to a report published by the human rights group B’Tselem. The Israeli organisation said Israel is “dramatically intensifying its attacks on every aspect of Palestinian life in the West Bank.” The B’Tselem report stated: “Palestinian communities are being pushed out in an accelerating process of ethnic cleansing, while an ever-expanding Israeli presence is being established … Elimination in this context means sustained harm to the conditions that enable Palestinians to exist as a people with land, institutions, language, culture, social ties, leadership, shared memory and history, and a social and political horizon. It is an ongoing political project.”
Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany said he had to swim to safety after a plane he was traveling in made an emergency landing in a lake late Saturday. Tiffany is running for governor on the Republican ticket in Wisconsin and has been endorsed by Trump. He said he was returning from the La Crosse County Lincoln Day Dinner when the light aircraft lost power as it approached Wausau Downtown Airport. Tiffany said the pilot made an emergency landing in Lake Wausau and that he and the pilot ended up in the water and swam to safety. Emergency responders took both to a nearby hospital, where they were treated for minor injuries.
Sweden’s centre-left parties lead the country’s national election by a single seat with most votes counted, according to the Guardian. The election authority said a preliminary vote count may not be ready until Thursday. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said that although voters had had their say, “we still don’t have a final result.”
Trump has doubled down on his controversial pledge to give US adults a $5,000 “dividend” if the Republican Party keeps control of Congress after the midterms. A San Jose police officer was fired for using the department’s Flock license plate tracking system to share the location of a woman with the suspect accused of abusing her. A coroner in Pennsylvania announced the death of a 40-year-old woman associated with the state’s ongoing measles outbreak. A newly unveiled statue of what the Guardian described as rightwing activist Charlie Kirk was vandalized at the Turning Point USA headquarters. Actor Sydney Sweeney has been accused of “sexualising women’s sport” by appearing naked in a sports betting prediction ad.
In France, experts believe one-third of wildfires are set deliberately, with arson the biggest single cause of forest fires last year, the Guardian’s Jon Henley reported from Saumos in the Gironde department. The Guardian also profiled members of the Coalición Exigimos Agua (We Demand Water Coalition), residents of the San Juan neighbourhood of Santurce in Puerto Rico who are campaigning over the island’s water issues.
A major Guardian investigation revealed how generations of British monarchs were central to the slave trade. The interactive document identified thousands who profited from trafficking enslaved Africans and laid bare Britain’s slave-trading past, listing the names of monarchs, MPs and merchants.
Architecture and design critic Oliver Wainwright, writing for the Guardian, criticised what he called the “mutilation” of Washington DC through Trump’s proposed Independence Arch. Wainwright described the US president as the nation’s modern “king” and a “decorator-in-chief” reshaping the capital in his own image.
PFAS companies are launching a “tidal wave” of forever-chemical production to meet demand from the industry, campaign organisation ChemSec warned, the Guardian reported. Separately, a 70-year-old hiker, Craig Berg, who had been missing for a week on Isle Royale in Lake Superior, Michigan, was rescued at the weekend. The US Coast Guard said Berg was found injured and hypothermic but “alive and alert.”
In energy news, oil prices climbed above $108 a barrel after a series of drone attacks from Iraq forced Saudi Arabia to close its east-west crude pipeline. Saudi traders said the kingdom would run out of oil stocks for export if the pipeline does not reopen within days; the Red Sea port of Yanbu has stocks sufficient to maintain exports for only five to seven days. Iraq’s government confirmed the attacks were launched from its territory and ordered an investigation. Trump said he believed Tehran was responsible. Iran-aligned Houthi forces in Yemen launched several attacks against Saudi Arabia over the weekend and on Sunday captured the strategic island of Perim in the Bab al-Mandab strait, expanding their control of the waterway.