News Of The Day From Across The Globe, July 5

Four giant pandas will be coming to two U. S. zoos later this year, an announcement that comes after three beloved bears in the nation’s capital were returned to China last November. The Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute announced Wednesday that two giant pandas will be coming to the zoo by the end of 2024.

OpenAI identified and removed five covert influence operations based in Russia, China, Iran and Israel that were using its artificial intelligence tools to manipulate public opinion, the company said on Thursday. In a new report, OpenAI detailed how these groups, some of which are linked to known propaganda campaigns, used the company’s tools for a variety of “deceptive activities.” These included generating social media comments, articles, and images in multiple languages, creating names and biographies for fake accounts, debugging code, and translating and proofreading texts.

Agadir, Morocco — The head of the U. S. military in Africa vigorously defended the country’s counterterrorism strategy on the continent and vowed to press forward with it despite a wave of criticism and a drift among African nations toward seeking security help from Russia instead. In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday at Africa Lion, a war games exercise in Morocco, Gen.

New York — A nurse was fired by a New York City hospital after she referred to Israel’s war in Gaza as a “genocide” during a speech accepting an award. Labor and delivery nurse Hesen Jabr, who is Palestinian American, was being honored by NYU Langone Health for her compassion in caring for mothers who had lost babies when she drew a link between her work and the suffering of mothers in Gaza. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “It pains me to see the women from my country going through unimaginable losses themselves during the current genocide in Gaza,” Jabr said, according to a video of the May 7 speech that she posted on social media.

That it is a foregone conclusion that Claudia Sheinbaum will be Mexico’s next President is a tragedy for Mexican democracy. Sheinbaum is Mexico’s presidential frontrunner and the anointed successor of the country’s powerful President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. She leads most polls with a large double-digit margin that has remained virtually static for the entire campaign. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The tragedy isn’t that she is likely to win—a large majority of Mexicans will happily and democratically cast their ballots on June 2 for what will be the country’s first woman President (and the first of Jewish descent).

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — South Africa held a national election Wednesday that could be the country’s most hotly contested in 30 years, with the long-ruling African National Congress party facing a stern test to hold onto its majority. The ANC has been the majority party and in government ever since the end of South Africa’s apartheid system of white minority rule and the establishment of democracy in 1994 and has held the presidency since then. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Under the South African political system, people vote for parties and not directly for the President in their national elections.