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Der Tod von Elly Mattiuzzo und ihrem Freund Daniele hinterlässt an ihrer Schule und im Eiskunstlaufverein viele traurige Gesichter. Mit tollen Gesten verabschieden sie sich von ihnen.

31 Titel hat Zlatan Ibrahimovic (40) während seiner sagenhaften Karriere gewonnen, einzig beim Thema Henkelpott wird aus dem selbsternannten Gott ein Normalsterblicher.

La commission des affaires économiques et monétaires du Parlement européen (ECON) pourrait déposer jusqu’à six amendements apportant des modifications importantes à la loi visant à réglementer les géants d’Internet.

Gemütlich in den eigenen vier Wänden auf dem Sofa entspannen, draussen schneits und drinnen läuft dein Lieblings-Weihnachtsfilm – was gibt es Schöneres? Blick möchte wissen: Welche weihnachtlichen Filme gefallen dir besonders gut und warum?

Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2021 - EP

Nach der Swiss setzt auch die Schwester-Airline Edelweiss auf eine Impfpflicht bei ihrem fliegenden Personal.

Wegen der sich verschärfenden Corona-Lage hat der Bundesrat erneut einen Armeeeinsatz bewilligt. Erste Durchdiener sind bereits zurückgerufen worden. Bis 2500 Armeeangehörige könnten in Impfzentren und Spitälern zum Einsatz kommen.

Les incursions précédentes ont donné lieu à des accusations de pillage et d'abus, cette fois-ci sera-t-il différent ?

Credit: Yousef Alfuhigi / Unsplash

By Hanna Valynets
VILNA, Dec 7 2021 (IPS)

Independent journalism has come increasingly under attack in Belarus, as the country has become a regional hotspot of media repression. Lately, as many as six media outlets have closed shop to ensure the security of their staff. Some media workers have fled the country.

Among those who have left were employees of the country’s largest media outlet, TUT.BY. The site shut down in May, after government officials raided the newsroom’s offices and the homes of some employees. Fifteen staffers were arrested on criminal charges, and currently are being held in jail.

The TUT.BY site was blocked, and the government declared over 20 years of their published reporting extremist material. Under penalty of administrative and criminal sanctions, their reporting can no longer be disseminated or reprinted in Belarus, the publication’s logos cannot be used, and the TUT.BY name can’t be mentioned.

After the site was blocked, the newsroom’s journalists began to publish their reporting on Telegram. In early July, some of these reporters launched a new project called Zerkalo.io. Now registered in Ukraine but still reporting for a Belarusian audience, the Zerkalo team considers itself the successors to TUT.BY.

Looking back, Pushkina believes that TUT.BY’s editors made a critical mistake — one that she personally regrets. They hadn’t anticipated the dire turn of events inside Belarus: “I would advise all media outlets that find themselves in a similar position in other countries to try to answer the question: How far might the repressive crackdown go?”

“I consider our [relocation] case noteworthy, but it’s not by any means positive,” said Alexandra Pushkina, Zerkalo’s public relations manager. Approximately 30 members of TUT.BY’s 260-person team now work for Zerkalo, she explained. They’re based across five countries.

The employees who left the country are safe — an especially meaningful development in light of the Belarusian government bringing a second criminal case against TUT.BY employees in early October.

“I feel guilty for every day that my colleagues spend in prison. I would gladly swap places with them,” said Pushkina. “But I manage the country’s largest media outlet, and I’m responsible for keeping it alive.” She added that the editorial staff’s current objective is to “make clear that [the government] can’t simply flip a switch and stop the flow of information.”

Zerkalo went live two months after the government raids of TUT.BY. Upon deciding to launch the new site, the Zerkalo team discussed it with the owners of TUT.BY, registered the new outlet in another country (Ukraine), bought the domain name, and designed and launched the new site, Pushkina explained. For journalists who find themselves in similar situations, she recommended making relocation arrangements ahead of time: buy a domain name, make a backup copy of your existing content, and safeguard it in another country.

Less than an hour after Zerkalo launched, Belarusian authorities blocked access to it. A month later, the court ruled that the site’s content is extremist. “Today, our average daily figure is 200,000 page views. According to Google Analytics data from September, the site has 2.9 million monthly visitors,” Pushkina said, noting that the numbers are growing. “Today, we [Zerkalo] are once again the largest media outlet covering politics. We are ahead even of the state-run media,” said Pushkina. Still, they are much smaller than TUT.BY’s readership was before it was shut down. In April 2021, for instance, 18.2 million unique visitors visited TUT.BY.

The relocation provided critical advantages for Zerkalo. “The editorial staff are in greater safety, and nobody has been arrested since the new site was launched,” Pushkina said.

Zerkalo continues to prioritize security. The newsroom doesn’t have a physical office that can be bugged, or where its employees could be detained. Reporters’ names are kept off the record, and their articles have no bylines. To safeguard information, employees communicate via secure messaging apps.

Zerkalo has no journalists physically working in Belarus; the editorial staff receives information about developments inside the country from their readers. “Our staff are facing 12 years [of prison]. We get letters from the journalists who say they are ready [to work with us]. But I’m not ready to be responsible for anyone else who might end up in prison,” said Pushkina.

She noted that Zerkalo reporters maintain their editorial integrity, despite the challenges they’re up against. “When your colleagues are imprisoned, when many people are forced to leave their homeland, you want to defend yourself. But we decided to uphold the previous editorial policy because [we don’t want to depart from] high journalistic standards.”

Looking back, Pushkina believes that TUT.BY’s editors made a critical mistake — one that she personally regrets. They hadn’t anticipated the dire turn of events inside Belarus: “I would advise all media outlets that find themselves in a similar position in other countries to try to answer the question: How far might the repressive crackdown go?”

Journalists and newsrooms elsewhere that face efforts to silence their reporting might similarly consider relocating. Here are tips to keep in mind should the need arise:

• Ensure that employees understand what they are signing up for — including the financial situation. For the first few months, Zerkalo employees worked without compensation because TUT.BY’s bank accounts had been frozen. It was impossible to implement commercial projects because the site’s content was identified as extremist, too. It might also not be safe for relocating employees to return to their home country.
• Re-think your business model. Zerkalo editorial staff sought news ways to sustain themselves given the circumstances. This included soliciting donations and assistance from foundations that support free media.
• Remember that, in addition to your editorial staff, your newsroom must have people who are familiar with the business side of the initiative, familiarity with legal issues, and experience in project management. It’s also important to identify who will be the chief decision-maker.
• Define your editorial policy and communications strategy before launching.

 

This article was originally published by IJNet, International Journalists’ Network

 

In China entkommt die Mutter Zhong nur ganz knapp dem Tod. Als ihr Sohn nach ihr ruft, verlässt sie die Küche. Wenige Sekunden später explodiert der Gastank. Mutter und Sohn bleiben glücklicherweise unverletzt.

Ein Mann hat in Russland eine Pistole gezogen und zwei Menschen erschossen. Offenbar nur, weil er aufgefordert worden war eine Maske tragen sollte.

Der einstige Freund von Olga T. soll auch ihr Killer sein. Davon ist das Bezirksgericht Meilen ZH überzeugt. Im Urteil vom Dienstag verurteilte es den Polen Patryk R. zu einer langen Knaststrafe und Landesverweis.

A l'occasion d'un petit-déjeuner presse organisé mardi 7 décembre, le sénateur Jean-François Rapin, président de la commission des Affaires européennes du Sénat, a précisé l’agenda parlementaire de la PFUE.

Wer kennt sie nicht? Jedes Jahr um diese Zeit dröhnen aus den Musikboxen die immergleichen Weihnachtslieder. Aber die Songs verbreiten nicht nur Weihnachts-Stimmung – für ihre Urheber sind sie ein wahrer Geldsegen.

TASR: A kormánykoalíció egyezségre jutott a kórházi betegeknek arról a számáról, amely felett Vladimír Lengvarský egészségügyi miniszter felfüggesztheti a járványellenes óvintézkedések enyhítését – közölte Igor Matovič pénzügyminiszter a kormány vezetőinek keddi parlamenti sajtótájékoztatóján – azzal, hogy a pontos számról még tájékoztatni fognak...

EDA today announced the two winners of the 2021 EDA Defence Innovation Prize. Launched in March, this year’s contest looked for the most innovative ideas, technologies and solutions related to Human-Machine Interfaces enabling Human-Machine-Teaming for Defence. After a thorough assessment of all applications received, the jury decided to announce two winners, each of whom is rewarded with €30,000.

ASTARTES

The first of the two winning projects is called ASTARTES (Air Superiority Tactical Assistance Real-Time Execution System) and was proposed by Design AI, a German deep tech start-up specialized in Artificial Intelligence.

Frederik Mattwich, the company’s co-founder and Chief Technical Officer (CTO), explains his team’s winning project as follows:

“Supporting human pilots with their tactical decision-making speed is an expected future role of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In order to overcome the ethical and technical challenges such an AI assistance system poses, many steps will be necessary to gain confidence and understanding of how AI decisions are made. We have identified one such step which is scientifically reproducing the published results from Google Deepmind’s AlphaStar. A planned next step is to transfer the results from a reproduced AlphaStar to ‘Command:Professional Edition’ which is used (among others) to teach air combat tactics in the German Officer Academy in Fürstenfeldbruck. Through this serious gaming approach, ASTARTES aims to visualise AI assisted tactical decisions and thus make it transparent as well as explainable, and also to facilitate its evaluation from a military personnel perspective. It will be essential for all stakeholders to understand the strengths and, most importantly, the drawbacks and limitations of AI in the context of military applications. Our overall vision for ASTARTES is the development of a digital (super) human-level AI assistance system, which will combine the data from all platforms and provide real time tactical support to a human commander in every situation, reduce his workload in the NGWS (Next-Generation Weapon System) context and speed up the OODA loop (observe–orient–decide–act) drastically. The AI is planned to potentially also support pilot training in an Live-Virtual-Constructive context as well as tactical scenario analysis”.

COMBI

The second of the two winning projects is called COMBI (Bidirectional Communicator) and was proposed by Thales, a global high technology company active, among others, in digital and “deep tech” innovations.

Marc Gatti, Human Autonomy Teaming (HAT) Department Director at Thales AVS/DMS France, explains his team’s winning project as follows:

 “COMBI is a high-level operator ‘intentions’ translator from and to operator to and from plural intelligent systems within his working area.

The future of defence operations are expected to become even more complex. A similar mission to one carried out today will include several intelligent systems that combine the operator’s platform with those controlled remotely (teammates, drones, etc.). A more complex environment will not only increase the operator’s workload but also further distance from him to the vital decision-making process. Genuine collaborative work (from a human point of view) between humans and intelligent systems will be a game changer for future defence operations whatever the environment: ground, sea, sky or space.  Classically, the distribution of roles between human and artificial agent is called "authority sharing". It is limited to the analysis of the tasks to be performed (task analysis) and to the development of related autonomous functions. The operator is then responsible for adapting this assistance, to meet the technical parameters for carrying out the mission. However, authority sharing is not enough to tackle complex future defense missions (time consuming and technical skills). The collaboration level between human and artificial agents should be increased and this is the objective of the Human-Autonomy Teaming (HAT) concept. One of the most important characteristics of HAT is efficient dialogue between participants. This is the way to establish a shared representation of the situation to reduce misunderstandings and improve decision-making. However, the way dialogue is performed depends on the situation. To reduce the cognitive workload of managing complex systems, the communication level must be conducted at a high level of abstraction.

COMBI is composed of: - a top-down transfer function that translates pilot's high-level intentions into intelligible parameters for the solvers, optimizing their treatment; - and a bottom-up transfer function that translates solver results into the high-level pilot referential operational intentions and parameters”.

About the winners

Design AI GmbH is a German deep tech start-up specialized in Artificial Intelligence. It focuses on bringing state-of-the-art innovations from AI research to the industry in the areas of Reinforcement Learning, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, Business Intelligence and Predictive Analytics. It manages to bridge the gap between user-centered concept development and agile research and development of AI systems, especially through the combination of Design Thinking and Artificial Intelligence. Experienced in various industries, the company is focused on the defence sector, where it successfully brings state-of-the-art AI into the field of mission planning and execution.

Thales is a global high technology leader investing in digital and “deep tech” innovations: connectivity, big data, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and quantum technology. The company provides solutions, services and products that help its customers (businesses, organisations and states) in the defence, aeronautics, space, transportation and digital identity and security markets to fulfil their critical missions, by placing humans at the heart of the decision-making process.  In the field of aeronautics, Thales supports aircraft manufacturers, armed forces, airlines, operators, pilots, crews and passengers in making improvements to flight efficiency, safety and comfort. The secure, natively connected systems that Thales designs allow aircraft, helicopters and drones to fly under all conditions and to interface with all parts of the aeronautical ecosystem, on the ground or in flight.

About the EDA Defence Innovation Prize

The award, organised by EDA since 2018, aims to stimulate defence technological innovation in Europe, in particular by reaching out to non-defence R&T communities and innovators set to play an ever-bigger role in developing and producing Europe’s future defence capabilities. It is also meant to provide non-traditional defence stakeholders (civil industries, SMEs, research organisations, universities, etc.) with an opportunity to showcase their know-how in domains relevant for defence, maximize dual-use synergies and engage in partnerships with the defence sector.

Kurz vor Weihnachten soll der Kracher Young Boys gegen FC Basel steigen. Soll. Denn schon wieder steht eine mögliche Verschiebung im Raum.

Noah Okafor (21) soll am Mittwoch gegen Sevilla nach Muskelproblemen wieder spielen. Vorher spricht er zu sieben Stichworten.

Eine Solothurner Gemeinderätin wetterte auf Tiktok gegen «Psychopathen in den Regierungen». Die Wutrede hatte Folgen. Inzwischen ist die Frau von ihrem Amt zurückgetreten.