UN Security Council will hold its first-ever discussion on artificial intelligence (AI) later this month, the UK envoy announced on Monday.  

Permanent Representative to the UN Barbara Woodward, whose country assumed the presidency for the month of July, said the UK is "very excited about the first ever Security Council discussion of AI". 

At a press briefing, she said UK Foreign Secretary James cleverly will chair a meeting of the Security Council on July 18 with briefings from international AI experts and from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Woodward said the UK aims to examine the potential threats posed by AI to international peace and security, as well as its potential benefits and utility. 

Noting that AI is not itself an actor, she said that humans are the ones who can deploy it, direct it, and can see its risk.  

"So that's why we need to have a debate in the Security Council," she said.

The Turkish Coast Guard has rescued 84 irregular migrants pushed back by Greek authorities off the northwestern province of Çanakkale.

The teams initiated an operation after receiving information that a group of irregular migrants was drifting off Çanakkale’s Ayvacık district.

A total of 84 migrants were pulled from life rafts and inflatable boats after being pushed back by Greek forces into Turkish territorial waters.

Greece has long been under fire for its illegal, often inhumane and sometimes deadly practice of pushbacks – summary deportations of migrants without allowing them to apply for asylum.

The Greek government denies all allegations, despite claims to the contrary from alleged victims, rights groups, Turkish drones and even the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants.

Recently, at least 81 people lost their lives as a result of a shipwreck off southern Greece.

The suspect who allegedly shot and killed four people in Kellogg, Idaho, on Father’s Day is a neighbor of the victims, according to police.

Idaho State Police said Monday the 31-year-old man accused of carrying out the quadruple homicide was detained at the scene Sunday evening and has since been booked into the Shoshone County Jail on probable cause for murder.

“This is a tragic situation that will affect the Kellogg community. Detectives continue working to establish a timeline and what led to the shooting,” Idaho State Police Lieutenant Paul Berger, who is investigating the case, said in the news release.

Sunday’s shooting in Kellogg happened about 70 miles from a quadruple homicide in Moscow, where suspect Bryan Kohberger, 28, is accused of killing four undergraduates at the University of Idaho in November.

The Shoshone County Coroner’s Office has not yet released the identities of the victims or the manner of their deaths.

On Monday, Idaho State Police released a statement updating the public on the shooting.

“Investigators are releasing that the suspect is the neighbour of the victims,” state police said. “However, neither the relationships between the parties nor the suspect’s motive will be confirmed by law enforcement until after the initial court appearance when records become available through the courts. Detectives are confident all parties in this homicide have been identified and do not believe there is an ongoing danger to the community.”

On Father’s Day, the Shoshone County dispatch center received a 911 call at about 7:20 p.m. saying multiple people had been killed inside a residence on West Brown Ave in Kellogg, police said.

Law enforcement personnel responded to the scene, where they found four victims dead, each with gunshot wounds. A 31-year-old male suspect was swiftly arrested./Fox

After US pressure, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant will hold phone talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Oleksii Reznikov next week, according to a US news website.
The two ministers will speak over the phone early next week to discuss “non-lethal assistance to Ukraine,” Axios said, citing two senior Israeli defense officials.
The idea of the phone call came during a meeting between Gallant and his US counterpart Lloyd Austin in Brussels on the sidelines of the meeting of NATO defense ministers.
If confirmed, the contact will be the first between the Israeli and Ukrainian defense ministers since Gallant took office last December.
“Plans for the call came after Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Thursday asked Gallant if he would speak to his Ukrainian counterpart and do more to help Ukraine,” the Israeli officials said.
According to the news portal, Gallant presented Israel’s policy about military assistance to Ukraine during his meeting with Austin.
“Israel will not provide to Ukraine any lethal weapons,” Gallant said.
The Israeli government has pursued a careful approach to the Russian war in Ukraine in an effort to avoid tension with Moscow.
The US, however, has piled pressure on Israel to do more to help Ukraine, Axios said.
Israeli-Ukrainian relations have been marred by tension over the past months.
Last year, Russia launched a war on Ukraine, which was met with international outrage, with the European Union, G-7, US, and UK among others imposing tough financial sanctions on Moscow.
However, Israel's pro-Kyiv policies did not go beyond a declaration of support for Ukraine against the Russian offensive, rejecting a referendum in the regions annexed by Russia, and the provision of humanitarian aid in the war.
Nonetheless, Ukraine considered these steps insufficient./AA

NATO defense ministers recently met in Brussels but failed to reach an agreement on the alliance's first defense plans since the end of the Cold War. 

The reasons for the failure and the implications are as follows:

• Turkey blocked the decision over the wording of geographical locations, particularly with regard to Cyprus.
• Despite the failure to formally endorse regional plans, a senior U.S. official anticipates that these plans will be part of a series of deliverables for the Vilnius Summit in July.
• NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg mentioned that the ministers reviewed the plans, which were the first since the end of the Cold War and given impetus by Russia's actions .
• A NATO diplomat stated that there is still an opportunity to find a solution before the NATO summit in mid-July in Vilnius.

In summary, the NATO meeting failed to approve the first defense plans since the Cold War due to disagreements over geographical locations. However, there is still a chance to find a solution before the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius in July.

Web servers in the Netherlands are hosting the most, some one-third, of all child sexual abuse material online, according to a recent report by a watchdog that tracks and removes such content.

Last year, the UK-based Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) took action to remove over 255,000 reports of confirmed child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, which refers to visuals depicting the exploitation and sexual abuse of children.

Organizations such as the IWF and others prefer the term CSAM instead of child pornography, as the latter could denote some degree of consent on children’s part.

IWF data shows the EU remains the “global hub” for CSAM, with a staggering 150,419, or 59%, of the reports being about material hosted on computer servers in the EU member states, the highest worldwide.

Among them, the Netherlands was at the top, hosting 32%, or 82,605 URLs.

But why is the EU, and the Netherlands in particular, hosting the highest amount of such material in the world?

Experts explain it is in part because the small European country has web hosting companies and server providers offering services at a low cost.

High-speed internet, developed digital infrastructure, and favorable regulations are additional factors.

“The Netherlands has plenty of fast, cheap hosting infrastructure … so naturally you are going to find content wherever you have good technology and infrastructure for hosting,” Michael Tunks, head of policy and public affairs at IWF, told Anadolu.

Dutch laws, which give a lot of weight to freedom of expression, are not stringent enough to allow authorities to crack down on servers, he said.

“The way that constitutionally and legally the Netherlands is set up has meant that it has become a hotbed for the hosting of child sexual abuse material as well,” said Tunks.

Having the servers in the Netherlands does not mean that the content was generated there, and tracking down the source of the material remains a challenging task, he added.

The Dutch government has acknowledged the issue in the past and taken measures to combat online child sexual abuse, including a strategy focused on removing such content, but the numbers remain damning.

Images of extreme child abuse double

The IWF has recorded a worrying spike in images and videos of the most severe kinds of child sexual abuse.

The content, labeled Category A, can include the rape of children, babies, as well as acts such as bestiality or sadism, the report said.

“That’s the most severe forms of content … (and) we’ve seen that double. We’ve taken about 50,000 reports down of that in the last year,” said Tunks.

The IWF warns that as children become more active online, they are increasingly vulnerable to grooming and abuse by strangers “even in their own bedrooms.”

Rise of self-generated content

Another alarming trend is the rise of self-generated content, defined as sexual abuse images and videos created using mobile phones or webcams and then shared online.

Children can be groomed, deceived, or coerced into producing and sharing a sexual image or video of themselves by someone who is not physically present with them, said the IWF report.

Around 78% percent of the total URLs IWF identified in 2022 had self-generated images.

“Generally, that’s hitting the 11 to 13 age range and we’re seeing that get younger. We’re seeing 7- to 10-year-olds and particularly young girls as well,” said Tunks.

“If you have a child, and they have a smartphone or a device that has a camera in it and is connected to the internet, then any child could be at risk of potentially generating those images.”

Lobbying for laws

Last May, the European Commission proposed a new regulation to tackle online child sexual abuse.

It urged social media platforms, service providers and tech companies to scan, remove and block all content, personal messages or encrypted data with abusive material.

“I think it’s a much-needed piece of legislation and it’s really, really important because companies need to continue scanning, detecting and putting in place measures that better protect children online,” said Tunks.

Activists in the Netherlands are pushing for the government to support the proposal, but like other countries, there is pushback from data watchdogs, tech companies and politicians.

“There’s a lot of resistance within the Netherlands due to privacy issues,” explained Celine Verheijen, project coordinator at Defense for Children-EPACT Netherlands, an NGO focused on children’s rights.

The concerns also include scanning of text, including personal messages, and end-to-end encryption.

Verheijen said they are also advocating for better legislation, for instance, to make websites accountable for hosting material and to take these companies to court.