Famed Jerusalem stone still sells despite West Bank economic woes
Despite the catastrophic state of the Palestinian economy, Faraj al-Atrash, operator of a quarry in the occupied West Bank, proudly points to an armada of machines busy eating away at sheer walls of dusty white rock that stretch into the distance.”This here is considered the main source of revenue for the entire region”, Atrash said at the site near the town of Beit Fajjar, close to the city of Hebron.The quarry is a source of Jerusalem stone, the famed pale rock used throughout the Holy Land and beyond for millennia and which gives much of the region its distinctive architectural look. But Atrash, in his fifties, said “our livelihood is constantly under threat”.”Lately, I feel like the occupation (Israel) has begun to fight us on the economic front,” he said.Atrash fears the confiscation of the quarry’s industrial equipment, the expansion of Israeli settlements and the Palestinian financial crisis.The war in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, dealt a severe blow to a Palestinian economy that was already in poor shape.The Palestinian territories are “currently going through the most severe economic crisis ever recorded,” according to a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development presented in late November.Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967, has recently set up hundreds of new checkpoints across the territory, paralysing commercial transport.Beyond restrictions on freedom of movement, a halt in permits for West Bank Palestinians seeking work inside Israel has also had a severe impact.- Soaring costs -“There are problems with exports and market access because we used to export most of the stone to Israel, and after October 7, we ran into difficulties,” explained Ibrahim Jaradat, whose family has owned a quarry for more than 40 years near Sair, also near Hebron.The Palestinian Authority, which exercises partial civilian control over some of the West Bank, is on the brink of bankruptcy.Public services are functioning worse than ever, Atrash said, adding that fixed costs such as water and electricity had soared.Quarries account for 4.5 percent of Palestinian GDP and employ nearly 20,000 workers, according to the Hebron Chamber of Commerce.Around 65 percent of exports are destined for the Israeli market, where some municipalities mandate the use of Jerusalem stone.”The people who buy the stones from us to resell them to construction sites are mostly Israelis,” said Abu Walid Riyad Gaith, a 65-year-old quarry operator.He lamented what he said was a lack of solidarity from Arab countries, which he said do not buy enough of the rock.- ‘Afraid to build’ -Other threats hang over the industry.Most of the roughly 300 quarries in the West Bank are located in Area C, land which falls under full Israeli authority and covers the vast majority of its settlements.”Many (Israeli) settlers pass through here, and if Israel annexes Palestine, it will start with these areas,” said one operator, speaking on condition of anonymity.Some members of Israel’s government, one of the most right-wing in the country’s history, openly discuss plans to annex parts or all of the West Bank.Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.They are expanding at the fastest rate since at least 2017, when the United Nations began tracking such data, according to a recent report by the UN chief. The physical demands of working in a quarry are intense, but for many Palestinians there are few other options as the West Bank’s economy wilts.”We are working ourselves to death,” Atrash said, pointing to his ten labourers moving back and forth in monumental pits where clouds of dust coat them in a white film.In the neighbouring quarry, blinking and coughing as he struggled with the intense work was a former geography teacher. With the Palestinian Authority’s budget crisis meaning he was no longer receiving his salary, he had looked for work in the only local place still hiring.All the labourers AFP spoke to said they suffered from back, eye and throat problems.”We call it white gold,” said Laith Derriyeh, employed by a stonemason, “because it normally brings in substantial amounts of money”.”But today everything is complicated; it’s very difficult to think about the future.””People have no money, and those who do are afraid to build,” he added.
Trump sues BBC for $10 billion over documentary speech edit
US President Donald Trump on Monday filed a lawsuit seeking at least $10 billion from the BBC over a documentary that edited his 2021 speech to supporters ahead of the US Capitol riot.The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Miami, seeks “damages in an amount not less than $5,000,000,000” for each of two counts against the British broadcaster, for alleged defamation and violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.Trump, 79, had said earlier on Monday that the lawsuit was imminent, claiming the BBC had “put words in my mouth,” even positing that “they used AI or something.”The documentary at issue aired last year before the 2024 election, on the BBC’s “Panorama” flagship current affairs program.The video spliced together two separate sections of Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021 in a way that made it appear he explicitly urged supporters to attack the Capitol, where lawmakers were certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.”The formerly respected and now disgraced BBC defamed President Trump by intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech in a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement to AFP.”The BBC has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda,” the statement added. The British Broadcasting Corporation, whose audience extends well beyond the United Kingdom, faced a period of turmoil last month after a media report brought renewed attention to the edited clip.The scandal led the BBC director-general and the organization’s top news executive to resign.Trump’s lawsuit accuses the edited speech in the documentary of being “fabricated and aired by the Defendants one week before the 2024 Presidential Election in a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the Election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment.”The BBC has denied Trump’s claims of legal defamation, though BBC chairman Samir Shah has sent Trump a letter of apology.Shah also told a UK parliamentary committee last month that the broadcaster should have acted sooner to acknowledge its mistake after the error was disclosed in a memo, which was leaked to The Daily Telegraph newspaper.The BBC lawsuit is the latest in a string of legal action Trump has taken against media companies in recent years, several of which have led to multi-million-dollar settlements.
Will OpenAI be the next tech giant or next Netscape?
Three years after ChatGPT made OpenAI the leader in artificial intelligence and a household name, rivals have closed the gap and some investors are wondering if the sensation has the wherewithal to stay dominant.Investor Michael Burry, made famous in the film “The Big Short,” recently likened OpenAI to Netscape, which ruled the web browser market in the mid-1990s only to lose to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.”OpenAI is the next Netscape, doomed and hemorrhaging cash,” Burry said recently in a post on X, formerly Twitter.Researcher Gary Marcus, known for being skeptical of AI hype, sees OpenAI as having lost the lead it captured with the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022.The startup is “burning billions of dollars a month,” Marcus said of OpenAI.”Given how long the writing has been on the wall, I can only shake my head” as it falls.Yet ChatGPT was a tech launch like no other, breaking all consumer product growth records and now boasting more than 800 million — paid subscription and unpaid — weekly users.OpenAI’s valuation has soared to $500 billion in funding rounds, higher than any other private company.But the ChatGPT maker will end this year with a loss of several billion dollars and does not expect to be profitable before 2029, an eternity in the fast-moving and uncertain world of AI.Nonetheless, the startup has committed to paying more than $1.4 trillion to computer chip makers and data center builders to build infrastructure it needs for AI.The fierce cash burn is raising questions, especially since Google claims some 650 million people use its Gemini AI monthly and the tech giant has massive online ad revenue to back its spending on technology.Rivals Amazon, Meta and OpenAI-investor Microsoft have deep pockets the ChatGPT-maker cannot match.- Turbulence ahead? -A charismatic salesman, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman flashed rare annoyance when asked about the startup’s multi-trillion-dollar contracts in early November.A few days later, he warned internally that the startup is likely to face a “turbulent environment” and an “unfavorable economic climate,” particularly given competitive pressure from Google.And when Google released its latest model to positive reactions, Altman issued a “red alert,” urging OpenAI teams to give ChatGPT their best efforts.OpenAI unveiled its latest ChatGPT model last week, that same day announcing Disney would invest in the startup and license characters for use in the bot and Sora video-generating tool.OpenAI’s challenge is inspiring the confidence that the large sums of money it is investing will pay off, according to Foundation Capital partner Ashu Garg.For now OpenAI is raising money at lofty valuations while returns on those investments are questionable, Garg added.Yet OpenAI still has the faith of the world’s deepest-pocketed investors.”I’m always expecting OpenAI’s valuation to come down because competition is coming and its capital structure is so obviously inappropriate,” said Pluris Valuation Advisors president Espen Robak.”But it only seems to be going up.”Opinions are mixed on whether the situation will result in OpenAI postponing becoming a publicly traded company or instead make its way faster to Wall Street to cash in on the AI euphoria.Few AI industry analysts expect OpenAI to implode completely, since there is room in the market for several models to thrive.”At the end of the day, it’s not winner take all,” said CFRA analyst Angelo Zino.”All of these companies will take a piece of the pie, and the pie continues to get bigger,” he said of AI industry frontrunners.Also factored in is that while OpenAI has made dizzying financial commitments, terms of deals tend to be flexible and Microsoft is a major backer of the startup.
Hong Kong : l’ex-magnat prodémocratie Jimmy Lai reconnu coupable d’atteinte à la sécurité nationale
L’ex-magnat des médias prodémocratie de Hong Kong, Jimmy Lai, a été reconnu coupable lundi de trois chefs d’accusation liés à la sécurité nationale, une décision qui selon des groupes de défense des droits humains sonne le glas de la liberté de la presse dans ce territoire rétrocédé à la Chine en 1997.Pour le parquet, M. …
Intermarché ne commercialisera pas son “loup” en peluche ce Noël mais en 2026
Intermarché ne commercialisera pas avant l’année prochaine la peluche de son loup, star d’une pub de Noël qui a fait le tour du monde, a annoncé lundi Thierry Cotillard, patron du Groupement Mousquetaires/Intermarché.”la vérité, c’est qu’on a été pris de court”, a déclaré Thierry Cotillard dans le journal de 20H de France 2.”Dans la semaine, …
Intermarché ne commercialisera pas son “loup” en peluche ce Noël mais en 2026 Read More »