Benin Republic captain, Steve Mounie has sent a strong warning to the Super Eagles ahead of their 2025 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying tie, DAILY POST reports. The big forward will lead his teammates out against their fellow West Africans at the Felix Houphouet Boigny Stadium, Abidjan on Thursday night (today) hoping for a repeat […]

AFCON 2025Q: Mounie upbeat Benin Republic can beat Super Eagles again

AI is not just a race to the top in terms of innovation—it’s also about who sets the rules of the game. In this sense, Europe may not need to ‘win’ the AI war in the traditional sense but could instead reshape the battlefield entirely

Makovsky called Trump's Defense Secretary selection of Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and Army combat veteran, a "curious appointment."

Borrell cited "serious concerns about possible breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza" in a Wednesday letter.

Some US officials doubt the feasibility of mass firings at a time of global turmoil.

By KARTUNISTA ZACH

1. India has the highest number of diabetic people in the world, even more than China: Report  The Economic Times
2. Why Lancet study on diabetes is a red flag: A quarter of diabetics globally are Indians  The Indian Express
3. 800 million diabetics worldwide and most aren't getting treatment, finds study  The Times of India
4. Indians account for quarter of world’s adult diabetes patients: Lancet study  Hindustan Times
5. Why have diabetes rates doubled over the past 30 years – and what can be done about it?  The Guardian

1. Kanguva Twitter Review: Netizens LAUDS Suriya's Performance But Call Film's Execution 'Clumsy'  Times Now
2. Kanguva Movie Review: An earnest Suriya gives his all for a Siva film that doesn’t give him enough  The Indian Express
3. Kanguva Movie Review: Suriya's Visually Superlative Film Has Grand Vision But Fails To Realise It  News18
4. Kanguva first reviews: Suriya ‘shed his blood and sweat’ but the movie ‘is tiring’, say fans  Hindustan Times
5. Kanguva: Here's how much Suriya, Bobby Deol and Disha Patani got paid for Siva's directorial  TOI Etimes

[Shabelle] Mogadishu, Somalia -- The National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) said it has made a significant breakthrough in the investigation into the murder of three businessmen in Mogadishu's Darusalam neighborhood last month.

[Shabelle] Mogadishu, Somalia -- Somalia's Deputy Minister of Information, Abdirahman Al Adale, has categorically denied allegations suggesting that the federal government had a hand in the suspension of numerous Facebook accounts belonging to notable politicians and journalists.

The Paris prosecutor on Wednesday requested a five-year prison sentence and a five-year ban from public office against far-right leader Marine Le Pen, at a trial where she and 24 others are accused of embezzling European Union funds. The trial, which comes almost a decade after initial investigations started, threatens to undermine her party’s efforts […]

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that it is not unconstitutional nor a violation of European Union law for the construction of luxury camp sites, also known as ‘glamping’, to be subject to planning permission being granted. Parliament had passed an amendment to the 2018 law regarding environmental assessment impacts on construction projects in June, […]

PATTAYA — A Korean live streamer has been arrested for allegedly injuring the owner of a massage parlour while attempting to block his live coverage of a client's massage.

[Dabanga] Adré / El Fasher -- The World Food Programme (WFP) has appealed to Sudan to keep the Adré border crossing open, as a convoy carrying crucial humanitarian aid heads toward the Zamzam camp for displaced people in North Darfur, where famine was confirmed earlier this year.

[VOA] Nairobi -- As African farmers struggle with unpredictability caused by climate change, some are looking into contract farming, which involves growing a certain crop for a price set in advance.

[VOA] Washington -- Polls have closed across Somaliland after presidential elections, and it appears Wednesday's voting across the breakaway region has gone smoothly.

[allAfrica] Margareth Mwakilasa, an assistant research fellow at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences in Tanzania and a PhD student in Global Health at University College Dublin, presented her research findings at the 5th HIV Research for Prevention Conference (#HIVR4P2024) in Lima, Peru. Her study, titled ''They are Not HIV Treatment Drugs; They are Preventive Drugs (PrEP): Experiences of Using PrEP Among Vulnerable Adolescent Girls and Young Women in Tanzania,'' was part of the Oral Abstract

Royal author Tina Brown has suggested that Prince William would benefit from a stronger relationship with his brother, Prince Harry, who could help temper William's statements and actions when necessary. The brothers, who are currently not on speaking terms, have had a strained relationship...

Chanel Maya Bank plays Sawyer Bennett in 'Gossip Girl' Gossip Girl star Chanel Maya Bank’s has sparked panic as she has been missing since two weeks.Chanel aka Sawyer Benett reportedly disappeared in Los Angeles. Her family members, including her mum, Judy Singh and cousin, Danielle-Tori...

Britney Spears first priority is reunion with her childrenBritney Spears’ recent reunion with son Jayden came as a shock to people close to her and the singer’s friends are reportedly feeling divided over her decision.The 42-year-old popstar, who had not seen her kids for over a year...

J Hope is as excited about BTS bandmate Jin’s debut solo album releases as BTS ARMY and K-pop idol himself.In a recent Weverse Live on Tuesday, November 12, J Hope, whose real name is Jung Ho-seok, updated his whereabouts to the curious fans while teasing new projects in the pipeline and...

John M. Chu has recently spilled the tea about highly-anticipated Britney Spears biopic.In an exclusive interview with E! News, Chu, who is currently promoting his new Wicked movie, revealed he’s is all set for movie adaptation of Britney’s 2022 memoir, The Woman In Me for big...

Gabriel Macht reveals his brother believed he was just like his character from 'Suits'Gabriel Macht, American actor, wanted to be as far away as possible from his beloved fictional persona, Harvey Specter. The actor revealed the reason why he holds no interest in living the life the way...

Zendaya got candid on how she feels working with her beau Tom Holland.While joining the star-studded lineup on the cover of Vanity Fair’s 31st Annual Hollywood Issue, the actress shared about the “chemistry” she has with Holland when the couple is working together.When asked if...

Katy Perry dishes on her plans for the next yearPopstar Katy Perry had some big secrets up her sleeve that she just shared with fans.The 40-year-old songstress took to Instagram and shared a reel announcing her Mexico tour next year.The video clip shows a montage of the Teenage Dream singer...

King Charles issues message after solo appearance at ‘Gladiator II’ premiereKing Charles appeared in high spirits as he stepped out on the red carpet for Gladiator II world premiere in London on Wednesday.The monarch, who is a patron of The Film and TV Charity, attended the 72nd Royal...

Israel's military campaign against Hamas and Hezbollah could reshape Middle Eastern alliances and weaken Iran's regional influence.

CAIRO: Israeli military strikes killed at least 22 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, as Israeli forces deepened their incursion into Beit Hanoun town in the north, forcing most remaining residents to leave.

Residents said Israeli forces besieged shelters housing displaced families and the remaining population, which some estimated at a few thousand, ordering them to head south through a checkpoint separating two towns and a refugee camp in the north from Gaza City.

Men were held for questioning, while women and children were allowed to continue towards Gaza City, residents and Palestinian medics said.

Israel’s campaign in the north of Gaza, and the evacuation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the area, has fuelled claims from Palestinians that it is clearing the area for use as a buffer zone and potentially for a return of Jewish settlers.

Students occupy defence firm Leonardo’s headquarters in Italy to protest against assistance to Tel Aviv

“The scenes of the 1948 catastrophe are being repeated. Israel is repeating its massacres, displacement and destruction,” said Saed, 48, a resident of Beit Lahiya, who arrived in Gaza City on Wednesday.

“North Gaza is being turned into a large buffer zone, Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing under the sight and hearing of the impotent world,” he said via a chat app.

Protest

Around a hundred students occupied Leonardo’s Turin headquarters to denounce what they say is the Italian defence group’s complicity in Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

The students, who unfurled a flag of the Palestinian territories from the roof of Leonardo’s offices, said the company was supporting Israel by providing remote technical assistance and spare parts to Israel’s air force. Leonardo declined to comment.

Images released by the students show them in Leonardo’s offices waving Palestinian flags and carrying spray cans. Outside they hung banners on the buildings saying ‘no arms to Israel’ and accusing the group of complicity in genocide. They also clambered on top of a plane in the grounds of the company’s headquarters.

Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto condemned the protest, saying on X that the students were “destroying and defacing” the offices where an “important meeting with the staff of the defence ministry” was taking place.

“These people must be treated for what they are, dangerous subversives. Criminals have no political colour, they are just criminals,” he said.

No plans for settlers’ return

The Israeli military has denied any such intention, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he does not want to reverse the 2005 withdrawal of settlers from Gaza. Hardliners in his government have talked openly about going back.Speaking on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israel “has accomplished the goals that it set for itself” by taking out Hamas’ leadership and ensuring the group is unable to launch another massive attack. “This should be a time to end the war,” he said.

“We also need to make sure we have a plan for what follows,” he said, “so that if Israel decides to end the war and we find a way to get the hostages out, we also have a clear plan so that Israel can get out of Gaza and we make sure that Hamas is not going back in.”

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Blinken’s comments showed: “We are facing one enemy and that the US enmity against the Palestinian people is no less than that of the occupation.”

Medics said five people were killed in an Israeli strike that hit a group of people outside Kamal Adwan Hospital near Beit Lahiya, while five others were killed in two separate strikes in Nuseirat in central Gaza Strip where the army began a limited raid two days ago.

In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, one man was killed and several others were wounded in an Israeli airstrike, while three Palestinians were killed in two separate Israeli airstrikes in Shejaia suburb of Gaza City, medics added. Later on Wednesday, an Israeli strike on a house in western Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip killed eight people, medics said.

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2024

PESHAWAR / QUETTA: An important ‘commander’ of a banned organisation was among 16 terrorists killed and six others injured in gun battles, retaliatory attacks and operations carried out in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, it was officially announced on Wednesday.

Security forces conducted an intelligence-based operation (IBO) on the reported presence of khwarij (the military’s terminology for the proscribed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan) in the Miramshah area of North Waziristan district between Nov 12 and 13, said a statement issued by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR).

The security forces effectively engaged the terrorist locations during the operation. Eight terrorists were killed and six others injured during the exchange of fire.

In the Kech area of Balochistan, four terrorists, including an important ‘commander’, were killed in a gun battle during an operation, the ISPR said.

Majeed Brigade man was responsible for choosing suicide bombers, says ISPR

In a statement, the military’s media wing said that on the night between Nov 12 and 13, security forces conducted IBOs in the general area Balgatar of Kech district on the reported presence of terrorists.

After an intense exchange of fire between the troops and the terrorists, a high-value target, terrorists’ ringleader Sana alias Baru was killed along with three other terrorists.

The ISPR said that Sana was the focal recruitment agent, especially for suicide bombers, for the so-called Majeed Brigade wing of the banned Balochistan Liberation Army in Kech district and was highly wanted by the law enforcement agencies.

Weapons and ammunition were recovered from the killed terrorists.

Sanitisation operations were being conducted in Miramshah and Kech to eliminate any other terrorists found in the areas, the ISPR said, adding that security forces were determined to wipe out the menace of terrorism from the country and thwart attempts to sabotage peace, stability and progress of Balochistan.

Earlier in the day, four terrorists were killed in two encounters conducted by the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) personnel in Malakand, officials said.

Arms and ammunitions were seized after the gun battles, they added.

In the first encounter, three terrorists were killed when the CTD personnel retaliated against attackers in the Sher Khana Palai area. The dead militants were identified as Rizwan alias Bodagay, Salman, and Abdur Rehman alias Shadmani.

Rizwan was wanted by the police and security forces for his involvement in various terrorism-related cases, and was also involved in the firing incident at the historic Churchill Packet, they said.

Deputy Inspector General CTD Hassan Raza told a press conference in Batkhela that his department had received information on Oct 23 that some terrorists had sneaked into the country from Afghanistan and they were planning to carry out subversive activities in different districts of Malakand Division, including Bajaur, Malakand and Swat.

He said that terrorists attacked a CTD team, which had placed barricades on a road at the Sher Khana Palai area to check their movement. In a retaliatory action, the CTD personnel killed three terrorists.

The CTD personnel recovered three Kalashnikovs, hand grenades, pistols and live rounds from the dead militants.

During the other encounter, security forces killed a terrorist, identified as Abdullah.

DIG Raza, flanked by SP Malakand Amjad Ali Khan, stated that the killed terrorists, who belonged to the Sher Khana Palai area, were wanted by the police and security forces for their involvement in several terrorism-related cases. He said a search operation continued in the area.

Gohar Ali Gohar in Malakand also contributed to this report

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2024

This brief shows how civil society organizations (CSOs) in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) are rooted in strong village traditions of community support, maps their growth, and explains how they help drive resilient development.

And both Sydney Sweeney and Zendaya will be there, even if they don’t seem thrilled.

Doctor Who's ramped up production speed is part of why we're getting Double Moff this year.

President-elect Donald Trump's selection of Fox News host Pete Hegseth as his nominee for defense secretary would place atop the Pentagon a combat veteran and political ally who has assailed the military as ineffective and "woke," mused about firing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and blasted the top brass as having failed to safeguard American strength.

Trump has pledged to reverse many actions of the Biden administration using executive orders, the Congressional Review Act, and fewer and less-reaching rules.

Nvidia, Oracle, Google, Dell and 13 other companies reported how long it takes their computers to train the key neural networks in use today. Among those results were the first glimpse of Nvidia’s next generation GPU, the B200, and Google’s upcoming accelerator, called Trillium. The B200 posted a doubling of performance on some tests versus today’s workhorse Nvidia chip, the H100. And Trillium delivered nearly a four-fold boost over the chip Google tested in 2023.

The benchmark tests, called MLPerf v4.1, consist of six tasks: recommendation, the pre-training of the large language models (LLM) GPT-3 and BERT-large, the fine tuning of the Llama 2 70B large language model, object detection, graph node classification, and image generation.

Training GPT-3 is such a mammoth task that it’d be impractical to do the whole thing just to deliver a benchmark. Instead, the test is to train it to a point that experts have determined means it is likely to reach the goal if you kept going. For Llama 2 70B, the goal is not to train the LLM from scratch, but to take an already trained model and fine-tune it so it’s specialized in a particular expertise—in this case, government documents. Graph node classification is a type of machine learning used in fraud detection and drug discovery.

As what’s important in AI has evolved, mostly toward using generative AI, the set of tests has changed. This latest version of MLPerf marks a complete changeover in what’s being tested since the benchmark effort began. “At this point all of the original benchmarks have been phased out,” says David Kanter, who leads the benchmark effort at MLCommons. In the previous round it was taking mere seconds to perform some of the benchmarks.

Performance of the best machine learning systems on various benchmarks has outpaced what would be expected if gains were solely from Moore’s Law [blue line]. Solid line represent current benchmarks. Dashed lines represent benchmarks that have now been retired, because they are no longer industrially relevant.MLCommons

According to MLPerf’s calculations, AI training on the new suite of benchmarks is improving at about twice the rate one would expect from Moore’s Law. As the years have gone on, results have plateaued more quickly than they did at the start of MLPerf’s reign. Kanter attributes this mostly to the fact that companies have figured out how to do the benchmark tests on very large systems. Over time, Nvidia, Google, and others have developed software and network technology that allows for near linear scaling—doubling the processors cuts training time roughly in half.

First Nvidia Blackwell training results

This round marked the first training tests for Nvidia’s next GPU architecture, called Blackwell. For the GPT-3 training and LLM fine-tuning, the Blackwell (B200) roughly doubled the performance of the H100 on a per-GPU basis. The gains were a little less robust but still substantial for recommender systems and image generation—64 percent and 62 percent, respectively.

The Blackwell architecture, embodied in the Nvidia B200 GPU, continues an ongoing trend toward using less and less precise numbers to speed up AI. For certain parts of transformer neural networks such as ChatGPT, Llama2, and Stable Diffusion, the Nvidia H100 and H200 use 8-bit floating point numbers. The B200 brings that down to just 4 bits.

Google debuts 6th gen hardware

Google showed the first results for its 6^th generation of TPU, called Trillium—which it unveiled only last month—and a second round of results for its 5^th generation variant, the Cloud TPU v5p. In the 2023 edition, the search giant entered a different variant of the 5^th generation TPU, v5e, designed more for efficiency than performance. Versus the latter, Trillium delivers as much as a 3.8-fold performance boost on the GPT-3 training task.

But versus everyone’s arch-rival Nvidia, things weren’t as rosy. A system made up of 6,144 TPU v5ps reached the GPT-3 training checkpoint in 11.77 minutes, placing a distant second to an 11,616-Nvidia H100 system, which accomplished the task in about 3.44 minutes. That top TPU system was only about 25 seconds faster than an H100 computer half its size.

A Dell Technologies computer fine-tuned the Llama 2 70B large language model using about 75 cents worth of electricity.

In the closest head-to-head comparison between v5p and Trillium, with each system made up of 2048 TPUs, the upcoming Trillium shaved a solid 2 minutes off of the GPT-3 training time, nearly an 8 percent improvement on v5p’s 29.6 minutes. Another difference between the Trillium and v5p entries is that Trillium is paired with AMD Epyc CPUs instead of the v5p’s Intel Xeons.

Google also trained the image generator, Stable Diffusion, with the Cloud TPU v5p. At 2.6 billion parameters, Stable Diffusion is a light enough lift that MLPerf contestants are asked to train it to convergence instead of just to a checkpoint, as with GPT-3. A 1024 TPU system ranked second, finishing the job in 2 minutes 26 seconds, about a minute behind the same size system made up of Nvidia H100s.

Training power is still opaque

The steep energy cost of training neural networks has long been a source of concern. MLPerf is only beginning to measure this. Dell Technologies was the sole entrant in the energy category, with an eight-server system containing 64 Nvidia H100 GPUs and 16 Intel Xeon Platinum CPUs. The only measurement made was in the LLM fine-tuning task (Llama2 70B). The system consumed 16.4 megajoules during its 5-minute run, for an average power of 5.4 kilowatts. That means about 75 cents of electricity at the average cost in the United States.

While it doesn’t say much on its own, the result does potentially provide a ballpark for the power consumption of similar systems. Oracle, for example, reported a close performance result—4 minutes 45 seconds—using the same number and types of CPUs and GPUs.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has won the support of enough Republicans to stand as their candidate for the gavel in January.

Republicans in North Carolina plan to override Gov. Roy Cooper's veto of an immigration and school choice bill in their closing days of session.

A Democratic elected official was arrested in Chicago after allegedly causing a three-car pileup and making inappropriate comments about the arresting officer’s penis.

GOP Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas said he was detained by police at Dulles International Airport after he became disoriented from mixing Ambien with alcohol.

Two opposing House GOP factions have come together to agree on raising the threshold for the motion to vacate the chair.

Assassin's Creed turns 17 years old today, so we're taking a blood-spattered walk down memory as we check out some of its most infamous fictional kills of real people

Special counsel Jack Smith has asked a federal appeals court to pause his appeals of the documents-mishandling case against President-elect Donald Trump.

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday won a unanimous closed-door vote for his first, full term as Speaker despite rumblings of a possible rebellion against him, after he received a full-throated endorsement from President-elect Donald Trump.

The Series D fundraising round was "oversubscribed" and netted Firefly $175 million.

Super Bowl champion Heath Evans offered advice to ESPN NFL analyst Ryan Clark after the former player said he would not and does not respect President-elect Trump.

San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich has been sidelined for several games, and on Wednesday, the team announced that the longtime NBA coach had suffered a "mild stroke" on Nov. 2.

Basketball Hall of Famer Shaquille O'Neal tore into Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid Tuesday night after Embiid made his season debut against the New York Knicks.

WWE legend John Cena will compete in the 2025 Royal Rumble, he said on Wednesday. It is set to be the final year of his pro wrestling career.

Colorado superfan Peggy Coppom turns 100 next week, and coach Deion Sanders is hoping to deliver her what might be the best birthday gift ever.