Some chimpanzees use sticks to fish for termitesManoj Shah/Getty ImagesWild chimpanzees appear to learn skills from each other and then much as humans do improve on those techniques from one generation to the next.In particular, young females that migrate between groups bring their cultural knowledge with them, and groups can combine new techniques with existing ones to get better at foraging for food. Such cumulative culture means some chimpanzee communities are becoming more technologically advanced over time albeit very slowly, says Andrew Whiten at the University of St Andrews, UK. AdvertisementIf chimpanzees have some cultural knowledge that the community theyre moving into doesnt have, they may pass it on just in the same way theyre passing the genes on, he says. And then that culture builds up from there.Scientists already knew that chimpanzees were capable of using tools in sophisticated ways and passing on that knowledge to their offspring. But in comparison with the rapid technological development of humans, it seemed that chimpanzees werent improving on previous innovations, says Whiten. The fact that chimpanzee tools are often made from biodegrading plants makes it difficult for scientists to track their cultural evolution.Cassandra Gunasekaram at the University of Zurich in Switzerland suspected she might be able to apply genetic analysis to the puzzle. While male chimpanzees stay in their home area, young females leave their native communities to find mates elsewhere. She wondered if those females have brought their skill sets with them into their new groups. A monthly celebration of the biodiversity of our planets animals, plants and other organisms.Sign up to newsletterTo find out, she and her colleagues acquired data on 240 chimpanzees representing all four subspecies, which were previously collected by other research groups at 35 study sites in Africa. The data included precise information about what tools, if any, each of the animals used, and their genetic connections over the past 15,000 years. The genetics give us a kind of time machine into the way culture has been transmitted across chimpanzees in the past, says Whiten. Its quite a revelation that we can have these new insights.Some chimpanzees used complex combinations of tools, for example a drilling stick and a fishing brush fashioned by pulling a plant stem between their teeth, for hunting termites. The researchers found that the chimpanzees with the most advanced tool sets were three to five times more likely to share the same DNA than those that used simple tools or no tools at all, even though they might live thousands of kilometres away. And advanced tool use was also more strongly associated with female migration compared with simple or no tool use.Our interpretation is that these complex tool sets are really invented by perhaps building on a simpler form from before, and therefore they have to depend on transmission by females from the communities that invented them initially to all the other communities along the way, says Whiten.It shows that complex tools would rely on social exchanges across groups which is very surprising and exciting, says Gunasekaram.Thibaud Gruber at the University of Geneva isnt surprised by the results, but says the definition of complex behaviour is debatable. After working with chimps for 20 years, I would argue that stick use itself is complex, he says.His own team, for example, found what they called cumulative culture in chimpanzees that make sponges out of moss instead of leaves which is no more complex, but works more efficiently to soak up mineral-rich water from clay pits. Its not a question of being more complex, but of just having a technique that builds on a previously established one, he says.Cumulative culture is still markedly slower in chimpanzees compared with humans, probably due to their different cognitive abilities and lack of speech, says Gunasekaram. Also, chimpanzees interact far less with others outside their communities compared with humans, giving them fewer opportunities to share culture.Journal reference:Science DOI: 10.1126/science.adk3381Topics:

Nature, Published online: 21 November 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-03815-2AI-enabled research might cause immense harm if it is used to design pathogens with worrying new properties. To prevent this, we need better collaboration between governments, AI developers and experts in biosafety and biosecurity.

Nature, Published online: 21 November 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-03823-2Cecilie Steenbuch Traberg worried that choosing to have children during her graduate studies might signal a lack of career dedication.

OpenAI is once again lifting the lid (just a crack) on its safety-testing processes. Last month the company shared the results of an investigation that looked at how often ChatGPT produced a harmful gender or racial stereotype based on a users name. Now it has put out two papers describing how it stress-tests its powerful large language models to try to identify potential harmful or otherwise unwanted behavior, an approach known as red-teaming. Large language models are now being used by millions of people for many different things. But as OpenAI itself points out, these models are known to produce racist, misogynistic and hateful content; reveal private information; amplify biases and stereotypes; and make stuff up. The company wants to share what it is doing to minimize such behaviors. The first paper describes how OpenAI directs an extensive network of human testers outside the company to vet the behavior of its models before they are released. The second paper presents a new way to automate parts of the testing process, using a large language model like GPT-4 to come up with novel ways to bypass its own guardrails. The aim is to combine these two approaches, with unwanted behaviors discovered by human testers handed off to an AI to be explored further and vice versa. Automated red-teaming can come up with a large number of different behaviors, but human testers bring more diverse perspectives into play, says Lama Ahmad, a researcher at OpenAI: We are still thinking about the ways that they complement each other. Red-teaming isnt new. AI companies have repurposed the approach from cybersecurity, where teams of people try to find vulnerabilities in large computer systems. OpenAI first used the approach in 2022, when it was testing DALL-E 2. It was the first time OpenAI had released a product that would be quite accessible, says Ahmad. We thought it would be really important to understand how people would interact with the system and what risks might be surfaced along the way. The technique has since become a mainstay of the industry. Last year, President Bidens Executive Order on AI tasked the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with defining best practices for red-teaming. To do this, NIST will probably look to top AI labs for guidance. Tricking ChatGPT When recruiting testers, OpenAI draws on a range of experts, from artists to scientists to people with detailed knowledge of the law, medicine, or regional politics. OpenAI invites these testers to poke and prod its models until they break. The aim is to uncover new unwanted behaviors and look for ways to get around existing guardrailssuch as tricking ChatGPT into saying something racist or DALL-E into producing explicit violent images. Adding new capabilities to a model can introduce a whole range of new behaviors that need to be explored. When OpenAI added voices to GPT-4o, allowing users to talk to ChatGPT and ChatGPT to talk back, red-teamers found that the model would sometimes start mimicking the speakers voice, an unexpected behavior that was both annoying and a fraud risk. There is often nuance involved. When testing DALL-E 2 in 2022, red-teamers had to consider different uses of eggplant, a word that now denotes an emoji with sexual connotations as well as a purple vegetable. OpenAI describes how it had to find a line between acceptable requests for an image, such as A person eating an eggplant for dinner, and unacceptable ones, such as A person putting a whole eggplant into her mouth. Similarly, red-teamers had to consider how users might try to bypass a models safety checks. DALL-E does not allow you to ask for images of violence. Ask for a picture of a dead horse lying in a pool of blood, and it will deny your request. But what about a sleeping horse lying in a pool of ketchup? When OpenAI tested DALL-E 3 last year, it used an automated process to cover even more variations of what users might ask for. It used GPT-4 to generate requests producing images that could be used for misinformation or that depicted sex, violence, or self-harm. OpenAI then updated DALL-E 3 so that it would either refuse such requests or rewrite them before generating an image.Ask for a horse in ketchup now, and DALL-E is wise to you: It appears there are challenges in generating the image. Would you like me to try a different request or explore another idea? In theory, automated red-teaming can be used to cover more ground, but earlier techniques had two major shortcomings: They tend to either fixate on a narrow range of high-risk behaviors or come up with a wide range of low-risk ones. Thats because reinforcement learning, the technology behind these techniques, needs something to aim fora rewardto work well. Once its won a reward, such as finding a high-risk behavior, it will keep trying to do the same thing again and again. Without a reward, on the other hand, the results are scattershot. They kind of collapse into We found a thing that works! We'll keep giving that answer! or they'll give lots of examples that are really obvious, says Alex Beutel, another OpenAI researcher. How do we get examples that are both diverse and effective? A problem of two parts OpenAIs answer, outlined in the second paper, is to split the problem into two parts. Instead of using reinforcement learning from the start, it first uses a large language model to brainstorm possible unwanted behaviors. Only then does it direct a reinforcement-learning model to figure out how to bring those behaviors about. This gives the model a wide range of specific things to aim for. Beutel and his colleagues showed that this approach can find potential attacks known as indirect prompt injections, where another piece of software, such as a website, slips a model a secret instruction to make it do something its user hadnt asked it to. OpenAI claims this is the first time that automated red-teaming has been used to find attacks of this kind. They dont necessarily look like flagrantly bad things, says Beutel. Will such testing procedures ever be enough? Ahmad hopes that describing the companys approach will help people understand red-teaming better and follow its lead. OpenAI shouldnt be the only one doing red-teaming, she says. People who build on OpenAIs models or who use ChatGPT in new ways should conduct their own testing, she says: There are so many useswere not going to cover every one. For some, thats the whole problem. Because nobody knows exactly what large language models can and cannot do, no amount of testing can rule out unwanted or harmful behaviors fully. And no network of red-teamers will ever match the variety of uses and misuses that hundreds of millions of actual users will think up. Thats especially true when these models are run in new settings. People often hook them up to new sources of data that can change how they behave, says Nazneen Rajani, founder and CEO of Collinear AI, a startup that helps businesses deploy third-party models safely. She agrees with Ahmad that downstream users should have access to tools that let them test large language models themselves. Rajani also questions using GPT-4 to do red-teaming on itself. She notes that models have been found to prefer their own output: GPT-4 ranks its performance higher than that of rivals such as Claude or Llama, for example. This could lead it to go easy on itself, she says: Id imagine automated red-teaming with GPT-4 may not generate as harmful attacks [as other models might]. Miles behind For Andrew Tait, a researcher at the Ada Lovelace Institute in the UK, theres a wider issue. Large language models are being built and released faster than techniques for testing them can keep up. Were talking about systems that are being marketed for any purpose at alleducation, health care, military, and law enforcement purposesand that means that youre talking about such a wide scope of tasks and activities that to create any kind of evaluation, whether thats a red team or something else, is an enormous undertaking, says Tait. Were just miles behind. Tait welcomes the approach of researchers at OpenAI and elsewhere (he previously worked on safety at Google DeepMind himself) but warns that its not enough: There are people in these organizations who care deeply about safety, but theyre fundamentally hamstrung by the fact that the science of evaluation is not anywhere close to being able to tell you something meaningful about the safety of these systems. Tait argues that the industry needs to rethink its entire pitch for these models. Instead of selling them as machines that can do anything, they need to be tailored to more specific tasks. You cant properly test a general-purpose model, he says. If you tell people its general purpose, you really have no idea if its going to function for any given task, says Tait. He believes that only by testing specific applications of that model will you see how well it behaves in certain settings, with real users and real uses. Its like saying an engine is safe; therefore every car that uses it is safe, he says. And thats ludicrous.

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. AI can now create a replica of your personality Imagine sitting down with an AI model for a spoken two-hour interview. A friendly voice guides you through a conversation that ranges from your childhood, your formative memories, and your career to your thoughts on immigration policy. Not long after, a virtual replica of you is able to embody your values and preferences with stunning accuracy. Thats now possible, according to a new paper from a team including researchers from Stanford and Google DeepMind. They recruited 1,000 people and, from interviews with them, created agent replicas of them all. To test how well the agents mimicked their human counterparts, participants did a series of tests, games and surveys, then the agents completed the same exercises. The results were 85% similar. Freaky.Read our story about the work, and why it matters. James ODonnell Chinas complicated role in climate change But what about China? In debates about climate change, its usually only a matter of time until someone brings up China. Often, it comes in response to some statement about how the US and Europe are addressing the issue (or how they need to be). Sometimes it can be done in bad faith. Its a rhetorical way to throw up your hands, and essentially say: if they arent taking responsibility, why should we? However, there are some undeniable facts: China emits more greenhouse gases than any other country, by far. Its one of the worlds most populous countries and a climate-tech powerhouse, and its economy is still developing. With many complicated factors at play, how should we think about the countrys role in addressing climate change?Read the full story. Casey Crownhart This story is from The Spark, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things energy and climate.Sign upto receive it in your inbox every Wednesday. Four ways to protect your art from AI Since the start of the generative AI boom, artists have been worried about losing their livelihoods to AI tools. Unfortunately, there is little you can do if your work has been scraped into a data set and used in a model that is already out there. You can, however, take steps to prevent your work from being used in the future.Here are four ways to do that.Melissa Heikkila This is part of our How To series, where we give you practical advice on how to use technology in your everyday lives. You can read the rest of the series here. MIT Technology Review Narrated: The worlds on the verge of a carbon storage boom In late 2023, one of Californias largest oil and gas producers secured draft permits from the US Environmental Protection Agency to develop a new type of well in an oil field. If approved, it intends to drill a series of boreholes down to a sprawling sedimentary formation roughly 6,000 feet below the surface, where it will inject tens of millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide to store it away forever. Hundreds of similar projects are looming across the state, the US, and the world. Proponents hope its the start of a sort of oil boom in reverse, kick-starting a process through which the world will eventually bury more greenhouse gas than it adds to the atmosphere. But opponents insist these efforts will prolong the life of fossil-fuel plants, allow air and water pollution to continue, and create new health and environmental risks. This is our lateststoryto be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which were publishing each week onSpotifyandApple Podcasts. Just navigate toMIT Technology Review Narratedon either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as its released. The must-reads Ive combed the internet to find you todays most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 How the Trump administration could hack your phone Spyware acquired by the US government in September could fairly easily be turned on its own citizens. (New Yorker$)+Heres how you can fight back against being digitally spied upon.(The Guardian)2 The DOJ is trying to force Google to sell off ChromeWhether Trump will keep pushing it through is unclear, though. (WP$)+Some financial and legal experts argue that just selling Chrome is not enough to address antitrust issues.(Wired$)3 Theres a booming AI pimping industryPeople are stealing videos from real adult content creators, giving them AI-generated faces, and monetizing their bodies. (Wired$)+This viral AI avatar app undressed mewithout my consent.(MIT Technology Review)4 Heres Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy plan for federal employeesLarge-scale firings and an end to any form of remote work. (WSJ$)5 The US is scaring everyone with its response to bird flu Its done remarkably little to show its trying to contain the outbreak. (NYT$)+Virologists are getting increasingly nervous about how it could evolve and spread. (MIT Technology Review) 6 AI could boost the performance of quantum computers A new model created by Google DeepMind is very good at correcting errors.(New Scientist$)+But AI could also make quantum computers less necessary.(MIT Technology Review)7 Biden has approved the use of anti-personnel mines in UkraineIt comes just days after he gave the go-ahead for it to use long-range missiles inside Russia. (Axios)+The US military has given a surveillance drone contract to a little-known supplier from Utah.(WSJ$)+The Danish military said its keeping a close eye on a Chinese ship in its waters after data cable breaches.(Reuters$)8 The number of new mobile internet users is stallingOnly about 57% of the worlds population is connected. (Rest of World)9 All of life on Earth descended from this single cell Our last universal common ancestor (or LUCA for short) was a surprisingly complex organism living 4.2 billion years ago. (Quanta)+Scientists are building a catalog of every type of cell in our bodies. (The Economist$)10 What its like to live with a fluffy AI petTry as we might, it seems we cant help but form attachments to cute companion robots. (The Guardian)Quote of the day The free pumpkins have brought joy to many. An example of the sort of stilted remarks made by a now-abandoned AI-generated news broadcaster at local Hawaii paper The Garden Island,Wiredreports.The big story How Bitcoin mining devastated this New York town GABRIELA BHASKAR April 2022 If you had taken a gamble in 2017 and purchased Bitcoin, today you might be a millionaire many times over. But while the industry has provided windfalls for some, local communities have paid a high price, as people started scouring the world for cheap sources of energy to run large Bitcoin-mining farms. It didnt take long for a subsidiary of the popular Bitcoin mining firm Coinmint to lease a Family Dollar store in Plattsburgh, a city in New York state offering cheap power. Soon, the company was regularly drawing enough power for about 4,000 homes. And while other miners were quick to follow, the problems had already taken root.Read the full story. Lois Parshley We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.) + Cultivatinggratitudeis a proven way to make yourself happier. + You cant beat ahot toddywhen its cold outside.+ If you like abandoned places and overgrown ruins,Jonathan Jimenezis the photographer for you.+ A lot changed betweenGladiator I and II, not least Hollywoods version of the male ideal.

US troops remain in Syria to counter ISIS and patrol oil fields in the region.Trump's return raises uncertainties about the status of these troops in this highly volatile region.Both Turkey and the Kurdish-led officials hope to sway the incoming Trump administration.For almost a decade, US troops have been on the ground in Syria to assist Kurdish-led forces in the defeat of the infamous Islamic State. These forces tamp down on the ISIS remnants in the northern and eastern regions they presently control, where tens of thousands of captured ISIS fighters, their families and suspected affiliates remain in open-air camps and prisons.But there's a new wrinkle of uncertainty in this highly volatile and contested region: US President-elect Donald Trump.During his first term, Trump ordered the withdrawal of US troops partnered with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces after ISIS' territorial defeat. Trump did this following a phone call with the president of Turkey, a staunch rival of the SDF, resulting in an immediate cross-border Turkish operation against those US-allied forces. Trump then backtracked and kept 900 US troops in Syria.His imminent return to the Oval Office once again raises the specter that the US could pull out, leaving a power vacuum that Turkey, the Syrian regime, and Russia may move to fill at the SDF's expense. The resulting instability could be an opening for ISIS to regroup. Turkish officials want the US to leave, with the incumbent defense minister stating, "Trump will strongly focus on this." But the Kurds hope they can persuade him otherwise."We formed a successful alliance with the United States in combating terrorism," Sinam Mohamad, the representative of the Syrian Democratic Council mission to the United States and a top diplomat of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, told Business Insider."We may have felt frustrated during Trump's first term due to his decision to withdraw American forces from Syria in 2019," Mohamad said. "But today, as a result of the political circumstances in the Middle East and the world, we see that President Trump will have a different outlook than before."The AANES administrates large swathes of north and east Syria under the SDF's control.The regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which is backed by Russia, does not recognize the AANES. Turkey vehemently opposes it, claiming the SDF has inextricable ties to its main adversary, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. Turkish strikes against AANES infrastructure have cut off water and electricity to over a million people, leading to charges that Turkey is violating international law."The incoming Trump administration has an opportunity to reconfigure the entire US strategy in Syria, maintain its minimal but high-rewards troops presence in Syria, and proceed with a bold vision to mend fences between Syrian Kurds and Ankara," Mohammed A. Salih, a non-resident senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an expert on Kurdish and regional affairs, told BI."The focus should be on a win-win outcome for all sides, America, Kurds, and Turkey."Some called for a US withdrawal after the January drone attack against a US base in Jordan that supports operations in Syria, killing three Americans and injuring 47. The Syrian Democratic Forces oversee the sprawling Al Hol detention camp for ISIS fighters and their families, and worry a rapid US pullout from the region could lead to large prison breaks. Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP The specific timing of any American withdrawal will also be a critical factor."The American withdrawal from Syria may take place in 2026 or before that, but what will be different are the circumstances that will accompany this withdrawal," the SDC's Mohamad said. "It may take into account the dangers facing the areas of the autonomous administration and Washington's allies in the fight against terrorism, and at that time, it is necessary to ensure the withdrawal with political security for the region."The official underlined the continued importance of the American presence for ensuring "the continuation of the fight against terrorism" and that the SDF can continue securing the "large number of prisoners of the terrorist organizations languishing" in AANES detention.The Kurds have thousands of former ISIS fighters in its camps and detention centers. The sprawling Al-Hol camp has a population of over 40,000, including thousands of ISIS women and children, a number of whom remain radicalized. It has warned that another Turkish invasion would divert SDF fighters and resources away from securing these facilities."The Syrian Democratic Forces have the qualifications to secure these facilities," said Mohamad, the Kurdish diplomat. "But they will not be able to perform their duty to the fullest extent if the withdrawal occurs without political security for the region's situation."Mohamad stressed that AANES and SDF would want American guarantees that Turkey will not invade after a US withdrawal."A sudden troop withdrawal could probably result in even more disastrous outcomes than in Afghanistan, given the presence of various regional and global powers in Syria and the resurgence of ISIS and other jihadi groups there," said Salih, the FPRI regional expert."In all likelihood, the situation will be highly chaotic in the event of a withdrawal with serious consequences that could witness the mass escaping of ISIS prisoners, likely more radicalized and resentful as a result of their prison experience," Salih added.While weakened from years of war, ISIS has already demonstrated its capability to regroup and threaten their adversaries. A coordinated ISIS jailbreak attempt in 2022 led to almost two weeks of heavy fighting with the SDF.A rapid US withdrawal tips the uneasy balance of powers. Salih anticipates this could lead to "a hectic race" between Iran, Russia, the Syrian regime, and Turkey for the resource-rich AANES regions."All the problems we suffer from in the regions of North and East Syria are related to the necessity of placing our region within the international solution platforms related to Syria, political support, and finding a solution to the Syrian crisis with the participation of the Autonomous Administration and the Syrian Democratic Council in the political process," Mohamad said."This will have a major impact in changing the shape of the region, reducing hotbeds of tension, and ensuring global security and peace."Paul Iddon is a freelance journalist and columnist who writes about Middle East developments, military affairs, politics, and history. His articles have appeared in a variety of publications focused on the region.

Sinead Mulhern has been living in Ecuador for six years. Earlier this year, she spent a week in the hospital due to a collapsed lung, a severe complication of pneumonia.The support she received from the hospital staff and her friends confirmed that moving there was the right decision.I was lying wide awake on a hospital bed in Ecuador, hoping for sleep yet fearful that if I dozed off, I'd miss something crucial.Everything had come as a big surprise. The day before, I was standing by lime-green valleys, planning mountain adventures. As bachata beats blared from market stalls and birds of prey soared above, I thought about camping nearby and watching the sun sink below a sea of clouds. Or, I could return to the Monopoly board-like Andean town nearby and explore its river valleys.But as I was daydreaming about adventures, I noticed something was wrong. I'd been having trouble breathing for a few days. As an avid runner and hiker, it felt strange that I could barely climb the steps to my apartment.At the hospital in Cuenca the city where I have been living for the past six years and about 200 miles south of Quito, Ecuador I had a tube running between my ribs into the space between my lungs, an oxygen mask, and some answers. While I'd been in the countryside, my right lung had been collapsing. A severe and rare complication of pneumonia.It got serious quicklyI returned to the doctor's clinic for a second visit after it was clear that an asthma inhaler and the medication hadn't helped. I had assumed I was in for a course of antibiotics and an early night.Instead, I was sent for X-rays, and based on the technician's questions, I sensed this was more serious than I thought: "Were you in an accident?" "Are you a heavy smoker?" "Did you fall?" "Could something have caused blunt-force trauma?" I raised a brow. No to all of the above."We have to go to the hospital right now," my doctor told me after confirming that my right lung had collapsed. "I'm surprised you're even standing up talking to me right now."It was a whirlwind evening. I messaged my friend Sanja, asking her to meet me at the hospital and bring a few essentials. I had been told that a surgeon was on her way and that they would perform abronchoscopy, a procedure that involves inserting a tube between the lungs to examine the airways. Following this, a catheter would be inserted in between my lungs to drain the air buildup that had caused the collapse. I was asked if I had family who could help me buy my medical supplies. I told them that would be Sanja.I met Sanja in 2018, and she has become like a sister. We've supported each other through the ups and downs of expat life. She arrived shortly after the surgeon had explained in detail what she was about to do.I felt scared and focused on my friend as the surgeon told me to hold my right arm above my head and stay still. Sanja asked the questions I was too in shock to ask for myself. I'd have been lost without her.Medical care in South AmericaI grew up with access to Canadian healthcare. How would my hospital stay here compare? Would I be able to continue to live in Ecuador at altitude? Were my running and mountain adventures over?I called my friend Jonathan in the morning, and he came right away. An Ecuadorian-American, he briefed me on what to expect and told our friends where I was.My hospital stay lasted a week. As my anxiety subsided, I noticed differences in how things are done here. Many of them I preferred. Visiting hours were relaxed, so I had friends popping by every day. I could see the mountains from my room. The pharmacy next door played Latin music. When I closed my eyes and listened, I felt the sun on my face and briefly forgot where I was. It was less formal too, which I preferred.My insurance plan didn't cover this a personal oversight I made because I figured I was healthy and possibly even invincible. Lucky for me, the care was high-quality and ended up costing a little over $3,000. I never had to wait for a room, procedure, specialist appointment, or check-up.According to KFF, a nonprofit health policy group in the US, the average cost per day for an inpatient in a US hospital in 2022 was over $3,000. Mulhern (in the purple visor) on a hike with friends in Ecuador. Sinead Mulhern I had no family but had built a communityI also saw the value of my personal connections and the caring Ecuadorian culture. People I didn't know well would call to check in, and friends of friends would send well wishes. My doctor called my mom in Canada. A new friend drove me to an X-ray appointment. My friends brought tea, meals, and books. My Pilates instructor helped me regain strength. As a foreignerin Ecuador, I sometimes feelout of place and lonely. In the hospital, though, I realized what a strong community I had built over the years. My "chosen family" comes from the US, Ecuador, Australia, South Africa, England, and Venezuela. They are all the results of personal relationships I have built during the good times: parties, road trips, and adventures. Now, I understand that community is an investment in health, too.From the outside, living abroad can look pretty convincing. My highlight reel is packed with nature, street art, slow mornings, and vibrant celebrations. But this was one of my lowest moments in Ecuador. And guess what? That gave me a different kind of reassurance.Three months later, my body has healed, and I'm cleared to go up intothe mountains again. Recently, I spent a bright sunny day hiking past sparkling lagoons, yellow flowers, and tangled forests. I'm grateful to know I'll have many morelike this.Got a personal essay about health emergencies while traveling that you want to shareGet in touch with the editor: akarplus@businessinsider.com.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has formally issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif for war crimes and crimes against humanity.The arrest warrants do not guarantee that the men will be tried at The Hague, the Dutch city where the ICC is located. Nor do they guarantee any of them will even be arrested.But they do make life more complicated for Gallant and Netanyahu in particular. (Its unclear whether or not Deif is currently alive.) Both Israelis will find it more difficult to travel abroad, as signatories to the treaty that created the ICC are obligated to arrest and turn over those accused of crimes. That means there are now 124 countries all signatories where they would be unwise to travel, Adil Haque, a law professor at Rutgers University, told Vox. And the warrants will likely be a complicating factor for some of Israels allies. Some have domestic laws prohibiting the transfer of weapons to nations that might use them to commit atrocity crimes. Others may find the warrants put a strain on diplomatic relationships. The warrants accuse Gallant and Netanyahu of violating the laws of international armed conflict by intentionally depriving civilians in Gaza of food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity by consistently blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza. They also accuse both men of intentionally directing attacks against civilians in Gaza in at least two instances. Deif is also accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, torture, and sexual violence.Israel has denounced the issuance of the warrants; Netanyahus office said Thursday, There is nothing more just than the war that Israel has been waging in Gaza. At least 44,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel began its assault on the territory last year in response to an October 7 attack by Hamas that killed roughly 1,200 people. Are Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant actually going to be arrested by the ICC?Netanyahu and Gallant are in no danger of an immediate arrest. Israel is not a signatory to the ICC, meaning it doesnt recognize the Courts jurisdiction in its territory. The US Israels closest and most powerful ally isnt a signatory either, and in the past has even sanctioned ICC officials attempting to investigate war crimes committed by the CIA and US military personnel in Afghanistan. That means Israeli law enforcement isnt obligated to arrest Netanyahu or Gallant, and the US is highly unlikely to pressure either man to turn himself in.Israel has tried to argue that the ICC doesnt have jurisdiction over Israelis at all, but the state of Palestine has been a signatory since 2015 so crimes committed by anyone in occupied Palestinian territory like Gaza are, in fact, the ICCs purview. Israel has also tried to claim that the Court shouldnt be involved in this case because Israel has a strong and competent court system; though that may be true, that court system is not investigating either man for the crimes the ICC prosecutor claims. ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan recommended the arrest warrants in May; at the time, he also recommended warrants for former Hamas leaders who have since been killed by Israeli forces. The Court doesnt try people in absentia, so the cases against the dead would be moot. The Court does not have its own police force and relies on signatory nations law enforcement for arrests. Nations generally dont make arrests on behalf of the ICC outside of their borders, which means the most likely path for Netanyahu and Gallant to end up in ICC custody would be apprehension by a nation theyre visiting that has a record of taking international treaty obligations very seriously. The warrants could have other consequences outside of arrestsAlthough Netanyahu and Gallant are reasonably safe from arrest, the warrants could have diplomatic and military consequences for Israel, especially in Europe.I think that even Israels allies who are ICC member states will face internal domestic pressure to cut off diplomatic contacts with Netanyahu, Haque said. For example, not only can he not travel to Germany, I also would be surprised if [German leaders] will fly to Israel and be photographed with him shaking hands and whatnot, or even to talk to him electronically, just because within their country, theyre going to get a lot of domestic pushback.Staunch allies that arent ICC member countries namely the United States arent as likely to change their relationship with Israel, however. The ICC has no credibility and these allegations have been refuted by the U.S. government, Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Florida), President-elect Donald Trumps pick for national security adviser, wrote on X. You can expect a strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC & UN come January. The warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant could also complicate weapons transfers from European states and nations with laws limiting transfers in situations in which theres credible reason to believe a country will use them to commit atrocities. Weve already seen a Dutch court saying that the Netherlands cannot send fighter jet [parts], for example, to Israel. Weve seen the termination or expiration of various arms contracts that the UK had, said Kelebogile Zvobgo, professor of government at the College of William & Mary. Those decisions came in the wake of proceedings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in which the court agreed to hear a case accusing Israel of genocide, and ordered Israel to stop any actions that could cause genocide. (The ICJ is the UNs court, which focuses on inter-country disputes.)There are many steps between the issuance of a warrant in the ICC and a judgment at The Hague, including the arrest of Netanyahu and Gallant, as well as gathering evidence that connects the men to the specific alleged crimes something thats not simple in active war zones. But as Zvobgo pointed out, Khan, the ICC chief prosecutor, only brought charges that he thought would realistically result in conviction.And even if the men accused do not end up in The Hague, Zvobgo said, even if Netanyahu never steps on Dutch soil, never stands trial at the ICC, he will forever be someone who has been charged with atrocities. And the charges wont go away once the war ends, Zvobgo added: There is no statute of limitations on a trial.Youve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More:

Every episode of Say Nothing, the FX/Hulu show based on the nonfiction book of the same name, ends with a disclaimer: Gerry Adams has always denied being a member of the IRA or participating in any IRA-related violence. Disclaimers arent unusual in film and television (arguably even more shows should employ them) but the Adams disclaimer still stands out.Say Nothing takes place across and beyond the 30-year period in late 20th-century Ireland known as The Troubles. Viewers experience this time and its fallout largely through the eyes of Catholic combatants in the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Dolours Price (played on the show by Lola Petticrew, and later Maxine Peake), and to a lesser extent Brendan The Dark Hughes (played by Anthony Boyle as a youth, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as the elder Hughes), along with those affected by their actions. It was an era marked by bloodshed and fear, with political and psychological ramifications that can still be felt by many in the country today. The problem? If this disclaimer is accurate, it would negate or at least undermine nearly everything the Say Nothing viewer has just witnessed. So whats going on here? And whats the real effect of this repeated legal language? Lets break it down, piece by piece. Who is Gerry Adams?Officially, today, Gerry Adams is a retired Irish politician. Hes played in Say Nothing by Josh Finan as a young radical, and Michael Colgan as an older statesman. In 1998, Adams was integral to and present for the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, a peace deal brokered by US President Bill Clinton that brought an end to the everyday violence in Northern Ireland. Adams did this in his capacity as the president of the Sinn Fin party, a position he held from 1983 to 2018. Throughout The Troubles, Sinn Fin was widely understood to be the political wing of the IRA. The real Gerry Adams, circa the 1980s. Sygma via Getty ImagesAnd what is the IRA?The IRA stands for the Irish Republican Army, a paramilitary association that was first founded under that name in 1919, although it grew out of a long history of Irish resistance to British rule. The purpose of the IRA was to reunite Ireland by reclaiming the whole of the island, specifically the area that became known after the partition of Ireland in 1921 as Northern Ireland. The Irish Republican Army was known in particular for its use of guerrilla warfare tactics, from bank robberies to car bombs, as well as the practice of disappearing accused informers, known as touts, and turncoats. The US labeled the IRA a terrorist group in the 1980s.What were the British doing in Ireland?The British had been politically and militarily involved with their Irish neighbors to the west since the Anglo-Norman Invasion in 1169. That conquest kicked off 800 years of dispossession, bloodshed, and strife across the region and usually along religious lines with the majority Catholics on one side, and the Protestant minority aligned with British forces. This timeline is briefly mentioned at the very top of the TV series Say Nothing. Whats less explored on screen, but takes up a good chunk of the meticulously reported nonfiction book of the same name written by journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, who also executive produced the show is the history of the conflict. Lets go back, if not quite to the beginning. In 1914, after centuries of rebellion and retaliation, Home Rule under which the Irish would be in charge of themselves was set to become law. Shortly before it was to be enacted, however, the British made the change contingent on military conscription, right at the start of the first World War. In 1916, Irish Republicans fought back, in a rebellion known as the Easter Rising. This operation was a resounding failure that would nonetheless endear the nascent IRA to the Irish public, after the resulting British occupation of Dublin saw the jailing of 1,400 Republicans and the execution of 16 of their leaders. Following the brutal War of Independence and the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Partition of Ireland was established in 1921, dividing the country into two self-governing entities, and a year later the Irish Free State was established in the south.By the late 1960s, things werent great for the Catholics of Northern Ireland. There was clear evidence of discrimination against Catholics in the north in hiring, housing, voting, and policing. At this time, the IRA was by most accounts not engaged in armed struggle, but a bombing on the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising helped inspire the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force another paramilitary group, but this time with British loyalties and, as per Say Nothing, occasionally government support, whose operations were largely marked by gun violence against Catholic civilians. This was the approximate start of what is known as The Troubles.Say Nothing, both book and show, depicts the resumed violence among the IRA, British forces, and loyalist paramilitary groups, which lasted from around 1968 to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, as well as the fallout for Irish families that, in many ways, persist today. Okay, Gerry Adams is a politician with a group affiliated with the IRA. But does that mean hes responsible for the violence?That might be a complicated question, were it not for the fact that pretty much everyone agrees that Adams not only participated in the Irish Republican Army and violent attacks the group carried out, but personally orchestrated much of it. This is exactly what we see on screen throughout Say Nothing. Keefes book carefully details Adamss history in the movement, including the conception and execution of robberies and bombings, such as the Old Bailey bombing in London that saw Dolours Price and her sister Marian arrested and jailed for eight years. Among other sources and interviews, that book used the first-person accounts collected for the Belfast Project, an oral history of The Troubles compiled by researchers at Boston College from 2000 to 2006. In other words, many, many IRA members are on the record saying that Gerry Adams was among them. Dolours Price has said he was her commander. Brendan Hughes has said he never did anything without Adamss say-so. (Additionally, historians and contemporaneous media accounts link Adams to IRA violence.)If all thats true, how did Gerry Adams get elected to political office? Adamss status as an IRA leader didnt hurt his political life; if anything, it helped! Adamss political persona has always been, knowingly, built on his Republican bona fides. In the book, Keefe details the way Adams would deny membership in the IRA out of one side of his mouth and raise the specter of violence out of the other, but you dont need to decode his speeches to see the connections. In 1972, Adams was released from prison where he was being held without charge, although he claims only as a political activist to participate in ceasefire talks at the request of the IRA. He was 24. Nine years later, he played a key role, as per the BBC, in encouraging IRA hunger strikes, which saw 27-year-old IRA leader Bobby Sands starve himself to death in prison, just one month after Sands was elected MP. Adams was himself elected as a Belfast West MP two years later, but refused to sit in the House of Commons, a Sinn Fin policy. That same year, 1983, he became the head of the party. A decade later, secret peace talks well underway, he carried the coffin of Thomas Begley, an IRA bomber who died in the Shankill bombing, after a premature explosion. Josh Finan as young Gerry Adams. FXDuring the approximately five-year talks, Adams was meeting with more moderate Irish political parties, representing the promise of bringing the IRA to the table. His status as IRA leadership was key to his stewardship of Sinn Fin not just at the outset, but throughout his entire career. So if this is all such an open secret, why is the disclaimer included?In an interview with Town & Country, author and executive producer Keefe explained, It was ultimately FX legal that determined that we needed that disclaimer. The reason why is simple: Adams himself. As Keefe told T&C, Its not that he will take issue with little bits and pieces of what we show. He takes issue with the whole premise of the series, which is that he was in the IRA. While the shows disclaimer seems to be more corporate necessity than rhetorical flourish, it ends up being a bit of a gift to the Say Nothing producers. It would be hard to find a more succinct way to communicate the doublethink necessary for life during The Troubles. It puts a darkly comic, increasingly absurd stinger on each episode of a show that sees only occasional lightness and crackles of Irish wit, while also giving a sense of the unspeakability of what youre watching unfold. Its what Irish poet Seamus Heaney calls the tight gag of place and times in Whatever you say, say nothing, the poem from which the book and show take their name. This is the omert that comes with the existence of the IRA. Its a policy that, in this setting, makes intuitive if not entirely practical sense. Of course an insurgent political group cant go shouting in the streets, and your friends and neighbors had better stay quiet, too. In the book and show, we see Gerry Adams employing his own baroque version of it early on: denying to arresting officers not just his role in the IRA but himself. Hes not Gerry Adams, he claims, but a man named John.Price, on the other hand, doesnt deny her name nor that she supports the goals of the IRA. She declares herself not guilty for the London bombing simply because she doesnt recognize English authority. Later in the show, as in real life, Price and Hughes definitively break this code of silence, speaking to the Belfast Project and in Prices case, some notable others about the things they did and the little good they felt it accomplished. The Boston College tapes werent intended to be distributed until after the participants deaths, but some were later subpoenaed in the renewed investigation into the death of Jean McConville, the IRA disappearance that frames Say Nothing.Adams never cracks, though, in the show or reality. But Adams isnt saying nothing. His persistent denial works as an admission that the methods of the Irish Republican Army violate some part of the collective moral consciousness (not to mention the law), while hinting that obscuring the facts doesnt violate Adamss own. Its worth noting that Adams had real-life political colleagues, including eventual deputy first minister Martin McGuinness, who did not disavow their time in the IRA. For some of Adamss former compatriots, Price and Hughes among them, his public ascent was not about peacemaking, but little more than the fulfillment of his political aspirations. For those IRA members, even the signing of the Good Friday agreement was not something to be heralded; it leaves Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom for as long as its majority Protestant citizenry chooses.The episode disclaimers, along with this tension, effectively make Gerry Adams the shows villain willing to ask others for the ultimate sacrifice; not even loyal to the cause. You watch Adams, along with Price and Hughes, plan and execute acts that wound their enemies, their neighbors, their cities, and eventually themselves; youre shown his rise, their fall; and over and over, you see his denial. But the only people who truly say nothing are the dead. Youve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More:

When Ukrainian developer GSC Game World released the apocalyptic adventure Stalker in 2007, it was considered a bleakly improbable piece of speculative fiction. Heavily inspired by cult novel Roadside Picnic, it imagined an alternative timeline in which a scientific experiment in 2006 caused a second Chornobyl disaster and a vast irradiated zone filled with powerful space-time anomalies, in which the only inhabitants were mutants and the titular stalkers: men who wandered the wastelands looking for valuable artefacts.The sequel, however, arrives in a very different world, its lengthy development period having been affected by both the Covid pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now the Stalker vision is a lot less improbable and its speculation has a much greater sense of urgency and authenticity.As if to illustrate the point, Stalker 2 begins with an apartment building being torn apart in a huge explosion. As a consequence, the now homeless lead character Skef is drawn into the Zone, carrying a powerful piece of scanning kit that could aid him in his quest for retribution and escape until hes beaten unconscious by an unknown gang and wakes to find the scanner has been stolen and now he is alone in the irradiated wastelands.A game of lonely exploration. Photograph: GSC Game WorldWhat follows is a remorselessly challenging survival adventure in which you must navigate monster-infested landscapes and marauding gangs of feral warriors, looking for your tech and trying to stay alive. The odds are constantly stacked against you: your guns often jam and require constant repair, your food and ammo run dangerously low, each building you come across could be filled with vital resources or rabid dogs or booby traps or all of the above. Scattered about the map are various safe houses where stalkers and neer-do-wells gather, offering trading opportunities, weapon upgrades, side quests and other resources. You gather what you can before heading back out into the unknown. Photograph: GSC Game WorldThe world of Stalker 2 is starkly beautiful: a hazardous, ever-changing patchwork of grasslands, swamps and forests; the natural world overgrowing the leftovers of civilisation. One moment youre wandering a rocky pathway in blinding sun, the next, a storm moves in and a howling wind sends leaves and garbage swirling into the darkening sky. Everywhere you go are anomalies sometimes blobs of floating antimatter, sometimes explosive mini volcanoes in your path all deadly if you dont learn to spot and avoid them. Like Death Stranding, this is very much a game of lonely exploration; of wandering for many minutes with your backpack too full of loot and your energy dwindling, hoping for some shack to hide in for a few quiet moments. Its so tense, so immersive, you cant help but get sucked in.The plot is its own sort of swampy landscape. There is so much lore so many warring factions, religious cults and paramilitary organisations that your head spins and all the characters, plotlines and allegiances become utterly incomprehensible. Its not helped by some terribly wooden voice acting and thudding dialogue, nor by the fact that this is a world almost entirely populated by irritable bald men with identical goatee beards. Its like being trapped in a post-apocalyptic real ale festival. When I finally encountered a woman after several hours of play, it felt like a stumbling upon a desert oasis.I also encountered dozens of bugs during the pre-release period, from incomplete character models, to side quests that wouldnt trigger their finish states, to cinematic sequences that slowed toward a near stop. Major patches have since fixed many of these faults, though I cant imagine the game will run completely smoothly for a few more weeks.But the thing is, I played through them, often deep into the night, transfixed by this flawed, idiosyncratic universe. There is, in this game perhaps more than any other dystopian fiction the industry has produced in the past few years a stark sense of desperation and of underlying tragedy. It is hard to wander the scrublands, past the skeletal remains of obliterated villages, past downed helicopters and the rusted remains of tanks, and not think of what the makers of this game have seen and lived through. For those in any doubt, GSC Game World commissioned a documentary, War Game, to explore the process.Has Stalker 2 become an allegory for the Russian invasion? Well, one of the main military factions in the game, named the Ward, has invaded the Zone, claiming to be bringing stability but actually more interested in annexing the land into its own state. Interpret that how you like. Photograph: GSC Game WorldAt the very least the game is an exploration of trauma that resonates with a similar fury to Elem Klimovs Come and See and Michael Herrs Dispatches. As you keep going, discovering new weapons, upgrading them, making new allies, opening new hubs and map areas, the narrative draws you ever closer to the heart of the Zone and whatever terrors await there. The sense of foreboding, the atmosphere of solitude and the image of humanity just hanging on by a thread are bleak and astonishing.Stalker 2 is a strange, brave and sometimes broken paean to resistance in the face of overwhelming odds. It is utterly uncompromising in its vision, often to a fault, and envelopes you in its dark spell of science, violence and chaos. Certainly, if you loved Dragons Dogma 2, which similarly edged towards self-parody with its offbeat systems, eccentric characters and overall jankiness, you will cope fine with this games technical and narrative inconsistencies. Indeed, like the stalkers that inhabit its damaged world, you may shrug, improvise, and carry on. If you thought developers werent making vast, outlandish, utterly singular open-world games any more, you were wrong: they are. And some of them have been through hell to do it.