Article in Atlantic claims The Blue Fighter was artificially generated, days after it won Caine prize for African writersThe Zimbabwean writer Simbarashe Kundizeza has denied using AI to write a prize-winning short story after an article in the Atlantic said software had flagged it as almost completely AI-generated.Kundizeza’s story The Blue Fighter was announced as the winner of the prestigious Caine prize for African writers on 6 October. Five days later, The Atlantic published an article by the author and journalist Vauhini Vara titled: “Yet Another Literary prize winner Seems to Be AI.” Continue reading......
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Health minister says government ‘did not authorize’ Danish-led hepatitis B trial in babies backed by RFK JrGuinea-Bissau has not approved the controversial hepatitis B study in newborns that would be funded by the US government and private partners, the African country’s minister of health said on Tuesday.The study, which would not investigate the safety or effectiveness of vaccines but would instead track “nonspecific” health outcomes like overall mortality or neurodevelopmental conditions, has been championed by Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and a longtime anti-vaccine activist. Continue reading......
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Cultivating the nutritious bugs means families can raise livestock and enrich their own food, while lowering pressures on the landA few minutes’ walk from his home in the Kyaka II refugee settlement, Kanane Bikanyale feeds black soldier fly larvae to chickens in a coop above a fishpond. The larvae disappear in a scrum of chickens. Nearby, more larvae grow in modified jerrycans, while adult flies are kept in netted boxes.Bikanyale kept chickens before he fled to Uganda from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). But the cost of conventional feed and shortages of ingredients made them increasingly difficult to...
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Drawing on dozens of interviews with intelligence and police officers across two continents, a Guardian investigation reveals the murderous cost of our insatiable appetite for cocaineAs abductions go, few have been more brazen. Alan Jalloh was with two friends outside Goodies supermarket, frantic as usual with late afternoon shoppers. Rush hour in downtown Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, was under way with familiar gusto.A black Toyota Rav4 forced its way through the Peninsula highway traffic. Witnesses describe burly white men leaping out, yanking on balaclavas. Jalloh, 40, seemed to freeze. As did his two friends, one a famous Freetown footballer. All...
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Different forms are distinguished by who exercises control and which institutions they targetRead more: How Europe’s most wanted cocaine trafficker turned Sierra Leone into the world’s first true narco stateTwo crypto-billionaires pour millions into a political party and its wannabe prime minister. A drug trafficker’s bribe to a senior official buys a cocaine shipment safe passage across a border. Human traffickers take control of the institutions mandated to stop them. A foreign power uses evidence of a president’s sexual abuse of children to dictate government policy. An influential lobby group donates to both a ruling party and opposition members. All...
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At first the idea of mercy was something that helped me through the ordeal. But would real forgiveness be a form of Stockholm syndrome?I knew Mohamed Tahlil as a gentle pirate who oversaw a team of guards during the first months of my life as a hostage in 2012. I had travelled to Somalia to report on the outbreak of modern piracy off the coast. On the 10th day, along a dusty road near Galkayo, in the centre of the country, I was kidnapped by pirates. For the next two and a half years, I was a hostage.I spent most...
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