AI firms flex lobbying muscle on both side of Atlantic

The latest developments in the Middle East war:

- US envoys head to Islamabad -

US envoys headed to the Pakistani capital Saturday in a bid to kickstart a new round of peace negotiations with Iran amid a fragile ceasefire, though the prospect of direct talks remained uncertain.

The White House said emissaries Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would engage in an "in-person conversation" with Iranian representatives, but Iranian state media said that direct negotiations were not in the cards.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has already arrived in Islamabad.

- Spain 'reliable' NATO member -

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez stressed Spain was a "reliable member" of NATO, after a report the United States was considering trying to suspend it over its refusal to support military operations against Iran.

The Reuters news agency cited an anonymous US official as telling it that the Pentagon had outlined the suspension option in an email looking at ways to punish NATO allies that steered clear of the US-Israeli war against Iran.

- Kuwait frees journalist -

An American-Kuwaiti journalist has been released after being held for weeks in Kuwait during a crackdown on sharing footage of the US-Iran war, a US State Department official said.

Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, who has contributed to The New York Times, PBS, and Al Jazeera English, was arrested on March 3 for allegedly spreading false information, harming national security and misusing his mobile phone.

- US freezes $344 mn in cryptocurrency -

The United States has frozen $344 million in cryptocurrency assets over ties to Iran, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says, as Washington seeks to raise pressure on Tehran amid energy supply disruptions due to the war.

- Six killed in Lebanon -

Israeli strikes in Lebanon killed six people Friday, the Lebanese health ministry said, despite an ongoing ceasefire in the more than six-week war between Israel and Hezbollah.

"The Israeli enemy's airstrikes on southern Lebanon today, April 24, resulted in the martyrdom of six citizens and the injury of two others," the ministry said in a statement.

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Nikolay Solovyov was on shift the night of April 26, 1986 when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded. Instead of fleeing, he chose to fight his "first war" against radiation.

Four decades later, a second war -- Russia's invasion of Ukraine -- has taken his son.

Solovyov, 67, a hard rock fan, still wears his hair long, though it has turned grey.

On the night of the world's worst nuclear accident, he was working as a turbine mechanic in unit number two, a few hundred metres from reactor number four, which exploded during a safety test.

"It felt like an earthquake. I didn't hear the explosion -- the turbines were still running, with a very loud noise," he recalled, his voice quiet and gentle.

The alarms went off. As he rushed towards the exploded reactor, he saw one colleague badly irradiated and vomiting, another being carried out on a stretcher. The third one was slumped in his chair, head in his arms. All of them died soon after. 

Only then did the full extent of the disaster become clear. Through the massive hole ripped open by the explosion, he could see "the sky." In the corridors, torrents of water poured from broken pipes.

Firefighters quickly began hosing down the smoking reactor -- "they didn't let the fire spread," Solovyov said. Almost all those firefighters later died from radiation exposure.

At dawn, he and his colleagues discussed how long they had left to live. "We'll last two weeks," said one of them. 

After hearing this, Solovyov, who quit smoking five months earlier, lit up a cigarette. "Well, if I'm going to die, at least I'll die young and handsome," he recounted his thought in the moment. 

- Seeking praise - 

His night shift ended in the morning. The day team took over and the bus drove him back to Pripyat, the workers' town three kilometres (two miles) from the plant.

It was all quiet and business as usual, except for the roaring trucks that were spraying foamy "detergent" on the pavement. Once home, he told his wife to seal the windows.

For days, Soviet authorities hid the catastrophe from the world -- a disaster that further weakened the already crumbling USSR, which collapsed in 1991.

Solovyov stayed at the plant throughout the "liquidation" -- a massive clean-up operation in the aftermath. He later helped build the first sarcophagus covering the reactor, as well as the second one, which was damaged by a Russian drone strike in 2025.

The plant continued producing electricity until 2000 and teams still work there to ensure its safety.

Among the reasons for his decision to stay, Solovyov lists good pay, "generous holidays" and an "interesting" nature of work. 

The man, who later became an engineer, believes that the "dangerous" 1986 test was pushed ahead by the plant managers for the sake of winning praise from Soviet leadership.

Hundreds of thousands of people were involved in the massive liquidation operation, which saw hundreds of thousands more evacuated from neighbouring settlements. "Only the USSR" had the resources to carry out such an effort, Solovyov believes.

Dozens of his acquaintances later died of cancer. Of the 22 men on his night shift, only four are still alive.

A 2005 UN report put the number of confirmed and projected deaths at 4,000 in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Greenpeace in 2006 estimated that the disaster had caused close to 100,000 deaths.

- 'The other war' -

Solovyov, who received high doses of radiation and has undergone countless medical checks, attributes his longevity to good health, regular sport, a calm temperament and genetics.

"I have to thank God and my parents for giving me good genes," he said.

He now lives in a country house near Slavutych, a town 120 kilometres (70 miles) north of Kyiv, built in 1986 to house people displaced by the disaster.

In the local Chernobyl museum, wreckage from downed Russian drones is displayed in the main hall. "That's the other war," Solovyov said quietly.

Standing on the windswept central square of Slavutych, he said that his first, "nuclear" war was against an invisible, odourless poison.

"When people here say 'before the war' or 'after the war,' they mean April 26, 1986," he said. "And now, as people put it, this is already the second war of our generation."

On the night of February 23-24, 2022, Solovyov set out for the plant as usual. But he never reached it: the two bridges leading there had been destroyed. Russian forces seized Chernobyl and occupied the site for a month.

His youngest son joined the Ukrainian army. In September 2023 he was reported missing in action.

Devastated, Solovyov could no longer find the strength to work and took early retirement.

rco/asy/giv/ach 

AI developers are ramping up efforts to win over the hearts and minds of officials in Europe and the United States, hoping to sway governments as they weigh high-stake regulatory frameworks for the ever more powerful technology.

Flush with cash, the firms are also wooing the general public, insisting that artificial intelligence will be a force for good -- and not a destroyer of jobs or an existential threat for humanity.

ChatGPT maker OpenAI unveiled this month a 13-page "Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age" that calls for new taxation and expanded safety nets to ensure society withstands the arrival of superintelligent systems. 

It has even bought TBPN, a technology-focused talk show, to help shape the narrative.

But the policy document also came just days after a public backlash forced the company to halt plans for a sexually explicit chatbot.

OpenAI has also faced legal challenges from families of teenagers who say ChatGPT caused harm and even suicide among young people, prompting the company to introduce an age-verification system.

"This is a turning point" for the industry, and companies "are spending a fortune to try to get favourable measures passed in their patch", said Alexandra Iteanu, a Paris-based lawyer specialising in digital law.

- Politicians in pocket? -

The AI industry has transformed Washington lobbying at extraordinary speed, with more than 3,500 federal lobbyists -- one-fourth of the total -- working on AI issues last year, a 170 percent increase over three years, according to Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group. 

The established giants like Meta, Google and Microsoft still dominate spending, but AI start-ups like OpenAI and Anthropic have rapidly built out their Washington presence, hiring elite firms and expanding in-house policy shops. 

Anthropic for example has focussed its message on promoting AI safety and tighter regulation.

But OpenAI is also actively pushing the industry's top legislative priority of preventing US states from passing their own laws governing AI, an effort that has twice failed in Congress but remains very much alive, backed by a sympathetic White House. 

The influence campaign has moved into electoral politics, with a pro-AI campaign called Leading the Future assembling a $100 million war chest to back AI friendly candidates in the 2026 midterms. 

President Donald Trump, a fierce opponent of AI regulation, counts OpenAI's cofounder Sam Altman and its president Greg Brockman among his biggest donors. 

European regulators are also feeling the heat, with the French start-up Mistral recently presenting in Brussels a 22-point plan to accelerate AI development on the Continent.

Lobbying outlays by the tech industry have surged 55 percent since 2021 to reach 151 million euros ($177 million) last year, according to study by the Corporate Europe Observatory and LobbyControl, a nonprofit.

- 'Concentration of wealth' -

For Margarida Silva of the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO, a Dutch nonprofit), AI firms are working from playbook of the oil and smoking industries, but with one major difference. 

"They're just the wealthiest companies in the world, so they have a lot of money that they can use to put towards lobbying," Silva said.

"When you have such intense corporate lobbying that is based on having such a concentration of wealth, and that is standing in the way of public interest regulations... we are really talking about a democratic threat," she added.

Many executives also cultivate friendships with elected officials to have "privileged channels" with public administrations, said Charles Thibout, a politic science professor at the Sciences Po Strasbourg university in eastern France.

He noted the phalanx of tech moguls at Trump's inauguration last year, and the close ties between Mistral's cofounder Arthur Mensch and French President Emmanuel Macron. 

Political leaders are often keen to be seen with AI's top names, Thibout added, if only to help get some of their huge development spending for their states or regions.

But "lawmakers are not fooled", said Iteanu, as enthusiasm for AI has not dispelled public wariness about its potential consequences. 

Despite the colossal spending in the United States, for example, opinion polls regularly show that Americans remain highly sceptical about the technology's benefits, and more worried that it spells doom for millions of jobs. 

dax-arp/mch/js/rl

New Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally, the first woman to lead the world's Anglican Christians, heads to Rome and the Vatican this weekend for an audience with Pope Leo XIV.

Mullally will meet the head of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics during a four-day visit starting Saturday, her first abroad since being enthroned last month as the Church of England's top cleric.

The audience comes 60 years after a historic meeting in 1966 between then archbishop Michael Ramsey and pope Paul VI, the first at that level since the Church of England was created in the 16th century, when king Henry VIII broke with Rome.

Relations have been steadily improving since although in 2016 their successors noted "new disagreements", particularly on the ordination of the women -- making Mullally's visit a significant moment.

The 63-year-old former nurse, who is married with two children, is the first woman to lead the mother church of the world's 85-million strong Anglican community.

The first female Anglican bishops were appointed in the United States in 1989, and they have been allowed in the Church of England since 2014, although the issue remains divisive.

By contrast the Catholic Church has repeatedly rejected the idea of female priests, while male priests also cannot marry -- with the exception of married Anglican priests who want to convert.

Campaigners for women's rights, who had hoped for progress under former Pope Francis before his death last year, welcomed the archbishop's visit.

"If a female archbishop comes to see him, it might give Pope Leo XIV pause for thought," Sylvaine Landrivon, spokeswoman for Catholic feminist association Magdala, told AFP.

"He might realise that women, who represent half of God's people, have the same abilities as men."

- 'United Christian community' -

The visit, in which Mullally will also meet with members of the Catholic community, comes six months after King Charles III became the first supreme governor of the Church of England to pray with a pontiff.

In a letter marking her enthronement, Leo -- himself new in the job, marking one year as pope on May 8, expressed his hope of a "reconciled, fraternal and united Christian community".

Bishop Anthony Ball, the archbishop's representative to the Holy See, told AFP the meeting was "an important opportunity to build and establish a personal relationship" as well as mark the institutional ties.

Mullally praised the pope's "courageous call" for peace earlier this month after US President Donald Trump criticised the pontiff's calls for an end to the Middle East war.

The archbishop and the pope face many common challenges, Ball noted, from pressing social issues such as immigration, poverty, war and the environment, to the question of how to engage with younger people.

Their churches have also both been rocked by  clerical child sexual abuse and its cover up. Mullally's predecessor, Justin Welby, quit over failures in handling an abuse scandal.

Internal unity is also under pressure in the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church, amid tensions between conservative and progressive factions on issues such as liturgy, gay marriage and priestly celibacy.

- 'Careful listeners' -

Mullally's appointment was deeply divisive within the Anglican Communion, both because of her sex and also her positive stance towards same-sex marriage.

Several conservative African archbishops, who have for years been at odds with their more liberal Western counterparts, strongly criticised the choice.

Ball said he expected Pope Leo to be "respectful" of the archbishop's appointment -- and for her not to press the issue of women in the Church.

"I think she will be resistant to being co-opted into somebody else's agenda, particularly in another church that isn't her own," he said.

"She's got more than enough on her plate with the Anglican Communion."

Leo also inherited from pope Francis a church divided over key social challenges.

During his 12-year papacy, the charismatic Argentine reformer often riled traditionalists, particularly in the US and Africa, with his efforts to open up the Catholic Church.

Ball said both Mullally and Pope Leo had so far proved to be "quite careful listeners".

Leo is "taking his time to listen to people, to hear, and to try and discern ways of ensuring that people can move forward together. And I think Archbishop Sarah is similar in that regard", he said.

ar/dt/ach 

Hundreds of firefighters were battling wildfires in the forests of northern Japan on Saturday, as authorities urged more than 3,200 people to evacuate from their homes, government officials said.

As of Saturday morning, blazes in the mountainous areas of Iwate region had burned about 700 hectares (1,730 acres) since breaking out three days ago, local government officials said in a statement.

A large column of smoke, which could be smelled 30 kilometres (20 miles) away, was seen rising up the valley near the town of Otsuchi as two helicopters dropped water on the burning forest.

In Otsuchi, fire engines were spraying the forest near homes close to the fire.

About a dozen helicopters and more than 1,300 firefighters as well as Japan Self-Defense Forces troops would be mobilised on Saturday to battle the fires, the statement said.

At least eight buildings had been burnt but all the residents had evacuated, it said.

"We're making efforts to extinguish (the fires) ... and will update the information" later in the day, an Iwate official told AFP.

"Ultimately, I do hope it'll rain," a man in Otsuchi told public broadcaster NHK.

Increasingly dry winters have raised the risk of wildfires. A blaze that broke out in the Iwate city of Ofunato early last year was Japan's worst in more than half a century.

Scientists have long warned that climate change caused by mankind's burning of fossil fuels will make periods of drought more intense and longer-lasting, creating the ideal conditions for wildfires. 

kh/mtp

The Los Angeles Lakers, fueled by 29 points from LeBron James, beat the Houston Rockets 112-108 in an overtime thriller on Friday to take a 3-0 stranglehold in their NBA playoff series.

James, the 41-year-old superstar playing in his 19th post-season, came up with a steal and a game-tying three-pointer with 13.6 seconds left in regulation.

He couldn't get a potential game-winner to drop at the buzzer, but added a steal and a block in a frantic overtime as the Lakers pushed the Rockets to the brink of elimination in the best-of-seven Western Conference series.

No NBA team has come back from an 0-3 deficit to win a playoff series.

"Just trying to seize the opportunity," James, who added 13 rebounds, six assists and three steals, told broadcaster Prime. "My guys trust me to try to make plays and I'm blessed to be able to do it."

The Lakers will have a chance to close out the series in Houston on Sunday. It's not a position many expected them to be in with league-leading scorer Luka Doncic sidelined by a hamstring strain and key offensive contributor Austin Reaves out with an oblique injury.

The young Rockets, with veteran star Kevin Durant sidelined by a sprained ankle, were led Alperen Sengun's 33 points and 16 rebounds.

They rallied from an early 15-point deficit and led by six with less than 30 seconds left in regulation.

But their mistakes caught up with them. A Houston turnover was followed by a foul on Marcus Smart as he attempted a three-pointer.

Smart made all three free-throws to cut the Lakers' deficit to 101-98 and set the stage for James's game-tying basket.

Sengun missed a potential go-ahead basket before James was off-target from beyond the arc and they went to overtime, Smart scoring eight of his 21 points in the extra session as the Lakers pulled away.

- Celtics hold off 76ers -

Boston's Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown scored 25 points apiece to lead the Celtics to a hard-fought 108-100 victory over the 76ers in Philadelphia and a 2-1 lead in their Eastern Conference series.

The Sixers had grabbed game two in Boston to knot the series at one game apiece.

In a game that neither team led by more than 10 points,

the Celtics took a five-point lead into the fourth quarter.

Tyrese Maxey's three-pointer briefly put the Sixers up 85-84 with 8:42 remaining, and Philadelphia were within one when Tatum drilled a three-pointer that pushed Boston's lead to 100-96 with 1:57 left to play.

Payton Pritchard added another three-pointer with the shot-clock winding down before Tatum -- who missed most of the season after suffering a torn Achilles tendon in last year's playoffs, drained a dagger trey that sealed it for Boston.

"We just were resilient," Tatum told broadcaster Prime. "We stuck with it. It's a game of runs -- good team and just, you've got to answer."

Maxey scored 31 points to lead the Sixers. Paul George added 18 and rookie VJ Edgecombe added 10 points and 10 rebounds.

Sixers star Joel Embiid, still recovering from an emergency appendectomy earlier this month, was ruled out shortly before the game.

"He's just not ready," said Sixers coach Nick Nurse, whose team will try to even the series when they host game four on Sunday.

bb/hol

Before the puck dropped in Friday's pivotal NHL playoff match, hundreds of Montreal Canadiens fans took their seats in two century old Catholic cathedral. 

But they weren't there to pray the Canadiens beat the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 3 of their first round series -- they were there to drink beer and watch the game.

"Hockey is a religion in Quebec," said Francoise Dancause, artistic director of the Cargaison collective, which curates immersive cultural experiences in Quebec. 

She had the idea to install a hockey viewing experience in a church when she woke up on New Year's Day.

"The Canadiens had a good team. I said to myself, for sure we're making the playoffs," Dancause told AFP.

It took months of work, but by the time the NHL playoffs started, the ornate Cathedral of St John the Evangelist in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec was ready to host -- with a projection screen strung across the sanctuary.

"The Canadiens are larger than life," she said of the Montreal club, which has the most wins in NHL history with an unfailingly passionate fan base.

"We often say they're our gods, so the parallel is really easy to make."

For her, a church is an ideal setting for a high-stakes game in a hockey mad society. 

"It's the essence of the church: gathering, being together, living together," she added, conceding that some of the 650 people in attendance on Friday night "have never set foot in a church" previously.

For 94-year-old Aline Tremblay, watching hockey was the new experience.

She had been to the cathedral -- about a 40-minute-drive from Montreal -- for an earlier match in the Montreal-Tampa Bay series.

"It was fantastic, I had so much fun. I screamed, I lost my voice," she told AFP. "For once I shouted out loud in a church."

People drank beer and "everyone was happy," she said. 

She came back for more on Friday, in what was the second hockey game she'd ever watched. 

The church-going crowd didn't leave disappointed. Montreal won in overtime on Friday, taking a 2-1 lead in the best of seven series.

daf-bs/aks

Brady Kehlenbrink had another solid start against No. 24 Arkansas. But a baseball game cannot be won without scoring runs, as Missouri coach Kerrick Jackson likes to say.

Mizzou baseball was shutout 6-0 on Friday evening in Columbia. With a 5-4 loss the night before, the Game 2 defeat brought another series loss for the Tigers. The team has dropped to 3-17 in conference play and has lost nine straight.

"We are allergic to offense and executing two-strike pitches," Missouri coach Kerrick Jackson said postgame. 

For Kehlenbrink’s last three outings, he has gone more than five innings and has left Mizzou in a position to win. This continued on Friday when the Missouri starter tossed 5⅓ innings and allowed four runs.

"He put is a good position," Jackson said. "When he left, I know he didn't want to come out as early as he did." 

While not his best start, Mizzou has shown on other days that the team is capable of scoring more than four runs. The Tigers were averaging 6.34 runs per game coming into the night.

When Kehlenbrink exited the mound, only two runs had crossed on a two-run homer, but he left two runners on. Reliever Eli Skidmore allowed both inherited runners to score.

While the starter had done his part, the Tigers offense at the plate had not lived up to their end of the bargain. However. this was nothing new for Kehlenbrink. He has received zero runs in support in his time on the mound in the last three games.

In three of the five times that Mizzou has been shutout this season, Kehlenbrink has been on the mound. In six of his starts, the offense has recorded less than three runs.

At the plate in Game 2 of the series, the Tigers added just two hits from left fielder Donovan Jordan and right fielder Pierre seals, and had three walks during the game. Mizzou was put down in order in the first, fourth, sixth, eighth and ninth innings.

"Hitting is hard," Jackson said. "I think our guys are chasing hits and not quality at-bats."

Skidmore added one more run of his own and walked a batter before being pulled for Isaiah Salas for the final out of the fifth. Salas added a scoreless sixth, before finally allowing an unearned run to cross in the eighth on a single that followed an error from second baseman Blaize Ward.

Luke Fricker came in to close the game, loaded the bases in the ninth, but earned a strikeout to shut down additional runs.

The Tigers will try to avoid the sweep against the Razorbacks at 2 p.m. Saturday at Taylor Stadium. Despite initially being expected to start the game on Saturday, lefty Javyn Pimental will miss his start due to injury. 

Things could get awkward Saturday night when US President Donald Trump takes his seat at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, his first time attending the gala while in office.

The White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA), which organizes the annual meeting of the political press, opted not to go with a comedian host this year, as is tradition, but instead invited a mentalist and magician, Oz Pearlman.

Since his return to office last year, Trump's administration has taken a number of measures against the media, selectively restricting access for news outlets that have fallen afoul of his officials.

In a break with precedent, the White House now chooses which reporters are in the press "pool" that has rotating access to the president.

"The Press was extraordinarily bad to me," Trump said recently in a post on his Truth Social platform.

The WHCA inviting Trump this year, despite his repeated attacks on the media, has drawn backlash across newsrooms, and hundreds of journalists have signed an open letter asking attendees to call out Trump's press restrictions to his face at the event.

- 'Untouchable' -

Unlike all other presidents from the past 100 years, Trump has never attended the White House Correspondents' Dinner while in office -- until now.

But as opposed to the tradition of a comedian host "roasting" the commander in chief, this year's edition might see a bit of role reversal with Trump's attendance.

"My guess is that there is going to be some significant expression of grievances" by Trump, according to Robert Rowland, a communications professor at the University of Kansas.

"The other thing is that he does feel untouchable," he told AFP.

- 'Awkward and embarrassing' -

The "Nerd Prom" as attendees affectionately call it brings together hundreds of Washington journalists and media executives to raise funds for scholarships and awards.

And though the White House Correspondents' Dinner is presented as a celebration of America's press freedom, critics have lambasted the event as emblematic of US political journalism's insular, tight-knit nature.

"Even in the best of times, the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner is an awkward and ethically fraught affair," journalist Paul Farhi quipped in The Atlantic magazine, adding that this year's edition "figures to be even more awkward and embarrassing than usual."

Though it will be his first time attending as president, Trump has been a guest at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2011.

Then-president Barack Obama infamously teased him relentlessly at the event, making fun of the former real estate developer's proliferation of the birtherism conspiracy theory that America's first Black president wasn't born in the country.

"Say what you want about Mr Trump, he would certainly bring some change to the White House," Obama said at the event, showing an image of the White House transformed into a Trump-branded hotel and casino.

And although the joke has played out with some truth -- with Trump's second term marked by high-profile renovations of the White House and beyond -- Trump's rise to power and his return to the White House Correspondents' Dinner as president 15 years later may show who ended up getting the last laugh after all.

aue/jgc/md

The Wikimedia Foundation said Saturday it has found a compromise with the Indonesian government, which had threatened to block Wikipedia over domestic registration rules the foundation feared were overly invasive.

Under a 2020 regulation, all electronic system providers (PSEs) must register in Indonesia for what the government calls legal and user protection purposes before making their services available.

Critics have pointed to a provision that requires registered PSEs to take down content deemed as "causing public unrest and disturbing public order" as a free speech restriction.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns and operates Wikipedia, had previously said the provision "departs from international human rights norms".

In a statement sent to AFP on Saturday, the foundation said it had a "very constructive meeting" earlier in the week with the Communication and Digital Affairs ministry, during which it explained its "non-profit mission" and "emphasised its commitment to protecting user privacy and security".

It said the ministry informed it that the registration requirement was administrative in nature.

"With assurances that there would be no unlawful content takedown orders or data disclosure requirements that could put the Wikimedia community-led model at risk, the Foundation is working constructively towards the administrative next steps," the statement said.

The ministry did not respond to an AFP request for comment. 

The government last week gave the foundation seven days to register or face its services, including Wikipedia Indonesia, being blocked in the country of around 284 million people.

Last October, Indonesia briefly suspended TikTok's local operating licence after the social media platform refused to share information sought by Jakarta about violent anti-government protests earlier in the year.

mlr/tc