January 17, 2024

*) Qatar announces humanitarian deal between Israel, Hamas Israel and Palestinian resistance group Hamas have reached an agreement that will enable humanitarian aid to be delivered to civilians in Gaza in exchange for the delivery of medicines to Israeli hostages. The agreement is a joint effort between Qatar and France, according to the Qatari Foreign Ministry. The ministry added that the humanitarian aid is scheduled to be dispatched to Egypt today before reaching Gaza. *) US Senate rejects measure to force human rights report on Israel Meanwhile, the US Senate has rejected a resolution that would have forced the State Department to examine whether Israel committed human rights violations in Palestine’s Gaza. As voting continued, 54 senators voted to set the resolution aside, thus meaning it cannot move ahead in the 100-member Senate. Israel's brutal war on Gaza — now in its 103rd day — has killed some 24,285 Palestinians and wounded 61,154, Palestinian authorities say. *) Russia calls Ukraine peace meetings 'pointless' In the Ukraine conflict, Russia has said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's plan to resolve the nearly two-year war had no hope of succeeding. Putin dismissed meetings devoted to Zelenskyy's plan as "pointless and harmful". A statement on the Russian Foreign Ministry's website underlined that the meeting had exposed differences between participants and produced no increase in support for the proposals. *) Sudan accuses east African bloc of violating sovereignty, suspends ties Sudan's army-aligned government has frozen ties with the East African bloc of Intergovernmental Authority on Development or IGAD. For nine months war has been raging between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, and has now spread to the remains of the ancient Kush kingdom. IGAD extended an invitation to paramilitary leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo to a summit in Uganda, which he accepted. But the move prompted the foreign ministry, loyal to army chief and Sudan's leader Abdel Fattah al Burhan, to announce it was suspending its ties with the bloc. And finally… *) OpenAI braces AI for anti-disinformation tools for 2024 elections ChatGPT maker OpenAI has said it will introduce tools to combat disinformation ahead of the dozens of elections this year. With elections due in the US, India and UK, OpenAI said it will not allow its tech to be used for political campaigns. It is working on tools that would attach reliable attribution to text generated by ChatGPT, and also give users the ability to detect if an image was created using AI.