RUSSIA SAYS IT WILL NO LONGER SHARE INFO WITH US ABOUT MISSILE TESTS

Russia said Wednesday it will no longer give the United States advance notice of its missile tests — a month after suspending its participation in the most recent nuclear arms agreement between the two countries.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters that Russia will halt the information exchange after suspending “implementation” of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty​ (START)​.

“There will be no notifications at all,” Rybakov said, according to Russian news agencies.

“All notifications, all kinds of notifications, all activities under the treaty, will be suspended and will not be conducted regardless of what position the US may take,” he said.

New START calls for Washington and Moscow to share information about the current state of their nuclear forces every six months.

The two countries have also exchanged warnings about upcoming test launches.

Those alerts reduce the likelihood that a test launch will be misinterpreted as a missile attack by either side.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ​announced his intention to suspend the treaty in a rambling speech to the country’s parliament last month, claiming that the US and NATO cannot inspect Russian nuclear sites because they have declared war on the country over its invasion of Ukraine. ​

ISRAELI PM, BIDEN EXCHANGE FROSTY WORDS OVER LONG LEGAL OVERHAUL

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday rebuffed US President Biden’s suggestion that the premier “walks away” from a contentious plan to overhaul the legal system, saying the country makes its own decisions. The exchange was a rare bout of public disagreement between the two close allies.

Asked by reporters late Tuesday what he hopes the Israeli premier does with the legislation, Biden replied, “I hope he walks away from it. ” The president added that Netanyahu’s govt “cannot continue down this road” and urged compromise on the plan roiling Israel. The president also stepped around US ambassador Thomas Nides’ suggestion that Netanyahu would soon be invited to the White House, saying, “No, not in the near term. ”

Netanyahu responded with a statement expressing appreciation for Biden’s years of support for Israel and vowing to seek a “broad consensus” over the legal programme. But he also dismissed the outside pressure. “Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends,” Netanyahu said.

UN ADOPTS LANDMARK RESOLUTION ON CLIMATE JUSTICE

UNITED NATIONS — The UN General Assembly on Wednesday adopted by consensus and to cheers a resolution calling for the world body's top court to outline legal obligations related to climate change.

Pushed for years by Vanuatu and Pacific islander youth, the measure asks the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to lay out nations' obligations for protecting Earth's climate, and the legal consequences they face if they don't.

"Together, you are making history," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, emphasizing that even if non-binding, an opinion from the International Court of Justice "would assist the General Assembly, the UN and member states to take the bolder and stronger climate action that our world so desperately needs."

The resolution, ultimately co-sponsored by more than 130 member states, had been widely expected to pass.

The adoption sends "a loud and clear message not only around the world, but far into the future," Vanuatu's Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau told the assembly.

The resolution asks the ICJ to clarify the "obligations of States under international law to ensure the protection of the climate system."

Kalsakau, whose archipelago nation was ravaged by two cyclones over the course of just a few days, emphasized that member states had "decided to leave aside differences and work together to tackle the defining challenge of our times, climate change."

A week ago, the UN's panel of climate experts (IPCC) warned that global average temperatures could reach 1.5 C above the pre-industrial era by as early as 2030-2035, underlining the need for drastic action this decade.

While nations have no legal obligation under the 2015 Paris Agreement to meet emission reduction targets, backers of the new climate resolution hope other instruments, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, could offer some pathways for enforcement.

ICJ opinions are not binding, but they carry significant legal and moral weight, and are often taken into account by national courts.

HUMZA YOUSAF SWORN IN AS NEW LEADER IN SCOTLAND AMID PARTY ROW

EDINBURGH: Humza Yousaf was sworn in as Scotland’s first minister on Wednesday, becoming the first Muslim leader of a government in western Europe but already facing unrest in his party. The new first minister vowed to “well and truly serve His Majesty King Charles” III, despite his stated support for abolishing the monarchy.

ZELENSKY INVITES XI TO WAR-TORN COUNTRY

Ukraine’s president invited his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to visit the war-torn nation, saying they haven’t been in contact since the war began and he is “ready to see him here.” “I want to speak with him,” Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday, the week after Xi visited Russian President Vladimir Putin last week. China had no immediate response about whether a Xi visit to Ukraine would happen. Zelensky spoke to the AP aboard a train shuttling him across Ukraine, to cities near some of the fiercest fighting and others where his country’s forces have successfully repelled Russia’s invasion. He has extended invitations to Xi before in recent months, but this explicit call to visit comes days after the Chinese leader visited Putin in Russia last week. But the Ukrainian leader said he hasn’t communicated with Xi for the duration of the conflict.

IAEA CHIEF VISITS UKRAINE N-PLANT

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog visited the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in Ukraine on Wednesday as part of efforts to avert the risk of an atomic accident. Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, wants to assess first-hand the “nuclear safety and security situation” and press on with efforts to broker a deal to protect the plant.

UKRAINE STRIKES RUSSIAN-HELD CITY

Ukraine struck a railway depot and knocked out power in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol, deep behind the front line, on Wednesday amid growing talk from Kyiv of a counterassault against Russian forces worn out by a failed winter offensive. Ukraine’s exiled mayor of the city confirmed that there were explosions there.

11 KILLED IN STAMPEDES WHILE GETTING FREE FLOUR IN CASH-STRAPPED PAK

Lahore : At least 11people, including women, have died while trying to get free flour from government distribution outlets in Pakistan’s Punjab province in recent days, authorities said. The deaths were reported after several people flocked to the government distribution points after the cash-strapped Pakistani government introduced a free flour scheme for the poor, especially in Punjab province, to beat the skyrocketing inflation. The scheme aims to counter the rising popularity of PTI chief Imran Khan. Two elderly women and a man died on Tuesday, while 60 others suffered injuries in stampedes at free flour centres in four districts — Sahiwal, Bahawalpur, Muzaffargarh and Okara— of south Punjab. The other districts where deaths were reported are Fasailabad, Jehanian and Multan.

Police have been blamed for causing mayhem at the centres by manhandling and batoncharging the citizens waiting in long queues to get free flour. Security forces also resorted to aheavy-handed approach following the looting of free flour trucks in Muzaffarghar and Rahim Yar Khan cities. Punjab caretaker CM Mohsin Naqvi announced on Wednesday the opening of free flour centres at 6am (local time) throughout the province to reduce overcrowding. In a meeting held at the CM’s office, it was decided that provincial ministers and secretaries will visit flour centres over the next three days and assess the situation.

Former PM Imran Khan has condemned the PML-N government for its mismanagement at the free flour centres and held PM Shehbaz Sharif and Naqvi responsible for the deaths. Imran said that the “government of thieves” has made people’s lives so miserable that they are dying to collect a bag of flour.

PAKISTAN’S NA ADOPTS BILL TO CLIP CJ’S POWER

Islamabad : Pakistan’s National Assembly cleared Wednesday a bill that will clip the Supreme Court chief justice’s power to take suo moto notice in an individual capacity and transfer that privilege to a threemember committee of senior judges.

The SC (Practice and Procedure) Bill, 2023, will now go to the Senate, the upper house, which is scheduled to take it up Thursday. The National Assembly is the lower house. PM Shehbaz Sharif’s eight-party coalition government drafted and pushed the bill after two judges of a fivemember SC bench raised questions over the powers of the chief justice while hearing a petition by ousted PMImran Khan’s PTI on the election commission postponing polls in Punjab province. The judges had said the top court “cannot be dependent on the solitary decision of one man, the chief justice”.

The crisis originated in April last year when Imran and his government were ousted in a no confidence vote in the National Assembly and he launched a countrywide campaign soon after demanding immediate national polls. The campaign failed to move the government and Imran reacted by dissolving the PTI governed assemblies in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces this January. It was a pressure tactic as the constitution mandates elections within 90 days of an assembly’s dissolution.

ELON MUSK, OTHERS URGE AI PAUSE, CITING RISKS TO SOCIETY

Elon Musk and a group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives are calling for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s newly launched GPT-4, in an open letter citing potential risks to society and humanity.

Earlier this month, Microsoft-backed OpenAI unveiled the fourth iteration of its GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) AI program, which has wowed users with its vast range of applications, from engaging users in human-like conversation to composing songsand summarising documents.

The letter, issued by the non-profit Future of Life Institute and signed by more than 1,000 people including Musk,

called for a pause on advanced AI development until shared safety protocols for such designs were developed, implemented and audited by independent experts. “Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,” the letter said. OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to arequest for comment. The letter detailed potential risks to society and civilization by human-competitive AI systems in the form of economic and political disruptions, and called on developers to work with policymakers on governance and regulatory authorities. Co-signatories included Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, researchers at Alphabet-owned DeepMind, and AI heavyweights Yoshua Bengio, often referred to as one of the “godfathers of AI”, and Stuart Russell, a pioneer of research in the field.

According to the EU’s transparency register, the Future of Life Institute is primarily funded by the Musk Foundation, as well as London-based effective altruism group Founders Pledge, and Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Theconcerns come as EU police force Europol on Monday joined a chorus of ethical and legal concerns over advanced AI like ChatGPT, warning about the potential misuse of the system in phishing attempts, disinformation and cybercrime.

Meanwhile, the UK government unveiled proposals for a regulatory framework around AI. The government’s approach would split responsibility for governing AI between its regulators for human rights, health and safety, and competition, rather than create a new body dedicated to the technolog y.

TAIWAN PREZ’S US MEETING PLANS DRAW CHINESE THREAT

Beijing : China threatened “resolute countermeasures” over a planned meeting between Taiwan’s president and the US House speaker during an upcoming trip through Los Angeles. Diplomaticpressure against Taiwan has ramped up recently, with Beijing poaching Taipei’s dwindling number of allies while also sending jets flying toward the island on a near daily basis. Earlier this month, Honduras established diplomatic ties with China, leaving Taiwan with only 13 countries that recognise it as a sovereign state.

President Tsai Ing-wen framed the trip as a chance to show Taiwan’s commitment to democratic values on the world stage, as she left Taiwan on Wednesday to begin her 10-day tour of the Americas. “External pressure will not obstruct our resolution to engage with the world,” she said before she boarded the plane. She is scheduled to transit through New York on March 30 before heading to Guatemala and Belize. On April 5,she’s expected to stop in LA on her way back to Taiwan, at which time the meeting with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is tentatively scheduled.

Spokesperson for the Chinese cabinet’s Taiwan affairs office Zhu Fenglian denounced Tsai’s US stopover and demanded that no US officials meet with her. “We oppose this and will take resolute countermeasures. ” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said China would “follow the development and resolutely defend national sovereignty. ”

SAUDI ARABIA AGREES TO JOIN SCO AS A DIALOGUE PARTNER

Saudi Arabia has agreed to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) as a “dialogue partner”, state media reported on Wednesday, the latest indication of closer political ties with China. The SCO was established in 2001 as a political, economic and security organisation.

Besides China, its eight members include India, Pakistan and Russia, as well as four central Asian countries — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The cabinet approved the decision at a meeting on Tuesday chaired by King Salman, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

The move would grant Riyadh “the status of a dialogue partner in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation”, it said. Other countries with either observer or dialogue partner status include Egypt, Iran and Qatar. Riyadh’s move to partner with the bloc comes less than three weeks after the unveiling of a landmark China-brokered reconciliation deal with Iran.

Mr. Xi’s role in the rapprochement raised eyebrows given Saudi Arabia’s traditionally close partnership with Washington.

In his first comments on the matter, Mr. Xi said the dialogue promoted by China would “play a major role in strengthening regional cooperation”.

POPE SUFFERING FROM RESPIRATORY INFECTION, IN HOSPITAL: VATICAN

Vatican City : Pope Francis has a respiratory infection and will need to spend “a few days” in hospital for treatment, the Vatican said in a statement on Wednesday. The statement said the 86year-old pontiff had complained of breathing difficulties in recent days. It added that tests showed he did not have Covid-19. “Pope Francis is touched by the many messages received and expresses his gratitude for the closeness and prayer,” the Vatican said. The statement came hours after the pope was unexpectedly taken to hospital for tests. The Vatican initially said the check-up had been scheduled, but Italian media questioned that, saying a TV interview with the pope for Wednesday was cancelled at the last moment.

‘NO IMPUNITY FOR DEATHS OF MIGRANTS’

Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador vowed on Wednesday during his daily press briefing that there would be “no impunity” for those found responsible for the death by fire of 38 migrants.