US adds 339,000 jobs in May
Job creation in the US remained robust last month, despite rising prices and a sharp spike in borrowing costs weighing on the economy.
Employers added 339,000 jobs, but the unemployment rate rose to 3.7%, from April's unusually low 3.4%.
The gains were far greater than expected, continuing a streak of hiring that has surprised economists.
Analysts have expected hiring to slow as the US central bank raises interest rates to try to rein in rising prices.
But payrolls have remained resilient, raising hopes the economy will avoid a painful recession, while also stirring debate about whether the Federal Reserve will have to take more aggressive action to bring inflation under control.
Inflation, the rate at which prices rise, was 4.9% in the US in April.
While that was the lowest in roughly two years, it remained more than double the 2% rate that the bank considers healthy.
Expectations of what Friday's report might mean for interest rates in the months ahead were divided.
"This is the strangest employment report for some time," said Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics, pointing to the disconnect between the job gains and the rise in unemployment.
Some analysts said the widespread job gains in May, as hospitals, restaurants, bars, and construction firms added workers, was a sign that the Fed will have to raise interest rates more.
The Labor Department also said job gains in April had been greater than previously estimated.
Others said the report included signs that should convince the bank to hold off, pointing to moderating wage gains. At 3.7%, the jobless rate was also the highest in seven months.
US President Joe Biden, who has been dogged by public pessimism over the economy, celebrated the figures, saying it was a "good day for the American economy and American workers".
But others said the gains may not be sustainable.
Seema Shah, the chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, said the "blowout" job gains in May indicated that the "Fed's job is not yet done".
"The key question now is: can they wait until July or does this monster payrolls number trigger another burst of urgency?" she said.
"Perhaps the report details, with the unemployment rate rising and average hourly earnings growth slowing, tilts the decision to July. But overall, this is not a labor market that is slowing - and if it's not slowing, then inflation isn't coming down to 2%."
If the US central bank continues to raise interest rates, that would lead to higher borrowing costs for households and businesses seeking mortgages or other loans.
The expectation is that the economy will cool, easing pressures pushing up prices, as higher borrowing costs lead people to cut back on spending and businesses to delay expansions and other activities.
"By year-end, as the impact of Fed tightening feeds into the economy and corporates retrench, we expect a material weakening in job market conditions and an early-90s type economic recession," said Hussain Mehdi, macro and investment strategist at HSBC Asset Management.
He added: "A delay to this process implies the risk of higher-for-longer rates and a deeper downturn."
Source- BBC
TURKS AND CAICOS 3-DAY PUBLIC FORECAST
THIS IS A 3-DAY PUBLIC FORECAST FOR 6:00 AM, TODAY AND TONIGHT,
FRIDAY, 2ND JUNE, 2023, ISSUED BY THE BAHAMAS DEPARTMENT OF METEOROLOGY.
GENERAL SITUATION: DEEP LAYERED TROUGHING COMBINED WITH STREAMING TROPICAL
MOISTURE WILL CONTINUE TO PRODUCE WIDESPREAD SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS
ACROSS THE ISLAND CHAIN. HOWEVER, MOST OF THE PRECIPITATION WILL BE
CONCENTRATED IN THE CENTRAL BAHAMAS AND TURKS & CAICOS ISLANDS THROUGH TONIGHT.
WINDS WILL REMAIN LIGHT TO GENTLE AS A WEAK PRESSURE PATTERN REMAIN IN PLACE.
SPECIAL WARNINGS: RESIDENTS, ESPECIALLY IN THE CENTRAL BAHAMAS AND TURKS & CAICOS
ISLANDS SHOULD BE ALERT FOR THE POSSIBILITY OF FLOODING IN DURING HEAVY AND
PROLONGED RAINFALL EVENTS. THUNDERSTORMS COULD BECOME STRONG TO SEVERE AT
TIMES. THERE IS A FULL MOON THIS WEEKEND THEREFORE PLEASE EXERCISE CAUTION
WHEN TRAVERSING THE COASTAL ROADWAYS DURING HIGH TIDE OR IN FLOODED AREAS AS
WATER LEVELS COULD BE HIGHER THAN NORMAL.
AREA – THE CENTRAL BAHAMAS AND TURKS & CAICOS ISLANDS:
WEATHER: MOSTLY CLOUDY TO OVERCAST, WARM, AND HUMID WITH WIDESPREAD
SHOWERS AND ISOLATED THUNDERSTORMS THROUGH TONIGHT.
ADVISORY: EXPECT GUSTY WINDS AND HIGHER SEAS IN OR NEAR HEAVY SHOWERS AND
THUNDERSTORMS.
WINDS: SOUTH TO SOUTHWEST AT 10 TO 15 KNOTS IN THE CENTRAL BAHAMAS, EAST-
NORTHEAST BAHAMAS TO EAST-SOUTHEAST AT 10 KNOTS OR LESS, OCCASIONALLY FALLING LIGHT AND
VARIABLE IN THE TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS.
SEAS: 2 TO 4 FEET OVER THE OCEAN IN THE CENTRAL BAHAMAS, 1 TO 3 FEET IN THE
TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS.
HIGH-TEMPERATURE TODAY: 86°F / 30°C
LOW-TEMPERATURE TONIGHT: 73°F / 23°C
SUNRISE: 6:19 AM
SUNSET: 7:55 PM
MOONSET: 4:52 AM
MOONRISE: 6:41 PM
HIGH TIDE: 6:55 AM
LOW TIDE: 1:00 PM
HIGH TIDE: 7:27 PM
LOW TIDE: 1:57 AM SAT.
EXTENDED FORECAST (FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYS): TROUGHING COMBINED WITH
STREAMING MOISTURE IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE TO SUPPORT A WET AND HUMID
WEATHER PATTERNS ACROSS THE ISLANDS FOR THE WEEKEND.
FORECAST FOR SATURDAY:
WEATHER: PARTLY CLOUDY TO OCCASIONALLY OVERCAST WITH SCATTERED SHOWERS AND
ISOLATED THUNDERSTORMS, MAINLY IN THE SOUTHEASTERN ISLANDS.
WINDS: LIGHT AND VARIABLE AT 1O KNOTS OR LESS OVER THE NORTHWEST AND CENTRAL
BAHAMAS… SOUTH TO SOUTHWEST AT 15 TO 20 KNOTS WITH HIGHER GUSTS IN THE
TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS.
SEAS: 1 TO 3 FEET IN THE NORTHWEST AND CENTRAL BAHAMAS… 4 TO 6 FEET IN THE
TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS.
FORECAST FOR SUNDAY:
WEATHER: VARIABLY CLOUDY, WARM, AND HUMID WITH ISOLATED SHOWERS AND
THUNDERSTORMS.
WINDS: LIGHT AND VARIABLE AT 10 KNOTS OR LESS IN THE NORTHWEST BAHAMAS…
SOUTHWEST TO WEST AT 10 TO 15 KNOTS IN THE CENTRAL BAHAMAS AND TURKS & CAICOS.
SEAS: 1 TO 3 FEET IN THE NORTHWEST BAHAMAS… 2 TO 4 FEET IN THE CENTRAL BAHAMAS AND
TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS.
TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK: ⚠ PLEASE SEE THE LATEST NEWS ITEM ON NEWLY
FORMED TROPICAL DEPRESSION TWO, CURRENTLY IN THE NORTHEASTERN GULF OF
MEXICO AT 27° NORTH AND 86.5° WEST. ⚠
US Air Force denies AI drone attacked operator in test
A US Air Force colonel "misspoke" when describing an experiment in which an AI-enabled drone opted to attack its operator in order to complete its mission, the service has said.
Colonel Tucker Hamilton, chief of AI test and operations in the US Air Force, was speaking at a conference organized by the Royal Aeronautical Society.
A report about it went viral.
The Air Force says no such experiment took place.
In his talk, he described a virtual scenario in which an AI-enabled drone was repeatedly stopped from completing its task of destroying Surface-to-Air Missile sites by its human operator.
He said that in the end, despite having been trained not to kill the operator, the drone destroyed the communication tower so that the operator could no longer communicate with it.
"We've never run that experiment, nor would we need to in order to realize that this is a plausible outcome," Col Hamilton later clarified in a statement to the Royal Aeronautical Society.
There have been a number of warnings about the threat to humanity posed by AI issued recently by people working in the sector, although not all experts agree on how serious a risk it is.
Speaking to the BBC earlier this week, Prof Yoshua Bengio, one of three computer scientists described as the "godfathers" of AI after winning a prestigious Turing Award for their work, said he thought the military should not be allowed to have AI powers at all.
He described it as "one of the worst places where we could put a super-intelligent AI".
I spent several hours this morning speaking to experts in both defense and AI, all of whom were very skeptical about Col Hamilton's claims, which were being widely reported.
One defense expert told me Col Hamilton's original story seemed to be missing "important context" if nothing else.
There were also suggestions on social media that had such an experiment taken place, it was more likely to have been a pre-planned scenario rather than the AI-enabled drone being powered by machine learning during the task - which basically means it would not have been choosing its own outcomes as it went along, based on what had happened previously.
Steve Wright, professor of aerospace engineering at the University of the West of England, and an expert in unmanned aerial vehicles, told me jokingly that he had "always been a fan of the Terminator films" when I asked him for his thoughts about the story.
"In aircraft control computers there are two things to worry about: 'do the right thing' and 'don't do the wrong thing', so this is a classic example of the second," he said.
"In reality, we address this by always including a second computer that has been programmed using old-style techniques, and this can pull the plug as soon as the first one does something strange."
Source- BBC
Spanish Grand Prix: Max Verstappen sets pace in first practice
Max Verstappen set the pace in a first practice session that gave little insight into the true competitive picture at the Spanish Grand Prix.
The world champion was a massive 0.768 seconds quicker than team-mate Sergio Perez, who trails the Dutchman by 39 points in the championship.
Alpine's Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly were third and fifth fastest, split by the Alpha Tauri of Nyck de Vries.
Many teams were trying upgrades on a new version of the Barcelona track.
The fiddly chicane in the final sector, which was introduced in 2007, has been replaced and the circuit now has two fast right-handers to complete the lap, as it did in its first iteration from 1991 to 2006.
There had been questions as to whether the last corner would be taken flat-out, but in first practice, it was not by anyone.
Many drivers - including the Red Bull pair - were complaining that their cars were "bouncing" going into the final corner.
This marked a return of an aerodynamic problem known as "porpoising" that dominated much of last season and will be something teams will want to try to eradicate for the rest of the weekend.
Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso, whose car has a series of revisions focused mainly on the front and rear wings, was sixth fastest ahead of Kevin Magnussen's Haas.
The Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz were eighth and ninth ahead of Mercedes driver George Russell.
Ferrari have brought a revised sidepod and floor edge which they hope will address the inconsistency of the car's handling on long runs that has blighted their season so far.
There are enough parts for both cars but Sainz was running the new design and Leclerc the old as the team sought a comparison of their effects.
Source- BBC
Nikola Jokic powers Denver Nuggets to opening win against Miami Heat
Denver Nuggets eased to a 104-93 victory over a disappointing Miami Heat in the first game of the 2023 NBA Finals.
Nikola Jokic was the standout player as the Nuggets center picked up a triple-double - double figures in points, assists, and rebounds.
Denver never looked like losing in front of their home crowd in their first finals game for 47 years.
It puts them 1-0 ahead of Heat in the best-of-seven series.
Jokic rose to the occasion, finishing with 27 points, 14 assists, and 10 rebounds, as Heat had no answer for the 28-year-old Serb.
"Right now, the most important thing is to win a game, and I'm trying to win a game in any possible way," Jokic told ABC.
"I don't need to shoot and I know I don't need to score to affect the game, and I think I did a good job today. Everybody contributed."
Jokic was assisted by Jamal Murray with 26 points, while Aaron Gordon added 16 and Michael Porter Jr 14.
"I think that's the beauty of Nikola," Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. "I learned a long time ago the defense tells you what to do, and Nikola never forces it.
"One thing about Nikola is he takes great satisfaction in making plays for others. He really does. I think he takes more joy in that.
"I don't think he cares if he scored 27 points or not. He cares that we're up 1-0."
For Heat, Bam Adebayo put in a strong showing as he picked up 26 points but had little help from his teammates.
"They were in a pretty good rhythm, especially in that first half," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of the Nuggets.
"Our disposition, the efforts, the resolve in the second half was much better. But when you get to this level, it has to be complete games."
Source- BBC
TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS ANNUAL PRIMARY SCHOOL SPELLING BEE
Tianna Kerr of Alpha Christian Academy captured the title of Champion Speller at the Turks and Caicos Islands Annual National Primary School Spelling Bee (NPSSB) held on Thursday, 25th May 2023, at Beaches Turks and Caicos. The Ministry of Education, Youth, Sports, and Social Services congratulates Miss Kerr, her parents, and her coach, Heather Robertson, a veteran who coached the champion speller in 2005.
Twelve (12) talented spellers from across the country competed for the coveted title of Champion Speller:
Adelaide Oemler Primary - Darius Bassett and Coach Stafford Salmon
Alpha Christian Academy - Tianna Kerr and Coach Heather Robertson
BEST Institute - Sydney Kay Brisbane and Coach Mrs. Tanisha Rigby
Enid Capron Primary - George Williams and coach Ms. Sacha Deans
Ianthe Pratt Primary - Mark Morrison and Coach Ms. Natalia Butterfield
International School of the TCI - Lola Jimenez and coach Ms. Iman Rudi-Bonotti
MILLS Institute - Nathan Forbes and Coach Mrs. Denesha Robinson
Ona Glinton Primary - Joneil Belzi and Coach Ms. Jacqueline Henry
Oseta Jolly Primary - Ruth Lormine and Coach Ms. Tevynn Lewis
Providence International Academy - Kian Jules and Coach Ms. Karla Williams
Provo Christian Academy - Marbelli Castillo and Coach Ms. Crystal Glinton
Thelma Lightbourne Primary - David Lawrence and Coach Ms. Alexa Greene
At the end of ten intense rounds of spelling, there was a tie. After round 11, Tianna Kerr scored 42 points, and Ruth Lormine scored 41 points. Ruth was determined to hold on to the title held by the Oseta Jolly Primary School in 2019 and 2022.
The top Three winners were:
1st place Alpha Christian Academy - Tianna Kerr;
1st Runner Up Oseta Jolly Primary - Ruth Lormine
2nd Runner Up Ona Glinton Primary - Joneil Benzi
The 2023 Spelling Bee’s primary sponsors were F Chambers and Island Printing, with usual support from Flow TCI and The Sandals Foundation.
The following prizes were sponsored by F Chambers and Island Printing
Grand Prize/Winner: MacBook Air,
1st Runner-Up Prize: Apple iPad Mini
2nd Runner-Up Prize: Apple iPad Mini
Prizes for the top 7 spellers: Galaxy Tablet A7 Lite
Prizes for remaining participants: $50 gift certificates
Champion Trophies for the Champion Speller, Runners Up, and Champion Coach, and complimentary Trophies for the remaining spellers.
FLOW TCI also sponsored an Asus Laptop for the coach of the champion speller.
The Minister of Education, Hon. Rachael Taylor, said, ‘I congratulate all the champion spellers of 2023 who are indeed winners and who represented their schools well at the Bee. We are proud of you! I especially want to congratulate our winner, Tianna Kerr, and the Alpha Christian Academy Family! These events confirm that our children are indeed dedicated and committed students.
An event such as the annual Spelling Bee could only happen with the support of principals, coaches, teachers, and parents. Special mention must be made of the efforts of coaches and teachers who remained dedicated to the training of the participants despite their hectic schedules. Their contribution has once again made this year’s spelling bee a success.
A special thank you is extended to all volunteers who helped to make the competition a success:
Chairperson: Mrs. Sophia Garland
Scorers: Ms. Evadne Williams and Mr. Hugh Adams
Judges: Ms. Jasmine Malcolm, Mrs. Latoya Simpson, and Pastor Pedro S Williams
Pronouncers: Mrs. Cherylann Foreman and Ms. Kawanza Morley
Time Keeper: Mr. Christopher Foster
Expressions of gratitude are extended to Mr. Orville Morgan, photographer; Mr. Gary Andrew, Technician; Ms. Tanya Swann, Director of Sales, Groups, and Conventions at Beaches Turks and Caicos, for coordinating the hosting of the event at the resort and providing complimentary snacks; Mr. Greg Been, Ms. Zoia Fessler and Mr. Chris Jarrett, Director of RTC, for live coverage on Radio Turks & Caicos.
The Ministry and Department of Education are grateful for the 2023 Annual Spelling Bee sponsorship made possible through the generous partnership of Mr. Mark Fulford, Managing Partner of F Chambers, and Mrs. Ava Fulford, Founder and Managing Director of Island Printing. Special thanks to our long-term partners, Flow TCI and The Sandals Foundation, who continue to be gracious hosts of this event. Thank you for your remarkable partnership.
PM urges Jamaicans to take precautions as hurricane season begins
With the 2023 Atlantic Hurricane Season now underway, Prime Minister Andrew Holness is urging Jamaicans to take the necessary precautions to protect life and property.
He said that individuals should listen for and adhere to warnings issued by the relevant authorities and ensure that they are accessing information from credible sources.
“More and more, the infodemic is becoming a major challenge… you have to manage the information you consume, because if you consume the wrong information, it could mean your life,” he pointed out.
The prime minister was addressing a National Disaster Risk Management Council Meeting on Thursday at the Spanish Court Hotel in New Kingston.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is forecasting a busy hurricane season with 12 to 17 named storms at winds of 39 miles per hour (mph) or higher.
Of those, five to nine could become hurricanes with winds of 74 mph or higher, including one to four major hurricanes at Category 3, 4, or 5, with winds of 111 mph or higher.
Meanwhile, the prime minister provided preparedness tips, including stocking up on simple first-aid supplies and medication and at least two days’ supply of water and food that does not need cooking or refrigeration.
The prime minister also advises the trimming of trees with branches near buildings or electrical lines, and the storage of essential documents in plastic to prevent them from getting wet.
He is imploring individuals who live in at-risk areas to be on alert and to relocate or visit a shelter when advised.
Holness said that Jamaica, like many Caribbean countries, is extremely vulnerable to natural disasters, noting that the human and economic costs are substantial.
“According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Jamaica’s exposure to natural disasters ranks in the top 20 globally, and this is primarily due to our low-lying coastal zones, which is where most of our population exist and our five major fault lines,” he said.
Holness pointed out that the country has withstood approximately 40 natural disasters on a national scale between 1950 and 2017. These include hurricanes and storms, severe droughts, floods, and epidemics.
Source- Jamaica Observer
Mexican police find 45 bags of human remains
Mexican authorities have found 45 bags containing human remains in a ravine outside the western city of Guadalajara.
Officials were searching for seven young call center workers, who had been reported missing last week when they found the bodies.
The remains include men and women, and the number of bodies is unknown.
The search is expected to continue for several days because of difficult terrain and poor lighting.
The state prosecutor's office for the western state of Jalisco said in a statement that, following a tip-off in the search for the seven people, they had begun searching at the Mirador del Bosque ravine where they found the bags that included body parts.
Firefighters and civil defense were working with police and a helicopter crew to recover the remains.
The first bag was found on Tuesday, but because of the rugged terrain and lack of sunlight, the investigation resumed on Wednesday and will continue until all remains are located, the prosecutor's office said.
Officials said they would continue working to determine the number of dead bodies, who they were, and their causes of death.
It added that it would continue trying to establish the whereabouts of the seven people reported as missing.
Although it has not yet been established how the bodies ended up in the ravine, crimes of disappearance are relatively common in Mexico.
More than 100,000 people are missing, government figures suggest, with many being victims of organized crime. Perpetrators are rarely punished.
Government data shows many disappearances have occurred since 2007 when then-President Felipe Calderón launched his "war on drugs".
Three-quarters of those reported missing were men and one-fifth were under the age of 18 at the time of their disappearance.
Relatives of the disappeared say that the government is not doing enough to find them and that officials are indifferent when they report their loved ones as missing.
The United Nations has called it "a human tragedy of enormous proportions".
Jalisco is the heartland of a violent drug war, and some of the most powerful groups operating there include the Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG), and their rival, Nueva Plaza, which split from the CJNG in 2017, sparking violence across Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco state.
Source- BBC
War crimes evidence erased by social media platforms
Evidence of potential human rights abuses may be lost after being deleted by tech companies, the BBC has found.
Platforms remove graphic videos, often using artificial intelligence - but the footage that may help prosecutions can be taken down without being archived.
Meta and YouTube say they aim to balance their duties to bear witness and protect users from harmful content.
But Alan Rusbridger, who sits on Meta's Oversight Board, says the industry has been "overcautious" in its moderation.
The platforms say they do have exemptions for graphic material when it is in the public interest - but when the BBC attempted to upload footage documenting attacks on civilians in Ukraine, it was swiftly deleted.
Artificial intelligence (AI) can remove harmful and illegal content at scale. When it comes to moderating violent images from wars, however, machines lack the nuance to identify human rights violations.
Ihor Zakharenko, a former travel journalist, encountered this in Ukraine. Since the Russian invasion, he has been documenting attacks on civilians.
The BBC met him in a suburb of Kyiv where one year ago men, women, and children had been shot dead by Russian troops while trying to flee occupation.
He filmed the bodies - at least 17 of them - and burnt-out cars.
He wanted to post the videos online so the world would see what happened and to counter the Kremlin's narrative. But when he uploaded them to Facebook and Instagram they were swiftly taken down.
"Russians themselves were saying those were fakes, [that] they didn't touch civilians, they fought only with the Ukrainian army," Ihor said.
We uploaded Ihor's footage onto Instagram and YouTube using dummy accounts.
Instagram took down three of the four videos within a minute.
At first, YouTube applied age restrictions to the same three, but 10 minutes later removed them all.
We tried again - but they failed to upload altogether. An appeal to restore the videos on the basis that they included evidence of war crimes was rejected.
Key figures within the industry say there is an urgent need for social media companies to prevent this kind of information from vanishing.
"You can see why they have developed and trained their machines too, the moment they see something that looks difficult or traumatic, to take it down," Mr. Rusbridger told the BBC. The Meta Oversight Board that he sits on was set up by Mark Zuckerberg and is known as a kind of independent "supreme court" for the company, which owns Facebook and Instagram.
"I think the next question for them is how do we develop the machinery, whether that's human or AI, to then make more reasonable decisions," Mr. Rusbridger, former editor-in-chief of the Guardian, adds.
No one would deny tech firms' right to police content, says US Ambassador for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaak: "I think where the concern happens is when that information suddenly disappears."
YouTube and Meta say that under their exemptions for graphic war footage in the public interest, content that would normally be removed can be kept online with viewing restricted to adults. But our experiment with Ihor's videos suggests otherwise.
Meta says it responds "to valid legal requests from law enforcement agencies around the world" and "we continue to explore additional avenues to support international accountability processes… consistent with our legal and privacy obligations".
YouTube says that while it has exemptions for graphic content in the public interest, the platform is not an archive. It says, "Human rights organizations; activists, human rights defenders, researchers, citizen journalists and others documenting human rights abuses (or other potential crimes) should observe best practices for securing and preserving their content."
The BBC also spoke to Imad, who owned a pharmacy in Aleppo, Syria, until a Syrian government barrel bomb landed nearby in 2013.
He recalls how the blast filled the room with dust and smoke. Hearing cries for help, he went to the market outside and saw hands, legs and dead bodies covered in blood.
Local TV crews captured these scenes. The footage was posted on YouTube and Facebook but has subsequently been taken down.
In the mayhem of the conflict, Syrian journalists told the BBC their own recordings of the original footage were also destroyed in bombing raids.
Years later, when Imad was applying for asylum in the EU, he was asked to provide documents that proved he was at the scene.
"I was sure that my pharmacy was captured on camera. But when I went online, it was taking me to a deleted video."
In response to this sort of incident, organizations like Mnemonic, a Berlin-based human rights organization, have stepped in to archive footage before it disappears.
Mnemonic developed a tool to automatically download and save evidence of human rights violations - first in Syria and now in Yemen, Sudan, and Ukraine.
They saved more than 700,000 images from war zones before they were removed from social media, including three videos showing the attack near Imad's pharmacy.
Each image might hold a key clue to uncover what really transpired on the battlefield - the location, the date, or the perpetrator.
But organizations like Mnemonic cannot cover every area of conflict around the world.
Proving that war crimes have been committed is incredibly hard - so getting as many sources as possible is vital.
"Verification is like solving a puzzle - you put together seemingly unrelated pieces of information to build a bigger picture of what happened," says BBC Verify's Olga Robinson.
The task of archiving open-source material - available to pretty much anyone on social media - often falls to people with a mission to help their relatives caught up in violent conflict.
Rahwa lives in the United States and has family in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, which has been wracked with violence in recent years, and where the authorities in Ethiopia tightly control the flow of information.
However, social media means there is a visual record of a conflict that might otherwise remain hidden from the outside world.
"It was our duty," says Rahwa. "I spent hours doing research, and so when you're seeing this content trickle in you're trying to verify using all the open-source intelligence tools you can get your hands on, but you don't know if your family is OK."
Human rights campaigners say there is an urgent need for a formal system to gather and safely store deleted content. This would include preserving metadata to help verify the content and prove it hasn't been tampered with.
Ms. Van Schaak, the US Ambassador for Global Criminal Justice, says: "We need to create a mechanism whereby that information can be preserved for potential future accountability exercises. Social media platforms should be willing to make arrangements with accountability mechanisms around the world."
Source- BBC
Amazon to pay $25m over Alexa and Ring privacy violations
Amazon is to pay $25m (£20m) to settle allegations that it violated children's privacy rights with its Alexa voice assistant.
The company agreed to pay the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after it was accused of failing to delete Alexa recordings at the request of parents.
It was found to have kept hold of sensitive data for years.
Amazon's doorbell camera unit Ring will also pay out after giving employees unrestricted access to customers' data.
The ring will pay $5.8m to authorities, according to a filing in federal court in the District of Columbia.
According to the FTC complaint regarding Alexa, Amazon "prominently and repeatedly assured its users, including parents, that they could delete voice recordings collected" by the system.
But the company did not do this, keeping data for years and using it unlawfully to help improve its Alexa algorithm, the complaint said.
In a statement, Samuel Levine, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, accused Amazon of "misleading parents, keeping children's recordings indefinitely, and flouting parents' deletion requests".
The company "sacrificed privacy for profits", he added.
Similarly, the FTC said Ring - which Amazon bought in 2018 - allowed "thousands of employees and contractors" to watch recordings of customers' private spaces.
They were able to view and download customers' sensitive video data for their own purposes, the body said.
Amazon told the BBC in a statement that "Ring promptly addressed the issues at hand on its own years ago, well before the FTC began its inquiry".
But according to the complaint, one employee viewed thousands of video recordings belonging to female users of Ring cameras that "surveilled intimate spaces in their homes such as their bathrooms or bedrooms".
The employee was only stopped once their actions were spotted by a colleague, it said.
"Ring's disregard for privacy and security exposed consumers to spying and harassment," Mr Levine said. "The FTC's order makes clear that putting profit over privacy doesn't pay."
Amazon said: "While we disagree with the FTC's claims regarding both Alexa and Ring and deny violating the law, these settlements put these matters behind us."
The company added that it will continue to invent more privacy features on behalf of customers.
Source- BBC