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The EU and Ukraine issued a joint statement on civilian detainees and the humanitarian consequences of Russia’s war of aggression.

The Council adopted an assistance measure, worth €120 million under the EPF that will benefit the Moldovan Armed Forces.

The Council strengthened EU sanctions on Sudan by targeting gold mining and gold exploitation to curb financing of the conflict.

The Council appointed a new EU Special Representative for Kosovo* and extended the mandates of the current EU Special Representatives for Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Horn of Africa.

The Council has launched the EU Partnership Mission in Armenia (EUPM Armenia) under the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) to enhance the country’s resilience and its ability to address hybrid threats.

Council formally adopts regulation aimed at helping farmers cope with high fertiliser costs.

Along with the fatalities, 19 people suffered injuries, the authorities say.

Robin Gosens soll am Donnerstag den Medizincheck bei Schalke absolvieren. Der deutsche Nationalspieler verzichtet bei seinem Abgang aus Florenz offenbar auf viel Geld.

Reich an Vitaminen und Antioxidantien. Datteln sind wahre Gesundheitsbooster und haben es richtig in sich. Denn wie Studien belegen, helfen bereits drei Stücke der Frucht, Alzheimer vorzubeugen.

Wie geht es den Schweizer Firmen? Was läuft an der Wall Street? Und wie entwickeln sich Bitcoin- und Goldpreis? Im Liveticker halten wir dich über die neusten Entwicklungen an den Märkten auf dem Laufenden.

Einbruch in Solothurn: Drei Personen sind in der Nacht auf Donnerstag in ein Waffengeschäft eingebrochen. Leseraufnahmen zeigen den Einsatz von Gewalt. Die Täter flohen mit einem Fahrzeug, die Polizei fahndet.

Sonne, hohe Temperaturen, abendliche Gewitter: Dieses Muster hat uns die letzten Tage beschäftigt. Am Donnerstag geht es erst einmal mit Unwetterpotenzial weiter – doch eine Abkühlung steht kurz bevor.

Seine Weltpremiere feiert der VW ID. Cross in schweren Zeiten für den deutschen Autogiganten. Umso wichtiger ist der Elektro-SUV für die Wolfsburger: Kann er bei der ersten Sitzprobe überzeugen?

Les conséquences de la tentative de coup d'État du 15 juillet 2016 ont transformé tous les aspects de la politique turque au cours de la dernière décennie, modifiant l'équilibre des pouvoirs à l'intérieur du pays et remodelant ses relations à l'étranger.

Der WM-Traum ist geplatzt! Die Engländer verlieren den Halbfinal gegen Argentinien auf dramatischer Weise mit 1:2. Nach dem Abpfiff liegen die Nerven blank.

Emotionale Szenen nach Englands WM-Aus gegen Argentinien: Harry Kane ist am Boden zerstört, Jude Bellingham verliert die Nerven und David Beckham muss von seiner Familie getröstet werden.

Der Schweizer Hypothekarmarkt ist im letzten Jahr deutlich gewachsen – dank tiefen Zinsen und stetig steigenden Immobilienpreisen. Erstmals durchbrachen die gesamthaft ausgegebenen Hypotheken die Marke von 1,3 Billionen Franken.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres at the launch of the preliminary report from the UN Independent Panel on AI. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 16 2026 (IPS)

As the international community continues to weigh the good, the bad and the deadly in artificial intelligence (AI), which is spreading far and wide with apparently no guardrails, the United Nations is taking a closer look at the impact, both positive and negative, of AI.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said last week that “the technology is heightening the danger, with sophisticated and increasingly autonomous new weaponry, including drones, able to inflict massive harm on populations.”

The new weapons, particularly Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), more commonly known as drones, seem to be a new wave of killing machines in recent conflicts, including the US vs. Iran, Israel vs. Palestine and Lebanon, and Russia vs. Israel, plus scores of civil wars in Africa and Asia.

Simon Adams, Professor of Human Rights at Murdoch University in Australia and former President and CEO of the Center for Victims of Torture—a leading international human rights and humanitarian NGO—told Inter Press Service no country in the world has openly admitted to deploying a weapon that is completely autonomous in the sense of killing humans without a person also being involved in the decision-making process.

“But there are already a number of powerful states—including several that sit around the table at the UN Security Council—who are increasingly dependent on drones, robots and AI systems to fight wars for them. Algorithms are choosing bombing targets and are already responsible for killing civilians in some major conflict zones.”

AI has the potential to improve the lives of billions of people on this planet. It would be a moral failing of epic proportions and a global tragedy if AI were harnessed to innovate new ways for humans to outsource the dirty work of waging war to robots, he said.

“Killer robots are a horror that belongs in science fiction. There is nothing more sinister than outsourcing killing and warfighting to emotionless, faceless machines that will select which humans get to live or die. Lethal autonomous weapons systems are ethically indefensible and should be illegal. We need a global ban before it is too late.”

Guterres has also reiterated his call to have them banned by international law, adding that some decisions must remain forever human, none more than taking a human life.

David Swanson, campaign coordinator for RootsAction, told IPS dozens of national governments have already stated their support for banning autonomous weapons, and dozens of others expressed their inclination to support such a ban.

So, a treaty could be established among those nations, on the model of the recent Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and then work could be done to add more nations to it. The initial signers and ratifiers would be the small and medium nations with the most willingness to defy the will of the U.S. government.

This banning of a particular type of weapon would ignore, as does the TPNW, the existence of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which requires disarmament of all weapons. It would also fail to address the morally repugnant act of ordering a young person, on pain of severe punishment, to press a button that sends a missile into people thousands of miles away—an act of dubious moral superiority to setting loose fully autonomous killer robots, he declared.

“But the biggest denier of reality in all of this is the U.S. government, which pioneered drone wars, was widely warned that it would not like the results when other nations followed suit, went on to suffer huge damage from foreign drones in places like the Persian Gulf during the current war on Iran, and altered its agenda not one iota. As guns sometimes appear to have more rights within the United States than children do, all forms of weaponry seem to be treated as deserving first consideration in U.S. foreign policy’,” he said

According to the New York Times of July 13, for decades Western governments have ordered supplies like tanks, fighter jets and submarines from contractors such as Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman—items that take years to deliver and are dizzyingly expensive: an F-35 jet can run to over $100 million.

“But the current trend is clear: defense technology is becoming cheaper and nimbler, with breakthroughs developed by privately funded companies rather than governments,” says an article authored by Vivienne Walt.

Of the Pentagon’s $1.5 trillion budget request by the current US administration for next year, about $55 billion is earmarked for the creation of a new unmanned, AI-powered arsenal.

Singling out a more positive non-military use of drones, the Times said last month that Sri Lanka, faced with one of the worst outbreaks of dengue fever in years, is using military drones to scan rooftops and find mosquito breeding grounds to eliminate them. The country’s air force has been routinely flying drones over high-rise buildings to identify breeding sites.

Nick Mottern, co-coordinator of the Weaponized Drone Ban Treaty Campaign, told IPS: “We are calling for a treaty to remove all weapons from drones, rather than to ban drones controlled autonomously by AI.

This is because all militaries will claim that there will always be a human in ultimate control of AI-augmented drones in spite of the fact that the drone will identify targets using AI, select weapons using AI, and present a human with all elements of the decision to kill using AI.

A treaty banning weapons on drones is the only way to stop the drone tsunami, he declared

Speaking at the First Global Dialogue on AI Governance in early July, Guterres said the world faced more than 120 conflicts in 2025.

Conflicts are becoming more protracted, more complex, and more interconnected, he pointed out. “We see widespread violations of international law and a growing sense of impunity. Technology is heightening the danger, with sophisticated — and increasingly autonomous — new weaponry, including drones, able to inflict massive harm on populations.”

“And online hate speech, misinformation and disinformation are spread and amplified in an instant. Too often, early warning signs are ignored. And responses are often a little too late.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Die Schweiz hat eine historische WM absolviert und ist bis in den Viertelfinal vorgestossen. Die nächsten Spiele finden nun im Rahmen der Nations League statt. Hier im Ticker gibts alle News zur Nati.

Romantische Sommerabende? Nicht unbedingt mit der Zürcher Gewerbepolizei. Restaurants auf öffentlichem Grund müssen auf elektrische Tischlämpchen und Lichterketten verzichten. Wirte verstehen das nicht, die Stadt signalisiert eine Lösung.