After the fastest admission process in the history of NATO, the Nordic country adapts to its new reality as a member of an alliance with a great impact on its military plans, but not on its resilience as a nation: “That is our thing” , it states

Japan has long had a serious problem with the abundant amount of child pornography that flooded its networks.. Also at street level. A report published in 1999 by the American magazine Wired explained that, in Tokyo, vending machines sold used schoolgirl panties and that in sex shops there were notebooks with illustrations of naked teenagers.

Unlike many other developed nations, it was not until 2014 when the authorities of the Asian country passed a law to punish the possession of images of sexual abuse of minors.. But the ban did not apply to anime or manga due to the commotion caused by artists and editors, who claimed their freedom of expression.

Almost a decade after that, the fight against child pornography is again topical in Japan, but this time because of artificial intelligence: there are more and more websites that publish sexual images of children generated by AI.

This was discovered by an investigation by the Yomiuri Shimbu newspaper. With the help of several experts, he found more than 3,000 images of minors, many indistinguishable from real photographs, uploaded each month by an Osaka-based technology company to its website, accessible worldwide and with 100,000 registered users.

“The page generated more than two million visits per month. But this company is just one of several companies selling access to AI-generated child pornography. Analysis was carried out only on free viewing sites. There are other paid ones that contain many more images of this type,” explains the research.

Registered users on these pages can also post and purchase AI-generated images of naked children. Using software developed by analytics company Similarweb, Yomiuri Shimbun found that about 40% of visits to the site came from abroad during the period from July to September this year.

In Japan, the law against prostitution and child pornography prohibits the production and publication of sexual images of children, but AI creations are not subject to this law. Therefore, technology companies are taking advantage of this legal loophole to create and share realistic AI images that represent the sexual abuse of minors.

But Japan isn't the only country that has a big problem with AI-generated child pornography.. In November, a child psychiatrist was sentenced in the US to 40 years in prison for recording minors and using an artificial intelligence application that removed the clothes of the children who appeared in the images.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a UK-based safety watchdog, says that around the world there are increasing numbers of pedophiles using freely available AI software to create this material.. “They use deep web forums to learn how to use open source AI models to create all the stuff,” explains Dan Sexton, chief technology officer at IWF.

A few months ago, a BBC program uncovered several image-generating software that was then sold to users around the world through a Japanese social network called Pixiv, used mainly by artists who share manga and anime.

The testimonies of Israeli children released in recent days who wanted to tell some of their harsh experiences complete a disturbing portrait of captivity, in which more than 140 people still remain.

Meanwhile, concern is growing in Israel for the life of its most beloved baby, Kfir Bibas, 10 months old, his brother Ariel, four years old, and his parents Shiri and Yarden, still kidnapped, after the fundamentalist group Hamas announced the death of the first three. The Israeli Army denounced the “barbarism and cruelty of Hamas” and stated that it was investigating the veracity of the information.

The picture of psychological terror applied in tunnels or houses in the Gaza Strip is far from the idyllic image that Hamas produces and disseminates in the daily television delivery of hostages since last Friday. when the truce agreed with his enemy began.

The stories to their families after more than 50 days of captivity are dominated by stories such as the violent welcome by Gazan civilians to a 12-year-old boy, the death threats to two girls so that they do not tell anything when they return, malnutrition, the absence of light, of minimal sanitary conditions and of news about their parents and grandparents, the isolation, the dangerous transfer from one place to another in the middle of the Israeli military offensive and a silence imposed with words or with rifles.

On their first days back in one of the noisiest countries, Israeli children do not speak but whisper. Hamas stole their freedom and kidnapped their voice.

When Eitan arrived in Gaza, they beat him. He is a 12 year old boy. We are talking about a 12 year old boy.

Eitan Yahalomi, 12, was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz. His father is still in the hands of Hamas. His testimony, told by his aunt Deborah Cohen, has increased the anger of many Israelis not only against Hamas but also against the population of Gaza, already high due to the participation of unarmed Gazans in the attacks of October 7. or his shouts of encouragement to the armed wing of the fundamentalist group in the delivery of hostages.

“When Eitan arrived in Gaza, all the civilians in that area beat him. He is a 12 year old boy. We are talking about a 12-year-old boy,” he denounced his Israeli-French nephew before admitting: “Maybe I was naive and wanted to hope that they would treat him well, but apparently they didn't.”. “They are monsters.”

“Eitan has been through terrible things. Hamas-ISIS forced him to watch the video of horrors, the movie that no one wants to see,” he told the French network BFMTV in reference to the images filmed by the terrorists themselves during their bloody attacks on the kibbutzim, bases and music festival. in southern Israel that sparked the massive and lethal military offensive.

Since his release, Eitan maintains a serious face. His trauma is also explained by the fact that he refused to get off the Israeli military helicopter that took him to the hospital after leaving the Gaza Strip.. “He has become much thinner and does not smile. On a physical level he is healthy, but we have a lot of work ahead of us,” his grandmother Esther says before the media at the health center about a task entrusted to family, friends, psychologists and time.

Esther reports that Eitan was isolated in a closed room for 16 days and then adds with some relief that he was later transferred to another place where he found a group of hostages from Nir Oz.. There he finally saw familiar and desired faces like that of his kindergarten caregiver, Shani.. She and 42 other members of the kibbutz remain in captivity.

According to their aunt, every time one of the children cried, the captors threatened them with their rifle to silence them immediately.

“He only whispered, you couldn't hear him”

This regime of silence explains the heartbreaking words of Tom Hand after recovering his nine-year-old daughter Emily, who not only came back thinner and with lice but without speaking out loud.. “The most shocking and disturbing thing about my encounter with her was that she only whispered, you couldn't hear her.”. I had to put my ear to his lips. They had conditioned her not to make noise,” she revealed to CNN.

In their first meeting, which went as he had hoped and while he was overcome with tears, Hand confirmed that his daughter had returned without the weight, joy and look prior to 7-O.. “You could see the terror in the glassy eyes,” he reveals about the girl kidnapped at Kibbutz Beeri.

During her more than 50 days in the hands of Hamas, this Israeli-Irish girl believed her father had been murdered. In this sense, they were tragically tied because for many days he also believed, due to a mistake in identification, that his daughter was already dead.

One of the hardest moments on his return was when he revealed that his stepmother had been murdered in the attack on the kibbutz.. Emily, by the way, thought she was kidnapped for a year and not almost two months.. Hand points out that the captors did not hit her but they did prohibit her from making noise. The captivity ended but not the suffering. On the first night in freedom, he didn't stop crying. Without noise. He's still afraid to make noise.

The one who never wanted to make noise at Kibbutz Nir Oz is the Filipino Jimmy Pacheco, 33 years old, who regained his freedom a few days ago. For many Israelis, he is a hero because when Hamas began the armed attack against this agricultural group, he refused to abandon Amitai Ben Zvi, 80, whom he was caring for.. The Israeli was murdered and he was kidnapped. Both brutally. His prayers bore fruit and now he can tell about it.

“I just didn't think they would forgive me because they killed my boss (the old man I cared for). “I am grateful because I showed that when you need God's help, he has your back,” he said in a video shared by the Philippine embassy in Israel.

Ben Zvi's two children went to the hospital to meet again with one of the anonymous heroes of 7-O and assure him of all the support he needs.. Pacheco revealed his last words to them. “Aba (father) asked me to tell you that he loves you very much and he yelled at me to run away to save myself”. It did not.

They are very scared. They told them not to tell anything, that they knew where they lived in Israel and that they would be murdered.

Silvie Elyakim has already been able to hug her granddaughters Dafna, 15, and Ela, eight. The father of these two girls as well as his partner and her son were murdered in the attack on the Nahal Oz kibbutz after being arrested in a dramatic Facebook session filmed live by the attackers. After being kidnapped, they were taken to Gaza where their car was stoned by Gazans.. “They are very scared. (The terrorists) told them not to tell anything since they told them that they knew where they lived in Israel and that they would kill them,” says the grandmother.

Dafna and Ela are now with their mother without forgetting the last month and a half in which they basically slept, ate and talked to each other without knowing if they would end up murdered and who survived in the kibbutz. In the Palestinian enclave – the grandmother tells Channel 11 from the city of Ofakim – the two were moved to various places, including houses, schools and a hospital.. Ela was surprised by the enormous family and national uproar caused by her return since she thought that no one in Israel knew they were in Gaza.. “They had told us there that no one wants us back here,” said the little girl.

In the department of the Ministry of Health in charge of the hostages, they do not give names or surnames to respect their privacy, medical secrecy and, above all, to protect those who are still captive.. But one of those responsible, Hagar Mizrahi, revealed that some were in “horrible conditions with clear medical consequences.”. “Some of the things I've heard in the last few days leave my heart breaking.. They are monstrous from any point of view,” he added to France Press.

After a traumatic experience that has mobilized an entire country that every day witnesses the cruel selection of lists between those who are released and those who remain in captivity while the countdown continues for the resumption of the war, dozens of children have returned to their homes in Israel. At least, physically.

Eight years at the top and an abrupt and precipitous fall have culminated this Wednesday with the approval of the latest General Budgets of the Government of António Costa. The outgoing Prime Minister of Portugal has remained in office until now and with full powers after his announced resignation in order to be able to definitively approve his latest public accounts in a debate that has served all parties to rehearse the next electoral campaign, that of the elections. advance notices on March 10.

Costa arrived at the debate better than when he resigned. The alleged case of corruption for which he left office has been deflated by the judge after the serious initial accusations of the Prosecutor's Office. But Costa has promised not to hold any public office again until the judicial investigation into Operation Influencer is over.. This Wednesday in the Assembly of the Republic has been, therefore, his last political act of relevance in a long time.. The candidate of the Socialist Party (PS) will be different and will be decided in primaries.

Tied in the polls, both the PS and the Social Democratic Party (PSD, center-right) used the debate in the Chamber, which approved the Budget with 120 votes in favor, 108 against and two abstentions, to address voters and gain ground facing the next appointment with the polls. The right and the extreme right have an advantage, but the Portuguese conservatives have stated until now that they rule out governing in coalition with the extreme right of Chega, so the next Executive is up in the air.

Costa preferred not to intervene in the debate and left the entire intervention at the lectern to his Minister of Finance, Fernando Medina.. At the exit, he did make a passionate defense of his mandate before journalists: “In eight years, we have turned the page on austerity,” he summarized.

An emotional prime minister concluded that in 2015 he took charge of the country in “a situation of excessive deficit”. After this time, he added, Portugal enjoys “solid fiscal stability”. “There have been eight years of convergence with the European Union as has not happened since the beginning of the century,” he assured.. After his last political act before leaving permanently, Costa guaranteed that “the Portuguese will have, in the year 2024, accounts that continue the path of improved income, promote investment and protect their future.”

The general accounts of Portugal were approved without problems thanks to the absolute majority of the PS. The PSD, Chega, Liberal Initiative, the Communist Party and the Left Bloc voted against. And the two deputies from Livre (ecologists) and the Animalist Party (PAN) abstained.

In their responses, the center-right and the radical right accused Costa of leaving, increasing the tax pressure on the Portuguese and leaving “weak economic growth”. On the opposite side, the spokespeople of the left assured that in this time public services have deteriorated and that the “good economic indicators” have not managed to improve people's lives.

However, the center of the attacks, especially from the right, were “the scandals” that have surrounded Costa's last year in power.. “No one fired the prime minister,” said a vehement André Ventura, the leader of Chega (extreme right), “he left office forced by a scandal of cronyism and corruption; not even your mother believes in you anymore,” he snapped, before that the president of the Assembly, Augusto Santos Silva, called him to order.

The arguments of the economic spokesperson of the PSD were similar: “The Costa Government collapsed from within, involved in poorly explained scandals.”

Although the prime minister is no longer being investigated for the serious crimes of which the Prosecutor's Office initially accused him, two of his closest collaborators, including his chief of staff, Vítor Escária, are in question and remain charged.. In the search of Escária's office, the police found 75,800 euros in cash distributed in envelopes.

The spokesmen of the right also took the opportunity to attack the socialist leader who is the favorite to win the primaries and be a candidate, Pedro Nuno Santos.. According to the PSD and Chega, he is “an impulsive radical” and a Government led by him “would be even more tragic for Portugal.”

The next Portuguese elections are planned to be open with a certain advantage in favor of the right, according to polls in recent weeks. The PSD and the PS appear tied, as do the liberals and the left. On that side, the blocs are fighting for victory for a handful of seats.

The extreme right breaks the tiebreaker in the polls, appearing as the third most voted force with up to 42 deputies (compared to the 77-80 of the PSD and the PS). However, for the moment, the leader of the PSD, Luís Montenegro, maintains that he will not govern with the radical right, contrary to what happened in the Netherlands, where the center-right opened the doors to govern with the extreme right and the ultra Geert Wilders won. the elections.