London is preparing for the final farewell to the Queen Elizabeth II and for the occasion Members of all European and non-European royal families are also expected in the city. The state funeral takes place Monday 19 September in Westminster Abbey, around which the Brits are already lining up for miles. Over 500 heads of state and important personalities have been invited to the event, and among those who have already confirmed their attendance, there are quite a few Sergio Mattarella, Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron. There will be royals from across Europe, many of whom share blood ties with the late sovereign, among other things. Among the first to announce that they would be present at the state funeral are King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spainwho will be with me at Westminster Abbey King Juan Carlos of Spainthird cousin of Elizabeth II, and his wife, Queen Sophia. Juan Carlos, who has lived in Abu Dhabi since 2020, abdicated in 2014 to leave the throne to his son Felipe VI.

King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain

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A very timely commitment to participate in the state funeral came King of the Netherlands Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima, who are accompanied by the Princess Beatrice, Queen of the Netherlands from 1980 to 2013 (when she actually abdicated in favor of her son Willem-Alexander). The last royals to respond to the invitation were instead Prince Alois and Princess Sophie von und zu Liechtenstein. The final farewell to Queen Elizabeth II will also be attended by the Prince Albert and the Princess Charlene of Monacothe Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg and his wife Maria Teresa, and the King Philip and the Queen Mathilde of Belgium. The latter and Queen Elizabeth II share a common ancestor: it is Leopold I, the first King of Belgium and uncle of Prince Albert, who married Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.

Prince Albert II and Princess Charlene of Monaco in 2018

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Part of Westminster Abbey’s 2,200 seats will then be reserved King of Sweden Carl XVI Gustav (75 years, on the throne since 1973: it is the longest reign in the history of the country) and his wife there Queen Silviathe Prince and Crown Princess of Denmark, Frederik and Mary, and his mother, Queen Margaret II The latter became the longest-lived monarch in Europe and the only one to actually reign after the death of her third cousin Elizabeth II at the age of 96. The Queen, who is 82, should have been celebrating her Golden Jubilee these days, on the occasion of Denmark’s 50th jubilee: the programs were changed, however, due to mourning for the English sovereign. That King of Norway Harald V (second cousin of Queen Elizabeth and incidentally 78th in line to the British throne) and his wife, Queen Sonja.

Queen Margaret of Denmark

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Díaz-Canel welcomed López Obrador and recalled the Grito de Dolores

The First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, greeted his counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, on the 212th anniversary of Mexico’s call for independence. “On another anniversary of the Grito de Dolores, I repeat what I said a year ago: “Among all the brothers that Our America has given us, Mexico is considered, for many reasons, one of the dearest to Cuba.” Long live Mexico !” he wrote on Twitter. (International Editor)

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization opposes interference in the internal affairs of states

The heads of state and government of the member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, consisting of China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, signed a final declaration at the end of the summit in the Uzbek city of Samarkand. , which reaffirmed the inadmissibility of foreign interference in the internal affairs of states under the pretext of fighting terrorism and stressed the need to continue nuclear disarmament at the global level. They declared that they oppose protectionist measures and trade restrictions that endanger the global economy. (RT)

Photo: Spanish television

The West has taken the wrong path, said the Pope

Pope Francis reiterated that the West was on the wrong track, stressing that this community — which the Pope says also includes Latin America — cannot serve as an example for the rest of the world. The highest representative of the Catholic Church also addressed the demographic crisis in Europe and advocated migration flows, particularly towards some countries in southern Europe that need labour. He called for raising intellectual values ​​and living with migrants. (RT)

Russia is ready to deliver 300,000 tons of fertilizers for free

Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that Moscow is ready to donate 300,000 tons of Russian fertilizers to developing countries, which will be stockpiled in European ports. The President noted that Moscow welcomes the lifting of sanctions against Russian fertilizers announced by the European Commission on September 10. He said the restrictions only affect European states. The President also noted that Russia is increasing grain exports to world markets. (RT)

When Ja’Kobi Moore decided to apply to a private high school in her hometown of New Orleans this year, she was told she needed at least one letter of recommendation from a teacher. She had never asked for one, so she sought help.

“Teacher recommendation letter,” she typed into TikTok’s search bar.

Moore, 15, scrolled through the TikTok app until she found two videos: one explaining how to ask a teacher for a letter of recommendation and the other showing a template for doing so. Both were created by teachers and are easier to understand than a Google search result or a YouTube video, said Moore, who plans to speak to her teachers this month.

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TikTok is known for its viral dance videos and pop music. But for Generation Z, the video app is increasingly also a search engine.

More and more young people are taking advantage of TikTok’s powerful algorithm, which personalizes the videos they see based on their interactions with content, to find information that’s eerily tailored to their tastes. This customization comes with the feeling that real people are synthesizing and providing information in the app, rather than faceless websites.

On TikTok, “you can see how the person actually felt about where they ate,” said Nailah Roberts, 25, who uses the app to search for restaurants in Los Angeles, where she lives. A lengthy written review of a restaurant can’t capture its ambiance, food and drink like a bite-sized clip, she said.

The rise of TikTok as a discovery tool is part of a broader transformation of digital search. While Google remains the world’s dominant search engine, people are turning to Amazon to search for products, Instagram to keep up with trends, and Snapchat’s Snap Maps to find local businesses. As the digital world continues to grow, the universe of ways to find information within it is expanding.

Google has noticed that TikTok is invading its domain. While the Silicon Valley company denied that young people are using TikTok as a replacement for its search engine, at least one Google executive has spoken out publicly about the competing video app’s search capabilities.

The story goes on

“In our studies, around 40% of young people don’t go to Google Maps or Google Search when looking for a place to have lunch. They go to TikTok or Instagram,” Google senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan said at a technology conference in July.

Google has included images and videos in its search engine in recent years. Since 2019, some of his search results have included TikTok videos. In 2020, Google released YouTube Shorts, which shares vertical videos less than a minute long, and started including its content in search results.

TikTok, which is owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance, declined to comment on its search function and products it may be testing. It said it was “always thinking of new ways to add value to the community and enrich the TikTok experience.”

A search on TikTok is often more interactive than typing a search query on Google. Instead of just slogging through walls of text, Gen Z people collect recommendations from TikTok videos to find what they’re looking for and watch video after video to sort out the content. Then they verify the accuracy of a suggestion based on comments posted in response to the videos.

This type of search is rooted in how young people use TikTok not only to search for products and companies, but also to ask questions about how to do things and to find explanations about the meaning of things. With videos often under 60 seconds long, TikTok seems to be returning more relevant responses, many said.

Alexandria Kinsey, 24, communications and social media coordinator in Arlington, Virginia, uses TikTok for many searches: recipes to cook, movies to watch, and nearby happy hour to try. She also turns to it for less typical questions, like looking up interviews with actor Andrew Garfield and weird conspiracy theories.

TikTok’s results “don’t seem as biased” as Google’s, she said, adding that she often wants “a different opinion” than what Google-optimized ads and sites say.

Kinsey said she also loved how quickly TikTok videos presented information. Though she sometimes Googles what she finds on TikTok, she said, “I rarely see anything that requires so much thought.”

The rise of TikTok as a search engine could mean more people encounter misinformation and disinformation on the app, which could then be amplified and shared more widely, said Francesca Tripodi, professor of information and library science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The platform has struggled with moderating misleading content about elections, the war in Ukraine and abortion.

TikTok’s algorithm tends to keep people in the app, making it difficult for them to turn to additional sources to verify searches, Tripodi added.

“You don’t actually click anything that would take you out of the app,” she said. “That makes it even more difficult to double-check the accuracy of the information received.”

TikTok has evolved into a place to find information. The app is testing a feature that identifies keywords in comments and links to search results for them. In Southeast Asia, it’s also testing a local content feed so people can find businesses and events near them.

The development of search and location functions should further anchor TikTok – according to Sensor Tower already the world’s most downloaded app for the age group 18 to 24 – among young users.

TikTok “is becoming a hub for content in a way it wasn’t in its earlier days,” said Lee Rainie, who leads internet and technology research at Pew Research Center.

That’s certainly true of Jayla Johnson, 22. The Newtown, Pennsylvania resident estimates that she watches 10 hours of TikTok videos a day and said she’s started using the app as a search engine because it’s more convenient than Google and Instagram .

“You know what I want to see,” she said. “It’s less work for me to really try to search.”

Johnson, a digital marketer, added that she especially appreciated TikTok when she and her parents were looking for places to visit and things to do. Her parents often wade through pages of Google search results, she said, while she only has to scroll through a few short videos.

“God bless,” she said, she thinks. “You could have had that in seconds.”

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Foreign domestic workers demonstrate in Beirut on May 1, 2016. ANWAR AMRO v AFP

Eventually, Hannah managed to leave Lebanon. “It’s a miracle, I didn’t believe in it anymore,” says the 28-year-old Ghanaian, who testified on the phone under a false first name for security reasons. On Thursday, September 15, she flew to Accra while living in hiding with a compatriot in a suburb of Beirut for four months. his wrong? He had fled the family, who employed him as a servant and subjected him to harassment and humiliation.

The ordeal began as soon as he arrived in Lebanon. On December 15, 2019, an agent picked her up at Beirut Airport and then drove her to Tyr in the south of the country. There she discovers a different reality than that of the “super job” sold to her by a friend who is herself employed in Lebanon. She was the one who put her in touch with a Ghanaian recruiter.

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“She lied to me. It was exhausting. I worked every day from sunrise to sunset in a big house with five people. I did all the housework, the garden,” she recalls. After a few months, his body gives Hannah asks to see a doctor, but her employer, she says, refuses. “So I begged him to let me go back to Ghana. I didn’t want to die here.”

Like Hannah, countless women are exploited as craftswomen in Lebanon, but also in the countries of the Persian Gulf. It is in this region of the world that most cases of “forced labour” – particularly domestic work – are concentrated in relation to the population, according to the Global Slavery Index published on Monday. The majority of domestic workers hail from Asian countries, but sub-Saharan Africa offers a growing – and vulnerable – workforce.

“A system of total control”

Abuses result in Lebanon, as in most countries in the Arabian Peninsula, from the “kafala” (“guarantor”) sponsorship system to which low-skilled foreign workers are exposed. According to this practice, derived from common law and institutionalized during British colonization, it is the employer who signs the work permit, authorizes leaving the territory and extends the contract, with or without the consent of the worker, who is obliged to reside at home.

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Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian girl, died after falling into a coma after being arrested by police in Tehran on Tuesday night for improperly wearing a veil. This was announced by IranWire. According to the Iranian section of Amnesty International, the girl was “arbitrarily detained by the so-called vice squad” and there are allegations of torture in detention. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has asked the Interior Ministry to launch an investigation into the girl’s death, the Tehran government said

Raisi urged Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi to “investigate the causes of the accident with urgency and special attention.” But the protest exploded when Iranian police violently crushed the street demonstrations. The demonstrators, explains Arabic broadcaster Al Arabiya, marched towards the hospital where the 22-year-old girl died and chanted anti-authority slogans. The security forces intervened by blocking the march and beating the participants, the broadcaster said, after which the police made numerous arrests.