accountability

A viral clip showing Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar reaching out and pulling down a Muslim woman’s hijab during an official event has ignited a fresh round of public outrage, celebrity condemnation, and legal and political debate — with former Bollywood actor Zaira Wasim joining prominent...

The NSW Parliament’s Planning System Reforms Bill 2025 passed with sweeping changes that will reconfigure who actually decides development applications (DAs) across the state — moving day‑to‑day DA decision‑making away from elected councillors and toward Local Planning Panels (LPPs) and...

Rishi Sunak’s move into senior advisory roles at Microsoft and Anthropic marks one of the most consequential post-premiership pivots in recent UK political history — a high-profile marriage of political capital and cutting-edge AI ambition that raises urgent questions about the revolving door...

Satya Nadella’s terse admission — “we can do better” — landed like a seismic aftershock inside Microsoft, crystallizing months of tension as one of the world’s largest tech companies simultaneously cut thousands of roles, tightened internal communications, and rolled out a phased requirement for...

In a deliberately fictional exercise staged by IPAA ACT, a cabinet decision to replace frontline public servants with AI agents culminates in spectacle and sharp lessons: procurement defaults to a dominant vendor, automated casework produces unexpected harms for vulnerable communities, and an...

Albania has just promoted an avatar to cabinet rank: Diella, an AI-driven virtual assistant that will now sit—digitally—in the role of minister responsible for public procurement with an explicit mission to make government tenders “100% free of corruption.” Background Diella first appeared on...

Satya Nadella’s blunt acknowledgement — “I think we can do better, and we will do better” — landed during an unusually tense internal town hall and has become the most visible signal yet that Microsoft’s leadership recognizes a widening credibility gap with its workforce. The admission followed...

Israel’s reliance on commercial cloud and AI tools has crossed a new threshold: investigative reporting and follow‑up coverage show the Israeli military’s Unit 8200 used a segregated Microsoft Azure environment to store and process huge volumes of intercepted Palestinian phone calls, and that AI...

John Arnett’s column about Officer MJ Byrd — a short, human moment under a park tree that ended with two lost children safely returned — is a small, clear rebuke to the breathless extremes of our AI debate: no matter how capable large language models and other generative systems become, there...

Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, told reporters from his office at the Redmond campus that the company will “investigate and get to the truth” after a Guardian-led investigation alleged that Israel’s Unit 8200 had used Microsoft Azure to store and process vast troves of intercepted Palestinian...

A coordinated pair of stories surfaced this week that together sketch two urgent and contrasting dilemmas at the intersection of technology, power, and public life: investigative reporting that Israeli military intelligence has been using Microsoft’s Azure cloud to store and analyze massive...

The UK government has announced a national programme to trial agentic AI across public services, inviting frontier AI labs to work with Whitehall teams to build prototypes that could automate routine “life admin” — from filling forms and booking appointments to tailored careers and...

Malaysia’s future rests not only on the infrastructure it builds or the policies it enacts, but critically on the values it instills in tomorrow’s leaders—values largely taught through the subtle signals and lessons found in the engagement, or lack thereof, between current leaders and young...

Here is a summary of the news you provided: Headline: European Commission regains GDPR compliance for Microsoft 365 use Key Points: The European Commission (EC) has regained compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regarding its use of Microsoft 365. The European Data...

India’s political landscape is often defined by a complex interplay of party discipline, public perception, and legislative maneuvering, a reality underscored by recent events surrounding Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. As July 22 approached, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in...

In the heart of Southern Africa, Zambia is witnessing a profound transformation in the way citizens interact with government services—a shift driven in large part by the implementation of Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Customer Service and the creation of the SMART Zambia Institute’s Citizens Portal...

In an era where public trust in municipal governance is both essential and increasingly scrutinized, the Town of Greater Napanee has taken decisive steps to reinforce the ethical framework guiding its staff. On June 11, council quietly adopted a comprehensive Staff Conflict of Interest Policy—a...

In recent decades, few issues have galvanized international attention and debate as persistently as the plight of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention facilities. During the past year, well-documented accounts, testimonies, and investigative reports have painted a harrowing portrait of...

At the recent Microsoft Build developer conference in Seattle, a series of protests erupted, drawing attention to the company's involvement in supplying artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing services to the Israeli military. These demonstrations, both inside and outside the event...

When allegations surfaced that Microsoft was censoring pro-Palestinian language in its internal communications, it sent shockwaves through the global IT community and raised urgent questions about the responsibilities of tech giants at the intersection of innovation, war, and human rights...