France has Europe’s largest population of Muslims, over 6 million. File.
| Photo Credit: AFP

New Delhi:

India is developing its own large language model in a public-private partnership (PPP) mode, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the AI Action Summit in Paris.

The PPP model is used to bring resources together and make them available to startups, he said.

“India is building its own large language model considering our diversity. We also have a unique public-private partnership model for pooling resources like compute power. It is made available to our startups and researchers at an affordable cost. India is ready to share its experience and expertise to ensure that the future of AI is for good and for all,” PM Modi said.

The prime minister, who is co-chairing the major event on artificial intelligence along with French President Emmanuel Macron, said while India is at the dawn of the AI age, machines can never overpower humans.

“We are at the dawn of the AI age that will shape the course of humanity. Some people worry about machines becoming superior in intelligence to humans. But no one holds the key to our collective future and shared destiny other than us humans. That sense of responsibility must guide us,” PM Modi said.

India’s digital public infrastructure is open and accessible to all, he said, referring to massively successful programmes such as the UPI network in a nation of over a billion people.

“India has successfully built a digital public infrastructure for over 1.4 billion people at a very low cost. It is built around an open and accessible network. It has regulations and a wide range of applications to modernise our economy, reform governance and transform the lives of our people,” he said.

The data from these projects form the foundation of the National AI Mission, he added.

“During our G20 presidency, we built a consensus on AI… Today, India leads in AI adoption and techno-legal solutions on data privacy. We are developing AI applications for public good, and have one of the world’s largest AI talent pools,” PM Modi said.

During his stay in France, PM Modi will visit the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, a significant international collaboration in nuclear fusion research.

In a tribute to historical ties, PM Modi will also visit the Mazargues War Cemetery to honour Indian soldiers who were killed in action in the World Wars.

From France, PM Modi will fly to the US on a two-day visit at the invitation of US President Donald Trump.

With inputs from PTI

First mass at Notre Dame after reopening

| Video Credit:
The Hindu

Paris’s iconic Notre Dame cathedral is back. It reopened on December 7 following the devastating fire of 2019.

Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, rector of Notre-Dame de Paris, held the first mass open to the public after the 12^th century cathedral was restored.

Some of the distinguished guests included French President Emmanuel Macron, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Video: Images France TV

Paris, France:

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and one of Donald Trump’s closest allies, made a surprise appearance Saturday at the ceremony marking the re-opening of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.

The boss of Tesla, SpaceX and social media network X landed during the afternoon at Le Bourget airport north of Paris, which is frequently used by private jets, an airport source told AFP, asking not to be named.

Musk was then present inside the cathedral for the ceremony on Saturday evening to mark its re-opening after the 2019 fire. His attendance had not previously been announced.

He took a picture of the cathedral’s immense doors before entering and also had an exchange inside with Trump who was sitting in the front row.

“Magnificat Cathedrale,” he posted on X with a video of the cathedral’s vaulted roof. 

Musk has taken an influential and highly visible role at Trump’s side since the Republican won re-election in the United States on November 5.

He spent at least $270 million funding Trump’s campaign and he moved into the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after election day while the next White House team was assembled. 

The two men have watched an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout in New York, as well as the launch of one of Musk’s SpaceX rockets.

Trump has selected the South African-born tycoon and fellow ally Vivek Ramaswamy to head the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency”, a commission that will recommend ways of slashing billions of dollars in federal spending.

Given that Musk’s businesses are regulated by and receive contracts from the US government, his role has raised concerns about conflicts of interest.

Trump accepted French President Emmanuel Macron’s invitation to attend the re-opening of Notre Dame cathedral, more than five years after it was devastated by a fire.

He met Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris on Saturday, renewing a relationship that was often tense during Trump’s first term in office.

The president-elect has nominated several people close to Musk for roles in his new administration, including investor David Sacks as the so-called “AI and crypto czar”.

Billionaire astronaut Jared Isaacman, who has collaborated with Musk’s SpaceX, was named the head of US space agency NASA.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Paris:

A massive shootout linked to drug trafficking has left a teenager and four others seriously wounded in western France, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said Friday, in the latest such gunfight to injure children.

The shootout erupted in front of a restaurant overnight in the western city of Poitiers, Retailleau told BFMTV/RMC radio. 

“What started as a shooting at a restaurant ended up in a fight between rival gangs that involved several hundred people”, Retailleau said.

The 15-year-old boy wounded was between life and death, he said.

The minister warned that the country was at a “tipping point” when it came to drug trafficking violence, saying that he was planning to travel later in the day to the northwestern city of Rennes, where a five-year-old child was also between life and death after being shot on Saturday in another fire exchange related to drug trafficking.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Paris:

The Olympic rings will remain on the Eiffel Tower until at least 2028, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has announced. The rings were mounted ahead of the Paris Olympics and became a popular tourist attraction. However, the mayor’s decision to keep them as is has received opposition from lawmakers, residents, and conservation groups, who argue that the symbol of the International Olympic Committee does not belong to a protected historical landmark like the Eiffel Tower. Her rivals accuse her of political opportunism ahead of the 2026 mayoral election.

“The proposal that I have made for the rings… is a proposal that until 2028, until the Games in Los Angeles, we will leave the rings on the Eiffel Tower,” she said at a press conference.

The Eiffel Tower was a central backdrop for several Olympic events, including the opening ceremony and beach volleyball. However the temporary structures built for the Games are supposed to be dismantled, and the city is expected to return to its original state.

Mayor Hidalgo claimed she wanted to preserve the “festive spirit” of the successful Games, but her opponents see it as an attempt to leave her mark on the iconic monument. David Alphand, a right-wing city councillor and ally of Ms Hidalgo’s rival Rachida Dati, accused the mayor of trying to “recuperate the positive spin-offs” of the Olympics for her political gain.

Ms Hidalgo’s camp has dismissed criticism as typical Parisian resistance to change, citing the initial opposition to the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre’s pyramids. However, descendants of Gustave Eiffel (who designed the Eiffel Tower), including Olivier Berthelot-Eiffel, argue that the rings disrupt the tower’s design and disrespect their ancestor’s work.

“The rings completely break the design of the monument… it does not respect the work of our ancestor,” Mr Berthelot-Eiffel, chairing an association of Eiffel’s descendants, told Politico. 

While decorating the tower is not unprecedented, this is the first time the Eiffel family has publicly opposed plans related to the monument. Meanwhile, the Mayor claimed the decision was hers to make, as the tower was owned by the city of Paris. But rivals like Rachida Dati and heritage groups argue that modifications require careful consideration and approval.

“The Eiffel Tower is a protected monument that can only be modified under certain conditions and after an impact assessment,” Ms Dati noted.

Julien Lacaze, president of the association “Sites & Monuments,” France’s oldest heritage defence association, slammed Ms Hidalgo’s proposal as a way to promote herself, latching onto the Eiffel Tower like a “parasite” to “take advantage of its fame… to say these are my Games.”

The current 30-ton steel rings will have to come down as they are too heavy to remain there permanently. The Mayor said the city planned to replace them with new, lighter ones.

The controversy comes as Ms Hidalgo prepares to face off against Rachida Dati in the 2026 mayoral election. Ms Dati is the outgoing culture minister and current mayor of the arrondissement where the Eiffel Tower is located. 

Paris:

The investigation into Telegram boss Pavel Durov who has fired a warning shot to global tech titans was started by a small cybercrime unit within the Paris prosecutor’s office, led by 38-year-old Johanna Brousse.

The arrest of Durov, 39, last Saturday marks a significant shift in how some global authorities may seek to deal with tech chiefs reluctant to police illegal content on their platforms.

The arrest signalled the mettle of the J3 cybercrime unit, but the true test of its ambitions will be whether Brousse can secure a conviction based on a largely untested legal argument, lawyers said.

In an unprecedented move against a major tech CEO, prosecutors argued that Durov bears responsibility for the alleged illegality on his platform, placing him under formal investigation on organized crime charges. He is suspected of complicity in running an online platform that allows the posting of child sex abuse images, drug trafficking and fraud. 

Durov’s lawyer said on Thursday it was “absurd” for him to be held responsible and that the app abided by European laws, echoing an earlier statement by Telegram itself.

Being placed under formal investigation in France does not imply guilt or necessarily lead to trial, but indicates judges consider there is enough evidence to proceed with the probe. Investigations can last years before being sent to trial or dropped. Durov is out on bail but barred from leaving France.

Brousse’s unit began investigating Durov earlier this year after seeing his app being used for countless alleged crimes, and growing frustrated by the “almost total lack of response from Telegram to judicial requests”, Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau said on Wednesday.

Brousse declined to comment.

In an interview with the newspaper Liberation in January, Brousse said her office was overseeing a growing number of probes involving Telegram and rival messaging app Discord, adding that tackling crime on them was “one of my battles”. 

Jason Citron, Discord’s CEO, did not respond to a request for comment. 

Brousse’s J3 cybercrime unit is France’s most important, with a licence to prosecute nationwide. But it also is small, with just five prosecutors, well below the 55-60 cybercrime prosecutors in Switzerland, a 2022 parliamentary report found. With limited resources, they “prioritize the most serious crimes”, Brousse told Le Figaro last year.

Brousse said in a 2022 podcast appearance she wanted to be tough “so cybercriminals believe that if they attack France, they will be judged and punished very severely”.

“We want people to be prosecuted, either in their country … or in France through arrest warrants,” she said.

Her office was used to “extremely sensitive cases”, she added. “Sometimes, legal and geopolitical issues intersect.”

Patrick Perrot, who coordinates AI-assisted probes at the French gendarmerie and advises the Interior Ministry’s cyber command unit, said the J3 had been innovative in seeking to prosecute cases that set an international precedent. 

“I think it shows that you can’t do whatever you want with these platforms,” he told Reuters. “It’s a real question for the future, because these platforms won’t stop multiplying, so the challenge of regulation is essential.”

TOUGH LEGAL GROUND?

Brousse has led the J3 since 2020, which has given her oversight of one of the most important – and controversial – French cybercrime cases ever. 

In late 2020, the J3 took charge of the probe into Sky ECC, which alongside Encrochat was one of the main encrypted communications services used by gangsters to buy drugs and weapons, or murder rivals. A few years earlier, French, Dutch and Belgian police had hacked into their servers, which were housed in northern France, giving French prosecutors jurisdiction over many of the resulting probes. 

There have been more than 6,500 arrests since the takedown of Encrochat in 2020, according to Europol, with the legality of the intercepts challenged in appeals courts across Europe.

Paul Krusky, the Canadian Encrochat boss, was extradited in February from the Dominican Republic to France, where he now awaits trial. Lawyers for Sky ECC’s Jean-François Eap are contesting his French arrest warrant.

Stephane Bonifassi, Eap’s lawyer, said his client was innocent, adding that “Sky ECC was not conceived as a tool for criminals, nor commercialized as such”.

Krusky’s lawyer, Antoine Vey, said his client was innocent.

“The service set up by Paul Krusky, like other services that have enjoyed global success, was only intended to protect the privacy and freedom of exchange of its users, and in no case to support criminal activities,” Vey said in a statement.

Two other French lawyers who have worked on Sky ECC and Encrochat cases told Reuters that these earlier probes gave prosecutors the ambition – and a blueprint – to target Durov.

Robin Binsard, who has fought Encrochat cases at France’s top court, said prosecutors would need to prove that Durov knew and approved of the criminality on the app, calling their argument “totally questionable”.

The fact that Telegram didn’t comply with law enforcement requests “does not automatically make one an accomplice to a criminal project”, he added.

Binsard said it was clear “France is pursuing encrypted messaging providers”, and that other operators of such apps, such as Signal, “should be concerned about whether or not they are in compliance with French regulations. Because the message is clear if they are not, legal action will take place”.

Signal did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

A source at the Paris prosecutor’s office said the Sky ECC probe had no links to the Telegram investigation.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

French railway company SNCF suffered a massive attack of sufficient magnitude to paralyze its TGV network on the night of July 25, 2024 to July 26, the group told AFP and TGV traffic on the Atlantic, North and East routes will be very disrupted, a few hours before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games
| Photo Credit: AFP

High-speed trains around France were hit by several “malicious acts” on July 26 that heavily disrupted traffic on the day of the high-risk opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, according to the national rail company SNCF.

Travel to and from London beneath the English Channel, to neighboring Belgium, and across the west, north and east of France were affected by what SNCF called a series of coordinated overnight incidents.

Also read | Postcard from Paris

Government officials denounced the incidents hours before the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, which are happening around France, though there was no immediate sign of a link to the Games.

National police said authorities are investigating what happened. French media reported a big fire on a busy western route.

Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete said in a post on X that he “firmly condemns these criminal incidents,” and that SNCF is working to restore traffic.

Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castera said authorities are working to “evaluate the impact on travelers, athletes, and ensure the transport of all delegations to the competition sites” for the Olympics. Speaking on BFM television, she said, “Playing against the Games is playing against France, against your own camp, against your country.” She didn’t identify who was behind the vandalism.

Paris police chief Laurent Nunez, speaking on France Info radio, said he would send police reinforcement to overcrowded train stations in relation to the SNCF incidents.

Passengers at St. Pancras station in London were warned to expect delays of around an hour to their Eurostar journeys. Announcements in the departure hall at the international terminus informed travelers heading to Paris that there was a problem with overhead power supplies.

Paris:

A man shot and seriously wounded two officers in a Paris police station on Thursday after grabbing a weapon, a source close to the case told AFP.

The officers had just arrested the man and were searching him when he seized one of their weapons and opened fire, according to a police source.

The source close to the case said the incident happened in the French capital’s 13th district shortly before 10:30 pm (2030 GMT), adding that the officers were in critical care.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

French President Emmanuel Macron and Chinese President Xi Jinping review the troops, on May 7, 2024 at the Tarbes airport, southwestern France.
| Photo Credit: AP

France’s President is hosting China’s Leader at a remote mountain pass in the Pyrenees on May 7 for private meetings after a high-stakes state visit in Paris dominated by trade disputes and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron made a point of inviting Chinese President Xi Jinping to the Tourmalet Pass near the Spanish border, where Mr. Macron spent time as a child visiting his grandmother. It is meant to be a reciprocal gesture after Mr. Jinping took Mr. Macron last year to the residence of the governor of Guangdong province, where the Chinese president’s father once lived.

Snow coated nearby slopes after new snowfall overnight, and security was tightened around the area. The winding roads up to the pass were blocked by authorities on May 7 for dozens of kilometers (miles).

The mountain meetings come after a grandiose state visit by Mr. Jinping on May 6 that included a ceremonial welcome at the monument housing Napoleon’s tomb and a state dinner at the Elysee Palace with celebrities and magnates.

Mr. Jinping is on a trip to Europe aimed at reinvigorating relations at a time of global tensions. He heads next to Serbia and Hungary.