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It all started off as a joke, a French researcher told AFP.But what the team found was a piece of history — a long-lost page from a legendary manuscript by ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes which had been languishing, forgotten, in the archives of a French museum.Archimedes, considered one of history’s greatest mathematicians and inventors, lived in the third century BC in the city of Syracuse. Among his many discoveries was the principle of buoyancy, which he struck while stepping out of a bath — famously prompting him to shout “Eureka!”.This treatise and many others of his lasted down through the centuries on a manuscript called a palimpsest, which changed hands many times.A palimpsest is a handwritten parchment that has had its original text scraped off before being written over, sometimes several times.Victor Gysembergh, the researcher at France’s CNRS research centre who found the missing page of Archimedes’s palimpsest, told AFP it was a “treasure trove of lost texts from antiquity”.As well as Archimedes’s mathematical breakthroughs, the manuscript contains his “philosophical, literary and religious” writings, Gysembergh enthused.The palimpsest itself was not written by Archimedes’s hand but was instead copied during the 900s AD.Around two centuries later, the text was erased and re-used as a Christian prayer book.- From Constantinople to Bezos? -That was just the beginning of the journey for this unique manuscript, whose fate followed the twists and turns of history.By the 1800s, it was held by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, including inside a library in Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul.Danish historian Johan Ludvig Heiberg found the palimpsest there — and took photographs of every page in 1906.However, at some point during World War I, the document vanished without a trace.It somehow wound up in the private collection of a French family, which eventually put it up for auction in 1998. It was purchased by an anonymous Western businessman.Insiders quoted by Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper claimed it was Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, although the true identity remains unknown.But three of the palimpsest’s 177 pages had disappeared.This is where Gysembergh comes in.”I am interested in palimpsests because they are a way to discover lost texts,” said the lead author of a study in the German Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy.Sometimes Gysembergh searches for palimpsests in the libraries of different cities for fun.The lost Archimedes’s page was discovered “due in part to a joke”, he said.One day he was chatting with his office colleagues, when he mentioned that the old kings of France had kept part of their library in the central French city of Blois.”Hey, let’s see if there’s a palimpsest in Blois,” he told his colleagues.- ‘Very unexpected’ -Gysembergh was astonished to find a hit on Arca — an online catalogue of digitised manuscripts — in the city’s museum of fine art.”It was very unexpected to stumble upon a Greek manuscript,” Gysembergh said. “And even more so to find a 10th-century scientific treatise!”The researcher then compared the pages to the photos of Archimedes’s palimpsest taken in 1906.The handwriting, the geometric figures, even the errors all perfectly matched, he said.One side of the page contains Archimedes’s treatise “On the sphere and the cylinder”, which was the first time the surface area of a sphere and its volume were described in such detail.On the other side is a newer drawing, which is thought to have been added in the 1900s in an attempt to increase the document’s value.To decipher the text below the drawing, Gysembergh hopes to carry out high-tech analysis — such as multispectral imaging and X-ray fluorescence — in the coming year.He also hopes that this breakthrough will help find the other two missing pages of the palimpsest.”Until this discovery, we had no reason to hope we would ever find them,” he said.”Now, if institutions or private collectors have this kind of manuscript, they should think about whether it could be one of the other lost pages.”

Historically considered a more peaceful species than their chimpanzee cousins, bonobos are actually just as aggressive — but target their ire most often at males, according to a study published Wednesday.Living in matriarchal societies, the gentle-eyed primates once dubbed “hippy apes” are far from violence-free, a group of European researchers reported in the journal Science Advances.They studied 13 groups of bonobos and nine groups of chimpanzees — who conversely live in patriarchal systems and are well known for their aggressivity — in zoos, seeking to find out which is more prone to attacks.Measuring different types of aggressive behavior, both physical and not — such as throwing objects, intimidation, or biting and slapping — they found “no overall differences in absolute aggression rates between the two species.”However, differences emerged “in how the aggression is distributed among group members,” co-author Nicky Staes told AFP.”In chimpanzees aggression mostly comes from males and is directed towards both males and females, whereas in bonobos aggression levels are quite equal in both sexes but are mostly directed at males,” she said.Emile Bryon, another co-author, said that, as bonobos live in female-dominant groups, the fact that both females and males direct most of their aggression toward males surprised researchers.”Dominant individuals compete amongst each other for resources,” he said, so “one could expect aggression among bonobo females.

But our study says otherwise.”The relative lack of aggression among female bonobos could be explained by the species’ well-studied use of sex to defuse conflicts, or the aggression may be “redirected towards males, who become buffers in the females’ competitive dynamics,” Bryon said.- Aggressive ancestors? -The authors noted limitations to their findings due to the apes living in captivity, where food is not as much of a source of tension, but highlighted the variability of aggressiveness in both species.Some groups of bonobos and chimpanzees appeared particularly prone to violence and others more peaceful, which “suggests that limiting our understanding of a species to a handful of groups can prevent grasping the full species-wide diversity in behavioral expressions,” said Bryon.As our closest primate relatives, the behavior of chimpanzees and bonobos are of particular interest to science.”There is big debate in evolutionary anthropology whether humans descended from a violent ape or a more cooperative, peaceful one,” Staes explained.The new study suggests that “aggression was likely present in the common ancestor of humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos.”They also show that aggression can vary widely among apes, said Bryon.”Recognizing this variation and understanding its roots suggests that it can be better understood, managed, and even reduced.”

Arctic sea ice is headed for one of its smallest winter peaks on record, an AFP review of US data showed Wednesday, as climate change shrinks the region’s frozen cover and heightens geopolitical tensions.Formed when ocean water freezes, Arctic sea ice melts naturally in summer and reforms in winter, but the amount that returns has been declining due to human-induced planetary warming.The maximum sea ice extent in the Arctic reached nearly 14.22 million square kilometres (5.5 million square miles) on March 10, according to the data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).If the trend continues before winter ends later this month, it would rank among the five smallest ice covers in four decades of satellite monitoring, possibly even breaking last year’s record.While ice has gone down in the last few days, it can still go back up, said Seamus McAfee, an NSIDC spokesman.”But so far, it is looking like it could be a very significant extent, perhaps one of, if not the lowest, in the record,” McAfee told AFP.Last year, Arctic sea ice reached an all-time low on March 22, at 14.31 million square kilometres, according to the NSIDC.

Previous lows were set in 2016, 2017 and 2018.The NSIDC has yet to have an exact date for the 2026 maximum sea ice extent, McAfee said, adding that it would issue a press release once that becomes clearer.Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, told AFP that this year would be among the lowest five on record.Gilles Garric, polar oceanographer at French climate research institute Mercator Ocean Toulouse, said this winter was among the “top three” so far.”The sirens are blaring that we’re headed for a hothouse planet with massive devastation around the world,” said Shaye Wolf, climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, a US-based environmental group.- Faster warming -The last three years have been the hottest globally on record, as rising greenhouse gas emissions drive global warming.The polar regions are warming faster than the global average, especially the Arctic.Experts say the warming El Nino weather phenomenon could return later this year, which could send temperatures to new heights.”Given that the Arctic is warming at 3-4 times the global average rate, we are likely to continue to observe continued Arctic warming, loss of multi-year ice,” Burgess told AFP.The consequences of low winter sea ice could include “potentially faster and more extensive summer melt”, she said.While the Arctic reached a new low, the situation improved in Antarctica as sea ice coverage came closer to its annual summer average after four years of extreme lows, the NSIDC reported on Monday.Unlike melting land ice such as glaciers or ice sheets, shrinking sea ice does not directly raise ocean levels, but its loss threatens ecosystems.Many species, including polar bears in the Arctic and emperor penguins in Antarctica, rely on sea ice to breed and feed.”But Arctic warming, driven by fossil fuels, puts us all in peril,” said Wolf.”We’re closer than ever to irreversible tipping points that will forever alter the world we know.

Rapidly getting off fossil fuels is the only way to pull back from the brink,” he added.- Geopolitical heat -The loss of sea ice contributes to global warming as the bright white surface makes ir replaced by darker ocean water, which absorbs more sunlight and retains heat.It also has geopolitical implications.

As the frozen cover retreats, new shipping routes and access to mineral resources may open up.US President Donald Trump has voiced his desire to acquire Greenland, arguing that it was a national security matter in the face of Russian and Chinese threats.”From a geopolitical perspective, the climate change-induced melting of sea ice is turning the Arctic into the new Mediterranean: a common shared maritime resource surrounded by competing states,” Elizabeth Chalecki, a climate change and security expert, told AFP.The Russian side of the Arctic will melt fast because it is shallower, she said, prompting Moscow to increase its economic and military presence in the Northern Sea Route.The United States and Canada “will have to play catch-up”, said Chalecki, a research fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Canada.”There are significant opportunities for petroleum extraction, mining of critical minerals, scientific expeditions, and more,” Chalecki said.

Melting glaciers and ice sheets are raising sea levels while the Arctic is poised to log one of its worst winters on record.Here are some key points about the planet’s ice as human-induced global warming accelerates:- Where is the Earth’s ice? -Nearly all of the planet’s land ice — about 99 percent — is stored in the polar ice sheets, mainly in Antarctica and the Arctic, especially Greenland, glaciologist Christian Vincent told AFP.The rest is largely found in mountain glaciers around the world.If all the ice in Antarctica were to melt, global sea levels would rise by about 58 metres (190 feet), Vincent said.Greenland’s ice sheet alone would add around seven metres, and mountain glaciers about 41 centimetres.Ice does not melt at the same rate everywhere.

The loss of polar ice sheets is the main driver of sea-level rise, ahead of melting mountain glaciers and the thermal expansion of seawater, which occurs as the oceans warm due to global heating.Between 1901 and 2018, the global average sea level rose by about 20 centimetres.Sea ice, which melts in summer and reforms in winter, does not raise ocean levels — much like a floating ice cube in a glass of water.- Where has melting occurred? -Mountain glaciers alone lost about 9.18 trillion tonnes of ice between 1976 and 2024, according to a 2025 study in the journal Earth System Science Data (ESSD) based on satellite and ground observations.That figure is close to estimates by the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) for the period from 1961 to 2016, which likened the loss to a block of ice the size of Germany and 27 metres tall.Most of this mountain ice loss occurred in Alaska, Patagonia and the Arctic, the WGMS said.At the poles, Greenland and Antarctica together lost roughly 7.56 trillion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2020, according to a 2023 estimate by the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE), an international collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency that relies on satellite observations.That amount is roughly equivalent to a cube of ice measuring about 20 kilometres (12 miles) on each side.These figures do not include sea ice.In the Arctic, however, sea ice has thinned dramatically, with average thickness falling from 3.59 metres in 1975 to 1.25 meters in 2012, according to a 2015 study.The poles are warming at a faster rate than the rest of the planet — four times the global average in the Arctic.Greenland, the Danish territory that US President Donald Trump wants to acquire, lost nearly 4.9 trillion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2020.Looking further back in time is much harder, especially for Antarctica.”I do not know if we can really say how much ice Antarctica has lost since the 1950s,” said British scientist Ruth Mottram, a specialist in polar ice sheets, referring to the period before satellite measurements began.”It’s extremely challenging to measure even today with satellites and we simply don’t have very many observations going back so far in time,” she told AFP.- What about the future? -Ice loss is accelerating as the planet warms, and the extreme heat of the past three years — the hottest ever recorded — offers little reason for optimism.”The rate of ice loss is now five times higher in Greenland and 25  percent higher in Antarctica compared to the early 1990s,” according to a 2023 study published in the journal ESSD.In Greenland, summer melting has accelerated since 1900 to levels not seen in at least 850 years, according to the latest report on the cryosphere by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).The melt season is also lasting longer, extending into late summer and even September — something rare in the past.As for mountain glaciers, about 41 percent of their total ice loss occurred in the decade from 2015 to 2024, according to a study in ESSD that found the largest losses in Alaska, western North America and central Europe.

The Trump administration did an about-face Tuesday on an autism treatment it had promoted with great fanfare.It had said back in September it would approve use of a drug called leucovorin — synthetic vitamin B9 — to treat the disorder. But on Tuesday the Food and Drug Administration backed off, citing insufficient evidence that it works for the condition.The initial announcement came from Health Secretary Robert F.

Kennedy Jr, who for decades has spread debunked claims that vaccines cause autism.Kennedy touted leucovorin, usually used to alleviate chemotherapy side effects, as an “exciting therapy” that could help children with autism, a disorder whose symptoms vary widely across a spectrum.”This gives hope to the many parents with autistic children that it may be possible to improve their lives,” President Donald Trump said in September at a press conference.At the event he gave sweeping, unsubstantiated advice on autism, such as insisting that pregnant women should “tough it out” and avoid Tylenol over an unproven link to autism — statements slammed by scientists.Studies on a small number of patients have suggested that taking leucovorin can help ease some communication or personal-relations problems linked to autism, but experts say this issue needs more study.On Tuesday the FDA said it was in fact approving use of leucovorin for a rare condition called cerebral folate deficiency but not for autism. The Trump administration’s touting of it for autism ran the risk of raising false hopes, dozens of autism specialists said at the time in a joint letter.”We don’t have sufficient data to say that we could establish efficacy for autism more broadly,” an FDA official told NBC News.”It’ll be up to patients to talk with their physicians to see if that might be right for them,” said the official, whose name was not given.

The tongue-in-cheek Ig Nobel awards will be held in Europe for the first time this year because the United States has become “unsafe” for international prize-winners to visit, the organisers have announced.The awards, which celebrate the sillier side of science, have held raucous ceremonies that see the winners showered with paper aeroplanes at universities in Massachusetts since 1991.Like the Nobels they satirise, Ig Nobel laureates hail from all over the world.

However, international academics have reported problems travelling to the US since President Donald Trump’s second term began in early 2025.”During the past year, it has become unsafe for our guests to visit the country,” Ig Nobel founder Marc Abrahams said in a statement on Monday.”We cannot in good conscience ask the new winners, or the international journalists who cover the event, to travel to the USA this year.”The 36th edition of the Ig Nobels will be held in the Swiss city of Zurich on September 3, the organisation said.The University of Zurich and ETH Domain will host the ceremony, which gives prizes to achievements “that first make people laugh, then make them think”.To make this possible, Zurich and its institutions “rapidly moved mountains (only metaphorically — in Switzerland it is illegal to physically move mountains),” Abrahams said.”Switzerland has nurtured many unexpected good things — Albert Einstein’s physics, the world economy, and the cuckoo clock leap to mind — and is again helping the world appreciate improbable people and ideas.”Despite the silliness, many scientists appreciate the Ig Nobels.

Real Nobel prize-winners hand out the awards at the ceremony — often wearing funny hats.Milo Puhan, an epidemiologist at the University of Zurich who won a 2017 Ig Nobel for showing that playing the didgeridoo can alleviate snoring, welcomed the move.”The Ig Nobel Prize makes research visible, and does so with a wink,” Puhan said in the statement.The awards said that the “general plan” is to hold ceremonies in Zurich every second year.

In odd-numbered years, it will move to different European cities.”It will be a little like the Eurovision Song Contest,” Abrahams said.The winners of last year’s Ig Nobels included scientists who painted zebra stripes on cows to fend off flies and others who showed how drinking alcohol can help people speak a foreign language.

At the popular yachting harbour of Porto Rafti near Athens, a project is underway to protect a vulnerable seagrass species vital to the health of the Mediterranean.Damaged for decades by anchors scraping the seabed, new eco-mooring are designed to be less harmful to the posidonia plants.Diver Makis Sotiropoulos used a special drill to bore three metres into the seabed before installing the ecological anchorage with its two symmetrical fins. “We pull upwards to lock it in place before attaching a chain and a marker buoy,” he told AFP. The buoy then enables a vessel to moor “in complete safety”, he said. The project is run by the Greek ministry of merchant marine, which aims to extend it across the country’s 13,000 kilometres (8,000 miles) of coast, 70 percent of which is covered by Posidonia seagrass meadows.”When we establish a nationwide network of mooring buoys, then those with boats will be able to tie up safely, quickly and efficiently and at the same time the seabed will not be damaged,” ministry secretary general Evangelos Kyriazopoulos told AFP.The ribbon-like plants have been classified as a “priority habitat” by the European Union for various marine species.”Posidonia is among our best allies in the fight against climate change and deserves our full attention,” said Maria Salomidi, a researcher at the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR). The seagrass meadows “capture and store carbon beneath their rhizomes (root stems), produce oxygen, filter and purify the water, and support biodiversity,” she said. – Severe damage -A large number of Posidonia root stems are torn out when anchors are raised.”Very often I have observed anchors lying on posidonia meadows,” said Rouli Prinianaki, a diver and member of the NGO Aegean Rebreath, which is part of the campaign.The Greek state organisation for environment and climate change (OFYPEKA) has termed anchoring “one of the most significant threats” to the plants.Around 40 ecological moorings have been installed in Greece in recent years, mostly in marine parks of the Ionian Sea and near the island of Alonissos. Fifteen eco moorings have been installed in Alonissos “but they are not enough for the thousands of boats in summer,” said Spyridon Iosifidis, a fish specialist at the OFYPEKA directorate for the Sporades island group. – Need for legislation -Experts say Greece must speed up and broaden the installation of ecological moorings for pleasure boats that flock to its bays in summer. Athens “needs to legislate to protect seagrass meadows and allow them to regenerate” following the example of the Balearic Islands in Spain and the French Mediterranean coast, said WWF Greece biologist Vangelis Paravas.According to HCMR, the problem is particularly acute along the coasts and islands of the Ionian Sea, the Saronic Gulf and the Cyclades, where over-tourism is threatening certain areas. “The number of vessels has increased and there is neither monitoring nor information,” said HCMR’s Salomidi.Managing the moorings can be a profitable commercial activity, promoting high-quality tourism, she adds. “It is extremely important to develop such a network of mooring buoys across the country, both to protect the environment and to support the growth of maritime tourism,” the ministry’s Kyriazopoulos said.

The global positioning system (GPS) capabilities of cargo ships, oil tankers and other vessels stuck in the Middle East because of the widening war are likely worse than those in your cell phone.Experts say this deficiency explains why since the start of US-Israeli strikes, the jamming of satellite navigation signals has left about 1,000 ships in the Gulf and the Gulf of Oman unable to determine their location, either momentarily or continuously.Dimitris Ampatzidis, a senior risk and compliance analyst for the energy market intelligence firm Kpler, told AFP the number represents about half of the vessels in the area. The vast majority of those ships are located off the United Arab Emirates and Oman.A satellite navigation system is made up of a constellation of satellites that send signals with the time to Earth, allowing the receiver to determine its precise location.Modern smartphones receive signals from four groups of satellites: the American, European (Galileo), Russian (GLONASS) and Chinese (BeiDou) Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS).Most cell phones now use two GPS frequency bands — one that is older and fainter, and a second that is newer and stronger.But “many ships only listen to the original civilian GPS signal, which is called the L1 C/A signal.

It’s the one that’s been around since the early 1990s for civilian use,” Todd Humphreys, an engineering professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told AFP.Most ships are thus unable to rely on the BeiDou or Galileo systems in the event that a GPS is jammed.The situation is even worse for airplanes, due to aviation regulations.”You will not find any aircraft flying in the world today whose built-in GPS receiver is capable of tracking and interpreting signals other than the GPS L1 C/A.

So it’s out of date by 15 years,” Humphreys said.- Spoofing -Jamming a GPS signal is “not that complicated,” said Katherine Dunn, the author of an upcoming book of the history of GPS, “Little Blue Dot.”All one needs is “another radio transmitter that can broadcast on the same frequency, but louder,” she said, which creates “a wall of mush.”Spoofing is more sophisticated — and more dangerous, affecting a ship’s Automatic Identification System, or AIS.Every vessel transmits a message per second over a universal radio frequency that announces its identity, destination and position.Spoofing manipulates that system, causing the affected ship to send a fake, or even nonsensical, location — meaning that ships could appear to be on land in Iran or the Emirates.- Clocks -Today, GPS signals are not just used to determine location; they also power onboard clocks, radar systems and speed logs, Dunn said.So even if the ships off the Emirates or Kuwait were protected from drone fire and escorted through the Strait of Hormuz, navigating without a GPS would be perilous.”Given the size of the ships, electronic assistance has become necessary to steer them,” said one merchant marine captain who has sailed on cargo ships around the world.Crews must “resort to using 20th-century instruments — radar or visible landmarks,” he told AFP on condition of anonymity.- Defensive jamming -Signal jamming is undoubtedly being used both offensively and defensively.

Gulf states are directing their systems towards their own shores to ward off Iran’s satellite-guided Shahed drones — at the cost, deemed acceptable, of disrupting their own lives.Israel did the same thing in 2024, as did Iran after its 12 days of conflict with Israel last year.”Even if their own air traffic or maritime traffic or their delivery drivers or their dating apps are affected by GPS jamming and spoofing, they’ll do it, just like Israel did.

Israel did it for a year in 2024,” Humphreys said.For air and sea navigation, start-ups are developing alternative technologies using Earth’s magnetic field or inertial navigation.But for ships today, navigating without a GPS is still far in the future.

Four years ago, NASA purposely smashed a spacecraft into a small asteroid to see if they could deflect it — a test to prove humanity could protect Earth from threatening space rocks.The experiment pushed the moonlet asteroid Dimorphos into a smaller, faster route around its sibling Didymos — and according to new research out Friday, it also pushed the pair into a slightly different orbit around the Sun.The test on Dimorphos was never based on any actual threat to our planet.But the successful experiment and additional analysis offers a solid data point to mount a defense if any such eventual threat is detected, researchers said. “This study marks a notable step forward in our ability to prevent future asteroid impacts on Earth,” the team of international researchers wrote in their new paper published in the journal Science Advances.Their observations detailed in the paper showed that the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) in 2022 marked “the first time a human-made object has measurably altered the path of a celestial body around the Sun,” NASA said in a statement.Rahil Makadia, the study’s lead author, told AFP his team tracked stellar occultations — the moment when an asteroid passes in front of a star, causing a brief dimming for less than a second — to obtain hyper-precise measurements of the asteroid’s position, speed and shape.- Tiny change, significant deflection -Obtaining this data is no small feat.

The team relied on volunteer astronomers from around the globe, who recorded 22 of these stellar occultations.Using that data along with years of additional observations, Makadia said the team was able to measure Didymos’s orbit around the sun with precision.”We were able to measure what this change was exactly,” he said, and make computations that could assist with future “planetary defense efforts.”The orbital change was miniscule — just 0.15 seconds.But it’s enough to make a difference, scientists say.”This is a tiny change to the orbit, but given enough time, even a tiny change can grow to a significant deflection,” said Thomas Statler, lead scientist for solar system small bodies at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in a statement. “The team’s amazingly precise measurement again validates kinetic impact as a technique for defending Earth against asteroid hazards and shows how a binary asteroid might be deflected by impacting just one member of the pair.”

Exhibitors and organisers were gamely showing off new AI-focused tech at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) trade fair in Barcelona Monday, although some were kept away by travel disruptions caused by the US-Israel-Iran war. The annual gathering, expected to draw around 109,000 visitors, went ahead without many Israeli companies as flights were cancelled from the nation’s airports.”Certainly, the travel restrictions are having an impact,” said Lara Dewar, marketing chief at the GSMA telecoms industry association, which organises the MWC.Around 30 Israeli participants had been slated to exhibit in the Catalan city.Some such as AI security firm DeepKeep were unable to attend, AFP journalists saw on signs posted at the absent companies’ stands.Nine of the 25 businesses supposed to join the Israeli national pavilion were also kept away.”Due to the current situation, our flights… were cancelled, and we were unable to reach Barcelona,” Nofar Moradian-Shiber of the Israel Export Institute told AFP.Spanish media reported that thousands of prospective MWC attendees had cancelled, as airports across the Middle East have shut down during the fighting.Catalonia’s regional president Salvador Illa said there was “very limited disruption” to the trade show.- ‘Decolonise technology’ -Several Israeli firms declined to comment to AFP about the war’s impact on their operations.The GSMA said that no Iranian exhibitors had been expected at this year’s event.GSMA chief Vivek Badrinath referred to the fighting directly in a Monday morning panel discussion, saying: “Our thoughts are with all those affected by the conflict.”Around 30 demonstrators had earlier gathered at the entrance to the vast congress centre, shouting “Boycott Israel, boycott USA”, shadowed by several police officers.”Let’s decolonise technology,” one demonstrator had written on a sign.”We were already planning to demonstrate before this weekend’s actions.

So what (the Israelis) have done proves that we must continue to boycott them,” said Roland Mimi Ngoy, a spokesman for the activists.Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had on Sunday condemned the US and Israeli strikes on Iran at a Barcelona dinner on the sidelines of the MWC.”You can be against a despicable regime… like the Iranian regime, and at the same time against an unjustified and dangerous military intervention,” he said.- ‘Safe bet’ -Beyond the day’s dominant news story, players in the telecoms sector are looking ahead to a year with packed to-do lists, from network improvements to the growing capability of generative artificial intelligence.”In a world filled with uncertainty, our country is a safe bet,” Sanchez said after meeting Amazon representatives in Barcelona.Governments — especially in Europe — are engaged in a push for technological sovereignty to insulate their tech infrastructure from geopolitical tensions.In Europe, “we need larger companies that assume more risks, attract better talent and have deeper technological investments,” said Marc Murtra, head of Spanish operator Telefonica.Calls for more mega-mergers to be allowed in Europe have been an MWC staple for years.Around the world, device makers are confronted with a surge in the price of memory (RAM) chips, pumped by massive demand from tech giants building up AI computing capacity.That could put the brakes on growth in global smartphone sales, which added 1.9 percent to reach 1.26 billion devices last year.Meanwhile, operators and space firms are together racing to offer so-called “direct-to-device” satellite connectivity, in which phones or other connected gadgets communicate directly via satellites overhead without the need for towers on the ground.