Tehran: One of Iran’s most influential filmmakers, Jafar Panahi, has reportedly gone on a hunger strike in Tehran’s Evin prison to protest his continued detention.

The move by Panahi, a Cannes film festival award winner who directed such movies as “The White Balloon,” “The Circle,” and “No Bears,” comes after his hopes of a temporary release were denied, activist group Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported, citing Pahani’s wife, Tahereh Saeedi.

On Wednesday, Pahani apparently wrote on his wife’s Instagram account, “Today, like many people trapped in Iran, I have no choice but to spend my dearest property… I will refrain from eating and drinking any kind of food or medicine. I will remain in this situation so long that my lifeless body may be released from prison. With love to Iran and the people of my land.”

Panahi was arrested in front of Evin prison on July 11, 2022, and told he would have to serve a six-year prison sentence issued by a Tehran court in 2011, according to HRANA.

He had been charged with making anti-government propaganda and inciting protests during the turmoil that followed the 2009 election, Reuters reported.

The Artistic Freedom Initiative (AFI), a New York-based human rights organization, said that because Panahi’s sentence was handed down over a decade ago, the statute of limitations had expired under Iranian law.

But the Iranian judiciary refused to review his case or release him on bail, AFI reported.

In an open letter, published on HRANA’s website, Panahi wrote, “According to law, once my request for a retrial was accepted and my legal case was delivered to a court branch for review, I should have been released on bail immediately.”

In his open letter, he referenced the protests that have roiled the country since the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022, and the wave of arrests and executions that have since taken place.

“While we witnessed the execution of the innocent young men of our country within 30 days, by the interference of intelligence agents, delivering my case to a court branch took over 100 days,” Panahi said.

Panahi has been suffering from the flu and other ailments in prison in the past few weeks, and has been constantly harassed by the authorities and deprived of basic rights in prison, a source close to the film director told AFI.

SOURCE: CNN

San Francisco: ChatGPT, a popular chatbot from OpenAI, is estimated to have reached 100 million monthly active users in January, just two months after launch, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history, according to a UBS study on Wednesday.

The report, citing data from analytics firm Similarweb, said an average of about 13 million unique visitors had used ChatGPT per day in January, more than double the levels of December.

"In 20 years following the internet space, we cannot recall a faster ramp in a consumer internet app," UBS analysts wrote in the note.

It took TikTok about nine months after its global launch to reach 100 million users and Instagram 2-1/2 years, according to data from Sensor Tower.

ChatGPT can generate articles, essays, jokes and even poetry in response to prompts. OpenAI, a private company backed by Microsoft Corp, made it available to the public for free in late November.

On Thursday, OpenAI announced a $20 monthly subscription, initially for users in the United States only. It would provide a more stable and faster service as well as the opportunity to try new features first, the company said.

Analysts believe the viral launch of ChatGPT will give OpenAI a first-mover advantage against other AI companies. The growing usage, while imposing substantial computing costs on OpenAI, has also provided valuable feedback to help train the chatbot's responses.

The company said the subscription revenue would help cover the computing cost.

The availability of the tool has raised questions about the facilitation of academic dishonesty and misinformation.

Last month, Microsoft announced another multi-billion-dollar investment in OpenAI in the form of cash and the provision of cloud computing.

SOURCE: REUTERS

Islamabad: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said the government is working to diversify energy mix by focusing on the development of indigenous sources of power generation such as hydropower, coal and solar.

In his tweets today, the premier said locally produced electricity will help reduce fuel import, bring down tariff and thus provide relief to the common man.

Alluding to the 7th nuclear power plant of Pakistan inaugurated by him yesterday in Karachi, he said with the induction of K-3, the total nuclear power generation capacity has reached 3600 megawatt.  

The K-3 project has added a total of 1100 MW electricity to the national grid.

The government is working to diversify the energy mix by focusing on the development of indigenous sources of power generation such as hydropower, coal, & solar. Locally produced electricity will help reduce fuel import, bring down tariff & thus provide relief to the common man. https://t.co/ZIkLPIAFWd

— Shehbaz Sharif (@CMShehbaz) February 3, 2023