A severe intensity earthquake, measuring 5.8 on the richter scale has hit the New Zealand’s South Island today.
The tremor centred 30 km north-west of Wanaka town was of a severe intensity, according to GeoNet, the island country’s earthquake monitoring agency.
The quake was followed by two aftershocks of intensity 3.5M and 3.1M around the Wanka town, the agency reported.
Though tremors were also felt as far as the capital city of Wellington, due to the distance from populated centres, it is not expected to cause extensive damage.
The quake comes in the backdrop of the massive 7.9 magnitude earthquake that jolted Nepal on April 25, killing more than 7,000 people. The landlocked nation still has not fully recovered from the calamity.
This photograph taken on May 16, 2018, shows a figurine standing in front of the logo of social network Facebook on a cracked screen of a smartphone in Paris. VOA
Facing flak for failure to block the live broadcast of the New Zealand terrorist attack last week, Facebook on Thursday said that its Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools were not “perfect” to detect the horrific video.
Vowing to improve its technology, the social networking giant, however, ruled out adding a time delay to Facebook Live, similar to the broadcast delay sometimes used by TV stations.
“There are millions of Live broadcasts daily, which means a delay would not help address the problem due to the sheer number of videos,” Guy Rosen, Facebook’s Vice President of Integrity, said in a statement.
“More importantly, given the importance of user reports, adding a delay would only further slow down videos getting reported, reviewed and first responders being alerted to provide help on the ground,” Rosen added.
Strapped with a GoPro camera to his head, the gunman broadcast graphic footage of the New Zealand shooting via Facebook Live for 17 minutes, which was later shared in millions on other social media platforms, including Twitter and YouTube.
Fifty people were killed and dozens injured in the shootings at Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Avenue Masjid in Christchurch on March 15 after 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant opened indiscriminate firings.
This photo shows a Facebook app icon on a smartphone in New York. VOA
The circulation of the video on social media platforms attracted widespread criticism from different quarters.
In a letter to CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson asked the technology companies to brief the US Congress on March 27 regarding their response to dissemination of the video on their platforms.
Thompson also warned the technology companies that unless they do better in removing violent content, the Congress could consider policies to bar such content on social media.
Facebook on Thursday said it was exploring how AI could help it react faster to this kind of content on a live streamed video.
“AI has made massive progress over the years and in many areas, which has enabled us to proactively detect the vast majority of the content we remove. But it’s not perfect.
“However, this particular video did not trigger our automatic detection systems,” Rosen said, referring to the New Zealand attack video. (IANS)
