Scientists use AI to help kids sold for sex in hotels

Washington: Scientists are hoping artificial intelligence (AI) can help identify and rescue child victims of sex trafficking via an app and more than a million crowdsourced pictures of hotel rooms. Researchers launched an app in 2016 to collect photographs of 50,000 hotels around the world that could be matched up with online adverts placed by traffickers, who often use selfies taken by their victims in hotel rooms. Hotels-50K can be used to identify where trafficking victims are being held - and ultimately to rescue them, according to a paper written by a group of scientists and presented at a conference on AI in Hawaii. Reuters

Thai princess disqualified to contest PM poll

bangkok: Thailand's election panel on Monday disqualified the sister of the king from running for prime minister, putting an end to a stunning, short-lived candidacy by echoing King Maha Vajiralongkorn's words that royalty should be "above politics". The Election Commission released the official list of parties' candidates for prime minister without the name of Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya Sirivadhana Barnavadi, 67, the king's elder sister. The list excluded Ubolratana "because every member of the royal family comes within the application of the same rule requiring the monarch to be above politics and to be politically neutral," the panel said in a statement after a meeting. Reuters