内容摘要：An aid initiative to help an occupied and besieged population can never be neutral when it coordinates with the occupying army. It cannot be impartial when it excludes the occupied from decision-making. It cannot be independent when its security depends on the very military that engineered the famine it is trying to address.

An aid initiative to help an occupied and besieged population can never be neutral when it coordinates with the occupying army. It cannot be impartial when it excludes the occupied from decision-making. It cannot be independent when its security depends on the very military that engineered the famine it is trying to address.

I have treated every word of every column that has appeared on this page, devoted to Palestine’s precarious fate and the indefatigable souls who refuse to abandon it, as an obligation and a duty.It is the obligation and duty of writers – who are privileged to reach so many people in so many places – to expose injustice and give pointed expression to gratuitous suffering.

I have made it plain throughout: Here I stand. Not because I am the all-knowing arbiter of right from wrong – any honest writer is aware of how exhausting and foolish that can be – but because I am obliged to tell the truth clearly and, if need be, repeatedly.I consider ending what has happened and continues to happen to Palestinians to be the moral imperative of this awful, disfiguring hour.It requires a response since silence often translates – consciously or by neglect – into consent and complicity.

Each of us who shares this sense of obligation and duty responds in our own way.Some make speeches in parliaments. Some lock arms in demonstrations. Some go to Gaza and the occupied West Bank to ease, as best they can, the pervasive misery and despair.

Writing in defence of Palestinians – of their humanity, dignity, and rights – is not meant, nor can it be dismissed, as a polemical provocation.

For me, it is an act of conscience.But not every bot was up to the task. One collapsed moments after the starting gun and lay motionless for minutes before regaining its feet. Another slammed into a barrier after only a few strides, taking its handler down with it.

Some machines made it to the finish line but still trailed the humans badly. Tiangong Ultra, developed by the Beijing Innovation Centre of Human Robotics, clocked a time of 2 hours and 40 minutes. The men’s winner finished more than an hour earlier.“Generally, these are interesting demonstrations,” said Alan Fern, a robotics professor at Oregon State University, “but they don’t demonstrate much regarding the utility of useful work or any type of basic intelligence.”

“The robots are running very well, very stable… I feel I’m witnessing the evolution of robots and AI,” said He Sishu, a local AI engineer watching from the sidelines.Though technically in the race, the robots weren’t exactly autonomous athletes. Each one came with a team of engineers, and some needed physical support to stay upright.