*[Enwl-eng] Renewed violence in Kosovo leaves EU in a quandry
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 Is a lasting peace possible in Kosovo?Violence has flared up again in Kosovo, where Serb protesters tried to block newly elected ethnic Albanian mayors taking office in the country’s northern Serb majority towns. This latest incident is part of a worrying pattern that has seen the two communities living at best parallel lives and, at worst, coming into open conflict. Fearful of a reprise of the 1990s war, the European Union has been trying for years to mediate between Kosovo and Serbia. So why is a lasting solution to their dispute still not forthcoming? International security expert Stefan Wolff investigates. Local elections across Spain this weekend have caused havoc for the governing socialist party PSOE, which was trounced by the parties of the right. So severe were these regional defeats that prime minister Pedro Sánchez has rolled the dice and chosen to call a snap general election in July in a bid to reclaim his national mandate. Our briefing explains how the establishment came to take such a trouncing and looks ahead to see if Sánchez’s gamble will pay off. On the financial front, the European Union is looking into whether it could launch its own digital currency. Like Bitcoin, the e-euro would be held in digital wallets enabled by blockchain. Unlike Bitcoin, it would be regulated by a central bank. It’s a bold move with plenty of upsides. More people would be able to use a centralised, regulated currency than private options and they can have more confidence in its stability. But a key appeal of crypto is the anonymity it provides, and that’s potentially the one thing an e-euro can’t offer. One of the many philosophical and existential questions raised by the arrival of generative artificial intelligence tools such ChatGPT and Dall-E is whether they can ever be considered creative in their own right. We already know how good they can be at producing a hit song in the style of existing bands and that they can knock out what looks a lot like a Van Gogh painting at the drop of a hat, so how long before they are replacing our masters with art of their own? Although generative AI excels at what’s called “combinational” and “exploratory” forms of creativity, it falls down on a third: “transformational” creativity. That means that while it can produce something beautiful in the style of an artwork that already exists, it cannot strike out in a bold new direction and create something beyond existing structures and styles. And that, dear humans, is where we will always have AI trumped. AI probably can't, for example, invent a whole new letter of the alphabet like medieval scribes did when they found they were wasting too much ink on complicated texts. The result was the "ñ". This potted history reveals what makes the Spanish character so special. We know that regular exercise is good for our health. That’s obvious. But a fascinating new study out of Norway suggests it may also increase our pain threshold. Researchers tested the pain tolerance of more than 10,000 people eight years apart and found, by and large, that those who were committed to an active regime were better able to withstand discomfort. A psychologist from a British university helps us understand the study and its implications here. - Laura Hood, Politics Editor and Assistant Editor, The Conversation UK  Kosovo government must take most of the blame for the latest violence, but any long-term solution will require a constructive response from Serbia as wellOnce again ethnic tensions have boiled over in Kosovo. Was this email
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