WASHINGTON (ANP) - De VS zijn aan de winnende hand in de oorlog die het land samen met Israël begonnen is tegen Iran. Dat zei minister van Defensie Pete Hegseth in een gezamenlijke persconferentie met generaal Dan Caine.

Volgens Hegseth en Caine zijn er tekenen dat Iran de voorbije dagen minder raketten afvuurt dan eerder. Iran heeft geen langere adem dan de VS, aldus de minister. "We kunnen deze strijd gemakkelijk laten voortduren, zolang als nodig is."

Hegseth benadrukte in zijn persconferentie uitgebreid de sterkte van de Amerikaanse en Israëlische strijdkrachten en de zwakte van de Iraniërs. "Het was nooit de bedoeling dat dit een eerlijk gevecht zou zijn", aldus Hegseth. "De Iraanse luchtmacht is niet meer" en "de Iraanse marine rust op de bodem van de Perzische Golf", sprak hij.

Binnen enkele dagen verwacht hij dat de Israëlische en Amerikaanse luchtmacht volledige controle over het Iraanse luchtruim hebben. Het is volgens Caine daarom nu tijd de aanvallen uit te breiden naar het binnenland van Iran.

Wikipedia editors have implemented new policies and restricted a number of contributors who were paid to use AI to translate existing Wikipedia articles into other languages after they discovered these AI translations added AI “hallucinations,” or errors, to the resulting article. 

The new restrictions show how Wikipedia editors continue to fight the flood of generative AI across the internet from diminishing the reliability of the world’s largest repository of knowledge. The incident also reveals how even well-intentioned efforts to expand Wikipedia are prone to errors when they rely on generative AI, and how they’re remedied by Wikipedia’s open governance model. 

The issue in this case starts with an organization called the Open Knowledge Association (OKA), a non-profit organization dedicated to improving Wikipedia and other open platforms.

“We do so by providing monthly stipends to full-time contributors and translators,” OKA’s site says. “We leverage AI (Large Language Models) to automate most of the work.”

The problem is that editors started to notice that some of these translations introduced errors to articles. For example, a draft translation for a Wikipedia article about the French royal La Bourdonnaye family cites a book and specific page number when discussing the origin of the family. A Wikipedia editor, Ilyas Lebleu, who goes by Chaotic Enby on Wikipedia, checked that source and found that the specific page of that book “doesn't talk about the La Bourdonnaye family at all.”

“To measure the rate of error, I actually decided to do a spot-check, during the discussion, of the first few translations that were listed, and already spotted a few errors there, so it isn't just a matter of cherry-picked cases,” Lebleu told me. “Some of the articles had swapped sources or added unsourced sentences with no explanation, while 1879 French Senate election added paragraphs sourced from material completely unrelated to what was written!”

As Wikipedia editors looked at more OKA-translated articles, they found more issues. 

“Many of the results are very problematic, with a large number of [...] editors who clearly have very poor English, don't read through their work (or are incapable of seeing problems) and don't add links and so on,” a Wikipedia page discussing the OKA translation said. The same Wikipedia page also notes that in some cases the copy/paste nature of OKA translators’ work breaks the formatting on some articles. 

Wikipedia editors investigated how OKA was operating and found that it was mostly relying on cheap labor from contractors in the Global South, and that these contractors were instructed to copy/paste articles to popular LLMs to produce translations. 

For example, a public spreadsheet used by OKA translators to keep track of what articles they’re translating instructs them to “pick an article, copy the lead section into Gemini or chatGPT, then review if some of the suggestions are an improvement to readability. Make edits to the Wiki articles only if the suggestions are an improvement and don't change the meaning of the lead. Do not change the content unless you have checked that what Gemini says is correct!”

Lebleu told me, and other editors have noted in their public on-site discussion of the issue, that these same instructions previously told OKA translators to use Grok, Elon Musk’s LLM, for the same purpose. Grok, which also produces an entirely automated alternative to Wikipedia called Grokepedia, is prone to errors precisely because it does not use humans to vet its output. 

“The use of Grok proved controversial, notably given the reasons for which Grok has been in the news recently, and a recent in-house study showed ChatGPT and Claude perform more accurately, leading them to switch a few days ago, although they still recommend Grok as ‘valuable for experienced editors handling complex, template-heavy articles,’” Lebleu told me. 

Ultimately the editors decided to implement restrictions against OKA translators who make multiple errors, but not block OKA translation as a rule. 

“OKA translators who have received, within six months, four (correctly applied) warnings about content that fails verification will be blocked without further warning if another example is found,” the Wikipedia editors wrote. “Content added by an OKA translator who is subsequently blocked for failing verification may be presumptively deleted [...] unless an editor in good standing is willing to take responsibility for it.”

A job posting for a “Wikipedia Translator” from OKA offers $397 a month for working up to 40 hours per week. The job listing says translators are expected to publish “5-20 articles per week (depending on size).”

“They leverage machine translation to accelerate the process. We have published over 1500 articles and the number grows every day,” the job posting says. 

“Given this precarious status, I am worried that more uncertainty in the translator duties may lead to an overloading of responsibilities, which is worrying as independent contractors do not necessarily have the same protections as paid employees,” Lebleu wrote in the public Wikipedia discussion about OKA. 

Jonathan Zimmermann, the founder and president of OKA, and who goes by 7804j

on Wikipedia, told me that translators are paid hourly, not per article, and that there is no fixed article quota. 

“We emphasize quality over speed,” Zimmerman told me in an email. “In fact, some of the problematic cases involved unusually high output relative to time spent — which in retrospect was a warning sign. Those cases were driven by individual enthusiasm and speed rather than institutional pressure.”

Zimmerman told me that “errors absolutely do occur,” but that OKA’s process includes human review, requires translators to check their content against cited sources, and that “senior editors periodically review samples, especially from newer translators.”

“Following the recent discussion, we have strengthened our safeguards,” Zimmerman told me. “We are now rolling out a second, independent LLM review step. Translators must run the completed draft through a separate model using a dedicated comparison prompt designed to identify potential discrepancies, omissions, or inaccuracies relative to the source text. Initial findings suggest this is highly effective at detecting potential issues.”

Zimmerman added that if this method proves insufficient, OKA is considering introducing formal peer review mechanisms 

Using AI to check the output of AI for errors is a method that is historically prone to errors. For example, we recently reported on an AI-powered private school that used AI to check AI-generated questions for students. Internal testing found it had at least a 10 percent failure rate. 

“I agree that using AI to check AI can absolutely fail — and in some contexts it can fail at very high rates. We’re not assuming the secondary model is reliable in isolation,” Zimmerman said. “The key point is that we’re not replacing human verification with automated verification. The second model is a complement to manual review, not a substitute for it.”

“When a coordinated project uses AI tools and operates at scale, it’s going to attract attention. I understand why editors would examine that closely. Ultimately, the outcome of the discussion formalized expectations that are largely aligned with our existing internal policies,” Zimmerman added. “However, these restrictions apply specifically to OKA translators. I would prefer that standards apply equally to everyone, but I also recognize that organized, funded efforts are often held to a higher bar.”

Sixteen novels are in contention for the £30,000 award, now in its 31st year, with settings ranging from climate-ravaged islands to a near-future Kolkata

Katie Kitamura, Susan Choi, Kit de Waal and Lily King are among the authors longlisted for this year’s Women’s prize for fiction.

Awarded annually and now in its 31st year, the prize comes with £30,000, and is one of the most prominent accolades for women’s writing in the English language. The 16-strong list features a selection of novels that range in setting from climate-ravaged islands to a near-future Kolkata, and from 1970s Birmingham to East Berlin on the brink of reunification.

To browse all books in the Women’s prize for fiction 2026 longlist, visit guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

If you want to add some glitz to elevate your look, try shiny earrings, metallic shoes or a snazzy belt

Once in a while, it is fun to pull out all the stops and get properly dressed up. To wear something gorgeous and probably impractical, do your makeup carefully, rather than in two and a half minutes, and coerce a family member into taking a photo before you leave the house.

It is awards season, and red carpet fashion hoopla is all around us. But for those of us who don’t have an Oscar nomination, the nights that call for weapons-grade glam are few and far between, especially at this time of year. Which is fine by me because, frankly, who has the time? In real life, for most of us, quick styling hacks when you want to look A Bit Dressed Up are way more useful than a ball gown. Accessories that elevate your look from blah to belle, easy tricks that give your outfit a sense of occasion. These, not the bells-and-whistles party dresses, are the real treasures of your wardrobe.

‘We just don’t know what will happen,’ western officials say, as UK bases prepare for arrival of US heavy bombers

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Britain has not ruled out participating in future strikes against Iranian ballistic missile launch sites, officials have indicated.

US heavy bombers are expected to reach UK bases at Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands and Fairford in Gloucestershire in the next few days, from where they are expected to attack Iran’s underground “missile cities”.

In an attempt to find new audiences and save money, opera companies are ‘throwing spaghetti at the wall’ to see what sticks. It often works

It’s Sunday and I’m in a suburban Ikea on the verge of tears. Perhaps this is not so surprising – who among us hasn’t approached emotional breakdown navigating the labyrinthine homewares store? But these are tears of joy. And no, it’s not because I’ve nabbed one of the cult-status Djungelskog plushies; it’s because of the five people singing at me from two metres away.

I’m in the outdoor plants and furniture section, watching The Marriage of Figaro – or a version of it, in which Figaro and his bride-to-be, Susanna, work in floor sales and their philandering boss is the store manager. It’s probably the last place I’d expect to discover the sublime beauty of Mozart’s opera. Half an hour earlier, my fellow audience members and I – who were emailed the secret location 24 hours earlier – were eating meatballs and mash in the canteen.

Linguists say reaction to Irish TD’s remarks reflects shared regional English roots and enduring impact of empire

When the politician Thomas Gould rose to speak in the Irish parliament recently, few expected a lesson in colonial linguistics.

Yet clips of his speech began circulating online last week, with some viewers saying he sounded unmistakably Jamaican. The reaction was animated, particularly among Jamaican heritage communities.

New capacity under construction falls for first time since 2020 as permitting, zoning, and power hurdles mount

New datacenter capacity under construction in primary US markets declined in the second half of 2025, as community opposition increasingly disrupted planning approvals - a dynamic commercial real estate firm CBRE says is reshaping the industry.…