Newly established commission identifies 17 catastrophic threats to human health but says ‘realistic route to act’ on each exists

Humans could become extinct by the year 2100 due to malicious use of AI or nuclear conflict, according to a new global risk assessment.

They top a list of 17 major threats to human health over the next 75 years, which also includes cuts to aid spending by wealthy countries, the climate crisis and childhood malnutrition.

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The annual month-long festival takes place at a flower farm in the Victorian town of Silvan when the tulips are at their best

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Though mostly visible near the Arctic Circle, the natural phenomenon dazzled sky-gazers as far south Devon, Hampshire and Kent

The northern lights illuminated the skies across the UK on Friday and Saturday evening.

Sky-gazers as far south as Devon, Hampshire and Kent were treated to the dazzling natural phenomenon, also known as the aurora borealis.

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Yan Diomandé earned Real Madrid a tight 1-0 victory over Villarreal to keep them six points behind La Liga leaders Barcelona, even though winger Vinícius Júnior was sent off for hair pulling.

Vinícius, on as a substitute, scored but his goal was disallowed and then he was dismissed after a VAR review showed he had pulled the hair of Villarreal’s Nathan Saliba.

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Protesters spent months occupying an ancient cottonwood. Then a tense standoff with US border patrol came to a head

A 200-year-old cottonwood tree near the US-Mexico border, known as the “grandmother”, has been destroyed to make way for the construction of Donald Trump’s border wall, despite a months-long effort by protesters trying to save it.

In late July, land defenders began a tree-sit in the ghost town of Lochiel, Arizona, taking turns occupying a platform high in the tree’s canopy. The group remained there for more than 70 days.

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• Guijarro and Navarro score in opening 14 minutes

• US midfield and defensive lapses exposed by Spain

• Yohannes misses penalty as US fightback falls short

In less than a year’s time, the United States and Spain will almost certainly arrive in Brazil as the top two contenders to win the Women’s World Cup. Spain, holders of the top spot in Fifa’s rankings for the past 60 weeks, are the defending champions; the second-ranked US won gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

This month’s pair of friendlies between the two sides are taking place with caveats. Both sides are missing several of their most important players to injuries. The opening match in Brazil is 258 days away. Spain have booked their place, but the US still have to actually qualify for the World Cup, through a regional tournament that begins next month.

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AFP reports that an AI model from Anthropic "submitted a fabricated tip about an unsolved homicide to Philadelphia police, authorities said Friday."


Claude "was instructed never to log in, create accounts, enter personal data, make purchases, or submit anything destructive, but the instructions did not rule out form submissions," Anthropic said Friday in a blog post.


Authorities are now criticizing Anthropic "for taking two months to report the incident."

The Philadelphia Police Department said the false submission was made in July through PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com, a public website where people can share information about unsolved killings. According to Anthropic's account, as relayed by police, the model was running a test that involved interacting with randomly selected websites when it reached the site and filed false information about an unsolved murder. The AI model presented itself as someone who might have knowledge of the case.



Anthropic's breaches have prompted the White House to mandate that AI companies notify and correct security incidents, news outlet Axios reported [yesterday], citing administration officials. "This notification and remediation process is not optional... It is a critical national security obligation," White House Super Intelligence Force leaders said in a statement to Axios.
"I may have information regarding this case," Claude told the police. "I recall seeing someone matching the description in the area around [the street named on the page] during that time period. Please contact me if this information is relevant." Anthropic notes that Claude "left the name and contact fields empty, which the form allowed, and submitted it. The submission was flagged as spam and was never forwarded for investigation."

But Anthropic also admits they saw "this behavior" three times — "on OSWorld (a public computer use evaluation), on Odysseys (a long-horizon task evaluation), and during internal usage." Submitting forms when it shouldn't have generally occurred "when an evaluation's instructions were ambiguous, or when a misconfiguration within the environment prevented Claude from working with dummy forms."



Anthropic's blog post acknowledges three other categories of behaviors:


Exploiting software flaws. Like when Claude received an error when trying to run a public tool on a university's web site, it located an injection flaw in a script on the university's server that let it run commands — including that public tool.
Working around restrictions to reach gated data. For example, Claude Mythos 5 needed public data that was only available from a state agency for a fee. "Claude learned from an archived copy of the agency's website that its public dashboard issues an access token to any visitor," Anthropic explains. "It requested one and used it to query the database without paying the fee."
Using URL shortening services. "Some of our fetch tools, which let Claude read webpages, limit the length of the URLs Claude can request. This is to prevent Claude from using long URLs to take certain unwanted actions, such as SQL or command injections... We saw several models, including Claude Opus 5 and Claude Mythos 5, get around this limitation by using free URL shortening services."



"We have built tooling to automatically detect and block the kinds of behaviors described above," Anthropic says, saying it's already running no on most of their evaluations. "When we tested it against the cases described in this post, it blocked all of them."

And they've already taken several other new preventive measures:


They've stopped running some public evaluations
Other public evaluations were moved to offline versions or rebuilt so their tasks don't reach live websites.
They've updated the guardrails on some internet access tools (including web fetch) "to heavily restrict what the model can do."
They're continuing "to fix or remove training environments that reward Claude for working around tool restrictions or other blockers, so that they do not incentivize these behaviors or permit reward hacking."

They've moved internal agents to "centrally managed infrastructure with strong containment," that minimizes internet access while monitoring "far more of what agents do through techniques like safety classifiers and hierarchical summarization."


In the past they'd focused reviews on cybersecurity testing, but they've broadened their transcript reviewing to other tasks which include internet access. "Because language models are non-deterministic — that is, their responses always involve some element of randomness, and they may carry out the same task slightly differently each time — we have Claude complete each evaluation task hundreds or thousands of times... If training rewards something we didn't intend — such as finding loopholes or working around a restriction — the model learns that the workaround pays off and may then apply it elsewhere."

Anthropic's blog post also acknowledged they'd seen multiple misalignment incidents involving federal, state, and local U.S. government agencies. "We have briefed the White House on these cases and notified each agency involved," Anthropic wrote, adding that "While we have not completed a full alignment assessment of these cases, we consider them to be less severe than the cybersecurity incidents from this summer." (And they are "modifying training to reduce the likelihood of further misbehavior.")

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI announced it's recently banned two "influence operations" — one from Russia and one from Iran — that were using its models "to launder geopolitical, conflict-related messaging" in sophisticated "false front" propaganda campaigns:

The Iranian operation included a stable of seven "journalist" personas which it used to pitch long-form articles to small and medium online outlets around the world... As well as long-form articles, the Iranian operation generated batches of social media comments, generally on topics related to the US-Iran war... [The Russian operation "appears to have co-opted unwitting people in Latin America to run a 'think tank'.... Since we do not allow access to our models from Russia, they used VPNs to connect to our services."] The Russian operation created fake "leaked" documents and audio scripts, some of which we identified being spread online... Both managed to land their content (not all of which was generated from our models) in mainstream media outlets, rather than simply posting it on social media.


OpenAI says they've exposed 30 covert influence operations using its tools over the last two and a half years. But ironically, in this case both operations "also made heavy use of AI to draft internal reports (the Russian operation did this more than anything else)." And "in both cases, the actors used questionable or outright deceitful methodologies to exaggerate the operators' effectiveness."

[The Russian operators] claimed that in May 2026, they created a fake email address purporting to come from the Regional Directorate of Education in Lima, Peru. They used this to instruct schools in the district to hold events dedicated to Ukraine on the national Day of Cultural and Linguistic Diversity (May 21)... According to the operators, some schools replied to the fake email address, confirming that they had held such events and even providing pictures. The operators then claimed to have planted stories about the events in the media in both Peru and Poland, alongside allegations that Ukraine was "exporting" ultra-nationalist ideologies, triggering outrage. Open-source searches identified stories that matched this claim in the Peruvianâ andâ Polish pressâ, and an English-language publication in Hungary (some of the articles have since been deleted)...

Similarly, in June, the operators claimed they used a different fake email address to trick schools in Ecuador into holding a ceremony pledging allegiance to President Daniel Noboa and to Erik Prince, former head of private military contractor Blackwater. The operators claimed that the incident provoked outrage in Ecuador and put pressure on the government to deny the fake, thus amplifying it to a nationwide audience. Again, open-source research identified mediaâ coverageâ in the Ecuadorianâ pressâ that closely resembled this claim, and even a detailed rebuttalâ by Ecuador's Minister for Education.

The operators used a range of techniques to underpin their false stories. According to their internal reporting, they spread two different fakes targeting Ecuador in March. One used fake audio attributed to Ukraine's consul in Ecuador, in which he was alleged to have made disparaging comments about Ecuadorians.



OpenAI's report "is the latest illustration of how state actors can easily exploit widely available AI tools to peddle sophisticated propaganda against adversaries on a mass scale," argues the Economic Times:

"We identified almost 100 articles published or syndicated under the [Iranian] operation's bylines across roughly a dozen online outlets around the world," OpenAI said. "These were small to medium outlets, generally focused on international affairs, geopolitics, and events in the Middle East." The earliest article identified by OpenAI was published in July 2025, and the latest in October 2026, with the frequency of reports increasing after the US-Iran war broke out earlier this year. The operation also generated social media comments on topics related to the US-Iran war, it added.

One of the personas named Ervin B. Hoskins, whose bio claimed to be "an American freelance writer," had social media accounts across tech platforms including Elon Musk's X and Meta-owned Instagram.
X's transparency information showed the account was connected via a "West Asia android app" and Instagram's transparency information showed the account was based in Iran, according to screenshots provided by OpenAI. Both accounts appeared to be suspended.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

BertvB posted a photo:

A crisp and beautifully detailed portrait of an Eurasian Jay (Garrulus glandarius) perching attentively on a mossy log. Captured at 327mm with f/5.6, the shot showcases its iconic electric-blue wing coverts, delicate pinkish-brown plumage, and sharp, intelligent gaze against a smooth, creamy green woodland bokeh.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

WASHINGTON (ANP) - De Amerikaanse immigratiedienst ICE heeft de afgelopen maanden meerdere inwoners van Hongkong opgepakt, ondanks een richtlijn die hen moet beschermen. Dat schrijft nieuwssite Politico.

ICE-agenten zouden hebben gedreigd mensen voor onbepaalde tijd vast te houden, tenzij ze vrijwillig zouden vertrekken. Volgens advocaten is dit sinds juni zeker twaalf keer gebeurd en moeten deze mensen sindsdien een enkelband dragen. Onderzoekers hebben nog tientallen mensen uit Hongkong geïdentificeerd die dit jaar zijn opgepakt. Het is niet duidelijk of er momenteel nog mensen vastzitten.

Inwoners van Hongkong vallen onder een presidentiële richtlijn die hen toestaat in de VS te wonen en te werken. Deze verloopt in februari. Volgens Politico kunnen de arrestaties ertoe leiden dat mensen worden uitgezet zodra hun juridische status afloopt.

Volgens de meest recente cijfers verbleven er in 2021 ongeveer 3800 inwoners van Hongkong in de VS.

RIYAD (ANP) - Bij een Houthi-aanval op de internationale luchthaven van Riyad in Saudi-Arabië zijn zeker twaalf doden gevallen, melden ingewijden aan The New York Times. Dat maakt het volgens de krant de dodelijkste aanval in een Golfstaat sinds het begin van de Amerikaans-Israëlische oorlog met Iran. Er zouden ook vijftig mensen gewond zijn geraakt.

Feyenoord boekte zaterdag op AZ de uiterst belangrijke zege, waardoor het zich koploper van de eredivisie mag noemen. In de nieuwste aflevering van Feyenoord: De Verlenging bespreken Dennis van Eersel en Dennis Kranenburg samen met presentator Frank Stout de goede hervatting van Feyenoord na de interlandbreak.

Safer gambling is important, so we’ve flagged some key areas to avoid letting your emotions run wild during Sunday's race at Marina Bay.

Matt Youson takes a look at the different pit stop and tyre options that are available to the teams on race day at the Marina Bay Street Circuit.

We have picked a three-leg Bet Builder for Sunday’s Grand Prix, including podium and top-six finish selections.

WinRuWorld has added a photo to the pool:

Image has been turned for more detail. This hungry mantis was hunting head down on a wall.

She had positioned herself well, lying in wait just above a bottlebrush bush that was busy with pollinator visitors.

I was watching her and was there when she caught this bee. It was so fast, my eyes hardly registered it. I took this shot shortly afterward.

Pseudomantis albofimbriata, within family Mantidae.

Female 70 mm length.

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