The Sudanese armed forces (SAF) are renewing efforts for an operation to retake the Kordofan and Darfur regions from the control of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), as the civil war rages deep into its third year. The army has been assessing the RSF's capabilities and resources in readiness for launching the military operation with a large number of military formations fully prepared to launch an attack, it said. Reporting from Khartoum, Al Jazeera's Hiba Moran said the Sudanese army had reorganised and redeployed troops in various part of Kordofan. "We have also seen the Sudanese army retake control of territories in the Kordofan region as well as launch air strikes and drone strikes on several RSF positions in Darfur and Kordofan," she said. "And it looks like these are the preparations or the first steps of that offensive that the army has been speaking about in efforts to regain control of territories in Kordofan and Darfur," she added.

Malaysia has blocked access to Elon Musk's artificial intelligence model Grok amid a global uproar over the chatbot's ability to create sexually explicit images of people without their consent. The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said on Sunday it had temporarily banned Grok after ordering the chatbot's developer xAI and the social media platform X to introduce safeguards to ensure compliance with the law. "MCMC considers this insufficient to prevent harm or ensure legal compliance." The Malaysian watchdog's announcement came a day after Indonesia became the world's first country to formally ban the chatbot, which is offered as both a standalone platform and an in-built feature on X. Grok has been mired in controversy in recent days over the use of its image-generation tool to depict real people in minimal clothing and sexualised poses without their consent. The spread of the sexualised deepfakes, some of them including minors, has prompted condemnation and calls to action from officials in numerous countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Australia.

Ai, a female chimpanzee famous for her cognitive skills has died at 49, according to the Japanese institute where she lived. The Kyoto University's Center for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior said Ai died on 9 January of old age and organ failure and that she was surrounded by staff when she died. Ai was born in western Africa and arrived at the Japanese institute in 1977. There, she became the namesake of the Ai Project, a research programme into the chimpanzee mind. Among the institute's noteable findings were the fact that Ai was able to use numbers and identify colours.

Elon Musk's firm X has blocked non-paying users from Grok's image-generation tool on Friday. Elon Musk's firm X has blocked non-paying users from Grok's image-generation tool on Friday. Monday briefing: How Elon Musk's Grok is being used as a tool for digital sexual abuse In today's newsletter: The chatbot is being used to digitally undress photos of women and children. What can politicians actually do to stop it, and what does it say about our control of the internet? Last week, the UK technology secretary, Liz Kendall, said: "We cannot and will not allow the proliferation of these demeaning and degrading images, which are disproportionately aimed at women and girls."

Malaysia and Indonesia block Musk's Grok over sexually explicit deepfakes Malaysia and Indonesia have blocked access to Elon Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Grok over its ability to produce sexually explicit deepfakes. Grok, a tool on Musk's X platform, allows users to generate images. In recent weeks however, it has been used to edit images of real people to show them in revealing outfits. The South East Asian countries said Grok could be used to produce pornographic and non-consensual images involving women and children. They are the first in the world to ban the AI tool.

Host Nikki Glaser returned to host the Golden Globes on Sunday, delivering a scorching opening monologue that roasted many of the celebrities in the room. Just like Wicked, I'm back for a sequel, she told the A-list crowd. Just like Frankenstein, I've been pieced together by an unlicensed European surgeon. And just like the podcasters nominated tonight, I should not be allowed to be this close to Julia Roberts. The stars took her cutting comments in good humour as Glaser reflected on the last year in film and TV.

Parents of under-fives in England are to be offered official advice on how long their children should spend watching TV or looking at computer screens. The government says it will publish its first guidance on screen time for the age group in April. It comes as government research was published showing that about 98% of children under two were watching screens on a daily basis - with parents, teachers and nursery staff saying youngsters were finding it harder to hold conversations or concentrate on learning. Children with the highest screen time - around five hours a day - reportedly could say significantly fewer words than those at the other end of the scale who watched for around 44 minutes. A national working group led by Children's Commissioner for England Dame Rachel de Souza and Department for Education scientific adviser Professor Russell Viner will formulate the guidance after speaking to parents, children and early years practitioners.

Eggie, Neo, Isaac and Memo are domestic robots. But would you let them load your dishwasher? The idea of having a friendly robot butler that can do all the dull duties of running a home has existed for decades. But now, thanks to AI, it's genuinely happening and this year the first truly multi-purpose domestic bots will start to enter homes. In Silicon Valley, they're being trained at speed to fold laundry, load the dishwasher, and clean up after us.

Science Archaeology 3D map of Easter Island takes you places visitors aren't allowed One of the world's most isolated islands is open to virtual tourists. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Nestled in the South Pacific Ocean, some 6,000 people live on the most isolated, inhabited island in the world: Rapa Nui. Known to many as Easter Island, a name Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen coined after landing on the island on Easter Sunday 1722, Rapa Nui is roughly double the size of Disney World, or 63.2 square miles. And every year, some 100,000 people visit the remote island to see the famed 13-foot-tall moai statues or Easter Island heads .

Even the Empire State Building would eventually crumble. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. New York City is one of the noisiest cities in the world. With a population of eight and a half million people, the city is a nonstop symphony of car honks, yelling, and ambulance sirens. Now, imagine if all that noise and all those people suddenly disappeared overnight. Just how quickly would nature move into abandoned apartments? Well in a new episode of's podcast, we explore just that. So, yes, there's a reason cats love boxes and no, hot workout classes usually aren't better . If you have a question for us, send us a note .