Could Ukraine hold a presidential election right now? Will Europe use frozen Russian assets to fund war? How can Ukraine rebuild China ties? 'Ukraine is running out of men, money and time' Overnight into Friday, Russia launched a large attack on Ukraine with missiles and drones, killing at least three and injuring 16 people in the capital Kyiv, according to The Associated Press news agency. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko reported multiple districts in Kyiv were struck, including Desnyanskyi, where a drone crashed into a building and the first two floors of a residential building were damaged.

Ofcom urged to use'banning' powers over X AI deepfakes The government has urged the regulator Ofcom to use all its powers - up to and including an effective ban - against X over concerns about unlawful AI images created on the site. Ofcom's powers include the ability to obtain a court order to prevent third parties from helping the Elon Musk-owned platform from raising money or from being accessed in the UK. This follows an ongoing backlash against the use of X's AI Grok to digitally remove clothing from images of people. The possibility there could be sexualised images of children raised very specific concerns in government. Addressing concerns over sexualised images of adults and children produced by Grok, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: This is disgraceful.

The pivot doesn't look out of place at CES, where Chinese electronics companies are increasingly applying their manufacturing prowess to new industries. If you've never been to Shenzhen, China's electronics capital, the annual CES trade show in Las Vegas is the next best thing. I'm reporting this week from the sprawling event, surrounded by fancy, strange, and often unnecessary gadgets, and despite my sore legs, I've barely scratched the surface. There are at least 900 Chinese tech companies attending CES this year, almost a quarter of the total exhibitors, according to an analysis of the conference's exhibitor directory. I even saw two Chinese humanoid robots at different booths dancing to the same viral Chinese rap song five minutes apart.

'Nearly three-quarters of posts collected and analyzed by a researcher were requests for nonconsensual images of real women or minors.' 'Nearly three-quarters of posts collected and analyzed by a researcher were requests for nonconsensual images of real women or minors.' Sample of roughly 500 posts shows how frequently people are creating sexualized images with Elon Musk's AI chatbot Thu 8 Jan 2026 12.00 ESTLast modified on Thu 8 Jan 2026 12.01 EST New research that samples X users prompting Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok demonstrates how frequently people are creating sexualized images with it. Nearly three-quarters of posts collected and analyzed by a PhD researcher at Dublin's Trinity College were requests for nonconsensual images of real women or minors with items of clothing removed or added. The posts offer a new level of detail on how the images are generated and shared on X, with users coaching one another on prompts; suggesting iterations on Grok's presentations of women in lingerie or swimsuits, or with areas of their body covered in semen; and asking Grok to remove outer clothing in replies to posts containing self-portraits by female users. Among hundreds of posts identified by Nana Nwachukwu as direct, nonconsensual requests for Grok to remove or replace clothing, dozens reviewed by the Guardian show users posting pictures of women including celebrities, models, stock photos and women who are not public figures posing in snapshots.

Campaigners have accused the government of dragging its heels on implementing a law which would make it illegal to create non-consensual sexualised deepfakes. It comes amid a backlash against images created using Elon Musk's AI Grok to digitally remove clothing - with one woman telling the BBC more than 100 sexualised images have been created of her. It is currently illegal to share deepfakes of adults in the UK, but new legislation that would make it a criminal offence to create or request them is still not in force despite passing in June 2025 . But it is unclear whether all of the unclothing images created by Grok would fall foul of this law. The BBC has contacted the government for comment.

Could Ukraine hold a presidential election right now? Will Europe use frozen Russian assets to fund war? How can Ukraine rebuild China ties? 'Ukraine is running out of men, money and time' Russian mortality rates on the front lines are rising to levels that cannot be sustained by the current method of voluntary recruitment, Ukrainian figures suggest. "In December, 35,000 occupiers were eliminated - and this has been confirmed with video footage," said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a Monday evening address.

Elon Musk's Grok AI appears to have made child sexual imagery, says charity The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) charity says its analysts have discovered criminal imagery of girls aged between 11 and 13 which appears to have been created using Grok. The AI tool is owned by Elon Musk's firm xAI. It can be accessed either through its website and app, or through the social media platform X. The IWF said it found sexualised and topless imagery of girls on a dark web forum in which users claimed they used Grok to create the imagery. The BBC has approached X and xAI for comment.

We were fired, and we're owning it - here's how to find a new job that works for you The new year is a natural time to reflect, and for many of us, that involves thinking about our careers. Kristina O'Neill and Laura Brown are both editors who lost their jobs after restructures, and they initially thought it was the end of the world. I poured my heart into the role... I believed in the values we promoted. Yet, when it came to me, those values weren't there, says Laura.

Trump calls for US military spending to rise more than 50% to $1.5tn President Donald Trump has called for US defence spending to be increased to $1.5tn (£1.1tn) in 2027 for what he called these very troubled and dangerous times. That would be more than 50% higher than this year's $901bn budget, which was approved by Congress in December. This will allow us to build the Dream Military that we have long been entitled to and, more importantly, that will keep us SAFE and SECURE, regardless of foe, Trump said on social media on Wednesday. In separate posts, the president said he would crack down on payouts to bosses and shareholders of major US defence contractors unless the firms speed up deliveries of armaments and build new manufacturing plants. Economists have previously warned that the gap between US spending and its income has reached unsustainable levels.

It looks like a golden chandelier and contains the coldest place in the universe. What I am looking at is not just the most powerful computer in the world, but technology pivotal to financial security, Bitcoin, government secrets, the world economy and more. Quantum computing holds the key to which companies and countries win - and lose - the rest of the 21st Century. In front of me suspended a metre in the air, in a Google facility in Santa Barbara California, is Willow. Frankly, it was not what I expected.