Africa
Students use AI to find possible cave entrances on Moon
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been used to find two previously undiscovered possible cave entrances on the Moon, which could support human survival on future space missions. Daniel Le Corre, a PhD researcher at the University of Kent, surveyed less than 0.3% of the lunar surface before finding the two pits. The South Marius Hills Pit, which the university said was previously overlooked by researchers, is in an area thought to be rich in lava tubes, while the Bel'kovich A Pit is close to the Moon's north pole and more likely to be a source of water. The pits were detected using an AI model that was trained to scan publicly available Nasa images and identify pits based on their distinctive shape. The AI model is named Essa, which is short for entrances to sub-surface areas and a nod to the Cornish name of Mr Le Corre's hometown, Saltash.
Scammers using AI to lure shoppers to fake businesses
Unscrupulous foreign firms are using AI-generated images and false back stories to pose as family-run UK businesses to lure in shoppers. Customers say they feel completely ripped off after believing they were buying from independent boutiques in England but were delivered cheap clothes and jewellery, mass-shipped from warehouses in east Asia. Among the websites is C'est La Vie, a shop purporting to be run by couple Eileen and Patrick for 29 years and based in Birmingham's historic Jewellery Quarter - but with a returns address in China. Consumer guide Which? said the growing use of AI tools was making it possible for fraudsters to mislead the public on an unprecedented scale. Another website appearing to use AI-generated images is Mabel & Daisy, a seemingly quintessential, mother and daughter-owned clothing firm, which claims to be based in Bristol but has an address in Hong Kong.
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,322
Can Ukraine restore its pre-war borders? Why are Tomahawk missiles for Ukraine a'red line' for Russia? Is Russia testing NATO with aerial incursions in Europe? Russian President Vladimir Putin said his forces have captured almost 5,000 square kilometres (1,930sq miles) of Ukrainian territory so far this year, and Moscow retains the strategic initiative on the battlefield. Russian troops have captured the Ukrainian villages of Novovasylivka in the southeastern Zaporizhia region and Fedorivka in the eastern Donetsk region, Russia's defence ministry said.
The African Languages Lab: A Collaborative Approach to Advancing Low-Resource African NLP
Issaka, Sheriff, Wang, Keyi, Ajibola, Yinka, Samuel-Ipaye, Oluwatumininu, Zhang, Zhaoyi, Jimenez, Nicte Aguillon, Agyei, Evans Kofi, Lin, Abraham, Ramachandran, Rohan, Mumin, Sadick Abdul, Nchifor, Faith, Shuraim, Mohammed, Liu, Lieqi, Gonzalez, Erick Rosas, Kpei, Sylvester, Osei, Jemimah, Ajeneza, Carlene, Boateng, Persis, Yeboah, Prisca Adwoa Dufie, Gabriel, Saadia
Despite representing nearly one-third of the world's languages, African languages remain critically underserved by modern NLP technologies, with 88\% classified as severely underrepresented or completely ignored in computational linguistics. We present the African Languages Lab (All Lab), a comprehensive research initiative that addresses this technological gap through systematic data collection, model development, and capacity building. Our contributions include: (1) a quality-controlled data collection pipeline, yielding the largest validated African multi-modal speech and text dataset spanning 40 languages with 19 billion tokens of monolingual text and 12,628 hours of aligned speech data; (2) extensive experimental validation demonstrating that our dataset, combined with fine-tuning, achieves substantial improvements over baseline models, averaging +23.69 ChrF++, +0.33 COMET, and +15.34 BLEU points across 31 evaluated languages; and (3) a structured research program that has successfully mentored fifteen early-career researchers, establishing sustainable local capacity. Our comparative evaluation against Google Translate reveals competitive performance in several languages while identifying areas that require continued development.
Deep Learning-Based Multi-Factor Authentication: A Survey of Biometric and Smart Card Integration Approaches
Ganmati, Abdelilah, Afdel, Karim, Koutti, Lahcen
In the era of pervasive cyber threats and exponential growth in digital services, the inadequacy of single-factor authentication has become increasingly evident. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), which combines knowledge-based factors (passwords, PINs), possession-based factors (smart cards, tokens), and inherence-based factors (biometric traits), has emerged as a robust defense mechanism. Recent breakthroughs in deep learning have transformed the capabilities of biometric systems, enabling higher accuracy, resilience to spoofing, and seamless integration with hardware-based solutions. At the same time, smart card technologies have evolved to include on-chip biometric verification, cryptographic processing, and secure storage, thereby enabling compact and secure multi-factor devices. This survey presents a comprehensive synthesis of recent work (2019-2025) at the intersection of deep learning, biometrics, and smart card technologies for MFA. We analyze biometric modalities (face, fingerprint, iris, voice), review hardware-based approaches (smart cards, NFC, TPMs, secure enclaves), and highlight integration strategies for real-world applications such as digital banking, healthcare IoT, and critical infrastructure. Furthermore, we discuss the major challenges that remain open, including usability-security tradeoffs, adversarial attacks on deep learning models, privacy concerns surrounding biometric data, and the need for standardization in MFA deployment. By consolidating current advancements, limitations, and research opportunities, this survey provides a roadmap for designing secure, scalable, and user-friendly authentication frameworks.
Space agency breaks silence on 'foreign' interstellar object soaring past Mars: 'A rare visitor'
Dolly Parton's sister asks for prayers for music icon, 79, amid mystery health battle Bloodcurdling videos shows girl aged 12 subway surfing days before she and friend, 13, died during 3.10am stunt Trump's mass deportation effort removed staggering amount of migrants from US in first year of term: 'Just the beginning' Mom-of-two hospitalized, her son left suicidal and their dog dead... after a simple mistake turns $500K home into a death trap Popular actress shocks fans with'unrecognizable' appearance after suffering heartbreaking tragedy Selena Gomez's'disgusting' habit on her wedding day exposed by eagle-eyed fans despite star's efforts to hide it Charlie Kirk leaked text confirms he was livid about'bullying' Jewish donors: 'I'm leaving pro-Israel cause' She's accused of'murder-for-hire' plot against her famous TV star husband. Now there's a shock twist in the case... and she's forced to stare her demons in the face Man is arrested on terror charges over disturbing Halloween display of fake body bags with town official's titles Space agency breaks silence on'foreign' interstellar object soaring past Mars: 'A rare visitor' 'Disneyland of grocery stores' reveals items most hit by tariffs and the fan favorite it STOPPED buying from China Space agency breaks silence on'foreign' interstellar object soaring past Mars: 'A rare visitor' READ MORE: Mysterious interstellar visitor spotted above Mars appears as'massive cylindrical craft' The European Space Agency (ESA) has finally shared new details about the mysterious interstellar visitor days after its closest approach to Mars . The object, dubbed 3I/ATLAS, came within 18.6 million miles of the Red Planet on October 3, and while NASA quickly uploaded images captured by its Perseverance rover on the Martian surface, ESA had remained quiet until now . The ESA's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) captured images of the object, appearing as a tiny, blurry white dot in a series of images. The object's icy nucleus and its surrounding halo of gas and dust, called a coma, could not be distinguished separately, but the faint glow was clearly visible against the blackness of space.