Patriot missile involved in Bahrain blast likely U.S.-operated, analysis finds Smoke rises following a strike on the Bapco Oil Refinery, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, on Sitra Island Bahrain, on March 9. | REUTERS An American-operated Patriot air defense battery likely fired the interceptor missile involved in a pre-dawn explosion that injured dozens of civilians and tore through homes in U.S.-ally Bahrain 10 days into the war on Iran, according to an analysis by academic researchers examined by Reuters. Both Bahrain and Washington have blamed an Iranian drone attack for the March 9 blast, which the Gulf kingdom said injured 32 people including children, some seriously. Commenting on the day of the attack, U.S. Central Command said on X that an Iranian drone struck a residential neighborhood in Bahrain. In response to questions, Bahrain on Saturday acknowledged for the first time that a Patriot missile was involved in the explosion over the Mahazza neighborhood on Sitra island, offshore from the capital Manama and also home to an oil refinery. In a statement, a Bahraini government spokesperson said the missile successfully intercepted an Iranian drone mid-air, saving lives. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

Elon Musk-owned X's Grok AI chatbot stirred outrage earlier this year over it generating images of naked women and girls without their consent. Paris - French prosecutors said Saturday they had alerted U.S. authorities to a suspicion that tech tycoon Elon Musk had encouraged controversy over sexualized deepfakes on X to artificially increase the value of his company. The social media network's Grok AI chatbot stirred outrage earlier this year over it generating images of naked women and girls without their consent. The controversy sparked by sexually explicit deepfakes generated by Grok (X's AI) may have been deliberately generated in order to artificially boost the value of companies X and xAI, the Paris prosecutor's office said, confirming a report in Le Monde newspaper on Friday. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.

Small modular reactors and microreactors could power AI data centers and factories, but outdated rules and public fears are stalling America's nuclear energy future.

Two robots box while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz visits Unitree Robotics in Zhejiang Province, China. In the exhibition hall at Unitree Robotics in Hangzhou, Friedrich Merz smiled and applauded the martial arts display by a platoon of humanoid warriors. But when a robot boxer advanced toward him, punching the air with its red-gloved fists, the German chancellor flinched, a look of alarm crossing his face as he appeared to realize the danger posed by an autonomous fighting machine. It was also a moment that crystallized for Merz the power of China's technology, according to a person familiar with his thinking. He saw it, too, as a sign of how far behind Germany has fallen and how European Union regulation holds back their efforts to catch up, the person said, asking not to be named discussing the chancellor's private views. The trip, last month, has triggered a broader reckoning that is starting to settle in across Europe: Maybe de-risking from China is just too big a task.

A trio linked with a US technology supplier have been charged over a ploy to smuggle American artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, the Department of Justice said on Thursday. The individuals allegedly conspired to sell billions of dollars' worth of technology to buyers in China by faking documents and using dummy equipment to slip past audits, according to the DOJ. The goods in question included Nvidia-made semiconductors, highly coveted AI chips which are subject to export controls. In August 2025, two Chinese nationals were also arrested and charged with illegally shipping millions of dollars' worth of Nvidia chips to China. The DOJ said in a statement on Thursday that it had arrested US-citizen Yih-Shyan Wally Liaw and Taiwanese citizen Ting-Wei Willy Sun, while Ruei-Tsang Steven Chang, a Taiwanese citizen, remains a fugitive.

As OpenClaw enthusiasm grips China, school kids and retirees alike raise'lobsters' Zhipu staff members help residents install and setup AutoClaw, a local version of the AI agent OpenClaw developed by Zhipu, at an office building in Beijing. BEIJING - Fan Xinquan, a retired electronics worker in Beijing, has recently started raising a lobster, hoping that the AI agent he has been training can help organize his specialized industry knowledge better than chatbots like DeepSeek. OpenClaw can actually help you accomplish many practical things, the 60-year-old said at a recent event hosted by AI startup Zhipu to teach people how to use and train the AI agent, which has gone viral in China, with its various local versions earning the lobster nickname. In the past month, OpenClaw, which can connect several hardware and software tools and learn from the data produced with much less human intervention than a chatbot, has captured the imaginations of many in China, from retirees looking for side income to AI firms hoping to generate new revenue streams. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.

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Steve Rose goes for a spin. Steve Rose goes for a spin. 'We don't tell the car what it should do': my ride in a self-driving taxi Driverless'robotaxis' will be accepting fares in Britain's biggest city by the end of next year. Can they deal with London's medieval roads, hordes of pedestrians and errant ebikers? 'I'm really excited to show you this," says Alex Kendall, the CEO of Wayve, as he gets behind the wheel of one of the company's electric Ford Mustangs. The car pulls up to a junction at a busy road in King's Cross, London, all by itself. "You can see that it's going to control the speed, steering, brake, indicators," he says to me - I'm in the passenger seat. "It's making decisions as it goes.

An engineer at the AgiBot factory in Shanghai, China, where the 5,000th mass-produced humanoid robot had rolled off the production line. An engineer at the AgiBot factory in Shanghai, China, where the 5,000th mass-produced humanoid robot had rolled off the production line. How close are we to the sci-fi vision of autonomous humanoid robots? C hen Liang, the founder of Guchi Robotics, an automation company headquartered in Shanghai, is a tall, heavy-set man in his mid-40s with square-rimmed glasses. His everyday manner is calm and understated, but when he is in his element - up close with the technology he builds, or in business meetings discussing the imminent replacement of human workers by robots - he wears an exuberant smile that brings to mind an intern on his first day at his dream job. Guchi makes the machines that install wheels, dashboards and windows for many of the top Chinese car brands, including BYD and Nio. He took the name from the Chinese word, "steadfast intelligence", though the fact that it sounded like an Italian luxury brand was not entirely unwelcome. For the better part of two decades, Chen has tried to solve what, to him, is an engineering problem: how to eliminate - or, in his view, liberate - as many workers in car factories as technologically possible. Late last year, I visited him at Guchi headquarters on the western outskirts of Shanghai. Next to the head office are several warehouses where Guchi's engineers tinker with robots to fit the specifications of their customers. Chen, an engineer by training, founded Guchi in 2019 with the aim of tackling the hardest automation task in the car factory: "final assembly", the last leg of production, when all the composite pieces - the dashboard, windows, wheels and seat cushions - come together. At present, his robots can mount wheels, dashboards and windows on to a car without any human intervention, but 80% of the final assembly, he estimates, has yet to be automated. That is what Chen has set his sights on. As in much of the world, AI has become part of everyday life in China . But what most excites Chinese politicians and industrialists are the strides being made in the field of robotics, which, when combined with advances in AI, could revolutionise the world of work.

'Phase-free' design builds disaster preparedness into everyday life Tadayuki Sato, representative director of the Phase Free Association, has introduced the phase-free concept in a bid to seamlessly integrate disaster preparedness with everyday life and business operations. A ball-point pen that can write on a wet piece of paper is an example of everyday goods that fit the phase-free concept. Fifteen years after the devastating March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Japan is seeing growing momentum behind phase-free design, a new approach to disaster preparedness that integrates emergency functionality into everyday items. As major quakes have continued to strike various parts of Japan, Tadayuki Sato, representative director of the Phase Free Association, recognized the limitations of traditional disaster preparedness. Conventional approaches, led primarily by government bodies and focused on stockpiling specialized emergency supplies, were falling short. Around 2014, he introduced the phase-free concept in a bid to seamlessly integrate disaster preparedness with everyday life and business operations.