Politics aside, reports on years of United Kingdom defense cuts could help explain why Britain avoided an offensive role in Iran amid Trump criticism.

What are Russia's gains from the Iran war? 'We are not losers; we are winners' Latvia's president asks opposition leader to form new government Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics has backed opposition lawmaker Andris Kulbergs to replace Evika Silina for the top job after the prime minister resigned over an incident involving Ukrainian drones. Kulbergs, leader of the United List of smaller parties, which forms the largest opposition bloc in parliament, will take office if lawmakers approve him and his cabinet. "Considering recent events, I think the new prime minister should come from opposition parties," President Rinkevics told a news conference on Saturday. Last weekend, the former Prime Minister Silina fired her defence minister, Andris Spruds, after two Ukrainian drones strayed into Latvia from Russia and exploded at an oil storage facility. The incident is only the latest in a series of such events in NATO members Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania.

Swatch have closed their stores in cities across the UK after hundreds of people queued outside branches eager to buy a new limited watch. The Swiss firm said it would not open its branches in the capital in light of safety considerations for both our customers and our staff. Stores in Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield will also remain closed. The firm had been due to launch their new Royal Pop pocket watch collaboration with luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet, with eight models priced from £335. However the watch has been put on resale online for up to £16,000.

Plus: Instructure's Canvas ransomware debacle comes to a close, an alleged dark net market kingpin gets arrested, OpenAI workers fall victim to a supply chain attack, and more. The worst part of your iPhone getting stolen may not be the theft itself. Instead, it's the phishing attacks waged against people in your contacts. New research this week shows that there's a thriving ecosystem for tools that let criminals unlock iPhones and target the phone numbers they find inside. Foxconn, the electronics manufacturing giant known for its role in building iPhones, revealed this week that it recently "suffered a cyberattack."

Ukraine's bet on drone swarms. Lyiv, Ukraine - Hundreds of AI-controlled robots operating in unison, talking to each other to autonomously attack targets -- a dystopian vision of the future of war that Ukraine's defense industry wants to make a reality. Four years into the Russian invasion, the idea -- known as drone swarms -- is one of the hottest topics in military tech in a country that describes itself as the world-leader in drone warfare. There is a huge interest, military expert Yury Fedorenko told a recent Drone Autonomy conference, held in an undisclosed location in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

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Environment Animals Wildlife'Two-headed snake' confuses predators More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. The reed snake is only about eight inches long. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Only around 600 of the nearly 4,000 known snake species are venomous. The recently discovered Guangxi reed snake () in China is not one of those species, but its alternative defense mechanism is strange enough to keep most predators at bay.

Russia and Ukraine exchanged 205 prisoners of war on Friday, hours after rescue workers ended their search of a destroyed block of flats in Kyiv in which 24 people were killed, including three girls. Most of the Ukrainian prisoners had been held since 2022, said President Zelensky. The swap was part of a short-lived ceasefire ending this week with the launch of massive Russian strikes across Ukraine, including a missile attack that reduced 18 flats to rubble. Among the victims was 12-year-old Lyubava Yakovleva, whose father was killed during the war. Meanwhile, Russian officials said four people, including a child, were killed when Ukrainian drones hit the city of Ryazan, south-east of Moscow.

Plus: as their trial goes to the jury, Musk and Altman face lying accusations. China's short drama industry is fueled by bite-sized, melodramatic, and smutty shows built for smartphone scrolling. Now, many are being made entirely with AI: no actors, camera operators, cinematographers, or CGI specialists required. An average of 470 AI-generated short dramas were released every day in January. Production timelines have shrunk from months to weeks, while costs have dropped by up to 90%. Storytelling is also increasingly driven by performance data.

CFTC chairman Michael Selig sat down with WIRED to discuss how the agency scours Polymarket and other prediction markets for illegal activity. For most of the past year, it looked like prediction markets had kicked off a new golden age of fraud. On Polymarket, traders raked in fortunes from suspiciously timed bets on geopolitical events like the raid on Venezuela and the Iran War. It wasn't clear whether the US government would bother pursuing some of the most flagrant bad actors, since Polymarket's crypto-based platform was technically offshore and not regulated or licensed within the country. Now, however, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees prediction markets, wants you to know that it's watching very, very closely.