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.

The viral short dramas are increasingly being created entirely with AI, with hundreds of new shows spun up each day. In a dimly lit bedroom, a frightened young woman is thrown onto a bed by a tall, muscular man. He grabs her hand, and flame-like vines crawl across her body, fusing with her flesh. A dragon-shaped tattoo appears across her chest. "Two months," the man says. "Give me an heir, or I will eat you."

Students at one of Russia's leading engineering universities are getting a lucrative offer: ditch their studies for a year, fly drones for the military and earn more than 5 million rubles ($68,275) in pay as well as free tuition on their return. Pamphlets distributed at Bauman Moscow State Technical University promise students who sign up for the unmanned systems forces will fly drones from far behind the front lines, but still qualify for combat veteran status. It's part of a broader push across Russia to recruit university and college students, using lavish signing bonuses, academic leave and even outright coercion to convince young men to join the fight. At least 270 institutions are actively promoting military contracts, according to the independent magazine Groza, which specializes in higher education and student issues. 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.

Before arriving for his high-stakes summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, United States President Donald Trump aimed to set expectations high. He said he would urge Xi to "open up" China's economy and announced a delegation of top business executives, including Tesla's Elon Musk, Apple's Tim Cook and Nvidia's Jensen Huang, to accompany him. While Trump and Xi are anticipated to extend the one-year pause in their trade war agreed to in South Korea in October, the expectations are for a stabilisation - not revitalisation - in ties between the world's two largest economies, which are locked in a rivalry that spans everything from trade and artificial intelligence to the status of Taiwan. "It is important to be clear-eyed about the state of relations here," Claire E Reade, a senior counsel at Arnold & Porter who previously worked on China at the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), told Al Jazeera. "China does not trust the US, and China wants to beat the US in what it sees as long-term global competition," Reade said.

Brutal raid on woman's birthday party highlights rise of Russian vigilante group Katya was about to blow out the candles on her 30th birthday cake when masked men burst into the nightclub hired for her party, and began physically and verbally attacking her friends. They called us faggots and lesbians. I could hear violence from every corner, she told a BBC World Service investigation. Her mother was told to get down on all fours, she says. The swoop was instigated by a vigilante group, called Russkaya Obshina, that wants to accelerate President Vladimir Putin's agenda to stamp out what he describes as Western liberalism, and promote traditional family-oriented values.