Goto

Collaborating Authors

 English Channel


Trump's new world order has become real and Europe is having to adjust fast

BBC News

Trump's new world order has become real and Europe is having to adjust fast Downtown Munich is best-known for chic shops and flashy fast cars but right now its streets are bedecked with posters advertising next generation drones. Europe's security under construction boasts the slogan on an eye-catching set of sleek black-and-white photographs, festooned across a scaffolding-clad church on one of this town's best known pedestrian boulevards. Such an unapologetic public display of military muscle would have been unimaginable here just a few years ago, but the world outside Germany is changing fast, and taking this country with it. The southern region of Bavaria has become Germany's leading defence technology hub, focusing on AI, drones and aerospace. People here, like most other Europeans, say they feel increasingly exposed - squeezed between an expansionist Russia and an economically aggressive China to the east, and an increasingly unpredictable, former best pal, the United States, to the west.


Medieval shipwreck mistaken for underwater 'rubbish'

Popular Science

Science Archaeology Medieval shipwreck mistaken for underwater'rubbish' Loaded with grave slabs, the 13th century English ship was dragged to a grave of its own. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. After centuries at the bottom of the English Channel, remnants from one of England's oldest surviving shipwrecks are finally back on shore. Yet the reason it took maritime archaeologists this long to retrieve items from the 13th century Mortar Wreck was not because of its depth or the ravages of time. The shipwreck was mistaken for modern construction debris.


UK's sweeping asylum law changes: How will they impact refugees?

Al Jazeera

UK's sweeping asylum law changes: How will they impact refugees? Shabana Mahmood, the United Kingdom's home secretary, has said the country's asylum system is "not working" and is placing "intense strain on communities" ahead of proposals for major government reforms that would end refugees' automatic right to settle permanently in the UK. Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, Mahmood said undocumented migration is "tearing the country apart". First, they would end the automatic path to settled status for refugees after five years. And second, they would remove state benefits from those who have the right to work and can support themselves.


Captain of tanker linked to Russian 'shadow fleet' charged in France

BBC News

Captain of tanker linked to Russian'shadow fleet' charged in France The captain of an oil tanker believed to be part of Russia's shadow fleet of vessels used to evade sanctions has been charged by French authorities. The Chinese national was handed one count of refusing to follow instructions from the French navy and told to attend a court hearing in the northern coastal city of Brest next February. The Boracay left Russia last month and was off the coast of Denmark when unidentified drones forced the temporary closure of several airports last week. The tanker was earlier boarded by French soldiers because it was on a list of vessels subject to EU sanctions for carrying Russian oil exports. Russian President Vladimir Putin called France's actions piracy.


French troops board oil tanker linked to Russian 'shadow fleet'

BBC News

French troops board oil tanker linked to Russian'shadow fleet' French soldiers have boarded an oil tanker believed to be part of Russia's shadow fleet, used to evade sanctions imposed because of the war in Ukraine. The Boracay left Russia last month and was off the coast of Denmark when unidentified drones forced the temporary closure of several airports last week. It has been anchored off western France for a few days. French President Emmanuel Macron said at an EU leaders' summit in Copenhagen on Wednesday that the crew had committed serious offences, but did not elaborate. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia had no knowledge of the vessel.


Uncle Sam to the rescue. Trump helps out the UK with a 350 billion tech deal

FOX News

President Trump's state visit to the UK secured $350 billion in US tech investments to strengthen Britain's AI capabilities and counter Chinese influence.


Another French invasion! Orange and white spotted ladybirds seen for first time in the UK

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Charlie Kirk assassin's ammunition'engraved with transgender and antifascist' messages My last phone call with Charlie: MARK HALPERIN remembers a dedicated, political genius, who didn't hate anyone. FBI under pressure over open airport five miles from Charlie Kirk assassination hit as private jet'vanishes' after shooting Elite sniper breaks down Charlie Kirk assassin's sick plot... and reveals tiny detail everyone's missed: The gun. Silenced by a bullet to the throat - then came the sneers. MAUREEN CALLAHAN's blistering rebuke as America faces greatest political crisis since the 60s Musk dethroned as richest person by forgotten Wall Street darling's founder as stock soars 42% MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd fired over'disgusting' on-air comments about Charlie Kirk shortly after conservative star was assassinated Jimmy Kimmel reacts to assassination of Charlie Kirk: 'No finger pointing' Charlie Kirk's widow wrestling with shattering truth kids must hear soon Sweater weather starts here - the cozy, chic pieces from Soft Surroundings you'll actually wear all season Trader Joe's continues USA takeover as it snaps up more land after opening new stores this year Fierce debate erupts over'non-human' technology in space after video captures UFO surviving Hellfire strike TMZ forced to apologize after staff heard erupting in laughter as Charlie Kirk's death was announced Police tapes capture chilling details of Charlie Kirk gunman's appearance as FBI faces fury over his escape This Oscar-nominated actress, 68, will soon reunite with her ex in Spain for their daughter's wedding, can you guess who? READ MORE: 'Cannibal' ladybirds from East Asia are wiping out British species It's been hundreds of years since the French last tried to conquer Britain.


Fusing Monocular RGB Images with AIS Data to Create a 6D Pose Estimation Dataset for Marine Vessels

Holst, Fabian, Gülsoylu, Emre, Frintrop, Simone

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

The paper presents a novel technique for creating a 6D pose estimation dataset for marine vessels by fusing monocular RGB images with Automatic Identification System (AIS) data. The proposed technique addresses the limitations of relying purely on AIS for location information, caused by issues like equipment reliability, data manipulation, and transmission delays. By combining vessel detections from monocular RGB images, obtained using an object detection network (YOLOX-X), with AIS messages, the technique generates 3D bounding boxes that represent the vessels' 6D poses, i.e. spatial and rotational dimensions. The paper evaluates different object detection models to locate vessels in image space. We also compare two transformation methods (homography and Perspective-n-Point) for aligning AIS data with image coordinates. The results of our work demonstrate that the Perspective-n-Point (PnP) method achieves a significantly lower projection error compared to homography-based approaches used before, and the YOLOX-X model achieves a mean Average Precision (mAP) of 0.80 at an Intersection over Union (IoU) threshold of 0.5 for relevant vessel classes. We show indication that our approach allows the creation of a 6D pose estimation dataset without needing manual annotation. Additionally, we introduce the Boats on Nordelbe Kehrwieder (BONK-pose), a publicly available dataset comprising 3753 images with 3D bounding box annotations for pose estimation, created by our data fusion approach. This dataset can be used for training and evaluating 6D pose estimation networks. In addition we introduce a set of 1000 images with 2D bounding box annotations for ship detection from the same scene.


AIS-LLM: A Unified Framework for Maritime Trajectory Prediction, Anomaly Detection, and Collision Risk Assessment with Explainable Forecasting

Park, Hyobin, Jung, Jinwook, Seo, Minseok, Choi, Hyunsoo, Cho, Deukjae, Park, Sekil, Choi, Dong-Geol

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

With the increase in maritime traffic and the mandatory implementation of the Automatic Identification System (AIS), the importance and diversity of maritime traffic analysis tasks based on AIS data, such as vessel trajectory prediction, anomaly detection, and collision risk assessment, is rapidly growing. However, existing approaches tend to address these tasks individually, making it difficult to holistically consider complex maritime situations. To address this limitation, we propose a novel framework, AIS-LLM, which integrates time-series AIS data with a large language model (LLM). AIS-LLM consists of a Time-Series Encoder for processing AIS sequences, an LLM-based Prompt Encoder, a Cross-Modality Alignment Module for semantic alignment between time-series data and textual prompts, and an LLM-based Multi-Task Decoder. This architecture enables the simultaneous execution of three key tasks: trajectory prediction, anomaly detection, and risk assessment of vessel collisions within a single end-to-end system. Experimental results demonstrate that AIS-LLM outperforms existing methods across individual tasks, validating its effectiveness. Furthermore, by integratively analyzing task outputs to generate situation summaries and briefings, AIS-LLM presents the potential for more intelligent and efficient maritime traffic management.


DipLLM: Fine-Tuning LLM for Strategic Decision-making in Diplomacy

Xu, Kaixuan, Chai, Jiajun, Li, Sicheng, Fu, Yuqian, Zhu, Yuanheng, Zhao, Dongbin

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Diplomacy is a complex multiplayer game that requires both cooperation and competition, posing significant challenges for AI systems. Traditional methods rely on equilibrium search to generate extensive game data for training, which demands substantial computational resources. Large Language Models (LLMs) offer a promising alternative, leveraging pre-trained knowledge to achieve strong performance with relatively small-scale fine-tuning. However, applying LLMs to Diplomacy remains challenging due to the exponential growth of possible action combinations and the intricate strategic interactions among players. To address this challenge, we propose DipLLM, a fine-tuned LLM-based agent that learns equilibrium policies for Diplomacy. DipLLM employs an autoregressive factorization framework to simplify the complex task of multi-unit action assignment into a sequence of unit-level decisions. By defining an equilibrium policy within this framework as the learning objective, we fine-tune the model using only 1.5% of the data required by the state-of-the-art Cicero model, surpassing its performance. Our results demonstrate the potential of fine-tuned LLMs for tackling complex strategic decision-making in multiplayer games.