Vision-language models (VLMs) are highly effective but often underperform on specialized tasks; for example, Llava-1.5 struggles with chart and diagram understanding due to scarce task-specific training data. Existing training data, sourced from general-purpose datasets, fails to capture the nuanced details needed for these tasks. We introduce MM-Gen, a scalable method that generates task-specific, high-quality synthetic text for candidate images by leveraging stronger models. MM-Gen employs a three-stage targeted process: partitioning data into subgroups, generating targeted text based on task descriptions, and filtering out redundant and outlier data. Fine-tuning VLMs with data generated by MM-Gen leads to significant performance gains, including 29% on spatial reasoning and 15% on diagram understanding for Llava-1.5 (7B). Compared to human-curated caption data, MM-Gen achieves up to 1.6x better improvements for the original models, proving its effectiveness in enhancing task-specific VLM performance and bridging the gap between general-purpose datasets and specialized requirements. Code available at https://github.com/sjoshi804/MM-Gen.

Royal Mail has launched the United Kingdom's first-ever drone delivery service. The service was launched on Scotland's Orkney Islands -- operating for three months with the intent to extend in the future. A man in the U.K. who claimed to be friends with former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a pilot with a multimillion-dollar trust fund, and a cruise ship captain was exposed as a decades-long conman who swindled millions of dollars from people, according to a report. Jody Francis Oliver, 45, is currently behind bars on fraud and theft charges after leading seven different lives and allegedly swindling roughly $5.6 million from people, The Times of London reported. For decades, the man reportedly took on different high-powered identities, despite being an unemployed married dad of three.

Eight people have now been fined up to £10,000 after an illegal rave that attracted 3,000 people, with arrests also made for public order offences and driving under the influence of drugs. The unlicensed event at Banwen, on the edge of the Brecon Beacons, started Saturday night. There were still 400 people at the site on Monday morning. South Wales Police Assistant Chief Constable Dave Thorne said drone footage would help identify organisers. A student who attended the rave admitted being taken aback by the scale of the event and likened it to a festival.

Police have said they are seeking "balance" in the use of artificial intelligence to predict crimes, after freedom of information requests found that 14 UK police forces were deploying, testing or investigating predictive AI techniques. The report by Liberty, "Policing by Machine", warned that the tools risk entrenching existing biases and delivering inaccurate predictions. The civil liberties group urged police to end the use of predictive AI, saying mapping techniques rely on "problematic" historical arrest data, while individual risk assessment programmes "encourage discriminatory profiling". The forces using or trialling predictive mapping programmes are Avon and Somerset Constabulary, Cheshire Constabulary, Dyfed-Powys Police, Greater Manchester Police, Kent Police, Lancashire Police, Merseyside Police, the Metropolitan Police Service, Norfolk Constabulary, Northamptonshire Police, Warwickshire Police and West Mercia Police, West Midlands Police and West Yorkshire Police, while a further three forces – Avon and Somerset, Durham and West Midlands – are using or trialling individual risk-assessment programmes. Norfolk Police, for instance, is trialling a system for identifying whether burglaries should be investigated, while Durham Constabulary's Harm Assessment Risk Tool (Hart) provides advice to custody officers on individuals' risk of re-offending, and West Midlands Police uses hotspot mapping and a data-driven analysis project.

A fraudster who met her victim on a dating website for naturists scammed him out of £50,000. Moira Etchells, 45, met Ian Chatting-Tonks in 2013 and persuaded him to lend her the cash to start a business artificially inseminating cows. Swansea Crown Court heard she spent £35,000 on a new Land Rover and banked the rest. Etchells, of Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, admitted fraud and got an 18-month sentence, suspended for two years. Widower Mr Chatting-Tonks, from Norfolk, went online to search for a new partner who was also interested in naturism, which is when he found Etchells' profile.

A heat-seeking drone is being used to hunt a lynx which went missing from a zoo more than a week ago. Lilleth the Eurasian lynx escaped from her enclosure at Borth Wild Animal Kingdom near Aberystwyth. The drone has a specialist night scope and thermal cameras which zoo staff searching for her hope will help pinpoint her location. So far Lilleth has evaded police helicopters, tracking devices and traps. Staff said the lynx's brother Tyrion, who also lives at the zoo, has been pining for her every night and calling out to her.