Is the war entering a new phase? At least 13 killed in Ukrainian drone attack on Russia's Nizhnekamsk At least 13 people, including a child, have been killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian city of Nizhnekamsk, authorities said, as Ukraine's military said it carried out an attack on an oil facility in the region. Monday's attack in the Tatarstan region, about 800km (497 miles) east of Moscow, wounded at least 39 others, regional authorities said. The Russian defence ministry says it intercepted more than 450 Ukrainian drones overnight, as both sides continue to exchange heavy attacks. Nizhnekamsk plays a crucial role in Russia's oil exports, hosting one of the country's largest and most advanced refineries.

Look Up Mashable Selects Say More Versus Creator Hub Switch Off Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Trending Now Safety Net In My Bag VidCon with Mashable Back to School All Series Shannon Connellan is Mashable's Senior Editor, General Assignments, based in London. She has been Mashable's UK Editor (and still manages the illustrious UK team) and Australia Editor, but emotionally, she lives searching for . A Tomatometer-approved critic, Shannon writes about entertainment, tech, social good, science, culture, and Australian horror, and loves to nerd out with movie stars, filmmakers, and TV creators . All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission.

Image caption, Derbyshire Police has referred a case to the police watchdog over a senior officer's use of AI A senior detective is being investigated over potential artificial intelligence (AI)-related gross misconduct. The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said it had started investigating the officer after they were referred to the watchdog by Derbyshire Police following an internal review of their use of AI. The investigation into the force comes two months after a criminal investigation was launched into another officer accused of using AI systems to create evidential material in a number of cases. Derbyshire Police said on Monday it made a voluntary referral to the IOPC on 23 June regarding an officer's use of artificial intelligence. The force said the latest investigation was being independently led by the IOPC and it was unable to comment further.

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From branding irons to iris scans, the ancient business of proving who you are has never been stranger--or more lucrative. There are now more bots online than people. The challenge used to be telling who was a person from who was a bot; today, the challenge is telling good bots and bad bots apart--with humanity in the lurch. Three summers ago, Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, posted on X a fifteen-second video of dozens of people--mostly young, veiled in face masks, and wearing super-hip, white-soled sneakers--waiting in a long, snaky line in the traffic-light-lit but otherwise dusky dark of an unnamed city that appears to have been Nagoya, Japan. "Crazy lines around the world," Altman wrote. "One person getting verified every 8 seconds now." In the video, the camera pans to the front of the line, where a woman is kneeling on the sidewalk as if in prayer, staring into a gleaming silver orb about the size of a volleyball that has been propped up on a stand about the height of an end table. It looks like the eyeball of a giant robot Cyclops. She is bowing before an artificially intelligent machine, seeking a certification that she is human. That eyeball, which is known as the Orb, was developed by Tools for Humanity, a San Francisco-and Munich-based tech company that Altman founded in 2019 with a twenty-five-year-old German physicist named Alex Blania, who is now its C.E.O.

Thames Water paid its finance chief a £1m signing-on fee in July as the company struggles with a mountain of debt and faces temporary nationalisation. Steve Buck joined the company in April 2025 but it is understood the seven-figure payment was not made until last month after the company had taken legal advice over its contractual obligations. The existence of the payment, first reported by Sky News,, external was apparently revealed in a letter from the Thames Water chairman to MPs on the Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. The money is believed to have come from emergency funding provided by Thames Water's lenders. The utility company owes roughly £20bn and has been working with creditors and government officials to find a way forward.

Is the war entering a new phase? 'Like the movies': How Ukraine's ground robots are changing rules of war A ground robot carrying ammunition and resembling a real-life cousin of Wall-E, the 2008 Pixar cartoon's rusty protagonist, got stuck late one night in a trench in northeastern Ukraine. Named Murakha (ant in Ukrainian), the robot was a bit more than a metre high, but had a large clearance to trudge across rugged terrain, bombed-out streets, mud, sleet or snow on tank-like tracks at up to 12km (7.5 miles) per hour. Sending a human rescue team to the front-line area was deemed too dangerous, an officer in charge of planning robotic missions said. Instead, the pilots managed to get another Murakha to pull the first one out with a rope.

Sunset Visitor studio's founder tells us about their new, unnerving Captcha-filled world which prompts players to ask what it means to have a'meat body' S unset Visitor is a studio that has long engaged with the idea that video games are an effective vehicle for ruminating on societal problems. Its Peabody award-winning project, 1000XResist, incorporated the development team's complex feelings about the Covid pandemic. "We're pretty used to absorbing the world into the work," says studio founder Remy Siu. The outfit's latest game, Prove You're Human, continues this legacy of reflective game making, providing players with an AI-centric psychological horror experience where they must reason with a learning model convinced that it's alive. "We've tried to situate ourselves in [the question]: what is the effectual feeling of being a person inside of all of this?" Siu says.

At least 13 killed in Ukrainian strike on Russia's Tatarstan region, officials say At least 13 people have been killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on the Russian republic of Tatarstan, officials have said. One child was among the victims with 75 more people injured, Russian authorities said, in one of the deadliest single attacks on Russia since the start of Moscow's full-scale war in Ukraine. Kyiv has not yet commented on the strike on the city of Nizhnekamsk, which is more than 1,100 kilometres (680m) from the Ukrainian border. Ukraine's Armed Forces confirmed Nizhnekamsk's Tanevo oil refinery had been hit, while Ukrainian defence technology manufacturer FirePoint said its FP-1 drones had been used in the attack. The strike lasted several hours overnight and into the morning, local sources say.

A device currently being used to help octogenarians do self-administered eye exams could be part of future space missions to monitor astronauts' ocular health. The European Space Agency is trying to understand why astronauts lose their eyesight in space, in the hope they can figure out how to treat--or even prevent--the condition as looming longer spaceflights heighten the risk of permanent vision damage. The agency has commissioned British eye-scanning startup Siloton to develop a solution ahead of the international Artemis flights to the moon and other deep space missions. The health tech uses quantum technology to shrink core components used in eye-testing equipment found at optometrists to fit on a photonic chip smaller than a coin. Founded by physicists in 2020, Siloton is currently working with the UK's National Health Service to enable patients with retinal conditions to self-scan at home. "The ESA pretty much has the same requirements," says cofounder and chief technology officer Euan Allen.