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The Baltics urgently need a de-escalation mechanism; Belarus can help

Al Jazeera

Recent weeks have seen a significant escalation of military tensions in and around the Baltics. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which are all NATO members, now experience regular incursions into their airspace by Ukrainian drones. According to both Kyiv and the Baltic capitals, those drones, en route to hit targets in western Russia, get diverted by Russian electronic jamming and end up entering these countries' territories. In early May, several stray unmanned aircraft crashed in Latvia, one of them damaging an oil storage facility. Those developments triggered a political crisis in Latvia and led to the collapse of its government.


Few-shot Cross-country Generalization of Tabular Machine Learning and Foundation Models for Childhood Anemia Prediction under Distribution Shift

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Background Childhood Anemia affects an estimated 40% of children aged 6-59 months globally and arises from heterogeneous nutritional, infectious, and socioeconomic factors that vary substantially across settings. This variability challenges the generalizability of predictive machine learning models, which often degrade under cross-population or temporal shifts. We investigated the utility a modern transformer-based tabular foundation model (TabPFN) as a complementatry framework with respect to supervised classical machine learning methods across diverse country contexts, with particular attention to data-scarce settings where surveillance capacity is most limited. Methods We conducted a multi-country prediction study using Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) children's recode data from 16 countries spanning Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. The harmonized analytic cohort comprised of (n = 68,856)children aged 6-59 months with valid hemoglobin measurements. Anemia was defined using WHO age and altitude-adjusted thresholds and treated as a binary outcome. We trained Logistic Regression, XGBoost, and LightGBM models using standard supervised learning, and evaluated TabPFN v2.6 in an in-context learning setting. Performance was assessed using Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (AUC-ROC) and other standard classification metrics, with calibration evaluated via Brier score and expected calibration error (ECE). Uncertainty in performance estimates was quantified using bootstrap resampling to derive 95% confidence intervals. Robustness was assessed in a few-shot learning setting. Cross-population generalization was examined using leave-one-country-out (LOCO) validation and reverse-LOCO experiments to assess directional transferability. Subgroup analyses were conducted across five demographic strata: child age group, sex, maternal education, residence type, and household wealth quintile. Feature importance was assessed using standard linear and tree-based explainer SHAP values for the three supervised models and an adapted version of SHAP for TabPFN, aggregated across countries and examined at the country level. TabPFN also yielded the best probabilistic calibration across all 16 countries, achieving the lowest mean Brier score (0.203) and Expected Calibration Error (ECE = 0.042) of all models evaluated; LightGBM and Logistic Regression exhibited the greatest miscalibration, particularly at higher predicted probabilities. Under full-data conditions, within-country discrimination was moderate across all models (AUC-ROC 0.59-0.76) Under LOCO validation, performance declined modestly (AUC-ROC 0.58-0.69) Reverse-LOCO analyses revealed asymmetric and directional transferability, with epidemiologically diverse populations serving as more informative training sources and certain target populations remaining persistently difficult to predict regardless of model or training data.


Latvian PM resigns over handling of stray Ukrainian drones

Al Jazeera

Latvia's Prime Minister Evika Silina resigned following criticism of her government's handling of stray drones, believed to be Ukrainian, crossing into Latvian territory. The controversy deepened divisions within the ruling coalition, causing it to lose its parliamentary majority. Trump, Xi speak ahead of talks to make relations'better than ever'


Why are World Cup tickets so expensive?

Al Jazeera

Why are World Cup tickets so expensive? Game Theory Why are World Cup tickets so expensive? The 2026 World Cup is not only the biggest World Cup in history. With dynamic pricing and rising travel costs, the game may be global, but access isn't to your average football fan. So who gets to be in the stands?


The biggest military spenders

Al Jazeera

Global military spending is up again, according to SIPRI's latest report showing the 11th consecutive year of growth. But it's based on open data and not everything makes the list. Ukrainian drones strike Russia's Tuapse refinery for third time


War, the Gulf & Rethinking Money in Sport

Al Jazeera

Game Theory: Could geopolitics impact the business of sport in the Gulf? The Gulf helped transform global sport through billions in investment. But as geopolitical tensions rise is that era of rapid expansion coming to an end? Al Jazeera's Samantha Johnson looks at how geopolitics could impact the business of sport. The Masters: Golf's segregated past Are Iran's athletes political pawns?


Sebastian Sawe breaks London marathon record with first run under two hours

Al Jazeera

Kenya's Sabastian Sawe has become the first man to run a marathon in under two hours, winning the London Marathon in 1:59:30. Ethiopia's Tigst Assefa defended her London Marathon crown on Sunday, breaking her own world record. The 31-year-old, who has never lost a marathon, smashed the world record by 65 seconds. Yomif Kejelcha of Ethiopia stayed on Sawe's heels for most of the 42.195km course before fading down the final stretch to take second in his marathon debut with 1:59:41, while Jacob Kiplimo of Uganda won bronze in 2:02:28. All three finished under Kiptum's previous record time.


China car giant BYD says it can thrive without US

BBC News

The recent surge in fuel prices due to the war in Iran has spurred demand for electric vehicles around the world, and Chinese car makers are making the most of the opportunity. China is the world's top producer of EVs, and while its manufacturers remain largely shut out of the major car market of the United States, they are benefiting from an uptick in interest and orders via dealerships across Asia and elsewhere. BYD, which overtook Tesla as the world's largest seller of electric vehicles last year and is expanding aggressively overseas, is at the centre of this shift in focus. We survive and are successful without the US market today, BYD executive vice president Stella Li told the BBC at the Beijing Auto Show. Instead of aiming for US customers, the company says its challenge is meeting increased demand in other regions, including Brazil, the UK and Europe.


Who's in control of AI?

Al Jazeera

Owner of US tech giant reveals breach of one of world's most powerful AI models. Reports of unauthorised access to one of the most powerful Artificial Intelligence models yet developed have emerged. Nothing malicious, say the owners - but it has intensified focus on such technology falling into the wrong hands. So, how is AI being controlled globally? Will complex EU loan deal intensify conflict?


Chornobyl at 40: Settlers and horses survive Russian drones, contamination

Al Jazeera

What are Russia's gains from the Iran war? 'We are not losers; we are winners' But the calm is deceptive. Two soldiers scour the skies, hands firmly gripping anti-aircraft guns mounted on pick-up trucks parked on a small, dilapidated bridge on a tributary of the Pripyat River. Danger is all around, both in the surrounding land, which still carries the legacy of the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster, with pockets of intense radioactive contamination, and above, where Russian drones and missiles launched from just across the border in Belarus, a short distance to the north, regularly pass overhead. The area is known as the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), a restricted area of approximately 30km (19 miles) in diameter, comparable in size to Luxembourg, established to contain the spread of contamination. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, briefly occupying the CEZ and the surrounding area, large swaths of it have become militarised, adding another layer of restriction to an already tightly controlled and hazardous environment. Yet despite the CEZ's many dangers, four decades on from the Chornobyl disaster, small communities of scientists, elderly returnees and soldiers have carved out lives among its abandoned buildings, while wildlife thrives in the surrounding forests.