Meta says it is acquiring the Chinese-founded AI firm Manus as it looks to boost the capabilities of its tech. Bloomberg analysts and The Wall Street Journal suggested the purchase could be worth more than $2bn (£1.48bn). Meta said the deal would help improve its own AI by giving people access to agents - tools which can do complex things with minimal user interaction such as planning trips or making presentations. Manus's exceptional talent will join Meta's team to deliver general-purpose agents across our consumer and business products, including Meta AI, it said in a blog post. Barton Crockett, analyst at Rosenblatt Securities, told Reuters it was a natural fit for Meta, which extended into boss Mark Zuckerberg's vision of personal AI using agents.

Elon Musk walks to the White House after landing in Marine One on the South Lawn on 9 March in Washington DC. Elon Musk walks to the White House after landing in Marine One on the South Lawn on 9 March in Washington DC. We still don't really know what Elon Musk's Doge actually did W hen Elon Musk vowed late last year to lead a "department of government efficiency" (Doge), he claimed it would operate with "maximum transparency" as it set about saving $2tn worth of waste and exposing massive fraud. Today, with Musk out of the White House, Doge having cut only a tiny fraction of the waste it promised, and dozens of lawsuits alleging violations of privacy and transparency laws, much of what the agency has done remains a mystery. The effects of Doge's initial blitz through the federal government - which included dismantling the US Agency for International Development ( USAID), embedding staffers in almost every agency and illegally firing people en masse - are still playing out.

Tech giant Meta has announced it will buy artificial intelligence startup Manus in a rare crossover of US and Chinese technology amid Washington and Beijing's heated tech rivalry. Meta said the acquisition would see it take over the operation of Manus's self-directing AI agent and integrate the technology into its own products. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said the deal would bring one of the "leading autonomous general-purpose agents" to billions of people worldwide. "Manus's exceptional talent will join Meta's team to deliver general-purpose agents across our consumer and business products, including in Meta AI," the California-based firm said in a statement on Monday. "We're excited to welcome the Manus team and help improve the lives of billions of people and millions of businesses with their technology."

Octopus Energy to spin off $8.65bn tech arm Kraken Octopus Energy is set to spin off its Kraken Technologies arm as a standalone company after a deal to sell a stake in the platform valued it at $8.65bn (£6.4bn). The energy giant, Britain's biggest gas and electricity supplier, has sold a $1bn stake in the AI-based division to a group of investors led by New York-based D1 Capital Partners. The move paves the way for Kraken to be demerged from Octopus, and for a potential stock market flotation for the business in the future. Octopus founder and chief executive Greg Jackson told the BBC there was every chance Kraken would list its shares in the medium term, with the location of the flotation between London and the US. Kraken uses AI to automate customer service and billing for energy companies and can manage when customers use energy, rewarding them for reducing consumption at peak times. It was initially built for use by Octopus but has since picked up a raft of other utilities clients, including EDF, E.On Next, TalkTalk and National Grid US.

Throughout the year we've reported on some of the larger stories, and some of the lesser-covered happenings, in our regular monthly digests. We look back through the archives and pick out one or two stories from each of our digests. This month, AI startup DeepSeek released DeepSeek R1, a reasoning model designed for good performance on logic, maths, and pattern-finding tasks. The company has also launched six smaller versions of R1 that are tiny enough to run locally on laptops. In Wired, Zeyi Yang reported on who is behind the startup, whilst Tongliang Liu (in The Conversation) looked at how DeepSeek achieved its results with a fraction of the cash and computing power of its competitors.

Could Ukraine hold a presidential election right now? Will Europe use frozen Russian assets to fund war? How can Ukraine rebuild China ties? 'Ukraine is running out of men, money and time' Each week, Myroshnyk Vassyl Savych heads north to deliver his newspaper to border communities exposed to Russian fire and disinformation. Editor-in-Chief Myroshnyk Vassyl Savych gets ready to deliver his weekly newspaper, Zorya Visnyk (The Dawn Bulletin), from his office in Zolochiv, in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, to front-line villages in November 2025 [Louis Lemaire/Al Jazeera] Editor-in-Chief Myroshnyk Vassyl Savych gets ready to deliver his weekly newspaper, Zorya Visnyk (The Dawn Bulletin), from his office in Zolochiv, in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, to front-line villages in November 2025 [Louis Lemaire/Al Jazeera] It's a cold, foggy morning in early November, and Myroshnyk Vassyl Savych is driving north on a narrow road in eastern Ukraine towards the Russian border. He's headed to villages where, owing to increasing exposure to Russian fire, only a fraction of residents remain. The war has cut them off from regular services. They no longer receive mail, and Russian transmitters often overpower or interfere with their Ukrainian mobile-phone signals. Before large-scale signal jamming was introduced to counter drones, Russian television and radio channels were accessible on televisions and radios in border-area communities. In his trunk are bundles of Zorya Visnyk ( The Dawn Bulletin), a local newspaper that Vassyl edits and delivers to front-line communities in Ukraine's Kharkiv region.

Trump says US hit'big facility' linked to alleged Venezuelan drug boats Donald Trump has said the US has carried out a strike on a dock area linked to alleged Venezuelan drug boats. The US president said there had been a major explosion where they load the boats up with drugs - but did not give more details. Venezuela's government is yet to respond. The explosion was caused by a drone strike carried out by the CIA, CNN and the New York Times reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. If confirmed, it would be the first known US operation inside Venezuela.

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Music in 2026: Who's releasing new albums and will Oasis play Knebworth? As the sun sets on 2025, all the year-end lists have been published and it's time to look forward to what 2026 has in store. In many ways, the last 12 months have felt transitional. With relatively few A-list releases, and a Brat-shaped hole in the summer, music seemed to split in two. The charts were agonisingly static: Just three songs held the number one spot hostage for half the year: Taylor Swift's Fate of Ophelia, Huntr/x's Golden, and Alex Warren's Ordinary (never has a song been so aptly titled).

Could Ukraine hold a presidential election right now? Will Europe use frozen Russian assets to fund war? How can Ukraine rebuild China ties? 'Ukraine is running out of men, money and time' Volodymyr Zelenskyy quickly denied a claim by Moscow that his country's military launched a drone attack on Vladimir Putin's residence in the city of Novgorod. The Ukrainian leader accused Russia of trying to derail peace talks a day after Zelenskyy met with US President Donald Trump.