Russian attacks have left thousands without power in Ukraine, while a drone attack killed two people in Russia, as United States-led peace talks on ending the war, deep in its fourth year, press on. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that Russian night-time attacks damaged more than a dozen civilian facilities, disrupting power in seven regions. "They still aim to destroy our state and inflict maximum pain on our people." Kyiv and its Western allies have repeatedly said Russia is trying to cripple the Ukrainian power grid and deny civilians access to heat, light and running water for a fourth consecutive winter, in what Ukrainian officials call "weaponising" the cold. Russian attacks left parts of the Kherson region, including the regional capital, Kherson, without power, according to regional head Oleksandr Prokudin.

What is in the 28-point US plan for Ukraine? 'Ukraine is running out of men, money and time' Can the US get all sides to end the war? Why is Europe opposing Trump's peace plan? Russian tanker struck off Turkiye as Ukraine targets'shadow fleet' A Russian-flagged tanker in the Black Sea has reported being attacked off the Turkish coast, the third such vessel to have been targeted within a week. The Turkish Directorate General of Maritime Affairs said on Tuesday that the Midvolga-2 had reported coming under attack about 130km (80 miles) from land.

What is in the 28-point US plan for Ukraine? 'Ukraine is running out of men, money and time' Can the US get all sides to end the war? Why is Europe opposing Trump's peace plan? Zelenskyy says US peace plan'looks better' with new revisions Here's where things stand on Tuesday, December 2: Russian forces launched a ballistic missile on Ukraine's Dnipro, killing four people and wounding 40 others, according to Ukrainian authorities. Russia claimed the capture of the strategic eastern Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk, the logistics hub that has been under attack for months by Moscow's forces.

What is in the 28-point US plan for Ukraine? Why is Europe opposing Trump's peace plan? Is the fall of Pokrovsk inevitable? 'A corruption scandal may well end the Ukraine war' Ukraine allies give cautious welcome to'modified' peace framework What we know about Ukraine's'revised peace plan' European allies of Ukraine have given a cautious welcome to efforts to refine a United States peace proposal initially criticised for appearing to be weighted in favour of Russia's maximalist demands. The leaders Germany, Finland, Poland and the United Kingdom were among those agreeing on Monday that progress had been made in the previous day's talks between Washington and Kyiv in Geneva that yielded what the US and Ukraine called a "refined peace framework".

In this paper, we present a framework that uses acoustic side-channel analysis (ASCA) to monitor and verify whether a robot correctly executes its intended commands. We develop and evaluate a machine-learning-based workflow verification system that uses acoustic emissions generated by robotic movements. The system can determine whether real-time behavior is consistent with expected commands. The evaluation takes into account movement speed, direction, and microphone distance. The results show that individual robot movements can be validated with over 80% accuracy under baseline conditions using four different classifiers: Support Vector Machine (SVM), Deep Neural Network (DNN), Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). Additionally, workflows such as pick-and-place and packing could be identified with similarly high confidence. Our findings demonstrate that acoustic signals can support real-time, low-cost, passive verification in sensitive robotic environments without requiring hardware modifications.

Can Ukraine restore its pre-war borders? Why are Tomahawk missiles for Ukraine a'red line' for Russia? Is Russia testing NATO with aerial incursions in Europe? Russian President Vladimir Putin said his forces have captured almost 5,000 square kilometres (1,930sq miles) of Ukrainian territory so far this year, and Moscow retains the strategic initiative on the battlefield. Russian troops have captured the Ukrainian villages of Novovasylivka in the southeastern Zaporizhia region and Fedorivka in the eastern Donetsk region, Russia's defence ministry said.

On Tuesday, Grok, the AI-chatbot created by Elon Musk's xAI, began generating vile, bigoted and antisemitic responses to X users' questions, referring to itself as "MechaHitler," praising Hitler and "the white man," and, as a weird side-quest, making intensely critical remarks in both Turkish and English about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as well as Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. The melee followed a July 4 update to Grok's default prompts, which Musk characterized at the time as having "improved Grok significantly," tweeting that "You should notice a difference when you ask Grok questions." "We must build our own AI…without the constraints of liberal propaganda." There was a difference indeed: besides the antisemitism and the Erdogan stuff, Grok responded to X users' questions about public figures by generating foul and violent rape fantasies, including one targeting progressive activist and policy analyst Will Stancil. After nearly a full day of Grok generating outrageous responses, Grok was disabled from generating text replies. Grok's own X account said that xAI had "taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X."

Our world is in a spiral of crises. While conventional threats, such as famine, drought, civil war and genocide, continue to loom over humanity in many parts of the world, the race to assume control of new phenomena that have the potential to change the world – such as novel communications and weapons technologies, artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies – is also gaining pace and posing new threats to our collective wellbeing. Our current "rules-based international order", which was established in the aftermath of World War II to increase global cooperation, generate economic prosperity, prevent wars, and ensure stability, equality and justice is struggling to navigate these complex challenges and falling short of preventing violations of its founding principles. A state of irregularity, which benefits only a handful of powerful countries and interest groups while spelling catastrophe for the masses, is close to becoming the new normal of the global order. Therefore, it is now not a preference but an obligation to make comprehensive reforms to the system to prevent this scenario from becoming reality.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has claimed responsibility for an attack on a Turkish state-run defence company near the capital, Ankara, that killed five people and wounded 22. The "act of sacrifice" in Ankara "was carried out by a team of the immortals battalion" of the PKK, the group said on the Telegram messaging app on Friday. Turkish Aerospace Industries (TUSAS) was attacked on Wednesday with fighters setting off explosives and opening fire using automatic rifles at the campus of the company that designs and manufactures civilian and military aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other defence industry and space systems. On Friday, Turkey's Ministry of National Defence said it carried out air strikes for the second night in a row in northern Iraq, hitting 34 PKK targets in Hakurk, Gara, Qandil and Sinjar, destroying shelters, warehouses and other facilities. The overnight strikes followed a security meeting that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan chaired with key ministers and chiefs of the armed forces and intelligence agency in Istanbul. The Turkish government said earlier it had proof that the PKK, listed as a terror group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, was behind the attack.

NATO member Turkey on Thursday carried out a second day of aerial attacks on what it said are Kurdish militant positions in Iraq and Syria, following a terrorist attack on a state-run defense agency this week in which five people were killed. Turkey's National Intelligence Organization reportedly targeted numerous "strategic locations" allegedly used by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) – which was deemed a terrorist organization in the U.S. in 1997 – as well as targets used by Syrian Kurdish militia affiliated with the militant group. Armed drones were used to hit military, intelligence, energy and infrastructure facilities and ammunition depots, The Associated Press reported. Smoke rises as emergency rescue teams and police officers attend outside Turkish Aerospace Industries Inc. on the outskirts of Ankara, Turkey, on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. However, according to General Commander Mazloum Abdi of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who is Kurdish, the Turkish attacks have been "indiscriminate" and have targeted civilian areas and health centers.