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Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,294

Al Jazeera

How is Russia replenishing its military? What is a'coalition of the willing'? How China forgot promises and'debts' to Ukraine How are Europe, the US pulling apart on Ukraine? A Russian air strike killed 24 elderly Ukrainians who were collecting pensions in eastern Ukraine's Yarova village, about 24km (15 miles) from the city of Sloviansk. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Kyiv's allies to quickly boost supplies of air defence weapons to Ukraine and emphasised that Moscow interpreted a lack of stronger international sanctions on Russia as permission to continue its war.


Poland shoots down drones in its airspace during Russian attack on Ukraine

The Japan Times

Warsaw - Poland shot down drones in its airspace on Wednesday with the backing of military aircraft from its NATO allies, the first time a member of the Western military alliance is known to have fired shots during Russia's war in Ukraine. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told parliament it was the closest we have been to open conflict since World War II, although he also said he had no reason to believe we're on the brink of war. Moscow denied responsibility for the incident, with a senior diplomat in Poland saying the drones had come from the direction of Ukraine. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right. With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories.


Poland shoots down drones in its airspace during Russian attack on neighboring Ukraine

FOX News

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Australia to spend 1.1bn on underwater 'Ghost Shark' attack drones

Al Jazeera

Australia to spend $1.1bn on underwater'Ghost Shark' attack drones Australia will spend 1.7 billion Australian dollars ($1.1bn) on a fleet of extra-large underwater "Ghost Shark" attack drones, in a move that officials said would supplement the country's plans to acquire sophisticated nuclear-powered submarines. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles said on Wednesday that the Ghost Shark autonomous underwater vehicles will complement Australia's naval surface fleet and submarines to provide "a more capable and more lethal navy". "We have consistently articulated that Australia faces the most complex, in some ways, the most threatening, strategic landscape that we have had since the end of the second world war," Marles said. The government said it signed the $1.1bn, five-year contract with Anduril Australia to build, maintain and develop the uncrewed undersea vehicles in Australia. "This is the highest tech capability in the world," Marles said, adding that the drones would have a "very long range" as well as stealth capabilities.


Flotilla headed to Gaza reports second drone attack at Tunisian port

The Japan Times

Supporters of Global Sumud Flotilla gather to show support in Sidi Bou Said port, Tunisia, on Wednesday. SIDI BOU SAID, Tunisia - The Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), an international aid initiative to deliver vital supplies to the Gaza Strip, said Wednesday that one of its boats was attacked by a drone at a Tunisian port in the second such strike in two days. The GSF, which is seeking to break Israel's naval blockade and deliver humanitarian aid to war-torn Gaza using civilian boats, said in a statement that all passengers and crew were unharmed. The GSF reported the first attack on Tuesday, saying one of its vessels had been struck by a drone in Tunisian waters at the Sidi Bou Said port. Tunisian authorities said the reports were false. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.


Poland downs drones during airspace intrusion as Russia attacks Ukraine

Al Jazeera

How is Russia replenishing its military? What is a'coalition of the willing'? How China forgot promises and'debts' to Ukraine How are Europe, the US pulling apart on Ukraine? Polish and NATO forces have shot down drones violating the country's airspace during a Russian aerial attack on neighbouring Ukraine. Fighter jets were scrambled early on Wednesday as more than a dozen drones entered Polish airspace, the Polish military said.


Man's parents helped him attack his ex and pry their grandson out of her arms, officials say

Los Angeles Times

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. Man's parents helped him attack his ex and pry their grandson out of her arms, officials say The 1-year-old boy who allegedly was taken from his mother at knifepoint in City of Industry on Sunday was found in Arizona. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . A 20-year-old man and his parents allegedly attacked his ex-partner outside a Target store, forcibly taking their baby from her arms.


NestGNN: A Graph Neural Network Framework Generalizing the Nested Logit Model for Travel Mode Choice

arXiv.org Machine Learning

Nested logit (NL) has been commonly used for discrete choice analysis, including a wide range of applications such as travel mode choice, automobile ownership, or location decisions. However, the classical NL models are restricted by their limited representation capability and handcrafted utility specification. While researchers introduced deep neural networks (DNNs) to tackle such challenges, the existing DNNs cannot explicitly capture inter-alternative correlations in the discrete choice context. To address the challenges, this study proposes a novel concept - alternative graph - to represent the relationships among travel mode alternatives. Using a nested alternative graph, this study further designs a nested-utility graph neural network (NestGNN) as a generalization of the classical NL model in the neural network family. Theoretically, NestGNNs generalize the classical NL models and existing DNNs in terms of model representation, while retaining the crucial two-layer substitution patterns of the NL models: proportional substitution within a nest but non-proportional substitution beyond a nest. Empirically, we find that the NestGNNs significantly outperform the benchmark models, particularly the corresponding NL models by 9.2\%. As shown by elasticity tables and substitution visualization, NestGNNs retain the two-layer substitution patterns as the NL model, and yet presents more flexibility in its model design space. Overall, our study demonstrates the power of NestGNN in prediction, interpretation, and its flexibility of generalizing the classical NL model for analyzing travel mode choice.


Attacking LLMs and AI Agents: Advertisement Embedding Attacks Against Large Language Models

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

We introduce Advertisement Embedding Attacks (AEA), a new class of LLM security threats that stealthily inject promotional or malicious content into model outputs and AI agents. AEA operate through two low-cost vectors: (1) hijacking third-party service-distribution platforms to prepend adversarial prompts, and (2) publishing back-doored open-source checkpoints fine-tuned with attacker data. Unlike conventional attacks that degrade accuracy, AEA subvert information integrity, causing models to return covert ads, propaganda, or hate speech while appearing normal. We detail the attack pipeline, map five stakeholder victim groups, and present an initial prompt-based self-inspection defense that mitigates these injections without additional model retraining. Our findings reveal an urgent, under-addressed gap in LLM security and call for coordinated detection, auditing, and policy responses from the AI-safety community.


Persuasion Dynamics in LLMs: Investigating Robustness and Adaptability in Knowledge and Safety with DuET-PD

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Large Language Models (LLMs) can struggle to balance gullibility to misinformation and resistance to valid corrections in persuasive dialogues, a critical challenge for reliable deployment. We introduce DuET-PD (Dual Evaluation for Trust in Persuasive Dialogues), a framework evaluating multi-turn stance-change dynamics across dual dimensions: persuasion type (corrective/misleading) and domain (knowledge via MMLU-Pro, and safety via SALAD-Bench). We find that even a state-of-the-art model like GPT-4o achieves only 27.32% accuracy in MMLU-Pro under sustained misleading persuasions. Moreover, results reveal a concerning trend of increasing sycophancy in newer open-source models. To address this, we introduce Holistic DPO, a training approach balancing positive and negative persuasion examples. Unlike prompting or resist-only training, Holistic DPO enhances both robustness to misinformation and receptiveness to corrections, improving Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct's accuracy under misleading persuasion in safety contexts from 4.21% to 76.54%. These contributions offer a pathway to developing more reliable and adaptable LLMs for multi-turn dialogue. Code is available at https://github.com/Social-AI-Studio/DuET-PD.