A pro-Russia disinformation campaign is leveraging consumer artificial intelligence tools to fuel a "content explosion" focused on exacerbating existing tensions around global elections, Ukraine, and immigration, among other controversial issues, according to new research published last week. The campaign, known by many names including Operation Overload and Matryoshka (other researchers have also tied it to Storm-1679), has been operating since 2023 and has been aligned with the Russian government by multiple groups, including Microsoft and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. While the campaign targets audiences around the world, including in the US, its main target has been Ukraine. Hundreds of AI-manipulated videos from the campaign have tried to fuel pro-Russian narratives. The report outlines how, between September 2024 and May 2025, the amount of content being produced by those running the campaign has increased dramatically and is receiving millions of views around the world.

In the predawn darkness of June 13, Israel launched a "preemptive" attack on Iran. Explosions rocked various parts of the country. Among the targets were nuclear sites at Natanz and Fordo, military bases, research labs, and senior military residences. By the end of the operation, Israel had killed at least 974 people while Iranian missile strikes in retaliation had killed 28 people in Israel. Israel described its actions as anticipatory self-defence, claiming Iran was mere weeks away from producing a functional nuclear weapon.

The United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) has released a new report mapping the corporations aiding Israel in the displacement of Palestinians and its genocidal war on Gaza, in breach of international law. Francesca Albanese's latest report, which is scheduled to be presented at a news conference in Geneva on Thursday, names 48 corporate actors, including United States tech giants Microsoft, Alphabet Inc. – Google's parent company – and Amazon. A database of more than 1000 corporate entities was also put together as part of the investigation. "[Israel's] forever-occupation has become the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and Big Tech – providing significant supply and demand, little oversight, and zero accountability – while investors and private and public institutions profit freely," the report said. "Companies are no longer merely implicated in occupation – they may be embedded in an economy of genocide," it said, in a reference to Israel's ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.

After more than a day of continuous debate, the US Senate passed its version of the budget megabill Tuesday afternoon--with potentially disastrous implications for the future of renewable energy in the country. The bill ends credits for projects placed in service--a term meaning, essentially, that a project is ready to provide power to the grid--after 2027, putting hundreds of planned projects around the country in jeopardy. "This is a bill to punish renewables," says Costa Samaras, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. "There is a real need to add clean energy supply to the grid--electrifying our cars, electrifying our homes, electrifying our buildings, electrifying our factories, and the demands from AI are all going to require new clean energy. What this bill does is make it harder and more expensive."

A Ukrainian drone attack at an industrial plant in central Russia has killed three people and injured 35 others, a Russian regional governor has said. Alexander Brechalov, head of the Udmurt Republic, said in a post on Telegram on Tuesday that the attack took place at a factory in Izhevsk city. Ten of the wounded were in a serious condition, he noted. There was no immediate official comment from Kyiv. But a Ukrainian security official confirmed the attack, telling the news agency Reuters that the Kupol plant had been hit, with a fire breaking out as a result.

Earlier in the week, Blackburn attempted to forge a compromise with Ted Cruz, who led the provision. Together, they produced a new version that reduced the ten-year ban to a five-year one, and carved out exceptions for laws related to kids' online safety and personal publicity rights. But this version of the bill was promptly excoriated by vocal coalitions in both parties. A group of 140 mostly left-leaning advocacy organizations, including Encode AI and Common Sense Media, penned an open letter arguing that this new version actually shielded tech companies from the state regulation that Blackburn was attempting to protect. "The vague standards set out in the moratorium will provide Big Tech a clear path to challenge nearly any state law in court," the letter read.

Fox News' Chad Pergram reports the latest on the Senate's vote-a-rama from Capitol Hill. Many senators failed to get their amendments across the finish line during the chamber's vote-a-rama on Monday, leaving the future of President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" uncertain. Two key failures came from Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, with the former proposing a plan that would have boosted funding for rural hospitals and the latter calling for further cuts to Medicaid. Collins and Cornyn were far from the only lawmakers who had amendments fail, however. Here are some details on some of the unsuccessful efforts, plus one that succeeded with nearly unanimous support.

This is second Ukrainian drone attack on the Kupol factory since November - although that strike had not resulted in any casualties. For its part, Moscow continues to carry out attacks in Ukraine. At the weekend Russia launched a record 537 drones and missiles on various locations across the country, including Kyiv and the western city of Lviv. On Monday Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky granted the Hero of Ukraine award posthumously to an F-16 pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Maksym Ustymenko, who was killed while trying to repel the aerial attack. On the battlefield, while Russia's advance on the Sumy region seems to have stalled, Moscow appears to be targeting the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region.

Fox News contributor Brett Velicovich demands U.S. defenses'adapt' to modern warfare after Ukraine's drone strikes on'The Story.' As sixth-generation fighter programs ramp up, military insiders are divided over whether future warplanes need pilots at all. The Pentagon is pouring billions into next-generation aircraft, pushing the boundaries of stealth and speed. But as America eyes a future of air dominance, one question looms large: Should Americans still be risking their lives in the cockpit? Autonomous drones backed by AI are progressing faster than many expected, and that has some defense leaders rethinking the role of the pilot.

Hal LaCroix's Here and Beyond takes place on a spaceship journeying for centuries to a new planet Riches galore await sci-fi fans in July, with two of the books I've enjoyed most so far this year due to be published for all to read. Fancy a beautifully written vision of a world turning ever faster, in which the consequences of this speed-up play out in subtle but increasingly disturbing ways? Try Alex Foster's Circular Motion. Set in the not-too-distant future, this stunningly impressive debut novel imagines an Earth orbited by massive aircraft, which allow the sufficiently wealthy to pop from New York to London in an hour, or order in sushi from Japan. Earth's spin, meanwhile, is gradually accelerating, with days at first just a few seconds shorter but, nightmarishly, contracting to just two hours as the novel progresses, with all sorts of terrible consequences.