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Dating apps used in Mexico to lure and kidnap U.S. citizens, officials warn

Los Angeles Times

U.S. citizens who visit Mexico are being warned that they may be at risk of being kidnapped by people who lure them in through dating apps, according to federal officials. The U.S. Consulate General Guadalajara warned that the victims of such schemes were kidnapped in Puerto Vallarta and Nuevo Nayarit areas in recent months, according to a news release. The consulate did not say how often this type of crime has occurred or whether any suspects have been arrested. Victims and their family members were extorted for large amounts of money in order to be released, officials said. Some of the victims met their captors in residences or hotel rooms.


FDA approves first AI tool to predict breast cancer risk

FOX News

Senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel discusses advancements in artificial intelligence aimed at predicting an individual's future risk of breast cancer and the increased health risks from cannabis as users age. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first artificial intelligence (AI) tool to predict breast cancer risk. The authorization was confirmed by digital health tech company Clairity, the developer of Clairity Breast โ€“ a novel, image-based prognostic platform designed to predict five-year breast cancer risk from a routine screening mammogram. In a press release, Clairity shared its plans to launch the AI platform across health systems through 2025. Most risk assessment models for breast cancer rely heavily on age and family history, according to Clairity.


After Ukraine's surprise drone assault on Russia, new attention drawn to sensitive sites stateside

FOX News

After Ukraine launched a sudden drone assault on Russian installations, it brought new attention to the U.S.' own vulnerabilities, regardless of which side the U.S. stood on Kyiv's attack. In recent years, Chinese Communist Party-linked entities have commercially targeted land around the U.S., including in the vicinity of sensitive installations like the Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota. The Fufeng Group's 300-acre farmland purchase in 2021 first raised the collective antennae of Congress to such under-the-radar transactions โ€“ and even Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis swiftly banned them in his state as a result, among other efforts around the country. On Tuesday, North Dakota's senators agreed that the U.S. must remain vigilant for any malign activity, whether it be from relatively novel drone assaults to potential espionage through real estate transactions. An explosion of a drone is seen in the sky over the city during a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 24, 2025.


Will AI wipe out the first rung of the career ladder?

The Guardian

This week, I'm wondering what my first jobs in journalism would have been like had generative AI been around. In other news: Elon Musk leaves a trail of chaos, and influencers are selling the text they fed to AI to make art. Generative artificial intelligence may eliminate the job you got with your diploma still in hand, say executives who offered grim assessments of the entry-level job market last week in multiple forums. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, which makes the multifunctional AI model Claude, told Axios last week that he believes that AI could cut half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and send overall unemployment rocketing to 20% within the next five years. One explanation why an AI company CEO might make such a dire prediction is to hype the capabilities of his product.


'Aces up the sleeve': Ukraine drone attacks in Russia shake up conflict

The Japan Times

Ukraine managed to not only humiliate the Kremlin by boasting of taking out more than a third of all Russian missile carriers in a spectacular drone attack but also to rewrite the rules of modern warfare, analysts say. Despite being outnumbered and outgunned, Kyiv used inexpensive drones at the weekend to destroy Russian nuclear-capable bombers worth billions of dollars in an operation carried out after months of planning. "Spider's Web" dealt a blow to Russia more than three years after its invasion of Ukraine, and the operation will now be studied closely by militaries around the world as a new strategy in asymmetric warfare.


Pennsylvania senator bucks party on border, Israel and more top headlines

FOX News

REMEMBER THAT? โ€“ Treasury secretary reminds CBS host of past remarks over tariff inflation concerns. UNDER FIRE AGAIN โ€“ New Karen Read text scandal emerges -- and it's not the one from last year. ONGOING INVESTIGATION โ€“ 'King of the Hill' voice actor killed in shooting. CRACK IN THE FOUNDATION โ€“ Fight over lumber tariffs could reshape future of US home building. SOUNDING THE ALARM โ€“ Experts warn of America's risk to drone attack after Ukraine blasts Russian installations.


Google's New AI Tool Generates Convincing Deepfakes of Riots, Conflict, and Election Fraud

TIME - Tech

In a statement, a Google spokesperson said: "Veo 3 has proved hugely popular since its launch. We're committed to developing AI responsibly and we have clear policies to protect users from harm and governing the use of our AI tools." Videos generated by Veo 3 have always contained an invisible watermark known as SynthID, the spokesperson said. Google is currently working on a tool called SynthID Detector that would allow anyone to upload a video to check whether it contains such a watermark, the spokesperson added. However, this tool is not yet publicly available.


The Uncertain Future of a Chinese Student at Harvard

The New Yorker

Around midnight on April 16, 2025, after Chen Zimo learned that the Department of Homeland Security had threatened to revoke Harvard University's certification to enroll international students, he began communicating with a trusted source about possible legal scenarios. Chen, a Chinese citizen, still needed a number of courses before he could complete his degree in computer science at Harvard, and he felt panicked about the possibility of having his visa revoked. For him, the Harvard experience had been transformative. Chen--not his real name--had grown up in provincial China, where his family had modest resources and sent him to public schools. He could never have afforded Harvard without the university's generous financial support, and he had also received funding for summer language study.


Russia using drones to hunt Ukrainian civilians: HRW

Al Jazeera

Russian forces have been using drones to hunt and attack civilians in Ukraine and continue to do so, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). In a report released on Tuesday, HRW stated that the Russian military has repeatedly deployed unmanned drones to attack civilian targets in its more than three-year war with Ukraine. The NGO said that dozens of civilians have been killed and hundreds injured in violation of the laws of war. Referencing video from Russian drones and witnesses and survivors, the rights watchdog alleges that Russia has "deliberately or recklessly" hunted civilians and civilian objects, particularly in the southern city of Kherson, using "commercially available quadcopter drones" made domestically and in China. "Russian drone operators are able to track their targets, with high-resolution video feeds, leaving little doubt that the intent is to kill, maim, and terrify civilians," Belkis Wille, a director on arms and conflict at HRW, said in a statement.


Generalized Gradient Norm Clipping & Non-Euclidean $(L_0,L_1)$-Smoothness

arXiv.org Machine Learning

This work introduces a hybrid non-Euclidean optimization method which generalizes gradient norm clipping by combining steepest descent and conditional gradient approaches. The method achieves the best of both worlds by establishing a descent property under a generalized notion of ($L_0$,$L_1$)-smoothness. Weight decay is incorporated in a principled manner by identifying a connection to the Frank-Wolfe short step. In the stochastic case, we show an order optimal $O(n^{-1/4})$ convergence rate by leveraging a momentum based gradient estimator. We discuss how to instantiate the algorithms for deep learning and demonstrate their properties on image classification and language modeling.