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Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,415

Al Jazeera

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' Overnight into Friday, Russia launched a large attack on Ukraine with missiles and drones, killing at least three and injuring 16 people in the capital Kyiv, according to The Associated Press news agency. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko reported multiple districts in Kyiv were struck, including Desnyanskyi, where a drone crashed into a building and the first two floors of a residential building were damaged.


Ofcom urged to use 'banning' powers over X AI deepfakes

BBC News

Ofcom urged to use'banning' powers over X AI deepfakes The government has urged the regulator Ofcom to use all its powers - up to and including an effective ban - against X over concerns about unlawful AI images created on the site. Ofcom's powers include the ability to obtain a court order to prevent third parties from helping the Elon Musk-owned platform from raising money or from being accessed in the UK. This follows an ongoing backlash against the use of X's AI Grok to digitally remove clothing from images of people. The possibility there could be sexualised images of children raised very specific concerns in government. Addressing concerns over sexualised images of adults and children produced by Grok, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: This is disgraceful.


Grok AI: is it legal to produce or post undressed images of people without their consent?

The Guardian

Under the UK's Online Safety Act, social media platforms have to act on intimate image abuse, but the government has yet to introduce additional measures such as banning nudifying apps. Under the UK's Online Safety Act, social media platforms have to act on intimate image abuse, but the government has yet to introduce additional measures such as banning nudifying apps. Grok AI: is it legal to produce or post undressed images of people without their consent? Deluge of'nudified' images on social media platform X raises questions about regulation of use of AI technologies The deluge of images of partly clothed women - stripped by the Grok AI tool - on Elon Musk's X has raised further questions over regulation of the technology. Is it legal to produce these images without the subject's consent?


ICE Agent Who Reportedly Shot Renee Good Was a Firearms Trainer, Per Testimony

WIRED

Jonathan Ross told a federal court in December about his professional background, including "hundreds" of encounters with drivers during enforcement actions, according to testimony obtained by WIRED. Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer identified by multiple news outlets as the federal agent who shot 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis on Wednesday, is a veteran deportation officer in ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations division, according to sworn testimony from the federal district court in Minnesota obtained by WIRED. A member of a Special Response Team, ICE's version of a SWAT team, he's had duties as a firearms trainer and led teams drawn from multiple federal agencies including the FBI, Ross testified. The testimony stems from a December 2025 trial related to a June incident with parallels to the interaction that led to Good's killing. In June according to Ross's testimony, he led a team seeking to apprehend a man named Roberto Carlos Muñoz-Guatemala, who was on an administrative warrant for being in the United States without authorization.


Forecasting the U.S. Treasury Yield Curve: A Distributionally Robust Machine Learning Approach

arXiv.org Machine Learning

We study U.S. Treasury yield curve forecasting under distributional uncertainty and recast forecasting as an operations research and managerial decision problem. Rather than minimizing average forecast error, the forecaster selects a decision rule that minimizes worst case expected loss over an ambiguity set of forecast error distributions. To this end, we propose a distributionally robust ensemble forecasting framework that integrates parametric factor models with high dimensional nonparametric machine learning models through adaptive forecast combinations. The framework consists of three machine learning components. First, a rolling window Factor Augmented Dynamic Nelson Siegel model captures level, slope, and curvature dynamics using principal components extracted from economic indicators. Second, Random Forest models capture nonlinear interactions among macro financial drivers and lagged Treasury yields. Third, distributionally robust forecast combination schemes aggregate heterogeneous forecasts under moment uncertainty, penalizing downside tail risk via expected shortfall and stabilizing second moment estimation through ridge regularized covariance matrices. The severity of the worst case criterion is adjustable, allowing the forecaster to regulate the trade off between robustness and statistical efficiency. Using monthly data, we evaluate out of sample forecasts across maturities and horizons from one to twelve months ahead. Adaptive combinations deliver superior performance at short horizons, while Random Forest forecasts dominate at longer horizons. Extensions to global sovereign bond yields confirm the stability and generalizability of the proposed framework.


Grok Deepfaked Renee Nicole Good's Body Into a Bikini

Mother Jones

Hours after an ICE agent killed the mother of three, Elon Musk's chatbot was undressing her. Grok, created by Elon Musk's xAI, is now central to Twitter. So, increasingly, are its deepfakes. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Grok, the AI chatbot launched by Elon Musk after his takeover of X, unhesitatingly fulfilled a user's request on Wednesday to generate an image of Renee Nicole Good in a bikini--the woman who was shot and killed by an ICE agent that morning in Minneapolis, as noted by CNN correspondent Hadas Gold and confirmed by the chatbot itself.


Why is this infamous iceberg turning blue?

Popular Science

Environment Climate Change Global Warming Why is this infamous iceberg turning blue? Iceberg A-23A is bigger than New York City, but its days are numbered. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Iceberg A-23A is looking a little blue these days. In late December 2025, NASA and NOAA's Terra satellite spotted the massive iceberg covered with blue meltwater .


Mamdani adviser, Warren in the hot seat as collapse of Roomba maker shifts data to China

FOX News

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Biden FTC Chair Lina Khan are facing backlash after regulatory opposition helped derail Amazon’s bid for iRobot, resulting in the Roomba maker falling into Chinese ownership.


America's new dietary guidelines ignore decades of scientific research

MIT Technology Review

America's new dietary guidelines ignore decades of scientific research An emphasis on fruit, vegetables, and whole foods is welcome--but it's wrong to suggest steak and beef tallow should be prominent. The new year has barely begun, but the first days of 2026 have brought big news for health. On Monday, the US's federal health agency upended its recommendations for routine childhood vaccinations--a move that health associations worry puts children at unnecessary risk of preventable disease. There was more news from the federal government on Wednesday, when health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his colleagues at the Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture unveiled new dietary guidelines for Americans . And they are causing a bit of a stir. RFK Jr's plan to improve America's diet is missing the point That's partly because they recommend products like red meat, butter, and beef tallow--foods that have been linked to cardiovascular disease, and that nutrition experts have been recommending people in their diets.


Hundreds of nonconsensual AI images being created by Grok on X, data shows

The Guardian

'Nearly three-quarters of posts collected and analyzed by a researcher were requests for nonconsensual images of real women or minors.' 'Nearly three-quarters of posts collected and analyzed by a researcher were requests for nonconsensual images of real women or minors.' Sample of roughly 500 posts shows how frequently people are creating sexualized images with Elon Musk's AI chatbot Thu 8 Jan 2026 12.00 ESTLast modified on Thu 8 Jan 2026 12.01 EST New research that samples X users prompting Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok demonstrates how frequently people are creating sexualized images with it. Nearly three-quarters of posts collected and analyzed by a PhD researcher at Dublin's Trinity College were requests for nonconsensual images of real women or minors with items of clothing removed or added. The posts offer a new level of detail on how the images are generated and shared on X, with users coaching one another on prompts; suggesting iterations on Grok's presentations of women in lingerie or swimsuits, or with areas of their body covered in semen; and asking Grok to remove outer clothing in replies to posts containing self-portraits by female users. Among hundreds of posts identified by Nana Nwachukwu as direct, nonconsensual requests for Grok to remove or replace clothing, dozens reviewed by the Guardian show users posting pictures of women including celebrities, models, stock photos and women who are not public figures posing in snapshots.