Fraud researcher reveals how state actors from Iran, North Korea, Russia and China use dark web identity markets and shell companies to defeat U.S. financial defenses.

The work of Peter Aaby and Christine Stabell Benn has long been controversial. Until Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became US health policy chief, most vaccine scientists tended to ignore it. In 1996, Guinea-Bissau seemed like an ideal research post for budding pediatrician Lone Graff Stensballe. Her supervisor, a fellow Dane named Peter Aaby, had spent nearly two decades collecting data on 100,000 people living in the mud brick homes of the West African country's capital. Aaby and his partner, Christine Stabell Benn, believed that the years of research in the impoverished country had yielded a major discovery about vaccines--and what they described as "non-specific effects": The measles and tuberculosis vaccines, which were derived from live, weakened viruses and bacteria, they said, boosted child survival beyond protecting against those particular pathogens. But, the scientists said, shots made from deactivated whole germs, or pieces of them, such as the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) shot, caused more deaths--especially in little girls--than getting no vaccine at all.

More than a trillion dollars are lost every year due to system failures. To resolve them, engineers must troubleshoot outages quickly. An important task in incident response involves analyzing observability metrics, or time series data that snapshot the health of software systems. For example, an engineer for a service may use Datadog to answer questions like "When did latency start increasing?" and "What metrics outside of latency are also behaving abnormally?" to localize the root cause of the anomalous behavior. These time series question-answering (TSQA) tasks are essential for engineers, and present challenging and necessary tasks for SRE models and agents to perform.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Get Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2019 for Windows for a one-time payment of $19.97 (MSRP $229) and skip the subscription cycle while keeping access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more. Monthly software fees have a way of sticking around long after you stop thinking about them. You get the core Microsoft apps most people rely on daily -- including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, Access, and OneNote -- installed directly on your PC with no ongoing payments attached. This is one of Microsoft's most widely used Office versions for good reason.

Drone strikes by Mali's army have killed at least 10 civilians as they prepared to celebrate a wedding in the central region of San in another escalation of the conflict since armed groups launched a widespread coordinated assault late last month. The strikes on Sunday occurred during a security crisis after attacks on the military government's positions last month by fighters from the al-Qaeda-linked Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and Tuareg separatists known as the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA). "What was supposed to be a moment of joy in the village turned into immense sorrow," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The tragedy occurred as the villagers were preparing the second edition of this traditional collective wedding, a major cultural event for this community," a security source who requested anonymity for safety reasons told AFP. The strikes targeted "a procession of motorbikes following one another", he added.

An escaped tiger believed to be owned by Germany's Tiger Queen has been shot dead by police after attacking one of its keepers, according to local media reports. Police say a 73-year-old man was seriously injured after being attacked on Sunday while he was inside the animal's enclosure, located in a privately-owned facility on the outskirts of the German city of Leipzig. The tiger escaped the enclosure and was found shortly after by armed police, who shot and killed the animal. The site of the enclosure is believed to be owned by controversial trainer and private owner Carmen Zander, who describes herself as Germany's Tiger Queen. The animal was one of eight big cats kept at the industrial site near the German town of Schkeuditz, according to local media.

ANA President and CEO Koji Shibata speaks during a news conference in Tokyo on April 30. Many major Japanese companies, namely electronics makers, enjoyed rosy earnings in the year ended in March thanks to significant artificial intelligence-linked investment worldwide, but they are looking ahead with caution amid high costs for fuel and materials spurred by the war in Iran. Chipmaker Kioxia saw its group net profit double from the previous year to an all-time high of ¥554.4 billion ($3.48 billion). President and CEO Hiroo Ota described the financial performance as a "historic feat." Kioxia benefited from rising demand for memory chips amid a rush to build more data centers due to the growing use of AI.

Japan's startup story is just beginning, venture capitalist says Japan's startup moment may soon arrive given significant government support, the rise of corporate venture capital and a changing mindset about internationalization, according to Anis Uzzaman, founder and CEO of Pegasus Tech Ventures. "Overall, I would say Japan is now at a turning point," Uzzaman said. San Jose, California's Pegasus Tech Ventures has invested in a number of major U.S. tech companies, including SpaceX, Airbnb and Robinhood, and also in major artificial intelligence companies, such as OpenAI and Anthropic. 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.

The rise of AI tools that instantly answer questions and complex problems could make humans less intelligent, the Royal Observatory Greenwich has warned. The Observatory, one of the UK's oldest purpose-built scientific institutions, is known for its contributions to astronomy. Paddy Rodgers, director of the Royal Museums Greenwich group which oversees it, said its rich history of research showed the power of human knowledge and curiosity - and the need to avoid complete dependence on AI. A reliance solely on instant answers risks losing the habits of questioning and evaluation that underpin knowledge, expertise and innovation, he said. Rodgers' remarks come amid an ongoing transformation of the Royal Observatory in a project called First Light. The project hopes to seize on the passion of all the astronomers over the last 350 years, and interpret that passion through science, Rodgers told the BBC.

Thailand risks losing ground to regional rivals such as Vietnam and Indonesia, which have moved more aggressively to streamline regulatory regimes and court foreign capital. Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul's government plans a sweeping reform of more than 7,000 business regulations, aiming to cut bureaucratic hurdles and accelerate investment as it tries to compete for global capital. The planned rollback of ministerial rules and secondary regulations, many of which have accumulated into a significant burden on companies, marks a concerted push to reposition Thailand as a more competitive destination for multinational firms reconfiguring supply chains. The effort was detailed in a government statement Monday and comes as Thailand risks losing ground to regional rivals such as Vietnam and Indonesia, which have moved more aggressively to streamline regulatory regimes and court foreign capital. "Regulations intended to guide have, in practice, become costs," said government spokeswoman Rachada Dhnadirek.