Social conflict is a survival mechanism yielding both normal and pathological behaviors. Tounderstand its underlying principles, we collected behavioral and whole-brain neural data from mice advancing through stages of social conflict.

Science Biology Golden retrievers and humans share'striking' genetic similarities The same genes influence intelligence, anxiety, and depression in both species. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. You're likely not reading too much into your dog's mood: according to researchers at the University of Cambridge, certain genes influencing golden retriever behavior are also traceable to human emotions including intelligence, depression, and anxiety. "The findings are really striking," Eleanor Raffan, a neuroscience researcher and coauthor of a study published in the, said in a statement . "They provide strong evidence that humans and golden retrievers have shared genetic roots for their behavior."

Antisocial behavior (ASB) on social media -- including hate speech, harassment, and cyberbullying -- poses growing risks to platform safety and societal well-being. Prior research has focused largely on networks such as X and Reddit, while \textit{multi-party conversational settings} remain underexplored due to limited data. To address this gap, we use \textit{CyberAgressionAdo-Large}, a French open-access dataset simulating ASB in multi-party conversations, and evaluate three tasks: \textit{abuse detection}, \textit{bullying behavior analysis}, and \textit{bullying peer-group identification}. We benchmark six text-based and eight graph-based \textit{representation-learning methods}, analyzing lexical cues, interactional dynamics, and their multimodal fusion. Results show that multimodal models outperform unimodal baselines. The late fusion model \texttt{mBERT + WD-SGCN} achieves the best overall results, with top performance on abuse detection (0.718) and competitive scores on peer-group identification (0.286) and bullying analysis (0.606). Error analysis highlights its effectiveness in handling nuanced ASB phenomena such as implicit aggression, role transitions, and context-dependent hostility.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has said a new anti-drone system should be fully operational by the end of 2027, as part of a drive to toughen defences against Russia and be fully prepared for possible conflict by 2030. Drones are already redefining warfare. Having drone defences is no longer optional for anyone, Kallas said, referring to Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine and fears that Moscow may attack the EU. The European Commission's defence roadmap also proposes strengthening the EU's eastern borders and building air and space shields. Several EU nations have faced Russian incursions into their airspace and US President Donald Trump has urged the bloc to do more to defend itself.

Can Ukraine restore its pre-war borders? Why are Tomahawk missiles for Ukraine a'red line' for Russia? Is Russia testing NATO with aerial incursions in Europe? Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he will travel to Washington, DC, to meet his US counterpart, Donald Trump, on Friday. The main topics to be discussed will be air defence and long-range capabilities, Zelenskyy said in a message on his Telegram channel.

Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov says his country has no intention of attacking EU or Nato member states but warned of a decisive response to any aggression directed towards Moscow. In a wide-ranging speech delivered at the UN General Assembly on Saturday, Lavrov said threats against Russia by Western countries were becoming increasingly common. He also took aim at Israel, saying that while Russia condemned the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas, there was no justification for the brutal killings of Palestinians in Gaza, or for plans to annex the West Bank. Israel has previously said its Gaza operation is necessary to defeat Hamas. At least 65,926 people have been killed by Israeli strikes, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, while about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage in the 7 October attacks.

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.

Since his first day in office, President Donald Trump has mismanaged negotiations over an end to the war in Ukraine. More than 100 days later, innocent Ukrainians are still dying while the president gets played by Russian President Vladimir Putin – illustrated starkly by the barrages of drones and missiles continually aimed at Ukrainian cities as Trump posts online. It's good to hear Trump finally express some frustration toward Putin and admit that his negotiating tactics aren't working, that, as he says, Putin is "just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently." The reasons for this aren't complicated. Instead of increasing his leverage over Russa, Trump offered concession after concession before talks even began.

In the animal kingdom, having a big brain is usually linked with being smarter. But a new study by scientists in France shows this is not actually true when it comes to domestic dogs. They found that breeds with smaller brains respond best to training and have good short-term memory – two traits considered'clever' in dogs. Meanwhile, breeds with bigger brains scored higher for fear, aggression, attention-seeking behaviours and separation anxiety – traits linked with dimwittedness. So, if you've got a big dog such as a Retriever, Rottweiler or Siberian Husky, they're likely to have a smaller brain but higher brainpower.