Incoming U.K. Ambassador to Japan Corin Robertson speaks at the Japan National Press Club in Tokyo on Wednesday. British Ambassador-designate to Japan Corin Robertson on Wednesday called for stronger cooperation between the two countries in the fields of artificial intelligence and semiconductors. During a news conference at the Japan National Press Club in Tokyo, Robertson noted that both Britain and Japan are facing economic challenges amid AI and other technological innovations, and vowed to focus on working together to develop future industries and drive economic growth. With Britain set to hold the Group of 20 presidency next year, Robertson indicated that the country will promote international cooperation on the safe use of AI. Referring to British Prime Minister Andy Burnham's willingness to rebuild his country's relationship with the European Union, Robertson said, "I think a closer U.K.-EU relationship is good for both, and I think it's also good for Japan." In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department conducts an on-site investigation of a fatal hit-and-run incident, with traffic restrictions in place, on Dec. 22, 2025, in Adachi Ward, Tokyo. Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department plans to introduce a new system that can reconstruct traffic accidents using artificial intelligence, it was learned Wednesday. The system will combine AI with 3D spatial data from accident sites and footage from nearby security cameras, reducing the need for lengthy on-site inspections, which require traffic restrictions and often cause congestion and economic losses. The MPD plans to test the new system from June 2027 and launch full-scale operations in January 2028. Related expenses have been included in the police department's budget request for the next fiscal year. Currently, fatal accidents and hit-and-run incidents are investigated through on-site inspections, in which vehicles are positioned as they were at the time of the crash and measurements are taken to produce reports and diagrams.

A man described as Abdulrahman Alfozan, a Saudi national employed as an OpenAI engineer, looks behind a TV where a recording device had been placed at a conference room in OpenAI offices, in a still image from surveillance video included in a charging document after U.S. federal agents arrested and charged him with installing a hidden audio recording device, in San Francisco on Oct. 5. | U.S. Department of Justice / via REUTERS SAN FRANCISCO - When OpenAI disclosed in October that it found a recording device planted in an executive conference room, a number of former employees had the same reaction -- they were not surprised. Even before OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, some company staffers raised concerns internally about its security practices, according to five people familiar with the matter. Employees shared their concerns with top OpenAI leaders and the board of directors, the people said, adding that some staffers came away from those interactions concluding that management was more focused on keeping pace with competitors like Google and Anthropic than on security. These workers argued that OpenAI's controls were so lax that outsiders, including foreign governments, could obtain sensitive information about the artificial intelligence lab's technology with relative ease, the people said. For example, anybody at OpenAI who could access its code could see the technical details underlying many company projects.

Google, whose Chromebooks are the most widely used laptops in U.S. classrooms, has faced growing resistance to AI from parents and school districts. Schools that want their K-12 students to have access to Google Search will soon have to turn it on themselves, and the AI features built into Search will come with it, under changes the Alphabet company announced Tuesday. Chris Phillips, Google's vice president and general manager of education, said in a blog post that Search, along with Google's Gemini chatbot, Gemini Notebook and Gemini in Google Classroom, will be set off by default for K-12 student accounts until school administrators turn them on. Search, however, will include AI features. The company said it would share more specifics with schools "in the coming months" ahead of the rollout and that the decision followed conversations with schools, teachers, researchers and policymakers.

A Ghostwake uncrewed surface vessel, developed by U.S.-based STR8 Industries and manufactured in Taiwan, performs a high-speed maneuver during the Taiwan Marine Tech and Unmanned Robotics Expo in Tainan on Monday. Tainan, Taiwan - Silver-hulled sea drones skim across the water as part of an exhibition in Taiwan where local and foreign companies are competing for a share of surging government investment in uncrewed vehicles to deter China. As Chinese military pressure increases, Taiwan is pouring billions of dollars into aerial and sea drones, which have been widely used in Russia's war in Ukraine and in the Strait of Hormuz with devastating effect. Taiwan's military has said it wants to acquire more than 1,400 coastal surveillance and reconnaissance drones, over 200,000 coastal attack drones and 1,320 one-way attack uncrewed surface vessels (USVs). In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

The Russian military suffered record casualties in Ukraine last month while also ceding some territory to Kyiv's forces, according to Western intelligence data and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. More than 54,000 Russian troops were killed and heavily wounded in October, the most since the full-scale invasion began almost five years ago, the Ukrainian leader said Sunday. Ukraine uses drone footage to document casualty numbers, which have now exceeded Russia's monthly recruitment rate. 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.

Trump's Iran threat renews Gulf fears of a war it didn't choose A building that was damaged by an Iranian drone attack, after Israel and the U.S. launched strikes on Iran, in Juffair, Manama, Bahrain, on March 1. | REUTERS MANAMA, Bahrain - U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to strike Iran again confronts America's Gulf allies with a stark prospect: another war decided in Washington in which the U.S. bases built to protect them could instead make them targets for harsh Iranian reprisal. Iranian missiles that struck U.S. military bases and Gulf energy facilities in the last round of fighting exposed a vulnerability at the heart of Washington's decades-old security architecture. Rather than deterring Tehran, America's sprawling regional footprint gave Iran fixed targets and the Gulf states hosting them pressure points it can exploit. That prospect dominated discussions among ministers, policymakers and security officials at the annual Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain over the weekend, as governments weighed what another round of war could mean for U.S. forces and the countries that host them. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

Binance outflows hit $4.7 billion after record North Korea hack The crypto market at large has faced a surge in cybercrime this year, fueled in part by the growing sophistication and availability of artificial intelligence tools. Traders have pulled billions from Binance since late last week, when the crypto exchange giant suffered the largest cyber theft in history. Net withdrawals from the platform reached $4.7 billion by Monday morning in London, according to a Binance spokesperson. While sizeable, the outflows still represents less than 4% of the $128 billion in assets held on the world's largest crypto venue. Binance restored customer withdrawals on Sunday after freezing them in the wake of the $6.4 billion exploit, which the Federal Bureau of Investigation has attributed to North Korean hackers.

Unlike garden-variety hackers targeting individual investors, TraderTraitor uses a strategy known as Big Game Hunting, cybersecurity experts say, helped by AI to seek out high-value crypto businesses to compromise. The North Korean group accused of the world's largest-ever crypto heist is a state-sponsored collective of elite hackers, groomed from an early age to hunt for "big game." Artificial intelligence has now provided them with a powerful new tool to swell Kim Jong Un's coffers and fund his military expansion. Nuclear-armed North Korea maintains a thousands-strong hacker army, but the top unit known as "TraderTraitor," which the FBI blames for the recent $6.3 billion Binance hack, may only have a dozen or so members, experts say. Unlike garden-variety hackers targeting individual investors, TraderTraitor uses a strategy known as Big Game Hunting, cybersecurity experts say, helped by AI to seek out high-value crypto businesses to compromise.

Shock, vindication, regret: Scientists react to AI roiling life's work OpenAI and Anthropic each said on Monday that one of their AI models had disproved the exponential time hypothesis. San Francisco - For decades, three computer scientists built their careers around an idea about the limits of what computers can do. Artificial intelligence may now have shown it to be wrong: OpenAI and Anthropic each said on Monday that one of their AI models had disproved the "exponential time hypothesis" (ETH). The hypothesis holds that some problems are so hard that computers can solve them only by trying nearly every possible answer. Hundreds of studies in computer science and biology rely on it.