The Trump Alien'Disclosure Speech' Rumors Are Reaching a Fever Pitch The US government has been sharing more information about UFOs. That's fueling excitement over the possibility of the president announcing that humans are not alone. In 2006, Donald Trump was firing people on and Dr. Phil was daytime television's reigning tough-love therapist. Twenty years later, the former is president of the United States, the latter, his informal UFO ambassador--recently trusted with unreleased government files on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) to gauge how the public might handle what's inside. Here's what comes in stages.

In some municipalities in Hokkaido to be designated as national strategic special zones, autonomous tractors will be allowed to travel on public roads without a driver onboard. The government decided Thursday to designate 19 municipalities in the Tokachi region of Hokkaido, including the city of Obihiro, as national strategic special zones to promote artificial intelligence-powered agriculture. The government will apply special deregulation measures to the areas, including simplifying the procedures needed to operate robot tractors autonomously on public roads and spraying pesticides with drones. Under current laws, robot tractors capable of autonomous operation must have a driver when traveling on public roads, such as from a warehouse to a field. When multiple tractors are used on vast farmland, each tractor must be crewed, thus preventing farmers from fully realizing the benefits of the labor-saving technology.

Mashable Selects Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Creator Playbook Look Up Back to School Say More Trending Now Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age Switch Off Mashable Voices Safety Net Versus All Series Avian flu, drone swarms, and mass surveillance included in Anthropic's safety report The AI company releases a doom-filled safety report as the company backs AI regulation. Rebecca Ruiz is a Senior Reporter at Mashable. She frequently covers mental health, digital culture, and technology. Her areas of expertise include suicide prevention, screen use and mental health, parenting, youth well-being, and meditation and mindfulness. Rebecca's experience prior to Mashable includes working as a staff writer, reporter, and editor at NBC News Digital and as a staff writer at Forbes.

China slams US claims of'industrial-scale' AI theft Share China slams US claims of'industrial-scale' AI theft on social media China has issued a forceful reply against claims by the United States that top Chinese artificial intelligence companies have engaged in "industrial scale" theft of their US counterparts' AI models. The response on Wednesday comes after three US federal agencies - the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), National Security Agency (NSA) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) - accused Chinese AI companies of exploiting American AI models to benefit their own systems. Tokens are the smallest units of text that AI models read, or generate. On Wednesday, China's Commerce Ministry dismissed the allegations and accused the US of seeking a "monopoly of the AI industry". "If the U.S. suppresses Chinese AI companies under the pretext of targeting distillation, China will take resolute countermeasures," the ministry said in a statement to the Associated Press.

UK Lawmakers Are Freaking Out Over AI's Summer of Chaos As AI agents go rogue and fears of superintelligence grow, politicians are raising the alarm over its potential harm to human existence. A leading British politician has urged the United Nations to intervene in "the unsafe development of super intelligence" after an Anthropic team leader posted: "We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!" Whether "marketing hype" or signposting of a genuine extinction threat, "governments must step in," Labour MP Darren Jones wrote in an open letter also addressed to the UK prime minister and international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Jones is the latest lawmaker scrambling to find ways to protect the British public from AI threats to safety. Just one day earlier, Labour MP Alex Sobel had introduced a parliamentary bill proposing to ban the "development, deployment, and operation of artificial superintelligence"--systems which can fully replace and outmatch humans at any task.

Trump has touted a recent Census report. WIRED found grave flaws in its analysis and the process behind it, and confirmed the identity of several of its authors--among them a one-time DOGE affiliate. A report published by the US Census Bureau last month purported to uncover evidence backing up President Donald Trump's baseless claims that noncitizens voting cost him the 2020 election . It was the latest salvo in Trump's broader assault on the safety of US elections. "I WON THE ELECTION," Trump quickly declared on Truth Social after the publication of the report.

Follow this section to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. Follow this tag to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW?

Now the UK government plans to introduce new legislation that would see companies face fines and potential criminal liability, and signaled similar plans could extend to Snapchat and Instagram. In June, the UK government told Big Tech it had three months to make taking, viewing, or sharing images of child nudity on their devices impossible. "I expect tech firms to make that happen," said then prime minister Keir Starmer. "But if they choose not to, then we will act and change the law." That deadline arrived on Tuesday, and the government says that the likes of Apple and Google have failed.

UK pupils have performed well again in international science, reading and maths tests sat every three years by hundreds of thousands of teenagers around the world. The UK's performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) remained steady, ranking below the highest-performing countries like Singapore, Estonia and parts of China, but ahead of the US, Australia and other major European nations. But the Pisa report also warned of a worldwide decline in teenagers' reading skills. England's schools minister, Georgia Gould, said the government wanted to build on the positive results and go further so all young people leave school with strong literacy and numeracy. The Pisa tests, run by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), assess teenagers on their ability to solve problems, think critically and communicate, before asking them a wider range of questions about their education in a questionnaire.

Follow this section to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. Follow this tag to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW?