Denmark has accused a Russian warship of firing two emergency flares at one of its helicopters while it was tracking the vessel in the Baltic Sea. The Danish government has summoned the Russian ambassador over the incident, which it said happened during a routine monitoring operation on Monday. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen branded the Russian action reckless and said it was designed to intimidate and divide. Moscow has not commented on the incident. It came on the same day Nato forces shot down a drone over Lithuania in the latest security scare on the alliance's eastern flank, where tensions remain high during Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Plus: The US disrupts the internet's biggest black market, a Conti ransomware hacker gets prison time, Meta fails to stop AI-generated videos of child abuse. Meta failed to catch roughly 350 AI child abuse ads, according to new research this week, including some that included images of real kids. In one case, a child depicted in an ad was a member of a European royal family. Lawmakers have said they intend to investigate, and the San Francisco City Attorney's Office ordered the company this week to stop "allowing" AI child abuse ads. In other Meta news, the company announced a new personal AI agent this week that can book your plane tickets or sell your car, but it emphasized heavy investment in security and privacy features, seemingly anticipating mistrust from consumers.

Anthropic AI claims to have thwarted multiple malicious operations using its Claude models, ranging from cyber-espionage and weapons design to mass surveillance campaigns. On the conventional weapons front, the company alleges in a new report that it intervened in northern Yemen, blocking an effort to deploy Claude for missile guidance software, including a guided rocket and a long-range ballistic missile. According to Anthropic's threat report, the operators used Claude "in place of human software engineers", reportedly assigning different instances of the model specific roles to write missile-guidance and flight-control software. While internal safeguards blocked many requests, Anthropic admitted several slipped through. The operators avoided detection by obscuring their ultimate goals and breaking tasks across separate sessions, so no single prompt gave away the operation.

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.

The battle over Palestine has never been fought only on the ground. For decades, Israel and its powerful political, lobbying and public-relations networks have devoted enormous resources to shaping how the conflict is understood in Washington and across the Western world. But an investigation into an Israeli-funded influence operation suggests that this campaign has entered a new and potentially more consequential arena: the artificial intelligence systems increasingly used by millions of people to determine what is true. Recent investigations exposed the Hanover Institute for Public Policy as a purported American think tank that appeared to have no real offices, identifiable scholars or meaningful institutional presence. Instead, the institute appears to have been created as a sophisticated propaganda operation aimed at shaping search engine results and influencing the answers generated by AI chatbots.

Foreign recruitment and external support networks are sustaining and expanding the civil war in Sudan by providing weapons, military technology and fighters, to the detriment of civilians, according to a United Nations-backed investigation. A report by the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan, released on Thursday, said transnational entities operating across several countries recruited, trained and deployed foreign personnel to support the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Since April 2023, the conflict between the SAF and the RSF has killed tens of thousands of Sudanese and forced millions to flee their homes. "This support fed into RSF operations in Zamzam camp and later during the takeover of el-Fasher, where the [UN] Mission documented grave human rights and international humanitarian law violations and international crimes, including conduct displaying hallmarks of genocide," mission member Mona Rishmawi said. The report said external entities have substantially enhanced the drone capabilities of both the RSF and the SAF, enabling them to strike far beyond front lines.

The Cybercab Is Almost Here. The electric-auto maker will officially debut its steering-wheel-free robotaxi on Thursday. But building the vehicle is the easy part. Matte gold, sloped, and steering-wheel-free, the Tesla Cybercab seems designed to catch the eyes of looky-loos. Now rubberneckers may have more opportunities: Tesla is set to host an event on Thursday at its Austin, Texas, headquarters to debut the Cybercab.

Is the war entering a new phase? Germany says Russia preparing'hybrid' attacks over Ukraine support Germany says Russia preparing'hybrid' attacks over Ukraine support Germany says an attempted drone attack at Leipzig Airport showed hallmarks of Russian hybrid operations against Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin says the proof is fake, even as the Germans warn Moscow could be planning more of these types of operations. Share Germany says Russia preparing'hybrid' attacks over Ukraine support on social media

Will self-flying planes transform the skies? Image caption, Pyka's crop dusters are used in the US and Brazil Over an alfalfa field in California's San Joaquin Valley, a small crop-spraying plane is flying scarily low to the ground. There's little risk to humans though, as the plane is pilot-free. We can actually go lower than a human pilot can, says Russ Marotzke, as the aircraft skims over the crop. Flying lower means less spray drift and therefore less chemicals are needed than in conventional manned crop-dusting, he says.

The US Army's laser system is part of a new generation of directed-energy weapons capable of detecting, tracking, and destroying drones with a concentrated beam of light. The Locust system, designed to be mounted onto military vehicles, targets drones with high-power lasers. This week, the US Army used a high-energy multipurpose laser to shoot down three drones near the US-Mexico border, which official reports claimed were "posing a physical threat to US military personnel and CBP partners," referring to Customs and Border Patrol. The operation took place between the night of August 25 and the early morning of August 26 in the vicinity of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas and was led by the Joint Task Force Southern Border (JTF-SB), which operates under US Northern Command. Authorities confirmed that, during the operation, agents used technology derived from the Army's High-Energy Multipurpose Laser (AMP-HEL) system, a military program focused on implementing high-energy lasers for new defense capabilities.