'A new norm': BBC visits Doha market starting to fill up again two weeks into Iran war At the beginning of the conflict between Israel and the US, and Iran on 28 February, Doha's Souq Waqif market was almost empty, with those in the usually safe and stable capital shocked by the attacks in the region. Qatar's neighbouring countries have felt the impact of Tehran's retaliatory strikes, with at least 18 people killed across the Gulf states so far . Meanwhile, most of the strikes aimed at Qatar - some targeting US military bases - have been intercepted by air defences, with little damage done on the ground and no deaths reported in the country. As the conflict in the Middle East enters its third week, Doha's best-known market is starting to look busy again - and the BBC's Barbara Plett Usher has visited to ask people there how they are feeling. Voiced by Domhnall Gleeson and directed by John Kelly, Retirement Plan is nominated for Best Animated Short Film at the 98th Academy Awards.

Kharg Island is a small rocky outcrop just 15 miles (24km) off the coast of Iran - but despite its size, it is one of the most critical pieces of Iran's energy infrastructure. US President Donald Trump recently posted on Truth Social that the US military had conducted what he called one of the most powerful bombing raids in the history of the Middle East, obliterating every military target on the island. BBC Security Brief's Mikey Kay breaks down why Kharg Island is a lifeline for Iran, and why it is so strategically important for the US. As turmoil continues in the Middle East, the price of crude oil rose to more than $100 a barrel on Monday. Watch: Ukrainian anti-drone'bullet' that could help defend Gulf The BBC's Diplomatic Correspondent, James Landale, is in Ukraine to see the latest anti-drone technology the country has to offer.

'I am betting big,' said Peter Kyle at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. 'I am betting big,' said Peter Kyle at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. 'I'm picking winners': UK business secretary takes activist approach to economic growth AI evangelist Peter Kyle wants to scale up businesses, attract overseas investors and look out for UK's poorer regions The UK business secretary, Peter Kyle, has said he is "betting big" and "picking winners" as the government takes direct stakes in growing businesses to boost economic growth. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have been talking up Britain's prospects, Kyle said ministers were taking an "activist" approach to industrial policy. The idea of "picking winners" is closely associated with the Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher's attacks on Labour's 1970s strategy and her argument that it should be the private sector that decides which companies thrive.

The UK government has warned that X could be blocked after Grok AI was used to create sexual images without consent. The UK government has warned that X could be blocked after Grok AI was used to create sexual images without consent. Government signals support for possible Ofcom intervention on Grok as scrutiny of X's AI tool intensifies Elon Musk's X "is not doing enough to keep its customers safe online", a minister has said, as the UK government prepares to outline possible action against the platform over the mass production of sexualised images of woman and children. Peter Kyle, the business secretary, said the government would fully support any action taken by Ofcom, the media regulator, against X - including the possibility that the platform could be blocked in the UK. Kyle said Ofcom had received information it had requested from X as part of a fast-tracked investigation into the use of platform's built-in AI tool, Grok, to generate large numbers of manipulated images of people, often depicting them in minimal clothing or sexualised poses.

If a major disaster like Fukushima or Chornobyl ever happens again, the world would know almost straight away, thanks to an array of government and DIY radiation-monitoring programs running globally.

New Scientist changed the UK's freedom of information laws in 2025 By requesting copies of the then-UK technology secretary's ChatGPT logs, New Scientist set a precedent for how freedom of information laws apply to chatbot interactions, helping to hold governments to account Our successful request for Peter Kyle's ChatGPT logs stunned observers When I fired off an email at the start of 2025, I hadn't intended to set a legal precedent for how the UK government handles its interactions with AI chatbots, but that is exactly what happened. It all began in January when I read an interview with the then-UK tech secretary Peter Kyle in . Trying to suggest he used first-hand the technology his department was set up to regulate, Kyle said that he would often have conversations with ChatGPT. AI may blunt our thinking skills - here's what you can do about it That got me wondering: could I obtain his chat history? Freedom of information (FOI) laws are often deployed to obtain emails and other documents produced by public bodies, but past precedent has suggested that some private data - such as search queries - aren't eligible for release in this way. I was interested to see which way the chatbot conversations would be categorised.

As large language models become increasingly capable, there is growing concern that they may develop reasoning processes that are encoded or hidden from human oversight. To investigate whether current interpretability techniques can penetrate such encoded reasoning, we construct a controlled testbed by fine-tuning a reasoning model (DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B) to perform chain-of-thought reasoning in ROT-13 encryption while maintaining intelligible English outputs. We evaluate mechanistic interpretability methods--in particular, logit lens analysis--on their ability to decode the model's hidden reasoning process using only internal activations. We show that logit lens can effectively translate encoded reasoning, with accuracy peaking in intermediate-to-late layers. Finally, we develop a fully unsupervised decoding pipeline that combines logit lens with automated paraphrasing, achieving substantial accuracy in reconstructing complete reasoning transcripts from internal model representations. These findings suggest that current mechanistic interpretability techniques may be more robust to simple forms of encoded reasoning than previously understood. Our work provides an initial framework for evaluating interpretability methods against models that reason in non-human-readable formats, contributing to the broader challenge of maintaining oversight over increasingly capable AI systems.

The final language of the annual bill that funds the US military is in. It removes provisions that would have helped ensure service members' ability to fix their own equipment. US lawmakers have removed provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act for 2026 that would have ensured military members' right to repair their own equipment. The final language of the NDAA was shared by the House Armed Services Committee on Sunday, after weeks of delays pushed the annual funding bill to the end of the year. Among a host of other language changes made as part of reconciling different versions of the legislation drafted by the Senate and the House of Representatives, two provisions focused on the right to repair--Section 836 of the Senate bill and Section 863 of the House bill--have both been removed.

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. Porn advertisers target California secretary of state's website The state of California's elections and business website appears to be hosting pornography and cash apps as seen through a web search on Dec. 4, 2025. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . The California secretary of state's website appears to have been compromised with advertisements for pornography and cash apps.

The United States Inspector General report reviewing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's text messaging mess recommends a single change to keep classified material secure. A United States Inspector General report publicly released today found that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth could have put US troops and military operations at risk by using the consumer messaging service Signal to share sensitive, real-time details in March about a planned attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen. The IG first shared the classified report with Congress on Tuesday. The report contains only one direct recommendation: that the chief of US Central Command's Special Security Office "review the command's classification procedures for compliance" with Department of Defense regulations "and issue additional procedures, as necessary, to ensure proper portion marking of classified information." The report also references another IG publication about use of "non-DOD-controlled electronic messaging systems" and points to its recommendations that DOD "improve training for senior DOD officials on the proper use of electronic devices."