sunday
Russian strikes kill Ukrainian woman as NATO jet downs drone over Romania
Is the war entering a new phase? Russian strikes on Ukraine have killed at least one person and wounded seven more while a Spanish jet has shot down a drone that entered Romanian airspace. A woman was killed and six others wounded in a missile and drone attack on Kryvyi Rig, the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the region's governor said early on Sunday. Separately, Romania's Defence Ministry reported on Sunday that a Spanish F-18 fighter jet pilot on a NATO air policing mission to Romania had shot down a drone illegally breaching its national airspace. It is the fourth drone shot down in Romania this year .
Houthis renew missile and drone attacks on Yemen's port of al-Makha
Houthis renew missile and drone attacks on Yemen's port of al-Makha Yemen's Houthis have launched a new wave of missile and drone attacks on the Red Sea port city of al-Makha (Mocha), extending an assault on government-held areas along Yemen's western coast and killing at least 11 people. The latest attacks came on Sunday evening, less than 24 hours after an earlier barrage struck al-Makha and its commercial port. Yemeni government forces said air defences intercepted six drones during the renewed assault, while two ballistic missiles fell into the sea without hitting their targets. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the operation targeted Saudi troop concentrations and weapon depots in the area, according to the Reuters news agency. Earlier on Sunday, Attacks on al-Makha killed at least 11 people, including eight military personnel and three civilians, and wounded 32 others, according to the latest toll cited by the AFP news agency.
British parts found in Russian drones, Zelensky says
British microcomputers were among more than 100,000 foreign-made parts contained in Russian missiles and drones used in Sunday's deadly strikes on Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky has said. The Ukrainian president called for further effective sanctions after saying parts originating in allied countries including Germany, Japan and the US have been identified in Russian weapons. The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) said it had recently undertaken efforts to crack down on UK firms whose products have continued to make their way into Russia's military supply chain. We take reports of goods from UK companies being found in Russian weaponry incredibly seriously, a government spokesperson said. The spokesperson said the government had banned the export of thousands of goods to Russia including every battlefield item Ukraine has brought to our attention, adding that they have imposed the most the most severe package of sanctions. What are the sanctions on Russia and are they working?
Denmark bans all civilian drone flights ahead of European summit
Denmark has banned all civilian drone flights this week ahead of a European Union summit in Copenhagen, the country's transport minister said on Sunday. The ministry said the decision was made in order to simplify security work for the police, and they could not accept foreign drones creating uncertainty and disruption. Denmark is one of several European countries that have reported drone incidents in recent weeks, with unidentified drones sighted above Danish military sites as recently as Saturday. Defence ministers from 10 EU countries have agreed to create a drone wall in response to the sightings, and Nato says it has enhanced vigilance across the Baltic. In their statement announcing the ban, the transport ministry said police were on significantly increased alert ahead of this week's summit and that they needed to take care of Danes and our guests.
Massive Russian drone and missile attack kills four in Kyiv
Men stand at the site of heavily damaged residential buildings following a Russian air attack on the outskirts of Kyiv on Sunday. KYIV - A massive Russian drone and missile attack against Ukraine lasting 12 hours into Sunday killed at least four people in Kyiv, including a 12-year-old girl, Ukrainian authorities said. Neighboring Poland scrambled jets to secure its airspace in the wake of the barrage, after NATO accused Moscow of being behind a series of violations of the defense alliance's airspace. Diplomatic efforts to stop the war have faltered, and Russia has vowed to press on with the offensive that it launched in February 2022. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.
Denmark bans civilian drone flights due to EU summit
A mobile radar installation is positioned near the strait between Denmark and Sweden on Friday. COPENHAGEN - Denmark will ban all civilian drone flights across the country over the coming days to ensure security as Copenhagen hosts an EU summit gathering heads of government, the transport ministry said Sunday. Mysterious drone sightings across Denmark since Sept. 22 have prompted the closure of several airports, with Denmark hinting at possible Russian involvement, though Moscow denies the charge. Drones were observed over Danish military sites Saturday night for the second straight day, Denmark's army said on Sunday. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,313
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? Russian forces killed four people, including a 12-year-old girl, and injured 13 in an attack on Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, on Sunday night, Tymur Tkachenko, the head of Kyiv's military administration, wrote in a post on Telegram. Those killed also included staff and patients at a cardiology centre, Tkachenko added.
Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Next Location Predictors
Beneduce, Ciro, Lepri, Bruno, Luca, Massimiliano
Predicting the locations an individual will visit in the future is crucial for solving many societal issues like disease diffusion and reduction of pollution among many others. The models designed to tackle next-location prediction, however, require a significant amount of individual-level information to be trained effectively. Such data may be scarce or even unavailable in some geographic regions or peculiar scenarios (e.g., cold-start in recommendation systems). Moreover, the design of a next-location predictor able to generalize or geographically transfer knowledge is still an open research challenge. Recent advances in natural language processing have led to a rapid diffusion of Large Language Models (LLMs) which have shown good generalization and reasoning capabilities. These insights, coupled with the recent findings that LLMs are rich in geographical knowledge, allowed us to believe that these models can act as zero-shot next-location predictors. This paper evaluates the capabilities of many popular LLMs in this role, specifically Llama, GPT-3.5 and Mistral 7B. After designing a proper prompt, we tested the models on three real-world mobility datasets. The results show that LLMs can obtain accuracies up to 32.4%, a significant relative improvement of over 600% when compared to sophisticated DL models specifically designed for human mobility. Moreover, we show that other LLMs are unable to perform the task properly. To prevent positively biased results, we also propose a framework inspired by other studies to test data contamination. Finally, we explored the possibility of using LLMs as text-based explainers for next-location prediction showing that can effectively provide an explanation for their decision. Notably, 7B models provide more generic, but still reliable, explanations compared to larger counterparts. Code: github.com/ssai-trento/LLM-zero-shot-NL
Google 'panic': Samsung said to consider switching to Bing
Google went into a "panic" after Samsung, the world's second-largest manufacturer of smartphones and a user of the company's Android operating system, said it was considering offering Bing as the default search engine for users, according to a report published by the New York Times on Sunday. The tech giant is scrambling to catch up to rivals Microsoft in the adoption of A.I. services. The threat to Google's $162 billion business is reportedly pushing the company to revamp its search products, including creating an entirely new A.I.-powered search engine. Google's drive to compete contrasts with comments from Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai in an interview, also aired on Sunday, in which he suggested that he wanted to avoid a rush to release new A.I. products for fear of how they might affect society. In the interview with CBS's 60 Minutes, Alphabet CEO Pichai called artificial intelligence "the most profound technology humanity is working on," adding that it was "more profound than fire or electricity or anything that we've done in the past."