What to know about the conflict in Mali and the world’s most terrorized region

August 1, 2026

LAGOS, Nigeria — Mali is facing its most serious security crisis in years as al-Qaida-linked militants and separatist rebels join forces to intensify attacks against its military. The partnership between the JNIM jihadi rebels and the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) is the latest twist in a decades-long conflict in what is already the world’s most terrorized region. It has resulted in some of the largest attacks Malian security forces and their partners have seen in years, analysts say. The rebels and separatists launched massive simultaneous attacks across the country in ...

Social media companies sued over deaths of four teens as pressure, lawsuits over child safety mount

August 1, 2026

The families of four teenagers who died by suicide are suing Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube over what they describe as “years of escalating harms” from using their platforms that eventually resulted in their deaths. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the Superior Court of Delaware, is ...

‘Pleading the Fifth’ invokes a constitutional amendment that has a long history in US society

August 1, 2026

NEW YORK — It was important enough to the framers of the U.S. Constitution to be included in the first 10 amendments known as the Bill of Rights — that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” As part of the Fifth Amendment, the right ...

EU to crack down on AI deepfakes, illicit imagery and hacking with new team in Brussels

August 1, 2026

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union rolled out a new team on Friday to rein in AI companies across the world, in one of the most aggressive regulations the high-tech sector has so far faced as fears rise over the risks the rapidly advancing technology poses to people, politics and ...

Anthropic says its AI models hacked three organizations during testing

August 1, 2026

Anthropic said its artificial intelligence models hacked into three other organizations during testing, just days after ChatGPT maker OpenAI raised concerns over AI controls after it disclosed its rogue models hacked another company. Anthropic, the San Francisco-based AI company behind Claude, posted on its website Thursday that it discovered the three incidents after reviewing more than 141,000 evaluation runs. It had launched a “large-scale” cybersecurity review which specifically looked for evidence whether its AI models were able to access the internet from within testing ...

A discarded SpaceX rocket is on a high-speed collision course with the moon

August 1, 2026

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A drifting SpaceX rocket is on a collision course with the moon after launching a pair of lunar landers more than a year ago. The rocket’s upper stage will unintentionally slam into the moon on Wednesday, carving out a crater and sending up a plume of dust and rubble that scientists — and skygazers — are eager to observe. Space tracking expert Bill Gray predicts an impact of 5,400 mph (8,700 kph) — seven times the speed of sound — near Einstein Crater on the moon’s sunlit western limb. With the action unfolding in the wee hours, the eastern ...