HellsBelle

Well-known AI chatbots can be configured to routinely answer health queries with false information that appears authoritative, complete with fake citations from real medical journals, Australian researchers have found.

Without better internal safeguards, widely used AI tools can be easily deployed to churn out dangerous health misinformation at high volumes, they warned in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

“If a technology is vulnerable to misuse, malicious actors will inevitably attempt to exploit it - whether for financial gain or to cause harm,” said senior study author Ashley Hopkins of Flinders University College of Medicine and Public Health in Adelaide.

We’ve made the difficult decision to sunset the Ghostery Private Browser (formerly known as Dawn). While it’s always tough to retire a product, this change reflects the evolution of the mobile web and our commitment to protecting your privacy more effectively across the platforms you already use.

A decision by Spain's Socialist government to backtrack on a promise to cancel a contract to buy bullets from an Israeli firm drew a rebuke on Wednesday from its junior coalition partners, with some allies threatening to withdraw support.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's minority government has struggled to pass legislation since securing a new term by cobbling together an alliance of left-wing and regional separatist parties in 2023.

An administrative court on Wednesday overturned France's decision to cut government funding to the country's biggest Muslim high school in 2023, in what rights groups say is part of a wider crackdown on Muslim schools.

Private school Averroes, the first Muslim high school to open in mainland France in 2003 in the northern city of Lille, had 800 pupils in 2023 and had been under contract with the state since 2008. Pupils follow the regular French curriculum, and are also offered religion classes.

At a secret workshop in Ukraine’s north-east, where about 20 people assemble hundreds of FPV (first person view) drones, there is a new design. Under the frame of the familiar quadcopter is a cylinder, the size of a forearm. Coiled up inside is fibre optic cable, 10km (6 miles) or even 20km long, to create a wired kamikaze drone.

Capt Yuriy Fedorenko, the commander of a specialist drone unit, the Achilles regiment, says fibre optic drones were an experimental response to battlefield jamming and rapidly took off late last year. With no radio connection, they cannot be jammed, are difficult to detect and able to fly in ways conventional FPV drones cannot.

“If pilots are experienced, they can fly these drones very low and between the trees in a forest or tree line. If you are flying with a regular drone, the trees block the signal unless you have a re-transmitter close,” he observes. Where tree lined supply roads were thought safer, fibre optic drones have been able to get through.

Levels of a little-known forever chemical known as TFA in European wines have risen “alarmingly” in recent decades, according to analysis, prompting fears that contamination will breach a planetary boundary.

Researchers from Pesticide Action Network Europe tested 49 bottles of commercial wine to see how TFA contamination in food and drink had progressed. They found levels of trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), a breakdown product of long-lasting Pfas chemicals that carries possible fertility risks, far above those previously measured in water.

Wines produced before 1988 showed no trace of TFA, the researchers found, but those after 2010 showed a steep rise in contamination. Organic and conventional wines showed a rise in TFA contamination, but levels in organic varieties tended to be lower.

Meta Platforms’ Oversight Board on Wednesday sharply rebuked the Facebook and Instagram owner over a policy overhaul in January that cut fact-checking and eased curbs on discussions of contentious topics such as immigration and gender identity.

The board, which operates independently but is funded by Meta, urged the world's biggest social media company to assess “potential adverse effects” of the changes, put in place just before U.S. President Donald Trump began his second term.

It cited concerns that Meta had announced the changes “hastily, in a departure from regular procedure, with no public information shared as to what, if any, prior human rights due diligence the company performed.”

Maduro has demanded the immediate release of 250 Venezuelans held in an El Salvador mega-prison built by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to house gang members. Maduro claimed in his weekly televised address on Monday that “Bukele is a serial violator of the right to freedom, fair treatment, and human dignity.”

He urged that Bukele, instead of an exchange, sign “a decree granting unconditional freedom” to the deportees.

For his part, Bukele in a post on X on Tuesday goaded Maduro, asking wasn’t the Venezuelan leader the one who said he’d do “whatever it takes” to secure the release of the Venezuelans detained in El Salvador.

It’s the fourth global bleaching event since 1998, and has now surpassed bleaching from 2014-17 that hit some two-thirds of reefs, said the ICRI, a mix of more than 100 governments, non-governmental organizations and others. And it’s not clear when the current crisis, which began in 2023 and is blamed on warming oceans, will end.

“We may never see the heat stress that causes bleaching dropping below the threshold that triggers a global event,” said Mark Eakin, executive secretary for the International Coral Reef Society and retired coral monitoring chief for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“We’re looking at something that’s completely changing the face of our planet and the ability of our oceans to sustain lives and livelihoods,” Eakin said.

Over the past month, VA has cut 2,400 positions, and VA Secretary Doug Collins said this week the department plans to slash more than 70,000 jobs. The goal would reduce VA staffing to 2019 levels, three years before the historic PACT Act expanded benefits to more than a million veterans sickened by exposures to toxins.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has repeatedly promised that the quest to shrink the federal government will not harm veterans or their care.

“We’re going to make the department work better for the veterans, families, caregivers, and survivors,” Collins said this week.

But VA employees from across the country said the cuts and a climate of fear are already hurting veterans.

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Sunday he was hopeful a dispute with Canada over accusations of the deadly fentanyl opioid entering the U.S. across its northern border could be resolved by the end of March.

His comments on ABC News's "This Week" raise the possibility that tariffs due to be reimposed by U.S. President Donald Trump at the end of the month could be stayed further.

In reality, Canada is responsible for a minuscule proportion of drug smuggling into the United States and it wasn't immediately clear what progress Hassett was referring to.

Democratic U.S. Senator Adam Schiff from California, who appeared after Hassett on ABC, called the adviser's comments "incomprehensible."

A federal judge has awarded nearly $2 million in damages as part of a civil lawsuit after concluding an FBI agent was negligent when he fatally shot a kidnapped Texas man during a botched rescue attempt in 2018.

The family of 47-year-old Ulises Valladares filed a lawsuit in Houston federal court alleging their loved one had been helpless as he was bound and blindfolded when FBI agent Gavin Lappe shot him shot in January 2018 as authorities entered a home where the man was being held.

The FBI agent had told investigators he only fired when he thought a kidnapper had grabbed his rifle after the agent broke a window to get inside and didn’t know he was shooting Valladares, who had lived in suburban Houston.