Monday, 14 September 2026
Trump downplays warnings of AI risks, citing rivalry with China
US President Donald Trump has downplayed risks posed by artificial intelligence following days of dire warnings by experts.
"You have a lot of very negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn't be bringing it up and they're bringing up things that won't happen," Trump said during a visit to Ireland.
One of the warnings came from a former Anthropic researcher who said "there is a strong chance that we could all die in the immediate future" if the current pace of development continued.
On Saturday, top industry bosses agreed and called for a slow-down. Trump did not directly address the idea, but said: "We're leading China on AI... and, frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins."
Trump spoke on the same day AI researcher Jacob Coxon - who quit Anthropic a few days ago - told the BBC that staff who were developing the systems were "genuinely frightened" for the future of humanity.
Coxon – who has also worked at OpenAI – welcomed the idea of a slowdown but said it would need to be co-ordinated with China.
On Saturday, Elon Musk, owner of xAI, and Sam Altman of OpenAI, backed a warning from the head of Anthropic Dario Amodei that the pace of development should be slowed "to reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong".
The Anthropic CEO said any slowdown would have to be limited to avoid allowing China to pull ahead.
FULL ARTICLE AT: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7v48vp31mdo
Why a Russian strike on train near Ukraine-Poland border could mark an escalation
A Russian drone struck a train near the Ukraine-Poland border shortly after the former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and top European security officials had passed through.
No casualties were reported after the strike at Yahodyn, which hit the train's engine. All the passengers had been evacuated, Ukrainian authorities said.
Johnson and other European national security advisers, including the UK's Jonathan Powell, had passed along the same line on a different train on their way back from a conference in Kyiv.
BBC's James Landale explains why the incident could signal an escalation in Russia's war against Ukraine.
Russia hits Ukrainian train shortly after Boris Johnson and top European officials leave station
A Russian drone has hit a train near the Ukraine-Poland border shortly after former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and top European security officials had passed through.
No casualties were reported after the strike at Yahodyn, which hit the train's engine. All the passengers had been evacuated, Ukrainian authorities said.
Johnson and other European national security advisers, including the UK's Jonathan Powell, had passed along the same line on a different train on their way back from a conference in Kyiv.
Russia said it had struck "railway infrastructure" in western Ukraine, but Ukraine's state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia said that "quite possibly, the target of this drone could have been the diplomatic train".
Former CIA chief David Petraeus, who had been on board another train at Yahodyn station at the time of the strike, said the incident was "terrifying".
In an interview with the New York Times, Petraeus said: "This is the act of a truly barbaric leader trying to terrorize Ukrainian civilians."
In a statement, Ukrzaliznytsia said the diplomatic train "had left the station earlier than expected because of the timetable change... due to constant threats of Russian strikes".
It also said an evacuation order for passengers on the hit train had been given "just 15 minutes" before the strike by a Russian jet-propelled drone.
Both Ukrainian and Polish authorities said the Russian drone had struck 2km (1.2 miles) from the Polish border.
Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, who had also attended the conference in Kyiv, told the BBC passengers on board his train had been told to prepare for evacuation before subsequently being allowed to continue their journey.
"On the train I was on we received order to prepare evacuation after it had stopped. But after a number of minutes we were informed that it was clear and we could proceed," he said.
That train then safely arrived at Poland's border station in Dorohusk.
FULL STORY AT: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy5zg41dkqwo
MPs and Lords call for new law to address AI threat to human rights
A cross-party group of MPs and peers has identified human rights risks posed by artificial intelligence (AI) which existing laws, they argue, are ill-equipped to cover.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) published a report calling for a new bill on AI to "address the scale and seriousness" of such threats.
"Nowhere in the world, including the UK, has a current legislative and regulatory approach to AI that is fit for purpose," said Labour MP and committee chair Alex Sobel.
A government spokesperson said AI is "advancing at an extraordinary pace" and is creating both opportunities and risks.
They said: "We're leading global efforts to test and understand AI, with the best-resourced security institute in the world, that will help us develop the standards and safeguards necessary to keep people safe."
On Saturday, the head of the US AI company Anthropic, Dario Amodei, proposed a plan calling for the regulation of AI.
Amodei's plan includes global regulation, industry-wide regulation and independent monitoring of AI models as they are developed.
FULL ARTICLE AT: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyzvgj70y4o
Sunday, 13 September 2026
Britain braces for fuel price surge: Saudi Arabia shuts key oil pipeline as catastrophic new war fronts open up
Britain is on alert for a fuel price surge as catastrophic new war fronts in the Middle East threaten shipping and oil around the world.
Last night Saudi Arabia shut down its East-West pipeline after it came under aerial attack, potentially from Iranian-backed terrorists in Iraq.
The 745-mile-long pipeline running across the whole country had helped the Saudis to bypass the chaos in the Strait of Hormuz, where tanker traffic has slowed to a trickle due to the war between the US and Iran.
But on Thursday morning, it was hit from above - with the resulting miles-high smokestacks visible from space. Global oil prices have risen above $100 (£74) per barrel once again as a result, just days after unleaded petrol prices rose in the UK by 5p a litre in the space of a week, according to the RAC, which warned there was "no sign of any relief".
Fuel prices have soared since the war with Iran began at the end of February, with the fighting severely disrupting supplies of crude oil - a key ingredient in petrol and diesel - across the Middle East.
While the price of Brent is still below its April peak of $120, it's still far above the $70 it was trading at before the conflict started. Meanwhile, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, which battled the Royal Navy more than two years ago, are now reemerging as a force to be reckoned with, and could soon have the power to shut off the Red Sea.
If they do so, ships hoping to travel from Europe to Asia and vice versa would have to sail around the whole of Africa, increasing shipping costs around the globe.
FULL ARTICLE AT: https://www.gbnews.com/lifestyle/cars/fuel-price-fears-saudi-arabia-houthis-iran-war
Russians seek answers over hundreds missing after Ukraine's 2024 incursion
"I used to have complete faith in our country," says Lyubov. The last time she spoke to her mother was a day after Ukrainian forces broke into Russia's Kursk region more than two years ago.
Now she feels "resentful towards the [Russian] state", in a country where most people avoid criticising the full-scale invasion unleashed on Ukraine in February 2022. The local governor says more than 300 Russians are still missing in Kursk region, but no-one really knows the true figure.
Lyubov says she tried to persuade her mother to leave her village in the Sudzha area, but blames Russian state TV "propaganda" for her refusal to listen. Some 2,000 people remained in the settlements captured by Ukraine's military, Russian authorities estimate.
"The state channels were convincing viewers that 'everything is under control: two or three days, and it'll be just as it was before'," she recalls. She still fails to understand why Russian authorities could not stop Ukrainian soldiers storming two border checkpoints in August 2024, taking around 40 prisoners and bombing a convoy carrying Russian soldiers.
Within six days they had overrun more than 777 sq km (300 sq miles) of Russian territory, as Ukraine's military sought to divert Russian forces away from their front-line offensive. For most of the next eight months, mobile and internet links were down.
Russia's foreign ministry repeatedly accused Ukraine of war crimes against civilians: allegations rejected in Kyiv as completely unfounded. Nearly 200 Russians sent a letter to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russia's President Vladimir Putin and the United Nations, asking them to organise a humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians.
It never happened and, by late autumn, battles raged as Russian forces sought to retake the territory. Lyubov and others who had lost contact with their loved ones began to form groups.
FULL REPORT AT: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62ene9kr71o
AI staff 'genuinely frightened' for humanity's future, ex-Anthropic researcher says
An AI researcher who quit Anthropic has stated that people working on the technology are "genuinely frightened" about the speed of its advancements and what it could mean for humanity.
Jacob Coxon spoke on Saturday about his viral resignation post where he raised concerns about out-of-control artificial intelligence.
"I believe that if we don't slow down at the current rate of progress, there is a strong chance that we could all die in the immediate future," he said.
His resignation comes amid growing safety concerns in the industry, including from his former boss, head of Anthropic Dario Amodei, who in an essay on Saturday argued for development to slow down.
However some industry figures say the dangers are being overblown, possibly to build hype around the two biggest AI companies ahead of their potential stock market debut or to prompt regulation which would slow their competitors.
Coxon, a 27-year-old from Britain whose research focuses on training AI models, said AI leaders including Elon Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman have shared similar concerns to Amodei. "They've all made statements about the necessity of being careful of the potential for AI takeover. They've all talked about this. AI takeover implies human extinction," Coxon said.
The hardest question to answer, according to Coxon, is what that would look like. "Any kind of concrete scenario you can lay out ends up sounding like science fiction," Coxon said, but notes that advancements which have already happened would have sounded like fiction in the past.
A potential scenario could involve AI agents hacking into medical laboratories to "autonomously produce deadly viruses", Coxon said. Another example he listed could be AI hacking into "critical infrastructure that the world runs on".
The researcher points out a recent report from OpenAI, which detailed how its own technology went on a hacking spree against an online platform called Hugging Face. "They did it autonomously, without any human encouragement. They chose to go on this hacking spree. It was the combination of things getting faster and things also getting scarier," Coxon said.
One of the risks outlined in Amodei's comments was of a swarm of bots acting like a supercomputer that could take over the internet. Coxon said this scenario could be realistic in six months to a year.
Anthropic and OpenAI are reportedly preparing for potentially record-setting initial public offerings. Industry figures have suggested comments about the perils and power of AI may be designed to generate hype. Other critics say Anthropic has been trying to trigger a regulatory push to block competition, leaving it and OpenAI with a duopoly.
Coxon's views have also been questioned by the CEO of the AI platform Hugging Face, Clement Delangue. "Sorry, but asking Jacob about AI extinction risk is like asking your AC guy about climate change," he wrote on X. "Not saying it's necessarily uninteresting or wrong per se but let's keep things in perspective."
After Amodei's essay on Saturday, however, Delangue offered to help be a part of the potential solutions proposed by the Anthropic boss. Nvidia boss Jensen Huang also discussed Coxon's comments before a crowd at a conference hosted by the investment bank Goldman Sachs last week, multiple people in the group told the BBC. They said he dismissed them as untrue.
Huang has previously said the notion that AI "is going to be the end of humanity" is "complete nonsense". And while he may have a business interest in an AI boom - Nvidia builds chips that power AI systems - his comments reflect a growing backlash in Silicon Valley to the existential warnings from current and former staffers.
FULL ARTICLE AT: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1kx0gyje9wo
Anthropic boss Dario Amodei calls for AI development to slow down
The head of AI company Anthropic has called for the pace of development of artificial intelligence models to slow down and to be closely monitored.
In an essay, Dario Amodei said developing AI was not in question, but the risks associated with it were "serious" and companies and governments must be given time to address them.
The bosses of two rival AI firms, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk, have both said they agree with Amodei.
There have been growing concerns recently about the technology's potential risks. An AI researcher who left Anthropic this week told the BBC that "if we don't slow down at the current rate of progress, there is a strong chance that we could all die in the immediate future".
Jacob Coxon told Laura Kuenssberg that people working at AI companies were "genuinely frightened... genuinely concerned about the fate of humanity in the next two years".
"It's not at all an exaggeration to say that the people who are involved with both founding these companies and building the tech believe there is a possibility of human extinction," Coxon said.
"Many of the people who are sort of deep in the weeds on actually coding the thing believe that there is like a greater than ten percent chance, or even greater. Some smaller, but they all have different numbers for a probability that humans might die. And they all keep this in their head on a daily basis while working on the technology."
FULL ARTICLE AT: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c14dpgm0rg4o
Trump's comments on a united Ireland may have targeted audience across the Atlantic
When another world leader meets US President Donald Trump the only certainty about what might happen is the uncertainty about what might happen.
This was exactly the case ahead of President Trump's two-day visit to Ireland. Nobody could have predicted that by the end of the first day, the main global headline would be his desire to see a unified Ireland.
As the shockwaves of his remarks rippled through this island and Great Britain, it was unclear whether this represented a new US administration policy, or an off-the-cuff remark from a president who likes to take questions from reporters, and likes to give answers.
Former Republican Congressman Mick Mulvaney was Trump's special envoy to Northern Ireland in his first term in office.
He cautioned against anyone reading too much into the president's remarks. "This does not represent a shift in US foreign policy," he said. "We're still very much committed to the Good Friday Agreement."
Democratic Congressman Brendan Boyle agreed. "There is bipartisan support for that deal, and that is not going to change." Although both agreed that Donald Trump was probably right to say that "eventually" unification would happen, that did not mean the US was about to start pushing for it. Giving an answer to a question that is asked at a free-flowing press conference is one thing, but Donald Trump repeated his sentiments a short time later when he was delivering a speech to an invited audience at the US Ambassador's residence.
In fact it was almost the first thing he mentioned, hinting that maybe he realised he had kicked over a can of worms at his earlier appearance. The rest of that speech was curious. It was billed as a 20-minute address to Irish and Irish American business leaders, but was about twice that and strayed largely into domestic US matters.
President Trump has a speaking style that he describes himself as "the weave". He can bounce from topic to topic during any speaking engagement, veering off the script and then returning to the matter at hand.
Today he lauded his own achievements, as he sees them, such as clamping down on illegal immigration, doing deals and boosting defence production. He repeated his criticisms once again of what he views as the UK's lack of support for his military operation in Iran.
FULL REPORT AT: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyzppd1d5lo
"Today in History: Europe Crushes the Ottoman Jihad at Vienna" by Raymond Ibrahim
Two days ago we saw how September 11 was, before being a day of tragedy, a day of victory, after a small band of knights delivered the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta from Islam on September 11, 1565.
As a reflection of the nonstop jihad against the West, it just so happens that another major Christian victory — much more famous than the siege of Malta — also took place around the now ominous date of 9/11: the delivery of Vienna from arguably the largest Muslim army ever to invade European territory. That instructive story follows.
In July 1683, some 200,000 Ottoman combatants invaded Austria. By July 14, they had surrounded the walls of Vienna, where Ottoman grand vizier Kara Mustafa was following the protocol laid out by his prophet Muhammad in 628: “Aslam taslam” — “submit [to Islam] and have peace.” Before 1683, that formulation had been in use for a thousand years, resulting in the older and greater portions of the then-Christian world — including all of the Middle East, Egypt, North Africa, Spain, the Balkans, and Constantinople — to be conquered.
Although Starhemberg, the Viennese commander in charge, did not bother to respond to the three choices he was offered, graffiti inside the city — including “Muhammad, you dog, go home!” — captured its mood.
The next day, Mustafa unleashed all hell against the city’s walls. For two months, the holed-up and vastly outnumbered Viennese suffered plague, dysentery, starvation, and many casualties as their walls rocked day and night to the thunderous bombardment.
Then, sometime around September 11, as the Muslims were about to burst through the walls, the desperate commander fired distress rockets into the night sky to give “notice to the Christian army” — that is, the relief force Vienna had beyond all hope been counting on — “of the extremity whereto the city was reduced.”