Britain is expanding its use of artificial intelligence to detect cyber vulnerabilities and strengthen protections against risks from increasingly capable AI systems. The government announced the measures on October 12, building on two pilot programmes that have identified and addressed more than 1,000 potential vulnerabilities across government systems. The expanded initiative will use advanced AI tools to help detect weaknesses before attackers can exploit them. AI Minister Kanishka Narayan called on companies developing advanced models to take greater responsibility for safety. He to
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission returned to Earth on October 8, bringing four astronauts home after 237 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft Freedom splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Los Angeles. The crew comprised NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. During their stay in orbit, the astronauts travelled more than 100 million miles and conducted scientific research in the station’s microgravity environment. Their work contri
Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have developed Brain-IT, an artificial intelligence model that reconstructs images people have viewed using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) recordings of brain activity. The research was presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations in 2026. The team comprises Roman Beliy, Amit Zalcher, Jonathan Kogman, Navve Wasserman and Michal Irani. Brain-IT uses a Brain Interaction Transformer to group brain voxels, the small units measured by fMRI scans, according to functional similarities. This allows the model
Malaysia is developing Silicon Island, a 930-hectare artificial island off Penang, to expand its semiconductor industry and attract investment driven by growing demand for artificial intelligence technology. The project aims to address a shortage of industrial land in Penang, which has developed into a major electronics manufacturing centre over more than five decades. The new island is expected to accommodate companies involved in semiconductor manufacturing, chip design and advanced packaging. Once completed, Silicon Island is projected to support around 220,000 direct, indirect and i
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has highlighted India’s growing ability to develop and scale its own telecom and digital technologies, saying the country is moving from being a technology market to a developer and exporter of technology. Speaking around the 10th edition of the India Mobile Congress in New Delhi, Modi pointed to the expansion of indigenous telecom technologies and India’s increasing role in global technology development. The India Mobile Congress 2026 is being held from October 7 to 10 at Yashobhoomi. Its theme, “Scale Without Boundaries”, focuses on digital innovat
Pacific nations have called for deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions as governments prepare for the COP31 climate summit in Türkiye in November. Delegates from more than 50 countries met in Fiji on October 7 to discuss priorities for the summit. Representatives from 30 countries also adopted a declaration during a preliminary visit to Tuvalu, calling for deep, rapid and sustained reductions in emissions. United Nations projections indicate that global temperatures are likely to exceed the 1.5°C limit above pre-industrial levels in the near term. Climate officials have warned that p
Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel have won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics. Hegemann and Nagel laid the foundation for the field through their discovery of channelrhodopsins, light-sensitive proteins that control the movement of ions across cell membranes. Deisseroth later built on this work to develop methods for using these proteins to control specific neurons. Optogenetics combines genetic techniques with light-sensitive proteins, allowing researchers to activate or inhibit selected nerv
SpaceX launched NASA’s Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station on October 1, carrying four astronauts aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft. A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 11:10 a.m. EDT. The crew comprises NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. Watkins is the mission commander, while Delaney serves as pilot. The Crew Dragon spacecraft reached the International Space Station later the same day. It doc
Indonesia is developing 14 solar power plants across six provinces as the first projects under its 100-gigawatt-peak (GWp) national solar programme. The plants are expected to save the state budget about 4.6 trillion rupiah, or roughly US$257 million, each year. The projects will be located in East Java, Central Java, West Java, Bali, the Riau Islands and the Bangka Belitung Islands. They will include both ground-mounted and floating solar facilities. President Prabowo Subianto officially launched the wider 100 GWp programme in Jembrana, Bali, on August 25. Construction of the 14 initia
India has demonstrated its first free-space Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) link over a distance of 5.56 kilometres. The trial was conducted by QNu Labs with the Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG-N) and IIT Gandhinagar. The field trial took place on the night of September 27–28 in Gujarat. It established a secure quantum communication channel between BISAG-N and IIT Gandhinagar using a free-space optical link. The system recorded a Quantum Bit Error Rate below 5 per cent and generated secure keys at a rate of 230–260 bits per second.