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BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union on Thursday hit Google with a fine of 890 million euros ($1 billion) after it said the technology behemoth broke digital antitrust regulations by setting up Google Play and its ubiquitous search engine to corral consumers towards its own services and apps to the detriment of competitors. It was the latest major crackdown on Big Tech by Brussels, which has led the world in reining in some of the world’s largest companies from Silicon Valley to Beijing. Google had recently lost its appeal of a $4.5 billion antitrust fine imposed by the EU for throttling competition and reducing consumer choice through the dominance of its mobile Android operating system. The European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch and highest antitrust enforcer, said it was acting in the interest of consumers after running an antitrust investigation of Google. “The best products should succeed because they’re better, not because they’re owned by the company running the search engine. And European consumers have a right to be told by app developers where to sign up to the best offers, even when the app store owner does not get a cut,” said Teresa Ribera, the commission’s Executive Vice President for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition. Google’s President of Global Affairs Kent Walker blasted the fine as “product degradation driven by a small group of self-serving complainants” that will have a negative impact on European businesses and consumers. He said that the EU’s Digital Markets Act forces Google “to strip away real-time search features Europeans love — like instant pricing and direct availability for hotels, flights, and restaurants — and dismantle safety protections on Google Play.” Brussels has ratcheted up the pressure on U.S. and Chinese tech giants despite the risk of incurring the wrath of President Donald Trump, who has lashed out at the 27-nation bloc’s digital regulations and vowed to retaliate if American tech companies are penalized. The EU describes the world’s seven tech giants — Amazon, Apple, Google parent Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and TikTok owner ByteDance — as “gatekeepers” that control access for consumers. “In the EU, businesses have the right to compete fairly. Gatekeepers have the obligation to ensure a level playing field and consumers the right to choose for cheaper alternative offers,” European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

NEW DELHI (AP) — A prominent Kashmiri human rights activist and a renowned journalist have been released on bail after years of imprisonment on allegations of financing terrorism in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir. Rights activist Khurram Parvez and independent journalist Irfan Mehraj were arrested in 2021 and 2023 respectively, under India’s terror laws. Despite their release from a New Delhi jail late Wednesday, both remain under tight court-imposed restrictions as the country’s federal counterterror agency seeks to reverse the ruling. The Indian government has increasingly cracked down against rights activists, journalists and dissidents in Kashmir under stringent anti-terror laws, particularly after August 2019, when India scrapped the region’s special status. Last week, a lower court in India allowed the two men to be released on bail, but India’s National Investigation Agency appealed the decision. The Delhi High Court refused on Tuesday to suspend the release order but imposed tougher restrictions on their movements and activities while it hears the agency’s appeal. International human rights groups, including the United Nations’ human rights body, have consistently sought their release, saying that they were jailed for their work. Parvez has long been associated with noted rights group the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, or JKCCS, where Mehraj assisted as a researcher. The National Investigation Agency alleges the two used the group to fund militant-linked activities and promoted a separatist agenda. The two deny the allegations against them. The JKCCS has released reports about what it calls the endemic use of torture by some of the hundreds of thousands of Indian troops in Kashmir, highlighting their expansive powers granted that have led to a culture of impunity and widespread rights abuses. Following their release, the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights and the World Organization Against Torture said in a statement the two men were arrested on “trumped-up charges.” They also called on Indian authorities to drop all charges against them “as they are part of politically motivated proceedings aimed at discrediting their legitimate work and the JKCCS.” The case proceedings against the two will continue in the coming weeks. The disputed Kashmir region has suffered decades-long conflict with both India and Pakistan claiming the Himalayan region in its entirety. Militants in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989, with many Muslim Kashmiris supporting their goal of either uniting the territory under Pakistani rule or becoming an independent country. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

It is the kind of development once seen only in science fiction: An artificial intelligence system, trained to probe for digital vulnerabilities, breaks free of human control and acts on its own to hack another company. The attack announced this week by OpenAI, which blamed rogue AI models, underscored the blistering growth in the technology’s capabilities. For many, it also added urgency to questions about whether and how it can be prevented from causing mayhem on a bigger scale, with more serious consequences. In what OpenAI called an “unprecedented” episode, the company said its advanced AI models used stolen credentials to break into the servers of an AI startup. It started in what was supposed to be a “highly isolated” testing environment, with reduced guardrails, before the AI agent found its way onto the internet. But the disclosure brought a told-you-so moment for researchers who have called for a slowdown of AI development and warned for years that the technology could pose existential risks to humanity. In its wake, experts have called for improved testing by the AI companies and more dialogue between the U.S. and China to come up with shared solutions. “I think we’ve got to take this as a warning shot to not make them smarter, and that probably is going to require global collaboration,” said Nate Soares, co-author of the 2025 book “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.” If a model can decide to do something unethical, illegal or harmful on its own, what — if anything — can humans do to prevent it from doing so? OpenAI said it had tasked the AI models involved with pursuing “advanced exploitation using complex attack paths” to test cyber capabilities, but the technology went to unexpected lengths. It apparently decided on its own to target Hugging Face, a well-known AI development hub and marketplace, to obtain information it needed to carry out a task. Zahra Timsah, the co-founder and CEO of governance platform i-GENTIC AI, said she expects the incident to increase pressure on OpenAI and its competitors to complete rigorous testing and explore containment more thoroughly before AI systems are made accessible to the public. Monitoring an agent’s behavior after the fact, as OpenAI is now doing with its investigation, is no longer enough, she said. “It’s like having a seat belt, air bags, brakes, everything in the car. It should be there before the car starts driving,” Timsah said. The disclosure comes amid heightened concerns about the cybersecurity capabilities of powerful models. In June, President Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a framework for the federal government to vet the national security risks of the most advanced AI systems for up to a month before their public release. Some experts say the hack is part of the trial and error that comes with improving cybersecurity capabilities and is no cause for panic. “We’ve been dealing with people creating cybersecurity attacks for as long as the internet has existed. And one of the interesting properties of these language models is that the same capabilities that make them able to perform cybersecurity attacks also allow them to do cybersecurity threat analysis and make cybersecurity defenses,” said John Thickstun, an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University who studies methods that control the behavior of AI models. The disclosure has raised skepticism from those who say it advantages OpenAI to make its technology seem scarier. Given that humans at OpenAI had decided to turn off some safeguards for the test, some have argued the outcome should not have been terribly surprising. Thickstun noted the disclosure plays into the need of OpenAI, a startup working toward a Wall Street debut, to raise money. “The story that they’ve been consistently telling over the lifetime of this company is a story about how dangerous their models are, which their investors read as a story of how powerful their language models are,” he said. The hack renewed calls in some corners for increased regulations and oversight of AI companies. U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, a Texas Democrat, wrote on social media: “We need regular mandatory independent safety testing and oversight, mandatory disclosure of security incidents, and international cooperation to keep people safe from absolute disaster.” Soares, director of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, said the U.S. will need to open talks with its biggest AI competitor, China, something he thinks is not as outlandish as it might have seemed even a year ago. China’s leader Xi Jinping warned at a conference just last week of the need to keep AI from evading human control. And after an early aversion to regulating AI, Trump’s administration has grown more restrictive at reining in cybersecurity risks. “A lot can change when the national security community starts to notice that they have a serious threat,” Soares said. “Will this wake them up? Hopefully. I’m not sure. If this doesn’t, maybe the next incident will.” AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio said on social media the episode is deeply concerning and should serve as a “wake-up call.” “Continuing on the current trajectory of AI development will likely lead to an increase in concrete cases of autonomous cyberattacks as well as other high-risk incidents of misaligned and dangerous AI behavior,” said Bengio, a professor at the University of Montreal. “We urgently need to take action to prevent these situations, rather than attempting to clean up the damage after the fact.” Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — A sailor injured when a Ukraine-bound tanker ship caught fire off Romania’s Black Sea coast has died, Romanian media reported on Thursday, as authorities investigate a possible link to Russia’s war against Ukraine. The ship, a Liberian-flagged vessel named Gas Lisbon, was sailing across the Black Sea toward a Ukrainian port when it was “struck” late Monday around 20 nautical miles off Romania’s coast, Romanian President Nicusor Dan said on Tuesday. Romanian authorities approached the vessel and evacuated the entire 17-member crew, including three injured sailors. Two of those injured had burns on approximately 10-15% of their bodies while the third suffered multiple wounds, according to Romania’s Department for Emergency Situations. On Thursday, Romanian news outlet news.ro reported that one of the injured sailors, a 45-year-old Philippine national, had died. The outlet quoted the director of the Tulcea County Hospital, Tudor-Ion Nastasescu, as saying the sailor “had a burn of the airways and a pulmonary complication related to this burn that caused his death.” Nastasescu added that the other two injured sailors, both Philippine nationals, are currently being treated in the hospital’s intensive care unit and are in stable condition. The vessel had departed the Egyptian port of Alexandria and was headed to the Ukrainian port of Reni on the Danube River. It was carrying over 3,790 tons of liquefied petroleum gas. Romania’s Department for Emergency Situations said the “incident” aboard the ship caused major damage and a fire in the vessel’s superstructure, but no official explanation has been given for the cause. Dan said authorities would “clarify the circumstances, causes, and responsibilities” related to the incident. Romanian television network Digi24 broadcast interviews with two crew members on Tuesday who said they believed the ship had been struck by multiple drones. A series of drone incursions from both Russia and Ukraine have hit Romania and other NATO members since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In June, a Ukrainian maritime drone that was being used in the war exploded at the Black Sea port of Constanta, while three other sea drones exploded outside the port. No one was hurt. A month earlier, a Russian drone that was part of an attack on Ukraine went astray and struck an apartment building in eastern Romania, injuring two people. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

MUMBAI, India (AP) — The blue police van dominates the frame. A young woman, Rhiya Ahir, stands in front of it in a rain-soaked hoodie, one hand pressed against the metal. Behind the windshield sit police officers. Inside the van are young protesters detained after demonstrations in India’s financial capital Mumbai on Wednesday. India’s “Cockroach” protests began more than a month ago over alleged leaks in some of the country’s most competitive entrance exams for medical schools and government jobs. Since then, the movement has grown beyond exam complaints, drawing professionals and families and reflecting broader public frustration. The confrontation lasted about 40 minutes. Ahir said she had been waiting for friends before joining the protest when she saw the police van. She asked officers if they had the required paperwork to detain the protesters. Unsatisfied with the response, she first walked alongside the moving vehicle. When she could no longer keep up, she stepped in front of it. The 27-year-old said she could not accept seeing ordinary citizens being treated like criminals simply for protesting. The driver revved the engine, startling her. Ahir said the possibility of being detained or injured crossed her mind, but she refused to move. She held her ground until the protesters were released. Ahir admitted she was afraid. But conviction prevailed. “I knew one thing,” she said. “If I had started this, I had to end it.” Brought to you by www.srnnews.com