📌 Deceitful Recruitment, Milton, More

Young African women lured to Russia with promises of a work-study program assembled drones in a factory.

Some of them learned only after arriving on the steppes of Russia’s Tatarstan region that they would be toiling in a factory to make weapons of war, assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine. Parts of the Iranian drones shot down in Ukraine are pictured above.

The Kremlin recruited women aged 18–22 from Africa and South Asia to fill labor shortages in wartime Russia. The women faced long hours, constant surveillance, and exposure to caustic chemicals, leading to health issues.

Around 200 African women work alongside Russian vocational students as young as 16 in the plant in Tatarstan’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone, about 600 miles east of Moscow.

The recruiting drive uses slickly edited videos with upbeat music on social media showing African women visiting Tatarstan’s cultural sites or playing sports. The videos show them working, cleaning floors smiling, wearing hard hats while directing cranes and donning protective equipment to apply paint or chemicals.

Russia’s actions “could potentially fulfill the criteria of trafficking if the recruitment is fraudulent and the purpose is exploitation,” said Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Moscow is a party to the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime.

Hurricane Milton landed on Florida’s west coast, destroying homes and knocking out power to nearly 2 million customers.

The storm made landfall around 8:30 p.m. EDT on Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph near Siesta Key, the US National Hurricane Center said.

By early Thursday, wind speeds reduced to a still dangerous 90 mph, dropping Milton to a Category 1 hurricane, with heavy rains and damaging storm surges.

At least two deaths were reported at a retirement community following a suspected tornado in Fort Pierce on the eastern coast of Florida.

Milton is forecast to lose tropical characteristics gradually and slowly weaken after moving into the Atlantic, the Hurricane Center said.

The death toll in a brutal gang attack last week on a small town in central Haiti has risen to 115, a local official said.

The attack on residents of Pont-Sondé on Oct. 3 was one of the biggest massacres that Haiti has seen in recent history. Authorities are still looking for bodies and haven’t been able to access certain areas of the town.

The victims included babies, young mothers and the elderly, with the gang approaching Pont-Sondé via canoes to catch residents by surprise, according to a local human rights group.

A day after the attack, officials replaced the police commissioner who oversees the Artibonite region, which has seen a surge of gang violence in recent years, with at least 20 criminal groups operating in the area, according to the UN.

Haiti’s National Human Rights Defense Network said the Gran Grif gang was angry that a local self-defense group was trying to limit its activity in nearby Pont-Sondé and prevent it from profiting off a makeshift road toll it had established nearby.

Gran Grif has about 100 members. The UN said it is the largest and most powerful gang in Artibonite, committing nine mass kidnappings from October 2023 to January 2024.

OpenAI is combating a surge of attempts to misuse its AI models for fake election content, neutralizing over 20 attempts this year.

A 54-page report published Wednesday intended to provide a “snapshot” of what the ChatGPT creator is seeing and to identify “an initial set of trends that … can inform debate on how AI fits into the broader threat landscape.”

The rise of AI-generated content has led to serious election-related misinformation concerns, with deep fakes increasing 900% yearly, reported machine learning firm Clarity.

OpenAI said election-related uses of AI “ranged in complexity from simple requests for content generation, to complex, multi-stage efforts to analyze and reply to social media posts.”

The social media content related mainly to elections in the US and Rwanda, and to a lesser extent elections in India and the EU, OpenAI said. None of the content attracted “viral engagement,” the company said.

Trading platform Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt (pictured) has launched Aetherflux, focused on space-based solar power.

Aetherflux aims to create a constellation of satellites to collect and transmit solar energy from orbit to Earth. The startup plans to deploy thousands of smaller satellites in low Earth orbit, each equipped with a solar array, battery, and near-optical infrared laser for power transmission.

Aetherflux aims to revolutionize energy distribution, particularly in hard-to-reach or disaster-hit areas. Its first mission, scheduled for late 2025 or early 2026, will attempt to demonstrate solar energy transmission using an infrared laser. If successful, it will set a distance record for how far power can be transmitted.

The potential market for space-based solar power is significant, though the technology is still theoretical. Bhatt said: “The thing that’s always been my interest is, how do you bring more capitalism to space?” His physics and maths background and his lifelong interest in space make this venture a natural progression.

Americans are revolting against McDonald’s and fast-food chains. That’s hurting french fry suppliers like Lamb Weston.

Lamb Weston, the largest french fry producer in North America and a major supplier to fast-food chains, restaurants and grocery stores, is closing a production plant in Washington state and laying off nearly 400 employees, or 4% of its workforce.

Restaurant prices have increased faster than grocery store prices in recent years, leading customers to pull back at fast-food chains. Around 80% of french fries consumed in the US come from fast-food chains, Lamb Weston said.

Lamb Weston said customers at fast-food chains dropped 2% last quarter and 3% the previous quarter compared with last year. French fry consumers have also reduced the size of their orders from large to medium or to small to save money and seek value in special meal offers.

A mother named Grazer has been crowned queen of Fat Bear Week for the second year.

Grazer — known officially as 128 — once again defeated a male named Chunk (32) in the final round of the annual online tournament. Grazer won the rematch by a landslide, beating her challenger by over 40,000 votes.

Fat Bear Week is an online, bracket-style tournament that celebrates the brown bears of Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. Fans vote on head-to-head matchups between 12 bears in a single elimination contest each year.

The tournament occurs while the bears gorge on sockeye salmon ahead of hibernation. Competitors are asked to vote for the brown bear they believe “best exemplifies fatness and success.”

Adult males weigh 700–900 pounds in the middle of the summer but can balloon to over 1,200 pounds by the fall. An estimated 2,200 live in the park.