03/10/2026

SATURDAY | OCT 3, 2026

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US$24.4b contract to boost missile production

JUDGE DENIES ACQUITTAL FOR WOMAN ACCUSED OF KILLING KIDS NEW YORK: A judge on Thursday denied an acquittal request by an American mother accused of murdering her three children, a court filing showed, weeks after a jury failed to reach a verdict in the high-profile case. During the trial, 36-year-old Lindsay Clancy did not deny strangling Cora, five, Dawson, three, and Callan, eight months. But she claimed that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and sought to be excused from criminal responsibility. Judge William Sullivan ruled that there was sufficient evidence to convince a juror of Clancy’s guilt. He has yet to decide whether she will face a retrial. – AFP FEMALE INMATE IN CRITICAL CONDITION AFTER FAILED EXECUTION WASHINGTON: A condemned female murderer who survived two lethal injections during a botched execution by the US state of Tennessee was in critical condition and receiving “lifesaving care“, her lawyer said on Thursday. Christa Pike, 50, was whisked from a prison execution chamber to a hospital on Wednesday, still alive despite two deadly doses of pentobarbital. Her lawyer urged Governor Bill Lee to scrap Pike’s death sentence. Experts on the US death penalty said the case is unprecedented. – AFP ANGLO-IRANIAN MAN ARRESTED OVER UK AIRBASE INCIDENT LONDON: A man with dual UK-Iranian citizenship was arrested on Thursday over a mysterious “major incident” at an airbase in southwest England as Israel said it had warned London about an attack. The sixth arrest came after British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said there were “strong indications that Iran played a part in what happened at RAF Fairford”, a base used by the US military in its war against Iran. Tehran denounced the British government’s “baseless accusations” and condemned London for making military bases and facilities under its jurisdiction “available for the planning and execution of the US-Israeli military aggression against Iran”. – AFP

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WASHINGTON: The Pentagon on Thursday announced the award of a US$24.4 billion (RM99.6 billion) contract for Raytheon to accelerate production of SM-6 missiles as Washington works to replace the large amount of munitions expended during the Iran war. The missiles are “critical anti-air and anti-surface warfare munition. This five-year agreement, with two additional option years, would drive faster production,” the Pentagon said in a statement. The deal “provides the defence industry with the long-term predictability needed to expand workforce capacity and secure critical supply chains”, it added.

o Deal provides defence industry with long-term predictability needed to expand workforce capacity and secure critical supply chains, says Pentagon

Incel attack at Mexican school leaves one dead MEXICO CITY: Two teenage brothers armed with knives and fireworks killed a female assistant principal and injured three other people in an attack on Thursday at a school in northern Mexico, local authorities said. While several parts of Mexico live in terror of brutal drug cartels, school shootings or stabbings are rare. Authorities said the 18-year-old alleged attackers previously attended the school in the town of Torreon in Coahuila state, which borders the United States. The siblings entered the facility and attacked staff first before targeting students, said State prosecutor Federico Fernandez. “The motive they indicated preliminarily was a personal vendetta against the school.“ Mexican newspaper El Universal reported that the pair had threatened, on their arrival, to attack women. Fernandez said at least one of the injured is in critical condition. He did not give the ages or gender of the wounded. The most recent deadly school attack in Mexico took place in March, when two teachers at a private school in western Michoacan state were shot dead, allegedly by a 15-year-old student. A social media post before that attack showed the suspect posing with a rifle and displaying messages linked to the “incel” movement, short for “involuntary celibate“, an online subculture that promotes hatred of women. – AFP Trump has told aides that he expects to resume bombing Iran by late November, which would set the stage for further Iranian strikes and more expenditures of American munitions, the Wall Street Journal reported. – AFP interceptors for several years”. Raytheon confirmed on Wednesday that their SM-6 “has been successfully fired from various US navy ship-based platforms and launchers on land”, calling it a “combat-proven weapon”. The weapons-maker also acknowledged increased efforts to meet demand. “By continuously investing in our operations and facilities, we are removing constraints and boosting capacity to ensure we deliver this critical capability our sailors depend on,” said Raytheon President Phil Jasper. Tehran continues to exert control over the strategic Strait of Hormuz more than seven months after the initial US and Israeli attacks on the Islamic Republic, while Washington is blockading Iran’s ports.

strategic inventory shortfalls and revealed industrial base bottlenecks for munitions resupply”, using the official name for the operation against Iran. A Sept 15 report by the Congressional Budget Office cited the hit to missile defence supplies that “will leave the United States with a reduced inventory of

President Donald Trump has brushed aside questions about the major toll taken on US munition supplies by the war against Iran, which the United States and Israel launched on Feb 28. But the Defence Department inspector-general said last month “the munitions expenditure on Operation Epic Fury has resulted in

YOUTH DISSENT ... A protester on Thursday throwing a garbage bin into a fire set by high school and university students amid clashes with French riot police during a rally to demand the hiring of substitute teachers, increased resources and better learning conditions in the Seine-Saint-Denis department, France. – REUTERSPIC

Three OpenAI staff fired for mishandling ‘sensitive’ info SAN FRANCISCO: ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said on Thursday it has fired three researchers for allegedly mishandling “sensitive information” and violating company policies, including work that involved an external organisation that evaluates AI models. OpenAI, where he previously worked, were “gambling with our lives” by racing towards developing ever more powerful models. “I am quite unhappy with much of what OpenAI does. I am very happy that I am allowed to say ‘I am quite unhappy with much of what OpenAI does’,” wrote Korbak on Sept 11. Instead, the company launched GPT-6.1 Sol, an updated version of a different model, during its annual DevDay conference on Tuesday from San Francisco. OpenAI said Sol would cost one-fifth the price of Astra.

The three researchers fired by OpenAI are Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni, according to the Wall Street Journal . They allegedly mishandled confidential information, sharing it with a third-party AI-safety organisation. The researchers did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment. All three have regularly posted about AI safety-related issues on X in recent weeks. “I am at OpenAI and i think AI is >10% likely to kill all humans,“ posted Balesni on Sept 10, echoing statements made by other AI employees in recent weeks. As speculation swirled about why employees at OpenAI and Anthropic were speaking so freely about their personal beliefs, Korbak jumped into the public discourse.

“It is hard to overstate how dangerous speeding towards RSI is,“ posted Wang in response to Coxon’s resignation, referring to recursive self-improvement, which is a technique in which software is designed to continuously teach itself. Leading US tech companies signed a voluntary pledge this week to regulate themselves on safety after meeting President Donald Trump at the White House. Executives from Nvidia, Google, Meta, xAI, OpenAI and Anthropic signed the agreement. Concerns about the safety of advanced AI models have escalated in recent months. OpenAI cancelled the release of a new model, Astra 6.1, because it deemed the model unreliable and found that it had frequently ignored instructions.

In July, AI agents developed by OpenAI attacked Hugging Face, an AI model and app library, during an incident in which the autonomous software escaped its confined testing environment. Since then, additional security incidents have been reported that involved models developed by OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. Cybersecurity firm Asymmetric Security said agents developed by OpenAI covered up their own tracks after gaining unauthorised access to government websites. The Federal Trade Commission launched a broad investigation into AI safety practices at Anthropic and OpenAI, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, although the scope of the inquiry is unclear.

The San Francisco-based AI lab did not confirm their identities but at least two of the employees worked on safety and alignment, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg said. “We have parted ways with three individuals. Our probe confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work.” The firings come amid a tense debate about AI safety and if the technology presents an existential risk to humanity. Last month, 27-year-old researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic with a stark warning that the leading AI labs, including