Northamptonshire Police will roll out live facial recognition cameras in three town centres. Deployments are scheduled in Northampton on 28 November and 5 December, in Kettering on 29 November, and in Wellingborough on 6 December.
The initiative uses a van loaned from Bedfordshire Police and the watch-lists include high-risk sex offenders or persons wanted for arrest. Facial and biometric data for non-alerts are deleted immediately; alerts are held only up to 24 hours.
Police emphasise the AI based technology is ‘very much in its infancy’ but expect future acquisition of dedicated kit. A coordinator post is being created to manage the LFR programme in-house.
British campaigners express concern the biometric tool may erode privacy or resemble mass surveillance. Police assert that appropriate signage and open policy documents will be in place to maintain public confidence.
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Children will no longer be able to chat with adult strangers on Roblox after new global age checks are introduced. The platform will begin mandatory facial estimation in selected countries in December before expanding worldwide in January.
Roblox players will be placed into strict age groups and prevented from messaging older users unless they are verified as trusted contacts. Under-13s will remain barred from private messages unless parents actively approve access within account controls.
The company faces rising scrutiny following lawsuits in several US states, where officials argue Roblox failed to protect young users from harmful contact. Safety groups welcome the tighter rules but warn that monitoring must match the platform’s rapid growth.
Roblox says the technology is accurate and helps deliver safer digital spaces for younger players. Campaigners continue to call for broader protections as millions of children interact across games, chats and AI-enhanced features each day.
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The Digital Omnibus has been released by the European Commission, prompting strong criticism from privacy advocates. Campaigners argue the reforms would weaken long-standing data protection standards and introduce sweeping changes without proper consultation.
Noyb founder Max Schrems claims the plan favours large technology firms by creating loopholes around personal data and lowering user safeguards. Critics say the proposals emerge despite limited political support from EU governments, civil society groups and several parliamentary factions.
The Omnibus is welcomed by industry which have called for simplification and changes to be made for quite a number of years. These changes should make carrying out business activities simpler for entities which do process vast amounts of data.
The Commission is also accused of rushing (errors can be found in the draft, including references to the GDPR) the process under political pressure, abandoning impact assessments and shifting priorities away from widely supported protections. View our analysis on the matter for a deep dive on the matter.
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Concerns are growing as European countries expand the use of AI in healthcare without establishing sufficient protections for patients or healthcare workers.
A new World Health Organisation report found significant disparities in how nations develop, regulate and fund AI tools.
Some countries are rapidly deploying chatbots, imaging systems and data-analysis tools, while others have barely started integrating AI into their health services. Only four nations across Europe and Central Asia currently have a national strategy dedicated to AI in health care.
WHO officials warn that weak safeguards could lead to biassed algorithms, medical errors and increased inequality in access to care.
The report urges governments to strengthen legal frameworks, train health workers in AI literacy and ensure these technologies are rigorously tested before reaching patients.
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SAP has announced new partnerships with Bleu, Capgemini, and Mistral AI to advance Europe’s digital sovereignty. The collaboration combines SAP’s expertise in enterprise software with France’s AI ecosystem to develop secure, scalable, and sovereign cloud solutions for governments and regulated sectors.
Bleu and Delos Cloud have established a Franco-German alliance focused on crisis resilience, creating joint capabilities for early detection, analysis, and remediation of cyber incidents. Their cooperation supports rapid response in extreme scenarios and reinforces control over critical infrastructure.
SAP and Capgemini are expanding their partnership to advance sovereign agentic AI and strengthen cybersecurity across Europe. Their new Sovereign Technology Partnership will deliver data management, cloud services, and automation tools for public and regulated sectors.
SAP and Mistral AI are also deepening their collaboration to create Europe’s first full sovereign AI stack. SAP will offer Mistral’s frontier models through its sovereign AI foundation on SAP BTP, while both companies co-develop industry-specific AI applications designed for engineering and R&D workloads.
These partnerships form part of SAP’s broader sovereign cloud strategy, backed by more than €20bn in investment. SAP states that its aim is to provide a secure, compliant, and locally controlled infrastructure that enables innovation while safeguarding European data, assets, and long-term technological independence.
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A new WHO Europe report warns that AI is advancing faster than health policies can keep up, risking wider inequalities without stronger safeguards. AI already helps doctors with diagnostics, reduces paperwork and improves patient communication, yet significant structural safeguards remain incomplete.
The assessment, covering 50 participating countries across the region, shows that governments acknowledge AI’s transformative potential in personalised medicine, disease surveillance and clinical efficiency. Only a small number, however, have established national strategies.
Estonia, Finland and Spain stand out for early adoption- whether through integrated digital records, AI training programmes or pilots in primary care- but most nations face mounting regulatory gaps.
Legal uncertainty remains the most common obstacle, with 86 percent of countries citing unclear rules as the primary barrier to adoption, followed by financial constraints. Fewer than 10 percent have liability standards defining responsibility when AI-driven decisions cause harm.
WHO urged governments to align AI policy with public health goals, strengthen legal and ethical frameworks, improve cross-border data governance and invest in an AI-literate workforce to ensure patients stay at the centre of the transformation.
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SAP and UNESCO have agreed to deploy the AI-supported disaster management system EDiSON in the Solomon Islands.
The platform, created by SAP Japan and the start-up INSPIRATION PLUS, utilises the SAP Business Technology Platform with machine learning to merge real-time meteorological information with historical records, rather than relying on isolated datasets.
A system that delivers predictive insights that help authorities act before severe weather strikes. It anticipates terrain damage, guides emergency services towards threatened areas and supports decisions on evacuation orders.
The initiative aims to serve as a model for other small island states facing similar climate-related pressures.
UNESCO officials say the project strengthens early warning capacity and encourages long-term resilience. EDiSON will become operational in 2026 and aims to offer a scalable approach for nations with limited technical resources.
Its performance in Japan has already demonstrated how integrated data management can overcome fragmented information flows and restricted analytical tools.
The design of EDiSON enables governments to adopt advanced disaster preparedness systems instead of relying on costly, bespoke infrastructure. A partnership that seeks to improve national readiness in the Solomon Islands, where earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones and floods regularly threaten communities.
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Meta has defeated a major antitrust challenge after a US federal judge ruled it does not currently hold monopoly power in social networking. The decision spares the company from being forced to separate Instagram and WhatsApp, which regulators had argued were acquired to suppress competition.
The judge found the Federal Trade Commission failed to prove Meta maintains present-day dominance, noting that the market has been reshaped by rivals such as TikTok. Meta argued it now faces intense competition across mobile platforms as user behaviour shifts rapidly.
FTC lawyers revisited internal emails linked to Meta’s past acquisitions, but the ruling emphasised that the case required proof of ongoing violations.
Analysts say the outcome contrasts sharply with recent decisions against Google in search and advertising, signalling mixed fortunes for large tech firms.
Industry observers note that Meta still faces substantial regulatory pressure, including upcoming US trials regarding children’s mental health and questions about its heavyinvestment in AI.
The company welcomed the ruling and stated that it intends to continue developing products within a competitive market framework.
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A University of Arizona astronomer, Peter Behroozi, has developed a novel technique to make AI systems more trustworthy by enabling them to quantify when they might be wrong.
Behroozi’s method adapts ray tracing, traditionally used in computer graphics, to explore the high-dimensional spaces in which AI models operate, thereby allowing the system to gauge uncertainty more effectively.
He uses a Bayesian-sampling approach: rather than relying on a single model, the system effectively consults a ‘whole range of experts’ by training many models in parallel and observing the diversity of their outputs.
This advance addresses a critical problem in modern AI: ‘wrong-but-confident’ outputs, situations where a model gives a single, confident answer that may be incorrect. According to Behroozi, his technique is orders of magnitude faster than traditional uncertainty-quantification methods, making it practical even for extensive neural networks.
The implications are broad, extending from healthcare to finance to autonomous systems: AI that knows its own limits could reduce risk and increase reliability. Behroozi hopes his code, now publicly available, will be adopted by other researchers working under high-stakes conditions.
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Students with disabilities met technology executives at National Star College in Gloucestershire, UK to explain what they need from communication devices. Battery life emerged as the top priority, with users saying they need devices that last 24 hours without charging so they can communicate all day long.
One student who controls his device by moving his eyes said losing power during the day feels like having his voice ripped away from him. Another student with cerebral palsy wants her device to help her run a bath independently and eventually design fairground rides that disabled people can enjoy.
Technology companies responded by promising artificial intelligence improvements that will make the devices work much faster. The new AI features will help users type more quickly, correct mistakes automatically and even create personalised voices that sound like the actual person speaking.
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