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Armed National Guard soldiers from West Virginia patrol the Mall near the Capitol in Washington, as part of President Donald Trump's order to impose federal law enforcement in the District of Columbia, Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

What Americans think about Trump’s handling of crime, according to a new poll

Jill Colvin And Linley Sanders, The Associated Press 6 minute read Preview

What Americans think about Trump’s handling of crime, according to a new poll

Jill Colvin And Linley Sanders, The Associated Press 6 minute read Tuesday, Sep. 16, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — As armed National Guard troops patrol the nation's capital as part of an unprecedented federal takeover of Washington's police department, handling crime is now a relative strength for President Donald Trump, according to the latest AP-NORC poll.

Americans are generally not happy about the Republican president’s handling of issues like immigration and the economy but are more positive about his tough-on-crime approach, according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Indeed, the vast majority of Americans, 81%, see crime as a “major problem” in large cities — a concern Trump has seized on as he has deployed the National Guard to the District of Columbia and threatened to expand that model to cities across the country. Despite that perception, data shows that violent crime in D.C. is at a 30-year low. But Trump’s approach appears to be helping him, at least for the moment: His overall approval rating has increased slightly, from 40% in July to 45% now.

But the poll shows there is less public support for federal takeovers of local police departments, suggesting opinions could shift over the coming weeks or months, depending on how aggressively Trump pursues his threats.

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Tuesday, Sep. 16, 2025
More workers are engaging with AI tools to help them complete work tasks and increase their productivity. Chat GPT's landing page is seen on a computer screen, Monday, Aug. 4, 2025, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)
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Businesses put at risk when employees use unauthorized AI tools at work

Ritika Dubey, The Canadian Press 6 minute read Preview
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Businesses put at risk when employees use unauthorized AI tools at work

Ritika Dubey, The Canadian Press 6 minute read Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025

An artificial intelligence chatbot could help quickly clean up your presentation moments before an important board meeting. But those quick AI fixes can become a liability for the higher-ups you're trying to impress.

More employees are using AI tools to help them complete work tasks and increase their productivity, but most of the time, those tools aren't approved by companies. When employees make use of unauthorized AI platforms and tools, it's referred to as shadow AI, and it creates a risk that workers could accidentally disclose sensitive internal data on these platforms, making the company susceptible to cyberattacks or intellectual property theft.

Often, companies are slow in adopting the latest technology, which may push employees to seek third-party solutions, such as AI assistants, said Kareem Sadek, a partner in the consulting practice at KPMG in Canada specializing in tech risk.

This so-called shadow AI often seeps in when users are looking for convenience, speed and intuitiveness, Sadek said.

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Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025
FILE - China's Long March 2F rocket, carrying three astronauts for the Shenzhou 20 manned space mission, blasts off at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, northwestern China, April 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)
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Hijacked satellites and orbiting space weapons: In the 21st century, space is the new battlefield

David Klepper, The Associated Press 7 minute read Preview
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Hijacked satellites and orbiting space weapons: In the 21st century, space is the new battlefield

David Klepper, The Associated Press 7 minute read Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — As Russia held its Victory Day parade this year, hackers backing the Kremlin hijacked an orbiting satellite that provides television service to Ukraine.

Instead of normal programing, Ukrainian viewers saw parade footage beamed in from Moscow: waves of tanks, soldiers and weaponry. The message was meant to intimidate and was an illustration that 21st-century war is waged not just on land, sea and air but also in cyberspace and the reaches of outer space.

Disabling a satellite could deal a devastating blow without one bullet, and it can be done by targeting the satellite's security software or disrupting its ability to send or receive signals from Earth.

“If you can impede a satellite's ability to communicate, you can cause a significant disruption,” said Tom Pace, CEO of NetRise, a cybersecurity firm focused on protecting supply chains.

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Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025
AI-powered personal finance is here: for better and for worse
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AI-powered personal finance is here: for better and for worse

Joel Schlesinger 5 minute read Preview
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AI-powered personal finance is here: for better and for worse

Joel Schlesinger 5 minute read Saturday, Aug. 16, 2025

Financial advice at your fingertips is by no means a new innovation.

Yet with the rise of artificial intelligence, getting insights about your money has been taken to new heights of potential benefit — and dangers.

“There is a lot of upside to using AI, especially for budgeting, and it’s often good as a first draft for anything you want to do,” says Monisha Sharma, Toronto-based chief revenue officer at Fig Financial, which provides consolidation, home improvement and unsecured loans.

Fig has some insight on AI’s benefits. The fintech company leverages AI technology to make loans quickly to Canadians, but its use case is contained to Fig’s own specific data to ensure a low error rate.

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Saturday, Aug. 16, 2025
FILE - Head of the Police Security Service Beate Gangas during a press conference on threat and risk assessments in Norway, in Oslo, Monday, Feb. 13, 2023. (Fredrik Varfjell/NTB Scanpix via AP, file)

Norwegian police say pro-Russian hackers were likely behind suspected sabotage at a dam

Emma Burrows, The Associated Press 2 minute read Preview

Norwegian police say pro-Russian hackers were likely behind suspected sabotage at a dam

Emma Burrows, The Associated Press 2 minute read Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025

Russian hackers are likely behind suspected sabotage at a dam in Norway in April that affected water flows, police officials told Norwegian media on Wednesday.

The director of the Norwegian Police Security Service, Beate Gangås, said cyberattacks are increasingly being carried out against Western nations to stoke fear and unrest.

The Associated Press has plotted more than 70 incidents on a map tracking a campaign of disruption across Europe blamed on Russia, which Western officials have described as “reckless.” Since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, Western officials have accused Russia and its proxies of staging dozens of attacks and other incidents, ranging from vandalism to arson and attempted assassination.

Intelligence officials told the AP that the campaign is becoming more violent.

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Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025
A person uses a cell phone in Ottawa on July 18, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

‘No safety rules’: Concerns grow as AI-generated videos spread hate online

Sharif Hassan, The Canadian Press 6 minute read Preview

‘No safety rules’: Concerns grow as AI-generated videos spread hate online

Sharif Hassan, The Canadian Press 6 minute read Tuesday, Sep. 23, 2025

At first it appears to be a quirky video clip generated by artificial intelligence to make people laugh.

In it, a hairy Bigfoot wearing a cowboy hat and a vest emblazoned with the American flag sits behind the wheel of a pickup truck.

“We are going today to the LGBT parade,” the apelike creature says with a laugh. “You are going to love it.”

Things then take a violent and disturbing turn as Bigfoot drives through a crowd of screaming people, some of them holding rainbow flags.

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Tuesday, Sep. 23, 2025
FILE - One of the control rooms at the Arizona PBS offices at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix is seen Friday, May 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Katie Oyan, File)

Not just Big Bird: Things to know about the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and its funding cuts

Audrey Mcavoy, The Associated Press 5 minute read Preview

Not just Big Bird: Things to know about the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and its funding cuts

Audrey Mcavoy, The Associated Press 5 minute read Friday, Sep. 19, 2025

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps pay for PBS, NPR, 1,500 local radio and television stations as well as programs like “Sesame Street” and “Finding Your Roots,” said Friday that it would close after the U.S. government withdrew funding.

The organization told employees that most staff positions will end with the fiscal year on Sept. 30. A small transition team will stay until January to finish any remaining work.

The private, nonprofit corporation was founded in 1968 shortly after Congress authorized its formation. It now ends nearly six decades of fueling the production of renowned educational programming, cultural content and emergency alerts about natural disasters.

Here's what to know:

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Friday, Sep. 19, 2025
FILE - A person working on a laptop in North Andover, Mass., June 19, 2017. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)

Creating realistic deepfakes is getting easier than ever. Fighting back may take even more AI

David Klepper, The Associated Press 6 minute read Preview

Creating realistic deepfakes is getting easier than ever. Fighting back may take even more AI

David Klepper, The Associated Press 6 minute read Thursday, Sep. 18, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — The phone rings. It's the secretary of state calling. Or is it?

For Washington insiders, seeing and hearing is no longer believing, thanks to a spate of recent incidents involving deepfakes impersonating top officials in President Donald Trump's administration.

Digital fakes are coming for corporate America, too, as criminal gangs and hackers associated with adversaries including North Korea use synthetic video and audio to impersonate CEOs and low-level job candidates to gain access to critical systems or business secrets.

Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, creating realistic deepfakes is easier than ever, causing security problems for governments, businesses and private individuals and making trust the most valuable currency of the digital age.

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Thursday, Sep. 18, 2025
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman participates in a panel discussion during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 18, 2024. OpenAI was one of the major tech firms that promised to pursue watermarking technology. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Canadian researchers create tool to remove anti-deepfake watermarks from AI content

Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press 4 minute read Preview

Canadian researchers create tool to remove anti-deepfake watermarks from AI content

Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press 4 minute read Saturday, Sep. 20, 2025

OTTAWA - University of Waterloo researchers have built a tool that can quickly remove watermarks identifying content as artificially generated — and they say it proves that global efforts to combat deepfakes are most likely on the wrong track.

Academia and industry have focused on watermarking as the best way to fight deepfakes and "basically abandoned all other approaches," said Andre Kassis, a PhD candidate in computer science who led the research.

At a White House event in 2023, the leading AI companies — including OpenAI, Meta, Google and Amazon — pledged to implement mechanisms such as watermarking to clearly identify AI-generated content.

AI companies’ systems embed a watermark, which is a hidden signature or pattern that isn’t visible to a person but can be identified by another system, Kassis explained.

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Saturday, Sep. 20, 2025
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Book Review: ‘Algospeak’ shows just how much social media is changing us

Rachel S. Hunt, The Associated Press 3 minute read Preview
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Book Review: ‘Algospeak’ shows just how much social media is changing us

Rachel S. Hunt, The Associated Press 3 minute read Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025

How much has social media changed the way we talk and behave?

That’s the question linguist and content creator Adam Aleksic sets out to answer in his debut book “Algospeak.”

If you already know what words like “yeet,” “rizz,” “brainrot” or “blackpilled” mean, some of this information might not come as a surprise to you. Still, Aleksic’s analysis reaffirms how this language came about and why it continues to proliferate. For those unfamiliar, it acts as an accessible entry point into social media slang and its evolution.

“Algospeak” touches on a wide array of topics, including in-groups and out-groups, censorship, language appropriation, extremism online, microtrends, clickbait and generational divides. The chapters build on each other with a textbook-level attention to vocabulary.

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Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025