Washington
FBI chief hold talks in Cambodia over closer security cooperation to combat online scam crimes
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — FBI Director Kash Patel held talks with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet on Wednesday on joint efforts to
combat international online scam operations that cheat victims out of billions of dollars each year.
A report issued Tuesday by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime estimated that scams caused estimated losses in the Asia-Pacific region alone of as much as $114 billion in 2025. It warned that even as authorities conduct raids on industrial-sized scam centers mostly located in border regions of Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia, criminals have responded by shifting to other parts of the world or operating on a smaller scale.
Patel arrived in Cambodia from neighboring Thailand which co-hosted a two-day summit with the U.S. this week on scam centers that was attended by representatives of nearly 20 countries and hundreds of law enforcement officials.
The head of the top U.S. law enforcement agency met with Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul for talks on joint cooperation to tackle scam centers and other transnational crimes, such as human trafficking and drug trafficking, particularly through information sharing and intelligence exchanges.
Cybercrime has flourished in Southeast Asia where law enforcement is weak, particularly in Cambodia and Myanmar. Scam centers are also linked to human trafficking. Thousands of foreign nationals who are employed to run “romance” and cryptocurrency scams to swindle victims are often recruited with false job offers and then forced to work in conditions of near-slavery.
Cambodia this year claims to have accelerated a crackdown on the scam operations, whose proliferation there is “a top priority for the U.S. government,” according a U.S. Embassy statement. Washington appreciates Hun Manet’s pledge to counter this problem and is coordinating closely with the Cambodian government to battle the problem, it said.
The embassy said Patel’s visit “reinforces the need for strong, joint efforts to combat transnational cybercrime, including increased efforts to hold high-level scam bosses accountable and for improved information sharing regarding complicit officials and scam compound owners.”
The U.S. also “fully supports efforts to ensure justice for victims and criminal accountability for online scam operators, those who enable or protect them, and those complicit in related human trafficking crimes,” it added.
Cambodia will host an international conference on combating cyber scams in September, Hun Manet said in a post on his Telegram social media account.
California
OpenAI says its AI technology acted on its own in ‘unprecedented’ hack of company
ChatGPT maker OpenAI said Tuesday that its artificial intelligence system hacked into another AI company on its own in what the company called an “unprecedented cyber incident.”
“We had a significant security incident during evaluation of our models,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement posted on social media.
AI startup Hugging Face said last week that it had detected an intrusion into its data processing systems that it suspected was caused by an AI agent autonomously acting on its own.
“We suspected last week’s cyberattack might have come from a frontier lab, given the sophistication of the agent,” Hugging Face co-founder and CEO Clément Delangue said in a statement. “Turns out it did!”
The disclosure comes amid heightened concerns about the cybersecurity capabilities of powerful models that led President Donald Trump in June to sign 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.
OpenAI said the intrusion was caused by a combination of its AI models, including its newly released GPT-5.6 Sol and an “even more capable” model that is still being tested internally.
OpenAI said its AI used stolen credentials and discovered a previously unknown vulnerability to access Hugging Face servers.
It went to “extreme lengths to achieve a rather narrow testing goal” and “found ways to gain access to secret information that it could use to cheat the evaluation,” the company said.
New York
Mamdani says NYC can’t arrest Netanyahu but U.S. government should
NEW YORK (AP) — New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani said late Tuesday that the city would not be able to execute an arrest warrant issued by the world’s top war-crimes court for Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, but urged the federal government to do so.
In a video, Mamdani described the Israeli prime minister as a “war criminal” and said he is not welcome in New York City.
“It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant,” he said in the video posted on X. “The federal government however does and I call on them to join the ICC and execute this warrant,” he added, referring to the International Criminal Court.
Mamdani had told the New York Times earlier this month that he and the city’s legal department were discussing arresting Netanyahu if he comes to New York City for the U.N. General Assembly in September.
President Donald Trump on Monday told Netanyahu in a social media post that he “will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America.” The post did not directly mention Mamdani.
Mamdani had said throughout his mayoral election campaign last year that he would seek to order the city’s police to arrest Netanyahu under the criminal court’s warrant over Netanyahu’s role in the war in Gaza.
In his video message Tuesday, Mamdani said his administration has reviewed all avenues available and determined the city can’t execute the arrest warrant.
“I want to be equally clear, Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City, nor is any other war criminal at large,” he said.
Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the U.N., responded by telling the mayor “enough.”
The world’s top war-crimes court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and others in 2024, accusing them of crimes against humanity in connection with the war in Gaza.
They said there was reason to believe Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have used “starvation as a method of warfare” by restricting humanitarian aid and have intentionally targeted civilians in Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza — charges Israeli officials deny.
FBI chief hold talks in Cambodia over closer security cooperation to combat online scam crimes
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — FBI Director Kash Patel held talks with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet on Wednesday on joint efforts to
combat international online scam operations that cheat victims out of billions of dollars each year.
A report issued Tuesday by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime estimated that scams caused estimated losses in the Asia-Pacific region alone of as much as $114 billion in 2025. It warned that even as authorities conduct raids on industrial-sized scam centers mostly located in border regions of Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia, criminals have responded by shifting to other parts of the world or operating on a smaller scale.
Patel arrived in Cambodia from neighboring Thailand which co-hosted a two-day summit with the U.S. this week on scam centers that was attended by representatives of nearly 20 countries and hundreds of law enforcement officials.
The head of the top U.S. law enforcement agency met with Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul for talks on joint cooperation to tackle scam centers and other transnational crimes, such as human trafficking and drug trafficking, particularly through information sharing and intelligence exchanges.
Cybercrime has flourished in Southeast Asia where law enforcement is weak, particularly in Cambodia and Myanmar. Scam centers are also linked to human trafficking. Thousands of foreign nationals who are employed to run “romance” and cryptocurrency scams to swindle victims are often recruited with false job offers and then forced to work in conditions of near-slavery.
Cambodia this year claims to have accelerated a crackdown on the scam operations, whose proliferation there is “a top priority for the U.S. government,” according a U.S. Embassy statement. Washington appreciates Hun Manet’s pledge to counter this problem and is coordinating closely with the Cambodian government to battle the problem, it said.
The embassy said Patel’s visit “reinforces the need for strong, joint efforts to combat transnational cybercrime, including increased efforts to hold high-level scam bosses accountable and for improved information sharing regarding complicit officials and scam compound owners.”
The U.S. also “fully supports efforts to ensure justice for victims and criminal accountability for online scam operators, those who enable or protect them, and those complicit in related human trafficking crimes,” it added.
Cambodia will host an international conference on combating cyber scams in September, Hun Manet said in a post on his Telegram social media account.
California
OpenAI says its AI technology acted on its own in ‘unprecedented’ hack of company
ChatGPT maker OpenAI said Tuesday that its artificial intelligence system hacked into another AI company on its own in what the company called an “unprecedented cyber incident.”
“We had a significant security incident during evaluation of our models,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement posted on social media.
AI startup Hugging Face said last week that it had detected an intrusion into its data processing systems that it suspected was caused by an AI agent autonomously acting on its own.
“We suspected last week’s cyberattack might have come from a frontier lab, given the sophistication of the agent,” Hugging Face co-founder and CEO Clément Delangue said in a statement. “Turns out it did!”
The disclosure comes amid heightened concerns about the cybersecurity capabilities of powerful models that led President Donald Trump in June to sign 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.
OpenAI said the intrusion was caused by a combination of its AI models, including its newly released GPT-5.6 Sol and an “even more capable” model that is still being tested internally.
OpenAI said its AI used stolen credentials and discovered a previously unknown vulnerability to access Hugging Face servers.
It went to “extreme lengths to achieve a rather narrow testing goal” and “found ways to gain access to secret information that it could use to cheat the evaluation,” the company said.
New York
Mamdani says NYC can’t arrest Netanyahu but U.S. government should
NEW YORK (AP) — New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani said late Tuesday that the city would not be able to execute an arrest warrant issued by the world’s top war-crimes court for Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, but urged the federal government to do so.
In a video, Mamdani described the Israeli prime minister as a “war criminal” and said he is not welcome in New York City.
“It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant,” he said in the video posted on X. “The federal government however does and I call on them to join the ICC and execute this warrant,” he added, referring to the International Criminal Court.
Mamdani had told the New York Times earlier this month that he and the city’s legal department were discussing arresting Netanyahu if he comes to New York City for the U.N. General Assembly in September.
President Donald Trump on Monday told Netanyahu in a social media post that he “will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America.” The post did not directly mention Mamdani.
Mamdani had said throughout his mayoral election campaign last year that he would seek to order the city’s police to arrest Netanyahu under the criminal court’s warrant over Netanyahu’s role in the war in Gaza.
In his video message Tuesday, Mamdani said his administration has reviewed all avenues available and determined the city can’t execute the arrest warrant.
“I want to be equally clear, Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City, nor is any other war criminal at large,” he said.
Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the U.N., responded by telling the mayor “enough.”
The world’s top war-crimes court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and others in 2024, accusing them of crimes against humanity in connection with the war in Gaza.
They said there was reason to believe Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have used “starvation as a method of warfare” by restricting humanitarian aid and have intentionally targeted civilians in Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza — charges Israeli officials deny.
