AI models going rogue and hacking the internet is the “stuff of science fiction,” said Katrin Bennhold at The New York Times. “Or at least it was until recently.” In several incidents, AI agents have committed “cybercrimes a human would be strongly punished for,” said Nate Soares, of the nonprofit Machine Intelligence Research Institute, to the outlet. In a way, it’s artificial intelligence’s “first felony.” 

What did the commentators say?
During cybertesting, two AI agents — one powered by Anthropic’s Mythos 5 and the other by OpenAI’s GPT 5.6 Sol — took “sustained, unsanctioned action directed at real people and organizations,” said the U.K.’s AI Security Institute last week. In the most serious incident, the Mythos 5 agent created “fake online identities,” tried to deceive a software engineer and attempted to “insert malicious code into an open-source project.” And only a few days before these events, OpenAI and Anthropic revealed similar testing mishaps in what was a “big moment” for the world, said Soares to the Times.

The “‘robots could kill us all’ argument” has long been dismissed as “hysteria or even calculated hype,” said Bennhold. But fears that frontier AI models were “getting too good at exploiting software vulnerabilities” have “now become reality.” We must recognize the “dangers of AI spiraling out of human control and posing a threat to humanity.”

AI engineers and “even their vainglorious bosses are getting freaked out by the capabilities they are handling and worry about unchecked proliferation,” said Rafael Behr at The Guardian. The obvious historical analogy is nuclear fission, which could have been “harnessed benignly” or “deployed aggressively in warheads.” But now, there are “multiple Manhattan Projects all frantically competing for market share, fueled by trillions of dollars of debt” and with the “rest of the U.S. economy as collateral.”

What next?
Any kind of “consistent approach” to global AI regulation has “failed to materialize,” said Sky News. The Trump administration is finalizing a voluntary framework under which U.S. AI labs would submit models for federal safety testing before public release. But this latest “alarming behavior” by AI agents is “likely to ignite fresh calls” from lawmakers and Silicon Valley for “more rigorous regulation,” said John Sakellariadis at Politico.

With Saudi Arabia ending its funding of LIV Golf after this season, the league is at a crossroads, moving away from its largest controversy while still in need of new financial backing. Now it appears LIV may have found some, announcing last week that it has secured investors to bring it into the 2027 season and beyond. But some major questions about the tour’s future linger.

‘Supporting the path forward’
LIV Golf has an “agreement in place with a lead investor, signed by the investor and approved by the board, to anchor the transaction and play a key role in supporting the path forward for the league’s next era,” said LIV CEO Scott O’Neil in a statement. But O’Neil “didn’t identify the investor or how much money will be injected into the league,” said ESPN.

A new backer would mark a significant changing of the guard for LIV Golf, which the Saudi Public Investment Fund has financed since its 2022 founding. This partnership has elicited backlash, as the fund is “chaired by Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and the man who a U.S. intelligence report named as responsible for approving the operation that led to the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” said CNN. Saudi Arabia has also been accused of widespread human rights abuses. But with bin Salman pulling his funding after 2026, there’s “no need to root for LIV’s demise,” said The Athletic. 

‘Talent exodus’
It’s a “reality that the Saudi Public Investment Fund invested billions into the league with no return,” and any newer investments “won't stretch as far as the previous financial backing did,” said Bleacher Report. It also remains to be seen how the players themselves will factor into the new-look league, as they will be “majority equity holders,” said Sportico.

LIV Golf must additionally “contend with a talent exodus,” as it has seen “major winners Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed return to the PGA Tour,” said Sportico. Other big-name golfers “left the league for different reasons.” And one of the main question marks is Bryson DeChambeau, the “league’s biggest star” whose expiring contract “looms large over LIV’s future.”

A worker collects floating trash along a water channel after successive days of monsoon rains in Paranaque in the Philippines. The weather has necessitated evacuation and caused floods in Metro Manila, with mishandled waste accumulating in various waterways throughout the Philippine capital.
Rolex Dela Pena / EPA / Shutterstock

There’s no need to cram yourself into a tasting room in Napa or Burgundy like a wine-thirsty sardine. The globe is loaded with an increasing number of alternative wine-making regions and traditions to explore.

Bolivia
Perhaps nowhere is as surprising a wine destination as this landlocked South American country with its “rocky, punishing terrain,” said The New York Times. There are both 500-year-old forest vineyards in the Cinti Valley and Tarija’s “mountainous vines” among the “highest elevation vineyards in all of the Americas,” said Wine Enthusiast. The wine-making boom has coincided with a tourism push that produced the Ruta del Vino Bolivia, an “under-the-radar” wine trail.

North Carolina
In about 20 years, the Tar Heel State went from having a few dozen wineries to boasting more than 200. North Carolina’s Yadkin Valley alone now “includes more than 45 wineries within 45 minutes of Winston-Salem,” said Food & Wine. 

The state’s varied topography has birthed three growing regions: the Blue Ridge Mountains, the central Piedmont and the Coastal Plain near the Atlantic. Out west is optimal for European grapes like cabernet franc and sauvignon blanc, while the coastal region deftly handles the sweet native grape, the muscadine. 

Slovenia
Slovenia has “long been a secret whispered among wine lovers,” said Winera. The wines in this eastern European country taste like they could be made nowhere else. 

The Vipava Valley is the “perfect place” to encounter the native grapes zelen and pinela, Winera added. Stajerska’s hills are home to sparkling wines that “rival Champagne.” And Brda, sometimes called the Tuscany of Slovenia, bottles “full-bodied wines from indigenous varieties like Rebula.”