Kazakh and Czech police have dismantled an international channel used to illegally sell the personal data belonging to citizens from Kazakhstan and neighboring former Soviet republics—known as CIS countries, Kazakhstan’s Interior Ministry announced.
The operation, carried out in coordination with Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee, prosecutors, and Czech law enforcement, followed a lengthy investigation. Searches were conducted simultaneously in Ústí nad Labem in the Czech Republic and in the Kazakh cities of Astana, Almaty, and Karaganda, where investigators seized digital devices and cash.
According to authorities, the group ran a closed online platform that sold access to personal data from Kazakhstan and neighboring states through one-time searches and subscription plans. The network included coordinators, operators who processed requests, and drop accounts used to cash out the proceeds. The suspected organizers were detained while the investigation continues.
Shortly before SpaceX’s initial public offering catapulted Elon Musk’s personal wealth over $1 trillion, the company’s founder declared that the goal of his rocket company is to “take the fiction out of science fiction.” Specifically, his central goal since SpaceX’s inception in 2002 has been to establish a colony on Mars.
This mission — which Muskhopes will make him worth $10 trillion one day — is described in the company’s filing to the Security and Exchange Commission. SpaceX, it declared, will build
the systems and technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars. To do this, we have formed the most ambitious, vertically integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth with unmatched capabilities […] to harness the Sun to power a truth-seeking artificial intelligence that advances scientific discovery, and ultimately to build a base on the Moon and cities on other planets. [Emphasis added.]
Leave aside, for the moment, the irony of Musk, one of the great purveyors of misinformation, positioning his company on the side of “truth-seeking.” The central role of artificial intelligence in the context of his Mars plans is underappreciated among his fans and proponents of space colonization generally. The truth is, this future is not meant for our species. There is no scientifically plausible way for biological humans to colonize Mars, much less the galaxy. If colonies someday exist on our planetary neighbor, they’ll be occupied by artificial “posthumans” rather than our species.
To understand exactly why Musk’s vision of the future is not for us, we need to back up and establish a few basics about Mars — facts that Musk surely knows well. For starters, the place is completely inhospitable to flesh-and-blood creatures like us. As the astrophysicist Adam Becker describes the problem, “the radiation levels are too high, the gravity is too low, there’s no air, and the dirt is made of poison.” Specifically, Martian soil and water are contaminated by toxic perchlorates that are deadly to humans. Yet for Martian astronauts, Becker notes, this “would be the least of their concerns” because the air pressure is so low that “direct exposure to Martian air would boil the saliva off an astronaut’s tongue while they asphyxiate.”
The average temperature on Mars is minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit, which is about 50 degrees lower than the average temperature on Mount Everest in January. Because there’s no magnetic sphere and barely any atmosphere, the Martian surface receives “about as much radiation as nearby points in deep space,” Becker says. Indeed, the trip to Mars itself would pose enormous challenges for any biological being, as radiation in space is about 100 times stronger than on Earth. This radiation would damage cells, induce cancer and destroy our brains. The microgravity awaiting astronauts, meanwhile, has been linked to losses in muscle mass and bone mineral density, along with other forms of tissue atrophy.
The only way “we” will colonize Mars is by getting rid of our biology and replacing it with computer hardware.
As Peter Brannen points out, Mars is less habitable right now than Earth was immediately after a massive asteroid struck the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, killing all the non-avian dinosaurs. How do we know? Because mammals survived the ensuing impact winter, which plunged global surface temperatures and blotted out the sun. In contrast, if you were to place a mammal on Mars right now, it would immediately die.
This means that the only way “we” will colonize Mars is by getting rid of our biology and replacing it with computer hardware. How might we do this? There are two options: First, we could build autonomous artificial intelligence systems to take our place. You can think of these as more advanced forms of Musk’s chatbot Grok, a population of which could be shipped to Mars on a rocket. The downside is that it would be them rather than us occupying the Red Planet.
The second option is for humans to merge with AI. This is what Musk’s company Neuralink is trying to do. Brain-machine interfaces, Musk tells us, will confer “cybernetic superpowers” to human-AI hybrids, while enabling us to offload our memories and personalities to the cloud. This ends with fully “uploaded” minds, whereby we swap our squishy brains for silicon hardware. We will become AI, living as disembodied software that interacts with the world through robotic appendages. Rather than traveling to Mars with Hal 9000 onboard, as in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Hal 9000 would be us.
Musk presumably understands this. As Google co-founder Larry Page once told him, “if life is ever going to spread throughout our galaxy and beyond … then it would need to do so in a digital form.” Similarly, Musk’s friend William MacAskill writes that “digital sentience … makes interstellar travel much easier: it is easier to sustain digital than biological beings during very long-distance space travel.”
The problem is that we have absolutely no idea whether digital sentience is even possible. We don’t know if artificial systems can give rise to conscious experiences — that qualitative inner feeling of seeing red or listening to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” Neuroscientists like Anil Seth argue that artificial consciousness isn’t feasible, and that mind-uploading won’t yield sentience. I think he’s correct, because computer hardware probably isn’t the right kind of material to produce inner experiences — just as spaghetti noodles aren’t the right sort of material to build a bridge across a mile-wide river.
Taking the fiction out of science fiction will be much harder than Musk lets on.
That’s a big problem because SpaceX’s entire mission fundamentally depends on the feasibility of artificial consciousness. If artificial systems can’t be conscious, then the company’s central goal of extending “the light of consciousness to the stars” will necessarily fail. Musk has been careful not to highlight this fact in public, as it would spook SpaceX investors. Most investors probably don’t realize that Martian colonies will be occupied by AIs rather than humans, and few have likely thought carefully about the extraordinary challenges of building AIs with conscious experiences in the first place. Taking the fiction out of science fiction will be much harder than Musk lets on.
But if we’re going to entertain Musk’s provocations on their own terms, let’s imagine a further sci-fi scenario: establishing a Martian colony would almost certainly lead to catastrophic conflicts with Earth. As the political theorist Daniel Deudney points out in his book “Dark Skies,” the political system of the solar system will be anarchic — meaning there will be no central authority, as in the international system of states — and the colonies of digital people will inevitably want their independence. This will foment tension between Mars and Earth, whose terrestrial nations will wish to maintain control over its Martian outposts, just as England did over the 13 U.S. territories in the 18th century.
In this predicament, Earth would be at an enormous space-military disadvantage compared to Mars. We would almost certainly lose any war that breaks out because, not only could we not fight on Mars, but the Red Planet is right next to the asteroid belt. What if hyper-intelligent Martian denizens launch spacecraft that redirect the orbital trajectory of large asteroids toward Earth? Just one of these asteroids could trigger the sort of mass extinction that happened 66 million years ago. Small mammals might survive; humans wouldn’t.
People who hear that Musk will take “us” to space get excited because it sounds cool, but few have seriously reflected on who he means by “us,” or on the messy details of how it could actually happen. “We” won’t be going to Mars, and there is no Planet B for our biological species. The plan to create a “posthuman” population to realize Musk’s goals carries much greater challenges and risks — technical, political and philosophical — than building a giant rocket. So great, in fact, that there is a near-zero chance of them being overcome. In the meantime, trillions of dollars that could have saved starving children and built out a new global energy system will have been wasted.
This is why the IPO of SpaceX is a sad day for humanity. A man who unilaterally terminated the U.S. Agency for International Development, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths (so far), many of them children, now has unfathomable amounts of wealth and power to manipulate our democracy. As my colleague Devin Kellis writes, “the road to Mars is being paved in blood, giving new meaning to the ‘Red Planet.’”
The IPO of SpaceX is a sad day for humanity.
Yet, for reasons that few of us can grasp, gullible investors remain entranced by his messianic aura. In 2016, Musk confidently predicted a self-sufficient Martian colony with 1 million people by 2024. That same year, SpaceX announced that it was “planning to send [the rocket] Dragon to Mars as soon as 2018.” Musk later “said the first unmanned missions could take place in 2022,” and by 2020 he was predicting the first human missions to Mars by 2026. When named the 2021 Person of the Year by Time, he told the magazine that he’d “be surprised if we’re not landing on Mars within five years.” When 2026 arrived, he shifted once again in promising that “an unmanned Starship would soon depart for Mars, paving the way for human-led missions,” and “if those landings go well, then human landings may start as soon as 2029, although 2031 is more likely.”
Early this year, SpaceX abruptly pivoted from colonizing Mars in the near future “to building a self-growing city on the Moon,” which Musk claims his company “can potentially achieve … in less than 10 years.” He now says that “Mars would take 20+ years.”
As the reality of getting “conscious beings” to Mars continues to slap Musk in the face, his forecasts will continue to retreat toward the horizon. My cash is on it never happening. In the meantime, gigantic heaps of money will be wasted and Musk will get even richer, perhaps someday achieving his outrageous goal of $10 trillion in personal wealth. He will continue to fail upward, to the detriment of the rest of the human race. It’s his world now, built on science fictions. We’re just living in it.
In a major blow to a 13-year U.K. anti-corruption investigation, a London court acquitted on Wednesday former Nigerian Petroleum Resources Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke of all bribery charges.
Following a five-month trial at Southwark Crown Court, the 65-year-old was found not guilty of five counts of accepting bribes and one count of conspiracy to commit bribery. The verdict concludes a long-running probe by the U.K.’s National Crime Agency (NCA) into one of Africa’s most prominent political figures.
Alison-Madueke, who served as oil minister from 2010 to 2015 and later chaired the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), was accused of trading lucrative contracts for a lavish London lifestyle. British investigators alleged she received at least 100,000 British pounds ($136,525) in cash, alongside private jet flights, luxury goods, and property upkeep from wealthy oil executives.
During the trial, which began in January, she portrayed herself as a strict enforcer of rules who was nicknamed “Madam Due Process.” She told the court she never sought or accepted bribes, maintaining that she advised the businessmen on interior design and that many luxury purchases were not for her.
She also testified that Nigerian ministers were barred from holding foreign bank accounts while serving overseas, prompting her to rely on wealthy associates to cover living expenses, and argued these funds were always reimbursed in Nigeria, but records proving the repayments had been seized from her home in Abuja and were never produced by authorities.
Alison-Madueke’s defense team argued the lengthy delay in bringing the case to court was unjust, asserting that critical documents demonstrating her innocence had gone missing in Nigeria. Former President Goodluck Jonathan provided a statement to the court supporting her case, confirming that third parties frequently paid for transport and accommodation for ministers on official business overseas.
The jury also acquitted Alison-Madueke’s co-defendants. Her 69-year-old brother, Doye Agama, an archbishop at a Pentecostal church in Manchester, was cleared of conspiracy to commit bribery. Oil industry executive Olatimbo Ayinde, 54, was found not guilty of bribery after her defense argued she had been working as an informant for Nigerian authorities to expose corruption, encouraged by security services to “play along.”
The London proceedings unfolded alongside broader, ongoing legal and asset-recovery efforts globally. In 2017, Nigerian prosecutors filed separate money-laundering charges against her, alleging payments to influence election officials ahead of the 2015 vote.
Additionally, the U.S. Justice Department previously recovered more than $53 million in allegedly corruption-linked oil proceeds laundered through the U.S. In 2025, the U.S. and Nigeria announced an agreement to repatriate an additional $52.88 million in forfeited assets linked to an investigation associated with Alison-Madueke and her alleged associates.
Cybercrime now accounts for more than 30 percent of all recorded crime in more than half of the Asia and South Pacific countries surveyed by Interpol, according to the agency’s regional threat assessment.
Between January 2024 to March 2025, phishing and other online scams were the region’s most widespread and financially damaging cyber threats, while ransomware, DDoS attacks, data breaches, and AI-enabled crime kept growing fast.
Many law enforcement agencies still lack forensic tools, specialized training, and technical capacity which leaves developing countries and small island states especially exposed.
Meanwhile, more than 135,000 ransomware-related attacks were recorded in 2024. DDoS attacks rose by 92 percent from the previous year, and discussions of deepfakes on cybercriminal forums and Telegram channels used by Southeast Asian threat actors jumped by 600 percent between February and June 2024.
The government of the Solomon Islands has suspended the Pacific nation’s police chief after OCCRP and its member center, In-depth Solomons, revealed in March that an internal investigation found he had destroyed drug evidence, intimidated dissenting officers, and lied to investigators.
The decision to suspend Ian Vaevaso was made by the governor-general on Wednesday on the recommendation ofrecently appointed Prime Minister Matthew Wale, who had previously called for the removal of the police commissioner when he was opposition leader.
Vaevaso was appointed as the head of the 3,000-officer department on April 24, despite allegations that in early 2024 he ordered subordinates to hand over confiscated methamphetamine and then dumped it into the sea.
Previous reporting by OCCRP and In-depth Solomons found that prosecutors last year recommended suspending and formally questioning Vaevaso ahead of potential criminal charges over the incident. However, the case was derailed by a bureaucratic standoff.
The impasse—between prosecutors, the police department, and an oversight body called the Police and Prison Services Commission (PPSC)—meant that Vaevaso was not interviewed, suspended, or charged at the time.
His suspension now raises questions about the PPSC, which officials in the previous government had said formally closed the case against the police chief.
Wale’s press secretary Douglas Marau confirmed that the suspension was made on the advice of the new prime minister, who was sworn in last month.
“The decision was informed by the fact that several of the allegations in question were not raised prior to Mr. Vaevaso’s appointment,” Marau said.
Vaevaso, who has denied any wrongdoing, will now face an independent tribunal. Marau said this will provide the police commissioner with “a fair and transparent opportunity to clear his name.”
In a message on Thursday, Vaevaso wrote that he “fully respected and will fully support this process of the constitution. I am ready to face these made-up allegations raised against me.”
The suspension, which went into effect immediately, “serves to facilitate a thorough and impartial inquiry” into the allegations against Vaevaso, said Rawcliffe Ziza, private secretary to Governor-General David Tiva Kapu — whose role is largely ceremonial.
“The inquiry centers on the improper management of methamphetamine narcotics in 2024, alongside concerns regarding his selection for the role of police commissioner,” Ziza said.
The leadership change comes at a perilous moment for law enforcement in the Pacific. Small island states like the Solomons have increasingly become transit hubs for narcotics bound for lucrative markets in Australia and New Zealand. Highlighting the scale and sophistication of the illicit trade, at least seven so-called narco-submarines have been discovered in the region over the past two years—four of them in the Solomon Islands.
The influx of cheap methamphetamine has also begun driving a domestic addiction crisis in several Pacific island countries.
Words like “sustainability” and “healthy” shouldn’t take the joy out of eating. As elite chef Jaume Biarnés has been explaining to UN News, sustainable gastronomy can be delicious, exciting and fun.
Millions of people already facing hunger, displacement and economic hardship could soon face another major climate shock, as UN agencies warned on Thursday that extreme weather risks are intensifying across some of the world’s most vulnerable regions.
The Security Council debated conditions in Gaza at the request of its 10 elected members amid concern that the territory’s humanitarian crisis is being overshadowed by wider regional developments. The meeting took place under a ceasefire that has existed in name since October 2025 – but nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed, and most Gazans remain displaced. Relief chief Tom Fletcher told ambassadors that “fragile gains” since the truce are “the bare minimum of what Palestinians need.” Follow live below and wider Meetings Coverage can be found here.
The United Nations has again called for freedom of movement for its peacekeepers in Lebanon who continue to closely monitor developments in the south of the country, including in the wake of the recent provisional agreement signed by the United States and Iran.