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New Emojis Debut on World Emoji Day

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As the world celebrated World Emoji Day yesterday, more than 117 new emojis are anticipated to make their debut this year, including new coronavirus (COVID-19) emojis.

The new emoji list for 2020 was announced by Emojipedia in January 2020 after new emojis gained approval in January. These are expected to roll out across major platforms throughout 2020.

Among the hugely anticipated emojis this year are bubble tea, bottle-feeding parents, gender-neutral characters, new animals and the transgender flag.

There were over 3 304 emojis in the Unicode Standard as of March 2020 – this includes sequences for gender or skin tone, flags and the components that are used to create keycap, flag and other sequences.

This week, Apple released a preview of new emoji characters coming to iPhone, iPad and Mac later this year, and Android’s latest version, 11 beta, includes a number of new emoji coming to Android devices, with additions including ‘smiling face with tear’ and ‘pinched fingers’.

The most used emoji on Twitter is ‘face with tears of joy, which is an emoji featuring a jovial face laughing, while also crying. It has been used over two billion times in 2020 so far, according to Emoji Tracker. In 2015, it was used over 6.6 billion times. Twitter’s second and third most-used new emojis are ‘pleading face’ and ‘woozy face’, respectively.

Around 86% of emoji users on Twitter are aged 24 or younger.

In terms of Facebook, more than 700 million emojis are used on Facebook posts every day and another estimated 900 million emojis are sent every day without text on Facebook Messenger. The biggest day for emoji usage on Messenger is New Year’s Eve.

Dean McCoubrey, ICT expert and founder of social media and online safety programme MySociaLife, says emojis have become one of the fastest developing new languages in history, especially among Gen Z and millennials.

“In the same way that devices have become part of our lives, emojis continue to be more inclusive too, with a bigger focus on gender inclusivity this year. MySociaLife is very close to the ground in terms of social media and popular culture for this generation, and we consistently see many dimensions of kids.

“There may be TikTok or Fortnite obsession, but there is also an evolution of being conscious about social issues. New emojis sometimes reflect the trends of the time − this year seeing the inclusion of the transgender icon and the (protest) placard.”

Originating on Japanese mobile phones in 1997, emoji became increasingly popular worldwide in the 2010s after being added to several mobile operating systems.

The use of emojis has increased rapidly over the years to now becoming a part of mobile users’ day-to-day life.

A sample of nearly 50 000 tweets from early March 2020, analysed by Emojipedia, revealed the top emojis to be included in conversations about the COVID-19 were: ‘microbe'(42%), and the ‘face wearing the medical mask’ (36%). Other popular emojis strongly associated with COVID-19 include ‘nauseated face’, ‘face vomiting’, ‘sneezing face’ and ‘face with a thermometer’.

For World Emoji Day, Google has announced a number of classic emojis returning to Android this year, including frog, hatching chick, pig face, octopus and spouting whale.

Emojis approved and coming to Apple’s iOS this year include ‘smiling face with tear’, ‘disguised face’, ‘pinched fingers’ and ‘people hugging’. Last year on World Emoji Day, Apple launched new emojis to its visual language, including waffle, flamingo and sloth.

Emoji that are approved by the Unicode Consortium in January often don’t make it onto phones until about September. However, Unicode has announced a six-month delay to Unicode 14.0, which was expected to debut in 2021, due to COVID-19 interruptions.

MySociaLife, which teaches 4 000 school pupils annually about life online, advises parents to keep tabs on their children’s online behaviour and the type of emojis they use or receive from peers.

“Emojis have not waned. We live in a visual world, but this requires guidance and navigation for parents, teachers and students. There are few mysterious double meaning emojis that parents should know of; for instance, an eggplant emoji doesn’t necessarily mean that your child is a fan of aubergines, and the shapely apple emoji is less about fruit and more about curves,” according to McCoubrey.


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Trump Threatens More Strikes in Nigeria

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President Donald Trump has warned that the United States could carry out further military strikes in Nigeria if Christians continue to be killed, reigniting a sensitive debate over religious violence and foreign intervention in Africa’s most populous nation.

Trump Threatens More Strikes in Nigeria

President Donald Trump

Trump made the remarks in an interview with The New York Times, published on Thursday, while responding to questions about a US military strike carried out in Nigeria on Christmas Day.

At the time, the US military said the operation targeted Islamic State militants in north-west Nigeria and was conducted at the request of the Nigerian government.

Nigeria, however, described the operation as a joint counterterrorism effort, stressing that it was aimed at armed groups designated as terrorists and “had nothing to do with a particular religion”.

“I’d love to make it a one-time strike,” Trump was quoted as saying. “But if they continue to kill Christians, it will be a many-time strike.”

Pressed on comments by his own Africa adviser that extremist groups such as Islamic State and Boko Haram have killed more Muslims than Christians in Nigeria, Trump acknowledged that Muslims were also victims but insisted that Christians were being targeted disproportionately.

“I think that Muslims are being killed also in Nigeria. But it’s mostly Christians,” he said.

Trump has repeatedly raised alarms about the safety of Christians in Nigeria, beginning in late October when he warned that Christianity faced what he described as an “existential threat” in the country. He has accused Nigerian authorities of failing to adequately protect Christian communities and has openly threatened US military intervention if the violence continues.

Nigeria has firmly rejected claims of systematic persecution of Christians. The government maintains that the country’s security challenges are complex and largely driven by insurgency, banditry and criminal violence rather than religious targeting.

With a population of more than 230 million people, Nigeria is almost evenly divided between Christians, who are concentrated mainly in the south, and Muslims, who predominate in the north. Islamist insurgencies, particularly Boko Haram and its offshoots, have plagued parts of northern Nigeria for more than a decade, killing thousands and displacing millions.

Nigerian authorities have repeatedly pointed out that militant attacks have claimed the lives of both Muslims and Christians, arguing that framing the violence along religious lines oversimplifies the crisis and risks inflaming tensions.

Following Trump’s earlier threats, the Nigerian government said it was willing to continue cooperating with Washington in combating terrorism but rejected language suggesting that Christians alone were under threat.

The latest comments are likely to strain diplomatic relations further, as Nigeria balances its partnership with the United States against concerns over sovereignty, security cooperation and the portrayal of its internal conflicts on the global stage.


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OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Health

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OpenAI maker of ChatGPT is rolling out a health-focused feature to the generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool that’s used by nearly a billion users.

Named ChatGPT Health, the new feature aims to provide users with health and wellness information. This, as health is one of the most common ways people use ChatGPT, according to OpenAI.

In a blog post, Microsoft-backed OpenAI says de-identified analysis of conversations show that over 230 million people globally ask health and wellness-related questions on ChatGPT every week.

ChatGPT Health will also “securely” connect medical records and wellness apps to ground conversations with a user’s own health information, making responses more relevant and useful.

“Designed in close collaboration with physicians, ChatGPT Health helps people take a more active role in understanding and managing their health and wellness – while supporting, not replacing, care from clinicians.”

According to OpenAI, health information is often scattered across portals, apps, wearables, PDFs, and medical notes making it hard to see the full picture, and people are left to navigate a complex healthcare system on their own.

“ChatGPT Health builds on these so responses are informed by your health information and context. You can now securely connect medical records and wellness apps – like Apple Health, Function, and MyFitnessPal – so ChatGPT can help you understand recent test results, prepare for appointments with your doctor, get advice on how to approach your diet and workout routine, or understand the trade-offs of different insurance options based on your healthcare patterns.”

According to the company, ChatGPT Health is designed to support, not replace, medical care, adding that it is not intended for diagnosis or treatment. “Instead, it helps you navigate everyday questions and understand patterns over time – not just moments of illness – so you can feel more informed and prepared for important medical conversations.

“To keep your health information protected and secure, Health operates as a separate space with enhanced privacy to protect sensitive data. Conversations in Health are not used to train our foundation models. If you start a health-related conversation in ChatGPT, we’ll suggest moving into Health for these additional protections.”

OpenAI adds that access to ChatGPT Health has started with a small group of early users to learn and continue refining the experience, adding that users with ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans outside of the European Economic Area, Switzerland, and the UK are eligible.

“As we make improvements, we plan to expand access and make Health available to all users on web and iOS in the coming weeks.

“Medical record integrations and some apps are available in the US only, and connecting Apple Health requires iOS.”


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Kaspersky Shares AI Cybersecurity Predictions for 2026

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Kaspersky experts outline how the rapid development of AI is reshaping the cybersecurity landscape in 2026, both for individual users and for businesses. Large language models (LLMs) are influencing defensive capabilities while simultaneously expanding opportunities for threat actors.

Deepfakes are becoming a mainstream technology, and awareness will continue to grow. Companies are increasingly discussing the risks of synthetic content and training employees to reduce the likelihood of falling victim to it. As the volume of deepfakes grows, so does the range of formats in which they appear.

At the same time, awareness is rising not only within organisations but also among regular users: end consumers encounter fake content more often and better understand the nature of such threats. As a result, deepfakes are becoming a stable element of the security agenda, requiring a systematic approach to training and internal policies.

Deepfake quality will improve through better audio and a lowering barrier to entry. The visual quality of deepfakes is already high, while realistic audio remains the main area for future growth.

At the same time, content generation tools are becoming easier to use: even non-experts can now create a mid-quality deepfake in just a few clicks. As a result, the average quality continues to rise, creation becomes accessible to a far broader audience, and these capabilities will inevitably continue to be leveraged by cybercriminals.

Online deepfakes will continue to evolve but remain tools for advanced users. Real-time face and voice swapping technologies are improving, but their setup still requires more advanced technical skills. Wide adoption is unlikely, yet the risks in targeted scenarios will grow: increasing realism and the ability to manipulate video through virtual cameras make such attacks more convincing.

Efforts to develop a reliable system for labelling AI-generated content will continue. There are still no unified criteria for reliably identifying synthetic content, and current labels are easy to bypass or remove, especially when working with open-source models. For this reason, new technical and regulatory initiatives aimed at addressing the problem are likely to emerge.

Open-weight models will approach top closed models in many cybersecurity-related tasks, which create more opportunities for misuse. Closed models still offer stricter control mechanisms and safeguards, limiting abuse.

However, open-source systems are rapidly catching up in functionality and circulate without comparable restrictions. This blurs the difference between proprietary models and open-source models both of which can be used efficiently for undesired or malicious purposes.

The line between legitimate and fraudulent AI-generated content will become increasingly blurred. AI can already produce well-crafted scam emails, convincing visual identities, and high-quality phishing pages.

At the same time, major brands are adopting synthetic materials in advertising, making AI-generated content look familiar and visually “normal.” As a result, distinguishing real from fake will become even more challenging, both for users and for automated detection systems.

AI will become a cross-chain tool in cyberattacks and be used across most stages of the kill chain. Threat actors already employ LLMs to write code, build infrastructure, and automate operational tasks.

Further advances will reinforce this trend: AI will increasingly support multiple stages of an attack, from preparation and communication to assembling malicious components, probing for vulnerabilities and deploying tools. Attackers will also work to hide signs of AI involvement, making such operations harder to analyse.

“While AI tools are being used in cyberattacks, they are also becoming a more common tool in security analysis and influence how SOC teams work. Agent-based systems will be able to continuously scan infrastructure, identify vulnerabilities, and gather contextual information for investigations, reducing the amount of manual routine work.

“As a result, specialists will shift from manually searching for data to making decisions based on already-prepared context. In parallel, security tools will transition to natural-language interfaces, enabling prompts instead of complex technical queries,” adds Vladislav Tushkanov, Research Development Group Manager at Kaspersky.

 


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