AnewZ Morning Brief - 17 February, 2026
Start your day informed with AnewZ Morning Brief: here are the top news stories for the 17th of February, covering the latest developments you need to...
San Francisco, CA, February 17, 2025 – OpenAI announced on Friday that its AI agent, Operator, is now available for ChatGPT Pro subscribers in a broader range of countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and the United Kingdom, among others.
The rollout marks another step in the expansion of the tool, which was first launched in the United States in January.
Operator is designed to perform a variety of tasks on behalf of users, such as booking tickets, making restaurant reservations, filing expense reports, and shopping on e-commerce websites. The service is currently offered exclusively to subscribers of the $200-per-month ChatGPT Pro plan and can be accessed through a dedicated web page. Operator operates in a separate browser window that users can control at any time to complete their tasks.
While Operator will be available in most regions where ChatGPT is offered, OpenAI noted that it will not be offered in the European Union, Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein, or Iceland.
The company plans to eventually extend Operator to all ChatGPT clients, broadening its accessibility beyond the current Pro subscriber base. The move comes amid growing competition in the “AI agent” space, with companies such as Google, Anthropic, and Rabbit developing similar tools. However, each competitor’s approach varies: Google’s project remains on a waitlist, Anthropic provides its agentic interface via an API, and Rabbit’s action model is limited to users who own its device.
OpenAI’s expansion of Operator reflects its ongoing efforts to integrate advanced AI capabilities into everyday applications, aiming to simplify routine tasks for users while navigating an increasingly competitive landscape in AI-powered productivity tools.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani said the United States could evaluate its own interests separately from those of Israel in ongoing negotiations between Tehran and Washington.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday (15 February) called it “troubling” a report by five European allies blaming Russia for killing late Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny using a toxin from poison dart frogs.
Cuba’s fuel crisis has turned into a waste crisis, with rubbish piling up on most street corners in Havana as many collection trucks lack enough petrol to operate.
Norway is holding a commanding lead in the medal standings with 12 golds and a total of 26, with Italy having an historic performance on home soil on the ninth day of the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics on Sunday (15 February).
Iran is pursuing a nuclear agreement with the U.S. that delivers economic benefits for both sides, an Iranian diplomat was reported as saying on Sunday (15 February), days before a second round of talks between Tehran and Washington.
ByteDance will take steps to prevent the unauthorised use of intellectual property on its artificial intelligence (AI) video generator Seedance 2.0, the Chinese technology firm said on Monday.
The formation of a black hole can be quite a violent event, with a massive dying star blowing up and some of its remnants collapsing to form an exceptionally dense object with gravity so strong not even light can escape.
BMW is recalling a mid six figure number of vehicles worldwide after identifying a potential fire risk linked to the starter motor.
British chipmaker Fractile will invest £100 million over the next three years to expand its artificial intelligence hardware operations in the UK, opening a new engineering facility in Bristol as it ramps up production of next-generation AI systems.
The European Union has launched its largest semiconductor pilot line under the European Chips Act, investing €700 million ($832 million) in the new NanoIC facility at IMEC in Leuven, Belgium, as part of efforts to strengthen Europe’s technological sovereignty.
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