A major earthquake struck southwest Japan on Tuesday, with “quite a few” people believed dead and dozens trapped inside a collapsed shopping mall. The tremor sparked fires near its epicenter and damaged buildings and highways, according to the country’s public broadcaster.
Rescue teams worked quickly to reach those feared trapped after an explosion caused the mall’s second floor to cave in. Aerial footage revealed extensive structural damage. The Japan Meteorological Agency recorded the quake’s depth at 10 kilometers.
Wildfires in Europe may burn for months
Wildfires in France and Spain continued to spread, with officials warning the blazes could last for months. In France, the fires grew so intense they produced extreme heat conditions.
Thousands evacuated their homes as rising temperatures threatened to hinder firefighting efforts. Authorities prepared for a difficult week ahead.
Ukraine and Iran wars merge in the Caspian
Ukraine’s military targeted Russian and Iranian supply routes in the Caspian Sea over the weekend, linking the Russo-Ukrainian War with the U.S.-Israeli conflict involving Iran. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed responsibility for the strikes, which damaged vessels transporting Iranian drones to Russia and a Russian warship.
The Security Service of Ukraine reported hitting a Russian oil field as well. Iran threatened retaliation but took no immediate action. The attacks opened a new front in the overlapping conflicts, increasing concerns about further escalation. Meanwhile, Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Yemen launched drone strikes on U.S. Gulf allies, including Saudi Arabia, during a pause in direct U.S.-Iran hostilities.
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The convergence of these conflicts in the Caspian added complexity to an already unstable situation. The U.S. faced challenges in withdrawing from its military operations in Iran, with rising fuel prices and domestic political pressures mounting. Iran rejected negotiation requests, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz disrupted global energy supplies.
Tech giants form alliance to support open AI
Thirty-seven major tech companies, including Adobe, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, and Nvidia, launched the Open Secure AI Alliance this week. The coalition plans to share AI model weights and strengthen cybersecurity by making vulnerabilities easier to identify and address.
The group pointed to a recent cyberattack on Hugging Face, an AI platform, as evidence of the risks posed by closed systems. The company struggled to contain the breach because leading proprietary models restricted access to their underlying code. Open-weight models differ from fully open-source systems by making trained parameters public without releasing training data or code.
Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI did not join the alliance. The group stated it would prioritize fixing and disclosing vulnerabilities using open technologies.
In a separate development, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Health, a feature enabling U.S. users to link medical records and wellness apps for tailored health advice. The company clarified the tool is designed to assist, not replace, professional medical care.