August 2026
All columns and Brief analyses.
10 results
North Korea fires missiles as allied drills wind down and Wang Yi visits Seoul
Pyongyang launched a barrage of short-range ballistic missiles hours before the shortened US-South Korea exercise ended, while China's foreign minister urged Seoul to pursue strategic autonomy.
OpenAI adds data controls, narrows access in cyber program
OpenAI restated its zero data retention commitment for API customers and fixed a file-deletion bug in its Codex model. In the same period, the company shut some researchers out of its Daybreak Blue cybersecurity program.
OpenAI faces service outages as it patches a Codex bug and updates its retention policy
OpenAI experienced a widespread login outage across its services on Wednesday, concurrent with patching a critical Codex bug that deleted user files and announcing zero data retention for frontier models.
Oxygen vacancies speed up ion conduction, a lipid membrane holds memory and ceramic waveguides target high power
Deliberate oxygen vacancies in lithium titanate accelerate lithium-ion conduction. Separately, an artificial lipid membrane acts as a memory resistor and capacitor, while printed ceramic waveguides aim to carry more power than glass fibre lasers.
Patient outcomes and clinical data published for cardiac surgery and device trials
Of 1,357 AI devices the FDA has cleared, 3 were tested against patient outcomes, while separate studies showed preoperative intravenous iron bought patients one extra day and a leadless pacemaker ran for a month in a pig.
Pew estimates a third of recent web pages carry AI text, as Pangram points to guardrails
A Pew Research study found AI-writing signals in 10 percent of 10,000 web pages. Detection company Pangram argued that post-training safety rules make model text easier to spot.
Stripe acquires model gateway OpenRouter as DeepSeek and Liquid AI expand open-weight tooling
The infrastructure for open models is consolidating and expanding; Stripe is buying API gateway OpenRouter in a multibillion-dollar deal, while DeepSeek open-sources its agent runtime and Liquid AI releases quantized models.
Taiwan sets record defence budget while India and Japan sign security pact
Taipei proposed an 18 per cent increase in its defence spending to counter regional threats, as New Delhi and Tokyo established a new framework for maritime domain awareness and search operations.
Target and SQM post record earnings while Nordson lifts its profit forecast
Target's quarterly earnings per share doubled as tariff refunds were added, and SQM sold record lithium volumes, while industrial equipment maker Nordson lifted its full-year guidance.
Target's earnings double on tariff refunds as productivity absorbs broader costs
Target's quarterly earnings per share doubled after tariff refunds added 994 million dollars, while a Boston Fed study found that faster labour productivity offset most inflation impacts from the 2025 tariffs.