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OpenAI’s safety chiefs quit

OpenAI’s co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever quit. Sutskever led the team that created ChatGPT, but was also involved in the 2023 coup which briefly ousted CEO Sam Altman, apparently over concerns about safety. Altman soon returned and Sutskever recanted: Whether that disagreement was behind Sutskever’s departure is unknown, but he led the company’s “superalignment” team, intended to make future, very powerful AIs safe. Notably, Jan Leike, Sutskever’s superalignment co-lead, resigned within hours of Sutskever’s departure. The news follows OpenAI announcing the latest iteration of ChatGPT, and its rivals Anthropic and Google DeepMind both revealing significant updates to their own generative AIs: With or without Sutskever, AI is racing ahead.

US’ $1B arms package for Israel

The US government plans to send more than $1 billion in new weapons to Israel, according to congressional sources. It would be the first arms shipment since President Joe Biden’s administration put another transfer on hold over concerns for civilian casualties in Gaza. That package would have contained 3,500 bombs, which the administration did not want used in Israel’s offensive in the crowded southern Gaza city of Rafah. The new package includes tactical vehicles and ammunition for tanks, anonymous aides told the Associated Press. Biden’s administration is under pressure from both left and right over its support for Israel: Democrats are pushing for a limit to arms transfers, while Republicans argue that reducing support would strengthen Hamas.

Concerns over Chinese chips

The US and European Union are concerned about Chinese “legacy” microchips. Recent discussion about semiconductors has focused on advanced chips, such as those made for artificial intelligence models, where sanctions have hit Chinese industries. But the EU is now shifting its attention to lower-end products, used in everyday appliances and cars. It is following the US, which launched a survey on the topic in January, Politico reported, and in April the US commerce secretary raised concerns that China will produce around 60% of the world’s “workhorse” chips within a “handful of years.” China is indeed producing huge numbers of the products: The Chinese chip manufacturer SMIC warned that the market for such less advanced semiconductors faced a price war and global oversupply.

India’s misplaced focus on US politics

India’s media overemphasizes US concerns about its “democratic backsliding,” argued an international affairs scholar. C Raja Mohan wrote in The Indian Express that “neither India nor the quality of its democracy are political issues” in the US, which is struggling with Russian and Chinese aggression and the Israel-Hamas war while focused on its own election in November. US politics will be hugely influential in India, Mohan said — if Donald Trump were to win, his radical agenda “on border security, immigration, trade, military alliances” will matter enormously to Delhi. But Washington cares mainly about India as a security and trading partner, and its rhetoric on democracy is more bark than bite. “The battle for Indian democracy,” Mohan said, “is at home, not between Delhi and the Western capitals.”

Niger PM blames US for rift

US threats over whether troops stationed in Niger would be allowed to stay there led to the rupturing of the crucial military alliance between the two countries, Nigerien Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine told The Washington Post. The US’ military operations in the Sahel country had been central to containing a growing Islamist insurgency in the region. The rift between the two nations — which widened when Washington froze military support after the junta led by Zeine took power — has created a vacuum that Russia has been quick to fill, with Russian and soon-to-depart US troops now sharing the same air base.

Race to save abducted Ukrainian children

Ukrainian families and NGOs are in a race against time to bring back the roughly 20,000 children that Kyiv says have been forcibly removed to Russia. According to Ukraine and its Western allies, Russia has been committing war crimes by seeking to erase the identities of Ukrainian children it has abducted and transported to Russia. Although some have managed to return to their families with the help of charities, many have been changed so much by the indoctrination process that they disown their relatives. “Every time it gets harder and harder,” the founder of a Ukrainian NGO told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s harder to find the child. It’s harder to organize the journey.”

Petrobras boss fired after Lula row

The head of Brazil’s state-owned oil company was fired following tensions with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration, which has attempted to exert greater influence over the firm. Shares in Petrobras, Latin America’s biggest oil producer, fell 6% after the firing was announced. Since returning to the presidency last year, Lula has pushed the company to invest more in renewable energy while simultaneously moving to allow oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon River. Some fear the erratic pressure on the company could herald the return of mismanagement and corruption at Petrobras that defined past left-wing administrations.

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Bird flu risk for raw milk

The rise of bird flu in dairy cows has made drinking raw milk, already a somewhat risky thing to do, even more dangerous, but enthusiasts are unconcerned. H5N1 bird flu has been detected in 42 herds in nine US states: Several cats drank untreated milk from those cows, and half of them died. US regulators recommended halting the sale of raw milk — pasteurized milk should be safe — but the head of one raw-milk advocacy group told the Los Angeles Times that this was “fearmongering” and that customers have been “asking for H5N1 milk because they want immunity from it.” As the epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz wrote last year, though, drinking raw milk regularly kills people, especially children, even without the presence of bird flu.

Brain cancer doctor remains tumor-free

An Australian doctor whose rare brain cancer was treated with a therapy based on his own research remains cancer-free after a year. Richard Scolyer led groundbreaking research into immunotherapy for melanoma, encouraging the body’s own immune system to attack cancer cells. He was diagnosed last year with an aggressive glioblastoma, which kills most patients within 12 months. He and a colleague repurposed the combination immunotherapy they pioneered for melanoma, and he became the first patient to undergo it for brain cancer. A recent scan showed no recurrence, and he told the BBC, “I’m the best I have felt for yonks.” It “doesn’t mean that my brain cancer is cured [but] I’ve still got some more time to enjoy my life with my wife Katie and my three wonderful kids.”

Hydrogen fuel system scales up

The world’s most efficient system for producing hydrogen is scaling up for mass production. Some energy is always lost when turning water into hydrogen and oxygen — typical processes lose about 20-30%. The Australian startup Hysata developed a new system, avoiding bubbles in the fluid that block the conduction of electrical charge, and improving efficiency to 95%. Hydrogen has advantages over batteries for long-term energy storage: It is more energy-dense — meaning it can be more easily used in industries such as aviation — and doesn’t lose charge over long periods. Hysata announced $111 million in funding to scale production up, New Atlas reported.

• Canada’s foreign minister meets her Turkish counterpart in Ankara.
• US President Joe Biden will speak at the National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service.
• The annual Cheung Chau Bun Festival takes place in Hong Kong.

The cost of violent crime to South Africa’s economy, equivalent to roughly 10% of GDP. Crime has soared across the country in recent years, with murder rates — 45 per 100,000 people, more than seven times higher than in the US — hitting a two-decade high last year. The wave of violence has led many to join volunteer crime-fighting groups. “We’re doing stop and search and if you are a criminal and you are not going to comply with us, the sjambok (a traditional leather whip) will apply also to you,” a volunteer told the BBC.

A new museum celebrating the British street artist Banksy opened in New York. It displays more than 160 recreations of his murals by artists who will remain “as anonymous as Banksy,” said the Banksy Museum, which has opened similar outfits in Barcelona, Brussels, Kraków, and Paris: The elusive artist has never confirmed his full identity. Hazis Vardar, the museums’ founder, addressed doubts on whether street art should be reimagined in this way, CultureOwl reported. “Little of Banksy’s works are visible to the public at large. Most have been stolen for resale, inadvertently destroyed, or erased by overzealous city cleaning teams,” he said, explaining that the project aims to “bring Banksy’s art back before the public.”

• Biden hikes tariffs on $18 billion in Chinese goods.
• Blinken makes surprise trip to Kyiv.
• China gains ground in Iraq’s oil industry.