Previously: August 10’s roundup covered the deadly drone strike on Russia’s Taneco refinery, Iran’s hardened terms for reopening Hormuz, Claude Code’s auto mode going default, and sugar’s role in human brain evolution.
Disaster — Magnitude 7.4 Earthquake Kills More Than 130 in Western Colombia
A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia early Monday, centered near San José del Palmar in the Chocó region roughly 250 miles (400km) west of Bogotá. As of the latest counts at least 132 people have died and around 570 have been injured, with dozens more missing and trapped under collapsed buildings — making it the country’s most powerful and deadliest quake in years. The worst-hit cities — Pereira, Cali, Quibdó, Manizales and Armenia — remain under the government’s highest-level “red alert,” with Pereira alone accounting for roughly 60 of the confirmed deaths.
Seven airports have suspended operations and hospitals, roads, aqueducts, energy and telecommunications networks are all disrupted across the affected region. Colombia has declared a state of emergency as search-and-rescue teams work through the rubble; officials warned the toll is likely to keep rising as more areas become reachable.
Sources: NPR — A 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck Colombia, with at least 20 dead · CNN — Death toll rises to 132 following 7.4 magnitude earthquake in Colombia · Al Jazeera — 7.4-magnitude earthquake hits Colombia, killing at least 132 · NBC News — At least 132 people killed in Colombia’s strongest earthquake in years · CBC News — 7.4-magnitude earthquake strikes Colombia, killing more than 100
Ukraine — Drones Torch a Second Russian Refinery 1,500km From the Border
Ukrainian forces struck the Orsknefteorgsintez oil refinery in Orsk, deep in Russia’s Orenburg region roughly 1,500km from the Ukrainian border, overnight into August 11. Ukraine’s General Staff confirmed the hit, and eyewitnesses reported thick black smoke and at least two separate fire hotspots at the plant, which refines around 6 million tonnes of oil a year into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and bitumen. It’s the second major long-range strike on Russian refining capacity in as many days, coming right after Sunday’s deadlier hit on the Taneco refinery in Tatarstan that yesterday’s roundup covered, and extends Kyiv’s campaign to squeeze Russian fuel supply even further from the front line.
Russia, meanwhile, kept up its own strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, hitting the Odesa thermal power plant, seven electrical substations in the Odesa region and a gas field in Sumy overnight, part of a barrage that Ukraine’s air force said included a Kh-59/69 missile, three Banderol loitering munitions and 126 drones.
Sources: Militarnyi — Drone attack hits Orsknefteorgsintez oil refinery in Orsk · Ukrainska Pravda — Ukraine’s General Staff confirms strike on oil refinery in Russia’s Orsk · Euromaidan Press — Two Russian refineries burn: Orsk hit by drones 1,500km out, Komsomolsk ablaze 6,500km east · Interfax-Ukraine — AFU General Staff: Ukrainian Defense Forces hit oil refinery in Orsk, Russia
Geopolitics — Trump Demands Iran Pay “50 Years” of Compensation as Hormuz Standoff Drags On
President Trump escalated his terms for talks with Iran on Monday, saying the US would now demand compensation from Tehran for “50 years” of damages as a condition for negotiations — a direct response to Iran tying the Strait of Hormuz’s reopening to its own list of demands (covered in yesterday’s roundup): a full US troop withdrawal, an end to sanctions, release of frozen assets, and war reparations. Trump separately claimed the US Navy has swept the strait for mines and now holds “100% control” of the waterway, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and LNG normally transits.
Despite that claim, shipping traffic through Hormuz has stayed “subdued” and weakened further over the weekend, according to maritime intelligence firm Kpler — underscoring that the practical standoff over the world’s most important oil chokepoint remains unresolved even as both sides trade rhetorical positions.
Sources: CNN — Trump says he would require compensation from Iran as condition for talks · CNBC — Trump claims ‘100% control’ of Hormuz, demands Iran pay reparations · Al Jazeera — Trump demands compensation from Iran as talks on Strait of Hormuz continue · Washington Post — Trump scoffs at Iran’s demand for war reparations and other Mideast developments
AI & Tech — Anthropic Brings In Macquarie and GIC to Bankroll New Data Centers, EU Forces Google to Open Android
Anthropic, Macquarie Asset Management and Singapore’s GIC sovereign wealth fund announced a new joint venture, Theseus Infrastructure, to develop, own and operate AI data centers in the US that will be leased back to Anthropic under long-term contracts. Macquarie and GIC are putting up the bulk of the equity for each site, while Anthropic has committed to covering any resulting spikes in consumers’ electricity prices — a financing structure that keeps the capital spending largely off Anthropic’s own balance sheet, echoing the landlord-style model behind OpenAI’s Stargate buildout.
Separately, the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act enforcement is reshaping the AI-assistant landscape on Android: under a binding order adopted in mid-July, Google must give rival assistants like Claude and ChatGPT the same system-level access on Android that Gemini currently enjoys exclusively — deep OS integration, “Hey Google”-style voice invocation, and the ability to interact with apps and hardware — by July 2027, with a parallel search-data-sharing requirement starting January 2027. The rules apply in the EU only for now.
Sources: Bloomberg — Anthropic, Macquarie and GIC Form Venture for AI Data Centers · Macquarie Group — Anthropic, Macquarie Asset Management, and GIC announce strategic partnership · HPCwire — Anthropic, Macquarie and GIC Launch Theseus Infrastructure for AI Data Centers · TheNextWeb — EU prepares to force Google to open Android to ChatGPT and Claude
AI & Tech — Meta Ships an Open-Weight 30B Agentic Model, OpenAI Splits Its Cybersecurity Program in Two
Meta Superintelligence Labs released Muse Glimmer, a 30-billion-parameter open-weight model under Apache 2.0 tuned for local agentic tool use and coding, with a 131K context window and support for 100+ languages. Quantized to under 20GB, it runs on a single consumer GPU; Meta pairs it with DFlash speculative decoding for a claimed 3.1x speedup on an Nvidia RTX 5090. It’s available now on Hugging Face with support across Ollama, LM Studio, llama.cpp, MLX and vLLM.
OpenAI, meanwhile, expanded its Daybreak cybersecurity program into two tiers built on its new GPT-5.6 Sol model: Daybreak Blue, a general-purpose tier for defensive work like vulnerability discovery and patch validation, and the more restricted Daybreak Red, which grants vetted partners access to GPT-5.6-Cyber — a model OpenAI says can find zero-days and build exploit chains, and which answers 95% of sensitive security queries in internal testing versus 1.5–2% for the safety-restricted general model. OpenAI is widening Daybreak access to Accenture, IBM, CrowdStrike, Cisco, Sophos and Cloudflare.
Sources: VentureBeat — Meta returns to open source with Muse Glimmer, an Apache 2.0 licensed 30B model · MarkTechPost — Meta AI Releases Muse Glimmer: A 30B Open-Weights Agentic Model · OpenAI — Expanding Daybreak as the cyber defense window narrows · Axios — OpenAI unveils GPT-5.6-Cyber to help prepare for AI cyberattacks · Dataconomy — OpenAI Expands Daybreak With New GPT-5.6-Cyber Model
Science — The Sharpest Images of the Sun Ever Taken
An international team using the US National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Maui — the world’s most powerful solar telescope, with a 4-meter mirror collecting seven times more sunlight than any predecessor — captured the highest-resolution images yet of the Sun’s surface, published in Nature. The images reveal whirling vortex patterns in the solar plasma that researchers identify as Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, turbulence that arises when adjacent layers of fluid move past each other at different speeds.
The finding gives solar physicists a sharper look at the small-scale turbulent processes that help drive the Sun’s magnetic activity, a piece of the puzzle for understanding what ultimately powers solar flares and space weather.
Sources: Space.com — Sharpest image of the sun ever captured! Space photo of the day for Aug. 10, 2026 · Sky & Telescope — Inouye Solar Telescope Sees the Sun Closer Than Ever · ScienceAlert — Record-Breaking Images Reveal The Sun Is Teeming With Whirling Vortices · Hawai’i Public Radio — Maui telescope captures clearest images of the sun ever taken