Wrongly discarded lithium batteries, such as those in vapes, are causing more than 10 fires a week at U.K. recycling centers, according to figures shared with the Guardian:

The Environment Services Association (ESA), the trade body for waste management companies, said its members had reported 1,518 fires in the year to March 2026. At least 541 of these fires were directly attributed to lithium ion batteries, the survey found. There were a further 216 battery fires in bin lorries [garbage trucks]. The ESA said the reported number of battery-related fires underestimated the scale of the problem, because in most incidents it was impossible to determine the cause of the blaze. A spokesperson said: "We know 40% of fires at recycling centres are caused by batteries, but we think the actual number is more like 70%."

It estimates that annual cost of these fires has increased from £150m in 2021 to £1bn today...
The ESA is calling for a £5 deposit scheme on the sale of all vapes to ensure that vape users have an incentive to return used devices to retailers for safe disposal... [Patrick Brighty, the head of recycling policy at the ESA, said] "Vapes are among the biggest culprits because they're cheap, abundant and typically have a short use-life."




Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"AI went from being very terrible to seemingly genuinely quite good at a professional level in a very short space of time..." says the Verge's AI reporter.

But AI systems "are still truly, truly terrible at some areas of math... even the days of the week."

If you look at academic math papers, a lot of the time you won't see numbers... So they're still terrible, but they're now also very good at this other part. As to why, at some point you reach a critical mass of what these systems can do. We saw it with writing, we've seen it with programming. They're very good at forging connections between different areas, applying old methods in new ways, those kinds of things. It appears that the newer models they're training have apparently reached that level where it clicks, and now it can do math...

There are areas now where it seems to be producing work that is on par with good mathematicians, alongside other parts where yeah, it can't count. All caught up in that is whether it's going to rewrite employment structures or funding structures... One would hope [math researchers] would branch out into all of these new exciting areas or pose new questions. But AI won't do that, and that's the concern. And then that would leave the field quite sterile, and it will have all of these things that have been done, and maybe nothing left to pursue... [A] lot are scared that it's closing off the field. So by definition, those breakthroughs that lead to something surprising and new that you can say, "Oh, this works here," may not be happening anymore...

There were some bleak responses from graduate students I saw in essays posted online. Where's their place in this as future researchers? Do they have a place in this? Is it as glorified AI proof checkers? That will be quite an unsatisfying career, I imagine. Or maybe not, I don't know. We will see. I think anything used properly will be a net boon.

They also had an interesting response when asked if AI democratizes access to high-level mathematical proofs:

A lot of the mathematicians I spoke to were almost quite weary of this, actually. They love the idea, in theory, of democratizing access. They're also quite fed up with AI-generated or -assisted papers that are flooding every publication imaginable, as well as the pre-print servers that they use in these fields. Some of those I spoke to said things like, "Oh, I got three emails this week alone with people being like, 'Hey, is this legit?'" Because they thought they'd solved something with ChatGPT or with Claude, and they also don't have the mathematical skills to check whether they've actually solved something.
On the flip side, there are parts where they said, "Well, we've got a talented undergrad who's done something that a talented undergrad would probably have never managed, and here they are doing grad-level work and they've produced a paper that is legit." And in the bigger scheme of things, a few I spoke to said, "Well yeah, a lot of these are in the ivory tower. Having access to this kind of thing globally could really boost access to the kind of things here." On the flip side, the cost. These things cost a lot to run.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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French president is working on European alternatives to US Patriot missile system and expresses ‘horror’ at deadly attack on shopping centre in Kryvyi Rih. What we know on day 1,642

French president Emmanuel Macron has promised to strengthen support for Ukraine with the delivery of interceptor missiles after a call with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which they discussed Kyiv’s shortage of air defences. The move comes amid a surge in Russian strikes that have pushed civilian deaths in the war to their highest since the first months of Moscow’s invasion. Macron said they would continue to work with the Anti-Missile Coalition launched at a meeting in Paris on July. The coalition consists of 10 European countries that are developing an anti-ballistic missile system as a cheaper alternative ⁠to the US Patriots. At that time, Macron said France would advance the deployment of the new SAMP/T ​system to Ukraine and license Kyiv to manufacture ​the interceptor missiles, as well as the ​SCALP long-range cruise missile and other munitions. Speaking on the Telegram app, Zelenskyy said: “We agreed to accelerate the delivery of the latest French equipment and missiles,” without providing further details. “Thank you for confirming the readiness to provide licences for missile production.”

President Macron wrote on X: “It is crucial to provide Ukraine with all the necessary means to defend its skies and thwart this aggression.” The Patriot air defence system is the only weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal capable of downing high-speed ballistic missiles used by Russia in its war in Ukraine. Russia has pounded Ukraine – the capital Kyiv especially – with ballistic missile attacks in recent months. The hard-to-intercept super-fast weapons reach their target within minutes, making it virtually impossible for people to reach underground shelters in time.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that Ukraine’s strikes, which Kyiv says seek to choke off ​financing for Moscow’s war effort, had opened a “Pandora’s box” ‌of Russian retaliation. But Ukraine’s allies in the Coalition of the Willing – an initiative led by France and Britain – will meet on Monday to look at how to ramp up pressure on Moscow to halt its invasion. Diplomacy has stalled with the US, which had brokered several rounds of direct talks between Kyiv and Moscow, but is now focused on its war with Iran.

Macron expressed his “horror and emotion” to Zelenskyy over the attack on a shopping centre in the city of Kryvyi Rih, that killed 16 people as rescuers sifted through the rubble of the site in the president’s home town.

Russia fired a ballistic missile towards Kyiv in the middle of the day – while the German foreign minister Johann Wadephul was visiting on Saturday for talks with Zelenskyy. Two were killed and several wounded in the Boryspil district, on the eastern outskirts of the city. Russia’s defence ministry said it had struck at trucks outfitted for transporting long-range drones near Kyiv, as well as targets linked to the Ukrainian army in the Odesa region on the Black Sea.

The Odesa region’s governor Oleg Kiper said three people had been wounded, including a 16-year-old girl, in a “prolonged and combined strike” that hit a house and grain silos. At least four were killed in a series of strikes on the frontline region of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukrainian drones killed at least 10 people in attacks against targets across Russia and Russian-occupied ⁠areas of Ukraine, including ⁠a warehouse owned by online ​retailer Ozon and an industrial facility, Russian officials said on Saturday. Ozon, Russia’s second-largest online retailer, said in a statement on Telegram that the attack had caused injuries. The attack is the first on Ozon after weeks of drone strikes on its larger rival Wildberries, which Ukraine has ​cast as part of a wider campaign against economic infrastructure underpinning the Russian war in Ukraine.

On the Crimean peninsula, at ​least two people were ​killed and 10 injured when a Ukrainian drone struck a city bus, said the ​Moscow-backed governor of Sevastopol, ‌Mikhail Razvozhayev. The peninsula was seized from Ukraine by Russia in 2014. In Luhansk region, an eastern Ukrainian province almost all of which is controlled by Russia, Moscow-installed governor Leonid Pasechnik said that two civilians, including a 16-year-old boy, had been killed and nine more were wounded.

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TOKIO (ANP) - Een aardbeving met een kracht van 5.9 heeft in de nacht van zaterdag op zondag het oosten van Japan getroffen, meldt persbureau Kyodo. De beving was sterk te voelen in de hoofdstad Tokio. Meerdere mensen raakten gewond, melden lokale hulpdiensten. Er is geen gevaar voor een tsunami.

Het epicentrum lag in het zuiden van de prefectuur Ibaraki, ten noordoosten van Tokio, op een diepte van 68 kilometer. Onder anderen in Saitama, bij Tokio, en in Kawasaki, ten zuiden van de hoofdstad, raakten mensen gewond.

In een wijk van Tokio barstte een waterleiding. De autoriteiten onderzoeken of dat door de aardbeving kwam. Bij kerncentrales in de omgeving, waaronder de beschadigde centrale Fukushima, zijn volgens de beheerders geen bijzonderheden vastgesteld.

De Japanse meteorologische dienst waarschuwt dat de komende week opnieuw een stevige aardbeving kan plaatsvinden. Vooral de komende twee tot drie dagen moeten inwoners alert blijven.

WASHINGTON (ANP) - De Amerikaanse president Donald Trump heeft in juni meer dan duizend transacties met aandelen en andere beleggingen gedaan. De transacties hadden samen een waarde van maximaal 263 miljoen dollar (circa 224 miljoen euro), blijkt uit een zaterdag gepubliceerde financiële verklaring.

De handel kan vragen oproepen over mogelijke belangenverstrengeling, omdat Trump als president beleid voert dat invloed kan hebben op bedrijven en sectoren waarin hij belegt. Zo kocht hij aandelen in cryptobeurs Coinbase. Zijn regering versoepelde de regels voor de cryptosector en Trump heeft zich nadrukkelijk voorstander van cryptovaluta getoond.

Trump handelde ook rond belangrijke politieke gebeurtenissen. Zo kocht en verkocht hij in juni meerdere keren aandelen van technologiebedrijf Palantir, dat onder meer het leger en veiligheidsdiensten als klant heeft. Ook kocht hij opnieuw aandelen nadat de Verenigde Staten en Iran een vredesakkoord hadden gesloten.

In 2025 deed Trump volgens Bloomberg meer dan 21.000 beleggingstransacties, met een gezamenlijke waarde van 600 miljoen tot mogelijk 1,86 miljard dollar. Het Witte Huis ontkent belangenverstrengeling en zegt dat Trumps beleggingen onafhankelijk worden beheerd.

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