The measure is part of a European Union-led strategy to eliminate all drunk-driving-related deaths and injuries by 2050. As of July 1, all vehicles sold within the European Union must include a standard, preinstalled interface that allows a breathalyzer lock to be added to the ignition system. This measure is part of a larger strategy promoted by the EU to reduce drunk-driving-related deaths and injuries by at least 50 percent by 2030. The requirement falls under the Vision Zero program, launched by European authorities more than five years ago, which aims to eliminate alcohol-related traffic fatalities entirely--or get as close to zero as possible--by 2050. The measure also aligns with the timetable established in the EU's General Safety Regulation, which sets specific deadlines for manufacturers to incorporate various safety features into vehicle designs, starting at the factory.

Nine people have died in an explosion at a coal mine in Colombia in the latest fatal accident to hit the country's mining sector. Emergency workers said they had rescued six miners from the shafts in Sutatausa, north of the capital, Bogotá. Colombia's national mining agency said a build-up of gases was thought to have caused the explosion at 16:00 (21:00 GMT) on Monday. It also published a list of recommendations it said it had made to the mine's operators after an inspection less than a month ago, in which it had warned of a potentially dangerous gas build-up. Many mines in Colombia are operated informally and without proper safety standards.

A blast at a fireworks factory in China's Hunan province has killed 21 people and left 61 wounded, according to state media. The explosion at the Changsha Liuyang Huasheng Fireworks plant happened at around 16:40 local time (08:40 GMT) on Monday, in the city of Liuyang, leading rescuers to evacuate everyone within a 3km (1.9mi) radius of the plant. Authorities deployed nearly 500 personnel to conduct search and rescue operations and treat the injured, while robots were used to help find those trapped within the building. Police, who are investigating the cause of the blast, have taken control measures against the person in charge of the fireworks company, Chinese state media reported. Authorities said that two gunpowder warehouses within the factory area posed a high risk amid rescue efforts, state media reported.

An autonomous robot from the company Honor ran a half marathon in 50:26, beating the human record by 7 minutes. A humanoid robot from the Honor remote-controlled team crosses the finish line during the E-Town Humanoid Robot Half Marathon in Beijing on April 19, 2026. Over the weekend in China, a humanoid robot shattered world half-marathon record--the human record--by seven minutes. The star performer was a robot developed by the Chinese company Honor (the smartphone maker), which finished the 13.1-mile race in 50 minutes, 26 seconds. The human record, set by Ugandan Olympic medalist Jacob Kiplimo, is 57 minutes, 20 seconds.

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. T he smell was strange . The concrete wall was too close. One of my kids was standing on the sidewalk next to our car--not crying, just confused. The seat belt had held. The crumple zone had crumpled.

While recent developments in autonomous vehicle (AV) technology highlight substantial progress, we lack tools for rigorous and scalable testing. Real-world testing, the de facto evaluation environment, places the public in danger, and, due to the rare nature of accidents, will require billions of miles in order to statistically validate performance claims. We implement a simulation framework that can test an entire modern autonomous driving system, including, in particular, systems that employ deep-learning perception and control algorithms. Using adaptive importance-sampling methods to accelerate rare-event probability evaluation, we estimate the probability of an accident under a base distribution governing standard traffic behavior. We demonstrate our framework on a highway scenario, accelerating system evaluation by 2-20 times over naive Monte Carlo sampling methods and 10-300P times (where P is the number of processors) over real-world testing.

An explosion at a fireworks shop in central China's Hubei province has killed at least 12 people, state media reported, marking the second deadly blast linked to fireworks as the country celebrates the Lunar New Year . The explosion tore through the shop in Xiangyang on Wednesday afternoon. Officials said five children and seven adults died in the explosion. The victims included the shop owner and customers who had been buying fireworks for holiday celebrations. Some had travelled from other areas to visit relatives during the festive period .

Bobsledders rely a lot on specialized equipment to perform well and stay safe during the Formula 1 of ice." Olympic bobsledding often gets called the "Formula 1 of ice." Tracks are more than 1.5 kilometers (nearly a mile) long, and athletes often race down them at speeds nearing 145 kilometers per hour (90 mph). Bobsledders--whether in teams of four, two, or sliding solo--are often subjected to gravitational forces in excess of 5g. At the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Games, they're using tech aimed at making each phase of the race, from initial push to technical driving to final braking, just a little bit more precise than in previous Games.

Could the AI industry be on the verge of its first major layoffs? Will China spread propaganda to slow the US data-center building boom? Where are AI agents headed? AI-powered robots are just one of the topics likely to grab headlines in 2026. When OpenAI declared a "code red" this month to refocus its teams on competing with Google, I couldn't help but think back to December three years ago when the companies' roles were reversed.