IROS

Renan Calheiros is out of the Senate after more than 30 years, marking the end of one of the longest and most influential careers in Brazilian legislative politics. The former Senate president from Alagoas failed to secure a seat in the latest elections, closing a chapter that included decades of backroom power-broking, impeachment trial votes and repeated legal controversies.

A study of a leptospirosis outbreak in California has prompted calls for wider vaccination, according to a report in the veterinary press. Leptospirosis is a bacterial disease that can affect both animals and humans, often spread through water contaminated by infected urine. Details of the outbreak's scale and the study's findings have not been further specified in the available reporting.

Robotics startup RoboParty has unveiled the RP1, a full-stack open-source humanoid robot, at the IROS robotics conference. The company describes the RP1 as a high-performance platform whose complete hardware and software design is openly available, positioning it as a challenger to proprietary humanoid systems. The announcement was picked up by international outlets including Kyodo News, PR Newswire and StreetInsider, drawing attention from the robotics community interested in open alternatives.

A 1950s American television program staged an on-air meeting between a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing and one of the crew members of the plane that dropped the bomb. The remarkable encounter, resurrected by VICE, is drawing renewed attention decades later for its raw confrontation over one of history's most devastating acts of war.

A Polish-language travel account describes a visit to Hiroshima, noting that the city lives on and continues to develop despite its history. The Genbaku Dome, the Atomic Bomb Dome, is highlighted as the famous structure that roughly survived the 1945 explosion and remains the only such building still standing, now a memorial visited by travellers.

The Hirshhorn Museum's Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC has reopened following a redesign led by artist and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto. The project reworked the sunken garden below the National Mall, restoring visibility between the garden and the Mall itself while creating new spaces for sculpture display. The reopening marks the completion of a long-debated renovation at the Smithsonian institution, with art-world observers weighing in on the changes to a historically contested site.

Rural high schools in Hiroshima Prefecture are recruiting students from outside the prefecture in an effort to combat steadily shrinking enrollment numbers. Teenagers are reportedly packing up and moving to remote schools to study, a sign of how depopulation is reshaping education in the Japanese countryside and pushing schools to seek applicants well beyond their traditional local catchment areas.

Aegean College, working with Aegis Omiros University and the University of Essex, is being positioned as part of the future of international higher education in Greece. The development points to growing foreign academic involvement in Greek institutions at a time when the country is seeking to expand internationally recognised degree programmes and attract more students to study at home.

Nikkei Asia argues that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki hold lessons for governing artificial intelligence. Drawing on the history of nuclear weapons, the piece suggests humanity should establish international rules and oversight for powerful technologies before, not after, catastrophe strikes. The article adds to a growing debate over how to regulate AI development globally.