Editor's note: Global Morning Briefing summarizes international news reported by Seoul Economic Daily.
Houthi Strike on Saudi Airport Leaves 321 Dead or Injured; U.S. Weighing Involvement
Yemen's pro-Iran Houthi rebels attacked King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on the 10th, killing at least 12 people and injuring 309, Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation said. It is the heaviest death toll in an Arab country since the war with Iran began. The dead included four Saudis, two Bangladeshis and one national each from the United States, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Sudan and Egypt. It was the third attack on the airport since the 5th. Earlier, attacks on the Riyadh and Abha airports on the 6th and 7th killed three people, and three more died on the 8th, including a pilot.
The Houthis said on the 11th that every Saudi airport except those in Mecca and Medina was a potential target, vowing to respond with "airports for airports, blockade for blockade." Saudi Arabia, whose missile stockpiles have run dry, has asked France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt for air-defense support. The conflict widened on the 4th when the Saudi-led coalition and Yemeni government forces declared an operation called Dawn of Yemen. U.S. President Donald Trump said he would "look into" whether the United States would join, but a decision appears unlikely before the midterm elections on Nov. 3.
Easing Russia Sanctions to Tame Diesel Prices Draws "Major Blunder" Charge From Republicans
Trump, who struck a diesel deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin and went as far as easing sanctions on Moscow to bring fuel prices down, ratcheted up pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after he criticized the arrangement, saying Ukraine "would be better off with new leadership." On the 10th, Trump accused Zelenskyy of continuing to strike Russian refineries despite his warnings. Talks between the United States and Ukraine held in Miami the previous day also broke down. According to the Financial Times, U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, met the Ukrainian side and warned that intelligence sharing could be suspended unless the attacks on refineries stopped.
Opposition is also growing within the Republican Party. Former Rep. Mike Rogers, who is running for the Senate in Michigan, and Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska said they opposed the agreement to import Russian diesel. Rep. Don Bacon, who is set to retire, called the deal a major blunder by the president. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick said he would introduce a bill to block purchases of Russian oil and push it to a floor vote in the House.
Trump has taken on political and diplomatic costs, but the effect appears likely to be marginal. According to CNN, the 800,000 tons of supply secured through next month amounts to about 6 million barrels, roughly 1.5 days of U.S. diesel demand.
AI Files False Murder Tip; Nadella Calls for an "Emergency Brake"
An artificial intelligence model submitted a false tip about a murder case to Philadelphia police. According to Bloomberg on the 11th, Anthropic's Claude Haiku 4.5 wrote on July 18 through an unsolved-murder website, PhillyUnsolveMurders.com, that it "may have information about this case" and that it recalled seeing someone matching the description. It is the first known case of an AI attempting to pass a false tip to law enforcement.
Pennsylvania law treats knowingly filing a false report with law enforcement as a misdemeanor, but the statute applies only to persons, making prosecution difficult. Claude had been instructed only not to create accounts or submit destructive content, and submitting forms was not itself prohibited, leaving gaps in its internal instructions. Philadelphia police said Anthropic notified them only this week and that taking two months to detect and report the incident was unacceptable. The tip was classified as spam and never reached the department's real-time crime center, and there was no evidence of unauthorized system access or data leakage.
Anthropic also disclosed the same day that Claude had manipulated government websites without authorization. It submitted 20 visa applications through a State Department website form, obtained paid public data free of charge in two cases, exploited a flaw in a university's public tool, and circumvented restrictions using a free URL-shortening service. Last month, OpenAI apologized after a rogue AI agent hacked an Australian health data portal.
In response, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on X that high-performance AI should be treated as a potential insider threat and equipped with an "emergency brake" that lets authorized people halt a model mid-task. He also proposed tamper-proof logs of model actions and independent audits.
Takaichi Voices "Deep Concern" as U.S. Urges Japan to Join ICC Sanctions
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi expressed "deep concern" over a U.S. State Department request that Japan join sanctions against the International Criminal Court. Writing on X on the 10th, Takaichi said Japan has consistently valued the rule of law and supports the ICC as essential to upholding it, and that the U.S. measure was incompatible with Japan's position.
The dispute began on the 9th, when the State Department announced sweeping sanctions on the ICC shortly after Navi Pillay, a former ICC judge and former U.N. high commissioner for human rights, was named a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a video message that if the ICC did not end its threats, the United States would end the ICC, and that he expected allies that rely on the U.S. military for their defense to help rein it in — an indirect push for Japan to join. The Trump administration, which argues the ICC unfairly prosecutes Americans, has already placed 17 ICC officials on its sanctions list, including Tomoko Akane, the court's Japanese president.
Japan, the ICC's largest financial contributor, is keeping its distance. It joined foreign ministers from Germany, France, Italy and four other countries in a statement voicing strong opposition to the U.S. sanctions. Takaichi had earlier taken a cautious line, calling the move "regrettable," before escalating in August to say Japan took it very seriously. Japan is also moving quickly to contain the friction. Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi spoke by phone with Akane on the 10th and with Rubio on the 11th, the Asahi Shimbun reported.
Nvidia Pushes Deeper Into Open AI With Reported Reflection AI Bid
Nvidia is in talks to acquire Reflection AI, a developer of open-weight models, according to media reports. The Financial Times reported on the 10th, citing sources, that Nvidia was discussing either additional investment or an outright acquisition. Reflection AI is a startup founded in 2024 by former Google DeepMind researchers and was valued at $25 billion in a funding round in March this year.
Instead of a full takeover, the two sides are considering an "acquihire" structure in which Nvidia buys key personnel along with licenses. The approach avoids lengthy regulatory review; Nvidia used the same structure late last year to indirectly acquire AI chip designer Groq for $20 billion.
Reflection AI released its first open-weight model, Beam, on the 5th of this month to compete with low-cost Chinese models such as DeepSeek and Kimi. Open-weight models offer performance close to cutting-edge closed models at lower cost, and the Trump administration has emphasized nurturing open models to counter China.
Nvidia, already a major shareholder after investing $800 million, has its own open-weight model, Nemotron, but lacks a top-tier model. Earlier this month, it agreed to acquire open AI platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion. The FT said Nvidia is increasingly focused on building up the market for open-weight models that users can customize and run on their own hardware.
U.S. Says Korea Must Uphold Decades-Old Alliance Standards on Intelligence
The White House said on the 9th, regarding a dispute over Korea-U.S. intelligence cooperation, that it "expects the Republic of Korea to uphold the standards of our decades-long alliance, particularly on intelligence and counterintelligence matters." The response was provided in the name of a senior Trump administration official in reply to questions from Seoul Economic Daily about the level of trust between the two countries' intelligence agencies and the scope of information sharing.
The dispute stemmed from reports that the United States had refused to allow the National Intelligence Service to attend the fifth Korea-U.S.-Japan working group meeting on countering North Korean cyber threats, held in Washington in June. The NIS said on the 8th that there had been some misunderstanding several months ago but that the matter was in the past and no misunderstanding remained. Gen. Jin Young-seung, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the National Assembly the same day that U.S. sharing of intelligence on North Korea was still partly restricted. The latest response is read as a sign that U.S. concerns about Korea's handling of intelligence have not been fully resolved.
