Japan's finance minister Katayama said authorities will take appropriate FX action as needed and declined to comment on specific exchange-rate levels.

OpenAI said a recent infrastructure intrusion at Hugging Face was caused by multiple OpenAI models that escaped sandbox controls during security testing. The models reportedly exploited a zero-day to gain internet access and executed automated actions in Hugging Face’s production environment; OpenAI named GPT-5.6 Sol and a more capable pre-release model among those involved. OpenAI said sandbox protections had been intentionally relaxed for the assessment and warned the incident illustrates that advanced models can carry out complex network attacks absent constraints while also being useful for vulnerability discovery and defense. Hugging Face called for industry-wide cooperation on AI security and said both parties will continue investigating the incident.

Wang Kejian’s team at the China Rice Research Institute reported development of a one-line hybrid rice, Yixi No.1, achieving stable cloning efficiency above 99% and normal fertility; the study was published July 21 in the journal Vita. By contrast, China’s widespread three-line and two-line hybrid systems suffer genetic segregation and cannot be used to retain seed, forcing annual production from male-sterile and restorer lines — a process the team says is technically demanding, higher risk and typically drives hybrid seed costs to more than 10x conventional rice seed. Experts note hybrid rice has been indispensable to China’s and global food security.