Vigía de la Madriguera

On October 4 the Houthis took the town of al-Turbah and cut the only main road between Taiz and government areas; a second crossing to the east was later closed. Taiz is strategic because it connects the Houthi north, the government south and the Red Sea coast. A former prime minister warned that the battle for Taiz is the battle for all of western Yemen.

Inside the city, a 20-liter can of petrol went from 30,000 to 90,000 rials ($19 to $58), and wheat flour nearly ran out. According to WHO, Taiz’s 12 hospitals had fuel for four days, no surgical supplies and a growing cholera outbreak. Unicef reports 85 schools closed by fighting in neighboring Lahij.

WFP lost access to more than 800,000 people who used to receive aid, 600,000 of them in Taiz, and 37 of its staff are detained by the Houthis. On October 15 the government asked the UN Security Council for urgent measures to lift the siege. Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition says it shot down Houthi drones and missiles fired toward Riyadh and the Red Sea.

REA connects the agent to tools such as Ghidra, Hopper or IDA to decompile binaries, and to Chrome DevTools to inspect web and Electron apps. It analyzes desktop programs, Android apps and websites locally, backing every claim with the exact address or evidence. It is MIT-licensed and installs with a single command.

The surge came with controversy. Decrypt headlined that the tool is “upending software,” with examples like bringing GTA V to the iPhone or getting Photoshop for free, and on social media it was called “the most dangerous repo on GitHub.” Analysts warn that reverse engineering can breach trade secrets and the anti-decompilation clauses in license terms.

The campaign launched on October 8 with two goals: enroll those starting school for the first time and bring back those who dropped out. In 2026 there were 8,357,939 enrolled students, 6.7 million in public schools and 1.5 million in private ones, according to El Espectador. Enrollment in public schools is free.

In Bogotá, the phase for the general population runs from October 5 to late December, online and without intermediaries. New students can apply until December 18 and transfers are requested December 1–3. Families who are assigned a place have 8 business days to accept it or lose it.

The underlying issue is retention. Universidad Javeriana’s Education Economics Lab estimates that of every 100 students who start primary school, only 44 finish grade 11 on time; the move from ninth to tenth grade is where most are lost.

Alert CIAD-2026-0049, titled “AI Agents as Attack Vectors,” describes two risks. One: criminals using open AI offensive-security tools that can plan tasks, run commands and work on their own for hours; with them, an attack that used to take days now takes hours. Two: research agents from AI providers that went beyond their approved tasks and got into company systems.

In both cases the way in was the same: passwords and keys exposed in code, repositories and configuration files, forgotten but active APIs, overly broad cloud permissions and admin panels without two-factor authentication. The alert does not name the providers.

Last week we reported that Anthropic disclosed incidents involving its agents in internal tests and cut their internet access. There is no public information linking that case to the incidents in India.

The proposal is part of a review of 40 technologies in AI, biomedicine and solar power: 14 would be banned from export and 26 restricted. The banned ones include systems that generate malicious code on their own and models trained on sensitive national data.

Restrictions would cover the weights and code of models with at least 2 trillion parameters or in the top 10 of global rankings, such as Moonshot’s Kimi K3 or Alibaba’s Qwen3.8-Max, according to The Next Web. Chip designs at 14 nanometers or below would also be covered.

The exceptions are broad: open source and published research are not controlled, Chinese companies can keep serving foreign users through apps, websites and APIs, and there is an automatic license to run models on their own servers abroad. A prior export registration has applied since October 16, and comments are open until November 15.

The cases include military use of schools, explosives and armed clashes near classrooms. The most affected departments are Cauca, Arauca, Norte de Santander and Chocó. Cali’s El País summed it up in one figure: a school is attacked every six days.

Unicef’s figure comes a day after the Education Minister presented a much larger number to the House: 1,587,248 children and youth aged 5 to 16 not enrolled, 16.2%. The difference comes from how it is measured: different age ranges, sources and cutoff dates.

The model targets complex coding and agent work, and requires at least 1 TB of memory. Mark Zuckerberg highlighted that it runs well on the new Mac Studios. It arrives three days after Muse Wonder, the closed model Meta uses in its Muse agent.

With Muse Spark Open, Mistral Large 4 (weights expected October 27) and the Chinese models, October is shaping up as a key month for large open models.

According to International Maritime Organization data, it is only the third ship sunk in the Middle East since the Iran war began in February; the previous one, the Cape Dao, was hit on September 23. Attacks have intensified since late September and include a drone strike on a tanker. CNN links them to the approaching US midterm elections.

On Monday only 4.1 million barrels of oil crossed the strait, less than a quarter of the pre-war level. Meanwhile, the clash between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis in the Red Sea is intensifying.

The system splits the document into sections, such as introduction, methods, results and proofs, and assigns an agent to each, with access to the full document to catch contradictions. A final agent consolidates the findings and checks them against outside information to reduce false alarms. Each review takes 10 to 20 minutes and returns comments anchored to the text.

In a test with 26 math and computer science papers, it caught 89.7% of 29 confirmed errors, versus 55.2% for Gemini 3.1 Pro on its own. Before launch it was tested on more than 15,000 papers. Google says documents are not used to train models and are kept for one year.

The free version uses Gemini 4 Argon. For more reviews you can connect a Gemini API key, and there is an API to build it into other workflows.

Fecode’s demands include teachers’ working conditions and health care, support for school communities affected by the August 10 earthquake, promotions and transfers for teachers under Decree 1278 of 2002, recognition of service time for those under Decree 2277 of 1979, and a guaranteed 2026 teacher competition. The union is weighing a national strike in November.

Bogotá’s Education Department did not suspend classes: each principal organizes the day according to their school’s situation and must notify families. Fecode asked the Ministry to clarify the circular’s scope, arguing it could limit the right to protest and union freedom.

Kroger CEO Greg Foran wrote in a memo that “technology is reshaping what’s possible” and that the company must adopt capabilities, reduce duplicate work and look at where each task is best done. Inc. noted that, even so, the CEO did not directly blame AI for the cuts.

In its third-quarter report, Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun said the group is training and equipping more than 90% of its employees with AI productivity tools. The company did not clarify whether reducing tasks will mean fewer hires or staffing changes.

The Iran-backed Houthis said they struck Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport with a ballistic missile, and their spokesman issued a “last warning” to airlines to stop flying in Saudi airspace except to Mecca and Medina. Saudi Arabia warned that attacks on civilians will not go unanswered.

The attacks come amid the war with Iran and a Saudi offensive against the Houthis in Yemen. Oil has swung: Brent topped $102 and then fell back below $100 despite the fighting.

Update, October 13: Saudi Arabia reported a new barrage of drones and missiles and Riyadh airport remained shut. Trump said he is considering joining the Saudi counteroffensive, and a Houthi leader warned the US would face a “swift and painful” response.

Argon was announced in late September for cybersecurity defenders only. It now reaches the Gemini app and AI Mode in Search for Pro and Ultra subscribers, AI Studio, the API and Gemini Enterprise. It handles up to one million tokens of input and output. According to VentureBeat, the promotional price is half that of Claude Opus 5.5 and a fifth of GPT-6 Astra; from December 1 it rises to $4 / $20.

Gemini agent, unveiled on October 8 at Gemini at Work, plans the work, uses skills and tools, connects to systems such as Workspace, Microsoft 365, Salesforce or Snowflake, and picks the best model for each task. It is in private beta, with general availability expected between late October and early November.

The diagnosis includes an enrollment drop of 421,142 students in May 2026 compared with the previous year (−4.5%); Fomag health needs of more than COP 8.44 trillion; an additional COP 245.8 billion needed to sustain free higher-education tuition through 2026; and a 20.8-point gap in gross coverage between urban (98.5%) and rural (77.7%) areas.

The hearing was a political oversight debate on the handover. El Heraldo headlined it as “what Petro left, according to the Education Ministry.” In the available coverage we have not yet found the previous government’s response to these figures.

In the latest attack two ships were hit by drones overnight and one sank. The missing crew are reportedly Syrian and Egyptian. A week earlier, two other ships were attacked with sea and air drones in the same area; one sank and the search for its ten crew was called off.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev did not directly accuse Russia but said the attacks’ outcome “benefits the Russian Federation.” They come as Ukraine reports new Russian strikes on its energy infrastructure, hours after Trump announced a purported energy ceasefire.

The scholarships give up to a year of Coursera access, with Google’s new AI Professional Certificate (eight modules on ideation, data analysis and app building) and seven other programs in Spanish, such as IT support, cybersecurity and project management. Applications are handled by the NGO Colnodo from October 13 until places run out, and notifications start October 26.

Applicants must be over 18, live in Colombia and have a computer with internet; no prior experience or university degree is needed. People in Chocó, Buenaventura, Cali, Pereira, Manizales and Armenia get priority, several of them earthquake-affected areas.

Saber Pro assesses students about to finish a university degree and Saber TyT those finishing technical and technological programs. Taking it is a graduation requirement. Test-site notices, with each student’s location and mode, were published from October 2 on the Icfes portal.

For context, our study on Saber Pro 2025 found a national average of 148.2 out of 300, with a 13.3-point gap in favor of on-campus over online programs and 14.3 in favor of accredited ones. Transparency note: it is a Madriguera de Datos study.

SPUR (Standards for Publisher Usage Rights) is building standards and technical systems so outlets can track and control how AI companies use their content, and to make licensing deals easier. Around October 2 it finalized its “content telemetry standard.”

SPUR invited OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and Microsoft to adopt that standard; none of the five has publicly committed to doing so.

According to the company, its agents used URL shorteners to move data past restrictions and interacted with US government sites. In one case, the Claude Mythos Preview model exploited SQL and command injection flaws in third-party software to run commands on a university server when its own tools were restricted.

The false tip, dated July 18, was flagged as spam and never reached investigators; Anthropic detected it on September 28. The company says it will not give its evaluations live internet access again until it can show it can monitor and control what its agents do. This week the White House began requiring AI companies to promptly report and fix such unauthorized interactions.

According to the Ministry, 77.6% of students (990,974) attend in person, 109,640 on alternating schedules and 175,353 in hybrid mode. To get there it reviewed 5,539 sites and used temporary classrooms, traveling teachers, alternative learning spaces, connectivity and equipment. UNICEF provided more than 40 temporary classrooms, materials and socio-emotional support.

The damage was huge: according to El Tiempo, about 2,486 sites were damaged and six children died when school buildings collapsed; Chocó, the epicenter, had 796 schools affected. Vanguardia reported in August that 811 schools collapsed. At the October 1 meeting with Fecode, more than 23,000 psychosocial cases were identified in school communities.

On October 3 federal forces and allied pro-government Tigrayan fighters recaptured Mekelle airport as rebels began abandoning the city. Losing Mekelle did not end the war: fighting continues in the north, alongside an intense federal air campaign and rebel drone strikes on facilities near Addis Ababa.

Ethiopia accuses Eritrea of backing the rebels, closed its embassy and expelled its diplomats on October 1; Eritrea denies it and cut ties. In an October 8 letter to the French foreign minister, Ethiopia’s foreign minister said Eritrean units had advanced up to 60 kilometers into the country, “a blatant act of aggression.” Analysts also warn that Egypt, at odds with Ethiopia over the Nile dam, is building a coalition against it.

The “ICT Training for Colombian Teachers” program with South Korea has trained about 300 educators: 102 from rural areas and 198 from urban ones. In 2026 it offered 17 places for tenured teachers, with 14 days of training in three areas: artificial intelligence, programming and computational thinking, and public science communication. Seven of the shortlisted projects used AI to support teaching.

Vice Minister Gledy María Foliaco proposed three priorities for the alliance: student mobility between the two countries, expanding the ICT classroom network in strategic regions, and exchanging teaching resources adapted to Colombia.

The alliance adds to the “AI Day in Your School” led by Computadores para Educar. The first edition was on October 2, 2025, with more than 2,000 schools and MIT support; the second was on July 22, 2026, under the motto “Towards AI with a human and territorial sense,” alongside 28 in-person training sessions at three levels.

The rollout began on October 7 on Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise, which use GPT-6 Sol, and reached Free and Go on October 8, which use GPT-6 Luna.

Intelligent UI lets an answer be an interface. OpenAI shows examples such as an interactive bicycle breakdown, a cooking plan with a shopping calculator and timeline, calculators, bill splitters and games inside the conversation.

According to OpenAI, for web searches GPT-6 Instant starts answering 44% sooner than GPT-5.6 Instant. The company acknowledges it is still improving the model’s design judgment and what it can build.

Claude Dashboards is in beta on the Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans. It connects to Redshift, BigQuery, ClickHouse, Databricks and Snowflake, and to connectors such as Salesforce. Each chart shows when it was refreshed, and Claude can be asked to explain the SQL behind it. Dashboards can move to BI tools; Looker, monday.com and Tableau integrations are announced.

Claude Motion, Team and Enterprise only, writes editable code for text, shapes, images, charts and timing instead of using a video model: any word, number or timing can be changed and the result downloaded as MP4. Canva and Captions integrations are announced.

The same day, Claude Docs, Slides and Design left beta for every plan, free included, with team editing, PowerPoint and PDF export, and mobile editing. The standalone Claude Design app closes on December 14, 2026.

In Frederick, the board cited AI-generated inappropriate images of students, bullying, harmful mental-health advice, cheating and over-reliance. The rule keeps exceptions for teaching about AI and for disability accommodations. In New York, the largest US school district banned AI for students through eighth grade and blocked companion chatbots and services such as ChatGPT and Claude in all grades, while offering “AI critical thinking” courses in high school.

World Teachers’ Day, on October 5, coincided with the 60th anniversary of the ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers. According to the OECD’s TALIS survey, about 80% of Colombian teachers who use AI rely on it to plan lessons and 79% to simplify content. In its 2026 digital education report, the OECD warns that generative AI used without pedagogical guidance improves task performance, not learning.

The outbreak began on May 15, 2026 in Ituri province (Congo) and in Uganda. WHO declared it an international emergency on May 17, and by August it was the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record and the second largest. Bundibugyo virus is a different species from Zaire ebolavirus, for which the approved vaccines were developed.

In Kenya, eight relatives and 21 health workers were quarantined and 28 contacts identified. The patient took a commercial flight from Kampala to Nairobi, which requires tracing passengers.

Jev takes a “state” (text or structured data) and a set of typed questions and evaluates them all in parallel. It returns three answer types: a choice among categories, a score on a scale, and a yes/no probability, each with its distribution and confidence level, so the system can act above a threshold or escalate to a person below it. It answers in 70 to 500 milliseconds.

TypeSafe AI was founded in San Francisco by Diogo Almeida, co-inventor of the RLHF that made ChatGPT possible, Erik Gafni and Sasha Sheng. Its documentation acknowledges limits: it is unreliable at counting, arithmetic or comparing dates, and loses accuracy on very long or noisy states.

OpenAI’s Decisions API uses the /v1/decisions endpoint on GPT-6 Luna, with three question types (predicate, choice and score), text and base64 image input, and a 10% surcharge for regional processing in the US or Europe. It is in public beta and expects general availability within weeks.

Mistral says the model was trained in its own EU data centers and can be deployed from Europe on its infrastructure, under European law and independent of other digital providers. Before releasing the weights, it is testing it with cybersecurity leaders, vetted partners and state authorities.

French President Emmanuel Macron presented it as “a third way in AI,” between the United States and China. According to Reuters, Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch said in Abu Dhabi that the model beats Chinese ones on cybersecurity.

DeepSeek initially sought about 50 billion yuan, but investor demand grew after the launch of its latest model. With signed term sheets, the total could approach 100 billion yuan. The company has not officially confirmed the round.

After closing, DeepSeek plans to restructure for an IPO. Reuters reported it hired CITIC Securities to prepare a possible listing on Shanghai’s STAR Market; other reports mention Hong Kong.

Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, which control more than 95% of global DRAM production, have shifted capacity toward the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in AI accelerators, which is more profitable. SK Hynix warns the shortage could last beyond 2030.

Forecasts differ: Counterpoint expects average phone prices to rise 6.9% in 2026 and shipments to fall 2.1%; IDC forecasts a 14% price rise and a 12.9% drop in shipments. Last year 173 million phones under $100 were sold worldwide.

In February 2026 Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic a national security supply-chain risk after the company refused to lift the usage restrictions on its models for autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. He set a six-month deadline to stop using them. On September 25 a federal appeals court in Washington upheld the designation.

The exit was slow: Palantir’s Maven system, which analyzes satellite imagery and drone footage, relied heavily on Claude, and reports say it was still in use in September. The $200 million contract signed in July 2025 was voided.

The Pentagon signed contracts with Google, xAI and OpenAI. According to Forkast, OpenAI offered a deal on October 1 with a zero-cost license and usage discounts. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met President Trump twice in late September.

There are two measures. The first, announced September 20, covers about 170,000 borrowers in repayment who are up to date, with an additional COP 51.6 billion secured by the government and the Education Ministry. The second, on October 5, covers 64,904 students still studying, with COP 49.3 billion.

To qualify, the loan must be active, the student enrolled and up to date or at most 30 days late. Icetex clarifies it is not a permanent cut: when the money runs out, loans return to their original contract rate. Icetex president Richard Caicedo called it “an important relief for personal finances.”