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Australia’s NextDC stock collapse fires a global AI warning

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For two decades, data centers were relatively safe, lucrative real estate investments. They attracted investors because they served as digital infrastructure — the essential plumbing that keeps the internet running.

The growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and its increased demands on computing power has meant data centre builders are in a race to build out sufficient supply.

But in the past two weeks, investors have started to have genuine concerns about the long-term viability of these businesses.

On Wednesday (October 21), shares in NextDC, one of Australia’s largest data center builders, collapsed by 40% after it said delays at its flagship Melbourne site meant its revenue forecasts would fall short of forecasts.

These delays have come about after the local community raised significant concerns about the impact of NextDC’s M3 data center expansion. Electricity distributor Jemena paused the construction of the giant concrete power poles that had been snaking their way along Footscray streets after local councils raised concerns about the impact on residential neighborhoods.

These 22-meter power poles are crucial to NextDC’s operations in Footscray. Data center operators make their profits from selling access to the massive amounts of power that AI chips need. Without that power, these facilities cannot remain viable.

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NextDC is not alone in facing significant headwinds. Data center company Firmus abruptly canceled its multi-billion-dollar listing on the Australian stock exchange due to a lack of investor demand.

Similarly, London-based data center developer Nscale is struggling to attract buyers for a stock market listing on Wall Street. Shares in CoreWeave, which claims to operate the world’s most powerful AI supercomputer, dropped 15% in one day last week on concerns about its financial strength.

These jitters reflect the harsh reality of AI: while the hype is strong, the business models are coming under increasing scrutiny.

Rising costs for massive investments

Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent globally on training models and building the data centers to house the infrastructure that powers AI. The pipeline of investments is expected to reach some US$10 trillion (A$14.25 trillion) by 2032.

Until recently, much of the capital expenditure was funded internally by the AI companies or by raising money directly from investors; more recently, they have been borrowing vast sums in the corporate bond market.

And while those investing in AI are patient, they still expect to see significant financial returns.

Community campaigners demonstrating against a proposed large-scale data centre rally outside the Park Hotel
Community campaigners demonstrating against a planned data centre in Kilmarnock, Scotland. Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images via The Conversation

Sticky inflation and rising interest rates complicate this further. Data center developers now face higher borrowing costs, plus higher construction costs. And rising interest rates can make other investments more attractive.

Analysts estimate that giants like OpenAI and Anthropic will need to increase revenues by 80% a year for the next six years to meet investors’ revenue expectations. Yet, indicators suggest that consumer and corporate spending on paid AI models is slowing down.

Racing for chips

To make things worse, the hardware that AI depends upon is driving real investor concern. Historically, data centers could operate for decades with minimal maintenance, guaranteeing rents and returns.

But AI chips have a shelf life of only a few years. Each new generation requires upgrades to power delivery and cooling, trapping data centres on a treadmill of multibillion-dollar expenses to pay for these upgrades.

Even if AI revenues stabilize enough to support these expenses, there’s no guarantee that data center companies will be able to access the chips they need to fill data centers and support AI demand.

Amazon recently admitted it is hoarding billions of AI chips, even though it doesn’t have any capacity for installing them. This massive over-investment is driven by anxieties around long-term supplies.

This gold rush for chips is why American chip manufacturer Nvidia is one of the few companies in the AI space to actually be making money. Nvidia also invests in the companies that buy its chips — its own customers — raising concerns about circular financing.

The social licence

Beyond the balance sheet, investors are also concerned about the loss of social license for data centers amid local community protests. Community concerns around data centers are already high, driven by persistent noise (from energy transmission), visual impact, localized heating, and environmental concerns.

And these concerns will only grow if data centres start to impact the cost of living by pushing up electricity or water prices. Forecasts suggest that New South Wales data centres could consume up to 25% of Sydney’s daily water demand within a decade.

In Victoria, transmission company AusNet is reviewing requests from data centers for more than 10 gigawatts of connections, which could exceed the state’s entire supply capacity. In both cases, this level of demand will inevitably affect consumer prices.

When will communities benefit?

The AI age depends on the physical infrastructure of data centres. But the current path we are on demands ever-increasing capital from investors to fund a relentless upgrade cycle.

It demands huge volumes of power and water from local utilities. And it places a significant burden on the communities that host these data centers.

These factors mean the era of data centers as a safe stock market investment is over. And if investors become unwilling to fund these risks blindly, and communities become resistant to hosting these centers, this month’s stock market jitters may turn into a steeper market sell-off.

To shore up investor confidence, it’s important that investments in AI do not just focus on building better models, but also models that are more efficient — in terms of their costs, energy demands and spatial requirements.

And if they can be designed to support the electricity grid by adding, rather than displacing, renewables capacity, then communities may begin to feel the benefits of investments into AI.

Andrew Cullen is guest research fellow, School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

OpenAI’s latest AI models are coming to Google Cloud and Antigravity

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OpenAI’s latest AI models are coming to Google Cloud and Antigravity

Google would certainly prefer that everyone used its Gemini models with Google Cloud services, but soon, you’ll have more options. OpenAI and Google have come to an arrangement that will see the former’s frontier models arrive in Google Cloud services. Perhaps more importantly, GPT models will soon appear in Antigravity, Google’s agent-powered coding tool.

For enterprise customers and AI enthusiasts, OpenAI’s latest model will appear in Google’s “Model Garden” in the coming weeks, adding to its 200-plus options. The garden already offers access to Google’s Gemini models, as well as an assortment of open models like Mistral, Llama, and Gemma. Anthropic’s Claude AI has also been available for some time. Google says it’s now the only large cloud provider offering access to all three leading closed LLMs.

While OpenAI notes that Microsoft continues to be its primary cloud partner, the full suite of current GPT 6 and 6.1 models—Astra, Sol, and Luna—will launch on Google Cloud. Astra will naturally cost the most to run, but Google’s system supports dynamically moving workloads between LLMs based on performance, latency, and efficiency.

OpenAI models will be available to run entirely on Google’s infrastructure, with transactions handled via the Google Cloud Marketplace. For businesses with established Google Cloud spending commitments, this will make it easy to begin using GPT models in place of whatever they were using before.

Google says all three OpenAI LLMs are rolling out now in private preview for select enterprise customers. Anyone interested in getting early access to the latest GPT AI in Google Cloud can submit a request, which will enable access through the API even if they’re using Codex CLI or Codex Desktop. The inference just runs on Google’s systems.

Bringing GPT models to Google Cloud could be a big deal for enterprise, but even individual users could see some benefit from the deal. Alongside the Cloud deployment, GPT models will appear in the Google Antigravity client. Until now, Antigravity has supported Google’s Gemini as well as Claude. Presumably, the same trio of OpenAI models will appear in Antigravity, but Google has not specified.

Google recently rolled out Gemini 4 Argon across its AI footprint, bringing its flagship AI back to parity with the competition—at least if you ask Google. It does seem like an improvement over Gemini 3.1 Pro, but it burns through tokens at an astonishing rate. Anthropic’s Claude models are already supported in Google Cloud, but the OpenAI deal will offer another alternative to Gemini for those not feeling the Argon love.

UK expands military support for Saudi Arabia against Houthis with ‘defensive’ air patrols

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UK expands military support for Saudi Arabia against Houthis with ‘defensive’ air patrols


Britain announced Tuesday that it is expanding military support for Saudi Arabia against the Houthis to include “defensive” air patrols by Royal Air Force jets, but stressed there is no military solution to the conflict.

Defense Secretary Wes Streeting said Royal Air Force Typhoon jets will “conduct defensive counter-air operations over Saudi Arabia, helping to protect Saudi cities, civilian populations and critical national infrastructure” from missiles and drones fired by the Iran-backed rebels in Yemen.

That means the British planes would try to shoot down missiles or drones in the air, but Streeting said the British planes won’t strike Houthi targets on the ground.

The U.K. will also send a military transport plane and an unspecified number of military advisers to Saudi Arabia, Streeting said.

The announcement follows Britain’s decision last month to offer in-air refueling of Saudi planes operating against the Houthis. That mission is being extended by another 90 days, Streeting said.

The conflict between the Houthis and Yemen’s Saudi-backed government has reignited, with the Houthis aiming missile and drone strikes at Saudi Arabia, against which the oil-rich kingdom has struggled to defend itself. The country’s main international airport in Riyadh was struck several times earlier this month.

Streeting called the attacks “despicable” and said targeting the airport showed “the lengths the Houthis are going to to escalate the situation in the region.”

The Associated Press reported last month that Saudi Arabia had asked its allies, including France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt to deploy air-defense support to the region to help defend against missiles and drones fired by Houthis and other Iran-backed groups.

The U.S., which bombed the Houthis under the Biden and Trump administrations, has declined to do the same this time around.

Streeting said in a written statement to Parliament that “the government remains clear that there is no long-term military solution to the conflict in Yemen.”

“We continue to support a U.N.-led political process as the best route to a durable peace,” he said.

Yemen first plunged into civil war in 2014, when the Houthis seized Sanaa and much of northern Yemen and forced the government into exile.

A Saudi-led coalition intervened the following year in an attempt to restore the government to power. The conflict created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, and killed more than 150,000 people.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s spokesman denied Britain was being dragged in to the conflict.

“Our support for Saudi Arabia is considered, proportionate and focused on helping them defend themselves from relentless Houthi attacks,” spokesperson Tom Wells said.

Egypt has also announced military assistance, saying it will provide “all possible forms of support” to help Saudi Arabia “defend its security and stability.”

The Egyptian government will deploy air defense systems and aircraft to help intercept missiles and drones fired toward the kingdom, a regional official briefed on the matter said.

The official said Egypt’s support would be defensive and would not include deploying ground troops to Yemen. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said Saturday that his government would take “any measure” to defend Saudi Arabia and called for parliament to convene to authorize the deployment of troops and military equipment.

Parliament held two days of deliberations and is scheduled to reconvene for a vote next week.

Source: AP

Hundreds sign letter supporting Irish author Sally Rooney, Faber over UK restrictions

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Hundreds sign letter supporting Irish author Sally Rooney, Faber over UK restrictions

Hundreds of authors, actors and musicians have signed an open letter supporting Irish author Sally Rooney and her publisher, Faber, demanding an amendment to legislation that has prevented the sale of her books in the UK, Anadolu reports.

The letter, which was published in the New Statesman, argues that the decision to stop distributing Rooney’s works in the UK raises concerns about freedom of expression following the government’s designation of Palestine Action as a terror organization.

“Sally Rooney is a writer, not a terrorist. Her books must be available to the public,” said the letter.

Signatories include authors Zadie Smith, Patrick Ness, Damian Barr and Juno Dawson; actors Paul Mescal, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Tilda Swinton; musician Kate Nash; filmmaker Jonathan Glazer; and the Irish rap group Kneecap.

The letter describes removing Rooney’s books from shelves as an “affront to basic principles of free speech and expression so long taken for granted in this country,” and attributes the decision to “ill-conceived and draconian anti-terror legislation.”

“We categorically reject censorship – whether direct or indirect – and urge the government to change course, amending the legislation which has led us to this point of repressive absurdity,” it added.

Public support for Palestine Action and financial assistance to the group can constitute criminal offenses punishable by up to 14 years in prison under the legislation that designated it a terror organization.

Rooney previously said she would continue donating proceeds from her books to Palestine Action, arguing that the designation equated acts of vandalism, demonstrations and disruptions at military bases with terror crimes.

Earlier this month, Rooney said Faber had determined it could “no longer supply my work within the UK,” and that the decision had been made with her full agreement.

“I have made every effort to be honest with the public about my beliefs and intentions,” she said. “And I am wholly prepared to accept the consequences.”

Takaichi’s next vote is in the bond market

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Takaichi’s next vote is in the bond market

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi needs to better sell her economic program to investors. Image: Reddit

Sanae Takaichi has done something few Japanese leaders manage. She’s reached her first anniversary in office more popular than her predecessors, and she looks well placed to keep the job.

In a country that has burned through five prime ministers in a decade, this counts for a lot. Popularity, though, is only one of two votes a Japanese leader needs to win. The other is cast every day in the government bond market, and on that ballot, her result is far less certain.

Her food sales-tax cut, due in April, is the clearest test. Families squeezed by rising prices will feel it at the checkout, and politically it’s a smart move. Yet it carries a bill of roughly 5 trillion yen (US$32 billion) a year, and so far nobody has said who will pay it.

Japan’s public debt is already well over twice the size of its economy. A country carrying a load like this can borrow cheaply only for as long as lenders believe the numbers add up. Opening a large and possibly permanent hole in revenue, with no credible plan to fill it, tests their patience.

Bond markets rarely deliver their verdict in one dramatic moment. Yields drift higher, demand at auctions softens and the cost of servicing old debt creeps up as it’s rolled over at new rates. By the time politicians notice, their room to maneuver has already shrunk.

Her wider agenda then starts to collide with itself. Takaichi wants aggressive spending to revive growth and a bigger defense budget to deal with an increasingly tense neighborhood, not least rising tensions with China over Taiwan.

Both depend on the state borrowing at affordable rates. If the tax cut pushes yields up, every other priority becomes more expensive to fund.

Households wouldn’t escape either. Higher yields feed through to mortgage rates, and many Japanese homeowners have known borrowing costs near zero for most of their adult lives.

A family could save on groceries in the spring and lose more than it saved on its home loan by the following year. Relief at the till, paid for with pain on the mortgage statement, would be a poor trade, and voters would quickly work it out.

None of this makes the tax cut wrong. Living costs are a genuine strain, and a government that ignores them soon loses the public. What matters is whether Takaichi treats funding as an afterthought or as the policy’s core.

Markets would respond to specifics, namely spending she’s prepared to trim, revenue she’s prepared to raise elsewhere, and a timeline showing the cut won’t quietly become another permanent addition to the deficit.

Even a fixed end date would signal discipline. Vague assurances are likely to be priced as exactly what they are.

Her political position makes this harder. The resignation of a cabinet minister over a vote-buying scandal is the first serious dent in her administration.

A leader whose authority rests on public goodwill will find it tough to pick fights with her own party over spending restraint while that goodwill is under pressure.

There’s an obvious temptation in that situation: keep giving voters what they want and hope growth arrives in time to cover the cost. Japan has tried versions of this before. The growth tends to turn up late, if at all. The debt always turns up on schedule.

Takaichi does have one advantage her predecessors lacked. She has the public’s trust and a realistic prospect of staying in office long enough to see a plan through.

A prime minister expecting to last a year can promise almost anything, because someone else inherits the bill, whereas a prime minister expecting to be around for several years has to live with the consequences. This should give her every reason to be credible, and markets know it.

Global investors are watching closely, and for good reason. Japan is one of the world’s largest creditor nations, and its bond market helps set the tone for borrowing costs across Asia and beyond. A disorderly rise in Japanese yields would travel far beyond Tokyo.

My view is that Takaichi will likely put some kind of funding framework on the table before April, because the cost of staying silent rises every week the question goes unanswered.

Whether it’s convincing is another matter. A plan built on optimistic growth assumptions would buy her at most a few months. She’s already shown she can read the country’s mood better than most of her recent predecessors and win over voters.

Her next task is to read the mood of the people who lend Japan its money, a far smaller and far less sentimental audience.

Nigel Green is founder and CEO of de Vere Group.

The new human-crafted Apple Music brand matters in an AI world

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The new human-crafted Apple Music brand matters in an AI world

Apple just revealed a new brand identity for Apple Music, with the expected turn to Liquid Glass. I’m not much of a fan of their new design language in general; this is where I admit that I’m still running MacOS Sequoia and have grumpy things to say about rounded corner radii and text legibility.

It’s just a trend, it will pass, and at some point I’ll probably cave and upgrade when it starts actually affecting my ability to get work done, or more importantly get security updates. Once I adjust, I’ll stop noticing it, and life will go on.

As such, I wouldn’t normally find an obvious rebrand like this notable, much less feel like I had much to say about it. But then I happened to catch Apple’s behind-the-scenes video in my YouTube recommendations, and I realized I did have thoughts.

It’s a short clip, respecting your time at just a little over a minute long if you want to watch for yourself.

Let’s get the obvious part out of the way: It’s pretty peak Apple. More than a little pretentious, with all the resources a $5 trillion market cap can bring to bear on every problem.

There’s a design agency (TBWA/Media Arts Lab), a pop hitmaker music producer (Fred again.. and yes, that’s how you spell it), a whole crewed set with cameras and lighting, and a mineral oil tank equipped with a transducer to effectively transmit audio signals into physical ripples.

They shot a ton of footage of the oil (chosen for its higher viscosity) interacting with the branding printed on transparent panels. Fast Company has a nice detailed breakdown of the technical aspects if you want to dig in more.

It’s a little eye-rolly with the narration, but honestly also lovely in the execution and care. And it made me realize how much I think we’re all going to value this kind of hands-on, human crafting in an era where anything can be generated out of a prompt.

Like many Ars readers, I have feelings about generative AI imagery. It’s feeling increasingly impossible to avoid in daily life. My new favorite term is “slop ghouls.”

One really unfortunate side effect of that persistence is a new natural tendency to be suspicious of everything you see. Was that picture you just saw hand-drawn, or did someone prompt it into existence with styles stolen from human artists?

I see us increasingly place genuine value on not just human-created craft, but seeing the process behind it that shows the hands at work. This Apple video was a neat bit of promotion, but it also provided the receipts. Real people did real things in the physical world to make the final images and videos.

Some stills from the video showing the process and people

Credit: Apple

Some stills from the video showing the process and people Credit: Apple

The final effect is obviously cleaned up and post-processed. But when I look at it now, I don’t just see Liquid Glass; I see the humans and their time and energy and creativity. To me, at least, that matters. Showing your work, proving the time you put in—I appreciate it. I’m slightly less grumpy for it!

Generative AI is likely here to stay. There’s no stuffing the genie back in the bottle. I probably need to find some peace with that, though I reserve the right to still yell at clouds about it. In the meantime, I think we should do more to celebrate human involvement in things and not be shy about showing the process and behind-the-scenes work.

Israel’s Sheba Rises to No. 6 in Global Ranking of World’s Smartest Hospitals 

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Israel’s Sheba Rises to No. 6 in Global Ranking of World’s Smartest Hospitals 


Sheba Medical Center rose from ninth to sixth place in Newsweek and Statista’s World’s Best Smart Hospitals 2027 ranking, marking the sixth consecutive year the Israeli hospital has been recognized among the world’s leading hospitals for innovation. 

Newsweek and Statista highlighted Sheba as a “leader in AI innovation” and cited its work in robotics and automation. The ranking evaluates how hospitals translate technological developments into clinical applications, including artificial intelligence, robotics, telemedicine, digital imaging and electronic medical records. 

“An advanced healthcare system is a strategic foundation for national resilience, economic growth and Israel’s leadership on the international stage,” Sheba Director General Prof. Yitshak Kreiss said. “We have a responsibility to push scientific and technological boundaries, nurture the next generation of medical entrepreneurs, and connect research, medicine and industry.” 

Among Sheba’s applications of artificial intelligence is SmartER, a platform that follows conversations between doctors and patients and generates organized clinical summaries for physician review, reducing time spent on documentation. 

Sheba is also the first international rollout site for OpenAI’s clinical AI platform for enterprises. Led by the hospital’s AI Center, the system provides clinical personnel with answers based on peer-reviewed research and clinical guidelines and displays sources for verification. Other AI tools help identify patients who may be eligible to receive ward-level treatment and monitoring at home. 

Research and international partnerships are another part of Sheba’s technology program. Through its ARC Innovation Center, Sheba is working with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and NVIDIA on a three-year project examining artificial intelligence applications in genomics. The research applies large language models to study the roughly 98% of the human genome whose function remains poorly understood, with the aim of connecting genetic variation to disease risk and treatment response. 

ARC also recently launched ARC Landing Boston, a US hub connecting startups in its network with American healthcare providers, investors and institutions. 

Newsweek and Statista base the smart hospital ranking on peer recommendations from healthcare experts, questionnaires examining hospitals’ implementation of advanced technologies and Joint Commission International accreditation. The 2027 edition also incorporates data from the Smart Hospitals Digital Maturity 

Enterprises keep buying software upgrades that IT thinks will make things worse

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Enterprises keep buying software upgrades that IT thinks will make things worse

Enterprise-sized businesses spend, on average, 28 percent of their software budgets on unwanted upgrades, migrations, and licensing changes. Often, those firms’ IT heads think those changes are detrimental.

Those results are according to a survey of 2,018 chief information officers and senior IT decision-makers at companies with at least 10,000 employees that Origina commissioned for its report, “The Software Tax.” About half of the respondents (1,011) are from the US, and the rest are from the United Kingdom. All respondents worked at companies with at least $1 billion in annual revenue.

Keep in mind that Origina provides maintenance for various enterprise software. Its report points to independent software maintenance as a way for IT leaders to regain control over software budgets, illustrating its potential bias. A third-party research consultancy, Censuswide, conducted the survey.

Among the report’s most concerning findings, enterprises often make software purchases that IT heads believe could hurt the organization. Ninety-five percent of respondents said “their organization has paid for a vendor-driven upgrade, migration, or licensing change in the past three years that it believed at the time would reduce performance, reliability, or business value,” the report says. Fifty-three percent of respondents “have done so more than once,” the report notes.

“Some 76 percent say their organization has very little real leverage in negotiations, and 80 percent say moving away from major vendors would cause significant disruption,” the report says, referring to the share of respondents who selected “strongly agree” or “somewhat agree” to those statements.

“When the alternative to an unwanted upgrade is losing support on systems the business runs on, saying yes is often a rational response,” Tomás O’Leary, one of the report’s authors and Origina’s CEO and founder, said in a statement. “That’s exactly the problem. The market has left some of the most experienced technology leaders in the world with little room to refuse, and that cost shows up in budgets, in engineering time, and in innovation that never gets funded.”

The result is less funding for other areas, particularly, per the report, innovation (named by 36 percent of respondents), human resources (32 percent), security (31 percent), and “customer-facing investment” (31 percent).

In a statement accompanying the survey’s announcement, Liberty Mutual’s CIO, James McGlennon, pointed out that an upgrade cycle could occupy top technical workers for “the better part of a year.”

“That’s not a one-off cost, it’s a recurring drag on capacity, and every year it repeats is a year those people aren’t working on the initiatives that actually differentiate the business,” he said.

The majority (91 percent) surveyed would support laws that give enterprises “protections comparable with those available to long-term residential tenants.” Only 1 percent opposed this (with the rest signaling that they neither support nor oppose the idea).

CIOs should “negotiate the exit before the entry” to have more control over software budgets, Marshall Van Alstyne, the report’s co-author and an information sciences professor at Boston University, said in a statement. Origina’s report suggests “settling the terms of a potential exit,” including setting a price for migration assistance and caps on renewal and expansion prices, during initial negotiations with the software vendor.

Origina’s report didn’t call out any specific vendors as forcing enterprises’ hands. However, every survey respondent currently runs “at least one of IBM, HCL, VMware/Broadcom, or SAP at meaningful scale.”

European Parliament Sets Position on Packaging, Battery and Textile Waste Rules

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European Parliament Sets Position on Packaging, Battery and Textile Waste Rules


The European Parliament has backed a narrower suspension of a requirement that companies appoint a local compliance representative in every EU country where they sell products covered by waste rules.

Lawmakers adopted their position ahead of negotiations with EU governments on measures covering packaging, batteries, textiles, footwear, electronics and single-use plastics.

Under existing EU law, producers that place goods on the market pay fees toward the cost of collecting, sorting and recycling those products once they become waste. The system is known as extended producer responsibility, or EPR. Producers must also appoint an authorized representative for EPR compliance in each member state where they sell.

The European Commission proposed suspending the representative requirement in certain sectors to ease barriers in the single market. Parliament would limit the suspension to small and micro enterprises based in the EU, defined as those with fewer than 50 employees and annual turnover or a balance sheet below 10 million euros. It would last until 2035, or until a broader circular economy act is adopted, whichever comes first. Lawmakers said the suspension would not affect other EPR duties, such as waste prevention and fees.

To further cut red tape, Parliament also called for better information sharing among member states, interoperable digital systems and common reporting requirements for companies.

Rapporteur Ingeborg ter Laak, a Dutch member of the European People’s Party, said administrative burdens should be reduced without weakening environmental goals. She said companies must still take responsibility for their waste and that products must be properly collected and recycled, and she argued that environmental duties and economic opportunity can go together.

The position on batteries and packaging waste passed with 616 votes in favor, 9 against and 39 abstentions. The position on textile, footwear, electronic appliance and single-use plastic waste passed with 612 votes in favor, 8 against and 39 abstentions.

Talks on the final laws can begin once the Council, which represents member states, adopts its own position.

The measures, a directive and a regulation, are part of the Environmental Omnibus package. The Commission is expected to propose a comprehensive circular economy act later in 2026.

Bomb Explodes in Apartment Building During Police Investigation

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Bomb Explodes in Apartment Building During Police Investigation


What began as a routine investigation into suspected drugs turned into a terrifying emergency when a mysterious bag suddenly exploded inside an apartment building in Greece, injuring two police officers and two civilians and raising concerns that authorities may have been deliberately lured into a trap.

The frightening incident unfolded Wednesday afternoon, October 21, in the Kolonos neighborhood of Athens, where officers had responded to a report of suspicious items discovered inside a residential building.

According to Greek police, the building’s manager contacted emergency services around 2:30 p.m. after discovering a bag containing what appeared to be illegal drugs and a weighing scale in a shared area of the property.

Two police officers were dispatched to investigate, unaware that the seemingly ordinary call would soon take a dangerous turn.

When the officers arrived, the building manager and another resident directed them toward the suspicious bag. As police began examining its contents, a powerful explosion suddenly ripped through the area, catching the officers and nearby civilians in the blast.

The explosion occurred around 3:30 p.m., sending emergency responders rushing to the building on Platonos Street as authorities scrambled to determine what had happened.

Both officers and the two civilians were injured, including the building manager who had originally reported the suspicious items.

One police officer suffered more serious injuries and was transported to Athens’ 401 Military Hospital, where doctors determined he would require surgery. The second officer and two civilians were taken to Evangelismos Hospital for treatment.

Fortunately, medical officials indicated that none of the four victims was believed to be in life-threatening condition, despite the frightening circumstances.

As investigators examined the damaged area, they discovered evidence that the blast had been caused by an explosive device hidden among the suspicious materials.

That discovery transformed what initially appeared to be a drug-related police call into a potentially much more serious criminal investigation.

Authorities are now examining whether the device was deliberately planted to injure whoever approached it, with particular attention on the possibility that police officers were the intended targets.

According to Reuters, a police official said investigators were also considering whether the explosive had been activated remotely. However, authorities have not established how the device was triggered, and that possibility remains under investigation.

The timing of the explosion has raised troubling questions because the device detonated while officers were examining the bag, rather than before they arrived at the building.

Greek media outlets have reported that investigators are exploring whether the suspicious package was part of a deliberate ambush, although police have not confirmed that anyone intentionally arranged the incident to target responding officers.

Specialized bomb disposal teams and forensic investigators were called to the scene to collect evidence and examine the remains of the explosive device.

Additional officers secured the surrounding area while investigators worked to determine who placed the suspicious materials inside the apartment building and whether the reported drugs were connected to the explosion.

The case has also drawn attention because of the unusual circumstances surrounding the initial emergency call.

According to the official police account, the building manager had reported finding a bag containing a jar of suspected drugs and a scale. Those items were discovered in a common area, where residents and visitors could potentially have encountered them.

Investigators are examining the contents of the bag and the sequence of events leading up to the blast to determine whether the suspected narcotics were genuine or had been placed there for another purpose.

While some early reports suggested the explosion could have been remotely triggered, other possibilities have not been ruled out, and investigators have not publicly identified a suspect or motive.

Greek authorities have also indicated that the incident is not currently being classified as an act of terrorism.

Instead, the investigation is being handled by the country’s organized crime authorities, who are working to establish whether the device was connected to criminal activity, a targeted attack or another unresolved dispute.

The explosion has understandably raised concerns about the safety of officers responding to seemingly routine calls involving suspicious objects, particularly when the true nature of those objects remains unknown.

In this case, a report about possible illegal drugs quickly escalated into a dangerous emergency that left four people hospitalized and prompted a major police investigation.

Despite the injuries, authorities have reported no fatalities, and the fact that all four victims are expected to survive has offered some relief following the frightening blast.

For now, investigators face several unanswered questions, including who placed the device inside the building, why it was hidden among suspected drugs and whether the explosion was intentionally timed to coincide with the officers’ arrival.

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