April 12, Wednesday

1. Yellow sand swept across Beijing and other parts of China, sending air pollution surging to hazardous levels on Monday and Tuesday. Chinese weather officials said strong winds carried yellow sand from inland regions and neighboring Mongolia to northern China and other parts of the country. 2. NHK has learned that a draft of a communique to be issued by the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven nations demands that Russia withdraw its forces from Ukraine immediately and unconditionally. The G7 foreign ministers are scheduled to meet from April 16 in the town of Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture, central Japan. A draft of the communique the ministers are aiming to adopt condemns Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine in the strongest possible terms.
3. US IT venture firm Open AI says it will pay people who report vulnerabilities, bugs or security flaws in its artificial intelligence systems up to 20,000 dollars. Open AI is the developer of Chat GPT. It made the announcement about its Bug Bounty Program on its official blog on Tuesday.