London's mayor praised the beavers, who are already having a noticeable impact.
April 13, 1986 – April 27, 2026
Guadalajara, Mexico, was quite a different place when it last hosted World Cup games 40 years ago. The city welcomed matches in June 1986 and did so again in 2026, when South Korea faced Czechia at Guadalajara Stadium in the opening round of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
In 1986, Guadalajara Stadium had not yet been built in Zapopan, the fast-growing municipality just northwest of Guadalajara. Many of that year’s World Cup matches were held instead at Jalisco Stadium in northeastern Guadalajara. It was in that stadium that France defeated Brazil in a penalty shootout in the 1986 quarterfinals, in what is widely regarded as one of the most memorable World Cup games of all time.
As seen in the Landsat images above, the land where Guadalajara Stadium (also called Estadio Akron) now sits was farmland in 1986. The new stadium, built in 2010 to host Mexico’s Club Deportivo Guadalajara, or Chivas, lies near the Sierra la Primavera volcanic complex, a rugged landscape full of lava flows, volcanic domes, steam vents, and hot springs. The architects who designed the stadium took inspiration from the nearby volcanic terrain, creating a structure that rises from a grassy earthen berm meant to resemble the flanks of a volcano, topped with a white roof reminiscent of a volcanic cloud.
About 95,000 years ago, the volcanic system underneath Sierra la Primavera produced a massive eruption that caused a caldera 11 kilometers (7 miles) in diameter to slump downward. Water filled the depression for tens of thousands of years, but tectonic uplift and the accumulation of sediment eventually led to the demise of the lake. Erosion wore away the softer surrounding rock over time, leaving harder, erosion-resistant volcanic rocks within the circular feature that now stand high above the surrounding terrain.
Starting about 60,000 years ago, several lava domes erupted along the southern edge of the caldera. The youngest of them, Cerro del Colli, formed about 30,000 years ago, leaving the dome-shaped feature just south of the stadium and contributing to a broader landscape dotted with other volcanic domes and cinder cones.
Today, much of the original caldera has been preserved as a forested area known as La Primavera Biosphere Reserve, even as development has partially encircled it during the past 40 years. The population of the Guadalajara metro area has grown from about 2.7 million in 1986 to more than 5.5 million now, with particularly rapid growth in Zapopan, a burgeoning tech hub sometimes billed as “Mexico’s Silicon Valley.” A prominent development visible in Landsat images is Guadalajara Technology Park, one of several new industrial parks in Zapopan. New greenhouses have also come to the area en masse, including south of the reserve, where they are mostly used to grow fruits and vegetables.
World Cup fever runs particularly high in Guadalajara, which is hosting World Cup matches for the third time. During Brazil’s legendary title run in 1970, when Pelé led the team, Jalisco Stadium was the venue for Brazil’s first-round, quarterfinal, and semifinal matches. To commemorate him, the city in May 2026 erected a 9.5-meter (31-foot) bronze statue of the iconic football (soccer) player.
Even the animals at Guadalajara Zoo are taking part in the festivities, with elephants, gorillas, giraffes, capybaras, pumas, and macaws “predicting” match winners by choosing between food, shirts, boxes, soccer balls, and other items. A puma named Muluk predicted South Korea would beat Czechia by sniffing and moving a ball, one newspaper reported.
Guadalajara will host four first-round matches: South Korea vs. Czechia on June 12, Mexico vs. South Korea on June 18, Colombia vs. Democratic Republic of the Congo on June 23, and Uruguay vs. Spain on June 26.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Adam Voiland.
Stay up-to-date with the latest content from NASA as we explore the universe and discover more about our home planet.
A massive, old caldera and more recently formed craters shape the landscape in the eastern Sierra Nevada.
The hill-shaped features are a sign of explosive volcanic activity—a rarity on the Red Planet.
Episode 43 of the Hawaiian volcano’s current eruption was marked by high lava fountains and widespread ash dispersal.
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The post World Cup Fever in Guadalajara appeared first on NASA Science.
April 13, 1986 – April 27, 2026
Guadalajara, Mexico, was quite a different place when it last hosted World Cup games 40 years ago. The city welcomed matches in June 1986 and did so again in 2026, when South Korea faced Czechia at Guadalajara Stadium in the opening round of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
In 1986, Guadalajara Stadium had not yet been built in Zapopan, the fast-growing municipality just northwest of Guadalajara. Many of that year’s World Cup matches were held instead at Jalisco Stadium in northeastern Guadalajara. It was in that stadium that France defeated Brazil in a penalty shootout in the 1986 quarterfinals, in what is widely regarded as one of the most memorable World Cup games of all time.
As seen in the Landsat images above, the land where Guadalajara Stadium (also called Estadio Akron) now sits was farmland in 1986. The new stadium, built in 2010 to host Mexico’s Club Deportivo Guadalajara, or Chivas, lies near the Sierra la Primavera volcanic complex, a rugged landscape full of lava flows, volcanic domes, steam vents, and hot springs. The architects who designed the stadium took inspiration from the nearby volcanic terrain, creating a structure that rises from a grassy earthen berm meant to resemble the flanks of a volcano, topped with a white roof reminiscent of a volcanic cloud.
About 95,000 years ago, the volcanic system underneath Sierra la Primavera produced a massive eruption that caused a caldera 11 kilometers (7 miles) in diameter to slump downward. Water filled the depression for tens of thousands of years, but tectonic uplift and the accumulation of sediment eventually led to the demise of the lake. Erosion wore away the softer surrounding rock over time, leaving harder, erosion-resistant volcanic rocks within the circular feature that now stand high above the surrounding terrain.
Starting about 60,000 years ago, several lava domes erupted along the southern edge of the caldera. The youngest of them, Cerro del Colli, formed about 30,000 years ago, leaving the dome-shaped feature just south of the stadium and contributing to a broader landscape dotted with other volcanic domes and cinder cones.
Today, much of the original caldera has been preserved as a forested area known as La Primavera Biosphere Reserve, even as development has partially encircled it during the past 40 years. The population of the Guadalajara metro area has grown from about 2.7 million in 1986 to more than 5.5 million now, with particularly rapid growth in Zapopan, a burgeoning tech hub sometimes billed as “Mexico’s Silicon Valley.” A prominent development visible in Landsat images is Guadalajara Technology Park, one of several new industrial parks in Zapopan. New greenhouses have also come to the area en masse, including south of the reserve, where they are mostly used to grow fruits and vegetables.
World Cup fever runs particularly high in Guadalajara, which is hosting World Cup matches for the third time. During Brazil’s legendary title run in 1970, when Pelé led the team, Jalisco Stadium was the venue for Brazil’s first-round, quarterfinal, and semifinal matches. To commemorate him, the city in May 2026 erected a 9.5-meter (31-foot) bronze statue of the iconic football (soccer) player.
Even the animals at Guadalajara Zoo are taking part in the festivities, with elephants, gorillas, giraffes, capybaras, pumas, and macaws “predicting” match winners by choosing between food, shirts, boxes, soccer balls, and other items. A puma named Muluk predicted South Korea would beat Czechia by sniffing and moving a ball, one newspaper reported.
Guadalajara will host four first-round matches: South Korea vs. Czechia on June 12, Mexico vs. South Korea on June 18, Colombia vs. Democratic Republic of the Congo on June 23, and Uruguay vs. Spain on June 26.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Adam Voiland.
Stay up-to-date with the latest content from NASA as we explore the universe and discover more about our home planet.
A massive, old caldera and more recently formed craters shape the landscape in the eastern Sierra Nevada.
The hill-shaped features are a sign of explosive volcanic activity—a rarity on the Red Planet.
Episode 43 of the Hawaiian volcano’s current eruption was marked by high lava fountains and widespread ash dispersal.
Subscribe to the Earth Observatory and get the Earth in your inbox.
NASA’s Earth Observatory brings you the Earth, every day, with in-depth stories and stunning imagery.
Explore Earth Science
Open access to NASA’s archive of Earth science data
A German court has sparked a legal controversy by ruling that Google is responsible for defamatory comments generated by its own AI system. The search giant had argued that it couldn’t be blamed for the false results, but a Munich court has deemed that not to be the case and has ruled in favor of the two unnamed plaintiffs, both publishing companies, who the Google AI Overview inaccurately said engaged in shady business practices.
Google is required to remove the comments and ensure that they are not repeated. The case is certainly going to raise some questions globally. Will this mean that other courts are going to rule against AI vendors?
Bernhard Buchner, a partner at Lausen Rechtsanwälte, the legal firm that acted for the plaintiffs, said, “I believe it shows that online providers such as Google cannot hide behind the fact that a statement was generated by AI, but rather that they can be held liable for its output. It is an important step towards ensuring that providers of AI systems have to take responsibility for their outputs.”
So, does this mean that the decision could be replicated in the US or elsewhere? Alex Shahrestani, managing partner at Austin-based Promise Legal, said, “the short answer is ‘yes’: the Munich ruling travels, because US courts are already making the same move.”
He explained that Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act, which has been applied to protect online service providers like social media companies from lawsuits based on their decisions to transmit or take down user-generated content, was built for computer bulletin boards, “not for a model that writes its own answers. Once the AI is the author, the company is the publisher.”
This means, he said, “businesses now need named humans at accountability nodes, verification gates before AI output ships, and audit trails that survive discovery, because ‘the model recommended it’ is a legally empty sentence.”
Does the decision mean that other AI providers could find themselves in the same position? Buchner believes it’s possible, although, he said, the situation in this case is unusual; it does not involve a classic chatbot scenario, but one where the AI-generated statements are published as an ‘AI overview’ of a search query.
“Google’s liability here is based not so much on the fact that it operates the underlying AI, but rather on the publication of its output. However, it seems entirely conceivable to me that this could also be applied generally to inaccurate or defamatory AI,” he pointed out.
Nonetheless, said Carolyn Shelby, head of SEO at Yoast, the German ruling should ensure that companies will be more circumspect in how they handle AI in the future, to protect themselves from any legal action. The first thing they should do is to separate low-risk use of AI from major decision-making.
“Using AI to summarize meeting notes, brainstorm campaign ideas, or create a first draft of something is very different from using it to make decisions about customers, employees, finance, compliance, health, legal claims, competitive positioning, or public communications,” she noted.
She pointed out that the effects of AI use could be devastating for companies. “The consequences could include customer complaints, reputational damage, regulatory attention, legal claims, correction costs, loss of trust, and internal disruption,” she said. “Even when a mistake does not become a lawsuit, the operational cost of correcting bad information can be significant.”
However, she noted, things may not change immediately. “Many companies will wait until there is a high-profile court case, regulatory action, or major corporate embarrassment before they take this seriously. That is usually how governance catches up with technology. But the better-run organizations will start treating AI governance as part of normal business risk management now.”
And, said Shahrestani, after the Google decision, everything has changed. It will become more important to ensure that employees remain part of the process.
Microsoft 365 (and Office 365) subscribers get more frequent software updates than those who have purchased Office without a subscription, which means subscribers have access to the latest features, security patches, and bug fixes. But it can be hard to keep track of the changes in each update and know when they’re available. We’re doing this for you, so you don’t have to.
Following are summaries of the updates to Microsoft 365/Office 365 for Windows over the past year, with the latest releases shown first. We’ll add info about new updates as they’re rolled out.
Note: This story covers updates released to the Current Channel for Microsoft 365/Office 365 subscriptions. If you’re a member of Microsoft’s Office Insider preview program or want to get a sneak peek at upcoming features, see the Microsoft 365 Insider blog.
Release date: June 9, 2026
This build offers “various fixes to functionality and performance,” according to Microsoft.
Get more info about Version 2605 (Build 20026.20168).
Release date: June 3, 2026
This build fixes a single bug, in which images didn’t display when using top and bottom text wrapping in classic Outlook.
Get more info about Version 2605 (Build 20026.20140).
Release date: May 26, 2026
This build offers “various fixes to functionality and performance,” according to Microsoft.
Get more info about Version 2605 (Build 20026.20112).
Release date: May 20, 2026
This build fixes several bugs, including one in which Excel or PowerPoint closed unexpectedly in rare cases while the user was actively co-authoring, particularly when opening a document for the first time.
Get more info about Version 2605 (Build 20026.20076).
Release date: May 14, 2026
This build fixes a bug in Outlook in which sending mail failed when multiple Exchange accounts were configured.
Get more info about Version 2604 (Build 19929.20172).
Release date: May 12, 2026
The build plugs a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.
What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.
Get more info about Version 2604 (Build 19929.20164).
Release date: May 5, 2026
This build fixes a bug in which Outlook closed unexpectedly after replying to a mail item with labels.
Get more info about Version 2604 (Build 19929.20136).
Release date: April 29, 2026
This build includes “various fixes to functionality and performance,” according to Microsoft.
Get more info about Version 2604 (Build 19929.20106).
Release date: April 21, 2026
This build includes “various fixes to functionality and performance,” according to Microsoft.
Get more info about Version 2604 (Build 19929.20090).
Release date: April 14, 2026
In this build, Copilot can now edit your PowerPoint documents. Copilot can start a new presentation or build on an existing one, generate slides, update content, improve layouts, and polish design, while preserving formatting, structure, and branding.
The build also plugs a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.
What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.
Get more info about Version 2603 (Build 19822.20182).
Release date: April 9, 2026
This build fixes several bugs, including one in Outlook in which users could not close the Copilot chat pane using a keyboard. Users can now close the pane by navigating to the Close button using a keyboard or by using the assigned keyboard shortcut.
Get more info about Version 2603 (Build 19822.20168).
Release date: March 31, 2026
This build includes “various fixes to functionality and performance,” according to Microsoft.
Get more info about Version 2603 (Build 19822.20142).
Release date: March 24, 2026
This build fixes a single bug in which PowerPoint sometimes closed unexpectedly when opening a newly created empty file from the OneDrive folder.
Get more info about Version 2603 (Build 19822.20114).
Release date: March 18, 2026
This build fixes an Outlook bug in which updating a single instance of a recurring meeting in a Microsoft 365 group calendar updated the entire series.
Get more info about Version 2602 (Build 19725.20190).
Release date: March 10, 2026
This build introduces agent mode in Word, which adds a conversational chat experience that helps create, edit, and refine document content as you work. In addition, the build fixes a bug that impacted the rendering of extended characters in calendar items, causing certain characters to appear as question marks.
The build also plugs a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.
What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.
Get more info about Version 2602 (Build 19725.20172).
Release date: March 3, 2026
This build fixes a bug in which closing a document sometimes remained in progress indefinitely after the Office app resumed from sleep or hibernation.
Get more info about Version 2602 (Build 19725.20152).
Release date: February 24, 2025
This build fixes several bugs, including one that caused OneNote to close unexpectedly upon startup.
Get more info about Version 2602 (Build 19725.20126).
Release date: February 17, 2025
This build includes, in Microsoft’s words, “various fixes to functionality and performance.”
Get more info about Version 2601 (Build 19628.20214).
Release date: February 10, 2026
This build fixes a bug that sometimes prevented users from opening emails with the Encrypt Only label in Outlook.
It also plugs a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.
What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.
Get more info about Version 2601 (Build 19628.20204).
Release date: February 3, 2026
This build includes, in Microsoft’s words, “various fixes to functionality and performance.”
Get more info about Version 2601 (Build 19628.20166).
Release date: January 27, 2025
In this build, OneNote applies your chosen proofing language more consistently, so you don’t have to reset it for every paragraph when writing in multiple languages. In addition, the build fixes several bugs, including one that caused Office applications to become unresponsive when profile card-related activities were performed.
Get more info about Version 2601 (Build 19628.20150).
Release date: January 21, 2025
This build includes, in Microsoft’s words, “Various fixes to functionality and performance.”
Get more info about Version 2512 (Build 19530.20184).
Release date: January 13, 2026
This build fixes a number of bugs, including one that caused Excel, PowerPoint, and Word to become unresponsive when profile card-related activities were performed.
It also plugs a number of security holes. For details, see Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates.
What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.
Get more info about Version 2512 (Build 19530.20144).
Release date: January 8, 2025
This build offers, in Microsoft’s words, “Various fixes to functionality and performance.”
Get more info about Version 2512 (Build 19530.20138).
Release date: December 16, 2025
This build offers, in Microsoft’s words, “Various fixes to functionality and performance.”
Get more info about Version 2511 (Build 19426.20218).
Release date: December 9, 2025
This Patch Tuesday build offers, in Microsoft’s words, “Various fixes to functionality and performance.” The build also has a variety of security updates (see details).
What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.
Get more info about Version 2511 (Build 19426.20186).
Release date: December 3, 2025
This build includes, in Microsoft’s words, “Various fixes to functionality and performance.”
Get more info about Version 2511 (Build 19426.20170).
Release date: November 20, 2025
This build fixes a bug in Outlook that caused users to see “Contacting the server for information” repeatedly when loading some emails.
Get more info about Version 2510 (Build 19328.20244).
Release date: November 18, 2025
This build includes, in the words of Microsoft, “various fixes to functionality and performance.”
Get more info about Version 2510 (Build 19328.20232).
Release date: November 11, 2025
This Patch Tuesday build fixes a bug in Outlook that caused some recipients to be unable to access OneDrive links shared with them via email. The build also has a variety of security updates (see details).
What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.
Get more info about Version 2510 (Build 19328.20190).
Release date: November 4, 2025
This build fixes a single bug, in which @mention searches produced no results in Office apps.
Get more info about Version 2510 (Build 19328.20178).
Release date: October 30, 2025
This build introduces a new Get Data dialog in Windows that simplifies finding and using external data, and adds Analyze Data to the Data tab.
The build also fixed an bug in Outlook that prevented users from downloading web add-ins in some virtualized environments.
Get more info about Version 2510 (Build 19328.20158).
Release date: October 21, 2025
This build has, in Microsoft’s words, “various fixes to functionality and performance.”
Get more info about Version 2509 (Build 19231.20216).
Release date: October 14, 2025
This build has a variety of security updates (see details), along with various fixes to functionality and performance.
What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.
Get more info about Version 2509 (Build 19231.20194).
Release date: October 7, 2025
This build has, in Microsoft’s words, “various fixes to functionality and performance.”
Get more info about Version 2509 (Build 19231.20172).
Release date: October 1, 2025
This build fixes two bugs, one in Excel in which ribbon controls were not rendered when rejoining Office sessions in a virtual machine, Azure Virtual Desktop, or remote desktop environment, and another that caused Outlook to terminate unexpectedly when starting.
Get more info about Version 2509 (Build 19231.20156).
Release date: September 23, 2025
This build has, in Microsoft’s words, “various fixes to functionality and performance.”
Get more info about Version 2508 (Build 19127.20264).
Release date: September 16, 2025
This build has, in Microsoft’s words, “various fixes to functionality and performance.”
Get more info about Version 2508 (Build 19127.20240).
Release date: September 9, 2025
This build has multiple security updates (see details), along with various fixes to functionality and performance.
What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.
Get more info about Version 2508 (Build 19127.20222).
Release date: September 3, 2025
This build fixes a bug in which some Outlook add-ins were getting “Office.auth.getAccessToken is not a function” errors.
Get more info about Version 2508 (Build 19127.20192).
Release date: August 26, 2025
This build fixes a bug that caused Outlook to terminate unexpectedly when sending a meeting invite with an encryption label. It also adds support for pixelated rendering of embedded images in SVG assets for the entire Office suite.
Get more info about Version 2508 (Build 19127.20154).
Release date: August 19, 2025
This build fixes a variety of bugs.
Get more info about Version 2507 (Build 19029.20208).
Release date: August 12, 2025
This build fixes a bug which required users to restart Outlook to open a .msg file after initially accessing it once. The build also includes a variety of security updates (see details).
What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.
Get more info about Version 2507 (Build 19029.20184).
Release date: August 5, 2025
This build fixes a single bug, in which users had to restart Outlook to open a .msg file after initially accessing it once.
Get more info about Version 2507 (Build 19029.20156).
Release date: July 30, 2025
This build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including in which Outlook closed unexpectedly shortly after launch, and another in Word in which the word count sometimes displayed incorrectly.
Get more info about Version 2507 (Build 19029.20136).
Release date: July 22, 2025
This build fixes two bugs, one that caused the Copilot Command Center to continue to be visible after disabling the Copilot user interface, and another in which when creating handouts in PowerPoint, certain characters (full-width numbers) couldn’t be properly transferred to the handout.
Get more info about Version 2506 (Build 18925.20184).
Release date: July 15, 2025
This build fixes two bugs, one that caused Visio 32-bit to close unexpectedly when using the Drawing control, particularly in setups involving COM components or .NET integrations, and another in Word in which copying and pasting content between documents sometimes changed the applied style unexpectedly.
Get more info about Version 2506 (Build 18925.20168).
Release date: July 8, 2025
This Patch Tuesday build fixes several bugs in Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, and the whole Office suite, including one that caused the Copilot icon to unexpectedly display in Outlook when Copilot had been disabled by the admin in government cloud.
The release also includes a variety of security updates (see details).
What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.
Get more info about Version 2506 (Build 18925.20158).
Release date: July 1, 2025
This build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in Word in which print preview sometimes stopped working when printing long emails.
Get more info about Version 2506 (Build 18827.20176).
Release date: June 26, 2025
This build introduces several new features, including one in Excel in which the PivotTables dialog box interface has been replaced by a redesigned panel, making it easier to view all of your options and simpler to change your data selection before inserting a recommended PivotTable.
Get more info about Version 2505 (Build 18827.20176).
Release date: June 17, 2025
This build fixes a bug that caused the “Try the new Outlook” toggle to be enabled when working in Classic Outlook side by side with the new Outlook.
Get more info about Version 2505 (Build 18827.20164).
Release date: June 10, 2025
This build fixes several bugs, including one for the entire Office suite in which a Save As attempt on an existing file didn’t complete successfully, and subsequent attempts continued to encounter issues when trying to save to a file that no longer existed.
This Patch Tuesday release also includes a variety of security updates: see details.
What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.
Get more info about Version 2505 (Build 18827.20150).
Release date: June 3, 2025
This build offers a variety of bug and performance fixes.
Read about Version 2505 (Build 18827.20140).
Release date: May 20, 2025
This build introduces a new PowerPoint feature: Notification emails for mentions, tasks, comments, and replies will now contain context previews even when the source document is encrypted, and the email will inherit the document’s security policies.
Get more info about Version 2504 (Build 18730.20186).
Release date: May 13, 2025
This build fixes a bug in which users were seeing high CPU usage when typing in Outlook. It also includes a variety of security updates: see details.
What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.
Get more info about Version 2504 (Build 18730.20168).
Release date: May 6, 2025
This build includes various bug and performance fixes.
Get more info about Version 2504 (Build 18730.20142).
Release date: April 29, 2025
This build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in which PowerPoint was unable to open a file from a network mapped drive from File Explore, another in which Word closed unexpectedly when opening .doc files, and another for the entire Office suite in which large 3D files couldn’t be inserted.
Get more info about Version 2504 (Build 18730.20122).
Release date: April 17, 2025
This build fixes a bug that could cause Excel to stop responding.
Get more info about Version 2503 (Build 18623.20208).
Release date: April 8, 2025
This build fixes a single bug in Word in which users may have encountered an issue with saving, seeing the message “saving…” in the title bar. It also includes a variety of security updates. Go here for details.
What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.
Get more info about Version 2503 (Build 18623.20178).
Release date: April 2, 2025
This build lets you use Dark Mode in Excel, which darkens your entire sheet, including cells, and may reduce eye strain. It also fixes several bugs, including one in Word in which opening specific files that contain many tracked changes and comments resulted in poor performance, and one in PowerPoint in which the app was not displaying the icon for an inserted PDF object.
Get more info about Version 2503 (Build 18623.20156).
Release date: March 11, 2025
This build fixes several bugs, including one in which some Word files with numerous tracked changes and comments were slow. It also includes a variety of security updates: see details.
What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.
Get more info about Version 2502 (Build 18526.20168).
Release date: March 5, 2025
This build fixes a wide variety of bugs, including one in Word in which the default font size may not be 12pt as expected, and another in which PowerPoint automatically closed when the system went into hibernate or sleep mode.
Get more info about Version 2502 (Build 18526.20144).
Release date: February 11, 2025
This build removes the option to display Track Changes balloons in left margin in Word. It also includes a variety of security updates. See “Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates” for details.
What IT needs to know: Because this is a security update, it should be applied relatively soon. Over the next few weeks, check for reports about problematic issues, and if all seems well, apply the update.
Get more info about Version 2501 (Build 18429.20158).
Across the stories today, a common thread emerges: conservation is working, but the planet isn’t waiting for us to catch up. From Kent’s butterfly meadows to Cambodia’s tiger corridors, dedicated efforts are bringing species back from the brink — yet climate disasters are simultaneously accelerating faster than anyone predicted.
The Duke of Burgundy butterfly’s 90-fold population surge in Kent represents the kind of conservation victory that reminds us what’s possible with focused effort and patience. Similarly, Kyrgyzstan’s massive wildlife corridor for snow leopards and Cambodia’s ambitious tiger reintroduction program signal that countries are thinking beyond traditional protected areas toward landscape-scale solutions. These aren’t just feel-good stories — they’re blueprints for how targeted conservation can reverse seemingly impossible odds.
But the day’s coverage points to growing momentum around an uncomfortable truth: even our biggest successes are racing against accelerating climate impacts. In Indonesia, extreme rainfall killed 58 of the world’s rarest orangutans in just four days — a 7% population loss that no conservation program can quickly replace. Meanwhile, Antarctica recorded winter temperatures above 15°C, shattering records and leaving scientists describing conditions as “very strange.”
Behind the numbers are real communities adapting in real time. Indonesian fishers are turning to mangrove restoration and crab farming as traditional catches dwindle. Coffee farmers worldwide are rediscovering forgotten species as familiar varieties fail under changing conditions. In the Cotswolds, citizen scientists are filling gaps left by overstretched agencies, uncovering “worrying” pollution levels in rivers that official monitoring might have missed.
The tension between protection and development threads through multiple stories today. Property developers argue that new environmental regulations will drive up housing costs, while environmental groups fight to prevent SpaceX from acquiring wildlife refuge land in Texas. In Ethiopia, successful conservation efforts are preserving nature but may be undermining local food security — a reminder that progress and pressure often arrive together.
Perhaps most revealing is how different institutions are responding to crisis. While the U.S. weakens marine protections domestically, it’s actively policing illegal fishing internationally. Kenya becomes the first African nation to receive UN climate disaster compensation, while proposed federal budget cuts threaten to eliminate Great Lakes monitoring programs. China’s Belt and Road Initiative generates massive emissions through steel-heavy construction, even as solar power surpasses coal in the U.S. for the first time in history.
The enforcement stories offer a different kind of hope. South Africa sentenced two pangolin traffickers to eight years in prison — a serious consequence in a field often marked by weak penalties. Durham’s chemical company faces state lawsuits for decades of toxic contamination, while an 80-year-old Texas shrimper traveled 8,000 miles to Taiwan to confront a petrochemical giant at their shareholder meeting.
What emerges is a picture of environmental action happening at every scale — from butterfly meadows to international courts — but also of systems under unprecedented stress. As extreme weather kills endangered species faster than breeding programs can replace them, and as climate displacement intensifies while immigration laws offer no protection, the question isn’t whether we can solve individual problems. It’s whether we can solve them fast enough, and at the scale the planet now demands.
The post Environmental News Roundup: Rare Duke of Burgundy Butterfly Population Soars 90-Fold in Kent Conservation Success first appeared on EnviroLink Network.
In 2011, miles of rock shifted deep underwater in the Japan Trench, causing an earthquake that deformed the seafloor and caused a devastating tsunami. Off the Eastern Coast of the Tōhoku region in Japan, a huge piece of the Earth’s crust carrying the Pacific Ocean, known as a tectonic plate, is forcing itself beneath Japan and into the Earth’s interior. Researchers think rock from this plate pushed against rock far beneath Japan, building pressure until it became too great. The lower plate slipped, spreading energy from the slip site and causing the earthquake.
Plate slip can cause 2 types of outcomes. The first occurs kilometers deep in the Earth’s crust, causing earthquakes too small to trigger tsunamis. The second type causes extreme slip events that begin deep in the crust, like the 2011 event that extended into the Japan Trench and warped the seafloor. The moving seafloor displaces seawater, causing a tsunami. These events are referred to as slip-to-the-trench style earthquakes.
Researchers think this phenomenon is not unique to 2011, as Japan has a long history of tsunami-causing earthquakes. Charlotte Pizer and colleagues investigated sediment from the Japan Trench to unearth the geologic history of slip-to-the-trench style earthquakes.
In between earthquakes, Japanese islands continuously shed sediment that fills the trench, forming horizontal layers. Slip-to-the-trench earthquakes bend and fold these layers. The team hypothesized that if they found these folds in the Japan Trench and dated them, they could catalogue the record of slip-to-the-trench style earthquakes in the area.
Earthquakes like these occur repeatedly, meaning that younger ones can erase folds caused by older ones. To account for this overprinting, the researchers chose a study site within the Japan Trench about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of where the most severe earthquakes occur. This site is only mildly deformed by slip-to-the-trench earthquakes since it’s so far from their source, making it easier for the team to identify individual events.
Pizer and her group pieced together data collected from this site by previous researchers to reconstruct Japan’s earthquake history. They compiled 3 main types of data. Two of these were images of sediment layers in the trench constructed from reflections of vibrations sent into the ground, called seismic profiles.
The first seismic profile captured the full trench, over 1 kilometer deep (about 0.6 miles), at 5-meter (16-feet) resolution. Using this method, any layers smaller than 5 meters thick won’t appear in the image. The second seismic profile captured only the top 40 meters (130 feet) of sediment, but could detect layers as thin as 10 centimeters (4 inches).
The final type of data they used came from a 36-meter (120-foot) long cylinder of sediment extracted from the bottom of the trench, called a sediment core. Researchers in the past tied layers within this sediment core to historic earthquake events. They showed that it recorded 2 specific earthquakes in the area, the Kyotoku earthquake of 1454 CE, and the Jogan earthquake of 869 CE, both of which likely caused tsunamis.
Pizer’s team could observe the depth of the Kyotoku and Jogan earthquake layers taken from the sediment core in their high-resolution seismic profile of the trench. In these high-resolution data, they noticed that deformation occurred in the sediment up to the layer marking the Jogan earthquake, but not above it, meaning deformation of the trench happened during this 869 CE event.
The high-resolution data were only able to image sediments from recent earthquakes since 869 CE, but the low-resolution profile, which imaged the full trench, was able to capture the deeper, older record. When they looked deeper into the trench sediment, the researchers noticed that deformation from the 869 CE event had spread from where the tectonic plate is colliding with Japan. They saw at least 6 more similarly deformed layers, implying each was its own slip-to-the-trench event, although the dates of these events are unknown.
Pizer and colleagues concluded that slip-to-the-trench earthquakes are long-standing, common events in the Japan Trench. They hope future scientists will continue to research this site to better assess tsunami risks in Japan.
The post The history of tsunami-causing earthquakes in Japan appeared first on Sciworthy.
When it comes to AI deployments, IT leaders are often caught in an awkward middle space, trying to reconcile conflicting directives from senior management with constantly changing AI models, capabilities, and costs; data governance and security needs; and the limitations of their own team.
“Very few real benefits can be attained by simply purchasing an AI product and giving it to employees. Vendors have been overselling that fallacy for the past three years,” said Nader Henein, a Gartner VP analyst.
“The reality is that strong AI value and consistent ROI are almost always a result of deep and intentional integration of AI capabilities into existing workflows. For that you need specialized teams, which do not come cheap, and organizations have been recruiting those teams in a variety of ways,” Heinen said.
Among the options available to IT leaders looking for help with AI deployments are traditional IT consultancies, AI-specific consultancies, and independent contractors. Large enterprises with deep pockets can consider acquiring an AI firm and integrating its technology and expert staff. The use of open source to reduce vendor lock-in is a strategy that can sit on top of those others, an approach that Capital One has used.
But the option that has been getting the most attention recently is bringing in forward-deployed engineers (FDEs), teams of experts from AI vendors that embed with a customer’s in-house engineers to oversee AI rollouts within the enterprise environment. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have recently announced FDE offerings, for example, and Microsoft is partnering with consulting giant EY in a new FDE program for agentic AI deployments.
Engineering teams employed by AI vendors have key strengths, such as understanding their models better than anyone else, having experience integrating those models into different types of enterprise environments, and knowing about upcoming model capabilities before they’re announced. But they also have the obvious drawback of vendor lock-in. Even if future rollouts are not within their contracted deliverables, those vendor employees could subtly influence a client’s future AI efforts.
Flavio Villanustre, CISO for LexisNexis Risk Solutions, cautions IT executives to move into FDE programs carefully.
FDEs “are financially incentivized to grow customers’ use of a vendor’s AI products and to create stickiness with that vendor’s services,” he said. “While FDEs may be a reasonable value-added service by the AI vendor, customers should always find other unbiased expert opinions that can evaluate competitive solutions across multiple vendors.”
This is particularly important at a time when “investor-subsidized AI token business models are starting to show cracks,” Villanustre said. “Also, in the current rapid pace of innovation in this field where AI vendors are constantly leapfrogging each other, retaining the agility to move from one vendor to the next could create significant competitive advantages.”
Analysts, consultants, and other industry experts who spoke with Computerworld about FDEs echoed Villanustre’s caution, citing concerns around hidden costs, confidentiality, observability, and vendor lock-in.
A key issue that IT executives need to consider is how long the FDE teams will be needed. The enterprise will likely need an ongoing series of AI deployments synced with the current AI model(s). If help is needed today, why would that change tomorrow?
Enterprises tend to overlook those longer-term costs, said John Sangyeob Kim, an AI engineer at software development vendor Solidroad.
“Deployment is maybe 20% of the total cost. The other 80% is keeping the system running through model upgrades, data drift, and edge cases that only appear after months in production,” Kim said. “Most contracts price the first part and assume the rest. Deployment isn’t the hard part of enterprise AI anymore. The next eighteen months are.”
And whether it’s intentional or not, FDEs will naturally favor their own product portfolio — it’s what they know best.
“FDEs from model labs are good at making their own models work in your environment. They are less suited for multi-model systems, because their incentive is to keep you inside their ecosystem,” Kim said.
Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research, said IT leaders should look at the FDE model as a strategy involving ongoing operational power.
“Whoever shapes the deployment pattern shapes the enterprise’s future muscle memory. Whoever owns the evaluation layer owns the truth layer. Whoever controls the integration logic controls the dependency map,” Gogia said. “This is why the FDE model matters. It is not just another delivery option. It is the frontier AI vendor moving closer to the customer’s workflow, operating model, and decision architecture.”
That proximity cuts both ways, Gogia noted. “FDEs are embedded inside the customer’s [environment], but they are also connected to the vendor’s commercial center of gravity. Their instinct will be to build around the model family, tooling assumptions, deployment patterns, and product roadmap they know best. This is perfectly natural. It is also precisely why CIOs must be cautious,” he said.
Allowing AI vendor employees an outsized say in enterprise deployment decisions could lock in model vendor dependency, which in turn will fuel high prices that can’t be fought effectively.
“FDEs can accelerate deployment and deepen dependency at the same time,” Gogia said. “Frontier AI vendors are no longer content to sell access to models. They increasingly want to shape how enterprises deploy intelligence. That is a larger prize.”
FDE post-departure risks are severe and often underappreciated, according to Justin Greis, CEO of consulting firm Acceligence and former head of the North American cybersecurity practice at McKinsey.
For one thing, the FDE team learns a massive number of operational details from the enterprise deployment. Although NDAs and confidentiality contracts protect any data accessed, they often don’t regulate observed processes and procedures.
“The learnings are absolutely going to be taken from client to client,” Greis said. “Whoever helps deploy AI will learn far more than what appears in the statement of work. They will learn the real workflows, the undocumented exceptions, the data-quality gaps, the approval bottlenecks, the security workarounds, and the places where the business depends on a few people knowing what to do when the process breaks. That knowledge may be as sensitive and precious as the data itself.”
Another critical but often overlooked issue is how much meaningful control will IT have over the project if and when the FDE team leaves.
“The danger is not using outside help. Most companies will need outside help,” Greis said. “The danger is using outside help in a way that leaves the enterprise less capable and more dependent when the engagement is over.”
It is precisely those operational decisions that IT often neglects, said Solidroad’s Kim.
“The best predictor of success is not the vendor. It is whether one internal engineer truly understands the system before the implementer leaves. What matters is who owns the evaluation loop after the demo,” Kim said.
“What happens to our prompts, scorers, and guardrails when the model version changes? If we paused this engagement tomorrow, what would actually stop working, by design or by accident?” Kim asked. “Where do you want the enterprise’s AI learning, control, and dependency to live after the engagement is over?”
Kim argues that observability — the ability to understand and manage all elements of a complex enterprise environment — is a critical function to which IT often gives insufficient attention. Determining whether the project uses the enterprise’s observability stack or the vendor’s observability stack is crucial.
“If the implementer is using their observability stack, that is fine during the build, but you need a plan to migrate it to something you own before they leave; otherwise the visibility walks out of the door with them,” Kim said. “If they are using yours, that is the best case. It means they are working inside the system your team will operate long-term.”
A major problem crops up when they are using neither the enterprise’s nor the vendor’s observability stack. “Neither means they are building the system without any production observability layer at all, and you inherit a system you cannot see into. The first time something breaks in production, you have no traces, no failure history, and no way to tell whether the issue is a model regression, a data problem, or a code bug,” Kim said.
“If observability was not a priority during the build, evals and regression testing usually weren’t either, so you are inheriting a system you cannot measure and cannot safely change. That’s the worst possible handoff position,” he said.
While the FDE approach is not new, it is just now beginning a surge in popularity, and there are a finite number of such specialists available. That means not all companies even have the option of using FDEs.
This availability disconnect is especially prominent for non-US deployments, where on-site FDEs are rarer, said Gartner’s Henein. “Where is the development happening? There may not be FDEs available in that region,” he said.
There are plenty of other places enterprises can turn to for AI help. Ishraq Khan, CEO of coding productivity tool vendor Kodezi, encourages IT executives to consider a wide range of options but notes that all approaches have major drawbacks.
“Traditional consultancies are usually stronger at governance, process, compliance, and organizational coordination. They know how large enterprises operate politically and structurally. The downside is that many move slower and often lack deep frontier AI specialization,” Khan said.
Gogia from Greyhound Research put it more colorfully: Traditional IT consulting firms “know how to get legal, risk, security, finance, HR, and business units into the same room without anybody setting fire to the carpet. For regulated enterprises, that matters,” he said.
Specialized AI consultancies have a different set of strengths, Khan said. “AI-native consultancies move much faster and are often more technically current, but many are still immature operationally. Some can build impressive demos without fully understanding long-term maintainability, governance, or production reliability.”
Greis from Acceligence commented on two other options for bringing in outside AI help. Using an independent contractor “can be great for eval design, architecture reviews, red teaming, agent design, or getting a stalled team unstuck,” he said, but it can increase the risk of “key-person dependency,” where a single external person is the only one who understands the system.
As for purchasing an AI firm and onboarding its employees, a practice known as “acquihiring,” Greis said it can work well when the AI capability and expertise being brought in are truly strategic for the acquiring enterprise. But there is a risk that the acquired team will be smothered by the parent company’s bureaucracy: “You buy a speedboat, bolt it to an aircraft carrier, and then wonder why it stopped moving,” he said.
Finally, an open-source strategy can give companies flexibility and reduce vendor dependence, but “many companies underestimate the operational burden that comes with it,” Kodezi’s Khan said. “Open source only helps if the organization has the internal talent and discipline to maintain it properly.”
Bottom line: enterprises need to define their true objectives before deciding on an approach. Khan offered several key questions for CIOs to consider: “Who owns the deployment after implementation? Can we move providers later without rebuilding everything? What happens if the vendor relationship changes or disappears? Are we optimizing for short-term deployment speed or long-term operational resilience?”
In any scenario where outside firms have direct access to enterprise systems, IT needs to be kept fully in the loop. “The worst outcome is when an enterprise successfully deploys AI but no longer fully understands how its own systems operate underneath,” Khan said.
| Pros | Cons | |
| AI vendor FDEs | + Best expertise on the main model being used | – Vendor lock-in – Operational detail leaks |
| Traditional IT consultancies | + Best understanding of change management, legacy integration, global rollout, governance, and operating-model redesign | – Can be too slow, too expensive, or too generic |
| AI consulting firms | + More practical AI deployment experience than traditional consultants + Less vendor lock-in than model-provider FDEs | – May not sufficiently understand enterprise-grade requirements: security, identity, auditability, compliance, incident response, cost controls, and long-term maintainability |
| Independent contractors | + Useful for precision tasks: eval design, architecture reviews, red teaming, agent design, or getting a stalled team unstuck | – Risk of ‘key-person dependency’ |
| ‘Acquihiring’ an AI firm | + Works when the acquired capability is truly strategic | – Acquired team can be smothered inside existing bureaucracy |
| Deploying open-source products | + Reduces dependency on one model vendor + Attractive for data sovereignty, control over enterprise systems, cost efficiencies, and regulated environments | – Enterprise takes on full responsibility for security, patching, evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and lifecycle management |
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