Briefly 2026-05-12    

FRANCE

Ship passenger tests positive for hantavirus

A French woman evacuated from a cruise ship has tested positive for hantavirus and her health worsened in the hospital overnight, French Health Minister Stephanie Rist said on Monday. The woman was among five French passengers repatriated Sunday to Paris from the MV Hondius. She developed symptoms on the flight to Paris, Rist told public broadcaster France Inter. The World Health Organization recommended close monitoring of the former passengers, and many countries quarantined them. The US Department of Health and Human Services said on Sunday that one of the 17 US citizens being repatriated had tested mildly positive for the Andes strain of the virus, while a second had shown mild symptoms.

EUROPEAN UNION

Commission in talks with OpenAI, Anthropic

The European Commission is in ongoing discussions with US artificial intelligence giants OpenAI and Anthropic, a spokesman said on Monday. Spokesman Thomas Regnier said the Commission welcomed OpenAI's proactive engagement, including its intent to grant access to its new AI model. He added that the Commission has had four or five meetings with Anthropic though no discussions on possible access to its AI models have taken place yet."With one (OpenAI), you have a company proactively offering to give access to the company. With the other one (Anthropic), we have good exchanges though we're not at a stage where we can speculate on potential access or not", Regnier said.