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Artificial intelligence chatbot makers OpenAI and Meta say they are adjusting how their chatbots respond to teenagers asking questions about suicide or showing signs of mental and emotional distress.

OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, said Tuesday it is preparing to roll out new controls enabling parents to link their accounts to their teen’s account.

Parents can choose which features to disable and “receive notifications when the system detects their teen is in a moment of acute distress,” according to a company blog post that says the changes will go into effect this fall.

Regardless of a user’s age, the company says its chatbots will attempt to redirect the most distressing conversations to more capable AI models that can provide a better response.

EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.

The announcement comes a week after the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging that ChatGPT coached the California boy in planning and taking his own life earlier this year.

Jay Edelson, the family’s attorney, on Tuesday described the OpenAI announcement as “vague promises to do better” and “nothing more than OpenAI’s crisis management team trying to change the subject.”

Altman “should either unequivocally say that he believes ChatGPT is safe or immediately pull it from the market,” Edelson said.

Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, also said it is now blocking its chatbots from talking with teens about self-harm, suicide, disordered eating and inappropriate romantic conversations, and instead directs them to expert resources. Meta already offers parental controls on teen accounts.

A study published last week in the medical journal Psychiatric Services found inconsistencies in how three popular artificial intelligence chatbots responded to queries about suicide.

The study by researchers at the RAND Corporation found a need for “further refinement” in ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude. The researchers did not study Meta’s chatbots.

The study’s lead author, Ryan McBain, said Tuesday that “it’s encouraging to see OpenAI and Meta introducing features like parental controls and routing sensitive conversations to more capable models, but these are incremental steps.”

“Without independent safety benchmarks, clinical testing, and enforceable standards, we’re still relying on companies to self-regulate in a space where the risks for teenagers are uniquely high,” said McBain, a senior policy researcher at RAND and assistant professor at Harvard University’s medical school.

Elon Musk may not have founded Tesla, but he has become the company, and it’s become him. Now sales are plummeting, and while the share price is up 65% in the past year, investors are concerned about the close link between Musk, with his multiple projects and controversial political stands, and a company that makes cars and promises to create the next industrial revolution. To understand what Musk must do next, BBTW editor Peter Green spoke with Howard Yu, the Lego professor of management and innovation at IMD Business School in Lausanne.

That visionary talk and insane work ethic are okay in my mind. Nvidia $NVDA and Taiwan Semiconductor $TSM are also insane on the work ethic front. What is less desirable is when the CEO’s focus is less about chasing purely scientific breakthroughs or unparalleled service to customers, but instead they get distracted by politics and don’t seem able to focus. Then we have a problem.

Find a successor. Delegate stuff he doesn’t like, just as he does with SpaceX. Build a strong bench of competent managers. If he’s Steve Jobs, he’ll also need a Tim Cook.

Nope. That’s his personality. Maybe he’ll learn. Again, he did so at SpaceX. But we haven’t yet seen him moving in that direction for Tesla so far. Perhaps he’s running into a wall when it comes to attracting top-level, world-class, big-name talent.

Rolling out the robotaxi. If you cannot get Robotaxi, how can anybody trust you can do a humanoid robot? So that would be a not-too-distant-future test that Elon Musk is facing.

He’s just not interested in that part. But what he’s interested in, of course, is AI, maybe potentially taking over OpenAI, continuing to accelerate Grok, and continuing to go into humanoids. So, in the ideal world, he would be able to delegate, just like at SpaceX, the day-to-day operations to someone to just run Tesla.

That is the Tesla conundrum: at some point, you need to pass the torch to the next generation. Other companies that stay relevant over centuries develop generational leaders. And Elon Musk, because of his personal insecurity, you can read this in his biography, he appears to feel that when he becomes dispensable, that threatens his own self-worth.

That would be a setback. Which are the companies that have gone through maturity and a new generation of managers? Microsoft has gone through that, Google has gone through that, Tesla has not. If something happened to Elon, even when he has put the company on a path to success, because of the sheer persona he imposed on the company, there’s no way that Tesla’s not going to suffer for a few years. And if deep down in the organization, there’s no one really able to figure it out as a CEO, it would be gone forever.

Don’t increase the exposure, but just hold.

This interview has been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.

—Peter S. Green

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• Google, Apple, and the domino effect: Sometime soon U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta will decide on a remedy for Google’s illegal monopoly on Internet search and ads. At the heart of the dilemma is the $20 billion a year that Google parent Alphabet $GOOGL pays Apple $AAPL to make Google the default search engine on all Apple devices, directing many more billions of dollars in search ad revenue to Google. It sure looked like curtains for Google’s endless cash stream. But the impending dominance of AI results in internet search may have completely shifted the paradigm: Now it’s Apple that could see its pre-tax profit crash 7% and Google that could save 20% of its cash flow, freed from expensive arrangements that are suddenly yielding less demand. And that still might not help consumers escape the monopoly: Microsoft’s 20-year, $100 billion bet on Bing has only yielded a 7.65% market share to Google’s 86%.
• Exxon’s Russia Play: Oil giant Exxon Mobil $XOM has met with senior Russian energy officials to revive a joint venture to pump oil and gas from fields off Russia’s Pacific coast, the Wall Street Journal reports. Washington has allowed U.S. companies to talk with Russia about assets left there when sanctions were imposed after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Letting Exxon back in as part of a peace deal has been part of on-again, off-again talks with Russia. Exxon wrote off its Russia stake for $4 billion, and wants to get that back.
• Nvidia Envy? The world’s most valuable public company did it again: Posting record sales of $46.7 billion in the quarter ending in July, with net income of $26.4 billion up 59% from a year ago. Still, Nvidia $NVDA shares dropped 3% in aftermarket trading as the company said the China-U.S. trade war could hit sales in the second half of the year, and as analysts worry the rush to build AI computing centers may stall, stymied by a lack of electrical power, and uncertain demand as dozens of new data hubs come online at once. That could crimp demand for Nvidia’s famous AI chips. CEO Jensen Huang said he sees companies spending $3 trillion to $4 trillion over the next five years on AI chips, and expects to capture about a third of that.
• Peet’s coffee joins an original crowd. Look around these days and there is definitely a Dr. Pepper craze. Keurig Dr Pepper $KDP is buying Peets for about $18 billion. Keurig Dr Pepper, the coffee and fizzy drink firm created in 2018 when the OG soft drink owner was bought by the original coffee pod maker, hasn’t been doing well, as the coffee industry is losing its buzz from a grande mix of factors: Soaring bean prices, up 49% so far this year, a climate-led 18% decline in Brazilian coffee production from last year, and a 50% Trump tariff on Brazilian imports. Keurig says it plans to split its coffee business from soda (it also owns 7-Up and Snapple), and complete the deal in the first half of 2026. Shares dropped about 18% on the news.
• The Cracker’s back: Cracker Barrel $CBRL is bringing back the old guy. A streamlined design for the roadside rest stop’s iconic logo went over about as well as New Coke, with President Donald Trump urging the chain to “admit a mistake,” and revert to the old logo. “They got a Billion Dollars worth of free publicity if they play their cards right,” Trump posted on his own social media platform, for 42,000 likes. “We said we would listen, and we have. Our new logo is going away and our “Old Timer” will remain,” Cracker Barrel tweeted, to 227,000 likes. Shares in Cracker Barrel dropped 9% on the new logo’s announcement, but are now 4.4% higher than before the kerfuffle began.
• This clock don’t Tok: The deadline for Chinese-owned TikTok to find a U.S. buyer will probably be pushed back from mid-September, as talks to find a new owner drag on. Trump says he has “very substantial American buyers” lined up, and the White House also launched its own TikTok channel.
• You Got Amazoned: Corporate employees at Whole Foods are losing their supermarket discount and other perks, including four weeks of annual work-from-home, under a plan that will see them get new job offers from Whole Foods parent Amazon $AMZN. Since Amazon paid $13.7 billion for Whole Foods in 2017, sales are up more than 40%, but market share is down as Walmart $WMT and Costco $COST grab more grocery dollars.

• Hot Soon? After a failed partnership with McDonald’s $MCD , Krispy Kreme $DNUT is taking its oversugared donuts to big box retailers, including Costco $COST and Walmart $WMT (them, again?!), in an effort to rebuild the brand. Shares have dropped 66% in the past year, and sales dropped 13.4% in the last quarter. Analysts at JP Morgan Chase $JPM downgraded Krispy Kreme this week, as shares dropped 3.49% on Wednesday. The problem bedeviling Krispy Kreme? Getting their donuts to the store while fresh, at a reasonable cost. That failure killed the McD’s partnership. As the JP Morgan analyst noted: “The reality is this donut has nearly all of its appeal when eaten freshly fried & glazed within minutes of being made.”
• Who said Love can’t buy you money? It wasn’t Phil Collins, was it? Still, news that Taylor Swift was engaged to Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce boosted shares in some surprising stocks. Signet Jewelers $SIG rose more than 7%, Ralph Lauren $RL , whose clothes both were wearing in photos was flat, while American Eagle Outfitters $AEO , with which Kelce’s own sportswear brand Tru Kolors has a collab going, rose more than 8%. Meanwhile this is every unmarried guy in a three-year-plus relationship on hearing the news:
• If you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em: Frontier Airlines’ $ULCC offers to buy discount rival Spirit $FLYY have been rejected so many times, that it’s now angling to steal Spirit customers by adding some 20 routes aimed at Spirit’s main markets, including Ft. Lauderdale. Spirit is still trying to restructure, but that’s looking a lot more like a garage sale, with planes and gates up for bids. Spirit had projected a $252 million profit this year, but it’s already lost $256 million from mid-March through June.
• Can Hooters make a comeback? That’s the aim of a Hooters franchisee named Neil Kiefer, who’s trying to convince a Chicago bankruptcy court to let him manage the chain’s 100 or so bankrupt locations. Kiefer says he wants to downgrade the licentiousness and make Hooters “family-friendly,” while still keeping it “delightfully tacky.” Part of his plan: Banning bikini bottoms and lengthening the servers’ shorts by about an inch.

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• Search results: AI startup Perplexity says it will pay media companies each time its search engine uses a news article to answer a request. The micropayments will come from subscriptions to Perplexity’s Comet Plus. Publishers want to be paid for letting their words train AI models, and last year Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones, part of News Corp $NWSA sued Perplexity for copyright infringement. The perplexity arrangement could signal a new model to provide compensation for content. Hey Grok, should content be free? “A hybrid makes sense: free access to basic or essential content, with premium options for specialized or high-effort work. Total freedom sounds nice until you realize someone’s gotta pay the bills.”
• Apple Radio goes out-of-app: Apple’s $AAPL six curated radio stations will be available on non-Apple devices for the first time, as the tech giant tries to catch up with Spotify $SPOT . Apple’s market share of digital music subscribers in the U.S. fell to 25% at the end of last year from 30% in 2020, while Spotify’s share grew to 37% from 31%. The deal will put the Apple stations on TuneIn, which has 75 million monthly active users.

• The Apprentice: Fed Chair Edition: “You’re Fired!” That’s what Donald Trump said to Fed governor Lisa Cook, but Cook says there’s no valid grounds to fire her, and on Thursday sued Trump in federal court to block her sacking. The suit sets up a landmark legal battle over the independence of the Fed, and the limits of executive power. Trump wants to people the Fed with his own supporters, who would presumably do his bidding on interest rates and bank regulation.
• Tarifftown: Remember that $550 billion Pres. Trump said Japan would invest in the U.S., with the White House directing how it’s spent, and the U.S. keeping 90% of the profits? Commerce Sec. Howard Lutnick told Fox’s Laura Ingraham on Monday night that the deal will be signed this week, and Japan’s investment would be “at the hand of Donald Trump, and he can go invest it.” But that’s not what the Japanese said when the deal was first agreed to. Tokyo’s chief trade negotiator said Japan would offer a mix of investment, loans, and loan guarantees, with no promise that the investments would be new, or under Trump’s control.
• The Gilded Age: There’s a new crypto lifeline for Trump’s troubled Trump Media & Technology Group $DJT, which is down 50% since he took office. On Tuesday, the Truth Social owner said online exchange Crypto.com will seed a new joint venture with $1 billion in CRO tokens, a form of cryptocurrency it created, while Yorkville Advisers will provide a $5 billion line of credit to acquire about $6.4 billion of CRO tokens. It’s not clear where either the line of credit or the profit will come from, but it’s notable that Trump Media said it will buy $150 million in CRO tokens, while Crypto.com will purchase $50 million in Trump Media stock, the only part of the transaction that appears to be made with cash.

• Tenth times’ a charm: A tenth launch of SpaceX’s 403-foot-tall Starship rocket made it successfully to orbit, where it released a bunch of dummy satellites, as engineers carried out a stress test of the often-problematic launch vehicle. Musk wants the Starship to take a payload to Mars next year.
• Not as I do: While Musk has been suing Sam Altman for turning OpenAI into a for-profit corporation after Musk helped launch it as a non-profit, he quietly changed the status of xAI from a Nevada public benefit corporation into a simple for-profit firm. Meanwhile, on Monday, Musk ratcheted up his attack on OpenAI, alleging in a lawsuit in Texas that Apple’s partnership with OpenAI to power AI on Apple devices is a “monopolistic collaboration” that disadvantages xAI’s Grok. Apple’s 65% share of the US smartphone market and OpenAI’s 85% share of the AI chatbot market makes a collaboration between the two monopolistic, Musk said.

NEW YORK (AP) — About 780,000 pressure washers sold at retailers like Home Depot are being recalled across the U.S. and Canada, due to a projectile hazard that has resulted in fractures and other injuries among some consumers.

According to a Thursday recall notice published by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, TTI Outdoor Power Equipment is recalling certain models of its Ryobi-branded electric pressure washers because the products’ capacitor can overheat and burst, “causing parts to be forcefully ejected.”

That poses serious impact risks to users or bystanders. To date, the CPSC notes, the power tool and equipment company has received 135 reports of capacitors overheating in the U.S. — including 41 reports of explosions that resulted in 32 injuries and/or fractures to consumers’ fingers, hands, face and eyes. A corresponding notice from Health Canada noted that no additional incidents were reported in Canada.

Consumers in possession of the now-recalled pressure washers are urged to stop using them immediately and visit Ryobi’s recall website to learn about how to receive a free repair kit, which includes a replacement capacitor.

The Ryobi washers under recall have model numbers RY142300 and RY142711VNM. About 764,000 were sold in the U.S., in addition to 16,000 in Canada.

In the U.S. these products were sold at Home Depot and Direct Tools Factory Outlet between July 2017 and June 2024, the CPSC notes, for about $300 to $400 in stores and online.

TTI Outdoor Power Equipment is a subsidary of Techtronic Industries (TTI). The Associated Press reached out to the company for further comments on Thursday.

Beyond Thursday’s pressure washer recall, TTI also recalled Ryobi-branded mowers and hedge trimmers earlier this year — due to fire and laceration hazards, respectively.

NEW YORK (AP) — Europeans angry at Elon Musk still aren’t buying his cars months after the billionaire predicted a “major rebound” in Tesla sales, data released Thursday shows.

Tesla sales plunged 40% in July in the 27 European Union countries compared with the year earlier even as sales overall of electric vehicle soared, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. Meanwhile sales of Chinese rival BYD continued to climb fast, grabbing 1.1% market share of all car sales in the month versus Tesla’s 0.7%.

Tesla stock fell 1.5% in afternoon trading Thursday.

Musk angered many Europeans by wading into politics there, embracing far-right candidates, calling a British prime minister an “evil tyrant” who belongs in prison and telling Germans “things will get very, very much worse” in their country if they didn’t vote for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party. Protests broke out in several cities, including a hanging of the billionaire in effigy in Milan and posters in London likening him to a Nazi.

The company has several other problems that have hurt sales.

The company is still awaiting European regulatory approval to allow Tesla owners there to use its most advanced driver-assistance features available in the U.S., a big appeal to buyers. Musk had predicted approval of its so-called Full-Self Driving software was going to happen by March of this year.

Another hit came from Tesla’s decision to close down factories temporarily earlier this year to retool for a new version of its best selling Model Y sport utility vehicle

The company is hoping the introduction of cheaper Teslas in the last three months of this year will boost sales.

Overall, the company sold 6,600 cars in July in the EU versus 11,465 a year ago. The plunge came despite a 39% surge in battery electric vehicle sales overall.

For the first seven months of the year, Tesla sales have fallen 44%. For that entire period, as opposed to just July, Tesla accounted for 1.2% of European sales of all types —- battery, hybrid and gas powered —- versus 0.9% for BYD.

President Donald Trump has fired one of two Democratic members of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to break a 2-2 tie before the body considers the largest railroad merger ever proposed.

Board member Robert E. Primus said on LinkedIn that he received an email from the White House Wednesday night terminating the position he has held since he was appointed by Trump in his first term. The vacancy would allow Trump to appoint two additional Republicans to the board before its decision on the Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger though the Senate would have to confirm them.

Primus was the only board member to oppose Canadian Pacific’s acquisition of Kansas City Southern railroad when it was approved two years ago because he was concerned it would hurt competition. He was named Board chairman last year by former President Joe Biden and led the board until Trump, after his election, elevated Board member Patrick Fuchs to Chairman.

This follows Trump’s previous firings of board members at the National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Reserve, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which are all supposed to be independent agencies.

“Robert Primus did not align with the President’s America First agenda, and was terminated from his position by the White House,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said. ”The administration intends to nominate new, more qualified members to the Surface Transportation Board in short order.”

Primus said he doesn’t think the firing is valid because the White House didn’t offer any cause for it, and he plans to fight. He also rejected their explanation for the move because he has long tried to encourage railroads to serve every industry better and help them grow, but he has already been removed from the STB website.

“I’ve been pro growth across the board in terms of encouraging growth in the freight rail network, which in turn will grow our national economy. So if that’s not being in line with America first, then I don’t know what America he’s saying is first,” Primus said to The Associated Press.

He said the firings at all these agencies threaten their independence and credibility. Primus said in his tenure the STB always strove to be impartial and apolitical.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who serves on the Commerce Committee, said it’s clear that “Donald Trump is trying to stack the deck so the federal government rubberstamps the merger as a huge favor for Wall Street and wealthy railroad owners.” She said Primus has been a fair regulator who worked hard to make sure railroads delivered for their customers and focused on safety.

Every rail worker union and the nonprofit Rail Passengers Association also quickly condemned the firing.

“The explanation provided for this decision — that his position has been “eliminated” — is nothing short of outrageous. Appointed bodies established through federal code are not designed to be erased at the whim of powerful corporate interests," said the SMART-TD union that represents concductors. “This action is unprecedented, unlawful in spirit, and reeks of direct interference from hedge funds and the nation’s largest rail carriers.”

The board is set to consider Union Pacific’s $85 billion acquisition of Norfolk Southern in the next two years before deciding whether to approve the nation’s first transcontinental railroad and reduce the number of major freight railroads in the U.S. to five.

Primus said the biggest problems in the industry are the lack of growth and poor service after all the deep cuts railroads have made over the last decade in the interest of efficiency and improving profitability. He hasn’t taken a position on the UP-NS deal, but he doesn’t think mergers will necessarily improve competition.

“We don’t need to merge to increase competition. We need to understand that we have to grow,” he said.

The average rate on a 30-year U.S. mortgage slipped this week to its lowest level in 10 months, but remains close to where it’s been in recent weeks.

The long-term rate eased to 6.56% from 6.58% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 6.35%.

Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, were unchanged from last week. The average rate held steady at 5.69%. A year ago, it was 5.51%, Freddie Mac said.

Elevated mortgage rates have added to a slump in the U.S. housing market that began in early 2022, when rates began climbing from pandemic lows.

For much of the year, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage has hovered relatively close to its 2025 high of just above 7%, set in mid-January. It’s has mostly trended lower six weeks in a row and is now at the lowest level since Oct. 24, when it averaged 6.54%.

The recent downward trend in mortgage rates bodes well for prospective homebuyers who have been held back by stubbornly high home financing costs. But it has yet to translate into a turnaround for home sales, which have remained sluggish this year after sinking in 2024 to their lowest level in nearly 30 years.

Economists generally expect the average rate on a 30-year mortgage to remain near the mid-6% range this year.

Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, from the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy decisions to bond market investors’ expectations for the economy and inflation.

The main barometer is the 10-year Treasury yield, which lenders use as a guide to pricing home loans. The yield was at 4.21% at midday Thursday, down from 4.24% late Wednesday.

The yield has been mostly easing since mid-July as bond traders weighed data on inflation, the job market and how the potential economic impact of the Trump administration’s tariffs may influence the Fed’s interest rate policy moves.

In a high-profile speech last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled the central bank may cut rates soon even as inflation risks remain elevated.

Powell noted that there are risks of both rising unemployment and stubbornly higher inflation, and suggested that with hiring sluggish, the job market could weaken further. That could warrant the Fed adjusting its “policy stance,” he said.

The central bank has so far been hesitant to cut interest rates out of fear that Trump’s tariffs could push inflation higher, but data showing hiring slowed last month have fueled speculation that the Fed will cut its main short-term interest rate next month.

The Fed doesn’t set mortgage rates. And while a Fed rate cut could give the job market and overall economy a boost, it could also fuel inflation. That could push bond yields higher, driving mortgage rates upward in turn.

“While the Fed is likely to cut interest rates at their September meeting, it is not at all certain that mortgage rates are going to come down,” said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS. “As a result, buyers and sellers are still going to be cautious and the market could remain gridlocked this fall.”

New data on contract signings suggest home sales could remain sluggish in the near term.

A seasonally adjusted index of pending U.S. home sales fell 0.4% in July from the previous month, the National Association of Realtors reported Thursday. Pending home sales rose 0.7% from July last year.

There’s usually a month or two lag between a contract signing and when the sale is finalized, which makes pending home sales a bellwether for future completed home sales.

TOKYO (AP) — Mount Fuji hasn’t erupted since 1707. But for Volcanic Disaster Preparedness Day, Japanese officials have released computer- and AI-generated videos showing a simulation of a potential violent eruption of the active volcano.

The videos, released this week, are meant to prepare the 37 million residents in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area for potential disasters.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s video warns an eruption could strike “at any moment, without warning,” depicting volcanic ash shrouding central Tokyo, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) away, within hours, paralyzing transportation, disrupting food and power, and causing long-term respiratory problems.

The video ends with the message: “We need to arm ourselves with facts and prepare for disaster in our daily lives.” It shows a family’s pantry stocked with canned food and a first-aid kit.

The Tokyo government said in a statement that there are currently no signs of Fuji erupting. “The simulation is designed to equip residents with accurate knowledge and preparedness measures they can take in case of an emergency,” it explained.

But the videos have caused anxiety and confusion among some residents.

“Are there actually any signs of eruption?” said Shinichiro Kariya, a 57-year-old hospital employee. “Why are we now hearing things like ‘10 centimeters of ash could fall,’ even in Tokyo? I’m wondering why this is happening all of a sudden.”

Hiromi Ooki, who lives in Mishima City, which has prime views of Fuji, said she planned to buy emergency supplies the next day. “Nature’s power is so great that maybe it’s better if it scares us a little,” she said.

Representatives of both the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Japan’s Cabinet Office Disaster Prevention Division said they had not received complaints from Tokyo residents about the videos.

University of Tokyo professor and risk communication expert Naoya Sekiya said the government has for years modeled scenarios for volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, but added that does not mean Fuji is about to erupt.

“There’s no particular significance to the timing,” Sekiya said.

Japan is highly vulnerable to natural disasters because of its climate and topography and is known for its meticulous disaster planning which spans earthquakes, typhoons, floods, mudslides and volcanic eruptions.

The Japan Meteorological Agency last August issued its first-ever “megaquake advisory” after a powerful quake struck off the southeastern coast of the southern main island of Kyushu.

Of the world’s roughly 1,500 active volcanoes, 111 are in Japan, which lies on the Pacific “Ring of Fire.”

Fuji, Japan’s tallest peak, used to erupt about every 30 years, but it has been dormant since the 18th century.

___

Video journalist Ayaka McGill contributed to this report.