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Chinese universities have significantly overtaken their American rivals in research output at one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence (AI) conferences, according to an analysis of more than 5,000 accepted papers that went viral on social media. Among the top 50 institutions contributing to the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), held in Rio de Janeiro last month...
A 12-year-old boy in China who was taken to work by one of his parents literally played with fire and left an office completely destroyed. The parent, whose gender is unknown, took the boy to an office in Ningbo in the eastern province of Zhejiang on April 30 in an effort to enhance their emotional bond, the Red Star News reported. It is not clear what kind of company this parent works for. While...
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington hopes to convince Beijing to play a “more active role” in resolving the Iran crisis, a clear sign the issue will come into sharp focus when President Donald Trump holds his closely watched summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Speaking to Fox News aboard Air Force One, Rubio said the Iran war was a “huge source of instability” and “threatens to de...
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington hopes to convince Beijing to play a “more active role” in resolving the Iran crisis, a clear sign the issue will come into sharp focus when President Donald Trump holds his closely watched summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Speaking to Fox News aboard Air Force One, Rubio said the Iran war was a “huge source of instability” and “threatens to de...
Statues erected by South Korean civic groups on the other side of the world honouring the tens of thousands of women forced into sexual slavery by imperial Japanese forces during World War II have once again succeeded in making Tokyo’s elites deeply uncomfortable. The decisions by local governments in Germany’s capital and New Zealand’s largest city to rescind or decline to renew permits for “comf...
Chinese memory module manufacturers are accelerating the release of consumer and enterprise storage products powered by domestic DDR5 chips, as breakthroughs by ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), the nation’s leading memory chipmaker, filter through the supply chain. Powev, one of China’s major memory module vendors, recently said its Sinker-branded DDR5 server memories had entered mass producti...
The number of reported technology-based crimes in Hong Kong dipped over the past year, but financial losses from hacking more than doubled to HK$62.6 million (US$8 million), prompting police to urge companies to bolster their cybersecurity checks. Carmen Leung Oi-lam, senior superintendent of the force’s cybersecurity and technology crime bureau, attributed the surge in money lost, despite the ove...
Office rents in Hong Kong’s Central district are expected to rise faster in the second quarter of the year, according to analysts, a reversal of a multi-year slump that began in the second half of 2019. The latest forecast was made by US bank Citi, which said premium offices in the city’s main business zone had seen rents rise 1.7 per cent from a trough in October, with room for further increments...
A Chinese-American was found guilty on Wednesday of acting as a Chinese agent in a case involving a Chinese police station set up in New York’s Chinatown. The week-long trial of Lu “Harry” Jianwang, 64, was seen as a test of Washington’s ability to counter what prosecutors said were efforts by Beijing to expand its influence and intimidate Chinese communities well beyond its shores. On the three c...
A Chinese-American was found guilty of acting as a Chinese agent in a case involving a Chinese police station set up in New York’s Chinatown. The week-long trial of Lu “Harry” Jianwang, 64, was seen as a test of Washington’s ability to counter what prosecutors said were efforts by Beijing to expand its influence and intimidate Chinese communities well beyond its shores. On the three charges Lu fac...
US President Donald Trump’s landmark visit to China comes as the US-Iran war disrupts global energy supplies, fuels economic uncertainty and adds fresh strain to Washington-Beijing ties. In the latest instalment of a series examining how rivalry, interdependence and geopolitical crises are reshaping the relationship between the two powers, we look at the likely outcomes from Trump’s trip. As Donal...
The US strikes on Iran sent a clear signal to Pyongyang. But rather than retreat or show renewed interest in denuclearisation, North Korea has doubled down on deterrence. In recent weeks, Pyongyang has tightened security around its leadership and continued its missile launches, underscoring its sensitivity to Washington’s military posture. From Pyongyang’s perspective, these moves are meant not on...
A US Senate hearing on nuclear capabilities issued a warning about China on Wednesday, hours before US President Donald Trump was due to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping. Senator Roger Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in his opening statement that China has been engaged in an “unprecedented nuclear expansion” in recent years. China, Wicker sa...
A Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband will serve a life sentence without the possibility of parole for his murder, a judge ruled Wednesday. Kouri Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing her husband Eric Richins’ cocktail with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her g...
The Trump administration on Wednesday publicly renewed an offer of US$100 million in humanitarian aid to Cuba, stepping up pressure on Havana despite Beijing’s continued political and economic backing for the island. The announcement came as US President Donald Trump travelled to China this week for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, with Trump saying before departure that Cuba would be amon...
The US Senate on Wednesday confirmed Kevin Warsh as the new Federal Reserve chairman to lead a central bank whose independence is under attack and with inflation at a three-year high. The Senate voted 54 to 45 to in favour of Warsh, with Republicans holding a slim majority and ensuring US President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Jerome Powell was confirmed. Once known as a monetary “hawk” again...
The United Arab Emirates’ foreign ministry denied on Wednesday a statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office that he visited the country and held a secret meeting with its president. The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said earlier he travelled to the UAE during the war with Iran and met Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed. A statement by the Emirati foreign ministry said that Emirati r...
The United Arab Emirates’ foreign ministry denied on Wednesday a statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office that he visited the country and held a secret meeting with its president. The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said earlier he travelled to the UAE during the war with Iran and met Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed. A statement by the Emirati foreign ministry said that Emirati r...
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the United Arab Emirates and met the Emirati president during the war with Iran, the Prime Minister’s Office said on Wednesday in what would be their first confirmed meeting. According to the statement, the meeting resulted in a “historic breakthrough” in relations between Israel and the UAE. A source familiar with the meeting said Netanyahu an...
A paediatrician at a hospital near Berlin has been charged with sex offences in 130 cases, many of which are said to have taken place at the hospital, prosecutors said on Wednesday. The extent of the offences, which include serious sexual abuse of children and rape, had previously been unknown. The paediatrician has been in pre-trial custody since November, with prosecutors citing a risk of reoffe...
Washington and Beijing have piled on irritants in advance of this week’s summit between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, suggesting that neither side wants to be seen as a deal killer – even as they try to build potential leverage to bargain away, analysts and former US government officials said. Scott Kennedy, senior adviser with the Centre for Strategic and Inter...
French prosecutors on Wednesday requested a seven-year prison sentence for former president Nicolas Sarkozy in an appeal trial on charges that he sought Libyan financing for his 2007 election. Sarkozy, France’s right-wing leader from 2007 to 2012, has always denied any wrongdoing but last year became modern France’s first former president to have gone to jail over the case, before he was released ...
The bodies of three women have been recovered from the sea off Brighton. Sussex Police said emergency services were called after concerns were raised for the women’s welfare at around 5.45am on Wednesday, and their bodies were pulled from the water near Madeira Drive. Chief Superintendent Adam Hays said the coastguard is completing an “extensive search of the water”, but the force is not searching...
US President Donald Trump arrived in China – flanked by his top aides and American tech leaders – on Wednesday night as Beijing rolled out a lavish welcome ceremony at the airport. He was received by Chinese Vice-President Han Zheng at Beijing Capital International Airport. Trump’s entourage includes Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia and a last-minute addition to the trip, as well as US Defence Secretar...
Ten students from an elite secondary school in Hong Kong were injured or experienced ringing in their ears after a self-heating hotpot pack exploded in a classroom on Wednesday. A police spokesman said officers received a report from St Paul’s Co-educational College in the Mid-Levels at 3.29pm, that a self-heating hotpot pack had exploded after being improperly heated. A source said a 15-year-old ...
The government-appointed administrator of Hong Kong’s fire-ravaged Wang Fuk Court has sought to delay an owners’ meeting, prompting calls from residents to hold it before the end of June to address concerns ahead of a decision on whether to sell their flats. The move by Hop On Management Company came after more than 240 owners, representing over 12 per cent of households at the estate in Tai Po, p...
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s rare presence in President Donald Trump’s entourage to Beijing signals a willingness on both sides to strengthen military communications to de-escalate and avoid crises, and suggests US arms sales to Taiwan will feature in talks, analysts say. The Chinese experts expected Beijing to include Defence Minister Dong Jun in talks during the summit, with one source su...
The European Union will not ban “conversion therapy” targeting LGBTQ people, but will push member states to take action against such practices, it said on Wednesday. So-called conversion “therapies” involve methods that seek to change the sexual orientation or gender identity or expression of members of gay, lesbian, queer and trans people. The EU stopped short of heeding a call by over a million ...
A Hong Kong court has remanded a former university professor in custody pending sentencing for accepting a HK$40,000 (US$5,109) bribe and offering red packets to two colleagues to help a student gain admission to a postgraduate programme last year. Kwun Tong Court heard on Wednesday that Liu Hongbin, 63, abused his authority as chair professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’...
French authorities on Wednesday allowed asymptomatic passengers to leave a British cruise ship, saying a gastrointestinal virus was behind an outbreak of sickness that came after an elderly man died of a heart attack. Earlier, authorities had ordered a lockdown for the more than 1,700 passengers and crew on the vessel, but insisted there was no connection with the hantavirus outbreak suspected of ...
