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WASHINGTON: Donald Trump defended Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the murder of a journalist and hailed a $1 trillion investment pledge Tuesday as the US president laid on a lavish welcome at the White House. Trump moved to consolidate his growing bromance with the de facto Saudi leader, giving him a parade of soldiers on horseback and a military flypast featuring F-35 jets that he said Washington would soon sell to Riyadh. Opening their White House meeting with praise for the prince’s “incredible” human rights record, Trump dismissed the 2018 killing of Jamal Khashoggi, saying “things happened”…

Yang, who previously worked on AI models at ByteDance and Alibaba Group Holding’s Damo Academy, said in a recent interview with the South China Morning Post that her newly formed start-up, InfiX.ai, envisioned a world in which various businesses could train their own “domain-specific” LLMs, which would complement commercially available AI models from Big Tech firms and start-up developers. Alibaba owns the Post.According to InfinX.ai’s landing page on developer platforms GitHub and Hugging Face, the start-up’s research would “eventually lead to decentralised generative AI – a future where everyone can access, contribute to and benefit from AI equally”.“Over the next…

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers from Xpeng to Chery Automobile, leveraging their technological and manufacturing strength, are intensifying efforts to build humanoid robots as they position themselves as potential game-changers amid Beijing’s ambitions to gain an upper hand over the US in the hi-tech sector.Guangzhou-based Xpeng said it envisioned sales of 1 million units by 2030 after its next-generation humanoid robot Iron won praise from Tesla CEO Elon Musk early this month.He Xiaopeng, co-founder and CEO of Xpeng, told an earnings results briefing on Monday that the cost of producing humanoid robots would eventually come down to the level of…

Indonesia’s latest plan to clamp down on violent video games in the wake of a mosque bombing has reignited a long-running debate over the impact of digital media on young minds and whether regulation alone can stem an apparent rise in bullying and online radicalisation.President Prabowo Subianto called for restrictions on games that “normalise violence” following a November 7 blast at a North Jakarta high school mosque that injured nearly 100 students during Friday prayers.Prasetyo Hadi, the state secretary, told reporters two days later that Prabowo had instructed officials “to think about limiting and trying to find solutions to the…

Eschcollection | Digitalvision | Getty ImagesAsia-Pacific markets were set to open higher Wednesday, after Wall Street declined as concerns about artificial intelligence valuations continued to pressure tech stocks.Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index was set to rise, with its futures contract in Chicago at 48,885, and its counterpart in Osaka last trading at 48,900, against the index’s Tuesday close of 48,702.98.Australia’s ASX/S&P 200 rose 0.13% in early trading.Futures for Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index also pointed to a higher open, trading at 26,033, against the index’s previous close of 25,930.03.U.S. equity futures were little changed in early Asian hours after the…

The spectacular gain in Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) shares since its Hong Kong listing faces a reality check this week: a twofold increase in its free-float shares will test investors’ risk appetite.Some 76 million shares of the Ningde, Fujian province-based company will be available for trading on the city’s exchange from Thursday following the expiry of a six-month lock-up period. The shares, which are held by cornerstone investors like Kuwait Investment Authority and UBS Asset Management, account for almost half of CATL’s HK$41 billion (US$5.3 billion) offering, the biggest in Hong Kong this year.A sudden burst in the supply of…

The spectacular gain in Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) shares since its Hong Kong listing faces a reality check this week: a twofold increase in its free-float shares will test investors’ risk appetite.Some 76 million shares of the Ningde, Fujian province-based company will be available for trading on the city’s exchange from Thursday following the expiry of a six-month lock-up period. The shares, which are held by cornerstone investors like Kuwait Investment Authority and UBS Asset Management, account for almost half of CATL’s HK$41 billion (US$5.3 billion) offering, the biggest in Hong Kong this year.A sudden burst in the supply of…

Xpeng’s CEO He Xiaopeng is among three corporate founders who have been shortlisted as finalists in the 2025 Business Awards organised by SCMP Live, in a reimagination of a series of accolades first introduced in 1990.A total of 43 nominations were received for the awards in six categories, honouring the most noteworthy business owner, corporate executive, company, small-and-medium-sized enterprise (SME), start-ups and the best globalised brand. A discretionary award honouring lifetime achievement did not receive any nominations.Nominations were submitted by industry peers, and the winners picked by a panel of 11 judges by secret ballot, comprising seven permanent judges and…

China turned a brief but intense India-Pakistan conflict in May into a live testing ground for its advanced weaponry and intelligence systems, and then aggressively marketed those results to undercut Western arms sales, a US congressional panel said in its annual report on Tuesday.“Beijing opportunistically leveraged the conflict to test and advertise the sophistication of its weapons,” a new report from the bipartisan US-China Economic and Security Review Commission stated bluntly.It highlighted the combat debut of systems such as the HQ-9 air defence network, PL-15 beyond-visual-range air-to-air missiles, and J-10C fighter jets, describing the skirmish as “the first time China’s…

Limiting AI use in military applications and ensuring global AI governance could ease collaboration and dialogue between China and the US as they vie for influence over the transformative technology, according to experts at a forum in Hong Kong on Monday.Their remarks came as artificial intelligence is being increasingly adopted in the defence sector, including for weapon-related functions. It raises serious ethical and accountability concerns, further elevates the US-China AI race to a high-stakes geopolitical contest and adds to existing tensions over regulation standards, talent and access.Sun Chenghao, a fellow at Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, said…