SYDNEY: Australia on Tuesday (Apr 4) announced a ban on TikTok from all federal government-owned devices over security concerns, becoming the latest US-allied country to take action against the Chinese-owned video app. The ban underscores growing worries that China’s government could use the Beijing-based company, owned by ByteDance to harvest […]
Year: 2023
HONG KONG: Hong Kong today “firmly rejected” findings in a new US government report that said US interests had been threatened and that Beijing continued to “undermine” the rule of law and freedoms in the territory under a national security crackdown. The US’ 2023 Hong Kong Policy Act Report, published […]
BEIJING: China threatened to retaliate on Wednesday (Mar 29) if United States House Speaker Kevin McCarthy meets Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen during her planned transit of the US next month, saying that any such move would be a “provocation”. China, which claims democratically ruled Taiwan as its own territory, has […]
Elon Musk and a group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives are calling for a six-month pause in training of systems more powerful than GPT-4, they said in an open letter, citing potential risks to society and humanity. The letter, issued by the non-profit Future of Life Institute and […]
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban after six people, including three children, were killed in a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee yesterday, the White House said. “We have to do more to stop gun violence. It’s ripping our communities apart,” Biden said […]
WACO, Texas: Donald Trump used his first election rally in Waco, Texas, to cast the 2024 presidential vote in apocalyptic terms, slam his leading Republican rival Ron DeSantis and rail against prosecutors pursuing him with criminal investigations he likened to a “Stalinist Russia horror show.” Speaking to several thousand of […]
LONDON: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and bereaved families on Tuesday led calls for “top to bottom” reform of London’s Metropolitan Police, after a review found the UK’s largest crime-fighting force to be institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic. The report, written by government official Louise Casey, was commissioned after the kidnap, […]
MOSCOW: The leaders of China and Russia hailed a “new era” in their relationship on Tuesday, putting on a united front in Moscow as Vladimir Putin accused the West of rejecting Beijing’s proposals to end the Ukraine conflict. The nations, eager to curb Western power, expressed concerns about Nato expansion […]
PARIS: The FIA said yesterday it intends to “address” the problems at last weekend’s Saudi Arabia Grand Prix where Fernando Alonso was handed a punishment at the end of the race that was later overturned. The Spaniard crossed the line third in his Aston Martin on Sunday but was then […]
China is facilitating easier access to subsidies and more control over state-backed research for a handful of its chip companies, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday. Chipmakers such as Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC), Hua Hong Semiconductor and Huawei, as well as equipment suppliers like Naura and Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc […]