Testimony emerges from Babak Alipour, who spent three years on death row before being taken to gallows in March Writing from his cell in the Rajai Shahr prison in the northern Iranian city of Karaj, Babak Alipour wanted to tell his friends about those who had already gone to their execution.There was Behrouz Ehsani, 69, the elder statesman of the group, who was “never angry” about their predicament. Then there was Mehdi Hassani, a 48-year-old father of three who he saw a couple of times in the p
Testimony emerges from Babak Alipour, who spent three years on death row before being taken to gallows in March
Writing from his cell in the Rajai Shahr prison in the northern Iranian city of Karaj, Babak Alipour wanted to tell his friends about those who had already gone to their execution.
There was Behrouz Ehsani, 69, the elder statesman of the group, who was “never angry” about their predicament. Then there was Mehdi Hassani, a 48-year-old father of three who he saw a couple of times in the prison hospital and who would ask him to pass on to the children the message that he was “fine”.
Wendy Duffy died at Pegasos clinic in Basel as assisted dying bill in England and Wales fails to passA grieving mother has ended her life at a clinic in Switzerland four years after the death of her only child.Wendy Duffy, 56, a physically healthy woman, died at the Pegasos clinic in Basel after struggling to cope with the death of her 23-year-old son, Marcus. Continue reading...
Wendy Duffy died at Pegasos clinic in Basel as assisted dying bill in England and Wales fails to pass
A grieving mother has ended her life at a clinic in Switzerland four years after the death of her only child.
Wendy Duffy, 56, a physically healthy woman, died at the Pegasos clinic in Basel after struggling to cope with the death of her 23-year-old son, Marcus.
The Judicial AI Consortium is free, judges-only, and run by three sitting judges. About 200 have joined. The evidence landing in courtrooms says that is not enough.
The Judicial AI Consortium is free, judges-only, and run by three sitting judges. About 200 have joined. The evidence landing in courtrooms says that is not enough.
Scammers are exploiting the Strait of Hormuz crisis by impersonating Iranian officials and demanding cryptocurrency tolls from ships seeking safe passage.
Scammers are exploiting the Strait of Hormuz crisis by impersonating Iranian officials and demanding cryptocurrency tolls from ships seeking safe passage.
Meta has announced a new "Account" system that allows users to log in and manage their settings across Instagram, Facebook, Threads, AI smart glasses, and its other apps.
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Meta has announced a new "Account" system that allows users to log in and manage their settings across Instagram, Facebook, Threads, AI smart glasses, and its other apps.
The Minnesota House has passed a landmark bill to ban AI nudification apps and websites that create explicit images of people, mostly women, without consent.
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The Minnesota House has passed a landmark bill to ban AI nudification apps and websites that create explicit images of people, mostly women, without consent.
Exclusive: Scholars, writers and artists risk arrest with message of support for proscribed group before next week’s appeal hearingUK politics live – latest updatesSally Rooney, Greta Thunberg and Brian Eno have written to the court of appeal in support of Palestine Action before next week’s hearing to determine the lawfulness of the ban on the direct action protest group.The letter, composed of only seven words – “We oppose genocide, we support Palestine Action” – is signed by more than 130 peo
Sally Rooney, Greta Thunberg and Brian Eno have written to the court of appeal in support of Palestine Action before next week’s hearing to determine the lawfulness of the ban on the direct action protest group.
The letter, composed of only seven words – “We oppose genocide, we support Palestine Action” – is signed by more than 130 people and is the first time that prominent scholars, writers and activists have come together to defy the ban.
Chinese startup DeepSeek released a new artificial intelligence model Friday, more than a year after it stunned the world with a low-cost reasoning model that matched the capabilities of US rivals.
Chinese startup DeepSeek’s AI assistant. File photo: Kelly Ho/HKFP.
DeepSeek-V4 “features an ultra-long context of one million words”, the company said in a statement on social media platform WeChat, hailing it as “cost-effective” in a separate announcement on X.
The announcement came as Me
Chinese startup DeepSeek released a new artificial intelligence model Friday, more than a year after it stunned the world with a low-cost reasoning model that matched the capabilities of US rivals.
Chinese startup DeepSeek’s AI assistant. File photo: Kelly Ho/HKFP.
DeepSeek-V4 “features an ultra-long context of one million words”, the company said in a statement on social media platform WeChat, hailing it as “cost-effective” in a separate announcement on X.
The announcement came as Meta said it planned to cut a tenth of its staff as it looks for productivity gains from the rest of the workforce while investing heavily in artificial intelligence. Reports said Microsoft was also looking to trim its ranks.
DeepSeek-V4’s context length, which determines how much input a model is able to absorb to help it complete tasks, “(achieves) leadership in both domestic and open-source fields across agent capabilities, world knowledge, and reasoning performance”.
A “preview version” of the open source model is now available, the company said.
DeepSeek-V4 is released as two versions, DeepSeek-V4-Pro and DeepSeek-V4-Flash, with the latter being “a more efficient and economical choice” because it has smaller parameters.
V4-Pro has 1.6 trillion parameters while the V4-Flash has 284 billion parameters, which refine models’ decision-making ability.
The model has also been “optimised” for popular AI Agent products such as Claude Code, OpenClaw, OpenCode and CodeBuddy, the statement said.
“In world knowledge benchmarks, DeepSeek-V4-Pro significantly leads other open-source models and is only slightly outperformed by the top-tier closed-source model, (Google’s) Gemini-Pro-3.1,” the statement added.
Hangzhou-based DeepSeek burst onto the scene in January last year with a generative AI chatbot, powered by its R1 reasoning model, that upended assumptions of US dominance in the strategic sector.
This so-called “DeepSeek shock” sparked a sell-off of AI-related shares and a reckoning on business strategy in what was also described as a “Sputnik moment” for the industry.
DeepSeek displayed on a laptop. Photo: Matheus Bertelli, via Pexels.
The chatbot performed at a similar level to ChatGPT and other top American offerings, but the company said it had taken significantly less computing power to develop.
At home, DeepSeek’s AI tools have been widely adopted by Chinese municipalities and healthcare institutions as well as the financial sector and other businesses.
This has been partly driven by DeepSeek’s decision to make its systems open source, with their inner workings public — in contrast to the proprietary models sold by OpenAI and other Western rivals.
“China-made large AI models spearheaded the development of the global open-source AI ecosystem,” Chinese Premier Li Qiang told an annual gathering of China’s top decision-makers last month.
The AI race has intensified the rivalry between China and the United States, and the White House on Thursday accused Chinese entities of a massive effort to steal artificial intelligence technology.
“The US has evidence that foreign entities, primarily in China, are running industrial-scale distillation campaigns to steal American AI,” science and technology chief Michael Kratsios said in a post on X.
“We will be taking action to protect American innovation.”
Canon, Nikon, and Sony raised prices during the tariff period, citing increased costs. Now that the Supreme Court has invalidated the IEEPA tariffs and US Customs has opened a refund process for at least some affected importers, the photography community deserves transparency about whether companies will seek refunds and, if they do, whether any portion will flow back to customers who paid higher prices.
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Canon, Nikon, and Sony raised prices during the tariff period, citing increased costs. Now that the Supreme Court has invalidated the IEEPA tariffs and US Customs has opened a refund process for at least some affected importers, the photography community deserves transparency about whether companies will seek refunds and, if they do, whether any portion will flow back to customers who paid higher prices.
Inquiry began in March after report on security arrangements involving FBI director’s girlfriend, NYT saysSign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inboxThe FBI began investigating a New York Times reporter after the newspaper published a story raising concerns about the security arrangements surrounding the girlfriend of Kash Patel, the FBI director, the Times has reported.According to reporting from the Times on Wednesday, the inquiry into Elizabeth Williamson, th
The FBI began investigating a New York Times reporter after the newspaper published a story raising concerns about the security arrangements surrounding the girlfriend of Kash Patel, the FBI director, the Times has reported.
According to reporting from the Times on Wednesday, the inquiry into Elizabeth Williamson, the reporter, began in March following an article she reported alleging that Patel used FBI resources to provide protection and transportation for his girlfriend, the country singer Alexis Wilkins.
ICC judges say there are substantial grounds to believe Duterte guided anti-drugs crackdown that killed thousandsThe former president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, will face trial at the international criminal court (ICC) after judges unanimously confirmed charges of crimes against humanity over his “war on drugs”.Pre-trial judges concluded on Thursday that there were substantial grounds to believe Duterte was responsible for the crimes against humanity of murder and attempted murder in r
ICC judges say there are substantial grounds to believe Duterte guided anti-drugs crackdown that killed thousands
The former president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, will face trial at the international criminal court (ICC) after judges unanimously confirmed charges of crimes against humanity over his “war on drugs”.
Pre-trial judges concluded on Thursday that there were substantial grounds to believe Duterte was responsible for the crimes against humanity of murder and attempted murder in relation to anti-drugs crackdowns that led to the killing of thousands of people.
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