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☆ China's Tiananmen Square demonstrations and crackdown
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-04 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Tanks rolled into the square before dawn on... Read moreJune 4 (Reuters) - Sunday is the 34th anniversary of China's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in and around central Beijing's Tiananmen Square, when Chinese troops opened fire on their own people. April 17: Protests begin at Tiananmen Square, with students calling for democracy and reform. May 13: Hundreds of students begin a hunger strike on Tiananmen Square. May 30: Students unveil a 10-metre (33 ft) high "Goddess of Democracy", modelled on the Statue of Liberty, in Tiananmen Square. June 5: An unidentified Chinese man stands in front of a tank convoy leaving Tiananmen Square.

Persons: Read, Hu Yaobang, Mikhail Gorbachev, Gorbachev, Zhao Ziyang, Li Peng, Wen Jiabao, Zhao, Li, Butcher, Yuan Mu, Deng Xiaoping, Ben Blanchard, Robert Birsel Organizations: Communist Party, of, Asian Development Bank, People, Paramount, Thomson Locations: Tiananmen, Beijing, China, Xian, Changsha, Shanghai, Great

CNN —One month after four children vanished into the Colombian Amazon, a preliminary report by the country’s Civil Aviation Authority offers clues to how they could have survived the devastating airplane crash that killed every adult onboard. “…Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, 2803, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, I have the engine at minimum, I’m going to look for a field,” he said. Air traffic control later tracked the plane veering right, the report said. The report says the plane likely first hit the trees of the dense forest, tearing the engine and propeller off, followed by a vertical drop to the forest floor. Two of three seats occupied by the children remained in place and upright despite the crash, according to the report, while one child’s seat came loose from the plane structure.

Persons: Hernando Murcia Morales, Herman Mendoza Hernández, Magdalena Mucutuy Valencia, “, ”, …, Dirección, Fidencio Valencia Organizations: CNN, country’s Civil Aviation Authority, Colombian, Caracol Locations: Colombian, Colombia, Araracuara

May 31 (Reuters) - Specialized cloud computing provider CoreWeave has raised $200 million in funding from its existing investor Magnetar Capital, highlighting investor interest in backing infrastructure powering the generative AI boom. The funding, which valued the company at more than $2 billion, comes weeks after CoreWeave raised $221 million from investors including Magnetar Capital and Nvidia (NVDA.O). CoreWeave specializes in providing cloud computing services based on graphics processing units (GPUs), the category of chip pioneered by Nvidia that has become central to artificial intelligence (AI) services like OpenAI's ChatGPT. CoreWeave sells computing power to those AI companies, competing with cloud computing service providers such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon's AWS. (MSFT.O), (AMZN.O)CoreWeave aims to stand out by building its data centers differently for AI work, using a networking technology called InfiniBand to link computers together instead of Ethernet cables that are the current standard in most data centers, McBee said.

Persons: CoreWeave, Brannin, McBee, Krystal Hu, Stephen Nellis, Himani Sarkar Organizations: Magnetar, Magnetar Capital, Nvidia, ChatGPT, Microsoft, AWS, Thomson Locations: New York, San Francisco

☆ Giant isopod: A 14-legged crustacean is Taipei’s hottest new menu item
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-30 | by ( ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

A 14-legged giant isopod is the highlight of a new dish at a ramen restaurant in Taipei and it has people queuing up—both for pictures and for a bite from this bowl of noodles. “It is so attractive because of its appearance - it looks very cute,” said the 37-year-old owner of the restaurant, who wanted to be identified only as Mr. Hu, as he held up a giant isopod while customers took pictures. A customer said the meat tastes like a cross between crab and lobster with a dense texture and some chewiness. Giant isopods - a distant cousin of crabs and prawns - are the largest among the thousands of species in the crustacean group, the NOAA Ocean Exploration said on its website. Diners sample -- and photograph -- the isopod ramen.

CNN —Canada’s former Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole has accused China of targeting him with misinformation and voter suppression campaigns during the 2021 election, citing intelligence from Canada’s spy agency. Canadian Security Intelligence Service last week identified multiple threats against him, O’Toole told Parliament on Tuesday. O’Toole emphasized that alleged misinformation occurred in the run-up to the 2021 general election, which saw the reelection of a Liberal Party government led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Earlier this month, Canada expelled an accredited Chinese diplomat accused of involvement in a harassment campaign against Canadian opposition lawmaker Michael Chong and his relatives. China has repeatedly dismissed previous claims of political interference in Canada’s political system.

Persons: CNN —, Erin O’Toole, O’Toole, ”, Justin Trudeau, Michael Chong, Chong, Marco Mendicino, Mendicino, Meng Wanzhou, Michael Kovrig, Michael Spavor, Meng Organizations: CNN, Conservative Party, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Liberal Party, Huawei, Canadian Public Safety, CSIS, ” Locations: China, Canada, Canadian, Beijing

[1/5] Digell Huang, 34, one of the two reserved customers tries the giant isopod ramen in Taipei, Taiwan May 27, 2023. REUTERS/Ann WangTAIPEI, May 28 (Reuters) - A 14-legged giant isopod is the highlight of a new dish at a ramen restaurant in Taipei and it has people queuing up - both for pictures and for a bite from this bowl of noodles. "It is so attractive because of its appearance - it looks very cute," said the 37-year-old owner of the restaurant, who wanted to be identified only as Mr. Hu, as he held up a giant isopod while customers took pictures. "As for the cooking method, we use the simplest way, steam, so there is no difficulty to process it." The restaurant steams the isopod for 10 minutes before adding it to the top of a bowl of ramen with thick chicken and fish broth.

☆ Under Xi Jinping, China's military has become an untouchable nationalist symbol
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-26 | by ( Nectar Gan | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +11 min

Yue’s alleged transgression: “uglifying” and “insulting” China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Under Xi, China passed a law in 2018 to ban the slander of national “heroes and martyrs,” a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. To outsiders, it may appear puzzling that China’s military, the largest and one of the most powerful in the world, would be so easily offended by a seemingly tame joke. Xi has staked his legitimacy on returning China to its former greatness, and a strong and powerful military plays a key role in driving that nationalist agenda. He has also ramped up China’s military posturing, sending fighter jets and warships to the Taiwan Strait and around the disputed islands with Japan.

CNN —As the Colombian military frantically searches for four children missing after a jungle plane crash over two weeks ago, new details are emerging about the plane’s history – and local concerns over the safety of air travel in that part of the Amazon. Colombian Military Forces/ReutersIndigenous activists who mourned the deaths in a statement earlier this week said the crash was no surprise, accusing airline companies operating in the Amazon of chasing profits and the Colombian government of failing to uphold safety standards. Speaking to CNN, OPIAC president Julio Cesar Lopez pointed out that the ill-fated plane had previously crashed in the same region, on July 25, 2021. The report states that the plane was built in 1982 and, prior to the 2021 crash, had accumulated over 10 thousand flight hours. Relatives say the children knew the jungle well, and are holding out hope that they will be found alive.

☆ Zoom invests in AI startup Anthropic in latest effort to spruce up offerings
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

May 16 (Reuters) - Zoom Video Communications Inc (ZM.O) said on Tuesday it has invested an undisclosed sum in Anthropic and will integrate the artificial intelligence start-up's technology into its video-conferencing platform. The move marks the latest effort by Zoom to spruce up its offerings with AI as it competes against Microsoft Teams, the dominant video-conferencing tool for enterprises. Under the collaboration, Anthropic's Claude - a large language model that competes directly with offerings from Microsoft-backed OpenAI - will be integrated with Zoom's platform. In March, Zoom had announced a partnership with OpenAI to add AI-driven capabilities such as conversation summaries and message drafts to its Zoom IQ assistant. Reporting by Akshita Toshniwal in Bengaluru and Krystal Hu; Editing by Shailesh KuberOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

May 16 (Reuters) - Hippocratic Health, a startup building artificial intelligence models for the healthcare industry, has raised $50 million in a larger-than-usual seed funding round, signaling strong investor interest in betting on AI models for specific industries. Large language models are AI systems that mine vast amounts of data to summarize information and generate content. Also known as foundation models, large language models can perform tasks from writing essays to generating codes. Our focus is to build the safest language model for healthcare," said Shah, who previously founded insurance startup Health IQ. A16z said it is one of the largest seed checks it has written in the healthcare industry.

CNN —Canada decided to expel a Chinese diplomat on Monday, following an uproar in the country over allegations of political meddling, which Beijing has fiercely denied. “Canada has decided to declare persona non grata Mr. Zhao Wei,” read a statement by Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly. The intelligence service also said that Beijing had tried to sway the outcome of Canada’s federal elections in 2019 and 2021. Chong himself has focused much of his criticism on Trudeau’s government, which he says was too slow to act. Last week, Joly previewed the possibility of retaliatory action against China, but warned that Canada needed to carefully weigh how China might react.

☆ Meta Platforms scoops up AI networking chip team from Graphcore
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Katie Paul | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

May 5 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) has hired an Oslo-based team that until late last year was building artificial-intelligence networking technology at British chip unicorn Graphcore. "We recently welcomed a number of highly-specialized engineers in Oslo to our infrastructure team at Meta. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has become increasingly reliant on AI technology to target advertising, select posts for its apps' feeds and purge banned content from its platforms. The 10 employees' job descriptions on LinkedIn indicated the team had worked on AI-specific networking technology at Graphcore, which develops computer chips and systems optimized for AI work. A new category of network chip has emerged to help keep data moving smoothly within those computing clusters.

☆ Shopify divests logistics arm to Flexport in strategic reversal
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Krystal Hu | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

May 4 (Reuters) - Shopify Inc (SHOP.TO) has divested the logistics arm it built over the past few years, in a reversal of its strategy of aggressively investing in fulfillment networks, the Canadian e-commerce platform said on Thursday. Flexport was last valued at $8 billion in a $935 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz and MSD Partners in February 2022. The move to expand into logistics services was part of Shopify's ambition to support merchants selling on its platform with one-stop service. Shopify President Harley Finkelstein said the shift in strategy was a result of prioritizing product acceleration. San Francisco-based Flexport will expand into fulfillment and last-mile delivery through the deal as the official logistics partner for merchants on Shopify.

☆ How These Budding Entrepreneurs Won $20,000 for Their Start-Ups
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Winnie Hu | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Teaching remotely, Ms. Adams put the money that she saved by not commuting toward trying out recipes for vegan muffins, reduced-sugar cookies and low-carb pizzas. A few months ago, Ms. Adams received a newsletter from her landlord, the New York City Housing Authority, which announced a new competition for entrepreneurs living in public housing. It offered cash prizes of up to $20,000 and free business development classes. “I thought it was fake,” Ms. Adams said. She called the housing authority to make sure it was real.

☆ Do You Know How to Spot Foods That Are Ultraprocessed?
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Sally Wadyka | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Do You Know How to Spot Foods That Are Ultraprocessed? Years of research has linked diets high in ultraprocessed foods with a higher risk of illness, including obesity, cancer and heart disease. More recently, it’s become apparent that these foods can take a toll on our mental health, too. Learning to identify ultraprocessed foods, or UPFs, is a step toward making your diet healthier. Think you know which foods are ultraprocessed or not?

May 4 (Reuters) - Two prominent former Google (GOOGL.O) researchers who authored the groundbreaking paper that paved the way for the generative AI boom, have raised $8 million for their new startup Essential AI, four sources told Reuters. Thrive Capital had led the round in Essential AI, founded by Ashish Vaswani and Niki Parmar. Thrive Capital, founded by Joshua Kushner, is also an investor in Microsoft-backed OpenAI. Essential AI aims to build software for enterprises to use large language models, the core software of a new artificial intelligence system that has powered generative AI applications such as ChatGPT, sources said. The raise came after Vaswani and Parmar left Adept AI, a company they also co-founded in 2021 with former Google director David Luan.

☆ Marc Benioff says he has a successor. A leaked Salesforce org chart identifies the likely candidates.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Ashley Stewart | Ellen Thomas | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Marc Benioff's succession plan appeared to fall apart when co-CEO Bret Taylor resigned on Nov. 30. "I always have a succession plan," Benioff told Insider. A leaked Salesforce organizational chart identifies the likely candidates who are next in line. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says he has a successor in mind and a leaked Salesforce organizational chart identifies the likely candidates who are next in line. "I always have a succession plan," Benioff told Insider in an interview.

☆ Taiwan seeking US cooperation to make next generation fighters
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

TAIPEI, May 3 (Reuters) - Taiwan is seeking U.S. cooperation to make the island's next domestically developed fighter jet, the head of Taiwanese defence contractor Aerospace Industrial Development Corp (AIDC) (2634.TW) said on Wednesday. Taiwan's air force scrambles daily to see off incursions by Chinese jets into the airspace around the island as Beijing steps up its pressure to try and force Taiwan to accept China's sovereignty. Speaking at a Taiwan-U.S. defence industry forum in Taipei, AIDC Chairman Hu Kai-hung said the company wanted to raise its technical prowess to help with the development of Taiwan's next generation fighter. Taiwan in 2017 announced the next generation fighter programme, to include stealth capabilities, but has given few details since. Even the United States has been unwilling to provide Taiwan its most advanced fighters like the F-22 or F-35, and Taiwan has no direct answer to China's new J-20 stealth fighter.

☆ Taiwan seeking US cooperation to make next-generation fighters
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

TAIPEI, May 3 (Reuters) - Taiwan is seeking U.S. cooperation to make the island's next domestically developed fighter jet, the head of Taiwanese defence contractor Aerospace Industrial Development Corp (AIDC) (2634.TW) said on Wednesday. Taiwan's air force scrambles daily to see off incursions by Chinese jets into the airspace around the island as Beijing steps up its pressure to try and force Taiwan to accept China's sovereignty. While the mainstay of Taiwan's air force is Lockheed Martin Corp's (LMT.N) F-16s and French-build Mirages it also uses AIDC's F-CK-1 Ching-kuo Indigenous Defence Fighter, or IDF. Taiwan in 2017 announced the next generation fighter programme, to include stealth capabilities, but has given few details since. Even the United States has been unwilling to provide Taiwan its most advanced fighters like the F-22 or F-35, and Taiwan has no direct answer to China's new J-20 stealth fighter.

CNN —Venezuela’s former opposition leader Juan Guaidó is visiting Washington this week, where he hopes to meet with the Biden administration, he told reporters on Tuesday during a surprise appearance at the Washington Conference on the Americas. Asked if he sought political asylum in the US, he said, “I am currently visiting. Guaidó landed in Miami the following day, after accusing Colombia of forcing him out of the country – a claim Colombian officials refuted. “We also hope to meet with the Biden administration – obviously it’s a critical moment for the region, especially Venezuela, a moment in which we are pressing to achieve a free election,” he said. The Biden administration loosened some sanctions against the Maduro government in 2022, and last November, it granted Chevron limited authorization to resume pumping oil from Venezuela.

☆ Reid Hoffman's new AI startup Inflection launches ChatGPT-like chatbot
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Krystal Hu | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

May 2 (Reuters) - Inflection AI, the AI startup founded by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and former Deepmind (GOOGL.O) researcher Mustafa Suleyman, has released its first AI chatbot product, the company said on Tuesday. Similar to the viral chatbot ChatGPT, Inflection's AI chatbot, named Pi, uses generative AI technology to interact with users through conversations, in which people can ask questions and share interests. Inflection AI said it developed the technology in-house and its Pi chatbot is built on prioritizing human conversations with a high level of emotional intelligence. Pi uses user data, including conversational content, to train its AI systems, according to its terms of service. Chatbot powered by generative AI technology has become a crowded field since OpenAI's ChatGPT burst into the scene last November.

May 1 (Reuters) - Longtime Kleiner Perkins partner Wen Hsieh is leaving the Silicon Valley venture capital establishment to start a fund with backing from the firm and Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC (2330.TW), sources told Reuters. Hsieh is in advanced talks to raise $200 million from limited partners including Kleiner Perkins and TSMC for the new fund called Matter Ventures. A Kleiner Perkins spokesperson confirmed Hsieh's departure and the firm's participation in the fund. Hsieh, with two PhDs from the California Institute of Technology, has worked at Kleiner Perkins for 17 years, leading investments in Chinese drone maker DJI and 3D printing company Desktop Medal (DM.N). He will remain on the boards of companies he invested in at Kleiner Perkins, including orthodontic brackets maker LightForce.

☆ An 'air train' in China runs using an overhead magnetic track, never touching it as it glides through the air 30 feet above the ground — see it in action
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-29 | by ( Sarah Jackson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

An 'air train' in China runs using an overhead magnetic track, never touching it as it glides through the air 30 feet above the ground — see it in actionChina's "Red Rail" air train glides through the air without touching the track above it or anything below. Hu Chenhuan/Xinhua via Getty Images The Red Rail glides through the air suspended about 10 meters, or 33 feet, above the ground. Photo by Hu Chenhuan/Xinhua via Getty Images Source: South China Morning Post It has two cars that can carry 88 passengers total. Photo by Jiang Tao/China News Service via Getty Images Source: South China Morning Post In its experimental phase, the track is 800 meters long, or roughly 2,620 feet. Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images Source: South China Morning Post Read next China Trains Business Visual Features More...

☆ Benioff vs. Benioff
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Ashley Stewart | Ellen Thomas | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +29 min

Within Salesforce, Benioff riffs are at times met with backlash from an angry workforce. "You're not going to fire your family during times of need," a former Salesforce executive told Insider. "I don't think they understand Ohana," Benioff told Insider. "Look, we have to be the example of stakeholder capitalism," Benioff told Insider. A 'New Day' at Salesforce"I use the Japanese principle of shoshin, beginner's mind," Benioff told Insider in a phone interview in March.

Generative AI gobbles up reams of computing power, amplifying the urgency of Meta's capacity scramble, said five of the sources. Executives also that spring set about reorganizing Meta's AI units, naming two new heads of engineering in the process, including Janardhan, the author of the September memo. According to four of the sources, Meta did not prioritize building generative AI products until after the launch of ChatGPT in November. Zuckerberg announced a new top-level generative AI team in February that he said would "turbocharge" the company's work in the area. Carvill, the Meta spokesperson, said the company has been building generative AI products on different teams for more than a year.

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