Latest news with #Fu
The Star
a day ago
- Business
- The Star
Asia-Pacific news agencies seek cooperation to tackle global changes, tech challenges
ST. PETERSBURG, June 19 (Xinhua) -- The 19th General Assembly of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA) kicked off in St. Petersburg on Thursday. During the two-day event, representatives of member news agencies will hold in-depth discussions on how news agencies can respond to global changes and technological challenges. Dmitry Peskov, press secretary of Russian president, read out Russian President Vladimir Putin's congratulatory letter to the conference at the opening ceremony. Putin noted that currently, objective and timely information is vital for enhancing mutual trust and understanding among countries and their peoples. As the world's largest alliance of news agencies, OANA has long played a significant role in global news dissemination. He said that he hopes this conference, through constructive exchanges, would explore and formulate promising cooperation projects, pushing mutually beneficial cooperation to a new level. In his opening remarks, Fu Hua, president of Xinhua News Agency, pointed out that the Asia-Pacific region is the locomotive driving economic globalization, the hub of world economic growth, the anchor of global development and stability, and a highland for cooperation, with an important role in addressing global challenges. Xinhua calls on news agencies in the Asia-Pacific region to join hands to enhance mutual trust, advocate inclusiveness, promote cooperation, and contribute to win-win outcomes, Fu said. Fu said that Xinhua will earnestly perform its duties, deepen partnership with member organizations, and well establish and utilize multilateral mechanisms like the World Media Summit, the Global South Media and Think Tank Forum and the China-Central Asia News Agency Forum to jointly write a new chapter in news agencies' exchange and development. Andrey Kondrashov, director general of Russia's TASS news agency, said that the world is in a critical period of profound transformation and information environment transition, with cyber threats and disinformation testing the public trust in media. In-depth exchanges and cooperation among Asia-Pacific news agencies, along with joint exploration of new technologies such as AI and big data to drive media industry transformation, will not only bolster their own development but also hold significant importance for safeguarding regional and global security and prosperity, he added. Melissa Fleming, UN under-secretary-general for global communications, said in a video address that the current world is volatile, and news organizations and practitioners are facing multiple severe challenges, making strengthened media dialogue and exchanges particularly crucial. She expressed her hope that while abiding by journalistic ethics, media outlets around the world can provide global audience with more valuable and positive news information. Vu Viet Trang, general director of Vietnam News Agency, told Xinhua that the world is changing rapidly, with technological transformation advancing at an unprecedented pace. As important sources of information, news agencies need to enhance efficiency of information delivery through technological innovation while ensuring the accurate and timely transmission of information, she said. The Asia-Pacific region is playing an increasingly prominent role on the international stage, and regional news agencies should voice more strongly on regional and international issues, she said, noting that this is the common mission shouldered by news agencies in the Asia-Pacific region. Dzhaldinov Askar Muratovich, deputy director of the Kazakhstan President's TV and Radio Complex, said as global news media face multiple common challenges, cooperation and exchanges offer opportunities to tackle these challenges. News organizations should not only fulfill their responsibilities in information dissemination, but also actively influence social development and policymaking, he added. During the conference, the delegates visited an OANA photo exhibition, where Xinhua News Agency's photographic works were on display. OANA consists of 41 news agencies from 33 countries and has its origin in the Organization of Asian News Agencies established in Thailand in December 1961.
Time of India
2 days ago
- Sport
- Time of India
Rookie QB Shedeur Sanders caught speeding at 101 mph, faces fine or court date
Shedeur Sanders cited for going 101 mph on Ohio highway days before Browns training camp (Image via Getty) Just months after being drafted by the Cleveland Browns, rookie quarterback Shedeur Sanders is already making headlines and not the kind the team was hoping for. Early Tuesday morning, the 22-year-old was pulled over in Ohio for allegedly speeding at 101 miles per hour on the highway. It was 12:24 a.m., and according to police records, Sanders was driving north on I-71 when he was cited for going 41 mph over the limit. Police say Shedeur Sanders was clocked at 101 mph near Strongsville, Ohio According to the citation, Shedeur was pulled over by local authorities in Strongsville, about 20 minutes from downtown Cleveland. He was allegedly driving 101 mph, a clear violation of the speed limit and one that could come with steep penalties depending on how the case is handled. For now, it's a standard traffic ticket, but driving over 100 mph can sometimes result in harsher consequences depending on local laws, past driving history, or how the court views the offense. Luckily for Shedeur, this doesn't appear to involve any DUI or reckless endangerment charges, just excessive speed. The rookie QB now has two options: fight it in court or pay up Shedeur now has a choice: he can either fight the ticket in court or pay the fine outright. That's standard in these cases though fighting it could come with the hope of reducing points or penalties on his license. No official statement has been released by Sanders or the Browns organization, but it's safe to assume the team is aware. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Switch to UnionBank Rewards Card UnionBank Credit Card Apply Now Undo And considering this is his rookie offseason, the last thing they want is more off-field drama. Fans react as Sanders' 'fast start' takes on a whole new meaning Naturally, fans didn't waste time chiming in. Some joked that Sanders is just 'practicing his 40-yard dash in a car,' while others questioned his decision-making just weeks before Browns training camp. It's not uncommon for NFL players to land in hot water over speeding tickets, but driving over 100 mph? That's never a good look, especially for a rookie QB already under the microscope thanks to his famous last name and high expectations. While no one's calling this a scandal, it's definitely not the cleanest way to kick off your NFL career. Shedeur has time to clean it up, either by paying the fine or showing up in court. But you can bet Browns fans and coaches will be watching closely. Also read - 'Fu*k KC': Chiefs hit with racial bias lawsuit, fans stunned over pay gap and wrongful firing claims Game On Season 1 kicks off with Sakshi Malik's inspiring story. Watch Episode 1 here
National Geographic
2 days ago
- Science
- National Geographic
Scientists discovered a new kind of human with its pinkie bone. Now we have a skull.
Finally, we can put a face on a Denisovan. The "Dragon Man" skull was discovered in Harbin, China in 1933 by a local laborer, but remained hidden away until 2018. A new analysis now finds its very likely to be a Denisovan. In the summer of 2021, a team of five Chinese researchers stirred up some controversy by suggesting that an unusual skull unearthed in northeastern China belonged to a previously unknown species they thereby officially described as Homo longi, nicknamed 'Dragon Man.' (Both names were inspired by the Long Jiang Dragon River region where it was found.) Soon afterwards, the team was contacted by paleogeneticist Qiaomei Fu of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, who asked if she could try and get DNA from the skull. Back in 2010, she'd been the first to investigate the DNA from a tiny finger bone found in a Siberian cave called Denisova that became world famous because it revealed the existence of a population of hominins not previously known to science, and for which no other fossils existed: the Denisovans. In two papers published in the journals Science and Cell this week—coauthored with Qiang Ji of Hebei GEO University, an author on the original Homo longi paper—Fu and her team conclude the 'Dragon Man' was likely a Denisovan too. Which is big news, as it makes the stunningly complete skull of 'Dragon Man', also known as the 'Harbin skull', the only Denisovan skull known to science. 'After 15 years, we give the Denisovan a face,' she says. 'It's really a special feeling, I feel really happy.' This illustration depicts how Homo longi may have appeared when they lived during the middle Pleistocene, over 146,000 years ago. Illustration by John Bavaro Fine Art, Science Photo Library We now know Denisovans had a wide and low face that combined more primitive features, like a prominent brow ridge, with more modern ones, like delicate cheekbones and a relatively flat lower face that does not jut out like it does in other primates and more ancient hominins. Its massive size also suggests a very large body that perhaps helped protect it from brutal winters in northeastern China. The findings open the door to a better understanding of these ancient hominins and the world they inhabited. 'Having a well-preserved skull like this one allows us to compare the Denisovans to many more different specimens found in very different places,' says paleoanthropologist Bence Viola of the University of Toronto, who was not involved in the new study. 'This means we might be able to compare their body proportions and start thinking about their adaptations to climate, for example.' How dental plaque helped confirm the findings Bulgaria's cultural capital After she was granted access to the skull, the first thing Fu did was look for DNA, specifically in the teeth and the petrous bone, a dense part of the skull near the inner ear that is known to be the last spot where DNA might survive in a skull that is estimated to be at least 146,000 years old. When that revealed no genetic material, she turned to a different method: extracting proteins. These are usually more hardy than DNA – and because they are what the genes in the DNA code for, they can also provide genetic clues about the DNA that gave rise to them. She was able to collect information from 95 different proteins, four of which are known to differ between Denisovans and other hominins. For three of those, the skull had a Denisovan variant (sometimes in combination with another one on the other chromosome). Yet Fu still wanted to find DNA to confirm if the skull belonged to a Denisovan. And so she looked in the dental plaque on its single remaining tooth. It was a long shot: while plaque is a very hardy material, researchers more typically find bacterial DNA in it. It's rarer to find the DNA of the owner of the teeth. Against expectations, she did find a tiny amount of DNA there that was human and looked sufficiently old to have belonged to the skull itself, and not one of the people who have handled it since. (How a molar, jawbone, and pinkie are rewriting human history) 'They may have actually recovered many DNA fragments from me because I studied and handled the specimens so many times,' says paleoanthropologist Xijun Ni, who is based at the same institute and was one of the coauthors of the paper proposing Homo longi as a new species, but was not a coauthor on the current paper. (He is not convinced that the protein analysis is sufficiently specific, nor does he believe the degraded DNA is enough to identify the specimen as Denisovan.) Fu acknowledges in the paper 'a substantial proportion' of the DNA she found was clearly the result of contamination. But using the established protocols to select only the DNA that is indeed ancient, she found that the tiny amount of DNA that remains, like the proteins, confidently identifies the skull as Denisovan 'It contains 27 gene variants only found in the seven known Denisovan individuals,' says Fu. 'None of these can arise from modern human contamination.' 'The data are quite convincing,' says paleobiologist Frido Welker of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, who specializes in the analysis of ancient proteins, but wasn't involved in this study. 'The Harbin cranium appears to be a Denisovan.' Other researchers are convinced as well. Since the description of [the Harbin skull] I was hopeful that we finally had a face for the Denisovans, and these papers prove it,' says Viola who has conducted excavations in Denisova cave. 'It's great that two different methods gave us the same result, this makes me much more confident that this is real.' Denisovans inhabited an even wider range than we thought These results provoke an unsettled question: Since Denisovans have never been formally described as a species, but Homo longi has, should we now refer to Denisovans as Homo longi? For some, the answer is clearly yes. 'Assuming the author's claim is true, then Denisovans are a population of Homo longi, just as New Yorkers and Beijingers are both Homo sapiens' says Ni. Paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, who has been collaborating with Ni and others on a new analysis of Chinese hominin fossils, agrees that even though 'it is increasingly likely that Harbin is the most complete fossil of a Denisovan found so far, Homo longi is the appropriate species name for this group.' But other researchers don't think it's useful to assign separate species names to hominins from this period. 'We ourselves do not use species names for Neandertals or Denisovans,' says paleogeneticist Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthrology, who leads the lab where Fu first analyzed the Denisovan DNA. 'We do not find it helpful as these are closely related groups that have been shown to mix and have fertile offspring, with each other and with our own direct ancestors. But if a species name is needed, we would simply call them all Homo sapiens.' (The best evidence yet that Roman gladiators fought lions: a bite mark) Naming discussions aside, a very exciting discovery remains: a kind of human we once only knew from a pinky bone dug up from a cave now has a face. And we now know this kind of human did not just live in Siberia where the first pinkie bone was found, but across much of East-Asia. Confidently identifying this fossil will also help researchers make sense of the many other mysterious fossils found across East-Asia, and will encourage them to try and get molecular evidence from those as well. This may also cast a new light on how and when Denisovans and our own ancestors interbred, which is why long after the death of the last direct descendant of the Denisovan 'Dragon Man', some of its genetic material still survives in people alive today.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
China Retail Sales Saw May Bump in Spite of Tariff Firestorm
China's retail sales rose in May in spite of long-simmering tariff tensions with its largest consumer export market, with in-country retail spending growing at the highest rate since December 2023. Newly released data from China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed that total sales of consumer goods reached 4,132.6 billion yuan ($575.44 billion) in May, beating the same period last year by 6.4 percent. More from Sourcing Journal China's Cosco Eyes Stake in MSC-BlackRock Panama Ports Deal Port of LA Imports Dip 9% in May After Tariff Shock Vietnam's Ready For High Stakes US Trade Talks To Avoid Steep Tariffs Despite the disruptions caused by the trade war with the U.S., which began heating up earlier this year, sales within China have been on an upswing. Between January and May, the total retail sales of consumer goods grew 5 percent, reaching 20,317.1 billion yuan ($2,829.05 billion), and sales of goods other than cars increased by 5.6 percent. NBS spokesperson and director of the Comprehensive Statistics Department of the National Economy Fu Linghui said the data points to China's steadfastness in 'expanding high-level openness' against a backdrop of 'rising protectionism and unilateralism, as well as obstacles to global economic and trade exchanges.' China has been focused on fostering symbiotic trade relationships with nations across the globe outside of the U.S., and the positive impacts of that strategy have become 'increasingly evident,' he added. From January to May, China's total import and export volume grew 2.5 percent from the same period in 2024, while trade of services grew 8.2 percent. The Asian superpower has also sought to increase its influence across continents, while taking in new talent, too. Fu said China has opened up its visa-free entry scope in order to promote 'economic exchanges and cultural communication.' That change resulted in a 72.7-percent increase in foreign arrivals who entered the country under the visa-free policy during the May Day holiday this year. The data presents an interesting dichotomy when compared to China's industrial output, which hit a six-month low in May, growing 5.8 percent from the same period last year and slowing from April's 6.1-percent rate. Growth was projected to hit about 5.9 percent, but instead backslid to the slowest rate seen since November 2024, when President Donald Trump was elected. Nonetheless, the country's consumer economy showed notable signs of recovery in May after months of stagnation due to weak demand and deflationary pressures. The sale of retail goods increased 6.5 percent from the year prior for a total of 3674.8 billion yuan ($511.83 billion), and the January-to-May timeframe generated 18,039.8 billion yuan ($2,512.59 billion)—an increase of 5.1 percent from 2024. Specialty stores saw gains of 6.3 percent while brand stores saw modest growth (1.8 percent) along with department stores (1.3 percent). But online sales were the winner, demonstrating 8.5-percent growth year over year. Clothing, shoes, hats and textile sales increased by 4 percent in May from the year prior, and 3.3 percent between January and May compared with the same period in 2024. Throughout the month of May, Beijing and Washington made plodding progress toward a trade deal, both agreeing to lower and suspend duties on each other for a period of 90 days on May 12. That agreement devolved in early June when the Trump administration accused China's government of 'slowrolling' compliance with the terms of the deal. Last week, U.S. and China trade officials traveled to London to hash out new terms, settling on a 55-percent duty rate for China-originating imports into the U.S. market. Goods making their way into China will face far lower tariffs of just 10 percent. In April, tariffs on U.S. apparel imports hit their highest point in decades, with China-made clothing bearing the brunt of the duty hikes. Such imports faced an unprecedented tariff markup of 55 percent, up from 37 percent in March and 22 percent in January—data that likely skews lower due to the fact that many importers frontloaded orders before the steepest duties took effect.
Fibre2Fashion
4 days ago
- Business
- Fibre2Fashion
China records 5.8% industrial growth in May, 6.3% in Jan-May period
China's value-added industrial output of major enterprises, whose annual primary business revenue reaches or exceeds 20 million yuan (~$2.79 million), rose by 5.8 per cent year-on-year (YoY) and 0.61 per cent compared to April, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Within key sectors, manufacturing output increased by 6.2 per cent, while mining expanded by 5.7 per cent. Equipment manufacturing saw a robust 9 per cent YoY growth, 3.2 percentage points (pp) higher than the overall industrial average. High-tech manufacturing followed closely, up by 8.6 per cent—2.8 pp faster than the broader industrial sector. China's industrial sector grew 5.8 per cent year-on-year in May, led by high-tech and equipment manufacturing. Manufacturing and mining rose 6.2 and 5.7 per cent, respectively. Cumulative value added rose 6.3 per cent over Januaryâ€'May. Industrial profits reached 2.12 trillion yuan (~$295.26 billion). Despite steady gains, the NBS urges continued innovation amid external and domestic challenges. Over the January-May period, the cumulative value added by large industrial enterprises climbed by 6.3 per cent YoY. Business sentiment showed marginal improvement as the manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) edged up to 49.5 per cent in May, a 0.5-point rise from April. Meanwhile, the production and operation expectation index reached 52.5 per cent, increasing by 0.4 pp. Profits of industrial enterprises with annual revenues above 20 million yuan totalled 2.12 trillion yuan (~$295.26 billion) in the first four months of 2025, marking a 1.4 per cent annual increase. The industrial sector displayed resilience and potential, supported by ongoing structural upgrades and targeted policy measures, NBS spokesperson Fu Linghui said. He emphasised strong gains in high-end manufacturing, the digital economy, and clean energy sectors, which are driving long-term transformation. However, Fu also cautioned about persistent external uncertainties and domestic pressures, calling for sustained efforts to enhance innovation and ensure high-quality development, as per Chinese media reports. Fibre2Fashion News Desk (SG)
