New Delhi (AFP) Oct 14, 2025
Google said Tuesday it will invest $15 billion in India over the next five years, as it announced a giant data centre and artificial intelligence base in the country. "It is the largest AI hub that we are investing in anywhere outside of the US," Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said at a ceremony in New Delhi. Demand for AI tools and solutions is surging among businesses and individuals i

San Francisco, United States (AFP) Oct 10, 2025
A chatbot from one of Silicon Valley's hottest AI startups called a 14-year-old "sweet king" and pleaded with him to "come home" in passionate exchanges that would be the teen's last communications before he took his own life. Megan Garcia's son, Sewell, had fallen in love with a "Game of Thrones"-inspired chatbot on Character.AI, a platform that allows users - many of them young people -

Houston TX (SPX) Oct 13, 2025
Rice University researchers used a focused electron beam to pattern device functions with submicron precision directly into an ultrathin crystal. The approach produced traces narrower than the width of a DNA helix that glow with bright blue light and conduct electricity, showing it could be used to manufacture compact on-chip wiring and built-in light sources. "The electron beam essentiall

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Oct 13, 2025
Unmanned swarm systems are revolutionizing fields from disaster relief to military reconnaissance, yet two obstacles have long hindered their reliability: precise trajectory prediction and transparent understanding of swarm interactions. Researchers at Northwestern Polytechnical University have now proposed a solution with their Swarm Relational Inference (SRI) model, published in the Chinese Jo

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Oct 10, 2025
The rapid rise of compact fusion has ignited demand for high temperature superconducting tapes, creating a major opening for the HTS industry. Manufacturers are scaling pulsed laser deposition REBCO coated conductors to deliver performance and price points suited to fusion magnets and other high field systems. PLD has matured from lab tools to industrial production through multi plume mult

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Oct 10, 2025
The appearance of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere was a turning point in the history of our planet, forever transforming the environment and setting the stage for complex life. This event, known as the Great Oxidation Event (GOE), occurred roughly 2.1 to 2.4 billion years ago. Yet, although oxygenic photosynthesis in cyanobacteria is thought to have evolved hundreds of millions of years earlier tha

Mae Sot/Paris, Thailand (AFP) Oct 14, 2025
Scam centres in Myanmar blamed for swindling billions from victims across the world are expanding fast just months after a crackdown that was supposed to eradicate them, an AFP investigation has found. New buildings have been springing up inside the heavily guarded compounds around Myawaddy on the Thailand-Myanmar border at a dizzying pace, with others festooned with dishes for Elon Musk's S

Sydney (AFP) Oct 14, 2025
Australia is pushing to lock in a critical minerals deal with the United States, dangling access to its vast reserves as an alternative to China. China dominates the production of metals used in everything from solar panels to precision missiles - and has threatened to strangle supplies as it fights a festering trade war with Washington. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese travel

Stockholm Oct 13, 2025
One of the winners of this year's Nobel economics prize, France's Philippe Aghion, on Monday warned Europe that it must not let the United States and China dominate technological innovation. Aghion shared the Nobel with American-Israeli Joel Mokyr and Canada's Peter Howitt for work on technology's impact on sustained economic growth. "I think European countries have to realise that we sh

South Padre Island, United States (AFP) Oct 14, 2025
SpaceX's massive Starship rocket soared through Texas's golden-hour skies Monday before splashing down successfully, as the US company vies to silence critics who doubt Elon Musk's startup can deliver NASA's lunar projects on time. In its 11th test voyage, the enormous rocket took off Monday from Space X's south Texas launch facilities just after 6:25pm local time (2325 GMT), according to a