Mount Etna, Europe's tallest active volcano, has been erupting for several days, spewing ash and lava and repeatedly disrupting flights at Catania Airport, a major gateway to Sicily.

The ongoing eruption has also attracted a surge of tourists eager to watch the lava flows, particularly during nighttime excursions organized by local tour operators.

Daniele Perricelli, a local guide with Guide Etna, said his group, which normally takes several dozen visitors up the volcano each evening, has recently received about 300 inquiries a day, roughly three times the average level for a summer day.

"Everyone wants to see the lava," Perricelli saying visitors were drawn to the unusual spectacle.

Another local guide, Ernesto Maria Magri, described the eruption as a major tourist attraction, saying its activity could be observed from relatively safe areas. He added that many local residents had also been making their way up the volcano to see the lava, at times causing overcrowding.

The sharp increase in visitors has raised safety concerns. Perricelli said as many as 2,000 people were climbing Etna each evening, leaving some trails severely congested. He also noted that some visitors were inadequately equipped, with some seen wearing flip-flops.

Local guides have urged visitors not to climb the volcano alone, warning that the terrain remains unstable and that conditions can change rapidly. While cooled lava flows at lower elevations can be approached relatively closely, access to higher areas requires greater caution and professional guidance.

Under current regulations, visitors may climb independently to around 2,400 meters above sea level, while those wishing to go higher must be accompanied by a guide. Etna's summit stands at 3,324 meters.

Italy's Civil Protection Department has issued a yellow alert for Etna, the second level in a four-tier warning system. The alert reflects the volcano's ongoing activity and the possibility of further eruptions and explosions.

Volcanic ash has also disrupted air traffic in eastern Sicily. Catania Airport has repeatedly suspended flight operations in recent days, with Italian media reporting that hundreds of flights have been canceled since Saturday.

The airport operator on Wednesday said that arrivals and departures would remain suspended until 4 p.m. local time on Thursday.

Catania International Airport handled around 12 million passengers in 2024 and serves as a key transportation hub for eastern Sicily, one of Italy's most popular tourist destinations.

(With input from AFP)

As deserts nurture new hope, mountain forests carry forward age-old wisdom, and oceans pave the way for a circular future. Across China, an exploration centered on humanity and nature is unfolding. Stretching across wastelands, woodlands and coasts, China is writing a brand-new chapter of coexistence between people and nature. Symbiosis brings you true stories of green development in China. Witness how ecological conservation generates value, as humans and nature move hand-in-hand toward tomorrow. Coexistence is not merely a choice, but a way of life for the future. Symbiosis premieres on CGTN on August 14.

A rare total solar eclipse swept across Europe on Wednesday, attracting millions of spectators who gathered to witness one of nature's most spectacular astronomical events.

It was the first total solar eclipse visible in Europe in 27 years, following the previous one in August 1999 when the eclipse crossed countries including France, Germany and Austria.

The eclipse path of totality passed through Greenland, Iceland, Spain and a small region of Portugal before ending over the Mediterranean. During totality, when the moon completely blocked the sun, daylight suddenly turned into darkness and the sun's glowing corona became visible. The period of complete darkness lasted more than two minutes in some areas.

Spain was one of the main destinations for eclipse watchers, as the path of totality crossed the northern and central parts of the country before reaching the Balearic Islands. According to the country's National Geographic Institute, it was the first total solar eclipse visible from the Iberian Peninsula in more than a century.

Viewing events were organized across Spain, attracting residents, tourists and astronomy enthusiasts from around the world. In Molina de Aragon, nearly 100 visitors gathered, including travelers from Germany, Poland and Italy. As the moon covered the sun, crowds cheered and captured the moment with cameras and phones. After about 90 seconds, sunlight returned and spectators applauded.

In Madrid, viewers described the experience as remarkable, spectacular and unique. Many said the sudden change from daylight to darkness felt unreal.

Portugal also witnessed the eclipse, although only a narrow area in the northeastern municipality of Braganca fell within the path of totality.

Local media reported that it was the first time since 1912 that a total solar eclipse could be observed from the country. Thousands gathered at Bragança Airport, while people in other cities, such as Lisbon, watched a partial eclipse with famous landmarks including the Belem Tower.

Iceland also offered a glimpse of totality despite cloudy conditions, as a break in the clouds allowed some viewers on the western coast to witness the darkened sky. The sky became completely dark for about two minutes and 13 seconds, creating a dramatic experience for those who were able to see it.

On the same day, a partial solar eclipse was also visible in places including France, the UK, Germany and Croatia, attracting large numbers of spectators.

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon moves between the sun and Earth. A total solar eclipse happens when the three bodies align perfectly, allowing the moon to completely cover the sun. A partial solar eclipse occurs when the three are not perfectly lined up.

Special eclipse glasses are required to safe observation because direct sunlight can damage the eyes. These glasses contain filters designed to block harmful solar radiation.

Beyond the visual spectacle, the eclipse provided scientists with valuable research opportunities. NASA-supported teams planned to chase the moon's shadow with a high-altitude jet and scientific balloons to investigate the sun's dynamics and how the temporary darkening affects the Earth's atmosphere.

"From our unique perspective on Earth during a total solar eclipse, scientists can study the sun's corona in a way we can't from anywhere else in the solar system," said Kelly Korreck, NASA's eclipse program manager.

"The sun impacts our daily life, satellites, and astronauts in space, and we can take advantage of this moment to advance our understanding of that influence," she added.

(With input from agencies)

China's green transition is gaining momentum as renewable energy expands and ecological resources are finding new pathways to create economic value. The implementation of the Ecological and Environmental Code on August 15 is set to provide stronger legal support for this ongoing transformation.

Across the country, renewable energy is reshaping both the energy mix and industrial landscape. 

In north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, rich wind and solar resources are supporting the construction of large-scale renewable energy bases, while driving the development of equipment manufacturing and related industries. 

By the end of 2025, China's installed capacity of wind and solar power had reached 1.84 billion kilowatts, according to the National Energy Administration.

The green transition is also creating new opportunities for rural and regional development. 

China is exploring ways to turn the ecological value of forests, wetlands and other natural resources into sustainable economic benefits. 

In January 2026, a national standard for assessing the economic value of terrestrial ecosystems was introduced, providing a unified framework for measuring such value.

From clean energy production to the sustainable use of natural resources, green industries are becoming an increasingly important link between ecological conservation and economic development. 

Scientists used an AI called "Evo" to design whole viruses from scratch. Don't worry: they infect bacteria, not humans – and could become the antibiotics of the future as drug resistance grows.

But some experts warn it's an "urgent" biosecurity concern: AI-generated DNA can slip past existing safety screening. Once AI can write biological code – who decides what it's allowed to design?

(Sun Dan, Gao Yun and Gong Zhe contributed to the story. Cover by Li Wenyi)

China's homegrown C919 large passenger aircraft landed safely at the new Ulaanbaatar airport in Mongolia on Wednesday afternoon after departing from Beijing Capital International Airport, marking the completion of the aircraft's first scheduled international commercial passenger flight.

A grand water salute ceremony was held at the airport. Passengers gradually disembarked from the aircraft, watched a unique ethnic dance performance, and were greeted by a procession of attendants dressed in traditional Mongolian attire.

This is the first international route opened for the C919 since the aircraft entered commercial operation, marking the official transition of China's domestically developed mainline passenger jet into a new era of regular international operations.

According to available information, the international route is operated under flight numbers CA723/CA724, with daily scheduled flights connecting Beijing and Ulaanbaatar.

As China's first domestically developed large passenger jet for civilian use, the C919 has been successfully operated on multiple domestic routes since entering commercial service. It has gained widespread market recognition due to its reliable flight performance, comfortable cabin experience and high safety standards.

The operation of this flight on the China-Mongolia international route demonstrates that the C919 has successfully passed the verification of bilateral international civil aviation operating standards, thereby officially acquiring the qualification for regular international commercial passenger operations.

China sent two AI-powered hyperspectral satellites into orbit on Wednesday morning, marking a step forward in bringing AI computing capabilities into space.

The Smart Dragon-3 carrier rocket lifted off at 10:38 am on Wednesday from the offshore waters near Haiyang, east China's Shandong Province, carrying the Oriental Smart Eye (OSE) hyperspectral satellites 01 and 02 into their planned orbits. The offshore launch mission was conducted by the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center.

From space sensing to space computing

Unlike conventional remote-sensing satellites that send raw data back to Earth for processing, the two satellites can analyze data directly in orbit.

Each satellite has onboard AI computing capability of up to 400 TOPS, or 400 trillion AI operations per second.

"A high-performance laptop has about 20 to 30 TOPS of computing power. That means a single hyperspectral AI satellite has computing power equivalent to 20 to 30 high-performance laptops," said Song Bingchen, Star.ai's co-founder.

"With an onboard 'brain,' we can process the data in space and transmit results instead of images," he added.

"Each satellite can generate tens to hundreds of gigabytes of imaging data per day," said Peng Feiyu, a Satellite AI Algorithm Engineer. "It can process 15 seconds of imagery in orbit within just 10 to 15 minutes, and transmit only the analyzed results to the ground. The downlinked data is reduced to just tens of kilobytes or tens of megabytes."

What makes the AI satellites different?

The two OSE satellites feature a spatial resolution of five meters, an imaging swath of 300 kilometers and 22 calibrated spectral channels.

They can not only capture the shape and color of objects, but also can identify the unique "spectral fingerprints" of individual pixels, providing more detailed information about what they observe.

"The two satellites are benchmarked against leading hyperspectral satellites currently in orbit," said Wang Mi, a professor at Wuhan University. "They can conduct hyperspectral imaging over land during the day and capture light scenes associated with human activity across cities during the night."

How AI-powered satellites put to work?

The two satellites will work with the OSE Gaofen-1 satellite already in orbit. Their data can support applications in agriculture, forestry, environmental protection, marine monitoring and mineral resources.

Instead of simply sending images to users, AI-powered satellites can analyze the data and provide recommendations.

"For disaster monitoring, conventional satellites may take hours to provide the latest information, while our satellites could potentially provide warnings and decision-making guidance within minutes," said Song.

"In agriculture, intelligent satellites can provide specific recommendations, such as how to sow crops and carry out agricultural operations, instead of simply providing images," Song added.

Satellite 01, part of a space cooperation project between China and Indonesia, is expected to help safeguard agricultural production in Indonesia by precisely tracking crop growth and assessing disaster risks, according to the developer.

Satellite 02, part of a space cooperation project between China and Uzbekistan, is designed to support the landlocked country's full-cycle monitoring of cotton cultivation from sowing to harvesting.

High-quality data combined with onboard computing capabilities is a key step in bringing space computing from concept to reality. More importantly, the launch marks the beginning of a much larger plan.

The OSE constellation is planned to eventually comprise 258 satellites, with deployment scheduled for completion by 2030.

An integrated "satellite-rocket-ship" model

The launch also highlighted the development of China's commercial space industry.

The rocket, satellites and launch vessel involved in the mission were all produced or developed within the Dongfang Aerospace Port industrial park in Yantai, creating an integrated "satellite-rocket-ship" model.

"The integrated model is expected to improve offshore launch capabilities, accelerate satellite constellation deployment and support the large-scale development of commercial spaceflight," said Wang Chao, an official with the Shandong Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology.

(With input from Xinhua)

Part of a used SpaceX rocket floating in space since last year crashed at high speed into the moon on Wednesday. The object is the second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that ‌had launched a lunar lander from Firefly Aerospace toward the moon in January 2025. 

Although the impact was not visible to the naked eye on Earth, a telescope in Chile spotted what astronomers have identified as the debris plume resulting from the crash.

A SpaceX rocket stage floating in space since last year smashed into the moon at high speed early Wednesday morning, joining the ranks of meteoroids, wayward spacecraft ​and other pieces of space junk that have bombarded the lunar surface for ages, astronomers confirmed.

The school-bus-size object is the second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched a lunar lander from Firefly Aerospace toward the moon in January 2025. While the rocket's booster returned to Earth, the upper stage remained in space after completing its primary mission.

The unintentional collision occurred at around 2:35 a.m. ET (0635 GMT), when the 4,000-kilogram rocket stage slammed into the moon at a speed of about 8,690 kilometers per hour. The impact had been predicted months in advance by astronomers tracking the object's trajectory.

The crash posed no threat to Earth, and no spacecraft orbiting the moon were positioned to capture close-up images of the impact.

But the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope in Chile detected glimmers of light associated with the impact. "We can confirm that the telescope detected spectral lines of sodium and lithium gas in the impact plume lasting for 5-10 minutes after impact," an ESO spokesperson told Reuters.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter probe and South Korea's Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter were also expected to take images of the impact site, though it could take days to receive that information.

The event comes as SpaceX continues to expand its space operations and commercial activities. In its first quarterly report since going public in June, the company reported strong revenue growth, with revenue reaching $7.8 billion, up more than 90% from a year earlier. Starlink revenue, which accounted for over half of total revenue, rose 66%, and revenue from SpaceX's AI business – which Musk has pitched as the company's future growth driver – surged about 250%. However, the stock fell by as much as 8% in after-hours trading following the release, as investors reacted to a sharp increase in capital expenditures, driven largely by AI infrastructure investments.

Space junk raising concern

Space debris has become a growing concern as more satellites and spacecraft enter orbit.

Experts have warned that amassing too much space junk around Earth could lead to a dangerous chain reaction of collisions known as the "Kessler syndrome."

Generally on such missions, SpaceX performs a maneuver to make sure the second stage "is safe per the appropriate rules and regulations," said Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA Science and Dragon Programs at SpaceX, at a Monday news conference.

"We did that," she continued, but "what has happened is essentially a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put it on a path towards the moon."

The rocket stage was just one of tens of thousands of pieces of human-made debris currently orbiting Earth. While the moon is constantly bombarded by natural objects such as meteoroids, impacts from artificial spacecraft remain relatively uncommon.

NASA and SpaceX are discussing ways to prevent future lunar impacts, Scheiman said. Under NASA's multibillion-dollar Artemis program, the US space agency plans to build a lunar base and send routine astronaut missions to the lunar surface later this decade. Protecting future spacecraft, equipment and lunar habitats from errant pieces of space junk will become a growing priority.

"It's one of the things that we're working in partnership with NASA and the other appropriate agencies is what is the best future disposal path for high-energy missions that are in the sun-Earth-moon system," said Scheiman.

Despite concerns over space debris, scientists also see research value in the collision.

NASA intentionally crashed stages from its Saturn V moon rocket into the moon in the 1970s to study the impacts' seismic effects. In 2009, the agency intentionally crashed a rocket stage into the moon as part of the LCROSS mission to study the plume of lunar material kicked up by the impact, leading to a key discovery that lunar dirt contains traces of water ice.

This time, "NASA scientists are planning to collect lunar data from the event and refine techniques for tracking objects in space," the US agency said.

(With input from agencies)

China's National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center (NMEFC) on Thursday issued an orange alert for ocean waves as Typhoon Dolphin, the 13th typhoon of the year, continues to approach the China's eastern coastal regions.

According to the alert issued at 8 a.m., waves of 6 to 10 meters are expected in the eastern part of the East China Sea from Thursday morning to Friday morning, triggering an orange-level warning for offshore waters.

During the same period, waves of 2 to 3 meters are forecast in the coastal waters off east China's Zhejiang Province, with a blue-level warning issued for nearshore waters.

The NMEFC advised vessels operating in the affected waters to ensure safety, while relevant coastal authorities were urged to take precautionary measures against high waves.

China's National Meteorological Center (NMC) on Thursday also renewed a blue alert for Typhoon Dolphin.

As of 5 a.m. Thursday, the center of Dolphin was located over the northwestern Pacific Ocean, about 1,360 kilometers east of Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province. The typhoon was maintaining its intensity, with maximum winds of 42 meters per second near its center.

The NMC said Dolphin will move west-northwestward at a speed of 15 to 20 kilometers per hour, with little change in intensity. It is expected to enter the East China Sea on Friday after passing through the Ryukyu Islands and gradually approach the eastern coast of China.

The typhoon is expected to enter China's 48-hour typhoon warning zone on Thursday night.

Strong winds are forecast to affect most parts of the East China Sea, the southeastern Yellow Sea, waters east of Taiwan, the eastern coast of Taiwan Island, the Bashi Channel, as well as the central and southern parts of the South China Sea from Thursday morning to Friday morning.

According to the forecast, the peripheral subsiding airflow associated with the typhoon will sustain high temperatures across east China on Thursday and Friday.

From August 8 to 12, under the influence of Typhoon Dolphin, heavy to torrential rainfall is expected in Jiangnan, Jianghan, Jianghuai and Huanghuai, with some areas forecast to experience severe rainstorms. From August 12 to 14, the remnant circulation of the weakened typhoon, combined with cold air, is expected to bring heavy to torrential rainfall to parts of north China, eastern Inner Mongolia and southern part of northeast China.

Meteorological authorities said that regardless of its eventual track, the typhoon will have significant impacts on China, affecting not only the eastern coastal regions but also inland and northern parts of the country.

According to meteorological observations, Dolphin is expected to become the easternmost-generated typhoon to make landfall in China since 1951 if current forecasts hold. The typhoon formed on July 27 and has traveled more than 4,700 kilometers over the past 10 days.

China has a four-tier color-coded weather warning system, with red representing the most severe warning, followed by orange, yellow and blue.

(With input from Xinhua)

Google's head of AI, Demis Hassabis, will step down from his current role to become Alphabet's chief scientist amid a reshuffling at DeepMind that will also include a key engineer's departure.

Hassabis will take on two new titles, Alphabet announced on Wednesday: chair of DeepMind and chief scientist of Alphabet.

The change "will allow me to focus on long-term strategy, and accelerating scientific breakthroughs, including leaning into my work at Isomorphic to help cure disease," Hassabis wrote in a social media post.

Isomorphic Labs is an AI-powered drug discovery lab that spun out from DeepMind in 2021. In 2024, Hassabis won a Nobel Prize in chemistry.

As part of the shake up, DeepMind's chief technology officer and chief AI architect Koray Kavukcuoglu will become the division's senior vice president and oversee its operations, including the development of Google's flagship frontier models and products which are known as Gemini.

Longtime Google engineer Jeff Dean is also leaving the company after nearly three decades to "try something new, and we're excited to support him in that," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post announcing the news.

Hassabis co-founded DeepMind in 2010, and four years later, Google bought the research lab for $650 million, according to reports at the time. His co-founder, Mustafa Suleyman, is currently the chief of Microsoft's AI segment.

Google is competing for customers alongside other major AI developers including Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta, as well as DeepSeek and Moonshot in China.

The industry is also chasing a theoretical milestone known as advanced general intelligence (AGI), which is a point when AI software matches the capabilities of human thinking.

"I've been working towards AGI my whole life and now, like many of you, I feel it is close at hand," Hassabis wrote in Wednesday's blog post.

"With this backdrop, I've decided that now is the right time for me to hand over my day-to-day operational responsibilities at (Google DeepMind), so that I have the time and space to focus on the big picture and help influence what is to come," Hassabis continued.

Observers have been waiting for Google to announce a more powerful version of its AI model, called Gemini 3.5 Pro, which was supposed to launch in June but appears to be delayed.

Its shares closed 4% down Wednesday afternoon.

The leadership changes come amid a wider brain drain at Google.

In June, a top AI and engineering executive, Noam Shazeer, left for OpenAI, while senior researcher John Jumper, who shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Hassabis, jumped to Anthropic.

Serbian emergency services are battling multiple wildfires across the country as strong winds, extreme heat and prolonged drought intensify fire conditions, with a reignited blaze in the Deliblato Sands protected nature reserve in northeastern Serbia burning around 300 hectares of pine forest on Wednesday.

Serbia's public broadcaster RTS reported that a fire extinguished in the Deliblato Sands about 10 days ago flared up again after ground-level embers were fanned by strong winds. The blaze, in the southern Banat region about 60 kilometers east of Belgrade, had not yet been brought under control.

Serbian Interior Ministry said it had committed all available personnel and equipment. According to RTS, 45 firefighters from several towns, volunteer fire brigades and three police helicopters were tackling the fire, while no buildings were under threat.

Meanwhile, emergency services continued to battle several other fires across the country.

The wildfires coincide with the peak of a prolonged heatwave. The Republic Hydrometeorological Service (RHMZ) forecast maximum temperatures of 35 to 40 degrees Celsius on Wednesday and Thursday, with tropical nights expected in Belgrade and the northern province of Vojvodina.

The prolonged drought has also lowered river levels across Serbia. RHMZ warned that the Danube, Sava and Tisa rivers are expected to remain below navigational thresholds in the coming days, while flows on several smaller rivers have fallen close to biological minimum levels after weeks of exceptionally dry weather.

Scientific and technological modernization is key to Chinese modernization, with the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026–2030) marking a critical stage in China's drive to become a global science and technology powerhouse.

Since the beginning of the year, Chinese President Xi Jinping has made a series of major decisions and policy measures centered on scientific and technological innovation, accelerating efforts to achieve greater self-reliance and strength in science and technology as the country embarks on the 15th Five-Year Plan period.

Building China into a leading science and technology powerhouse and achieving high-level self-reliance in science and technology by 2035 are strategic goals set by the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

The extent of scientific and technological breakthroughs largely determines the speed, breadth and depth of the development of future industries, Xi said at a meeting at the beginning of this year.

During an inspection tour of the National Information Technology Application Innovation Park in Beijing's E-Town (Yizhuang) area on February 9, Xi reviewed developments in information technology innovation and examined exhibitions showcasing advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics.

He said that self-reliance and strength in science and technology are the keys to building China into a great modern socialist country, calling for the integration of high-quality innovation resources to tackle core technologies and accelerate efforts to overcome key bottlenecks in pursuit of the country's strategic goals.

On July 8, at a meeting in Beijing that brought together the National Science and Technology Award Conference, the general assemblies of the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) and the 11th National Congress of the China Association for Science and Technology, Xi described the country's scientific and technological workforce as an important force in building a modern socialist country.

He called on scientists and researchers to carry forward the tradition of serving the nation and benefiting the people and to make greater contributions to China's goal of becoming a global science and technology leader.

Strong international influence and leadership are hallmarks of a science and technology powerhouse. China is accelerating its transformation from a contributor to global scientific and technological development to a pioneer and leader, becoming one of the world's fastest-rising innovation hubs.

On July 17, Xi attended the opening ceremony of the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance in Shanghai and delivered a keynote speech outlining China's vision for advancing global AI development and governance.

He said that in China's view, all countries should take a people-centered approach and develop AI for the positive and for good. We should ensure that AI is an important driver for shared prosperity and common security. We should join hands to build a just and equitable system for global AI governance.

With the joint efforts of all parties, the World AI Cooperation Organization was officially established in Shanghai, marking a major milestone in the development of AI. At the conference, Xi also announced a series of major initiatives to support global AI development, underscoring China's commitment as a responsible major country.

The UK government has announced plans to invest more in robotic equipment for English hospitals and set a target for robotic assistance to be used in 90% of keyhole surgeries carried out in England by 2035.

The government highlighted robotics as one of five "big bets" in a 10-year health plan for England, alongside other transformative technologies: data, AI, genomics and wearables. 

At St Bartholomew's Hospital in central London, visiting surgeons are among the first to be trained to use the new da Vinci 5 robotic-assisted surgical system, made by US company Initiative. The system, which includes three robotic arms that can hold surgical equipment, is controlled using an immersive 3D headset and a video-game-like console.

Robotic surgical systems like this can be used across a range of specialties including urology, gynecology, abdominal, colorectal, and thoracic or general surgery. 

The precision of robotic-assisted surgery should mean shorter hospital stays and quicker recovery times, which will take strain off a struggling health service with year-long waitlists, workforce shortages and discharge bottlenecks.

"The ability to have lots of integrated computer-aided technology on top" of human-controlled robotics "makes this precise surgery. It makes it safe surgery," says Sasha Stamenkovic, Director of Robotic Surgery and Research at Barts Health NHS Trust.

As well as improving recovery times, the greater precision also reduces the risk of complications like air leaks, a common cause of longer hospital stays following lung surgery. 

Ian Macleod was the first patient in Britain's NHS to undergo lung cancer surgery using the new da Vinci robotic system. Macleod says he "didn't realize" until he was wearing a surgical gown and anesthetised that he would hold this groundbreaking title, but the news "didn't faze" the 76-year-old retired detective.

Thirty minutes after the robotic-assisted operation, Macleod was back on his feet. "It was extraordinary," he says. "In fact, after the operation, I found out quite quickly that I only had one stitch." He had undergone non-robotic keyhole surgery for a different cancer in the past, and says the recovery time was "much longer". This time, he was driving his wife to the garden centrer for coffee less than a week later.

Stamenkovic runs fellowships at St Bartholomew's training surgeons on this new technology. He says it is the young surgeons who pick up the new robotic control system the fastest and who become the most adept. 

"They've come with different skill sets," he says, "they've probably come with gaming skill sets, some of them have come with a musical background." 

Laying out his long-term mission, Stamenkovic added: "All we need to do is harness their energy, their passion, their skill set, and teach them the right moves. And that will make the surgeon of the future."

China is betting big on the technologies of tomorrow – and its strategies are already changing the global order in the technology sector.

From humanoid robots and AI to advanced manufacturing, the country is racing to achieve technological independence in almost every area and turn breakthrough research into real-world products. 

Behind the push to develop technology is China's long-term vision to build "new quality productive forces," a plan to drive growth through innovation, high-tech industries, and smarter manufacturing.

But there's more to the story than just robots. China is pouring record investment into research and development, building innovation hubs that connect entire supply chains, and reinventing traditional factories to compete at the cutting edge of global manufacturing.

As Xu Hongcai, deputy director of the Economic Policy Commission under China Association of Policy Sciences, says, new quality productive forces will push foreign investment to shift from "made in China" to "created in China."

Huawei on Wednesday unveiled its latest HUAWEI MateBook Fold Ultimate Design at a product launch event, introducing the company's first foldable computer featuring native stylus input under the HarmonyOS system.

The move marks Huawei's latest attempt to explore the high-end flexible PC segment, where manufacturers have been experimenting with foldable displays but have yet to achieve widespread adoption. By adding stylus interaction and cross-device capabilities, Huawei is seeking to expand the potential use cases of foldable computers beyond screen portability, although market acceptance remains uncertain.

The device features an 18-inch dual-layer OLED display when unfolded, with a resolution of 3,296 by 2,472 pixels and can be folded into a 13-inch form factor. It runs HarmonyOS 6.1 powered by the Kirin X90 Plus chip.

Huawei said the device adopts 40-micron ultra-thin glass and a reinforced structural design, with the display panel rated for 500,000 folding cycles and 500,000 stylus touches. The company also highlighted improvements in impact resistance and bending durability compared with the previous generation.

The bundled M-Pen 3 stylus supports system-wide annotation, handwriting on documents and webpages, AI-assisted selection and remote pointer functions for presentations. Huawei said HarmonyOS on the device supports more than 19,000 native applications and offers features including cross-device file transfer, application continuity and offline meeting transcription.

Foldable PCs are not a new category. Previously, companies including Lenovo and Samsung have explored similar form factors. Lenovo launched the ThinkPad X1 Fold series with flexible OLED displays and stylus support, while Samsung has extended its foldable technology experience from smartphones to larger-screen devices.

Huawei's approach focuses on integrating handwriting, flexible screen modes and device connectivity within its HarmonyOS ecosystem. Compared with traditional PC platforms such as Windows and macOS, however, the maturity of software ecosystems and compatibility with professional applications will remain key factors affecting wider adoption.

The launch event also showcased Huawei's broader terminal strategy, with new notebooks, smartphones and wearable devices presented alongside the foldable PC. The company has continued to emphasize seamless connectivity among different devices, including smartphones, tablets, computers and smartwatches.

The event also highlighted products from Huawei's automotive ecosystem partner. The move reflects a broader industry trend in which consumer electronics companies are expanding into smart vehicle ecosystems, with features such as account integration, navigation transfer and in-car digital services becoming part of competition in the intelligent vehicle market.

Japan and South Korea are enduring one of the most severe heat waves in recent years, with record-breaking temperatures claiming lives, damaging agriculture, disrupting daily activities and raising growing concerns over the increasing frequency of extreme weather events.

South Korea has been particularly hard hit. According to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, at least 19 people have died from heat-related causes this summer, while more than 2,000 others have suffered heat-related illnesses since mid-May.

The Korea Meteorological Administration said temperatures have repeatedly exceeded 40 degrees Celsius in some areas. Yangsan, located in the country’s southeast, registered 42.5 degrees Celsius, setting a new national record since modern observations began more than a century ago.

At a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said the ongoing heat wave should be considered a "national disaster," urging the government to mobilize all available resources to protect the public and instructing relevant authorities to step up emergency response measures, support vulnerable groups and secure power supplies amid rising demand.

Across the country, local governments have expanded cooling centers, increased welfare checks on elderly residents living alone and advised outdoor workers to avoid prolonged exposure during the hottest hours of the day. Health authorities have repeatedly urged the public to stay hydrated, use air conditioning when possible and seek immediate medical attention if symptoms of heatstroke develop.

The prolonged heat has also inflicted heavy losses on the agricultural sector. Tens of thousands of livestock, including poultry and pigs, have died from heat stress, while aquaculture farms have reported significant fish mortality as water temperatures continue to rise. Farmers are also facing concerns over crop damage caused by persistent high temperatures and drought conditions.

Neighboring Japan is facing similarly challenging conditions. The country's meteorological agency has issued repeated heatstroke alerts as temperatures remain well above seasonal averages across wide areas. According to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency, more than 18,000 people were taken to hospitals with suspected heatstroke during a single week in late July, highlighting mounting pressure on emergency medical services.

The extreme weather has also affected wildlife. According to CNN, three female African lions at Tokyo's Tama Zoological Park died within a week after showing symptoms consistent with heat-related illness. Zoo officials said several other lions became lethargic and lost their appetite during the period of intense heat, prompting veterinarians to provide around-the-clock care and the zoo to temporarily close the lion exhibit.

Experts noted that although lions are native to hot regions, they are generally adapted to dry climates rather than Japan's hot and humid summer conditions, which may have intensified heat stress.

Meteorological agencies in both countries attributed the prolonged heat to persistent high-pressure systems dominating East Asia. Climate scientists meanwhile warned that human-induced climate change is increasing the likelihood, intensity and duration of extreme heat events worldwide, making heat waves more frequent and more dangerous.

With forecasts indicating that exceptionally high temperatures are likely to persist in the coming days, authorities in both Japan and South Korea have continued to urge residents to limit outdoor activities during peak daytime hours, drink sufficient water and pay particular attention to children, the elderly and people with underlying health conditions.

(With input from agencies)

An AI agent was caught ​creating fake online identities to gain unauthorized access to secure systems during tests of models from OpenAI and Anthropic, Britain's AI Security Institute (AISI) disclosed on Tuesday.

Agents powered by Anthropic's Mythos 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6-Sol engaged in unauthorized actions during security evaluations, AISI said.

"Some of the agents being tested had engaged in sustained, potentially harmful ​activity directed at real people and organisations," the institute said in a blog post.

The report underscores lax safeguards ​around testing agents, which AI companies are marketing as the future of business.

AISI, which ⁠receives access to advanced AI models under voluntary agreements from major labs, put the agents through a fictional cybersecurity scenario to test ​their capabilities.

It ran the challenge 122 times, and identified 19 unsanctioned actions across a total of 10 test runs. Anthropic's agent was behind ​17 of the actions, and OpenAI's agent the remaining two.

The most egregious action involved an agent writing malicious code and creating fake online identities to get a human to approve the code, AISI said, adding that no real-world harm was found.

While ​AISI did not name the agent, Antropic confirmed its model was behind the fake identities.

"We're grateful to the UK AISI ​for their leadership on this incident, which underscores the need for a broader conversation about how to safely evaluate increasingly capable AI agents," Anthropic said ‌in a ⁠statement, adding that it was working with AISI to obtain more details and conduct its own investigation.

Andrew Yoon, a researcher at CivAI, a California non-profit that examines AI capabilities and dangers, said: "The fact that Mythos engaged in such deceptive actions, with apparent awareness that it was targeting a real person, suggests that Anthropic does not have as good a handle on their models as they think."

OpenAI ​said ⁠its agent's unapproved actions involved accessing the internet in ways forbidden by the prompt. It also disclosed a separate incident in which a third-party testing provider, Irregular, misconfigured its system, allowing its agents to mistakenly connect to the internet. It mirrored a similar disclosure about misconfiguration from Anthropic last week.

"We are committed to working across the industry to strengthen shared practices for conducting high-risk evaluations safely, including convening ​stakeholders such as national AI institutes, independent evaluators, other AI labs, and other groups in the ​coming weeks," OpenAI ⁠said.

Last week, OpenAI widened its hacking probe ⁠after finding ​evidence of other agent breakouts.

Unlike the July breach at AI firm Hugging Face, in which an OpenAI agent escaped an isolated testing environment, the agents in this evaluation did not break out of their sandbox. Internet access was explicitly allowed under the test's deliberately permissive guidelines, AISI said.

Huawei-backed Maextro on Wednesday launched the V800, its first ultra-luxury multi-purpose vehicle (MPV), marking another step in Chinese automakers' push into one of the last premium vehicle segments long dominated by imported brands.

Co-developed and manufactured by Jianghuai Automobile, the lineup starts with the V680 at 648,000 yuan (about US$90,000), while the flagship V800 is priced between 766,000 yuan and 1.016 million yuan (about US$107,000–142,000).

Huawei says the V800 integrates its latest intelligent cockpit and driver-assistance technologies, powered by a CATL battery with a claimed comprehensive driving range of up to 1,335 kilometers. Measuring more than five meters in length and approximately two meters in width, the vehicle was designed with a height of 1.85 meters, allowing it to fit into most underground parking garages in China.

The MPV also introduces enhanced voice interaction with gesture-assisted controls, allowing passengers to point at an object – such as a window shade or seat function – and activate it through voice commands. The feature is available from every seat, underscoring the growing emphasis on rear-seat comfort in chauffeur-driven vehicles.

The launch comes as Chinese automakers accelerate their move upmarket. At this year's Beijing Auto Show, brands including Huawei-backed Stelato, Zeekr and GAC unveiled premium MPVs targeting family and business users, with most priced in the several-hundred-thousand-yuan range. The V800 goes a step further, targeting the chauffeur-driven luxury market long associated with imported models such as the Toyota Alphard, Lexus LM and Mercedes-Benz V-Class.

The shift reflects a broader transformation taking place in China's automotive industry.

After establishing a strong presence in the mass market EV segment, Chinese automakers are increasingly filling the remaining gaps in their product portfolios, expanding into executive sedans, luxury SUVs and now chauffeur-driven MPVs. The strategy is not only about selling more expensive vehicles, but also about strengthening brand value and moving further up the value chain.

Speaking at the launch event, Yu Chengdong, Huawei's executive director and chairman of the consumer business group, said Maextro aims to combine advanced design, craftsmanship and intelligent technologies while driving the broader upgrading of China's automotive supply chain.

That ambition is backed by an increasingly integrated industrial ecosystem.

The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has become one of China's most comprehensive automotive clusters, bringing together vehicle manufacturers, battery suppliers, autonomous driving developers, lidar companies, chip designers and automotive electronics producers. The close proximity of the supply chain has helped shorten development cycles, accelerate technology integration and reduce the time required to bring new products to market.

Whether Chinese automakers can establish themselves in the ultra-luxury market will ultimately depend on more than intelligent features or larger screens. Long-term reliability, safety and consumer trust – built over years rather than product cycles – may prove to be the industry's most important test.

(CGTN's Huang Yi also contributed to the story)

The three crew members of China’s Shenzhou-21 mission met the press for the first time since their return to Earth in late May. Here are their thoughts from the seven-month space mission.

Chinese scientists have successfully produced and identified the rare atomic nucleus hafnium-153 using a powerful "super microscope" in southern China, marking the first physics achievement from the country's newest mega-lab.

The facility, known as the High Intensity Heavy-ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF), allows scientists to see the building blocks of matter in ways that weren't possible before. 

Atomic nuclei are made of protons and neutrons, and different combinations create different nuclides. Hafnium-153 is important because it helps scientists understand how nuclear structure evolves and where stability breaks down. Its discovery also helps test theoretical nuclear models and deepens our understanding of atomic nuclei at their most fundamental level.

In the experiment, researchers detected 10 hafnium-153 ions, enough to confirm that the nuclide is bound, or weakly bound, as predicted.

The research team, led by scientists from the Institute of Modern Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said high-performance technologies developed for HIAF made the detection possible despite the nuclide's extremely low production probability.

They expect more discoveries to come from the lab, which should become a powerful platform for exploring unknown regions of the nuclear chart and studying the properties of atomic nuclei under extreme conditions. 

The findings were recently published in the journal Science Bulletin.

The three Shenzhou-21 astronauts made their first public appearance on Tuesday, sharing highlights from their record-setting 210-day stay aboard China's Tiangong space station.

Commander Zhang Lu, spaceflight engineer Wu Fei and payload specialist Zhang Hongzhang met the media in Beijing, reflecting on a mission that set several milestones, including the first delayed spacecraft return caused by a space debris, the first astronaut crew to return aboard a replacement spacecraft and the first emergency spacecraft launch.

During their 210 days in orbit, the crew conducted three spacewalks, installed debris protection devices, performed multiple cargo transfer operations, carried out scientific experiments and cultivated more than 10 kinds of plants, including chery tomatoes and wheat grown using aeroponic technology, in a "space garden." 

Working closely with ground teams, the crew also conducted experiments in microgravity physics, space materials, life sciences, aerospace medicine and space technologies.

Zhang Lu, who now holds the record for the most spacewalks by a Chinese astronaut, brought back a sentimental token: an apple marked with the characters for "peace and safety," a wish he carried for his crew and all Chinese space workers.

Payload specialist Zhang Hongzhang highlighted the first closed-environment breeding of mice in space, a step toward future mammalian research in microgravity. He also shared how reading classical poetry and practicing Tai Chi helped him stay grounded for the long mission, and encouraged young people to keep learning. 

Wu Fei, the youngest Chinese astronaut to fly a space mission, described his experience as "tempering" and "coming back home" to the equipment he helped design as an engineer – the Tianhe core module and Wentian laboratory module. 

All three astronauts have recovered well, the China Astronaut Research and Training Center said. Their fitness levels have largely returned to pre-flight levels and are expected to get back to training soon.

More than a decade ago, when cloud computing was still a new concept to many, Wang Jian believed computing would eventually become a public service, available to everyone like water and electricity.

That belief led to the development of the "Apsara" system, China's first self-developed cloud computing operating system. Today, Wang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and director of Zhejiang Lab, is taking another step forward – bringing computing power into space.

At the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), space computing emerged as one of the most discussed topics. Wang's "3-Body Computing Constellation" project aims to deploy 1,000 computing satellites by 2032, creating a space-based computing network capable of supporting artificial intelligence applications worldwide.

Unlike traditional satellites designed for communication, navigation or remote sensing, the new generation of computing satellites is expected to carry general-purpose AI models, allowing data to be processed directly in orbit.

"The future satellites will be general-purpose satellites," Wang said in a recent interview with China Media Group. "AI makes satellites more versatile by enabling one model to solve different kinds of problems."

For Wang, 1,000 satellites is not an arbitrary number, but "the smallest meaningful number." A constellation of such a scale would provide sufficient computing capacity, improve reliability through networking and ensure timely services around the globe.

"Only space has the potential to serve every corner of the Earth," he said, comparing future computing infrastructure to public utilities that are widely accessible and affordable.

The proposal was initially met with skepticism. When Wang introduced the concept in 2023, some questioned whether there was a real demand for space computing. Instead of avoiding criticism, Wang actively sought opinions from experts with different views.

He believes innovation requires both sound judgment and determination. "If you don't believe in what you are doing yourself, others won't follow you," he said.

Wang's career reflects China's broader pursuit of technological innovation. From developing cloud computing infrastructure to exploring space-based AI, he has remained focused on building technologies for the future.

His story also illustrates the spirit shared by many Chinese researchers – pursuing original innovation, embracing long-term challenges and remaining committed despite uncertainty.

Looking ahead, Wang believes young people will play the leading role in shaping the future of artificial intelligence. He encourages them to stay curious and persistent, noting that every generation has the opportunity to define its own era.

From cloud computing to space computing, Wang's journey offers a glimpse into China's efforts to expand the frontiers of AI, driven by scientific exploration and a long-term vision for technological development.

Two hyperspectral satellites were successfully launched from Haiyang, Shandong Province, at 10:38 a.m. Beijing Time on August 5. It marked the 12th flight of the Smart Dragon-3 (SD-3) carrier rocket.

The satellites will primarily be used to monitor water quality, vegetation and crops and mineral resources, serving industries including agriculture, forestry, grassland, water resources and mining.

The satellites will also enable full-cycle monitoring of Uzbekistan's cotton industry and support other applications. In addition, they will help safeguard agricultural production and food security in Indonesia. 

According to the Chinese AI satellite company STAR.VISION, the mission will support the digital economy and cross-border trade across all ten ASEAN countries.

The company added that the satellites combine multi-band hyperspectral imaging with onboard edge artificial intelligence to deliver fast Earth observation insights to global partners.

According to the Uzbek space agency Uzcosmos, the launch is part of a memorandum of cooperation covering satellite technology development, joint project implementation, and stronger scientific and technical integration.

A Smart Dragon-3 carrier rocket lifted off from the waters off east China's Shandong Province on Wednesday, sending Oriental Smart Eye hyperspectral satellites 01 and 02 into the planned orbits.

The rocket blasted off at 10:38 a.m. (Beijing Time) from the sea near the city of Haiyang. Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center conducted the offshore launch mission.

China unveiled plans on July 21 to complete a massive transport loop along its land borders and coastline during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030), with three major highways – G219, G331 and G228 – stretching more than 27,000 kilometers in total, according to the Ministry of Transport.

The three highways meet at three key points – northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, northeast China's Liaoning Province and south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region – creating a giant ring around the country's edges.

G331 runs about 9,200 kilometers from Dandong in Liaoning Province to Altay in Xinjiang, following much of China's northern border and passing through the grasslands of Inner Mongolia and the major agricultural, forest and energy regions of the northeast.

G219 stretches roughly 10,000 kilometers from Kanas in Xinjiang to Dongxing in Guangxi, traversing China's western border. Of the three highways, it crosses some of the country's most diverse landscapes, from deserts and the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau to the Himalayas, deep valleys, glaciers and wetlands.

G228 runs about 7,400 kilometers along China's eastern and southern coastline, linking Dandong in Liaoning and Dongxing in Guangxi. It connects dozens of coastal cities and major river systems, including the Yangtze and Pearl rivers.

The significance of the transport loop goes beyond its value as a scenic route. According to the Ministry of Transport, the loop will serve as major tourism, resource-development and border-security corridors.

"The 'Golden mega-ring' is not only a major transport corridor along China's borders and coastlines, but also an important tourism route, resource development corridor and channel for strengthening border areas," Li Meng, deputy director of the Technical Committee at the Transport Planning and Research Institute under the Ministry of Transport, said in an interview with the People's Daily.

Li said the project will allow border counties and remote townships to connect more efficiently with the national highway network, significantly improving travel conditions for residents. It is also expected to stimulate the development of rural guesthouses, drive tourism and leisure industries, contributing to rural revitalization and prosperity in border regions.

It will connect hundreds of scenic and historic sites, while also linking major agricultural, mineral, energy and manufacturing hubs. The network will also connect more than 100 major ports of entry and numerous coastal ports, strengthening logistics and border security.

The project is therefore more than simply linking the three highways. As part of China's national comprehensive three-dimensional transportation network, it will facilitate the flow of resources and people and promote greater economic integration.

On Monday, Chinese meteorologist Wang Jingsong was awarded the William Nordberg Medal at the 46th Scientific Assembly of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) in Florence, Italy. He becomes the first Chinese scientist to receive the honor.

Established in 1988, the William Nordberg Medal recognizes outstanding achievements in the application of space science. In recognition of Wang's contributions, an asteroid has been named after him.

Wang Jinsong is the Director-General of China's National Satellite Meteorological Center and Chief Designer of the Fengyun Meteorological Satellite Program. He spearheaded the development of China's national operational space weather system and played a key role in expanding the global application of Fengyun meteorological satellites.

Under his leadership, his research team has achieved major breakthroughs in solar imaging, aurora observation, particle detection, and airglow monitoring. He also led the development of China's first-generation numerical space weather forecasting system, as well as Fengyu, the world's first AI-powered end-to-end forecasting model for space weather.

Centered on the Fengyun satellite constellation and supported by nearly 100 ground stations, China's space weather monitoring network has provided critical support for major national space missions, including BeiDou, Chang'e, Tianwen, and Kuafu. It also earned the only all-A rating in a joint assessment conducted by the World Meteorological Organization and the International Civil Aviation Organization.

COSPAR is one of the world's leading international space science organizations operating under the International Science Council. The other recipient of this year’s William Nordberg Medal is David Sibeck, NASA’s Chief Scientist for Heliophysics.

Europe is experiencing a summer of extreme heat and drought, with record temperatures, wildfire risks and falling river levels affecting several countries.

France recorded its hottest July since nationwide records began in 1900, with a monthly average temperature of 24.9 degrees Celsius, according to Meteo-France.

Rainfall across the country was nearly 70% below the seasonal average, making July 2026 the third-driest July on record.

Persistent heat, drought and windy conditions kept wildfire risks high or very high, while a wildfire in the southwestern department of Gironde burned about 42,000 hectares and forced the evacuation of more than 220,000 people.

In Austria, a national temperature record of 41 degrees Celsius was set on Tuesday as the heat wave continued. The record was measured in the Stammersdorf region of Vienna, according to Austria's state broadcaster ORF.

A forest fire is also raging in Burgenland, while the Lobau wetlands in Vienna face the highest fire danger level. Meanwhile, water levels on the Danube River have fallen to historically low levels, comparable to the major low-water years of 2003 and 2018.

Neighboring Hungary has extended its highest-level heat alert until midnight on Friday as forecasts show the heat wave will continue. Authorities warned that persistent high temperatures could affect everyone and urged people to take precautions.

The heat wave has intensified drought conditions, lowered water levels in major rivers and increased wildfire risks, with firefighters recently responding to around 100 outdoor fires per day.

Italy is also facing its fourth major heat wave of the summer, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius in some areas.

The Health Ministry placed 25 of the country's 27 monitored cities under the highest heat alert, including Rome, Milan, Florence, Bologna, Venice, Naples and Palermo.

Hot and dry conditions have increased wildfire risks and put pressure on agriculture, with farmers reporting reduced crop yields and higher irrigation demand.

Low river levels and rising water temperatures have also affected nuclear power operations in parts of Europe.

Hungary's Paks nuclear power plant, which supplies nearly half of the country's electricity, remained operational but its operation depended on river conditions and cooling system performance.

Romania's Cernavoda nuclear power plant shut down both reactors after low Danube water levels affected operations. In France and Switzerland, some nuclear facilities also faced operational disruptions as high river temperatures affected cooling capacity.

The combination of extreme heat, drought and declining water availability is putting pressure on public health, agriculture, wildfire prevention and energy systems in affected areas.

(With input from Xinhua)

In late July, US officials accused China's Moonshot of "industrial-scale distillation" of Anthropic's AI and threatened sanctions.

So what exactly is "distillation"? Does it amount to copying? And how did China's AI models achieve their rapid breakthroughs?

Distillation is standard practice, widely used by US tech giants like Google and xAI.

Calling it "theft" is seen by many as a commercial tactic to slow down competitors, not a technical reality.

US officials charge that large-scale unauthorized distillation violates terms of service and raises national security concerns. 

China's Commerce Ministry has hit back, accusing Washington of "double standards" and "typical AI hegemony." It pointed out that many US AI companies have distilled Chinese models in their own R&D, using the very technique the administration is now trying to ban.

Elon Musk's team used it for Grok. Google even sells a distillation service. And Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO, put it best: "Distillation, learning from AI, learning from other sources of knowledge, is fundamental to intelligence." 

That's not theft – that's how intelligence works.

The key point is this: distillation alone cannot produce a model with the performance of Kimi K3. Moonshot says the leap came from its own architecture, a new optimizer called Moon Clip, a linear-attention system and attention residuals – breakthroughs Musk once praised. Original engineering, not a copy, at about a third of Anthropic's flagship price per task.

And here's a telling contrast: on OpenRouter, US companies now run nearly 60% of their tokens on Chinese models. In July, Hugging Face – an American platform – had to call in a Chinese model to fight off an attack that US frontier models couldn't handle. Washington wants to cut off what Silicon Valley is already buying.

Distillation was never the whole story. It's about who gets to define innovation. And China's advancements have made that conversation truly global.

The White House has finalized a voluntary framework for reviewing the cybersecurity capabilities of the most advanced artificial intelligence models before they are released, marking a new step in the United States' approach to artificial intelligence (AI) oversight.

White House officials met with representatives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and Nvidia on Tuesday to review the framework, which focuses on evaluating the cybersecurity capabilities of advanced AI models.

Under the framework, developers of the most advanced AI models will be asked to provide the US government with access to their systems for up to 30 days before public release. The review is intended to assess the advanced cybersecurity capabilities of AI models and the potential risks they may pose.

The framework does not cover open-weight AI models, whose model weights are publicly available. Instead, it focuses on the most advanced closed models developed by companies such as OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. The distinction has drawn attention as policymakers and industry continue to debate how advanced AI should be reviewed.

Participation in the program is voluntary, and the framework itself has not been made public. According to US media reports, only a limited number of companies were invited to review the details during White House meetings.

The administration has said little publicly about how the reviews will be conducted or how models will be evaluated. Some industry observers and policy groups have questioned whether a voluntary and non-public framework will provide sufficient transparency and oversight.

An innovation is transforming tomato harvesting in Xinjiang, China, leading to increased crop yields.

For more, check out our exclusive content on CGTN Now and subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The China Report.

China on Tuesday launched the 23rd group of satellites for its low-Earth-orbit satellite internet constellation from Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site in Wenchang, south China's Hainan Province.

A Long March-8A carrier rocket lifted off at 4:52 p.m. Beijing Time and placed the satellites into their designated orbit.

The mission was a full-system validation flight following performance upgrades to the Long March-8A. The upgrades increased the rocket's payload capacity, supporting future frequent launches of large batches of satellites for constellation deployment.

Kenya hosted the second African edition of the China International College Students' Innovation Competition, bringing together young innovators from across the continent to showcase practical solutions to challenges including food security, healthcare, biotechnology and sustainable agriculture.

The competition is organized by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China together with 11 other institutions. 

First launched in China, the event expanded overseas in 2025, with Kenya becoming the first country outside China to host the African regional competition. Following the inaugural African edition last year, Kenya once again staged the event this year.

The competition encourages university students to translate classroom learning into innovative solutions for real-world problems while strengthening educational and scientific cooperation between Africa and China.

Kenyan education officials said supporting young innovators is crucial given Africa's youthful population.

"I think one of the most important things for us is really to look at ways and means of how we can be able to support our youth," a Kenyan education official said. "In Kenya, 75% of the population is aged 35 and below, while Africa has almost 400 million young people in the same age bracket. We want to nurture their creativity and provide mentorship by helping them develop their talents," said Professor Shaukat Abdulrazak, Kenya's Principal Secretary for the State Department for Science, Research and Innovation.

Professor Abdulrazak said the longstanding partnership between Africa and China, and between Kenya and China since independence, continues to create opportunities for cooperation in education, innovation and skills development.

Nanjing Agricultural University Vice President, Professor Feng Shuyi said the competition pushes students beyond academic theory by requiring them to develop practical solutions to societal challenges.

"The competition encourages university students to apply what they have learned in the classroom to real-world problems," Feng said. 

Many of the projects presented focused on improving food security, tackling water shortages, preventing crop diseases and advancing healthcare technologies.

Professor Abdulrazak said that the competition gives students an opportunity to use innovation and technology to solve problems affecting communities.

"I was very impressed to see some of the projects related to health, including traditional Chinese medicine that is being implemented by the African younger generation. We also saw areas of biotechnology aimed at enhancing food safety and food security," Prof. Abdulrazak said.

Among the gold medal-winning projects was one from Malawi's Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources, which showcased an innovation designed to improve agricultural productivity for smallholder farmers. Ufulu Kampinga, a student at the university, said the project, titled Malawi Youth Hope Seeds in Africa Science and Technology Backyard Entrepreneurship Project, aims to improve farmers' incomes, nutrition and crop production.

"Our project is helping smallholder farmers in Malawi earn more, eat enough and eat better," Kampinga said. "We encourage practices such as intercropping maize with soybeans to improve nutrition while increasing harvests so farmers can strengthen their food security throughout the year."

Fellow student Monica Didas said the team developed the project to address persistent farming challenges.

"Using this technology and the model introduced through China's support, we have been able to overcome some of those challenges," Didas said. 

The competition also highlighted collaboration in healthcare and traditional medicine.

Hu Zijing, an associate professor at the University of Johannesburg who teaches traditional Chinese medicine, said the initiative strengthens exchanges between African and Chinese students.

"This platform enhances mutual understanding and collaboration between young people from Africa and China," Hu said. "It enables students to showcase their work, better understand one another and develop an international outlook."

He added that the goal extends beyond introducing traditional Chinese medicine in Africa.

"We want to integrate Chinese medicine with African traditional medicine because Africa also has a very long history of traditional medicine," he said.

University of Johannesburg student Rabone Monama demonstrated a traditional Chinese medicine rehabilitation model used to help patients with arthritis, dysmenorrhea and other pain-related conditions.

Monama said studying traditional Chinese medicine had taught her that healthcare extends beyond medication.

"We learn from nature how we live, how we eat and how we manage our emotions," she said. "The food we eat is also medicine. We can learn to take care of ourselves through healthy lifestyles before medical intervention becomes necessary."

Fellow student Elina Hlatshwayo said participating in the competition helped her develop skills beyond her academic training.

"Our course is heavily focused on clinical studies and traditional Chinese medicine, so this project allowed me to explore the technical aspects, including physics and chemistry," Hlatshwayo said. 

Other participating institutions included Kenya's Egerton University and Kabarak University, alongside Uganda's Makerere University.

Organizers say the competition continues to provide a platform for African and Chinese university students to collaborate, exchange ideas and develop innovations capable of addressing shared development challenges while preparing the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs.

(Video Editor Kelvin Mokaya contributed to this report.)

A wave of extreme weather events is sweeping across Europe and parts of the United States, with devastating wildfires, record-breaking drought and soaring temperatures disrupting lives, ecosystems and transportation.

In southwestern France, Ukrainian firefighters joined operations on Monday to contain a wildfire that has ravaged the Gironde region since July 22, incinerating about 42,000 hectares of land. The unprecedented deployment saw 70 firefighters arrive on Sunday in a convoy of 15 vehicles, including 10 fire engines, to support French crews west of Bordeaux.

They worked alongside teams from multiple countries to extinguish smoldering hotspots threatening unburned forest in Le Temple, west of Bordeaux.

Meanwhile, Europe's prolonged drought is disrupting the River Rhine. Water levels at the Kaub measuring point in Germany dropped to 24 centimeters on Monday, the lowest since records began in 1880, threatening the movement of coal, fuel and industrial goods along the crucial transport artery.

The heat and drought have also hit the UK. July 2026 was the driest and sunniest month on record in England and Wales, the Met Office said on Monday. England recorded only 6.5 millimeters of rain, 10% of its usual average, while Wales had 9.3 millimeters.

In southern England, July was the driest month since measurements were first taken in 1836, with just 1.9 millimeters of rain – or 3% of the average. London and its suburbs are one of 19 English regions to have had no more than 1 millimeter of rainfall last month.

Farming yields, wildlife and water supplies have been hit. Parts of England and Wales have imposed hosepipe bans, while officials have warned of severe consequences for biodiversity.

Public health is also under pressure. Record-breaking heatwaves in May and June led to an estimated 2,877 excess deaths in England, the UK Health Security Agency said last week.

Beyond Europe, wildfires are also intensifying in the US. In Utah, a wildfire sparked by lightning, the Widemouth 2 blaze, was first detected on July 27 and expanded to about 283 square kilometers.

The fire remained completely uncontained on Monday, with more than 1,000 homes under evacuation orders in parts of Fillmore. Federal firefighting assistance was approved on Sunday.

(With input from agencies)

China aims to raise the share of its electricity generated from non-fossil energy sources to 50% by 2030, according to a newly released national plan outlining the country's power sector development for the 2026-2030 period.

The five-year plan, jointly issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration, sets out the overall road map for the country's power sector in the 2026-2030 period and targets the initial establishment of a new power system by 2030.

Under the plan, China aims to enable the high-level integration of more than 2.8 billion kilowatts of new energy capacity into the power grid and build a charging infrastructure network capable of supporting over 110 million electric vehicles by 2030.

To achieve these goals, the plan outlines a range of priorities, including expanding green and low-carbon power supplies, building a more coordinated and resilient power grid, enhancing the power system's flexibility, improving electricity supply security, advancing market-oriented power sector reforms, and promoting international cooperation.

The plan calls for balancing the development of renewable energy with grid integration, advancing conventional hydropower projects in a science-based manner, promoting the safe and orderly development of nuclear power, encouraging diversified development of non-fossil energy sources, and improving the efficiency and carbon performance of coal-fired power generation.

By 2030, China plans to increase installed conventional hydropower capacity to around 410 million kilowatts, nuclear power capacity to about 110 million kilowatts, and combined installed capacity of biomass, solar thermal, geothermal and ocean energy to roughly 65 million kilowatts.

Earlier official data showed that coal-fired power had accounted for 49.7% of China's total electricity output in the first half of 2026, marking the first time its share had fallen below 50% and a new milestone in the country's transition toward a green and low-carbon energy system.

China has pledged to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.

The European Union on Sunday expanded the scope of its Artificial Intelligence Act, bringing into force new transparency requirements and rules governing providers of general-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) models.

The new rules, which took effect on August 2, require interactive AI systems such as chatbots to clearly inform users that they are interacting with AI rather than a human.

Under the transparency requirements, AI-generated or AI-manipulated content, including images, videos and audio known as "deepfakes," must be clearly labeled. AI-generated or modified content must also include machine-readable markers to make it easier to identify, according to the European Commission.

The Commission said the measures are intended to reduce deception and manipulation associated with AI-generated content.

The rules also empower the EU AI Office to enforce provisions of the AI Act on providers of general-purpose AI models.

Providers of advanced general-purpose AI models that may pose systemic risks are subject to additional obligations aimed at mitigating large-scale harms, including risks related to cyberattacks, loss of model control, harmful manipulation and violations of fundamental rights.

The EU's Artificial Intelligence Act entered into force on August 1, 2024, establishing a risk-based regulatory framework that classifies AI systems into four categories: unacceptable risk, high risk, transparency risk, and minimal or no risk.

The first phase of Guangdong Taipingling Nuclear Power Project, the first Hualong One nuclear power project in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, was fully completed and put into operation on Sunday after its second unit began commercial operation.

The newly commissioned Unit 2 uses China's domestically developed third-generation Hualong One nuclear technology, which has fully independent intellectual property rights. More than 90% of its core equipment is domestically manufactured, and the unit has a rated electric output of about 1,200 megawatts.

Developed by the China General Nuclear Power Group, Taipingling Nuclear Power Project is planned to include six Hualong One nuclear power units.

Once all six units are completed, the project is expected to generate about 55 billion kilowatt-hours of clean electricity annually. The output is equivalent to reducing standard coal consumption by about 16.52 million tonnes and cutting carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 50.82 million tonnes each year.

China has completed construction of the country's largest single-site production base for high-end polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), strengthening supply support for industries including new energy and optoelectronics.

The 50,000-tonne-per-year specialty PVA resin facility of Sinopec Chongqing SVW Chemical Co., Ltd., located in Chongqing Municipality, southwest China, brings the company's total annual PVA production capacity to 210,000 tonnes, making it the world's largest single-site high-end PVA production base, according to Sinopec.

Known as a "universal auxiliary material" in the fine chemical industry, PVA features high strength, high transparency, strong barrier properties and complete biodegradability. It is widely used in textiles, construction, pharmaceuticals, new energy, electronics and other sectors.

The newly commissioned facility was built using a full set of independently developed core technologies. It enables large-scale and stable production of high-end specialty products, while also driving technological upgrades and capacity optimization of the company's existing 160,000-tonne production facilities, forming an overall high-end PVA production capacity of 210,000 tonnes.

"We have innovatively optimized the polymerization process and adopted self-developed alcoholysis and precision purification technologies, increasing overall production efficiency by 40% and enabling intelligent, green and high-end operation throughout the entire production process," said Yang Kun, manager of the dispatch center at Sinopec Chongqing SVW Chemical Co., Ltd.

As one of the most widely used water-soluble polymer materials, PVA supports applications ranging from daily consumption to advanced manufacturing.

In consumer sectors, it can be used as a moisturizing ingredient in cosmetics, pharmaceutical excipients for controlled-release drugs, and biodegradable water-soluble films for personal care products and environmentally friendly packaging.

In industrial applications, PVA helps improve the strength and toughness of safety glass used in automobiles and rail transit, serving as an important supporting material for various basic industries.

In recent years, demand from traditional sectors such as textiles and construction has remained stable, while emerging applications including photovoltaic encapsulation films, optical polarizing films, electronic-grade high-purity materials and biodegradable green packaging have grown rapidly.

As demand rises for high-purity and customized high-end PVA products, supply shortages in these areas have become increasingly prominent.

China has established the world's largest PVA industrial system, accounting for more than 60% of global production capacity. The completion and operation of the Chongqing high-end production base is expected to further strengthen upstream material support for strategic emerging industries, including new energy and optoelectronic displays.

China launched its first-ever selection of "carbon-efficiency leaders" for key industries, according to a notice jointly issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and two other government agencies.

The move is aimed at facilitating energy-saving and carbon-reduction upgrades among industrial enterprises, while advancing the green and low-carbon transition of key industries.

Five industries – electrolytic aluminum, cement clinker, synthetic ammonia, ethylene and methanol – have been named as the first batch of sectors eligible for the "carbon-efficiency leader" recognition, said the notice.

China had launched the "energy-efficiency leaders" program, which recognized 224 enterprises across 35 sub-sectors in eight previous rounds. At present, the program covers a total of 43 sub-sectors, having recently added new industries such as industrial sulfuric acid and glacial acetic acid.

To qualify for "carbon-efficiency and energy-efficiency leaders," enterprises must meet a certain green power consumption threshold, and must not use any processes, equipment, or products listed in the national catalog of banned or eliminated items.

"The selection of leaders in energy and carbon efficiency is a crucial measure to promote comprehensive energy-saving and carbon-reduction transformations," said Chen Daji, deputy head of the China Electronics Standardization Institute.

Anthropic on Thursday disclosed that its artificial intelligence (AI) model Claude hacked into the systems of three companies during testing after a configuration error gave it internet access, raising concerns about the safety of increasingly autonomous AI systems.

The disclosure comes just days after OpenAI acknowledged that one of its experimental AI agents escaped a testing environment and hacked into AI platform Hugging Face during a cybersecurity benchmark.

What is an AI 'escape' attack?

The recent cases are different from traditional "jailbreak" attacks, in which users trick chatbots into ignoring safety rules through carefully crafted prompts.

Instead, the latest incidents involved AI agents that autonomously sought ways to achieve assigned goals. In Anthropic's tests, the models exploited relatively simple security flaws, such as weak passwords, during simulated "capture-the-flag" exercises designed to evaluate cybersecurity capabilities. OpenAI's agent, meanwhile, reportedly discovered a vulnerability that allowed it to escape its sandbox environment and reach external systems while attempting to complete a benchmark task.

Were the intrusions real?

Yes. Unlike simulated cybersecurity exercises, both OpenAI's and Anthropic's incidents involved AI agents carrying out real cyber operations against external systems after being granted unintended access.

Neither company reported significant financial losses or operational disruption. OpenAI said its agent accessed Hugging Face while attempting to obtain answers for the ExploitGym cybersecurity benchmark rather than steal sensitive information. Anthropic likewise said its three intrusions were identified during internal evaluations after a configuration error inadvertently granted internet access to the models.

Although the consequences were limited, researchers say the incidents demonstrate that autonomous AI agents can independently identify vulnerabilities and take unexpected actions once given sufficient permissions, underscoring the need for stronger containment and monitoring.

Different approaches to AI safety

The Hugging Face incident also highlighted differing approaches to AI safety.

According to Hugging Face, investigators used Chinese AI company Z.ai's open-source GLM-5.2 model to assist with forensic analysis. The company said the Chinese model helped security engineers better understand the attack path and identify ways to contain it.

This episode drew attention because it reflected different safety philosophies emerging across the AI industry.

OpenAI's experimental agent was deliberately granted broad permissions as part of an advanced cybersecurity benchmark designed to evaluate autonomous offensive capabilities. Anthropic likewise tested Claude in environments where models were allowed to make independent decisions while pursuing assigned objectives.

Chinese frontier AI developers, by contrast, have generally adopted more conservative deployment strategies. Most major Chinese models maintain stricter permission controls, tighter execution boundaries and multiple layers of human oversight before autonomous actions can affect external systems.

Telling a safety story, or a capability story?

While Anthropic and OpenAI described the disclosures as efforts to improve transparency around frontier AI risks, some critics argue the announcements also serve a commercial purpose.  

TechCrunch noted that AI companies have been accused of using safety incidents for marketing purposes, as they generate significant attention and may underscore how powerful the companies' products are.

Writing in Lawfare, Kate Klonick, an associate professor at St. John's University Law School, argued that AI companies have become adept at turning safety incidents into opportunities to reinforce their technological leadership. Drawing on technology historian Lee Vinsel's concept of "criti-hype," she wrote that warnings about AI's dangers can simultaneously function as marketing for AI's power, allowing companies to convert criticism into publicity while strengthening the perception that they possess the world's most advanced systems. Klonick added that, in OpenAI's case, the disclosures could also serve as "an advertisement" ahead of the company's anticipated initial public offering (IPO).

Others have been even more direct. In an interview with The Guardian, Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, criticized Anthropic's earlier high-profile safety announcement surrounding its unreleased Claude Mythos model as "a marketing post," questioning whether the company was using alarming claims to attract investment and public attention without providing sufficient supporting evidence.

Critics also argue that the incidents ultimately reveal human design choices rather than AI autonomy. The agents were assigned ambitious objectives, granted broad permissions and operated under imperfect containment measures. From that perspective, the real challenge is improving evaluation design and safety controls, rather than portraying the episodes as machines independently "escaping" their creators.

As desertification threatens ecosystems and livelihoods across many parts of the world, China's experience in combating advancing sands is offering new insights to countries seeking to restore degraded land.

Surrounded by deserts on three sides, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northwest China has spent decades battling desertification. Decades of desert-control efforts have transformed the once sand-threatened region into a model of ecological restoration.

Established in 2025, the China-Central Asia desertification prevention and control cooperation center, based in Ningxia, serves as a platform for technical exchanges, joint research and pilot projects, helping connect China's experience with the ecological conditions and development needs of partner nations.

Among the techniques attracting international attention is the straw checkerboard, a method developed and widely applied in China in which straw is arranged in a grid pattern and partially buried in shifting sand to stabilize dunes and create conditions for vegetation growth.

Yet Chinese experts emphasize that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to desertification control. "Whether an approach works depends on local conditions," said Huang Wei, deputy director of the cooperation center and a senior engineer.

During an anti-desertification workshop held last month in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Huang tailored the curriculum to address the country's mountainous terrain and severe soil erosion, adding sessions on mountain afforestation, soil conservation, forest pest management and wildfire prevention.

The same demand-driven approach underpins the center's pilot projects now under development, including an urban green-space demonstration zone in Uzbekistan, a seedling propagation base in Kyrgyzstan, and a program involving smart greenhouses in Kazakhstan.

Gulom Bekmirzaev, a professor at Uzbekistan's Green University specializing in desertification control and desert economy studies, has attended several training programs in China. He hopes to organize similar programs in Uzbekistan so that more people can benefit from shared experience.

The latest example came in late July, when a three-week training program opened in Yinchuan, the regional capital, bringing together 34 ecological experts and officials from Iraq, Jordan, Tunisia and three other Arab countries.

"We are here to explore how China's experience can be adapted to our own conditions," said Saifeddine Eturki, a researcher at Tunisia's Arid Regions Institute.

China's desert-control experience has also provided insights that benefit ecological restoration efforts in other parts of the world. In Saudi Arabia, China's integration of photovoltaic development with desert restoration has offered new ideas for balancing renewable energy development and land rehabilitation. Lessons from China's Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program have also been shared to support the Great Green Wall Initiative on the African continent.

"Sandstorms know no borders," said Feng Zhanwen, director of the cooperation center. "Sharing experience and solutions is essential as countries work together to address this common challenge."

China's tech giant Alibaba on Monday unveiled Qwen3.8-Max, its largest and most capable AI model to date, intensifying the country's race to develop powerful yet cost-efficient artificial intelligence systems.

The model features 2.4 trillion parameters, second only to Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 with 2.8 trillion parameters. It also ranked among the world's leading AI models on Arena, placing fifth on the Text Arena leaderboard and second on the Vision Arena leaderboard. Overall, Alibaba said its performance is in the top tier globally, trailing only Anthropic's Claude family.

Built on a sparse mixture-of-experts architecture, Qwen3.8-Max assigns tasks to specialized components rather than activating the entire model for every query. It uses only 95 billion parameters at a time, significantly reducing costs and latency while handling text, image and video processing with a context window of up to 1 million tokens.

Alibaba said the model delivers "comprehensive improvements across coding, work, research, and long-horizon tasks," enabling it not only to handle more complex queries but also to complete multi-step tasks end-to-end with greater reliability and produce more dependable outputs.

In a demonstration of its autonomous coding capabilities, Alibaba said Qwen3.8-Max completed a multi-day software engineering project from scratch without human intervention, ranking fourth on the Frontend Code Arena leaderboard with a score of 1,668.

Alibaba also opened API access to developers worldwide, pricing the model at about 40% of Claude Opus 5 for input tokens and 24% for output tokens in international markets, while offering substantially lower costs through cache hits.

Alibaba plans to open-source the model's weights next week.

The release follows growing momentum in China's AI sector. In July, Chinese startup Moonshot AI drew global attention with the releasing of Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter open-weight model that currently holds the record as the world's largest open-source AI model by parameter count.

(With input from Reuters)

Two firefighting helicopters collided on Sunday while battling a major wildfire northwest of Athens that has destroyed more than 100 homes. Two crew members aboard one helicopter – a Greek and a Danish national – were killed, while two others on the second helicopter survived. Investigations into the crash have begun.

The wildfire, which began in Boeotia and spread to Attica, was reportedly caused by sparks from conductors on a private network transmitting electricity to the main power grid. Two Greek nationals were arrested on suspicion of negligence, while another suspect remains at large.

Strong winds eased near Porto Germeno, but flames reached Veniza and a military firing range, where unexploded ordnance caught fire. Crews worked to stop the blaze from reaching Megara, a coastal town of about 30,000 people, while evacuation alerts were issued in western Attica. On Kefalonia, residents in several areas were evacuated after another wildfire broke out.

Fires ease in France and Spain

Wildfires in France and Spain showed signs of easing over the weekend. In France's Var region, a fire changed direction due to shifting winds and spread into a forested area that was difficult to access, while another blaze near Carcassonne was triggered by a burning vehicle. A highway was closed and a nearby animal park evacuated.

In Spain, major wildfires that scorched tens of thousands of hectares over the past week were largely brought under control, though firefighters continued battling flare-ups. Around 800 residents evacuated from Caceres were allowed to return home but were instructed to remain indoors as the fire remained active.

Elsewhere in Europe, prolonged drought and falling water levels continue to disrupt daily life. The Rhine and Danube rivers have receded significantly, with the Danube reaching record-low levels in parts of Hungary, Serbia and Romania, hampering shipping, tourism and power generation. Hungary temporarily shut down its only nuclear power plant because of low Danube water levels, while Serbia's largest hydropower plant reduced its daily electricity output to just 20%.

Washington wildfires force 60,000 to evacuate

In the US, wildfires around eastern Washington's Spokane forced about 60,000 people to evacuate and destroyed at least 600 homes, businesses and structures. The fires burned around 21 square kilometers over the weekend, with a total of about 1,000 square kilometers affected statewide.

Further west, firefighters in Idaho and Oregon continued battling a massive wildfire for a tenth straight day. The blaze has burned nearly 1,360 square kilometers of grassland and continues to threaten hundreds of homes and other structures.

(With input from agencies)

Scientists using China's Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) recently found that a remarkable binary system in the constellation Cygnus, Cygnus X-3, is the most powerful particle accelerator discovered to date, according to the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Cygnus X-3 is a binary system composed of a compact object (either a black hole or a neutron star) and a massive companion star. As the compact object voraciously accretes material from the intense stellar wind of its companion, it accelerates particles to extremely high energies. However, previous mainstream theories held that charged particles within the Milky Way could reach energies of about 1 PeV (peta-electron volt), scientists said.

Through detailed analysis of the time variability and spectral characteristics of ultra-high-energy gamma rays, LHAASO has confirmed that Cygnus X-3 can accelerate cosmic-ray particles to energies of at least 30 PeV, said Cao Zhen, principal investigator of LHAASO and an academician of CAS.

Furthermore, LHAASO detected a 4.8-hour periodicity in the ultra-high-energy gamma-ray signal and constrained the particle acceleration region to roughly three times the Sun's radius, according to scientists.

Researchers noted that this discovery opens new avenues for investigating extreme physical processes near compact objects such as black holes. The related findings were recently published in the journal National Science Review.

Located on a mountain at an elevation of about 4,410 meters above sea level in southwest China's Sichuan Province and covering an area of 1.36 square kilometers, LHAASO is used for cosmic ray and gamma-ray observation and research.

More than two months after arriving at China's space station, the three astronauts of the Shenzhou-23 spaceflight mission – Zhu Yangzhu, Zhang Zhiyuan, and Lai Ka-ying – are all in good condition and have made steady progress on multiple space science experiments, including a groundbreaking study on multi-generational rice cultivation in microgravity.

The Shenzhou-23 spacecraft lifted off on May 24, carrying rice seeds and other scientific payloads to the China Space Station. After more than two months of cultivation, the astronauts have harvested the first batch of experimental rice samples.

The experiment is expected to become the first to cultivate two successive generations of rice in orbit, enabling researchers to complete two full life cycles of the crop in microgravity. The study is expected to reveal how prolonged exposure to the space environment affects the genetic stability of rice across generations.

China conducted the world's first full life-cycle rice cultivation experiment in space in 2022. During that mission, six rice seeds were grown aboard the China Space Station for 120 days, producing 59 first-generation space-grown seeds that were returned to Earth with the Shenzhou-14 crew.

The current experiment uses two types of japonica rice, a variety known for its adaptability and three- to four-month growing cycle. One group consists of ordinary seeds that have never left Earth, while the other comes from seeds harvested aboard the space station in 2022 and subsequently propagated for three generations after returning to Earth.

Researchers say the study could provide important theoretical support for in-situ food production beyond Earth – the ability to grow crops in space without relying on resupply missions from Earth. Such capability is considered essential for future long-duration human exploration of deep space.

Other recent works in-orbit

In space medicine, the astronauts used ultrasound equipment to examine the carotid, radial and dorsalis pedis arteries. The data will support studies on vascular hemodynamics and the long-term effects of microgravity on blood circulation.

The crew also conducted experiments on the station's lighting environment, adjusting cabin illumination and evaluating crew performance before and after the changes to better understand how lighting conditions affect psychological well-being and work efficiency in space.

To enhance operational readiness, the astronauts completed scheduled emergency response training, including evacuation drills under simulated fire scenarios.

Routine health monitoring has also continued, with the crew undergoing electrocardiograms, vision tests, intraocular pressure measurements and retinal examinations. They also measured body mass using specialized equipment designed for microgravity to track physiological changes during long-duration spaceflight.

In addition, the astronauts maintained their daily exercise routine using treadmills and other onboard fitness equipment to help counter the effects of prolonged weightlessness.

The first Hualong One nuclear power unit in south China's Hainan Province was connected to the power grid on Saturday, marking a key milestone before the reactor enters commercial operation.

The unit, officially Unit 3 of the Phase II Changjiang Nuclear Power Plant, uses China's domestically developed third-generation Hualong One nuclear reactor technology. Following grid connection, the unit will undergo a series of commissioning, efficiency optimization and performance tests before being put into full commercial service.

The second phase of the Changjiang project consists of two 1.2-gigawatt nuclear power units. Once both reactors are operational, they are expected to generate about 18 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, according to He Qingwei, a senior operator at the Changjiang Nuclear Power Plant.

The project is expected to save around 6.3 million tonnes of standard coal each year while reducing carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 11.6 million tonnes, contributing to energy security and China's climate goals, He said.

China has pledged to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.

Multiple innovations

The Hualong One reactor incorporates several safety features developed with independent Chinese intellectual property.

One of its most notable designs is a double containment structure. Unlike earlier-generation reactors that used a single containment shell, this Hualong One features both an inner and an outer protective barrier.

The inner containment consists of 1.3 meters of reinforced concrete lined with a 6-millimeter steel plate, designed to securely contain radioactive materials. The outer containment is built with 1.8 meters of high-strength concrete, providing additional protection against external impacts.

The reactor island contains approximately 230,000 tonnes of reinforcing steel, and the containment structure is designed to withstand the impact of extremely heavy external forces.

Another key safety feature is its passive emergency cooling system. A gravity-fed water tank capable of storing about 2,400 tonnes of water can automatically inject cooling water into the reactor without external electricity or human intervention if an emergency occurs. The system can continue cooling the reactor for up to 72 hours, helping maintain safe temperatures and providing operators with valuable time to respond.

The plant also uses a fully domestically developed digital management system integrating video surveillance, 5G communications and artificial intelligence to monitor nuclear power production throughout its entire lifecycle.

The platform enables closed-loop digital management and full operational traceability while providing compatibility with future fourth-generation nuclear reactors, supporting China's efforts to strengthen independent and intelligent nuclear power technologies.

Supporting local low-carbon transition

The project also aligns with Hainan Province's long-term climate strategy.

Under the Hainan Low-Carbon Island Construction Plan released last July, the province aims to peak carbon emissions by 2030, establish a comprehensive low-carbon island by 2045, reduce annual carbon dioxide emissions by 70% from peak levels, and build a zero-carbon, efficient, smart and resilient energy system. Hainan targets achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.

John Lee, chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), said on Sunday that the Northern Metropolis is designed as a strategic platform to elevate Hong Kong's industries, technology, and talent development through key initiatives like its university town.

Lee made the remarks when attending a district forum to listen to views and suggestions from members of local communities on Hong Kong's five-year plan and the chief executive's fifth policy address. The event drew about 130 participants from different backgrounds.

Speaking on urban development, Lee emphasized the need to systematically integrate various sectors, including drainage, emergency response and daily traffic management. He noted that systematic management, coupled with the use of technology, is essential to understanding current, mid-term and long-term challenges.

Public consultations for Hong Kong's five-year plan and the 2026 policy address were launched in June, and multiple consultation sessions have been held.

At ChinaJoy2026 in Shanghai, Chinese games are going global. Developers are blending cutting-edge AI with ancient mythology and martial arts legends, a fusion capturing the imagination of players worldwide. CGTN's Zhang Siran spoke to industry insiders, distributors and cosplayers to see how this creative wave is reaching international audiences. Join us to discover how China is scripting a new chapter in the global gaming industry.

The fires that have ravaged France are "today under control," Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said Saturday, more than a week after the country's largest wildfire since 1949 flared up.

"Overall, the fires are now under control in our country," he said in an interview with the La Tribune Dimanche weekly.

The largest wildfire erupted more than a week ago in a pine forest near the southwestern city of Bordeaux.

"We have returned to a more stable situation," Lecornu said, confirming earlier comments by Interior Minister Laurent Nunez.

France has for weeks been battling wildfires after a series of deadly heatwaves that have dried up riverbeds and vegetation, extreme weather events scientists have linked to human-made climate change.

In the Gironde region near the winemaking capital of Bordeaux, an inferno ripped through 42,000 hectares of pine forest along the Atlantic coastline – an area larger than the US city of Detroit. It also destroyed around 240 homes.

Some local people think a brushwood-clearing machine accidentally started the blaze with a spark on July 29.

Sophie Brocas, the prefect of the southwestern Gironde region, remained cautious on Saturday.

"Fire fixed doesn't mean fire out," she warned, mentioning two "hot points" still giving cause for concern.

But most of the 224,000 people evacuated from the flames have been allowed to return to their homes, she said.

She said the others would have to wait for the fire to be put out in the areas where it was still active.

Most land burnt in years

Lecornu, in his interview, made it clear that if the situation changed, the authorities would take the appropriate action.

The fire in the southeastern Var region was still under close surveillance, he added.

Firefighters there have managed to stem the advance of a fast-moving blaze that sprang up Friday, said regional prefect Simon Babre.

Strong winds fanning the flames had caused them to spread "faster than a galloping horse," he said, warning that the situation was still "extremely precarious."

"We're staying cautious because the fight goes on," he added.

The fire was just the latest of several that have consumed 5,600 hectares of land in total in the region in July. Hollywood star George Clooney, his wife Amal and children were among those forced to flee their home earlier this week.

Rail traffic, interrupted since last weekend south of Bordeaux, finally resumed on Saturday as another wave of holidaymakers started or finished their summer breaks.

The wildfire near Bordeaux is the largest nationwide since a deadly forest fire in the same region in 1949, which scorched around 50,000 hectares.

Lecornu, in his interview, encouraged people to go on holiday in the region as "a gesture of solidarity."

The total area of land burnt so far this year in France – 92,000 hectares – is the largest on record for any year over the past 20 years, according to satellite data from the European Forest Fire Information System.

Elsewhere in France, a fire in the Fontainebleau forest near Paris incinerated a tenth of the UNESCO-listed site in mid-July, after several other wildfires in the country.

Across France, police have arrested 308 people in connection with the fires, of whom 33 are being held in custody.

The ongoing El Nino event in the Pacific Ocean is continuing to strengthen and could become the most powerful in the past 150 years, according to the China Meteorological Administration (CMA).

Observations from the CMA's national climate center show that the central and eastern equatorial Pacific reached the threshold for El Nino conditions in May, and sea surface temperatures in the region continued to rise in June. Since July, it has been under monitoring as a potential strong El Nino event, and the probability of it developing into a super El Nino is increasing.

Forecasts indicate that the event is likely to persist until at least next spring, with the overall duration close to the historical average for El Nino events – around 10 to 11 months.

A global climate amplifier

El Nino is regarded as a global climate "amplifier" that changes the probability of extreme weather events, including heatwaves, droughts and heavy rainfall. Through interactions between the ocean and atmosphere, a strong El Nino can alter global atmospheric circulation, therefore reshaping seasonal climate patterns across different regions.

According to Chen Lijuan, chief forecaster at the National Climate Center, historical data shows that El Nino affects China's climate differently at each stage of its development.

During the developing phase in summer, more typhoons are likely to form over the northwestern Pacific, which tend to be stronger, originate farther to the southeast, and make landfall in China with stronger intensity. They may bring stronger wind and rainfall in China's southeastern and southern coastal regions, alongside the possibility of typhoons tracking northward.

When El Nino reaches its peak in autumn and winter, southern China typically receives significantly more precipitation. As the event weakens during the following spring and summer, the Yangtze River Basin and areas south of the river face a high risk of flooding.

2027 may be the hottest year

According to the World Meteorological Organization's Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update (2026-2035), released in May, global average temperatures are likely to remain at or near record levels over the next five years.

"It is likely (86% chance) that one year between 2026 and 2030 will surpass 2024 as the warmest year on record, " said the report.

Based on historical data and experts' analysis, the effects of a strong El Nino often peak in the year after the event, said Chen.

Due to a delay in the ocean's impact on the atmosphere, the full impact on global temperatures usually becomes apparent six months to a year after El Nino reaches its maximum intensity, Chen added.