📰 Latest News

Iceland's foreign minister has said accession talks with the EU could be completed within 18 months if voters approve restarting negotiations in an August referendum. Public opinion is narrowly in favour, but deep domestic divisions—especially over fisheries—and the need for unanimous EU approval make a rapid accession far from certain.

WeRide’s CEO Han Xu argues that L3 autonomy will not undercut L4 Robotaxi commercialisation, and that China’s data depth plus domestic hardware cost control give L4 firms a competitive edge. The company has crossed the 1,000‑vehicle deployment threshold, achieved pure‑driverless operations in multiple cities, and is leaning on a high‑fidelity simulator (GENESIS) and healthy cash reserves to scale further and pursue profitability.

Huawei, Xiaomi and Honor have launched mobile, on-device AI agents — dubbed "phone lobsters" in China — promising 24/7 personalised assistance and cross-device actions. Vendors tout privacy and low latency from edge deployment, but analysts warn usefulness is limited without third-party API access and wider app integration.

The New York Times reports that Attorney General Bondi has moved into a fortified residence on a Washington-area military base after being warned of threats related to drug cartels and criticism over the Epstein case. Several other senior U.S. officials are reported to live in similar military housing, raising questions about security, costs and the politicization of protection for government leaders.

Baidu staged a high-profile, free on-site installation event for OpenClaw to counter Tencent’s recent promotional push, offering a heavily discounted first-month cloud-and-tooling bundle to capture AI developers. The tactic illustrates how cloud competition has shifted from commodity IaaS pricing into offline, developer-focused acquisition and model-tooling bundling, but raises doubts about sustainability, churn, and security.

Tencent Cloud dismissed a viral claim that installing OpenClaw in a charity campaign generated a sudden ¥200 bill, saying the charges were from the user’s prior model calls. The firm reiterated that installation is free but model invocations incur token fees, a common arrangement across AI agent tools. The episode underscores UX and transparency gaps around token‑based billing that could erode trust and invite regulatory attention.

AMD CEO Lisa Su will meet Samsung chairman Lee Jae‑yong in Seoul to discuss collaborating on high‑bandwidth memory (HBM) supplies and will also explore AI compute infrastructure cooperation with Naver. The talks are a bid to secure scarce memory resources and to deepen regional partnerships as demand for AI accelerators intensifies worldwide.

Nvidia has entered a strategic partnership with cloud provider Nebius to build a hyperscale AI cloud platform, and will invest $2 billion in the company. The move accelerates Nvidia’s expansion beyond chips into the cloud infrastructure that will host large AI models and could reshape competition among cloud providers.

China’s ChiNext led mid‑day gains as green power and energy‑storage stocks surged, driving a pickup in trading volume to RMB 1.67 trillion. The advance was narrow, however, with more than 3,200 stocks falling — a sign that investor flows remain concentrated and the rally may be fragile.

Baidu Intelligent Cloud launched DuClaw, a zero‑deployment OpenClaw service that preloads Baidu search, Baike and academic search skills and supports multiple mainstream large models. The product aims to speed enterprise agent adoption by tightly coupling knowledge retrieval with LLMs, but it also raises questions about platform control and security oversight.

Tencent launched five AI agents across desktop, social and cloud products as part of a push to capture developers and users for its AI infrastructure. The rapid roll‑out seeks to monetise compute and embed agents into WeChat’s mini‑program economy, but faces security, cost and scaling challenges that will determine whether the strategy pays off.

Huabao Xinneng clarified that its much‑rumoured "Mars robot" has not been officially released, while promoting its Dianxiaoer outdoor power supplies as having supported multiple domestic rocket launches and related space operations. The statement underscores the growing role of specialised Chinese suppliers in commercial space logistics and highlights the gap between investor hype and product readiness.

Minglue Technology’s AdEff product applies EEG and eye-tracking data combined with a multimodal AI model to assess AI-generated video ads in minutes, claiming high correlation with human test results. The tool aims to help marketers select high-potential creatives quickly, cutting wasted media spend and shortening campaign cycles, though questions about external validation, cultural generalisability and biometric privacy remain.

Xiaomi Automobile published a patent for a parking-space detection method that infers available slots from surrounding obstacles rather than relying on painted lines. The technique aims to improve automated parking reliability where markings are missing or obscured and reflects Xiaomi’s push to build vehicle perception capabilities and IP in a competitive Chinese auto-tech landscape.

A sharp exchange between the United States and Iran has evolved into a costly, high-risk stalemate. Rising oil prices, depleted Western munitions stocks and a harder-line Iranian leadership are increasing the probability of protracted conflict or dangerous escalation, while diplomatic overtures offer a face-saving exit that remains hard to negotiate.

Tencent is developing a secret AI agent for WeChat meant to autonomously use mini‑programs to handle tasks for users, with limited trials planned for mid‑2026 and a possible full rollout by Q3. The project mixes in‑house and third‑party models, seeks to monetise heavy cloud usage generated by autonomous agents, and confronts significant privacy, security and regulatory hurdles.

NIO reported its first profitable quarter in Q4 2025 and narrowed its full‑year loss, while announcing the successful tape‑out of a second 5nm automotive chip and reiterating a strategic focus on battery swapping. Management set ambitious 2026 volume and revenue targets but warned of supply‑side cost pressures and acknowledged liquidity and margin risks that make annual profitability contingent on execution.

OpenClaw agents, nicknamed “lobsters,” are spurring a wave of desktop automation in China that promises increased productivity and new business models but also raises steep costs and security concerns. A NetEase salon on March 13 convened industry leaders to share deployment guides, case studies and safety practices as the technology moves from hobby to enterprise adoption.

Prime Minister Kearney publicly ruled out Canadian participation in US and Israeli military actions against Iran, responding to criticism from opposition MPs. The categorical pledge reflects Ottawa’s attempt to avoid direct military entanglement while preserving room for non‑combat cooperation and diplomatic engagement.

Lebanese authorities say Israeli strikes since March 2 have killed 570 people and injured 1,444, with significant damage around Beirut’s southern suburbs. The surge in violence highlights Lebanon’s vulnerability to rapid escalation and poses broader regional risks, including humanitarian strain and potential spillover.