Matein Khalid Any macro crystal-ball gazer must learn to swallow crushed glass – this is a lesson I learned the hard way on Wall Street. My strongest prediction is that the diesel shock I outlined in my previous AGBI column will reshape the political and economic destiny of our world this winter. Diesel has now risen to $6.50 a gallon, and the crack spread is a lethal […]
By Nitya Chakraborty Donald Trump-Xi Jinping summit on September 24 in Washington has not led to a major breakthrough in resolving the issues of bilateral trade, AI’s future, West Asia wars and Taiwan’s fate, but the visible bonhomie between the two leaders has laid the ground for a firm understanding that the world’s two biggest […]
The article President Xi Dominates US-China Summit, But Trump Has His Winning Cards appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).
By Ashok Nilakantan Ayers NEW YORK: September 24, 2026, the third day of the high-level General Debate of the 81st UN General Assembly, turned the UN podium into something of a geopolitical courtroom on Thursday, with Iran’s war with the United States and Israel, Gaza, terrorism, sovereignty and the credibility of the international system crowding […]
The article UNGA 81 Day 3: Gaza, Iran War And The Limits Of Multilateral Diplomacy appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).
Both are appealing versions of life in the city. Choosing between them starts with understanding how you want your home to serve you. For buyers considering Dubai property, exploring different housing types within one developer’s portfolio can make that decision more concrete. Liam Real Estate’s guide to Binghatti properties brings together apartment projects such as Spectre and Wraith alongside the villa-focused Tilal Binghatti, offering a useful starting […]
By Ashok Nilakantan Ayers NEW YORK: The second day of the 81st United Nations General Assembly saw diplomatic spotlight shifting from the opening-day clash of competing worldviews to the harder business of finding common ground — over Gaza, Ukraine, Iran, development, climate, artificial intelligence and the future of multilateral institutions. For India, this was an […]
The article UNGA 81: India Positions Itself As A Bridge Across A Fragmenting World appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).
By Dr. Gyan Pathak Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojna (DDU-GKY) will complete 12 years on September 25, 2026. It was launched by PM Narendra Modi led government with great fanfare on September 25, 2014 under the National Rural Livelihood Mission. The chief objective was to equip rural youth with relevant skills and access to […]
The article Skilling And Placement Of Rural Youth Under DDU-GKY Is Dismal appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).
By Tirthankar Mitra At the sight of the slogan “bhoi out, bhorsa in”, people sat up and took notice, making up their mind to vote for the BJP candidates in 2026 Assembly elections in West Bengal. Little did these men and women who exercised their franchise in favour of the saffron camp nominees know that […]
The article Bhoi (Fear) Yet To Be Out, And Bhorsa (Assurance) Not Yet In appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).
The rocket launched at 9.32 pm Beijing time on Wednesday from the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site in Wenchang and successfully delivered the 26th group of internet satellites into their designated orbit, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation said. Independent launch trackers identified the mission as carrying nine communications satellites for the SatNet constellation.
The mission used the Long March-8A, a two-and-a-half-stage liquid-fuel launch vehicle developed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology under the state-owned aerospace group. The manufacturer said the rocket is designed for constellation deployment missions to low and medium Earth orbit and uses a 3.35-metre core first stage, a hydrogen-oxygen second stage, two liquid boosters and a 5.2-metre payload fairing.
Wednesday’s flight was the 669th launch of the Long March rocket family, according to the aerospace corporation. Launch tracking services recorded liftoff at 13.32 UTC and classified the mission as successful.
The launch followed another satellite-internet deployment from Hainan on September 17, when a Long March-12 rocket carried the 25th group of low-orbit internet satellites into space. That mission was also declared successful, putting the payloads into their planned orbit. The succession of launches underscores the accelerated cadence being used to assemble China’s large communications constellation.
The latest deployment also marks the third numbered internet-satellite group sent up in little more than five weeks. The 24th group flew on a Long March-12 from Hainan on August 16, followed by the 25th group on September 17 and Wednesday’s 26th group. Official launch announcements for those missions have not disclosed satellite counts, while independent orbital and launch databases identify nine spacecraft on the latest flight after successful deployment into orbit.
The satellites form part of a national low-Earth-orbit broadband system associated with China Satellite Network Group, the state-owned operator commonly linked with the SatNet programme. Specialist launch databases list the planned network at roughly 13,000 satellites, although Chinese authorities have disclosed limited technical and commercial detail about individual spacecraft and the timetable for completing the full constellation.
Low-Earth-orbit communications systems are designed to provide broadband links with lower latency than traditional geostationary satellites because they operate much closer to Earth. Large constellations require frequent launches to establish coverage, replace spacecraft and maintain orbital capacity, making launch rate and manufacturing scale central to deployment.
The Long March-8A has become one of the vehicles assigned to that role. Launch data show Wednesday’s mission was the rocket variant’s 11th flight and its fifth mission of 2026. The vehicle entered active service in 2025 and is rated by launch databases to carry up to about 9.8 tonnes to low Earth orbit, depending on mission profile.
The Hainan commercial launch facility is also playing a larger role in China’s launch programme. Its location near Wenchang gives launch vehicles access to trajectories over the sea and supports missions carrying larger payloads from a relatively low latitude. China has increasingly used the site for commercial and constellation missions alongside its established inland spaceports.
The Philippine Space Agency confirmed the Long March-8A launch and said expected debris was projected to fall in two designated zones, one within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone and another within Philippine archipelagic waters. The agency said the zones were identified through a Notice to Airmen issued before the flight.
Philippine authorities said one projected debris area lay about 24 nautical miles from Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park and 46 nautical miles from Puerto Princesa, while another was farther west near areas including Patag Island and Bajo de Masinloc. No debris was projected to fall on land or inhabited areas.
Greenlogue/AP The UAE has warned that a global water financing shortfall of as much as $141 billion a year threatens ambitions spanning artificial intelligence, energy transition, food security and rapidly growing cities. The warning was delivered at a private roundtable at the UAE’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, where about 50 chief executives, investors and philanthropy leaders examined how to turn viable water […]
The government is considering an offering of about HK$15 billion to HK$20 billion across US dollar, Hong Kong dollar, euro and offshore renminbi tranches, according to people familiar with the planned transaction. Pricing could take place as early as Monday, after fixed-income investor meetings arranged this week.
The proposed deal would exceed the scale of Hong Kong’s previous digital green bond issues and underline its push to expand tokenised capital markets alongside conventional debt issuance. Digital bonds use distributed-ledger technology to record ownership and support parts of the issuance, settlement and post-trade process.
Hong Kong has steadily increased the size and complexity of its sovereign digital bond programme. Its third digital green bond offering, completed in November 2025, raised about HK$10 billion equivalent across four currencies and attracted subscriptions exceeding HK$130 billion, according to government figures.
That transaction was then the world’s largest digital bond sale. It also incorporated tokenised central bank money, including e-HKD and e-CNY, into the primary settlement process, while using the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s Central Moneymarkets Unit and a digital assets platform to connect tokenised infrastructure with established settlement channels.
The planned new sale would come after the Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation completed a HK$12 billion public digital bond issuance in June, setting another global size record for a digital bond at the time. The transaction included Hong Kong dollar and offshore renminbi tranches and used the same digital assets platform, demonstrating broader public-sector adoption of tokenised issuance.
Hong Kong authorities have made digital finance a central part of their capital-market strategy. Financial Services and the Treasury Secretary Christopher Hui said last week that digital bonds issued in Hong Kong accounted for about half of the global market between 2025 and the first half of 2026.
The government has also said it intends to make digital bond issuance a regular feature rather than an occasional pilot. Its 2026 policy agenda calls for further use of digital currencies in bond settlement and for tokenised money to be tested across additional stages of the bond lifecycle, including coupon payments and redemption.
Hong Kong Monetary Authority Chief Executive Eddie Yue said at the Treasury Markets Summit on Wednesday that the city was working to encourage more bond issuance, deepen offshore renminbi liquidity and modernise market infrastructure. He called for development of a more diversified, deep and digital-native bond market.
The proposed green bond would also extend Hong Kong’s sustainable-finance programme. Proceeds from government green bonds are allocated to eligible projects under its green bond framework, including areas such as green buildings, waste management, resource recovery, energy efficiency and conservation.
By the end of 2025, around US$32 billion equivalent of green bonds had been issued under the government’s sustainable bond programme in institutional, retail and tokenised formats, according to the monetary authority. The proceeds had been allocated to more than 110 green projects.
Hong Kong’s first tokenised government green bond was issued in February 2023. A second transaction in February 2024 became the world’s first multi-currency digital bond offering, raising about HK$6 billion equivalent in Hong Kong dollars, renminbi, US dollars and euros.
The 2024 transaction also broadened access by linking the Central Moneymarkets Unit with international settlement systems Euroclear and Clearstream, allowing investors to participate through familiar market infrastructure while the bonds themselves were digitally native.
For the proposed new offering, final size, tenor, pricing and tranche allocations will depend on investor demand and market conditions. The government has not yet announced final terms, and the people familiar with the discussions said the structure remained subject to change.
Arabian Post Staff -Dubai Saudi Arabia is driving a $90 billion hotel and resort development pipeline across the Gulf and North Africa, accounting for about 110,000 of nearly 200,000 rooms planned across the region, new HVS data show. The pipeline would expand the region’s existing hotel room supply by about 27 per cent, underlining the scale of investment continuing across major tourism markets despite a more selective […]
By Dr. Gyan Pathak Two Election Commissioners of India, out of three, have put on record their objections against certain decisions of the Election Commission under the leadership of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar Gupta, and labeled them even ‘illegal’ and ‘unauthorised.’ An Indian Express investigation has found that objections were raised at least […]
The article Accountability For CEC’s ‘Illegal’ And ‘Unauthorised’ Actions Lies With PM Modi appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).
By K Raveendran The Supreme Court’s hearing on Vande Mataram has exposed the question at the centre of the Modi government’s new law: when does honouring a national symbol become an obligation to voice beliefs a citizen does not hold? The court has given no final answer. Its decision to examine the consequences of refusing […]
The article Supreme Court Tests The Limits Of Mandatory Patriotism appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).
By Ashok Nilakantan Ayers NEW YORK: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar arrived at the 81st UN General Assembly with an unusually broad diplomatic canvas before him. In meetings with European, Ukrainian, Arab, Asian and other counterparts, India was simultaneously talking to countries that sit on opposite sides of some of the world’s sharpest geopolitical divides. […]
The article Jaishankar’s Speech At UNGA: Multilateralism, Not ‘Choosing Camps’ appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).
BlackRock expects Gulf investors to redirect as much as $100 billion towards their home markets, creating opportunities in infrastructure and assets opened to private capital. The figure is an estimate of capital that might otherwise have flowed overseas, according to the BlackRock Investment Institute. It is not a commitment by BlackRock to invest $100 billion, despite that interpretation appearing in a report on the firm’s regional outlook. […]
Key findings:
The main finding concerns questions such as “Have you ever…” and “Tell me about a time…”. Four in ten English answers to them stayed general: what the child usually does, or what people should do, without describing a specific experience of their own.
The problem is not that children cannot explain themselves. Almost every opinion answer gave a reason. What went missing was the child’s own experience, and that is part of what the oral paper assesses. In the PSLE English oral, the conversation section carries 25 of the 40 marks, and the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board (SEAB) lists expressing “personal opinions, ideas and experiences” among its assessment objectives. In August, SEAB said the oral assesses communication skills, and that pupils are “not expected to reproduce … pre-prepared responses”.
Here is the same question answered two ways. Asked “Do you enjoy eating at hawker centres? Tell me about a time you went”, a general answer says: “Yes, I enjoy hawker centres because the food is cheap and tasty.” A specific answer says: “Yes, because there is so much choice. Last month my grandmother took me to the Bedok hawker centre and I tried chee cheong fun for the first time. I did not like the sauce, so she laughed and bought me chicken rice instead.” Both give a reason. Only the second describes a particular visit. The examples were written by PSLEPrep to illustrate the point; they are not children’s transcripts.
“Children have learned to say ‘because’. What they often leave out is the moment that makes the answer their own, and that is one of the things the examiner is listening for,” said Paul Whiteway, founder of PSLEPrep. “The most useful question a parent can ask is a simple one: when did that actually happen?”
Practice also bunched up before the exam. More than a quarter of all sessions in the three months began in the four days before the oral examinations started on 12 August. The busiest hour of the day was 8pm.
“At 8pm on a school night, a child can practise answering aloud with a patient examiner, and get feedback straight away,” said Mr Whiteway. “AI does not replace a good teacher. It gives children more chances to speak between lessons.”
The analysis used de-identified transcripts and reports only aggregated findings; no child is named or identifiable. The children are a self-selected group, so the findings describe children practising on the platform, not Singapore children as a whole. The full report at https://psleprep.sg/findings sets out the method and limitations and carries a chart free for editorial use.
PSLEPrep was founded by Mr Whiteway, a Singapore-based parent who does not speak Chinese and began using AI voice practice to help his son with spoken Mandarin at home. Its AI oral examiner runs a full PSLE oral practice session in either language and gives feedback and a score on each session, explained in plain English. The oral paper carries 20 per cent of the PSLE English grade and 25 per cent of the Chinese grade. PSLEPrep was named in The Straits Times in May 2026 among AI tools for PSLE oral preparation.
Hashtag: #PSLEPrep #PSLE #PSLEOral
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
PSLEPrep is a Singapore-built AI oral examiner for PSLE English oral and PSLE Chinese oral practice, operated by Studio P2 Pte Ltd. Primary 5 and 6 pupils practise reading aloud and stimulus-based conversation by speaking, and receive feedback on every session. The first ten practice sessions are free; a subscription is S$29.90 a month. PSLEPrep publishes findings from its practice data, free study guides and a public database of reported PSLE oral topics. Learn more at 
https://psleprep.sg.
A fresh outage on the C2C submarine cable system is contributing to packet loss and higher latency across parts of Asia, website security provider Sucuri said on Tuesday. Sucuri identified the disruption at 15:00 UTC on September 22, saying multiple simultaneous subsea cable outages were reducing backbone capacity available to its upstream network provider. Traffic was being rerouted over remaining paths, creating intermittent packet loss, slower responses […]
By Ashok Nilakakntan Ayers WASHINGTON: The confrontation between Donald Trump and the American press has entered a new phase. What began on Friday as a presidential declaration against three news organizations — CNN, MS NOW and Politico — became a physical ban on Saturday, when reporters from the three organizations were stopped at the White […]
The article Trump’s White House Media Ban: Fourth Estate Under Attack In USA appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).
By Ashok Nilakantan Ayers NEW YORK: After months of courtroom confrontation, political pressure, Hollywood lobbying and increasingly tense negotiations, Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery have finally found a settlement with California and 11 other states that removes the biggest obstacle to their proposed $110 billion merger. It is not quite the closing of the […]
The article Paramount-Warner: Hollywood’s $110 Billion Mega Merger appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).
By Annie Domini MOSCOW: It might have been predictable to some extent, but United Russia scoring eight percentage points higher than the previous parliamentary elections in 2021, has, on the one hand, surprised some, while on the other, got branded as one of the ‘dullest election’ ever, despite the wartime upheavals. The just-concluded elections to […]
The article 2026 Russian State Duma Elections Further Consolidate Putin’s Reign appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).
Digital-asset companies in South Africa have put at least R2.2 billion of transactions on hold as uncertainty grows over proposed rules that would bring cryptocurrencies more firmly within the country’s exchange-control system. At least three deals have been paused because of the proposed changes, according to people familiar with the transactions. The affected agreements include a large private-equity investment and other deals intended to support small-business capital […]
The model supports text-to-image creation, image-to-image generation and multi-round editing, according to Tencent Cloud documentation published alongside the release. It can accept multimodal inputs combining text and reference images, preserve context across successive editing turns and produce images at resolutions of up to 4K.
Tencent said the model improves on Hy Image 3.0 in text rendering, realism, stylistic expression and editing consistency. The company said internal evaluations showed an overall capability improvement of about 30 per cent over the previous generation, though those performance claims have not been independently established.
The new system is being integrated into Tencent products including its Yuanbao chatbot and a range of design, productivity and creative tools, while developers can access it through Tencent Cloud’s TokenHub platform. Tencent’s cloud documentation lists the model under the identifier hy-image-v3.5-preview and says it can handle up to 100,000 input tokens for conversational image-generation and editing requests.
The release places greater emphasis on iterative visual production rather than single-prompt image creation. Users can provide reference pictures, request changes over several rounds and retain earlier context, allowing the model to perform tasks such as poster design, product-image editing and other workflows that require repeated adjustments.
Tencent also says the model can use external search enhancement and automatic prompt rewriting, while its application programming interface allows developers to specify image dimensions or let the system determine an appropriate format. The model supports output of up to 4,096 by 4,096 pixels under Tencent Cloud’s documented limits.
The launch comes as China’s largest technology groups broaden their AI offerings beyond large language models and compete more aggressively in image, video and agent-based systems. ByteDance has built a strong position in visual-generation tools through its Seedream family, while Alibaba has expanded its Qwen image models alongside a wider push into cloud infrastructure and AI chips.
Tencent said testing among hundreds of its in-house designers found Hy Image 3.5 Preview performed on a level comparable with ByteDance’s Seedream 5.0 Pro. It also claimed the model slightly exceeded Google’s Nano Banana Pro and Alibaba’s Qwen-Image-3.0 Pro in its own assessments. The company did not disclose full methodology or independent benchmark results for those comparisons.
The timing also coincided with Alibaba’s annual Apsara conference in Hangzhou, where the company outlined plans for a much larger next-generation AI model and introduced its Zhenwu V900 accelerator chip. Alibaba Chief Executive Eddie Wu said the planned model would contain between five trillion and 10 trillion parameters, potentially several times the size of its current flagship system.
Tencent has been accelerating investment in its Hunyuan model family while placing more emphasis on deployment across its existing products. Its Hy3 language model, released in July, was designed around a mixture-of-experts architecture and has since been integrated into services including WorkBuddy, Yuanbao and Tencent Cloud.
The company has also strengthened its AI research leadership. Former OpenAI researcher Yao Shunyu serves as Tencent’s chief AI scientist, while computer-vision specialist Tian Yonglong joined the company in July and leads vision-language model development within the Hunyuan team.
Tencent’s Hong Kong-listed shares climbed more than 6 per cent during Tuesday trading as investors reacted to the product launch and a broader rise in technology stocks. The stock had also advanced in the previous session.
For business users, Tencent Cloud is positioning Hy Image 3.5 Preview as a professional visual-production model rather than a consumer-only image generator. Its documentation says users can combine multiple reference images with text instructions, carry generated images forward into later editing rounds and receive synchronously generated results without submitting separate polling requests.
South African businesses are treating water security as a core continuity risk as unreliable municipal supply, ageing infrastructure increase operational risk across affected municipal networks and major cities. Companies are responding by expanding on-site storage, drilling boreholes where viable, installing treatment systems, recycling wastewater and improving consumption monitoring. The shift resembles the earlier move towards private power resilience, with businesses seeking alternatives to dependence on a single […]
By Dr Arun Mitra Forest fires across different parts of Europe, devastating heat waves in many western countries, growing concern over El Niño & similar phenomena and the rapid melting of glaciers are alarming indicators of a planet under severe stress. The formation of large glacial lakes poses an additional danger, as the breaching of […]
The article Triple Whammy: Ongoing Wars, Nuclear Threats Worsen Climate Crisis appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).
