Greenlogue/AP Qatar’s greenhouse industry is projected to more than double in value by 2034 as investment in controlled-environment farming accelerates efforts to raise domestic food production and conserve water resources. Market research firm IMARC Group estimates the sector will expand from $226.9 million in 2025 to $600.1 million by 2034, equivalent to about QR2.18 billion at Qatar’s fixed exchange rate. The forecast implies compound annual growth of […]
Ed Sheeran has said his “heart has been broken” by the scale of civilian suffering in Gaza, while apologising for mistakes made amid the dispute over rapper Macklemore’s removal from his United States tour. Addressing fans at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on Saturday, Sheeran described the situation in Gaza as “catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate” and said the humanitarian toll had forced him to speak publicly […]
Arabian Post Staff -Dubai Cosmo Developments has launched THE WADI, a mixed-use project on Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island with an estimated investment of AED6 billion and plans for 3,950 homes. The company, a joint venture between Abu Dhabi-based Flag Holding Group and Reportage Group, said the development will occupy about 140,700 square metres along Yas Canal. Reportage Group, which manages Cosmo Developments, will oversee the project from […]
European electricity prices for the coming winter have risen to their highest levels since the 2022 energy crisis, with German January contracts trading above €180 a megawatt-hour as gas supply concerns and geopolitical disruption tighten the market across the continent now. The German benchmark on the European Energy Exchange is more than 60 per cent higher than a year ago, signalling growing concern over the cost of […]
By K Raveendran Donald Trump now possesses one of the most formidable economic weapons available to an American president against countries sustaining Russia’s energy revenues. Yet, the decision on how aggressively to wield it is complicated by a contradiction that Washington cannot easily escape: squeezing Russian oil out of the international market could also push […]
Hackers who physically removed a Flock Safety roadside camera were able to copy much of its internal storage, uncover an encryption key and access tens of thousands of video clips and data linked to about 1.6 million images generated over 21 days. The compromise involved a single camera taken from above a roadway and did not amount to a remote breach of Flock Safety’s cloud network. The […]
Westinghouse Electric is seeking a valuation above $50 billion for a planned US initial public offering, people familiar with the preparations said, as the nuclear technology group moves towards a potential public filing as early as October. The proposed valuation has not been announced by Westinghouse or its owners and could change as preparations advance. The number of shares to be sold, the price range and the […]
HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach Newswire – 18 September 2026 – Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, John Lee, took part in a radio phone-in programme this morning (September 18), fielding questions about the First Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) (2026-2030) and his fifth Policy Address, which were unveiled on Wednesday (September 16).
Quizzed on various aspects of the HKSAR Government’s new blueprint for economic and social development, Mr Lee said the inaugural Five-Year Plan set out five main objectives for Hong Kong: better livelihoods for all; breakthroughs in economic development; expanding global competitiveness and influence; faster development of the Northern Metropolis; and to better serve the country.
On expanding global competitiveness, Mr Lee said the Government would make good use of its international networks.
“The strength of Hong Kong is its international status, and we have been emphasising on how we ensure the internationalism or the ‘internationalness’ of Hong Kong. We are expanding to cover every part of the world where we can reach,” Mr Lee said, noting that the Government had offices, including Economic and Trade Offices, and the offices of Invest Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, in countries around the world. “I’m very serious about expanding our network.”
Since taking office four years ago, Mr Lee has led delegation visits to regions, including ASEAN Member States, the Middle East, and recently Central Asia. “And my colleagues really go more often to different parts of the world, so for South Africa, and also Kenya and these are the very popular African places that my colleagues go to visit,” he added.
To boost Hong Kong’s influence in overseas markets, Mr Lee highlighted the example of the International Organization for Mediation (IOMed).
“We are very proud to have the headquarters of IOMed set up in Hong Kong, because this is an organisation which is of United Nations status,” Mr Lee said. He added that an international office would be set up in Hong Kong under the global network of corruption prevention authorities. “Hong Kong is an international city, which not just is very good at doing business, but is exercising its responsibility as a global participator, and also, we really can contribute.”
“And this is also very important, because it just means how, in different areas, Hong Kong is doing very well, and also very connected to the world. And not just being a member, but being a contributor, being really a driver, and we want to share our good experiences, and also learn from other experiences.”
The First Five-Year Plan and the 2026 Policy Address placed strong focus on speeding up the development of the Northern Metropolis (NM) project, so as to boost long-term economic development, improve people’s livelihoods and help the city to further integrate into overall national development.
“The Northern Metropolis represents about one third of our geographical area. So it is a big piece of land that gives us new opportunities. An opportunity to upgrade ourselves, both from the accommodation angle as well as development angle,” Mr Lee said.
Beyond the city’s core economic strengths such as finance, shipping and trade, Mr Lee said the NM would provide room for diversifying local industries, creating new jobs and a brighter future as more development opportunities emerge from different kinds of industries as well as closer alignment with national development.
“The NM is actually mentioned in our country’s 15th Five-Year Plan. That means it is not just a Hong Kong development, it has been elevated as a state-driven project. And with the elevation of position, we will have to work hard. And I am sure that the Central Government will also help us to ensure that this will be a success story.
“And so, doing the Five-Year Plan has this advantage. We will capitalise on all the opportunities that the state can give us. At the same time, we will remain very fully connected to the international world. So we have the beauty of both worlds.”
Asked about Hong Kong’s approach to adopting artificial intelligence (AI), Mr Lee stressed the need to take advantage of the opportunities brought by AI, while also protecting against the risks of AI, in areas such as crime, fraud, sexual abuse and potential negative impacts on younger people.
“Last year, we talk very much about how we should benefit from the application of AI, how it will do things faster, and how it will also do things more correctly,” Mr Lee said.
“So while we develop and ensure people understand and use it, we also need to tell everybody the potential risks that it will bring.”
Mr Lee said the Government would create a post of Commissioner for AI, with a mandate that he is “the chief for the whole government, in terms of AI. It means setting the policy. It means coordinating resources, identify problems for them, setting the best practices, issuing guidelines. And also, very importantly, is developing AI for the whole of government with a view to, after we have developed our experience, let the world also learn from these experiences.”
By T N Ashok The passage by the US Congress of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 has confronted India with a problem that is simultaneously diplomatic, economic and strategic. The immediate headline is stark: the legislation creates a statutory pathway allowing President Donald Trump to impose tariffs of up […]
OpenAI has asked a federal judge in California to dismiss lawsuits brought by survivors and families affected by the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting, arguing that British Columbia is the appropriate forum for claims arising from the February attack. Motions filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California invoke the doctrine of forum non conveniens, which allows a court to decline a case when […]
More than 2,000 African business leaders, heads of state, investors and policymakers are set to gather in New York on September 20 and 21 for Unstoppable Africa 2026, with investment, trade and ownership of African value chains at the centre of the agenda. The fifth edition of the Global Africa Business Initiative’s flagship forum will be held at the New York Marriott Marquis during the opening of […]
SpaceX has held informal discussions about buying customer and operational data from troubled or defunct startups to train artificial intelligence models, people familiar with the talks say, as the company looks for lower-cost information beyond material available on the public internet. The discussions are taking place within SpaceXAI, the artificial intelligence operation created after SpaceX acquired Elon Musk’s xAI business in February. No transaction has been announced, […]
Dubai is set to gain a mixed-use development where robots are planned to handle reception, security, cleaning, deliveries, coffee service and selected wellness functions, as Fakhruddin Properties advances a Dh700 million project in Dubai Land Residence Complex. The development, called Tréppan Vision, was unveiled at IPS 2026 and is scheduled for completion in the fourth quarter of 2029. Fakhruddin Properties says the scheme is designed to extend […]
Security specialists from the United States and China have proposed a set of nuclear-style safeguards for military artificial intelligence, including red lines around nuclear command systems, mandatory human control over major cyber operations and a dedicated bilateral crisis hotline. The proposals were published on September 9 by Melanie Sisson, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Tianjiao Jiang, an associate professor at Fudan University. Both participate […]
Global oil prices fell as much as 1.2 per cent on Thursday as Saudi Arabia offered additional crude cargoes to Asian refiners through Oman, easing immediate fears of a deeper supply squeeze after attacks forced the kingdom to shut its East-West pipeline. Brent crude dropped $1.24 to $104.59 a barrel in early Asian trading, while US West Texas Intermediate fell $1.14, or 1.1 per cent, to $101.29. […]
Arabian Post Staff -Dubai The UAE has ranked first in a new global tax optimisation index assessing 48 jurisdictions for internationally mobile individuals, driven by its lack of personal income, wealth and inheritance taxes and a 5 per cent value-added tax. The study by Global Citizen Solutions’ Global Intelligence Unit gave the UAE a composite score of 82.7 out of 100, narrowly ahead of Antigua and Barbuda […]
Huawei Technologies has laid out plans to launch two new artificial intelligence processors in 2027, strengthening its push to supply the computing power China needs as US export controls restrict access to Nvidia’s most advanced chips.
Rotating chairman David Wang said at Huawei Connect 2026 in Shanghai on Thursday that the company plans to release the 960DT in the first quarter of 2027 and the Ascend 960PR in the third quarter. The roadmap places Huawei’s next generation of accelerators at the centre of its effort to build domestic alternatives for training and running increasingly demanding AI models.
Huawei also unveiled the Ascend 960 SuperPoD and an upgraded version of its UnifiedBus interconnect technology, designed to link large numbers of processors so they can function as one computing system. The company said a combination of UnifiedBus and its Hi-ONE optical system could connect as many as 4,000 processors within a SuperPoD, extending high-speed optical links deeper into the machine.
The strategy reflects a broader shift towards system-level performance rather than relying solely on the capability of individual chips. Advanced AI workloads require thousands of processors to exchange data rapidly, making networking bandwidth, memory access and cluster efficiency increasingly important alongside raw chip performance.
Wang said Huawei has developed 11 semiconductors based on UnifiedBus technology for use across its large computing systems. Its biggest planned superclusters will be able to support up to one million AI processors, he said, while the company has already shipped more than 1,000 smaller supernodes to more than 370 customers.
Huawei did not identify those customers or give a detailed breakdown of shipments. It also did not provide independently verified benchmarks directly comparing the new 960-series chips with Nvidia’s leading accelerators, leaving questions over single-chip performance, software compatibility and manufacturing scale.
The company had previously said the Ascend 960 would offer twice the computing power, memory capacity, memory bandwidth and interconnect ports of the Ascend 950 generation. Huawei has also been developing the Atlas 960 SuperPoD and SuperCluster, with the larger system intended to combine more than one million neural processing units when it reaches the market.
Huawei’s current product roadmap also includes the Ascend 950DT, due in the fourth quarter of 2026. The company has said that processor will use its HiZQ 2.0 high-bandwidth memory, providing 144 GB of capacity and 4 terabytes per second of bandwidth. Those specifications are intended to support both model training and the decode stage of inference workloads.
US restrictions have limited China’s access to cutting-edge Nvidia processors and advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment, giving domestic suppliers greater room to expand. Huawei has emerged as the most prominent of those suppliers, but Nvidia retains a major advantage through its CUDA software ecosystem and a broad global developer base.
Chinese AI developers have increasingly turned to domestic accelerators for inference, where trained models generate responses, even as many frontier laboratories continue to depend on Nvidia hardware for the most demanding training jobs. That split has made Huawei’s ability to improve both hardware and software a critical test of whether China can reduce its dependence on foreign computing infrastructure.
Huawei is also contending with shortages of high-bandwidth memory, a key component in AI accelerators. The company has designed memory for some newer Ascend products, but supply constraints across the industry have increased costs and complicated efforts to scale production quickly enough to meet demand.
The group is seeking to offset those limitations through architectural changes, advanced packaging, optical networking and tighter integration between chips, systems and software. Its SuperPoD approach is intended to compensate for weaker performance from individual processors by allowing much larger numbers of chips to work together with lower latency.
Nigeria’s fixed-income market appears to be crossing an important threshold. For much of the past two years, yields were principally shaped by a familiar combination of aggressive government borrowing, restrictive monetary policy and investors demanding substantial compensation for inflation and currency risk. That hierarchy is changing. AAG Capital argues that liquidity is becoming the more powerful force behind pricing, potentially pushing government yields lower even while fiscal […]
US midterm elections are emerging as a fresh policy risk for artificial intelligence-linked stocks as President Donald Trump defends rapid AI development while candidates from both parties respond to widening voter resistance to data centres and calls for tighter safeguards. The political pressure intensified this week after Trump rejected demands for a slowdown in advanced AI development and argued that existing laws and enforcement powers were sufficient […]
Middle East supply disruptions are accelerating Africa’s drive to expand domestic refining and production as governments and companies seek to reduce exposure to volatile fuel costs and vulnerable shipping routes. Disruption around the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea has pushed energy markets higher, raising import bills across a continent where most countries remain net buyers of crude or refined petroleum products. The African Development Bank says […]
Arabian Post Staff -Dubai Fasset will become the first platform worldwide to list DDSC, the UAE dirham-backed stablecoin, under a new collaboration that will also allow users to swap the token with major dollar-backed stablecoins including USDC and USDT. The arrangement expands DDSC’s distribution beyond its initial institutional use and follows regulatory approvals that opened the way for the token to appear on selected platforms overseen by […]
The US Senate failed to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act on Tuesday, halting the cryptocurrency industry’s strongest attempt to secure a comprehensive federal market structure framework and pushing the regulatory burden back towards existing agencies. The cloture motion on the measure, H. R. 3633, was rejected 49-50, according to the Senate’s official roll call. Sixty votes were required to end debate on the motion to […]
OpenAI is using hundreds of outside contractors to examine real ChatGPT conversations and rate the system’s replies, with some reviewers earning more than $50 an hour, according to leaked internal materials that have sharpened scrutiny of the company’s privacy practices. The work is described in instruction guides, Slack messages and reviewer materials under an internal initiative known as Project Lily. Contractors are shown user prompts and, in […]
By TN Ashok The 18th BRICS Summit, held at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on September 12–13, 2026, was never going to escape Washington’s shadow — and it didn’t. Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi steered eleven member states toward a unanimously adopted New Delhi Declaration that pointedly avoided naming the United States, President Donald […]
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