China's DeepSeek shakes up global artificial intelligence markets

Today's news: Pakistan hands down death penalty to four men for sharing blasphemous content online; Israeli fire kills two more people in southern Lebanon, despite truce; In Laos, two women arrested for human trafficking; The cause of the Jeju Air plane crash in Muan in December with 179 fatalities was allegedly (also) a bird strike.

CHINA

Chinese start-up DeepSeek has shaken the world's stock markets with the launch of its latest artificial intelligence models. The company claims they are on par with or better than industry-leading models in the US, but at a fraction of the cost, which has led to a sharp drop in shares of Nvidia and others. US President Trump called the low-cost Chinese artificial intelligence model a ‘wake-up call’ for US companies.

PAKISTAN

A Pakistani court sentenced four men to death for publishing blasphemous content online. The four were sentenced in Rawalpindi, a city bordering Islamabad. The private group Legal Commission on Blasphemy Pakistan brought the case to court. These ‘vigilante’ groups denounce hundreds of young men. The four convicted Muslim men are between 20 and 32 years old and come from the province of Punjab.

ISRAEL - LEBANON

The Lebanese Health Ministry said on Monday Israeli fire killed two people and wounded 17 others in the south of the country, in a second day of violence as residents tried to return to border villages. The violence came just hours after the deadline for Israeli forces to withdraw from southern Lebanon was extended, according to the November ceasefire agreement. Another 24 displaced people were killed on Sunday.

LAOS

Laos authorities prevented three young women from boarding a flight from Vientiane International Airport to China and arrested two others on suspicion of human trafficking. Investigators believe the young women were travelling to China to marry Chinese men. The news comes as the government announced that a total of 107 victims of human trafficking were rescued in 2024.

SOUTH KOREA

In the first report on the Jeju Air plane crash in December - 179 people died - there is evidence of a bird strike. In the plane's engines were the remains of a type of migratory duck that flies in large flocks. The investigation into the accident - the deadliest on South Korean soil - will now focus on the role of impact and the concrete structure at the end of the runway, against which the plane crashed, is under investigation.

GEORGIA - HUNGARY

The speaker of the parliament in Tbilisi, disowned by the oppositions, Šalva Papuašvili, paid an official visit to Hungary, welcomed by his counterpart Laszlo Kover, Prime Minister Viktor Orban and President Tamas Sulyok, accompanied by several deputies of the Georgian Dream, seeking the first opportunity to obtain a certificate of legitimacy at the international level.

RUSSIA

As the ‘Centre for the Defence of Media Rights’ Fund released data for 2024, during which 45 journalists were put on criminal trial in Russia, twice as many as in the previous year, 16 of them for ‘non-compliance with regulations for foreign agents’, 10 for fake news against the army, 8 for ‘participation in extremist groups’ and 7 for ‘justification of terrorism’.

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