Our gifting experts are obsessively searching for holiday gifts that are unique, thoughtful and suitable for any budget. Microsoft's new Surface Laptop Ultra finally has a starting price (you should sit down) The Surface Laptop Ultra is an AI powerhouse, with Nvidia's new RTX Spark chip and up to 128GB of unified memory - and it's priced for power users. Kyle Kucharski is a Brooklyn-based writer and Senior Editor at ZDNET. The new Surface Laptop Ultra launches Oct. 18. It's thoughtfully designed but very pricey.

South Korea bank hack suspect may be 26-year-old in China, U.S. firm says Authorities in Seoul are investigating cyberattacks that affected multiple financial institutions after banks, including Shinhan Bank and KB Kookmin Bank, reported data breaches. SEOUL - The suspect behind recent cyberattacks targeting South Korea's financial sector may be a 26-year-old based in China's Guangdong province, U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has said. In a report published on its website on Wednesday, CrowdStrike said it uncovered personal details linked to the suspected attacker while analyzing AI coding-tool sessions and infrastructure associated with a campaign targeting South Korean financial institutions from late September to early October. CrowdStrike said the attacker used ARTEX, a recently released Chinese-developed open-source penetration testing tool, alongside large language models and assessed with "moderate confidence" that the actor was a Chinese speaker and likely financially motivated. The firm said one Claude Code session contained a request to create a security researcher resume describing results from the hacking activity.

Image caption, Samsung is also one of the world's biggest smartphone makers Samsung Electronics says it expects a nine-fold surge in its quarterly profits compared with a year earlier, driven by surging demand for memory chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centres. The tech giant estimates that its operating profit for the three months to the end of September will jump to 107.4tn won (£61bn; $80bn), its fourth quarter in a row of record earnings. Samsung is one of the world's largest memory chip makers alongside local rival SK Hynix and Micron in the US, which produce chips crucial for AI firms like Nvidia. Samsung, which makes the Galaxy Fold and S26 smartphones, is also expected to get a boost from its latest folding devices that were launched in August. The firm's full third-quarter earnings will be released at the end of October.

Zelenskyy condemns one of Russia's most'vile strikes' as at least 28 killed in Ukraine Rescuers work outside a damaged five-story residential building following a Russian drone attack in Kyiv on Wednesday. KYIV - Russia pounded Ukraine with waves of missiles and drones in one of its most "vile strikes" on Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, killing at least 28 people, including children, and damaging industrial facilities and energy infrastructure. Ukrainian Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi put the country-wide death toll at 28. The heaviest losses were in Pryluky in Ukraine's northern Chernihiv region, where a Russian missile obliterated a five-story residential building. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

At the 2026 International Astronautical Congress in Turkiye, SpaceX unveiled a new visualisation of its plan to put a million satellites in space to power AI data centres. Gaza child's autoimmune condition triggered amid Israel's war Israel's deadline to close UK consulate in East Jerusalem nears How genocide in Gaza followed Bosnia's painful pattern

Technology Engineering The world's first nuclear clocks are ticking Nuclear clocks may surpass their atomic forebears and help solve the universe's most difficult mysteries. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Timekeeping has officially entered its nuclear age. Two independent teams, one in Vienna, Austria and another in Beijing, China have built working thorium-229 nuclear clock prototypes . Rather than track changes in an atom's electrons the way that current atomic clocks do, these nuclear versions use a laser that's tuned to the frequency where a thorium nucleus flips between two energy states for potentially even more accurate time keeping.

Donald Trump will award the National Medal of Science to Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Jensen Huang and Lisa Su at a White House summit on super intelligence and innovation.

While sources say Nippan Group has confirmed that it sold books to U.S. artificial intelligence firm Anthropic, the Japanese wholesaler did not disclose how many books were sold or the total purchase amount. Nippan Group Holdings, a Japanese book wholesaler, has confirmed that it had sold books to U.S. artificial intelligence firm Anthropic, sources familiar with the matter said Wednesday. In a letter addressed to the Japan Book Publishers Association, an industry group, Nippan Group said that Nippan IPS, a subsidiary that sells Japanese books overseas, concluded a deal with Anthropic in November 2024 and sold books to it between December that year and last December, according to the sources. Before striking the deal, Nippan IPS asked about the purpose of the book purchases, the letter said. But Nippan Group said that the unit had not been aware that Anthropic's purchases were for AI learning, according to the letter.

Plus: OpenAI has released 377 new math findings, further rattling the field. Popular weight-loss drugs may do more than help people shed pounds. They might also slow the aging process. Drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk say patients taking their GLP-1 drugs age less quickly, according to molecular "aging clocks" that track changes in DNA or levels of key proteins. The findings add to speculation that GLP-1 drugs could be acting on basic causes of aging and might be true longevity treatments. But how much can we read into these results?

Kristalina Georgieva, before the start of the IMF-World Bank annual meeting in Singapore, said economic policy chiefs could not keep delaying action. Kristalina Georgieva, before the start of the IMF-World Bank annual meeting in Singapore, said economic policy chiefs could not keep delaying action. Kristalina Georgieva says big economies will have to make'very touch choices' as soaring bond yields hit budgets The head of the International Monetary Fund has called on governments across big economies to tighten their belts as soaring bond yields hit budgets. Speaking in Singapore, the IMF's managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, said global debt-to-GDP ratios were at their highest level since the second world war and on course to hit 100% in the coming years. She said governments could not rely on rapid economic growth to lift the burden of debt - and instead would have to make "very tough political choices".