Dipu Tamang from Nepal is among more than 400,000 international students in Japan. When Dipu Tamang arrived in Japan from Nepal in 2024, he joined a growing stream of young people who see the country less as a traditional study destination and more as a structured route into work and long-term opportunity. The 22-year-old graduated from Shinjuku Heiwa Japanese Language School in March and now studies international business at a vocational college in Tokyo. He juggles part-time work as a convenience store clerk and hotel housekeeper to help cover his living expenses. "At first, I was interested in Japanese pop culture," he said. "Then I wanted to learn the language.

North Korea will'never' get nuclear recognition, EU and South Korea say European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen shakes hands with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung next to European Council President Antonio Costa on the day of an EU-South Korea summit in Brussels on Wednesday. South Korea and the European Union have said that North Korea will "never" be recognized as a nuclear-weapon state, reaffirming their commitment to denuclearization days after China and North Korea pledged closer ties at a summit that made no public mention of the issue. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung held talks with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa on Wednesday in Brussels, where they agreed to step up defense ties, including efforts to facilitate the exchange of classified information. "The DPRK will never be accepted as a nuclear-weapon state," the EU and South Korea said in a joint statement, referring to North Korea's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.

Several countries have been considering tightening rules around AI use as well as social media use for children. OTTAWA - The Canadian government introduced a digital safety bill on Wednesday that would ban social media for children under 16 with exemptions for platforms that meet certain safety standards, months after Australia enacted the world's first social media ban for young people. The bill also aims to make AI chatbots safer by setting up a digital regulator to establish safety standards, a government official said. Companies could face penalties of 3% of global revenue or up to 10 million Canadian dollars ($7.2 million), whichever is more, for failing to comply. "Social media platforms and AI chatbots are designed to capture attention. They do not support healthy childhood development and have become a source of anxiety, isolation, depression and a range of other mental health challenges for many young Canadians," said Marc Miller, minister of Canadian identity and culture.

We introduce BO4Mob, a new benchmark framework for high-dimensional Bayesian Optimization (BO), driven by the challenge of origin-destination (OD) travel demand estimation in large urban road networks. Estimating OD travel demand from limited traffic sensor data is a difficult inverse optimization problem, particularly in real-world, large-scale transportation networks. This problem involves optimizing over high-dimensional continuous spaces where each objective evaluation is computationally expensive, stochastic, and non-differentiable. BO4Mob comprises five scenarios based on real-world San Jose, CA road networks, with input dimensions scaling up to 10,100. These scenarios utilize high-resolution, open-source traffic simulations that incorporate realistic nonlinear and stochastic dynamics. We demonstrate the benchmark's utility by evaluating five optimization methods: three state-of-the-art BO algorithms and two non-BO baselines. This benchmark is designed to support both the development of scalable optimization algorithms and their application for the design of data-driven urban mobility models, including high-resolution digital twins of metropolitan road networks.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset . Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions . Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by LSEG .

Canada is proposing a social media ban for children and teenagers under the age of 16, mirroring a similar law passed in Australia late last year. But unlike Australia's law, tech firms could sidestep Canada's ban if they demonstrate they have policies to minimise harm to minors. The law includes sweeping measures to regulate AI chatbots and curtail harmful content online. It would create a regulator to ensure tech firms comply. Some free speech groups have warned it would expand censorship.

A year ago, Air India flight 171 crashed less than a minute after taking off from Ahmedabad airport in the western Indian state of Gujarat, en route for London. The official investigation that followed has sparked intense controversy, in India and beyond, with some questioning its integrity amid claims of conflicts of interest. It is not the first time such an investigation has proved contentious. So is it time for a different approach when investigating air crashes? It was a hot and dry afternoon on 12 June last year, when Flight 171 left the terminal at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Airport in Ahmedabad. Settling into their seats for the nine-and-a-half-hour journey to London were 230 passengers, 53 of them British citizens. Looking after them were 10 cabin crew.

Federal prosecutors in the United States have accused 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht of deliberately starting the Palisades Fire, which grew into one of the most destructive in the history of Los Angeles, California. Opening statements were presented on Wednesday in Rinderknecht's federal trial, where he stands accused of destroying property by means of fire, committing arson affecting interstate commerce, and lighting timber aflame. While prosecutors portrayed him as an arsonist who premeditated his crime, defence lawyers argued there was no proof that he had ignited the blazes. If anything, they said, Rinderknecht had tried to stop them. "When all the evidence is in, there will be one thing missing: proof that Jonathan Rinderknecht started that fire on January 1," lawyer Steve Haney told jurors.

The regulation also imposes new safety expectations on'AI chatbot services.' Canada is joining Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia, in banning teenagers from using social media. The Safe Social Media Act introduced by Marc Miller, Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, bans children under the age of 16 from having a social media account and introduces new regulatory expectations for social media services and AI platforms. Under the legislation, social media services are required to design their products to be safer for children. Platforms will also be expected to remove deepfakes and content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor.

The Canadian government has introduced a new digital safety bill that would ban social media for children under 16, with exemptions for platforms that meet certain safety standards. The bill also aims to make AI chatbots safer by setting up a digital regulator to establish safety standards, a government official said. "We have seen the very serious consequences that online harms can have. The safety of children cannot be an afterthought," the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, Marc Miller, said in a statement. Companies could face penalties of 3% of global revenue or up to C$10 million ($7.2 million), whichever is more, for failing to comply. "Social media platforms and AI chatbots are designed to capture attention.