The Democratic Party in Maine picked its new candidate for a key US Senate race on Saturday, after the original nominee was pressured to drop out over sexual misconduct allegations. Delegates to a hastily organised nominating convention picked Troy Jackson, a former state senate president, to go up against Republican incumbent Susan Collins. “Thank you, Maine. In 101 days, we will defeat Susan Collins and reclaim our Senate seat. Let’s get to work,” Jackson said on social media. The move comes...

One morning in February 1784, a converted privateer called the Empress of China sailed out of New York harbour. It was bound for a country almost no one aboard had ever seen – China, then ruled by the Qing dynasty. Six months later, it dropped anchor at Canton, the only port where the Qing government allowed Western maritime trade. At the time, the Declaration of Independence was less than a decade old, and the Treaty of Paris recognising American independence had been signed less than a year...

A Mitsubishi Heavy Industries factory is expected to be the Japan centre for the development and assembly of the next-generation fighter jet to be produced by Japan, Britain and Italy, sources close to the matter said on Saturday. The three members of the trilateral Global Combat Air Program are discussing the roles each will play in the design and manufacture of the jet, with Britain to set up its centre in Warton and Italy in Turin, according to the sources. The Japanese centre will be set up...

Hong Kong police have smashed a syndicate that used provocatively dressed foreign women to sell drugs at pubs and entertainment venues, arresting three people and seizing HK$5.2 million (US$663,080) worth of narcotics. The arrests came during an operation carried out on Friday to target the income sources of triad societies, Chief Inspector Man Cheuk-hei of the Kowloon East regional anti-triad unit said on Saturday. “They also hired some foreign ladies in sexy clothes as their drug salespeople,...

As the size of artificial intelligence models expands beyond 1 trillion parameters, a new concept is dominating the computing landscape: “supernode”. At this year’s World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), China’s top AI summit, domestic chipmakers from Huawei Technologies to Biren Technology showcased new hardware designed to knit hundreds or thousands of chips together to act as one giant supercomputer, which they called a supernode. The focus on supernodes at WAIC reflected a shift in...

Two men died when a light aircraft crashed into a single-family home in the northern German state of Lower Saxony on Saturday. A police spokesman reported that initially one body was recovered from inside the aircraft in Ganderkesee, near Bremen. The second body was found later. Emergency services had been searching for the missing second passenger for hours. The aircraft is believed to have taken off from Bremen shortly before the crash, before losing altitude in a residential area in...

Hong Kong lawmakers have said they gained new insights on how best to assist the government in creating the city’s first five-year plan following an unprecedented study trip to Beijing that wrapped up on Saturday. Upon returning to Hong Kong, Legislative Council president Starry Lee Wai-king shared key takeaways from the week-long trip, highlighting a delegation meeting with Xia Baolong, director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, at the Great Hall of the People. She added that lawmakers...