Jonathan Kitchen An artificial intelligence model that surfaced anonymously on a developer platform last week is said to be fueling speculation that DeepSeek ( DEEPSEEK ) may be quietly trialing its next-generation system ahead of a formal release. The free model, called Hunter Alpha, surfaced on the AI gateway platform OpenRouter on March 11 without any developer attribution and was later descri...
Jonathan Kitchen An artificial intelligence model that surfaced anonymously on a developer platform last week is said to be fueling speculation that DeepSeek ( DEEPSEEK ) may be quietly trialing its next-generation system ahead of a formal release. The free model, called Hunter Alpha, surfaced on the AI gateway platform OpenRouter on March 11 without any developer attribution and was later described by the platform as a "stealth model." During tests conducted by Reuters , the Hunter Alpha chatbot described itself as "a Chinese AI model primarily trained in Chinese" and said its training data extended to May 2025, the same knowledge cutoff point reported by DeepSeek's own chatbot. When asked about its creator, however, the system declined to identify its developer, the report said. "I only know my name, my parameter scale and my context window length," the chatbot said. Neither DeepSeek ( DEEPSEEK ) nor OpenRouter has identified the model's creator and they did not respond to requests for comment, Reuters reported. Hunter Alpha's profile page describes it as a 1-trillion-parameter model, meaning it was trained using roughly one trillion adjustable values that determine how the system processes language and generates responses. While the overlap does not establish a direct connection, it has intensified speculation among developers that the anonymous system could be an early test version of the upcoming release by DeepSeek. "The chain-of-thought pattern is probably the strongest signal," Daniel Dewhurst, an AI engineer who analysed the model after its release told the news agency, referring to how the AI model reasons. "Reasoning style is hard to disguise and tends to reflect how a model was trained." Hunter Alpha's scale and memory capacity also match specifications that have circulated for DeepSeek V4 since early this year, he said. Still, some developers cautioned that the evidence linking the model to DeepSeek was inconclusive. "My analysis suggests Hunte...
Cuba’s leader on Tuesday said the US would face “unbreakable resistance” if it tries to take over the impoverished island nation, as communist authorities scrambled to fix a nationwide electricity blackout. Cuba’s government has been under increasingly crushing pressure, with Washington enforcing an oil blockade and openly stating it wants to end the nearly seven-decade-old US stand-off with the o...
Cuba’s leader on Tuesday said the US would face “unbreakable resistance” if it tries to take over the impoverished island nation, as communist authorities scrambled to fix a nationwide electricity blackout. Cuba’s government has been under increasingly crushing pressure, with Washington enforcing an oil blockade and openly stating it wants to end the nearly seven-decade-old US stand-off with the one-party communist state. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Cuba’s decision announced this week to let exiles invest and own businesses did not go far enough to allow free-market reforms that the Trump administration demands. Advertisement “What they announced yesterday is not dramatic enough. It’s not going to fix it. So they’ve got some big decisions to make,” Rubio, a Cuban-American and vociferous critic of the country’s ruling party, told reporters at the White House. Havana as power was being restored on Tuesday. Photo: Reuters US President Donald Trump, who has heaped pressure on Cuba’s communist government, said Monday he would “take” Cuba, adding: “We’ll be doing something with Cuba very soon”.
Microsoft is weighing legal action against Amazon and OpenAI over a $50bn deal that could breach its exclusive cloud partnership with the Upgrade to read this Financial Times article and get so much more. A Silver or Gold subscription plan is required to access premium news articles.
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This glossy murder mystery, starring Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington and Kate Mara, should be better than this. But if you brace yourself for a perfectly acceptable eight hours of entertainment, you’ll have a good time You can’t say Imperfect Women doesn’t warn you. It is clear from the very first shots – three women dancing, drunkenly but happily, laughing but not scream-laughing, as the camera ...
This glossy murder mystery, starring Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington and Kate Mara, should be better than this. But if you brace yourself for a perfectly acceptable eight hours of entertainment, you’ll have a good time You can’t say Imperfect Women doesn’t warn you. It is clear from the very first shots – three women dancing, drunkenly but happily, laughing but not scream-laughing, as the camera whirls round their beautifully lit selves – and the first line – an earnest voiceover about “a kinship from deep in our souls” – what we’re in for. That is, an overwritten, far-fetched, glossy but derivative murder mystery – a descendant of Big Little Lies , intermarried with touches of everything else Nicole Kidman has done in the last 10 years. Adjust your expectations accordingly and you’ll have a perfectly acceptable eight hours of entertainment. Dwell on the fact that you could well have expected better of an Apple TV production and a main cast that includes Kerry Washington, Elisabeth Moss and Kate Mara and you’ll have less of a good time. So don’t do that. Continue reading...
PM’s proposal to tax super-rich and fund schools wins praise as her handling of the Greenland crisis boosts her standing across party lines – but not all voters are convinced Only four months ago, Copenhagen student Sven Li’s view of the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, was, like many Danish voters, less than favourable. The 21-year-old, who was about to host an election event for Green Left (So...
PM’s proposal to tax super-rich and fund schools wins praise as her handling of the Greenland crisis boosts her standing across party lines – but not all voters are convinced Only four months ago, Copenhagen student Sven Li’s view of the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, was, like many Danish voters, less than favourable. The 21-year-old, who was about to host an election event for Green Left (Socialistisk Folkeparti, known as SF) in his cramped but cosy halls-of-residence kitchen, said the woman who had led Denmark’s centrist coalition government for the past three and a half years had shown herself to be a “very cold, calculating figure”. Her Social Democrats were suffering too, going down to sweeping defeats in municipal elections in November and losing control of Copenhagen for the first time in more than a century. But since then, and as Denmark prepares for an early general election on 24 March, Li’s view of the prime minister has transformed, first as a result of her handling of the geopolitical crisis with Donald Trump over Greenland, and second because of her recent shift to the left in some areas – including a 0.5% wealth tax to fund smaller class sizes in schools. Continue reading...
As the hit travelogue about the worlds beneath us becomes a film, its maker takes us on a voyage through Las Vegas storm drains and the caves of Yucatán – via Goatchurch Cavern in the bowels of Somerset Just off the B3134 in Somerset is a portal to the underworld. The smaller of two openings to Goatchurch Cavern, it’s called the Tradesman’s Entrance – and through it I am squeezing. After tumbling ...
As the hit travelogue about the worlds beneath us becomes a film, its maker takes us on a voyage through Las Vegas storm drains and the caves of Yucatán – via Goatchurch Cavern in the bowels of Somerset Just off the B3134 in Somerset is a portal to the underworld. The smaller of two openings to Goatchurch Cavern, it’s called the Tradesman’s Entrance – and through it I am squeezing. After tumbling on my bum over damp smooth rock, lacerating a jumpsuit in the process, I venture down and down, sometimes crawling, sometimes standing upright, trying to find footholds in the dark. I’m here with film-maker Robert Petit, so he can show me something of what he’s been experiencing for the past five years, on his way to making an endearingly poetic documentary film called Underland, which riffs on nature-writer Robert Macfarlane’s bestselling 2019 subterranean travelogue of the same name. We’re heading 100ft underground to the Boulder Chamber where, over sugary snacks, I will quiz him about his obsession. Continue reading...
Armed with Orbán’s ruthless playbook and Trump’s political style, Janez Janša would be another illiberal threat to the EU if he wins on 22 March Stroll through almost any town in Slovenia – or simply drive along its regional roads – and you can’t miss them. Posters cling to lamp-posts, bus stops and construction fences, proclaiming the triumphs of one political party or another. It is the unmistak...
Armed with Orbán’s ruthless playbook and Trump’s political style, Janez Janša would be another illiberal threat to the EU if he wins on 22 March Stroll through almost any town in Slovenia – or simply drive along its regional roads – and you can’t miss them. Posters cling to lamp-posts, bus stops and construction fences, proclaiming the triumphs of one political party or another. It is the unmistakable visual language of campaign season: Slovenia is heading to the polls. On 22 March, the country will hold parliamentary elections. That the outgoing coalition, led by the centre-left prime minister, Robert Golob , will have served a full term is, by Slovenian standards, almost miraculous. It was formed ahead of the 2022 election by Golob’s Freedom Movement (Gibanje Svoboda, GS), a party established only months earlier by the former executive at the state-controlled energy company. In its first electoral outing, the party won 41 of the 90 seats in the national assembly – the strongest single-party result since independence. Ana Schnabl is a Slovenian novelist, editor and critic Continue reading...
Women who have been arrested, investigated and convicted under abortion legislation in England and Wales “must not be left behind” if the law is changed to prevent women being criminalised in future, campaigners have said. Last summer, the House of Commons voted to end the criminalisation of women who terminate their pregnancies outside the legal framework, through a new clause in the crime and po...
Women who have been arrested, investigated and convicted under abortion legislation in England and Wales “must not be left behind” if the law is changed to prevent women being criminalised in future, campaigners have said. Last summer, the House of Commons voted to end the criminalisation of women who terminate their pregnancies outside the legal framework, through a new clause in the crime and policing bill. The House of Lords will consider its own series of amendments to the legislation on Wednesday, including two that would end active police investigations into suspected illegal abortions and pardon women who have already been criminalised. “When I heard how the system has treated these women and girls when they are at their most vulnerable, and how they may have to explain this every time their [disclosure and barring service] check gets renewed, it was clear this cruelty had to be stopped,” said the Lib Dem peer Elizabeth Barker, who has put forward one of the amendments. “Although there are far fewer who have been convicted, that conviction is a life sentence – it prevents them getting jobs, and even when renewing their car insurance every year they’ll have to explain they have a lifelong criminal record.” View image in fullscreen A London rally in support of the protection of women’s reproductive rights. Photograph: Sopa Images/LightRocket/Getty Images Becca was 19 and working as a healthcare assistant in a hospital in the north of England when she realised she was pregnant. She had had no signs of pregnancy over the prior months. She was still wearing her normal dress size and had even been at the seaside in a cropped top the weekend before. As such, Becca assumed she had only just conceived. Deciding she wanted a termination, she went to a clinic and saw a doctor who gave her abortion pills. But when she did not experience the bleeding she had been warned to expect, she called NHS 111, who advised her to go to A&E. “I told them 100% the truth of what was go...
As a child, the singer loved to start fires. As an adult, he was barely less chaotic. He discusses Bez, charisma, ADHD, his new memoir – and why making music is great, even if the record industry will always screw you over There are thousands of pictures of Shaun Ryder and Bez in Happy Mondays, from the mid- to late 80s, that run the gamut from mashed to wrecked. They don’t always look that cheerf...
As a child, the singer loved to start fires. As an adult, he was barely less chaotic. He discusses Bez, charisma, ADHD, his new memoir – and why making music is great, even if the record industry will always screw you over There are thousands of pictures of Shaun Ryder and Bez in Happy Mondays, from the mid- to late 80s, that run the gamut from mashed to wrecked. They don’t always look that cheerful, but when they do, they look insanely fun. In Ryder’s new memoir, 24 Hour Party Person, he quotes a critic: “The poorly educated might just call [Bez] a dancer, but he’s the proprietor of good times.” What Bez did for the band, the band did for the era: just went way too far, in an absolutely magnetic way. Ryder, in a Novotel hotel to the west of Manchester, explains what drew the whole band together. “When you are neurodiverse, you attract other people who are,” he says. “I would have said at the time we were all fucked-up loonies. I mean Bez [he launches into a spirited impression]: ‘I’m-not-fucking-neurodiverse’… it’s like, mate . You are. ‘I’m fucking not.’ Mate, you are . The same with all of them. None of them have been tested and gone through the thing, but they are. All of them. Continue reading...
Judith Leyster, an artist of the Dutch golden age, was thought to be about 21 when she painted her self-portrait in 1630. In the picture she presented to the world, Leyster exudes cheerful confidence. Clad in shimmering silks and a stiffly starched lace collar, she leans back in her chair, palette and brushes in hand, a painting by her side. This work, completed in the year she was admitted to a p...
Judith Leyster, an artist of the Dutch golden age, was thought to be about 21 when she painted her self-portrait in 1630. In the picture she presented to the world, Leyster exudes cheerful confidence. Clad in shimmering silks and a stiffly starched lace collar, she leans back in her chair, palette and brushes in hand, a painting by her side. This work, completed in the year she was admitted to a painters’ guild in Haarlem, proclaimed her arrival as an established artist. It was one of the first self-portraits by an artist in the Dutch republic, a device most male painters did not adopt until years later. View image in fullscreen A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel, 1635 by Judith Leyster. Photograph: The Picture Art Collection/Alamy While celebrated in her lifetime, Leyster was quickly forgotten after her death. A posthumous inventory attributed some of her paintings to “the wife of the deceased”, referring to her artist husband, Jan Miense Molenaer. Then she disappeared. Her works were attributed to Frans Hals, other male contemporaries, or, simply, “unknown master”. Those paintings under her name were little esteemed. In the 1970s a major US museum sold one; other institutions left her work unseen in their vaults. Now the painter, who has been enjoying a revival for some time, is back in the spotlight, one of more than 40 female artists who worked in the Low Countries during the baroque period to be featured in a new exhibition. View image in fullscreen Maria van Oosterwijck, Flowers in an Ornamental Vase, 1670-1675, canvas, Mauritshuis, Den Haag. Photograph: Museum Prinsenhof Delft Unforgettable: Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600-1750 opened this month at the the Ghent Museum of Fine Arts (MSK), after an earlier run in Washington DC. The exhibition seeks to restore women to one of the most feted periods of art history, best known for works by Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer and Anthony van Dyck. As MSK puts it in its slogan: “Old masters were ...
In the many bizarre exchanges that occurred in the run-up to the US-Israeli attack on Iran, perhaps the most unexpected was an invitation by Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff for the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, to join him and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for a visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group. The idea that Araghchi would leave talks in Oman about...
In the many bizarre exchanges that occurred in the run-up to the US-Israeli attack on Iran, perhaps the most unexpected was an invitation by Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff for the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, to join him and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for a visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group. The idea that Araghchi would leave talks in Oman about the future of Iran’s nuclear programme to tour a ship sent to the Gulf in an effort to dislodge his government seemed idiosyncratic at best. But it was symptomatic of the unorthodox way in which Kushner and Witkoff approached the nuclear talks that stretched through last year and this, and have twice been halted by Israeli and US airstrikes. One Gulf diplomat, who has direct knowledge of the talks and is furious with Witkoff and Kushner’s behaviour, described the pair as “Israeli assets that had conspired to force the US president into entering a war from which he is now desperate to get himself out of”. Witkoff does not pretend to regional expertise – in one of his recent interviews he referred to the strait of Hormuz as the “Gulf of Hormuz”. Similarly, he admitted in an interview that his knowledge of Iran’s nuclear programme was sketchy, but insisted he “was competent to discuss it since he had studied it”. Yet, in the five sessions of the first round of talks last year – held before the 12-day June war – Witkoff rarely took notes and brought with him only Michael Anton, a hawkish essayist and political philosopher with no specialism in the Iran nuclear file. Anton was supposed to have an unnamed technical team back in Washington, and at times, as in May 2025, they could produce hard-core technical demands, but this level of expertise was never in the talks. When talks resumed in Oman on 6 February, Witkoff, in a breach of protocol and to the surprise of Oman’s foreign minister, Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, arrived in Muscat with Adm Brad Cooper, the commander of US force...
Luthando Kolisi jokes that if he finds work at another factory, it will probably end up shutting down. That’s how he lost his last two jobs. Since being let go from the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. factory in Nelson Mandela Bay — a coastal South African city that is the heart of the country’s automotive industry — he’s sent out countless applications, while eking out a bit of cash from odd jobs. “I’...
Luthando Kolisi jokes that if he finds work at another factory, it will probably end up shutting down. That’s how he lost his last two jobs. Since being let go from the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. factory in Nelson Mandela Bay — a coastal South African city that is the heart of the country’s automotive industry — he’s sent out countless applications, while eking out a bit of cash from odd jobs. “I’m slowly beginning to lose that hope,” he said. The auto sector makes up the biggest share of South Africa’s manufacturing and its contribution to the country’s economic output rivals that of the mining sector, but it is buckling under the pressure of rising costs and a flood of cheaper imports from India and China. Companies, including giant manufacturers Toyota Motor Corp. and Volkswagen AG , are clamoring for urgent policy interventions to help them compete. In a rare alignment, unions and investors have joined forces to do the same. In Nelson Mandela Bay, Goodyear is not the only plant to have shed jobs. The municipality lost 41,000 jobs last year, according to official statistics. Among all of South Africa’s metro regions, Nelson Mandela Bay experienced the steepest jump in joblessness, with more than 28% of people out of work in the final quarter — up from less than 22% a year before. “It used to be called the Detroit of South Africa,” Mziyanda Twani, a local leader of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, said from his office overlooking the center of Nelson Mandela Bay. Now, without drastic action to save the industry, he said, “this area is soon going to be defined as a ghost town.” The half-hour drive to Volkswagen’s factory northwest of Nelson Mandela Bay is strewn with evidence of industrial decline. Mangled roadside armco forms a flimsy barrier to moldering colonial-era buildings marked by peeling paint and rusted corrugated roofing. Volkswagen builds VW Polos for all markets outside of South America at its plant in Kariega, on the outskirts of th...
German pharmaceutical firm Stada said it’s ready to make a major consumer health acquisition as it books record profit and transitions to new ownership. “We have absolutely enough firepower to do meaningful acquisitions in the consumer health space,” Stada Chief Executive Officer Peter Goldschmidt said in a phone interview. He added that he’s open in terms of geographies and deal size, declining t...
German pharmaceutical firm Stada said it’s ready to make a major consumer health acquisition as it books record profit and transitions to new ownership. “We have absolutely enough firepower to do meaningful acquisitions in the consumer health space,” Stada Chief Executive Officer Peter Goldschmidt said in a phone interview. He added that he’s open in terms of geographies and deal size, declining to comment on specific targets. “It has to make sense for us,” he said, adding the company aims to further boost revenues and profit this year. Stada’s sales rose 6% in 2025 to a record €4.3 billion ($5 billion), it said in a statement Wednesday. The company’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization increased 8% to €961 million on a constant exchange-rate basis, which was also an all-time high. London-based CapVest Partners agreed in September to buy control of Stada from fellow private equity firms Bain Capital and Cinven . The deal, which values the business at about €10 billion including debt, is set to close in the next few weeks. Stada is based on the outskirts of Germany’s financial capital of Frankfurt. It makes generic drugs, consumer health products like Grippostad cold medicine and Ladival sunblock, as well as specialty drugs. The specialty segment grew the fastest last year, thanks to drugs like Uzpruvo, a biosimilar alternative to Stelara used to treat Crohn’s disease, according to the statement. The firm struck over 100 in-licensing deals for drugs it hasn’t developed itself, strengthening the pipeline going forward, Goldschmidt said. Read more: CapVest Jumps Into PE Big Leagues With €10 Billion Stada Buyout
Thursday’s summit between US President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was supposed to see the two leaders sit down in advance of Trump’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping to ensure the allies were on the same page. Instead, with the US-China summit postponed and the Israel-US war on Iran going full blast, their meeting is likely to find Japan more on the defensive, ac...
Thursday’s summit between US President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was supposed to see the two leaders sit down in advance of Trump’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping to ensure the allies were on the same page. Instead, with the US-China summit postponed and the Israel-US war on Iran going full blast, their meeting is likely to find Japan more on the defensive, according to analysts and former government officials. Takaichi will be trying to finesse shifting tariff levels, huge US investment demands and criticism over Tokyo’s hesitation at deploying support ships to the Strait of Hormuz, they said. Advertisement “Back then, her primary concern was getting into Trump’s ear before he headed off to his summit with Xi in Beijing. You had really positive momentum,” said Jeremy Chan, senior analyst with the Eurasia Group. “And now the double whammy of the Iran war and the delay to the China trip. It’s higher stakes, but for the wrong reason.” Analysts said Takaichi could find Trump keen to have a “normal” summit that distracts from the Middle East – or he could light into her for failing to support the unpopular war and lash out, rhetorically and economically.
In this article USO UAMY Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNT Commercial vessels are pictured offshore in Dubai on March 11, 2026. - | Afp | Getty Images Iran's de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has stoked fears of the gravest disruption to global oil supply in history , as the Middle East conflict stretches into its third week. The blockade has squeezed shipping traffic to a tr...
In this article USO UAMY Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNT Commercial vessels are pictured offshore in Dubai on March 11, 2026. - | Afp | Getty Images Iran's de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has stoked fears of the gravest disruption to global oil supply in history , as the Middle East conflict stretches into its third week. The blockade has squeezed shipping traffic to a trickle, with just 21 tankers transiting the route since the war began on Feb. 28, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, compared to more than 100 ships daily before the conflict. Most vessels appear to be holding positions outside Hormuz, with thousands of seafarers stranded aboard vessels in the Gulf. Some have explored a pivot to disperse to alternative ports. Roughly 400 vessels were spotted operating in the Gulf of Oman, as a massive backlog of ships waited near the chokepoint, according to a report from maritime intelligence firm Windward on Sunday. While Iran has kept a tight grip on the strait, a small number of other ships have made the crossing under varying circumstances, signaling that Tehran is selectively letting through some non-Iranian oil cargo in negotiated safe voyages, according to maritime analysts. Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards CNBC Europe Here's a look at some of the countries that have had their vessels go through the critical energy route since the war began. China Tehran has largely avoided targeting ships linked to China. Dozens of vessels broadcasting AIS — automatic identification system — destinations referenced Chinese ownership or crew presence while operating in the Gulf, according to Windward. "This pattern suggests the possibility of an informal access filter, where vessels signaling Chinese ownership or crew may be attempting to indicate neutrality or avoid targeting in the current conflict environment," Windward analysts said in a report last week. Beijing was reportedly in talks with Iran to allow crude oil and Qatari lique...