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An Uzbek national in Korea has been sentenced to 16 months in prison for sending funds to a terrorist group based in Syria, legal sources said Sunday. The Seoul Central District Court recently handed down the sentence to the defendant after finding the Uzbek national guilty of violating the anti-terrorism law. The court also ordered the defendant to pay 1.25 million won ($936) — the same amount the Uzbek national sent in six transfers to an account designated by a KTJ member between January 2024 and January 2025. Khatiba Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (KTJ), a UN-designated Islamic extremist group associated with al-Qaida, has been linked to the 2016 suicide bombing at the Chinese Embassy in Kyrgyzstan and the 2017 suicide bombing on the St. Petersburg subway in Russia. The Uzbek national entered Korea on a D-4-1 student visa to study at a university-affiliated language institute and was staying in the country as an international student when contacted by the KTJ member. According to the legal sources, the court said the defendant "provided funding to support a terrorist group knowing that

Anthropic's planned initial public offering (IPO) is drawing a muted response in Korea despite expectations it could raise a record-high $90.4 billion, as local brokerages and asset managers shy away from the deal following fallout from SpaceX's IPO, industry officials said Sunday. There were no Korean brokerages among the 22 underwriters named in Anthropic's S-1 registration statement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Korean retail investors are therefore unlikely to gain access to shares through the IPO. Those in Korea will still be able to invest through exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Major asset managers, including Mirae Asset, KB, NH-Amundi and Samsung Asset Management, have launched a range of related ETFs since news of Anthropic's IPO plan emerged. The funds have provisions allowing index committees to consider adding AI companies such as Anthropic once they go public in the U.S. Still, asset managers are taking a cautious approach to launching and promoting the products, emphasizing broader investment themes such as U.S. technology, large language models and

The Korean government said Nvidia's existing partnership commitments to Korea remain intact despite disgraced CEO Jensen Huang's departure from the artificial intelligence (AI) giant. However, uncertainties linger as remarks by Elon Musk and others suggest that much of the cooperation may have relied on Huang's personal verbal commitments. The Ministry of Science and ICT said it held a meeting with Nvidia officials Friday, a day after Huang resigned as the company's CEO, and confirmed that plans to supply graphics processing units (GPUs) to Korea and other collaborative projects remain on track. “The second vice minister presided over a meeting with Nvidia and reconfirmed that the company plans to proceed with the supply of 260,000 GPUs and cooperation with Korean companies as previously announced,” Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT Bae Kyung-hoon wrote on Facebook Friday. “We also agreed to continue ongoing projects, including connecting Korean AI chips with Nvidia's platform through NVLink, building AI computing infrastructure, conducting joint research on ph

South Korea's presidential office said Sunday it is considering life imprisonment without parole as part of an initiative aimed at strengthening public safety and cracking down on crimes targeting vulnerable people. The initiative will focus on crimes targeting socially vulnerable people, including relationship-based crimes and crimes with apparently random motives. The issue has drawn renewed attention amid a series of high-profile cases involving relationship-based violence in recent years, including the killing last month of a woman on the southern resort island of Jeju who had been under police protection after reporting stalking and dating violence, allegedly by a man who told police she was his former lover. The government will also step up efforts to eradicate crimes involving scams, illegal drugs, illegal private lending, digital sex crimes and false or fabricated information, among other offenses that disrupt people's daily lives or threaten public order, presidential chief of staff Lim Kwang-hyun said. Lim said the initiative follows instructions from President Lee Jae Myung at

The squid catch around Ulleung Island has plummeted amid rising sea temperatures caused by climate change, highlighting how warming waters are reshaping Korea’s marine ecosystem and the coastal communities that depend on it. According to Ulleung County on Sunday, the local catch fell from 11,315 tons in 2000 to 1,852 tons in 2015 and 1,172 tons in 2020, before plunging to 141 tons in 2025. The 2025 catch amounted to just 1.2 percent of the 2000 figure. The decline has continued this year, with only 54 tons caught from January to September. Squid is the signature seafood of the island in North Gyeongsang Province and has long been a mainstay of its economy. The decline stems largely from rising sea temperatures, which have reshuffled the marine food chain and are pushing squid out of Korean waters. The National Institute of Fisheries Science (NIFS) believes squid that would normally grow off Korea’s coast have moved north toward Russia and other areas as their main coastal and offshore habitat in the southern East Sea has warmed. The average sea surface temperature around the Korean Pe

SINGAPORE — Singapore-based data center company Megaspeed International, under scrutiny for allegedly steering Nvidia chips to China, said on Sunday that suspected spy Alice Huang had left the firm more than a year ago. Megaspeed is suspected of helping Chinese firms get around U.S. export controls by buying Nvidia chips for its data centers in Southeast Asia and routing them to China. Its former director Alice Huang has been identified in U.S. media as an alleged Chinese intelligence asset who had a relationship with Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang, who resigned as the tech giant's chief executive on Thursday. "Ms. Alice Huang officially left Megaspeed effective Aug. 30, 2025, and currently has no role with the company," the firm said in reply to an AFP query. "Megaspeed does not comment on Ms. Huang's personal and private matters." Alice Huang and Jensen Huang are not related. Beijing has denied the spying allegations. Jensen Huang acknowledged an extramarital affair in a Nov. 8 letter to Nvidia employees that did not name the woman involved. He resigned days later. Nvidia's board has sai

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is facing heat in Washington, including from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, over his approach to AI chip export controls amid Nvidia's national security scandal. Reports emerged this week that Lutnick took a softer line on Nvidia over the tech giant’s AI chip sales to China and failed to put the Singaporean...

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is facing heat in Washington, including from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, over his approach to AI chip export controls amid Nvidia's national security scandal. Reports emerged this week that Lutnick took a softer line on Nvidia over the tech giant’s AI chip sales to China and failed to put the Singaporean...

The United States and China are working to iron out a military accident-prevention agreement ahead of their summit in Shenzhen, although progress has been slow amid divisions within the US administration, according to sources. Both sides were still trying to reach common ground on a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on military-related crisis communication and prevention, sources said on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to speak on the matter publicly. The MOU was first...

Support has continued to build across the tech industry for Jensen Huang, with figures including Elon Musk rallying behind the former Nvidia CEO and an unverified online petition calling on the board to reinstate the company’s founder. Organisers of the “Stand with Jensen” campaign, who describe themselves as Nvidia employees, partners and shareholders, urged the board to “bring Jensen back while an independent investigation establishes the facts”, according to an open letter on the initiative’s...

New state media footage has surfaced showing for the first time what appears to be a Chinese-modified variant of the Russian-origin Kh-29T air-to-surface missile mounted on a J-10C fighter jet. State broadcaster CCTV’s social media account posted a video on Wednesday featuring Chinese fighters, showing the missile mounted under the 4.5-generation fighter as it took off, according to posts by Chinese military bloggers over the weekend. China originally imported about 2,000 Kh-29T missiles...

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