Time's up! Scientists vote to scrap the leap second - but will allow clocks to drift by an HOUR in huge shakeup

Daily Mail - Oct 15, 2026

In the biggest shakeup for timekeeping in over 50 years, a key vote has severed the connection between the Earth's rotation and modern clocks.

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Chinese video AI models beat US rivals in visual quality, but lag on safeguards: HKU study

Oct 26, 2026

Chinese video AI models beat US rivals in visual quality, but lag on safeguards: HKU study

Chinese AI video-generation models have surpassed leading US rivals in visual quality, but several fall behind in safety safeguards, according to researchers at the University of Hong Kong. ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 Pro took top spot in a ranking of 12 leading artificial intelligence video-generation models, scoring 3.84 out of 5 for visual quality. It outperformed Google DeepMind’s Veo 3.1, which scored 3.47, and OpenAI’s Sora 2 Pro, on 3.27, in a study led by Zhenhui Jack Jiang, professor of...

South Korea urged to guard chip profitability as China’s CXMT and YMTC gain market share

Oct 26, 2026

South Korea urged to guard chip profitability as China’s CXMT and YMTC gain market share

China’s expanding semiconductor industry is fuelling mounting anxiety in South Korea, where a new consultancy report has warned local chipmakers to defend profitability as Chinese rivals scale up production and strengthen market share. Samil PwC, the South Korean member firm of the global consultancy, said in a report made public on Monday that Chinese competition would likely heat up first in the areas of conventional memory, mature-node manufacturing, and packaging and testing. To stay ahead,...

Plans to create a wildflower meadow take shape

Oct 26, 2026

Plans to create a wildflower meadow take shape

Fairstead Recreation Ground is being planted with wildflowers to benefit insects and pollinators.

Fed-up driver builds AI litter tracker

Oct 26, 2026

Fed-up driver builds AI litter tracker

Robin Bennett says he created the app after getting frustrated by the amount of rubbish beside roads

The dump detectives on the trail of the fly-tippers

Oct 26, 2026

The dump detectives on the trail of the fly-tippers

The BBC joins environmental enforcement officers as they sift through illegally-dumped waste for clues.

What do we still need to know about the Tyne nurdle spill?

Oct 26, 2026

What do we still need to know about the Tyne nurdle spill?

The spill of 18 tonnes of plastic pellets happened in July but there is still a lot we do not know.

Fire-hit nature reserve 'will never be the same'

Oct 26, 2026

Fire-hit nature reserve 'will never be the same'

Three months on from a devastating wildfire, the RSPB says it will take 20 years to recover.

Grand Theft Auto VI launch: How is the highly anticipated game moving calendars as fever grips workforce

Oct 26, 2026

Grand Theft Auto VI launch: How is the highly anticipated game moving calendars as fever grips workforce

The survey found that among the 30% of gamers considering time off, about 35-36% admitted they would call in “sick” if they took the day off.

Two men killed by falling trees as Storm Boelo leaves 90,000 properties without power

Oct 26, 2026

Two men killed by falling trees as Storm Boelo leaves 90,000 properties without power

An amber wind warning has now expired after severe weather sweeps across the UK.

Alibaba Cloud founder on how AI can unlock human potential

Oct 26, 2026

Alibaba Cloud founder on how AI can unlock human potential

Long before artificial intelligence became the next big thing in the tech industry, Wang Jian was crafting the foundational infrastructure that would eventually power it. In 2008, he joined Alibaba Group Holding – owner of the South China Morning Post – as chief architect and founded Alibaba Cloud in 2009, convincing the company’s leadership to invest heavily in building a cloud computing infrastructure from scratch. Today, Wang’s purview has expanded considerably. As an academician at the...

Weapon or armour? The contentious debate over China’s open-weight AI

Oct 26, 2026

Weapon or armour? The contentious debate over China’s open-weight AI

Are China’s increasingly powerful open-weight AI models a cybersecurity threat, or could restricting them ultimately make the internet less secure? The dilemma has become a growing concern as Chinese developers including DeepSeek, Z.ai and Alibaba Group Holding – owner of the South China Morning Post – continue to challenge their American rivals by releasing models that anyone can download, modify and deploy. The growing impact of advanced AI on global cybersecurity has also forced governments...

China shoots ahead on AI video models

Oct 26, 2026

China shoots ahead on AI video models

While few dispute that China is narrowing the gap with the United States in developing artificial intelligence (AI) models, there is one area where Chinese firms are already the undisputed leaders: video. China has seen a proliferation of advanced generative AI video models – systems trained on visual data to generate or edit video content based on user inputs such as text prompts, images and audio. The country’s vast short-video ecosystems and looser copyright rules have helped give Chinese...

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Could new US investment curbs complicate China’s biotech licensing surge?

Oct 26, 2026

Could new US investment curbs complicate China’s biotech licensing surge?

Chinese biotech firms face fresh headwinds in their global expansion as Washington’s proposed outbound investment restrictions threaten to disrupt deal structures, even though drug licensing agreements remain untouched for now, analysts say. The US Treasury Department’s draft rules released last week would “make it much harder for Chinese biotech firms to attract direct US investment or enter joint ventures”, according to David Zhang, an analyst at policy research firm Trivium China. US Treasury...

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