Chinese National Sentenced to 28-Month Imprisonment Over Investment Scams
Liu Li, 27, of Los Angeles, was sentenced to 28 months in prison on Aug. 15, after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering on June 4, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California. Li also used aliases such as 'Qiunan Li' and 'Xiaoying Zhao.'
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Epoch Times
30 minutes ago
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2 Men Sentenced for Laundering Drug Proceeds as Part of Global Organization
A U.S. federal judge in Boston has sentenced two individuals involved in an international money laundering and drug trafficking organization. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts announced the sentencing in a statement on Aug 15. Chen Yanbing, 30, a Chinese national unlawfully residing in Brooklyn, New York, was sentenced to 57 months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release. Chen in October 2024 pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to distribute 5 kilograms or more of cocaine.
CNBC
an hour ago
- CNBC
OpenAI's Altman warns the U.S. is underestimating China's next-gen AI threat
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned that the U.S. may be underestimating the complexity and seriousness of China's progress in artificial intelligence, and said export controls alone likely aren't a reliable solution. "I'm worried about China," he said. Over Mediterranean tapas in San Francisco's Presidio — just five miles north of OpenAI's original office in the Mission — Altman offered a rare on-the-record briefing to a small group of reporters, including CNBC. He warned that the U.S.–China AI race is deeply entangled — and more consequential than a simple who's-ahead scoreboard. "There's inference capacity, where China probably can build faster. There's research, there's product; a lot of layers to the whole thing," he said. "I don't think it'll be as simple as: Is the U.S. or China ahead?" Despite escalating U.S. export controls on semiconductors, Altman is unconvinced that the policy is keeping up with technical reality. Asked whether it would be reassuring if fewer GPUs were reaching China, Altman was skeptical. "My instinct is that doesn't work," he said. "You can export-control one thing, but maybe not the right thing… maybe people build fabs or find other workarounds," he added, referring to semiconductor fabrication facilities, the specialized factories that produce the chips powering everything from smartphones to large-scale AI systems. "I'd love an easy solution," added Altman. "But my instinct is: That's hard." His comments come as Washington adjusts its policies designed to curb China's AI ambitions. The Biden administration initially tightened export controls, but in April, President Donald Trump went further — halting the supply of advanced chips altogether, including models previously designed to comply with Biden-era rules. Last week, however, the U.S. carved out an exception for certain "China-safe" chips, allowing sales to resume under a controversial and unprecedented agreement requiring Nvidia and AMD to give the federal government 15% of their China chip revenue. The result is a patchwork regime that may be easier to navigate than enforce. And while U.S. firms deepen their dependence on chips from Nvidia and AMD, Chinese companies are pushing ahead with alternatives from Huawei and other domestic suppliers — raising questions about whether cutting off supply is having the intended effect. China's AI progress has also influenced how OpenAI thinks about releasing its own models. While the company has long resisted calls to make its technology fully open source, Altman said competition from Chinese models — particularly open-source systems like DeepSeek — was a factor in OpenAI's recent decision to release its own open-weight models. "It was clear that if we didn't do it, the world was gonna head to be mostly built on Chinese open source models," Altman said. "That was a factor in our decision, for sure. Wasn't the only one, but that loomed large." Earlier this month, OpenAI released two open-weight language models — its first since GPT-2 in 2019 — marking a significant shift in strategy for the company that has long kept its technology gated behind application programming interfaces, or APIs. The new text-only models, called gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b, are designed as lower-cost options that developers, researchers, and companies can download, run locally, and customize. An AI model is considered open weight if its parameters — the values learned during training that determine how the model generates responses — are publicly available. While that offers transparency and control, it's not the same as open source. OpenAI is still not releasing its training data or full source code. With this release, OpenAI joins that wave and, for now, stands alone as the only major U.S. foundation model company actively leaning into a more open approach. While Meta had embraced openness with its Llama models, CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested on the company's second-quarter earnings call it may pull back on that strategy going forward. OpenAI, meanwhile, is moving in the opposite direction, betting that broader accessibility will help grow its developer ecosystem and strengthen its position against Chinese rivals. Altman had previously acknowledged that OpenAI had been "on the wrong side of history" by locking up its models. Ultimately, OpenAI's move shows it wants to keep developers engaged and within its ecosystem. That push comes as Meta reconsiders its open-source stance and Chinese labs flood the market with models designed to be flexible and widely adopted. Still, the open-weight debut has drawn mixed reviews. Some developers have called the models underwhelming, noting that many of the capabilities that make OpenAI's commercial offerings so powerful were stripped out. Altman didn't dispute that, saying the team intentionally optimized for one core use case: locally-run coding agents. "If the kind of demand shifts in the world," he said, "you can push it to something else." Watch: OpenAI's enterprise bet pays off as startups in Silicon Valley switch to GPT-5
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Retail units and takeaway approved in Shildon despite obesity concerns
Plans for a hot food takeaway and retail units have been approved despite concerns from residents. The new facilities will be built on land at Jubilee Field in Shildon after support from Durham County Council. A new bakery, hair salon, and Chinese takeaway have shown initial interest in opening at the new site. The site is currently occupied by a Spar convenience store and the Frydayz fish and chips takeaway. Jubilee Fields Community Centre also shares the same car park. A previously proposed car wash facility has been removed from the plans. The new development is expected to put an end to speculation over the site's future, as similar proposals were previously granted permission but never built. However, Shildon Town Council warned the new facilities are not needed. An objection read: 'There is already an over-concentration of takeaway outlets in Shildon. The development would lead to noise/ disruption to residents and would increase traffic/ congestion in the housing estate.' Five new parking spaces will be created for the new development, but residents have warned that the existing car park is already busy and leads to parking on Jubilee Road. A resident added: 'We already have several takeaways within the town and one located right next to this proposal. This is another unnecessary requirement and is only increasing the already high obesity levels.' But Manjinder Singh Jagpal, the applicant, said the new shops would make it easier for nearby residents to access local facilities. 'The proposed new bakery, hair salon and hot food takeaway would help to meet the day-to-day needs of residents on the eastern side of Shildon,' he said. Recommended reading: Residents warn loud and abusive language from leisure centre will increase Aycliffe bar that lost licence plans High Court challenge and booze-free reopening Concern County Durham solar farm could have 'enormous' impact on locals 'They would enhance the accessibility and availability of local-level retail and service facilities for these residents, in an area where existing provision is very limited. 'This area contains no bakeries or hair salons, with the only hot food takeaways being two fish and chip shops (which would have a quite different offer to the proposed Chinese takeaway).' Construction work is expected to commence later this year.
