Latest news with #Ren
Time of India
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
NYT Mini Crossword July 22 hints and answers: Full solution and hints to beat today's puzzle
The NYT Mini Crossword for July 22 is finally here, but if you're stuck on any clue, don't worry, we've got all the answers and hints to help you finish. This smaller version of the NYT Crossword is popular for being short but tricky, and it tests your speed just as much as your word skills. What is the NYT Mini Crossword? The Mini is a quick puzzle from The New York Times that you can finish in just a few minutes, if you know the answers, of course. Unlike the longer crossword, The Mini has only five Across and five Down clues, but they can be just as challenging. Many people try to beat their best time daily, which makes it fun but competitive. NYT Mini Crossword July 22 answers If any clue has stopped you today, here are all the answers for July 22's NYT Mini Crossword: Across Get ready for a vacation: PACK How you might feel after riding a roller coaster: DIZZY "All things being ___ ...": EQUAL Small donkey of the Southwest: BURRO Items shot from cannons at basketball games: TEES Down Spark, as curiosity: PIQUE Sky-blue hue: AZURE Government policy leaders: CZARS ___ Ren, villain in the "Star Wars" universe: KYLO What an I.O.U. represents: DEBT Why do people love the NYT Mini Crossword? The Mini is not just about knowing words, it's also about speed. Players often time themselves, trying to solve it faster each day. But when one tough clue breaks the flow, it can be frustrating. That's why guides like this help players keep their streaks alive and finish strong.
AllAfrica
2 days ago
- Business
- AllAfrica
US reporter goes inside the House of Huawei
'As a military man I have known many clever and truly outstanding strategists. I have rarely come across an individual more strategically oriented than Ren.' With this quote from Admiral William A. Owens, former vice-chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and former CEO of Nortel, Eva Dou introduces her detailed account of Chinese entrepreneur Ren Zhengfei and Huawei, the company that he founded and has led to global prominence. A technology reporter for the Washington Post, Dou provides the background to questions such as: How did Huawei get so big so quickly? What relationship does Ren have with the Chinese military? Is Huawei spying for the Chinese Communist Party? House of Huawei: The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company (Portfolio / Penguin, 2025, 406 pages) takes the reader through Ren's early life, his years in the military, Huawei's origins in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone established under the rule of Deng Xiaoping, Ren's political education and how he has used it to advance the company's interests, Huawei's rise to the top of the global telecommunications equipment market, the US government's attempt to shut it down and the start of its recovery. The story begins with the arrest of Ren's daughter and Huawei CFO Meng Wangzhou (Sabrina Meng) by Canadian authorities at Vancouver International Airport in December 2018 and concludes with her release in September 2021 and the company's subsequent development under sanctions. The timeline of events at the end of the book stops with the launch of Huawei's Mate 60 Pro 5G smartphone in September 2023. Focused on corporate structure, management and the question of just what sort of company Huawei is (and needing to stop somewhere), Dou does not address the evolution of Huawei into a diversified technology company that is far more sophisticated and influential than it was when the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the U.S. Department of Commerce put sanctions on it in May 2019. Born in 1944, Ren grew up in poverty in the early years of the People's Republic of China, during the struggle to establish a communist society, on the edge of starvation during the Great Leap Forward, in the dangerous political chaos of the Cultural Revolution. The son of an educator who was attacked and humiliated by students during the rampage of the Red Guards, and of a mother who supported his love of learning, he was the only one of seven children to attend university. In 1968, after graduating from the Chongqing Institute of Architecture and Engineering with a degree in heating, gas supply and ventilation engineering, Ren went to work at Base 011, a military factory hidden in the caves of Guizhou Province, not far from Vietnam. He worked as a cook, a plumber and a technician, studying electronics in his spare time. After that, he was dispatched to train at the Xi'an Instruments Factory, which made pressure gauges, thermometers and other devices, and then to Liaoyang in the far northeast with the PLA Engineering Corps to build a nylon and polyester factory. Ren was not a soldier, but he adopted military attitudes and a strong sense of patriotism. 'He would inculcate Huawei with a military-esque culture,' writes Dou, 'running new hires through army-inspired boot camps and emphasizing discipline and personal sacrifice. He peppered his speeches with military analogies and references to famous battles. Years later, he still carried himself with a soldier's bearing.' In Liaoyang, Ren's unit was assigned to test and calibrate instruments brought by French technical advisors. These included differential pressure transmitters, which measure the rate of flow through a pipe. Frustrated by the old and inaccurate Soviet gauges on hand and inspired after learning about a new type of precision gauge made in the US, he decided to build his own. In 1979, after a great deal of work, he published a small book about his invention entitled A Floating Ball-Precision Pressure Generator – Air Pressure Balance. By then, Ren had been sent to Jinan, where he was made deputy director of a research institute. And he had attended China's first National Science Conference, where Deng Xiaoping declared that scientists were part of the working class. This made it possible for him to join the Communist Party, which would greatly facilitate his career in China but raise the incurable suspicion of the Americans. And so it was that after the PLA Engineering Corps was disbanded in 1982, Ren was able to move to Shenzhen with the experience, drive and connections that would first land him a job at a subsidiary of the South Sea Oil Corporation and then, when Shenzhen legalized privately owned technology companies, strike out on his own. In September 1987, at the age of 42, Ren founded Huawei Technologies Co. Huawei started off as a contract assembler and distributor of telephone switches, but Ren wanted to build his own. To do this, he recruited engineering talent and began to copy a Chinese-made switch, a simple PBX (Private Branch Exchange), that was already on the market. The engineers he hired included Guo Ping, who is now chairman of Huawei's supervisory board, who joined Huawei in 1988; and Hu Houkun (Ken Hu), who is now one of the four rotating chairs of the company's board of directors, who joined in 1990. Two other current rotating chairs, Xu Zhijun (Eric Xu) and Liang Hua (Howard Liang), joined in 1993 and 1995. The fourth is Ren's daughter, Meng Wanzhou. In 1993, Ren bet the company on the development of an advanced digital PBX that could handle 10,000 telephone calls at once. The following year, having obtained the support of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications and formed a joint venture with provincial telecommunications bureaus, Huawei had both a functioning prototype and recognition as a company that could help China eliminate its dependence on foreign suppliers of telecom equipment. When national leader Jiang Zemin, himself an engineer, visited Shenzhen, Ren told him:'A country without its own program-controlled switches is like one without an army.' Ren added that such switches are 'related to national security' and that their 'software must be held in the hands of the Chinese government.' After that, Huawei's domestic business took off as it and Chinese rivals, led by ZTE, displaced foreign suppliers such as Northern Telecom (Nortel), Ericsson and Fujitsu with a combination of low prices, aggressive marketing, government favoritism and steady technological advance. Foreign equipment was ripped out and replaced, something that Huawei itself would experience in the US and other countries many years later. Huawei also began to expand outside China, starting in California in 1993 and moving on to Hong Kong, Russia, Europe, Latin America and the rest of the world. Faced with entrenched competition in advanced countries, it sought an advantage in less attractive markets including Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran. That earned it the attention of the US military (which bombed an optical fiber network Huawei was building in Iraq in 2001) and the National Security Agency (NSA). In February 2003, Cisco sued Huawei for patent infringement, dropping its suit in July 2004. Neither side revealed the details of the settlement, merely indicating that they were satisfied, but suspicion of Huawei only increased. The FBI interviewed Ren during his visit to New York in 2007, Motorola sued Huawei in 2010 and the House Select Committee on Intelligence looked into the activities of both Huawei and ZTE in 2012. In 2014, the New York Times and Der Spiegel, citing documents made public by Edward Snowden, reported that the NSA had hacked Huawei's email system in 2009, had also gained access to its source code and was even using Huawei telecom infrastructure to conduct its own spying operations. Also in 2014, Meng Wanzhou was detained for questioning at JFK Airport in New York. In 2016, the U.S. Department of Commerce put sanctions on ZTE, and in August 2018, President Trump prohibited US government agencies from using ZTE and Huawei equipment. When Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Vancouver in December of that year, the immediate pretext was Huawei's business in Iran, which contravened US sanctions. But there was a lot more to it than that. Huawei had become the world's top supplier of leading edge 5G mobile telecom equipment, with the highest market share, the most advanced technology and by far the lowest prices. Western vendors, who had invented and until recently dominated the telecom equipment market, were going the way of the Dodo bird. On top of that, the US, Australia and others were worried that China would do to them what the US had been doing to China, with serious consequences for national security. As former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull wrote about banning Huawei's 5G equipment, 'That didn't mean we thought Huawei was currently being used to interfere with our telecommunication networks. Our approach was a hedge against a future threat, not the identification of a smoking gun but a loaded one.' As things stand now, the use of Huawei and ZTE 5G equipment has been banned or greatly restricted in the US and Canada, western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. But because countries not allied with the US have not cooperated, and because the Chinese market is so big, Huawei remains the world's top supplier. Near the end of her narrative, Dou writes: But make no mistake: The US government has succeeded in halting Huawei's rise. Huawei is no longer setting new sales records each year but is instead working to regain its 2020 levels…[and] it remains to be seen if Huawei can maintain its place as an R&D leader in the next generation, and the one after that. However, Huawei's financial results for 2024 show sales up 35% since 2021, when sanctions hit hardest, reaching 96% of their 2020 peak with a higher operating margin. And, in addition to returning to the 5G cell phone market in defiance of US sanctions on the Chinese semiconductor industry, Huawei has taken the lead in 5G-Advanced (5.5G) mobile telecom technology, replaced Oracle's ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software with its own, become a significant supplier of autonomous driving solutions, and impressed both Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and industry analysts with its AI processing technology. Speaking in Beijing last Wednesday, Huang said, 'Anyone who discounts Huawei and anyone who discounts China's manufacturing capability is deeply naïve.' But that doesn't mean that Dou's conclusion is necessarily wrong, only that a book cannot keep up with the news, particularly in the case of fast-moving technologies. What the news can't match is Dou's thorough exploration of the evolution of Huawei's management, its legal and political battles in China and the US, and the character of Ren Zhengfei and its other key personnel. House of Huawei is an excellent source for scholars, journalists and anyone else interested in the rise of China. Follow this writer on X: @ScottFo83517667
Arab Times
3 days ago
- Sport
- Arab Times
Ren powers China into showdown with Japan
XI'AN, China, July 19, (Xinhua): Two home runs from Ren Min propelled China to an 8-4 victory over Chinese Taipei and a place in the women's softball Asia Cup final against defending champion Japan as the round-robin stage concluded here on Saturday. "I am satisfied with my performance today," Ren told Xinhua. "I see it as the result of many years of hard work, and it's a kind of recognition for me." Both teams entered the match tied with a 7-1 record, and the winner would earn a spot in Sunday's final against Japan, which topped the standings with a perfect 9-0. Looking into the second encounter with the world No. 1 after Friday's 10-0 loss, Ren noted: "I hope we can play our game just like we did today, cherishing every pitch and every swing, and doing everything we should do." China took an early lead with Ren's two-run homer in the first inning and extended it to 3-0 in the third, when Yan Siyu's double and Xie Yue's RBI single brought pinch runner Gui Yuanyuan home, prompting Chinese Taipei to replace starting pitcher Ke Hsia-Ai with Chu Yi-Shan. Lin Feng-Chen answered with a solo shot in the bottom of the third, but China restored its three-run cushion in the fourth as Wang Bei singled, Li Jiaqi walked, and He Xiaoyan reached on an error to score Zeng Zhilin. In the fifth inning, Ren struck again with her second home run after Xi Kailin's single to widen the gap, and despite Chinese Taipei loading the bases and pushing across a run on a fielder's choice, pitcher Chai Yinan's strikeout ended the threat at 6-2. China scored two more points and resisted Chinese Taipei's late comeback efforts in the seventh to seal the 8-4 victory. With the victory, China finished second in the standings behind Japan with an 8-1 record, enough to secure its berth for the 2026 World Cup. The only remaining ticket will be up for grabs in the bronze medal match between third-placed Chinese Taipei (7-2) and fourth-placed the Philippines (6-4) on Sunday. Elsewhere on Saturday, India edged Malaysia 6-5 for its first win of the tournament, after falling to Japan 16-0 earlier in the day. South Korea routed Malaysia 15-0, the Philippines blanked Hong Kong, China 12-0, and Singapore beat Thailand 7-2. The Asia Cup also serves as a qualifier for the 2026 Asian Games. South Korea, China's Hong Kong, Singapore, and Thailand joined the top four teams in earning their spots.
The Hill
14-07-2025
- The Hill
NY man accused of using ‘gold bar scam' to steal $555,892 from Pennsylvania resident
LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) — A New York man is accused of stealing gold bars worth over half a million dollars from a resident in Lancaster County, Pa., using a scam that authorities say is becoming increasingly common nationwide. The victim, described as an elderly woman by police in Ephrata, contacted authorities in April to report that someone stole $555,892 worth of gold bars. Investigators said that the suspect, 44-year-old Zhong Ren, of Brooklyn, N.Y., first gained access to the woman's computer in March. Ren allegedly convinced her that someone was trying to access her life savings, and the only way to keep the money safe was to convert it into gold bars and turn them over to federal employees. These supposed federal employees would purportedly keep the gold safe in Philadelphia's Federal Reserve vault. Investigators said people claiming to be government employees showed up twice in April at the woman's Ephrata address, ultimately leaving with $555,892 in gold. A 'complex' investigation led investigators to Ren, who was charged Thursday with theft by unlawful taking, criminal conspiracy of theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception, criminal conspiracy of theft by deception, and impersonating a public servant in connection with the crime. Court documents show Ren did not immediately post bail and was being held at Lancaster County Prison. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for July 18. What to know about the scam The FBI and local police across the U.S. have been warning Americans, especially seniors, about the con. In June, police in California warned that gold bar scams were becoming prevalent nationwide, and described how the criminal strategy often works: Initial contact: Criminals contact victims by phone, email, or text message, often pretending to be from a trusted source like the government, a bank, or a tech company. False urgency and fear: They create a sense of urgency, claiming the victim's financial accounts are compromised or vulnerable to hacking. Conversion to gold: Victims are instructed to withdraw their money and convert it into gold bars. Courier collection: A courier is sent to the victim's home to collect the gold bars, promising they will be stored securely or used for a legitimate purpose, such as protecting the victim's assets. The scam: Instead of protecting the gold, the courier steals the gold bars, and the victim is left with nothing. El Cerrito Police Dept. In January, the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions issued a similar warning and reminded consumers that 'no government agency will ever ask you to buy gold or use a courier to collect your money.' To protect yourself against gold bar and other scams you should hang up immediately if someone requests that you buy gold or take out money, according to the Department, which offered the following tips: Don't click on links in emails or texts if they appear in any way suspicious. Never share personal information or agree to meet with a stranger. Beware of anyone who makes you feel pressured by phone, email or in person. Reach out to your bank or a government agency directly using official contact information to verify any claims.
Tom's Guide
03-07-2025
- Business
- Tom's Guide
Ready to talk to Ernie? DeepSeek's latest rival from Baidu is here
Chinese search giant Baidu, known for its search technology, has made its Ernie large language model open source as of June 30. It's a shot across the bow of DeepSeek, China's premier LLM, which has seen unprecedented success since it debuted in December 2024. It's also a big change of approach for Baidu. The company had previously been vocal in its defiance of moving to open source, working to keep its business model proprietary. DeepSeek and other international rivals like ChatGPT have proven that being open source can lead to a more impressive LLMs, and still be lucrative. While the change could not be as monumental as the arrival of DeepSeek, it could have major ramifications for AI. 'This isn't just a China story," Sean Ren, associate professor of computer science at the University of Southern California and Samsung's AI Researcher of the Year told CNBC. "Every time a major lab open-sources a powerful model, it raises the bar for the entire industry." Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. "While most consumers don't care whether a model's code is open-sourced, they do care about lower costs, better performance, and support for their language or region," Ren added. "Those benefits often come from open models, which give developers and researchers more freedom to iterate, customize, and deploy faster." Baidu's move to open source could also help provide more competition to its aforementioned rivals. If Baidu's model is able to offer comparative features to rivals, but at a lower price, it could be seen as a moment that reverberates through the industry. Earlier this year, Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, discussed open source models on Reddit. 'While OpenAI has open-sourced models in the past, the company has generally favored a proprietary, closed source development approach,' Altman explained. '[I personally think we need to] figure out a different open source strategy,' he added. 'Not everyone at OpenAI shares this view, and it's also not our current highest priority … We will produce better models [going forward], but we will maintain less of a lead than we did in previous years.' Expect Baidu's model to be under plenty of scrutiny, too. This week, Germany moved to ban DeepSeek for transferring data to China. In AI, the term open-source refers to systems where the code and training data is made publicly available. This is becoming more common recently, with the likes of OpenAI, Deepseek and Gemini all releasing open-source versions of their products. With an open-source AI model, the public can inspect, adapt and distribute the code in their own way. This speeds up the process for smaller companies who aren't able to put in the huge amount of work at the start that is needed.
