BRUSSELS — Belgian federal prosecutors announced Thursday the arrests of several people as part of a corruption probe linked to the European Parliament amid reports in local media that Chinese company Huawei bribed EU lawmakers.
The arrests came as an investigation by Le Soir newspaper and other media said lobbyists working for the Chinese telecoms giant are suspected of bribing current or former European Parliament members to promote the company’s commercial policy in Europe.
About 100 federal police officers carried out 21 searches in Brussels, the Flanders and Wallonia regions, and Portugal, the federal prosecutor’s office said.
The suspects would be questioned over “alleged involvement in active corruption within the European Parliament, as well as for forgery and use of forgeries,” prosecutors said. “The offenses were allegedly committed by a criminal organization.”
Huawei public relations representatives in London did not respond to an emailed request for comment and could not be reached by phone.
The European Parliament said only that the assembly “takes note of the information” and “always cooperates fully with the judicial authorities.”
Huawei, which makes cellphones and is the biggest maker of networking gear for phone and internet carriers, has been caught in tensions between the United States and China over technology and trade.
Some European nations have followed Washington’s lead and banned Huawei’s equipment from next-generation mobile networks over allegations that it poses a security risk that could help facilitate Chinese spying. The company has repeatedly denied this.
European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said the EU’s executive branch had no comment regarding the investigation, but underlined security concerns the commission has about Huawei and Europe’s fifth-generation mobile phone networks.
“The security of our 5G networks is obviously crucial for our economy,” Regnier told reporters. “Huawei represents materially higher risks than other 5G suppliers.”
EU member states should swiftly “adopt decisions to restrict or to exclude Huawei from their 5G networks,” Regnier said. “A lack of swift action would expose the EU as a whole to a clear risk.”
The federal prosecutor’s office, which did not name Huawei, said it believes there was corruption “from 2021 to the present day” in various forms, “such as remuneration for taking political positions or excessive gifts such as food and travel expenses or regular invitations to football matches.”
Prosecutors say payments might have been disguised as business expenses and in some cases may have been directed to third parties. They would also look to “detect any evidence of money laundering.”
Police seized several documents and objects during the searches. Staff at Huawei’s offices in Brussels declined to comment and turned the lights off inside to avoid photographs taken through the window.
According to Follow The Money, an investigative journalism platform, one of the main suspects in the probe is 41-year-old Valerio Ottati, a Belgian Italian lobbyist who joined Huawei in 2019.
Before becoming Huawei’s EU public affairs director, Ottati was an assistant to two Italian MEPs who were both members of a European Parliament group dealing with China policy, Follow the Money reported.
This is the second corruption case targeting the EU Parliament in less than three years. In December 2022, the legislature was shaken by a corruption scandal in which Qatari officials were accused of bribing EU officials to play down labor rights concerns ahead of the soccer World Cup.
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SAN FRANCISCO — Social media giant Meta on Thursday announced it would begin testing its new “Community Notes” feature across its platforms on March 18, as it shifts away from third-party fact-checking toward a crowd-sourced approach to content moderation.
Meta’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced the new system in January as he appeared to align himself with the incoming Trump administration, including naming a Republican as the company’s head of public policy.
The change of system came after years of criticism from supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump, among others, that conservative voices were being censored or stifled under the guise of fighting misinformation, a claim professional fact-checkers vehemently reject.
Meta has also scaled back its diversity initiatives and relaxed content moderation rules on Facebook and Instagram, particularly regarding certain forms of hostile speech.
The initiative, similar to the system already implemented by X (formerly Twitter), will allow users of Facebook, Instagram and Threads to write and rate contextual notes on various content.
Meta said approximately 200,000 potential contributors in the United States have already signed up across the three platforms.
The new approach requires contributors to be over 18 with accounts more than six months old that are in good standing.
During the testing period, notes will not immediately appear on content and the company will gradually admit people from the waitlist and thoroughly test the system before public implementation.
Meta emphasized that the notes will only be published when contributors with differing viewpoints agree on their helpfulness.
“This isn’t majority rules,” the company said.
Moreover, unlike fact-checked posts that often had reduced distribution, flagged content with Community Notes will not face distribution penalties.
Notes will be limited to 500 characters, must include supporting links and will initially support six languages commonly used in the United States: English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, French and Portuguese.
“Our intention is ultimately to roll out this new approach to our users all over the world, but we won’t be doing that immediately,” the company said.
“Until Community Notes are launched in other countries, the third party fact checking program will remain in place for them,” it added.
Meta said that it would not be “reinventing the wheel” and will use X’s open-source algorithm as the basis of its system.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last month warned that the rollbacks to fact-checking and moderation safeguards were “reopening the floodgates” of hate and violence online.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — A launch pad problem prompted SpaceX to delay a flight to the International Space Station on Wednesday to replace NASA’s two stuck astronauts.
The new crew needs to get to the station so that Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams can head home after nine months in orbit.
Concerns about a critical hydraulic system arose less than four hours before the Falcon rocket’s planned evening liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. As the countdown clocks ticked down, engineers evaluated the hydraulics used to release one of the two arms clamping the rocket to its support structure. This structure needs to tilt back just before liftoff.
Already strapped into their capsule, the four astronauts awaited a final decision, which came down with less than an hour remaining in the countdown. SpaceX canceled for the day. The company did not immediately announce a new launch date but noted the next try could come as early as Thursday night.
Once at the space station, the U.S., Japanese and Russian crew will replace Wilmore and Williams. The two test pilots had to move into the space station for an extended stay after Boeing’s new Starliner capsule encountered major breakdowns in transit.
Starliner’s debut crew flight was supposed to last just a week, but NASA ordered the capsule to return empty and transferred Wilmore and Williams to SpaceX for the return leg.
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An innovative solution to remotely power devices using natural biological processes could help farmers get the most from their fields. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more.
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NEW DELHI — Encouraged by the enthusiastic reception to its DeepSeek artificial intelligence platform in January, China’s leaders are going all out to encourage AI companies to harness the power of this technology to compete with the United States and other countries in business and military spheres.
China considers AI an important tool to handle U.S. restrictions on Chinese business, particularly after DeepSeek shook up Wall Street, resulting in a loss of $589 billion for Nvidia stockholders in late January.
“The government in China works directly with the private sector and universities in the advancement and deployment of AI technology and are reducing their dependence on imports of high-technology products,” said Lourdes Casanova, director of Cornell University’s Emerging Markets Institute.
The past few weeks have seen China rolling out several new AI models, including Manus, which experts say can rival the latest model of ChatGPT. Industry experts were more than surprised to find that DeepSeek was equally efficient as ChatGPT, though it used older generation Nvidia chips. The U.S. has banned the supply of advanced chips.
“China and the U.S. have pulled way out front in the AI race. China used to be one to two years behind the U.S. Now, it is likely two to three months,” Jeffrey Towson, owner of Beijing-based TechMoat Consulting, told VOA.
“Alibaba’s Qwen is now a clear leader internationally in LLMs [large language models]. Chinese Kling AI and Minimax are arguably the global leaders in video generation,” Towson said.
Government involvement
In 2017, China released an AI development program to make the country a world leader by 2030. The government’s Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan said that AI would be adopted across different sectors and drive economic transformation.
“China has the most elaborate AI strategy compared to any other country,” Rogier Creemers, assistant professor in Modern Chinese Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands, told VOA.
China has established a National Computing Power Grid — somewhat like electricity grids — making it possible for Chinese AI companies to invest less in their own computing power. In the U.S., each company must fend for itself, Creemers said.
Competition
ChatGPT’s updated GPT4 large language model has gotten the attention of several top-ranking CEOs of Chinese tech companies. Baidu chief Robin Li recently said his firm was under “huge pressure and a sense of crisis” after seeing the updated ChatGPT. Baidu, which has launched Ernie Bot, said “the gap [between China] and leading international levels [in the field] has widened.”
“AI plus robotics is likely where China will take a commanding lead over the U.S., just like in EVs,” Towson said. “Chinese companies like Unitree are already pulling ahead. Watch for China to surprise everyone in personalized robots, industrial robots and speciality robots,” he said.
Communist Party control
Chinese President Xi Jinping recently convened a meeting with heads of private companies, including tech firms, calling on them to “show your talent” in overcoming challenges such as an economic slowdown and U.S. restrictions on Chinese business.
“There are discussions that the growth of large language models — the technology behind chatbots like DeepSeek and ChatGPT — may be hindered by media censorship, because the models will have less diverse data to work with,” said Creemers.
On the other hand, the government’s control ensures industrial policy coordination, which is helpful in the growth of AI in China.
China is focusing more on specialized software for health and other industries, which can largely tolerate political censorship. Chinese AI models are improving diagnostic accuracy in diverse areas from detecting rib fractures to cancer.
US ban on advanced chips
“It will take some time, but it would not be a surprise if China is also soon capable of building advanced chips for AI,” Cornell’s Casanova said.
Companies such as Huawei have shown that they can design and manufacture advanced chips successfully, thereby overcoming restrictions imposed by the U.S., she said.
Towson said China is 100% dedicated to building an independent semiconductor supply chain.
“It is advancing faster than anyone thought possible. But the frontier is always advancing, and it’s unclear how this will play out over time,” he said.
“But you can do a lot with software,” Creemers said. “China can work with more chips with less computing power or with fewer sophisticated chips.”
The risk for China is not limited to chips, because the Trump administration could impose restrictions on the Chinese AI model. It could also react to China’s restriction on the use of ChatGPT, because it can violate its censorship rules.
AI and the military
China’s air force is using AI-powered biometric tests to screen potential pilots as part of a rigorous hiring process, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
“AI now plays a crucial role in interpreting candidates’ biological signals, revealing underlying health risks that might not be immediately apparent to human evaluators,” CCTV said. “This data-driven approach allows the air force to predict long-term risks, ultimately ensuring that only the most suitable candidates are chosen.”
Chinese researchers have also revealed that the Chinese army has been using Meta’s publicly available Llama model to develop an AI tool for potential military applications.
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