United News of Bangladesh

A cyberattack on Arizona's court system compromised personal information belonging to more than 1 million people, with officials believing the breach began after a court employee clicked on a malicious link in an email. The Arizona Supreme Court said data belonging to 1.3 million people with unpaid court fees, fines and restitution payments related to traffic and criminal violations was copied in the attack. The records date back as far as 30 years. The attackers also obtained records involving nearly 30,000 active and inactive orders of protection, as well as 150,000 reports dating back to 2010 from a foster care board that makes recommendations in cases involving allegations that parents are unfit or unable to care for their children. Court technology staff detected the attack on Sept. 24 and shut down the affected backup server about two hours later. The court has since notified people whose information was compromised. "We don't have any evidence it has been used or shared" since the attack, state Supreme Court spokesperson Alberto Rodriguez said Tuesday. The incident remains under investigation and has not affected or delayed any court proceedings, Rodriguez said. No records were altered or deleted, and the attackers did not obtain information involving jurors, witnesses or court employees.

ICT Minister Faqir Mahbub Anam on Tuesday has stressed the need for trust, capacity-building and international cooperation to ensure responsible and inclusive use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the public sector. “The key question is not simply how quickly we adopt AI, but how wisely, responsibly and inclusively we govern and regulate it,” he said, according to a press release. He made these remarks while addressing the inaugural session of an interregional conference titled “AI Governance in Practice: Practical Use Cases, Institutional Capacity, Innovation at Scale and Global Cooperation” in Istanbul. The two-day conference, being jointly arranged by Korea, Türkiye, the Astana Civil Service Hub and UNDP, brings together ministers and senior officials from countries across the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Asia-Pacific region, along with representatives of UNDP and international development partners. The Minister said AI is no longer merely a technology of the future, as it is already transforming government decision-making, public services and development processes. He identified trust, capacity-building and international cooperation as three fundamental principles for effective AI governance. Referring to Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s remarks at the UN General Assembly, he said AI should not create new forms of inequality but should instead help address existing disparities. “Let us ensure that today’s digital divide does not become tomorrow’s AI divide,” he added. He also called for greater technology transfer, skills development and affordable access to modern technologies to ensure that the benefits of AI are shared more broadly. The Minister expressed hope that the conference would create a platform for innovation, trust and inclusive technology where no country is left behind. He reaffirmed Bangladesh’s strong commitment and support for the initiative

Digital Science has appointed Charlesworth as its strategic sales partner of Altmetric and Dimensions in China’s scholarly publishing sector. This collaboration aims to support the growing demand for research data and information across this rapidly developing market. China’s local publishing industry has grown significantly in scale and maturity, with journal publishers actively strengthening their international position, investing in publishing capability and seeking greater insight into the reach and impact of research. The partnership brings together Digital Science’s research technology and data solutions with Charlesworth’s extensive knowledge of the Chinese publishing market and established relationships across publishing clusters, publishers and journals. Dimensions is one of the world’s largest connected research databases, with 430M+ interconnected records – including publications, conference abstracts, grants, patents, clinical trials and more – enabling users to discover and analyze the global research landscape. Altmetric tracks and analyzes engagement with research as it is shared, mentioned, reviewed and read online, providing insight into the attention surrounding research beyond traditional citations. Together, the products can support the continued development of Chinese publishers by providing greater access to research information and a broader understanding of the reach and attention generated by published research. Michael Evans , CEO of Charlesworth, said: “Chinese scholarly publishing has developed significantly over recent years. We are seeing increasingly ambitious publishers, publishing clusters and journals looking to build their capabilities, strengthen their international presence and better understand their position within the global research landscape. “Charlesworth has worked with Chinese publishers for many years, giving us a strong understanding of both the market and its changing needs. Altmetric and Dimensions are highly relevant to this next stage of growth, and we are delighted to be working with Digital Science to make these products more accessible to publishers across China.” Stephen Leicht , CEO of Digital Science said: “China is an important and rapidly developing part of the global research ecosystem. As its publishing sector continues to grow and mature, access to high-quality research data and insights can play an important role in supporting that development. Charlesworth’s knowledge of the local market and relationships across the publishing community make them an excellent partner for Digital Science in China.” The agreement builds on Charlesworth’s long-standing work with the Chinese scholarly publishing community and its role in connecting publishing clusters, publishers and journals with international publishing expertise, technology and services. About Charlesworth Charlesworth, part of Enago, works with publishers and the wider research community in China and internationally, providing sales, marketing, technology and author services to support the development and internationalisation of scholarly publishing. About Digital Science Digital Science is an AI-focused technology company providing innovative solutions to complex challenges faced by researchers, universities, governments, funders, industry and publishers. We work in partnership to advance global research for the benefit of society. Through our brands – Altmetric, Dimensions, Figshare, IFI CLAIMS Patent Services, metaphacts, Overleaf, ReadCube, Symplectic, and Writefull – we believe when we solve problems together, we drive progress for all. Visit digital-science.com and follow Digital Science on Bluesky , on X or on LinkedIn .

Chinese and British researchers have developed a wireless charging system for new energy vehicles (NEVs) that achieves a power conversion efficiency of more than 98 percent. The system could help support the wider use of autonomous vehicles and may also be used in areas including rail transport, industrial robots and low-altitude aircraft. A fully automated charging system that does not require human intervention is considered important for the commercial development of autonomous vehicles. Inductive power transfer, which uses magnetic fields to transfer electricity, is widely seen as a suitable technology for such charging. However, conventional systems using ferrite cores face challenges in achieving high efficiency and power density while maintaining thermal stability. Improving these factors has remained a major challenge for wireless charging technology. Researchers from the Dongguan Institute of Materials Science and Technology in Guangdong Province, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), worked with the City University of Hong Kong, the University of Cambridge and the CAS Institute of Physics to develop a 20-kW-class wireless charging system. Using nanocrystalline alloys, the system achieved a conversion efficiency of 98.51 percent, according to the researchers. Their findings, recently published in Nature Communications, describe a magnetic core structure designed in a shape similar to an overpass. The structure can withstand the high temperatures associated with long-term wireless charging. The magnetic core strip developed by the team is 440 mm long, 330 mm wide and 4 mm thick. It is about half as thick as conventional ferrite-based solutions while supporting a higher power density. Researchers said the system could be further improved to increase charging efficiency. The Dongguan institute is also working to advance its industrial application. The technology could be used not only for autonomous vehicles but also in rail transit, automated guided vehicles used in factories and low-altitude aircraft, according to the institute. In September, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and eight other government departments issued a five-year plan for the intelligent connected NEV industry covering 2026 to 2030. The plan aims for autonomous-driving vehicles to achieve large-scale application in China by 2030, including highly automated driving on highways, urban expressways and some urban roads.

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have developed a light-powered artificial intelligence system that can detect deepfake videos with nearly 98 percent accuracy while screening 15 videos simultaneously. Unlike conventional digital detectors that process videos sequentially, the new optical-neural processor uses the physical propagation of light to analyse multiple video streams in parallel, potentially reducing processing time and energy use. The technology is detailed in a study published in eLight. Led by Professor Aydogan Ozcan, the UCLA team designed the system as a high-throughput first line of defence against manipulated and AI-generated video. In tests using 15 Celeb-DF videos, the processor achieved 97.79 percent overall accuracy, with 99.86 percent sensitivity and 95.72 percent specificity. When the system was expanded to process 18 videos at once, accuracy remained at 96.13 percent. The researchers also improved performance by adding two passive diffractive optical layers. When tested against more challenging manipulations, the additional layers increased detection accuracy by about 6.8 percent without substantially increasing energy consumption or processing time. The system was further tested on videos generated by Google's VEO-3 model, which can produce increasingly realistic synthetic footage. With minimal fine-tuning, it recorded 94.80 percent accuracy and 97.61 percent sensitivity on previously unseen VEO-3 videos. Researchers said the optical design also offers greater resistance to certain adversarial attacks because key computational parameters are physically embedded in the optical hardware, making them harder to reproduce or reverse engineer. The processor remained functional despite image noise, blur, JPEG compression and minor optical misalignments. The team does not intend the technology to replace conventional digital detectors. Instead, it could serve as a rapid screening layer, filtering large volumes of video and sending suspicious content to more sophisticated digital systems for detailed analysis. The researchers said the hybrid approach could eventually support large-scale content moderation, media authentication, surveillance and other security-related applications. The study was co-authored by Parnian Ghapandar Kashani, Dr. Shiqi Chen and Professor Aydogan Ozcan of UCLA's departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Bioengineering, and the California NanoSystems Institute. Source: Science Daily

Beijing is using research, investment, industrial infrastructure and policy support to speed up the transition of scientific discoveries from laboratories to mass production. In Yizhuang, a high-tech industrial zone in southeastern Beijing, Guoke Superconductor is building what it describes as the world's first mass-production line for iron-based superconducting wire and tape. The facility is expected to be completed by the end of 2026, with an annual capacity of about 100 km. “Fusion devices need 5,000 to 20,000 km of superconducting tape,” said Zhang Xiaohu, chairman of the company. He said global production in 2025 was insufficient to supply even one such device. Superconductors, which can carry electricity without resistance under certain conditions, are used in areas including nuclear fusion, medical equipment and quantum information. Yizhuang has also helped turn medical research into commercial production. Platinumlife Biotechnology developed automated production technology for amimestrocel injection, China's first approved stem cell drug. The treatment was approved in 2025 for steroid-refractory acute graft-versus-host disease. The company replaced manual cell culture with automated, closed production lines and three-dimensional bioreactors, reducing production costs to one-seventieth of a comparable treatment approved in the United States. The district has similarly supported the development of intelligent manufacturing. Xiaomi's electric vehicle factory was completed in 14 months and can produce a vehicle every 76 seconds at full capacity, using more than 1,000 robots. Yizhuang has also established a pilot platform for humanoid robot production, offering companies, universities and research institutions services ranging from prototyping to testing. Policy support has been central to the area's growth. Over the past five years, Yizhuang has introduced nearly 70 policies supporting emerging industries and allocated more than 10 billion yuan annually in industrial development funds. By 2030, the district aims to establish eight industrial clusters worth more than 100 billion yuan each and achieve total industrial output of 1 trillion yuan.

As the United States prepares to mark the 250th anniversary of its independence, the Smithsonian Institution is using artificial intelligence to uncover connections among artifacts and records from the American Revolution. The initiative, known as Revolution Crossroads, aims to help researchers and the public search Smithsonian collections and connect them with records from institutions such as the Library of Congress. Researchers began using AI models on the project this spring and have already found connections that would have required extensive manual searches across different catalogs. In one case, they identified a silversmith who advertised a creamer around 1774 that was similar to an item in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. The project team has identified about 10,000 objects linked to people who lived between 1770 and 1810. Some items have been digitized or redigitized to make them easier for AI systems to analyze. The broader goal is to uncover stories of people whose lives have largely disappeared from historical records. “Maybe they're not Thomas Jefferson or George Washington, but they did live in a community and build that community,” said Becky Kobberod, the Smithsonian's chief digital and innovation officer. Natalie Buda Smith, digital strategy director at the Library of Congress, said the project could help researchers find information across institutions rather than limiting their searches to one collection. The Smithsonian is undertaking the project amid growing debate over AI's risks and the need for stronger oversight. Kobberod said the institution is not using the frontier AI models that have recently faced increased scrutiny. She also stressed that historians remain involved in reviewing the AI-generated connections. Human experts can identify historical nuances, such as nicknames or terms with meanings that an AI system may misunderstand. Despite concerns about the technology, Kobberod said the Smithsonian believes it must explore AI's potential. “It's not going away,” she said. “We do believe we need to lean in and figure out the part that this technology plays in our work.”

The National Productivity Day 2026 was observed in the country on Friday with a focus on enhancing productivity through innovation, technology and skills. Marking the day, the National Productivity Organisation (NPO), an organisation under the Ministry of Industries, arranged a rally and an ‘Innovation Fair’ in the capital. A total of 50 stalls showcasing various innovative projects by students were set up at the fair on the BCIC College campus in Mirpur. The theme of this year’s day is “Enhancing Productivity through Innovation, Technology and Skills”. The rally began from the BCIC College Gate in Mirpur, passed through Sony Cinema Hall in Mirpur-1 and ended at the college premises. Industries Secretary Abdun Naser Khan, Additional Secretary Md Nuruzzaman, NPO Director General Mohd. Nayeb Ali, officials of different government and private organisations, industrialists, workers and employees took part in the rally. Speaking at the inauguration of the Innovation Fair, Industries Secretary Abdun Naser Khan said innovation, knowledge and skills must be combined to increase production in less time and at lower cost by ensuring the optimum use of the country’s limited resources. “New opportunities for increasing productivity must be created by utilising the intelligence and creativity of the future generation,” he said. The secretary said productivity means increasing production and achieving desired benefits at lower cost and in less time through the optimum use of available resources. He said various innovative projects displayed by students at the fair reflect the potential of future Bangladesh and demonstrate how different problems facing the country can be addressed through innovative thinking. Abdun Naser Khan also said the use of artificial intelligence, reduction of waste, generating electricity from waste and using waste as fertiliser are directly linked to productivity. “The efforts of the new generation to solve the country’s problems through innovative thinking are highly encouraging,” he said. Calling for creating a supportive environment for the future generation, the industries secretary said the responsibility of one generation is to build a ladder for the next generation so that they can reach a more advanced level. He said acquiring institutional knowledge alone is not enough to increase productivity; practical skills are also essential. Referring to the concept of “Skillage” — a combination of skill and knowledge — he said young people need to be equipped with skills alongside knowledge. “Human resources developed through a combination of knowledge and skills can play an important role in increasing the country’s overall productivity,” he said. Industries Ministry Additional Secretary Md Nuruzzaman, BSCIC Chairman Benazir Ahmed, Chairman of Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation (BCIC), Chairman of Bangladesh Sugar and Food Industries Corporation, Principal of BCIC College, teachers and students were present at the programme. Earlier, the secretary inaugurated the fair and visited different stalls.

Four astronauts pulled up at the International Space Station on Thursday after launching on an eight-hour express that set a U.S. speed record. The fresh arrivals include a Canadian whose wife will give birth while he’s away. SpaceX launched commander Jessica Watkins and her crew for NASA after a three-week delay to fix their Dragon capsule’s leaking fuel system. Thick clouds threatened all morning to halt the countdown but in the end, the skies cleared enough to allow for a safe liftoff. Although their stay at the International Space Station will last a long six months, the flight there was the quickest yet not only for Elon Musk’s company, but any American entity, including NASA. The space station's convenient location when the astronauts launched enabled the fast transit. With the late morning liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Watkins became the first Black woman to lead a crew to orbit. A geologist who worked with NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity a decade ago, Watkins is making her second trip to the space station following a lengthy stay in 2022. “Thanks for an amazing ride,” Watkins radioed following liftoff. The others are newcomers to space: NASA’s Luke Delaney, a retired Marine; Canada’s Joshua Kutryk, a colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force; and Russia’s Sergey Teteryatnikov, a former submariner. They will replace four astronauts who have been living at the orbiting laboratory since February. This was the 13th crew launched by SpaceX for NASA, not counting 2020's test flight. All four embrace their Crew-13 designation that pays homage in their mission patch to Apollo 13. The harrowing 1970 moonshot ended with the astronauts’ safe return. References to the number 13 abounded Thursday. Watkins and her crew rode to the launch pad in black Teslas bearing plates that read “Lucky 13.” What's more, they carried up a small crocheted golden dragon named Lucky with a four-leaf clover around its neck. “We figured it wouldn't hurt to bring a little of our own luck just in case, but clearly we don't need it,” Watkins said from orbit, noting they were “four of the luckiest humans on or off planet Earth.” Kutryk will become the fourth man to become a father while orbiting Earth. Wife Heather is due to give birth to their third child in late November. The Canadian Space Agency promises plenty of support for the entire family when the big day comes. “A lot of life-changing things can happen over six months,” NASA manager Dana Weigel said on the eve of liftoff, noting that the space agency will do its best to keep Kutryk looped in to his family. In 2004, NASA provided a radio link between space station astronaut Mike Fincke and his wife’s delivery room during the birth of their daughter. Five years later, Randy Bresnik, commander of next year’s Artemis III mission, dialed in to his wife’s hospital from orbit. The happy news traveled more slowly for Austrian astronaut Franz Viehbock. His daughter was born a few hours after he launched to the Soviet Union’s Mir space station in 1991. He was not informed until the next day. SpaceX, meanwhile, is on a roll. Three hours after Crew-13 blasted off, SpaceX launched a Falcon rocket from California with more than 100 mini satellites. Another Falcon was set to soar late Thursday night from Florida, with a classified satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office. All this comes the same week that the company's massive Starship reached orbit for the first time.  

A Tokyo court has recognized legal protection for a person's voice in a landmark case involving the unauthorized use of an artificial intelligence-generated voice resembling that of a popular Japanese anime voice actor. The Tokyo District Court on Wednesday ruled in favor of actor Kenjiro Tsuda, who had asked TikTok to remove an account that used an AI-generated voice similar to his distinctive deep voice. The decision marked the first time a Japanese court has recognized a legal right to one's voice. The ruling could be significant for anime voice actors, who have become increasingly concerned about the use of AI to imitate their voices on social media. Tsuda is best known for voicing characters such as Kento Nanami in the popular anime series "Jujutsu Kaisen." In his lawsuit, Tsuda said the anonymous operator of the TikTok account "Nanami" had improperly benefited from his voice. The account used an AI-generated voice to narrate more than 180 videos about urban legends and paranormal topics. Presiding Judge Aya Takahashi said in the court ruling that a person's voice, like their portrait, can represent their individual personality. She said the unauthorized use of Tsuda's voice with the clear intention of benefiting from its commercial appeal amounted to an infringement of his publicity rights. The account had more than 200,000 subscribers as of November 2025, and viewers frequently pointed out the similarity between the narrator's voice and Tsuda's. The defendant argued that the videos used an AI-generated voice that merely sounded like Tsuda's and was not his actual voice. The defendant also said the videos had not harmed Tsuda's reputation as a voice actor. The court, however, did not order the removal of all the videos using the voice because the TikTok account had already been shut down. The ruling comes amid growing concern among Japanese voice actors over AI technology being used to replicate their distinctive voices. In 2024, OpenAI said it would stop using one of its ChatGPT voices after actor Scarlett Johansson said it sounded strikingly similar to her voice. Last year, Oscar-winning actors Michael Caine and Matthew McConaughey reached agreements with voice-cloning company ElevenLabs allowing its AI technology to replicate their voices.