AFP

China has filed a dispute with the World Trade Organization over US restrictions on chip exports, Beijing’s commerce ministry said in a statement late Monday, accusing Washington of threatening global supply chains.

The United States in October announced new export controls aimed at restricting China’s ability to buy and manufacture high-end chips with military applications, complicating Beijing’s push to further its own semiconductor industry and develop advanced military systems.

The moves include export restrictions on some chips used in supercomputing as well as stricter requirements on the sale of semiconductor equipment.

The aim is to prevent “sensitive technologies with military applications” from being acquired by China’s military, intelligence and security services, the US Commerce Department said in October.

But China’s Ministry of Commerce on Monday accused the United States of “obstructing normal international trade in products including chips and threatening the stability of the global industrial supply chain”, as well as violating international trade rules and engaging in “protectionist practices”.

The WTO dispute is intended to defend China’s “legitimate rights and interests”, the ministry said in its statement, urging Washington to “give up zero-sum thinking”.

The two superpowers have long faced off over a range of issues including technology, trade, Hong Kong, Taiwan and human rights.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden pledged to repair frayed relations at a summit in Bali, Indonesia last month.

Days before the latest chip controls, the Pentagon added 13 more Chinese firms including drone manufacturer DJI and surveillance firm Zhejiang Dahua Technology to a blacklist of military-linked entities.

France hosts an international conference Tuesday designed to raise material and money to repair Ukraine’s damaged infrastructure as well as underline Paris’ ongoing support for Kyiv’s fight against Russia.

The gathering of politicians, blue-chip companies and aid agencies comes after fresh comments about the war from French President Emmanuel Macron which put him at odds with many in Ukraine.

Macron called for Russia to be offered “security guarantees” at the end of the war during an interview on December 3, drawing criticism from some Ukrainian and eastern European politicians.

A call between the French leader and Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday cleared the air and saw the men discuss Tuesday’s conference.

Macron “reminded President Zelensky that Ukraine can count on France’s support for as long as is required to fully re-establish its sovereignty and national integrity,” according to the French presidency.

Both men will address the first part of the conference, called “Solidarity with the Ukrainian People” — Macron in person and Zelensky via videolink.

The event will focus on ways in which Ukraine’s Western allies can provide immediate support to keep the country’s civil infrastructure functioning amid incessant bombing from Russia.

Moscow has switched tactics since October when it began airstrikes targeting Ukraine’s energy network in particular, plunging millions into cold and darkness at the onset of winter.

Another 1.5 million people were left without power in southern Odessa over the weekend after drone attacks, according to Ukrainian authorities. 

“Our immediate objective is to ensure that Ukraine’s network does not collapse and lead to black-outs for several weeks,” an aide to Macron told journalists last Friday. “This is about urgent help.”

– Coordination – 

French organisers have stressed that the conference is different from other recent international gatherings in Lugano, Warsaw or Berlin dedicated to long-term reconstruction.

Instead, they hope donors will pledge help from engineering expertise to spare parts to carry out repairs. 

Another key outcome will be a new platform, agreed by G7 leaders Monday, that will enable donors to see Ukraine’s needs and coordinate their aid.

Western military aid is currently coordinated in this way, but nothing of the sort exists for civilian assistance, Macron’s office said.

“The goal is now to build this platform quickly with the participation of Ukraine, international financial institutions and other partners,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said after the leaders of the club of wealthy nations held online talks Monday.

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and Zelensky’s wife Olena are both expected to be in Paris.

The second part of the event, called “The Franco-Ukrainian conference for Resilience and Reconstruction”, will see 500 French companies gather to discuss reconstruction contracts.

Even though the war is still raging, Western states and companies are already eyeing deals that are expected to be worth tens of billions of euros. 

“The Ukrainians wanted us to talk about reconstruction. There are already areas that have been evacuated by the Russian army which are ready to discuss reconstruction,” the French official said. 

The French economy ministry had already prepared a range of tools to encourage its companies, from insurance to export guarantees. 

– Out of context? –

Macron’s comments about providing security guarantees to Russia led to accusations he was focusing again on diplomatic compromises with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Critics say it is too early to discuss arrangements with Putin and that Western leaders should focus uniquely on helping Ukraine roll back Russia’s occupation.

Macron has riled his Ukrainian allies in the past, most notably in June when he said “we must not humiliate Russia”.

The 44-year-old French leader initially tried to position himself as an intermediary between Ukraine and Russia, holding lengthy talks with Putin and Zelensky shortly before Moscow’s attack.

Macron’s office have played down any suggestion of tensions with Zelensky.

“There’s a gap between what some people say by taking part of a sentence out of context and the reality of the work that we are doing, which is going smoothly,” the aide said.

“The dialogue between the president (Macron) and President Zelensky is excellent.”

The US Department of Energy’s nuclear fusion laboratory says there will be a “major scientific breakthrough” announced Tuesday, as media report that scientists have finally surpassed an important milestone for the technology: getting more energy out than was put in.

The announcement has the scientific community abuzz, as nuclear fusion is considered by some to be the energy of the future, particularly as it produces no greenhouse gases, leaves little waste and has no risk of nuclear accidents.

Here is an update on how nuclear fusion works, what projects are underway and estimates on when they could be completed:

– Energy of the stars –

Fusion differs from fission, the technique currently used in nuclear power plants, by fusing two atomic nuclei instead of splitting one.

In fact, fusion is the process that powers the sun.

Two light hydrogen atoms, when they collide at very high speeds, fuse together into one heavier element, helium, releasing energy in the process.

“Controlling the power source of the stars is the greatest technological challenge humanity has ever undertaken,” tweeted physicist Arthur Turrell, author of “The Star Builders.”

– Two distinct methods –

Producing fusion reactions on Earth is only possible by heating matter to extremely high temperatures — over 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million Fahrenheit).

“So we have to find ways to isolate this extremely hot matter from anything that could cool it down. This is the problem of containment,” Erik Lefebvre, project leader at the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), told AFP.

One method is to “confine” the fusion reaction with magnets.

In a huge donut-shaped reactor, light hydrogen isotopes (deuterium and tritium) are heated until they reach the state of plasma, a very low density gas.

Magnets confine the swirling plasma gas, preventing it from coming into contact with the chamber’s walls, while the atoms collide and begin fusing.

This is the type of reactor used in the major international project known as ITER, currently under construction in France, as well as the Joint European Torus (JET) near Oxford, England.

A second method is inertial confinement fusion, in which high energy lasers are directed simultaneously into a thimble-sized cylinder containing the hydrogen.

This technique is used by the French Megajoule Laser (LMJ), and the world’s most advanced fusion project, the California-based National Ignition Facility (NIF).

Inertial confinement is used to demonstrate the physical principles of fusion, while magnetic confinement seeks to mimic future industrial-scale reactors.

– State of research –

For decades, scientists have attempted to achieve what is known as “net energy gain” — that is, more energy is produced by the fusion reaction than it takes to activate it.

According to reports by the Financial Times and the Washington Post, that will be the “major scientific breakthrough” announced Tuesday by the NIF.

But Lefebvre cautions that “the road is still very long” before “a demonstration on an industrial scale that is commercially viable.”

He says such a project will take another 20 or 30 years to be completed. 

To get there, researchers must first increase the efficiency of the lasers and reproduce the experiment more frequently. 

– Fusion’s benefits –

The NIF’s reported success has sparked great excitement in the scientific community, which is hoping the technology could be a game-changer for global energy production.

Unlike fission, fusion carries no risk of nuclear accidents.

“If a few lasers are missing and they don’t go off at the right time, or if the confinement of the plasma by the magnetic field… is not perfect,” the reaction will simply stop, Lefebvre says.

Nuclear fusion also produces much less radioactive waste than current power plants, and above all, emits no greenhouse gases.

“It is an energy source that is totally carbon-free, generates very little waste, and is intrinsically extremely safe,” according to Lefebvre, who says fusion could be “a future solution for the world’s energy problems.”

Regardless of Tuesday’s announcement, however, the technology is still a far way off from producing energy on an industrial scale, and cannot therefore be relied on as an immediate solution to the climate crisis.

Disgraced cryptocurrency tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested Monday in the Bahamas at the request of the United States, according to US officials seeking to charge him after the spectacular collapse of his FTX platform.

The arrest comes on the eve of Bankman-Fried’s scheduled appearance at a US Congress hearing in which he was to testify under oath about the crypto exchange’s overnight demise.

The 30-year-old had in recent weeks defied legal advice and multiplied media appearances offering his version of his company’s sudden failure, usually by video link from the Bahamas where his company is headquartered.

“Earlier this evening, Bahamian authorities arrested Samuel Bankman-Fried at the request of the US Government, based on a sealed indictment filed by the southern district of New York,” said a tweeted statement from Damian Williams, lead prosecutor for the district.

“We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time,” he added.

According to a press release from the attorney general’s office in the Bahamas, Bankman-Fried was to be held in custody before an expected request for his extradition by the United States. 

The Bahamas prime minister’s office shared news of the arrest, as well as a police statement saying Bankman-Fried was arrested in the early evening at his apartment complex in the capital Nassau.

He was taken into custody without incident, the statement said, and was to appear in court in Nassau on Tuesday.

As much as anyone, Bankman-Fried had embodied the apparent emergence of cryptocurrency as an above-board investment and no longer a frowned on get-rich-quick scheme shunned by the banking establishment. 

His FTC platform was plugged by celebrities in advertising campaigns and the cyber whiz kid became a regular presence in Washington where he donated tens of millions of dollars in political contributions.

But after reaching a valuation of $32 billion, FTX’s implosion was swift following a November 2 report on ties between FTX and Alameda, a trading company also controlled by Bankman-Fried.

The report exposed that Alameda’s balance sheet was heavily built on the FTT currency — a token created by FTX and with no independent value.

– ‘Grossly inexperienced’ –

The price of FTT plunged in early November, roiling both Alameda and FTX, where Alameda had large trading positions. 

Reeling from customer withdrawals and short some $8 billion, FTX and some 100 related entities filed for bankruptcy protection on November 11, inviting scrutiny from regulators, prosecutors and furious clients who had believed the hype about cryptocurrency. 

Among the revelations, FTX is suspected of fraud for propping up Alameda with billions of dollars in customer funds that are now likely lost forever.

Questions also linger over whether Bankman-Fried engaged in market manipulation, or illegally provided inside information to Alameda.

In his media interviews, Bankman-Fried has admitted to mistakes, but has denied intent to fraud his customers.

FTX CEO John Ray, who came to the company after the debacle, was to tell Congress on Tuesday that the problems rose because control was “in the hands of a very small group of grossly inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals.”

“Never in my career have I seen such an utter failure of corporate controls at every level of an organization, from the lack of financial statements to a complete failure of any internal controls or governance whatsoever,” Ray said in prepared remarks.

The fall of FTX has caused major doubts on the long term viability of cryptocurrency and heaped stress on other platforms and entities that rode the success of Bitcoin and other currencies.