Russian President Putin says global markets will not face food shortages due to disruptions in Ukrainian exports.

Aug 21 — Oriental Selection reported FY2026 revenue RMB 5.7 bln, +29.8% YoY; operating profit RMB 660 mln, up 703.7% YoY, returning to profitability. For FY2027 the company plans to expand its in-house anchor team to over 100 and accelerate self-owned product development, building a full self-owned product matrix and scaling online-to-offline channels. The firm will roll out domestic and overseas product layouts in phases as a medium-to-long-term strategic priority. It has deployed more than 100 vending machines across regions, operating in 26 cities (mainly on New Oriental campuses), and will deploy AI tools across all customer service scenarios in FY2027, using large models to drive sales conversion and reengineer processes.

The 35th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the European AI Conference closed on Aug 21 in Bremen. Several international delegates said Chinese AI has rapidly advanced in research and industrial applications, with robotics and large language models among global leaders. Professor Calvanese of the Free University of Bozen‑Bolzano, who oversaw the academic program and paper review, said China submitted the most papers and showed high participation in machine learning, computer vision and robotics.