Today Qianwen upgraded its real-time speech-recognition model Fun-ASR-Realtime, a streaming ASR system with first-word latency controlled at the hundred-millisecond level and recognition accuracy approaching offline models; it supports 16 dialects and 30 languages.

Sources say Hong Kong’s Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) system will be permitted to invest in more gold ETFs as part of the Hong Kong government’s plan to build a regional gold trading centre. The MPFA is expected to amend gold ETF investment rules later this week. MPFA-regulated MPF assets were about HKD1.53 tln (USD195bn) at end-March. Currently the MPFA approves gold ETFs on a case-by-case basis; the proposed change would make ETFs that meet prescribed standards automatically eligible, removing the need for individual approvals. The move is intended to expand choices for roughly 4.8 million MPF members. Risk controls would remain: gold ETFs would be barred from using derivative leverage and the MPF allocation cap to gold ETFs would stay at 10%.

South Korea telecom operator KT said it will invest about 18 trillion won (~$11.8bn) to reposition as an AI-focused platform company. Under its AX platform strategy, KT plans to deploy 12 trillion won into cybersecurity, IT and network areas over the next three years. The company said it will allocate 4 trillion won to upgrade network security and drive IT innovation, seek leadership in next‑generation networks including 6G and satellite communications, and improve existing network quality. KT will invest 5 trillion won to build AI data centres with a total capacity of 1 GW to support physical-AI and autonomous-driving low-latency, real-time inference, and 1 trillion won to add subsea cable capacity exceeding 90 Tbps.