Founder of China's Evergrande pleads guilty to fraud

Shares in the French fashion groups Kering and Hermes plunged Wednesday after both reported sales that missed analyst expectations, in part due to the Middle East war, which has hit business in a key region.

At around 10:00 am, Kering stock was off 10.1 percent at 251.80 euros on the Paris stock exchange, while Hermes fell 10.5 percent to 1,601.00 euros.

Kering's first-quarter revenues were down three percent at comparable currency rates, dragged down again by its flagship Gucci brand, where sales dropped eight percent.

While that was an improvement from the 10 percent slide seen in the last quarter of 2025, analysts had pencilled in a decline of just six to seven percent.

The performance puts more pressure on Kering's new chief Luca de Meo, installed last year with the mandate of reviving Gucci under its Georgian creative director Demna.

De Meo is hosting a widely anticipated strategic presentation in Florence, Italy, on Thursday dubbed the "ReconKering".

"While the group's trajectory is clearly moving in the right direction under the new CEO, the recovery at Gucci is not yet showing up in the figures, and the timing remains uncertain," Jean Danjou, an analyst at Oddo BHF, said in a research note.

Kering also warned that Middle East revenues had been hit by the war unleashed in late February by US-Israeli strikes on Iran, with retail revenue falling 11 percent in the first quarter despite growth in the first two months of the year.

- 'Everything stopped' -

Weaker Mideast sales -- and the loss of high-spending tourists from the region to Europe due to travel disruptions -- hit Hermes as well.

Its sales were down 1.4 percent at 4.1 billion euros ($4.8 billion), reflecting what it called a "significant" currency hit of 290 million euros as the strong euro made its coveted handbags and other items more expensive.

Excluding the currency impact, revenues were up 5.6 percent in the quarter, below market expectations.

Growth for leather goods -- Hermes's biggest profit generator by far -- was 9.4 percent at constant rates, whereas analysts at Bernstein had expected more than 10 percent, while ready-to-wear sales edged up just 0.4 percent, well below Bernstein's estimate of closer to five percent.

The Mideast war cost Hermes "nearly 1.5 percentage points of growth", chief financial officer Eric du Halgouet told journalists on a conference call.

"We have very good growth in the double digits in January and February, but everything stopped in March because our business was down 40 percent," he said, adding that sales in Britain, Italy and Switzerland had also suffered from lost Middle Eastern clients.

Thomas Chauvet, an analyst at Citi, noted that "Most business segments posted results below expectations."

"However, Hermes continues to outperform its rivals in the luxury sector," he said.

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When Oleksiy Kravchuk joined the Ukrainian military at the start of Russia's invasion in 2022, he fought as a sniper and was known by his military nickname Saint Nicholas.

Wounded in combat in May 2022 in eastern Ukraine, he then started evacuating the dead bodies of colleagues who had been less lucky before being discharged when he reached 60 years old.

Since then he has been retelling his life as a civilian and soldier through theatrical stories told with wiry white figurines made from paper.

"This performance is dedicated to the memory of my comrades who fought in my unit and fell in my unit," he said during a recent performance in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, attended by AFP journalists.

"My comrades saved my life. So this is for them," he told the small audience.

Kravchuk had already been putting on figuring displays while serving on the front.

And when he returned to Lviv after being wounded, his friend who first created the dolls gifted him the white figurines. Kravchuk then created a theatrical performance called Wings, dedicated to his killed colleagues.

On stage, he slowly removes the dolls one-by-one from his weathered leather suitcase. Each represents a character from his life, including soldiers he fought alongside and those who had taught him valuable life lessons.

"The tenderness and the messages conveyed through the puppets are very important," Kravchuk told AFP, saying these messages might help give audiences extra "reason to live."

Soft-spoken Kravchuk, who comes from a family of actors and artists, puts on the show in his own puppet theatre.

"We are fighting not so much, as wise people say, for territory, but first and foremost for our culture and culture is made up of living people, that is what we are fighting for above all else," he said.

"This war will be long, that is the truth we must face. Each of us must do our part where we are," he added.

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In the jagged Hindu Kush in eastern Afghanistan, hundreds of men dug into the rocky bed of the Kunar River searching for a few grams of gold dust as an alternative source of income.

At the foot of imposing peaks, some still covered in snow in April, they toiled near the border with Pakistan to find the valuable glinting specks in a country where wages are low.

Below a village of mud-brick houses and small terraced wheat plots in Kharwalu, Kunar province, they dug into a dry section of the riverbed before sifting through their piles of rocks using river water.

Fifty-year-old Shahzahdah Gollalah was among the gold prospectors, having abandoned construction work a seven-hour drive from his home in Kabul. 

"There are not many job opportunities in the country, and in this way, we have created work for ourselves," said the father of eight. 

But "the gold nuggets we find are usually smaller than a grain of wheat," he added.

Downstream, in Ghaziabad, hundreds of men hacked into the mountain with picks, then carried a sack down on their backs along a steep slope and emptied it onto a sieve to filter gold from the sand. 

Others scooped river water into yellow jerrycans attached to long wooden handles, pouring it over the sieve so that the smaller stones, which may contain gold flakes, slid down onto a mat. A nugget would sometimes appear in a metal pan after two further rounds of sifting.

Gul Ahmad Jan, 35, said he can earn a substantial amount in just a week. 

"We can get up to about one gram of gold," which can fetch up to 8,000 Afghanis ($125), he told AFP.

Afghanistan's resources were rarely exploited during years of conflict, although a Kunar official said gold panning has happened there for more than a decade.

Najibullah Hanif, the province's information chief, said residents learnt the techniques from miners who arrived from gold-rich provinces. 

"Some started to dig with machines, an excavator; some locals came and asked the Islamic Emirate (of Afghanistan) to stop them because it destroys the river and the mountains," said Hanafi.

He estimated thousands of people in Kunar were gold panning, using the traditional method allowed by the authorities. 

Afghanistan's resources have attracted domestic and international investors in recent years, with the Taliban authorities promoting mining in various parts of the country. 

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Spanish singer Rosalia spent her early years training in classrooms, rehearsal spaces and small venues across Barcelona as she developed the voice and style that would define her career. 

She has now returned to the city where she honed her craft as a global star with her "Lux" tour.

"Barcelona, I love you madly," she said in Catalan on Monday night, opening the first of four sold-out shows at Barcelona’s Palau Sant Jordi arena.

The concerts are part of the rollout of her fourth album, “Lux,” a sweeping, spiritual work that does not overlook the flamenco rhythms of her earlier records.

"Thanks for carrying me," the 33-year-old added before breaking into tears as the audience erupted into applause.

The tour which began last month in France will also take her to the United States and Latin America.

Fans packed the arena to see Rosalia, who grew up in the nearby commuter town of Sant Esteve Sesrovires, perform in the city where he first began attracting attention as a student.

"There was already an intention there, a very flamenco way of moving through life -- which is to move with confidence,"  Luis Cabrera, founder of Taller de Musics, the music school where Rosalia enrolled in 2010, just before she turned 18, told AFP.

- 'Always restless' -

Rosalia, hailed for her genre-defying versatility, studied several subjects at the school, including flamenco singing with her mentor, Chiqui de la Linea.

Cabrera recalled Chiqui saying early on that Rosalia’s voice blended ancient flamenco styles with a strikingly modern sound.

Hard-working and deeply engaged in her studies, she already had a clear sense of direction.

"She used to ask a lot of questions, always restless. And when she said 'I want my music to reach millions of people' I was shocked," Cabrera said with a smile at the school, where photos of Rosalia now decorate the walls.

The "Rosalia effect" has since boosted enrolment in the school’s vocal programme, he added.

That same determination is remembered by music journalist and composer Luis Troquel, who closely followed her early years in Barcelona’s music scene.

"She told me she wanted to be a diva, but not in the distant sense. In the sense of an artist who sings on stage, dances, and pays close attention to image." he said.

"And she achieved that, even better than expected," added Troquel, who worked on the lyrics of one of the songs of Rosalia's 2018 breakthrough album "El mal querer" ("Bad love").

- 'Boldness and self-confidence' -

That album, her second, began taking shape during her time at Catalonia’s main public conservatory for higher music education, Barcelona's ESMUC, where Rosalia completed a degree in flamenco singing.

Like all students, she had to complete a final research project and graduation concert.

Rosalia based her project on "Flamenca", a medieval anonymous novel that inspired "El mal querer", which she later performed as her final graduation recital. 

"Everyone still remembers that concert," said ESMUC director general Nuria Sempere, describing Rosalia as a student who was "always focused and had strong family support".

"She had the boldness and self-confidence to take all her influences and present them to the public without any hesitation. That requires a lot of work," Sempere added.

ESMUC offers one place each year to study flamenco singing. Rosalia was awarded the place and now funds a scholarship for future students.

A few years ago, Rosalia returned to the school to give a masterclass on creativity.

"The first piece of advice was this: ‘screw it -- it doesn’t matter, just go for it. You’ll fix it later, but you have to jump in,'" Sempere recalled.

Rosalia did -- and it worked. With two Grammy awards, 11 Latin Grammys and 28 million Instagram followers, she is now impossible to ignore.

"In Spanish music, it’s hard for me to find a phenomenon with the same scale of impact as Rosalia," Troquel said.

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Dutch tech giant ASML, which makes cutting-edge machines to manufacture semiconductor chips, said Wednesday that rapidly expanding AI-related investments had pushed up net profits as it also hiked its sales forecast for 2026.

ASML, Europe's biggest tech firm by market value, is a critical cog in the global economy, as the semiconductors crafted with its tools power everything from smartphones to missiles.

In its latest quarterly earnings statement, the Dutch-based firm reported net profits of 2.76 billion euros ($3.25 billion), compared to 2.4 billion in the first quarter of 2025.

"The semiconductor industry's growth outlook continues to solidify, driven by ongoing AI-related infrastructure investments," said the firm's CEO Christophe Fouquet.

The company raised its prediction for full-year sales to between 36-40 billion euros from a previous estimate of 34-39 billion euros.

That forecast range "accommodates potential outcomes of ongoing discussions around export controls", said Fouquet.

ASML has been caught in the crossfire of a tech spat between the United States and China and has previously warned its Chinese sales would "decline significantly" this year.

Washington is leading efforts to curb high-tech exports to China over fears they could be used to bolster the country's military.

Beijing has reacted furiously to the measures, describing them as "technological terrorism".

A breakdown of ASML figures shows that 33 percent of sales went to China in 2025, compared to 41 percent in the previous year.

China was the firm's top customer in both years.

- 'Another growth year' -

The firm said total revenue in the first quarter was 8.77 billion euros, at the "high end" of what the company had earlier predicted.

This compared to 7.8 billion in the first quarter of last year and 9.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025.

The company issued a new forecast for the second quarter, of between 8.4 billion and 9.0 billion euros.

Fouquet said ASML customers were "accelerating their capacity expansion plans for 2026 and beyond", resulting in a "very strong" order intake for the firm.

"These business dynamics underpin our expectation that 2026 will be another growth year for all our businesses," he said.

In January, ASML announced a shake-up in its organisation that was expected to result in the loss of around 1,700 jobs in the Netherlands and United States, mainly from leadership roles.

The firm employs roughly 44,000 staff worldwide.

ric/jhb

Tottenham forward Maika Hamano scored the only goal as Japan ended the United States' 10-game unbeaten streak with a 1-0 victory in a friendly in Seattle on Tuesday.

Hamano's 27th minute curling strike into the top corner proved decisive in the second of three games between the two women's football powerhouses.

The United States dominated possession and had more shots but were let down by a lack of precision in front of goal before 36,128 fans at a rainswept Lumen Field in Seattle.

United States coach Emma Hayes rang the changes from the starting line-up which defeated the Japanese 2-1 in San Jose on Saturday, naming an entirely new starting eleven.

Asian champions Japan also made nine changes from the team beaten in San Jose, and started brightly, carving out a string of early openings before Hamano's goal.

The 21-year-old forward, who is on loan at Spurs from Chelsea, cut inside left back Lilly Reale before shooting into the roof of the net past goalkeeper Phallon Tullis-Joyce.

The third and final game in the series takes place in Colorado on Friday.

rcw/pst

China's President Xi Jinping met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday, Chinese state media said, as a string of leaders of countries impacted by the Middle East war flock to Beijing.

Lavrov joins Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Vietnamese leader To Lam in meeting with Xi this week.

The Russian diplomat told a news conference after meeting Xi that Moscow could "compensate" for China's energy shortages as shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains choked by the Iran war.

Xi, meanwhile, has sought to position China as a mediator and stable partner in the face of the US- and Israeli-led conflict.

Xi told Abu Dhabi's crown prince on Tuesday that China would play a "constructive role" in promoting peace talks in the Middle East.

In talks with Spain's Sanchez, Xi warned that the world was facing "chaos and turmoil" and "a contest between justice and force", urging closer cooperation.

The Spanish prime minister, meanwhile, welcomed China's role in seeking to resolve the conflict in the Middle East.

Though the level of diplomatic activity is normal for Beijing, the Middle East war and particularly the issue of energy security have taken on new urgency in diplomatic discussions, according to Dylan Loh, associate professor at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.

"China has got leverage and influence over Iran, and there are some hopes and expectations that China can use this influence in a more direct way," Loh said.

Countries, particularly in the Gulf, could be hoping China can pressure Iran to stop its attacks on Gulf countries and to persist with diplomatic negotiations, he said.

- Shortfall -

The string of visitors "demonstrates that various actors are adjusting to the realities of an uncertain world. Engaging with the PRC, including over areas of difference, is part of this adjustment", according to Ja Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore.

While many visits were likely planned before the Middle East crisis, those from Gulf countries' representatives and Lavrov "seem more of a direct result of the conflict and the desire to de-escalate", Chong said.

Lavrov, who is on a two-day visit to China to boost bilateral ties, said Russia could help China with energy resources following the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

China is a net importer of oil and has seen prices for petrol, plastics, and fertilisers spike due to the war.

"Russia can, without doubt, compensate for the shortfall in resources that has arisen both for the PRC and for other countries that are interested in working with us", Lavrov said during a news conference in Beijing, Russian state media reported Wednesday.

But "Moscow and Beijing's interests may diverge somewhat on the war in Iran", according to Chong.

High energy prices are disruptive for China's economy, but can help Moscow fund its war in Ukraine, Chong said.

During his meeting with Lavrov at Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Xi urged China and Russia to "give full play to the advantages of geographic proximity and complementarity, deepen all-round cooperation and raise the resilience of each other's development", according to a readout from Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

"Both sides should maintain strategic focus, trust each other, support each other, develop together," Xi said.

Lavrov told Xi that China-Russia relations "play a stabilising role in world affairs", according to Russian state news agencies.

On Tuesday, Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi "conducted in-depth exchanges on the US-Iran conflict, the Asia-Pacific situation, the Ukraine crisis" and other issues, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.

They also discussed plans for a meeting between Putin and Xi, which Lavrov said would take place in the first half of this year.

Beijing and Moscow are close economic and political partners, and the relationship has deepened further since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

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From anti-transgender narratives about Olympic swimmers to

fabricated comments from right-wing politicians, a slew of Facebook pages managed from Vietnam are capitalising on Australia's febrile politics to promote AI-generated articles on websites designed for profit.

With names like "Swimming Secrets" and "Tennis Triumph", the pages started in mid-2025 mimicking fan accounts posting athlete updates but sprinkled with falsehoods, such as claims Aussie swimmer Mollie O'Callaghan would forgo the next Olympics if a trans athlete were allowed to compete.

Several accounts -- run by users in Vietnam and boasting tens of thousands of followers -- later shifted to focus solely on Australian national politics, linking to websites full of AI-generated articles and advertisements.

AFP has tracked over a dozen sports and human-interest pages promoting content that mixes actual news with fabrications, with some posts getting thousands of shares. 

The websites display "almost industrial level forms of misinformation", said open-source intelligence analyst Giano Libot.

"It's designed for the algorithm in search engines to pick up," Libot said.

"It also is reflective that, especially in Southeast Asia, we don't have a lot of policy around it yet."

Meta removed 13 pages in March after AFP contacted the Facebook parent company for comment, citing site violations.

The network is the latest to emerge from Vietnam, where low labour and electricity costs have long bred a cottage industry of click farming via social media.

An AFP investigation last year uncovered more than 30 baseball-themed pages mostly operated from the country publishing false political claims ahead of the World Series, prompting removals by Meta. 

AFP fact-checkers have debunked similar disinformation targeting Dutch politicians.

AFP works in 26 languages with Facebook's fact-checking program, including in Asia and the European Union.

Experts say the surge of AI-generated political clickbait is a relatively new phenomenon for Australia, attributing it to the country's increasing polarisation.

"Often the purpose of disinformation is not to benefit a particular party, but to destabilise communities and create an era of distrust," said Jeannie Paterson, co-director of the University of Melbourne's Centre of AI and Digital Ethics.

"Australia is an ideal place at the moment for this sort of destabilisation exercise."

- 'Foreign interference' -

Recent in-fighting between Australia's opposition coalition and the rise of Pauline Hanson's far-right One Nation party provided ample fodder for the pages AFP identified.

Among the most widespread claims was that Hanson had launched a $12 million lawsuit against Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's Labor Party. 

Identical posts appeared on swimming and tennis-focused Facebook accounts linking to websites littered with ads and content in several different languages -- including Vietnamese titles.

Facebook transparency data showed the pages were managed by several administrators in Vietnam, despite listing contact details associated with American hotels and casinos.

On another post falsely claiming Hanson read Foreign Minister Penny Wong's record "on live TV" on CNN, commenters cheered the senator, saying it was time for the top diplomat to "go home". 

But the claims were baseless and an analysis using several AI detection tools -- including one co-developed by AFP -- found the articles were "likely machine-generated".

A One Nation spokesperson told AFP the pages are "a clear case of foreign interference in domestic Australian politics".

Albanese's office did not respond to a request for comment.

AFP could not independently verify the provenance of the Facebook pages and websites.

While Australia's next federal election isn't until 2028, politicking is still happening at the state level, with polls due in Victoria state in November and New South Wales next year.

The onslaught of polarising themes online "can sway electoral behaviour" on the local level, said Ika Trijsburg of the Australian National University, "because it's much less entrenched".

- 'Cat-and-mouse game' -

In a bid to reduce the potential risks of deceptive AI use, Vietnam in March enacted a law regulating the technology -- the first country in Southeast Asia to do so.

The legislation requires companies to clearly label AI-generated content. It applies to developers as well as providers and deployers of the technology, whether they are Vietnamese organisations or foreign entities operating in the country.

Still, the tide of AI slop is likely to persist.

In mid-February, a new Facebook page called "AU News Today" started publishing Australian political news that mirrored the pages AFP identified.

An investigation by the Australian Associated Press uncovered a similar Vietnam-based network of accounts, disguised as news outlets, that continued publishing well into March.

Shaanan Cohney, a cybersecurity expert at the University of Melbourne, said there is "a levelling-up of the skills in the disinformation world, which makes it a cat-and-mouse game".

"Even if things were easy to detect before, it gets harder to bring down these networks."

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A memory chip crunch fuelled by the artificial intelligence boom is hindering efforts to bring more people online worldwide, the head of the GSMA telecoms industry association told AFP.

An estimated 2.2 billion people -- around a quarter of the global population -- were not connected to the internet at all in 2025, according to the United Nations.

Yet only four percent of people live in mobile internet connectivity blackspots, according to the GSMA, whose members include more than 1,000 mobile operators and related businesses.

That means higher smartphone prices caused by the global shortage of memory chips are a "real hit" to efforts to close the gap, director general Vivek Badrinath said.

"It is a very tight situation" and "many manufacturers have reduced their efforts on low-end devices", he said in an interview ahead of a GSMA event in Tokyo on Wednesday.

"The risk of that is that there are fewer available low-end devices, which in Africa in particular is going to hurt. It is a serious issue."

The rush to build AI data centres has sent orders soaring for advanced high‑bandwidth memory microchips, which help the systems process vast amounts of data.

As chipmakers prioritise the lucrative AI industry, they are producing fewer less flashy chips that are used in everyday consumer electronics like phones and laptops, pushing up device prices.

Chey Tae-won, chair of the South Korean business group that includes chip giant SK hynix, told reporters at a tech conference in San Jose in March that the shortage will likely persist through 2030.

- Satellite regulation -

If everyone were able to access the internet through their mobile, global gross domestic product could grow by as much as $3.5 trillion by the end of this decade as digital tools and information make businesses more profitable, according to the GSMA.

The organisation is "engaging with every player in the industry" to address the issue -- including by lobbying policymakers to cut taxes or provide financing, and by encouraging smartphone recycling, Badrinath said.

Meanwhile, the rapid expansion of low-orbit satellite communications networks promises to eventually offer connectivity to people practically anywhere on the planet.

Amazon said Tuesday it had signed a deal to buy the US telecoms satellite group Globalstar, to expand its own space-based internet network and compete with Elon Musk's Starlink.

Despite the exciting developments, most people will only "use satellite once in a while", Badrinath said.

"Most of the time, you're still going to be at home under wi-fi or outside on your mobile network. And satellite doesn't work indoors that well."

It's also important that satellite companies offering cross-border services follow existing frameworks for the mainstream mobile internet, Badrinath stressed.

"It's important that policymakers define policies that ensure that... rules on privacy, on legal intercept, all those compliance rules are also adhered to by satellite operators. And that's something that we're working on with them."

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US rapper Kanye West postponed late Tuesday his concert in the French city of Marseille, following reports that the country's interior minister was seeking to block the performance.

"After much thought and consideration, it is my sole decision to postpone my show in Marseille, France until further notice," the rapper wrote on X.

France's interior minister Laurent Nunez was seeking to block West from performing in the southern city in a concert scheduled for June 11 due to his antisemitic remarks, AFP reported earlier on Tuesday.

West, 48, has been heavily criticized for making antisemitic remarks and voicing admiration for Adolf Hitler.

Britain has blocked the US rapper, also known as Ye, from entering the country due to his outbursts, prompting organizers of a festival he was to headline to cancel the July event. Prime Minister Keir Starmer had called booking West "deeply concerning."

But Dutch Asylum and Migration Minister Bart van den Brink said last week there were no plans as yet to bar the rapper from the Netherlands.

West wrote in another X post on Tuesday that "I know it takes time to understand the sincerity of my commitment to make amends."

"I take full responsibility for what's mine but I don't want to put my fans in the middle of it," he added.

In May 2025, the rapper released a song called "Heil Hitler," months after advertising a swastika t-shirt for sale on his website.

The song was banned by major streaming platforms. West subsequently expressed regret for his conduct, blaming it on his bipolar disorder.

hol/fox