In south Lebanon's Nabatieh, residents fear a return to war

Four months ago, the stars seemed to be aligned for veteran left-winger Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in his quest for an unprecedented fourth term as Brazilian president.

The 80-year-old was riding high in polls after staring down US President Donald Trump in a spat over the coup trial of former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.

The economy was growing and unemployment was falling to record lows.

But a flurry of financial scandals and growing discontent over a cost-of-living crisis have eroded his lead over his right-wing rival, Flavio Bolsonaro, son of Jair Bolsonaro, now sitting in prison.

A survey by the polling firm Datafolha published on April 11 sent alarm bells ringing throughout the Lula camp.

For the first time it showed Bolsonaro edging out the incumbent in a presidential runoff, with the senator garnering 46 percent to 45 percent for Lula, although the pair remained locked in a statistical tie.

Worryingly for Lula, the Datafolha poll showed 51 percent of voters disapproving of his performance. 

"It's a warning sign, obviously," said Jilmar Tatto, vice president of the Workers' Party, which former metalworker Lula co-founded in 1980.

The younger Bolsonaro is running as a more moderate version of his father, who is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting to cling onto power after losing elections to Lula in 2022. 

Lula has launched a counteroffensive, highlighting improvements in health, education, and infrastructure since he succeeded Trump ally Bolsonaro.

The publicity effort is taking place on several fronts.

To allay concerns about his age, Lula has released videos of him lifting weights, using a treadmill and sprinting to meetings.

He has also issued a new call to arms in the face of Trump's intimidation of friend and foe alike. 

"We cannot allow the world to bow down to the behavior of a president who believes that he can impose tariffs on products, punish countries, and wage war by email or Twitter," Lula said recently in Germany.

- 'Barely surviving' -

Defending Brazil's sovereignty gave Lula a poll bump last year, when the United States slapped tariffs on its longtime ally for putting Trump's friend Bolsonaro in prison.

But in the months since, the mood in Brazil has shifted.

Rising prices for essentials like food and energy have taken center stage, particularly among younger voters.

"The market is incredibly expensive. Buying clothes is very expensive too. It's very shocking because you're not really living, you're just barely surviving," Yohana Freitas Barbosa, a 27-year-old administrative assistant in the capital Brasilia, told AFP.

Mariano Machado, an analyst at the consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft, warned that "any gap between the macroeconomic situation and voters' everyday experience with the cost of living will influence the vote, and Lula knows it."

To curb rising fuel prices caused by the Middle East war, the government has temporarily reduced taxes on diesel to zero.

But Lula has failed to quell feverish speculation about his poll slump.

For the first time, newspaper columnists are pondering a hypothetical scenario in which he might withdraw from the election. 

The ruling party has dismissed the idea and doubled down on its social agenda, which includes a proposal to cut the working week by four hours to 40 total.

"We are going to set the country's agenda and win the elections," Tatto said.

- Whiff of scandal -

A series of high-profile financial scandals have added to the president's woes. 

Police and Congress are investigating a major alleged pension fraud scheme, from which one of Lula's sons is believed to have benefited.

Another probe is looking at the links between a businessman at the heart of a major banking scandal and high-ranking public officials. 

While none of the investigations target the president, Brazilians' weariness with corruption "ends up tainting those in power," Edinho Silva, head of the Workers' Party, lamented.

For many on the right, Lula remains poisoned by the corruption scandals that marked his first two terms as leader between 2003 and 2010.

Lula himself spent 580 days in prison for corruption as part of the sprawling Lava Jato (Car Wash) probe, although his convictions were later annulled.

The lingering perception among some voters is "that the (Workers' Party) is more corrupt than the rest," Creomar de Souza, a politics professor at the Dom Cabral Foundation, told AFP.

rsr/cb/jgc

China's artificial intelligence boom is in full swing, with the release of a new large language model (LLM) by top startup DeepSeek on Friday highlighting the country's rapid progress despite US export restrictions on advanced microchips.

Here's a look at the companies, big and small, driving China's AI ambitions:

- Legacy players -

Chinese internet giants Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent are racing to invest in AI, using existing vast user bases and cloud infrastructure to their advantage.

Search engine provider Baidu, sometimes called China's Google, has been a vocal proponent of the potential of AI in the country for over a decade.

Although it has recruited prominent AI researchers and its "Ernie" tool was one of the country's first AI chatbots, Baidu's fortunes have remained tied to its massive search and online marketing business.

Alibaba, the e-commerce behemoth behind shopping platforms like Taobao, is known for its open-source "Qwen" AI models -- popular with programmers worldwide because they can be freely customised.

The Qwen chatbot mobile app had more than 200 million monthly active users in January, according to AI ranking site AICPB.

Top gaming and social media firm Tencent, which launched an AI model in 2023 and a chatbot the following year, is seen as a cautious player.

Tencent's founder, Pony Ma, recently vowed to increase investment in AI, reportedly calling it "the only field worth investing in" in January.

- Beyond TikTok -

ByteDance, the Chinese company behind TikTok, is increasingly shifting its focus to AI as pressure on its overseas social media business intensifies.

And it is going well: Doubao, ByteDance's AI chatbot, is the most popular of its kind in China, with over 100 million daily active users.

This year, the firm's slick AI video generator, SeeDance 2.0, raised concerns over copyright and potential future job losses with its cinematic-looking clips created using just simple prompts.

- China's AI hero -

Startup DeepSeek started life in 2023 as a side project of a data-driven hedge fund, but shook up the global AI scene with its "R1" model in January 2025.

DeepSeek's low-cost, high-performance R1 chatbot challenged assumptions of US dominance in what some have called the "Sputnik moment" for AI.

Its open-source approach has galvanised the country's AI industry and accelerated the global diffusion of Chinese models.

Its newest V4 model, released Friday, promises performance similar to leading closed-source models at lower cost, according to the company. 

DeepSeek-V4 features an ultra-long context of one million tokens and 1.6 trillion parameters for the Pro version -- measures that determine how much input the model can absorb and its decision-making ability. 

"In world knowledge benchmarks, DeepSeek-V4-Pro significantly leads other open-source models and is only slightly outperformed by the top-tier closed-source model, (Google's) Gemini-Pro-3.1," DeepSeek said in a statement on Friday.

- Startup 'tigers' -

The startups Zhipu AI, MiniMax and Moonshot AI are nicknamed China's "AI tigers" -- challenging legacy tech giants on AI foundation model research.

Zhipu AI emerged from the prestigious Tsinghua University and was initially known for its strong focus on computing research.

The firm is a major provider of chatbot tools to Chinese businesses, and the performance of its latest "GLM-5" model impressed developer communities.

MiniMax targets the consumer market with its multimedia tools, from AI companions to video generators.

Both Zhipu and MiniMax saw their stock prices soar when they went public in Hong Kong in January, but both have also faced challenges.

A year ago, Washington put Zhipu on its export control blacklist over national security concerns, while Disney and other US entertainment outfits are suing MiniMax for copyright infringement.

Moonshot AI's Chinese name, Yue Zhi Anmian, pays tribute to Pink Floyd's album "The Dark Side of the Moon", reflecting the rock music passion of its co-founder Yang Zhilin.

Its latest offering, "Kimi K2.5", is one of the most popular AI models on developer platform OpenRouter.

Kimi K2.5's success is reflected in the company's revenues. Moonshot AI reportedly earned its 2025 full-year revenue in just weeks since its launch.

ll-sam/kaf/lga

As DeepSeek releases its first major new artificial intelligence model in over a year -- DeepSeek-V4 -- here are five things to know about the Chinese startup:

- 'Sputnik moment' -

Founded by Liang Wenfeng in the eastern Chinese tech hub Hangzhou, DeepSeek started life in 2023 as a side project of Liang's data-driven hedge fund that had access to a cache of powerful AI processors made by US chip giant Nvidia.

It shot to global attention in January 2025 with the release of its R1 deep-reasoning large language model, which sparked a US tech share sell-off.

Industry insiders were stunned by R1's high performance -- at a level similar to ChatGPT and other leading US chatbots -- and DeepSeek's claims to have developed it at a fraction of the cost.

Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen described it as a "Sputnik moment" -- referencing the 1957 launch of Earth's first artificial satellite by the Soviet Union that stunned the Western world.

- Censorship concerns -

Like other Chinese chatbots, DeepSeek's AI tools eschew topics usually censored in the world's second-largest economy, such as the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

That and data privacy concerns have led DeepSeek AI to be banned or restricted on government-issued devices in several countries, including the United States, Australia and South Korea.

However, its low cost and ease of deployment have made it a popular choice in developing countries, analysts say.

The company holds four percent of global market share for chatbots, according to web traffic analysis company Similarweb. ChatGPT dominates at 68 percent.

- Open source -

DeepSeek's systems are open-source -- meaning their inner workings are public, allowing programmers to customise parts of the software to suit their needs.

That is the same for other major Chinese AI players, including tech giant Alibaba, in contrast to the "closed" models sold by OpenAI and other Western rivals.

The Chinese government has trumpeted its lead in open-source AI technology, which it says can accelerate innovation.

"Chinese AI models are leading the way in the open-source innovation ecosystem," National People's Congress spokesman Lou Qinjian told policymakers this month.

- Startup boost -

The success of DeepSeek has galvanised China's AI scene, despite hurdles posed by rivalry with the United States, and fears of a global market bubble.

Shares in two leading Chinese AI startups, Zhipu AI and MiniMax, soared on their market debuts in Hong Kong this year, and it has been a similar story for Chinese chipmakers such as MetaX.

Shi Yaqiong and her team at Beijing-based Jinqiu Capital told AFP there has been a "clear surge" in enthusiasm around Chinese AI -- and competition among investors -- since the DeepSeek shock.

- Chip smuggling reports -

DeepSeek's rise has not been without controversy.

Reports, including in technology outlet The Information, say DeepSeek has been skirting a US ban on the export of top-end chips to China to train its new V4 model.

The Information said in December, citing six people with knowledge of the matter, that DeepSeek developed V4 using thousands of chips dismantled in third countries and smuggled to China.

DeepSeek did not respond to AFP's request for comment. Nvidia did not respond to a request for comment but told The Information that they had not seen any evidence of this and that "such smuggling seems farfetched".

ll-kaf-sam/fox

Bargain US carrier Spirit Airlines, which filed for bankruptcy in 2025 for the second time in a year, could be spared by a controversial potential White House rescue package.

Trump confirmed on Thursday that he was hoping Spirit could be saved, sparing thousands of jobs. 

"I think we'd just buy it," Trump said in the Oval Office. "They have some good aircraft, have good assets, and when the price of oil goes down, we'll sell it for a profit."

Trump's administration has been working on a potential $500 million package for the embattled airline, US media have reported in recent days.

Under a potential plan being discussed, the US government would make a loan to Spirit and receive warrants to take a large stake in the carrier, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Spirit had announced on February 24 an "agreement in principle" to restructure its debt with creditors, saying it expected to emerge from bankruptcy by early summer.

But only days later, the US-Israel alliance launched attacks on Iran, leading to a spike in oil prices.

That translated into a surge in jet fuel prices that proved to be "the straw that broke the camel's back," said Jan Brueckner, emeritus economics professor at the University of California, Irvine.

Jet fuel prices have more than doubled since the February 28 start of the war, prompting major US airlines to lower their profit forecasts, trim back on capacity growth plans or both.

As a no-frills carrier, Spirit adds pressure on larger airlines, which have responded with bare-bones "basic economy" offerings, according to Brueckner.

"It's beneficial to preserve this type of competitive airline that helps keep fares low," Brueckner said.

- 'Socialist Donald Trump' -

While a package sparing Spirit may benefit consumers, the potential solution has sparked blowback.

Critics include Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who called the plan "not the best use of taxpayer dollars" in a post on X.

"If Spirit's creditors or other potential investors don't think they can run it profitably coming out of its second bankruptcy in under two years, I doubt the US government can either," Cotton said.

Tad DeHaven, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a free-market think tank, called the White House proposal a "mistake," ruing a solution based around "politically engineered financing."

The US bankruptcy process should move forward "whether that means reorganization, liquidation, or asset sales to other companies," DeHaven said in a blog post. 

"That outcome may be less tidy, but it's still preferable to quasi-nationalization." 

Other critics include Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat. 

"Now socialist Donald Trump is nationalizing the airlines," Polis said on X. "What industry will the government take over next under his socialist regime?"

While the US government has provided direct relief to companies before, such cases have tended to be sector-wide and crisis-related, such as support packages for automakers and banks during the 2008 financial crisis.

Even in these circumstances, such moves have been political controversial.

But Trump has tested US norms resisting government stakes in businesses, announcing ventures that give Washington shares in semiconductor company Intel and rare earth company MP Materials, among others.

The White House has argued that these are strategic sectors for the country.

Trump administration officials have also criticized predecessor Joe Biden's administration, which successfully blocked a proposed $3.8 billion takeover of the carrier by JetBlue, arguing it would harm consumers.

"I understand the airline is bankrupt because the previous administration blocked the merger, which was probably not a wise move," White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said earlier this week.

Economist Brueckner said airlines face sharper pressures due to the Iran war "and the administration chose to initiate the War, and therefore they may feel some need to shelter companies from the consequences of the war."

elm-jmb/sla/hol

As he threaded his way through the scrub in Serbia's southern hills, Slobodan Velickovic stopped to inspect the small indigo berries that have made the Balkans a key part of the global gin industry.

Although still months from the autumn harvest, the 34-year-old picker -- who has collected juniper here since childhood -- expertly plucks an almost ripe berry from the bush.

"Strong aroma, beautiful taste," he told AFP as he chewed the fruit.

In Serbia, juniper is not farmed but gathered from wild bushes by hand.

Growing over a wide range of the northern hemisphere, the hardy plant thrives on rocky slopes and in harsh conditions where few others can survive.

Despite that resilience, the presence of juniper has declined in parts of Europe in recent decades -- particularly in lowland areas where it once grew, under pressure from climate change, overgrazing and habitat loss.

For pickers like Velickovic, the increasing variability of weather extremes also impacts the harvest in his region.

"It depends on the year -- whether it's dry or rainy. Those conditions affect quality," he said -- a shift that can affect flavour during distillation.

- Changing harvest conditions -

But for Balkan producers, pressures elsewhere also offer opportunity.

"In conditions of reduced yields in parts of Western Europe, the Balkans are increasingly positioning themselves as an alternative source of supply," Serbia's chamber of commerce said.

Serbia, with a long tradition of juniper picking, exports around 1,000 tonnes of juniper annually, according to the chamber.

"The quality in the Balkans is exceptional," said Tommy Haughton of Beacon Commodities, a global juniper wholesaler.

Haughton said the region offers larger volumes at lower prices than other sources, including Italy, with long-standing supply networks built over generations.

But he warned that hotter summers and fewer very cold winters could affect future harvests, while forest fires can restrict access to picking areas and taint berries with smoke.

- Flavour should be consistent -

A rainy harvest can also pose a challenge for ginmakers trying to maintain flavour.

"As gin distillers, our entire business is built around you having a product that's the same yesterday as it was today," said Matthew Pauley, a researcher at the International Centre for Brewing and Distilling at Heriot-Watt University.

Rain during harvest can force berries to be mechanically dried with hot air.

This process can alter the volatile compounds in the berries, affecting what is later extracted during distillation and, in turn, the flavour, according to Pauley's research.

As a result, distillers might need to source juniper from other regions or, in extreme cases, modify a recipe.

"If we're doing our job properly, there should be no difference," he said.

- Centuries of experience -

Protecting the taste in the glass falls to distillers like Ivan Lakatos, who runs a craft gin producer in the Serbian village of Belegis.

"The quality of juniper doesn't depend on the size of the berry itself, but on the intensity of its flavour, where it was picked," he said, as vapours rise from a copper still in the basement behind him.

To compete with the region's dominant spirit, rakija -- a brandy most often made with plums -- it is vitally important to maintain quality in every one of the around 2,000 bottles of his Little Fat Gin he sells per year.

"We're proud of that, but we'd like that number to grow," he said.

For him, local sourcing remains key, with noticeable differences in taste between Serbian juniper and juniper from other parts of Europe.

As climate change continues to shift where crops can be grown, Pauley said juniper sourcing was likely to evolve as well.

"That shift isn't going to stop anytime soon. In fact, it's going to accelerate."

"One way or another, we're going to be forced to explore other regions that previously, maybe we haven't used."

But he said distillers were well versed in adapting to changes in their ingredients.

"Gin distillers have been rolling with the punches since the 16th century."

al/ach 

Chinese startup DeepSeek released a new artificial intelligence model Friday, more than a year after it stunned the world with a low-cost reasoning model that matched the capabilities of US rivals.

DeepSeek-V4 "features an ultra-long context of one million words", the company said in a statement on social media platform WeChat, hailing it as "cost-effective" in a separate announcement on X.

The announcement came as Meta said it planned to cut a tenth of its staff as it looks for productivity gains from the rest of the workforce while investing heavily in artificial intelligence. Reports said Microsoft was also looking to trim its ranks.

DeepSeek-V4's context length, which determines how much input a model is able to absorb to help it complete tasks, "(achieves) leadership in both domestic and open-source fields across agent capabilities, world knowledge, and reasoning performance".

A "preview version" of the open source model is now available, the company said.

DeepSeek-V4 is released as two versions, DeepSeek-V4-Pro and DeepSeek-V4-Flash, with the latter being "a more efficient and economical choice" because it has smaller parameters.

V4-Pro has 1.6 trillion parameters while the V4-Flash has 284 billion parameters, which refine models' decision-making ability.

The model has also been "optimised" for popular AI Agent products such as Claude Code, OpenClaw, OpenCode and CodeBuddy, the statement said.

"In world knowledge benchmarks, DeepSeek-V4-Pro significantly leads other open-source models and is only slightly outperformed by the top-tier closed-source model, (Google's) Gemini-Pro-3.1," the statement added.

Hangzhou-based DeepSeek burst onto the scene in January last year with a generative AI chatbot, powered by its R1 reasoning model, that upended assumptions of US dominance in the strategic sector.

This so-called "DeepSeek shock" sparked a sell-off of AI-related shares and a reckoning on business strategy in what was also described as a "Sputnik moment" for the industry.

The chatbot performed at a similar level to ChatGPT and other top American offerings, but the company said it had taken significantly less computing power to develop.

However, its sudden popularity raised questions over data privacy and censorship, with the chatbot often refusing to answer questions on sensitive topics such as the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

At home, DeepSeek's AI tools have been widely adopted by Chinese municipalities and healthcare institutions as well as the financial sector and other businesses.

This has been partly driven by DeepSeek's decision to make its systems open source, with their inner workings public -- in contrast to the proprietary models sold by OpenAI and other Western rivals.

"China-made large AI models spearheaded the development of the global open-source AI ecosystem," Chinese Premier Li Qiang told an annual gathering of China's top decision-makers last month.

The AI race has intensified the rivalry between China and the United States, and the White House on Thursday accused Chinese entities of a massive effort to steal artificial intelligence technology.

"The US has evidence that foreign entities, primarily in China, are running industrial-scale distillation campaigns to steal American AI," science and technology chief Michael Kratsios said in a post on X.

"We will be taking action to protect American innovation."

ll-sam-mya/dan

Hundreds of alleged Mara Salvatrucha gang members sat chained, shaved and mute as they were accused of murder and torture during a mass trial at El Salvador's notorious CECOT jail, AFP reporters witnessed Thursday.

Seated in neat columns of plastic chairs in the prison's main hall, some 220 defendants are accused of collectively carrying out more than 29,000 murders.

"We burned her genitals and buttocks" one witness said over the loudspeaker, testifying in a mass trial El Salvador's president has compared to those of Nazi leaders at Nuremberg.

Among those on trial are about 20 alleged leaders and dozens of lieutenants, many with tattooed faces, heads, hands, and necks.

Some stared at journalists. All were dressed in white T‑shirts and shorts.

Hundreds more defendants appeared remotely.

Human rights groups have criticized the mass trials, warning that innocent people would inevitably be caught up in the process.

According to the testimony, gang members tied many victims' hands and took them to remote areas to kill them.

A phalanx of guards with full armor and riot shields watched over proceedings. 

"It's a horrifying account that makes your hair stand on end," said a hooded CECOT security agent who did not give his name.

- 'World's coolest dictator' -

The hearing took place on the fourth day of the mass trial at the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center, southeast of San Salvador.

Two witnesses testified that gang leaders ordered killings from prison.

The alleged leaders included "The little devil of Hollywood" Borromeo Henriquez and "Snaider of Pasadena" Carlos Tiberio Ramirez. 

Prosecutors accuse them directly of about 9,000 crimes. They listened to the accusations without reacting.

"These individuals caused mourning and pain to our society for many years," said CECOT director Belarmino Garcia.

Salvador's government invited journalists to witness proceedings under strict security protocols.

The prison, and the mass trials, have become centerpieces of media-savvy President Nayib Bukele's efforts to be, in his words, the "world's coolest dictator".

He has declared a "war" on gangs, imposing a state of emergency in 2022 which has since been used to arrest more than 90,000 suspected gang members.

Many caught in the dragnet were later declared innocent. 

Supporters say Bukele has made safe a country once ravaged by violent gangs and dubbed the murder capital of the world.

He has served as a model for many right-wing political candidates across Latin America looking to tap into widespread concerns about crime.

US President Donald Trump sent 140 Venezuelan alleged gang members to CECOT last year, a move that US courts later said was unlawful.

In 2021, the United States alleged that despite Bukele's carefully cultivated tough-on-crime image, his government held "covert negotiations" and "provided financial incentives" to gangs.

Secret deals were allegedly cut to reduce violence and for gangs to provide "political support" for Bukele's New Ideas party. 

cmm/axm/arb/md

India on Thursday criticized as inappropriate a post by US President Donald Trump that called the South Asian country a "hellhole."

The comments come ahead of a planned visit next month to India by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who would seek to turn the page on recent tensions between the normally friendly powers.

Trump late Wednesday posted on social media a screed apparently written by someone else denouncing the US constitutional right to citizenship of everyone born in the country.

The post accused Indian immigrants in the tech industry of not hiring white native-born Americans and inaccurately alleged that Indian immigrants lack English proficiency.

"A baby here becomes an instant citizen, and then they bring the entire family in from China or India or some other hellhole on the planet," the post said.

Indian foreign ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal responded that the remarks were "obviously uninformed, inappropriate and in poor taste."

"They certainly do not reflect the reality of the India-US relationship, which has long been based on mutual respect and shared interests."

Congressman Ami Bera, a Democrat who is the children of Indian immigrants, called the post by Trump "offensive, ignorant and beneath the dignity of the office he holds."

"President Trump, who was born into wealth and privilege, has never had to struggle the way so many immigrant families have," he said.

The Hindu American Foundation, an advocacy group, said it was disturbed by the "hateful, racist screed."

"Endorsing such rants as the president of the United States will further stoke hatred and endanger our communities, at a time when xenophobia and racism are already at an all-time high," it wrote on X.

Trump, who has made a sweeping crackdown on immigration a signature policy, has taken aim at visas commonly used by Indian tech workers.

He also for months maintained major tariffs on India after he was angry that Prime Minister Narendra Modi downplayed his mediation during a conflict between India and Pakistan, which has avidly courted Trump.

Trump's sparring with India stands in contrast to decades of efforts by successive US presidents to avoid friction and build relations with the world's largest democracy, which US policymakers have seen as a counterweight to rival China.

sct/msp/sla

Blink and you might miss Indian speed climber Deepu Mallesh scaling a wall five buses high in five seconds.

India, a country obsessed with cricket, has seen a surge in popularity in climbing but those who want to compete internationally have had to crowdfund and there is little government recognition or help.

Some have had to quit the sport they love.

"What I like most about climbing is how raw and honest it is," said 28-year-old Mallesh, who has climbed for his country and dreams of being the first Indian climber to qualify for the Olympics.

"It's just you, the wall and the clock."

Mallesh works part-time as a climbing instructor while pursuing his goal of reaching the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

"I have to somehow make some money. That is the only way for me to survive in this sport," he said.

The Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF) estimates there are tens of thousands of people who sport-climb regularly, with more than a dozen climbing gyms opening in the last decade.

But the rise in those picking it up as a professional career is slow -- high costs and scarce sponsorship deals hold back many.

There are about 3,500 climbers who compete across various levels in the country and among them, about 60 participate internationally annually.

Mallesh didn't win at the world championship in China this month, but at 5.39 seconds he set a national record in men's speed climbing.

He also qualified for the Asian Games in Japan in September-October.

- Shoes, chalk powder - 

Mallesh only manages to compete with support from the IMF.

Previously he raised the cash to compete via crowdfunding. Two years ago he collected about one million rupees ($10,500) to attend six international competitions. 

"I have had to miss competitions because I could not gather the requisite amount," he said.

"If I get proper funding and proper support I might see my career through till the Olympics. Otherwise I will have to find something else to do."

Since 2002, India have won nearly 70 medals in international climbing competitions, including in the Asian youth championships.

Among them is Joga Purty, who won silver in 2024. 

Purty, 19, said she was lucky because she was sponsored by the Tata conglomerate.

"If I didn't have this I also would be one of those who quit the sport," she said.

A decent pair of shoes and a harness cost about 10,000 rupees ($106) each. A chalk bag, used to dust the hands for grip, costs 5,000 rupees.

"The shoes also will only last three to six months, sometimes even less depending on the athlete's use," she said. "And we have to carry an extra pair of shoes."

- Game-changer? -

Unlike many other sports in India, there is little government support.

The IMF's Keerthi Pais, 50, said the organisation was in talks to get the sport recognised under the National Sports Governance Act.

"This recognition will help them continue their climbing career," Pais said.

Mallesh said wider recognition "would definitely help".

"It's not just about validation, it directly impacts support, funding, infrastructure and sponsorship opportunities," he said.

Pais said government support to make it easier to build climbing gyms would help too.

"That will be the game-changer... this is how it will grow."

Mumbai-based Shaiv Gandhi from The Indian Bouldering Company gym said facilities like his have been a catalyst for growth. 

"I think the two biggest things that the commercial climbing gym help with is awareness... and the infrastructure in order to train for the sport,"  the 30-year-old said. 

"We already have a programme where we have told our instructors to keep an eye out for budding talent... if anyone you think has potential, let them climb.

"It's on me."

ash-pit/pjm/pst

Chinese startup DeepSeek released "preview" versions of a new artificial intelligence model Friday, more than a year after it stunned the world with a low-cost reasoning model that matched the capabilities of US rivals.

The long-awaited DeepSeek-V4 "features an ultra-long context of one million words, achieving leadership in both domestic and open-source fields across agent capabilities, world knowledge, and reasoning performance", the company said in a statement on social media.

A "preview version" is now available, the company said.

The new DeepSeek-V4 model is released as two versions, DeepSeek-V4-Pro and DeepSeek-V4-Flash, with the latter being "a more efficient and economical choice" because it has smaller parameters.

"In world knowledge benchmarks, DeepSeek-V4-Pro significantly leads other open-source models and is only slightly outperformed by the top-tier closed-source model, (Google's) Gemini-Pro-3.1," the statement added.

ll-sam-mya/dan