Category: Flash News

On March 14th, Yermak, the Director of the Office of the President of Ukraine, stated that Ukraine firmly opposes the “freezing of conflicts” and this position has received support from its US partners. Yermak also stated that Europe will be included in the peace process, which is just the beginning, and there is still a lot of work to be done urgently by the Ukrainian side. He emphasized that Ukraine is not isolated in this process, but has gained the support and cooperation of numerous partners.

On March 14th, local time, the 43rd ordinary meeting of the Defense Chiefs of Staff Committee of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was held in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, from March 11th to 13th. The meeting aimed to review the overall security situation in the region, especially the increasingly serious threat of terrorism and the consequences and security challenges brought about by Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger’s withdrawal from the organization. Nigerian Defense Minister Mohamed Badaru revealed that the Western Community has activated standby forces to combat terrorism and other cross-border crimes in the region. This unit is expected to consist of approximately 5000 soldiers.

On March 14th, it was reported that on March 13th local time, a federal judge in California ordered six US agencies to reinstate thousands of laid-off probationary employees, including the US Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior, and Department of the Treasury. As of the end of February, US media statistics showed that since President Trump took office, about 100000 federal employees in the United States have been laid off or accepted “buyout” plans. On February 27th local time, a federal district judge in California ruled that the federal government’s previous large-scale layoffs of probationary employees were illegal. (CCTV News)

On March 14th, US President Donald Trump was sued by a group of predominantly Democratic led states. These states accuse that cutting half of the US Department of Education’s workforce is essentially equivalent to dissolving the department. Several states, including New York and California, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Boston on Thursday, stating that the plan to lay off approximately 1378 employees on top of 600 employees who had previously accepted buyout offers would weaken the Department of Education’s ability to fulfill its responsibilities under federal law. The lawsuit against Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon is one of the increasing cases challenging government spending cuts and reshaping the federal government through Elon Musk’s controversial Department of Efficiency.

On March 14th, interstellar dust is an important component of the Milky Way, and its distribution and properties are of great significance for understanding the structure, formation, and evolution of the galaxy. The absorption and scattering of starlight by dust can alter the luminosity and color of observed celestial bodies, and understanding the impact of dust is key to conducting various studies. However, depicting the three-dimensional distribution of the absorption and scattering characteristics of starlight by dust in the Milky Way has always been an important challenge in the field of astronomy. Recently, Chinese doctoral student Zhang Xiangyu from the Max Planck Institute in Germany and his supervisor Dr. Gregory Green collaborated to construct the world’s first database describing the absorption and scattering characteristics of interstellar dust on starlight at the scale of billions of stars, using data from China’s Guo Shoujing Telescope and the European Space Agency’s Gaia Space Telescope. They successfully drew a three-dimensional dust distribution and characteristics map of the Milky Way covering the entire sky for the first time, which is crucial for understanding the impact of dust on starlight absorption and scattering and provides a new perspective for astronomical observations, galactic evolution, cosmology, and other research. This achievement was published in the international academic journal Science on March 14th Beijing time.

On March 14th, the European Spirits Industry Association called on the European Union and the United States to stop using the industry as a “bargaining chip” in the tariff war. According to media reports, the European Spirits Industry Association stated in a statement on the 13th that the industry is “deeply shocked” by the US tariff threat and that “this cycle of ‘tit for tat’ tariff retaliation must stop immediately! We urge both sides not to use the spirits industry as a bargaining chip in disputes unrelated to us.

On March 14th, according to CoinDesk, the US Senate Banking Committee has advanced the stablecoin regulation bill for the cryptocurrency industry, which is an important first step in sending the bill to US President Trump for signature into law. With the first committee approval, this bill that will regulate US stablecoin issuers at the federal level now needs to be passed by the Senate as a whole, and there is a similar version waiting for approval in the House of Representatives. Although there are still many obstacles to overcome, including ultimately merging different bills from both houses, the bill has passed the committee’s review with a vote of 18 to 6.

On March 13th, the first two pilot scenarios of Shanghai Quantum City launched a roadshow on March 12th. The first batch of pilot scenes for this roadshow are “Treasure in the Hands of a Better Life” and “Ranjizhiwang”. The “Treasure of a Better Life” is a design product of Quantum City based on the “15 minute Community Life Circle” scenario, which digitally upgrades community services such as clothing, food, housing, and transportation. The “Pocket Treasure of a Better Life” application is expected to be piloted and launched on March 30th in Caoyang New Village Street, Putuo District. The “Ranji Intelligent Network” aims to empower management departments and gas social enterprises by creating a Ranji Intelligent Network Empowerment Platform (referred to as “Small Ran Application”), which develops functional modules such as review (business review), evaluation (spatial assessment), prevention (pre prevention), monitoring (dynamic monitoring), and assistance (emergency dispatch) in batches to meet the business needs of management departments and gas social enterprises. It carries out “observation, listening, questioning, and cutting” of urban gas, and real-time grasps the spatial location and safety dynamics of gas pipelines. (Upstream News)

On March 13th, antimony, also known as “industrial monosodium glutamate”, has recently come into the spotlight of the market due to its rapid price increase and significant price difference at home and abroad. Data shows that on March 12th, the domestic price of No.1 antimony ingot was 200000 yuan/ton, an increase of 57000 yuan/ton compared to the beginning of 2025. Since February this year, the price of antimony has risen by over 40%. However, the price difference of antimony ingots at home and abroad is still close to 200000 yuan/ton. The rise in antimony prices has strongly boosted the stock prices of related listed companies. As of now, since February, the stock prices of Huayu Mining, Hunan Gold, and Huaxi Nonferrous have increased by 68%, 33%, and 33% respectively. Industry insiders say that due to tight supply and stable demand, there is still potential for antimony prices to rise in the future.

On March 13, Silicon Mobile announced on the evening of March 12 that Trae, China’s first AI native integrated development environment (AI IDE) released by ByteDance, has preset the Silicon Mobile Silicon Cloud platform as a model provider to support users to access DeepSeek-R1&V3, QWQ-32B, Qwen2.5-Coder and other models suitable for coding through API Key.