Japan has scrambled jets to monitor Russian and Chinese air forces conducting joint patrols around the country, the Japanese defence ministry said late Tuesday, amid rising tensions between Tokyo and Beijing.

Two Russian Tu-95 nuclear-capable strategic bombers flew from the Sea of Japan toward the East China Sea to rendezvous with two Chinese H-6 bombers, and performed a “long-distance joint flight” in the Pacific, the ministry said.

Four Chinese J-16 fighter jets joined the bombers as they made a round-trip flight between Japan’s Okinawa and Miyako islands, it added. The Miyako Strait between the two islands is classified as international waters.

Japan also detected simultaneous Russian air force activity in the Sea of Japan, consisting of one early-warning aircraft A-50 and two Su-30 fighters, the ministry said.

Japanese Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said in a post on X on Wednesday that the Russian and Chinese joint operations were “clearly intended as a show of force against our nation, which is a serious concern for our national security.”

Japan’s fighter jets “strictly implemented air defence identification measures,” Koizumi added.

Russian news agencies reported that the Russian-Chinese joint flight near Japan lasted for eight hours, citing Moscow’s defence ministry.

South Korea’s military also said on Tuesday that seven Russian planes and two Chinese planes had entered its air defence zone.

Japan said on Sunday that Chinese carrier-launched fighter jets aimed radar at Japanese military aircraft a day earlier, an claim Beijing disputed.

Beijing’s rising military actions near Japan follow Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last month that Tokyo could respond to any Chinese military action against Taiwan that also threatened Japan’s security.

China and Russia have been ramping up military cooperation in recent years elsewhere, conducting joint operations such as an anti-missile training on Russian territory and live-fire naval exercises in the South China Sea.

ABU DHABI: Deep in the Abu Dhabi desert, a vast AI campus a quarter the size of Paris is starting to emerge, the oil-rich UAE’s boldest bet yet on technology it hopes will help transform its economy.

Towering cranes clank as long, low buildings take shape below, the eventual home of data centres powered by five gigawatts of electricity — the biggest such facility outside the United States.

The campus will provide storage and computing capacity over a 3,200-kilometre (1990-mile) radius covering up to four billion people, said Johan Nilerud, chief strategy officer of Khazna Data Centres, a subsidiary of Emirati AI giant G42, which is spearheading the project.

Since the 1960s, oil has fuelled the United Arab Emirates’ rise from a desert outpost of nomadic tribes to a Middle East economic and diplomatic powerhouse.

Now, the UAE is hoping that AI can help fill the gap when oil demand inevitably wanes.

“The UAE is punching above its weight because it’s a very small country that really wants to be at the forefront,” said Nilerud.

“The idea is obviously to bring in international partners… to be this AI-native nation,” he added.

Phase one of the AI campus — the G42-built, one-gigawatt Stargate UAE cluster — will be operated by OpenAI and is backed by other US tech giants such as Oracle, Cisco, and Nvidia.

And last month, Microsoft announced more than $15.2 billion in investments in the UAE by 2029, after injecting $1.5 billion last year into G42.

Core subject

The UAE has been betting heavily on AI since 2017, when it named the world’s first AI minister and became the second country after Canada to unveil a national AI strategy.

A year later, G42 was founded with backing from Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund Mubadala. Chaired by the UAE president’s brother, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, it offers a range of AI products and employs more than 23,000 people.

The UAE said it has pumped more than $147 billion into AI since 2024, including up to 50 billion euros ($58 billion) in a one-gigawatt AI data centre in France.

“AI, like oil, is a transversal sector, which can potentially have a leverage effect and an impact on different activities,” said Professor Jean-Francois Gagne of the University of Montreal.

In 2019, Abu Dhabi opened Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), the world’s first AI-dedicated university. Last August, AI became a core subject in the country’s public schools from kindergarten up.

MBZUAI and Abu Dhabi’s Technology Innovation Institute (TII) have since launched generative AI models, including Falcon, which compared favourably with industry leaders and now has an Arabic version.

Keen to cut reliance on imported hardware and expertise, the UAE has made large investments in research, development, and homegrown programmes.

TII opened a research lab with Nvidia to “push the boundaries” of generative AI models and develop robotics systems, said executive director Najwa Aaraj.

“Sovereignty and self-sustainability and domestic customisation of technology to local needs are all very, very important,” Eric Xing, president of MBZUAI, told AFP.

“And also difficult to achieve if you solely rely on importing and external… technical transfer.”

Chips ahoy

In the race for AI market share, the UAE is in the chasing pack behind the US and China, the clear leaders. But the small, desert country has its advantages, chiefly money and energy.

With oil, gas and year-round sun for solar power, it can quickly build electricity stations to feed data centres — a major obstacle elsewhere.

And as the region’s business hub, with a population that is nearly 90% expatriate, the UAE has the edge compared to other nations in the region.

All the while, the UAE has engaged in a balancing act between the US and China as it seeks imports vital for AI, including the specialist chips that make data centres work.

Last month, intense lobbying bore fruit when the US approved the export of advanced Nvidia chips to both the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

“They (UAE) clearly don’t want to be dependent on China, but that doesn’t mean they want to depend on the US either,” said Gagne.

But despite its progress and years of heavy investment, success in this complex, ever-changing sector is far from guaranteed.

“Right now, we don’t know what the right strategy is, or who the good players are,” Gagne said.

“Everyone is betting on different players, but some will lose, and some will win.”

• Two adjacent four-storey buildings collapsed in Fez.
• Search and rescue operations ongoing, injured taken to hospital.
• Fez is a former capital, located in northeastern Morocco.

At least 19 people were killed and 16 injured early on Wednesday by the collapse of two buildings in Morocco’s northeastern city of Fez, a former capital, the state news agency said.

Local authorities in the Fez prefecture reported two adjacent four-storey buildings had collapsed overnight, the state news agency said.

The buildings were inhabited by eight families and were in the Al-Mustaqbal neighbourhood, it reported.

As soon as they were informed of the incident, local authorities, security services, and civil protection units moved to the scene and immediately began search and rescue operations, it said.

The injured were transported to the university hospital centre in Fez, while search and rescue operations continued around the clock to find others who may still be trapped under the rubble, the news agency reported.

Most of Morocco’s population, financial, industrial hubs and vital infrastructure are concentrated in the northwest, with the rest of the country reliant on farming, fisheries and tourism.