In the midst of Washington and Beijing’s contentious tech conflict, tech giant Meta has made it known that it will buy artificial intelligence startup Manus.
Meta said the acquisition would allow it to integrate Manus’ self-directing AI agent technology into its own products.
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Manus, which was established in China in 2022 but relocated to Singapore earlier this year, describes its agent as a “virtual coworker” capable of “planning, executing, and delivering complete work products from start to finish.”
The deal, according to Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, will bring one of the “leading autonomous general-purpose agents” to billions of people around the world.
The California-based company announced in a statement on Monday that “Manus’s exceptional talent will join Meta’s team to deliver general-purpose agents across our consumer and business products, including Meta AI.”
“We’re thrilled to welcome the Manus team, who will use their technology to improve the lives of millions of people and millions of businesses.”
As a response to those who oppose autonomous AI, Manus, founder and CEO, and Xiao Hong, the deal was welcomed.
“It was too early, too ambitious, and too hard,” we were told. However, we maintained building. Through the doubts, the failures, and the countless nights of pondering whether we were pursuing the impossible. We “weren’t,” Xiao said on social media.
The AI era is only just beginning, Xiao said, adding that “the one that acts, creates, and delivers is not just talking.”
We will now begin to build it at a scale we haven’t yet imagined.
The deal’s financial details were not made public.
Manus, which claims to have developed more than 80 million virtual computers, drew comparisons to the ferocity of the DeepSeek, a chatbot developed by China, when it first launched in March.
Tech analysts have provided varying evaluations of Manus’ agent, who has the ability to create travel plans and analyze stocks without requiring any human intervention.
Khaleda Zia, the former prime minister of Bangladesh, passed away at the age of 79 after battling a long illness. She served as Bangladesh’s first female prime minister and was a key figure in the party’s decades-long leadership of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
Following Israel’s official recognition of the breakaway region of Somalia, protests have erupted across the country, with demonstrators taking to the streets in various cities, including Mogadishu, the country’s capital.
Large crowds gathered on Tuesday morning at locations like the main football stadium in Mogadishu and the city’s airport, where protesters chanted slogans and waved Somali flags.
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Following a stop in neighboring Djibouti, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud travelled to Istanbul to meet with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The demonstrations also took place in Baidoa, Dhusamareb, Las Anod, Hobyo, and the northeastern regions of Somalia.
Somalia and Turkiye have close political and security ties, with Ankara recently emerging as a regional rival to Israel.
Borama, a city in western Somaliland, where the population appears to be more ambivalent about ending its relationship with Somalia, also hosted small gatherings to express their opposition.
Despite retaining its own currency, passport, and army, Somaliland unilaterally declared independence in 1991 following a civil war.
The state, according to Somaliland’s leaders, is the country’s replacement for the former British protectorate, which voluntarily merged with Italian Somaliland and has since reclaimed its independence. Somalia does not recognize its independence, but it continues to claim Somaliland as part of its territory.
Last Friday, Israel became the first and only nation to formally recognize it as a sovereign state, citing the historic Abraham Accords, which established a framework for a more stable relationship between Israel and various Arab countries.
Mohamed Hassan, the director-general of Somaliland’s foreign ministry, stated to Israeli outlet i24 that more nations should follow suit, though he did not specify which ones.
Over the weekend, Somaliland’s leaders were urged by President Mohamud to reverse the decision, warning that its territory, which overlooks the strategic Red Sea gateway, must not be used as a staging area for attacks on other countries.
Any Israeli presence in Somaliland, according to Yemen’s Houthi rebels, would be seen as a “military target for our armed forces.”
President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi said the decision “is not a threat, not an act of hostility” toward any state shortly after Somaliland made its announcement to join Israel on Friday, and warned that Somalia’s insistence on unified institutions could lead to “prolonging divisions rather than healing” them.
Leaders from all political parties have publicly condemned Israel’s decision, which is a rare example of political unity in Somalia.
The recognition was rejected as an “illegal step” that threatens regional security stretching from the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden on Monday by the National Consultative Council, which is led by Mohamud and includes the prime minister, federal state presidents, regional governors, and prime ministers.
Over the weekend, four federal member states released coordinated statements denouncing the action. Puntland and Jubbaland have both remained silent, with the exception of the constitutional and electoral disputes that recently led to their withdrawal from Somalia’s federal system.
In response to the decision, which several nations claimed may have serious implications for Palestinians in Gaza, the majority of UNSC members criticized Israel’s decision to recognize Somaliland at a meeting held on Monday.
The 15-member body’s original members, including the United States, said their position on Somaliland had not changed, despite the fact that they were the only ones to not object to Israel’s formal recognition at the meeting in New York on Monday.
Abu Bakr Dahir Osman, the UN ambassador to Somalia, expressed concern that the recognition “aims to promote the fragmentation of Somalia” and that it may lead to the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza to northwestern Somalia. This concern is shared by several other countries.
He declared, “This total disregard for the rule of law and morality must end right away.”
Israel “has the same right to establish diplomatic relations as any other sovereign state,” according to US deputy representative Tammy Bruce, who added that Washington had not made any announcements regarding its own recognition of Somaliland.
Jonathan Miller, Israel’s deputy UN ambassador, argued that the decision was “not a hostile step toward Somalia” and that other nations should follow suit.
Israeli forces are carrying out strikes across the Gaza Strip as they continue to violate the ceasefire agreement almost daily. With the besieged enclave still raging, displaced Palestinians are dealing with flooding and the destruction of their few remaining possessions as a result of Israel’s bloody war.
According to Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary report, Israeli airs targeted locations north of Rafah and east of Khan Younis, the Maghazi camp in central Gaza, and Beit Lahiya in the north of the Strip.
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According to a report from Gaza City, Khoudary claimed that artillery shelling had been reported in the southern and central regions of the state, and that an attack had also occurred in Shujayea, a neighborhood in Gaza City, and that it had struck close to a displaced family’s tent.
She claimed that the most recent attacks, which were carried out in violation of the US-brokered ceasefire, came at a crucial time for displaced Palestinians, as heavy rain and strong winds had ravaged their temporary homes and had destroyed the few things they had left behind.
Since the ceasefire’s entry on October 10th, Israel has committed 969 violations, according to Gaza’s government media office, resulting in the deaths of 418 civilians and more than 1,100 injuries.
According to Khoudary, “Palestinians are still very traumatized and anxious.” As the rain continues, “the situation on the ground continues to deteriorate.”
On December 29, 2025, Palestinian children who have been taken from their homes in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip are sheltered inside a flooded tent.
calls to supply authorization
Aid organizations have repeatedly urged Israeli authorities to impose restrictions on entry to the area, where displaced families have been attempting to stay dry in battered, flimsy tents that have lacked protection from the elements for months.
Khoudary said, “Families here are helpless as the Israeli authorities continue to impose restrictions on all forms of shelter in the Gaza Strip.”
Officials have warned that the severe weather also presents new risks, including the risk of disease and illness as well as the risk of buildings collapsing in the presence of sluggish rain and wind.
In recent days of sweltering weather, damaged structures have caused at least two fatalities.
“We are still suffering,” the statement read.
Heavy rain in recent days east of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza has caused tents to become submerged in muddy water, destroying the few items the families had taken from their homes.
A team from Al Jazeera discovered crucial items soaked in muddy water, including pillows, mattresses, and bed covers inside the tents.
Residents’ resident Mohammed al-Louh claimed that the tent has been flooded.
“I took my family out, but I was unable to find a blanket, mattress, or bag of flour.” I can’t get my kids to sleep or keep them warm.
Another man, Haitham Arafat, claimed to have lost both his home and son to Israel’s genocidal war and was still suffering from the dire circumstances.
I made it to this location. Does this indicate that the conflict has ended? he stated.
“No, we continue to suffer. Due to the heavy rain, we haven’t slept for two days.
According to Ibrahim al-Khalili, a reporter from the camp, Palestinians who had been subjected to an humanitarian crisis as a result of the winter storms have received a new “chapter of suffering.”
The sixth large-scale war game since 2022, when then-Republican representative Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, has been conducted by China over two-day military exercises titled Justice Mission 2025.
As Chinese forces worked encircling Taiwan and preventing its major ports, the exercise included 10 hours of live fire drills on Tuesday.
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During the Justice Mission of 2025, what took place?
According to Shi Yi, a spokesman for China’s Eastern Theatre Command, the war games started on Monday in Taiwan’s main island’s waters and airspace.
In the exercises, China used its naval destroyers, frigates, fighter planes, bombers, drones, long-range missiles, and other “mobile ground targets” and maritime targets, according to Shi.
The exercises also simulated a blockade of Keelung and Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s main ports.
According to the Eastern Theatre Command, live-fire drills were conducted on Tuesday in five locations throughout Taiwan between 8am and 6pm local time (00:00 GMT and 00:00 GMT). Long-range rockets were launched into the waters around the island by Chinese forces, according to a video the military posted on social media.
Seven rockets were fired into two drill areas around the main island, according to Taiwan’s coastguard.
This screenshot from a video released by China’s People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theatre Command on December 30, 2025 shows long-range live-fire drills being conducted from an undisclosed location.
Between 6 a.m. on Monday and 6 a.m. on Tuesday, Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense announced it had tracked 130 air sorties from Chinese aircraft, 14 naval ships, and eight “official ships.”
In the second-largest incursion of its kind since 2022, 90 of the air sorties entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ), which Taipei has been monitoring land and sea for the past 24 hours.
What changes did the exercises make over the previous one?
According to Jaime Ocon, a research fellow at Taiwan Security Monitor, Justice Mission 2025 was the largest war game ever to cover the entire area since 2022.
He told Al Jazeera, referring to the area located just 12 nautical miles (22 kilometers) off Taiwan’s coast, that “these zones are very, very big, especially the southern and southeast areas around Taiwan, which actually breached territorial waters.” That’s a significant improvement over previous exercises.
Contrary to previous iterations, they also made explicit efforts to block Taiwan, sending a strong message to Taipei and its unofficial allies, particularly the US and Japan.
“This is a clear example of China’s ability to carry out A2/AD – anti-access aerial denial,” Ocon said. “This shows how capable it is to prevent Taiwan from being isolated from the world and for other countries like Japan, the Philippines, or the United States to not directly intervene,” he added.
A blockade would have an impact on Taiwan’s nearly all of its energy needs, including its dependence on imported commodities like natural gas and coal. Through the Taiwan Strait, it would also alter important international shipping routes.
The drills were similar to those conducted after Pelosi’s visit in August 2022, according to Alexander Huang, director-general of Taiwan’s Council on Strategic and Wargaming Studies.
It actually impacted international civil aviation and maritime shipping routes as a result of this drill. They had previously tried to avoid that, but this time they actually slowed down the air and sea traffic,” he claimed.
Additionally, the drills put pressure on Taiwan’s maritime and transportation links with those between Kinmen and Matsu islands, which are more close to the Chinese mainland.
Why are the exercises now being staged in China?
China has a history of conducting military exercises to express its anger toward Taiwan and its allies, but since Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, they have increased.
Beijing cites Taiwan as a province and claims that the US is interfering with its internal affairs by continuing to sell weapons to Taipei and supporting its “separatist” government under the leadership of President William Lai Ching-te.
Washington does not officially acknowledge Taiwan, but it has made a pledge to support Taipei’s defense in accordance with the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act and the 1982 Six Assurances.
Washington approved a record-breaking $ 11 billion arms sale to Taiwan just days before the Justice Mission 2025.
The drills were “a necessary step to safeguard China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” according to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday. They were also a “punitive and deterrent action against separatist forces who seek “taiwan independence” through military expansion. In connection with the arms sale, Beijing sanctioned 30 US businesses and individuals.
Additionally, experts claim that China and Japan had a separate but related diplomatic row.
In November, Sanae Takaichi, the prime minister of Japan, made the remarks that an attack on Taiwan would be a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan. She claimed that a scenario like this would allow Japan to use its “right of collective self-defence” and to deploy its military legally.
During China’s most recent military exercises in Taiwan, December 30 through December 30, 2025, several flights were canceled at the Taipei airport.
How are the drills being conducted in Taiwan?
On Tuesday, Taiwan warned that more than 300 international flights could be delayed as a result of flight rerouting during the live-fire drills and on average, cancelled more than 80 domestic flights.
An undisclosed number of naval vessels had also been deployed nearby, according to Taiwan’s defense ministry, and the coastguard had been monitoring the exercises near the outlying islands. Taiwan also kept an eye on all incursions into its ADIZ, including those into the Taiwan Strait, coastal China, and nearby waters.
The highly provocative actions of Beijing [also pose a significant security risk and disruption, according to Defense Minister Wellington Koo in a statement on Tuesday.
Koo referred to the exercises as “cognitive warfare” that sought to “deplete Taiwan’s combat capabilities through a combination of military and non-military means, and to create division and conflict within Taiwanese society through a method of sowing discord.”
What was the US’s response to the drills?
Donald Trump, the president of the United States, has so far kept quiet about the military exercises, telling reporters he is “not worried.”
Trump responded to Reuters’ request to discuss the exercises, saying, “I have a great relationship with President Xi, but he hasn’t told me anything about it.” He continued, “I don’t think he’s going to be doing it,” presumably referring to the possibility of real military action attacking Taiwan.
Trump may not say much about the Justice Mission 2025 exercises because he wants to meet with President Xi Jinping in April to discuss a US-China trade deal, according to William Yang, a senior analyst for Northeast Asia at the International Crisis Group. According to Yang, “the US response is a diplomatic tactic to ensure that the US response does not immediately damage the US-China temporary trade truce.”
He said, “I think it’s quite consistent with how he and his administration have been handling the Taiwan issue by trying to de-prioritize making public statements.”
Vassyl spent years reporting from Zolochiv before delivering news along the shattered roads of northeastern Ukraine. At the age of 20, he started writing poetry as a teenager, went to Kharkiv for literature, and then joined the neighborhood Zolochiv newspaper. He left his job at the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, where he investigated corruption in the district, at the age of 31. He returned to the weekly ten years later.
He claims, “I can’t imagine doing anything other than journalism.”
Vassyl is proud that his publication was one of the first to de-nationalize in 2017 to be de-nationalized. He contributed to the draft of the legislation that made it possible for local Ukrainian newspapers to be privatized, which he believed would help to lessen state pressure and preserve editorial independence.
He has continued to look into local political corruption throughout the war, even though he acknowledges that the war has been the center of his efforts.
Russia “feeds on our internal divisions.” My job is to fight the lies of the enemy, he says, even if holding our own authorities to account continues to be a priority.
His life has been in danger more than once as a result of the fight against Russian disinformation.
Two Russian shells struck the weekly newsroom on April 5, 2022, at 9:30 am, partially destroying the 140-year-old structure where it was originally located. Vassyl’s normal schedule would have allowed him to work at the time, but he was spared because he stayed in bed that day instead of going to bed.
“It was late to work,” I said. He says with a dark laugh that he and one of my friends had a big night out the night before and that we had drank a lot of terrible vodka. It’s a time of war, the author declares. We only had this bottle of the alcohol because the alcohol was so poor.
That is what saved me, he said. Although I usually get up early, I was hungover.
Two shells flew overhead as he finally started moving and was walking with a friend.
“Everything exploded a second later.
Thankfully, the newsroom was not accessible at the time. Vassyl is aware that he had a lucky escape when his old desk, which is still covered in debris more than three years later, is still a mess.
I would have been dead if there had been any shrapnel in the room, he claims.
His newsroom has been targeted ten times, eight times with guided aerial bombs, and eight times with artillery, since the most recent attack in spring 2025.
Kremlin media reported that Vassyl was responsible for spreading false information at the start of the conflict.
“Vassyl says ironically,” “Apparently, I run a propaganda outlet.” Russian state television broadcast a report in 2022 accusing me of breaking the law to enter one of their villages to spread false information.
“I’ve never been there,” he said. Documenting missile remnants that have been embedded in the ground since the start of the war is something I’ve done.
Russian missile remnants could be the subject of international law-related war crimes or violations.
Vassyl claims that this article is the motivation behind my newsroom’s targeting.
[Louis Lemaire/Al Jazeera] Kostyantyn Neoneta, the newspaper’s accountant, delivers the weekly edition in Zolochiv, far from first-person view (FPV) drones near the Russian border.
The newspaper stopped being published for nearly a year after the invasion of 2022 and the bombing of Kharkiv’s printing press. Many Zolochiv residents retreated to safer areas, at least temporarily, as a result of Russian forces’ closing in. Vassyl, however, made the decision to stay.
He says, “I had to bear witness, but I couldn’t do it if my loved ones were in danger as well,” explaining how he sent his family to western Ukraine and began documenting the destruction that had taken place in his hometown.
At the time, enemy forces were only 6 miles (6,2 km) away. He recorded bombings, evacuations for the poor, and ruined structures on his phone.
Who would have done it if I hadn’t captured what I was seeing with my own eyes? We reside in remote regions. I had to explain what was going on in the world.
Vassyl self-taught himself how to edit videos that he shared on social media and YouTube to get more views.
He continues to be angry that “the Russians were still claiming they were striking command posts or tank repair facilities.” They were actually hitting a kindergarten, a hospital, and residential structures.
[Louis Lemaire/Al Jazeera] Kostyantyn delivers the newspaper in Zolochiv.
Vassyl became determined to restore access to news in regions that had been deprived of it for six months when the Ukrainian army began liberating the first villages close to Zolochiv. He obtained a new printing press and began his work.
There is frequently no other reliable source of information in these rural areas. He proudly declares, “People trust us, and we cannot leave.”
Kostyantyn Neoneta, the newspaper’s accountant, remained in Zolochiv like Vassyl, while two members of the newsroom made remote workovers.
Kostyantyn, who bicycles to the town each week, states, “I didn’t want to leave.” I was aware of my significant contribution to this city over other towns.
