ZHENGZHOU, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) — Zhengzhou, capital of central China’s Henan Province, has become the nation’s first to apply facial recognition technology at all its metro stations, according to Zhengzhou Metro.

Instead of using a metro card or scanning a QR code on mobile phones, commuters in Zhengzhou can have their face scanned and the fare automatically deducted from a registered account starting from December 3.

In September, Zhengzhou began providing face-scanning check-in service along the entire Metro Line 1 and the first section of Line 14 to give passengers a better experience of quick pass access. Now the service has been expanded to cover all metro lines.

By logging into Zhengzhou Metro’s official APP and follow instructions to complete the face authentication, commuters can scan their faces to enter the subway and the fare will be automatically deducted via a pre-set payment method.

Now nearly 200,000 passengers have embraced the technology in Zhengzhou, and an average 10,000 commuters are paying metro fares by scanning their faces every day.

A number of Chinese cities, including Shenzhen, Jinan, Shanghai and Nanjing have used facial recognition technology on some of their metro lines.

JERUSALEM, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) — At the 23rd GoforIsrael investment conference held in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, both Chinese and Israeli business elites believed that more cooperation opportunities between the two sides in various sectors, particularly in the hi-tech sector, would be created.

The one-day business event, which was held on Monday, attracted about 1,000 business leaders, investors and entrepreneurs from Israel, China, the United States, Europe and other countries and regions.

In order to push forward further cooperation between China and Israel, more and more platforms have been forged as bridges to facilitate the cooperation, and GoforIsrael is one of them.

“We are creating a marketplace for investors and startups and so on,” said Yair Shamir, a managing partner of Catalyst Investments, in an interview with Xinhua at the sidelines of the conference.

The Chinese are looking for technology and Israelis are looking for markets, added Shamir, who is also a former Israeli agricultural minister.

According to Shamir, Israel is an easy place to do business with open-minded people and no governmental involvement, which “means there is no limitation or restriction.”

Shamir said the Chinese and the Israelis have mutual respect and “we are happy to do business with China.”

Comprehensive cooperation between China and Israel have been seen in recent years. In 2014, China and Israel established the mechanism of the China-Israel Joint Committee on Innovation Cooperation (JCIC). An innovative comprehensive partnership between the two countries was established when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited China in March 2017.

While Chinese companies are joining hands with Israeli partners in the hi-tech sector and other sectors, Israeli companies are also going eastward to China to seek markets and investors.

A total of 35 percent of the world’s economic growth came from China, and “Israel should look at Asia, including China”, said Ronnie Chan, chairman of the Hong Kong-based Hang Lung Properties, one of the largest real estate corporations in China.

In 1975, Chan visited Israel for the first time and in 2011 he joined the GoforIsrael event. Since then, he has begun to bring Chinese entrepreneurs to Israel to look for investment opportunities.

Chan has brought about nine groups to Israel with total investment value of about one billion U.S. dollars, 40 percent of which came from China and the rest from other Asian countries, according to Chan.

China has created a miracle over the past 40 years with its development, said Ilian Mihov, professor of economics and dean of France’s INSEAD, one of the world’s leading and largest graduate business schools, in an interview with Xinhua.

Nowadays China is looking for high-level technological cooperation in Israel. Israel has a lot of knowledge and creativity, especially in the tech industry, and has a lot of startups, said Mihov.

Now, more and more companies, including those from China, are interested in connecting with Israeli startups and take them globally or grow with them, added the professor.

The cooperation between the two sides could be done in various sectors including the hi-tech one, said Amir Lati, director of the Northeast Asia Department of Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Lati told Xinhua that Israel possesses leading innovative technologies in sectors such as healthcare, agriculture and new energy, while China has a huge demand for innovation. Both sides are expected to create more win-win cooperation opportunities if they could work together to forge more platforms for the mutual cooperation.

About 40 Israeli hi-tech startups from fields like life science showcased their latest innovative technologies at the conference and the roadshow attracted high attention of Chinese companies.

Chinese companies, not only strategic investors, but also industrial investors, are showing interest in the Israeli tech innovation and some of them have made investment in recent years, said Shengyan Fan, managing director of the M&A department of China Everbright Limited (CEL), a Hong Kong-based financial services company.

At the same time, a lot of Chinese local governments are making efforts to attract Israeli startups to settle down in some development zones in China, said Fan in an interview with Xinhua, adding that both sides are in the process of creating more investment and cooperation opportunities.

Fan also works as the managing partner of Catalyst-CEL China Israel Fund and she said the fund will complete investment for a total of eight projects by the end of 2019, involving advanced manufacturing, life science and autonomous driving.

The GoforIsrael investment conference was organized by Cukierman & Co. Investment House Ltd. and Catalyst Investment L.P. The 22nd conference was held in Jinan, capital city of east China’s Shandong Province in May this year.

Story: Nick Kolyohin, Chen Wenxian

LONDON (AP) — Thumping his chest on the world stage as he faces an impeachment inquiry at home, President Donald Trump claimed credit Tuesday for transforming NATO as the military alliance marks its 70th anniversary. But he also clashed with America’s NATO allies, especially French President Emmanuel Macron, about defense spending and the alliance’s very mission.

Trump began the first of two days at the NATO conference by publicly rebuking Macron, once arguably his closest European ally, for recently saying the post-World War II alliance was experiencing “brain death” as a result of diminished U.S. leadership under Trump.

“I think that’s insulting to a lot of different forces,” said Trump. “It’s very disrespectful.” But the president himself has questioned whether the alliance has become “obsolete,” and he accused NATO members anew of shirking national commitments on military spending.

Hours later, Macron and Trump sat side by side for a media session, and Macron said he stood by his comments about the health of the NATO alliance. He also firmly expressed his frustration that Trump withdrew hundreds of American troops from Syria in October

The U.S. president bantered with reporters for more than two hours Tuesday, sitting casually in a salon of Winfield House, the manicured estate of the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, where he also met with fellow NATO leaders.

He slammed the ongoing Democratic-led impeachment inquiry back in the United States as a “”hoax” and professed to be unconcerned about declines in the stock market spurred by his remark that a trade deal with China might not materialize until after the 2020 election.

Trump later called on Prince Charles and his wife Camilla and attended a NATO welcome reception at Buckingham Palace, before proceeding to an event at the prime minister’s residence at Number 10 Downing Street. Trump punctuated the day of diplomacy with a fundraiser for his reelection effort that his campaign said brought in $3 million.

The gathering of NATO leaders follows Trump’s frequent criticism of alliance members as falling well short in doing their financial part through the first three years of his presidency.

After a NATO summit last year, he called for members devote at least 4% of gross domestic product to military spending and took aim at German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom he accused of paying Russia ‘”billions of dollars for gas and energy” while failing to meet her nation’s commitment to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense.

But at this NATO meeting, Trump — who heads toward an election year looking to showcase foreign policy wins — is offering a more optimistic outlook for the alliance’s future. To that end, he suggested he deserved much of the credit for progress.

“I don’t think frankly before us that NATO was changing at all, and NATO is really changing right now,” Trump said as he sat down for a one-on-one talk with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

White House officials say that before Trump took office just four NATO members had reached the 2% benchmark set in 2014. Now there are nine, Eighteen of the 29 are projected to meet it by 2024.

Stoltenberg said that Trump does deserve credit for nudging members.

“The reality is that, not least because it has been so clearly conveyed from President Trump that we need fair burden sharing, allies are stepping up,” Stoltenberg said.

In his meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump gently ribbed the premier — whose country is spending about 1.3% of GDP on defense — as “slightly delinquent.”

“Some are major delinquent,” said Trump. He added that he’s looking at the possibility of imposing unspecified trade penalties against NATO allies that perpetually fall below benchmarks.

“Some are way below 1 percent and that’s unacceptable, and then if something happens we’re supposed to protect them and it’s not really fair and it never has been fair,” he said.

Trump’s talks with Macron were tense at times.

Before meeting with him on the sidelines of the summit, Trump laced into the French president for what he called “very, very nasty” comments in The Economist about NATO’s health with Trump leading its most important member.

Macron didn’t back down when they appeared later in the day, and he renewed his own criticism of Trump for withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria.

That decision by Trump, made without consulting France or other NATO allies, gave Turkey, another NATO member, a green light to launch operations against Syrian Kurdish forces who played a key role in the fight to clear a huge swath of Syria of the Islamic State.

Trump and Macron have had an up-and-down relationship in the nearly three years Trump’s been in office.

Macron, who early in Trump’s presidency had looked to cultivate a close relationship, hosted Trump in 2017 for Bastille Day celebrations in Paris. Trump reciprocated by honoring Macron last year with the first state visit of a foreign leader during his time in the White House.

As they answered questions from reporters, the new stress was most apparent as they discussed their concerns over Turkey’s plan to purchase an anti-aircraft missile system from Russia.

Macron said there is a disconnect in allowing Turkey to buy the system from Russia and also be a NATO member. Trump said he is weighing issuing sanctions against Ankara if it moves forward with plans to buy the weapons.

Ahead of the meeting, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would oppose a NATO plan to defend the Baltic region if the alliance does not back Turkey in its fight against Kurdish groups it considers terrorists.

“I’m sorry to say we don’t have the same definition of terrorism around the table,” Macron said in a swipe at Turkey.

Trump showed more deference to Erdogan, saying that Turkey was “very helpful” during the October U.S. commando raid that led to the death IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi near the Syria-Turkey border.

“We flew over areas that were totally controlled by Turkey and Turkish military,” Trump said. “We didn’t tell them what we were doing or where we were going. Turkey could not have been nicer, could not have been more supportive.”

At another point in their extended comments before the news media, Trump and Macron had a curt exchange about the repatriation of Islamic State fighters who are European citizens and were captured in Syria and Iraq in recent years. Trump has pressed unsuccessfully for European nations to accept fighters captured by U.S. forces.

“Would you like some nice ISIS fighters? I can give them to you,” Trump said. “You can take every one you want.”

“Let’s be serious,” Macron responded. “Your number one problem are not the foreign fighters.”

Trump retorted, “’That’s one of the greatest non-answers I’ve ever heard. And, that’s OK.”

After such exchanges, however, Trump gave Macron, along with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, a ride in his armored presidential limo from the queen’s reception at Buckingham Palace to another gathering hosted by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at No. 10 Downing St.

Story: Zeke Miller and Aamer Madhani

DAURA, Nigeria, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) — Nigeria has started the construction of the country’s first transportation university assisted by a Chinese firm.

The construction of the new specialized academic institution on a 413-hectare of land is undertaken by the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) Nigeria Ltd, as part of its corporate social responsibility in the country. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday attended the project’s ground-breaking ceremony.

When completed, the University of Transportation in Daura, the birthplace of Buhari in Nigeria’s northern state of Katsina, will focus on research and development of human capital for the country’s transport sector. It is expected to mark a new level of growth, as well as economic and educational development in Africa’s largest economy.

The Nigerian leader, while noting the university as the first of its kind in Africa, said it will provide technical skills, enhance managerial capacity and pave way for innovation in Nigeria’s transport system, as well as create more job opportunities.

Buhari said the local transport sector in the country was in dire need of new thinking, skills, and investment, further assuring that the university will open up opportunities for economic growth.

“When established, the university would, among other things, pave way for the domestication of railway engineering and general transportation sciences in Nigeria, thereby bridging the technology and skill gap in the railway and ultimately transportation sector,” the president said.

He described the project as one which keys into the efforts of the Nigerian government “toward promotion and development of indigenous capacity through technology acquisition and knowledge transfer to effectively maintain and operate numerous railway infrastructure”.

The completion of the university’s construction is expected within 18 months.

Rotimi Amaechi, Nigeria’s transport minister, told Xinhua in an interview that the project would go a long way to enhance the existing bilateral relationship between China and Nigeria, as well as encourage patronage of local content.

“We have talked about the transfer of technology. We have talked about the issue of maintenance… Being able to construct our own railways and knowledge transfer. That would be great,” Amaechi said.

Speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony which had several top government functionaries in attendance, Zhou Pingjian, the Chinese ambassador to Nigeria said the establishment of the University of Transportation was part of the ongoing effort of the Nigerian government to promote and develop the local capacity through technology acquisition in the rail transport sector.

Zhou also said China remained committed to working with Nigeria to implement the outcomes of the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum On China-Africa Cooperation and advance the Belt and Road Initiative for common development.

In addition to the university’s construction, the CCECC is also currently training at least 150 young Nigerian students in railway engineering in China, as well as building a railway rolling stock assembly plant in Kajola, a town in the southwestern state of Ogun.

In an interview with Xinhua, Jiang Yigao, the managing director of CCECC Nigeria Ltd, which has been in operation in Nigeria since 1981, said the university project was done to fully establish the railway industry in the west African country. The Chinese firm has been handling most of Nigeria’s major railway projects, including the flagship rail modernization project.

“During the construction of Nigeria’s railway projects, we thought it was very important to train people, to transfer technology and to develop the industry of railway,” Jiang said.

“This transportation university can reach this target. The railway is in huge demand in Nigeria, especially for economic development,” he added.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The co-founders of Google are stepping down as executives of its parent company, Alphabet, ending a remarkable two decades during which Larry Page and Sergey Brin shaped a startup born in a Silicon Valley garage into one of the largest, most powerful — and, increasingly, most feared — companies in the world.

Sundar Pichai, who has been leading Google as CEO for more than four years, will take on additional duties as Alphabet’s CEO, the position held by Page. The company isn’t filling Brin’s position as president.

Page and Brin started Google soon after they met as Stanford University graduate students in 1995.

What began as a way to catalog the growing internet has now become one of the most influential companies in the world. Google dominates online search and digital advertising and makes the world’s most widely used operating system for smartphones, Android. It’s hard to make it through a whole day without using one of Google’s services — ranging from online tools to email, cloud computing systems, phones and smart speaker hardware.

Yet Google has been facing pressure from privacy advocates over its collection and use of personal information to target advertising. It also faces allegations that it abuses its dominance in search and online advertising to push out rivals.

Google is the subject of antitrust inquiries from Congress, the Department of Justice and a contingency of states in the U.S. and from European authorities. The company has also faced harsh criticism about the material on its services. Its video streaming business, YouTube, was fined $170 million to settle allegations it improperly collected personal data on children without their parents’ consent.

Longtime tech analyst Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies doesn’t expect much to change with the executive shuffle. And if anything does, he said, it will be due to government regulation.

Pichai assured employees in an internal email that his new job wouldn’t mean he was taking a step back from Google.

“I want to be clear that this transition won’t affect the Alphabet structure or the work we do day to day,” he wrote. “I will continue to be very focused on Google and the deep work we’re doing to push the boundaries of computing and build a more helpful Google for everyone.”

Alphabet — an umbrella corporation that the two created in 2015 — still boasts Google as its central fixture and key moneymaker. But it’s also made up of what are known as “other bets,” or longshot projects. That includes drone company Wing and self-driving car firm Waymo.

Page and Brin, in announcing the news Tuesday, said the company has “evolved and matured” in the two decades since its founding. Both promised to stay active as board members and shareholders.

“Today, in 2019, if the company was a person, it would be a young adult of 21 and it would be time to leave the roost,” they wrote in a blog post.

Page and Brin, both 46, both have been noticeably absent from Google events in the past year. Both stopped making appearances at the weekly question-and-answer sessions with employees, and Page didn’t attend this summer’s Alphabet shareholders meeting even though he was still in the CEO role.

Alphabet has been positioning Pichai as the de facto leader for quite some time. It has made him the top executive voice at shareholders meetings, on earnings call and as a spokesman at congressional hearings.

Pichai, 47, has worked at the company for 15 years, serving as a leader in projects to build Google’s Chrome browser and overseeing Android. Pichai, who has an engineering background, took over as the head of Google’s products before being promoted to CEO when Alphabet was created. Pichai is known as a soft-spoken and respected manager.

Last year, Google raised hackles in Congress by refusing to send Page or Pichai to a hearing on Russian manipulation of internet services to sway U.S. elections. Congressional officials left an empty chair while top executives from Facebook and Twitter appeared. Offended lawmakers derided Google as “arrogant.”

Although Bajarin said he doesn’t believe Brin and Page are leaving “because the fire is getting hotter,” he said Pichai’s role at Google has been preparing him for the increased government scrutiny.

Brin and Page still hold a majority of voting shares of Alphabet. According to a regulatory filing in April, Page holds 42.9% of the company’s Class B shares and 26.1% of its voting power. Brin holds 41.3% of the Class B shares and 25.2% of the voting power. According to Forbes magazine, Page has a net worth of $52.4 billion and Brin $56.8 billion.

“Keep in mind, they are not losing their title as billionaires, but they are changing their roles,” Bajarin said.

Google’s stock increased less than 1% in after-hours trading after the news was announced.

Google’s longest serving CEO is still Eric Schmidt, the former executive brought into the role in 2001 as a so-called “adult supervisor” for Brin and Page. Schmidt stepped into the position as the company’s board worried about the relative inexperience of Brin and Page to manage the growing company. He remained CEO until 2011, when Page once again became chief executive. Schmidt stayed on the board until this year.

Page grew up in Michigan, where his late father, Carl, was a computer scientist and pioneer in artificial intelligence, and his mother taught computer programming. Page began working on personal computers when he was just 6 years old in 1979, when home computers were a rarity. The geeky impulses carried into his adulthood, leading him to once build an inkjet printer out of Legos.

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Story: Rachel Lerman. AP Technology Writers Mae Anderson in New York and Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco contributed to this story.