“We Are All Strangers,” written and directed by Anthony Chen, has been selected as Singapore‘s official entry in the international feature category at the 99th Academy Awards, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) said.

The pick was made by a Selection Committee drawn from eligible members of the Singapore Film Commission Advisory Committee (SFCAC).

Set in contemporary Singapore, the film centers on family relationships and unexpected life changes. It stars Chen’s frequent collaborators Yeo Yann Yann and Koh Jia Ler, with Andi Lim and Regene Lim rounding out the cast. Earlier this year, it became the first Singaporean film selected for the main competition at the Berlin Film Festival in the festival’s 76-year history, competing against 21 other international films for the Golden Bear.

“We Are All Strangers” completes Chen’s Growing Up trilogy, which began with “Ilo Ilo” in 2013 and continued with “Wet Season” in 2019. The two earlier films have collectively won more than 50 international accolades, including 12 Golden Horse nominations and five Golden Horse Awards, along with “Ilo Ilo”‘s Caméra d’Or win at Cannes. Both films previously served as Singapore’s Oscars entries, at the 86th and 93rd Academy Awards respectively.

Produced by Chen’s Giraffe Pictures and supported by IMDA, “We Are All Strangers” opened in Singapore cinemas in August and is rolling out progressively across international markets. Paradise City Sales is handling world sales. Film Movement holds North American distribution rights, and the film is currently screening at the Toronto Film Festival, marking its debut on the continent.

Yvonne Tang, assistant chief executive at IMDA’s Media Industry Group, said, “After careful deliberation by the selection committee, we are proud to present ‘We Are All Strangers’ as Singapore’s official entry to the 99th Academy Awards. Anthony has a remarkable ability to tell stories that are deeply rooted in Singapore while resonating with audiences around the world. We’re excited to celebrate this latest milestone with Anthony, whose talent, dedication, and belief have driven the trilogy over the past 10 years. We also hope Singaporeans watch and support this film.”

Chen said it meant a great deal to have the film picked to close out a project he has poured a decade into, and that watching every installment of the trilogy go on to represent Singapore has been a defining achievement for everyone who helped make them. “These stories belong to Singapore, and presenting this final chapter of the trilogy on the global stage is a privilege for me as a filmmaker,” he said.

A cargo ship docked for repairs at a port on the northeastern coast of China caught fire Thursday, killing at least 25 people who were on board at the time, according to Chinese state media.

The ship was being fixed by Beihai Shipbuilding Co. in the port of Qingdao — one of the country’s major shipping hubs — when it caught fire at approximately 11:15 a.m. local time, the Xinhua news agency reported.

A total of 42 people were on the vessel at the time of the blaze, and 12 of them were safely rescued, Xinhua reported. Five others were injured and taken to the hospital, where they are in stable condition.

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Photos released by Xinhua identified the ship as the Ocean Melody. The ship-tracking website VesselFinder lists it as sailing under the Liberian flag.

The Associated Press reported that the fire was extinguished at around 2:30 p.m., a little over three hours after it started. Videos online showed plumes of white smoke billowing from the ship.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation. Chinese authorities have not said what sparked the blaze while the vessel was undergoing repairs.

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China’s President Xi Jinping called for “intensified efforts” to provide support for those who were affected by the fire, Xinhua reported, adding that Premier Li Qiang said “trapped people” needed to be rescued.

Xi also called for ensuring “preventive measures are thoroughly implemented” and “resolutely prevent major and catastrophic accidents.”

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Beihai Shipbuilding is a subsidiary of the state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation, the world’s largest shipbuilder. According to the company’s website, its primary businesses are shipbuilding and ship repair.

Qingdao, in China’s Shandong province, is one of the country’s busiest ports and a major center for shipbuilding, shipping and international trade. The port handles millions of containers each year and is home to several large shipyards.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

AI was used to develop missile guidance software and to power state-linked cyber-espionage operations, a new report reveals.

Anthropic AI claims to have thwarted multiple malicious operations using its Claude models, ranging from cyber-espionage and weapons design to mass surveillance campaigns.

On the conventional weapons front, the company alleges in a new report that it intervened in northern Yemen, blocking an effort to deploy Claude for missile guidance software, including a guided rocket and a long-range ballistic missile.

AI-assisted missile and rocket development

According to Anthropic’s threat report, the operators used Claude “in place of human software engineers”, reportedly assigning different instances of the model specific roles to write missile-guidance and flight-control software.

While internal safeguards blocked many requests, Anthropic admitted several slipped through. The operators avoided detection by obscuring their ultimate goals and breaking tasks across separate sessions, so no single prompt gave away the operation.

The company said it has no evidence the group managed to field a working weapon, though Anthropic claimed the operators appeared to have conducted an unsuccessful test-fire.

The report stated that the company banned the accounts involved and “shared threat information with public- and private-sector partners to mitigate risks posed by the actors”.

State-linked cyber-espionage

The report alleges that a Russian-linked espionage operation bearing the hallmarks of Midnight Blizzard (or APT29), which Anthropic said relied on automated AI workflows to run nearly the entire operation, handling everything from phishing and setup to data theft against Ukrainian, European and diplomatic targets, including drone makers.

Separately, the company said it disrupted a Chinese operation run by university students in Hunan province, who used Claude “as the engineering and orchestration layer” of an offensive programme targeting government and corporate networks across the Middle East, Europe and Southeast Asia.

In both cases, Anthropic said it banned the associated accounts and deployed additional monitoring to detect similar activity.

Identifying targets, including in Syria and Iran

Anthropic also alleges that it identified and removed three Iranian state-aligned accounts using Claude to run covert influence and psychological operations. Each operation was tied to a named Iranian propaganda institution, including the Islamic Culture and Communications Organisation and a Mashhad seminary command room distributing content aligned with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) narratives.

In another instance, the report alleges that state-aligned groups used Claude for an industrial-scale operation, directing the model to generate structured profiles that mapped targets by location, demographics, political leanings, and confidence scores.

“The most operationally mature case,” Anthropic noted in its report, was detected when a China-aligned account “with no Arabic language skills” used Claude to run a “multi-day recruitment operation to infiltrate Uyghur targets in Syria”. Anthropic said, “the model drafted outreach in the regional dialect” and “translated replies in real time”.

Earlier this week, Anthropic revealed yet another incident of an AI model gaining unauthorised access to external systems involving an early version of Claude Opus 4.6, shortly after former company researcher Jacob Coxon publicly resigned over safety concerns.

“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” Coxon warned in a post on X. A further Anthropic scientist, Evan Hubinger, later chimed in, saying Coxon was correct.

The researchers’ warnings have led a growing number of US lawmakers to call for new rules to govern AI systems.

Anthropic said it is investigating the recurring issues and breaches across the incidents and has engaged an independent research firm to review them.

Relationship with Washington

Relations between Washington and the AI company remain fraught following a contentious standoff over ethical guardrails. Earlier this year, the Pentagon blacklisted the company as a supply chain risk after it refused to drop safeguards against using its technology for autonomous weaponry and domestic surveillance.

Anthropic challenged the decision in California, where a judge ruled last month that the US Department of Defense had acted unlawfully in issuing the designation. Yet despite the bitter legal battle and public friction, the Pentagon has reportedly deployed the firm’s Claude models in military missions in Iran and Venezuela.

The report arrives at a critical juncture for the company as it seeks to restore full standing within the US defence industrial base following the Pentagon’s blacklisting.