Connect with us

Technology

A friendship that blossoms in the Mu Us Desert

Published

on

BEIJING, Sept. 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — A report from People’s Daily

In Pennsylvania, the United States, the Allegheny River winds through Pittsburgh. Just east of the city lies the township of Plum, where Ronald Sakolsky, known to his Chinese friends as “Sai Kaosi,” has called home for many years.

“Part of my heart is still in China.” Upon returning recently from a trip across the Pacific, Sakolsky found it difficult to hide how deeply he missed the country.

His living room is filled with mementos from his travels. The sofa is covered with photos he brought back from his trip. But his most treasured keepsake is a large cross-stitch embroidery presented to him by Yin Yuzhen. Green leaves symbolizing peace surround a globe, with China and the United States stitched in different colors. The Chinese characters meaning “one earth, one dream” capture the deep friendship that has grown between Sakolsky and Yin over more than two decades.

“Yuanfen” — a special bond or sense of destiny — is the word Sakolsky repeatedly uses in Chinese when talking about his story with China. “It’s all yuanfen,” he said.

In 1999, at the age of 40, Sakolsky was a history teacher at a middle school in Pennsylvania. By chance, he came to Luoyang, central China’s Henan province, to teach through a China-U.S. teacher exchange program.

One day in October that year, he turned on the television as usual to watch the news. On the screen was a vast stretch of desert, where a petite Chinese woman from a rural area was carrying a bundle of tree saplings taller than she was. And that woman was Yin Yuzhen.

“I suddenly burst into tears,” he recalled. Deeply moved by what he saw, he thought, “I have to do something.”

For the next two months, Sakolsky searched everywhere for a way to make a donation. Eventually, he found a charitable organization willing to provide $5,000 with no conditions attached. Sakolsky insisted that every cent of the money go toward helping Yin plant trees.

In the spring of 2000, Sakolsky traveled to the Mu Us Desert in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region in north China. As he watched Yin plant the frail-looking saplings, he could not help wondering: Could a desert really be turned into a forest? It seemed impossible.

The second day after returning to China in August this year, he stood in the forest that had been planted with the $5,000 donation. Yin had named it “Sai Kaosi Forest.”

The dream he had once thought impossible had become a reality. More than 50,000 trees now grow there, forming a vast forest.

At the airport, he and Yin embraced in tears after 26 years apart. The following day, they planted another evergreen tree together as a symbol of their friendship.

“I have hugged Americans, and I have hugged Chinese. The feeling is the same,” Sakolsky said repeatedly after his latest trip to China.

Since returning home, he has been sharing his experiences online and reconnecting with old friends. Last week, he spoke to about 50 neighbors in his community, and soon he plans to address nearly 1,000 residents in Pittsburgh.

“We’ve sparked a flame of people-to-people exchange. Now, we just need to keep it burning,” he said.

He picked up a photo taken during his trip to China, showing him and Yin leaning against each other’s shoulders and embracing in tears.

“If I had to choose one photo to represent the friendship between the American and Chinese people, it would be this one,” he said. “This photo tells the whole story. It captures everything about this friendship.”

“The American and Chinese people share the same basic human goodness. Both have kindness in their hearts,” Sakolsky said.

In his view, Chinese and Americans both love their families, hope their children can have better lives, cherish peace and want to make the land beneath their feet a better place. These shared values matter far more than the differences brought about by nationality, he said. They form the simplest and most genuine foundation for people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States.

Outside the window, two newly planted green plants stand side by side on the lawn in front of Sakolsky’s, with the national flags of China and the United States fluttering nearby.

He said he had deliberately planted the two flowers in the front yard as a symbol of his hopes for friendship, peace and the protection of the shared planet.

“People-to-people friendship works. Our story will continue, just like the forest in the Mu Us Desert thousands of miles away, growing year after year,” Sakolsky said.

Stories of people coming to know and understand one another will continue to cross the ocean, putting down new rings of growth, one after another.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/a-friendship-that-blossoms-in-the-mu-us-desert-302888532.html

SOURCE People’s Daily

Continue Reading

Technology

Edvance and CWG Bring RealRelay.ai to Singapore, an Agentic AI Platform with Trust Built In

Published

on

By

Hong Kong-listed Edvance (HKEX: 1410) signs a three-year agreement with Singapore’s CWG Innovations, pairing more than 20 years of cybersecurity expertise with a platform that lets organisations build AI agents they can trust

SINGAPORE, Sept. 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Singapore is moving quickly on AI. Schools, universities and businesses are starting to use AI agents, software that can plan and act on its own, to teach, analyse and handle everyday work. With that comes a harder question. Can these agents be trusted?

In January 2026, the Infocomm Media Development Authority launched a Model AI Governance Framework for Agentic AI, which flags the risk of agents taking unauthorised or erroneous actions once they have access to sensitive data and systems. The Cyber Security Agency of Singapore has also issued guidance on securing agentic AI. For any organisation putting agents to work, security and governance need to be there from the start.

RealRelay.ai has been designed with this in mind. Edvance International Holdings Limited (HKEX: 1410) (“Edvance”), a Hong Kong-listed cybersecurity group, has signed a three-year strategic cooperation agreement with Singapore-based CWG Innovations Pte. Ltd. (“CWG”) to bring RealRelay.ai, a unified agentic AI platform the two companies are developing together, to market. The agreement was entered into through Paradise Matrix Pte. Ltd., Edvance’s wholly-owned subsidiary in Singapore.

A trust layer at the core

At the heart of RealRelay.ai is a trust layer. A built-in security agent tests each AI agent on the platform and tests it again every time it changes, so organisations can deploy agents with confidence. This is where the two companies meet. The trust layer draws on Edvance’s more than 20 years in cybersecurity, and CWG brings its experience in building and deploying AI across ASEAN.

Around that trust layer, RealRelay.ai gives enterprises and institutions one place to create, govern and deploy AI agents without writing code. More than 300 mainstream AI models sit behind a single interface, each task is matched to an appropriate model, and the platform is designed to run in the cloud, on-premises or fully offline.

What the agreement means for Edvance

Edvance will be responsible for commercialising the platform, drawing on its cybersecurity distribution business and enterprise customer base, with the aim of generating subscription revenue. CWG will operate and manage the platform from Singapore. All intellectual property developed for the platform’s cybersecurity AI agents will belong exclusively to Edvance.

The agreement marks Edvance’s entry into agentic AI and follows through on the strategy it set out earlier this year, to build its own solutions where AI and cybersecurity meet. It is designed to add recurring, subscription-based revenue alongside Edvance’s established business, with the potential to strengthen earnings visibility over time.

Education first, with early results

Education is the first vertical, with planned features including personalised learning and no-code agent building for students and educators. Cybersecurity follows, with tools for security operations centre triage and automated adversary simulation, and fintech has been identified as the next vertical after that.

The platform has already met its first users. At APEX Bootcamp: RealRelay Edition, organised by the Digital Defence Alliance Singapore and co-hosted by CWG on 12 and 13 September 2026, students and young working adults with no technical or AI background built working AI agents in two days. The programme was oversubscribed, and every team delivered a working minimum viable product. Participants said having many models in one place let them focus on the problem, and that security checks ran while they were building.

Edvance’s foray into safe, trusted agentic AI comes at an opportune time for Singapore. The government is investing more than S$1 billion in its National AI Research and Development Plan for 2025 to 2030, and from the 2027 academic year all students entering Singapore’s institutes of higher learning will take compulsory modules covering baseline AI competencies. Edvance and CWG will begin in Singapore and plan to expand across ASEAN.

About Edvance International Holdings Limited

Edvance International Holdings Limited (HKEX: 1410) is a Hong Kong-headquartered value-added distributor of cybersecurity products and provider of cybersecurity services, with more than 20 years of experience in the market. Paradise Matrix Pte. Ltd. is Edvance’s wholly-owned subsidiary in Singapore. For more information, visit https://www.paradisematrix.sg.

About CWG Innovations Pte. Ltd.

CWG Innovations Pte. Ltd. is a Singapore company focused on AI solutions development and enterprise AI deployment across ASEAN. CWG is the operator of RealRelay.ai. For more information, visit https://www.cwgsg.ai.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/edvance-and-cwg-bring-realrelayai-to-singapore-an-agentic-ai-platform-with-trust-built-in-302888538.html

SOURCE Edvance International Holdings Limited; CWG Innovations

Continue Reading

Technology

Avalara Ushers in New Era of Agentic Tax and Compliance with Avalara Aviator

Published

on

By

Avalara’s new agent hub brings together specialized AI agents to execute complex tax and compliance workflows while keeping people in control of the decisions that matter

PUNE, India, Sept. 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Avalara, Inc., the agentic AI leader in global tax and compliance, today unveiled Avalara Aviator at its CRUSH customer and partner conference. The new agent hub for tax and compliance turns days of manual work into minutes of oversight, with an audit-defensible record for every action.

As businesses expand across markets, channels, and business models, tax and compliance requirements are becoming more interconnected, more digital, and increasingly real-time. For years, tax software has automated individual compliance tasks, but much of the work between those tasks has remained manual and siloed. Avalara Aviator is designed to close that gap with intelligent agents that can understand context, coordinate work, monitor variance, and take action. Humans delegate the work while remaining in control of the decisions.

“Our customers need a system they can trust to get real work done,” said Hugo Sarrazin, Chief Executive Officer at Avalara. “Avalara Aviator fulfills that need. It’s built on more than 22 years of closed-loop compliance data, which informs every calculation, every filing, and every report. And that’s what enables us to turn days of manual compliance work into minutes of confident oversight.”

A turning point for compliance

For years, tax software has automated discrete compliance tasks, such as calculating taxes, filing returns, and managing exemption certificates. While that sped up each task, finance professionals have been left bridging the gaps between them, such as having to manage configurations, interpret reports, chase approvals, and understand how to construct business logic to meet their requirements.

Avalara is the first company to bridge these industry-wide deficits by bringing specialized AI agents, tax and compliance workflows, and Avalara’s trusted compliance technology into a connected agent hub. This helps customers move from understanding what needs to happen to getting the work done.

Customers interact with Avalara Aviator in plain language through Avi, its orchestrator AI agent. Avi can orchestrate by reaching out to “lead agents” that oversee key areas like research, certificates, and returns. The agents validate, reconcile, proactively surface insights, and execute compliance work, while keeping people in control of decisions requiring judgment and oversight.

The initial Avalara Aviator experience supports compliance operations, including capabilities that help customers:

Map products to tax codesReport transaction and tax liability dataValidate exemption certificatesAuto-generate tax matricesAnalyze results across multiple applicationsConfigure custom rules

For example, a customer can describe a needed tax rule in plain language. Avi then drafts the rule, simulates its impact on past transactions, and flags any conflicts with other rules. The customer reviews and approves the change before Avi activates the rule.

Avalara Aviator is initially being delivered to existing customers at no additional cost. Over time, Avalara plans to extend agentic capabilities across more of the compliance lifecycle and into the ERP, e-commerce, finance, and collaboration platforms customers already use. The goal is to make Avalara’s trusted tax and compliance platform available wherever work is happening.

Built for trust, accuracy, and control

Generic AI tools can struggle with complex, multi-step workflows that require context, accuracy, and continuity over time. They can’t connect to critical business systems fast enough to be useful, and they aren’t purpose-built for the accuracy that business-critical workflows demand.

In contrast, Avalara Aviator combines agentic AI with the compliance infrastructure Avalara has built for more than 22 years. That includes proprietary data and learnings from the market’s most trusted tax and compliance platform.

The result is an agentic experience designed to go beyond plausible answers and deliver source-backed, explainable, and expert-verified outcomes customers can understand, trust, and defend.

Preya Chandan, Senior Tax Accountant with Singer Equipment Company, Inc., a distributor of foodservice equipment and an Avalara Aviator beta customer, said the technology has changed how she approaches her work.

“As a tax accountant focused on audit readiness, I need tools that go beyond answering questions to help me think about the ones I haven’t asked yet,” Chandan said. “Avalara Aviator does that in one place, explaining taxability in plain language, surfacing considerations I might have missed, and providing trusted research I can rely on for detailed, defensible work.”

Industry analysts say that a combination of usefulness and defensibility is particularly important as AI moves deeper into regulated business processes.

“Agentic AI adoption in finance has moved well beyond exploration, and the question is now about how to broadly scale its use,” said Kevin Permenter, Research Director at IDC. “Finance teams are prioritizing agentic AI because they see it as an important operational capability. Scaling that impact depends on security and compliance, data quality and governance, and reliable outputs. That’s why many finance organizations lean toward agent capabilities that sit directly alongside their core SaaS systems, where existing security controls and financial data models are already established.”

The next era of agentic tax and compliance

Avalara Aviator advances Avalara’s broader vision for agentic tax and compliance: intelligent systems that find and manage risk before it finds you. It’s designed to not only monitor but proactively recommend actions. Upcoming enhancements will include features such as self-healing, in which agents examine changes to your business and recommend fixes to root discrepancies before they can turn into filing liabilities. It will be able to catch anomalies unloading a traditional human review onto an agentic worker.

Avalara Aviator will be generally available following next month’s Avalara CRUSH Europe event.

About Avalara
Avalara is the agentic AI leader in global tax and compliance. For more than two decades, Avalara’s trusted tax content, deep compliance expertise, proprietary data, and technology have helped customers succeed on a global scale. Avalara now pairs that foundation with agentic AI to help businesses execute complex compliance work while keeping people in control. Avalara processes more than 54 billion AvaTax API calls annually and supports millions of businesses worldwide. For more information, visit Avalara.com.

This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding Avalara’s product plans, technology capabilities, and expected availability dates. These statements describe Avalara’s intentions as of the date of release and are subject to change without notice.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/avalara-ushers-in-new-era-of-agentic-tax-and-compliance-with-avalara-aviator-302886904.html

Continue Reading

Technology

Reconova Makes Its Debut at PTE Asia 2026, Accelerating the Global Expansion of Smart Aviation through Embodied Intelligence

Published

on

By

SINGAPORE, Sept. 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — From September 23 to 24, Reconova (07656.HK) made its debut at PTE Asia 2026, the inaugural Asian edition of Passenger Terminal Expo, in Singapore. The company showcased a range of embodied AI products and solutions, including its baggage transfer robot and intelligent passenger processing solutions, demonstrating how embodied intelligence can enhance airport operations and productivity. The exhibits attracted strong interest from airport operators, industry experts, and aviation stakeholders from across Asia.

According to ACI data, airports across Asia and the Middle East are entering an unprecedented cycle of infrastructure investment, with approximately US$240 billion expected to be invested over the next decade in new airports, terminal expansion, and modernization. At the same time, demand for technologies such as AI and automation continues to grow.

Reconova has been deeply engaged in smart aviation for nearly a decade, with its solutions now deployed at more than one-third of China’s civil airports. Building on years of technological development and large-scale project delivery experience, the company is systematically adapting its products and solutions to meet the evolving digitalization and automation needs of airports across Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East.

As a provider of productivity-focused commercial robotics, Reconova has developed a full-stack embodied intelligence technology architecture spanning visual perception, cognition, reasoning, and execution. Its technology stack is built on capabilities including vision foundation models, with visual agents serving as a core capability and embodied robots as a strategic extension.

The AntOne baggage transfer robot and related solutions showcased at PTE Asia 2026 demonstrate how this technology strategy is being applied to real-world airport operations.

Reconova’s participation in PTE Asia 2026 marks another important step in its international expansion. Through an asset-light, deep-collaboration model, the company aims to bring its technologies and technical standards to global markets. Its international strategy initially focuses on leading airports in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, establishing reference projects before expanding to other major airports across these regions and further into Europe and the broader Asia-Pacific market.

Reconova’s intelligent passenger processing solution is currently undergoing a proof of concept (PoC) at Tashkent International Airport in Uzbekistan, while the AntOne baggage transfer robot is being introduced to markets including Europe and Japan.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/reconova-makes-its-debut-at-pte-asia-2026-accelerating-the-global-expansion-of-smart-aviation-through-embodied-intelligence-302888580.html

SOURCE Reconova

Continue Reading

Trending