The popular AI framework Virtuals Protocol will host an in-person meet-up in Hong Kong on Friday, January 17.

April 10: Shipping intelligence firm Kpler reports the number of vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz on April 9 rose to 9, up from 5 the previous day—but remains well below typical normalized levels. (Golden Ten)

April 10 — Upcoming Israel-Lebanon talks set for Washington next week will be limited to ambassador-level discussions, not higher-level negotiations, per The Wall Street Journal, mediators and a source familiar with the matter.

April 10th — The Kremlin said Friday that Russian special envoy Dmitryev’s recent U.S. trip does not signal a restart of Ukraine peace talks. Dmitryev did not engage in Ukraine-related negotiations during the visit, the Kremlin added. Russia is pursuing peace rather than just a ceasefire, and peace could be achieved today if Ukrainian President Zelensky makes a decision, it noted. The Orthodox Easter ceasefire also holds humanitarian significance, per the statement. (Source: Gold10)

Leading global AI benchmarking platform LMArena (which has over 1 million users participating in blind tests) updated its Code Arena specialized leaderboard today, per monitoring from 1M AI News. GLM-5.1 topped the global open-source model rankings and took third place overall in the global model rankings. GLM-5.1 not only retains the state-of-the-art (SOTA) coding capabilities of its predecessor in the open-source space but also made significant breakthroughs in long-horizon tasks, including: 1. Building a Linux desktop from scratch in 8 hours; 2. Overcoming the vector database optimization bottleneck in 655 iterations; 3. Optimizing real-world machine learning model workloads via 1,000 rounds of tool calls. Notably, under the same evaluation metrics as the METR ranking, GLM-5.1 is the only open-source model capable of sustained work at the 8-hour mark—and one of just a handful of models globally with this capability, alongside Claude Opus 4.6.

April 10 — CCTV News reported that Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar confirmed six of seven oil tankers bound for Malaysia have successfully transited the Strait of Hormuz. The remaining tanker is undergoing mechanical repairs at a port due to a technical issue.

April 10 — HSBC said it welcomes the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s issuance of a stablecoin license and plans to launch a Hong Kong dollar-denominated stablecoin in the second half of 2026.