LONDON — Codebreaker and computing pioneer Alan Turing has been chosen as the face of Britain’s new 50 pound note, the Bank of England announced Monday.

Governor Mark Carney said Turing, who did ground-breaking work on computers and artificial intelligence, was “a giant on whose shoulders so many now stand.”

During World War II Turing worked at the secret Bletchley Park code-breaking center, where he helped crack Nazi Germany’s secret codes by creating the “Turing bombe,” a forerunner of modern computers. He also developed the “Turing Test” to measure artificial intelligence.

After the war he was prosecuted for homosexuality, which was then illegal, and forcibly treated with female hormones. He died at age 41 in 1954 after eating an apple laced with cyanide.

Turing received a posthumous apology from the British government in 2009, and a royal pardon in 2013.

The U.K’s highest-denomination note is the last to be redesigned and switched from paper to more secure and durable polymer…

(Bloomberg) — Former U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice sparred with a senior Chinese diplomat on Twitter in an unusual and heated dispute over race in Washington.

In a series of Tweets apparently aimed at making a broader point about diplomatic divisions over the mass detention of Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province, Lijian Zhao, a diplomat posted in Islamabad, said on Sunday that if “you’re in Washington, D.C., you know the white never go” to the southeastern part of the U.S. capital.

“You are a racist disgrace. And shockingly ignorant too,” Rice told Zhao on Twitter. Likely assuming that Zhao was posted in China’s mission in Washington, she then addressed her next comment to China’s ambassador to the U.S., Cui Tiankai. “Ambassador Cui, I expect better of you and your team. Please do the right thing and send him home.”

You are a racist disgrace. And shockingly ignorant too. In normal times, you would be PNGed for this.

Ambassador Cui, I expect better of you and your team…

Chinese authorities detained another Canadian citizen last week in the eastern city of Yantai, further raising diplomatic tensions between the two nations.

Canada’s foreign ministry confirmed that the unnamed person is receiving consular services, according to the New York Times.

Relations between the countries have been strained since two Canadians were detained in China in December. Their arrest was believed to be a retaliatory move for the arrest of Huawei’s CFO, Meng Wangzhou, in Vancouver at the request of U.S. authorities over alleged Iran sanctions violations.

The Canadians, ex-diplomat Michael Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor, have been charged with espionage.

The latest arrest happened around the same time that China detained several foreign students and teachers on drug-related charges in the eastern Chinese city of Xuzhou. At least four are Britons, according to the Times.

It is unclear if last week’s detention is related to the drug case, or was meant to put pres..

(JAKARTA, Indonesia) — A strong earthquake in eastern Indonesia killed two people and damaged at least dozens of homes, a disaster official said Monday, as the government declared a seven-day emergency response period.

The magnitude 7.3 quake on Sunday was centered 166 kilometers (103 miles) southeast of Ternate, the capital of North Maluku province, at a depth of just 10 kilometers (6 miles). Shallow quakes can cause more damage.

National disaster agency spokesman Agus Wibowo said two women were killed by collapsing houses and more than 2,000 people have fled to temporary shelters. The quake was followed by at least 65 smaller aftershocks.

The agency is still assessing the level of destruction but said two bridges and about 58 homes in one village alone, Saketa, were damaged.

Authorities said there was no tsunami risk from the quake, but many people ran to higher ground anyway. TV footage showed people screaming while running out of a shopping mall in Ternate.

The hardest-hit are..

(TAIPEI, Taiwan) — Taiwan’s main opposition party picked a pro-China populist mayor Monday as its candidate for the 2020 presidential race against an incumbent who often bashes Beijing.

The Nationalist Party said Han Kuo-yu had won the presidential primary after opinion poll results gave him a 45 percent support rating. He defeated four other candidates including former Foxconn Technology chairman Terry Gou and will face incumbent Tsai Ing-wen in the January election.

Han has vowed to make peace with China, and signed deals with four Chinese cities in March to sell 5.2 billion New Taiwan dollars ($167 million) worth of Taiwanese agricultural products. Tsai has refused to negotiate with China on Beijing’s condition that the two sides belong under one flag.

China and Taiwan have been separately ruled since 1949, but Beijing still claims sovereignty over the island and occasionally threatens use of force to take it, if needed. A Taiwan government public opinion survey in January showed..