Beijing is competing with the U.S. for tech supremacy. Who wins will have huge political implications. As Donald Trump has cut research funds, China has pursued what one investor calls an "all-hands-on-deck approach to national innovation." Kai-Fu Lee, the C.E.O. of the artificial-intelligence company 01.AI, lives in a mirrored high-rise in Beijing, near a procession of landmarks that emperors considered the center of the cosmos. Lee takes early meetings at a nearby hotel that could be in any country, except that the room service is delivered by robots painted in the livery of butlers and maids. State propaganda hails these robots as emblems of China's ascent; in the hallway, most people sidestep them with the kind of indifference usually reserved for a Roomba. Over breakfast one recent morning, Lee, wearing a white polo shirt and rimless glasses, spoke about the future with an air of sanguine curiosity. He was born in Taiwan in 1961 and built his career by following the moving ...

The Michigan U.S. Senate candidate on campaigning with Hasan Piker, being a capitalist, and why his fellow-Democrats need to "stop compromising." Abdul El-Sayed, the front-runner in Michigan's Democratic primary for Senate, is sometimes lumped together with other rising stars on the left. He does refer to the Democratic Party's "brand" as "bullshit" and has taken clear left-leaning positions on health care, Israel, and much else. But, at the same time, he is a self-described capitalist. He is also a former public-health official and a Rhodes Scholar. As he told me when we spoke recently for The New Yorker Radio Hour, his influences include both Bernie Sanders, a socialist, and Barack Obama, a liberal Democrat. He refers to Israel's war in Gaza as a genocide, but unlike, say, Darializa Avila Chevalier, who is almost certainly going to win a congressional seat in New York, he denounces the October 7th massacre--and certainly would not have attended, as Chavalier did, a pro-Hamas rally on October 8th, or ever. El-Sayed is forty-one and the son of Egyptian immigrants. If elected, he would be the first Muslim ever to serve in the U.S. Senate. His opponent in the August 4th primary, Haley Stevens, represents the Party establishment: she has won endorsements from Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. She is a former Obama Administration official who worked on the rescue of the car industry, which is an especially appealing credential in Michigan. Stevens and groups supporting her have spent sixty million dollars on ads--half of that sum has come from the pro-Israel lobbying group . At this point, polls suggest that El-Sayed is leading Stevens in the Democratic Party race, but in a general election he is trailing the Republican Mike Rogers by ten points, while Stevens is running even. El-Sayed, who is both fluid and charming, also shows flashes of bravado and hauteur, particularly directed against his opponents. It was perhaps not a good idea, considering his Oxford and Ivy League bona fides, to say that Stevens could not "string together two coherent sentences." According to, El-Sayed recently said on a call with donors, referring to Senator John Fetterman, "You put one ogre on a pike, and then everyone else gets the message, and all of a sudden starts to sound a lot different." He is strong with younger voters; he is trailing with Black voters. He would ban, withhold funding for arms for Israel, push for Medicare for All, and "get money out of politics."

Fireworks by Grucci has been in the pyrotechnics business for six generations. For America's 250th, Grucci fired dozens of shows, including one that covered the entire three-and-a-half-mile Vegas Strip. A few days before the Fourth of July, I was on the rooftop of a casino in Las Vegas, where I ran into the head electrician of the Eisenhower Theatre at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, which is in Washington, D.C. The electrician, Thomas Benya, who is also a licensed pyrotechnician, had come to Vegas with a swarm of other pyrotechnicians, to set up, and set off, what was being billed as the nation's largest fireworks show. Back in D.C., President Donald Trump was claiming that show, around the National Mall, would be bigger, and that he would be giving a "really long" speech. Trump had been trying to muscle his name onto the Kennedy Center, and then, amid a series of staff departures and cancellations by performers, closed the place down for a "comprehensive revitalization project"; Benya, who enjoys "building art with people," and who has worked at the Kennedy Center for twenty years, since he was eighteen, told me, "It's been traumatic." Vegas seemed unlikely to offer respite. Three hundred and twenty-nine thousand visitors were in town, to celebrate America's two-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday, and all of them were on my elevator. It was a million degrees outside. On a different rooftop, on another day, a gloved woman whose T-shirt read " " paused while loading orange-strobe fireworks shells into three-inch mortars and told me, "When you've been around one hundred and twenty and above, this doesn't even feel like anything." The best sweaty person I saw in Vegas was an older woman with upswept black hair and bangs, wearing a lime-green fake chrysanthemum as plump as a grapefruit tucked behind her right ear, and carrying a Spanish fan. This was at a coffee shop in the Arts District, miles from the Strip. At the next table was a woman who also had black bangs, plus lip piercings and a tattoo on both wrists. She was engrossed in a book called "Fool's Errand," a fantasy novel about an assassin named FitzChivalry Farseer who, per a quick Google, has abandoned "self-imposed exile to rescue a missing prince and navigate perilous political waters." The woman wore an "Invader Zim" T-shirt: " " Belowground was the Vegas Loop--Elon Musk's idea.

The Chinese have broken the Dutch company's hold over deep-ultraviolet lithography, a technique essential to the computer chip supply chain. The Chinese have broken the Dutch company's hold over deep-ultraviolet lithography, a technique essential to the computer chip supply chain. Even for the rollercoaster world of AI, last week was particularly volatile as investors scrambled to keep up with developments that threatened the dominance of the largest western chipmakers. It began with a double whammy. On Monday, the Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT floated on the Shanghai stock market, soaring by 466% in value to 3.3tn yuan (£365bn).

Only about one in 10,000 porcupines are born with albinism. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. The small mammal was found after some dogs were chasing it and brought to the Center for Wildlife, a private 501(c)(3) non-profit wildlife medical clinic and nature-based education center that receives no state or federal funding. To learn more about the organization and our work, please visit www.thecenterforwildlife.org. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week.

These ultra-long commercial flights are becoming more common thanks to design innovations and fuel capacity. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. At 24 hours and 24 minutes of flight time, Project Sunrise broke the old record for longest-ever flight by a commercial-style aircraft. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy .

The Moonshot AI stand at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai in July. The Moonshot AI stand at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai in July. China's tech advances are causing chaos from Silicon Valley to the White House O ver the past month, a series of advancements in China's artificial intelligence, chip manufacturing and robotics technologies have rattled financial markets, caused divisions among US tech moguls and left the Trump administration scrambling to respond. Silicon Valley has long pointed to China's tech industry as a competitive threat and used its growth as rationale for why US firms should not face regulatory oversight that could slow them down. In recent weeks, however, China's progress has pushed US tech CEOs past vague warnings and into open disagreement over how to address Chinese-made products upending their industry.

More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Tourist feedings have sustained more rabbits than the island's natural environment could otherwise support. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy . Okunoshima Island in Japan's Hiroshima Prefecture is famous for its huge population of free-range rabbits .

Trust us, August 12 is a really big day. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. The Perseid meteor shower over the Ulanbum grassland in Chifeng city, Inner Mongolia, China, on August 14, 2023. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy .

Environment Animals Pets Monkeys sometimes have'pets' like humans And it may explain why we love ours so much. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. A review of over 300 cases of inter-species friendships indicates primates are also socially curious. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy .