What is Cartel de los Soles? Does'America First' make the US weaker? Who is Marjorie Taylor Greene? A bipartisan group of United States senators, including prominent Republican China hawk Tom Cotton, has unveiled a bill that would block the administration of President Donald Trump from loosening rules restricting Beijing's access to artificial intelligence chips for 2.5 years. The bill, unveiled on Thursday, is known as the SAFE CHIPS Act and was filed by Republican Senator Pete Ricketts and Democrat Chris Coons.

The renewed U.S.-China trade truce struck in London left a key area of export restrictions tied to national security untouched, an unresolved conflict that threatens a more comprehensive deal, two people briefed on detailed outcomes of the talks have said. Beijing has not committed to grant export clearance for some specialized rare-earth magnets that U.S. military suppliers need for fighter jets and missile systems, the people said. The United States maintains export curbs on China's purchases of advanced artificial intelligence chips out of concern that they also have military applications. At talks in London last week, China's negotiators appeared to link progress in lifting export controls on military-use rare earth magnets with the longstanding U.S. curbs on exports of the most advanced AI chips to China. That marked a new twist in trade talks that began with opioid trafficking, tariff rates and China's trade surplus, but have since shifted to focus on export controls.

China said on Monday it has launched an investigation into Nvidia over suspected violations of the country's anti-monopoly law, in a move widely seen as a retaliatory shot against Washington's latest curbs on the Chinese chip sector. The statement from the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) announcing the investigation did not elaborate on how the US company, known for its artificial intelligence (AI) and gaming chips, might have violated China's anti-monopoly laws. It said that the US chipmaker is, in addition, suspected of violating commitments it made during its acquisition of the Israeli chip designer Mellanox Technologies under terms outlined in the regulator's 2020 conditional approval of that deal. Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company's shares fell 2.2% in pre-market trading in New York after the Chinese regulator's announcement.

China ratcheted up trade tensions with the United States with an export ban on several materials with high-tech and military applications, in a tit-for-tat move after U.S. President Joe Biden's administration escalated technology curbs on Beijing. Gallium, germanium, antimony and superhard materials are no longer allowed to be shipped to America, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said in a statement Tuesday. Beijing will also place tighter controls on sales of graphite, it added. The move came after the White House on Monday slapped fresh curbs on the sale of high-bandwidth memory chips made by U.S. and foreign companies to China. The Biden administration's goal is to slow China's development of advanced semiconductors and artificial intelligence systems that may help its military.

The United States has launched its third crackdown in three years on China's semiconductor industry, curbing exports to 140 companies, including chip equipment maker Naura Technology Group, among other moves. The latest effort on Monday to hobble Beijing's chipmaking ambitions also hits Chinese chip toolmakers Piotech, ACM Research and SiCarrier Technology with new export restrictions as part of the package, which also takes aim at shipments of advanced memory chips and more chipmaking tools to China. The move is one of President Joe Biden's last large-scale efforts to stymie China's ability to access and produce chips that can help advance artificial intelligence for military applications, or otherwise threaten US national security. It comes just weeks before the swearing-in of Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who is expected to retain many of Biden's tough-on-China measures. The package includes curbs on China-bound shipments of high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, critical for high-end applications like AI training; curbs on 24 additional chipmaking tools and three software tools; and export curbs on chipmaking equipment made in countries such as Singapore and Malaysia.

SINGAPORE--New U.S. export controls may compel artificial-intelligence giant Nvidia to cancel billions of dollars in next-year orders for its advanced chips to China, a move that could deprive Chinese tech companies of crucial AI resources. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company had already finished delivering orders of its advanced AI chips to China for this year, according to people familiar with the matter, and was pushing to deliver some 2024 orders in advance before the new rules were scheduled to come into effect in mid-November.

The U.S. will take steps to prevent American chipmakers from selling products to China that circumvent government restrictions, a U.S. official said, as part of the Biden administration's upcoming actions to block more AI chip exports. The new rules will be added to sweeping U.S. restrictions on shipments of advanced chips and chipmaking equipment to China unveiled last October. The updates are expected this week, other people familiar with the matter said, though such timetables often slip. The new rules will block some AI chips that fall just under current technical parameters while demanding companies report shipments of others, said the official, who provided information on condition of anonymity.

The deliberations were earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal. Nvidia's shares fell roughly 2 percent in morning trading on Wednesday following reports of the potential export crackdown. The company has been one of the primary beneficiaries of the enthusiasm over artificial intelligence, with its share price surging by roughly 180 percent this year. Such additional restrictions, if adopted, would not have an immediate impact on Nvidia's financial results, Colette Kress, the chief financial officer of Nvidia, said Wednesday on a call with reporters. But over the long term, they "will result in a permanent loss of opportunities for the U.S. industry to compete and lead in one of the world's largest markets," she said.

Bloomberg – Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is heading to China to meet with technology executives in the world's biggest chip market, despite rising tensions between Washington and Beijing, according to people familiar with the matter. Huang, who headlined a trade show in Taiwan this week, plans to travel to China for the first time in years in June, said the people, who asked not to be identified because his schedule is private. Companies on his itinerary include gaming leader Tencent Holdings and TikTok-owner ByteDance, one of the people said. Nvidia is emerging as a critical player in the booming field of artificial intelligence, but its position in China has been complicated by geopolitics. U.S. sanctions unveiled by the Biden administration last year prevent the semiconductor company from selling its most advanced AI chipsets to Chinese customers, including Tencent and ByteDance.

ABSTRACT One of the main challenges autonomous vehicles (AVs) will face is interacting with pedestrians, especially at unmarked midblock locations where the right-of-way is unspecified. This study investigates pedestrians' crossing behavior given different roadway centerline features (i.e., undivided, two-way left-turn lane (TWLTL), and median) and various AV operational schemes portrayed to pedestrians through on-vehicle signals (i.e., no signal, yellow negotiating indication, and yellow/blue negotiating/no-yield indications). This study employs virtual reality (VR) to simulate an urban unmarked midblock environment where pedestrians interact with AVs as they cross a four-lane arterial roadway. Results demonstrate that both roadway centerline design features and AV operations and signaling significantly impact pedestrians' unmarked midblock crossing behavior, including the waiting time at the curb, waiting time in the middle of the road, and the total crossing time. Participants in the undivided scene spent a longer time waiting at the curb and walking on the road than in the median and TWLTL scenes, but they spent a shorter time waiting in the middle of the road. Compared to the AV without a signal, the design of yellow signal significantly reduced pedestrian waiting time at the curb and in the middle. But yellow/blue significantly increased the pedestrian waiting time. Interaction effects between roadway centerline design features and AV operations and signaling are significant only for waiting time in the middle of the road. For middle waiting time, yellow/blue signals had the most impact on the median roadway type and the least on the undivided road. Other factors, such as demographics, past behaviors, and walking exposure of pedestrians, are also explored. Results indicate that older individuals tend to wait longer before making crossing decisions, and pedestrians' past crossing behaviors and past walking exposures do not significantly impact pedestrian walking behavior interacting with AV. INTRODUCTION Between 2011 and 2020, the US witnessed a 46% increase in pedestrian fatalities in motor vehicle crashes, resulting in over 55,000 pedestrian deaths (NHTSA, 2020). In 2020 alone, 6,516 pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes, while approximately 54,769 were injured (NHTSA, 2022). On average, one pedestrian was killed every 81 minutes and injured every 10 minutes in traffic crashes, and pedestrian deaths accounted for 17 percent of all traffic fatalities in 2020 (NHTSA, 2022). Most of these pedestrian fatal and injury crashes occurred in urban areas (82%) rather than rural areas (18%), with 75% of them at midblock locations (NHTSA, 2022).