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In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity Thursday from Beijing, President Trump said that during their summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping assured him that China would not provide military equipment to Iran for its war in the Middle East.

Asked by Hannity how big of a discussion the two leaders had regarding China’s support for Iran, Mr. Trump responded, “We discussed it. When you say support, they’re [China] not fighting a war with us or anything.”

According to Mr. Trump, Xi told him that he’s “not going to give [Iran] military equipment. That’s a big statement. He said that today. That’s a big statement. He said that strongly.”

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The United States is taking steps to pursue a federal indictment against Raúl Castro, the 94-year-old former president of Cuba and brother of the late Fidel Castro, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the situation.

The potential charges center on his alleged role in ordering the 1996 shootdown of two civilian aircraft operated by the Miami-based humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue, according to a report from CBS News.

The 1996 incident occurred on February 24, when Cuban MiG fighter jets shot down two unarmed Cessna aircraft flying in international airspace north of Cuba. The planes were part of Brothers to the Rescue, a nonprofit organization that conducted search-and-rescue missions for Cuban rafters attempting to reach the United States and dropped leaflets over Cuba.

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LA PAZ, Bolivia — Clashes erupted Thursday in Bolivia’s capital as police used tear gas to disperse a crowd of miners trying to breach the government palace and setting off small dynamite charges, a tactic that has become increasingly common during this second week of nationwide unrest.

It was the latest incident in growing social unrest challenging the administration of President Rodrigo Paz, who was sworn in as president late last year, ushering a new era for the Andean nation after nearly 20 years of one-party rule.

Thousands of miners descended on downtown La Paz to demand labor refo

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As Donald Trump and Xi Jinping came face to face outside China’s Great Hall of the People, the pair exchanged a historic handshake, with this opening moment laying bare the nature of their relationship — a body language expert asserting that Xi holds the upper hand.

The two leaders sat down for two hours of talks on Thursday, May 14, with the entire world looking on as Xi hailed US-China relations as the world’s “most important” and Trump declared the discussions “extremely positive”.

From the very beginning of the visit, the power dynamic between the two men has been unmistakable, according to body language expert Louise Mahler, who argued “if life is a competition, for me, Xi won.”

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Pastor Mark Burns, a longtime spiritual adviser to President Donald Trump, wants to make something very clear: The massive golden statue of the president unveiled last week at Trump’s golf resort in Doral, Florida, is not a golden calf.

“It is not even a gold statue,” Burns explained when reached by phone. “It’s a bronze statue that has gold leaf.”

Don’t tell Trump that. “The Real Deal – GOLD – At Doral in Miami,” Trump boasted of the statue in a post on Truth Social. But Burns is right. Don Colossus, capturing a slimmed-down version of Trump raising his fist in the air, was cast in bronze and then painted—a cheaper option than crafting the entire sculpture from gold.

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President Trump said Friday that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping made some “fantastic trade deals” and both want the Iran conflict to end during this week’s summit in Beijing, as both countries look to claim the visit as a win — and aim to keep their relationship on a stable footing after last year’s trade war.

The leaders of the two superpowers are holding a bilateral meeting and lunch at China’s seat of power — the Zhongnanhai Garden compound — late Friday morning local time, before Mr. Trump leaves China and heads back to Washington. They met for tea and walked around the centuries-old gardens, mostly out of earshot of reporters.

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A new working paper by Philip Moreira Tomei and Bouke Klein Teeselink, posted to arXiv in early May, makes claims that, if correct, should reorient the workforce policy conversation. In short, the authors argue that the AI exposure indices that have shaped most current thinking are looking at an incomplete subset of digital work. They identify which jobs and tasks current language models can already accelerate but they miss the jobs with features that make them amenable to automation later.

Tomei and Klein Teeselink build a new index that scores all 17,951 task statements in the federal O*NET database. The authors propose a measure what they call “reinforcement learning feasibility” which asks whether a task has the structural features (e.g., verifiable outcomes, use environments amenable to simulation, discrete decision/feedback loops) that allow AI systems to be trained on it through the post-training methods that are becoming the main drivers of AI capability. They then compare their index to the most-cited existing measure, from Eloundou and colleagues, which looks at whether tasks can be automated with current technology.

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Nigel Farage bought a £1.4m property in cash shortly after receiving a £5m personal gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.

The revelation came as the Reform UK leader appeared to change his line on the reason for the £5m gift, saying in an interview on Thursday that it was a “reward” for campaigning for Brexit for 27 years.

Since it was revealed last month by the Guardian, Farage had maintained that the money was given to cover his personal security.

Both developments came on a day when parliament’s standards watchdog confirmed that the MP was under a formal investigation over the gift from the Thai-based businessman.

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For decades, scientists believed the Japanese population largely descended from two ancient groups: the Jomon hunter-gatherers who lived in the archipelago for thousands of years, and later migrants from East Asia who brought rice farming and new technologies to Japan.

But a major genetic analysis from researchers at RIKEN’s Center for Integrative Medical Sciences suggests the picture is far more complicated.

Using whole-genome sequencing on more than 3,200 people from across Japan, the team found evidence supporting a third ancestral group tied to northeastern Asia and possibly linked to the ancient Emishi people. The findings, published in Science Advances, add powerful support to the increasingly discussed “tripartite origins” theory of Japanese ancestry.

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TAIPEI, Taiwan – President Trump is in Beijing for high-stakes talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The president is expected to confront Xi over China’s support of Iran.

The Chinese leader is sending a strong message of his own, challenging U.S. policies on Taiwan.

But the war with Iran especially looms large as the two leaders meet, with President Trump expected to press Xi over China’s support for Tehran.

“You’ve got to remember, China is supporting everything to Iran that it needs in this war except combat personnel. It is a comrade in arms. It is an enemy combatant,” said Gordon Chang, with Gatestone Institute.

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Xi Jinping warned Donald Trump that tensions over Taiwan could push the US and China towards “clashes and even conflicts”, according to Chinese state media reports on their closed-door meeting in Beijing.

According to a readout published by Xinhua, Xi told Trump that if the Taiwan issue is “handled well”, relations between the two countries could maintain “overall stability”.

But he cautioned that mishandling the issue would place the wider US–China relationship in “great jeopardy”.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping had stern words for President Trump on Taiwan as they met in Beijing on Thursday, warning of potential “clashes and even conflicts” if the issue isn’t “handled properly,” according to Chinese state media.

During their summit, the two leaders are seen as aiming to stabilize their trading relationship after last year’s trade war. They’re also grappling with uncertainty over the United States’ war with Iran. But the issue of Taiwan loomed large.

The closed-door session lasted roughly two hours and 15 minutes. The White House characterized the meeting as “good.”

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Scientists studying ancient microfossils from Brazil have discovered that structures once believed to be traces left behind by tiny animals were actually formed by communities of microscopic bacteria and algae. The findings challenge previous ideas about when small animals first appeared on Earth and suggest oxygen levels in ancient oceans may still have been too low to support certain forms of animal life around 540 million years ago.

The research focused on fossils found in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul and was published in the journal Gondwana Research. Earlier studies had interpreted the marks as evidence of wormlike creatures or other tiny marine animals moving through seafloor sediment during the Ediacaran period, which came just before the Cambrian explosion.

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For decades, scientists searching for life beyond Earth have focused on one central challenge: identifying the right molecules to look for on distant planets and moons.

But new research published in Nature Astronomy suggests the answer may lie not in the molecules themselves, but in the hidden patterns that connect them.

“We’re showing that life does not only produce molecules,” said Fabian Klenner, UC Riverside assistant professor of planetary sciences and co-author of the study. “Life also produces an organizational principle that we can see by applying statistics.”

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“Artificial intelligence is not just for computer scientists anymore; it’s going to permeate every aspect of our lives and influence every business,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth.

The world is reaching an inflection point with artificial intelligence: over half of U.S. adults use generative AI — with 12 percent using it daily at work — and 88 percent of global organizations have integrated AI into at least one core function, up from 78 percent in 2024. AI knowledge is no longer optional for career growth, organizational leadership, and life. Yet, a growing information gap exists between those with the capabilities to leverage AI’s potential and those trying to keep pace.

The need for accessible, practical AI education has never been greater. To meet this moment, MIT Open Learning is launching Universal AI, an online, self-paced, modular program that takes a learner from AI novice to authority, starting with core fundamentals and building to real-world, industry-specific applications.

“We identified a need for an AI learning experience that is universal in breadth and accessibility — one that bridges the gap between deeply technical and surface level introductions to the latest AI tools, and that is designed for a non-technical, global audience,” says Dimitris Bertsimas, vice provost for open learning.

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Texas police said they’re investigating the death of six people found in a boxcar by a Union Pacific employee at a rail yard on Sunday.

Police said they responded to a call of “multiple casualties” at about 3 p.m. A Webb County medical examiner said the dead included one woman and five men.

One of the other dead persons appears to be a teenager. Officials said they believe they are all from Mexico and Honduras.

The examiner identified the female victim as a Mexican national and one of the men as a Honduran national.

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Canadian citizens are expressing outrage after a woman who was seeking medical attention for back pain was offered euthanasia before she was ever diagnosed. Now, a member of Parliament is citing the story of Miriam Lancaster as proof that Canada needs to stop expanding its euthanasia program.

Miriam told her story in a social media video as well as in a post on The Free Press called, “Never Kill Yourself: When I went to the doctor in Vancouver with back pain, she offered me assisted suicide; instead, I recovered—and went to Cuba!”

It started a year ago when Miriam woke up with back pain and went to the hospital. Before testing her or diagnosing her condition, the hospital staff immediately offered to help her kill herself.

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Three years ago, in the idyllic town of Woodside south of San Francisco, the United States and China held their first high-level talks on the dangers posed by artificial intelligence. President Xi Jinping and his longtime foreign minister appeared serious in their conviction that a channel should be a established between Beijing and Washington — a red phone for AI in case of emergencies.

They authorized a diplomatic effort that would begin in 2024 in Switzerland, only months before the U.S. presidential election. A large U.S. delegation arrived with high hopes that were abruptly dashed, according to four sources who attended the talks. The Chinese contingent dismissed American concerns over runaway AI as academic, almost theoretical, quickly turning the conversation to export controls seen in Beijing as yet another U.S. effort to hold China back.

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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed to “face up to the big challenges” facing the U.K. in a make-or-break speech on Monday, amid mounting pressure on his leadership.

Starmer cited growth, national defense, the U.K.’s relationship with Europe and energy needs as key issues that must be tackled urgently, in an attempt to convince Labour Party colleagues to keep him in the job.

“To meet the challenges that our country faces, incremental change won’t cut it,” he said, recognizing that “some people are frustrated with me” and acknowledging that he has “doubters.”

“I know I need to prove them wrong and I will,” he told an audience of supporters.

A Texas couple is suing OpenAI, alleging their product, ChatGPT, led to their son’s overdosing on drugs after following the AI platform’s advice.

OpenAI released this statement, “This is a heartbreaking situation, and our thoughts are with the family… ChatGPT is not a substitute for medical or mental health care, and we have continued to strengthen how it responds in sensitive and acute situations with input from mental health experts…”

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An experiment at the University of Rochester shows the long-life genes of moles could be transplanted to mice, producing mice that live longer than average mice.

Rochester University’s Biology and Medicine Professor Vera Gorbunova explained, “Our study provides a proof of principle that unique longevity mechanisms that evolved in long-lived mammalian species can be exported to improve the lifespans of other mammals.”

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