x01 Archives
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The Trump/Xi meetings in China were private. It appears that there were no big breakthroughs and “wins” for Trump to bring back to the United States.
Trump tried to flatter the Chinese leader, who responded with threats about Taiwan.
The Trump trip, where he took a bunch of the world’s richest CEOs with him, appears to have been a total bust on all fronts. Republicans were hoping that Trump would have another one of his fake deals with China to announce that would help to get farmers who are being devastated by the president’s toxic combo of war and tariffs off their backs, but there was no big announcement.
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent did not say when these talks would happen. There are fears in the United States and China about the threats from A.I., but neither side is willing to slow down its development.
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Germany’s federal system of government makes the country’s politics seem so complicated that most people outside Germany give up trying to understand it. At the federal level, there is the parliament (the Bundestag), a ceremonial president and a chancellor. At the moment, all of those branches of power seem normal enough, and are run by the same few democratic parties that have been there since the fall of the Berlin Wall. But if you look the next level down, at the individual states (or länder), the picture that emerges is terrifying.
Germany is still culturally and economically split in two by the old Iron Curtain. Nearly 40 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the promised reunification has still not been completed. People living in the former East look at the Berlin government and see policies that seem to ignore them. There are five states in the eastern part of the country, and opinion polls show majority support for the radical right party Alternative for Germany in all of them. This September, two of these states, Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, will be holding elections in which AfD candidates are expected to win, putting them in charge of state governments for the first time. They are hoping for absolute majorities. That would give them sole control of the education system, the prisons and the police force.
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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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Unsurprisingly, Democrats are willing to eliminate black-majority congressional districts through redistricting in order to gain more political power, a new poll finds. Democrat politicians and pundits have long claimed that any proposed shift away from race-based gerrymandering is racist, repeatedly weaponizing the issue to smear Republicans.
The Politico poll, conducted in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent decision on the Voting Rights Act, shows “a lot of Democrats are willing to sacrifice Black voting power to beat the GOP.” At face value, respondents — who were Kamala Harris voters — said discriminatory gerrymandering to carve out special districts for black voters and other minorities is more important “even if it means Democrats draw fewer seats.”
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“It was sort of like a statement but I think it was a commitment,” Trump said, describing his conversation with President Xi Jinping in a Fox News interview.
“That’s a lot of jobs,” Trump told Fox host Sean Hannity in excerpts released by the broadcaster.
Shares fell after the spots were released.
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That Abdul El-Sayed is a vicious, bald faced liar – we expect that, what’s shocking is he is leading the Senate race.
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Even before the war, Iran’s economy had been spiralling for years under international sanctions tied to the regime’s nuclear activities, alongside deep corruption and chronic mismanagement, making daily life increasingly difficult for millions.
Over the past decade, Iranians have staged several large local and nationwide protests triggered by economic grievances, including in 2019 and January 2026, leaving tens of thousands of protesters dead, arrested or injured.
Since April 28, when the US and Israel attacked Iran and the Iranian regime shut down the internet, the economy has worsened sharply.
Middle-class Iranians we spoke to said the situation was becoming unsustainable, and that they feared they may no longer be able to afford food in the coming months if the situation continues.
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Mathematicians have calculated a “golden rule” for abstract art that famous artists tend to follow when they compose their works. Artificial intelligence, the team found, does not follow such implicit rules about shape placement, possibly explaining why computer-generated art doesn’t usually evoke awe from viewers.
Scientists and philosophers have long tried to decipher why art moves people: Are there underlying features shared among masterpieces? Do painters unconsciously use similar shapes, contours or compositions to elicit an emotional response? Many of the ways researchers have tried to categorize shapes or complexity in paintings are “arbitrary,” however, says Jacek Rogala, a neuroscientist at the University of Warsaw and co-senior author of the new study.
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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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Entire residential buildings were demolished in Ukraine’s capital as Russian launched a “massive and virtually nonstop” aerial barrage on Kyiv and other major cities over the last two nights, according to Ukrainian officials. They said more than 1,500 drones and over 50 missiles were launched in the last two days.
At least seven people were killed in Kyiv, many in a strike that leveled an apartment building overnight, while 20 more remain missing, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy said he had met with his top staff on Thursday about “a massive and virtually nonstop Russian attack that lasted nearly 48 hours.”
“This is a deliberate terrorist tactic by the Russians, who amassed drones and missiles over a period of time and intentionally calculated the strike so that its scale would be significant, creating the greatest possible difficulties for our air defense,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.
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Modern air and missile defense is approaching a structural limit. The model that protected forces over the past two decades remains effective, but only within a narrower envelope than current threats demand. A new approach is required, built on fire-control-level integration, disaggregated survivable architectures, affordable magazine depth, and the integration of offensive action as the central element of defense.
I am a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general and now lead international business development and strategy for Northrop Grumman in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. I previously served as chief operating officer of DEFCON AI. As a defense industry executive, I have a direct commercial interest in the integration and command-and-control issues covered here. Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor for the Integrated Battle Command System, the U.S. Army program most closely associated with the fire-control-level integration concepts discussed, so readers should weigh that overlap most carefully in the procurement section, where my analytical argument and my employer’s commercial position are closest. The argument is not for my company’s solution specifically, but for any architecture or federated set of systems that can deliver sensor-shooter integration, disaggregation, survivability, and coalition interoperability.
The reason is simple: The threat has changed faster than the defensive architecture. Ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, one-way attack drones, and loitering munitions are no longer niche capabilities employed in small numbers. They are becoming routine instruments of coercion and war, used in combinations designed to overwhelm decision-making, exhaust magazines, expose seams between sensors and shooters, and force defenders into bad cost exchanges. Recent combat has shown that even capable defenses can perform well tactically while still revealing strategic fragility. It is time to invest in systems that are not just able to intercept threats, but do so at the scale, speed, cost, and survivability required for a sustained campaign.
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Cuba lost the source for around half its fuel needs when US forces snatched Venezuela’s president in a stunning January raid, with his successor complying with US pressure not to aid the island.
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US President Donald Trump has paused the rotation of US soldiers in Lithuania in a move likely to alarm NATO allies. The US Army has cancelled the planned deployment of around 4,000 troops from the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, to central and eastern Europe, while Lithuanian officials say the United States has also paused its troop rotation to the region.
Lithuanian Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas told LRT RADIO, Lithuania’s state-funded public broadcaster: “The rotation was paused to evaluate how the US will distribute its capabilities in Europe. This is the information we have so far, and we are awaiting clarification; once we have more news, we will be able to provide further information.”
The decision is expected to fuel growing concern among NATO allies over America’s long-term military commitment to Europe amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. However, Kaunas insisted Lithuania, Poland and the Baltic states remain “exemplary allies” that continue to meet both NATO and US defence expectations.
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The ‘cloud-native’ architecture of the last decade is built on a 20-year-old assumption: that state
lives in the database, and compute is stateless. If you want to scale, you scale the database
vertically (get a larger machine) [1][1] or design the database schema around partition the data
and you scale your application servers horizontally (add more
boxes). Any request can hit any server, the loadbalancer doesn’t care, and the database is the
single source of truth.
LLMs and agents are quietly violating this assumption, and making this architecture increasingly
hard to work with. Not all at once, but in three subtle ways:
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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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Key Takeaways
- Stanford School of Medicine has removed diversity, equity, and inclusion language from its website following a DOJ investigation into its admissions practices, prompting concerns about whether the changes are substantive or merely cosmetic.
- The medical school rebranded its diversity offices but maintained programs aimed at health disparities, leading some experts to criticize these actions as superficial and potentially misleading.
- Federal pressure has shifted the dynamics around DEI in higher education, pushing institutions to reconsider their diversity policies, which previously relied on government mandates for justification.
Stanford School of Medicine quietly removed diversity, equity, and inclusion langua
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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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The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer defied calls to resign on Tuesday, telling ministers he would “get on with governing” despite a “destabilizing” 48 hours of growing calls to set out a timetable for his departure after an election drubbing.
At a meeting of his cabinet team of ministers, Starmer, in the top job for less than two years, repeated that while he took responsibility for one of his Labour Party’s worst election defeats, there had been no official move to trigger a leadership contest.
“The past 48 hours have been destabilizing for government and that has a real economic cost for our country and for families,” Starmer told ministers, according to his Downing Street office.
“The country expects us to get on with governing. That is what I am doing and what we must do as a Cabinet.”
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President Donald Trump scored a major win Tuesday after the Senate confirmed Kevin Warsh to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, clearing the way for the former central banker to potentially become the next face of the Fed.
The Senate voted 51-45 to confirm Warsh to a 14-year term on the Fed’s seven-member board, putting one of Trump’s preferred economic voices in position ahead of a separate vote later this week on whether he will officially replace outgoing Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
The confirmation marks a pivotal moment in Trump’s long-running battle with Powell over interest rates and monetary policy. Trump has repeatedly blasted Powell for refusing to slash rates more aggressively, once calling him a “moron” and a “stubborn mule” as the White House pushed for looser policy to stimulate growth.