Category: Semafor

China is closing the satellite gap with the US, as Beijing strives to supplant Washington as the world’s leading space power. China’s BeiDou system comprises 56 satellites, offering more resilient and occasionally more advanced capabilities than the 31 powering the US’ Global Positioning System. China’s military was denied access to ...

London’s population shrank for the first time since the COVID pandemic as more than 400,000 people left the capital last year to move to other parts of the UK. All other regions in England saw their numbers rise, government data showed. Although London recorded more births than deaths, and international ...

France and Italy named their new men’s national soccer team managers — a Frenchman and an Italian, leaving them among the few countries that have very rarely employed foreign coaches. Zinedine Zidane and Roberto Mancini have different briefs: France are recent winners, while Italy last reached a World Cup in ...

by Annie Jacobsen. Jacobsen wrote a 2024 dramatization, based on dozens of interviews, of how nuclear war would unfold; this is her bioterrorism sequel. She imagines a genetically modified, airborne bacterium as deadly as pneumonic plague that releases a second pathogen when treated, based on a real Soviet “chimera program.” ...

The US’ ban on new foreign humanoids opens another front in Washington’s campaign against Chinese tech — but it also adds a new layer of pressure on domestic bot makers. Some in the industry speculated the US might put tariffs on Chinese robots, but Washington routed its ban through the ...

The US is looking to its allies to make sure China doesn’t dominate the future of telecommunications. The Trump administration on Monday unveiled a partnership with 24 countries — including Australia, Germany, Japan, and the UK — aimed at coordinating strategies around 6G, which is expected to be designed to ...

Wall Street is suffering from analogy slop: There’s so much money going into AI that it has to be a bubble, and surely there are parallels to past bubbles. It’s the financial crisis all over again; it’s the 1929 stock market crash; it’s the year 2000. The latest wave of ...

David’s view When they’re not fighting each other, which is rare these days, Democrats agree on three points about their midterm election strategy. First, they want to talk about affordability. Second, they want to take on corruption. And lastly, the public perception that both parties are crooked makes it hard ...

German officials are reportedly working to identify Chinese trade vulnerabilities that they could exploit should the EU enter a trade war with the Asian giant, underscoring the rising tensions between the economic superpowers. European leaders have long complained that cheap Chinese imports risk hollowing out their manufacturing capacity, particularly in ...

The News Zambians will vote next month in a test for the southern African region’s most closely watched economic recovery, facing the twin pressures of emergency power imports and expanded parliamentary map that threaten to complicate the nation’s reform path. President Hakainde Hichilema is largely seen as the frontrunner in ...