CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA — The Webb Space Telescope has discovered the earliest known merger of black holes.
These two gigantic black holes and their galaxies consolidated just 740 million years after the universe-forming Big Bang. It’s the most distant detection ever made of merging black holes, scientists reported Thursday.
One black hole is 50 million times more massive than our sun. The other is thought to be similar in size, but is buried in dense gas, which makes it harder to measure.
Until now, astronomers weren’t sure how supermassive black holes got so big.
The latest findings, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, suggest mergers are how black holes can grow so rapidly — “even at cosmic dawn,” said lead author Hannah Ubler of the University of Cambridge.
“Massive black holes have been shaping the evolution of galaxies from the very beginning,” Ubler said in a statement.
Launched in 2021 as the eventual successor to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, Webb is the biggest and most powerful observatory ever sent into space. A joint U.S.-European project, the infrared observatory surveys the universe from a location 1.6 million kilometers from Earth.
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TAIPAI, TAIWAN — Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC said Thursday there was no damage to its facilities after an incident at its Arizona factory construction site where
a waste disposal truck driver was transported to a hospital.
Firefighters responded to a reported explosion Wednesday afternoon at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company plant in Phoenix, the Arizona Republic reported, citing the local fire department.
TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker whose clients include Apple and Nvidia, said in a statement none of its employees or onsite construction workers had reported any related injuries.
“This is an active investigation with no additional details that can be shared at this time,” it added.
TSMC’s Taipei-listed shares pared earlier gains after the news and were last up around 0.8% on Thursday morning. TSMC last month agreed to expand its planned investment by $25 billion to $65 billion and to add a third Arizona plant by 2030.
The company will produce the world’s most advanced 2 nanometer technology at its second Arizona facility expected to begin production in 2028.
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General public gets to visit White House grounds in spring and fall
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NEW YORK — The number of fatal overdoses in the U.S. fell last year, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data posted Wednesday.
Agency officials noted that the data is provisional and could change after more analysis, and that they still expect a drop when the final counts are in. It would be only the second annual decline since the current national drug death epidemic began more than three decades ago.
Experts reacted cautiously. One described the decline as relatively small and said it should be thought of as part of a leveling off rather than a decrease. Another noted that the last time a decline occurred — in 2018 — drug deaths shot up in the years that followed.
“Any decline is encouraging,” said Brandon Marshall, a Brown University researcher who studies overdose trends. “But I think it’s certainly premature to celebrate or to draw any large-scale conclusions about where we may be headed long term with this crisis.”
It’s also too soon to know what spurred the decline, Marshall and other experts said. Explanations could include shifts in the drug supply, expansion of overdose prevention and addiction treatment, and the grim possibility that the epidemic has killed so many that now there are basically fewer people to kill.
CDC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Debra Houry called the dip “heartening news” and praised efforts to reduce the tally, but she noted that “there are still families and friends losing their loved ones to drug overdoses at staggering numbers.”
About 107,500 people died of overdoses in the U.S. last year, including American citizens and noncitizens who were in the country at the time they died, the CDC estimated. That’s down 3% from 2022, when there were an estimated 111,000 such deaths, the agency said.
The drug overdose epidemic, which has killed more than 1 million people since 1999, has had many ripple effects. For example, a study published last week in JAMA Psychiatry estimated that more than 321,000 U.S. children lost a parent to a fatal drug overdose from 2011 to 2021.
“These children need support” and are at a higher risk of mental health and drug use disorders themselves, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which helped lead the study. “It’s not just a loss of a person. It’s also the implications that loss has for the family left behind.”
Prescription painkillers once drove the nation’s overdose epidemic, but they were supplanted years ago by heroin and more recently by illegal fentanyl. The dangerously powerful opioid was developed to treat intense pain from ailments such as cancer but has increasingly been mixed with other drugs in the illicit drug supply.
For years, fentanyl was frequently injected, but increasingly it’s being smoked or mixed into counterfeit pills.
A study published last week found that law enforcement seizures of pills containing fentanyl are rising dramatically, jumping from 44 million in 2022 to more than 115 million last year.
It’s possible that the seizures indicate that the overall supply of fentanyl-laced pills is growing fast, not necessarily that police are whittling down the illicit drug supply, said one of the paper’s authors, Dr. Daniel Ciccarone of the University of California, San Francisco.
He noted that the decline in overdoses was not uniform. All but two of the states in the eastern half of the U.S. saw declines, but most Western states saw increases. Alaska, Washington and Oregon each saw 27% increases.
The reason? Many Eastern states have been dealing with fentanyl for about a decade, while it’s reached Western states more recently, Ciccarone said.
Nevertheless, some researchers say there are reasons to be optimistic. It’s possible that smoking fentanyl is not as lethal as injecting it, but scientists are still exploring that question.
Meanwhile, more money is becoming available to treat addiction and prevent overdoses, through government funding and legal settlements with drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies, Ciccarone noted.
“My hope is 2023 is the beginning of a turning point,” he said.
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He captured the most famous faces in 1930s and early ’40s cinema — Garbo, Crawford, Bogart and Gable. Now the work of George Hurrell, one of Hollywood’s greatest portrait photographers, is on display at Washington’s National Portrait Gallery. For VOA News, Cristina Caicedo Smit has the story. Videographer: Hakim Shammo; Video editor: Cristina Caicedo Smit
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NEW YORK — A sprightly miniature poodle named Sage was crowned “Best in Show” on Tuesday at the 148th annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, winning the grand prize in the most prestigious competition among pure-bred canines in the United States.
Sage, the finalist representing 21 breeds classified as non-sporting dogs, triumphed over more than 2,500 top-ranked dogs competing in the two-day contest, held at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in the Queens borough of New York City.
Sage, a 4-year-old black-colored female groomed in the fine, fluffy topiary style traditional for poodles, competed head to head against the winners in six other groups — terriers, hounds, herding dogs, working dogs, sporting dogs and toy dogs.
She was the first female to win the top prize at Westminster since 2020, according to commentators on the Fox Sports channel, which broadcast the event live.
And she became the fourth miniature poodle to claim the top prize in the 148-year history of the contest, with the trophy previously going to her breed in 1943, 1959 and 2002, according to kennel club records.
The larger “standard” poodle breed has been declared Best in Show five times, most recently in 2020, and the smaller “toy” poodle breed has won twice.
The poodle originated as a hunting dog in Germany and is now recognized as the national dog of France.
Sage’s handler, Kaz Hosaka, cried tears of joy and carried his prized poodle in his arms around floor of the auditorium to cheers of the crowd as he celebrated what he said was his 45th year participating at the Westminster dog show and the last of his career.
The Westminster dog show bills itself as the second-oldest U.S. sporting event, behind only the Kentucky Derby thoroughbred horse race. This year’s competition drew a field of contenders representing 200 breeds from all 50 U.S. states and 12 other countries.
Mercedes, a female 4-year-old German shepherd, was named runner-up for the overall contest, after first winning the top prize in the herding dog group.
Along with Sage and Mercedes, the two other finalists chosen on Monday were Comet the Shih Tzu, representing the toy group, and Louis, the Afghan hound leading the hound group.
Rounding out the finalists were three group winners chosen on Tuesday – Micah the black cocker spaniel, representing sporting dogs; Monty, the giant schnauzer, leading the working dogs; and Frankie, a colored bull terrier from the terrier group.
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SYDNEY — Researchers in New Zealand say that artificial intelligence, or AI, can help solve problems for patients and doctors.
A new study from the University of Auckland says that an emerging area is the use of AI during operations using so-called “computer vision.”
The study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, says that artificial intelligence has the potential to identify abnormalities during operations and to unburden overloaded hospitals by enhancing the monitoring of patients to help them recover after surgery at home.
The New Zealand research details how AI “tools are rapidly maturing for medical applications.” It asserts that “medicine is entering an exciting phase of digital innovation.”
The New Zealand team is investigating computer vision, which describes a machine’s understanding of videos and images.
Dr. Chris Varghese, a doctoral researcher in the Department of Surgery at the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at the University of Auckland, led the AI research team.
He told VOA the technology has great potential.
“The use of AI in surgery is a really emerging field. We are seeing a lot of exciting research looking at what we call computer vision, where AI is trying to learn what surgeons see, what the surgical instruments look like, what the different organs look like, and the potential there is to identify abnormal anatomy or what the safest approach to an operation might be using virtual reality and augmented reality to plan ahead of surgeries, which could be really useful in cutting out cancers and things like that.”
Varghese said doctors in New Zealand are already using AI to help sort through patient backlogs.
“We are using automated algorithms to triage really long waiting lists,” he said. “So, getting people prioritized and into clinics ahead of time, based on need, so the right patients are seen at the right time.”
The researchers said there are limitations to the use of artificial intelligence because of concerns about data privacy and ethics.
The report concludes that “numerous apprehensions remain with regard to the integration of AI into surgical practice, with many clinicians perceiving limited scope in a field dominated by experiential” technology.
The study also says that “autonomous robotic surgeons…. is the most distant of the realizable goals of surgical AI systems.”
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ottawa — Nobel Prize-winning Canadian writer Alice Munro, whose exquisitely crafted tales of the loves, ambitions and travails of small-town women in her native land made her a globally acclaimed master of the short story, has died at the age of 92, her publisher said on Tuesday.
Munro died at her home in Port Hope, Ontario, said Kristin Cochrane, chief executive officer of McClelland & Stewart.
“Alice’s writing inspired countless writers … and her work leaves an indelible mark on our literary landscape,” she said in a statement.
The Globe and Mail newspaper, citing family members, said Munro had died on Monday after suffering from dementia for at least a decade.
Munro published more than a dozen collections of short stories and was honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013.
Her stories explored sex, yearning, discontent, aging, moral conflict and other themes in rural settings with which she was intimately familiar, the villages and farms in the Canadian province of Ontario. She was adept at fully developing complex characters within the limited pages of a short story.
“Alice Munro was a Canadian literary icon. For six decades, her short stories captivated hearts around Canada and the world,” Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said on the X social media network.
Munro, who wrote about ordinary people with clarity and realism, was often likened to Anton Chekhov, the 19th century Russian known for his brilliant short stories, a comparison the Swedish Academy cited in honoring her with the Nobel Prize.
Calling her a “master of the contemporary short story,” the Academy also said: “Her texts often feature depictions of everyday but decisive events, epiphanies of a kind, that illuminate the surrounding story and let existential questions appear in a flash of lightning.”
In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation after winning the Nobel, Munro said, “I think my stories have gotten around quite remarkably for short stories, and I would really hope that this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something that you played around with until you’d got a novel written.”
Munro’s works included “Dance of the Happy Shades” (1968), “Lives of Girls and Women” (1971), “Who Do You Think You Are?” (1978), “The Moons of Jupiter” (1982), “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage” (2001), “Runaway” (2004), “The View from Castle Rock” (2006), “Too Much Happiness” (2009) and “Dear Life” (2012).
The characters in her stories were often girls and women who lead seemingly unexceptional lives but struggle with tribulations ranging from sexual abuse and stifling marriages to repressed love and the ravages of aging.
“Last month I reread all of Alice Munro’s books. I felt the need to be close to her. Every time I read her is a new experience. Every time changes me. She will live forever,” Canadian author Heather O’Neill said in a post on X.
Munro’s story of a woman who starts losing her memory and agrees to enter a nursing home titled “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” from “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage,” was adapted into the Oscar-nominated 2006 film “Away From Her,” directed by fellow Canadian Sarah Polley.
‘Shame’ a driving force of characters
Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, writing in The Guardian after Munro won the Nobel, summarized her work by saying: “Shame and embarrassment are driving forces for Munro’s characters, just as perfectionism in the writing has been a driving force for her: getting it down, getting it right, but also the impossibility of that. Munro chronicles failure much more often than she chronicles success, because the task of the writer has failure built in.”
American novelist Jonathan Franzen wrote in 2005, “Reading Munro puts me in that state of quiet reflection in which I think about my own life: about the decisions I’ve made, the things I’ve done and haven’t done, the kind of person I am, the prospect of death.”
The short story, a style more popular in the 19th and early 20th century, has long taken a back seat to the novel in popular tastes and in attracting awards. But Munro was able to infuse her short stories with a richness of plot and depth of detail usually more characteristic of full-length novels.
“For years and years, I thought that stories were just practice, ’til I got time to write a novel. Then I found that they were all I could do and so I faced that. I suppose that my trying to get so much into stories has been a compensation,” Munro told the New Yorker magazine in 2012.
Second Canadian to win Nobel
Munro was the second Canadian-born writer to win the Nobel literature prize but the first with a distinctly Canadian identity. Saul Bellow, who won in 1976, was born in Quebec but raised in the U.S. city of Chicago, Illinois, and was widely seen as an American writer.
Munro also won the Man Booker International Prize in 2009 and the Giller Prize — Canada’s most high-profile literary award — twice.
Alice Laidlaw was born to a hard-pressed family of farmers on July 10, 1931, in Wingham, a small town in the region of southwestern Ontario that serves as the setting for many of her stories, and started writing in her teens.
She married James Munro in 1951 and moved to Victoria, British Columbia, where the two ran a bookstore. They had four daughters, one died just hours old, before divorcing in 1972. Afterward, Munro moved back to Ontario. Her second husband, geographer Gerald Fremlin, died in April 2013.
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cannes, france — Film director Mohammad Rasoulof, who has secretly fled Iran for an undisclosed location in Europe, urged the world film community on Tuesday to provide “strong support” to his colleagues.
Rasoulof, who was sentenced to jail on national security charges, and whose latest movie will compete at this month’s Cannes film festival, said he fears for the “safety and well-being” of fellow filmmakers still in Iran.
“The global film community must provide strong support to the makers of these films,” Rasoulof said in a statement to Agence France-Presse.
Rasoulof announced on Monday he had escaped clandestinely from Iran, just days after it emerged that he had been sentenced to eight years in prison for “collusion against national security.”
Rasoulof had been under pressure from Iranian authorities to withdraw his latest film, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” from Cannes, where it will compete for the prestigious event’s top prize, the Palme d’Or.
Cannes director Thierry Fremaux said the festival was working with the French Foreign Ministry in the hope of ensuring that Rasoulof, 51, can attend his premiere next week.
Rasoulof’s statement said he did not yet know if he could attend the premiere.
“I arrived in Europe a few days ago after a long and complicated journey,” said Rasoulof, who won the Berlin International Film Festival’s Golden Bear in 2020 for “There Is No Evil.”
He said his latest movie set out to portray a version of Iran “that is far from the narrative dominated by censorship in the Islamic Republic and is closer to reality.”
After he and his filmmaking colleagues came under pressure from the authorities, Rasoulof learned that his “unfair” eight-year sentence would be enforced imminently, and he felt he had no choice but to flee.
“I had to choose between prison and leaving Iran,” he wrote. “With a heavy heart, I chose exile.”
While some colleagues involved in the film were also able to leave the country, others remain there.
“My thoughts go to every single one of them, and I fear for their safety and well-being,” he said.
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A groundbreaking clinical trial is underway in South Africa, marking a pivotal moment in the fight against tuberculosis. The new vaccine could become the first to help prevent pulmonary TB, the most common form of the disease, in adolescents and adults. It would be the first new TB vaccine in more than a century. Zaheer Cassim has the story.
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Seafaring robots are increasingly used for tasks ranging from ocean exploration to rescue missions. Matt Dibble has the latest in this week’s episode of LogOn.
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WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday unveiled a bundle of steep tariff increases on an array of Chinese imports including electric vehicles, computer chips and medical products, risking an election-year standoff with Beijing in a bid to woo voters who give his economic policies low marks.
Biden will keep tariffs put in place by his Republican predecessor Donald Trump while ratcheting up others, including a quadrupling of EV duties to over 100%, the White House said in a statement. It cited “unacceptable risks” to U.S. economic security posed by what it considers unfair Chinese practices that are flooding global markets with cheap goods.
The new measures impact $18 billion in Chinese imported goods including steel and aluminum, semiconductors, batteries, critical minerals, solar cells and cranes, the White House said. The announcement confirmed earlier Reuters reporting.
The United States imported $427 billion in goods from China in 2023 and exported $148 billion to the world’s No. 2 economy, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, a trade gap that has persisted for decades and become an ever more sensitive subject in Washington.
“China’s using the same playbook it has before to power its own growth at the expense of others by continuing to invest, despite excess Chinese capacity and flooding global markets with exports that are underpriced due to unfair practices,” White House National Economic Adviser Lael Brainard told reporters on a conference call.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said the revised tariffs were justified because China was continuing to steal U.S. intellectual property and in some cases had become “more aggressive” in cyber intrusions targeting American technology.
She said prior “Section 301” tariffs had minimal impact on U.S. economy-wide prices and employment, but had been effective in reducing U.S. imports of Chinese goods, while increasing imports from other countries.
But Tai recommended tariff exclusions for dozens of industrial machinery import categories from China, including 19 for solar product manufacturing equipment.
Even as Biden’s steps fell in line with Trump’s premise that tougher trade measures are warranted, the Democrat took aim at his opponent in November’s election.
The White House said Trump’s 2020 trade deal with China did not increase American exports or boost American manufacturing jobs, and it said the 10% across-the-board tariffs on goods from all points of origin that Trump has proposed would frustrate U.S. allies and raise prices. Trump has floated tariffs of 60% or higher on all Chinese goods.
Administration officials said their measures are “carefully targeted,” combined with domestic investment, plotted with close allies and unlikely to worsen a bout of inflation that has already angered U.S. voters and imperiled Biden’s re-election bid. They also downplayed the risk of retaliation from Beijing.
Biden has struggled to convince voters of the efficacy of his economic policies despite a backdrop of low unemployment and above-trend economic growth. A Reuters/Ipsos poll last month showed Trump had a 7 percentage-point edge over Biden on the economy.
Analysts have warned that a trade tiff could raise costs for EVs overall, hurting Biden’s climate goals and his aim to create manufacturing jobs.
Biden has said he wants to win this era of competition with China but not to launch a trade war that could hurt the mutually dependent economies. He has worked in recent months to ease tensions in one-on-one talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Both 2024 U.S. presidential candidates have sharply departed from the free-trade consensus that once reigned in Washington, a period capped by China’s joining the World Trade Organization in 2001.
China has said the tariffs are counterproductive and risk inflaming tensions. Trump’s broader imposition of tariffs during his 2017-2021 presidency kicked off a tariff war with China.
As part of the long-awaited tariff update, Biden will increase tariffs this year under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 from 25% to 100% on EVs, bringing total duties to 102.5%, from 7.5% to 25% on lithium-ion EV batteries and other battery parts and from 25% to 50% on photovoltaic cells used to make solar panels. “Certain” critical minerals will have their tariffs raised from nothing to 25%.
The tariffs on ship-to-shore cranes will rise to 25% from zero, those on syringes and needles will rise to 50% from nothing now and some personal protective equipment (PPE) used in medical facilities will rise to 25% from as little as 0% now. Shortages in PPE made largely in China hampered the United States’ COVID-19 response.
More tariffs will follow in 2025 and 2026 on semiconductors, whose tariff rate will double to 50%, as well as lithium-ion batteries that are not used in elective vehicles, graphite and permanent magnets as well as rubber medical and surgical gloves.
A step Biden previously announced to raise tariffs on some steel and aluminum products will take effect this year, the White House said.
A number of lawmakers have called for massive hikes on Chinese vehicle tariffs. There are relatively few Chinese-made light-duty vehicles being imported now. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown wants the Biden administration to ban Chinese EVs outright, over concerns they pose risks to Americans’ personal data.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who warned China in April that its excess production of EVs and solar products was unacceptable, said that such concerns were widely shared by U.S. allies and the actions were “motivated not by anti-China policy but by a desire to prevent damaging economic dislocation from unfair economic practices.”
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Washington — The spectacular auroras that danced across the sky in many parts of the world over the weekend are fading, scientists said Monday, as the massive sunspot that caused them turns its ferocious gaze away from Earth.
Since Friday, the most powerful solar storm to strike our planet in more than two decades has lit up night skies with dazzling auroras in the United States, Tasmania, the Bahamas and other places far from the extreme latitudes where they are normally seen.
But Eric Lagadec, an astrophysicist at France’s Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur, told AFP that the “most spectacular” period of this rare event has come to an end.
The first of several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — expulsions of plasma and magnetic fields from the Sun — came just after 1600 GMT Friday, according to the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The event was later upgraded to an “extreme” geomagnetic storm — the first since the “Halloween Storms” of October 2003 that caused blackouts in Sweden and damaged power infrastructure in South Africa.
Excitement over the phenomenon — and otherworldly photos of pink, green and purple night skies — broke out across the world, from Austria to Australia’s island state of Tasmania.
The storm had been forecast to intensify again until 0600 GMT Monday, the NOAA said, adding that auroras could be viewable as far south as New York.
But thousands of people who came out on Sunday night in the hope of seeing the aurora borealis over the Joshua Tree National Park in California instead saw the Milky Way. AFP pictures showed stars shining clearly in the night sky.
Lagadec said that while there were further solar outbursts on Sunday, it is unlikely that more auroras will be visible to the naked eye in lower latitudes such as in France.
“Only the most experienced photographers will be able to capture them” in such areas, said Lagadec, who was moved by witnessing an aurora during the event’s peak on Friday night.
The solar storm emanated from a massive sunspot cluster that is 17 times wider than our planet.
The storm has not ended, and auroras are expected to continue in the far northern or southern regions where they are normally visible.
But “the source of the storm is a sunspot that is now on the edge of the Sun, (so) we do not expect the next coronal mass ejections to head in Earth’s direction,” Lagadec said.
Scientists had already warned that the intensity of anything seen on Sunday night would unlikely reach the level of Friday’s show.
“This is likely the last of the Earth-directed CMEs from this particular monster sunspot,” Mathew Owens, a professor of space physics at the UK’s University of Reading, told AFP.
When charged particles from solar winds are captured by Earth’s magnetic field, they accelerate towards the planet’s magnetic poles, which is why auroras are normally seen there.
But during periods of heightened solar activity, the effects extend farther toward the equator.
Unlike during 2003’s solar storms, no major disruptions to power or communications networks appear to have been reported this time around.
Elon Musk’s satellite internet operator Starlink said on X that its thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit had “weathered the geomagnetic storm and remain healthy”.
Unlike solar flares, which travel at the speed of light and reach Earth in around eight minutes, CMEs travel at a more sedate pace, with officials putting the current average at 800 kilometers (500 miles) per second.
People with eclipse glasses can still look for the sunspot cluster during the day.
Fluctuating magnetic fields associated with geomagnetic storms induce currents in long wires, including power lines, which can lead to blackouts. Long pipelines can also become electrified.
Spacecraft are at risk from high doses of radiation, although the atmosphere prevents this from reaching Earth.
NASA can ask astronauts on the International Space Station to move to better-shielded places within the outpost.
Even pigeons and other species that have internal biological compasses can be affected.
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As generative AI technologies like ChatGPT rapidly gain popularity, they are beginning to change the future of the job market. Some fear mass unemployment, but others see a bright future for human-AI cooperation. Maxim Adams has the story.
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LOS ANGELES — “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” reigned over the weekend box office with a $56.5 million North American opening, according to studio estimates Sunday, giving a needed surge to an uncertain season in theaters.
The film from 20th Century Studios and Disney that built on the rebooted “Apes” trilogy of the 2010s had the third highest opening of the year, after the $81.5 million debut of “Dune: Part Two” in early March and the $58.3 million domestic opening of “Kung Fu Panda 4” a week later.
The strong performance for “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” — it played even better internationally with a global total of $129 million — comes a week after a tepid start for Ryan Gosling’s “The Fall Guy” signaled that the summer of 2024 is likely to see a major drop-off after the “Barbenheimer” magic of 2023.
“Planet of the Apes” easily made more than the rest of the top 10 combined.
“The Fall Guy” fell to No. 2 with a $13.7 million weekend and a two-week total of $49.7 million for Universal Pictures.
Zendaya’s “Challengers” was third with $4.7 million and has earned $38 million in three weeks for Amazon MGM studios.
The opening for “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” helmed by “Maze Runner” director Wes Ball, was the second best in the series, after the $72 million opening weekend of 2014’s “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.”
It’s the 10th movie in the “Planet of the Apes” franchise that began in 1968 with the Charlton Heston original with a twist ending.
“This franchise has never been allowed to lose its momentum,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “There are very few franchises that have this kind of longevity.”
And it really is the property itself. The new film shares no central actors or characters with its predecessors.
“There’s just this love for the way it melds sci-fi with social commentary and straight-up popcorn entertainment,” Dergarabedian said.
“Kingdom” came with strong reviews and positive buzz (80% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and a “B” CinemaScore). It was especially praised for its visual effects and the way its CGI has caught up with its primates-on-horseback aesthetic even since the last film, 2017’s “War for the Planet of the Apes.”
Mark Kennedy of The Associated Press called it “thrilling” and “visually stunning.”
The shot in the arm is welcome for the movie business, but there is little certainty in the forthcoming summer.
The year so far, lacking an early Marvel movie like 2023’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” is running 21% last year’s mid-May total.
While there are potential blockbusters that feel like safe bets including “Despicable Me 4” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” in July, others like “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” later this month and “Twisters” later in the summer feel like they could break either way.
Pixar once brought almost guaranteed hits, but June’s “Inside Out 2” may not thrive like the 2015 original.
“There used to be sure bets we cannot necessarily bank on anymore,” Dergarabedian said. “It is going to be a bit of a hit-or-miss slate.”
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
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“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” $56.5 million.
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“The Fall Guy,” $13.7 million.
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“Challengers,” $4.7 million.
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“Tarot,” $3.45 million.
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“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” $2.5 million.
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“Unsung Hero,” $ 2.25 million.
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“Kung Fu Panda 4,” $2 million.
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“Civil War,” $1.8 million.
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“Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace,” $1.5 million.
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“Abigail,” $1.1 million.
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Washington — Two Air Force fighter jets recently squared off in a dogfight in California. One was flown by a pilot. The other wasn’t.
That second jet was piloted by artificial intelligence, with the Air Force’s highest-ranking civilian riding along in the front seat. It was the ultimate display of how far the Air Force has come in developing a technology with its roots in the 1950s. But it’s only a hint of the technology yet to come.
The United States is competing to stay ahead of China on AI and its use in weapon systems. The focus on AI has generated public concern that future wars will be fought by machines that select and strike targets without direct human intervention. Officials say this will never happen, at least not on the U.S. side. But there are questions about what a potential adversary would allow, and the military sees no alternative but to get U.S. capabilities fielded fast.
“Whether you want to call it a race or not, it certainly is,” said Adm. Christopher Grady, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Both of us have recognized that this will be a very critical element of the future battlefield. China’s working on it as hard as we are.”
A look at the history of military development of AI, what technologies are on the horizon and how they will be kept under control:
From machine learning to autonomy
AI’s military roots are a hybrid of machine learning and autonomy. Machine learning occurs when a computer analyzes data and rule sets to reach conclusions. Autonomy occurs when those conclusions are applied to act without further human input.
This took an early form in the 1960s and 1970s with the development of the Navy’s Aegis missile defense system. Aegis was trained through a series of human-programmed if/then rule sets to be able to detect and intercept incoming missiles autonomously, and more rapidly than a human could. But the Aegis system was not designed to learn from its decisions and its reactions were limited to the rule set it had.
“If a system uses ‘if/then’ it is probably not machine learning, which is a field of AI that involves creating systems that learn from data,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Christopher Berardi, who is assigned to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to assist with the Air Force’s AI development.
AI took a major step forward in 2012 when the combination of big data and advanced computing power enabled computers to begin analyzing the information and writing the rule sets themselves. It is what AI experts have called AI’s “big bang.”
The new data created by a computer writing the rules is artificial intelligence. Systems can be programmed to act autonomously from the conclusions reached from machine-written rules, which is a form of AI-enabled autonomy.
Testing an AI alternative to GPS navigation
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall got a taste of that advanced warfighting this month when he flew on Vista, the first F-16 fighter jet to be controlled by AI, in a dogfighting exercise over California’s Edwards Air Force Base.
While that jet is the most visible sign of the AI work underway, there are hundreds of ongoing AI projects across the Pentagon.
At MIT, service members worked to clear thousands of hours of recorded pilot conversations to create a data set from the flood of messages exchanged between crews and air operations centers during flights, so the AI could learn the difference between critical messages like a runway being closed and mundane cockpit chatter. The goal was to have the AI learn which messages are critical to elevate to ensure controllers see them faster.
In another significant project, the military is working on an AI alternative to GPS satellite-dependent navigation.
In a future war high-value GPS satellites would likely be hit or interfered with. The loss of GPS could blind U.S. communication, navigation and banking systems and make the U.S. military’s fleet of aircraft and warships less able to coordinate a response.
So last year the Air Force flew an AI program — loaded onto a laptop that was strapped to the floor of a C-17 military cargo plane — to work on an alternative solution using the Earth’s magnetic fields.
It has been known that aircraft could navigate by following the Earth’s magnetic fields, but so far that hasn’t been practical because each aircraft generates so much of its own electromagnetic noise that there has been no good way to filter for just the Earth’s emissions.
“Magnetometers are very sensitive,” said Col. Garry Floyd, director for the Department of Air Force-MIT Artificial Intelligence Accelerator program. “If you turn on the strobe lights on a C-17 we would see it.”
The AI learned through the flights and reams of data which signals to ignore and which to follow and the results “were very, very impressive,” Floyd said. “We’re talking tactical airdrop quality.”
“We think we may have added an arrow to the quiver in the things we can do, should we end up operating in a GPS-denied environment. Which we will,” Floyd said.
The AI so far has been tested only on the C-17. Other aircraft will also be tested, and if it works it could give the military another way to operate if GPS goes down.
Safety rails and pilot speak
Vista, the AI-controlled F-16, has considerable safety rails as the Air Force trains it. There are mechanical limits that keep the still-learning AI from executing maneuvers that would put the plane in danger. There is a safety pilot, too, who can take over control from the AI with the push of a button.
The algorithm cannot learn during a flight, so each time up it has only the data and rule sets it has created from previous flights. When a new flight is over, the algorithm is transferred back onto a simulator where it is fed new data gathered in-flight to learn from, create new rule sets and improve its performance.
But the AI is learning fast. Because of the supercomputing speed AI uses to analyze data, and then flying those new rule sets in the simulator, its pace in finding the most efficient way to fly and maneuver has already led it to beat some human pilots in dogfighting exercises.
But safety is still a critical concern, and officials said the most important way to take safety into account is to control what data is reinserted into the simulator for the AI to learn from.
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New York — “The Fall Guy,” the Ryan Gosling-led, action-comedy ode to stunt performers, opened below expectations with $28.5 million, according to studio estimates Sunday, providing a lukewarm start to a summer movie season that’s very much to be determined for Hollywood.
The Universal Pictures release opened on a weekend that Marvel has regularly dominated with $100 million-plus launches. (In 2023, that was “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” with a $118 million debut.) But last year’s strikes jumbled this year’s movie calendar; “Deadpool & Wolverine,” originally slated to open this weekend, is instead debuting in July.
So in place of a superhero kickoff, the summer launch went to a movie about the stunt performers who anonymously sacrifice their bodies for the kind of action sequences blockbusters are built on. Going into the weekend, forecasts had the film opening $30 million to $40 million.
“The Fall Guy,” directed by former stuntman and “Deadpool 2” helmer David Leitch, rode into the weekend with the momentum of glowing reviews and the buzz of a SXSW premiere. But it will need sustained interest to merit its $130 million production budget. It added $25.4 million in overseas markets.
Working in its favor for a long run: strong audience scores (an “A-” CinemaScore) and good reviews (83% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). Jim Orr, distribution chief for Universal, believes things line up well for “The Fall Guy” in the coming weeks.
“We had a very solid opening,” said Orr. “We’re looking forward to a very long, very robust, very successful run throughout the domestic box office for literally weeks if not months to come.”
But the modest start for “The Fall Guy” hints at larger concerns for the film industry. Superhero films haven’t been quite the box-office behemoth they once were, leading studios to search for fresher alternative. “The Fall Guy” seemed to check all the boxes, with extravagant action sequences, one of the hottest stars in the business, a director with a track-record for crowd pleasers and very good reviews.
But instead, the opening for “The Fall Guy,” loosely based on the 1980s TV series, only emphasized that the movie business is likely to struggle to rekindle the fervor of last year’s “Barbenheimer” summer. “The Fall Guy” stars one from each: Gosling, in his first post-Ken role, and Emily Blunt, of “Oppenheimer.” Both were Oscar nominated.
“It’s going to be a very interesting, nontraditional summer this year,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore.
In part due to the effects of last year’s work stoppages, there are fewer big movies hitting theaters. Expectations are that the total summer box office will be closer to $3 billion than the $4 billion that’s historically been generated.
“The summer season is just getting started, so let’s give ‘The Fall Guy’ a chance to build that momentum over time. It’s a different type of summer kickoff film,” said Dergarabedian. “There’s always huge expectations placed on any film that kicks off the summer movie season, but this isn’t your typical summer movie season.”
In a surprise, No. 2 at the box office went to the Walt Disney Co. rerelease of “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.” The first episode to George Lucas’ little-loved prequels collected $8.1 million over the weekend, 25 years after “Phantom Menace” grossed $1 billion.
Last week’s top film, the Zendaya tennis drama “Challengers,” slid to third place with $7.6 million in its second week. That was a sold hold for the Amazon MGM release, directed by Luca Guadagnino, dipping 49% from its first weekend.
The Sony Screen Gems supernatural horror film “Tarot” also opened nationwide. It debuted with $6.5 million, a decent enough start for a low-budget release but another example of horror not quite performing this year as it has the last few years.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
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“The Fall Guy,” $28.5 million.
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“Star Wars: The Phantom Menace,” $8.1 million.
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“Challengers,” $7.6 million.
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“Tarot,” $6.5 million.
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“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” $4.5 million.
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“Civil War,” $3.6 million.
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“Unsung Hero,” $3 million.
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“Kung Fu Panda 4,” $2.4 million.
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“Abigail,” $2.3 million.
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“Ghostbuster: Frozen Empire,” $1.8 million.
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