Lead story

China launches a 29-nation AI alliance as Xi calls for a 'symphony' of cooperation

Beijing answers Washington's chip walls with an open door: a new world AI body, headquartered in Shanghai.

Speaking at the World AI Conference in Shanghai on Friday, his first appearance at the event, Xi Jinping unveiled the World AI Cooperation Organization, an intergovernmental body founded by 29 countries with its headquarters in Shanghai. He told delegates that AI development "should not be a solo performance by any single country but rather a symphony of global cooperation," a pointed answer to American export curbs that have squeezed China's access to advanced chips. Beijing backed the pitch with concrete offers: 5,000 AI training slots for developing countries over five years, and access for 30 nations to a Chinese-built meteorological early-warning system. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attended alongside more than 1,100 exhibiting companies.

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Tech & AI →

Moonshot AI releases Kimi K3, the largest open-weight model ever

Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter open-weight model with a million-token context window, shipped as China works around US compute limits.

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Huawei unveils Atlas 950 SuperPoD at Shanghai's AI conference

Huawei showed off its Atlas 950 SuperPoD at the World AI Conference, chaining thousands of Ascend chips as a homegrown alternative to Nvidia's export-restricted systems.

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Business & Markets →

Stocks slide as the semiconductor rout deepens

Stocks fell Friday as the chip selloff deepened: the Nasdaq dropped 1.4 percent, Nvidia, AMD and Intel all slid, gold topped $4,000, and the 10-year yield hit 4.55 percent.

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TSMC profit jumps 77 percent and adds $100 billion to its Arizona bet

TSMC posted a record quarter on 2-nanometer demand, with net income up 77 percent, and added $100 billion to its Arizona buildout for a $265 billion US total.

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Science →

NASA's New Horizons wakes healthy from its longest hibernation

New Horizons woke from eleven months of hibernation in good health, nearly 6 billion miles out, resuming its study of the Kuiper Belt and the sun's protective bubble.

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NASA opens applications for a year-long simulated Mars mission

NASA is recruiting four volunteers to spend a year in a 650-square-foot Mars simulation in Houston, with missions starting as soon as August 2027.

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Letters to the King

You danced before the ark with all your might, and you were despised for it in your own house. How do you stop caring what people think of your joy?

From the Baker's own shelf

When the ark came home I took off my royal robes and spun like a common man, for the music belonged to the Lord and was not mine to look dignified beside. Michal watched from her window and measured me; I had stopped measuring myself long before the first step. Hear this: joy offered to heaven is never on trial before men, and the eyes at the window are always smaller than the thing that makes you dance. I said then that I would become yet more undignified than this, and I have kept that promise all my days. Dance; let the windows think what they will.

– David, King in Jerusalem

Mail carried to the throne by the Baker – leave your own letter at the chronicles.

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