Flagship

Biden fights calls to drop out

US President Joe Biden tried to fend off growing calls to exit the presidential race, as support for his candidacy grows increasingly perilous. New Wall Street Journal and New York Times polls showed Republican Donald Trump has widened his lead over Biden since last week’s debate. The White House vehemently denied reports that Biden is privately weighing whether to drop out, even as some Democrats and donors pitched Vice President Kamala Harris as the most likely candidate to replace her boss. Harris has faced historically low approval ratings at times, but Democrats believe she has found her footing in the last year, taking the lead on abortion rights and making major speeches on the war in Gaza.

Diplomats scramble over Israel-Hezbollah

An Israeli strike in southern Lebanon killed a senior Hezbollah commander on Wednesday, as Western governments ramped up diplomatic efforts to stave off another all-out war in the region. A special US envoy met with French officials to discuss ideas for a possible compromise between Israel and Hezbollah, though the Iran-backed militant group doubled down on its stance that it will not stop striking Israel until the war in Gaza ends. “The window for diplomacy is closing but not closed,” one Middle East expert said, adding that July will be “either a blessing or curse” for the two sides. In a move that could further inflame tensions, Israel on Wednesday announced its biggest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in three decades.

Xi meets Putin in Kazakhstan

Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kazakhstan on Wednesday at an international summit focused on countering Western institutions and the US. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, formed by Russia and China in 2001, has expanded from a Central Asia-focused alliance to a Eurasia-wide coalition with broader geopolitical ambitions; staunchly pro-Russian Belarus is expected to be admitted this year. The summit also gives China a chance to assert itself on the world stage as the natural leader of the Global South, while competing with Russia for influence in Central Asia. As Moscow’s grip on the region loosens, Beijing is deepening trade links with countries like Uzbekistan, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Hong Kongers are UK’s new voting bloc

The UK’s general election on Thursday — in which the ruling Conservatives are expected to be trounced by the Labour party — presents a chance for a new wave of immigrants from Hong Kong to flex their electoral muscle. More than 144,000 Hong Kongers will be able to vote for the first time under a new visa scheme. Experts say the bloc could decide some crucial seats in Parliament, and the major parties have sought to win them over by portraying themselves as hawkish on Beijing, even as anti-immigration sentiment is high in the UK. “The government is happy to develop a ‘good immigrant’ narrative with Hong Kongers to try to distinguish between a lawful immigrant compared to an ‘illegal’ migrant,” one expert said.

China trade landscape worsening

The worst is yet to come for China’s trade landscape, data and experts predict. In the first half of the year, China faced 64 anti-dumping investigations, a 166% increase from 2023, according to a government tally. India was responsible for a quarter of the total. Analysts told the South China Morning Post they anticipate China will face even more tariffs, partly because of US efforts to diminish the World Trade Organization’s role in arbitrating disputes. While the most high-profile trade wars involve electric vehicle imports, many of the probes center on hyper-specific, and admittedly less exciting, materials: Turkey recently initiated an anti-dumping investigation into Chinese stainless steel cold rolled coil, while the US said it was looking into imports of the flavoring agent vanillin.

China’s underground AI chip market

A barely secret network of smugglers regularly brings Nvidia chips into China, bypassing US sanctions. More than 70 distributors openly advertise what they say are Nvidia products, and buyers can usually get hold of them within weeks. Some sellers offer entire servers, worth around $300,000 and containing eight high-end chips. The smuggled quantities are not enough for a tech giant, but could meet the needs of smaller research institutions or startups. The Wall Street Journal found one Chinese student who was paid $600 to carry six Nvidia chips, each worth tens of thousands of dollars, through Singapore customs. “I’m glad I was able to do something for my country,” he said, “and make a little extra money.”

Big Tech prepares for Trump 2.0

Tech leaders are preparing for how a second Donald Trump presidency could change the worldwide trajectory of artificial intelligence. The next four years will be pivotal for the growth of AI, and in the wake of US President Joe Biden’s poor debate performance, some companies are drafting memos on what to expect under Trump, Semafor reported. The Republican’s tendency toward unilateralism could have far-reaching consequences for AI, experts said: Several global summits have focused on AI in the last few years, and “it’s hard to imagine those continuing to have strong US participation under Trump,” a former OpenAI board member said. But some in the industry think the former president is less likely to stifle innovation with regulation.

Indonesia’s big EV push

Indonesia’s first battery cell factory has opened. Hyundai and LG built the $1.1 billion plant in Karawang as Jakarta pushes to step up its high-tech manufacturing. The Chinese company CATL, the world’s biggest electric vehicle battery maker, will also begin building a facility later this year. Indonesia produces nearly half of the world’s nickel, a vital raw material for EV battery manufacturing, and in 2020 it banned ore exports, forcing foreign companies to invest in factories in the country. The government also offers tax breaks to EV companies to incentivize investment. EV sales have slowed since the battery plant was proposed, but analysts told the Financial Times that Indonesia is set to gain from the energy transition.

Japan wins war on floppy disks

Japan declared victory in its war on floppy disks. The country stopped using the antiquated storage devices in all government systems as of last week, scrapping 1,034 regulations governing their use. Japan’s digital minister in 2022 began an effort to eradicate floppy disks; up until January of this year, the government required physical media like floppy disks and CDs for 1,900 types of document submissions, Ars Technica noted. Japan has a tendency to hold onto dated tech: Many offices still opt for sending faxes over emails, and a 2021 push to eliminate fax machines from the government was abandoned due to resistance.

World’s oldest cave art discovered

Cave paintings in Indonesia turned out to be 4,000 years older than thought, making them the world’s oldest known representational artworks. Archaeologists used new techniques to date the images in limestone caves on the island of Sulawesi, and found they were around 51,000 years old — predating the earliest European cave paintings by 15,000 years. Earlier artworks exist, notably in Spain and Africa, but are abstract: The Indonesia paintings include figurative images of human-animal hybrids hunting pigs. The discovery supports the idea that any cognitive leap required for figurative art happened before humanity’s ancestors left Africa.

July 4:

• New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art returns looted artifacts to Cambodia.
• Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD opens its first Southeast Asian plant, in Thailand.
• The US celebrates its 278th Independence Day.

The Caesar salad turns 100 on Thursday. An Italian immigrant to Mexico, Caesar Cardini, is believed to have invented the dish — consisting of Romaine lettuce, oil, Worcestershire sauce, lemons, eggs, and Parmesan cheese — at his restaurant Caesar’s Place, in Tijuana. “A star was born” on July 4, 1924, the Associated Press declared. The city is celebrating the anniversary by holding a three-day food and wine festival, and unveiling a statue of Cardini. The salad is served at 35% of US restaurants, and its sustained popularity is an outlier compared to other dishes from the early 1900s, like creamed liver loaf or aspic.

• Democrats weigh ‘comatose or dead’ Biden and alternatives.
• It’s a very strange time to be Bernie Sanders.
• Private equity’s movie studio cuts back for a changed reality.