Flagship

China encroaches on Japan airspace

A Chinese military surveillance aircraft encroached on Japanese airspace Monday — the first known incursion of its kind — putting the Pacific further on edge. The breach comes a day before the US’ top security adviser is set to meet senior Chinese officials in Beijing, where he is expected to raise concerns about Taiwan as well as Beijing’s actions in the South China Sea. Japan has long sent fighter jets to intercept Chinese planes, and analysts believe the latest incursion is a message from Beijing challenging Japan’s territorial border delineation, The New York Times reported. Japan is also seeking to strengthen its transatlantic and European security partnerships, a political scientist wrote in Politico, because “there’s no war scenario in which Japan wouldn’t be affected by China’s aggression against Taiwan.”

PDD misses analysts’ predictions

Shares of China’s PDD Holdings — owner of the e-commerce app Temu — plunged nearly 30% Monday after Q2 sales fell short of analysts’ predictions. Revenue reached a record $13.6 billion from April through June, but missed analysts’ average estimate of $14 billion, according to Bloomberg. PDD blamed the shortfall on weak consumer spending and high unemployment in China, especially among younger workers. The e-commerce giant also faces stiff competition from rivals Alibaba and ByteDance, the owner of TikTok. PDD was recently rattled by merchant protests demanding an end to unfair penalties.

Canada slaps 100% tariff on Chinese EVs

Canada on Monday said it would impose a 100% tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles as the West rushes to rein in China’s EV domination. The duty matches proposed US tariffs that are expected to be finalized this week but could be dialed back if the US industry gets its way, Reuters reported. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the tariffs are aligned with global economies that recognize the challenges posed by China: “Unless we all want to get to a race to the bottom, we have to stand up.” Imports from China have exploded in recent years after Tesla began selling its Shanghai-produced EVs to Canada, CBC reported. The duty is expected to force Tesla to supply Canada with vehicles made in its US or European factories.

US denies breakdown in ceasefire talks

Israel ordered more evacuations in central Gaza Sunday, escalating fighting there and diminishing ceasefire hopes. However, Washington insisted Monday that talks were progressing and were “constructive.” While a larger regional war was averted after Israel thwarted Hezbollah’s missile attack, the situation on Israel’s northern border is “not sustainable” without a long-term solution, an Israeli official said. Some analysts blame Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar for prolonging the conflict for their political survival. The two “share a common interest in keeping the fires of war… burning,” The Guardian wrote, because “if they fail, it is they themselves who will be consumed.”

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Russians panic over Telegram CEO arrest

The arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has left Russians reeling. French prosecutors said Monday that they detained the Russian-born billionaire as part of a probe into criminal activity on the app, including drug sales. The arrest irked the Kremlin, forcing the French government to insist it wasn’t politically motivated. But it also “baffled” Russia’s opposition members who publish censorship-free commentary on the app, The Moscow Times wrote, and alarmed the military that uses it for battlefield communications. “They practically detained the head of communication of the Russian army,” one blogger wrote. Durov’s arrest could also hurt the public’s understanding of the Ukraine war, Defense One argued, because Telegram provides Western analysts with a “window” into how pro-war military bloggers perceive the conflict.

Modi faces policy pushback from allies

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose party lost its majority in recent elections, is getting a bitter taste of coalition politics. His government was forced to withdraw an ad for merit-based federal jobs after allies objected to the plan’s lack of affirmative action for marginalized groups. It’s the latest in a series of recent government reversals: “Earlier [Modi’s party] could do what they wanted, but now no longer,” a political expert told Nikkei. “It’s a compulsion [of coalition politics].” Meanwhile, Modi’s popularity rating dropped below 50% for the first time in response to a question about who is best suited to be India’s next leader in a Mood of the Nation poll, with one political scientist pointing to high unemployment as a major pain point for Indians.

Artificial ‘scientist’ conducts experiments

An artificial intelligence model designed and ran its own scientific experiments. In what may be an early step towards AIs not simply learning from human-made data but inventing ideas of their own, an artificial “scientist” wrote several research papers, including on speeding up learning in deep neural networks. The ideas dreamt up by the AI, developed at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, are “not wildly creative,” lab leader Jeff Clune told WIRED, but they are “pretty cool.” However, others criticized the AI as derivative and unreliable. Scientists have been attempting to automate discovery since the 1970s, and whether AIs can ever come up with truly novel ideas is still unknown. “That’s the trillion dollar question,” Clune said.

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Antibiotic trial cuts Niger’s child mortality

Far fewer young children would die in sub-Saharan Africa if a common antibiotic was more widely used, a trial in Niger found. The west African nation has one of the highest child mortality rates in the world; more than one in ten children do not survive to see their fifth birthday. Azithromycin — used to treat diseases including respiratory infections, diarrhea, and malaria — is currently prescribed to babies younger than 11 months, but giving the drug to all under-fives cut mortality by 17%, the study found. Researchers at the University of California argue that the benefits of expanding the drug’s use outweigh the risks of antimicrobial resistance, and the WHO is reviewing its position, the Financial Times reported.

DC flocks to Finnish embassy sauna

The hottest ticket in Washington DC’s political, diplomatic, and media circles is the sauna at the Finnish embassy. The Finnish government’s Diplomatic Sauna Society, set up in 2003, is a networking club of influential people in the Beltway who conduct business in the 180F heat of the embassy’s sauna, The New York Times reported. Saunas are integral to Finland, and the country’s missions in London and Berlin also conduct similarly sweaty diplomacy. In DC, the embassy fields several requests a week from Congress members clamoring for an invite. “When you are half-naked or even sometimes completely naked, it allows for deeper discussion,” Mikko Hautala, Finland’s ambassador to the US, told The Times.

Open kitchens make chefs nicer

Open kitchens make chefs kinder. Restaurant kitchens used to be “windowless basements” home to “nasty tempers,” the Financial Times’ Rosanna Dodds wrote. Raised voices and smashed plates were par for the course, and working as a waitress a decade ago she once witnessed “an airborne panna cotta.” But with more establishments making their kitchens visible to diners, the ego-driven chefs of the past have been replaced by a more emotionally aware generation. While one design expert noted a Big Brother-ish aspect to requiring surveillance to encourage better behavior, it’s still preferable to chefs ruling by fear, Dodds argued: “I doubt a chef would throw a pudding in an open kitchen.”

August 27:

• Australian mining giant BHP releases results for the 2024 fiscal year.
• SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn crew attempts to carry out the first ever private spacewalk.
• British band Oasis announces that they will reunite for shows next summer.

Two powerhouse translators of Russian literature, Richard Perear and his wife Larissa Volokhonsky, bicker like any couple — but never about word choices. It could be the secret to their four-decade-long working relationship, with Volokhonsky, 78, and Perear, 81, publishing their latest project, a translation of Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin’s Foolsburg: The History of a Town, earlier this month. Their marriage is passionately literary: When they first translated Fyodor Dostoevsky’s masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov, the Russian giant dominated their lives to the point where “it was a marriage a trois,” Volokhonsky told The New York Times. Admirers say their work is more faithful to the original Russian, but they have also attracted fierce condemnation from critics who prefer older translations.

• Elon Musk blasts Telegram founder’s arrest as attack on free speech.
• Progressive news site Barbed Wire launches in Texas.
• Nigeria’s Chowdeck hopes to prove food delivery doubters wrong.