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Hours earlier, Future Forward, the largest super PAC in Democratic politics, announced it had secured $150 million in commitments over the same period from donors who were “previously stalled, uncertain or uncommitted,” a senior adviser said.

Taken together, the fundraising explosion puts Harris in a dominant position to secure the Democratic Party’s formal presidential nomination at next month’s national convention — if not sooner.

The huge haul also ensures that Harris and her allies can compete with Donald Trump, who has generated stunning fundraising totals of his own in recent weeks as he fights to return to the White House following multiple felony convictions and an assassination attempt.

Nobody really knew what was happening,” said Michael Smith, an Los Angeles donor who, along with his partner James Costos, held numerous fundraisers for Biden.

Chad Griffin, a member of the campaign’s national finance committee and a top Democratic fundraiser in the Los Angeles area, said the party is lucky to have Harris “ready to finish the job she and President Biden started together.”

With Biden’s endorsement, Harris’ campaign appears to have inherited his sprawling national infrastructure and tens of millions of dollars that his team previously raised.

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TOKYO – Vice foreign ministers from Japan and China held a strategic dialogue Monday for the first time in four and a half years, as the countries focus on shared interests amid a host of diplomatic challenges.

Masataka Okano and Chinese counterpart Ma Zhaoxu discussed developments in the East and South China seas as well as Ukraine during their talk in Tokyo.

Other topics included Japan’s release of treated wastewater from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and the detention of Japanese nationals in China.

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa and Chinese counterpart Wang Yi are considering holding talks on the sidelines of ASEAN-hosted meetings in Laos starting Thursday.

China is eager to bolster ties with Japan ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November, concerned that a harsher stance by Washington could lead Tokyo to follow suit.

Beijing also awaits the outcome of the leadership race in Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party scheduled for next month, which will decide the country’s next prime minister.

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Created by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a road map for the next Republican president, presented in the form of a hefty 922-page playbook.

Some of its most extreme priorities include: eliminating the Department of Education, prohibiting the FBI from fighting misinformation and disinformation and ending the “war on fossil fuels.”

Some of the goals outlined in the project don’t require a president’s involvement at all, and can be carried out by local and state governments.

When asked for comment, Trump’s spokesman Steven Cheung told BI: “Kamala is the one with the radical, out-of-touch agenda,” adding that she is “soft on crime” and “hates American energy production and jobs.”

Harris’ statement comes shortly after President Biden quit the race, following weeks of calls from top Democrats telling him to step aside or risk losing the election.

“While it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden wrote in a letter posted on social media.

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Researchers at the University of Hull recently unveiled a novel method for detecting AI-generated deepfake images by analyzing reflections in human eyes.

Adejumoke Owolabi, an MSc student at the University of Hull, headed the research under the guidance of Dr. Kevin Pimbblet, professor of astrophysics.

In some ways, the astronomy angle isn’t always necessary for this kind of deepfake detection because a quick glance at a pair of eyes in a photo can reveal reflection inconsistencies, which is something artists who paint portraits have to keep in mind.

They used the Gini coefficient, typically employed to measure light distribution in galaxy images, to assess the uniformity of reflections across eye pixels.

The approach also risks producing false positives, as even authentic photos can sometimes exhibit inconsistent eye reflections due to varied lighting conditions or post-processing techniques.

But analyzing eye reflections may still be a useful tool in a larger deepfake detection toolset that also considers other factors such as hair texture, anatomy, skin details, and background consistency.

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In the biggest news of all, Rivian and Volkswagen announced a $5 billion joint venture that will co-develop core parts of the hardware and software platform to be used in cars from both automakers.

We love that because it aligns so beautifully with our mission: the ability to help accelerate putting highly compelling electric vehicles into the market, which will ultimately drive more demand.

A core objective of how we’ve structured the joint venture is that we don’t lose the velocity and the speed and the decisiveness and lack of bureaucracy that exists within our software function today.

Beyond just simplification of how we manage running over-the-air updates across so many different instances, it also gets us a lot of supply chain leverage in a way that we, Rivian, haven’t had in the past.

In fact, you can imagine the day of the announcement, I had a handful of phone calls from CEOs of big semiconductor suppliers, and they’re like, “Hey, we can work harder on pricing.” So, that was awesome.

So, taking away all those mechanical design studio packaging constraints that we had before, and then solving the biggest challenge, which was network architecture by this being that as a project, it’s just a very different type of relationship.

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EMILYs LIST, the PAC focused on electing Democratic women, explicitly endorsed Harris in a tweet and, in a more subtle show of support, also added the tree and the coconut to its username.

The “coconut tree” meme originates from a May 2023 speech Harris gave at a White House event for advancing opportunities for Hispanic Americans.

At one point near the end of her remarks, Harris talked about how the initiative’s work would be focused on young people, but it should also take into account the needs of their families, teachers and communities, “because none of us just live in a silo.”

But the meme tookon new life this summer, after President Biden’s disastrous debate performance fueled speculation that he might step aside as the Democratic nominee.

The RNC compiled a supercut of Harris being “unburdened” and shared it on social media, arguing that it shows she is “unoriginal, annoying, and highly incompetent.” But her supporters have taken ownership of the line.

As Washington Post internet culture reporter Taylor Lorenz wrote: “Harris’s new online prominence could help give the Democratic Party new prominence with young people — including major content creators — who are hesitant to vote for Biden again due to his climate policies, support of Israel’s war in Gaza, mishandling of the ongoing pandemic, and signing a bill that could ban TikTok.”

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Critics say the legislation is fundamentally undemocratic and would undermine Israeli academia, because it restricts free speech and allows politicians to weaponise accusations that should be handled by the legal system.

Sivan said the legislation was dangerous for its broad restrictions and its narrow focus on universities, adding that Israel already had laws against incitement to terror that cover all residents.

“What they are trying to do is subject academics to stricter rules than other residents of Israel, where a violation of state laws is not judged in court but rather by a government-appointed administrator, with no process or opportunity for the accused one to defend him or herself.

The Association of University Heads, Israel (Vera) said in a public letter that the student union billboards backing the law were a divisive “campaign of persecution and incitement” that could lead to violence.

One of the academics targeted, Anat Matar from the philosophy department at Tel Aviv University, said the role of students in drafting and promoting a law to silence their lecturers was particularly disturbing.

Vera warned in a public letter that the draft law would also fuel international sanctions campaigns against Israeli universities by undermining their academic independence.

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The Philippines occupies Second Thomas Shoal but China also claims it, and increasingly hostile clashes at sea have sparked fears of larger conflicts that could involve the United States.

Chinese coast guard and other forces have used powerful water cannons and dangerous blocking maneuvers to prevent food and other supplies from reaching Filipino navy personnel at Manila’s outpost at the shoal, on a long-grounded and rusting warship, the BRP Sierra Madre.

The violent faceoff wounded several Filipino navy personnel, including one who lost his thumb, in a chaotic skirmish that was captured in video and photos that were later made public by Philippine officials.

In addition to China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have been locked in separate but increasingly tense territorial disputes in the waterway, which is regarded as a potential flashpoint and a delicate fault line in the U.S.-China regional rivalry.

The U.S. military has deployed Navy ships and fighter jets for decades in what it calls freedom of navigation and overflight patrols, which China has opposed and regards as a threat to regional stability.

Washington has no territorial claims in the disputed waters but has repeatedly warned that it is obligated to defend the Philippines, its oldest treaty ally in Asia, if Filipino forces, ships and aircraft come under an armed attack, including in the South China Sea.

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An MP for the radical-left France Unbowed party has sparked outrage after saying Israeli athletes are not welcome at the Paris Olympics and calling for protests against their presence.

Yonathan Arfi, the head of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), described the comments as “indecent” and “irresponsible”, accusing Portes of “putting a target on the backs of Israeli athletes”.

Arfi reminded the MP that 11 Israeli athletes were killed by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics and said the country’s Olympians were “already the most in danger” at the Games.

Portes later told Le Parisien newspaper that French diplomats should put pressure on the International Olympic Committee to ban the Israeli flag and anthem at the Games, which open on Friday, “as is done for Russia”.

The French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said: “The hints of antisemitism in his [Portes’] comments are obvious.”

Israel’s football team is scheduled to play its first match of the Olympics against Mali in Paris’s Parc des Princes stadium on Wednesday, two days before the opening ceremony.

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Members of the Recording Industry Association of Japan had taken legal action in the U.S. to demand information on Hikari No Akari’s operator from California-based Cloudflare, whose content delivery network the site had used.

“We’ll use information that Cloudflare will disclose to hold the website operator responsible and take other legal action,” an RIAJ spokesperson said.

The website received roughly 15 million visits over the past year, 75% of which were from countries outside Japan, such as Indonesia, the U.S. and France.

“Unlike videos or published materials, pirated works of music don’t need to be translated for anyone to enjoy,” says Hiroyuki Nakajima, an attorney versed in content piracy.

The RIAJ took a similar step in 2023, forcing the closure of another piracy website that August via legal action in the U.S.

This site, which had linked to illegal downloads of J-pop for more than two years, had not shut down as the trade group had demanded.

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Donald Trump has said China’s president wrote him a “beautiful note” after the assassination attempt a week ago, as he continued to court leaders whom Joe Biden has criticised as dictators.

In his first campaign rally since narrowly escaping the attempt on his life in Pennsylvania, Trump told a crowd in Michigan on Saturday: “[President Xi Jinping] wrote me a beautiful note the other day when he heard about what happened.”

As well as familiar attacks on Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, Trump also used the rally in Grand Rapids to hail Xi and Vladimir Putin as “smart, tough” figures who “love their country”, echoing praise he gave in 2022 of the Russian president’s strategy to invade Ukraine.

Still wearing a small wound dressing a week after the shooting, Trump also publicly supported the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, saying he was right in saying that “we have to have somebody that can protect us”.

In one letter, about a meeting in Singapore in June 2018, Kim wrote: “Even now I cannot forget that moment of history when I firmly held Your Excellency’s hand at the beautiful and sacred location as the whole world watched.”

After a summit in Vietnam in February 2019, Kim wrote that “every minute we shared 103 days ago in Hanoi was also a moment of glory that remains a precious memory”.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky struck an unusually subdued tone as he addressed his nation this week, hinting at a willingness to negotiate with Russia for the first time since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion more than two years ago.

At the same time, questions are emerging about the willingness of some of Ukraine’s closest and most important allies – notably the United States and Germany – to continue pouring resources into the conflict in support of Kyiv.

Speaking to CNN from the Aspen Security Forum, Herbst said that it was possible Zelensky was trying to reach out to the potential future Trump administration by stressing he would be willing to negotiate – as long as the deal on the table is just.

Orysia Lutsevych, deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, said that considering Putin’s public demands, Zelensky’s words were likely meant as a message to the rest of the world.

The southern front – which stretches from the Donbas in eastern Ukraine across the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, with Russian-occupied territory creating a land bridge between Russia and Crimea – will be a key target.

He believes Kyiv could “speak with some justification of Ukrainian victory in this war,” even if Ukraine doesn’t manage to get back all of its pre-war territory – as long as it reclaims enough to be an economically viable and secure state.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race for the White House on Sunday, ending his bid for reelection following a disastrous debate with Donald Trump that raised doubts about his fitness for office just four months before the election.

And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden wrote in a letter posted to his X account.

The announcement is the latest jolt to a campaign for the White House that both political parties see as the most consequential election in generations, coming just days after the attempted assassination of Trump at a Pennsylvania rally.

Now, Democrats have to urgently try to bring coherence to the nominating process in a matter of weeks and persuade voters in a stunningly short amount of time that their nominee can handle the job and beat Trump.

The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to be held Aug. 19-22 in Chicago, but the party had announced that it would hold a virtual roll call to formally nominate Biden before in-person proceedings begin.

“His decision of course was not easy, but he once again put his country, his party, and our future first,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “Joe, today shows you are a true patriot and great American.”

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In the months before the Israeli invasion, Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah was a lifeline, a place where thousands sought shelter or scrabbled to raise funds to cross into neighbouring Egypt.

Social media video and satellite images show the destruction of the Rafah crossing point, previously the last remaining passenger route out of Gaza, after Israeli forces seized control of the area in early May.

Soon afterwards, Israel said it had “operational control” of the entire Philadelphi corridor, a slim strip of land that runs next to the border with Egypt, where an Israeli presence is prohibited by the 1979 peace treaty between the two nations.

The moves appear designed to support the long-term presence of Israeli troops in Gaza, signalling little end to a war that has already lasted over nine months, the longest in Israel’s history.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a highly symbolic visit to the Rafah crossing in recent days, inspecting a lookout point at the Philadelphi corridor, shortly before flying to Washington to address Congress and meet Biden.

David Mencer, a spokesperson for Netanyahu, said: “With the intensive phase of this war coming to an end, the prime minister talks about a longer conflict, the necessity to go into Gaza to defeat terrorists when they raise their heads as needs be.”

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Police in Bangladesh have been granted “shoot-on-sight” orders and a nationwide curfew has been imposed as student-led protests continue to roil the country, leaving more than 100 people dead.

The curfew, imposed at midnight on Friday, was expected to last until Sunday morning as police tried to bring the swiftly deteriorating security situation under control, with military personnel patrolling the streets of the capital.

In extreme cases, police officers have been granted powers to open fire on those violating the curfew, confirmed Obaidul Quader, the general secretary of the ruling Awami League party.

They began earlier this month on university campuses as students protested against the reintroduction of civil service job quotas that they say are discriminatory and benefit the Awami League, led by Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister.

Pro-government student groups attacked protesters earlier this week and police were accused of instigating violence by firing teargas, rubber bullets and stun grenades at the demonstrators.

Representatives from both sides met late on Friday in an attempt to reach a resolution, with several student leaders demanding a complete reform of the quota system and for universities to be reopened.

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There’s a big piece of paper in the San Francisco offices of Daylight Computer, with a list written in purple ink of all the kinds of devices the company hopes to one day make.

And as CEO Anjan Katta shows me around the office, the rest of the team is preparing for a launch party for its first device, a tablet called the DC-1, it’s clear he’s worried about how the world will respond to his big idea about the future.

Instead of modeling themselves off of purveyors of high tech like Apple or Samsung, Katta and Daylight seem to idolize companies like Patagonia, which both made good things and stands for something.

I like the speckled back and the clicky buttons, but I can’t stop noticing the very slightly misaligned ports or the fact that I can slide my fingernail between the display and the case and literally pry the thing apart.

Live Paper is actually designed to solve some of the weaknesses of E Ink — particularly its slow refresh rate and the ghosting that leaves faint impressions of stuff on the screen for too long.

He hasn’t solved all of them — the DC-1 doesn’t do color, which Katta tells me is technically possible but causes a bunch of other compromises — but the Daylight team has managed to make a 10.5-inch reflective LCD that is almost as easy on the eyes as E Ink and almost as responsive as a typical tablet screen.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has blocked plans for a field hospital in Israel to treat sick and injured children from Gaza, according to reports.The site was announced earlier this week by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant as a temporary measure to provide treatment while the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt remains closed to civilians.

Since the conflict began last year, there have been numerous reports and widespread international concern about its impact on children and the number suffering serious physical injuries.

Mr Gallant said the temporary hospital would be used to address the most urgent humanitarian needs until a permanent system for the evacuation and treatment of sick children could be established.

He said it would treat those suffering with conditions including cancer, diabetes, and orthopaedic injuries.However, on Thursday the Mr Netanyahu’s office announced that he “does not approve the establishment of a hospital for Gazans within Israeli territory - therefore, it will not be established”.An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the AFP news agency that the defence ministry had asked the prime minister’s office to help speed up the evacuation of patients from Gaza two weeks ago.

“No response was received, so the minister issued an order to the army to establish a field hospital within Israeli territory as an immediate solution for sick children,” they said.Mr Netanyahu’s military secretary Major General Roman Gofman told the Ynet news site that there had not been enough progress in creating a corridor for transporting sick and injured Gazans to other countries and this was why the hospital did not go ahead.The episode is just the latest sign of tension in the Israeli government to show in recent months.

In April, British surgeon Dr Victoria Rose, who had been working in Gaza, told the BBC that a “huge amount” of the operations she had carried out had been on children under 16, including many under six.She said she had treated people with bullet wounds and burns and that a lack of food available in Gaza meant patients were not strong enough to heal properly.

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A widespread technology outage grounded flights, knocked banks offline and media outlets off air on Friday in a massive disruption that affected companies and services around the world and highlighted dependence on software from a handful of providers.

“Due to the worldwide Microsoft outage, all Maryland courts, offices, and facilities will be closed to the public today but will remain open for emergency matters,” the judiciary said in a news release.

“While things are still very uncertain, we do not anticipate a major macroeconomic or financial market impact at this stage,” Jennifer McKeown, chief global economist at Capital Economics, said in a written comment.

At the Narita International Airport near Tokyo, passengers of low-cost carrier Jetstar Japan formed long lines waiting at the airline’s departure counter, where boarding had to be processed manually due to a system failure.

At Hong Kong’s airport, hundreds of travellers were queuing for manual check-in around the counters of budget airline HK Express, which said that its global e-commerce system was affected by Microsoft’s service outage.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the company was working to fix problems created for Windows users of its tools by a recent update in a post on the social media platform X.

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YEKATERINBURG, Russia (AP) — Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was convicted Friday of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison on charges that his employer and the U.S. government have rejected as fabricated.

“This disgraceful, sham conviction comes after Evan has spent 478 days in prison, wrongfully detained, away from his family and friends, prevented from reporting, all for doing his job as a journalist,” Dow Jones CEO and Wall Street Journal Publisher Almar Latour and Editor in Chief Emma Tucker said in a statement.

State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel on Thursday declined to discuss negotiations about a possible exchange, but said: “We have been clear from the get-go that Evan did nothing wrong and should not have been detained.

Speaking to reporters after the verdict, prosecutor Mikael Ozdoyev reaffirmed that Gershkovich was accused of gathering secret information about production and repair of military equipment at Uralvagonzavod, a huge industrial plant about 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Yekaterinburg that manufactures tanks.

Russia’s interpretation of what constitutes high crimes like espionage and treason is broad, with authorities often going after people who share publicly available information with foreigners and accusing them of divulging state secrets.

The son of Soviet emigres who settled in New Jersey, Gershkovich was fluent in Russian and moved to the country in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times newspaper before being hired by the Journal in 2022.

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Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system has largely protected Tel Aviv and other population centers from the thousands of rockets fired by Hamas out of Gaza and by Hezbollah from Lebanon.

But an Israeli military official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, said no alert was sounded because the detection system had not been activated.

The Houthis, the most powerful group in Yemen, claimed responsibility and said this was a new type of drone "capable of bypassing the enemy’s interception systems and undetectable by radars.

The Israeli military official said the initial evidence suggested the drone was launched from Yemen, but Israel was investigating a range of possibilities.

The Houthis say they are acting to show solidarity with the Palestinians over the war in Gaza, though the civilian shipping traffic involves vessels from around the world.

Tel Aviv came under heavy rocket fire from Hamas in the early weeks of the war last fall, but the attacks have long since stopped.

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