A Chinese king’s infatuation with a woman was seen as the reason that a golden age collapsed. Evidence suggests climate change and internal strife played bigger roles.

Though funding for the department is set to run out early Saturday, officials said its essential functions would continue.

More than a decade into Beijing’s push for self sufficiency, Chinese firms are producing fewer, lower-performing chips than their foreign competitors.

Telecom operators planning aggressive fiber and fixed wireless broadband rollouts in 2026 face a serious supply problem -- DRAM and NAND memory prices for consumer applications have surged more than 600% over the past year as higher-margin AI server segments absorb available capacity, according to Counterpoint Research. Routers, gateways and set-top boxes have been hit hardest, far worse than smartphones; prices for "consumer memory" used in broadband equipment jumped nearly 7x over the last nine months, compared to 3x for mobile memory. Memory now makes up more than 20% of the bill of materials in low-to-mid-end routers, up from around 3% a year ago. Counterpoint expects prices to keep rising through at least June 2026. Telcos that were also looking to push AI-enabled customer premises equipment -- requiring even more compute and memory content -- face additional headwinds.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In her first interview with an American media outlet, Pelicot opens up about surviving years of secret abuse — and a trial that shocked the world.

Casey Wasserman, a Los Angeles entertainment executive and the head of the 2028 Olympic Games, has lost clients since his emails with Ghislaine Maxwell surfaced.

Anna's Archive, the shadow library that announced last December it had scraped Spotify's entire catalog, has quietly begun distributing the actual music files despite a federal preliminary injunction signed by Judge Jed Rakoff on January 16 that explicitly barred the site from hosting or distributing the copyrighted works. The site's backend torrent index now lists 47 new torrents added on February 8, containing roughly 2.8 million tracks across approximately 6 terabytes of audio data. Anna's Archive had previously released only Spotify metadata -- about 200 GB compressed -- and appeared to comply by removing its dedicated Spotify download section and marking it "unavailable until further notice."

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President Trump increases his attacks when he fears an election loss. With midterm elections approaching, he has gone into overdrive as Republicans face potential losses.

Speaking at Europe’s largest security conference, she tied income inequality to the rise of authoritarians and offered a forceful rebuttal to President Trump’s worldview. She also had some shaky moments.

Dynamic SRG repeatedly, and apparently unsuccessfully, asked the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to donate to House races, Justice Department records show.

Protesters in Minneapolis and St. Paul said in sworn statements that they were singled out by agents who demonstrated that they knew where they lived.

The couple, who were banned for life from a country club in Port Orange, Fla., face felony battery charges after the fight, which involved 20 people, the authorities said.

The Detroit Big Three -- General Motors, Ford and Stellantis -- have collectively announced more than $50 billion in write-downs on their electric-vehicle businesses after years of aggressive investment into a transition that, even before Republican lawmakers abolished a $7,500 federal tax credit last fall, was already running below expectations. U.S. EV sales fell more than 30% in the fourth quarter of 2025 once the credit expired in September, and Congress also eliminated federal fuel-efficiency mandates. More than $20 billion in previously announced investments in EV and battery facilities were canceled last year -- the first net annual decrease in years, according to Atlas Public Policy. GM has laid off thousands of workers and is converting plants once earmarked for EV trucks and motors to produce gas-powered trucks and V-8 engines. Ford dissolved a joint venture with a South Korean conglomerate to make batteries and now plans to build just one low-cost electric pickup by 2027. Stellantis is unloading its stake in a battery-making business after booking the largest EV-related charge of any automaker so far. Outside the U.S., the trajectory looks different: China's BYD recently overtook Tesla as the world's largest EV seller.

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More than 40 people have fallen ill at Ave Maria University, raising fears that college campuses may soon experience more measles outbreaks.

Jeremy Carl, President Trump’s nominee to lead the State Department’s outreach to international organizations, had a rough confirmation hearing, but he stood by his views on “whiteness.”

The department has sent Google, Meta and other companies hundreds of subpoenas for information on accounts that track or comment on Immigration and Customs Enforcement, officials and tech workers said.

Thorbjorn Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway who led the Nobel Committee, promised influence, and the disgraced financier had gifts to give, new emails show.

Also, Gisèle Pelicot shares her story. Here’s the latest at the end of Friday.

Shedly Apollon was on her way to a prenatal massage when she started to feel faint while on the road. Her car veered off the highway and into a lake.

At the Munich Security Conference, U.S. officials softened their tone but not their message: Europe should pay its own way. European leaders increasingly agree.