Author: KnowledgeHippo

With Russia mired in a long war in Ukraine and increasingly dependent on China for supplies, Beijing is moving quickly to expand its dominance in Central Asia, a region once in the Kremlin’s sphere of influence. Russia, for its part, is pushing hard.As the leaders of Central Asian countries meet with the presidents of China and Russia this week in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, China’s growing presence is visible in the region. New railway lines and other infrastructure are being built, while trade and investment are increasing.Flag-waving Kazakh children who sang in Chinese greeted Xi Jinping, China’s leader, upon…

Getting ominous warnings about your phone’s storage space? Have you ever gotten out of your phone to show someone a certain photo and had to scroll for minutes to find it? If you’ve accumulated gigabytes of pictures over the years, streamlining your photo library and ditching other unnecessary apps and files can help you reclaim that space. Here’s a guide to doing that using free tools that probably already exist on your phone.Check the saveStart the cleaning process by noting the space on your device — and what’s filling it.On many Android devices, open the Settings app and select Storage…

The life of a Florida carpenter ant can be violent. These half-inch ants are territorial and have violent bouts with ants from rival colonies in the southeast.Fighting can leave ants with leg injuries. But as scientists recently discovered, these ants have evolved an effective wound treatment: amputation.In the journal Current Biology on Tuesday, the researchers report that ants bite off the injured limbs of their nestmates to prevent infection. While other ant species are known to tend to the wounds of their injured, usually by licking them clean, this is the first time an ant species has been known to…

In case you haven’t heard, national parks in the United States have been busy in recent years. Record busy. But one way to enjoy the bounty of a national park without unwanted company is to hit the backcountry on a day hike.”In the backcountry, you get away from the crowds and the infrastructure,” said Scott Cundy, co-founder of Wildland Trekking, a company that offers guided hiking and backpacking trips in national parks and around the world. “You can experience the essential nature of these places and really understand why they were chosen as national parks. “Backcountry is a loose term…

Hurricane Beryl was barreling west toward Jamaica as a Category 4 storm on Tuesday, a day after it lashed the southeastern Caribbean and killed at least four people, officials said.Beryl strengthened to a Category 5 storm late Monday, meaning it had maximum sustained winds of at least 157 miles per hour, according to the United States National Hurricane Center. It was forecast to bring hurricane conditions to Jamaica on Wednesday.Major Atlantic hurricanes have maximum sustained winds of 111 mph or higher on a five-level scale developed in the 1970s. By Tuesday morning, Beryl had sustained winds near 165 mph, the…

Just weeks before Yale announced that Maurie McInnis would be its new president, she narrowly avoided impeachment at Stony Brook University, which she led for four years.The university senate criticized Dr. McInnis’ decision to call the police on May 1 to break up a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on the Stony Brook campus in Long Island. The arrests were the culmination of a growing rift between the Stony Brook faculty and its soon-to-depart president over policing and free speech, issues he is likely to face again at Yale, where he took over as president on Monday. When her appointment at Yale…

Weeks after Paramount’s shareholder and Skydance abruptly ended merger talks, the two sides have reached a preliminary agreement to create a new Hollywood giant, four people familiar with the negotiations said on Tuesday.The deal still must be approved by a special committee of Paramount’s board, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity as talks continued.Paramount — the parent company of CBS, MTV and Nickelodeon — and Skydance, the upstart movie studio that helped produce “Top Gun: Maverick,” broke off talks in June just before a scheduled vote on the merger. While the two sides had agreed to financial…

The Biden administration awarded $504 million on Tuesday to a dozen projects across the country in an effort to turn previously overlooked communities into tech powerhouses.The grants will fund “technology hubs” that aim to boost the production of critical technologies in areas such as western Montana, central Indiana, southern Florida and upstate New York. The hubs are intended to accelerate the development of advanced industries in the United States, such as biomanufacturing, clean energy, artificial intelligence and personalized medicine.The program reflects a federal effort to expand funding for America’s science and technology beyond Silicon Valley and some coastal regions, an…

Much of the auto industry, with the notable exception of Tesla, reported modest sales growth in the three months to June as high interest rates, high vehicle prices and uncertainty about the economy weighed on consumers.Sales at the end of June were also slowed by outages at auto dealerships stemming from a cyberattack on a company that provides software and data services to dealerships.Cox Automotive, a market research firm, estimated on Tuesday that 4.1 million new cars and trucks were sold in the second quarter in the United States, slightly more than in the period of 2023. That is a…

The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved a new drug for Alzheimer’s disease, the latest in a new class of treatments that has been greeted with hope, disappointment and skepticism.The drug, donanemab, which will be sold under the brand name Kisunla, has shown in studies to modestly slow the rate of cognitive decline in the early stages of the disease. It also had significant safety risks, including swelling and bleeding in the brain.Kisunla, made by Eli Lilly, is similar to another drug, Leqembi, that was approved last year. Both are intravenous infusions that attack a protein involved in Alzheimer’s…