Latest news with #Chinese-American
Time of India
17 hours ago
- Business
- Time of India
UAE: Driverless taxis now operating in two major Abu Dhabi islands, key info explained
Driverless taxis operating in Abu Dhabi's key urban zones as part of the city's smart mobility strategy/ Image: Abu Dhabi Media Office TL;DR Autonomous taxis now available in Al Reem and Al Maryah Islands Abu Dhabi is expanding its smart transport project with WeRide and Uber The service is growing quickly and expected to reach more areas soon In Abu Dhabi, driverless taxis are no longer just a trial on the outskirts, they're now running in two of the city's busiest and most important areas: Al Reem and Al Maryah Islands. These new routes mark a big step in the city's plan to grow a smart, AI-powered transport network. The service, which started in late 2024 with a small fleet on Saadiyat and Yas Islands, has expanded quickly. It now connects high-traffic business, residential, and financial zones with autonomous vehicles that you can hail through the Uber app. For commuters, it means a new, quieter way to get around. For the city, it's part of a long-term effort to reduce traffic, cut emissions, and use technology to improve daily life. Why These Islands? Al Reem and Al Maryah aren't just random stops. They're some of the busiest places in the city. Packed with offices, apartment towers, and shopping centers, these islands are a real test for self-driving systems. Roads are dense, traffic is unpredictable, and people are always moving. That's why authorities chose them, to show the tech can handle real city life, not just controlled environments. The goal isn't just about showcasing high-tech cars. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Discover Options For Affordable Back Pain Treatments Back Pain Treatment | Search Ads Undo Abu Dhabi wants to make 1 in 4 trips in the city powered by smart transport by 2040. This includes everything from autonomous taxis to electric buses, and eventually more seamless public transport options that talk to each other. Who's Behind the Project? For now, the autonomous taxi fleet is still growing, but it's much bigger than it was just a few months ago. Multiple partners are working together to run the service. The Abu Dhabi Mobility (Integrated Transport Centre), the main government body is managing the project. It's operated in partnership with WeRide, a Chinese-American tech company that specializes in autonomous driving systems. Uber is handling bookings, and local company Tawasul runs the operations on the ground. If you order one of these cars on Uber, you might notice a few things are different. The vehicle drives itself, but some still have a safety operator on board, just in case. It won't feel like a robot car. It'll feel like a regular ride, just quieter, smoother, and with no small talk. The city says these vehicles are packed with safety tools: sensors, cameras, emergency systems. And they're being tested constantly. So far, there's been no public safety incident related to the service. What's the Bigger Plan? What's happening in Abu Dhabi isn't just a showcase for cutting-edge vehicles. It's part of a wider shift happening in how cities think about transportation. Urban planning here is focused on sustainability, livability, and reducing dependence on fossil fuels. That means fewer cars, more public transport, and smarter ways to connect neighborhoods. And it's not just Abu Dhabi. Cities around the world are experimenting with AI-powered mobility, but this city has moved faster than most. It's now the first in the MENA region to operate a commercial fleet of autonomous taxis, with 44 vehicles on the roads and more coming soon. What Comes Next The city isn't stopping here. More areas across Abu Dhabi Island are in line to receive autonomous taxi services in the coming months. Officials say this is part of a broader smart mobility push, one that connects AI with real public needs. As the tech improves, it's expected that these taxis will no longer need backup drivers. And if the rollout stays on track, it won't be long before hailing a driverless ride feels as normal as taking the bus.
Winnipeg Free Press
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
‘Narcissist' novelist not a great mom
Once you get past the dishy first third of this Mommy Dearest-style memoir, you can be forgiven for starting to skim. Like any skilled journalist would do, New York author Molly Jong-Fast loads her best material into the first pages. After that she loses steam, and her already-slender book begins to feel repetitive and scattered. Thanks to its chatty style and gossipy content, How to Lose Your Mother received lots of attention when it came out in early June. How to Lose Your Mother Jong-Fast is the only child of the once-notorious novelist Erica Jong. In 1973, at age 31, Jong published her racy novel Fear of Flying, which broke the news to the English-speaking world that men were not the only gender who enjoyed casual sex. Jong became a cultural sensation. Although she published more than 20 books in the intervening years, she never again did anything as momentous. Molly says here that mom was 'a world-class narcissist' interested in her work, her famous friends and herself. Oh, yes, and in drinking wine. Lots of wine. 'She would always say that I was everything to her,' writes Molly, 46, a U.S. TV political analyst, podcaster and author of two novels and two other memoirs. 'She would always tell anyone who listened that I was her greatest accomplishment. I always knew that wasn't the truth.' Molly's father, by the way, was Jong's third husband Jonathan Fast. That marriage broke up when Molly was a young child. Husband No. 2 had been Chinese-American psychiatrist Allan Jong, whose surname Erica (neé Mann) kept. Molly goes easy on dad here. Even though he moved to California and had a second family, she saves her vitriol for mom. A typically catty judgment: 'She always had trouble getting along with people who were not men she wanted to seduce.' In later years, Molly writes, she and her biological father bonded over the fact that they were both the children of 'same-sex narcissists.' Molly's paternal grandfather was the prolific McCarthy-era novelist and Communist Howard Fast, best known for the 1960 movie adaptation of his novel Spartacus. 'I never knew my mother or grandfather at the height of their respective fames,' she notes, 'but I did know them at the end, when they were desperately trying to claw fame back.' To the degree that this memoir has a structure, it is a narrative of Molly's 'annus horribilis,' 2023. Coming out of the pandemic, she had to move her mother, suffering from dementia, into a nursing home and deal with the decline and death of her stepfather Kenneth Burrows, Jong's longtime hubby No. 4. Moreover, Molly's own husband (15 years her senior and father to their three children) was treated for a form of pancreatic cancer. At the end of the book, touch wood, he is OK. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. But the book is primarily an excuse for Molly to exorcise her demons over feeling unloved and ignored as a child. Mom was an alcoholic who let her be raised by her nanny. No surprise, Molly overdid the drugs and booze as a teenager. Miraculously, she got sober after a stint in rehab at age 19, and goes to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to this day. Aside from the amusing celebrity name-dropping — both mom and daughter move in predominantly Jewish circles of New York media and culture — there is not much else to tell. Although she does tell it, over and over again. Retired Free Press editor and writer Morley Walker admits he has never read Fear of Flying.
Vogue
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Vogue
With Her New Book, ‘Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar,' Katie Yee Slyly Updates the Divorce Novel
In Katie Yee's debut novel, Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar, the titular Maggie is two things at once: the white woman Yee's unnamed Chinese-American protagonist has been left for by her partner, Samuel (whom she memorably describes as having 'skin that loosely resembles pale shrimp gaining pink over the stove'), and the name that said protagonist gives to her tumor after discovering that she has breast cancer. While none of this may sound very funny, Yee manages to spin genuine laughs—not to mention a thoughtful meditation on the meanings of health, love, family, loyalty, and identity—out of her protagonist's pain. This week, Vogue spoke to Yee about knitting her novel together from two short stories, hanging onto useless-seeming information about exes, taking inspiration from Chinese folklore passed down from her mother and grandmother, and the strangeness of only wanting to read something that mirrors your own experience. The conversation has been edited and condensed. Vogue: How does it feel to see your book out in the world? Katie Yee: It feels pretty surreal. I feel like the whole publishing process is such a wild ride. I've had galleys for a while, but it feels so wonderfully strange to see the book in other people's hands. I got a text from a friend the other day that was like, 'I saw someone reading your book across the train platform,' and I was so excited. What came to you first as you were writing: Maggie the person or Maggie the tumor? Oh, that's a great question. The novel started out as a short story that just kept getting bigger and bigger and rolling away from me. I think at a separate point, these were two different short stories that kind of grew parallel lives. It wasn't until I was really thinking about it later that I was like, There's a narrator in one that's really funny and resilient, and I kind of want to see what might happen if we make these plot lines converge. I was so struck by the narrator's Guide to My Husband: A User's Manual. What was that like to put together? That was really fun. There's this incredible book called 2500 Random Things About Me Too by Matias Viegener that I want to say I read in an experimental fiction class in college, and the whole thing was a riff off of whatever Facebook trend was happening at the time, where the writer was just listing, you know, 'Thing one: I have a dog. Thing two: I live in Brooklyn. Thing three…' And then, over the course of a really long list, it's so interesting to see what recurring questions or themes or arcs kind of arrive. I think putting together the user's manual was a little bit like doing that. I was really caught up in the question of, what do you do when you when you break up with someone, or when someone's no longer in your life, but you have all of this information about them and you know all these granular details about really weird things, like what they're allergic to? Where does that go? That's kind of what I was getting at there.
New Indian Express
6 days ago
- Business
- New Indian Express
Spy in Silicon Valley: Chinese-American admits to stealing classified US military tech
A Chinese-American dual national has pleaded guilty to stealing classified US defence technology used to detect nuclear launches and track ballistic missiles, among other capabilities. According to the US Department of Justice (DOJ), 59-year-old Chenguang Gong, from San Jose, California, admitted guilt to one count of theft of trade secrets and remains free on a $1.75 million bond. The DoJ says Gong's actions caused an intended economic loss of more than $3.5 million. He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, with sentencing set for 29 September. DOJ prosecuters say Gong had transferred over 3,600 files from a Los Angeles-area research and development firm, where he was briefly employed last year, to personal storage devices. The files included blueprints for advanced infrared sensors intended for use in space-based systems to detect nuclear missile launches, as well as to track ballistic and hypersonic missiles. Other documents stolen by Gong pertained to sensors designed to equip US military aircraft with the ability to detect incoming heat-seeking missiles and deploy countermeasures such as jamming the missiles' infrared tracking systems. Gong had been hired in January 2023 as a design manager overseeing application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for infrared sensors. Between 30 March and 26 April 2023, the DOJ said he copied over 3,600 files from his work laptop to personal devices, including more than 1,800 after he had accepted the rival job. Many documents were labelled 'Proprietary Information' and 'Export Controlled.' The files contained proprietary information related to advanced readout integrated circuits used in missile launch detection systems and low-visibility threat tracking in military aircraft. Some files outlined blueprints for 'next-generation' sensors capable of identifying low-observable targets with enhanced survivability in space, along with engineering schematics for cryogenic sensor housing. Officials described the stolen data as some of the company's most valuable trade secrets, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Separately, between 2014 and 2022, the accused had submitted several applications to Chinese state-run 'Talent Programmes' designed to recruit experts in sensitive fields. The DOJ said Gong sought to develop military-grade analogue-to-digital converters and low-light image sensors for night-vision systems. In one 2020 application, Gong submitted a video referencing proprietary sensor models from a defence firm he had previously worked at. Prosecutors also cited a 2019 email in which Gong said he had 'taken a risk' by participating in the programmes due to his ties to the US defence industry but believed he could contribute to China's military chip design capabilities.
Express Tribune
6 days ago
- Health
- Express Tribune
Taliban say detained British couple receiving medical care
An elderly British couple detained for months in Afghanistan are receiving medical care, the Taliban government's top diplomat said Wednesday, after UN experts warned they were at risk of dying. Peter and Barbie Reynolds, 80-years-old and 75-years-old, had lived in Afghanistan for 18 years when they were arrested in February along with Chinese-American friend Faye Hall, who has since been released, and an Afghan translator. "All their human rights are being respected," Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi told a news conference in the capital Kabul. "They are being provided with medical care. They are in occasional contact with their families." Muttaqi said "efforts are underway to secure their release, but the process is not complete", echoing similar comments by the government in April. Independent United Nations experts warned on Monday of the "rapid deterioration" of their physical and mental health, stating that they "risk irreparable harm or even death". The couple, against whom no charges have been brought, were held "in a high-security facility for several months, then in underground cells, without daylight, before being transferred last week" to the intelligence services in Kabul, according to the UN.
