Tencent-Backed Kuaishou Pledges AI Efforts as Sales Growth Slows
Kuaishou Technology said artificial intelligence is what will drive users to its video platform after posting its slowest quarterly sales growth since its 2021 listing.
AI is the 'core engine that will drive our platform to create more value' for its commercial ecosystem while achieving traffic growth, the Tencent-backed internet company said in an exchange filing.
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New York Post
3 hours ago
- New York Post
Vance says Musk's public feud with Trump is a ‘huge mistake,' hopes billionaire ‘comes back into fold'
Vice President JD Vance said it was a huge mistake for Elon Musk to be at war with President Trump amid their escalating feud and is hopeful that the billionaire Tesla founder 'comes back into the fold.' 'Elon is entitled to his opinion,' Vance said during an interview with comedian Theo Von, which was released on Saturday. 'I'm not saying he has to agree with the bill or agree with everything that I'm saying. I just think it's a huge mistake for the world's wealthiest man — I think one of the most transformational entrepreneurs ever — to be at war with the world's most powerful man, who I think is doing more to save the country than anybody in my lifetime.' Advertisement Vance's appearance on Von's popular podcast, 'This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von,' was recorded as Trump and billionaire Musk traded barbs on social media over the latter's complaints about the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act. 'I just think you've got to have some respect for him and say, 'yeah, we don't have to agree on every issue.' But is this war actually in the interest of the country? I don't think so,' Vance said. 'Hopefully, Elon figures it out, comes back into the fold. I know the president was getting a little frustrated, feeling like some of the criticisms were unfair coming from Elon. But I think it has been very restrained, because the president doesn't think that he needs to be in a blood feud with Elon Musk. And I actually think that if Elon chilled out a little bit everything would be fine.' Advertisement 3 Vice President JD Vance appeared on Theo Von's podcast. X/JDVance The SpaceX founder signaled support for impeaching Trump and replacing him with Vance in one of several jabs directed at the commander in chief. 'President vs Elon. Who wins? My money's on Elon. Trump should be impeached and JD Vance should replace him,' right-wing commentator Ian Miles Cheong wrote on X. To which Musk replied: 'Yes.' Advertisement Vance appears to be fully in Trump's corner amid the public spat between the two billionaires — and expressed his support of the president in an X post late Thursday night. 'President Trump has done more than any person in my lifetime to earn the trust of the movement he leads. I'm proud to stand beside him,' the veep wrote. In an earlier post, as the Trump-Musk drama was simmering down on social media, Vance had teased that he would be appearing on Von's show. 'Slow news day, what are we even going to talk about?' Vance wrote on X. Advertisement 3 President Donald Trump points at Elon Musk during a conversation inside the Oval Office of the White House on March 14, 2025. AFP via Getty Images 3 Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump and vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance appear on the first day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisc. on July 15, 2024. Getty Images Musk shared the vice president's post and reacted with a laughing emoji. Von previously interviewed both Vance and Trump in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. Trump's August 2024 appearance on Von's show racked up nearly 17 million views on YouTube. The podcaster later attended Trump's inauguration and made a surprise appearance at a US air base in Qatar, where the president spoke to service members and their families last month.
4 hours ago
Lebanon aims to lure back wealthy Gulf tourists to jumpstart its war-torn economy
BEIRUT -- Fireworks lit up the night sky over Beirut's famous St. Georges Hotel as hit songs from the 1960s and 70s filled the air in a courtyard overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The retro-themed event was hosted last month by Lebanon's Tourism Ministry to promote the upcoming summer season and perhaps recapture some of the good vibes from an era viewed as a golden one for the country. In the years before a civil war began in 1975, Lebanon was the go-to destination for wealthy tourists from neighboring Gulf countries seeking beaches in summer, snow-capped mountains in winter and urban nightlife year-round. In the decade after the war, tourists from Gulf countries – and crucially, Saudi Arabia – came back, and so did Lebanon's economy. But by the early 2000s, as the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah gained power, Lebanon's relations with Gulf countries began to sour. Tourism gradually dried up, starving its economy of billions of dollars in annual spending. Now, after last year's bruising war with Israel, Hezbollah is much weaker and Lebanon's new political leaders sense an opportunity to revitalize the economy once again with help from wealthy neighbors. They aim to disarm Hezbollah and rekindle ties with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, which in recent years have prohibited their citizens from visiting Lebanon or importing its products. 'Tourism is a big catalyst, and so it's very important that the bans get lifted,' said Laura Khazen Lahoud, the country's tourism minister. On the highway leading to the Beirut airport, once-ubiquitous banners touting Hezbollah's leadership have been replaced with commercial billboards and posters that read 'a new era for Lebanon.' In the center of Beirut, and especially in neighborhoods that hope to attract tourists, political posters are coming down, and police and army patrols are on the rise. There are signs of thawing relations with some Gulf neighbors. The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait have lifted yearslong travel bans. All eyes are now on Saudi Arabia, a regional political and economic powerhouse, to see if it will follow suit, according to Lahoud and other Lebanese officials. A key sticking point is security, these officials say. Although a ceasefire with Israel has been in place since November, near-daily airstrikes have continued in southern and eastern Lebanon, where Hezbollah over the years had built its political base and powerful military arsenal. As vital as tourism is — it accounted for almost 20% of Lebanon's economy before it tanked in 2019 — the country's leaders say it is just one piece of a larger puzzle they are trying to put back together. Lebanon's agricultural and industrial sectors are in shambles, suffering a major blow in 2021, when Saudi Arabia banned their exports after accusing Hezbollah of smuggling drugs into Riyadh. Years of economic dysfunction have left the country's once-thriving middle class in a state of desperation. The World Bank says poverty nearly tripled in Lebanon over the past decade, affecting close to half its population of nearly 6 million. To make matters worse, inflation is soaring, with the Lebanese pound losing 90% of its value, and many families lost their savings when banks collapsed. Tourism is seen by Lebanon's leaders as the best way to kickstart the reconciliation needed with Gulf countries -- and only then can they move on to exports and other economic growth opportunities. 'It's the thing that makes most sense, because that's all Lebanon can sell now,' said Sami Zoughaib, research manager at The Policy Initiative, a Beirut-based think tank. With summer still weeks away, flights to Lebanon are already packed with expats and locals from countries that overturned their travel bans, and hotels say bookings have been brisk. At the event hosted last month by the tourism ministry, the owner of the St. Georges Hotel, Fady El-Khoury, beamed. The hotel, owned by his father in its heyday, has acutely felt Lebanon's ups and downs over the decades, closing and reopening multiple times because of wars. 'I have a feeling that the country is coming back after 50 years,' he said. On a recent weekend, as people crammed the beaches of the northern city of Batroun, and jet skis whizzed along the Mediterranean, local business people sounded optimistic that the country was on the right path. 'We are happy, and everyone here is happy,' said Jad Nasr, co-owner of a private beach club. 'After years of being boycotted by the Arabs and our brothers in the Gulf, we expect this year for us to always be full.' Still, tourism is not a panacea for Lebanon's economy, which for decades has suffered from rampant corruption and waste. Lebanon has been in talks with the International Monetary Fund for years over a recovery plan that would include billions in loans and require the country to combat corruption, restructure its banks, and bring improvements to a range of public services, including electricity and water. Without those and other reforms, Lebanon's wealthy neighbors will lack confidence to invest there, experts said. A tourism boom alone would serve as a 'morphine shot that would only temporarily ease the pain" rather than stop the deepening poverty in Lebanon, Zoughaib said. The tourism minister, Lahoud, agreed, saying a long-term process has only just begun. "But we're talking about subjects we never talked about before,' she said. 'And I think the whole country has realized that war doesn't serve anyone, and that we really need our economy to be back and flourish again.'
Newsweek
6 hours ago
- Newsweek
Trump Canceling Musk's SpaceX Contracts Could Force US Closer to Russia
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. As President Donald Trump threatens to cancel SpaceX's government contracts amid a feud with Elon Musk, experts told Newsweek that the move could leave the U.S. reliant on Russia for space launches and access. "SpaceX is immensely important to U.S. national security and NASA," Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Aerospace Security Project, told Newsweek on Friday, adding that if the contracts are terminated, "NASA would again have to turn to Russia to get to and from the [International] Space Station [ISS]." Why It Matters NASA and SpaceX have built one of the most significant public-private partnerships in modern space exploration. Since 2015, SpaceX has received more than $13 billion in NASA contracts, making it one of the agency's largest private partners. SpaceX is deeply integrated into U.S. national security and the space program, with Swope telling Newsweek: "SpaceX is not like the appendix but a vital organ in everything the United States is doing in space." Musk, the SpaceX CEO and former Trump ally heading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), clashed publicly with the president on Thursday in a heated exchange on social media. The dispute began over Musk's criticism of a Trump-backed spending bill and escalated into threats over federal contracts and allegations involving Trump's ties to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty/Canva What To Know On Thursday, the president threatened termination of Musk's various contracts, writing in a Truth Social post: "The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts." SpaceX holds billions of dollars in NASA contracts and plays a key role in the U.S. space program. While several experts told Newsweek they don't believe the contracts will be canceled, they raised concerns about the company's outsized influence on the industry and the critical gaps it could leave. Access To The ISS "SpaceX is immensely important to U.S. national security and NASA. SpaceX is not like the appendix, but a vital organ in everything the United States is doing in space," Swope said Friday in an emailed statement. "Ending work with SpaceX would leave a huge gap that cannot be filled with the other options available today. The biggest impacts would be to space launch and maintaining the International Space Stations. NASA would again have to turn to Russia to get to and from the space station." In 2014, SpaceX was selected to provide crew launch services to the ISS through the development of Crew Dragon, a capsule that transports astronauts to and from the ISS, and its operational missions. NASA has no other way to independently get to and from the ISS without SpaceX. As a result of this and other measures, Scott Hubbard, former director of NASA's Ames Research Center, the first Mars program director and the founder of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, told Newsweek that he doesn't believe Trump's threats will be realized, saying: "There is no alternative to the F9-Dragon combination at present. "He would be stranding astronauts on the ISS unless he wants to go hat in hand to the Russians and try to get more Soyuz flight," in reference to the spacecraft that provides crewed transport to the ISS. Russia, formerly part of the Soviet Union, and the U.S. have long been in a space race. Russia is actively developing its own space station, known as the Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS), to succeed the ISS, which is set to retire in 2030. Construction on the proposed project is set to begin in 2027. Laura Forczyk, founder of space consulting firm Astralytical, told Newsweek that while it's possible the U.S. may negotiate a contract with Russia to launch astronauts to the ISS, "the current geopolitical climate would make that difficult." Tensions between Washington and Moscow remain high as ceasefire talks for the Russia-Ukraine war have stalled, with the last round of negotiations lasting just 90 minutes with little progress. Adding to the tension, Dmitry Novikov, first deputy chairman of Russia's State Duma Committee on International Affairs, told the state-run outlet TASS on Friday that while he doesn't believe Musk will need political asylum, "if he did, Russia, of course, could provide it." Stateside, space experts largely agree that Musk essentially has a "monopoly" on the industry, responsible for key people movement and launching "more than 90 percent of the U.S. satellites into space," Darrell West, a senior fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation in the governance studies program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told Newsweek. While companies like Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Boeing are also involved in spaceflight, they don't operate at the same capacity as SpaceX or hold the same number and type of government contracts. Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the University of Mississippi's Center for Air and Space Law, told Newsweek in an email: "Certainly, there are other launch service providers but SpaceX remains dominant and the time it would take to replace all services would delay many important missions and strategic plans, including the proposed Golden Dome." She added that "U.S. reliance on SpaceX is not borne of favoritism but of necessity and efficiency." Aspects Of The Space Program Space research and exploration go beyond science. They are central to U.S. national security. The Department of Defense holds multiple contracts to launch satellites used for GPS, intelligence gathering and military coordination. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union fiercely competed for dominance in space, viewing it as a critical domain of defense. "Space is important as an end in itself in terms of exploring and gaining new knowledge. But it also is taking on a defense role, because space is getting militarized. There are both offensive and defensive weapons that could be put into space," West said. "There's a lot riding on this relationship. People are worried if there is a major war, adversaries could shoot down our satellites and destroy our GPS systems and mobile communications." Beyond high-profile rocket launches and missions to the ISS, the U.S. space program encompasses a wide range of activities, including deploying space-based science observatories, launching lunar landers and preparing crewed and uncrewed missions to the moon and other planets, among other initiatives. What Happens Next When Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment on Friday, it was referred to NASA Press Secretary Bethany Stevens' statement, which was emailed to Newsweek. "NASA will continue to execute upon the President's vision for the future of space," Stevens said. "We will continue to work with our industry partners to ensure the President's objectives in space are met." Given the volatile nature of their feud, it remains unclear whether Trump will attempt to cancel existing contracts or limit future deals, or whether Musk could pull SpaceX out of its government commitments altogether.
