Tag: News

• Michelle Obama isn't happy about how the Bidens have treated Hunter's ex, Kathleen Buhle, Axios reported.
• The former first lady has been quiet about Biden's campaign, with her husband attending events solo.
• Both Michelle Obama's spokespeople and the White House denied the report.

At a time when President Joe Biden needs all the political allies he can get, Michelle Obama is upset with his family over its treatment of Kathleen Buhle, her close friend and Hunter Biden's ex-wife, anonymous sources told Axios.

According to the sources — whose claims Michelle Obama's spokespeople and the White House denied — the former first lady has refrained from campaigning for the president partly because of her friendship with Buhle, who the Bidens have distanced themselves from in the years since her divorce.

The women became friends during the Obama administration and have remained close.

As Axios noted, Hunter Biden wrote in his memoir that the two women used to work out and have cocktails together during the Obama administration. Michelle Obama also appeared to mention Buhle in her own book, writing that she still takes regular walks with her friend Kathleen.

Though Michelle Obama did repost President Biden's campaign announcement on Twitter in 2023, she hasn't tweeted about the election since.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama has appeared solo at campaign fundraisers and a recent state dinner.

Since splitting from Hunter Biden in 2017, Buhle has remained on the outskirts of the Biden clan. She testified at her ex-husband's recent criminal trial, which resulted in three guilty verdicts for federal gun crimes.

Though the president has staunchly supported his son, the saga — including Buhle's testimony about the younger Biden's drug use during their marriage — has added an additional level of drama to the reelection campaign. It marked the first time that the child of a sitting president was convicted of a crime.

Michelle Obama's representatives and the White House have denied any tension between the families, instead attributing the former first lady's absence from the presidential campaign to her distaste for partisan politics. In 2018, Michelle Obama launched a nonpartisan voter engagement organization, When We All Vote, where she has since focused much of her political energy.

"Mrs. Obama has already said she supports President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign," Crystal Carson, the communications director for Michelle Obama, said in a statement. "She is friends with Kathleen and with the Bidens. Two things can be true."

Carson pointed Business Insider to the fact that Jill Biden attended the funeral of Michelle Obama's mother on Monday as evidence of the families' continued closeness. Obama's spokesperson also affirmed Michelle Obama's support for the president earlier this spring amid unsubstantiated speculation that the former first lady planned to run in his stead.

Andrew Bates, deputy press secretary at the White House, said in a statement to Business Insider that the "former President and First Lady have been two of the strongest supporters of President Biden's leadership and agenda."

Bates said that the anonymous sources, whoever they are, aren't familiar with the substance of the relations between the Biden and Obama families.

Michelle Obama may soon become more present in Biden's reelection campaign, as Axios reported that one of her top aides recently met with a White House aide to discuss increasing her involvement.

There may be some precedent to Michelle Obama getting involved later in the election cycle. She waited until August 2020 to start consistently posting her support during the first Biden-Trump match-up.

• NBC will use an AI version of Al Michaels to cover the Paris Olympics this summer.
• Michaels was skeptical at first but agreed to the proposal once he heard his AI voice, reports say.
• The AI recaps will be available on Peacock and contain customized event highlights.

The Summer Olympics in Paris will feature an element of artificial intelligence.

NBC, the network carrying the Summer Olympics next month, is home to several sportscasting legends who grace American televisions every few years for the Olympic games.

This year, NBC is creating an AI version of Al Michaels, one of those acclaimed reporters.

"Frankly, it was astonishing. It was amazing," Michaels, 79, told Vanity Fair. "And it was a little bit frightening."

The AI version of Michaels will create the daily recaps available on Peacock, NBC's streaming service. Michaels told Vanity Fair that he was initially "very skeptical" about the idea when NBC's top brass approached him about it, but he was convinced once he heard his artificial voice.

"It was not only close, it was almost 2% off perfect," Michaels told Vanity Fair. "It sounded like what I might say in certain situations."

The news comes amid ongoing concerns in the media industry about artificial intelligence replacing jobs. Hollywood writers went on strike for almost 150 days in 2023 in part to gain protection from AI taking their work. An NBC spokesperson told CNN that Michaels was being compensated for the use of his voice to train the AI.

NBC said in a press release that the AI would "provide fans with their own customized playlist featuring highlights of the events most relevant to them from the previous day."

"Each compilation will feature clips from NBCU's Olympics coverage and be narrated by a high-quality A.I. re-creation of Michaels' voice, which was trained using his past appearances on NBC and matches his signature expertise and elocution," NBC said.

The personalized clips will have about 10 minutes of content, and the recaps will be reviewed by NBCU editors "for quality assurance and accuracy before recaps are made available to users."

Opening ceremonies for the Paris Olympics begin July 26.

• Researchers found seven stars in our galaxy that might host alien megastructures called Dyson spheres.
• But these stars' strange behavior could also be explained by other phenomena, like clouds of dust.
• They'll need much more evidence to confirm that Dyson spheres truly surround these stars. 

In the search for intelligent alien life, finding a Dyson sphere would be like hitting the jackpot.

Theoretically, super-advanced alien societies could build these giant, ultra-high-tech megastructures around their host stars to harness solar energy.

Scientists have yet to find proof that Dyson spheres exist. But if they are real, we should be able to spot them, and researchers have been hunting for decades ever since physicist Freeman Dyson first theorized the idea in 1960.

Now, research published in the peer-reviewed journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society has identified seven stars in our galaxy that exhibit some unusual behavior, which the team can't easily explain with natural phenomenon.

What exactly is a Dyson sphere?

Despite what the name suggests, a Dyson sphere isn't necessarily one solid sphere that encases a star, although the most advanced ones could be.

Most likely, "these are satellites with very broad surfaces floating around the star," Suman Majumdar, study co-author and associate professor of astronomy, astrophysics, and space engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, told Business Insider.

This design would grant an intelligent society access to an unlimited energy source, allowing their population and industry to grow exponentially, according to Dyson's original theory.

The design also means there would be gaps between the satellites where some of the star's radiation could sneak through. And the rest of the light, the satellites would absorb and re-radiate back into space as pulses of infrared radiation known as infrared excess emissions, or IEEs, which could be a way of detecting a distant Dyson sphere from Earth.

For their study, Majumdar and colleagues analyzed more than 5 million stars throughout the Milky Way that exhibit IEEs. But Dyson spheres aren't the only possible explanation.

"There's a lot of reasons that stars might have extra infrared emission. Typically, it's because they're extremely young, and they have a protoplanetary disk," which is a disk of rotating gas and dust around a new star that radiates infrared light, Jason Wright, study co-author and professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, told BI.

There are other natural explanations for IEEs, too. That's why the research team had to rule out so many stars from their original list of 5 million Dyson sphere candidates, eventually leaving them with seven that exhibit IEEs they can't easily explain and that could, potentially, host these alien megastructures.

However, future research will need to rule out all other possible explanations first.

Hunting for Dyson spheres

To identify these seven strong Dyson sphere candidates, the researchers used a computer system to sift through a mountain of data collected by Gaia. This European Space Agency satellite is creating a three-dimensional map of more than a billion stars in our galaxy and beyond.

Data from this highly comprehensive survey allowed the research team to select a pool of millions of stars that exhibit IEEs and gradually weed out all the ones that could be explained by natural phenomena.

"It took more than a year to go through this," Majumdar said.

Without Gaia and the massive amount of data it collects, this study wouldn't have been possible.

"I'm really excited for this big data era, like all the big surveys that are coming out — all the things we can learn from this data by looking at it in different ways," Tabetha Boyajian, an associate professor of astrophysics at Louisiana State University who did not work on this study, told BI.

Next, the researchers will look closer at these seven strong Dyson sphere candidates using spectroscopic analysis, Majumdar said. This technique can reveal new information about the radiation these stars emit, and help the researchers rule out other possible explanations for their IEEs.

"It would take a lot of rigor to be able to say confidently that this is not something that nature is doing, it's something that an advanced civilization is doing," Boyajian said.

In the meantime, Gaia continues its survey, populating the database with even more stars for Dyson sphere hunters like Majumdar and Wright, so their search is far from over. In fact, it might just be getting started.

"The same analysis can be actually done on the newer candidates that are populating the catalog," Majumdar said.

• The 10-episode third season of FX's "The Bear" was released in full Wednesday night.
• The new episodes pick up immediately after the events of the season 2 finale.
• Most critics agree that the series is still one of the best on TV, but season 3 is flawed.

The reviews are in for season three of FX's "The Bear," and critics are torn.

The critically acclaimed, Emmy-winning series created by Christopher Storer returned with 10 new episodes on Wednesday night. The new episodes pick up immediately after the events of the season two finale.

Chef Carmen Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), aka Carmy, has finally gotten out of the walk-in fridge that he got trapped in during his friends and family preview night in the season two finale. Now that the Original Beef of Chicagoland has been transformed into a fine-dining restaurant and renamed The Bear, Carmy has his sights set on getting a Michelin star at any cost.

The result is a season that's received mixed reviews from critics, who agree that the show is still a standout but is showing signs of wear.

Here's a rundown of what critics are saying.

The slower pace will be jarring to fans who have become accustomed to the show's signature frenetic energy.

"At times, the show mirrors its titular restaurant's diminished mojo. Season three is too comfortable reliving the past instead of facing the future. A certain amount of self-reflection is healthy, but too much, especially on TV, causes stagnation, and 'The Bear' drags out too many questions for its own good." — Ben Travers, IndieWire

"Indecision can be exciting and I found the risks 'The Bear' takes in these 10 episodes to be thrilling. But if you're hoping to see things progress at an adrenalized rate, this is a season in limbo that reflects its main characters and their respective holding patterns." — Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter

"This 10-episode season is slower in narrative pace than viewers might be used to, taking stock of its characters' pasts and focusing on trauma reconciliation while setting up an uncertain future for the Michelin-aspiring restaurant — and an electric season four." — Michel Ghanem, TheWrap

The show's main trio of Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edibiri, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach continues to deliver award-worthy performances.

"Edebiri perfectly captures Sydney's hesitation about attaching herself to Carmy as his obsessive focus on quality and achievement turns self-destructive." — Linda Holmes, NPR

"White is as impeccably frenzied and weary as ever, never softening the character's escalating flaws. Moss-Bachrach continues his push toward making Richie the show's hero, never fully erasing the character's diminishing flaws. Except that Sydney is obviously the show's real hero and Edebiri continues to deliver hilarious and heartbreaking earnestness like nobody else." — Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter

Episodes focused on Tina Marrero and Natalie Berzatto are standouts of the season, and Edebiri is earning praise for directing the former.

"Edebiri's performance remains phenomenal, but she notches one of Season 3's biggest victories behind the camera. In 'Napkins,' she directs a showcase for struggling sous-chef Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) that gracefully reveals the vulnerabilities that constantly grind on her sense of security and worth. It's a beautiful and powerful short story about the power of fate and connection." — Tara Bennett, IGN

"Amid all the mania of the series' infamous kitchen scenes there are also quieter moments, like in an episode that gives beef-sandwich-line-cook-turned-fancy-schmancy-sous-chef Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) a heart-wrenching backstory and another set far away from the kitchen with a returning guest star. They are powerful and understated, the very best 'The Bear' can be." — Kelly Lawler, USA Today

"In a more heartening counterweight to last year's 'Seven Fishes,' this season's stand-alone flashback gives insight into how sous chef Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) came to join the team, and Carmy's sister Natalie (Abby Elliott) gets a long-overdue spotlight when she goes into labor with her first child." — Alison Herman, Variety

"'Ice Chips' is an intimate counterpoint to last season's 'Fishes' booking Elliott's seat at the 2025 Emmys." — Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter

There are too many cameos from celebrities and real-life chefs.

"It's understandable that the show wants to make a spectacle of how beloved it is by the real food world and how much star chefs want to elbow their way into episodes. But unsurprisingly, 'The Bear' gets its best acting work from actors. And detouring into celebrity cameos is tricky at a moment when time with the main cast feels precious and the story is gaining steam." — Linda Holmes, NPR

"At a certain point, such flourishes start to cross the line from enhancing the authenticity of 'The Bear' to hindering its core mission. The finale, in particular, affords so much screen time to these visiting dignitaries that most protagonists get short shrift, just as the show should be planting the seeds for next season or at least tying off the one we've just watched." — Alison Herman, Variety

"The finale embodies too many of season three's hiccups by overindulging on food celebrities and ending with an unearned 'to be continued.'" — Ben Travers, IndieWire

The season concludes with various unresolved threads and a frustrating cliffhanger in the form of a "to be continued" title card.

"It doesn't resolve either the main plot threads or the emotional tangles that have been built over these ten episodes. That's a choice the people behind the show have made, and it candidly seems like a perilous one for a project that presumably won't come back for many months." — Linda Holmes, NPR

"Everything and everyone is left unresolved, something that could've been avoided with even just a little advancement for the main characters. Storer and company have left themselves with so much to unpack and address in season four." — Tara Bennett, IGN

"Depending on your perspective, it will either be audacious or unforgivable how many things from season two are still unresolved at the end of the third season." — Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter

"The Bear" feels uneven, stuck, and lacking in meaningful progression.

"The Bear is still compulsively watchable, but its third season is frustrating, and creator Christopher Storer's choice to slow the frantic pace of the show's plot and character arcs is jarring and confusing." — Tara Bennett, IGN

"Season three is also, a little like its head chef Carmen 'Carmy' Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), a little overinflated and self-important after all the hype and praise." — Kelly Lawler, USA Today

"At its best, 'The Bear' remains innovative, excellent, and so vividly rendered that it can feel delicious to watch. But the season also feels confusing, overdone, and inconsistent at some points." — Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone

"The cast are still exceptional – particularly Moss-Bachrach and Edebiri, elevated to TV's A-list since the show first aired — but the show is starting to feel repetitious. 'The Beef evolves with the city,' a restaurant critic for the Chicago Telegraph writes, on the new restaurant's opening. 'The Bear,' however, feels stuck in a loop of its own creation." — Nick Hilton, The Independent

Season three is flawed, but "The Bear" is still indisputably one of the best shows on TV.

"'The Bear' season three doesn't quite strike the right balance (like the previous season did), but it serves up enough suitable side dishes to satiate diners until things really get cooking again." — Ben Travers, IndieWire

"'The Bear' may not have the same sense of intense urgency in season three but it feels no less exciting to return to this textured world of culinary wonder with a cast that's always worth watching." — Michel Ghanem, TheWrap

"This remains one of the best shows on TV right now, but season three can't quite replicate the recipe that made seasons one and two so stellar. That doesn't mean you won't be hungry for more whenever the show returns for season four." — Chris Evangelista, Slash Film

• After Ray Zahab was diagnosed with lymphoma, he plans to run 111 miles in Death Valley.
• Zahab, an accomplished ultrarunner, kept training in between chemotherapy treatments.
• Temperatures in Death Valley can reach over 120 degrees, but Zahab says he's ready.

Ray Zahab has run hundreds of miles across deserts and the Arctic, completed numerous ultramarathons, walked to the South Pole, and even starred in a film Matt Damon produced about Zahab's 111-day trek across the African desert with friends.

But two years ago, the 55-year-old Canadian adventurer started feeling exhausted all the time.

"I'm not that old," Zahab told Business Insider. "I mean, for crying out loud. I am getting older, but this is ridiculous," he remembered thinking.

It turned out that the ultrarunner's lack of energy had nothing to do with his age. His doctor diagnosed him with lymphoma, a form of blood cancer.

While the diagnosis was frightening, Zahab said he was grateful his form of cancer is treatable, even though it's not curable.

Zahab began chemotherapy but didn't take much time off from running. Though he experienced nausea, exhaustion, and shakiness from his treatments, he kept training, he told "Ottowa Citizen" last year.

"I was going to just spend each month between chemo being as fit as I possibly could and go do something epic," he said. In 2023, he spent 10 days running 87 miles across Canada's Baffin Island during the freezing winter.

Now that his cancer is in remission, his next adventure is to run about 111 miles through Death Valley, California, to celebrate.

Running in 120-degree weather

Death Valley is one of the hottest places on Earth. In summer, temperatures can regularly reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

It's no accident that Zahab is planning to run through the desert in mid-July, the region's hottest month.

This time of year, Death Valley feels like a hot convection oven, Zahab said. During past runs there, "my fingernails felt like they were burning in the wind coming off the valley," he recalled.

But despite the harsh conditions, Zahab actually enjoys summer runs in Death Valley. "I love being in these places at that time of year, and I don't take anything for granted," he said.

He's carefully planned his route and will have caches of emergency supplies and ice packs, he said.

He said he's also feeling better than he was last year. When he finished treatment in 2023, he decided to make the 111-mile trip through Death Valley, "as a treat to myself," he said. However, he didn't finish last year's run.

That's because Death Valley was experiencing hotter-than-usual temperatures that year. Plus, "I don't think I was completely recovered from the chemo yet," he said.

Though this desert run will be grueling, he thinks he's ready. "I'm in great shape," he said. "I've been training like crazy."

Finding your own version of extraordinary

Before he started mountain biking and running, Zahab said he was a regular smoker who wasn't very healthy. He was also afraid of failure. "I spent 30 years of my life talking myself out of trying new things," he said.

With his cancer in remission, Zahab knows he's luckier than many with the same disease. "I learned that in chemo," he said.

Not everyone would be able to jump right back into training for ultrarunning while still in treatment. And not everyone would want to run across the Sahara.

The key, Zahab said, is to find whatever you're passionate about.

"I think that within every single person, if they choose, is their own version of extraordinary," he said.

This summer's Death Valley run will be the next in a long series of ultramarathons and expeditions for Zahab. He hopes it will help prepare him for an upcoming run across South America.

• Late bloomers find career success later than other people expect them to.
• Author Henry Oliver said many famous people were late bloomers, such as Malcolm X and Vera Wang.
• He said late bloomers never stop being curious, and only take advice from the right people.

If "30 under 30" lists are any indication, there's a lot of cultural pressure to accomplish career milestones earlier in life.

But there are plenty of people who find their callings and reach success later on.

In his new book "Second Act," Henry Oliver, a global brand consultant-turned-literature blogger, shares stories of famous career "late bloomers," from modern celebrities like Jay-Z and Vera Wang to historical figures like Malcolm X and Margaret Thatcher.

"The book is about highly successful people, but I think there are these applicable lessons," Oliver told Business Insider. "We learn them from the best people."

He said there's no universal age that makes someone a late bloomer. Instead, he defines late bloomers as "people who start doing incredible things after the point when no one expects it."

"No one was sitting there in 1975 saying, 'Oh, Margaret Thatcher's going to do big things,'" he said. "When Malcolm X went into jail at age 20, no one had any idea that he was going to become Malcolm X."

Oliver shared some of the core traits of successful late bloomers — and how you can make sure you're on the right track if you're looking for your second act.

You tap into old passions

Oliver said that most of the late bloomers he researched were "just obsessively interested" in the things they ended up succeeding in.

He said Katharine Graham, who inherited The Washington Post, was always obsessed with the news. Margaret Thatcher was obsessed with politics, 18th-century writer Samuel Johnson was obsessed with books, and Frank Lloyd Wright was obsessed with buildings from a young age.

Sometimes, late bloomers would find a way to use their talents in new ways. "Malcolm X was always very, very good with people," Oliver said. In his youth, he wasn't interested in politics or religion, but "becoming this kind of charismatic leader is not entirely incompatible with the person he was."

You're eager to sample new things

People commonly get stuck in their careers because they think it must be linear, Oliver said. They might also feel like a career pivot has to be a huge decision right away, rather than a trial run.

"Do it for three hours one Saturday and just see if it was fun," he said of people trying out interests they want to pursue. "If you do lots of different things, you'll come across stuff that you like and you'll develop it and you'll build it up."

In his book, he calls this the "explore" phase of being a late bloomer, where you look around for new ideas and experiences to see what sticks. It can look like freelancing on many different projects or even changing your environment by moving cities.

He said this is the crucial first step to getting a "hot streak" later on and achieving success.

You make a conscious decision to move forward

After the explore phase comes the even more important "exploit phase," Oliver said. He describes it as making a firm choice to pursue a goal, rather than staying on a meandering path.

"You come to a point when you say, 'I'm going to pull some of these things together and I'm not going to explore anymore: I'm going to deliver," he said.

One of his favorite examples in the book is Audrey Sutherland, who solo-kayaked 850 miles around Alaska when she was 60. She'd never been to the Arctic before and had only kayaked in warm waters.

"She looked at herself at age 60 and said, 'do it now, or you're too old,'" he said. "That's the crucial thing. That's what matters."

You take small steps toward big breaks

According to Oliver, "luck" happens when you've done the work to set yourself up for success. That can look like saving money to quit a job or taking online courses to learn new skills.

One example in the book was Maya Angelou, who was in writing groups and sending out her work, to no avail. She moved from California to New York and still struggled to get any bites.

She was friends with James Baldwin, who took her to a dinner party in 1968 that she wasn't in the mood to go to. At the party, a couple asked her to tell them the story of her life. Their reaction and encouragement inspired her to write and publish her autobiography, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," the following year.

"You have to go to the party, even when everything's not working and you don't want to," Oliver said.

You only take advice from the right people

If you're doing a hard career pivot, Oliver said it's good to test out your ideas with people before making a big leap. However, it should only be with people who have relevant experience.

"Good advice comes from someone in a position of expertise with up-to-date knowledge," he said. But if your parents think pursuing your dream is worthless because being a doctor is safer, Oliver said the advice can be either useless or actually harmful to your progress.

You're not complacent, even if it's comfortable

One of the most common obstacles late bloomers face is the "competency trap," Oliver said. They feel stabler in a role they already know they're good at, even if they're unhappy, because it feels easier than quitting a lucrative job, dealing with a pay cut, or learning something completely new.

While he said career pivots are never easy, times have also changed: people are living longer, healthier lives, giving them more opportunities to try new things.

"We're always keen to compare the late bloomer with the early bloomer," he said. "But I would compare the late bloomer with the person who dies without doing their thing."

• Chinese state media shared a video of what it characterized as a submarine detection device dropped by a US Navy aircraft.
• The apparent sonobuoy was discovered in the South China Sea near the Second Thomas Shoal. 
• Military maritime patrol aircraft, including China's planes, routinely use systems like these.

China's coast guard found a submarine detection device dropped by a US Navy aircraft somewhere in the South China Sea, a state broadcaster reported.

Many militaries, including China, use sonobuoys and acoustic sensors. Maritime patrol aircraft often use them and other detectors in open waters to track submarine movements and locations.

Video footage shared by Chinese state media on Wednesday showed a US Navy aircraft, what appears to be a P-8 Poseidon, dropping an object resembling a sonobuoy into the South China Sea.

Business Insider was unable to independently verify the reported details of the video posted to Chinese social media. The footage showed a close-up examination of the object, which Yuyuan Tiantan, part of the China Media Group, identified as a "submarine detector" and reported was recovered by the Chinese coast guard.

The video identifies the object's manufacturer as Ultra Electronics Undersea Sensor Systems, Inc. It's a British company which makes sonobuoys and underwater sensors.

The US Department of Defense didn't respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Chinese state media said its coast guard picked up the device near the Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea, contested territory claimed by both China and the Philippines.

The two South China Sea claimants have clashed in the area, increasingly over the past few years and especially in recent months, with Chinese Coast Guard ships firing water cannons at Philippine supply boats and ramming Philippine vessels.

Chinese coast guard personnel recently disrupted a supply run with bladed weapons, drawing complaints of piracy from Manila.

The Second Thomas Shoal, which China calls Ren'ai Jiao, is located far from the Chinese mainland, as well as the Yulin Naval Base on Hainan Island, where China houses its submarines, though its boats operate across the strategic South China Sea.

Sonobuoys and other similar sensors are small, common instruments in anti-submarine warfare and underwater acoustic research. They have long been used by militaries for monitoring submarine locations and movements, as well as non-military purposes.

There are various kinds of sonobuoys that deliver active and passive collection of data or serve specific operations. In the state media video, China said that the "probe" was being used to detect subs and counter sub signals.

Like the US Navy, China has its own anti-submarine warfare and maritime surveillance aircraft, such as the KQ-200 that are capable of deploying sonobuoys like the SQ-4s and SQ-5s.

In response to the recent discovery by the Chinese coast guard, Ministry of National Defense spokesperson Wu Qian said that China firmly opposes US warships and aircraft stirring up trouble in the South China Sea, per Chinese media reporting.

US military ships and aircraft routinely operate in the international waters of the South China Sea unilaterally and with allies and partner nations in support of what it calls a "free-and-open Indo-Pacific," flying and sailing wherever international law allows.

• Bill Gates, the Microsoft cofounder, shares three kids with his ex-wife Melinda French Gates.
• They include a recent med school graduate and a fashion startup cofounder.
• His eldest daughter, Jennifer Gates Nassar, recently announced she is expecting her second child.

Bill Gates' story is a quintessential example of the American entrepreneurial dream: A brilliant math whiz, Gates was 19 when he dropped out of Harvard and cofounded Microsoft with his friend Paul Allen in 1975.

Nearly 50 years later, he's one of the richest and most famous men on Earth, with a fortune of about $131 billion, per Forbes. He stepped down from Microsoft's board in 2020 and has cultivated his brand of philanthropy with the Gates Foundation — a venture he formerly ran with his now ex-wife Melinda French Gates, who resigned in May. 

Even before founding one of the world's most valuable companies, Gates' life was anything but ordinary. He grew up in a well-off and well-connected family, surrounded by his parents' rarefied personal and professional network. Their circle included a Cabinet secretary and a governor of Washington, according to "Hard Drive," the 1992 biography of Gates by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Brock Adams, who went on to become the transportation secretary in the Carter administration, is said to have introduced Gates' parents.)

His father, William Gates Sr., was a prominent corporate lawyer in Seattle and the president of the Washington State Bar Association.

His mother, Mary Gates, came from a line of successful bankers and sat on the boards of important financial and social institutions, including the nonprofit United Way. It was there, according to her New York Times obituary, that she met the former IBM chairman John Opel — a fateful connection thought to have led to IBM enlisting Microsoft to provide an operating system in the 1980s.

"My parents were well off — my dad did well as a lawyer, took us on great trips, we had a really nice house," Gates said in the 2019 Netflix documentary "Inside Bill's Brain."

"And I've had so much luck in terms of all these opportunities."

Despite his very public life, his three children with French Gates — Jennifer, Rory, and Phoebe — largely avoided the spotlight for most of their upbringing. 

Like their father, the three Gates children attended Seattle's elite Lakeside School, a private high school that has been recognized for excellence in STEM subjects — and that received a $40 million donation from Bill Gates in 2005 to build its financial aid fund. (Bill Gates and Paul Allen met at Lakeside and went on to build Microsoft together.)

But as they have become adults, more details have emerged about their interests, professions, and family life. 

While they have chosen different career paths, all three children are active in philanthropy — a space in which they will likely wield immense influence as they grow older. While their father has reportedly said that he plans to leave each of the Gates three children $10 million — a fraction of his fortune — they may inherit the family foundation, where most of his money will go.

Here's all we know about the Gates children.

Gates and his children did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Jennifer Gates Nassar

Jennifer Gates Nassar, who goes by Jenn, is the oldest of the Gates children at 28 years old.

A decorated equestrian, Gates Nassar started riding horses when she was six. Her father has shelled out millions of dollars to support her passion, including buying a California horse farm for $18 million and acquiring several parcels of land in Wellington, Florida, to build an equestrian facility.

In 2018, Gates Nassar received her undergraduate degree in human biology from Stanford University, where a computer science building was named for her father after he donated $6 million to the project in 1996.

She then attended the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, from which she graduated in May. She will continue at Mt. Sinai for her residency in pediatric research. During medical school, she also completed a Master's in Public Health at Columbia University — perhaps a natural interest given her parents' extensive philanthropic activity in the space.

"Can't believe we've reached this moment, a little girl's childhood aspiration come true," she wrote on Instagram. "It's been a whirlwind of learning, exams, late nights, tears, discipline, and many moments of self-doubt, but the highs certainly outweighed the lows these past 5 years."

In October 2021, she married Egyptian equestrian Nayel Nassar. In February 2023, reports surfaced that they bought a $51 million New York City penthouse with six bedrooms and a plunge pool. The next month, they welcomed their first child, Leila. 

In June, she announced she was pregnant with her second child.

"Leila, being promoted to big sister," she captioned an Instagram photo of herself and her daughter.

In a 2020 interview with the equestrian lifestyle publication Sidelines, Gates Nassar discussed growing up wealthy.

"I was born into a huge situation of privilege," she said. "I think it's about using those opportunities and learning from them to find things that I'm passionate about and hopefully make the world a little bit of a better place."

She recently posted about visiting Kenya, where she learned about childhood health and development in the country.

Rory John Gates

Rory John Gates, who is in his mid-20s, is Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates' only son and the most private of their children. He maintains private social media accounts, and his sisters and parents rarely post photos of him.

His mother did, however, write an essay about him in 2017. Titled "How I Raised a Feminist Son," she describes as a "great son and a great brother" who "inherited his parents' obsessive love of puzzles."

In 2022, he graduated from the University of Chicago, where, based on a photo posted on Facebook, he appears to have been active in moot court. At the time of his graduation, Jennifer Gates Nassar wrote that he had achieved a double major and master's degree.

Little is publicly known about what the middle Gates child has been up to since he graduated, but a Puck report from last year gave some clues, saying that he is seen as a "rich target for Democratic social-climbers, influence-peddlers, and all variety of money chasers." According to OpenSecrets, his most recent public giving was to Nikki Haley last year.

The same report says he works as a congressional analyst while also completing a doctorate.

Phoebe Gates

Phoebe Gates, 21, is the youngest of the Gates children.

After graduating from high school in 2021, she followed her sister to Stanford. She graduated in June after three years with a Bachelor of Science in Human Biology. Her mom, Melinda French-Gates, delivered the university's commencement address.

In a story that Gates wrote for Nylon about her graduation day, she documented her graduation day, including a party she cohosted that featured speeches from her famous parents and a piggyback ride from her boyfriend Arthur Donald — the grandson of Sir Paul McCartney.

She has long shown an interest in fashion, interning at British Vogue and posting on social media from fashion weeks in Copenhagen, New York, and Paris. Sustainability is often a theme of her content, which highlights vintage and secondhand stores and celebrates designers who don't use real leather and fur.

That has culminated in her cofounding Phia, a sustainable fashion tech platform that is set to launch later this year, with her former college roommate.

Gates shares her parents' passion for public health. She's attended the UN General Assembly with her mother and spent time in Rwanda with Partners in Health, a nonprofit that has received funding from the Gates Foundation.

Like her mother, Gates often publicly discusses issues of gender equality, including in essays for Vogue and Teen Vogue, at philanthropic gatherings, and on social media, where she frequently posts about reproductive rights.

She's given thousands to Democrats and Democratic causes, including to Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and the Democratic Party of Montana, per data from OpenSecrets. According to Puck, she receives a "giving allowance" that makes it possible for her to cut the checks.

Perhaps the most public of the Gates children — she's got nearly 400,000 Instagram followers and a partnership with Tiffany & Co. — she's given glimpses into their upbringing, including strict rules around technology. The siblings were not allowed to use their phones before bed, she told Bustle, and to get around the rule, she created a cardboard decoy.

"I thought I could dupe my dad, and it worked, actually, for a couple nights," she told the outlet earlier this year. "And then my mom came home and was like, 'This is literally a piece of cardboard you're plugging in. You're using your phone in your room.' Oh, my gosh, I remember getting in trouble for that."

• Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said the "worst moment" of Sam Altman's ousting happened around midnight.
• Chesky said Altman expected to get reinstated but OpenAI then announced Emmett Shear as CEO.
• Altman planned to go to Microsoft but Chesky said his friendship with Shear helped open a dialogue.

Sam Altman has shared glimpses of his brief ousting from OpenAI, like how he operated in an "adrenaline-charged state" and barely ate or slept for the roughly four-day period.

But the hardest moment happened at midnight about two days in, according to an interview with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on CNBC.

"It was probably 48 hours in," Chesky said. "The board had led us to believe he was going to be reinstated, and right before midnight, we get information that Emmett Shear is now the CEO."

At that point, Chesky said Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman said they would go to Microsoft, and it felt like the page had turned. While Chesky said he wanted the two former executives to fight to stay, they were ready to leave if that was best for OpenAI and its employees.

"I thought that was the end of it," Chesky said. "The miraculous thing was, it turns out Emmett Shear is also a friend of mine and that opened a new line of communication." While many other things happened, his relationship with Shear, who ran Twitch before stepping down in March 2023 and who did briefly run OpenAI over that long weekend, helped foster dialog, Chesky said.

While the midnight news might have disappointed Altman, Chesky said he was surprised — in a good way — at how he wasn't acting out of self-preservation throughout the ousting.

"When people are attacked, they typically go to themselves," Chesky said. "And Sam was focused not on himself, but OpenAI and that made me want to fight for him."

Chesky was one of the first people Altman contacted when he was fired, and the two have reportedly been friends for a decade. Altman and Shear mentored Chesky at startup Y Combinator. Both Shear and Chesky worked together to bring Altman back as CEO, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

Airbnb and OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• Airline rating company Skytrax has released its 2024 list of the world's best business-class cabins.
• Qatar Airways and its Qsuite business class cabin took top honors. 
• Skytrax rankings are based on surveys of travelers from more than 110 countries. 

Qatar Airways offers the best business-class cabin in the world, according to travelers polled by travel industry rating company Skytrax.

Skytrax published its latest rankings in June as part of the 2024 World Airlines Awards, which also named Qatar Airways the best airline in the world.

Business-class offerings from Asian and Middle Eastern airlines took the top six spots in the Skytrax rankings which are compiled using feedback from over 350 airlines from travelers representing over 100 countries.

Here's a closer look at airlines with this year's 10 best business-class offerings in the world, according to Skytrax.

10. Turkish Airlines

Turkish Airlines operates a fleet of more than 450 narrow and widebody airliners, including the Airbus A321neo, the Airbus A350, and the Boeing 777, with various business layouts.

The Istanbul-based carrier also won the Skytrax award this year for best business class catering in the world and best airline in Europe.

9. EVA Air

EVA Air is a subsidiary of container shipping giant Evergreen Group. The Premium Laurel business class on board the Taiwanese carrier's widebody fleet offers lie-flat seats and 15.4-inch entertainment screens.

8. Delta Air Lines

The DeltaOne business class is available on the Atlanta-based airline's widebody fleet for long-haul flights.

DeltaOne is the top-rated business class in North America.

7. Air France

Air France has the highest-rated business-class product in Europe. The French national carrier also won awards for the best airline in Western Europe and for best first-class catering.

6. Hainan Airlines

Hainan has consistently been China's highest-rated carrier and the only one of the country's four major airlines not owned by the Chinese central government.

Hainan operates a fleet of over 100 aircraft, including the Boeing 737, 787 Dreamliner, and the Airbus A330.

5. Cathay Pacific Airways

Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific operates a fleet of more than 150 passenger aircraft, primarily widebody jets such as the Airbus A330, A350, and Boeing 777, with lie-flat business-class cabins.

4. Emirates

Dubai-based Emirates offers a world-class business class product across its fleet of Boeing 777-300ER and Airbus A380 Super Jumbo fleets. The standout feature of Emirates business class experience on board its A380 fleet is the iconic bar and lounge at the back of the upper deck.

3. All Nippon Airways (ANA)

Japan's All Nippon Airways offers a variety of business-class products across its widebody fleet led by its fully enclosed suite called "The Room" on board its Boeing 777-300ERs.

2. Singapore Airlines

Singapore Airlines's business class is a stalwart at the top of the annual Skytrax rankings. In addition to being named the second-best airline in the world, Singapore also picked up honors for the world's best cabin staff and the world's best first-class cabin.

1. Qatar Airways

Qatar Airways isn't just the highest-rated business class carrier; it's also the best airline in the world according to travelers surveyed by Skytrax.

Qatar's top business class offering is the Qsuite business class, which is found onboard its latest Airbus A350 and Boeing 777 widebody jets.