Sure A Not

Six out of 21 Chinese computers completed the world’s primary half marathon ( 21. 1 miles ) for human drones in Beijing on April 19, with the success setting a record period of 2 days and 40 days.

Over 12,000 individuals participated in the workout on the same day, and the individual success reached the terminal in 1 hours and 2 moments.

The Tien Kung Ultra robot ,  developed by X-Humanoid, a Beijing-based state-owned organization, won the race for human computers. It is 1. 8 feet tall and weighs 52 pounds.

The first runner-up, Noetix Robotics ’ N2, finished the half-marathon in 3 hours 37 minutes. It is 1. 2 feet tall, weighs 29 pounds, and wears children’s coaches.

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The next runner-up, DroidUp’s X02, finished the competition in 4 hours and 50 minutes. It wears  boxing  boots.

An illegal group entered the competition using a Unitree G2 machine, but the machine fell at the starting place and became a talking point of the celebration.

Unitree said that the company did not send a group to join in this workout as it has been busy lately. It added that anyone who bought a Unitree machine can install it in pursuits, but distinct training may lead to different results.  

On April 10, Unitree released images saying it will be live-streaming machine conflict in about a fortnight.

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Tang Jian, chief technology officer of X-Humanoid, said his staff only used one machine to finish the half-marathon, while another people needed to change computers many times.

He admitted that the X-Humanoid machine had fallen once during the triathlon according to power failure and had  three power derivatives during the competition.

“We have spent seven to eight times preparing for this workout by doing a lot of tests on the machine and fine-tuning its engine, ” Tang said.

“Firstly, we reduced our robot’s fat; firstly, we improved its heat absorption system to prevent burning; Finally, we added a insulation function to reduce wear on its single and joint components, ” he added. “ What is more important is that we increased the length of our robot’s arms to work faster. ”

“The industrialization of human robots will include three phases. In the first stage, robots will be used in standard industries; therefore, they will be used in certain business environments to complete tasks such as presentation and scanning codes; eventually, they will be deployed to properties to play the role of maid and maid, ” Tang said.

He said it would get Taiwanese companies three to five years to market their drones, by which time they may be deployed in homes to provide people and perform chores.

X-Humanoid, formally known as Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, was formed simultaneously by technology firm Ubtech, gadgets and electric car maker Xiaomi and the Beijing municipal state.

Stocks of the Hong Kong-listed Ubtech Robotics increased 2. 9 % on Tuesday. Stocks of the state-owned Shoucheng Holdings, which has invested in X-Humanoid and Noetix, rose 4 %.

Testing ‘cerebellums’

According to the workout rules, each team is build three staff members to help a machine. The machine does not need an pilot system; its distant joystick can be wired or wireless.

The contest landscape includes level land and stairs, with a maximum hill of 9 degrees. The competition way has six left-turn and eight right-turn roads.

One of the robot developers who joined the marathon said this activity aims to test robots ’ cerebellums ( ability to control the body ) instead of their cerebrums ( ability to make decisions and think ).

Of the 21 machine athletes, just six completed the competition, while the remaining 15 failed.

A little machine developed by Beijing Polytechnic University kids overheated and went up in smoke. Some other groups sprayed ocean on their computers to keep them cool.

A female-looking machine walked a little range and fell. One Gundam ( from a Japanese comic ) robot used four fans to move forward, but crashed seconds after beginning its journey.

“The winning technique of Noetix’s N2 robot is its steady mechanical construction and superior engine performance, ” Hu Chenxu, chairman and chief professor of Noetix, told the media. “Small computers have a lot of advantages, such as higher flexibility and agility. Some research institutes use small drones to complete their studies work. ” 

“Robots need a high resilience to go from the laboratory to the marathon record, ” he said.

He said he after worried that the N2 machine, which is more like a dancer, would not be a great skater; happily, the machine performed exceedingly well, except it needed a new distant controller after a power change.

He said Noetix’s robots are now used in medical research, education, exhibitions, social, and hospitality sectors and will be deployed for scenarios such as elderly care, professional inspection and industrial security.

In September 2023, Jiang Zheyuan, a PhD student at Tsinghua University, then 25, founded Noetix Robotics. So far, the company has raised five rounds of funding. It planned to deliver one thousand robots this year and expected positive cash flow in the fourth quarter.

Jiang told Sohu. com in an interview in March that his company needed to commercialize its products as early as possible due to its limited financial resources, unlike DeepSeek, an artificial intelligence company with sufficient resources to pursue technical ideals.  

Regarding the robotic race between China and the United States, Jiang said China has a substantial cost advantage. He said it costs only 40 yuan ( US$ 5. 5 ) per hour to collect robotic data in China but US$ 48 per hour in the US. Besides, he said a wide range of industries in China can provide different environments for companies to improve the algorithms of their robots.

He said that using Chinese humanoid robots will continue to focus on education and exhibition in the next three years. He said Noetix plans to launch a small robot that costs below 10,000 yuan next year.

According to the Gaogong Robot Industry Research Institute, total sales of humanoid robots will reach 12,400 units or 6. 34 billion yuan globally in 2025. Chinese companies may sell about 7,300 humanoid robots during this period.

Read: Unitree’s humanoid robot a great side-flip forward for China

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South Korea is heading into a critical round of trade deals with the United States in Washington on April 24. These discussions come at a time of mounting pressure from both Washington and Beijing, and the choices Korea makes today will considerably form its future economic and strategic direction.

The United States is urging South Korea to fit more tightly with its broader attempts to counter China. Washington is seeking assistance on a number of sides – export controls, purchase restrictions and supply chain reform – all aimed at curbing Beijing’s industrial and economic impact. But this is no longer simply about business. It is a turning point for Seoul, a minute to decide whether to pursue the US guide, assert its autonomy or get a more measured path – a multi-alignment strategy.

What the US needs

At the heart of US expectations is the issue of taxes. The Trump presidency has imposed 25 % mutual tariffs on major Asian imports, especially cars and material. Though the taxes were suspended for 90 days, Korea is pressing for continuous treatment to reduce financial uncertainty for its companies.

The disparity in diplomatic trade is another key issue. The US trade deficit with Korea reached$ 55. 7 billion in 2024, prompting Washington to call for greater exports of British goods, especially energy materials like liquefied natural gas. In reply, Korea is proposing broader cooperation in proper sectors, such as manufacturing and involvement in major US facilities projects, including the Alaska gas pipeline – offering common economic and geopolitical benefits.

Semiconductors are a major point of contention. With the US reportedly considering new tariffs on Korean chips, Seoul has already unveiled a 33 trillion won ($ 23 billion ) support package to reinforce its semiconductor industry. This reflects Korea’s desire to remain a global tech leader while bracing for possible shocks from US trade policy.

Although not officially on the agenda, the sensitive issue of defense cost-sharing may also surface in the talks. While South Korean officials insist this is unrelated to trade, there is speculation that Washington may raise it, potentially complicating the tone of the negotiations.

Perhaps the most complex issue is Korea’s economic relationship with China. The US is expected to pressure Seoul to reduce its dependency on Chinese trade and align with Washington ’s export controls that target exports of advanced technology to Beijing.

While South Korea has shown some willingness to cooperate, it is also seeking economic incentives to soften the blow of potential losses from a slowdown in China-bound trade. Washington ’s push for Korea to join the “Economic Prosperity Network ” – a framework aimed at restructuring global supply chains away from China – is further complicating matters. South Korean industries, still wary after the THAAD backlash, are concerned about provoking China and facing another wave of economic retaliation.

Meanwhile, the US has implemented new outbound investment restrictions on certain Chinese tech sectors, effective January 2025. While these measures primarily affect American companies, Seoul is monitoring them closely, assessing possible indirect impacts and preparing suitable responses.

Seoul is also seeking a reduction or delay of new tariffs on South Korean exports and, in return, offering deeper cooperation in fields like shipbuilding, clean energy, and digital infrastructure – areas where mutual benefit can be found without fully compromising strategic autonomy.

The high cost of saying ‘yes ’ or ‘no’ to Washington

The stakes are high. If Korea says “yes ” to US demands, the benefits are tangible. Tariff relief would directly support key Korean industries, and expanded cooperation in semiconductors, batteries, and renewable energy could enhance Korea’s technological edge. Such alignment would deepen the bilateral alliance and strengthen Seoul’s presence in Washington-led initiatives.

Yet the risks are equally significant. Aligning too closely with Washington could provoke harsh retaliation from China – Korea’s largest trading partner. Beijing has already warned countries seeking exemptions from the Trump-era tariffs not to make deals at its expense. While China claims to respect nations ’ efforts to resolve trade disputes with the US, it insists that they must also “stand on the side of fairness and justice ” and “on the correct side of history. ”

The tone of China ’s   recent statements suggests that it is taking this issue very seriously and is in no mood to let such deals proceed without imposing serious consequences on countries that act against its interests.

As seen during the THAAD deployment, Beijing may react with export bans, consumer boycotts, or diplomatic pressure. Overreliance on the US could also expose South Korea to political shifts in Washington and limit Seoul’s freedom to maneuver. Most importantly, South Korea risks losing its strategic autonomy – the ability to set its own course and engage multiple powers on its own terms.

On the other hand, if South Korea refuses US demands, it preserves its strong economic relationship with China. It avoids immediate retaliation, protects its exports and upholds its position as an independent middle power.

But this approach is also not without cost. US incentives for Korean firms could disappear. Access to American subsidies and collaborative opportunities in high-tech sectors might dry up. Korea could be excluded from future US-led initiatives such as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, QUAD or emerging digital and defense networks. Washington might also begin to question Korea’s reliability as an ally, weakening Seoul’s leverage in future security negotiations.

Why Korea needs a multi-alignment strategy

Amid this dilemma, a multi-alignment strategy emerges as the only sustainable solution.

With President Yoon Suk-yeol now removed and the domestic political climate rapidly changing, South Korea is entering a new phase. Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party, currently the frontrunner for the presidency, is unlikely to accept all of Washington ’s demands without recalibration. If pushed too far, relations between the two allies could face serious strain. In this evolving environment, a middle path – firm yet flexible – may be Korea’s best option.

Korea does not need to pick a side between the United States and China. It needs a smarter, more dynamic approach – one that prioritizes South Korean interests, mitigates risks, and enhances global credibility.

Multi-alignment offers precisely this. It allows Korea to cooperate with Washington in strategic areas like semiconductors, clean energy, and defense technologies – sectors where South Korea can gain from joint investment, research, and global market access. Simultaneously, it lets South Korea sustain strong trade and investment ties with China, avoiding unnecessary economic damage and ensuring the health of key industries.

A multi-alignment approach also opens the door to diversified diplomacy. South Korea can deepen its engagement with India, ASEAN, and the European Union while enhancing trilateral cooperation with China and Japan on vital areas such as climate change, logistics, and public health. Broadening partnerships with BRICS and Eurasian countries can further reduce dependence on any single power and unlock new economic opportunities.

Internally, South Korea must reinforce this strategy by investing in its domestic strengths – innovation, energy independence, and technological resilience. Building homegrown capabilities will give South Korea the freedom to navigate great-power rivalries without being constrained by external dependencies.

The era of uncritical alignment with Washington is over. Multi-alignment gives Korea multiple options – flexibility without fragmentation. It empowers Seoul to operate confidently in a fragmented world, defending its national interests while remaining an active and respected global player.

At this moment of crossroads, South Korea must choose wisely. Siding fully with one power risks long-term subordination. Refusing both invites isolation. The real answer lies in balance – a multi-alignment strategy that keeps Korea strong, sovereign, respected and prosperous.

This is not a moment to choose sides – it is a moment to shape outcomes. South Korea must rise to its full potential as a true pivotal state – not as a passive bystander in great-power rivalry, but as a confident architect of a new regional balance of power and a bridge-builder in an increasingly polarized world.

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This content was originally published by ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning exploratory office.

After President Donald Trump announced sweeping new levies earlier this month, the White House released a list of more than a thousand items that would be exempted.

One product that made the list is polypropylene terephthalate, more commonly known as PET epoxy, the plastic used to produce plastic containers.

Why it was spared is questionable, and also persons in the industry are confused about the reason for the break.

But its inclusion is a win for Reyes Holdings, a Coca-Cola bottler that ranks among the largest privately held organizations in the US and is owned by a pair of sons who have donated millions of dollars to Democratic factors. Records show the business just hired a lobbying organization with close relationships to the Trump White House to make its situation on taxes.

Whether the business ’s lobbying played any role in the deduction is unclear. Torres Holdings and its lobbying did not respond to queries from ProPublica. The White House even did not comment, but some business activists say the administration has rebuffed calls for deductions.

The resin’s unexpected addition on the list exemplifies how transparent the administration ’s method for crafting its tax legislation has been. Key participants are in the black about why certain items face charges and others don’t. Tax charges have been altered without any apparent reason for the alterations. Administration officials have given conflicting information about the taxes or declined to answer queries at all.

The lack of clarity about the procedure has created problems among business professionals that politically connected firms may be winning carve-outs behind closed doors.

“It had been corruption, but it could just as easily become incompetence, ” a lawyer who works on tax legislation said of PET resin’s addition. “To be fair, this was like a hurried chaos, I am not certain who got into the White House to talk to people about the record. ”

During the first Trump presidency, there was a proper method for seeking an exemption from taxes. Businesses submitted hundreds of thousands of uses making the case for why their products should be spared. The programs were open, so the technology of the tax crafting method could be more closely examined. For clarity allowed academics to immediately assess thousands of the applications and decide that political donors to Republicans were more likely to be granted exemptions.

In Trump’s next name, at least so far, there has not been a formal application process for tax carve-outs. Industry executives and activists are making their circumstance behind closed doors. The Wall Street Journal ’s editorial board last month called “the transparency of the process ” for getting an exemption “the Beltway Swamp’s vision. ”

In the professional order formalizing Trump’s fresh tariffs, including baseline 10 % tariffs for almost all countries, exemptions were loosely defined as items in the medical, semiconductor, lumber, copper, essential vitamins and energy fields. An accompanying list detailed the specific products that would be spared.

But a ProPublica review of that list found many items that don’t fit neatly, or at all, in those broad categories– and some items that fall squarely within the categories were not spared.

The White House exclusions list, for example, included most types of asbestos, which is not generally considered a critical mineral and does n’t seem to fit in any of the exempted categories. The cancer-causing mineral, which is not generally considered critical to national security or the US economy, is still used to make chlorine, but the Biden administration ’s Environmental Protection Agency banned imports of the material last year. The Trump administration has signaled it may roll back some of those Biden-era restrictions.

A spokesperson for the American Chemistry Council, which had pushed back on the ban because it could hurt the chlorine industry, said the trade group played no role in lobbying for asbestos to get a tariff exemption and did n’t know why it was included. ( Two major chlorine companies also showed no indication of lobbying on the tariffs in their disclosure forms. )

Other items that landed on the list, despite not falling into exempted categories, are far more innocuous. Among them: coral, shells and cuttlebone, a part of the cuttlefish that is used as a dietary supplement for pets.

PET resin also does n’t fit neatly in any of the exempted categories. It’s possible the administration counted it as an energy product, experts said, because its ingredients are derived from petroleum. But other products that would have met that same low bar were not included.

“We are as surprised as anybody, ” said Ralph Vasami, executive director of the PET Resin Association, a trade group for the industry. The resin, he said, has no application for the exempted categories, unless you count the packaging those products come in.

During the fourth quarter of last year, the same period when Trump won the election, records show Reyes Holdings, the Coca-Cola bottler, enlisted Ballard Partners to lobby on tariffs. During the first quarter of this year, when Trump was inaugurated, records show that Ballard began lobbying the Commerce Department, which shapes trade policy, on tariffs. The firm has become a destination for companies looking for an in with the Trump administration. It once lobbied for Trump’s own company, the Trump Organization, and its staff has included top officials in the administration, such as Attorney General Pam Bondi and the president ’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Brian Ballard, its founder and a prolific fundraiser for Trump, was named by Politico “the most powerful lobbyist in Trump’s Washington. ” He was one of two lobbyists from the firm who lobbied on tariffs for Reyes Holdings, federal disclosure records show.

The billionaire brothers behind Reyes Holdings, Chris and Jude Reyes, also have their own political ties. While they have given to some Democratic candidates, the bulk of their political donations have gone to Republican causes, campaign finance disclosures show. And after Trump’s first election win, Chris Reyes was invited to Mar-a-Lago to meet privately with Trump.

The PET resin carve-out is n’t just a break for Reyes Holdings. It’s a boon to other firms that buy the resin to manufacture bottles and the beverage companies that use them. Earlier this year, the CEO of Coca-Cola said the company would transition to using more plastic bottles in the face of new tariffs on aluminum, a plan that might have been dashed if the thermoplastics were also hit with new tariffs.

Disclosure records show the company also lobbied this year about tariffs on the Hill, but the documents don’t provide detail about which policies in particular, and the company did not respond to questions from ProPublica. ( Coca-Cola has looked to make inroads with Trump, donating about$ 250,000 for his inauguration, and the CEO presented Trump with a personalized bottle of his favorite soda, Diet Coke. )

Another industry that appears to have done relatively well lobbying for carve-outs from the recent tariffs is agriculture. The exemption list includes various pesticide and fertilizer ingredients.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, an agricultural lobby, took credit for some of those exemptions in an analysis posted on its website recently, calling exemptions for peat and potash “hard fought for by agricultural organizations such as the American Farm Bureau Federation ” and “a testament to the effectiveness of farmers’ and ranchers raising their collective voice. ”

There are a number of other imports that don’t neatly fall into any of the exempted categories but might if the categories were defined loosely.

One example is sucralose, the artificial sweetener. Its inclusion will largely help companies that use the product in food and beverages. But sucralose is also sometimes used in drugs to make them more palatable. It’s not clear if the White House gave it a pass under the pharmaceutical exemption or for some other reason.

Even for the items that were spared, the reprieve may just be temporary.

The broad categories exempted are largely industries that are being investigated by the administration for potential future tariffs under its authority to administer levies to protect national security.

Alex Mierjeski and Agnel Philip contributed research. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

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