China Leads the World in EVs

SHANGHAI — When Shanghai held its international auto show this spring, the world’s biggest names were there: Toyota, Ford, BMW and more. But Chinese brands such as BYD and NIO stood out with electric vehicles that are cutting-edge — and affordable.

China’s electric vehicle companies have grown rapidly in recent years, becoming major competitors for U.S. automakers like Tesla.

William Li, the CEO of NIO, said competition in the EV industry is “much fiercer” in China, the world’s largest market for EVs and for automobiles overall.

Every company “must go all out,” he said in an interview at the Shanghai International Automobile Industry Auto Show in April. “Otherwise, you may be ahead today, [but] you may not be ahead in a few months.”

The fierce competition has spurred rapid development of the industry. According to Hong Kong-based Counterpoint Research, about one-quarter of passenger cars sold in China last year were all-electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles, compared with about 7% in the U.S.

“China is way ahead of the U.S. in terms of EV adoption,” said Soumen Mandal, a senior analyst for Counterpoint, based in Kolkata, India.  READ MORE...

China & France

HONG KONG — Derided by concerned observers from Washington to Brussels, French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent trip to China did not go down well with allies. But he left his hosts feeling delighted.

Hundreds of cheering people were waiting to greet Macron when he arrived in the southern Chinese metropolis of Guangzhou this month, part of a high-profile state visit.


“He saw us and came right up to us and shook our hands who stood in the front row,” said Qiao Jiabao, a financial journalism student at Sun Yat-sen University, where Macron gave a speech. “I felt he was very gracious and proactive, even though we didn’t speak the same language,” Qiao told NBC News.


He said he and his friends joked that Macron, who has faced mass protests in France over his unpopular plan to raise the retirement age, had been treated so well in China that he might not want to go home.


When Macron returned to France, he faced another storm of criticism, this time over an interview in which he suggested that Europe should resist being drawn into a conflict over Taiwan and focus on “strategic autonomy” independent from both the United States and China.  READ MORE...

Rare Ancient Papyrus

Israel has acquired a previously unknown ancient papyrus bearing a Hebrew inscription dated to around 2,700 years ago that had long been in possession of a Montana resident, the country’s antiquities authority said Wednesday.

The scrap of papyrus — scarcely larger than a postage stamp with four lines of angular script — is one of just a few from the region in the Late Iron Age, archaeologists said. The Israel Antiquities Authority said it authenticated its age using radiocarbon dating, which corresponded with the age of the text’s writing style.

Joe Uziel, director of the Judean desert scrolls unit, said the matching radiocarbon date and paleographic style makes him “very certain” that it is not a modern forgery.

The papyrus, which bears the Biblical name Ishmael, was likely looted sometime in the last century from a cave in the Judean Desert, he said.

Its provenance and journey from the desert to Montana six decades ago and now to Jerusalem remain nebulous.

The antiquities authority declined to name the Montana resident but said the man’s mother obtained the artifact during a visit to what was then Jordanian-occupied east Jerusalem in 1965 and brought it to the United States.

Jordanian law that was in force at the time severely restricted the sale of antiquities and prohibited the export of artifacts without a permit from the minister of antiquities. It wasn’t clear whether the woman possessed such authorization.  READ MORE...

Our Metabolism

Blaming those extra pounds on a slowing metabolism as you age? Not so fast.

A new international study counters the common belief that our metabolism inevitably declines during our adult lives. Well, not until we’re in our 60s, anyway.

Researchers found that metabolism peaks around age 1, when babies burn calories 50 percent faster than adults, and then gradually declines roughly 3 percent a year until around age 20. 

From there, metabolism plateaus until about age 60, when it starts to slowly decline again, by less than 1 percent annually, according to findings published Thursday in the journal Science.

To tease out the specific impact of age on metabolism, the researchers adjusted for factors such as body size (bigger bodies burn more calories overall than smaller ones) and fat-free muscle mass (muscles burn more calories than fat).

“Metabolic rate is really stable all through adult life, 20 to 60 years old,” said study author Herman Pontzer, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University and author of “Burn,” a new book about metabolism. 

“There's no effect of menopause that we can see, for example. And you know, people will say, 'Well when I hit 30 years old, my metabolism fell apart.' We don't see any evidence for that, actually.”

Pontzer and colleagues studied a database of more than 6,400 people, ages 8 days to 95 years, from 29 countries worldwide who had participated in “doubly labeled water” tests. 

With this method, individuals drink water in which some of the hydrogen and oxygen have been replaced with isotopes of these elements that can be traced in urine samples.  READ MORE