投稿者: Nobu GOTOH

Kuo is a world-renowned authority in materials science and electronics, highly regarded for his research in thin-film technology and semiconductor devices.

007 : Daniel’s Draft2Pub

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2025-04-07 3:11 PM >2025-04-07 6:23 PM

After Canada pulled American-made spirits off its shelves following President Donald Trump’s implementation of tariffs on Canadian imports, the CEO of Brown-Forman, which makes Jack Daniel’s whiskey and other liquors, blasted the move as “disproportionate.”

“That’s worse than a tariff because it’s literally taking your sales away,” said Lawson Whiting in an earnings call Wednesday, noting the “very disproportionate response” to the 25% tariffs applied this week.

Provinces across Canada have pulled American-made spirits, beer and wine off their shelves. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario said in a statement that it’s pushing shoppers to seek Canadian-made alternatives and that US products will remain off shelves until it’s “directed by the government to resume normal business.”

However, Lawson noted that Canada accounts for just 1% of the company’s total sales, so the company can “withstand” the losses. He’s also awaiting a response from Mexico, which was also slammed with a 25% across-the-board tariff, to see how the move affects business there, since it accounts for 7% Brown-Forman’s total sales.

The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), a trade group that represents spirits makers, has also been vocal in its displeasure about the tariffs.

102 drft+time

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2025-04-07 3:13 PM

DeepSeek stunned the world in January with its high-performing reasoning model R1 that it said cost far less to train than established Western rivals. Its success has shored up confidence among global investors in Chinese companies’ ability to innovate at the time when the US-China tech rivalry intensifies. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index has surged over 30% since January.

Alibaba, the owner of Chinese e-commerce platforms Taobao and Tmall, first launched its ChatGPT-equivalent service Tongyi Qianwen in 2023, after OpenAI launched its industry-defining AI reasoning model.

In January, Alibaba released another model, Qwen 2.5 Max, which it said surpassed the performance of DeepSeek’s highly acclaimed V3 model, released just a few weeks before.

Last week, Alibaba pledged to invest at least 380 billion yuan ($52.4 billion) in its AI and cloud computing infrastructure over the next three years. It said the amount exceeded what it had invested in those areas over the past decade.

On Wednesday, Chinese leaders pledged support for “emerging industries and industries of the future,” including increasing funding for artificial intelligence, humanoid robots and quantum technology.

Liberals will win majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court

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Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford will win Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race, CNN projects, maintaining the liberal majority on the court in a key battleground state less than three months into President Donald Trump’s second term.

Crawford, a liberal circuit court judge in Dane County, will beat the conservative candidate Brad Schimel, a Waukesha County judge who received Trump’s backing in the final stretch of the campaign. The race was officially nonpartisan, but Crawford’s victory will be seen as a bright spot for Democrats in Wisconsin and nationwide as voters handed the president’s preferred candidate a defeat in the first major political test of the second Trump era.