Gold medalists Joshua Sweeney, Oksana Masters, Sydney Peterson, Jake Adicoff, and Adicoff's guide Reid Goble of Team USA pose for a photo on the podium during the medal ceremony for the para cross-country skiing mixed 4x2.5-kilometer relay on Day 8 of the 2026 Winter Paralympic Games, at Tesero Cross-Country Skiing Stadium....

Montserrat Roig's classic novel, The Time of Cherries, captures a sort of still point in the history of Barcelona' a moment that came before great change. When the novel ends, no one has any idea that within 18 months, Francisco Franco, the old dictator, will be gone. The Time of Cherries was originally published in Catalan in 1976, the year after Franco died. Half a century later, Roig's excavation of family life in a period of historical flux is now available in English in the United States for the first time. The Time of Cherries became an essential book in post-Franco Catalonia. It appeared at a time when there were few images of the culture whose youth had cast off Franco long before 1975. The novel is infused not only with an array of vivid characters but also with a sharply detailed vision of middle-class Barcelona before democracy was restored. The book revolves around Natalia, once a student activist and now nearly age 40, as she deals with unfinished business: her conservative brother and her fearful and neurotic sister-in-law, her father, her old friends, and, more than anything, the stifling political atmosphere that she had abruptly run away from 12 years earlier. Soon after its publication, the novel became available in a cheap paperback and was on sale in the newspaper kiosks that dotted downtown Barcelona....

China is pledging to use 'extraordinary measures' to support the country's bid to become a global leader in artificial intelligence, quantum technology and other cutting-edge technological fields, according to its 15th five-year plan. Many researchers noted an air of confidence in the plan. 'Five years ago, the sentiment of the Chinese science policymakers was still very much like, we don't want to be too far behind the US, we are still doing the catching up,' says Meicen Sun, an information scientist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 'Now, there is this more palpable sentiment that there's a real chance we can be a true leader,' she says. The government has promised to boost its research and development (R&D) expenditure over the next five years. And the country's science budget is also expected to increase to 426 billion yuan (US$62 billion) this year, a rise of 10% from 2025. The Chinese government now considers science to be as important as other top-level national goals, such as boosting defence, economic growth and the country's international influence, says Stefanie Kam, who researches Chinese politics at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore....

According to the announcement, the contract starts with a five-year 'base period,' with the option to extend the deal for an additional five years, and it includes Anduril hardware, software, infrastructure, and services. 'The modern battlefield is increasingly defined by software,' said Gabe Chiulli, the chief technology officer at the Department of Defense's Office of the Chief Information Officer, in a statement. 'To maintain our advantage, we must be able to acquire and deploy software capabilities with speed and efficiency,' Anduril was co-founded by Palmer Luckey, who was previously known for selling VR startup Oculus to Facebook (now Meta). Facebook fired Luckey after controversy erupted following a news report that he'd donated to a pro-Trump political group. Luckey has repeatedly insisted that the media misrepresented his political views, but according to a recent feature in The New York Times, Luckey and Anduril have been embraced by the second Trump administration, thanks to his vision for remaking the U.S. military with autonomous fighter jets, drones, submarines, and more. The company (named, like Palantir, for a magical object in 'The Lord of the Rings') brought in around $2 billion in revenue last year, the NYT says....