Month: May 2025

Trump cuts tariff on UK cars; American carmakers not happy about it

The UK is allowed to export 100,000 cars a year to the US at the lower rate.

The British car industry got a big break from US President Donald Trump yesterday afternoon. Trump and UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer have agreed to a bilateral trade agreement that cuts tariffs on a range of imports from the UK, including pharmaceuticals, aluminum and steel, and cars.

Now, the first 100,000 cars that come to the US from the UK will only be subject to a 10 percent tariff rather than the 27.5 percent they have been under since the start of this trade war in April.

"The car industry is vital to the UK’s economic prosperity, sustaining 250,000 jobs," said Jaguar Land Rover CEO Adrian Mardell. "We warmly welcome this deal which secures greater certainty for our sector and the communities it supports. We would like to thank the UK and US Governments for agreeing this deal at pace and look forward to continued engagement over the coming months," Mardell said.

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Doom: The Dark Ages review: Shields up!

Prepare to add a more defensive stance to the usual dodge-and-shoot gameplay loop.

For decades now, you could count on there being a certain rhythm to a Doom game. From the ’90s originals to the series’ resurrection in recent years, the Doom games have always been about using constant, zippy motion to dodge through a sea of relatively slow-moving bullets, maintaining your distance while firing back at encroaching hordes of varied monsters. The specific guns and movement options you could call on might change from game to game, but the basic rhythm of that dodge-and-shoot gameplay never has.

Just a few minutes in, Doom: The Dark Ages throws out that traditional Doom rhythm almost completely. The introduction of a crucial shield adds a whole suite of new verbs to the Doom vocabulary; in addition to running, dodging, and shooting, you’ll now be blocking, parrying, and stunning enemies for counterattacks. In previous Doom games, standing still for any length of time often led to instant death. In The Dark Ages, standing your ground to absorb and/or deflect incoming enemy attacks is practically required at many points.

During a preview event earlier this year, the game’s developers likened this change to the difference between flying a fighter jet and piloting a tank. That’s a pretty apt metaphor, and it's not exactly an unwelcome change for a series that might be in need of a shake-up. But it only works if you go in ready to play like a tank and not like the fighter jet that has been synonymous with Doom for decades.

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Europe launches program to lure scientists away from the US

EU will spend over $500 million to recruit researchers and scientists.

The European Commission has launched a new initiative to attract researchers and scientists to the European Union—especially those from the United States. The Choose Europe for Science program, backed with more than half a billion dollars, is designed to offer an alternative to researchers who have been forced to seek new opportunities following cuts in scientific funding imposed by President Donald Trump’s administration.

The program will invest €500 million ($568 million) between 2025 and 2027 to recruit specialists in various fields of knowledge to come and work in Europe. The initiative also includes a target for member states to allocate 3 percent of their GDP to R&D projects by 2030.

“The role of science in today’s world is questioned,” warned Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, in a statement on Tuesday. “What a gigantic miscalculation. I believe that science holds the key to our future here in Europe. Without it, we simply cannot address today’s global challenges—from health to new tech, from climate to oceans.”

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A star has been destroyed by a wandering supermassive black hole

Second supermassive black hole is a long way from the galaxy’s core.

Back in 2024, a system set up to identify objects that suddenly brighten found something unusual. Unfortunately, the automated system that was supposed to identify it couldn't figure out what it was looking at. Now, about a year later, we know it's the first tidal disruption event—meaning a star being ripped apart by a supermassive black hole—identified at visual wavelengths. It's also a rather unusual one, in that the supermassive black hole in question does not reside at the center of its galaxy. Instead, there's an even more massive object there, which is feeding on matter at the same time.

A mystery object

The object, now called AT2024tvd, was identified by the Zwicky Transient Facility, which is set up to scan the entire northern sky over a period of just two days, after which it repeats the process. Combined with software that scans the data for changes, these repeated exposures allow the system to identify objects that suddenly brighten (or, potentially, anything that suddenly goes dark). Among the events it can identify are tidal disruption events, where a star gets spaghettified by the enormous gravity of a supermassive black hole.

Normally, supermassive black holes live at the center of galaxies. So, the software that does the scanning will only flag something as a potential tidal disruption event if it coincides with the presence of a previous light source at the same location. And that wasn't the case with AT2024tvd, which appeared to be over 2,500 light years from the center of the galaxy. As a result, the software didn't flag it as a potential tidal disruption event; people didn't figure out what it was until they looked more closely at it.

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