making

R&B singer Ray J was arrested early Thanksgiving morning, according to jail records and a police spokesman.

The 44-year-old artist — whose legal name is Willie Norwood — was arrested on suspicion of making criminal threats, according to Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Mike Bland.

Jail records show Norwood was arrested around 4 a.m. by officers from LAPD’s Devonshire Division, which patrols parts of the San Fernando Valley including Chatsworth and Northridge.

Bland could not provide details on the incident or say exactly where Norwood was arrested. He was released on $50,000 bond a few hours after his arrest, according to jail records.

The younger brother of actress and singer Brandy, Norwood is best known for the tracks “One Wish” and “Sexy Can I.” He was sued for defamation in October by his ex-girlfriend, Kim Kardashian, over comments he made in a TMZ documentary.

Ray J is married to actor and producer Princess Love Norwood, whom he co-starred with on the reality show “Love & Hip Hop,” which showcased an often contentious relationship. The two, who share two children, are in the process of a divorce, as People reported last year.

This article contains spoilers for Season 5, Volume 1 of “Stranger Things.”

If anyone visited Jamie Campbell Bower in the days before he secured the role of Vecna in “Stranger Things,” they might have been disturbed by what they found.

Bower had spent that period “kind of going crazy,” studying the audition materials he had been given — a scene from the series (with fake character names), one from the 1996 film “Primal Fear” and one from the ‘80s horror classic “Hellraiser.” He then crafted a whodunit-style vision board, pinning printed images of iconic movie villains onto his walls. He latched onto Doug Bradley’s Pinhead and incorporated Voldemort, Nosferatu, Dracula and images from “The Shining,” “Insidious” and “The Prince of Darkness.”

Bower had essentially made a shrine to villainy. But what better way is there to make a monster than to draw from the scariest and most spine-chilling in the game?

He thumbed through a neat binder with all of the reference images that were once tacked to his walls as he sat in a hotel room at the Four Seasons earlier this month that was done up in “Stranger Things” decor. Although he had pulled ideas and inspiration from several different characters and movies, he couldn’t shake Bradley’s work from his mind.

He wanted Vecna to feel “so poised, so considered and surgical, almost. And Pinhead is that. He doesn’t run. Pinhead never runs. He knows that he’s an ultimate power all the time,” Bower said. “That feels really strong for me. I really, really like that.”

In addition to playing the monster, Bower plays the man he once was, Henry Creel, in “Stranger Things,” Netflix’s supernatural sensation, which released the first batch of episodes for its fifth and final season Wednesday. Henry, who we first meet as a young boy with powerful psychokinetic abilities, evolves throughout the show from the first child test subject in Hawkins Labs to the powerful Vecna after he’s banished to the Upside Down.

As he devolves in the dark, decaying shadow dimension, he becomes less and less human in both spirit and appearance. His skin is scorched by lightning, his body is overtaken by the vines from the Upside Down, and his left hand is mutilated. He has a deep, booming voice, which is actually Bower speaking without manipulation in post-production. And in Season 4, most of what the audience sees of Vecna — the vines wrapped around his body, his mutilations and burns, the slimy texture of his skin, his startling walk and movement — was pulled off practically with prosthetics, appliances and makeup.

Bringing Vecna to life was no easy feat, with a lot of cross-departmental collaboration happening behind the scenes. In Season 4, where Vecna is first introduced, the team built full-body prosthetics based on concept art for the character that took roughly eight hours to apply on Bower.

But for Season 5, the creatives behind the show were looking to make “Vecna on steroids,” as Barrie Gower, the prosthetics wiz for “Stranger Things,” put it.

Vecna has a sharper appearance and broader stance in Season 5 of “Stranger Things.”

(Netflix)

Michael Maher Jr., a concept illustrator and visual effects supervisor who had cooked up the earliest iterations of Vecna, said the show’s creators, brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, wanted Vecna to feel more powerful this season, “but not [in] the cliché, bigger and bulkier way.” They also wanted the extent of his injuries from the Season 4 finale, where his opponents set him on fire, shoot him repeatedly and send him flying out of a second-story window, to be evident.

Maher said he was sculpting to ideate on this new version of the character when he accidentally punched a hole in the figure’s torso. It was a serendipitous moment, however; it clicked for him that Vecna 2.0 could be simultaneously more exposed and sharper. The vines that overtook his body now have a Medusa-like quality near his head and shoulders, essentially serving as armor, Maher said.

His mutilated arm and hand, which was already terrifying with its long digits and sharp claws that he would draw close to his victims’ faces, is now extendable, as if he has become one with the vines of the Upside Down.

Because of Vecna’s souped-up look for the final season, a blend of practical and visual effects were used to accomplish the final look. Gower called it a “really beautiful marriage” of the two. The monster’s head, shoulders and right arm were made up of prosthetics, but for the rest, Bower wore a spandex suit that had a printed pattern of Vecna’s body from Season 4, serving as a reference for the visual effects team. Bower also wore foam inserts under his arms to capture the gait and broad stance of the creature.

Gower said with all of the moving parts and elements of Vecna’s body that they wanted to change for the new season, it would have been a “logistical nightmare” to pull off practically. He and Maher’s teams had lengthy conversations early on in the process to prevent overbuilding the prosthetics, Gower said. Creating the new look took about three months.

The team behind Vecna opted for a blend of prosthetics, appliances and a spandex suit to film Season 5. (Niko Tavernise / Netflix)

The character Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) and Vecna come face-to-face in Season 5. (Niko Tavernise / Netflix)

When the Duffer Brothers and Maher were initially talking about the design of Vecna, they drew from Pinhead and Freddy Krueger in the same way Bower did for his performance. The creatives had been pulling from ‘80s classic movies for the “nostalgia quality,” Maher said, but the challenge for him was creating something that still felt fresh and reflected Vecna’s power. He wanted to make it clear Vecna was “a character that is mostly powerful with his mind, that really resonates as a villain,” he said.

By 2019 as the developmental process for the concept art was moving along, the Duffer Brothers approached Gower, whose work on “Game of Thrones” and “Chernobyl” they admired. Gower has a young daughter who was an avid fan of “Stranger Things” at the time, and he said he couldn’t possibly turn down the opportunity. Even before Bower was cast, a roughly five-month process (save a pause in production for the pandemic) kicked off for Gower and his team to develop the Vecna gear. The full-body suit was made up of about 26 overlapping prosthetic pieces that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Gower and his team used foam latex, which is lightweight and opaque, to cover large body pieces for Vecna, mainly his left arm and lower body. Silicone-based materials came into play for his face, soldiers, chest, back and right arm, since the material is clear and can be dyed to match the pigment of the creature’s skin. It’s challenging to paint the two different materials and make them appear as one, cohesive body, Gower said, but the artists he worked with are “incredible craftspeople,” some of whom are classically trained painters.

Gower said with all of the logistics involved in creating Vecna, Bower was patient and collaborative — whether that was through 2 a.m. calls to get the prosthetics applied before he was called to set or through the adjustments Gower’s team had to make as those long shoot days progressed. Gower also praised not only Bower’s stamina, but also his commitment to the performance.

Bower described the “gothy folk, black metal” music he would play as he sat in the makeup chair, which would get faster and more hardcore as they progressed. Gower said at the start of the hours-long application, Bower would crack jokes and be himself. But as they neared the end, they would “start to lose Jamie.”

Jamie Campbell Bower in his Vecna costume on the set of “Stranger Things” with showrunners Matt Duffer, left, and Ross Duffer.

(Niko Tavernise / Netflix)

“Vecna’s voice would start coming out,” Gower said. “By the end of the process, it was Vecna talking to us. It wasn’t Jamie anymore.”

“I really can’t imagine Vecna being as successful, as iconic a villain and character without it being Jamie Campbell Bower,” Gower continued. “He’s incredible.”

Becoming Vecna can be both mentally and physically taxing because of the prosthetics and the dark place it requires the actor to go. But Bower said he found playing Henry, Vecna’s human form, even more challenging this season.

For him, Vecna is devoid of any humanity, but when he is playing Henry, there’s still “elements of humanity,” though his intentions are pure evil. In Vol. 1, we see Henry targeting the children of Hawkins, but instead of presenting himself as Vecna, as he did in Season 4, he’s approaching his victims with a friendly, well-dressed front — they call him Mr. Whatsit.

“There was something that was arguably more terrifying in having the composure enough to be able to let whomever else is there make wrong choices,” Bower said. It’s a fun puzzle for him to figure out how much emotion to show and when to let the mask slip to the audience, he added.

In comparison to the monsters Bower drew from to develop Vecna, he looked to one person as inspiration for Henry in Season 5: Mister Rogers.

He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. And Bower promises we’ll see more of the wolf come out as the season progresses, though he’s careful not to reveal too much.

On Saturday, the Reuters news agency published an exclusive report claiming that the United States is “poised to launch a new phase of Venezuela-related operations in the coming days”. The report cited four US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. Two of the officials said covert operations would likely be the first step in this “new action” against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

This was less than shocking news given that more than a month ago, US President Donald Trump himself announced that he had authorised the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela – a rather unique approach since one does not normally broadcast actions that are supposed to be, um, secret.

Anyway, it’s no secret that the US has been overseeing a massive military build-up in the region with about 15,000 US troops currently stationed there under the guise of fighting “narcoterrorism”. Since early September, Trump has also presided over wanton extrajudicial executions in the Caribbean Sea, repeatedly ordering the bombing of what he claims are drug-trafficking boats.

In addition to violating both international and US law, the strikes have produced little to show for themselves beyond terrorising local fishermen.

To be sure, the US has never met a “war on drugs” it didn’t love, given the convenient opportunities the whole drug-war narrative offers for wreaking havoc worldwide, militarising the Western Hemisphere, criminalising poor Americans and all sorts of other good stuff.

Never mind that US financial institutions have for decades reaped profits from the international drug trade – or that “The CIA Drug Connection Is as Old as the Agency,” as an article on The New York Times website puts it.

It should come as no surprise by now that the president who campaigned on keeping the US out of wars and then promptly bombed Iran has now found another conflict in which to embroil the country. And as is par for the course in US imperial belligerence, the rationale for aggression against Venezuela doesn’t hold water.

For example, the Trump administration has strived to pin the blame for the fentanyl crisis in the US on Maduro. But there’s a slight problem – which is that Venezuela doesn’t even produce the synthetic opioid in question.

As NBC News and other hardly radical outlets have pointed out, Venezuelan drug cartels are focused on exporting cocaine to Europe, not fentanyl to the US.

Nevertheless, on November 13, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth – pardon, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, as per administrative rebranding – took to X to assure his audience that the massive US military build-up off the Venezuelan coast is a mission that “defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people”.

This is the same administration, of course, that was just threatening to starve impoverished Americans by withholding essential food assistance, which suggests that the wellbeing of “our people” isn’t really of utmost concern.

Consider also the fact that Trump slashed federal funding for gun violence prevention programmes in a country where mass shootings have become a way of life. Obviously, massacres in elementary schools are “killing our people” in a way that has nothing whatsoever to do with Venezuela.

But it’s so much more fun to blame Maduro for everything, right?

Poverty itself is a major killer in America – as is the domestic pharmaceutical industry (speaking of opioids). However, none of these full-blown crises has merited a remotely gung-ho response from the valiant defenders of the Homeland.

Like his predecessor Hugo Chavez, Maduro has long been a thorn in the side of US empire – hence the current campaign to discredit him as a “narcoterrorist” and thereby set the stage for regime change. He also happens to be a pet target of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is seen as the main architect of Washington’s war plans in Venezuela. Potentially eyeing a presidential bid in three years, Rubio is seeking to curry favour with his Florida constituency, which includes fanatically right-wing members of the Venezuelan and Cuban diasporas.

According to the Reuters report on impending “Venezuela-related operations”, two of the US officials consulted told the news agency that “the options under consideration included attempting to overthrow Maduro”. If the plans succeeds, Rubio would join the lengthy roster of US politicians who have propagated deadly havoc abroad in the interest of political gains at home.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported on Saturday that the White House had “proposed an idea for US military planes to drop leaflets over Caracas in a psychological operation” to pressure Maduro.

Sounds like a page – or a leaflet – out of the old Israeli military playbook.

And as the Trump administration barrels on with its not-so-covert plans for Venezuela, such hemispheric recklessness will secure neither the US homeland nor anyone else’s.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Prep Rally. My name is Eric Sondheimer. It’s semifinals week in the high school football playoffs. This is the week players cry if they come up short and scream if they make it to the final. And it comes as the Southern Section Division 1 playoffs are on the verge of making history.

Semifinals week

The versatile Trent Mosley makes a run during Santa Margarita’s playoff win against Sierra Canyon.

(Craig Weston)

Carson Palmer held up well whenever he experienced rain in his 15 years as an NFL quarterback because of his big hands to help grasp the football. In his first experience last week as a high school head coach in the rain, he got one of his most memorable victories when Santa Margarita knocked off previously unbeaten Sierra Canyon on the road, 21-9, to advance to the Southern Section Division 1 semifinals. His quarterback, Trace Johnson, threw for two touchdowns. He played in Florida’s rain last season. Here’s the report.

It sets up one of the most unlikely semifinals, Santa Margarita playing Trinity League rival Orange Lutheran on Friday night at Orange Coast College. Orange Lutheran pulled off the biggest upset in California, if not the nation, with a 20-19 victory over top-seeded St. John Bosco. Orange Lutheran lost to St. John Bosco in the regular season 48-0.

The Lancers have Santa Margarita right where they want them. They lost to the Eagles 28-7 during the regular season. Coach Rod Sherman has his team believing. Quarterback Reagan Toki and defensive back King Rich Johnson came through with big plays against the Braves, who lost back-to-back games for the first time under coach Jason Negro. Santa Margarita remains the favorite with its outstanding defense and the versatile Trent Mosley.

The other semifinal is another rematch with Corona Centennial hosting Mater Dei. Centennial won a wild game in September 43-36 in which the Monarchs fell behind 28-0 and 33-7 at halftime, only to rally and take the lead before losing. Mater Dei had seven turnovers. The last time either Mater Dei or St. John Bosco did not win the Division 1 championship was 2015. Centennial won it, so history could be made if the Huskies eliminate Mater Dei.

The Division 2 semifinals are also outstanding. Los Alamitos is at Murrieta Valley in a game in which both teams love to run the football. Red-hot San Clemente plays at Leuzinger, which is riding high with the return of quarterback Russell Sekona and a tough defense.

Here’s the complete schedule for this weekend.

Here’s a look at top individual performances from the quarterfinals.

City Section

Garfield running back Zastice Jauregui cuts off a block to pick up some of his 440 yards rushing against Palisades on Friday night.

(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)

Garfield ended Palisades’ magical unbeaten football season with 42-21 victory. The Dolphins have had issues all season on defense, and the Bulldogs made them pay. Zastice Jauregui rushed for 440 yards and five touchdowns. Here’s the report.

It sets up an Open Division semifinal between top-seeded Carson and a Garfield team that’s surging and used to playing in big games.

The other semifinal will have Birmingham, unbeaten in 55 games against City Section opponents, taking on the surprise team of the year, 9-1 Crenshaw, which upset San Pedro on the road 30-0. The Cougars’ long-time head coach, Robert Garrett, has not coached all season while being on administrative leave. Terrence Whitehead has been running things. The Cougars are a dangerous team motivated to win a title for Whitehead and Garrett.

Aaron Minter of Venice enjoys the mud in a 35-8 win over Franklin in a City Division I playoff game.

(Nick Koza)

In Division I, Venice is top-seeded but Marquez will be a formidable semifinal opponent. South Gate has advanced to the other semifinal but its opponent won’t be decided until Eagle Rock hosts Dorsey on Monday at 4 p.m. after a power failure on Friday forced the postponement.

In Division II, Fairfax is at Cleveland ant Marshall at San Fernando. Marshall overcame a 12-11 deficit to Chatsworth by returning an onside kick for a touchdown in the fourth quarter.

In Division III, Contreras entered this season having never won a playoff game since the school opened in 2007. Contreras plays at top-seeded Santee and Wilson is at Hawkins.

Here’s a look at teams thriving in the mud.

Girls’ basketball

Kaleena Smith draws contact on her way to the basket for Ontario Christian. She’s a junior this season.

(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)

Monday marks the beginning of the high school basketball season.

Top girls teams have added to their rosters with transfer students similar to what’s been happening in the boys ranks.

Ontario Christian is the defending Southern Section Open Division champion. Etiwanda has won three straight state titles. Here’s a preview of the teams and players to watch and lots of players switching schools.

Top junior guard Kaleena Smith of Ontario Christian visited USC last week. UCLA is next. Don’t expect a commitment any time soon.

The state’s winningest coach, Kevin Kiernan, is back coaching at Troy. Here’s the report.

Westchester and Palisades look to be the top teams in City Section girls basketball.

Boys basketball

This week’s opening schedule includes the Mission League vs. Trinity League challenge on Saturday at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion. The featured games include Harvard-Westlake vs. St. John Bosco at 8:30 p.m. and Santa Margarita vs. Sherman Oaks Notre Dame at 7 p.m. Here’s the link for tickets.

Tom Hofman begins his 39th season as head coach at La Canada. Here’s a look at his motivation to keep coaching.

San Marino has a player showing how to play with hearing aids. Here’s the report.

Here’s The Times’ preseason top 25 boys rankings.

Water polo

Newport Harbor goalie Conner Clougherty helped lead his team to Southern Section championship.

(Don Leach/Staff Photographer)

Close to a perfection. That’s how to describe the season enjoyed by the Newport Harbor boys’ water polo team, which repeated as Southern Section Open Division champions with a 10-3 win over rival Corona del Mar. Newport Harbor is 30-1, has won four titles in the last five years and 16th championship overall.

Here’s the report.

Newport Harbor is seeded No. 1 for the Division I state regional water polo playoffs that begin Tuesday. Here are the pairings.

Loyola won the Division 1 championship over Mater Dei. Capistrano Valley, Bonita, Charter Oak and Fontana also won titles.

Cleveland won its third straight City Section championship. Here’s the report.

Cross country

It’s championship time in cross country. The City Section will hold its finals Thursday in Elysian Park. The Southern Section finals are Saturday at Mt. San Antonio College.

The Southern Section created a rain course for last weekend’s prelims at Mt. SAC. Here’s the link to results.

Maximo Zavaleta of King had the fastest Division 1 boys time at 14:21.3. Charlotte Hopkins led Division 1 girls in 16:56.5.

Interception machine

Jaden Walk-Green of Corona Centennial makes interception and returns it for touchdown against Mater Dei.

(Craig Weston)

There’s one defensive player who has thrust himself into the conversation for player of the year. Jaden Walk-Green, a junior at Corona Centennial, has made 10 interceptions, returning five for touchdowns.

Here’s a profile on an athlete who played almost every sport growing up and starts in center field for the baseball team.

Notes . . .

The City Section flag football championships were postponed Saturday because of rain and have been rescheduled for Saturday. Eagle Rock plays Marshall in the Open Division final at 6 p.m. at Garfield. . . .

The Southern California girls volleyball regional finals are set for Tuesday. Here’s the schedule. Winners advances to the state championships Friday and Saturday at Santiago Canyon College. . . .

Price has dropped its boys basketball progam. It was a long-time small schools power, winning numerous championships during the era of Michael Lynch . . .

Standout forward Maximo Adams of Sierra Canyon has committed to North Carolina. . . .

Vince Gomez has resigned as girls basketball coach at Anaheim. . . .

Sierra Canyon standout girls basketball player Jerzy Robinson hasn’t practiced in more than a month because of an injury. She’s waiting for doctor’s clearance to resume practices. . . .

Mater Dei senior basketball standout Kaeli Wynn has committed to South Carolina. . . .

Alyson Fullbright is the new girls beach volleyball coach at St. Margaret’s. . . .

Softball standout Shea Gonzalez of Villa Park has committed to Washington. . . .

Santa Margarita won the Southern California regional girls’ golf title for the fourth straight season to advance to the state championships on Wednesday at Poppy Hills. . . .

Junior infielder Parker Leoff of Huntington Beach has committed to UCLA. . . .

Former Sherman Oaks Notre Dame basketball player Tyran Stokes has enrolled at Rainer Beach in Seattle. . . .

TJ Yonkers has resigned as football coach at West Ranch.

From the archives: Sam Darnold

In 2017, USC quarterback Sam Darnold visits his former teammates at San Clemente.

(Los Angeles Times)

Sam Darnold is a hero in his home town of San Clemente. He starred at San Clemente High, USC and now is having success in the NFL with the Seattle Seahawks. He struggled Sunday in his homecoming to SoFi Stadium, with the Rams intercepting him four times.

Here’s a story on Darnold’s reflecting on hs football journey.

Here’s a story from 2017 on Darnold dealing with fame shortly before his 20th birthday.

Recommendations

From the Los Angeles Times, a story on former Thousand Oaks linebacker Alex Singleton revealing he has cancer.

From the Washington Post, a story on a high school athlete who grew up on basketball but her ticket to college might be flag football.

From the Los Angeles Times, a story on UCLA’s 16-year-old women’s soccer player.

Tweets you might have missed

Until next time….

Have a question, comment or something you’d like to see in a future Prep Rally newsletter? Email me at [email protected], and follow me on Twitter at @latsondheimer.

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China’s AI models are quickly gaining traction in Silicon Valley, becoming integral to the operations of American companies and earning the praise of a growing list of tech leaders.

Their rapid ascent has highlighted the competitive edge that Chinese developers such as Alibaba, Z.ai, Moonshot, and MiniMax have been able to gain by offering so-called “open” language models at much lower costs than their rivals in the United States.

The trend has also cast a critical glare on the US’s efforts to stunt China’s tech sector with export controls on advanced chips, which have not stopped Chinese developers from approaching the capabilities of Silicon Valley’s tech giants.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky generated headlines in October when he revealed that the short-term rental platform had opted for Alibaba’s Qwen over OpenAI’s ChatGPT, praising the Chinese model as “fast and cheap”.

Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya revealed the same month that his company had migrated much of its work to Moonshot’s Kimi K2 as it was “way more performant” and “a ton cheaper” than models from OpenAI and Anthropic.

Programmers on social media also recently highlighted evidence that two popular US-developed coding assistants, Composer and Windsurf, were built on Chinese models.

The assistants’ developers, Cursor and Cognition AI, have not publicly confirmed their use of Chinese technology and did not respond to requests for comment, though Z.ai has said the speculation aligns with its “internal findings.”

Nathan Lambert, a machine learning researcher who founded the Atom Project, an initiative to promote open models in the US, said such public examples were the “tip of the iceberg”.

“Chinese open models have become a de facto standard among startups in the US,” Lambert told Al Jazeera.

“I’ve personally heard of many other high-profile cases, where the most valued and hyped American AI startups are starting training models on the likes of Qwen, Kimi, GLM or DeepSeek,” Lambert said, adding that many US firms have been reluctant to publicly disclose their use of Chinese technology.

While it is not possible to precisely quantify the usage of different AI models, industry data points to the rising popularity of Chinese offerings.

Chinese AI tools, including MiniMax’s M2, Z.ai’s GLM 4.6 and DeepSeek’s V3.2, took up seven spots among the 20 models with the most usage last week, according to data from OpenRouter, a platform that connects developers with AI models.

Among the top 10 models used for programming, four were developed by Chinese firms, according to OpenRouter.

In the open model space, China’s clear lead is evident, with cumulative downloads surpassing 540 million as of October, according to an Atom Project analysis of data from hosting platform Hugging Face.

Rui Ma, the founder of Tech Buzz China, said Chinese models are particularly attractive to fledgling startups, while “high-resource organisations” have gravitated towards premium US models.

“These are typically cost-conscious early-stage companies that experiment widely, and many of them will not survive,” Ma told Al Jazeera.

Unlike leading US platforms such as ChatGPT, China’s open-weight large language models make their trained parameters – called weights – publicly available.

While open-weight models do not generate licensing or subscription fees, running them at enterprise scale requires large amounts of computing power, which creators can offer to users at a cost.

Developers such as Beijing-based Z.ai and Hangzhou-based DeepSeek have reported using older-generation chips that are not subject to US export controls, in relatively small quantities, dramatically reducing training and hardware costs compared with their Silicon Valley rivals.

“The success of these Chinese models demonstrates the failure of export controls to limit China,” Toby Walsh, an expert in AI at the University of New South Wales, told Al Jazeera.

“Indeed, they’ve actually encouraged Chinese companies to be more resourceful and build better models that are smaller and are trained on and run on older generation hardware. Necessity is the mother of invention.”

With lower input costs, Chinese firms have been able to offer their services far more cheaply than their US peers.

In an analysis published by AllianceBernstein in February, DeepSeek’s pricing for its models at the time was estimated to be up to 40 times cheaper than OpenAI’s, for instance.

“I do think China’s AI progress has been underestimated, partly because the signal is fragmented,” Greg Slabaugh, a professor who studies AI at Queen Mary University of London, told Al Jazeera.

“Much of the uptake of Chinese models is in China. China’s scale in AI publications and patents has long been visible; the emergence of open-weight models simply makes that capability more globally consumable.”

Some industry analysts have likened China’s approach to AI to the strategy undertaken by Chinese firms in other industries, such as solar panels, that flooded markets with cheap goods.

“This is the solar panel playbook running on software,” Poe Zhao, a Beijing-based tech analyst, wrote last week in his Substack newsletter, Hello China Tech.

But while Chinese AI models have made inroads with their low cost, US tech giants are in a strong position to dominate the high-end market and highly regulated sectors where considerations such as national security are paramount, according to analysts.

Ma, the Tech Buzz China founder, said the development of AI could end up following a similar trajectory to the Android and iPhone platforms, the former of which has about three times as many users worldwide.

“Over the longer term – likely faster than what we saw in the mobile era – it’s entirely possible that AI adoption might follow similar economic dynamics. There are simply more users in the world who prioritise affordability than those who choose premium options,” Ma said.

“But that doesn’t mean the greatest margins or market capitalisation will exist at the low end; value may still concentrate where differentiation, performance and trust command a premium.”

“In Fortune 500 and regulated sectors, widespread adoption is probably not imminent,” said Slabaugh, the Queen Mary University of London professor, referring to the uptake of Chinese models.

“If there is a ‘rude awakening’, it may come on the pricing and flexibility front rather than from a sudden displacement of US models.”

Travel giant Expedia has shared its top 10 destinations of the year, which are powered by real-time data from daily visitors to its site and app

If you fancy exploring hidden gems, these top 10 spots revealed by the travel giant might be perfect for your upcoming getaway. Expedia’s 2026 destinations of the year list draws on real-time data from daily visitors to its site and app.

The announcement coincides with the travel giant launching its Unpack ’26: The Trends in Travel report. It showcases where worldwide interest is surging rapidly.

This year’s selection features France, Italy, alongside more distant locations in Canada and Mexico.

Six of these emerging hotspots also satisfy the requirements for Expedia’s fresh Smart Travel Health Check, which acknowledges destinations that actively manage tourism sustainably, reports the Express.

Ariane Gorin, CEO of Expedia Group, said: “Some of my most unforgettable travel moments come from immersing myself in local cultures, supporting local economies, and exploring less-travelled destinations.

“With one billion average monthly travel searches, Expedia Group isn’t just a travel marketplace, we’re a catalyst for positive change.

“We have a responsibility to shape the future of travel: one that’s smarter, more sustainable, and deeply respectful of the places we go.”

Big Sky, Montana, U.S.

Nestled within the Rocky Mountains’ core, Big Sky in Montana provides year-round activities.

During winter months, the area becomes a snow enthusiast’s haven, whilst summer brings spectacular walking routes.

Okinawa, Japan Okinawa

Japan’s southernmost island chain, offers a blend of turquoise waters, coral reefs and a unique Ryukyuan heritage. Once a kingdom in its own right, the region now provides a mix of hospitality, history, and a relaxed island lifestyle.

Sardinia, Italy

Sardinia is a hidden jewel in the Mediterranean, offering crystal-clear waters, ancient history and untouched landscapes. From glamorous beaches to a bustling city, Sardinia provides an Italian getaway without the crowds.

Phu Quoc, Vietnam

Located off the southwest coast of Vietnam, Phu Quoc Island boasts white sandy beaches and emerald waters. Once a tranquil fishing hub, it’s now a fusion of beach resorts and night markets.

Savoie, France

Tucked away in the French Alps, Savoie is home to world-class ski resorts, making it perfect for a winter holiday. In summer, anticipate hiking, cycling and sailing, as well as indulging in cheese fondue and alpine wines.

Fort Walton Beach, Florida, U.S.

North Florida’s Gulf Coast is a region of exceptional natural beauty, with picturesque beaches and nature walks where you can explore the state’s native parks. It’s the ideal spot for those who love the outdoors, with activities such as snorkelling, hiking and dolphin watching.

Ucluelet, Canada

Visitors to Ucluelet can enjoy surfing, kayaking, and spotting whales and sea lions just offshore. There are also plenty of land-based activities like rock climbing, ziplining, biking and wildlife watching.

Or, if you prefer to relax, there are numerous top hotels and holiday rentals available.

Cotswolds, UK

The Cotswolds, one of England’s most scenic regions, is home to quaint towns like Bourton-on-the-Water and Stow-on-the-Wold. Here, you can wander through historic gardens, savour a pint in traditional English pubs and tearooms, and admire the iconic Cotswold stone.

San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

Tucked away in Mexico’s central highlands, San Miguel de Allende is a compact city boasting stunning architecture, ancient religious structures and cobbled streets. It’s renowned for its community of artisans and artists, with some of their finest works on display at the Fabrica La Aurora galleries and studios.

Hobart, Australia

Once notorious as a penal colony, this harbour city has transformed into Tasmania’s cultural heart, drawing food enthusiasts and nature buffs from around the globe. Hobart serves up some of the country’s most inventive cuisine, and its beer, wine and produce are celebrated across Australia.

New York City – For Zohran Mamdani, it starts and ends in Astoria, the Queens neighbourhood he has represented as a state assemblyman for five years, and where he made his first public address following a shock victory in the June Democratic primary for mayor.

On Monday, the 34-year-old made his final appearance before Tuesday’s election day, standing at a playground at dusk, with children laughing in the background.

His message to his army of volunteers, which the campaign has said is made up of more than 100,000: “Leave everything out there on the field”.

“These are the hands that have brought us to this point of making history in this city”, he said, “making history to show that when you focus and fight for working people, you can, in fact, remake the politics of the place that you call home”.

While US President Donald Trump may have gained from deep disquiet over an affordability crisis in the country to win the 2024 presidential vote, Mamdani has argued that it is he and his mayoral campaign that can actually address those challenges in the biggest city of the United States.

Indeed, Trump loomed large on Monday as Mamdani stood before a cadre of cheering canvassers, some clad in the campaign’s ubiquitous yellow beanies, and an equally large horde of local, national and international media.

Just hours earlier, the US president had explicitly endorsed former Governor Andrew Cuomo, saying New Yorkers must choose the “bad democrat” over the “communist”, a false label he has repeatedly applied to democratic socialist Mamdani.

Soon after, billionaire Elon Musk also threw his support behind Cuomo, a Democrat who is running as an independent after losing to Mamdani in the Democratic Party’s primary.

The most recent polls showed Mamdani maintaining a commanding, if shrinking, lead over Cuomo. The late endorsements for the former governor, who has explicitly called on conservatives to jump ship from Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa and support him instead, could also further destabilise an already volatile race.

Still, Mamdani’s supporters on Monday said they hoped their candidate’s speech will be a coda on a campaign that has been widely considered as a rebuke to the entrenched, donor-dominated Democratic establishment that Cuomo is seen to represent.

“I feel amazing right now,” said Tasnuva Khan, who was among the canvassers on Monday, adding that the race had revealed both the power of Muslim voters and the city’s fast-growing Bangladeshi community.

Mamdani would be the first Muslim, first person of South Asian descent, and the first person born in Africa to lead the city, if he wins.

“But I’m trying to stay balanced. What wins elections are votes. As long as we kind of stay focused and reach out to our community members, keep canvassing, knocking on doors, then I think we can definitely deliver,” she told Al Jazeera.

But Shabnam Salehezadehi, a dentist from Long Island City, Queens, and a Mamdani supporter, said she feared the mayoral candidate’s real challenges would begin after the election.

Winning is just the bare minimum, she noted, but for Mamdani to enact many of his sweeping pledges – free buses, universal childcare, rent freezes for a large portion of city apartments, paid for by increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthy – he must win buy-in from a coalition of both state and city lawmakers.

“I’m really anxious – not so much whether he’ll win or not,” said Salehezadehi, who added she was first drawn to Mamdani for his staunch support of Palestinian rights, a break from the traditional Democratic mainstream.

“I just really hope we have the mandate to show that Zohran Mamdani is the candidate the city vehemently voted for,” she said.

Election day looms

Cuomo also spent the final day of the race cutting across the city, visiting the Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn.

In the Fordham neighbourhood of the Bronx, a community representative of some of the minority-dominated working-class areas Cuomo carried in the primary, the former governor stood on a park bench overlooking nearby street vendors.

He decried the “socialist city” New York would become if Mamdani were to win.

“Socialism did not work in Venezuela. Socialism did not work in Cuba. Socialism will not work in New York City,” he said, in what has become a mantra in the final days of the race.

At a subsequent stop in Washington Heights, Manhattan, he replied to a question about the nod from Trump, which comes as Cuomo has already faced scrutiny for sharing many of the same billionaire donors as the Republican president.

“He called me a bad Democrat. First of all, I happen to be a good Democrat and a proud Democrat, and I’m going to stay a proud Democrat. Mamdani is not a communist,” Cuomo said. “He’s a socialist. But we don’t need a socialist mayor either.”

But for Gwendolyn Paige, a 69-year-old special educator from the Bronx, the “socialist label” is not what’s deterring her from voting for Mamdani.

Instead, she pointed to the Cuomo legacy. Cuomo’s father, Mario Cuomo, had also served as governor of the state. The younger Cuomo left his post in 2021 amid sexual misconduct allegations.

“Cuomo is the only person who will stand up to the Trump administration,” Paige told Al Jazeera from the Fordham neighbourhood, even as she dismissed Trump’s endorsement.

“Listen, tomorrow, Trump will say something else,” she said. “So, I don’t put much stock in it”.

At least 735,000 voters have already cast their ballots in early voting, just a portion of the 4.7 million registered voters in the city.

Polls will be open from 6am to 9pm on Tuesday (11:00 GMT, Tuesday to 02:00 GMT, Wednesday), with a winner expected to emerge in the hours after. The victor will take office in January.

With just hours until election day, some votes are still up for grabs.

Lisa Gonzalez, a retired Army veteran, pointed to dire times for low-income residents of the US, including restrictions on food assistance benefits (SNAP) included in a bill passed by Trump and Republicans earlier this year.

Trump has further threatened to cut federal funding for New York City and deploy the National Guard if Mamdani is elected.

“I’m still deciding. The stakes feel really high,” she said. “So I’m just gonna be very careful tomorrow when I vote”.

STRANGER Things star David Harbour admitted he has “made mistakes” over the last 10 years just WEEKS before ex-wife Lily Allen released her bombshell album.

The couple, who split after a five year marriage in February this year, have had their relationship thrust into the spotlight after Lily’s blistering attack on her marriage on new album, West End Girl.

The 14-track album was dropped last week, but shortly before the release, Harbour briefly spoke about ‘regrets’ while promoting the upcoming final season of Stranger Things.

Talking to Esquire Spain, Harbour was asked to reflect on the past decade of his life in line with how long he has played burly cop Jim Hopper on the show.

He responded by calling it a “hard question” and, while not addressing Lily specifically, he said: “I would change either everything or nothing. 

“You either accept your path completely and realise that even the pain and the slip-ups and the mistakes are all part of the journey, and that there’s truth and growth, wisdom and deeper empathy and connection in all that.”

SHOCK CLAIMS

David Harbour faces claims he ‘harassed & bullied’ co-star Millie Bobby Brown

who’s she

Lily Allen has dig at ex David Harbour & dresses as his ‘mistress’ for Halloween

“It’s kind of like a house of cards,” he added. “The minute you try to change one thing you kind of have to change it all.”

Ultimately he said he’d change “everything” and “just make his life happy and silly”, though it would “suck” not to be an actor.

West End Girl

On West End Girl, Lily chronicles her relationship with Harbour, starting with their whirlwind relationship after meeting on Raya in 2019 and setting up their life together in New York.

However, she notes things began to unravel after she landed a part in a West End production of 2:22 A Ghost Story, which required her to come back to London.

She then accuses him of getting close to a woman she names “Madeline”, despite them having an “arrangement” for him to sleep with other people.

Mentioning her on the track ‘Tennis’, fans were abuzz with the question: “Who the f**k is Madeline?”

While Lily has said the album, which features alleged dates and supposed voice notes, is a mixture of fact and fiction, the the real life “Madeline” has spoken out, with New Orleans based costume designer Natalie Tippett, 34, claiming to have been involved in the fling.

David and Natalie reportedly began an affair while working on 2021 film We Have A Ghost, despite marrying Lily the previous year in Las Vegas.

He later allegedly flew Natalie to his home in Atlanta, Georgia.

Since the album has been released, Harbour has not commented on the claims on the songs – which took Lily 10 days to make and record.

It’s also unclear where the line between fact and fiction stands on the album.

Despite this, Lily made another dig at her ex – dressing up as cartoon character Madeline for Halloween as she partied with friends in Los Angeles.