Author: News Room

Since taking over as chief executive of Starbucks last fall, Mr. Niccol has tried to come up with fixes for the many challenges facing the coffee giant.One of his top goals: Getting coffee to customers in four minutes or less.Four minutes might not sound so fast when you want a morning caffeine jolt, but even that goal is not as easy as it seems, Mr. Niccol told Wall Street analysts and investors in a call late Tuesday after announcing the company’s earnings results for the most recent quarter. That showed in the company’s results. While improving, revenues and same-store sales…

In Hanoi and other Vietnamese cities at this time of year, potted kumquat trees fastened to motorbike seats dodge and weave through traffic in a haze of orange. Families buy them as symbols of luck and good fortune for the new Lunar New Year, which started on Wednesday.This year a typhoon and extreme heat dented the harvest, scrambling prices for kumquats and other ornamental plants associated with the holiday, which is known as Tet in Vietnam. Some people bought smaller kumquats or switched to less expensive options, like orchids or persimmon branches.Ornamental plant farmers are now stuck with unsold inventory…

Two of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s three Democratic commissioners said on Tuesday that they had been removed from their roles by President Trump in a round of late-night firings that could mark a drastic shift in the government’s approach to workers’ rights in employment discrimination disputes.Charlotte A. Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels both said that they had been removed from their jobs late on Monday night. Their ousters may leave the agency without a quorum that would allow it to take formal actions.The E.E.O.C’s general counsel, Karla Gilbride, was also fired on Monday night, she said in a phone interview.…

Customers at some CVS stores will no longer have to push a button and wait for a clerk to unlock one of those glass cabinets to get the products they want to buy. A new app will allow them to open the cabinets themselves, the company said on Tuesday.That feature of the new CVS Health app has been available in three stores in New York City as part of a pilot program that began in August, said Tara Burke, a CVS Health spokeswoman. She said there are plans to roll out the “smart locks” at approximately 10 stores on the…

Much of the world is accustomed to thinking of Africa as an impoverished sideshow, accounting for only a small share of the world’s population and G.D.P. — but what if that is poised to change?Experts at the International Monetary Fund have argued that we are entering the “African century.” I wouldn’t go that far, but they are right to point to profound demographic and other shifts suggesting that Africa will play a far more important role in the world.A few data points:Because of collapsing fertility elsewhere, Africa will make up an increasing share of the world’s population. Africa accounted for…

Jay Mazur, a blunt-speaking, Bronx-born labor leader who was president of American garment workers’ unions in the 1980s and ’90s, a tumultuous time when clothing makers led the flight of American factories overseas and garment unions hemorrhaged members, died on Jan. 14 at his home in Manhattan. He was 92.The cause was congestive heart failure, his son, Marc, said.The son of a presser in a clothes factory, Mr. Mazur (pronounced MAY-zur) joined the staff of the storied International Ladies Garment Workers Union at 18. He spent his 51-year career militantly championing a largely female immigrant work force — historically Jewish…

Two years ago, when big-name Chinese technology companies like Baidu and Alibaba were chasing Silicon Valley’s advances in artificial intelligence with splashy announcements and new chatbots, DeepSeek took a different approach. It zeroed in on research.The strategy paid off.The Chinese start-up has jolted the tech world with its claim that it created a powerful A.I. model that was significantly cheaper to build than the offerings of its better-funded American rivals.In the rivalry between China and the United States over domination of artificial intelligence, DeepSeek seemed to come out of nowhere. In fact, it has skyrocketed through China’s tech world in…

Inside China, it was called the tipping point for the global technological rivalry with the United States and the “darkest hour” in Silicon Valley, evoking Winston Churchill. It was possibly a breakthrough that could change the country’s destiny.The news that the Chinese start-up DeepSeek can build artificial intelligence models that are as good as OpenAI’s, and at a fraction of the cost, tanked the stock market on Monday and sent Silicon Valley into a panic.The claim about DeepSeek’s success was viewed in China as a shot in the arm for a discouraged tech industry and a public that’s suffering through…

When President Bill Clinton worked with a bipartisan Congress to enact a federal program to guarantee vaccines for poor children, they agreed that the authority over buying shots from drug makers should rest with the health secretary. The bill’s drafters did not consider that an extremely vocal critic of childhood vaccines would emerge as a nominee for the role.That critic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., comes before the Senate for confirmation hearings this week. If confirmed, he would have the power to limit or even cut off contracts with the makers of vaccines for more than half the nation’s children under…

The U.S. Department of Education said in a statement on Tuesday morning that the memo sent to government agencies the day before calling for a broad pause on federal spending did not apply to federal student loans or Pell grants. That money will continue to flow, the statement said.“The temporary pause does not impact assistance received directly by individuals,” said Madison Biedermann, who, according to the department, is currently delegated to perform spokesperson duties. This assistance includes funds like federal direct student loans and Pell grants that the department provides to “individual students,” her statement said.Part of the confusion, which…