Author: News Room

For years, Dubrovnik, Croatia, has been a poster child for overtourism, with summer visitors vastly outnumbering the local population and the municipal government repeatedly introducing measures to diminish the size and impact of a flood of tourists that turns the historic center into a crowded parking lot of selfie-snappers.But you would never know about the negative effects of so many visitors from the Croatian Ministry of Tourism’s recent triumphant announcement noting that arrivals to the city had increased 9 percent in 2024, compared to 2023. “By all parameters we achieved another record year,” the tourism minister, Tonci Glavina, was quoted…

Lots of questions are still swirling this morning about the implications of DeepSeek, the Chinese start-up whose A.I. tools drove yesterday’s stock market plunge. Is it really as good as the closed-source frontier models made by OpenAI and Google? Did DeepSeek really use fewer chips? Did it piggyback off the work of U.S. players? And if it’s as good as some have suggested, how will its rise scramble the software, hardware and energy sectors? We break down what we know — and still don’t know — in our report below.Plus, DealBook’s Lauren Hirsch has a scoop on Mark Zuckerberg’s continuing…

Coca-Cola’s bottler in Europe said on Monday that it had recalled some drinks sold in Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands after discovering high levels of a chemical called chlorate during routine testing at a bottling facility.The recalled products included Coca-Cola, Sprite, Fanta, Fuze Tea, Minute Maid, Nalu, Royal Bliss and Tropico in cans and glass bottles, according to a statement from Coca-Cola Europacific Partners. Exposure to chlorate, a byproduct of using chlorine dioxide as a disinfectant and to control the odor and taste of water, can cause kidney problems and affect thyroid function, according to the Luxembourg Veterinary and Food…

General Motors executives are closely tracking President Trump’s plans to impose tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, but the company is not yet making any major changes to its strategy in North America in response to the threatened tariffs.The automaker has pulled together an “extensive playbook” of possible options but won’t put them in place “until the world changes dramatically, and we see a permanent level of tariffs going forward,” the company’s chief financial officer, Paul Jacobson, told reporters in a conference call on Monday evening.“I won’t go into the details exactly but we’ve been preparing for that and…

At the Federal Reserve’s final gathering of 2024, Chair Jerome H. Powell announced that the U.S. central bank was embarking on a “new phase” in how it would set interest rates.The Fed planned to “move cautiously” with cuts going forward, Mr. Powell told reporters at the time, reflecting officials’ thinking that they could afford to be patient with scant signs of an impending recession and lingering inflationary pressures. On Wednesday, the Fed is set to put that approach into action, pressing pause on further reductions for the first time since they began lowering borrowing costs in September.The question now looming…

A sell-off in the biggest technology companies in the United States rippled into Asia on Tuesday, with stock markets in Japan falling as U.S. markets appeared to stabilize.Japan’s tech-heavy Nikkei 225 fell 1.4 percent with Softbank, the Japanese investment firm with major holdings in the technology sector, falling about 5 percent. Arm Holdings, the U.S. listed chip design company that is 88 percent owned by Softbank, dropped more than 10 percent on Monday.Many financial markets in Asia, including those in China and Taiwan, were closed on Tuesday for Lunar New Year. Markets in mainland China are set to remain closed…

The Trump administration declared on Friday that the Gulf of Mexico had been renamed the Gulf of America, but popular mapping services from Google and Apple have continued showing the old name.On Monday, Google said it would update its maps to display Gulf of America as soon as the U.S. government updated its official maps.“We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources,” the company said in a post on X.President Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 20, his first day in office, to rename the gulf, in addition to…

Workers at a Whole Foods Market in Philadelphia voted on Monday to become the first unionized store in Amazon’s grocery chain, opening a new front in the e-commerce giant’s efforts to fend off labor organizing in multiple segments of its business.Employees at the sprawling Whole Foods store, in the city’s Spring Garden neighborhood, voted 130-100 in favor of organizing with the United Food and Commercial Workers union, the National Labor Relations Board said.Store employees said they hoped a union could help negotiate higher wages, above the current starting rate of $16 an hour, and better benefits. Some longtime employees, who…

Litigation has long been one of President Trump’s favorite weapons against media outlets whose coverage he objects to. But in at least one case, he is encountering an unforeseen obstacle: his previous arguments in court.On Monday, the board that awards the Pulitzer Prizes — which Mr. Trump sued in Florida in 2022 for defamation — said that the case should be put on hold because, as Mr. Trump has argued in two other cases, a state court should not be permitted to exert control over a sitting president.“Defendants agree,” wrote the law firm representing the board, Ballard Spahr. “To avoid…

The Senate on Monday voted 68 to 29 to confirm Scott Bessent to be President Trump’s Treasury secretary, putting in place the new administration’s top economic official who will steer an agenda that is focused on tax cuts, tariffs and deregulation.Mr. Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager with deep experience in financial markets, is taking over the job as Mr. Trump is sprinting to remake the U.S. economy in line with his “America First” vision. The new Treasury secretary will be responsible for helping to develop the Trump administration’s tax policies, plot the path for more tariffs on Mexico, Canada…