Author: News Room

Everything clicked when Peter Thiel gave the speech about God.The occasion was a 40th birthday party for Trae Stephens, who is Mr. Thiel’s venture capital partner as well as one of the founders of Anduril Industries, a maker of high-tech defense systems and weaponry. It was a multiday affair, held in 2023 at Mr. Stephens’s home in New Mexico. It began with an evening roasting the birthday boy, followed by another toasting him and then a brunch with caviar bumps, mimosas and breakfast pizza. At the brunch (the theme was the Holy Ghost), Mr. Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire and…

President Trump has paused enforcement of a federal law he has long bemoaned: the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits companies from bribing foreign officials.The law, enacted in 1977, makes it illegal for companies that operate in the United States to pay foreign government officials to secure business deals. Mr. Trump’s order on Monday bars federal prosecutors from launching new investigations or enforcement actions for 180 days. The Trump administration also said it would review existing investigations to “restore proper bounds” on the law.The law, which is enforced by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, has…

Ford Motor could be forced to lay off employees if the Trump administration ends subsidies and other financial support for electric vehicle manufacturing, the company’s chief executive said on Tuesday.Ford has invested heavily in factories to produce batteries and electric vehicles in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee, Jim Farley, the Ford chief executive, said at a conference in New York. If Republicans repeal Biden-era legislation that allocated billions of dollars in subsidies and loans for the projects, Mr. Farley said, “many of those jobs will be at risk.”Mr. Farley was also sharply critical of President Trump’s threat to impose tariffs…

We have spent much of the past 24 hours on the telephone trying to get to the bottom of Elon Musk’s hostile bid for Sam Altman’s OpenAI. It was a development in their corporate battle (or soap opera) that few could have seen coming. Altman, who is in Paris at an A.I. summit, hadn’t even seen the offer before rejecting it out of hand.But what does it mean to make a hostile bid for a nonprofit? How do board members actually balance any fiduciary duties they owe to investors in a for-profit subsidiary versus their institution’s mission? The man in…

European leaders vowed on Tuesday to retaliate after President Trump announced that he would raise tariffs on aluminum and steel to 25 percent, even as they held out hope for a potential deal that could stave off painful effects for a weakened economy.European Union officials have argued that Europe and the United States are deeply intertwined and that igniting a trade war would hurt both sides. But they have also been quietly preparing to hit back against possible U.S. tariffs, and officials have said they are ready to enact countermeasures if no trade solution can be found.“Unjustified tariffs on the…

President Trump has been in office less than a month, and Elon Musk’s vast business empire is already benefiting — or is now in a decidedly better position to benefit. Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man who has been given enormous power by the president, have been dismantling federal agencies across the government. Mr. Trump has fired top officials and pushed out career employees. Many of them were leading investigations, enforcement matters or lawsuits pending against Mr. Musk’s companies.Mr. Musk has also reaped the benefit of resignations by Biden-era regulators that flipped control of major regulatory agencies,…

Conventional wisdom says the theater is slow to react to current events, but dramatists like Ayad Akhtar (“McNeal”) have clamored lately to tell stories about artificial intelligence, sometimes using it to help with the writing.Matthew Gasda’s new play “Doomers” is an addition to that pack. Inspired by the 2023 ouster of Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, it was written with the help of ChatGPT and Claude. The two chatbots share a dramaturgy credit in the program.Alas, the hype around that technology does not correlate here with narrative cogency. Despite having a loathsome fictional ex-C.E.O. at its center, and…

Follow live updates on Trump’s cabinet picks and other administration news.Wall Street has not typically been accused of doing too much for women and minority groups. The financial services industry, after all, is one in which more major banks are named after the Morgan family than led by a female chief executive.So it meant something over the past half-decade or so when the biggest names in finance said, over and over again, that they would pour dollars and effort into lending to, hiring, promoting and working with underserved communities.And it means something else now, as many of those much-promoted policies…

Murray Auchincloss, the chief executive of the struggling energy giant BP, promised “a fundamental reset” of the company’s strategy on Tuesday while reporting disappointing earnings.The shift comes after a long period of lackluster share performance compared with its industry peers. BP’s weak stock price has attracted interest from Elliott Investment Management, a hedge fund known for shaking up its targets in an effort to improve shareholder value.Mr. Auchincloss is reserving the details of BP’s shift for a presentation to investors on Feb. 26, but analysts seem to have little doubt about its direction.BP is likely to reduce spending on low-emissions…

Unlike the high jinks and vibrant après-ski scene that permeate the Alps and Rockies, Japan offers a meditative experience on its slopes. Skiing here is an almost reverent affair.“It’s not about lounging in the sun or partying between runs,” said Sari Levy, 46, who lives in Telluride, Colo., and just returned from her second ski trip to Japan. “It’s all about the snow and ski, ski, ski.”There’s hardly been a better time to follow that directive. Japan is currently enjoying a banner ski season. The Hakuba Valley, the country’s largest ski area, has already recorded an impressive 370 inches of…