Author: News Room

Venu came. It saw. It did not conquer.Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. said on Friday that their forthcoming sports streaming service — which was announced to great fanfare last year before being buffeted by legal challenges — would be discontinued.The service had been given a name (Venu Sports), a management team (led by the former Apple executive Pete Distad) and a target launch date (Aug. 23, 2024), but that date passed and little else had been said publicly by the companies until the news that the joint venture was ending.“In an ever-changing marketplace, we determined that it was best to…

The United States on Friday announced new sanctions targeting Russia’s energy sector and its “shadow fleet” of oil tankers in what could be a final attempt by the Biden administration to cripple the Russian economy in response to Moscow’s war in Ukraine.President Biden has been cautious in his approach to sanctions on Russia’s energy sector out of concern that shutting off its exports would send gasoline prices surging around the world. But U.S. officials said healthier global oil supplies and the easing of inflation presented an opportunity to exert more pressure on Russia’s oil industry as the war approaches its…

Constellation Energy, the nation’s largest nuclear power plant operator, has agreed to buy another electricity producer, Calpine, for $16.4 billion, a deal that shows how fast-rising demand for power, partly a result of the data centers being built for artificial intelligence, is having far-reaching effects on the economy.The cash-and-stock deal, announced Friday, ranks among the power sector’s biggest, and indicates that natural gas is likely to play a larger role than many expected a few years ago in meeting the nation’s electricity needs. That could undermine efforts to address climate change unless companies quickly figure out how to capture and…

Sean Karaman, a freshman at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, hadn’t always paid close attention to his credit card spending. But after taking a personal finance course on campus last fall, he said, he is much more likely to pay as he goes.“I’ve become best friends with my debit card,” said Mr. Karaman, 21, who plays on the U.N.L.V. hockey team.More than two-thirds of states require high school students to take a personal finance class before graduation, according to the Council for Economic Education. Now, personal finance courses, offered mostly as electives, are sprouting up at public and private…

Who pays? The ferocious wildfires that have burned throughout the Los Angeles area continued to rage overnight, consuming an area twice the size of Manhattan. Forecasters expected “critical red flag” conditions to continue on Friday before the hurricane-force winds that have fueled the blazes subside in the afternoon.The devastation has more people asking one hard question: Has this part of California become uninsurable?The latest: At least 10 people have died and roughly 180,000 have been forced to evacuate, as firefighters take on six major blazes and remain on high alert for others. Thousands of homes and businesses, including whole neighborhoods…

When the Federal Reserve began lowering interest rates in September, inflation was cooling and the job market was showing some troubling signs of weakness.Three months and a full percentage point of rate cuts later, the opposite is true: The job market seems to have stabilized, but progress on inflation has stalled.As a result, the central bank is widely expected to pause its campaign of rate cuts at its meeting this month, a message reinforced by Fed officials in a series of speeches this week.“While it is not my baseline outlook, I cannot rule out the risk that progress on inflation…

When the Federal Reserve began lowering interest rates in September, inflation was cooling and the job market was showing some troubling signs of weakness.Three months and a full percentage point of rate cuts later, the opposite is true: The job market seems to have stabilized, but progress on inflation has stalled.As a result, the central bank is widely expected to pause its campaign of rate cuts at its meeting this month, a message reinforced by Fed officials in a series of speeches this week.“While it is not my base-line outlook, I cannot rule out the risk that progress on inflation…

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Friday on the fate of TikTok, the enormously popular video app that Congress says poses a looming threat to the nation’s security.Unless the justices intervene before a Jan. 19 deadline set by a federal law, the app must be sold or shut down.The law, enacted in April with broad bipartisan support, said urgent measures were needed because TikTok’s corporate parent, ByteDance, was effectively controlled by the Chinese government, which could use the app to harvest sensitive information about Americans and to spread covert disinformation.Saying that the law violates both its First Amendment rights…

The United States ambassador to China, R. Nicholas Burns, said the Biden administration is making a last push to try to persuade China to stop transferring equipment to Russia for the war in Ukraine.Mr. Burns, in an interview at the U.S. embassy in Beijing, asserted that nearly 400 Chinese companies have supplied Russia with so-called dual use products, those with both military and commercial applications. He also said China has supplied 90 percent of the microelectronics used in the Russian war effort.With less than two weeks remaining before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office, Mr. Burns is raising the administration’s…

Each of the homes burned in the Los Angeles fires is its own individual calamity.Collectively, the losses — whether in the hundreds or, as is far more likely, in the thousands — will weigh on the city’s already urgent housing shortage.Fires are still raging, and with 180,000 people under evacuation orders as of Thursday morning, the degree of displacement in the city and its surrounding areas will take time to assess. For the time being, evacuees are holing up in public shelters in Los Angeles County, with friends or family members or in hotels.But in the coming weeks and months,…