Author: News Room

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…

Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitions as a Washington power player have led him to another corner of the capital’s hobnobbing scene: the Business Roundtable.In September, the Meta chief executive quietly joined the organization that lobbies on behalf of large U.S. companies after reaching out about doing so months earlier, Andy Stone, a Meta spokesman, told The New York Times.Mr. Zuckerberg, who once avoided weighing in on politics, has embraced President Trump and become a more visible presence in Washington. The night before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, where Mr. Zuckerberg had prime seating, he attended a black-tie party to celebrate the new administration at…

Jim Acosta, a CNN anchor who earned notice for grilling Trump administration officials in the White House Briefing Room, said Tuesday that he was leaving the network after nearly 20 years.Mr. Acosta announced the decision at the end of his 10 a.m. show, which will be his last for CNN. He is stepping down after clashing with the network over a decision to move his show to start at the midnight hour, a cable news backwater, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions. The network is moving Wolf Blitzer, a well-known CNN anchor, into his time slot, along…

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…