Author: News Room
President Trump is swinging American energy policy sharply in favor of fossil fuels, but oil and gas companies say those changes won’t push them to engage in the frenzy of new drilling that Mr. Trump wants.The oil industry is thrilled by Mr. Trump’s executive orders, which are designed to make life harder for renewable energy companies and easier for oil, gas and pipeline businesses. But on the critical question of whether his policies will lead to more oil and gas production — one of Mr. Trump’s central goals — industry executives say not unless prices rise a lot, something the…
China Vanke, one of China’s largest property developers, said on Monday that its top executives were stepping down and warned of a $6.2 billion loss for 2024, the latest sign that China’s grueling multiyear property downturn has not reached the bottom.In a filing in Hong Kong, Vanke said that its chairman, Yu Liang, would leave his post for “work adjustment reasons.” Zhu Jiusheng, the chief executive, would resign “due to health reasons,” the company said.The changes mark an effort by the local government to take greater control of the management of Vanke.Vanke’s new chairman will be Xin Jie, the head…
The latest guessing game in Washington is where former Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, might go next. Half of that question has been answered.Starting Monday, Mr. Emhoff will become a partner at the corporate law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher, splitting his time between Los Angeles and New York. He will advise companies on crises including litigation and corporate investigations.Mr. Emhoff spent decades as a corporate lawyer before moving to Washington. He was a co-founder of a boutique law firm in 2000, which he sold to a rival, Venable, in 2006. He left Venable in 2017…
Good morning on this action-packed Monday. Mark this week on your “History of Artificial Intelligence Timeline”: The creation of DeepSeek, the Chinese A.I. sensation that we told you about last week, is shaking the technology industry to its core.The super-efficient, open-source software is raising questions about the valuations of tech giants, including the chip maker Nvidia, with their stocks getting crushed today. Has the entire industry been wildly overspending? It’s also raising profound questions about how China may have undercut America’s most critical economic advantage on A.I. by making its technology free. We have more on all of this below.Plus:…
Stock markets fell sharply on Monday, dragged down by fears that advances in artificial intelligence by Chinese upstarts could threaten the moneymaking power of American technology giants.The Chinese A.I. company DeepSeek has made waves by matching the capabilities of cutting-edge chatbots while using a fraction of the specialized computer chips that leading A.I. companies rely on. That has made investors rethink the large returns they are expecting on the heady valuations of chipmakers like Nvidia, whose equipment powers the most advanced A.I. systems, as well as the enormous investments that companies like Google, Meta and OpenAI are making to build…
Owners of electric cars in Vermont recently got a letter from the Department of Motor Vehicles with some bad news. Starting Jan. 1 they would have to pay $178 a year to register their cars, twice as much as owners of vehicles with internal combustion engines.In imposing the higher fee, Vermont became the latest state to make people pay a premium for driving electric. At least 39 states charge such annual fees, including $50 in Hawaii and $200 in Texas, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That’s up from no states a few years ago.Now, as President Trump…
When a group of prominent Chinese doctors publicly raised worries last week about the quality of domestic drugs, China’s government sent officials to investigate.But now data about the drugs that appeared on a government website as recently as Friday is no longer publicly available. A social media post from a doctor who scrutinized the data has been taken down.The criticism in China over how the government buys drugs for its public health care system, which most people use, has ignited frustration over the most basic of concerns: the effectiveness of medicine.Two separate groups of medical experts and political advisers in…
Earlier this month, Drew Wallace started paying the cooks, bussers and the rest of the 20 or so employees of his restaurant the Bull and Beggar, in Asheville, N.C., for the first time since two feet of river water flooded its dining room in September.“It’s a really victorious feeling,” Mr. Wallace said, his feet planted on a floor that had recently been buried under several inches of fine brick-colored silt. He seemed a little surprised as the words came out of his mouth. “It’s strange to say, ‘I can’t wait for payroll to kick back in.’”Payroll is one of the…
On its face, the claim feels improbable: In addition to being the world’s richest man, the chief executive of multiple companies and a key adviser to President Trump, Elon Musk says he is also a world-class video game player.It is a claim that Mr. Musk has repeated through the years. He has an account on X, his social media platform, dedicated to posting highlights of his gameplay. He has streamed with some of the top competitive video game players in the world on platforms like Twitch. He has even etched his name on the global leader boards of certain games.But…
Dressed in ball gowns, tuxedos and “Make Bitcoin Great Again” baseball caps, a crowd of some of the country’s most powerful cryptocurrency executives gathered a few blocks from the White House for a lavish party three days before President Trump’s inauguration, toasting an incoming administration that had vowed to promote the industry’s interests.Even Snoop Dogg joined the festivities, offering a rendition of “Don’t Stop Believin.’”But the crypto millionaires and billionaires were caught off guard by what happened next.At 9 p.m. on Jan. 17, with the festivities in full swing, Mr. Trump announced on social media that he was launching a…