Author: News Room

Over the last 10 months, Chelsea Prudencio, a junior at Baruch College in Manhattan, got a crash course in artificial intelligence through a new program for lower-income, Latina and Black young women majoring in computing.As part of the program, called Break Through Tech A.I., Ms. Prudencio completed an intensive class developed by Cornell Tech faculty with input from a few tech executives. She threw herself into a student A.I. project for Pfizer to create heart disease prediction models. And she was mentored by a cybersecurity executive at Citigroup on how to ace technical job interviews.These are the kinds of important…

Martin Gruenberg is still the leader of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, an agency that supervises U.S. banks, but after a bipartisan grilling on Wednesday by members of a House committee overseeing bank regulators, he appeared to be hanging on by a thread.Democrats expressed dismay over his responses to the crisis at his agency, after a scathing report of a culture of widespread sexual harassment and discrimination. One congresswoman appeared to call for him to resign, as Republicans have been doing for months.“Personally, I do not have confidence that you can continue to lead in this role,” Representative Ayanna S.…

Netflix is no longer simply in the “sports-adjacent” business. On Wednesday, the streaming giant announced a three-season deal with the National Football League that will include showing two Christmas Day games on its service this year. It’s the first time Netflix has become partners with a major sports league, and it likely won’t be the last.The move follows Netflix’s increasingly aggressive push into the business of live events. In the past two weeks, “The Roast of Tom Brady” was its most-watched English-language TV show; a quirky six-day John Mulaney talk show went viral as part of the Netflix Is a…

Shares of former President Donald J. Trump’s social media company have been on a wild ride since making their debut on Wall Street in March: soaring, crashing and then climbing again.The rally has pushed the value of Mr. Trump’s majority stake in the company to some $6 billion, a major windfall as he ramps up his presidential campaign and faces steep legal bills tied to the multiple cases against him.On Wednesday, the share price of Trump Media & Technology Group traded at around $53, approaching where the parent company of Truth Social ended its first day of trading on March…

More than two weeks after a deadline passed for federal loan borrowers seeking debt relief, the Education Department has extended the offer, giving millions of borrowers a fresh shot at aid.The department said on Wednesday that borrowers would now have until June 30 to consolidate commercially held education debt under the Federal Family Education Loan Program — loans originally from private lenders — or Perkins loans into new direct loans, which are held by the Education Department. That consolidation is a required step for borrowers to receive relief through an expansive, but temporary, government waiver program intended to wipe out…

Wall Street is back in rally mode, with investors seizing on the latest sign that interest rates could begin to come down this year.The S&P 500 rose 0.8 percent on Wednesday morning, adding to three straight weeks of gains and pushing it above its previous record, set on March 28.It marks a sharp shift from the sour mood that helped pull the index more than 5 percent lower at the beginning of April, as investors got used to the idea that high interest rates might stick around for longer, weighing on the economy and the markets.Fresh inflation data on Wednesday…

MSNBC placed a big bet on becoming comfort TV for liberals. Then it doubled down.Time slots on the cable network once devoted to news programming are now occupied by Trump-bashing opinion hosts. The channel has become a landing spot for high-profile alumni of President Biden’s administration like Jen Psaki, who went from hosting White House press briefings to hosting her own show. On Super Tuesday, when producers aired a portion of a live speech by former President Donald J. Trump, Rachel Maddow chastised her bosses on the air.The moves have been a hit with viewers. MSNBC has leapfrogged past its…

If your car broke down two years ago, it probably became a bigger problem than you bargained for.A confluence of forces were to blame: The Covid pandemic disrupted supply chains, pushing used car prices to record highs and making spare parts hard to get; out-of-practice drivers emerging from lockdowns caused more severe wrecks; and technological advancements like motion sensors made even the simplest parts, like a fender or a rim, expensive to replace.Things have since improved for car owners — except when it comes to insurance bills. Car insurers are still raising prices steeply: The price of motor vehicle insurance…

Behind a big shake-upA day after OpenAI announced major updates to its ChatGPT chatbot, the company said its chief scientist and co-founder was leaving.There were signs that Ilya Sutskever would quit, six months after he helped lead the rebellion that briefly ousted Sam Altman as OpenAI’s C.E.O. (He hasn’t been spotted in the office since that episode.) But it also raises questions about the future of a leading developer of generative A.I.“OpenAI would not exist without him and certainly was shaped by him,” Altman told The Times about Sutskever. It’s hard to understate Sutskever’s importance to OpenAI: He helped found…

If your car broke down two years ago, it probably became a bigger problem than you bargained for.A confluence of forces were to blame: The Covid pandemic disrupted supply chains, pushing used car prices to record highs and making spare parts hard to get; out-of-practice drivers emerging from lockdowns caused more severe wrecks; and technological advancements like motion sensors made even the simplest parts, like a fender or a rim, expensive to replace.Things have since improved for car owners — except when it comes to insurance bills. Car insurers are still raising prices steeply: The price of motor vehicle insurance…