Author: News Room

Southwest Airlines on Tuesday said it would start charging for checked bags, ending another longtime policy that had set it apart from other airlines as it seeks to boost revenues.Customers with the highest loyalty status will be spared from the fee, but all others will have to pay for checked bags for flights booked starting on May 28. The announcement represented Southwest’s latest decision to drop a practice that had made it unique — and appealing — to customers.The airline is also working to add premium seats, end its open-seating policy and recently started offering red-eye flights. When it announced…

The U.S. power grid added more capacity from solar energy in 2024 than from any other source in a single year in more than two decades, according to a new industry report released on Tuesday.The data was released a day after the new U.S. energy secretary, Chris Wright, strongly criticized solar and wind energy on two fronts. He said on Monday at the start of CERAWeek by S&P Global, an annual energy conference in Houston, that they couldn’t meet the growing electricity needs of the world and that their use was driving up energy costs.The report, produced by the Solar…

Fears over the future health of the global economy are continuing to rattle markets around the world, as investors grapple with the reality of tariffs and fresh signs that consumers are pulling back on spending.After the S&P 500 suffered its worst day of the year on Monday, the sell-off continued into Asia trading on Tuesday.Asian markets opened mostly lower, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 index falling about 2 percent, weighed down by big declines in Japanese technology stocks. Stock markets in South Korea and Taiwan also fell around 2 percent in early trading.Equity markets in China were faring slightly better. Shares…

Delta Air Lines on Monday cut its financial forecast for the first three months of the year, saying that growing economic concerns among businesses and consumers had lowered demand for domestic travel.The airline’s warning was the latest sign that the U.S. economy, or at least perceptions of it, have been weakening in part because of changes in federal policies announced by President Trump.Delta said it now expected quarterly revenue to rise by at least 3 percent from a year ago, down from a minimum gain of 7 percent it had projected just two months earlier. Delta’s share price, which fell…

Ruth Marcus, a columnist and editor for The Washington Post’s opinion section, said Monday she was leaving the newspaper after Will Lewis, the paper’s publisher, killed a column she wrote that was critical of the editorial pages’ new direction.Ms. Marcus announced her resignation in an email to her colleagues at The Post, saying she had arrived at the decision to resign “with immense sadness.”“I am taking this step, after more than 40 years at The Post, following Will’s decision to spike a column that I wrote expressing concern about the newly announced direction for the section and declined to discuss…

As he prepares to introduce new tariffs on foreign metals this week, President Trump has vowed not to grant the types of exclusions and exemptions that were common during his first trade war.But he has already undercut that tough position on other tariffs. After lobbying from automakers, farmers and other industries, Mr. Trump quickly walked back the sweeping tariffs he had imposed on Tuesday on all imports from Canada and Mexico. By Thursday, he had suspended those tariffs indefinitely for all products that comply with the North American free trade deal, U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or U.S.M.C.A. — about half of all…

For a decade, Eric Schmidt ran Google as chief executive and as the “adult” in the room, mentoring the internet company’s young founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. In 2011, Mr. Schmidt handed control of Google back to Mr. Page. He has not taken another C.E.O. job since.But on Monday, Mr. Schmidt told employees of Relativity Space, a rocket start-up in Long Beach, Calif., that he had made a significant investment and taken a controlling stake in the company, and would take over as chief executive, two people with knowledge of the meeting said.Mr. Schmidt, 69, succeeds Relativity Space’s current…

Across the spectrum of uses for artificial intelligence, one stands out.The big, inspiring A.I. opportunity on the horizon, experts agree, lies in accelerating and transforming scientific discovery and development. Fed by vast troves of scientific data, A.I. promises to generate new drugs to combat disease, new agriculture to feed the world’s population and new materials to unlock green energy — all in a tiny fraction of the time of traditional research.Technology companies like Microsoft and Google are making A.I. tools for science and collaborating with partners in fields like drug discovery. And the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year went…

As President Trump addressed Congress last week, he veered off script to attack a sensitive topic, the CHIPS Act, a bipartisan law aimed at making the United States less reliant on Asia for semiconductors.Republican lawmakers had sought and received reassurances over the past few months that the Trump administration would support the program Congress created. But halfway through Mr. Trump’s remarks, he called the law a “horrible, horrible thing.”“You should get rid of the CHIP Act,” he told Speaker Mike Johnson as some lawmakers applauded.The CHIPS program was one of the few things to unite much of Washington in recent…

Amazon is deepening its relationship with President Trump.Amazon Prime Video announced on Monday that multiple seasons of “The Apprentice,” the 2000s reality series that helped raise Mr. Trump’s profile on a national stage, would soon be available on the streaming service.The show’s first season, which premiered in 2004, is available on Prime Video starting Monday. Amazon said that a new season of “The Apprentice” would be made available each week, culminating with the show’s seventh season, which will make its debut to the streaming service in late April.Mr. Trump expressed his enthusiastic approval in a statement released by Amazon.“I look…