Author: News Room

The Biden administration issued sweeping rules on Monday governing how A.I. chips and models can be shared with foreign countries, in an attempt to set up a global framework that will guide how artificial intelligence spreads around the world in the years to come.With the power of A.I. rapidly growing, the Biden administration said the rules were necessary to keep a transformational technology under the control of the United States and its allies, and out of the hands of adversaries that could use it to augment their militaries, carry out cyberattacks and otherwise threaten the United States.The rules put various…

China announced on Monday that its trade surplus reached almost $1 trillion last year as its exports swamped the globe, while the country’s own businesses and households spent cautiously on imports.When adjusted for inflation, China’s trade surplus last year far exceeded any in the world in the past century, even those of export powerhouses like Germany, Japan or the United States. Chinese factories are dominating global manufacturing on a scale not experienced by any country since the United States after World War II.The outpouring of goods from Chinese factories has drawn criticism from an ever-lengthening list of China’s trade partners.…

The Social Security Administration receives billions in free money each year from an unexpected source: undocumented immigrants.This group paid an estimated $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes in 2022, according to a recent analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning tax research group. Since unauthorized workers cannot collect retirement and other Social Security benefits without a change to their immigration status, the billions they pour into the program effectively act as a subsidy for American beneficiaries.President-elect Donald J. Trump has vowed to carry out the nation’s largest mass deportation program to date, and restrict legal pathways…

Lauren Eager got into thrifting in high school. It was a way to find cheap, interesting clothes while not contributing to the wastefulness of fast fashion.In 2015, in her first year of college, she downloaded the app for Poshmark, a kind of Instagram-meets-eBay resale platform. Soon, she was selling as well as buying clothes.This was the golden age of online reselling. In addition to Poshmark, companies like ThredUp and Depop had sprung up, giving a second life to old clothes. In 2016, Facebook debuted Marketplace. Even Goodwill got into the action, starting a snazzy website.The platforms tapped into two consumer…

Two billion parking spots dot the country, by some estimates. That’s roughly seven spaces for every car, adding up to an area about the size of West Virginia.For some people, that’s way too many.Getting rid of spaces, housing advocates, environmentalists and real estate developers say, can give space to desperately needed housing development and help make cities more walkable and less reliant on cars.“Having some parking is important,” said Dirk Aulabaugh, head of global advisory services at Green Street, a real estate analytics firm. “But does it need to be what we’ve historically had? I think the answer is no.”Hundreds…

An unpaid group of billionaires, tech executives and some disciples of Peter Thiel, a powerful Republican donor, are preparing to take up unofficial positions in the U.S. government in the name of cost-cutting.As President-elect Donald J. Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency girds for battle against “wasteful” spending, it is preparing to dispatch individuals with ties to its co-leaders, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to agencies across the federal government.After Inauguration Day, the group of Silicon Valley-inflected, wide-eyed recruits will be deployed to Washington’s alphabet soup of agencies. The goal is for most major agencies to eventually have two DOGE…

About a decade ago, Mike Smith tried to capture the sour mood of the patrons in his neighborhood bar, Joe Kool’s. For years, their favorite sports teams endured winless seasons, playoff droughts and epic collapses, so he designed a T-shirt that included a map of southern Ontario with London in the middle and lines connecting to Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit and Toronto. Above it were the words “The Epicentre of Losing” and a red arrow pointing at London.Since then, London has morphed into an epicenter of winning, sort of. The Toronto Maple Leafs haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1967, but…

Scott Bessent, the billionaire hedge fund manager whom President-elect Donald J. Trump picked to be his Treasury secretary, plans to divest from dozens of funds, trusts and investments in preparation to become the nation’s top economic policymaker.Those plans were released on Saturday along with the publication of an ethics agreement and financial disclosures that Mr. Bessent submitted ahead of his Senate confirmation hearing next Thursday.The documents show the extent of the wealth of Mr. Bessent, whose assets and investments appear to be worth in excess of $700 million. Mr. Bessent was formerly the top investor for the billionaire liberal philanthropist…

As he waited for a call from his agent in September, Isaac Rochell, a professional football player looking for a team, watched the National Football League’s opening weekend games on television with his infant daughter. His wife needed a baby sitter.Allison Kucharczyk, Rochell’s wife and an online influencer with more than three million TikTok followers, was closer to the field than he was thanks to a partnership with NBC Sports. She was crisscrossing continents on a private jet with other content creators to document a weekend of rowdy tailgates, concession food and stadium environments at N.F.L. games in Kansas City,…

It’s hard to pinpoint when things began to change around here but you might start with the arrival of Yolanda Hadid in 2017.Ms. Hadid, a onetime regular on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” bought a farm just outside New Hope, Pa., to be closer to her daughters, the models Gigi and Bella Hadid, who were then living in New York City.The 32-acre property, with its stone farmhouse, horse barn and formal garden, became a family retreat, and the Hadids’ social media feeds filled with pastoral images: Gigi in a two-piece bathing suit, posing with a bowl of newly picked…