A 36-Year-Old Beauty Mogul Is South Korea's Newest Billionaire
Behind the firm is 36-year-old Kim Byung Hoon, a tech entrepreneur-turned-beauty mogul whose company has made him South Korea's newest billionaire. His 31% stake in APR is now worth about $1.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, after the firm's shares soared 200% this year.
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23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Stephanie Ruhle: Trump's baffling tariffs moves are undermining U.S. role as world's superpower
This is an adapted excerpt from the July 7 episode of "The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle." President Donald Trump is, once again, ramping up his trade war. On Monday, he sent letters threatening new, higher tariff rates of between 25% to 40% on imports from 14 countries, including key U.S. allies Japan and South Korea. Trump's news led all three major stock indexes to close down on Monday. However, considering that the president has yet to enforce any trade deadlines, it's interesting that this triggered a big sell-off at all. In fact, on Tuesday morning, several investment banks published notes for investors basically questioning the president's follow-through. From UBS: 'It seems a wasted effort to analyze every Trump social media post when investors understandably anticipate future retreats.' Over at Goldman Sachs, 'We do not generally expect these proposed rates to take effect on Aug. 1.' The folks at ING summed it up succinctly, 'The tariff rollercoaster ride continues.' The president's announcement came just before his original July 9 deadline. On Monday, Trump signed an executive order giving countries until Aug. 1 to lock in trade agreements with the United States or see these latest rates take effect. According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trump's executive order is already working. 'When he said that there's a chance that countries could boomerang back to their April 2 reciprocal tariff levels, we've had a lot of people change their tune in terms of negotiations,' Bessent told CNBC on Monday. 'My mailbox was full last night with a lot of new offers, a lot of new proposals. So, it's going to be a busy couple of days.' Despite stating that the administration has a lot of new offers and proposals, Bessent gave no details about who those offers and proposals are from. But let's go back to the administration's promise on tariffs back in April. White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told Fox Business the administration would 'run 90 deals in 90 days.' It's a catchy sound bite and easily amplifiable tagline but, what have we gotten so far? Just three so-called trade deals — more like frameworks or 'concepts' of deals — that have failed to enhance trade relations and trade deficits. So, what have we heard from the White House as this 90-day period comes to a close? A whole lot of contradictions. On Sunday, the president and one of his Cabinet members in charge of trade negotiations gave conflicting statements. According to Trump, 'deals' with most countries will be done by this Wednesday. However, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said reciprocal tariffs will go into effect on Aug. 1. On the very same day, it was shocking to hear Bessent, the other guy running trade negotiations, tell CNN that during this 90-day period, 'many' countries were not even in contact with the United States about trade deals. Just think about that: We are the world's superpower, and despite Trump's constant threats, many countries didn't even contact us about a possible deal. Take a minute to consider the process for how this whole operation is being led, executed and communicated, and then you may start to understand how 100-plus countries might not have any idea what to say to the United States. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Yahoo
AI developed a new rare-earth-free magnet 200 times faster than humans
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, BGR may receive an affiliate commission. If you want to buy an electric vehicle or another device with an electric motor, chances are that motor will contain a magnet made with rare-earth minerals. These are compounds like neodymium and dysprosium that are difficult to find and expensive to mine and refine. Rare-earth minerals are a potential bottleneck for EV manufacturers and other companies, and it's not just the costs involved with obtaining them. China controls the lion's share of the world's rare earths, with 70% of mining operations and 90% of processing. That can be a problem in a world where economic warfare is the new norm. Today's Top Deals XGIMI Prime Day deals feature the new MoGo 4 and up to 42% off smart projectors Best deals: Tech, laptops, TVs, and more sales Best Ring Video Doorbell deals There is an alternative to China's monopoly: New alloys for strong magnets that can be created using other compounds instead of rare earths. That's the theory, at least. In practice, finding the right recipe for rare-earth-free magnets can be a lengthy and challenging ordeal. It involves a trial-and-error process in which scientists try to combine all sorts of minerals and materials to create magnets. And there's no guarantee of success. However, add AI and you might end up with an expedited process that yields results. That's what researchers from Materials Nexus did. They used AI to find the recipe for a magnet that doesn't use any rare earths and came up with MagNex. The process was 200 times faster than traditional research avenues in this field. More impressive is that MagNex, the alloy they discovered, can be processed at 20% of the cost of rare-earth magnets. Even better, manufacturing drops carbon emissions by 70% compared to rare-earth magnets. The finding is not surprising when you stop to consider that medical professionals are using AI to repurpose existing drugs for other conditions or to find therapies for issues that are more difficult to treat. For example, researchers recently used AI to come up with a drug to treat a specific type of blindness. The AI system looked at the problem, then quickly came up with ideas to treat it, and proposed molecules that might work. It eventually settled on a drug that's used to treat other eye conditions. The same principle can apply to anything. An AI trained in a specific field can understand the problem you're trying to fix and potentially speed up some of the research process. The Materials Nexus scientists used their AI platform to analyze more than 100 million rare-earth-free material alloys to find MagNex. The AI looked at various factors for creating this type of magnet, including cost, supply chain security, performance, and the environment. Materials Nexus then partnered with the Henry Royce Institute at the University of Sheffield to create and test MagNex. As New Atlas explains, the company needed only three months to discover the new material. The same process would have taken years without the use of AI. It's unclear what the MagNex mix is. Understandably, that recipe is proprietary. Also, it's unclear which companies might want to use MagNex to power electric motors they need for their machines, including EVs. It wouldn't be surprising to hear that other labs are employing similarly customized AIs to speed up the work of rare-earth-free magnet discovery. 'I am delighted to share the news of MagNex, a significant milestone in the use of AI to design materials of the future which are cheaper, higher-performing, and more sustainable than existing options,' CEO of Materials Nexus, Dr. Jonathan Bean, said in a statement. 'AI-powered materials design will impact not only magnetics but also the entire field of materials science – we have now identified a scalable method for designing new materials for all kinds of industrial needs. Our platform has already attracted widespread interest for various products with applications that include semiconductors, catalysts, and coatings. I look forward to seeing the role it will play in supporting market demand for the creation of novel materials to help address increasingly pressing supply chain and environmental issues.' If MagNex becomes a viable alternative to rare-earth magnet use in the auto industry, we'll hopefully see some EV makers pass some of the magnet-related savings to the consumer. Whether or not permanent MagNex magnets are available commercially, the discovery is very exciting. Like the experiments involving AI-based drug discoveries, the use of AI to create new materials is proof that AI can be a force for good. It might help us create novel alloys that are easier to manufacture and can have immediate commercial applications. These findings also show that AI can improve our lives beyond increasing productivity at the office or improving one's meme-generation game. Remember that we're still in the early days. AI can't make discoveries on its own, as humans are still involved in the process. But we might see AI coming up with scientific breakthroughs on its own. Hopefully, those will be aligned with our interests, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. 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Yahoo
43 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Fact check: Debunking 11 of Trump's false claims at Cabinet meeting
President Donald Trump again turned a Cabinet meeting into a wide-ranging conversation with reporters – and again uttered a whole bunch of false claims in the process. Trump's Tuesday remarks at the White House included inaccurate assertions about inflation, immigration, his tariff policy, the massive domestic policy bill he signed last week, China's use of wind energy, US and European aid to Ukraine, the US relationship with South Korea, and other subjects. Here is a fact check of 11 of the president's false claims. This is not a comprehensive list. Inflation: As he has repeatedly, Trump falsely claimed Tuesday, 'We have no inflation.' The US does have inflation – an annual inflation rate of 2.4% in May, an uptick from a 2.3% annual rate in April. That April rate was the lowest since early 2021, and lower than some economists expected for April after Trump imposed significant new tariffs, but it's not 'no inflation' whatsoever. (And on a month-to-month basis, US consumer prices increased 0.1% in May and 0.2% in April.) Tax on Social Security: Touting the new domestic policy legislation, Trump repeated his false claim that it achieves his campaign promise of 'no tax on Social Security.' It does not. The legislation does create an additional, temporary $6,000-per-year tax deduction for individuals age 65 and older (with a smaller deduction for individuals earning $75,000 per year or more), but the White House itself has implicitly acknowledged that millions of Social Security recipients age 65 and older will continue to pay taxes on their benefits – and that new deduction, which expires in 2028, doesn't even apply to the Social Security recipients who are younger than 65. Trump's tariff letters: Trump spoke of the letters he sent to various foreign leaders announcing the tariff rates he plans to impose on their countries beginning in August – and said, 'I just want you to know - a letter means a deal.' That's just not true. Multiple letters the White House revealed on Monday announced tariff rates Trump said he plans to unilaterally place on imports from foreign countries; those letters did not describe negotiated deals. Who pays tariffs: Trump repeatedly spoke of how his new tariffs mean other countries will have to 'pay' the US for the privilege of doing business in the US. Contrary to Trump's frequent assertions, it is the US importers who buy foreign products, not foreign countries themselves, who make the tariff payments to the US government. Tariff history: Trump repeated his regular false claim that the US was 'proportionately' at its 'wealthiest' between 1870 and 1913, when tariff revenue made up a much larger share of federal revenue before the reintroduction of the income tax. Trump didn't explain what he meant by 'proportionately' or 'the wealthiest,' but economists say that by any standard measure, the US is far wealthier today than it was in the early 20th century and prior; per capita gross domestic product is now many times higher than it was then. China and wind power: Trump, asserting that 'smart countries' don't use wind and solar energy, repeated his recent false claim that China, the world's biggest manufacturer of wind turbines, barely uses such equipment itself - wrongly saying, 'They don't have a lot of wind farms, I'll tell you; very, very few.' In reality, China is the world leader in the generation of wind power and has massive wind farms onshore and offshore; it continues to install additional wind capacity much faster than the US. California and energy: Trump, reviving a previous inaccurate complaint about California's use of renewable energy sources, falsely claimed: 'They have blackouts and brownouts every week.' The state simply does not; its power system has improved significantly since the rolling blackouts of a 2020 heat wave. Daniel Villasenor, a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom, said in a Tuesday email that Trump is again 'lying about California.' Villasenor wrote: 'The state has not experienced any rotating outages since 2020 – and in the last three years, no Flex Alert calling to conserve power has even been issued. Not only has our grid been increasingly resilient, it's also cleaner than ever – clean energy provided for 100% of demand on our grid for at least some part of the day 167 out of the first 180 days of the year.' US and European aid to Ukraine: Trump repeated his frequent false claim that the US has provided 'far more' wartime aid to Ukraine that Europe has, saying the US is 'in there for over $300 billion; Europe's in there for over $100 billion.' Those numbers are not close to accurate. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank that closely tracks international aid to Ukraine, the US had committed about $139 billion in military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine from late January 2022, just prior to Russia's full-scale invasion, through April 2025 – well short of about $298 billion committed by European countries and the European Union. The gap was much narrower in terms of aid actually allocated through April 2025 – about $183 billion for Europe to about $134 billion for the US – but even those figures clearly disprove Trump's claim. South Korea's military cost-sharing: Trump repeated his false claim that South Korea convinced former President Joe Biden to let it stop making payments to help cover the cost of the US military presence in South Korea, saying Biden 'cut it down to nothing.' In fact, Biden's administration signed two cost-sharing agreements with South Korea, one in 2021 and one in 2024, that included South Korean spending increases – meaning South Korea agreed to pay more than it did during Trump's first term. US troops in South Korea: Trump again exaggerated the US troop presence in South Korea, falsely saying, 'You know, we have 45,000 soldiers in South Korea.' Official Defense Department data, published online, says the US had 26,206 military personnel in South Korea as of March 31, 2025, with 22,844 on active duty. Migration and mental health: Trump falsely claimed that unnamed foreign countries 'released their insane asylum – the insane asylum population into our country.' Even Trump's own presidential campaign could not produce any evidence for his frequent claims, which he has repeated for more than two years, that foreign countries deliberately emptied their mental health facilities to somehow get patients to migrate to the United States.
