Latest news with #TheTimes
New York Times
29 minutes ago
- Business
- New York Times
As U.S. Retreats on Climate, China and Europe Pledge to Go Green Together
Two of the world's three big climate polluters, China and the European Union, pledged on Thursday to work together to slow down planetary heating. Together they called the Paris Agreement, the pact among nations to address global warming, 'the cornerstone of international climate cooperation.' They didn't mention the United States by name, but they didn't have to. America, the third member of the trio of top global climate polluters, has said that it will pull out of the Paris Agreement, and the Trump administration has rolled back policies and government-funded programs that were intended to spur the development of renewable energy in the United States. The joint statement opened by saying, 'in the fluid and turbulent international situation today, it is crucial that all countries, notably the major economies, maintain policy continuity and stability and step up efforts to address climate change.' China and the European Union most certainly don't agree on everything when it comes to tackling rising emissions. European officials have in the past been vocal in criticizing China's widespread use of coal: China burns more coal than any country ever has. European officials have also criticized what they call China's dumping of inexpensive electric vehicles on the global market. And China has criticized the European Union's new border tax based on greenhouse-gas emissions, which makes it costlier to sell Chinese products there, particularly steel. Beijing and Brussels also have major differences on geopolitics, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But China has staked out an ambitious long-term policy of dominating the sale of clean-energy technologies to the world including solar panels, wind turbines, next-generation batteries and electric vehicles. What makes the joint pledge significant is that it represents an attempt to smooth the tensions over the trade of these products, particularly the export of Chinese EVs to Europe. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Chuck Mangione, Grammy-winning jazz superstar and composer, dies at 84
Chuck Mangione, the Grammy-winning flugelhorn player and prolific jazz musician known for songs including 'Feels So Good' and 'Children of Sanchez,' has died. Mangione died in his sleep Tuesday in his home in Rochester, N.Y., his manager Peter S. Matorin confirmed to The Times on Thursday. He was 84. The New York native, over the course of his career which began in the 1960s, earned a reputation as a stylish, lyrically smart trumpeter and played alongside jazz giants Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, Sam Jones, Ron Carter and Kai Winding. He also collected 14 Grammy nominations, notably winning two prizes: one for his smooth 'Bellavia' in 1977 and another a year later for the titular anthem he composed for the 1978 drama 'The Children of Sanchez.' This story is developing.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Rosie Roche: Cause of Death Revealed for Prince Harry, William Cousin
Originally appeared on E! Online More details have come to light surrounding 's untimely death. Just over a week after the granddaughter of 's uncle, who is also a cousin of and , died at her Norton home at 20 years old, a coroner confirmed to The Independent that the cause of death was a 'traumatic head injury.' As revealed during an inquest into Roche's death held on July 21 at Wiltshire and Swindon coroner's court, per The Times, the college student was found at the property by her mother and sister after she had been packing her bags to go away with friends. According to the outlet, a firearm was also found nearby. Area coroner Grant Davies added at the time, per The Times, that police 'have deemed the death as non-suspicious' and that 'there was no third-party involvement.' E! News has reached out to local police, the royal family and the coroner's office for comment but has not heard back. More from E! Online Sharon Osbourne Reacts to Ozzy Osbourne Tribute After His Death Dylan Mortensen Confronts "Hollow Vessel" Bryan Kohberger at Idaho Murder Sentencing Chad Michael Murray's Kids Make Red Carpet Debut in Rare Family Photo With Wife Sarah Roemer The case has reportedly been adjourned until October 25. 'This relates to the sudden death of a woman in her 20s,' Wilshire police told the outlet. 'There are no suspicious circumstances and our thoughts are with her family.' 'We would ask,' authorities continued, 'that their privacy is respected at this terrible time.' The news surrounding Roche's passing broke two days prior to the inquest when The Yorkshire Post announced in a notice that 'Roche, Rosie Jeanne Burke died on Monday 14th July 2025.' 'Darling daughter of Hugh and Pippa,' the obituary read, 'incredible sister to Archie and Agatha, Granddaughter to Derek and Rae Long.' The announcement also noted that a private family funeral and memorial service would be held at a later date. Roche was a first-year student studying English literature at Durham University, per The Times, and following her passing, the principal of the school's University College Wendy Powers shared that staff and students alike were 'extremely saddened' by her sudden passing. 'Rosie had settled into the university and college beautifully and had lots of friends,' she told the outlet. 'She was loved for her creativity, energy, her love of books, poetry and travel among many other talents. She will be sorely missed.' Before going to university, Roche had attended St Mary's Calne, a girls' independent boarding and day school in Wiltshire. 'Rosie was a cherished member of our community,' the school wrote in a statement, per The Times, 'and she will be remembered with great affection by all who had the privilege of knowing her.' 'When we return for the new term,' the statement continued, 'we will hold a time of reflection in her memory to honour her life and the wonderful impact she had on those around her.' For more updates on the royal family, keep reading. Queen Camilla Makes History with New Royal TitleKate Middleton Pulls Out of Royal AscotPrince Harry Loses Appeal to Dismiss Decision in His Security Protection CasePrince Harry and King Charles III Are Not SpeakingKing Charles III Shares Insight Into His Cancer DiagnosisPrince William and Kate Middleton's Family Skips Royal Family's Easter ServiceRoyal Aide Who Accused Meghan Markle Of Bullying Receives a PromotionPrince George Makes His First Public Appearance of 2025Former Bodyguard to Prince Harry and Prince William DiesThe Duke and Duchess of Westminster Expecting Their First BabyLuxembourg's Prince Fredrik Dies at 22Prince Harry Reaches Settlement in U.K. Tabloids LawsuitKate Middleton Is in Remission After Finishing Chemotherapy for CancerMeghan Markle's Longtime Dog Guy DiesPrince William Mourns Death of Former Nanny's StepsonMeghan Markle Rejoins Instagram to Reveal New Netflix Show For the latest breaking news updates, click here to download the E! News App
Los Angeles Times
8 hours ago
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Trump is undermining his own ‘action plan' for AI, experts say
WASHINGTON — President Trump revealed an 'action plan' for artificial intelligence on Wednesday ostensibly designed to bolster the United States in its race against China for AI superiority. But experts in the field warn the administration is sidestepping safety precautions that sustain public trust, and is ignoring the impacts of research funding cuts and visa restrictions for scientists that could hold America back. Trump introduced the new policy with an address in Washington, a new government website and a slew of executive actions, easing restrictions on the export of AI technology overseas and greasing the wheels for infrastructural expansion that would accommodate the computing power required for an AI future — both top requests of American AI companies. The plan also calls for AI to be integrated more thoroughly across the federal government, including at the Pentagon, and includes a directive targeting 'woke' bias in large language models. The new website, says the United States 'is in a race to achieve global dominance in artificial intelligence,' and lays out three pillars of its plan for success: 'Accelerating Innovation, Building AI Infrastructure, and Leading International Diplomacy and Security.' Scholars of machine learning and AI believe that whichever country loses the race — toward general artificial intelligence, where AI has capabilities similar to the human mind, and ultimately toward superintelligence, where its abilities exceed human thought — will be unable to catch up with the exponential growth of the winner. Today, China and the United States are the only powers with competitive AI capabilities. 'Whether we like it or not, we're suddenly engaged in a fast-paced competition to build and define this groundbreaking technology that will determine so much about the future of civilization itself, because of the genius and creativity of Silicon Valley — and it is incredible, incredible genius, without question, the most brilliant place on Earth,' Trump said on Wednesday in his policy speech on AI. 'America is the country that started the AI race. And as president of the United States, I'm here today to declare that America is going to win it,' he added. 'We're going to work hard — we're going to win it. Because we will not allow any foreign nation to beat us. Our children will not live in a planet controlled by the algorithms of the adversary's advancing values.' Yoshua Bengio, founder of Mila-Quebec AI Institute and a winner of the Turing Award for his work on deep learning, told The Times that the urgency of the race is fueling concerning behavior from both sides. 'These technologies hold enormous economic potential,' Bengio said, 'but intense competition between countries or companies can create dangerous incentives to cut corners on safety in order to stay ahead.' Silicon Valley may be getting much of what it wants from Trump — but the administration's continued assault on the student visa program remains a significant concern for the very same tech firms Trump aims to empower. Yolanda Gil, senior director of AI and data science initiatives at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, said that the Trump administration's reductions in funding and visas 'will reduce U.S. competitiveness in AI and all technology areas, not just in the near future but for many years to come,' noting that almost 500,000 international students in science and engineering are currently enrolled in U.S. universities. The majority of America's top AI companies have been founded by first- or second-generation immigrants, and 70% of full-time graduate students at U.S. institutions working in AI-related fields have come from abroad. Yet the administration's revocation and crackdown on F-1 visas risks crippling the talent pipeline the industry views as essential to success against China. Funding cuts to research institutions, too, threaten the stability of programs and their attractiveness to the best foreign minds, said Sheila Jasanoff, a professor of science and technology studies at the Harvard Kennedy School. 'Our openness to ideas and people, combined with steadiness of funding, drew bright talents from around the globe and science prospered,' Jasanoff said. 'That achievement is in a precarious state through the Trump administration's unpredictable and exclusionary policies that have created an atmosphere in which young scientists are much less comfortable coming to do their science in America.' 'Why would a talented young person wish to invest in a U.S. graduate program if there is a risk their visa could be canceled overnight on poorly articulated and unprecedented grounds? It's clear that other countries, including China, are already trying to benefit from our suddenly uncertain and chaotic research environment,' she added. 'We seem to be heading into an era of self-inflicted ignorance.' Teddy Svoronos, also at Harvard as a senior lecturer in public policy, said that the president is deregulating the AI industry 'while limiting its ability to recruit the highest-quality talent from around the world and de-incentivizing research that lacks immediate commercial use.' 'His policies thus far convince me that the future of the U.S. will certainly have more AI,' Svoronos said, 'but I don't see a coherent strategy around creating more effective or more aligned AI.' Aligned AI, in simple terms, refers to artificial intelligence that is trained to do good and avoid harm. Trump's action plan doesn't include the phrase, but repeatedly emphasizes the need to align AI development with U.S. interests. The deregulatory spirit of Trump's plan could help expedite AI development. But it could also backfire in unexpected ways, Jasanoff said. 'It's not clear that technology development prospers without guardrails that protect scientists and engineers against accidents, overreach and public backlash,' she added. 'The U.S. biotech industry, for example, has actively sought out ethical and policy clarification because missteps could endanger entire lines of research.' The plan also has the United States encouraging the development of open-source and open-weight AI models, allowing public access to code and training data. It is a decision that will allow AI to be more readily adopted throughout the U.S. economy — but also grants malicious actors, such as terrorist organizations, access to AI tools they could use to threaten national security and global peace. It is the sort of compromise that Bengio feared would emerge from the U.S.-China race. 'This dynamic poses serious public safety and national security risks, including AI-enabled cyberattacks, biological threats and the possibility of losing human control over advanced AI — outcomes with no winners,' Bengio said. 'To realize the full benefits of these technologies,' he added, 'safety and innovation must go hand in hand, supported by strong technical and societal safeguards.' The must-read: National Guard came to L.A. to fight unrest. Troops ended up fighting boredomThe deep dive: Hollywood's being reshaped by generative AI. What does that mean for screenwriters?The L.A. Times Special: As west Altadena burned, L.A. County fire trucks stayed elsewhere More to come,Michael Wilner—Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
Los Angeles Times
8 hours ago
- General
- Los Angeles Times
Americans may aspire to single-family homes, but in South Korea, apartments are king
SEOUL — For many Americans, the apartment where 29-year-old IT specialist Lee Chang-hee lives might be the stuff of nightmares. Located just outside the capital of Seoul, the building isn't very tall — just 16 stories — by South Korean standards, but the complex consists of 36 separate structures, which are nearly identical except for the building number displayed on their sides. The 2,000-plus units come in the same standardized dimensions found everywhere in the country (Lee lives in a '84C,' which has 84 square meters, or about 900 square feet, of floor space) and offer, in some ways, a ready-made life. The amenities scattered throughout the campus include a rock garden with a fake waterfall, a playground, a gym, an administration office, a senior center and a 'moms cafe.' But this, for the most part, is South Korea's middle-class dream of home ownership — its version of a house with the white picket fence. 'The bigger the apartment complex, the better the surrounding infrastructure, like public transportation, schools, hospitals, grocery stories, parks and so on,' Lee said. 'I like how easy it is to communicate with the neighbors in the complex because there's a well-run online community.' Most in the country would agree: Today, 64% of South Korean households live in such multifamily housing, the majority of them in apartments with five or more stories. Such a reality seems unimaginable in cities like Los Angeles, which has limited or prohibited the construction of dense housing in single-family zones. 'Los Angeles is often seen as an endless tableau of individual houses, each with their own yard and garden,' Max Podemski, an L.A.-based urban planner, wrote in The Times last year. 'Apartment buildings are anathema to the city's ethos.' In recent years, the price of that ethos has become increasingly apparent in the form of a severe housing shortage. In the city of Los Angeles, where nearly 75% of all residential land is zoned for stand-alone single-family homes, rents have been in a seemingly endless ascent, contributing to one of the worst homelessness crises in the country. As a remedy, the state of California has ordered the construction of more than 450,000 new housing units by 2029. The plan will almost certainly require the building of some form of apartment-style housing, but construction has lagged amid fierce resistance. Sixty years ago, South Korea stood at a similar crossroads. But the series of urban housing policies it implemented led to the primacy of the apartment, and in doing so, transformed South Korean notions of housing over the course of a single generation. The results of that program have been mixed. But in one important respect, at least, it has been successful: Seoul, which is half the size of the city of L.A., is home to a population of 9.6 million — compared with the estimated 3.3 million people who live here. For Lee, the trade-off is a worthwhile one. In an ideal world, she would have a garage for the sort of garage sales she's admired in American movies. 'But South Korea is a small country,' she said. 'It is necessary to use space as efficiently as possible.' Apartments, in her view, have spared her from the miseries of suburban housing. Restaurants and stores are close by. Easy access to public transportation means she doesn't need a car to get everywhere. 'Maybe it's because of my Korean need to have everything done quickly, but I think it'd be uncomfortable to live somewhere that doesn't have these things within reach at all times,' she said. 'I like to go out at night; I think it would be boring to have all the lights go off at 9 p.m.' *** Apartments first began appearing in South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s, as part of a government response to a housing crisis in the nation's capital — a byproduct of the era's rapid industrialization and subsequent urban population boom. In the 1960s, single-family detached dwellings made up around 95% of homes in the country. But over the following decade, as rural migrants flooded Seoul in search of factory work, doubling the population from 2.4 to 5.5 million, many in this new urban working class found themselves without homes. As a result, many of them settled in shantytowns on the city's outskirts, living in makeshift sheet-metal homes. The authoritarian government at the time, led by a former army general named Park Chung-hee, declared apartments to be the solution and embarked on a building spree that would continue under subsequent administrations. Eased height restrictions and incentives for construction companies helped add between 20,000 to 100,000 new apartment units every year. They were pushed by political leaders in South Korea as a high-tech modernist paradise, soon making them the most desirable form of housing for the middle and upper classes. Known as apateu, which specifically refers to a high-rise apartment building built as part of a larger complex — as distinct from lower stand-alone buildings — they symbolized Western cachet and upward social mobility. 'Around the late 1990s and early 2000s, almost every big-name celebrity at the time appeared in apartment commercials,' recalled Jung Heon-mok, an anthropologist at the Academy of Korean Studies who has studied the history of South Korean apartments. 'But the biggest reason that apartments proliferated as they did was because they were done at scale, in complexes of five buildings or more.' Essential to the modern apateu are the amenities — such as on-site kindergartens or convenience stores — that allow them to function like miniature towns. This has also turned them into branded commodities and class signifiers, built by construction conglomerates like Samsung, and taking on names like 'castle' or 'palace.' (One of the first such branded apartment complexes was Trump Tower, a luxury development built in Seoul in the late 1990s by a construction firm that licensed the name of Donald Trump.) All of this has made the detached single-family home, for the most part, obsolete. In Seoul, such homes now make up just 10% of the housing stock. Among many younger South Koreans like Lee, they are associated with retirement in the countryside, or, as she puts it: for 'grilling in the garden for your grandkids.' *** This model has not been without problems. There are the usual issues that come with dense housing. In buildings with poor soundproofing, 'inter-floor noise' between units is such a universal scourge that the government runs a noise-related dispute resolution center while discouraging people from angrily confronting their neighbors, a situation that occasionally escalates into headline-making violence. Some apartment buildings have proved to be too much even for a country accustomed to unsentimentally efficient forms of housing. One 19-story, 4,635-unit complex built by a big-name apartment brand in one of the wealthiest areas of Seoul looks so oppressive that it has become a curiosity, mocked by some as a prison or chicken coop. The sheer number of apartments has prompted criticism of Seoul's skyline as sterile and ugly. South Koreans have described its uniform, rectangular columns as 'matchboxes.' And despite the aspirations attached to them, there is also a wariness about a culture where homes are built in such disposable, assembly line-like fashion. Many people here are increasingly questioning how this form of housing, with its nearly identical layouts, has shaped the disposition of contemporary South Korean society, often criticized by its own members as overly homogenized and lockstep. 'I'm concerned that apartments have made South Koreans' lifestyles too similar,' said Maing Pil-soo, an architect and urban planning professor at Seoul National University. 'And with similar lifestyles, you end up with a similar way of thinking. Much like the cityscape itself, everything becomes flattened and uniform.' Jung, the anthropologist, believes South Korea's apartment complexes, with their promise of an atomized, frictionless life, have eroded the more expansive social bonds that defined traditional society — like those that extended across entire villages — making its inhabitants more individualistic and insular. 'At the end of the day, apartments here are undoubtedly extremely convenient — that's why they became so popular,' he said. 'But part of that convenience is because they insulate you from the concerns of the wider world. Once you're inside your complex and in your home, you don't have to pay attention to your neighbors or their issues.' Still, Jung says this uniformity isn't all bad. It is what made them such easily scalable solutions to the housing crisis of decades past. It is also, in some ways, an equalizing force. 'I think apartments are partly why certain types of social inequalities you see in the U.S. are comparatively less severe in South Korea,' he said. Though many branded apartment complexes now resemble gated communities with exclusionary homeowner associations, Jung points out that on the whole, the dominance of multifamily housing has inadvertently encouraged more social mixing between classes, a physical closeness that creates the sense that everyone is inhabiting the same broader space. Even Seoul's wealthiest neighborhoods feel, to an extent that is hard to see in many American cities, porous and accessible. Wealthier often means having a nicer apartment, but an apartment all the same, existing in the same environs as those in a different price range. 'And even though we occasionally use disparaging terms like 'chicken coop' to describe them, once you actually step inside one of those apartments, they don't feel like that at all,' Jung said. 'They really are quite comfortable and nice.' *** None of this, however, has been able to stave off Seoul's own present-day housing affordability crisis. The capital has one of the most expensive apartment prices in the world on a price-per-square-meter basis, ranking fourth after Hong Kong, Zurich and Singapore, and ahead of major U.S. cities like New York or San Francisco, according to a report published last month by Deutsche Bank. One especially brutal stretch recently saw apartment prices in Seoul double in four years. Part of the reason for this is that apartments, with their standardized dimensions, have effectively become interchangeable financial commodities: An apartment in Seoul is seen as a much more surefire bet than any stock, leading to intense real estate investment and speculation that has driven up home prices. 'Buying an apartment here isn't just buying an apartment. The equivalent in the U.S. would be like buying an ideal single-family home with a garage in the U.S., except that it comes with a bunch of NVIDIA shares,' said Chae Sang-wook, an independent real estate analyst. 'In South Korea, people invest in apateu for capital gains, not cash flow from rent.' Some experts predict that, as the country enters another era of demographic upheaval, the dominance of apartments will someday be no more. If births continue to fall as dramatically as they have done in recent years, South Koreans may no longer need such dense housing. The ongoing rise of single-person households, too, may chip away at a form of housing built to hold four-person nuclear families. But Chae is skeptical that this will happen anytime soon. He points out that South Koreans don't even like to assemble their own furniture, let alone fix their own cars — all downstream effects of ubiquitous apartment living. 'For now, there is no alternative other than this,' he said. 'As a South Korean, you don't have the luxury of choosing.'
