Month: March 2024

China Sets Economic Growth Target of About 5%

China Sets Economic Growth Target of About 5%

China top leaders set an ambitious goal for economic growth in 2024 as they tried to bolster conviction in an economy facing its biggest challenges in decades.But they announced only modest measures to stimulate growth, refraining from the kind of bold moves the business community has been looking for to address a property crisis, a loss of confidence among Chinese households and wariness by investors.Premier Li Qiang, the country’s No. 2 official after Xi Jinping, said in his report on Tuesday to the annual session of the legislature that the government would seek economic growth of “around 5 percent.” That…
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Kamala Harris Calls for ‘Immediate Cease-Fire’

Kamala Harris Calls for ‘Immediate Cease-Fire’

Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday called for an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza, saying that Hamas should agree to the six-week pause currently on the table and that Israel should increase the flow of aid into the besieged enclave amid a humanitarian crisis.Ms. Harris’s remarks, delivered in Selma, Ala., bolstered a recent push by the Biden administration for an agreement and came a day before she was to meet with a top Israeli cabinet official involved in war planning, Benny Gantz. Her tone, sharper and more urgent than President Biden’s in recent days, showed the White House’s building frustration with…
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Why ‘Fetal Personhood’ Is Roiling the Right

Why ‘Fetal Personhood’ Is Roiling the Right

As I.V.F. grew in popularity, so did the concerns of its opponents. Standard practice involves creating multiple embryos, which are screened for genetic abnormalities, and the ones that appear healthiest can be transferred. Extra embryos are often frozen; by one count, there are a million and a half frozen embryos in the United States. After a designated time period, they may be donated to science or destroyed, just as the Catholic Church feared.The anti-abortion movement won a partial victory for protecting life at conception in 2001, when President George W. Bush banned the use of federal funds for embryonic stem…
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Dale Earnhardt Jr. leaving NBC for Amazon Prime, Warner Bros. Discovery: Sources

Dale Earnhardt Jr. leaving NBC for Amazon Prime, Warner Bros. Discovery: Sources

The biggest name in NASCAR is on the move.Dale Earnhardt Jr. is leaving NBC and heading to racing newcomers Amazon Prime Video and Warner Bros. Discovery Sports, sources briefed on his decision told The Athletic.Earnhardt is expected to take this season off and then resume his broadcasting career in 2025 when WBD Sports and Amazon begin their coverage.The move figures to give WBD Sports and Amazon instant credibility when they start their series. Each will have five races a season. WBD Sports’ races will be broadcast on TNT, streamed on Max and have a Bleacher Report component. NASCAR complements WBD…
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The Paradox at the Heart of Elon Musk’s OpenAI Lawsuit

The Paradox at the Heart of Elon Musk’s OpenAI Lawsuit

It would be easy to dismiss Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI as a case of sour grapes.Mr. Musk sued OpenAI this week, accusing the company of breaching the terms of its founding agreement and violating its founding principles. In his telling, OpenAI was established as a nonprofit that would build powerful A.I. systems for the good of humanity and give its research away freely to the public. But Mr. Musk argues that OpenAI broke that promise by starting a for-profit subsidiary that took on billions of dollars in investments from Microsoft.An OpenAI spokeswoman declined to comment on the suit. In…
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How 33-Year-Olds, the Peak Millennials, Are Shaping the U.S. Economy

How 33-Year-Olds, the Peak Millennials, Are Shaping the U.S. Economy

I have covered economics for 11 years now, and in that time, I have come to the realization that I am a statistic. Every time I make a major life choice, I promptly watch it become the thing that everyone is doing that year.I started college in 2009, in the era of all-time-high matriculation rates. When I moved to a big coastal city after graduation, so did a huge crowd of people: It was the age of millennial urbanization. When I lived in a walk-in closet so that I could pay off my student loans (“The yellow paint makes it…
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Brian Mulroney, Prime Minister Who Led Canada Into NAFTA, Dies at 84

Brian Mulroney, Prime Minister Who Led Canada Into NAFTA, Dies at 84

Brian Mulroney, Canada’s 18th prime minister, whose statesmanship on what he called “great causes,” from free trade and acid rain in North America to the overthrow of apartheid in South Africa, gave way to accusations of financial misdoing and influence-peddling after he left office, died on Thursday in Palm Beach, Fla. He was 84.A spokesman for his daughter Caroline Mulroney, a cabinet minister in Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government, said Mr. Mulroney died in a hospital after a fall at his home in Palm Beach. “He died peacefully, surrounded by family,” Ms. Mulroney wrote on X, formerly Twitter.Born into a blue-collar…
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