IIB Network

‘To the Future’: Saudi Arabia Spends Big to Become an A.I. Superpower

26Apr

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

Technology

‘To the Future’: Saudi Arabia Spends Big to Become an A.I. Superpower

On a Monday morning last month, tech executives, engineers and sales representatives from Amazon, Google, TikTok and other companies endured a three-hour traffic jam as their cars crawled toward a mammoth conference at an event space in the desert, 50 miles outside Riyadh.The lure: billions of dollars in Saudi money as the kingdom seeks to build a tech industry to complement its oil dominance.To bypass the congestion, frustrated eventgoers drove onto the highway shoulder, kicking up plumes of desert sand as they sped past those following traffic rules. A lucky few took advantage of a special freeway exit dedicated to “V.V.I.P.s” — very, very important people.“To the Future,” a sign read on the approach to the event, called Leap.More than 200,000 people converged at the conference, includin...

How High Wall Street Thinks the Fed Will Keep Interest Rates

26Apr

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

Business

How High Wall Street Thinks the Fed Will Keep Interest Rates

At the start of 2024, investors expected the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates substantially this year as inflation cooled. But price increases have been surprisingly stubborn, and that is forcing a rethink on Wall Street.Investors and economists are questioning when and how much Fed policymakers will manage to cut rates — and some are increasingly dubious that Fed officials will manage to lower them at all this year.Inflation was coming down steadily in 2023, but that progress has stalled out in 2024. The Fed’s preferred inflation index climbed 2.8 percent in March from a year earlier, after stripping out volatile food and fuel costs, data on Friday showed. While that is down substantially from a 2022 peak, it is still well above the central bank’s 2 percent goal.Inflation’s stickines...

ExxonMobil and Chevron Report Lower Earnings

26Apr

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

World

ExxonMobil and Chevron Report Lower Earnings

ExxonMobil and Chevron, the largest American energy companies, said on Friday that their earnings in the first quarter fell from a year earlier, pulled down by lower refining margins and plunging natural gas prices.But the oil and gas business remains highly profitable for the two giants even at a time of moderate oil prices.ExxonMobil said that earnings were $8.2 billion in the quarter, compared with $11.4 billion in the same period a year earlier. Chevron reported a decline to $5.5 billion, from $6.6 billion a year ago.Both companies attributed their declines to lower profitability from refining crude oil into products like gasoline and diesel. Their earnings were also hurt by falling prices for natural gas, a key fuel that is used in heating and industry. Natural gas prices, which soare...

Beth Linker is Turning Good Posture On its Head

26Apr

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

Health

Beth Linker is Turning Good Posture On its Head

For decades, the idea of standing properly upright carried considerable political and social baggage. Slouching was considered a sign of decay.In the early 20th century, posture exams became mainstays in the military, the workplace and schools, thanks in part to the American Posture League, a group of physicians, educators and health officials that formed in 1914. In 1917, a study found that roughly 80 percent of Harvard’s freshman class had poor posture. Industrialists piled on with posture-enhancing chairs, products and gadgets.But the actual science doesn’t support the conventional wisdom about proper posture, Beth Linker argues in her new book, “Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America.” Dr. Linker, a historian and sociologist of science at the University of Pennsylvania, recently sat f...

Scottie Scheffler, Nelly Korda are the biggest things in golf for a reason

26Apr

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

Sports

Scottie Scheffler, Nelly Korda are the biggest things in golf for a reason

The heights they are reaching have become comical, two golfers taking over their respective sports with such dominance that — at least for this moment — it’s difficult to imagine anyone beating them.Nelly Korda just won her fifth straight start, ending with a major, the Chevron Championship. Scottie Scheffler just won four of five starts with a Masters in the middle. The men’s and women’s world No. 1s are no longer just the best players in their sport. They are becoming two of the best ever. It’s reached the point Scheffler was playfully asked this week in Hilton Head if the two of them are in a competition.“I don’t know, man,” he joked, “I think if it’s a competition she’s got me pretty beat right now. Five wins in a row. She had that T16 at the beginning of the year, which was just terri...

Meta Says It Plans to Spend Billions More on A.I.

25Apr

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

Technology

Meta Says It Plans to Spend Billions More on A.I.

Meta projected on Wednesday that revenue for the current quarter would be lower than what Wall Street anticipated and said it would spend billions of dollars more on its artificial intelligence efforts, even as it reported robust revenue and profits for the first three months of the year.Revenue for the company, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, was $36.5 billion in the first quarter, up 27 percent from $28.6 billion a year earlier and slightly above Wall Street estimates of $36.1 billion, according to data compiled by FactSet. Profit was $12.4 billion, more than double the $5.7 billion a year earlier.But Meta’s work on A.I., which requires substantial computing power, comes with a lofty price tag. The Silicon Valley company said it planned to raise its spending forec...

Bird Flu Is Infecting More Mammals. What Does That Mean for Us?

25Apr

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

Business

Bird Flu Is Infecting More Mammals. What Does That Mean for Us?

In her three decades of working with elephant seals, Dr. Marcela Uhart had never seen anything like the scene on the beaches of Argentina’s Valdés Peninsula last October.It was peak breeding season; the beach should have been teeming with harems of fertile females and enormous males battling one another for dominance. Instead, it was “just carcass upon carcass upon carcass,” recalled Dr. Uhart, who directs the Latin American wildlife health program at the University of California, Davis.H5N1, one of the many viruses that cause bird flu, had already killed at least 24,000 South American sea lions along the continent’s coasts in less than a year. Now it had come for elephant seals.Pups of all ages, from newborns to the fully weaned, lay dead or dying at the high-tide line. Sick pups lay list...

A Bill to Limit Canada’s Trade Negotiators on Farm Goods Edges Nearer to Law

24Apr

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

World

A Bill to Limit Canada’s Trade Negotiators on Farm Goods Edges Nearer to Law

Private members’ bills, particularly those from members of the Bloc Québécois, rarely make their way through the parliamentary process. But after passing the House of Commons with strong support from members of all parties, a bill from Yves Perron, who speaks for the Bloc on farming, handily passed a second vote in the unelected Senate on Tuesday.And perhaps even more surprising, it deals with a contentious issue: Canada’s supply management system, which controls production and sets minimum prices for dairy and poultry products as well as eggs.Many free-market economists and politicians cast supply management as a legalized price cartel that increases Canadians’ grocery bills. And in negotiations for every one of Canada’s major trade agreements in recent decades, the supply management syst...

Dairy Cows Transported Between States Must Now Be Tested for Bird Flu

24Apr

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

Health

Dairy Cows Transported Between States Must Now Be Tested for Bird Flu

The Biden administration on Wednesday said that it would begin requiring dairy cows moving across state lines to be tested for bird flu, which has been spreading in herds for months. The new policy is part of a growing effort to stamp out the spread of a virus that federal health officials have sought to reassure Americans poses little risk to people so far.The new order, issued by the Department of Agriculture, says that lactating cows must test negative for influenza A viruses, a class that includes bird flu, before they are transported. The owners of herds with positive tests will need to provide data on the movements of the cattle to help investigators trace the disease.The testing will help protect the livestock industry, limit the spread of the virus and “better understand this disea...

How hockey helped make J.J. McCarthy one of NFL Draft’s most intriguing prospects

24Apr

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

Sports

How hockey helped make J.J. McCarthy one of NFL Draft’s most intriguing prospects

Dan Capuano’s funeral at St. Rita of Cascia High School on Chicago’s Southwest Side was standing-room only. Hundreds of firefighters from Chicago and around the country attended. Members of the St. Jude Knights youth hockey club were there, too, wearing their jerseys.Capuano’s sons, Andrew and Nick, played for the Knights, a Northern Illinois Hockey League program that feeds many of Chicago’s powerhouse Catholic schools. Nick was on the 2012-13 team that won the Squirt A state championship.Dan had devoted much of his time to the Knights before he died in the line of duty while fighting a warehouse fire on the South Side on Dec. 14, 2015.That title-winning Knights team wanted to get back together to honor Capuano and his family, so in March 2016, a new team was formed. “Team Capuano” would ...