Elections

The rapidly spreading fire has consumed over 426,000 acres since it started burning in late July. The Park fire, the largest wildfire currently burning in the United States, has torn through over 426,000 acres in Northern California in recent weeks and has destroyed hundreds of homes and other structures.The fire ballooned in size in a matter of days, and it is the largest blaze in California so far this year. Thousands of firefighters and other personnel, some from as far as Utah and Texas, are battling the fire, which was 34 percent contained as of Wednesday.The hot and dry weather has made it difficult for firefighters to suppress the blaze, which is spreading northeast within Lassen National Forest and “ascending slopes with critically dry fuel,” according to Cal Fire. But forecasters say the coming days could bring lower temperatures and higher humidity levels in the fire zone. Current unseasonably warm temperatures are expected to steadily fade and give way to highs in the 70s next week.“It’s not a dramatic change, it’s slow. But each day is getting a little better,” said Eric Kurth, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Sacramento. “That’s certainly helpful.”Here’s what to know about the fire.The Park fire has burned more than 426,000 acres.Loren Elliott for The New York TimesWhen and how did the fire start?The fire ignited on July 24 near Chico, a college town in Butte County, north of Sacramento. After igniting, the fire exploded to more than 120,000 acres by the next day and then nearly doubled in size the night after that. Officials said the cause of the fire was arson.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Google, Microsoft and Amazon have made deals with A.I. start-ups for their technology and top employees, but have shied from owning the firms. Here’s why.In 2022, Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas left their jobs developing artificial intelligence at Google. They said the tech giant moved too slowly. So they created Character.AI, a chatbot start-up, and raised nearly $200 million.Last week, Mr. Shazeer and Mr. De Freitas announced that they were returning to Google. They had struck a deal to rejoin its A.I. research arm, along with roughly 20 percent of Character.AI’s employees, and provide their start-up’s technology, they said.But even though Google was getting all that, it was not buying Character.AI.Instead, Google agreed to pay $3 billion to license the technology, two people with knowledge of the deal said. About $2.5 billion of that sum will then be used to buy out Character.AI’s shareholders, including Mr. Shazeer, who owns 30 percent to 40 percent of the company and stands to net $750 million to $1 billion, the people said. What remains of Character.AI will continue operating without its founders and investors.The deal was one of several unusual transactions that have recently emerged in Silicon Valley. While big tech companies typically buy start-ups outright, they have turned to a more complicated deal structure for young A.I. companies. It involves licensing the technology and hiring the top employees — effectively swallowing the start-up and its main assets — without becoming the owner of the firm.These transactions are being driven by the big tech companies’ desire to sidestep regulatory scrutiny while trying to get ahead in A.I., said three people who have been involved in such agreements. Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple and Microsoft are under a magnifying glass from agencies like the Federal Trade Commission over whether they are squashing competition, including by buying start-ups.“Large tech firms may clearly be trying to avoid regulatory scrutiny by not directly acquiring the targeted firms,” said Justin Johnson, a business economist who focuses on antitrust at Cornell University. But “these deals do indeed start to look a lot like regular acquisitions.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

La cantante dio su codiciado apoyo al presidente Joe Biden en 2020. Ahora, una silueta en una foto de Instagram ha llevado a algunos swifties a especular que defenderá a Kamala Harris.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]¿Están solo viendo cosas o la silueta de una bailarina de apoyo de Taylor Swift se parece a la vicepresidenta Kamala Harris?El ejército de fans de Swift en internet por lo general trata de descifrar los mensajes ocultos de la estrella del pop como un trabajo a tiempo parcial, por lo que la especulación se extendió cuando algunos sugirieron que una foto que Swift había publicado en Instagram de su Eras Tour, que ha estado recorriendo Europa este verano, podría ser una pista de su apoyo a una determinada candidatura presidencial.Sin embargo, no ha habido ningún respaldo por parte de Swift, quien ha puesto cada vez más su enorme influencia al servicio de la política progresista. En octubre de 2020, su declaración de apoyo a Joe Biden no dejó nada a la interpretación.La foto en cuestión, que Swift incluyó en una publicación sobre sus recientes conciertos en Varsovia, coincide con una transición estándar de la gira en la que sus bailarines de apoyo —con trajes de pantalón no muy diferentes de los que Harris prefiere— desfilan fuera del escenario entre canciones.A pesar de los argumentos en contra, algunos swifties estaban convencidos de que la publicación era un mensaje en clave. Un segmento liberal del público está ansioso por que la cantante dé a conocer sus lealtades, y la urgencia subraya el poder de Swift como alguien que puede influir en la política electoral con una sola publicación en las redes sociales. (En 2023, una publicación suya en Instagram dio lugar a 35.000 nuevos registros de votantes).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

A revival of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” David Mamet’s classic play about unscrupulous real estate agents, is to open next spring.“Glengarry Glen Ross,” David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about the world of unscrupulous real estate agents, is returning to Broadway next spring with a starry cast for its seedy offices.Kieran Culkin, boosted to stardom by his role as a scheming son of a media titan in “Succession,” will be featured alongside Bob Odenkirk, the “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul” alumnus, and Bill Burr, one of today’s most successful standup comics.The production — which will be the fourth “Glengarry” outing on Broadway — is to be directed by Patrick Marber, a Tony Award winner for Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt.” Marber was 19 when he saw the first production of “Glengarry” in London in 1983.“Glengarry” is one of the plays that solidified Mamet’s reputation as a great American dramatist. It is an ensemble drama, set in a Chinese restaurant and a real-estate office, about a group of salesman competing to market real estate developments to unwitting buyers.The play arrived on Broadway in 1984, and it won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama that same year. It was adapted as a film in 1992, with a cast led by Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon.The play was revived on Broadway in 2005, with Alan Alda and Liev Schreiber, and again in 2012, with Pacino and Bobby Cannavale.Culkin, who will play Richard Roma, the alpha dog salesman, has appeared on Broadway once before, in a 2014 production of Kenneth Lonergan’s “This Is Our Youth.” Odenkirk will play Shelly Levene, the sad-sack veteran salesman, and Burr takes on the role of Dave Moss, Roma’s blustery rival; they will both be making their Broadway debuts in “Glengarry.” The rest of the cast and the production’s dates have not yet been announced.The 2025 revival is being produced by Jeffrey Richards, who has worked on every previous Broadway production of “Glengarry” and who often produces Mamet’s work on Broadway, as well as by Rebecca Gold, a frequent Richards collaborator. In 2018, Richards and Gold had plans to stage an all-female production of “Glengarry,” and in 2019, Patti LuPone said she was slated to star, but that production never happened.Mamet has become a polarizing figure in recent decades — his later plays have not been well-received, and his rightward political turn has alienated some onetime fans. But his early plays remain admired; most recently, “American Buffalo” was revived on Broadway in 2022, and Jesse Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times, although critical of Mamet, called the production “electric.” More

The Federal Reserve was about to cut interest rates, turning the corner after a long fight with inflation. But now, its soft landing is in question.The Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation was going almost unbelievably well. Price increases were coming down. Growth was holding up. Consumers continued to spend. The labor market was chugging along.Policymakers appeared poised to lower interest rates — just a little — at their meeting on Sept. 18. Officials did not need to keep hitting the brakes on growth so much, as the economy settled into a comfortable balance. It seemed like central bankers were about to pull off a rare economic soft landing, cooling inflation without tanking the economy.But just as that sunny outcome came into view, clouds gathered on the horizon.The unemployment rate has moved up meaningfully over the past year, and a weak employment report released last week has stoked concern that the job market may be on the brink of a serious cool-down. That’s concerning, because a weakening labor market is usually the first sign that the economy is careening toward a recession.The Fed could still get the soft landing it has been hoping for — weekly jobless claims fell more than expected in fresh data released on Thursday, a minor but positive development. Given the possibility that everything will turn out fine, central bank officials are not yet ready to panic. During an event on Monday, Mary C. Daly, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, suggested that officials were closely watching the job market to try to figure out whether it was cooling too much or simply returning to normal after a few roller-coaster years.“We’re at the point of — is the labor market slowing a lot, or slowing a little?” Ms. Daly said, as she pointed to one-off factors that could have muddled the latest report, like Hurricane Beryl and a recent inflow of new immigrant workers that left more people searching for jobs.“It’s clear inflation is coming down closer to our target, it’s clear that the labor market is slowing, and it’s to a point where we have to balance those goals,” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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Donald J. Trump plans to hold a “general news conference” on Thursday afternoon at his private club and home, Mar-a-Lago, the first such event he has held in months.Mr. Trump announced the event on his website, Truth Social, on Thursday morning.The former president’s prominence in news coverage has slipped since President Biden abruptly announced last month that he was ending his re-election campaign and then endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who secured the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination this week.Mr. Trump has been seeking ways to make headlines. But he has also sought to highlight how Ms. Harris has yet to give interviews and allow reporters to pose wide-ranging questions since she became a presidential candidate.During Mr. Trump’s civil court cases in New York earlier this year, he sometimes held news conferences at a building he owns near the courthouse. But since his criminal trial started in Manhattan on April 15, he has not held any. He has also given relatively few interviews to mainstream news outlets.Mr. Trump has been playing cat-and-mouse over a debate he had agreed to with Mr. Biden, which had been set to be hosted by ABC News in September. Ms. Harris said she planned to attend in Mr. Biden’s place, but Mr. Trump repeatedly suggested he would pull out of the debate. He then declared it was “terminated” and said he wanted a debate hosted by Fox News instead, but he had not discussed the terms of such a debate with Ms. Harris. Among the reasons he cited for not doing the ABC News debate was the fact that he is suing the network over comments by one of its anchors, George Stephanopoulos.Mr. Trump sounded more open to the possibility of the ABC News debate in a telephone interview on “Fox and Friends” this week.On Truth Social on Thursday morning, Mr. Trump promised to “expose” Ms. Harris during a debate. More

Many struggled to find housing and work after the wildfire destroyed the seaside town on Maui last year. But they have faced new hardships.For Ernesto Perez, life on Maui wasn’t easy. But it was pleasant and peaceful, and a long way from the cartel violence of Mexico that his family escaped nearly three decades ago.He became a chef, serving the flow of tourists that propelled the local economy, and found a home a short walk from the shimmering waters of the Pacific Ocean in the historic town of Lahaina. He got married, had four daughters, got divorced and found love again.Then last year, the fires came, consuming his home and claiming his job, and he was confronted with a choice: Stay or go? His mother invited him to return to Mexico, but he said he would never raise his daughters amid the violence of the drug trade that overshadows his homeland. Eventually, he was drawn to Las Vegas, a place that has attracted so many Hawaiians in recent years that it has been called the Ninth Island. These days, he works as a cook at the Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, dreaming of his lost paradise and worrying about the toll on his family.“I lived a block from the beach in Lahaina,” Mr. Perez, 42, said. “My daughters would go to the beach, they would go shopping by themselves. I didn’t have to worry. Here, there’s a lot of danger for my girls.”One year after a wildfire incinerated Lahaina, killing 102 people in the deadliest fire in the United States in more than a century, residents on the island of Maui are struggling to find work and housing. Some are still living in hotels, while others cannot find apartments they can afford.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More