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    Tesla Settles Lawsuit Over a Fatal Crash Involving Autopilot

    A Tesla driver’s family had sought damages for the 2018 crash, which happened while the carmaker’s driver-assistance software was in use.Tesla on Monday settled a lawsuit that blamed the automaker’s driver-assistance software for the death of a California man in 2018, averting a trial that would have focused attention on the company’s technology several months before it plans to unveil a self-driving taxi.The trial stemming from the death of Wei Lun Huang, an Apple software engineer who went by Walter, was scheduled to start Monday with jury selection. The case was one of the most prominent involving Tesla’s Autopilot software, attracting significant public attention and prompting an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.Terms of the settlement with Mr. Huang’s children and other members of his family were not disclosed, and Tesla filed court documents seeking to prevent them from being made public.Testimony in the trial would have put Tesla’s autonomous driving software under close scrutiny, further fueling a debate about whether the technology makes cars safer or exposes drivers and others to serious injury or death.Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, has said the company’s self-driving software will generate hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue. Investors have used his claims to justify the company’s lofty stock market valuation. Tesla is worth more than any other carmaker even though its shares have plunged in recent months.Mr. Musk said on X last week that Tesla would introduce a self-driving taxi, Robotaxi, in August. If Tesla has in fact perfected a vehicle that can ferry passengers without a driver — which many analysts doubt — the development will help answer criticism that the company has been slow to follow up its Model 3 sedan and Model Y sport utility vehicle with new products.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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    Can Xerox’s PARC, a Silicon Valley Icon, Find New Life with SRI?

    Two research labs known for some of the tech industry’s most important innovations have merged in hopes of recapturing their glory days. It is one of Silicon Valley’s enduring legends. In 1979, a 24-year old Steve Jobs was permitted to visit Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to view a demonstration of an experimental personal computer called the Alto. Mr. Jobs took away a handful of ideas that would transform the computing world when they became the heart of Apple’s Lisa and Macintosh computers. More

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    The Second Coming of the Microsoft Antitrust Battle?

    Prosecutors compare their new fight against Apple to the seminal case against Windows in the 1990s.Impeding innovation. Reducing consumer choice. Extending dominance to other markets.These are accusations that the Justice Department leveled against a technology giant it accused of running an illegal monopoly. But they aren’t from this week’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple — they’re from the case the department brought against Microsoft in 1998.The move against Apple is, along with the Justice Department’s 2020 lawsuit against Google over search, perhaps the most ambitious tech antitrust battle since the Clinton administration’s effort to open up Microsoft’s Windows operating system.And federal prosecutors are explicitly connecting the Apple lawsuit to that earlier fight. “They’re really presenting this case as a successor to that: Microsoft 2.0,” said Gus Hurwitz, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.But the comparison isn’t perfect. And it isn’t clear whether the Justice Department will be able to achieve here what it claims to have done by suing Microsoft.The Justice Department sees a direct connection between the two cases. “Microsoft” appears 26 times in the Apple complaint. And prosecutors say Apple wouldn’t have achieved its current towering success had it not been for the government’s fight against Microsoft:The iPod did not achieve widespread adoption until Apple developed a cross-platform version of the iPod and iTunes for Microsoft’s Windows operating system, at the time the dominant operating system for personal computers. In the absence of the consent decree in United States v. Microsoft, it would have been more difficult for Apple to achieve this success and ultimately launch the iPhone.In the 1998 case, the Justice Department argued that Microsoft illicitly sought to protect its Windows software from competition like the Netscape Navigator browser and Apple’s QuickTime multimedia software.This week, the agency said Apple was doing something similar, unlawfully restricting competition by denying rivals access to key iPhone features like its contactless payment chip. “Each step in Apple’s course of conduct built and reinforced the moat around its smartphone monopoly,” prosecutors wrote in Thursday’s lawsuit.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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    U.S. Sues Apple, Accusing It of Maintaining an iPhone Monopoly

    The lawsuit caps years of regulatory scrutiny of Apple’s wildly popular suite of devices and services, which have fueled its growth into a nearly $3 trillion public company.The Justice Department and 16 state attorneys general filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple on Thursday, the federal government’s most significant challenge to the reach and influence of the company that has put iPhones in the hands of more than a billion people.The government argued that Apple violated antitrust laws by preventing other companies from offering applications that compete with Apple products like its digital wallets, which could diminish the value of the iPhone. Apple’s policies hurt consumers and smaller companies that compete with some of Apple’s services, according to excerpts from the lawsuit released by the government, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.“Each step in Apple’s course of conduct built and reinforced the moat around its smartphone monopoly,” the government said in the lawsuit.The lawsuit caps years of regulatory scrutiny of Apple’s wildly popular suite of devices and services, which have fueled its growth into a nearly $2.75 trillion public company that was for years the most valuable on the planet. It takes direct aim at the iPhone, Apple’s most popular device and most powerful business, and attacks the way the company has turned the billions of smartphones it has sold since 2007 into the centerpiece of its empire.By tightly controlling the user experience on iPhones and other devices, Apple has created what critics call an uneven playing field, where it grants its own products and services access to core features that it denies rivals. Over the years, it has limited finance companies’ access to the phone’s payment chip and Bluetooth trackers from tapping into its location-service feature. It’s also easier for users to connect Apple products, like smartwatches and laptops, to the iPhone than to those made by other manufacturers.The company says this makes its iPhones more secure than other smartphones. But app developers and rival device makers say Apple uses its power to crush competition.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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    Read the Lawsuit Against Apple

    Case 2:24-cv-04055 Document 1 Filed 03/21/24 Page 4 of 88 PageID: 4

    across many technologies, products, and services, including super apps, text messaging, smartwatches, and digital wallets, among many others.

    Apple’s conduct also stifles new paradigms that threaten Apple’s smartphone dominance, including the cloud, which could make it easier for users to enjoy high-end functionality on a lower priced smartphone- -or make users device-agnostic altogether. As one Apple manager recently observed, “Imagine buying a [expletive] Android for 25 bux at a garage sale and it works fine…. And you have a solid cloud computing device. Imagine how many cases like that there are.” Simply put, Apple feared the disintermediation of its iPhone platform and undertook a course of conduct that locked in users and developers while protecting its profits.

    Critically, Apple’s anticompetitive conduct not only limits competition in the smartphone market, but also reverberates through the industries that are affected by these restrictions, including financial services, fitness, gaming, social media, news media, entertainment, and more. Unless Apple’s anticompetitive and exclusionary conduct is stopped, it will likely extend and entrench its iPhone monopoly to other markets and parts of the economy. For example, Apple is rapidly expanding its influence and growing its power in the automotive, content creation and entertainment, and financial services industries-and often by doing so in exclusionary ways that further reinforce and deepen the competitive moat around the iPhone.

    This case is about freeing smartphone markets from Apple’s anticompetitive and exclusionary conduct and restoring competition to lower smartphone prices for consumers, reducing fees for developers, and preserving innovation for the future. The United States and the States of New Jersey, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia, acting by and through their respective

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    Is China’s Era of High Growth Over?

    Beijing unveiled an annual economic target in line with last year’s, as it looks to refocus on strategically important sectors.With troubles brewing at home, China has set the same growth target as last year, reflecting its continuing economic challenges.Lintao Zhang/Getty ImagesChina’s real growth agenda China announced an official growth target of about 5 percent on Tuesday that’s already looking hard to pull off. The world’s second-biggest economy is facing headwinds, from a consumer slowdown to weak investor confidence and a trade war with the West.But the growth target only tells part of the story of how Beijing is rethinking economic policy.Left out of the pronouncements: a stimulus package. Investors watch the annual gathering of the National People’s Congress, the country’s rubber-stamp parliament, and a parallel meeting of China’s top policy body, for clues on the government’s priorities. Spending is set to remain at roughly last year’s level, suggesting that there’s no big-bang boost on the horizon.That’s not great news for Western brands that have ridden a surge in Chinese consumer spending to big growth in recent years. Apple reportedly has seen its Chinese iPhones sales plummet this year.The growth target matches last year’s too, when the post-lockdown economy grew 5.2 percent. (Some analysts say the real growth rate is much lower.) Global investors need to accept that slow growth is the new norm, says Yu Jie, a senior fellow on China at Chatham House, a think tank. “Beijing wants to draw a line under the past economic model which focused on infrastructure and property,” she told DealBook.Beijing’s real focus is reshaping the economy. The government knows that it faces a raft of challenges, but China’s leader, Xi Jinping, is trying to move away from debt-fueled sectors like property and move toward strategically important industries. The terms it uses are “high-quality development” and “new productive forces,” which includes electric vehicles, climate tech, life sciences, and artificial intelligence. The latest measures to achieve that: Premier Li Qiang, China’s second-highest official, said on Tuesday that the government would increase spending for science and technology research by 10 percent.More state-led investment is the priority, rather than “other kinds of more politically painful reforms,” George Magnus, a research associate at Oxford University’s China Center and a former chief economist at UBS, told DealBook.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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    A.I. Promises Give Tech Earnings from Meta and Others a Jolt

    Companies like Meta that could tout their work in the fast-growing field saw a benefit in their fourth-quarter results — and won praise from eager investors.Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s C.E.O., spoke expansively to analysts about his company’s work on A.I.Carlos Barria/ReutersA.I. and cost cuts lift Big Tech Earlier this week, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta endured a grilling on Capitol Hill and publicly apologized to relatives of victims of online abuse. Little more than a day later, he had a lot to crow about, as his business delivered some of its best quarterly earnings in years.Meta’s results illustrate how the most recent earnings season has gone for Big Tech: a mostly positive period in which companies that could claim the benefits of artificial intelligence and cost-cutting were hailed the most on Wall Street.Meta shot the lights out. After years of facing questions about its ad business and its ability to cope with scandals, the parent of Facebook and Instagram reported that fourth-quarter profits tripled from a year ago. A.I. was credited for some of that, with the technology helping make its core ad business more effective. So too was cost-cutting, which included tens of thousands of layoffs as part of the company’s self-described “year of efficiency.”Meta’s profit was so good that the company will soon start paying stock dividends for the first time (which could total $700 million a year for Zuckerberg alone) and announced a $50 billion buyback. It’s a sign that the tech giant is “coming of age,” according to one analyst, joining Microsoft and Apple in making regular payouts to investors.Zuckerberg pledged more investment in A.I. — “Expect us to continue investing aggressively in this area,” he said on an earnings call — and the company said it had largely concluded its cost cuts. But some analysts said that Meta will eventually have to show a return on that spending.Amazon also touted its A.I. initiatives. Much of its earnings call was spent talking about Rufus, a new smart assistant intended to help shoppers find what they’re looking for. (It may also allow Amazon to reduce ad spending on Google and social media platforms.)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 Trump’s Latest Indictment May Reshape the 2024 Race

    The former president, who faces seven criminal charges for mishandling classified documents, is expected to surrender to authorities next week.“I’m an innocent man,” Donald Trump told his supporters on Thursday night.Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTrump indicted: what to expect next For the second time in two months, Donald Trump will surrender to the authorities to face legal charges, dropping another bomb into the 2024 presidential race. Within minutes, he was fund-raising on the back of the news.The indictment hasn’t yet been unsealed, but some details are known. The former president and front-runner for the Republican nomination faces seven criminal charges that he mishandled classified documents from his time in the White House and obstructed the government’s efforts to reclaim them. He is expected to turn himself in to the authorities on Tuesday.Mr. Trump himself broke the news last night, a sign his inner circle had been bracing for the indictment for weeks.On his Truth Social platform, Mr. Trump called the charges “election interference at the highest level,” adding, “I’m an innocent man.” Mr. Trump’s legal troubles keep piling up. But this indictment holds greater “legal gravity and political peril,” writes The Times’s Peter Baker. It’s not just a first in American history for a former president, but also involves the nation’s secrets.Here’s a recap of the other legal matters he faces:A federal grand jury last month ordered Mr. Trump to pay $5 million to the journalist E. Jean Carroll in a civil case that he sexually abused and then defamed her; Carroll’s legal team has sued Mr. Trump again over subsequent comments he made about her.In April, the New York authorities charged Mr. Trump with falsifying business documents in connection with hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.Mr. Trump is also under investigation in Georgia for possible election tampering in the state; a decision is expected later this summer.Mr. Trump’s Republican challengers came to his defense. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, his nearest rival in the polls, accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the Justice Department to take on a political rival. And Vivek Ramaswamy, the anti-woke financier, said he would pardon Mr. Trump if elected president.Mr. Trump gained in the polls the last time he was charged. It is unclear if the public will be so supportive this time. A Yahoo-YouGov poll showed nearly two-thirds of Americans view the charges of removing classified documents and obstructing the investigation as a serious criminal matter; a similar percentage feel that he should not serve as president if convicted.So far, big-money conservative donors have stayed mum on the latest charges. Many have deserted Mr. Trump after backing him in previous election cycles.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING The wildfire haze is moving on from the Northeast. Cities including New York and Philadelphia have seen air conditions improve, though the noxious smoke is spreading south and west; the F.A.A. has lifted ground stops at LaGuardia and Newark airports. But scientists confirmed that the El Niño weather phenomenon has started, portending hotter temperatures through next year.China suffers from a lack of inflation. New monthly data shows that producer prices fell 4.6 percent in May, the sharpest year-on-year drop in seven years, while consumer prices rose just 0.2 percent. Though a contrast from Western countries grappling with rapid inflation, the trend suggests China’s faltering economy may soon suffer from deflation.The White House reportedly braces for the death of its student loan forgiveness program. Biden administration officials are privately worrying that the Supreme Court may strike down its proposal, which would eliminate up to $20,000 in education debt per person for millions of Americans, according to The Wall Street Journal. The White House is preparing less legally risky alternatives to help borrowers.G.M. electric vehicles will gain access to Tesla’s charging network. The move, which follows a similar announcement by Ford, will vastly expand charger accessibility for G.M. But some in the industry fear that wider adoption of Tesla’s plugs, which are now likely to become the industry standard, will give Elon Musk’s company even greater power over the E.V. market.The bull market rally is already being testedInvestors shrugged off lousy labor market data and a new round of inflation warnings to push the S&P 500 into bull market territory on Thursday. But that enthusiasm seems to be waning on Friday morning as stock futures suggest markets will open lower.The bear market lasted 248 trading days, the longest such run since 1948. Since its October low, the S&P 500 has gained 20.04 percent, just enough to tip into a bull market. The benchmark index is still roughly 10 percent away from a record high; some market observers say, therefore, that it’s premature to call this a true bull market.Investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence has underpinned this rally. According to Deutsche Bank analysts, the FANG+ Index — a collection of big cap tech stocks, many of which are expanding into A.I. — is up nearly 80 percent since ChatGPT debuted in November.Now to the bad news … A growing number of economists believe that next week’s Consumer Price Index report will show an uptick in core inflation. That could pressure the Fed to raise interest rates further — if not next week, in July.And there are signs of economic weakness. The Labor Department on Thursday reported 261,000 new jobless claims, the highest number since October 2021.Expect a prolonged period of economic uncertainty. That was the message from Mario Draghi, the former Italian prime minister and president of the E.C.B., in a speech on Thursday at M.I.T.The economist, who once famously vowed to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro, has a bearish view of the future. He warned that industrialized economies face a “volatile cocktail” of persistent inflation, high budget deficits, high interest rates and low potential growth as central banks grapple with a climate crisis, the reshoring of supply chains and the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine.Crypto’s protagonists lay out their casesRegulators and crypto executives are making their cases in the court of public opinion after the S.E.C. sued Binance and Coinbase, two of the sector’s biggest exchanges, this week in an intensifying crackdown on the industry.“We’ve seen this story before,” the S.E.C. chairman Gary Gensler said on Thursday at a fintech conference, likening widespread noncompliance in crypto to the era of “hucksters” and fraud a century ago. He rejected claims that digital asset businesses cannot comply with the existing rules or do not realize that they apply: “When crypto asset market participants go on Twitter or TV and say they lacked ‘fair notice’ that their conduct could be illegal, don’t believe it.”Coinbase’s boss says that new regulations are needed. Its C.E.O., Brian Armstrong, addressed the event on Wednesday, saying the rules are opaque and need to be updated. The S.E.C. case is certainly a drag on his company: Moody’s, the ratings agency, downgraded Coinbase on Thursday to negative from stable because of the charges.Binance is regrouping. The company’s American division said on Thursday that it would no longer allow customers to trade in U.S. dollars, after banks stopped working with it. At the same time, the S.E.C. says it is trying to find “alternative means” to serve legal papers to Binance and Changpeng Zhao, the company’s C.E.O., telling a federal court that it was difficult to determine where he was.Who’s judging? The S.E.C.’s case against Coinbase in New York was assigned to District Judge Jennifer Rearden. Her nomination last year angered some Democratic lawmakers because she represented Chevron as a lawyer at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. She’s also handling the government’s appeal of the sale of the failed crypto broker Voyager to Binance’s U.S. arm and put the deal on hold in March. Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court for D.C. is presiding over the Binance case, and is best known for overseeing the criminal proceedings against two Mr. Trump advisers, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. Next week, she will hold a hearing on an S.E.C. request to freeze Binance’s assets.“I did not comprehend that ChatGPT could fabricate cases.” — Steven Schwartz, a lawyer who has practiced in New York for 30 years. He told a federal judge that he regrets using the chatbot to write a legal brief that was found to be filled with fake judicial opinions and legal citations.Buzzphrase of the week: “spatial computing” Apple unveiled its first headset for augmented/virtual/mixed reality this week, but none of those words appears in a nine-minute video on its website about the $3,500 Vision Pro goggles. Instead, the company preferred a more obscure term: “spatial computing.”Apple is trying to put its own stamp on the category. When it comes to spatial computing, “no one knows what that is — and that provides Apple the opportunity to define it,” Marcus Collins, the author of “For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do and Who We Want to Be,” told DealBook.Apple has successfully done this in the past. Before the App Store, people didn’t talk about apps; they talked about “software programs.”And the iPhone and AirPods were neither the first mobile phone nor the first earbuds, but they became runaway hits (despite being priced at a premium to the competition). Jim Posner, a communications consultant who has led teams at Twitter and Google, said that the intended audience may be investors and the media rather than consumers. “They are pitching a product to people,” he said. “For the tech press, industry analysts and investors, they’re pitching a concept.”Elsewhere, Mark Zuckerberg gave his thoughts on Apple’s Vision Pro goggles. “I was really curious to see what they’d ship,” the Meta C.E.O. told employees on Thursday, “and it’s a good sign for our own development that they don’t have any magical solutions to the laws of physics that we haven’t already explored.”THE SPEED READ DealsThe agricultural commodities giant Bunge is said to be finalizing a deal to buy Viterra, a grain trader, that could value the combined firm at $30 billion. (Reuters)UBS has secured a government backstop for losses tied to its takeover of Credit Suisse, clearing the last hurdle for combining Switzerland’s top two banks. (FT)Permira is reportedly weighing a sale or public listing for Golden Goose, a footwear brand favored by Taylor Swift, at a $2.7 billion valuation. (Bloomberg)PolicyLouisiana passed a bill that would block online services — including Instagram, TikTok and Fortnite — for children under 18 without their parents’ permission. (NYT)The Supreme Court unanimously ruled against a dog-toy maker whose product closely resembles a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey. (NYT)Best of the restSam Altman of OpenAI, Bob Iger of Disney, Jay Monahan of the PGA Tour, Rupert Murdoch of Fox and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet are all on the guest list for this year’s Allen & Company gathering in Sun Valley, Idaho. (Variety)How Taylor Swift is a godsend for Chicago’s hotel industry. (Bloomberg)“What All the Single Ladies (and Men) Say About the Economy” (NYT)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More