Author: NY TIMES

A rust-colored dome looms over the muddy farmland of Hinkley Point, a headland overlooking the Bristol Channel in southwest England.When a giant yellow crane hoisted the 150-foot-wide concrete-and-steel saucer into place this winter, it signified a milestone for what will be the first commercial nuclear power station built in Britain since the mid-1990s and a flagship in an effort to revive the industry.Yet the capping of the first of twin cylindrical buildings for reactors was also a reminder of the prodigious, lengthy and increasingly costly effort to build what is known as Hinkley Point C.Work has been underway on the…

In November, a year after ChatGPT’s release, a relatively unknown Chinese start-up leaped to the top of a leaderboard that judged the abilities of open-source artificial intelligence systems.The Chinese firm, 01.AI, was only eight months old but had deep-pocketed backers and a $1 billion valuation and was founded by a well-known investor and technologist, Kai-Fu Lee. In interviews, Mr. Lee presented his A.I. system as an alternative to options like Meta’s generative A.I. model, called LLaMA.There was just one twist: Some of the technology in 01.AI’s system came from LLaMA. Mr. Lee’s start-up then built on Meta’s technology, training its…

People have told stories of strange underwater sounds for thousands of years, but it took until the mid-20th century for scientists to pinpoint one of the causes: whales, singing and whistling and squeaking in the blue.The means by which some whales make these sounds has remained a mystery. A study published Wednesday in the journal Nature puts forth a new explanation, discovered thanks to a contraption that forced air through the voice boxes of three dead whales.The voice box, or larynx, is an ancient organ. “It evolved when fish crawled out of the sea and animals needed a way to…

88rising’s Moonrise GalaOn Saturday evening in Los Angeles, the Lunar New Year celebrations continued as Hollywood’s Milk Studios was transformed for the inaugural Moonrise Gala by 88rising, the pan-Asian music collective and record label.Like 88rising, which helps Asian artists find mainstream success in the West, the event was focused on highlighting pioneering Asian performers, past and present.The night’s honorees spanned contemporary artists like the musicians Anderson .Paak, Jackson Wang and NIKI; the “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” director Destin Daniel Cretton; and influential figures like the ’90s dance-pop singer Jocelyn Enriquez and the Bay Area turntablist group…

The United States on Wednesday defended Israel’s decades-long occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, arguing at the U.N.’s highest court that Israel faced “very real security needs.”The defense came a day after the United States issued its third veto against a call for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza at the United Nations Security Council, a vote that drew an angry response from nations and aid groups that have urged a stop to the fighting to help Gaza’s civilians.The latest show of American support for Israel was at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where Richard C.…

The British government confirmed on Wednesday that the test launch of an unarmed Trident missile from a Royal Navy submarine last month had failed, raising questions about the state of Britain’s nuclear deterrence capability.It was the second straight malfunction of such a launch, coming nearly eight years after another Trident flew off course at sea, an incident that at the time drew criticism about the government’s failure to disclose it.This time, too, the failed launch was first reported not by the defense ministry but by a London tabloid, The Sun, which said the missile’s boosters failed and it landed in…

“Everything Robert won at Bayern Munich, the goals he scored, was all to achieve his goal now: to play for Barcelona.”Robert Lewandowski’s career has been filled with goals, but two years ago he achieved his ultimate ambition. The quote above comes from a source close to the 35-year-old forward – who, like everyone cited in this article, prefers to speak anonymously to protect relationships.Joining Barcelona is Lewandowski’s long-term goal. But since joining in July 2022 for €45 million (£38.5 million; $48.7 million at current exchange rates), everything has not been as rosy as he expected. This season has not been…

Mrs. Prada here looks youthful and vibrant, but her photo seems utterly unconcerned with primping or dissembling age. Her long, reddish-gold hair is tucked simply behind her ear, some stray flyaways visible. She seems to be wearing almost no makeup at all, allowing us to see the normally unseeable: the natural texture of her skin, its freckles, a mole, the lines around her mouth and eyes. In any other context, those details would be unexceptional, everyday sights. On a Vogue cover, they read as fresh and arresting, tiny hand grenades tossed into the status quo.Even more startlingly, unlike over 95…

A Tennessee-based company employed at least two dozen children as young as 13 to work overnight shifts cleaning dangerous equipment in slaughterhouses, including a 14-year-old whose arm was mangled in a piece of machinery, the Labor Department said on Wednesday.The department filed a request on Wednesday for a temporary restraining order and injunction in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa against the company, Fayette Janitorial Service LLC. It provides cleaning services at slaughterhouses in several states, including Iowa and Virginia, where the department said an investigation had found that the company had hired children to clean plants.The…

Nvidia, the kingpin of chips powering artificial intelligence, on Wednesday released quarterly financial results that reinforced how the company has become one of the biggest winners of the artificial intelligence boom, and it said demand for its products would fuel continued sales growth.The Silicon Valley chip maker has been on an extraordinary rise over the past 18 months, driven by demand for its specialized and costly semiconductors, which are used for training popular A.I. services like OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot. Nvidia has become known as one of the “Magnificent Seven” tech stocks, which along with others like Amazon, Apple and Microsoft…