Author: KnowledgeHippo

France faced a hung parliament and deep political uncertainty after the three main political groups of the left, center and right emerged from early parliamentary elections on Sunday with large shares of the vote but nothing close to an outright majority.Preliminary results overturned widespread predictions of a clear victory for National Rally, Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration party that dominated the first round of voting a week ago. In contrast, the left-wing New People’s Front won 178 seats.President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition, which caused turmoil in the country a month ago by calling the election, came in second with 150 seats.…

At the University of Tennessee, the campus DEI program is now called the Department of Access and Engagement.Louisiana State University also renamed its diversity office after Jeff Landry, a Trump-backed Republican, was elected governor last fall. The Division of Inclusion, Civil Rights, and Title IX is now the Division of Participation, Civil Rights, and Title IX.And at the University of Oklahoma, the office of diversity is now the Department of Access and Opportunity.In what appears to be an effort to appease or even lie to opponents of diversity and equity programs, university officials are rebranding their DEI offices under different…

Paramount’s board on Sunday signed a merger agreement with Skydance, according to two people familiar with the negotiations, ushering in a new era for CBS, Nickelodeon and the movie studio behind the “Top Gun” and “Mission: Impossible” franchises. “.The deal is a turning point for the Redstone family, whose fortunes have been intertwined with the rise and fall of the mainstream entertainment industry during the decades of tumultuous ownership of Paramount and its predecessors. Ms. Redstone, Paramount’s chairman, is cashing out much of her ownership in the company she has struggled to maintain and control.The merger will anoint a new…

In May, CoreWeave, a provider of cloud computing services for artificial intelligence companies, raised $1.1 billion and followed that with $7.5 billion in debt, valuing it at $19 billion. Scale AI, a data provider for artificial intelligence companies, raised $1 billion, valuing it at $13.8 billion. And xAI, founded by Elon Musk, raised $6 billion, valuing it at $24 billion.Such funding rounds boosted the industry’s overall transactions by dollar amount and number of deals, said Kyle Stanford, research analyst at PitchBook.”It’s not going down anymore,” he said. “The bottom has already fallen out.”The activity prompted some venture capitalists to change…

Voters in France went to the polls in droves on Sunday in the final round of early parliamentary elections. The results could force President Emmanuel Macron to govern alongside far-right rivals or lead to chronic political instability weeks before the Paris Summer Olympics.Turnout at noon local time was the highest in two decades, at about 26.6 percent, the interior ministry said. This was much higher than in the previous parliamentary elections in 2022, when the turnout was at the same time less than 19 percent. It was also slightly higher than midday in the first round of voting last week,…

In 2009, botanist Naomi Fraga was hunting an unnamed flower near Carson City, Nev. Ms. Fraga saw the plant disappear in real time as its desert valley habitat was bulldozed to make way for Walmarts and housing. But to seek legal protection for it, he had to give it a name.The tiny yellow flower became the Carson Valley Monkeyflower, or, formally, Erythranthe carsonensis, allowing conservationists to petition the US Fish and Wildlife Service to protect it under the Endangered Species Act. If their application is approved, the flower will go from unknown to extremely important in less than a generation,…

For Caroline Li and Colin Wang, moving in together after eight months of dating was a matter of calm and urgency.Last fall, Mr. Wang, 28, was finishing his final year of medical school at the University of California, Los Angeles, when he learned that the two-bedroom apartment he shared with a roommate was infested with mold. He had to leave immediately, but found it difficult to find new housing.”It was very difficult to find something that was close enough to campus and reasonably priced, and it was also in the middle of the school year,” said Mr. Wang, who had…

The Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and provides behind-the-scenes information on how our journalism comes together.After recording about 90 episodes of “Hard Fork,” a weekly New York Times podcast about technology and business, life is pretty much the same for its hosts, Kevin Roose and Casey Newton. That is, apart from the occasional encounter with a fan, which is a new and sometimes surprising experience for them.”Just last night, I had dinner with two friends who were visiting from out of town,” Mr. Newton said. “As I was returning from the bathroom, a man stopped…

The news shocked the collector car world. In May 2022, a 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé — named after its creator, the company’s chief engineer Rudolf Uhlenhaut — sold for 135 million euros, (about $143 million). That was more than double the previous record of $70 million set by a 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO in 2018.Perhaps even more amazing is that a car built in the mid-1990s, a McLaren F1, sold in 2021 for over $20 million. Sales in the tens of millions of dollars are rare in the collector car market, but these three cars represent what high-end…

When voters in Tokyo cast their ballots for the governor of the world’s largest city on Sunday, they will be spoiled for choice.Fifty-six candidates are running for office, a record. A self-described “Joker” has proposed legalizing marijuana and says polygamy could counter the nation’s declining birth rate. Another is a professional wrestler who hides his face on camera and vows to use artificial intelligence to complete government tasks. There’s a 96-year-old inventor who says she’ll develop carbon-free gas-powered cars and a 31-year-old entrepreneur who took off her shirt during a campaign video and promised “fun stuff.”It can look like democracy…