Economy

The United States and 21 other countries pledged on Saturday at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050, saying the revival of nuclear power was critical for cutting carbon emissions to near zero in the coming decades.Proponents of nuclear energy, which supplies 18 percent of electricity in the United States, say it is a clean, safe and reliable complement to wind and solar energy. But a significant hurdle is funding.Last month, a developer of small nuclear reactors in Idaho said it was canceling a project that had been expected to be part of a new wave of power plants. The cost of building the reactors had risen to $9.3 billion from $5.3 billion because of increasing interest rates and inflation.Britain, Canada, France, Ghana, South Korea, Swed...

The Academy Award-winning actress Susan Sarandon apologized Friday for saying at a pro-Palestinian rally last month that people feeling afraid of being Jewish right now were “getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence.”The remarks drew widespread criticism and soon afterward her agency, United Talent Agency, let it be known that it had dropped her as a client.In a statement posted to Instagram Friday night, Sarandon said that she had been trying to communicate her concern for rising hate crimes. “This phrasing was a terrible mistake,” she said, “as it implies that until recently Jews have been strangers to persecution, when the opposite is true.”“As we all know, from centuries of oppression and genocide in Europe, to the Tree of Li...

A video of security officers wrestling a protester to the floor in the lobby of the Jackson Lake Lodge in Wyoming, outside the Federal Reserve’s most closely watched annual conference, clocked more than a million views.A protest that disrupted a speech by Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, at the Economic Club of New York this fall generated extensive coverage. And when the activists showed up again at Mr. Powell’s speech at the International Monetary Fund in early November, they seemed to get under his skin: The central bank’s usually staid leader was caught on a hot mic using a profanity as he told someone to close the door.All three upheavals were caused by the same group, Climate Defiance, which a now-30-year-old activist named Michael Greenberg founded in the spring. Mr. Greenberg had l...

American oil fields are gushing again.Only three years after U.S. oil production collapsed during the pandemic, energy companies are cranking out a record 13.2 million barrels a day, more than Russia or Saudi Arabia. The flow of oil has grown by roughly 800,000 barrels a day since early 2022 and analysts expect the industry to add another 500,000 barrels a day next year.The surge in output has helped push down gasoline prices, which have fallen by close to $2 a gallon since the summer of 2022 and are now back to levels that prevailed in 2021. It has also provided the Biden administration with substantial leverage in its dealings with oil-exporting foes like Russia, Venezuela and Iran while reducing its need to cajole more friendly countries like Saudi Arabia to temper prices.But the comeba...

The prediction was straightforward: A rapid rise in interest rates orchestrated by the Federal Reserve would confine consumer spending and corporate profits, sharply reducing hiring and cooling a red-hot economy.But it hasn’t worked out quite the way forecasters expected. Inflation has eased, but the biggest companies in the country have avoided the damage of higher interest rates. With earnings picking up again, companies continue to hire, giving the economy and the stock market a boost that few predicted when the Fed began raising interest rates nearly two years ago.There are two key reasons that big business has avoided the hammer of higher rates. In the same way that the average rate on existing household mortgages is still only 3.6 percent — reflecting the millions of owners who bough...

A federal judge in Montana on Thursday blocked a statewide ban of TikTok from taking effect next year, at least temporarily preventing the nation’s first such prohibition on the popular video app.The judge, Donald W. Molloy, said Montana could act as a leader in protecting its residents from harm but must “act within the constitutional legal context,” and he granted a preliminary injunction to stop the TikTok ban. He said a ban of the Chinese-owned app most likely violated the First Amendment and a clause that gives Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations.“The current record leaves little doubt that Montana’s Legislature and attorney general were more interested in targeting China’s ostensible role in TikTok than with protecting Montana consumers,” Judge Molloy wrote i...

A closely watched measure of inflation showed continued signs of fading in October, encouraging news for the Federal Reserve as officials try to gauge whether they need to take further action in order to fully stamp out rapid price increases.The Personal Consumption Expenditures inflation measure, which the Fed cites when it says it aims for 2 percent inflation on average over time, climbed by 3 percent in the year through October. That was down from 3.4 percent the previous month, and was in line with economist forecasts. Compared to the previous month, prices were flat.After stripping out volatile food and fuel prices for a clearer look at underlying price pressures, inflation climbed by 3.5 percent over the year. That was down from 3.7 percent previously.The latest evidence that price i...

What It Means: Soaring energy and food prices have been tamed.Energy prices shrank 11.5 percent from a year ago, when the cost fuels and electricity had surged by nearly 35 percent from a dearth of energy supplies amid Russia’s war in Ukraine. Food prices rose 6.9 percent, around half the rate of a year ago.Governments in France, Germany and Spain have been working to lower food and energy bills to help consumers buffeted by the cost-of-living crisis. In Belgium, prices contracted for the second straight month, raising questions about whether deflation may setting in.“This shows that signs of an imminent victory on inflation are mounting for the European Central Bank,” Bert Colijn, senior eurozone economist at ING Bank, said in a note to clients.Behind the Numbers: Big economies are seeing...

The United Automobile Workers union announced Wednesday that it was undertaking an ambitious drive to organize plants owned by more than a dozen nonunion automakers, including Tesla and several foreign companies — a goal that has long eluded it.The move comes weeks after the U.A.W. won new contracts from General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis that included wage increases of 25 percent or more over four and a half years for its 146,000 members employed there.In addition to Tesla, the targets of the drive are two other electric vehicle start-ups, Lucid and Rivian, and 10 foreign-owned automakers: Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru, Volkswagen, Mazda and Volvo.The U.S. plants owned by those companies employ nearly 150,000 workers in 13 states, the union said.If the ...

This year’s DealBook Summit will include conversations with global leaders and powerful figures from Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Each has been at the heart of the news this year and will be at the center of some of the biggest events in the months ahead.Kamala Harris was elected vice president of the United States in 2020, after serving as a senator, the attorney general of California and the district attorney of San Francisco. Ms. Harris is expected to play a vital role in the 2024 presidential race. She will be tasked with helping to win over voters worried about President Biden’s age, squeezed by inflation and disconcerted by administration policies, including strong support for Israel in its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.Tsai Ing-wen has been president of Taiwan since 2...