Author: admin@primenews

Flights across Florida continue to be disrupted Wednesday as Hurricane Idalia churns through the state. Several airports are currently closed, including Tampa, St. Pete-Clearwater and Tallahassee, according to the Federal Aviation Authority. Tampa’s airport is reopening to inbound flights at 4 pm ET and full reopen Thursday. The airport posted on X, formerly Twitter, that it “sustained minimal damage” from the storm. St. Pete-Clearwater also plans to reopen this afternoon and Sarasota’s airport reopened Wednesday morning. Flight tracking website FlightAware shows that Southwest Airlines’ schedule is the most affected, with 220 cancellations and 300 delays. United, Delta and American Airlines are also impacted, with about 700…

Ten years ago, China’s capital was often covered in dense yellow and gray smog, so thick it shrouded nearly everything from view. People locked their windows, donned face masks and cranked air purifiers on high to escape what became known as Beijing’s “air-pocalypse.” The air quality was so bad, and became so globally infamous, that Chinese leaders launched a multibillion-dollar “war against pollution.” A decade on, those efforts are paying dividends. China’s pollution levels in 2021 had fallen 42% from 2013, according to a new report released Tuesday, making it a rare success story in the region, where pollution is getting worse in some parts,…

Russia has seen the biggest drone assault on its territory since it launched its war on Ukraine, while Moscow killed two men in a near-simultaneous bombardment on Kyiv as the aerial intensity of the conflict ratcheted up. Six Russian regions including Moscow came under attack early Wednesday, while in the city of Pskov, near the Estonian border, several transport planes were reportedly damaged when drones targeted an airport. Russian officials haven’t reported any casualties, and claimed to have thwarted almost all of the strikes. They claimed Russian air defense forces also shot down a Ukrainian missile over eastern Crimea and at least…

At least 73 people have died and dozens more were injured after a fire tore through a five-story building in central Johannesburg which housed “hundreds” of informal settlements. Authorities said they have moved through the building floor by floor, searching for survivors and pulling out charred bodies and laying them on the streets. Children are believed to have been killed, according to local media. The fire has now been extinguished, rescue officials said. In addition to the dead, more than 50 other people were injured, according to Robert Mulaudzi, a spokesperson for the city’s emergency services. Videos taken moments after the…

About 300 million full-time jobs across the globe could be lost (or greatly diminished) due to the recent boom in artificial intelligence, Goldman Sachs estimates. Some traders are betting on that AI boom. And they’re starting to make decent returns, too. What’s happening: Shares of US chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) are up a jaw-dropping 234% this year. Alphabet (GOOGL) is up 53% and Microsoft (MSFT) is up about 37%. That’s no coincidence. AI stocks are soaring — the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite is up by about 33% this year. But what does it really mean to invest in an AI company? Some would say it’s…

Chinese tech firms Baidu and SenseTime launched their ChatGPT-style AI bots to the public on Thursday, marking a new milestone in the global AI race. Baidu has opened public access to its ERNIE Bot, allowing users to conduct AI-powered searches or carry out an array of tasks, from creating videos to providing summaries of complex documents. The news sent its shares 3.1% higher in New York on Wednesday and 4.7% higher in Hong Kong on Thursday. Baidu (BIDU) is among the first companies in China to get regulatory approval for the rollout, and it is the first to launch this type of service…

Police are appealing for information after an award-winning poet went missing at a rural music festival. Gboyega Odubanjo was last seen at the Shambala Festival in Northamptonshire, at about 04:00 BST on Saturday. The 27-year-old, from Bromley in south London, had been due to perform at the event in Kelmarsh on Sunday, but did not turn up for his set. Northants Police said Mr Odubanjo is 5ft 6in (168cm) tall, with short, black dreadlocks and a full-face beard. He was last seen wearing a beige bucket hat, a red and white striped gilet with black clothing underneath, black trousers and dark…

Microsoft will allow business customers in Europe to buy its video and chat app Teams separately from its Office software, it said Thursday, a month after the European Union opened an antitrust investigation into the company’s bundling of the products. The change will take effect from October 1, affecting business customers in the EU and four other European countries that use Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites. Microsoft (MSFT) will also make it easier for other companies — for example, Zoom and Slack, which is owned by Salesforce — to integrate their products with Microsoft 365, the new name for Office 365. “We believe…

Factory activity in China contracted for a fifth straight month in August, adding pressure on Beijing to roll out more stimulus measures to bolster the faltering economy. The official manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) — which surveys larger companies and state-owned enterprises — stood at 49.7 in August, up from July’s 49.3, according to data released by the government’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Thursday. A reading above 50 indicates expansion, while anything below that level shows contraction. It was the third straight month that the index had improved from the previous month, and was better than economists were expecting.…

Consumer prices in the 20 countries that use the euro rose 5.3% on average this month compared with a year ago, preliminary estimates by Europe’s statistics office showed Thursday. That was unchanged from the annual rate of inflation in July. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, eased to 5.3%, from 5.5% in July. Food, alcohol, tobacco and services were the biggest drivers of inflation in August, although those prices rose at a slower pace than the previous month. Energy prices fell 3.3% over the year to August, compared with a decline of 6.1% in July, but increased on a…