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Han Jong-Hee, a senior Samsung Electronics executive credited with elevating the company’s television business, died Tuesday, the company said. He was 63. Han, a co-chief executive who oversaw the company’s consumer electronics and mobile devices businesses, died at a hospital after being treated for a heart attack, Samsung said. Han joined Samsung in 1988 and spent most of his career in TV-related divisions, during which the company became the world’s leading TV manufacturer. He was appointed co-vice chairman and CEO in 2022. Samsung, one of the world’s largest technology companies, has dual strengths in components and finished consumer products. The company had separ…

Foldable phones have spent years trying to justify themselves. Some were too fragile, others too bulky, and most felt like solutions in search of a problem. The Galaxy Z TriFold is Samsung’s clearest attempt yet to answer a more reasonable question: Can one device replace the phone-tablet combo without becoming a chore to carry? Coming to the United States later this month, the TriFold folds twice, opens into a 10-inch screen, and closes back into a pocketable form. It’s an assertive design, but not a novelty play. Samsung seems very aware that this kind of device only makes sense for a specific kind of user. The double fold is the trick, but the software does…

Samsung Electronics on Thursday reported a 32.5% increase in operating profit for the third quarter, driven by rebounding demand for its computer memory chips, which the company expects will continue to grow on the back of artificial intelligence. The South Korean technology giant set a new high in quarterly revenue, which rose nearly 9% to 86 trillion won ($60.4 billion) for the July-September period, fueled by increased sales of semiconductor products and mobile phones. Samsung, which has dual strength in both components and finished products, said it expects the demand driven by AI to further expand market opportunities in coming months. SK Hynix, another major South…

When samurai warriors went into battle in 16th century Japan, their swords included a piece of hidden art. Within the tsuba, the hand guard at the bottom of the blade, metal smiths carefully crafted beautiful and complex designs, including flowers, animals, and landscapes. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has one of the largest collections of Japanese art in the United States in its permanent collection, including hundreds of tsubas. It has just collaborated with the fine jewelry designer Monica Rich Kosann to create a collection of necklaces inspired by three tsuba designs—a crane, a turtle, and a butterfly—to introduce these ancient works of art back into the m…

Immigration Judge Ana Partida sat before a mostly empty courtroom on an afternoon in October, her body angled toward a television on one of the side walls. None of the people scheduled to appear before Partida, who hears cases inside San Diego’s Otay Mesa Detention Center, were present in person. That’s because Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had transferred all of them to other locations around the country, even though their cases were already underway in San Diego. One by one, an ICE attorney asked Partida to move the detainees’ cases to courts closer to their new locations. All of the people who were transferred had attorneys in San Diego, including …

San Francisco Bay Area residents woke up to some bad news for their Friday commute. Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, the region’s main commuter rail system, which connects San Francisco’s peninsula with the East and South Bay, systematically shut down due to a “computer networking problem” affecting train control. The agency announced it was closing all 50 stations at 4:24 a.m. on Friday morning, the East Bay Times reported. As of this writing on Friday morning, BART said that train service had resumed, although passengers should expect “major delays.” “Technicians are on site trying to get to the bottom of the situation, but right now, that is the infor…

The city of San Francisco filed a lawsuit against some of the nation’s top food manufacturers on Tuesday, arguing that ultraprocessed food from the likes of Coca-Cola and Nestle are responsible for a public health crisis. City Attorney David Chiu named 10 companies in the lawsuit, including the makers of such popular foods as Oreo cookies, Sour Patch Kids, Kit Kat, Cheerios and Lunchables. The lawsuit argues that ultraprocessed foods are linked to diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and cancer. “They took food and made it unrecognizable and harmful to the human body,” Chiu said in a news release. “These companies engineered a public health crisis, they…

When a major power outage left tens of thousands of San Francisco residents in the dark weekend, the city’s fleet of high tech self-driving vehicles went offline too. Videos circulating on social media showed Waymo robotaxis clogging up intersections, addled by the sudden absence of guidance from traffic lights. In one video posted to TikTok, a Waymo robotaxi sporting its telltale rooftop cluster of sensors blocks a busy intersection as human drivers stream around it on both sides. “This car did not move for 10+ min – it only left when the passengers ditched the car,” the TikTok user who caught the footage wrote in the caption. In another widely circulated video,…

Power was restored Sunday to the bulk of the 130,000 homes and businesses in San Francisco impacted by a massive outage a day earlier that caused major disruptions in the city. About 17,000 customers remained without power as of noon Sunday, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said. PG&E said earlier its crews were working to restore electricity in several neighborhoods and small areas of downtown San Francisco following Saturday’s outage. PG&E in a statement said it expects to restore power to remaining customers no later than 2 p.m. Monday. “The damage from the fire in our substation was significant and extensive, and the repairs and safe restoration will be complex…

Bernie Sanders says in a new ChatGPT-assisted report released Monday that AI and automation could eliminate nearly 100 million jobs over the next decade. Titled “Big Tech Oligarchs’ War Against Workers: AI and Automation Could Destroy Nearly 100 Million U.S Jobs in a Decade,” the report estimates that AI will automate away the jobs of 89% of fast food and counter workers, 64% of accountants, and 47% of truck drivers. “The artificial intelligence and robotics being developed by . . . today will allow corporate America to wipe out tens of millions of decent-paying jobs, cut labor costs and boost profits,” Sanders, an Independent from Vermont and ranking member of …

Multiple earthquakes are rattling Santorini, a volcanic island in Greece, prompting authorities to dispatch rescuers with tents, a sniffer dog and drones, and to shut schools on four islands. Residents have been warned to avoid indoor gatherings, check escape routes, stay away from cliffs and to drain swimming pools to reduce potential structural damage to buildings in the event of a large earthquake. Greece lies in a highly seismically active part of the world, and earthquakes are frequent. The vast majority cause no injuries and little or no damage, but the country has also seen deadly quakes. Earthquakes can’t be predicted, but authorities are taking measures a…

3:52 a.m.: Wake up. 3:54 a.m.: Pour out a cup of Saratoga Water. 4:04 a.m.: Work out next to a bottle of Saratoga Water. 5:49 a.m.: Dunk face in ice-cold bowl of Saratoga Water. These are just a few of the steps of fitness influencer Ashton Hall’s extremely specific morning routine, which grabbed the internet’s attention over the weekend for its oddly regimented timing and near-comical flaunting of wealth. One particular video of Hall’s schedule has amassed 98.4 million views on TikTok and 674.5 million views on X, spawning countless reactions and copycats, as well as shout-outs from Mr. Beast and Sweetgreen. And there’s one brand that’s clearly the …

The ceasefire agreed between Israel and Hamas makes provisions for the passage of food and humanitarian aid into Gaza. This support is much needed given that Gaza’s agricultural system has been severely damaged over the course of the war. Over the past 17 months we have analysed satellite images across the Gaza Strip to quantify the scale of agricultural destruction across the region. Our newly published research reveals not only the widespread extent of this destruction but also the potentially unprecedented pace at which it occurred. Our work covers the period until September 2024 but further data through to January 2025 is also available. Before the war, tomato…

A new insult for artificial intelligence just dropped thanks to Microsoft’s CEO. If you use Microsoft products, it’s near impossible to avoid AI now. The company is pushing AI agents deep into Windows, with every app, service, and product Microsoft has on the market now including some kind of AI integration, without the option to opt out. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently shared a blog post to LinkedIn titled “Looking Ahead to 2026” offering an insight into the company’s focus for the new year. Spoiler alert: it’s AI. Nadella wrote that he wants users to stop thinking of AI as “slop” and start thinking of it as “bicycles for the mind.” Many took the post…

While traveling to Riyadh for the Fortune Global Forum, FII9, and the Global Health Exhibition, I witnessed something that should be a wake-up call for health systems everywhere. Saudi Arabia is already operating the kind of connected, AI-enabled healthcare infrastructure many countries are still debating how to build. At FII9, the conversation was unmistakable. Global innovation momentum is shifting toward the Middle East, and nowhere more than Saudi Arabia, where national digital platforms like Sehhaty already give millions of residents unified access to their health data. At the Global Health Exhibition, I saw population-level analytics, AI-powered diagnostics, multiom…

Every comedian on the path to stardom will inevitably have to do shows they aren’t proud of. It’s sort of a rite of passage: the dreaded corporate gig or—shudder—the mortifying improv class at a company off-site. Typically, though, those embarrassing shows tend not to be paid for and hosted by countries accused of staggering human rights violations, nor do the performers tend to already be superstars. Perhaps the fact that so many well-known and well-compensated comics signed on to Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh Comedy Festival can be read as both an indictment of the era of multimillion-dollar stand-up specials and its logical conclusion. Spread across two weeks,…

Saudi oil giant Aramco reported Tuesday a $26.9 billion profit in the third quarter, down slightly from last year as global energy prices remain depressed over concerns of too much oil being on the market. Aramco’s results serve as a bellwether for the wider oil industry, which is still digesting the OPEC+ decision this weekend to halt planned production increases in the first quarter of next year over supply worries. Benchmark Brent crude, at just under $65 a barrel, has been fluttering near a four-year low. In filing on Riyadh’s Tadawul stock exchange, Aramco, formally known as the Saudi Arabian Oil Co., reported overall revenue of $111 billion in the third quarter, c…

In early 2024, Ben Collins was contemplating the future of the media business—and his place in it. He was in the process of resigning after spending six years as a senior reporter at NBC News, exhausted by the disinformation beat that took him to some of the darkest and most disturbing corners of the internet. It hadn’t helped that in December 2022 NBC News had suspended Collins from the Elon Musk beat following his highly critical coverage of the gazillionaire’s acquisition of Twitter. The media landscape looked bleak. Layoffs were decimating storied media titles like Sports Illustrated, and Collins was hearing rumors that G/O Media, the holding company owned by priv…

There’s never a dull day in the world of weight-loss medication. This week brought new restrictions on compounded GLP-1 medication, the cheaper, copycat versions of brand-name drugs that telehealth companies like Hims & Hers and Noom had been offering. Other developments include news that GLP-1 pills are on the way, and that a bankruptcy filing by weight-loss giant WeightWatchers is imminent. Let’s dive in. The end of copycat weight-loss drugs When the Food and Drug Administration declared that GLP-1 drugs were in short supply in 2022, it opened the door for compounding pharmacies to legally fill the gap and make copies of brand-name medications by altering som…

Financial technology is now entering its third act, marked by a significant shift in how platforms and businesses interact with financial services. The first wave brought democratization, with businesses gaining access to online credit and lending tools aimed at leveling the playing field. The second wave moved these products inside platforms, embedding payments and finance into everyday software workflows. Despite their impact, these steps left business owners managing multiple fragmented systems. Today, platforms are in a race to embed financial services; as of 2021, 73% planned to integrate lending features into their software within two years. The opportunity is h…

Leaders typically spend January prepping for the year ahead. But that’s difficult when you’re eight months pregnant, and your baby has zero concern for your deadlines. I’ve lost count of how many times people have asked how long I’ll be away, whether I’ll be checking my emails, or what support I’ll need when I return. People often expect leaders to have all the answers, but the truth is: I don’t know yet. Lucky for me, that uncertainty worked to my advantage. It forced me to change my approach from setting goals to building flexibility. This has resulted in a team that is autonomous and adaptable, whether I’m in the room or away on leave. You don’t have to hav…

As the largest art and design school in the United States—with nearly 17,000 students enrolled at its Savannah and Atlanta campuses—the Savannah College of Art and Design prides itself on offering a course of study for almost every type of creative person. Along with degree programs in animation, film and television, game development, graphic design, and illustration, SCAD tempts students with courses in beauty and fragrance, sneaker design, luxury and brand management, and equestrian studies. There’s a new degree program this school year, in Applied AI, that is attracting a different sort of attention. As I learned directly from faculty, students, and industry veter…

Despite a weekslong multinational crackdown, scam centers along the Thai-Myanmar border are still operating with up to 100,000 people working there, the top police general leading Thailand’s operations against the fraud compounds told Reuters. Thailand is fronting a regional effort to dismantle scam centers along its borders, which are part of a Southeast Asian network of illegal facilities that generate billions of dollars every year, often using people trafficked there by criminal gangs, according to the United Nations. Based on early assessments of some of the 5,000 people pulled out of sprawling scam hubs in Myanmar’s Myawaddy area, hundreds went there volunta…

The job market is rough right now. Mass layoffs have people desperately clinging to their current positions. The Great Flattening has more and more workers competing for a dwindling number of roles as entry-level roles dry up and AI potentially rendering entire career paths obsolete. Long-term unemployment is at a post-pandemic high, with more than one in four workers without jobs unemployed for at least half a year. Which makes it a nerve-wracking time to be moving through any sort of career upheaval. If you do find yourself unmoored in the current market, whether or not by choice, it could be a good time to recalibrate and get clear on your next steps. Th…