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Smoke From Canada’s Wildfires Darkens Skies Across Northern U.S.

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Smoke From Canada’s Wildfires Darkens Skies Across Northern U.S.

A smoky haze floated over a wide swathe of the northern United States on Tuesday from Canada, where hundreds of wildfires were blazing, triggering air alerts from Minnesota to Massachusetts.

In Ontario, a layer of haze blanketed parts of Ottawa and Toronto, where Canadian officials warned residents about the poor air quality, as smoke floated over portions of New York State and Vermont. All of New York City was under an air quality alert on Tuesday because of the smoke; by the afternoon, the Manhattan skyline was obscured by hazy skies.

More than 400 active wildfires were burning in Canada on Tuesday, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, exacerbating an already active wildfire season that is only expected to worsen. More than 200 of the fires were burning out of control, the agency said.

In eastern Canada, Quebec was most affected by wildfires as of early Tuesday afternoon, with more than 150 active blazes across the area, according to the fire agency. Residents in some areas were being encouraged to shut their windows and doors, local officials in Quebec said.

Videos and images showed some fires blazing for miles, sending dark smoke plumes billowing into the sky.

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At a news conference on Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was in contact with local officials across Canada about the fires.

“This is a scary time for a lot of people,” Mr. Trudeau said.

As of Monday, an estimated 26,000 people across Canada had been evacuated from their homes because of wildfires, Bill Blair, Canada’s minister of public safety, said at the news conference.

“The images that we have seen so far this season are some of the most severe ever witnessed in Canada,” Mr. Blair said.

Many Canadians who have had to evacuate in recent days had just a few hours to pack before fleeing their homes, Mr. Trudeau said.

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“When people lose their homes, they don’t just lose a roof and their possessions,” Mr. Trudeau said. “They lose a special place where they saw their children grow up, where they built a life for themselves. This is incredibly difficult and heartbreaking.”

Bands of smoke from the wildfires shifted southward across the border on Tuesday, creating hazy skies and prompting the U.S. National Weather Service to issue air quality alerts for parts of the upper Great Lakes and the Northeast.

Large swaths of Minnesota were under an air quality alert through the evening on Tuesday, the Weather Service said, as light winds pushed smoke from wildfires in Quebec across Minnesota. Smoke also moved into the state from Lake Superior.

Weather officials warned that people more sensitive to poor air quality, such as people with lung disease and heart disease, children and older adults, should limit certain activities outdoors.

Air quality alerts were also in place in New York City and in multiple counties in upstate New York through midnight. Mayor Eric Adams of New York said on Twitter that New Yorkers with heart or breathing issues should limit their time outside to “to the absolute necessities.” Similar alerts were issued for parts of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont.

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Toronto and New York City briefly ranked among the top 10 major cities with the poorest air quality on Tuesday, according to IQAir, a technology company that tracks air quality and pollution around the world. Historically, Toronto and New York City do not rank in the top 3,000 cities with the worst air quality, according to IQAir.

Poor air quality was expected to continue into Wednesday for much of upstate New York and the New York City region, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Satellite images of North America on Tuesday showed light brown smoke streaming south from the fires. The smoke appeared to be particularly thick over portions of Quebec, Ontario and New York. Hazy conditions could also reach as far south as the Carolinas.

In addition to the poor air quality, smoke from the wildfires could a create vivid, reddish sunset, similar to what New Yorkers saw last month when smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted south.

John Cristantello, a meteorologist with the Weather Service in New York, said that such sunsets and poor air quality could persist this summer if wildfires continue to burn in Canada.

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Mr. Blair, the public safety minister, said that hundreds of soldiers had been deployed across Canada to help with firefighting efforts. Other government agencies were on standby if wildfires damaged critical infrastructure, Mr. Blair said.

Mr. Trudeau said on Monday that forecasts indicated that “this may be an especially severe wildfire season throughout the summer.”

To date, there had already been more than 2,200 wildfires in Canada this year, according to the country’s fire agency.

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Microsoft hires DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman to run new consumer AI unit

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Microsoft hires DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman to run new consumer AI unit

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Microsoft has hired Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of Google’s DeepMind and chief executive of artificial intelligence start-up Inflection, to run a new consumer AI unit.

Suleyman, a British entrepreneur who co-founded DeepMind in London in 2010, will report to Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella, the company announced on Tuesday. He will launch a division of Microsoft that brings consumer-facing products including Microsoft’s Copilot, Bing, Edge and GenAI under one team called Microsoft AI.

It is the latest move by Microsoft to capitalise on the boom in generative AI. It has invested $13bn in OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and rapidly integrated its technology into Microsoft products.

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Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI has given it an early lead in Silicon Valley’s race to deploy AI, leaving its biggest rival, Google, struggling to catch up. It also has invested in other AI start-ups, including French developer Mistral.

It has been rolling out an AI assistant in its products such as Windows, Office software and cyber security tools. Suleyman’s unit will work on projects including integrating an AI version of Copilot into its Windows operating system and enhancing the use of generative AI in its Bing search engine.

Nadella said in a statement on Tuesday: “I’ve known Mustafa for several years and have greatly admired him as a founder of both DeepMind and Inflection, and as a visionary, product maker and builder of pioneering teams that go after bold missions.”

DeepMind was acquired by Google in 2014 for $500mn, one of the first large bets by a big tech company on a start-up AI lab. The company faced controversy a few years later over some of its projects, including its work for the UK healthcare sector, which was found by a government watchdog to have been granted inappropriate access to patient records.

Suleyman, who was the main public face for the company, was placed on leave in 2019. DeepMind workers had complained that he had an overly aggressive management style. Addressing staff complaints at the time, Suleyman said: “I really screwed up. I was very demanding and pretty relentless.”

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He moved to Google months later, where he led AI product management. In 2022 he joined Silicon Valley venture capital firm Greylock and launched Inflection later that year.

Microsoft will also hire most of Inflection’s staff, including Karén Simonyan, co-founder and chief scientist of Inflection, who will be chief scientist of the AI group. Microsoft did not clarify the number of employees moving over but said it included AI engineers, researchers and large language model builders who have designed and co-authored “many of the most important contributions in advancing AI over the last five years”.

Inflection, a rival to OpenAI, will switch its focus from its consumer chatbot, Pi, and instead move to sell enterprise AI software to businesses, according to a statement on its website. Sean White, who has held various technology roles, has joined as its new chief executive.

Inflection’s third co-founder, Reid Hoffman, the founder and executive chair of LinkedIn, will remain on Inflection’s board. Inflection had raised $1.3bn in June, valuing the group at about $4bn, in one of the largest fundraisings by an AI start-up amid an explosion of interest in the sector.

The new unit marks a big organisational shift at Microsoft. Mikhail Parakhin, its president of web services, will move along with his entire team to report to Suleyman.

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“We have a real shot to build technology that was once thought impossible and that lives up to our mission to ensure the benefits of AI reach every person and organisation on the planet, safely and responsibly,” Nadella said.

Competition regulators in the US and Europe have been scrutinising the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI amid a broader inquiry into AI investments.

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Threats, debt and Trump's advances: 'Stormy' doc examines the life of Stormy Daniels

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Threats, debt and Trump's advances: 'Stormy' doc examines the life of Stormy Daniels

Stormy Daniels from the Peacock documentary Stormy.

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Stormy Daniels from the Peacock documentary Stormy.

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The new documentary Stormy begins in 2023 — around the time former President Donald Trump was indicted over hush-money payments made during his 2016 presidential campaign.

Stormy Daniels, who was paid by Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen to keep quiet about their alleged previous affair, watches the news unfold on TV and then says, “Let’s go,” before she walks off screen.

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Stormy chronicles Daniels’ life from her childhood in Baton Rouge, La., to her rise as an adult film actor and then, in the opinion of some, a feminist hero. It also gives viewers a glimpse into how she went from friend to foe of a celebrity businessman who became president of the United States.

“I am here today to tell my story and even if I just change a few people’s minds, it’s fine. If not, at least my daughter can look back on this and know the truth,” she said in the film.

Trump’s criminal trial over the hush-money payments has been delayed until mid-April. He faces 34 felony counts, alleging he falsified New York business records to conceal damaging information before the 2016 presidential election. Trump denies the allegations that he had an affair with Daniels and has pleaded not guilty to all counts.

On Monday, a judge rejected Trump’s bid to block Cohen and Daniels — whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford — from testifying. The trial date will be set at a hearing on March 25.

The film, released Monday on Peacock, mainly captures Daniels’ life between 2018 and 2023. Here are the main takeaways from the documentary:

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1. Daniels explains why she didn’t say no to Trump’s advances back in 2006

Daniels alleged that she was abused by a neighbor in Louisiana when she was 9 years old. She did not go into further detail except to say that the man, whom she did not name, had abused other young girls and has since died.

Later in the film, as Daniels explained why she did not refuse Trump’s advances when the two met in 2006, she said, “I didn’t say no because I just, I was 9 years old again.” At the time, Daniels was in her 20s and Trump was 60.

Though she described the alleged affair as consensual, Daniels said she did not want to have sex with Trump.

“To this day, I blame myself and I have not forgiven myself because I didn’t shut his a** down in that moment, so maybe make him pause before he tried it with someone else,” she said. “The hardest part about all of this is I feel like I am partially responsible for every woman that could have come after me.”

2. Threats against Daniels have become more disturbing

Throughout the film, Daniels is forced to navigate insults and threats hurled at her and her family.

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But she described herself as having thick skin. In one scene from 2018, Daniels joked that she was disappointed she could not find any hate comments on Twitter after she had received a key to West Hollywood from the city’s mayor.

Fast forward to this past year, after Trump’s indictment, Daniels said the hate comments had become more intense and disturbing.

“Back in 2018, there was stuff like ‘liar, s***, gold digger,’ ” she said. “This time around, it is very different. It is direct threats. It is ‘I’m going to come to your house and slit your throat.’ “

Daniels added that she did not feel protected by the justice system, and accused it of ignoring her concerns about her safety.

3. Daniels says her ‘soul is so tired’ but she is willing to testify against Trump

Amid the six-year conflict with Trump, Daniels’ marriage ended, her relationship with her daughter became strained, and she felt her safety was constantly jeopardized.

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But with Trump about to go on trial, Daniels said she’s willing to testify in court against the former president.

“I’m more prepared with my legal knowledge but I’m also tired. Like, my soul is so tired,” she said. “I won’t give up because I’m telling the truth. And I kind of don’t even know if it matters anymore.”

4. Daniels owes Trump over $600,000 in attorney fees

Near the end of the documentary, it’s clear that Daniels also suffered financially as a result of her years-long legal battle against Trump.

In 2018, Daniels sued Trump for defamation. The suit was based on a tweet Trump wrote that year, which suggested Daniels had lied about being threatened in 2011 to not speak out about her alleged previous affair with Trump.

A federal judge later dismissed the suit and ordered Daniels to pay the then-president’s legal fees.

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Daniels appealed but lost. She now owes Trump over $600,000 in attorney fees. The film asserts that Daniels is afraid she may lose her home.

5. Seth Rogen and Jimmy Kimmel speak on Daniels’ behalf

Among the people who appeared in the documentary were actor Seth Rogen and late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel.

Rogen, who worked with Daniels on the 2007 film Knocked Up, recalled talking with her about Trump. At the time, Daniels said she was communicating with Trump about possibly being on his former reality TV show Celebrity Apprentice.

“She didn’t realize she would one day be at the center of this giant thing as she was messing around with some game show host,” Rogen said. “She’s someone who made an enemy of the most powerful guy on the planet and didn’t, like, cower.”

Kimmel invited Daniels to his show in 2018, when Daniels’ nondisclosure agreement about her previous affair with Trump was still in effect.

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Kimmel described Daniels as having a good sense of humor but also afraid of violating her NDA. He nodded to this during their interview, in which he brought out puppets to reenact her interactions with Trump.

“She told the truth and she paid a price for that,” Kimmel said in the film. “It’s not something that just goes away.”

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Calpers to invest more than $30bn in private markets

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Calpers to invest more than $30bn in private markets

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Calpers, the US’s biggest public pension plan, is to increase its holdings in private markets by more than $30bn and reduce its allocation to stock markets and bonds in an effort to improve returns.

A proposal to increase the $483bn fund’s positions in assets such as private equity and private credit from 33 per cent of the plan to 40 per cent was approved on Monday, according to an announcement by the fund and notes from its board meeting. 

The formal approval comes two years after Calpers admitted that a decision to put its private equity programme on hold for 10 years had cost it up to $18bn in returns.

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However, a review of its investment policy found that, despite the gains it had already missed, private equity was still the asset class with the highest expected long-term total return.

“Strong and ongoing growth in private equity returns is behind this measured and appropriate increase,” said Calpers trustee David Miller, chair of the investment committee. 

“Market conditions are evolving and the investment team needs latitude to deploy capital intelligently to keep the fund on track for sustainable returns.”

According to analysis published by Calpers alongside its board notes, private equity was the top-performing asset class in the decade to June 30 2023, with annualised returns of 11.8 per cent. That compares with 8.9 per cent from public equities and 2.4 per cent from fixed income. The documents did not disclose if the figures took account of fees.

The portfolio shake-up, which was confirmed after a scheduled asset allocation review, will bring the California-based plan into line with other big retirement systems in the US, including Calstrs, which has just over 40 per cent of its portfolio in private markets.

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As part of the move, Calpers will increase its bet on private equity from 13 per cent to 17 per cent of its portfolio, although this could potentially rise as high as 22 per cent.

At the same time, it is pulling back from investing in stock markets, with its allocation to equities set to fall from 42 per cent to 37 per cent of its portfolio. It will also trim its allocation to fixed income from 30 per cent to 28 per cent.

In 2021, Calpers’ board approved an expansion into private assets including private equity, real assets and private debt, from 21 per cent to 33 per cent of the portfolio, and also gave itself the ability to borrow money to invest in assets that would help diversify its holdings.

Last year the Financial Times reported that Calpers was planning a multibillion-dollar move into international venture capital, as the fund moved towards investing in riskier assets to drive returns.

The fund also reported a return of 10.3 per cent last year. It is yet to announce a replacement for chief investment officer Nicole Musicco, who resigned last year after 18 months in the role.

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