Latest news with #CulverCity
South China Morning Post
3 hours ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
TikTok ‘continues to work with' VP Vance on deal as its US fate hangs in the balance
TikTok, the popular short video app owned by China's ByteDance, thanked US President Donald Trump, while stating it was still working with Vice-President J.D. Vance who was tasked with brokering a deal under a sell-or-ban law. While TikTok's fate remains in limbo after Trump offered another 90-day postponement on the deadline for a deal, it will not be business as usual and a US sale could result in a bifurcated platform given the deal's complexity due to China's export rules, according to analysts. TikTok said on Thursday that it was 'grateful' for Trump's deadline extension, now set at September 17, which would allow it to keep serving its 170 million American users. It also said that it 'continues to work with Vice-President Vance's Office', which has been tasked with overseeing the deal process. There has been no update from Vance since March, when he said his team was 'trying to close this thing by early April'. However, negotiations collapsed amid escalating US-China trade tensions. On April 5, Trump extended the deadline to June 19. He first delayed it on January 20 when he took office. A view of the offices of TikTok in Culver City, California, April 2, 2025. Photo: Reuters Despite the negotiations for a trade truce, TikTok has not been named in the discussions. Beijing has remained silent on the matter, other than China's foreign affairs ministry issuing repeated statements saying that the TikTok case would be handled 'according to China's laws and regulations'.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
After my marriage fell apart, darkness got to me. Then I was catfished
'You don't revere me anymore.' The words rolled off my tongue at my husband, who had been acting strangely for a few days. 'Revere?' he said with such distaste that it stunned me. Then I did what any wife married for 23 years might do: I read his emails. I wanted the truth. 'All she does is spend money!' screamed up at me from the computer screen. I wasn't in love with my husband anymore. I did still love him and had planned to sacrifice my happiness to make sure he was taken care of until the end. Read more: L.A. Affairs: He looked hot in his tight jeans, boots and cowboy hat. Would he ask me to dance? Then he betrayed me and let me off the hook. He didn't cheat. He talked behind my back in ways that I felt dishonored me. Imagine reading your husband's emails (I'm not perfect) and finding long conversations between him and his daughter about you. This from the man you've been with for 25 years! I suppose I knew this day would come. Money was always the bane of our relationship. My husband would not have initiated divorce because it would have cost him too much. Did I spend? Yes, I suppose, but only to improve our home in Culver City, give us a luscious yard and a new paved driveway. And that's not to mention all the trips we took to fascinating places. I had done a lot for him. Surprised him with a bar mitzvah in Jerusalem, brought his "mathematical art" to life through art shows and social media and planned our busy social schedule. I moved to the Pico-Robertson area to be close to my niece and her three kids. Darkness consumed me, but my face was masked with perpetual smiles. How do you begin again at 71? Friends tried to guide me to dating sites, but I wasn't ready. I took refuge in my apartment with my dog, Murray, who kept me alive through the COVID-19 pandemic, depression and divorce. My life consisted of walking the dog, writing children's books and binge-watching Netflix nightly. Read more: L.A. Affairs: For years, I juggled co-parenting, dating and taking care of a family cat I didn't like Once the divorce was over, loneliness won out. I moved to a new city an hour outside of L.A. Male attention came from a 31-year-old gardener who brought me flowers every Tuesday. 'I'm old enough to be your grandmother,' I said. I was feeling the need for male energy, but not with this young man. So I turned to online dating. I scrolled down the list of all my likes on a dating site. One man caught my eye. He was Jewish, intelligent and had a dog named Erik. I sent him a like back. 'Can you give me your number so we can text?' he asked. What could it hurt? The next two weeks were a whirlwind. We were in a textationship. I felt so high I stopped eating. I lost six pounds in three days. Jay enchanted me with all the romantic things that he was going to do for me. He sent me love songs. I wasn't just beautiful; I was extremely beautiful and I shouldn't worry about being overweight, he told me. He wanted a soulmate and convinced me that we were meant to be. Blown away by our connection, we both realized bashert (or fate) had won out. Read more: L.A. Affairs: I grew up on Disney princesses and fairy tales. Was I ready for my own happily ever after? I was the happiest I had been in many years. Finally something was going to come easy for me. But I wasn't naive. Red flags started to pop up. Jay and I had barely spoken on the phone when he told me that he had to be in Washington, D.C. for three weeks to work on a military base. He wouldn't be able to video chat, and if he did, he could get fired. On a Friday morning, two weeks into our relationship, I texted, 'I'm sorry, but I can't invest anymore into this relationship until I see you.' He asked if I could Skype. (Oh, remember Skype?) Red flag. Why not FaceTime? I waited all day Saturday for him to call. Nothing. On Sunday morning, I blocked him on my phone. Murray and I headed to the ocean. On Monday, unable to text me, he emailed. Hope reared its head again. "How can you give up all we shared together?" he asked. 'I so want you to be true, Jay, but I still need to see your face," I replied. At 7 a.m. Monday, he called. In bed with no makeup on, we met on Google Meet. I loved the face on his profile, but I didn't think this face was the same one I saw on-screen. I asked him why he said he was a New York native on his profile when I knew he grew up in Sweden. He shrugged it off as a small embellishment. I fake smiled and asked him to say something to me in Swedish. He mumbled something that meant 'bright day." My intuition was on fire. The guy had to be a liar. Read more: L.A. Affairs: Oh, how my body wanted my pickleball partner! Then he opened his big mouth Was he grooming me to ask for money? Was he trying to feel important? Did he want to inflict harm? Later that day, he sent me an email. 'I told you I couldn't talk on video and that I'd be home soon enough, and we could be together. Now, they've found out that I made a video call and I could get fired. I'm not sure this was worth it. I'm angry you didn't believe me.' (He allegedly did secret work as an engineer for the Department of Defense.) I texted back: 'Goodbye, Jay.' 'Wow, goodbye,' he answered. I could've gone back into depression, but I was already out. I felt empowered. Catfished or not, I have to thank Jay — or whatever his name really is. He put the pep back in my step even if he didn't mean a word of it. Through the ping-pong of our conversations, my darkness ceased to be. I realized that I was capable of feeling again. Whatever it was that we meant to each other, Mr. Catfish managed to give me the very thing I was missing: Hope. The author is an actor, writer and producer living in Southern California with her dog Murray. L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@ You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here. Sign up for The Wild newsletter to get weekly insider tips on the best of our beaches, trails, parks, deserts, forests and mountains. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
South China Morning Post
a day ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
US President Trump delays US' TikTok ban again: ‘deadline purgatory'
US President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to keep TikTok running in the US for another 90 days to give his administration more time to broker a deal to bring the social media platform under American ownership. Advertisement It is the third time Trump has extended the deadline. The first one was through an executive order on January 20, his first day in office, after the platform went dark briefly when a national ban – approved by Congress and upheld by the US Supreme Court – took effect. The second was in April when White House officials believed they were nearing a deal to spin off TikTok into a new company with US ownership that fell apart after China backed out following Trump's tariff announcement. It is not clear how many times Trump can – or will – keep extending the ban as the government continues to try to negotiate a deal for TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance. While there is no clear legal basis for the extensions, so far there have been no legal challenges to fight them. Trump has amassed more than 15 million followers on TikTok since he joined last year, and he has credited the trendsetting platform with helping him gain traction among young voters. He said in January that he has a 'warm spot for TikTok'. US headquarters of TikTok in Culver City, California. Photo: Reuters As the extensions continue, it appears less and less likely that TikTok will be banned in the US any time soon. The decision to keep TikTok alive through an executive order has received some scrutiny, but it has not faced a legal challenge in court – unlike many of Trump's other executive orders.
CTV News
2 days ago
- Business
- CTV News
Amazon CEO Jassy says AI will reduce its corporate workforce in the next few years
Andy Jassy, Amazon president and CEO, attends the premiere of "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" at The Culver Studios on Monday, Aug. 15, 2022, in Culver City, Calif parts of its business, shuttering stores and slashing 29,000 jobs in an effort to reduce costs. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File) Amazon CEO Andy Jassy anticipates generative artificial intelligence will reduce its corporate workforce in the next few years as the online giant begins to increase its usage of the technology. 'We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,' Jassy said in a message to employees. 'It's hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.' The executive said that Amazon has more than 1,000 generative AI services and applications in progress or built, but that figure is a 'small fraction' of what it plans to build. Jassy encouraged employees to get on board with the e-commerce company's AI plans. 'As we go through this transformation together, be curious about AI, educate yourself, attend workshops and take trainings, use and experiment with AI whenever you can, participate in your team's brainstorms to figure out how to invent for our customers more quickly and expansively, and how to get more done with scrappier teams,' he said. Earlier this month Amazon announced that it was planning to invest $10 billion toward building a campus in North Carolina to expand its cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure. Since 2024 started, Amazon has committed to about $10 billion apiece to data center projects in Mississippi, Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina as it ramps up its infrastructure to compete with other tech giants to meet growing demand for artificial intelligence products. The rapid growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence has meanwhile fueled demand for energy-hungry data centers that need power to run servers, storage systems, networking equipment and cooling systems. Amazon said earlier this month that it will spend $20 billion on two data center complexes in Pennsylvania. In March Amazon began testing artificial intelligence-aided dubbing for select movies and shows offered on its Prime streaming service. A month earlier, the company rolled out a generative-AI infused Alexa. Amazon has also invested more heavily in AI. In November the company said that it was investing an additional $4 billion in the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic. Two months earlier chipmaker Intel said that its foundry business would make some custom artificial intelligence chips for Amazon Web Services, which is Amazon's cloud computing unit and a main driver of its artificial intelligence ambitions. Michelle Chapman, The Associated Press
Bloomberg
2 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
SoftBank-Backed Startup Misses Financial Goals, Slashes Staff
Just a couple years ago, Spotter Inc. was one of the most valuable startups in the booming business of YouTube celebrity. The company, which boasted a new way for social media stars to fund their operations, fronted millions of dollars to creators like MrBeast and Dude Perfect in exchange for a share of the revenue their videos generated. In 2022, the Culver City, California-based company raised $200 million in a funding round led by SoftBank Group, giving the startup a valuation of $1.7 billion.
