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Robert Prevost of the United States has been named the new pope, the new head of the Catholic church. Cardinals gathered to select their latest leader during a conclave. White smoke poured out of the Sistine Chapel chimney Thursday at 6:07 p.m. local time, signaling that a pontiff had been elected to lead the Catholic Church. Here is the latest: Robert Prevost is elected the first American pope in history Cardinal Robert Prevost, an American missionary who spent his career ministering in Peru and leads the Vaticans powerful office of bishops, was elected the first American pope in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church. Prevost, 69, took the name Leo XIV. Older updates… White smoke rises from Sistine Chapel White smoke is pouring out of the Sistine Chapel chimney, signaling that a pope has been elected to lead the Catholic Church. That means the winner secured at least 89 votes of the 133 cardinals participating in the conclave to elect a successor to Pope Francis. The crowd in St. Peters Square erupted in cheers. The name will be announced later, when a top cardinal utters the words Habemus papam! Latin for We have a pope! from the loggia of St. Peters Basilica. The cardinal then reads the winners birth name in Latin, and reveals the name he has chosen to be called. The new pope is then expected to make his first public appearance and impart a blessing from the same loggia. Older cardinals who didnt participate in the conclave rush out to the square These cardinals lined up as military bands played the Italian and Holy See national anthems. Spotted in the crowd were American Cardinals Sean OMalley and Donald Wuerl, both of whom are over 80 and didnt vote. Swiss Guards have taken position in front of front of St. Peters Basilica A marching brass band in blue uniforms led a contingent of Swiss guards through the crowd to a central spot below the balcony, generating another huge roar from the crowd. The Pontifical Swiss Guard is the official security force of the Vatican, and holds a ceremonial and a protective function. And now more marching bands are celebrating the election of a new pope in a parade that includes large groups in military dress uniforms. Vivi il Papa! erupts from the crowd whenever the music pauses. All eyes are now on the red-draped central balcony of St. Peters Basilica Thats where a cardinal will soon emerge to to proclaim a new pope to Rome and to the world. There is incredible excitement the crowd is roaring, and some are shouting hallelujah! Church bells ring in Spain Moments after white smoke poured out of the Sistine Chapel, the bells began tolling in Barcelonas towering Sagrada Familia basilica and the Almudena Cathedral in Madrid, across from the royal palace. The great bells of St. Peters Basilica are tolling And down below, amid the cheers in the vast mix of humanity in St. Peters square, priests are making the sign of the cross and nuns are weeping at the white smoke wafting into the sky. The crowd erupted with joy in St. Peters Square Some are obviously deeply moved, others excited. Theyre clapping and waving national flags and taking photos with their phones. Viva il papa! some shouted. White smoke is pouring out of the Sistine Chapel chimney It signals that a pope has been elected to lead the Catholic Church. That means the winner secured at least 89 votes of the 133 cardinals participating in the conclave to elect a successor to Pope Francis. The crowd in St. Peters Square erupted in cheers. The name will be announced later, when a top cardinal utters the words Habemus papam! Latin for We have a pope! from the loggia of St. Peters Basilica. The cardinal then reads the winners birth name in Latin, and reveals the name he has chosen to be called. The new pope is then expected to make his first public appearance and impart a blessing from the same loggia. The smoke emerged from the chimney at 6:07 p.m. Pope Francis appointed 108 of the cardinals voting for his successor He elevated these men and others who are not eligible to vote in groups throughout his papacy, beginning in January 2014 with 19. They came from around the world, including the developing nations of Haiti and Burkina Faso, in line with his belief the church must pay more attention to the poor and that its hierarchy should reflect the face of the faithful. His last batch was installed in December 2024 with 21 cardinals, 20 of whom are in the conclave. The excitement in the square is contagious At one point there was applause from the crowd as thousands train their eyes on the chimney above the Sistine Chapel, but it was a false alarm. We want a Pope close to the people and close to us, to the youth, who represent the future of the Church, said Kacper Michalak, 20, a seminarian from Poland who came for the 2025 Jubilee. The holy year is an ancient church tradition encouraging spiritual renewal which encourages pilgrimages to Rome. How long does it take to choose a pope? Its hard to say precisely. The Vatican doesnt officially publish the number of votes in past conclaves, and sources compiling their own tallies dont completely agree. But historical data provide a few clues. The longest conclave since the 20th century begantook 14 rounds of balloting across five days, ending with the election of Pius XI in 1922. The shortest, electing Pius XII in 1939, took three ballots over two days. Cardinals must reach a two-thirds majority to elect a pope. That may have been easier in the past: In 1922 there were just 53 voting cardinals, and until 1978 conclaves had fewer than 100. This year there are 133, so 89 votes are needed. These are the US cardinals voting for the next pope The United States is home to 10 of the 133 cardinals eligible to vote for the next pope. Thats more than any other nation except Italy, home to 17 of the electors in the conclave choosing a successor to Pope Francis. Only four of the American electors actively serve as archbishops in the U.S. Timothy Dolan of New York, Blase Cupich of Chicago, Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, and Robert McElroy of Washington. Two others are retired archbishops, and four have spent many years serving at the Vatican. Its a mixed group, ideologically. McElroy was one of Francis staunchest progressive allies. Cardinal Raymond Burke, a traditionalist, was a frequent critic of Francis.
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Seventeen states are suing President Donald Trump‘s administration for withholding billions of dollars for building more electric vehicle chargers, according to a federal lawsuit announced Wednesday. The Trump administration in February directed states to stop spending money for electric vehicle charging infrastructure that was allocated under President Joe Bidenpart of a broader push by the Republican president to roll back environmental policies advanced by his Democratic predecessor. The EV charger program was set to allocate $5 billion over five years to various states, of which an estimated $3.3 billion had already been made available. The lawsuit is led by attorneys general from California, Colorado and Washington, and challenges the Federal Highway Administration’s authority to halt the funding. They argue Congress, which approved the money in 2021 as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, holds that authority. “These funds were going to be used to shape the future of transportation, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said, calling it short-sighted of Trump to revoke the funds. We wont sit back while the Trump administration violates the law, Bonta, a Democrat, said. The U.S. Department of Transportation did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. EVs stood at about 8% of new car sales in the U.S. last year, according to Motorintelligence.com, a sign the market is growingalthough the pace has slowed as the auto industry tries to convince mainstream buyers about going electric. The program was meant to assuage some concerns and build infrastructure along highway corridors first, then address gaps elsewhere once the state highway obligations were met. Some states with projects running under the program have already been reimbursed by the Biden-era federal funds. Others are still contracting for their sites. Still more had halted their plans by the time the Trump administration ordered states to stop their spending. Regardless, getting these chargers installed and operating has been a slow process with contracting challenges, permitting delays and complex electrical upgrades. It was expected that states would fight against the federal governments efforts to slow the nations electric vehicle charger buildout. New York, for example, which is part of the suit, has been awarded over $175 million in federal funds from the program, and state officials say $120 million is currently being withheld by the Trump administration. Even the electric carmaker Tesla, run by Elon Musk, who has spearheaded Trumps Department of Government Efficiency efforts to cut federal spending, benefited greatly from funding under the program, receiving millions of dollars to expand its already-massive footprint of chargers in the U.S. Despite threats to the program, experts have said they expect the nations EV charging buildout to continue as automakers look to make good on massive electrification ambitions. Consumers thinking about buying an EV often cite concerns about the availability of charging infrastructure. It’s a hurdle for people living in multifamily dwellings and in rural areas, or what are otherwise known as charging deserts. It’s also a problem for people who can’t find a place to charge their vehicle near their work, or who often drive longer highway routes. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said withholding the funds was illegal and would kill thousands of U.S. jobs, ceding them to China. “Instead of hawking Teslas on the White House lawn, President Trump could actually help Elonand the nationby following the law and releasing this bipartisan funding, Newsom said, referencing Trump’s recent purchase of a Tesla in a show of support for Musk. The Trump administrations effort to withdraw funding for electric vehicle chargers is part of a broader push to roll back environmental policies advanced under Biden. During Trumps first week back in office, he signed executive orders to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement again, reverse a 2030 target for electric vehicles to make up half of new cars sold, and end environmental justice efforts. At the same time, federal agencies under Trump have rolled back key rules and regulations and supported the build-out of the fossil fuel industry. The U.S. House also advanced proposals last week aimed at blocking California from enforcing vehicle-emission rules, including a ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. The Senate parliamentarian says the California policies are not subject to the review mechanism used by the House. Sophie Austin and Alexa St. John, Associated Press/Report for America
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Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here. Half of all LLM usage is for writing computer code The tech industry insists that AI will transform how companies, both large and small, operate. Tech VCs and AI founders predict that major business functions will be reshaped, one by one, to be handled by AI agents. For a while, many speculated which function would be transformed first. It wasnt customer service, legal, or marketing: it was software development. Generative AIs first killer app is coding. Tools like Cursor and Windsurf can now complete software projects with minimal input or oversight from human engineers. Businesses are rushing to capitalize on the efficiency gains offered by AI coding. Naveen Rao, chief AI officer at Databricks, estimates that coding accounts for half of all large language model usage today. A 2024 GitHub survey found that over 97% of developers have used AI coding tools at work, with 30% to 40% of organizations actively encouraging their adoption. (GitHub, owned by Microsoft, created one of the first such tools, Copilot.) Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently said AI now writes up to 30% of the companys code. Google CEO Sundar Pichai echoed that sentiment, noting more than 30% of new code at Google is AI-generated. The soaring valuations of AI coding startups underscore the momentum. Anyspheres Cursor just raised $900 million at a $9 billion valuationup from $2.5 billion earlier this year. Meanwhile, OpenAI acquired Windsurf (formerly Codeium) for $3 billion. And the tools are improving fast. OpenAIs chief product officer, Kevin Weil, explained in a recent interview that just five months ago, the companys best model ranked around one-millionth on a well-known benchmark for competitive codersnot great, but still in the top two or three percentile. Today, OpenAIs top model, o3, ranks as the 175th best competitive coder in the world on that same test. The rapid leap in performance suggests an AI coding assistant could soon claim the number-one spot. Forever after that point computers will be better than humans at writing code, he said. One reason for the progress: AI coding tools are gaining stronger reasoning abilities and can process much more information at once. While models retain general knowledge from pretraining, they depend on specific project-related inputsuch as a software descriptionprovided by a human when its time to build something. This information is stored in short-term memory, known as a context window. Currently, state-of-the-art tools can productively consider fewer than 100,000 tokens (units representing words and word parts) at once. But that number is bound to go up. Google DeepMind research scientist Nikolay Savinov said in a recent interview that AI coding tools will soon support 10 million-token context windowsand eventually, 100 million. With that kind of memory, an AI tool could absorb vast amounts of human instruction and even analyze an entire companys existing codebase for guidance on how to build and optimize new systems. I imagine that we will very soon get to superhuman coding AI systems that will be totally unrivaled, the new tool for every coder in the world, Savinov said. Accenture research shows AI ‘reinvention’ of business still far away A large percentage of that first wave of AI projects, numerous industry sources have told me, ran into unforeseen problemssuch as messy or incomplete data, missing infrastructure, outdated IT systems, and a lack of in-house expertiseand never made it into production. Many of the projects that did go live failed to prove they were worth the time, money, or effort. One AI company founder told me that, based on his conversations with C-level executives, he believes the success rate of first-wave AI projects was less than 10%. The global consulting firm Accenture recently published research on what separates the winners from the rest of the pack. The firm emphasizes the importance of thinking bigthat is, scaling AI systems aggressively across users and business functionsas well as securing executive buy-in, reskilling employees, and making significant investments in AI and cloud infrastructure. Accenture refers to companies that meet these criteria and see tangible results as front runners. Yet Accentures data shows that such companies are still in the minority. After surveying executives at nearly 2,000 companies with more than $1 billion in revenue, the firm found that only about one-third (34%) had made a long-term investment in a generative AI system focused on a core business function. Accentures research revealed that a small minority of companies . . . are already achieving considerable success at reinventing their enterprises with gen AI, the report states. It also found that among those surveyed, 15% are ready to reinvent themselves with AI, 43% are progressing, and another 43% are merely experimenting. Some companies may have been better off ignoring the early AI hype and waiting for the models, tools, and infrastructure to mature. On the other hand, theres something to be said for learning by doingeven if the first attempt falls short. Google is putting AI models to work to protect against online and phone scams Online and phone scams, some of them powered by generative AI tools, surged in 2024 and continue to rise. Now, Google is deploying some of its latest AI models to help protect users from these threats. One such model is Gemini Nano, a lightweight AI that can run directly on a user’s device. Now, when a Chrome user enables Enhanced Protection mode in Safe Browsingthe browsers highest security settingthe Nano model runs locally to scan web content for signs of fraud. It can recognize common scam tactics, such as bad actors posing as remote technical support staff, a tactic Google says is becoming increasingly common. The model is also capable of detecting novel scams it hasnt encountered before. Google says it plans to use the on-device AI scam protection in the browser on mobile Android devices in the future, and to expand the detection to moe types of scams. Google already uses on-device AI to detect scams in other mobile apps. The company recently began warning Android users of possible scams within text messages and phone calls. More AI coverage from Fast Company: How AI is reshaping student writing LinkedIns new AI tools help job seekers find smarter career fits AI scam calls are getting smarter. Heres how telecoms are fighting back Apple eyes AI-powered search as Safari usage declines Want exclusive reporting and trend analysis on technology, business innovation, future of work, and design? Sign up for Fast Company Premium.
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