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Uber said Wednesday that the San Francisco Bay Area will be the first market for its specially built autonomous taxi, which is expected to launch in late 2026. The San Francisco ride-hailing company said in July it was developing a robotaxi with the electric car company Lucid and the self-driving technology company Nuro Inc. The vehicle is exclusive to Uber but is based on the Lucid Gravity SUV. Uber said Lucid recently delivered test vehicles to Nuro and said it plans to have 100 test vehicles on the road in the coming months. Within six years, Uber plans to deploy 20,000 or more Lucid-based autonomous taxis in multiple locations. The vehicles will be available to riders through the Uber app. Uber is working with multiple companies to speed the deployment of autonomous taxis. On Tuesday, Uber said its also developing robotaxis with the tech company Nvidia and the automaker Stellantis. Uber said Tuesday that in 2028, Stellantis expects to start production of at least 5,000 vehicles powered by Nvidia software for autonomous taxi operations in the U.S. And last week, Uber said it has begun offering autonomous taxi rides in Saudi Arabia as part of a partnership with WeRide, a Chinese autonomous tech company. Uber also works with WeRide in Abu Dhabi. Autonomous taxis arent new, but as the worlds largest ride-hailing service, Ubers adoption of them is significant. Uber operates in 15,000 cities in more than 70 countries. Waymo, which is owned by Google parent Alphabet, has been testing autonomous taxis for years. Those taxis are currently available in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Austin. Waymo said earlier this month it plans to expand to London next year. Uber is partnering with Waymo on autonomous taxis in Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta. Dee-Ann Durbin, AP business writer
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U.S. stocks are rising toward more records on Wednesday as Wall Street waits to hear from the Federal Reserve in the afternoon about what it will do with interest rates. The S&P 500 added 0.3% in morning trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 231 points, or 0.5%, as of 10:15 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.6% higher. All three indexes are coming off their latest all-time high. The bond market was also relatively steady as the countdown ticked to the announcement from the Fed. The widespread expectation is that it will announce the second cut of the year to its main interest rate in hopes of helping the slowing job market. More important will be whether the Fed gives hints about another cut to rates in December and beyond. Wall Street is banking on it. In the meantime, the deluge continues of big U.S. companies reporting how much profit they made during the summer. The pressure is on to deliver growth because thats one way they can quiet criticism that their stock prices have shot too high in recent months. Caterpillar rallied 12% after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. CEO Joe Creed said Caterpillar saw resilient demand, as customers bought more equipment, even with a dynamic environment. Teradyne soared 14.6% after the company, which makes automated test equipment and advanced robotics systems, likewise reported a stronger profit than analysts expected. CEO Greg Smith credited strength related to artificial-intelligence applications and said AI-related test demand remains robust. Nvidia, meanwhile, was the strongest force lifting the S&P 500 after rallying 4.4%. It became the first company valued at $5 trillion on Wall Street, just three months after the AI darling was the first to break through the $4 trillion barrier. They helped offset a 42.6% plunge for Fiserv. The payments and financial technology company reported weaker profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected, slashed its profit forecast for the year and revamped its board of directors and leadership team. The stock is heading toward its worst day since it began trading in 1986. Mondelez International fell 2.8%, even though it reported stronger results than analysts expected. The company, whose brands include Oreo cookies and Toblerone chocolate, has been dealing with record-high inflation for the cost of cocoa. It expects challenging conditions to continue in some markets, though it hopes that price increases are moderating for cocoa. In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe following a stronger finish in Asia. Tokyos Nikkei 225 jumped 2.2% to another record. Seouls Kospi rose 1.8% to its own all-time high after President Donald Trump met with South Koreas leader following his visit in Japan. Stocks rose 0.7% in Shanghai ahead of a meeting between Trump and Chinas leader, Xi Jinping. The worlds two largest economies have been locked in an escalating trade war, with Washington imposing high tariffs and tightened technology controls and China retaliating with curbs on rare earth shipments, one of its key sources of leverage. In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury was holding at 3.99%, where it was late Tuesday. It’s been coming down from nearly 4.80% early this year, a notable move for the bond market, as expectations have climbed for several cuts to rates by the Federal Reserve. But the Fed has also warned that it may have to halt the cuts if inflation accelerates beyond its still-high level, because lower rates can worsen inflation. Making an already tough course for Fed officials more difficult is the U.S. governments shutdown. That has delayed important updates on the economy that would normally help guide the Feds decision-making process. Stan Choe, AP business writer AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
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Stewart McLaurin knew it was coming.An entire wing of the White House, a building he calls “the most special, important building on the planet,” was going to be replaced to make way for a ballroom that President Donald Trump wants to add to the building.But when McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Association, saw the first images of backhoes tearing into the East Wing, it still came as a bit of a shock.“When the reality of things happen, they strike us a little bit differently than the theory of things happening, so it was a bit of a jarring moment,” McLaurin told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.McLaurin, who has led the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization for more than a decade, did not take a position on the changes. It’s not his job. “Ours is not to make happen, or to keep from happening but to document what does happen, what happens in this great home that we call the White House,” he said.But he said he sees a silver lining from the “jarring” images: they have piqued public interest in White House history.“What has happened since then is so amazing in that in the past two weeks, more people have been talking about White House history, focused on White House history, learning what is an East Wing, what is the West Wing what are these spaces in this building that we simply call the White House,” McLaurin said. Trump demolishes the East Wing The general public became aware of the demolition work on Oct. 20 after photos of construction equipment ripping into the building began to circulate online, prompting an outcry from Democrats, preservationists and others.In a matter of days, the entire two-story East Wing the traditional base of operations for first ladies and their staffs was gone. The demolition included a covered walkway between the White House, the family movie theater and a garden dedicated to first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.Trump had talked about building a ballroom for years, and pushed ahead with his vision when he returned to office in January. His proposal calls for a 90,000-square-foot structure, almost twice the size of the 55,000-square-foot White House itself and able to accommodate 1,000 people. The plan also includes building a more modern East Wing, officials have said.The Republican president ordered the demolition despite not yet having sign-off for the ballroom construction from the National Capital Planning Commission, one of several entities with a role in approving additions to federal buildings and property. The White House has yet to submit the ballroom plans for the commission’s review because it is closed during the government shutdown.Trump appointed loyalists to the planning commission in July. On Tuesday, he also fired the six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, a group of architectural experts that advises the federal government on historic preservation and public buildings. A new slate of members who are more aligned with Trump’s policies will be named, a White House official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on personnel decisions. The Washington Post was first to report the firings. East Wing art and furnishings preserved It was the job of the White House curator and their staff to carefully remove, catalog and store the art, the official portraits of former first ladies, and furnishings from the East Wing, McLaurin said.The White House Historical Association does not have a decision-making role in the construction. But it has been working with the White House to prepare for the changes.“We had known since late summer that the staff of the East Wing had moved out. I actually made my last visit on the last day of tours on August the 28th,” McLaurin said.Working with the curator and chief usher, the association used 3D scanning technology “so that every room, space, nook and cranny of the East Wing, whether it was molding or hinges or door knobs or whatever it was, was captured to the -nth degree” to be digitally recreated as an exhibit or to teach the history of that space, McLaurin said.A photographer also documented the building as it was being taken apart.It will be a while before any images are available, but McLaurin said items were found when flooring was pulled up and when wall coverings were pulled back that “no living person remembered were there. So those will be lessons in history.” White House has grown over the years Trump’s aides have responded to criticism of the demolition by arguing that other presidents have made changes to the White House, too. Trump has said the White House needs a bigger entertaining space.McLaurin said the building continues to evolve from what it looked like when it was built in 1792.“There is a need to modernize and to grow,” he said, noting that White House social secretaries for generations have chafed at the space limitations for entertaining. “But how it’s done and how it’s accomplished and what results is really the vision of the president who undertakes that project.” What the White House Historical Association does Jacqueline Kennedy created the historical association in 1961 to help preserve the museum quality of the interior of the White House and educate the public. It receives no government funding and raises money mostly through private donations and sales of retail merchandise.It is not the mission of the association to take a position on construction, McLaurin said. Its primary mandate is preserving the State Floor and some of the historic bedrooms upstairs in the private living quarters, and teaching the history of the White House, which is an accredited museum. The State Floor is made up of the Green, Blue and Red Rooms, the East Room and State Dining Room, the Cross Hall and Grand Foyer.“Ours is not to support or to not support,” McLaurin said. “Ours is to understand, to get the details.”Since the demolition, McLaurin said he has seen attendance spike at a free-of-charge educational center the association opened in September 2024 a block from the White House. “The People’s House: A White House Experience” is open seven days a week including during the current government shutdown.The educational center saw its busiest days the weekend of Oct. 17-19, with about 1,500 daily visitors, up from a previous average of 900, he said. Darlene Superville, Associated Press
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