Author: News Room

A prominent group of chief executives said almost six years ago that making profits for shareholders was only part of their business — and not necessarily the main part.Speaking collectively as the Business Roundtable, C.E.O.s from companies like Johnson & Johnson, FedEx, Wells Fargo and Amazon said that, really, they were devoted to serving employees and customers, protecting the environment and treating suppliers ethically.Thank you, I wrote in a column back then. And may I sell you a bridge?Now that many companies are muting their commitments to programs embracing diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as to environmental sustainability, I…

A veterinarian and 13 trainers, seeking an edge at a Pennsylvania racetrack, injected pain medications into the joints of more than 100 horses in violation of federal rules, the federal agency that now regulates the sport said on Friday.Afterward, 30 percent of the horses never raced again and 10 percent were declared lame post-race by a regulatory veterinarian. Three horses were euthanized as a direct result of injuries sustained in races, while four more died later, said the agency, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, or HISA.The veterinarian, Dr. Allen Post Bonnell, and three of the trainers, Kim Graci, Marlin…

Patsy Grimaldi, a restaurateur whose coal-oven pizzeria in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge won new fans for New York City’s oldest pizza style with carefully made pies that helped start a national movement toward artisan pizza, died on Feb. 13 in Queens. He was 93.His nephew Frederick Grimaldi confirmed the death, at NewYork-Presbyterian Queens hospital.Mr. Grimaldi began selling pies in 1990 under the name Patsy’s. In those days, legal skirmishes periodically disturbed the city’s pizza landscape, and it wasn’t long before threatening letters from the lawyers of another Patsy’s led him to rename the place Patsy Grimaldi’s, then simply…

Stocks slumped on Friday, with the S&P 500 wiping out almost all of its gains since President Trump took office last month, after a widely watched measure of how consumers feel about the economy showed mounting fears over stubborn inflation.The S&P 500 fell 1.7 percent, adding to a modest dip on Thursday and notching the worst week of Mr. Trump’s second term, which began five weeks ago. The index is now just 0.3 percent higher since Inauguration Day. Other stock indexes also fell, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropping over 2 percent on Friday.Fueling the decline was an unexpected drop…

The Associated Press filed a lawsuit on Friday against top White House officials, accusing them of violating the First and Fifth Amendments by denying A.P. reporters access in retaliation for references to the Gulf of Mexico in its articles.The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It named as defendants Taylor Budowich, the White House deputy chief of staff; Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary; and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.In the complaint, The A.P. said that the White House had ordered it to use certain words in its reporting…

Errol Musk wants the world to know that he and his son Elon are actually on very good terms.“Always have been,” he said in an interview on Friday, just days after comments that he made calling Elon a bad parent went viral.On a recent episode of the Wide Awake podcast, Mr. Musk talked about his son Elon, who is the subject of most of his interviews. “He hasn’t been a good dad,” Errol Musk said on the podcast. “They were too rich, too many nannies. Then he had five children with the same woman, five sons all brought up. Each…

Those dark days began almost five years ago.On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic, and four days later, U.S. states began to order shutdowns and travel restrictions.By the end of the month, the European Union had barred nonessential travel from outside the bloc, cruise ships were under a no-sail order in U.S. waters and state governors had issued stay-at-home orders to prevent the spread of the virus. Nonessential travel would be frozen for months.After Covid vaccines became widely available in the spring of 2021, travel began to rebound, albeit with face coverings mandatory on planes…

At his inauguration, President Trump said that “the golden age of America begins right now.” He was right, in one sense.The price of gold has been bursting through records in the first month of Mr. Trump’s second term, recently trading at more than $2,900 per troy ounce. It is up about 12 percent already this year, on top of a 27 percent gain last year. Many strategists are upgrading their forecasts, predicting more gains ahead.There is so much demand for gold in New York, the global hub for futures trading, that it has led to long wait times to get…

In recent years, the Food and Drug Administration hired experts in surgical robots and pioneers in artificial intelligence. It scooped up food chemists, lab-safety monitors and diabetes specialists who helped make needle pricks and test strips relics of the past.Trying to keep up with breakneck advances in medical technology and the demands of a public troubled by additives like food dyes, the agency enticed scores of midcareer specialists with remote roles and the chance to make a difference in their fields.In one weekend of mass firings across the F.D.A., much of that effort was gone. Most baffling to many were…

As President Trump uses tariffs as a weapon in his quest to even the score on trade with the world, Asia is emerging as target No. 1. And it’s not just because of China.Asia is home to seven countries that run the biggest trade surpluses with the United States, Mr. Trump’s go-to yardstick. It has some of the biggest exporters of goods that Mr. Trump promised to tax, like Japanese and South Korean cars, Taiwanese chips and Indian drugs. Many of the region’s countries have become top destinations for Chinese goods and investment, evidence that Mr. Trump cites to accuse…