Author: News Room

A pair of 50-page policy proposals laying out the plan in detail. Discussions about the specifics with President-elect Donald J. Trump and his advisers. And talks with cabinet nominees about how to pay for it.On the eve of Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the cryptocurrency industry is pushing his incoming administration to execute an audacious plan that would have seemed unimaginable just a year ago: a government program to buy and hold billions of dollars in Bitcoin.As he campaigned last summer, Mr. Trump vowed to create a federal “Bitcoin stockpile” that would serve as a “permanent national asset to benefit all Americans.”…

Some losses are incalculable. For Ms. Lavasani, it’s the photo albums of her two daughters, Xena and Rezvon, both now grown, that she mourns the most. She had hoped to save them as the fire drew nearer.“I was so scared of losing those memories,” Ms. Lavasani, 57, said. “All memories — gone.”Tricia Wachtendorf, director of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware, said researchers think of the financial costs of evacuating a disaster in three buckets. First, before disaster strikes, there’s the preparation phase of getting supplies together. Then, the immediate needs of restocking necessities while being displaced…

The Spanish government this week announced a major overhaul to a program in which police rely on an algorithm to identify potential repeat victims of domestic violence, after officials faced questions about the system’s effectiveness.The program, VioGén, requires police officers to ask a victim a series of questions. Answers are entered into a software program that produces a score — from no risk to extreme risk — intended to flag the women who are most vulnerable to repeat abuse. The score helps determine what police protection and other services a woman can receive.A New York Times investigation last year found…

To get its citizens to have more children and stop its population from shrinking, China has tried it all, even declaring having babies an act of patriotism. And yet, for the third year in a row, its population got smaller.Not even a surprise uptick in the number of babies born, a first in seven years, could reverse the course of an aging and declining population.China is staring down a longer term baby bust that is rippling through the economy. Hospitals are shutting their obstetrics units, and companies that sold baby formula are idling factories. Thousands of kindergartens have closed and…

Perdue Farms and JBS, two of the country’s biggest meatpackers, will pay a combined $8 million after the Department of Labor found the companies relied for years on migrant children to work in their slaughterhouses.The deals, announced this week, are part of a flurry of child labor settlements that have come in the last days of the Biden administration, which has been cracking down on the practice.It is rare for major brands to come under federal scrutiny for child labor. Many food-processing and manufacturing companies outsource cleaning and other jobs to third-party staffing firms, which technically employ the workers and…

The economic scars of China’s real estate crash are evident at the country’s many street markets for construction materials. Proprietors of once-bustling shops that sell everything from lighting fixtures and doors to toilet bowls are aching for customers.At the same time, China’s exports have climbed sharply. Companies are shipping cars, smartphones and many other products to foreign markets that they can no longer sell at home. Private-sector companies are investing heavily in new factories and equipment to expand production for export.On Friday, the National Bureau of Statistics said that China’s economy grew 5 percent last year, as surging exports and…

The actor Justin Baldoni filed a defamation lawsuit against the Hollywood stars Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds on Thursday, claiming that they tried to destroy him by accusing him of sexual harassment against the actress and then retaliation against her through a smear campaign.The lawsuit is the latest legal action in a feud tied to the 2024 film “It Ends With Us,” which starred Ms. Lively and Mr. Baldoni, who also directed it.The 179-page complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, named Ms. Lively and Mr. Reynolds, her husband, as defendants, as well…

UnitedHealth Group reported on Thursday that it earned less than expected this past quarter, citing higher medical costs and pressure on its insurance division at a time when the company is still reeling from the shocking murder of a top executive last month.Revenues for UnitedHealth Group amounted to $100.8 billion for the fourth quarter, below what analysts had predicted but still 6.8 percent higher than in the same quarter the year before. The company’s full-year revenue for 2024 rose to $400.3 billion. For UnitedHealthcare, the insurance division, full-year revenue increased to $298.2 billion, up 6 percent from 2023.The results were…

A Southwest Airlines pilot was removed from a plane at the airport in Savannah, Ga., on Wednesday and charged with driving under the influence, according to the authorities and jail records.Mark Howell, a regional spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, said on Thursday that one of its officers at Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport contacted law enforcement after “encountering an individual in the crew screening lane who smelled of alcohol and appeared intoxicated.”The pilot, David Paul Allsop, 52, was arrested by the airport police, Chatham County Sheriff’s Office records show. He was later released on a $3,500 bond, Brianna Jones, a…

The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the largest apartment landlord in the United States, Greystar Real Estate Partners, accusing it of charging tenants hundreds of millions of dollars in hidden fees.Greystar, which according to the National Multifamily Housing Council manages nearly 800,000 apartments across the country, routinely failed to notify prospective renters of mandatory fees for services including trash collection, pest control and package delivery, the F.T.C. said in its complaint. Combined, these apartment fees have often added up to hundreds or thousands of dollars each year. Many tenants, the agency said, did not discover the…