Author: News Room

The first time Jean Jennings confronted the Mexican federal police, they had just arrested one of her friends for public urination.It was 1983, and she was part of an eight-vehicle road test along the length of Baja California, which she had joined as a writer for Car and Driver magazine. Thinking fast, she called her friend a cerdo — pig — and talked the police down to a fine.A few days later, the cops caught them speeding outside La Paz, near the bottom of the peninsula; she wriggled out of a ticket by showing officers her Datsun’s fancy electronic voice…

A unanimous Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law that effectively bans the wildly popular app TikTok in the United States starting on Sunday. The ruling ended, at least for now, a legal battle involving national security, free speech and a cultural phenomenon that had millions of Americans deliriously swiping their phone screens at any given moment.The ruling, which forces the app to go dark if it remains under Chinese control, could be a death blow to TikTok’s American operations. President-elect Donald J. Trump, who is to be inaugurated the following day, has vowed to “save” the app though his…

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen told Congress on Friday that on Jan. 21 the Treasury Department will have to begin using “extraordinary measures” to prevent the United States from defaulting on its debt.The warning was likely one of Ms. Yellen’s final acts as Treasury secretary before the Trump administration assumes power at noon on Monday.The debt limit — which caps the amount of money that the United States is authorized to borrow to fund the government and meet its financial obligations — will now be the problem of the next Treasury secretary, along with President-elect Donald J. Trump and the…

Vanguard, the large mutual fund company, has agreed to pay $106 million in restitution to settle a securities regulatory investigation into whether the firm misled retail investors about the tax implications of changes in some of its retirement funds.The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the settlement on Friday along with a flurry of other settlements it reached with companies in Gary Gensler’s last days as the S.E.C.’s chair. He will officially step down on Monday.The settlement with Vanguard was part of a multistate investigation led by New York, New Jersey and Connecticut along with other regulatory agencies.The joint investigation found…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice to lead the nation’s health agencies, formally asked the Food and Drug Administration to revoke the authorization of all Covid vaccines during a deadly phase of the pandemic when thousands of Americans were still dying every week.Mr. Kennedy filed a petition with the F.D.A. in May 2021 demanding that officials rescind authorization for the shots and refrain from approving any Covid vaccine in the future.Just six months earlier, Mr. Trump had declared the Covid vaccines a miracle. At the time Mr. Kennedy filed the petition, half of American adults were receiving…

A jury in Florida on Friday found CNN liable for defaming a private security contractor in a five-minute segment that ran on the network in November 2021.The jury ordered the company to pay at least $5 million in damages, and an additional amount in punitive damages that has yet to be determined.The decision came after a two-week trial in a Panama City, Fla., courtroom, where lawyers for the contractor, Zachary Young, argued that the network had falsely accused him of illegally participating in a “black market” for exfiltration services in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of American forces.The segment, narrated by…

Daniel Werfel, the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, told the agency’s employees that he would end his term early and step down on Monday as President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office.Mr. Trump has said he plans to nominate Billy Long, a former Republican congressman, to the role. Past presidents have treated the tax collector’s leader as a nonpartisan job that continues between administrations of different parties. President Biden chose Mr. Werfel, a former career civil servant and management consultant, to attempt a renaissance of the I.R.S., which Democrats have infused with billions in new funding that Republicans are now…

A Russian organization linked to the Kremlin’s covert influence campaigns posted more than 8,000 political advertisements on Facebook despite European and American restrictions barring companies from doing business with the organization, according to three organizations that track disinformation online.The Russian group, the Social Design Agency, evaded lax enforcement by Facebook to place an estimated $338,000 worth of ads aimed at European users over a period of 15 months ended in October, even though the platform itself highlighted the threat, the three organizations said in a report released on Friday.The Social Design Agency has faced punitive sanctions in the European Union…

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.As a reporter covering the technology industry, I spend a lot of time thinking about artificial intelligence.Billboards for A.I. companies are scattered around my neighborhood in San Francisco. I regularly talk to people — company executives, my friends and family — about A.I. chatbots. I even tried using A.I. clones to fix my dating life.So when I came across a Facebook group called “A.I. for Church Leaders and Pastors,” my interest was piqued. On the page I found a community of…

On Wednesday afternoon, executives at Meta held a Q&A session with some of its employees about the state of American politics.Alex Schultz, the chief marketing officer, addressed questions about Meta’s embrace of the incoming Trump administration and what he said was the company’s precarious standing overseas, according to two attendees. He also said that Meta was paying close attention to the fate of one of its greatest competitors: TikTok.Depending on what happened to TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance and faces a ban in the United States, Meta needed to prepare for what could be a seismic…