Author: News Room
Do you care where a diamond comes from?Historically, consumers didn’t have a choice. Natural diamonds were formed billions of years ago, deep beneath the earth’s surface, and were then thrust hundreds of kilometers to its crust by volcanic eruptions before eventually being extracted from mines in South Africa, Russia and elsewhere. Companies like De Beers convinced the world that a diamond is forever, made the stones synonymous with engagement rings and encouraged people to spend at least three months’ salary on a rock when they wed.But in recent years, the natural diamond industry has been upended by laboratory-grown diamonds, which…
The mood at MilkenAs dealmakers descended on the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles this week for the annual Milken Institute Global Conference, they were laser-focused on one type of deal: trade deals.The threat of an intensifying trade war cast a shadow over the event, Lauren Hirsch reports.Many business giants in attendance — including Bill Ackman, Jensen Huang and Ken Griffin — started the year imagining how good things could be under President Trump. But talk at this week’s event, behind the scenes at least, was about how bad it could get. Speculation ranged from cautious optimism that the U.S.…
The British government made faster economic growth its No. 1 mission. But efforts to kick-start it have been repeatedly knocked off course by a global economy lurching from one crisis to another.On Thursday, British officials appeared to secure a win. The country is set to announce some form of trade deal with the United States that will ease the impact of recent increases in U.S. tariffs.President Trump said on social media on Thursday that the agreement with Britain “is a full and comprehensive one that will cement the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom for many years…
The British government made faster economic growth its No. 1 mission. But efforts to kick-start it have been repeatedly knocked off course by a global economy lurching from one crisis to another.On Thursday, British officials appeared to secure a win: The country is set to announce some form of trade deal with the United States that will ease the impact of recent increases in U.S. tariffs.President Trump said on social media on Thursday that the agreement with Britain “is a full and comprehensive one that will cement the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom for many years…
A’ja Wilson, a center for the Las Vegas Aces, is widely acknowledged as the best player in the Women’s National Basketball Association. She is something like the league’s on-court answer to LeBron James or Michael Jordan.“I don’t shy away from having conversations with her about being the greatest to ever play,” said Becky Hammon, who has coached the Aces since 2022.Ms. Wilson was the W.N.B.A.’s Rookie of the Year in 2018, won its Most Valuable Player Award in 2020 and 2022 and won a championship in 2022. But while she racked up achievement after achievement, one marker of basketball stardom…
Even as India was gearing up to use its military to strike at Pakistan this week, calling it revenge for a terrorist strike in Kashmir last month, the government was pursuing other forms of power projection as well: bloodless and more refined, and mostly aimed at Pakistan’s economic vulnerability.On Friday, May 9, the executive board of the International Monetary Fund is scheduled to meet three blocks from the White House. Indian officials have suggested that they will make a new case there: that the Fund should refuse the extension of a $7 billion loan to Pakistan described as crucial to…
A year ago, the world’s biggest automaker was on a tear. American consumers were snapping up Toyota Motor’s hybrids, and a weak yen inflated the value of the company’s earnings. That May, Toyota reported the highest annual profit ever recorded by a Japanese firm.On Thursday, Toyota presented a significantly more somber outlook, projecting that its operating profit would decline by about one-fifth for the fiscal year ending in March. It cited headwinds from a stronger yen and predicted a $1.3 billion hit from President Trump’s tariffs in April and May alone.The company estimated the effect of the auto tariffs, which…
President Trump’s desire to “make Hollywood great again” by wielding his preferred economic weapon — tariffs — has sent a shiver through Britain’s film industry.British producers, camera workers, costume designers and other film crew woke up Monday to Mr. Trump’s message that he wanted to impose 100 percent tariffs on films made in “foreign lands.” This threat is particularly alarming in Britain, where Hollywood blockbusters are a critical part of the industry.“It came completely out of the blue,” said Philippa Childs, the head of Bectu, the British union for workers in the creative arts. “It’s pretty frightening.”Last year, nearly 90…
President Trump is expected to announce on Thursday that the United States will strike a trade agreement with Britain, according to three people familiar with the plans.Mr. Trump teased a new trade agreement in a social media post on Wednesday night, though he did not specify which nation was part of the deal.“Big News Conference tomorrow morning at 10:00 A.M., The Oval Office, concerning a MAJOR TRADE DEAL WITH REPRESENTATIVES OF A BIG, AND HIGHLY RESPECTED, COUNTRY. THE FIRST OF MANY!!!” he wrote.A spokesman for the White House declined to comment beyond Mr. Trump’s post. A spokesman for the British…
On a recent afternoon in Philadelphia, an air traffic controller began shouting that he had lost his radar feed for planes flying in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport.Some of his colleagues still had radar but their radios went dead, prompting frantic calls to their counterparts in New York urging them to keep their planes away from Newark’s airspace.Then, for 30 harrowing seconds until the radios came back, there was nothing more to do but hope — as they had no means of telling pilots how to avoid crashing their planes into one another.Shortly after that, one controller discovered…