Author: News Room

What a plan B might look likeAs TikTok faces a countdown to a potential ban in the United States, Chinese officials are reportedly weighing an unexpected plan B: letting Elon Musk take over the popular video platform.On paper, such an arrangement makes sense, given Beijing’s existing ties to and trust in the world’s richest man. But beyond whether this might actually happen, there are a host of other questions that would need to be resolved for it to work.The latest: Chinese officials have debated whether the tech mogul should be allowed to invest in or buy TikTok’s American operations to…

The town of Honor, in northern Michigan, doesn’t have too many places to shop for food. The only grocery store in town is Honor Family Market, one of a shrinking number of independent grocers left in the United States.Because it’s the only market in town, it has an outsize role in this community of 330 residents. The 12,000-square-foot store, its shelves filled with local products like honey, baked goods and homemade bratwursts, is not only a place where people — in Honor and elsewhere in Benzie County — go to buy meat and produce. It’s also where they can go…

Governments around the world are uncomfortably watching their borrowing costs rise, following the lead of the U.S. Treasury market. But even in a global rout in bonds, Britain stands out.British government bonds, known as gilts, are suffering a particularly harsh sell-off, as investors recoil from the country’s low economic growth, stubborn inflation and high debt levels. The yield on 10-year gilts, the benchmark rate, reached 4.9 percent on Tuesday, the highest since 2008, while yields on 30-year bonds were the highest since 1998.The surge in borrowing costs puts the British government’s plan to revive economic growth, by allocating more money…

Over the past week, as eight wildfires destroyed vast portions of its home metropolis, Hollywood found itself violently impacted — and, at the same time, barely impacted at all.With thousands of homes destroyed, many of them in neighborhoods favored by producers, executives, agents and stars, and roughly 300,000 people under evacuation orders or warnings, little work got done at studio headquarters. Some studios closed entirely, and others encouraged employees to work remotely.Consider the impact of the fires on Disney alone. As of Monday, 64 Disney employees had lost their homes and hundreds more had been evacuated, including Robert A. Iger,…

South Korea plans to alter structures near runways at several airports after last month’s Jeju Air crash, when a plane that landed on its belly skidded into a concrete wall before exploding into a fireball.At seven of South Korea’s 14 domestic and international airports, structures that house antennas and other devices that help pilots navigate did not meet safety standards, the transport ministry said on Monday.The safety inspection was conducted after a Jeju Air passenger plane crashed at Muan International Airport on Dec. 29, killing 179 of the 181 people onboard. Officials are still investigating the cause of the accident,…

The Education Department announced on Monday that it had canceled student loans for more than 150,000 borrowers, bringing the tally of Americans whose loans were forgiven under President Biden to over five million.The Biden administration reached the milestone even though many of its more ambitious plans to overhaul the nation’s system for administering student debt faltered over the past two years, forcing the administration to slowly but steadily process applications for relief through established channels created by Congress.The latest cancellations were most likely the administration’s final round of relief. They covered borrowers who have worked in public service for at…

Robinhood was hit with $45 million in fresh fines from the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, the latest reprimand that the crypto-favorite brokerage has received from regulators.The violations laid out by the S.E.C. stretched from 2019 to 2023 and included a failure to protect sensitive customer data, employee use of encrypted messaging applications and errors of basic bookkeeping. The agency also said Robinhood had fallen short of its obligations to report suspicious client transactions to the authorities.The allegations announced Monday included a November 2021 incident in which a hacker obtained millions of email addresses and names of Robinhood customers,…

A possible new takeover bid for U.S. Steel emerged on Monday, teeing up more turmoil over the once-dominant company’s future after President Biden’s decision to block its acquisition by a Japanese company.Lourenco Goncalves, the chief executive of an American competitor, Cleveland-Cliffs, said his company had “an All-American solution to save the United States Steel Corporation,” stressing that acquiring U.S. Steel was a matter of “when,” not “if.” But he offered no details of the bidding plans.The renewed expression of interest from Cleveland-Cliffs comes less than two weeks after Mr. Biden blocked a $14 billion takeover of U.S. Steel by Nippon…

Matthew Giachelli got the call he anticipated on Thursday morning: The N.F.L. was moving the Rams’ playoff game to Arizona because of the wildfires raging in Los Angeles, and the league needed 200 gallons of paint pronto.The game on Monday between the Rams and the Minnesota Vikings would now be held at State Farm Stadium outside Phoenix, and it had to look and feel as if it were being played in the Rams’ usual home, SoFi Stadium. That included painting the field with the team’s and league’s logos and colors. The hometown Cardinals, though, did not have some of the…

Reporters and editors at national newspapers are increasing their reliance on encrypted communications to help shield themselves and their sources from potential federal leak investigations and subpoenas.Multiple media organizations are evaluating whether they have enough insurance coverage to absorb a potential wave of libel and other litigation from officials who have already shown an inclination to file such suits.And a nonprofit investigative journalism outlet is preparing for the possibility that the government will investigate issues like whether its use of freelancers complies with labor regulations.With President-elect Donald J. Trump returning to the White House, media outlets large and small are…