Author: News Room

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…

For 15 years, Elizabeth Spiridakis Olson used a matte lip pencil in a shade of red called Dragon Girl. In her view, it was “one of the great reds, and the perfect consistency.”Ms. Spiridakis Olson, a freelance creative director in South Orange, N.J., used it almost daily. She kept one Dragon Girl lip pencil in her home office and another in her handbag. If she misplaced or lost them, it was no big deal. She could always buy more.Then one day last year, Ms. Spiridakis Olson made a chilling discovery while shopping at Sephora: The store no longer carried her…

The good, bad and puzzlingCorporate leaders and investors expected a bit of volatility to accompany President Trump’s second term. In many ways, that’s exactly what has happened one month in, with the radical cutting of the federal government, threats of trade wars and more.But amid a flurry of unexpected announcements — talks over a possible Ukraine peace plan that exclude Kyiv, the retention of tough Biden-era deal guidelines and a potential Elon Musk-enabled stimulus plan, for starters — and a lack of clarity over where Trump stands on a host of issues, many executives are asking themselves: How do we…

The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase said on Friday that the Securities and Exchange Commission had agreed to drop its lawsuit against the company, lifting a legal cloud over the global crypto industry and signaling a broader retreat by federal regulators.Coinbase, in a post on its website and in a regulatory filing, said it had reached an agreement in principle with the S.E.C. to have the lawsuit withdrawn without any financial penalty. If the S.E.C. confirms the proposed settlement, it would be a remarkable reversal by the agency after years of legal battles against crypto firms.The S.E.C. sued Coinbase, the largest U.S.…