Author: News Room

Flying into or out of Newark Liberty International Airport has brought plenty of misery in the last week, with cancellations, delays stretching well past five hours and flight diversions that have stranded travelers far from their destinations.Passengers are reporting on social media that they have missed flights and spent hours stuck on the tarmac aboard planes. Some are still struggling to make new travel arrangements.The disruptions, which stretched into Friday with delays averaging over two hours, have highlighted ongoing air traffic control staffing issues. The troubles prompted United Airlines, Newark’s largest carrier, to cut nearly three dozen round-trip flights per…

President Trump on Friday proposed slashing $163 billion in federal spending next fiscal year, a drastic retrenchment in the role and reach of government that, if enacted, would eliminate a vast set of climate, education, health and housing programs, including some that benefit the poor.Issuing his first budget proposal since returning to office, Mr. Trump sketched out a dim view of Washington. His blueprint depicted many core government functions as woke, weaponized, wasteful or radical, as the president looked to justify his request that Congress chop domestic spending to its lowest level in the modern era.Mr. Trump proposed cutting funding…

Michael S. Jeffries, the former chief executive of Abercrombie and Fitch who was charged with running an international sex-trafficking ring, on Friday was found unfit to stand trial because of an Alzheimer’s diagnosis.In a three-page order, Judge Nusrat J. Choudhury of the Eastern District of New York, wrote that Mr. Jeffries was “suffering from a mental disease or defect rendering him mentally incompetent.” Judge Choudhury also ordered that Mr. Jeffries be hospitalized for four months to observe whether his condition improves.The ruling followed a letter filed last month by Mr. Jeffries’s lawyers, Brian H. Bieber and Alek Ubieta. They wrote…

Google plans to roll out its Gemini artificial intelligence chatbot next week for children under 13 who have parent-managed Google accounts, as tech companies vie to attract young users with A.I. products.“Gemini Apps will soon be available for your child,” the company said in an email this week to the parent of an 8-year-old. “That means your child will be able to use Gemini” to ask questions, get homework help and make up stories.The chatbot will be available to children whose parents use Family Link, a Google service that enables families to set up Gmail and opt into services like…

Stocks were on track on Friday to erase their losses from the days after President Trump’s chaotic rollout of tariffs in early April, bolstered in part by a healthy report on the labor market.The S&P 500 rose 1.6 percent by Friday afternoon, climbing back above where it stood before chaos descended on financial markets after April 2 — Mr. Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day,” which featured his most sweeping tariffs to date.Friday’s boost to stock prices followed a stronger-than-expected report on hiring in April. But the S&P 500 has been edging higher for days — Friday’s gain would be its ninth…

President Trump’s executive order to defund NPR and PBS was met with fiery pushback on Friday, as the organizations challenged the legality of the move and said it could jeopardize access to vital information.The order issued late Thursday instructed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which receives and distributes over $500 million in taxpayer money to public TV and radio stations annually, to eliminate millions of dollars in federal funding to the two public media organizations. It amounts to perhaps the most significant threat in a decades-long campaign by Republicans to weaken NPR and PBS.Patricia Harrison, the chief executive of the…

President Trump said on Friday that Harvard would lose its tax-exempt status, repeating his intent to enlist the Internal Revenue Service in his feud with the wealthy research university and upend the school’s finances. “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. It was not immediately clear if the I.R.S. was in fact moving forward with revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status, a change that could only typically occur after a lengthy process. Federal law prohibits the president from directing the I.R.S. to conduct tax investigations, and I.R.S. employees…

So you’re about to graduate from college. Congratulations. But now you have to think about finding a job and, sooner than you may prefer, starting to repay your student loans.It’s especially important to understand your options, experts on student borrowing say, because many aspects of the federal student loan system are in flux.The system, which has always been challenging to navigate, is only now creaking back into full operation after years of Covid-era pauses on payments and collections. And court challenges to a low-cost repayment option, along with program changes floated by the Trump administration and House Republicans, have created…

It was easy to miss, but last weekend President Trump floated a fundamental rewrite of the American tax code. In a social media post, and again in remarks to reporters, Mr. Trump suggested the United States could stop taxing income under $200,000 and instead rely on revenue from his extensive tariffs.“It’ll take a little while before we do that, but we’re going to be cutting taxes, and it’s possible we’ll do a complete tax cut,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Sunday. “Because I think the tariffs will be enough to cut all of the income tax.”The idea was news to…

A solid labor market has for months given the Federal Reserve comfort that it could hold off on interest rate cuts until it had more clarity about how President Trump’s policies would impact the economy. New data released on Friday reinforced that patient approach.Officials at the central bank are widely expected to keep interest rates steady when they announce their next decision on May 7. After lowering interest rates by a percentage point last year, the Fed has since January opted against making additional reductions. That has left interest rates at a range of 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent.Until this…