Author: News Room

The expansion of the loophole for tariff-free shipments of goods nearly a decade ago gave rise to Temu, Shein and other low-cost online retailers offering items straight from Chinese factories at unfathomable discounts.It also unleashed something else — a cascade of billions of dollars of digital advertising that provided a windfall for Meta, Alphabet and other technology industry giants. Temu and Shein, jockeying for the attention of American shoppers, blanketed seemingly every inch of the internet with their ads. In the last two years, only Amazon spent more on online advertising in the United States than Shein or Temu.Now, the…

As trade tensions flared between the world’s largest economies, communication between the United States and China has been so shaky that the two superpowers cannot even agree on whether they are talking at all.At a White House economic briefing this week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent demurred multiple times when pressed about President Trump’s recent claim that President Xi Jinping of China had called him. Although top economic officials might usually be aware of such high-level talks, Mr. Bessent insisted that he was not logging the president’s calls.“I have a lot of jobs around the White House; running the switchboard isn’t…

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…