Author: News Room

When German voters go to the polls on Sunday, the fate of companies like SKW Piesteritz will be at the top of their minds. The chemical factory halved its annual Christmas bonus for workers last year, and it just shut down one of its two ammonia plants.Hammered by high energy costs and what they call excessive German regulation, executives say they might be forced to move production abroad. That would jeopardize 10,000 jobs in and around the small community of Lutherstadt Wittenberg in the country’s economically depressed eastern region, which has already been hurt by pullbacks at the company.“It is…

“How high is up?”When Mark Woodbury became Universal’s theme park chief in 2022, he pressed his lieutenants to answer that question. The former architect was not referring to a roller coaster incline.Universal’s parks had already become a surprise growth engine for NBCUniversal, but Mr. Woodbury saw an even bigger opportunity to lift the business firmly out of Disney’s shadow. “How do we become the destination of choice in each of the markets that we operate in and in all of the markets that we choose to expand into?” he said in a recent interview.Mr. Woodbury, 67, is starting to unveil…

The U.S. Justice Department said Thursday that it would dismiss a case against Elon Musk’s SpaceX, in which the rocket company had been accused of discriminating against people based on their citizenship status.In an unopposed motion filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, the Justice Department said it intended to file a notice of dismissal with prejudice, which means prosecutors would not be able to file these charges again.The motion did not say why the case was being dropped.The Justice Department had filed the case against SpaceX on Aug. 23, 2023, accusing the company of…

Airbus, the world’s largest commercial airplane maker, said on Thursday that it was preparing for the possibility of new U.S. tariffs and would be able to “adapt accordingly,” including passing on higher costs to its American airline customers.In a wide-ranging media conference at Airbus’s headquarters in Toulouse, France, the company’s chief executive, Guillaume Faury, also stepped up calls for European companies and governments to increase collaboration on defense at a time when the United States appears to be retreating from its security role in Europe.President Trump’s rapid pivots on longstanding U.S. trade and security policy have increased uncertainty for businesses…

Democratic senators on Thursday questioned Steven Bradbury, President Trump’s nominee for deputy secretary of the Transportation Department, about his handling of the congressional investigation into two Boeing Max plane crashes in 2018 and 2019, and his safety record during his previous tenure at the agency.The Boeing investigation occurred during Mr. Trump’s first administration, when Mr. Bradbury, 66, served as general counsel of the Transportation Department from late 2017 through January 2021. In that role, he oversaw the agency’s legal work and coordinated its legislative efforts and regulatory programs.The investigative report, written under the direction of Senator Roger Wicker, then the…

Marshall Rose, a real estate developer who was instrumental in reviving the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and transforming the adjacent Bryant Park from a mecca for drug dealers into a verdant Midtown oasis, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 88.The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, his stepdaughter, Chloe Malle, said.As chairman of the library’s board of trustees from 1990 to 1995, Mr. Rose, along with his predecessor, Andrew Heiskell, and Vartan Gregorian, the library’s longtime president, engineered the resurgence of the Beaux-Arts landmark on Fifth Avenue and the derelict greensward just to…

The Trump administration started firing about 6,700 employees at the Internal Revenue Service on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter, extending its cost-cutting measures to the federal agency responsible for collecting tax revenue from millions of Americans.The job cuts at the I.R.S. are hitting probationary employees who were recently hired around the country. More than 5,000 of those workers are part of the agency’s compliance teams, which deal with auditing and collections. The layoffs are coming a week during tax filing season, when the I.R.S. will be inundated with paperwork and questions from taxpayers.The I.R.S. employs about 100,000…

Trying to finalize long-simmering and contentious plans to unite the PGA Tour with the Saudi Arabian-backed LIV Golf circuit, President Trump met with the leader of the kingdom’s sovereign-wealth fund at the White House on Thursday, according to five people who were briefed on the gathering.The meeting included the wealth fund official, Yasir al-Rumayyan, and Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, as well as the golfer Tiger Woods, said three of the people who were briefed on it.Mr. Trump’s specific objectives for the meeting were not immediately clear, according to those people. But the president has been agitating recently to…

Dozens of major news organizations, including CNN, The Washington Post and Fox News, wrote to the White House this week urging the Trump administration to immediately lift its ban on The Associated Press, which had been prohibited from attending a number of official press events over the past week.The White House has said it is blocking reporters from the news service because the outlet refers to the Gulf of Mexico in its articles, rather than “Gulf of America,” as decreed by President Trump in an executive order on Jan. 20.The letter, which was coordinated by the White House Correspondents’ Association…

The Federal Reserve’s independence from the White House has long been enshrined in the law. But an executive order that President Trump signed this week seeking to extend his administration’s reach over independent agencies is prompting concerns about how much further he will go to challenge that separation.Mr. Trump’s directive took aim at regulatory agencies that had typically operated with limited political interference as authorized by Congress.The order partially shielded the Fed by exempting the central bank’s decisions on interest rates. Those are voted on at every meeting by seven presidentially-appointed members of the Board of Governors, who typically serve…