Author: News Room

Under President Trump, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has dropped nearly a dozen enforcement cases brought during the Biden administration, ending lawsuits against banks and lenders for a variety of financial practices that the watchdog agency no longer considers illegal.But on Wednesday, the bureau went a step further: It is seeking to give back $105,000 that a mortgage lender paid to settle racial discrimination claims last fall.In an especially strange twist, the case — against Townstone Financial, a small Chicago-based lender — was brought during Mr. Trump’s first term by Kathleen Kraninger, the director he appointed to run the consumer…

In 2019, an A.I. researcher, François Chollet, designed a puzzle game that was meant to be easy for humans but hard for machines. The game, called ARC, became an important way for experts to track the progress of artificial intelligence and push back against the narrative that scientists are on the brink of building A.I. technology that will outsmart humanity. Mr. Chollet’s colorful puzzles test the ability to quickly identify visual patterns based on just a few examples. To play the game, you look closely at the examples and try to find the pattern. Each example uses the pattern to…

Tesla could be a winner from the auto tariffs announced by President Trump on Wednesday — or at least suffer less than its competitors.Tesla, whose chief executive, Elon Musk, has taken a leading role in the Trump administration, makes all the cars that it sells in the United States in California and Texas. That means that Tesla vehicles will not be subject to tariffs, although the company will still see its production costs rise because of tariffs on imported parts.Tesla’s Model Y sport utility vehicle and Model 3 sedan were the two best-selling electric vehicles in the United States last…

Stocks slumped on Wednesday ahead of President Trump’s announcement of tariffs on auto imports, as investors braced for levies that could disrupt carmakers’ supply chains and raise costs for consumers.The S&P 500 fell roughly 1.1 percent for the day, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was 2 percent lower. The downturn reflected ongoing volatility in the stock market, which has been fueled by Mr. Trump’s whiplash on trade policies and concern among investors that sweeping tariffs could reignite inflation and slow down the U.S. economy.Shares of most major automakers dropped on news from the White House that Mr. Trump would announce…

Last Friday’s power outage in Heathrow Airport disrupted vacations across the world, causing countless thousands of travelers to miss prepaid reservations and forgo long-anticipated adventures.Among them were Sheila Addison, a therapist from Seattle, who missed out on a four-day whisky-tasting in the Scottish Highlands, forfeiting a $500 nonrefundable hotel room and a rare break from her work routine; Zachary Wang and friends from Brown University, who lost $260 in “Les Misérables” tickets, $180 from an Airbnb reservation and two days of spring break in London; and Steve Wehr of Hyde Park, N.Y., who missed two days in Jordan — including…

It’s another blow to late-night television.CBS said on Wednesday that it was canceling “After Midnight,” the network’s 12:30 a.m. comedy show, after the host, Taylor Tomlinson, decided to return full time to stand-up comedy.The late-night comedy genre confronts significant financial challenges as the entertainment world transitions away from traditional television to streaming. The number of late-night shows is dwindling, and many of the survivors are facing pressure to cut their budgets. Audiences and advertising revenue for late-night TV are getting smaller by the year.Further, the genre, which depends on a large number of episodes and topical humor, has not worked…

Congressional Republicans laced into PBS and NPR on Wednesday, accusing the country’s biggest public media networks of institutional bias in a fiery hearing that represented the latest salvo against the American press by close allies of the Trump administration.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who organized the hearing — which she called “Anti-American Airwaves” — opened her remarks by deriding PBS and NPR as “radical left-wing echo chambers” that published skewed news reports and indoctrinated children with L.G.B.T.Q. programming.The leaders of both PBS and NPR testified that those claims were untrue, arguing that their stations served as a crucial…

The U.S. could run out of money to pay its bills by late May if Congress does not raise or suspend the nation’s debt limit, the Congressional Budget Office said on Wednesday.The forecast puts added pressure on Congress and the Trump administration to address the borrowing cap, which restricts the total amount of money that the United States is authorized to borrow to fund the government and meet its financial obligations. A protracted standoff later this year could rattle markets and complicate President Trump’s plans to enact more tax cuts.The C.B.O. noted that its forecast is subject to uncertainty over…

The British government on Wednesday laid out plans for higher military spending and cuts to social benefits, as it sought to keep the nation’s finances on track in what it called a “more uncertain world.”Rachel Reeves, the chancellor of the Exchequer, said there would be an extra 2.2 billion pounds ($2.8 billion) for defense in the fiscal year that begins next month. And she reiterated recently announced reductions to the benefits system that were expected to save about £5 billion by 2030.The changes come as President Trump’s economic policies have disrupted the global economy, putting more demands on the British…

One is a veteran TV executive. The other emerged from the world of digital media. Both are now chief executives of major public media organizations appearing before Congress on Wednesday, where they will face tough questioning from lawmakers.Here’s a look at their backgrounds.Katherine MaherC.E.O., NPRMs. Maher, 41, has spent much of her career leading digital media organizations. She joined NPR last year after serving as chief executive of Web Summit, an organization that holds technology events around the world. Before that, she was the chief executive of The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that supports the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.Ms. Maher joined…