Author: News Room

Earlier this year, everything seemed set for a major renovation to make two Chicago apartment buildings for mostly lower-income elderly residents more energy efficient. An affordable-housing organization had secured a federal loan, a state loan and money from private investors.But the project, which was to start in a few weeks and include the installation of solar panels, is on hold after the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development delayed funding a critical $5.4 million loan that it had previously approved.“Things are in limbo,” said Aaron Gornstein, chief executive of the Preservation of Affordable Housing, a Boston-based firm behind the…

The world’s most widely followed stock-market benchmark slid into a correction on Thursday, a drop that underscores how the two-year-long bull market is running out of steam in the early days of the Trump administration.The move stems from investors’ growing pessimism about the whipsawing policy pronouncements from Washington over the past few weeks. On-again, off-again tariffs and mass layoffs of federal workers have fomented unease on Wall Street.On Thursday, the S&P 500 fell 1.4 percent. After weeks of selling, the index is now down 10.1 percent from a peak that was reached less than one month ago and is in…

President Trump has called the word tariff “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” He imposed hefty tariffs during his first term and promised expansive new ones as he pursued his second. On his first day back in the White House in January, he issued an executive order directing his cabinet picks to prepare even more tariffs.In the first 50 days of his second term, those sweeping actions have upended diplomatic ties, shaken markets and confounded entire industries. But so has President Trump’s whipsawing commitment to his tariffs, which he has paused, reversed or withdrawn — at times almost as…

Wall Street’s slide resumed on Thursday, another anxiety-induced drop that left the S&P 500 on the verge of closing in a “correction” — a symbolic marker of the speed at which investors have fled the stock market in recent weeks.Traders, economists and business leaders have been grappling with a rapidly shifting economic landscape as President Trump has imposed and threatened new tariffs on imports that could upend global trade and undermine complex supply chains for big companies.On Thursday, Mr. Trump threatened to impose 200 percent tariffs on European wine and champagne, one day after the European Union announced retaliatory tariffs…

Mercedes-Benz said on Thursday that the latest version of its least expensive sedan would be available first as an all-electric car and then a hybrid. And the company will no longer sell a gasoline-only version of the car.That’s a big break from how Mercedes and other established carmakers have typically operated. Until recently, most automakers adapted vehicles designed for fossil fuels to be powered by batteries. The Mercedes sedan, the CLA, which the company unveiled in Rome with the rapper will.i.am, is an example of how at least some established carmakers are developing electric cars first, then adapting them for…

Nervous investors seeking news about the plunging markets on Monday afternoon would have been out of luck if they turned to the websites of The New York Post, The Daily Caller, One America News or The Blaze. Not one of those right-leaning outlets featured articles about the sell-off as the closing bell rang, cementing Wall Street’s steepest decline of the year.And Fox Business Network, which pledges to “deliver content focused on investing, optimism and the American dream,” placed coverage of the drop on its site below a story about temporary outages on Elon Musk’s social media site, X.As President Trump’s…

In the 19th and 20th centuries, railroads revolutionized transportation in North America, permanently accelerating the pace of travel across the continent. Today, many of those railroad tracks host an assortment of historic excursion trains, inviting riders to slow down and enjoy a grand day out. The trains below are destinations in themselves, offering a mix of spectacular sightseeing, onboard dining and glorious open-air observation cars. They traverse deserts, mountains, forests and canyons, pulled by diesel and steam into parts of nature reachable only by rail. They’re rolling lessons in geology and ecology, not to mention history. Most are accessible, none…

Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite communications company, fought behind the scenes for months to break into India’s internet business. The market is dominated by two local giants, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, which seemed united in trying to keep Starlink out.Then, suddenly, this week each of them announced a partnership to bring Starlink into India, pending the government’s approval.Jio, a branch of India’s biggest corporation, said on Tuesday that it would team up with Starlink “to deliver reliable broadband services across the country, including in the most remote and rural regions.” Hours earlier, Airtel had celebrated a deal in similar terms.The…

At Happy Hollow Farm, a small, 16-acre operation in central Missouri, Liz Graznak grows a variety of vegetables, including organic carrots, Swiss chard, radishes and beets.Some of those vegetables go to local distributors where they are placed in boxes, alongside meat and dairy items also produced in the state, and delivered to low-income people. Other vegetables are sent to school districts that would normally not have the budget to serve students fresh, locally grown produce.For Ms. Graznak, about $240,000, or roughly a quarter of her farm’s annual revenue, came from the two federal programs that supported these efforts.This week, she…

The cloud behind the inflation silver lining Even upbeat economic news can offer little comfort to markets and the C-suite.Stocks look set to open lower as relief over Wednesday’s better-than-expected inflation report fades, and concerns grow that a trade war could sap consumer spending and corporate profits. That’s led more corporate chiefs to speak out about the confusion over President Trump’s trade moves.A recap: The Consumer Price Index showed that inflation cooled off slightly last month. Trump hailed the data as “very good news,” and stocks rallied at the outset.But others saw red flags, and the S&P 500 pared its…