Author: News Room

This month in the White House’s Rose Garden, as he held up a placard showing the global wave of tariffs he wanted to impose, President Trump paused to fondly recall a fallen friend.“The prime minister of Japan, Shinzo, was — Shinzo Abe — he was a fantastic man,” Mr. Trump said during the tariff announcement on April 2. “He was, unfortunately, taken from us, assassination.”The words of praise for Mr. Abe, who was gunned down three years ago during a campaign speech, did not stop Mr. Trump from slapping a 24 percent tariff on products imported from Japan. But they…

President Trump’s tariffs have been good for China’s economic growth. At least they were over the first three months of the year, as the country’s factories raced to ship exports ahead of the trade restrictions.China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported on Wednesday that the country’s gross domestic product grew 1.2 percent from the last three months of 2024. If that pace continues, the Chinese economy will expand at an annual rate of 4.9 percent.But whether China can maintain that growth is shrouded in uncertainty.Pinned down by tariffs that threaten to freeze trade with its biggest customer, China’s economy is facing…

Wading into the trade war, Hong Kong said on Wednesday that its postal service will no longer send packages to the United States.It is the city’s first move in a spiraling tit-for-tat trade war between China and the United States that is reordering global shipping routes.President Trump this month ordered the closure of a loophole that allowed retailers to send clothes and goods from China and Hong Kong, a special administrative region, to the United States without having to pay tariffs. After that change takes effect on May 2, United States Customs and Border agents will begin to collect previously…

President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday outlining a series of actions intended to lower drug prices, including helping states import drugs from Canada.The policies were more modest than proposals to reduce drug prices that Mr. Trump offered in his first term.And one of his new directives could increase drug prices. It calls for the Trump administration to work with Congress to change a 2022 law in a way that could defang a negotiation program meant to reduce Medicare’s spending on commonly used or costly drugs.Such a change has the potential to increase costs for the government, because it…

The Trump administration said Tuesday that it would no longer reserve a regular slot in the presidential press pool for three independent newswires that have participated for decades, including The Associated Press.The move is the latest effort by the White House to exert more control over the dedicated press corps that reports on its day-to-day activities. It was also a new wrinkle in an unfolding legal battle with The A.P., whose journalists have been barred for the past two months from covering small-scale events with the president.A federal judge said last week that the White House had to restore full…

Victims of sophisticated online scams are often dealt a double whammy. Not only is their money forever gone, but these stolen sums often generate giant tax bills when the funds are emptied from taxable retirement accounts.Many of these victims are often left wondering what sort of recourse they might have. Tax regulators recently provided some answers, clearing the way for more victims to seek a tax break on more solid footing.In a memorandum released on March 14, the Internal Revenue Service’s Office of Chief Counsel described which types of scams might qualify for tax relief, which included many investment schemes…

This week, the actress Brooke Shields posted an image of an action-figure version of herself that came with a needlepoint kit and a pet terrier. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, imagined her own figurine accompanied by a gavel and a Bible.These hyper-realistic dolls are nowhere to be found in toy stores, at least for the time being. They are being created using artificial intelligence tools, including ChatGPT.In recent weeks, social media users have been turning to A.I. to generate Barbie-fied versions of themselves, their dogs or their favorite famous figures. Anna Wintour has not been spared the A.I.-doll…

The last time the courts seriously weighed the wisdom of breaking up a giant technology company was a quarter-century ago, after Microsoft was found to have illegally stifled competition in personal computer software.A Federal District Court judge said yes to forcing Microsoft to split in two, separating its monopoly Windows operating system from its Office productivity products and other software. But an appeals court threw out the order, calling the breakup option “a remedy that is imposed only with great caution, in part because its long-term efficacy is rarely certain.”In a pair of landmark proceedings this month in two Washington…

A retrial of the yearslong defamation case brought by Sarah Palin against The New York Times got underway before a Manhattan jury on Tuesday.Ms. Palin, the former Alaska governor and onetime Republican vice-presidential nominee, sued The Times in 2017 over an editorial that erroneously linked her campaign’s language to a mass shooting, which she claimed defamed her.A federal judge and a jury both ruled against her in a 2022 trial of the case, but Ms. Palin successfully appealed and a new trial was ordered. The same judge, Jed S. Rakoff, is hearing the case again. The arguments are largely the…

Reporters trying to get interviews with Steven Spielberg would sometimes grouse that his publicist’s job amounted to speaking a single word: “No.”But Marvin Levy, who served as Mr. Spielberg’s publicist for 42 years, was responsible for much more than body blocking the fifth estate (which he usually did with a gentlemanly grace). Mr. Spielberg did not become Mr. Spielberg because of his filmmaking alone: For 42 years, Mr. Levy was behind the scenes — promoting, polishing, spinning, safeguarding, strategizing — to ensure that his boss was viewed worldwide as Hollywood’s de facto head of state.In addition to representing Mr. Spielberg…