Author: News Room

Wishing you could buy a home? It can be challenging to save enough for a down payment, given how much houses now cost.But many people don’t realize there are myriad programs that offer grants or loans to help home buyers come up with the necessary funds. “There are tons of programs to assist them,” said Deatra Kemp, an advocate for first-time home buyers in Milwaukee.The programs can ease some of the daunting numbers behind buying a house. The median price of a home has risen to more than $400,000, meaning the once-traditional 20 percent down payment — an amount paid…

Thousands of customers have reported problems getting their banking done with Capital One because of a disruption accessing online services that began on Wednesday and persisted into the weekend.On at least two different occasions on Friday afternoon, nearly 4,000 customers each time reported issues completing transactions with Capital One, a credit card and banking company based in McLean, Va., according to Down Detector, a website that monitors internet and application outages.In a statement shared by Capital One’s customer service account on social media, the company said on Thursday that a “technical issue with a third-party vendor” was “temporarily impacting some…

And Mr. Trump, too, will be unavoidable in Davos, even if he is not there in person. (He is expected to give a speech in a virtual appearance on Thursday.)Yet the implications for a second Trump administration on the climate are more straightforward.Mr. Trump has called for a rapid expansion of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal. He has pledged to roll back investments in clean energy that the Biden administration has prioritized. And he has said he will pull out of the Paris climate accord, an international pledge to try and limit global warming.“It is certainly not helpful…

TikTok’s immediate future may rest in the hands of a tech company that has largely avoided the spotlight: Oracle. The company is one of the app’s leading server providers, managing the data centers where billions of 40-second videos are stored.“It could become a digital roadblock that prevents people from getting access to the content, if they make the decision to shut it down, which is uncertain,” said Bob O’Donnell, founder of TECHnalysis Research, a market research firm.An Oracle spokesman didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment. The company, which has close ties to the incoming Trump administration, has said in…

Davos is coming just in time for the inauguration of Donald J. Trump 2.0, and Europe is anxious. Mr. Trump is like an asteroid heading for Earth, argues Hubert Védrine, a former French foreign minister, and debates about the impact will dominate the cozy, internationalist bubble that gathers each year in the pricey snow of the Swiss Alps.Mr. Trump talks variously about huge new tariffs, about seizing Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, about tying American involvement in European defense not only to Europeans increasing their military spending but also decreasing their trade surplus with the United States.Mr. Védrine and…

When Joe Kudla talks about the Vuori customer — the loyal, die-hard consumer of the company he founded a decade ago — Jimmy Spencer is exactly the kind of person he has in mind.“Oh, I’m Mr. Vuori,” said Mr. Spencer, 41, a Californian who works in sports media and bought his first Vuori T-shirt about six or seven years ago. He estimates he now has 45 items in his closet, including fleeces, jackets, shorts, a stack of those tees in various colors and Vuori’s Meta Pant — five-pocket tapered trousers that are made from a polyester fabric typically used in…

Amid the global turmoil of this young new year comes a flurry of welcome developments that will help many people — especially retirees and those close to retirement — supercharge their savings, cut prescription drug costs, keep more of the money they earn and, possibly, raise their credit scores.Fair warning, though: It’s complicated.The details of the changes, which are partly tied to the phasing in of provisions from the SECURE 2.0 and Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, can be head spinning. But the payoff — and, in one case, possible penalty — can be substantial.Here is a roundup of the…

But I’ve never once added a friend on TikTok, sent a direct message or thought of myself as a “TikToker.” And I don’t think I’m alone. For most people I know, TikTok isn’t a place to connect with other people. It’s a place to waste time, to numb out, to unplug from reality and float in the feed. That passive, dissociative quality, while great for engagement, has also made TikTok feel more replaceable than other, more social networks. If it goes away, we’ll just get our fix somewhere else.I’m also persuaded by the explanation given in The Atlantic by Hana…

Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s C.E.O., will soon be making his way to Washington, where the company is planning to host its first-ever inauguration party on Sunday, along with X and The Free Press.Days later, Khosrowshahi is expected to travel to Davos, Switzerland, for the 54th World Economic Forum — an event that has, in recent years, been a platform for making exactly the kinds of corporate promises that Trump has railed against, including commitments to E.S.G., D.E.I. and globalism.Khosrowshahi’s itinerary symbolizes a stark shift in corporate America. While many C.E.O.s once distanced themselves from Trump, they are now embracing him. And…

Chinese tech companies long looked to the United States as a key market and source of investment. Firms like ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, courted major American investment firms like General Atlantic and Susquehanna Capital. Chinese start-ups in Shanghai and Shenzhen saw an initial public offering on the Nasdaq or New York Stock Exchange as the ultimate symbol of success.But as relations between Washington and Beijing have grown increasingly strained, that is changing.Companies with ties to China now face so much regulatory and political scrutiny that some companies are reconsidering going public or doing business in the United States, investors…