Author: News Room

When the Federal Reserve began lowering interest rates in September, inflation was cooling and the job market was showing some troubling signs of weakness.Three months and a full percentage point of rate cuts later, the opposite is true: The job market seems to have stabilized, but progress on inflation has stalled.As a result, the central bank is widely expected to pause its campaign of rate cuts at its meeting this month, a message reinforced by Fed officials in a series of speeches this week.“While it is not my baseline outlook, I cannot rule out the risk that progress on inflation…

When the Federal Reserve began lowering interest rates in September, inflation was cooling and the job market was showing some troubling signs of weakness.Three months and a full percentage point of rate cuts later, the opposite is true: The job market seems to have stabilized, but progress on inflation has stalled.As a result, the central bank is widely expected to pause its campaign of rate cuts at its meeting this month, a message reinforced by Fed officials in a series of speeches this week.“While it is not my base-line outlook, I cannot rule out the risk that progress on inflation…

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Friday on the fate of TikTok, the enormously popular video app that Congress says poses a looming threat to the nation’s security.Unless the justices intervene before a Jan. 19 deadline set by a federal law, the app must be sold or shut down.The law, enacted in April with broad bipartisan support, said urgent measures were needed because TikTok’s corporate parent, ByteDance, was effectively controlled by the Chinese government, which could use the app to harvest sensitive information about Americans and to spread covert disinformation.Saying that the law violates both its First Amendment rights…

The United States ambassador to China, R. Nicholas Burns, said the Biden administration is making a last push to try to persuade China to stop transferring equipment to Russia for the war in Ukraine.Mr. Burns, in an interview at the U.S. embassy in Beijing, asserted that nearly 400 Chinese companies have supplied Russia with so-called dual use products, those with both military and commercial applications. He also said China has supplied 90 percent of the microelectronics used in the Russian war effort.With less than two weeks remaining before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office, Mr. Burns is raising the administration’s…

Each of the homes burned in the Los Angeles fires is its own individual calamity.Collectively, the losses — whether in the hundreds or, as is far more likely, in the thousands — will weigh on the city’s already urgent housing shortage.Fires are still raging, and with 180,000 people under evacuation orders as of Thursday morning, the degree of displacement in the city and its surrounding areas will take time to assess. For the time being, evacuees are holing up in public shelters in Los Angeles County, with friends or family members or in hotels.But in the coming weeks and months,…

Richard M. Cohen, an outspoken and award-winning television news producer whose career was eventually derailed by the ravages of multiple sclerosis, which he wrote about in a best-selling memoir, died on Dec. 24 in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., a village in Westchester County. He was 76.His wife, the former “Today” show host Meredith Vieira, said his death, in a hospital, was caused by acute respiratory failure.Mr. Cohen spent more than 20 years in the news business, working with luminaries like Ted Koppel at ABC and Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather at CBS. But he tackled a different subject when he wrote…

Bill Belichick grew up around college football. As a child, he tagged along as his father, Steve, went about his duties as an assistant coach at the United States Naval Academy.But his own five-decade coaching career never took him back to the college game until recently. And in that time, and especially in the past few years, the sport has changed tremendously.There are now name, image and likeness rules, or N.I.L., that allow players to be paid directly, sometimes to the tune of millions of dollars. Players can use the transfer portal an unlimited number of times, which has led…

As deadly wildfires raged across Southern California this week, conservative and liberal media outlets reported similarly on the level of devastation that occurred. But they found vastly different culprits for it.Right-wing outlets blamed much of the devastation on Democrats. They assailed the political leadership of California, which is heavily Democratic. They also blamed the destruction on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives undertaken in Los Angeles.Liberal outlets criticized President-elect Donald J. Trump’s reaction to the fires, which they described as insensitive. Some attributed the intensity of the fires to climate change.The fires have so far killed at least five people, although…

A New York State appeals court on Thursday rejected a request by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation to dismiss part of a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit stemming from the broadcasting of misinformation around the 2020 presidential election.The lawsuit, filed by Smartmatic, a voting technology company, is on track to proceed to trial in state court in Manhattan, although the parties could settle the case out of court.Smartmatic sued Fox in February 2021, accusing the media conglomerate of defaming it by mentioning its name among false claims of vote-rigging in the 2020 election that were repeatedly aired on Fox News.Fox News agreed…

Paul F. Oreffice, who as the pugnacious head of Dow Chemical grew and diversified the company at the same time that he rebuffed Vietnam veterans over Agent Orange, argued that the chemical dioxin was harmless and oversaw the manufacturing of silicone breast implants that were known to leak, died on Dec. 26 at his home in Paradise Valley, Ariz. He was 97.His family confirmed his death.Mr. Oreffice (pronounced like orifice) spoke in staccato, fast-paced sentences, and they were often deployed in pushing back against environmentalists, politicians and journalists during an era, the 1970s and ’80s, when the environmental movement was…