Author: News Room

Los Angeles County sued Southern California Edison and its parent company on Wednesday, blaming the utility’s equipment for causing the deadly Eaton fire in January.The county’s lawsuit is the most prominent case brought against Edison, which is also facing scores of lawsuits filed by victims of the fire that killed 17 people and destroyed more than 9,400 buildings near Altadena and Pasadena, Calif.The cities of Pasadena and Sierra Madre are also filing suits against Edison for damages that include the use of taxpayer resources and destruction of public infrastructure during the fire, the county said.“We are committed to seeking justice…

Tom Llamas will take over as the anchor of NBC’s flagship news program, “NBC Nightly News,” the company said on Wednesday.Mr. Llamas, 45, has been the anchor on the company’s streaming news outlet, NBC News Now. He succeeds Lester Holt, the longtime anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” who last month announced his plans to step down from the role.The network said Mr. Llamas would take over “NBC Nightly News” this summer.This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

South Africa is preparing a new trade offer to present to President Trump, hoping to appeal to his transactional approach to foreign policy and ease boiling tensions with Washington, a spokesman for South Africa’s president said this week.The spokesman, Vincent Magwenya, said in an interview that South African officials are anticipating Mr. Trump will call for an end to the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a decades-old trade agreement that has been an economic boon to the 32 African nations that it includes.The act allows billions of dollars worth of goods — from produce to cars — from sub-Saharan Africa…

Hours after imposing steep tariffs on Canada, President Trump raised an issue that even the American lenders whose cause he’s championing find perplexing: the access, or lack thereof, of U.S. banks to the Canadian market.On Tuesday, Mr. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, “Canada doesn’t allow American Banks to do business in Canada, but their banks flood the American Market.” He added sarcastically, “Oh, that seems fair to me, doesn’t it?”While this issue doesn’t often come up in conversations with prominent American bank executives, it appears to be increasingly on the president’s mind.Mr. Trump mentioned the Canada banking…

Florida’s insurance regulator has demanded an unusually intrusive trove of data on millions of prescription drugs filled in the state last year, including the names of patients taking the medications, their dates of birth and doctors they’ve seen.The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation in January sought this information from pharmacy benefit managers like UnitedHealth’s Optum Rx and CVS Health’s Caremark, companies that oversee prescription drugs for employers and government programs.It remained unclear why the state was ordering the submission of so much data. In a letter to one benefit manager reviewed by The New York Times, the regulator said the…

When Asher Lucas’s co-workers started taunting him for being transgender, saying he was “born a girl and needed to be a girl,” he figured this type of bullying would not be tolerated at a well-known restaurant.But after complaining to his manager, Mr. Lucas was fired along with three employees who spoke up on his behalf.“This cannot be legal,” Mr. Lucas remembers thinking when his boss told him in a voice mail message that he was fired.The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission agreed with Mr. Lucas. In October, the agency sued his employer, Culver’s, in federal court in Michigan, saying the restaurant…

Adidas said Wednesday that it had sold its last pair of Yeezys, a wildly popular and profitable sneaker brand it developed with the rapper and designer Ye, as it tried to move past the publicity nightmare that followed after Ye’s antisemitic comments.The sportswear giant severed ties with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, in 2022 after he posted antisemitic remarks on social media and made other offensive comments publicly. Adidas had said that ending its nearly decade-long collaboration with the American entertainer cost it nearly 250 million euros that year.The rapper apologized to the Jewish community in 2022 only to…

“A little disturbance” For months, the debate gripping board rooms, Wall Street and world capitals was whether to take President Trump at his word on tariffs. For a while, the markets rallied as if he were just bluffing.He wasn’t. In an address before Congress last night, Trump said that tariffs would protect American jobs and enrich the nation. He also acknowledged that “there will be a little disturbance. But we’re OK with that.”What might a “a little disturbance” look like? DealBook has taken on the task of gaming out what could happen next. (A warning to free-trade advocates: this could…

In an address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, President Trump denounced Biden-era policies, mocked Democrats and lauded his administration’s early hailstorm of executive actions. He was, he said, “just getting started.”How did his speech go over? The New York Times talked with six voters — many of whom voted for Mr. Trump reluctantly — as part of a regular check-in over the first 100 days of Mr. Trump’s term.‘It was very nice to see a lot of empathy.’Tali Jackont, 57, from Los AngelesWhat struck Tali Jackont, an educator, more than anything was Mr. Trump’s showmanship. The…

For months, China has promised to help its people spend more to turn the economy around, while taking few concrete measures.On Wednesday, the country’s top leaders pledged to “vigorously” boost spending but once again offered limited details and little money to back it up.The government’s budget and annual work report, released on the most important day in China’s political calendar, during the meeting in Beijing called the National People’s Congress, set an optimistic target of 5 percent growth but gave scant indication of how the economy would get there without another surge in exports this year. China’s reliance on trade…