Author: News Room

Rows of white concrete buildings near the Pearl River in southern China house one of the world’s fastest-growing industries: Gritty workshops are churning out inexpensive clothing that is exported straight to homes and small businesses around the world. No tariffs are paid, and no customs inspections are conducted.The laborers who make these goods earn as little as $5 an hour, including overtime, for workdays that can last 10 hours or more. They pay $130 a month to sleep on bunk beds in tiny rooms above factories packed with sewing machines and mounds of cloth.“It’s hard work,” said Wu Hua, who…

This orange chicken has not been waiting for you on the steam table. It has not been bouncing and sweating in the darkness of a clamshell container while you wheel your luggage to the gate.At Panda Inn, the Pasadena restaurant that started Panda Express, the orange chicken is made to order, strewed with whole dried chiles, scallions and a few threads of orange zest. It arrives craggy and glistening on a blue stoneware plate.Is it good? Trick question! It is sticky, and it is familiar. It is relentlessly crunchy, with a flatly precise and habit-forming ratio of sweetness to acidity…

A 90-quart model of Igloo coolers has been recalled in North America after the handles of the product caused serious injuries to customers’ fingers, including amputation, government agencies in the United States and Canada said.The recall of the Igloo 90-Quart Flip & Tow Rolling Coolers was issued on Thursday after Igloo received 12 reports of fingertip injuries, including fingertip amputations, bone fractures and lacerations, from consumers in the United States, the Consumer Product Safety Commission said.“The tow handle can pinch consumers’ fingertips against the cooler, posing fingertip amputation and crushing hazards,” the company said.The recall applies to about 1.06 million…

Apple and Google restored TikTok to their app stores in the United States on Thursday evening, several weeks after they removed the short-form video platform in compliance with a new law that banned it in the country.President Trump tried to pause enforcement of the TikTok ban with an executive order, but the companies were reluctant to bring TikTok back until they were certain they were not breaking the law.The law, signed last year, had called for ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese owner by Jan. 19. The law targeted app store operators and internet hosting…

Crafters, quilters, knitters and makers across the country received bleak news on Wednesday when they learned that Joann, the arts-and-crafts retail giant, was preparing to close more than half of its stores in the wake of its latest bankruptcy filing — its second in less than a year.Possibly as early as this weekend, pending court approval, the company will begin closing 500 of its roughly 800 stores nationwide. To its loyal customer base, the news represented more than just the decline of a chain that sells yarn, art supplies, sewing machines and fabrics. It also symbolized the demise of a…

Jim Guy Tucker, a former governor of Arkansas who was caught up in the long-running investigation that unsuccessfully targeted his predecessor as governor, Bill Clinton, died on Thursday in Little Rock, Ark. He was 81.His death, at a hospital, was caused by complications of ulcerative colitis, said his daughter Anna Ashton.The Whitewater investigation, which looked into purportedly fraudulent land deals in northwest Arkansas, was led by a Republican special prosecutor and consumed much of the Clinton presidency. But it wound up netting only secondary players on minor charges.Mr. Tucker was one of them. He had been among the most promising…

In a case that could have major implications for abortion access in the United States, a Texas judge on Thursday ordered a New York doctor to stop prescribing and sending abortion pills to patients in Texas and to pay a penalty of more than $100,000 for providing the medication to one woman.The case is widely expected to reach the Supreme Court and become a pivotal test in the escalating battle between states that ban abortion and states that support abortion rights. It essentially pits Texas, which has a near-total abortion ban, against New York, which has a “telemedicine abortion shield…

President Trump on Thursday set in motion a plan for new tariffs on other countries globally, an ambitious move that could shatter the rules of global trading and is likely to set off furious negotiations.The president directed his advisers to come up with new tariff levels that take into account a range of trade barriers and other economic approaches adopted by America’s trading partners. That includes not only the tariffs that other countries charge the United States, but also the taxes they charge on foreign products, the subsidies they give their industries, their exchange rates, and other behaviors the president…

On Dec. 7, Rupert formally filed his petition to strip Prue, Liz and James of their voting power. The three children quickly filed an objection, arguing that their father was abusing the narrow amendment that enables him to make changes to the family trust. Though the public was still unaware of the escalating turmoil roiling the family, the legal battle was now underway.Since leaving the family empire, James had become a private investor, backing media firms, A.I. start-ups and a cannabis-edibles company. He was also a board member at Tesla and hired one of the automaker’s law firms, the heavy-hitting…

Skylar Holden, a cattle rancher in Missouri, had signed a $240,000 cost-sharing contract with the Agriculture Department to add fencing and improve the watering system for his property. But after the Trump administration abruptly froze federal funding, Mr. Holden said, he was suddenly out tens of thousands of dollars and on the hook for tens of thousands more in labor and material costs, and risked losing his farm.“Whenever my farm payment comes due, there’s a good chance that I’m not going to be able to pay it,” he said in an interview.Mr. Holden’s situation underlines the potentially precarious position of…