Aurelia Butler

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    Tariffs Push Honda to Move Production From Canada to U.S.

    President Trump’s trade war again tests Canada’s new government. Honda is also canceling plans for a major electric vehicle factory in Canada.In the face of U.S. tariffs, Honda said on Monday that it would shift production of one of its popular vehicles from Ontario to a U.S. factory and postpone an $11 billion plan to make electric vehicles and batteries in Canada.The announcement came less than a month after Honda denied a report in the Japanese media that President Trump’s tariffs would force it to pull back in Canada.It also poses a major challenge for Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada, who won a stunning victory in last month’s election after portraying himself as the leader best suited for dealing with President Trump and the trade war between the two countries.The United States has imposed a 25 percent tariff on many Canadian autos and auto parts.Honda’s chief executive, Toshiro Mibe, said in a news conference in Japan that the decision to move the manufacturing of the CR-V sport utility vehicle to the United States was part of the company’s plans to “optimize” production to reduce the effects of tariffs.He blamed sluggish growth of the electric vehicle market for the decision to hold off on an $11 billion expansion of the Ontario factory complex, which would have added battery and electric vehicle production.The expansion, which was backed by substantial financial incentives from the governments of Canada and Ontario, was characterized last year by Justin Trudeau, the prime minister at the time, as the largest investment by an automaker in Canadian history. It was projected to employ 1,000 people and was the signature piece of a series of government-backed moves to shift Canada’s auto industry toward electric vehicles.The effect of the CR-V production move was not immediately known. But, like all auto assembly lines in Canada, the majority of the CR-Vs made in Canada are shipped to the United States.Honda Canada did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It currently employs about 4,200 people at its plant in Alliston, Ontario, which also builds Civic sedans as well as engines.Mr. Carney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Honda’s decisions. He is set to swear in his new cabinet Tuesday.The announcement by Honda is the latest in a series of moves by the auto industry to pull back plans for expansion in Canada after the imposition of tariffs by the United States.Stellantis suspended the conversion of a factory in a Toronto suburb to make electric and gasoline powered Jeeps. It has shut down its plant in Windsor, Ontario, which makes minivans and Dodge muscle cars, for a total of three weeks and is also reducing its production schedule during the coming weeks.General Motors’ Canadian subsidiary suspended production of an electric commercial van in Ontario. Ford’s lone Canadian assembly plant, in Oakville, Ontario, has been idle for nearly a year after the company abandoned plans to make electric vehicles there. Instead, the plant will eventually start making gasoline-powered pickup trucks. More

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    Kate Middleton Presents 2025 Queen Elizabeth II Award for Design

    The British royal made a surprise appearance on Tuesday to present a fashion award named for Queen Elizabeth II.The fashion crowd in London is generally known for keeping cool. But on Tuesday, the editors and designers at a ceremony for one of the industry’s most prestigious local awards became palpably excited when Catherine, Princess of Wales, emerged to present this year’s Queen Elizabeth II Award for Design to Patrick McDowell, 29, a Liverpool-born designer.Dressed in an olive Victoria Beckham suit and a white silk pussy-bow blouse, Catherine walked with Mr. McDowell among mannequins and models wearing the designer’s looks inside 180 the Strand, the Central London building where the event took place. It was the second time the princess had presented the award, which was created by the British Fashion Council and the British royal family in 2018 to recognize the role London’s fashion industry “plays in society and diplomacy.”The princess did not give public comments at the ceremony, but Mr. McDowell said that their private conversation touched on topics including a shared appreciation for craftsmanship and the designer’s efforts to make collections in Britain and offer customers the option to repair or rework old garments.Mr. McDowell added that, as Catherine toured the clothes on display, she took interest in a tailored sleeveless jacket called “the Wales jacket.”“She said, ‘Why would you call it that?’ with a big smile,” Mr. McDowell said. “What a moment, to be sharing jokes with our future queen.”Patrick McDowell, left, a Liverpool-born designer and the winner of this year’s Queen Elizabeth II Award for Design.Shaun James Cox/BFCWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Interior Department Weighs Less Conservation, More Extraction

    A leaked version of the department’s five-year strategic planning document favors privatization and economic returns from the nation’s public lands.The Trump administration is proposing a drastic reimagining of how public lands across the United States are used and managed, according to an Interior Department document leaked to the public in late April. The document, a draft of the department’s strategic plan for the next five years, downplays conservation in favor of an approach that seeks to maximize economic returns, namely through the extraction of oil, gas and other natural resources.“That’s a blueprint for industrializing the public lands,” said Taylor McKinnon, who works on preservation of Southwestern lands for the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit organization. “A separate question is whether they’re able to achieve that,” Mr. McKinnon said, vowing lawsuits from his group and others.Sweeping proposals are a species native to Washington, D.C., and many of them stand little chance of being realized. However, Donald J. Trump has begun his second term as president at a blistering pace, remaking or shuttering entire federal agencies with such speed that opponents have only recently found their footing.“I would take it every bit as seriously as I would take what is laid out in Project 2025,” said Jacob Malcom, who until recently headed the Interior Department’s office of policy analysis. Project 2025, a 900-page document issued in 2023 by the Heritage Foundation, has served as a blueprint for the Trump administration on a host of policy fronts — including in its approach to public lands. The section of Project 2025 dealing with the Interior Department was primarily written by William Perry Pendley, a conservative activist.Of the several goals laid out in the draft strategic plan — which was pointedly made public on April 22, when Earth Day is marked — “Restore American Prosperity” earns top billing. To achieve that aim, the Interior Department proposes to “open Alaska and other federal lands for mineral extraction,” “increase revenue from grazing, timber, critical minerals, gravel and other nonenergy sources” and “increase clean coal, oil and gas production through faster and easier permitting.”South Lake Tahoe, Calif.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Jazz at Lincoln Center’s New Season Highlights Ties to Africa

    From July through June 2026, the new season will showcase works by John Coltrane, the South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim and more.Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 38th season will celebrate jazz, Africa and the African diaspora with programs that pay tribute to genre greats like John Coltrane and Miles Davis, while others will spotlight vocalists, pianists and other trumpeters. It will also include a tour of Africa by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.The new season opens on July 24 with a preview concert,, “Reflections on Africa,” in the Rose Theater. The program, with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Vincent Gardner as the musical director, offers compositions reflecting the effect of African consciousness on music composed by jazz artists including Coltrane, Randy Weston, Jackie McLean and Horace Parlan.The season continues on Sept. 18 with “Afro!,” a new composition by Wynton Marsalis, the managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, which illuminates his meditations on the African continent. It will also feature the vocalist Shenel Johns, the djembe player Weedie Braimah and the drummer Herlin Riley.On Oct. 3-4, Jazz at Lincoln Center will present a 91st birthday retrospective of the 75-year-long career of the Capetown-born pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim. (He was known as Dollar Brand when Duke Ellington first heard his trio in 1963 and sponsored his first recording.)On Oct. 24 and Oct. 25, the Orchestra will feature another South African pianist, Nduduzo Makhathini, including a debut of new work that he has composed.Works by Ellington take center stage Jan. 15-17, 2026, with “Duke in Africa.” The music directors for that program will be Chris Lewis and Alexa Tarantino, two of the Orchestra’s newest members.On Feb. 13 and on Valentine’s Day, Dianne Reeves will explore the universal theme of love as she shares songs that highlight rapture, anguish, romance and heartbreak.The Orchestra will feature works by Davis from May 14-16, 2026, in “Sketches of Miles: Miles Davis at 100.” Later that month (May 29-30, 2026), Jazzmeia Horn, the winner of the 2015 Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Vocals Competition, will present a program showcasing her vocal range and improvisation, with the Her Noble Force big band.Etienne Charles, the Trinidad-born trumpeter and composer, will take on Anglophone Afro-Caribbean traditions in “Folklore LIVE Vol. 2” from June 5-6, 2026, in the Appel Room. Later that month, June 12-13, 2026, the Orchestra with Marsalis will also explore the African roots that help make up the genres of Brazil, with “Soul of Brazil,” featuring Hamilton de Holanda and the music of Moacir Santos, in the Rose Theater.The full season is online at jazz.org/25-26. More

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    Why Saudi Arabia Rolled Out a Lavender Carpet for Trump’s Visit

    In recent years, Saudi Arabia has swapped red carpets for lavender, a symbolic color for the kingdom that celebrates national identity.No, don’t call it purple. When President Trump disembarked from Air Force One in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, he stepped onto the rich lavender-colored carpet unfurled before him, just one feature of the lavish welcome extended to the visiting American leader on the first day of his Gulf tour.Along with a fighter-jet escort in the air and riders on Arabian horses on the ground, the lavender carpet is one of the distinctive and symbolic Saudi protocols for greeting high-profile dignitaries. Saudi Arabia swapped red carpets for lavender in 2021, as the ruling royal family sought to define its own protocols and celebrate national identity, according to a report by the official Saudi Press Agency published at the time.“Lavender in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is associated with blossoming wildflowers that carpet the kingdom’s desert landscapes in the spring and is a symbol of Saudi generosity,” the report said. In spring, Saudi Arabia’s rugged dunes are covered in lavender, basil and Germander, a flowering shrub that grows across the Arabian Peninsula, also known by the Arabic name “Aihan.”The color of the carpet is also a nod to how the blooms transform an otherwise harsh desert landscape, the report said, symbolizing the growth that Prince Mohammed has promised to generate through his blueprint to diversify the economy of the oil-dependent kingdom, called “Vision 2030.”The carpet features a border of the traditional Al Sadu textile design created by Bedouin women. The geometric patterns, tightly woven on a hand loom, were included on a list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity compiled by the United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO, in 2020.Saudi Arabia first rolled out a lavender carpet in 2021, for Sheikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, a key Saudi partner in the Gulf, according to the Saudi Press Agency. The carpet is also used for state receptions and other official occasions. More

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    Afrikaners Arrive in U.S. as Trump-Approved Refugees

    The first group of Afrikaners have arrived in the United States, claiming they were victims of persecution or had reason to fear persecution in their home country.President Trump signed an executive order in February establishing refugee status for Afrikaners, the white ethnic minority in South Africa that created and led the brutal system of apartheid.As part of the executive order, the Trump administration created an expedited path for Afrikaners to resettle in the United States, even as the administration has barred most refugees from countries afflicted by war and famine.While waiting at the airport in Johannesburg, the passengers said the U.S. Embassy had instructed them not to speak with the news media. The first group of Afrikaners arrived in the United States on May 12.Here’s what you need to know:Who are the Afrikaners?What does land have to do with it?Why are Afrikaners being granted refugee status?How will they be resettled in the United States?Who are the Afrikaners?The Afrikaners who arrived in the United States on Monday are the descendants of the European colonizers who came to South Africa approximately four centuries ago. They later created the brutal system of apartheid in 1948.Decades after the end of apartheid, some Afrikaners now say they are being denied jobs and have been targeted by violence because of their race.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Germany Bans Far-Right ‘King of Germany’ Group and Arrests Its Leaders

    Members of a group calling itself the Kingdom of Germany, which was targeted in nationwide raids, reject the existence of the German state and want to set up a parallel one.Germany announced on Tuesday that it was banning a far-right group that refuses to recognize the German state and that has set up aspects of a parallel one of its own that includes a separate currency, ID cards, license plates and even a bank.On Tuesday morning, 800 police officers were mobilized in seven states and arrested four of the leaders of the group, which calls itself the Kingdom of Germany. Officers also searched buildings where the group was operating.Peter Fitzek, 59, a former cook who leads the group, and is known to his followers as Peter I, the self-appointed king, was among those arrested. The police said that Mr. Fitzek was being investigated for leading a criminal organization and illegally selling insurance and investments.The Kingdom of Germany, which the authorities estimate has 1,000 active members, is the largest organized grouping of the so-called Reichsbürger movement.Adherents of the movement generally claim that the German government is being run by “deep-state operatives” and often use antisemitic and anti-democratic conspiracy theories to justify their resistance to the modern German state.“The aim of this association is to establish a so-called parallel state and to secede from the Federal Republic of Germany,” Alexander Dobrindt, Germany’s new interior minister, said in Berlin after the raids.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Boxes of Nazi Material Are Found After Decades in Basement of Argentina Court

    Thousands of documents in the boxes could result in new information about Nazi activity in Argentina in the early years of World War II.Workers clearing out the basement of Argentina’s Supreme Court made a startling discovery recently. They found boxes filled with swastika-stamped notebooks, propaganda material and other Nazi-era documents.The boxes had been stored there for more than eight decades, the court said, and were uncovered by accident because workers were going through archives for the creation of a Supreme Court Museum.Upon opening the boxes, they found “material intended to consolidate and propagate Adolf Hitler’s ideology in Argentina, during the height of World War II,” according to a statement from the court in Spanish.Last week, officials, researchers and members of the Argentine Jewish community held a ceremony to open more of the boxes. The court’s president, Horacio Rosatti, ordered a full survey of the material given its historical significance and “potentially crucial information it could contain to clarify events related to the Holocaust,” the court said in its statement on Monday.Jonathan Karszenbaum, the executive director of the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires, participated in the formal opening on Friday. “I was shocked because of the volume of this,” he said, adding that he had not seen the contents of all of the boxes.The court has determined some details about the origin of the boxes. It said that the material had arrived in Argentina from the German Embassy in Tokyo on June 20, 1941, on the Japanese ship Nan-a-Maru, when Argentina was officially neutral in World War II, and Japan was allied with Hitler’s Germany.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More