Aurelia Butler

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    FIFA to Consider Expanding World Cup to 64 Teams

    Soccer’s governing body will look into another expansion of its marquee event, the most lucrative in sports, after a request by one of its 2030 co-hosts.FIFA, the governing body for global soccer, is considering a plan that would increase the number of teams in the 2030 World Cup to 64 for a one-off expansion to mark the centenary of the event, the organization said on Thursday.The proposal, which was made toward the end of a FIFA board meeting on Wednesday, would upend a tournament that already figures to be unwieldy and complicated because it will be played across three continents for the first time in its history.The World Cup is the most lucrative and most watched event in sports, bringing in billions for FIFA, but the coveted nature of the competition has led to battles among nations to host it, as well as widespread allegations in the past of corruption.The decision to award the 2034 World Cup to Saudi Arabia was criticized by good governance organizations, after FIFA changed its own rules to allow the country to effectively secure rights without facing any competition.The FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, has already overseen the expansion of the World Cup once during his nine-year tenure, bringing the number of teams up to 48 from 32 at the next edition in 2026, which will be mostly played in the United States but also include matches in Mexico and Canada.According to four people with direct knowledge of the discussions, the proposal for a 64-team tournament came as the meeting that was drawing to a close and had reached the section of the agenda earmarked for “miscellaneous” issues.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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    Trump Shifts From Lifting Up America’s Neighbors to Hurting Them

    When the United States signed a free-trade agreement with Canada and Mexico more than 30 years ago, the premise was that partnering with two other thriving economies would also benefit America.This week, President Trump abruptly scrapped that idea. He imposed a sweeping 25 percent tariff on the roughly $1 trillion of imports that Mexico and Canada send into the United States each year as part of that North American trade pact. Those tariffs are expected to significantly raise costs for Canadian and Mexican exports, undermining their economies and likely tipping them into recession.Mr. Trump’s decision to unwind decades of economic integration raises big questions about the future of North America and the industries that have been built around the idea of an economically integrated continent. While some factories in Canada and Mexico might move to the United States to avoid tariffs, the levies will also raise costs for American consumers and manufacturers that have come to depend on materials from their North American neighbors.“This is a day where the United States stopped seeing trade as force for mutual benefit, and began seeing it as a tool of economic warfare,” said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He added that the levies were “a fundamental attack on the economic well being of our closest neighbors.”Mr. Trump suggested on Wednesday that this arrangement could be long-lived, as he gave automakers who were abiding by the terms of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or U.S.M.C.A., only a one month reprieve to prepare for the tariffs. Trump officials said that the president expected to issue more tariffs on Canada and Mexico next month, when he announces what he is calling “reciprocal” tariff measures.Howard Lutnick at Mr. Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress.Eric Lee/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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    Trump Is Said to Be Preparing Order That Aims to Eliminate Education Dept.

    President Trump is preparing to sign an order that would instruct Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin dismantling her agency, setting the stage for a potential power struggle with Congress and another round of legal challenges from opponents.An administration official said the order could be signed as soon as Thursday. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak about private deliberations.No modern president has ever tried to unilaterally shut down a federal department. The Education Department was created by an act of Congress in 1979, and federal lawmakers would likely have to approve eliminating it.Mr. Trump’s order was expected to spark another legal fight for the administration, which is already embroiled in multiple lawsuits over actions in its first six weeks.The American Federation of Teachers noted in a statement late Wednesday that the Education Department was “legally required” to distribute federal funds — money approved for poor students, those with disabilities and others — to states.“Any attempt by the Trump administration or Congress to gut these programs would be a grave mistake, and we will fight them tooth and nail,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the union.A draft of Mr. Trump’s order circulated in Washington on Wednesday ahead of a potential announcement. The Wall Street Journal first reported that Mr. Trump could sign the order as soon as Thursday.Mr. Trump has been blunt about his desire to do away with the department entirely. He remarked recently that he hoped Ms. McMahon would effectively put herself out of a job.He told reporters last month that the Education Department was “a big con job” and that “I’d like to close it immediately.”Ms. McMahon’s first action as education secretary was to email the department’s staff about its “final mission,” an indication of how she planned to fulfill Mr. Trump’s goal of shuttering the department. More

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    Roy Ayers, Vibraphonist Who Injected Soul Into Jazz, Dies at 84

    He helped introduce a funkier strain of the music in the 1970s. He also had an impact on hip-hop: His “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” has been sampled nearly 200 times.Roy Ayers, a vibraphonist who in the 1970s helped pioneer a new, funkier strain of jazz, becoming a touchstone for many artists who followed and one of the most sampled musicians by hip-hop artists, died on Tuesday in New York City. He was 84.His death was announced on his Facebook page. The announcement said he died after a long illness but did not specify a cause or say where in New York he died.In addition to being one of the acknowledged masters of the jazz vibraphone, Mr. Ayers was a leader in the movement that added electric instruments, rock and R&B rhythms, and a more soulful feel to jazz. He was also one of the more commercially successful jazz musicians of his generation.He released nearly four dozen albums, most notably 22 during his 12 years with Polydor Records. Twelve of his Polydor albums spent a collective 149 weeks on the Billboard Top 200 chart. His composition “Everybody Loves the Sunshine,” from a 1976 album of the same name, has been sampled nearly 200 times by artists including Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige and Snoop Dogg. The electric piano hook from “Love,” on his first Polydor album, “Ubiquity” — which introduced his group of the same name — was used in Deee-Lite’s 1990 dance hit “Groove Is in the Heart.”“Roy Ayers is largely responsible for what we deem as ‘neo-soul,’” the producer Adrian Younge, who collaborated with Mr. Ayers and Ali Shaheed Muhammad of the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest in 2020 on the second album in the “Jazz Is Dead” series, which showcases frequently sampled jazz musicians, told Clash magazine. “His sound mixed with cosmic soul-jazz is really what created artists like Erykah Badu and Jill Scott. It was just that groove.“That’s not to say people around then weren’t making music with a groove,” he added, “but he is definitely a pioneer.”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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    Macy’s Signals a Rocky Year Ahead as Trade War Looms

    The largest department store chain in the U.S., like other retailers recently, warned that consumers may be more cautious with their money in the months ahead.Macy’s, the largest department store in the United States, saw slightly improved sales across all of its stores during the holiday season, but like other retailers it warned of a potentially rocky year ahead. Macy’s said comparable sales at stores that it owns were down 1.1 percent in its fiscal fourth quarter, which ended Feb. 1. Across all of Macy’s nameplates, which include Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury, as well as its licensed business and online marketplace, sales rose 0.2 percent, the best result in many quarters.Macy’s entered the holiday season facing tough challenges, including more cost-conscious consumers, weakening profitability and a bizarre accounting error. It is in the midst of a turnaround plan that includes closing underperforming locations and improving its remaining stores with more staffing and better merchandise. It has closed about 66 of 150 planned stores so far. While Macy’s sees signs of optimism, the forecast it offered Wall Street showed that it expects to bring in less revenue than it did last fiscal year, in part because of the store closures. The retailer said it expects net sales to be $21 to $21.4 billion, down from the $22.3 billion this past year. It expects comparable sales to fall as much as 2 percent.David Swartz, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, cautioned that investors and analysts like himself “need to see more” in order to be convinced that the department store’s strategy to reverse its fortunes is really working.“When you own hundreds of stores, some of them are going to be really good and some of them in the middle and some of them are terrible,” he said, adding that “the fact that the better stores are performing fairly well does not really tell you that much about the health of the whole company, unfortunately.”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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    E.C.B. Cuts Interest Rates Again, With an Uncertain Path Ahead

    Vows by European leaders in increase borrowing to ramp up military spending has reshaped the fiscal picture that the central bank must confront.The European Central Bank lowered interest rates on Thursday, the sixth consecutive cut, as the economic landscape for the region rapidly changes.The bank’s key rate was cut by a quarter point to 2.5 percent, which was widely expected as inflation in the region has stayed relatively low and economic growth has been weak.But the future path of interest rates has become increasingly uncertain as policymakers face a seismic shift in Europe. In the past few days, European leaders have vowed to increase military spending by hundreds of billions of euros as they are no longer sure of their alliances with the United States.The plans, which include borrowing more, notably in Germany, have led to yields on European government bonds jumping higher, particularly on long-dated debt, and rising borrowing costs. The prospects of more spending combined with lower interest rates has helped to push stocks up, with Germany’s benchmark index, the DAX, at a record high. And the euro is also rallying against the U.S. dollar to its strongest level in four months, further easing inflationary pressures.This has reshaped the fiscal picture in Europe at a time when the central bank was grappling with the prospect of President Trump imposing tariffs on the region.There has been division among the members of the European Central Bank’s Governing Council about how much lower interest rates need to go. Overall, policymakers have signaled that they were aiming for a neutral rate, where policy would neither restrict nor boost the economy. But they said they would only know that the rate had been reached when they were at it.On Thursday, the central bank said monetary policy was “becoming meaningfully less restrictive,” a sign that policymakers are drawing closer to pausing interest rate cuts.With yields rising, traders are signaling that there will be just one more rate cut, potentially in April or June.The eurozone economy has been sluggish since late last year, and policymakers have substantially cut interest rates — lowering them by 1.5 percentage points since last summer — to support businesses and households with easier access to loans. The extent of economic weakness has taken policymakers by surprise as consumers have been slow to spend more in response to lower inflation. But the central bank is still forecasting the economy will pick up later this year.Still, the central bank forecast slightly slower growth than it did three months ago, anticipating lower exports and weak investment as businesses contend with uncertainty over trade policy. The eurozone economy is now forecast to grow 0.9 percent this year and 1.2 percent next year.Inflation in the eurozone slowed to 2.4 percent in February, data published earlier this week showed, down from 2.5 percent the month before. Inflation in the services sector, which has been frustratingly stubborn for policymakers, also slowed to 3.7 percent, from 3.9 percent in January. More

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    Judge John Hodgman on Knowingly Mispronouncing Words

    Once you’ve been corrected, is it OK to keep going?Maggie writes: My sister, cousin and best friend all pronounce the Spelling Bee’s pangram as “pan-a-gram.” I have nicely pointed out their mistake, but they continue to gleefully mispronounce it. They don’t care that they’re wrong. Make them stop.For those who only read this column and then throw the magazine (or their phone) away, I’ll explain. In The Times’s Spelling Bee game, a pangram is a word formed using all seven letters in the puzzle. More generally, a pangram is a sentence which uses every letter of the alphabet, just like this one (if I had included Q, X and Z) does! “Pan-a-gram,” by contrast, means nothing — yet. But the gleefully wrong tend to get their message out a lot faster these days than we snobs, so “panagram” may eventually win a spot in our living dictionary. Until then, I rule in your favor. You should never speak to these people again. As those of us who play it understand: The Spelling Bee is more important than any sister, cousin, friend or thing on earth. More

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    Where the Gaza Cease-Fire Deal Goes Now Is Uncertain. Here’s What to Know.

    As negotiators are holding discussions on multiple tracks, Palestinians and Israelis are in limbo.Nearly a week after the first stage of Israel and Hamas’s cease-fire expired, both Palestinians and Israelis are in limbo, uncertain how long the truce will hold.The Trump administration, the Arab world, Israel, Hamas and others are now wrangling over the future of the Gaza Strip in a complex series of negotiations — some of which are unfolding along different channels, adding to the confusion.Here’s a look at the state of the cease-fire talks and who is involved.Israel and Hamas are negotiating through mediators.In mid-January, after 15 months of devastating war, Israel and Hamas agreed to a truce that would free hostages held in Gaza since the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on southern Israel, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.But the agreement did not end the war. Instead, the two sides committed to a complex, multiphase plan meant to build momentum toward a comprehensive cease-fire. They were supposed to negotiate terms for the full truce during the first stage, which lasted six weeks.Last weekend, the six weeks elapsed with little apparent success toward that goal, despite efforts by Qatar and Egypt, who have been mediating the talks. (Israel and Hamas do not negotiate directly.)Released Palestinian prisoners celebrating as they arrived in the Gaza Strip in February.Saher Alghorra 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