Aurelia Butler

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    What’s Next for the Gaza Truce? Look at the Border With Egypt.

    Israeli forces are supposed to begin withdrawing from the Philadelphi Corridor, a sensitive border zone between Gaza and Egypt, this weekend.As the first phase of the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas winds down this weekend, the future of the truce remains murky. What happens in a key strip of land along the border between Egypt and Gaza in the coming week could provide an indication of how things will move forward.Israel is supposed to begin withdrawing troops on Sunday from the border area, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, and leave it completely by the following weekend. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has long said that Israeli control there is a core security national interest, injecting uncertainty over this step.Here’s what to look for in the coming days.What is the Philadelphi Corridor?An eight-mile strip of land that divides Gaza from Egypt, the Philadelphi Corridor emerged as a major sticking point in cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas. The border, which divides the city of Rafah, was set up under the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979. More

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    PCE Report Showed Inflation Eased Slightly in January

    But consumer spending unexpectedly slowed, complicating the central bank’s plans for interest rates.Getting inflation under control since the worst surge in decades has been a bumpy process in recent months. New data on Friday showed a little progress, but also an unexpected pullback in consumer spending, complicating the path forward for the Federal Reserve as it debates when to restart interest rate cuts.The central bank’s preferred inflation measure, released on Friday, climbed 2.5 percent in January from a year earlier, slightly lower than the previous reading of 2.6 percent but still well above the central bank’s 2 percent target. On a monthly basis, prices increased 0.3 percent, in line with December’s pace.The “core” personal consumption expenditures price index, which strips out volatile food and energy costs and is closely watched as a gauge for underlying inflation, rose another 0.3 percent in January. Compared to the same time last year, it is up 2.6 percent, data from the Commerce Department showed. In December, it rose at an annual pace of 2.8 percent.The inflation figures were in line with what economists had expected and underscored the Fed’s decision to proceed cautiously with interest rate cuts after making adjustments in the second half of last year. The interest rate set by the Fed stands at 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent.Spending fell 0.2 percent in January, led by a drop in spending on cars and other goods. Economists had expected a 0.2 percent increase overall, following a 0.8 percent increase in December. Once adjusted for inflation, spending dropped by 0.5 percentage points, which is the sharpest monthly drop in almost four years.Thomas Ryan, an economist at Capital Economics, attributed the decline in part to “unseasonably severe winter weather,” but warned that the Fed’s job will become “trickier if January’s sharp decline in consumption was a sign of consumer strength buckling.”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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    “The Royal Tenenbaums” Introduced Gene Hackman to a New Generation

    His performance in Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums” introduced Hackman to a new generation, and his presence helped define the film.When the director Wes Anderson and the actors Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray and Gwyneth Paltrow took the stage in 2011 for a panel celebrating the 10th anniversary of Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums,” there was no need for small talk before addressing the elephant in the room.“So, no Gene Hackman?” began the director Noah Baumbach, the panel’s co-moderator, introducing an apparently genuine nervousness into the discussion.Hackman, who was found dead on Wednesday afternoon with his wife at their home in Santa Fe, N.M., at the age of 95, loomed over “The Royal Tenenbaums” in every possible sense.Within the film, of course, he is the paterfamilias — he is Royal Tenenbaum, “the displaced patriarch,” as Hackman put it in an on-set interview — of the remarkable, scattered family at the center of Anderson’s third film, the one that took him from art houses to the mainstream.That 2011 panel dived into Hackman’s presence, particularly an off-camera gruffness, that distinguished him from the whimsy typical of Anderson’s work. Here was the avatar of 1970s grit and paranoia — who had won an Oscar playing the bad-boy narcotics detective Popeye Doyle in “The French Connection” — dropped into a very different type of cinematic vision, from a very different generation.The tone throughout the panel, particularly from Anderson, was respectful and appreciative. But it was clear that Hackman stood out on set. At the time of filming “The Royal Tenenbaums,” Hackman was already considering a retirement that just a few years later he announced and stuck to, Anderson said. None of the panelists had been in touch with Hackman during the intervening years, they said. And they all remembered him being terse with Anderson.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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    ASAP Rocky, Cleared in Legal Battle, Gets Right Back to Fashion

    At a dinner in Milan the rapper spoke about beating his assault case, his maturing style and when a new album may finally arrive.ASAP Rocky is well aware that his life could be very different right now.“I feel so lucky to even be here talking to you,” Rocky said, speaking here late into the night on Thursday at a dinner celebrating his appointment as creative director for the Ray-Ban eyewear empire.After all, it was just last week that the rapper was found not guilty on charges of shooting a former collaborator, sparing him up to 24 years in jail.“I feel blessed, I feel lucky and fortunate,” Rocky said.And so, just after 10 p.m., and only a couple hours after landing in Italy, Rocky arrived at Trattoria del Ciumbia in an understandably triumphant mood.“I’m so happy to see y’all faces, this is crazy,” he called out to a room peppered with fashion designers, models and sundry celebrities like Romeo Beckham and Charli D’Amelio. For the remainder of the hour, Rocky worked the room like Frank Sinatra at the Copacabana.He shook hands and posed for endless photos with his eyes hidden behind blacked-out sunglasses. He autographed a box of his special-edition Ray-Bans printed with a reworked image of a $100 bill, with his face where Benjamin Franklin’s would normally appear. He poured shots of tequila for the table. If there were any lingering concerns about how the fashion world would receive post-trial Rocky, they were brushed away by hugs, clinked glasses and general good feelings pinging around the room.Clockwise from top left: Ice Spice, ASAP Rocky and Romeo Beckham, Charli D’Amelio, Amina Seck and Alioune Badara Fall.Photographs by Lucas PossiedeWe 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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    How Consumers Can Protect Themselves With the CFPB on Pause

    Rules on bank and credit card fees, medical debt and payment apps are in limbo. One thing you can do is carefully check your financial statements, one expert says.With the government seemingly stepping back from regulatory duties, consumers may have to act as their own financial watchdogs.The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the independent federal agency created after the 2008 financial crisis to shield people from fraud and abuse by lenders and financial firms, has been muzzled, at least temporarily.“Everything is on pause right now,” said Delicia Hand, senior director of digital marketplace with Consumer Reports. “So it’s back on consumers to be extra diligent.” Ms. Hand previously spent nearly a decade in a variety of roles at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, including overseeing complaints and consumer education, before departing in 2022.In early February, the Trump administration ordered the consumer bureau to mostly cease operations. It closed its Washington headquarters, fired some employees and put most of the rest of the staff on administrative leave, and opted not to seek funding for its activities. Several lawsuits are challenging the administration’s actions. On Feb. 14, a federal judge in Washington ordered the bureau to halt firing workers and not to delete data, pending a hearing scheduled for Monday.The administration, however, has already dialed back enforcement — dropping, for instance, a suit accusing an online lender of promoting free loans that actually carried high interest rates. On Thursday, the bureau dismissed a lawsuit that it had brought in January accusing Capital One of cheating customers out of some $2 billion in interest.It’s a stark change for an agency that had been energetic in adopting rules and filing lawsuits aimed at aiding consumers. Under the Biden administration, the bureau moved to reduce or eliminate various fees charged by banks and other financial firms and to remove unpaid medical debt from credit reports, and it fined a major credit reporting bureau for misleading consumers about credit freezes.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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    Paramount’s Shari Redstone Wants a Resolution on President Trump Lawsuit Ahead of Skydance Merger

    Redstone, who controls Paramount, has been trying to close a merger with the Hollywood studio Skydance. President Trump’s lawsuit against CBS News is complicating matters.Shari Redstone, the controlling shareholder of the entertainment giant Paramount, delivered a crucial message to her board a few weeks ago.For months, Paramount’s lawyers had been jousting with representatives for President Trump, who had sued the company’s CBS News network over its segment on former Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Trump accused the network of deceptively editing the interview; CBS said Trump’s lawsuit was without merit.But when the board gathered this month, Ms. Redstone was clear: She was in favor of resolving the issue, two people familiar with the matter told DealBook’s Lauren Hirsch and The New York Times’s Ben Mullin.As Paramount executives weighed the best course of action, Ms. Redstone said she was in favor of moving forward in a way that would lead to some form of conclusion, including mediation.It was the first time that Ms. Redstone made her wishes known to the full board. Many at CBS News and “60 Minutes,” where Ms. Harris’s interview aired, strongly opposed a settlement.Further complicating the matter: The Federal Communications Commission is reviewing Paramount’s pending deal with Skydance. Some executives said that a settlement would smooth the way to closing the merger, even as others worried that a settlement could be interpreted as bribery for the F.C.C. to clear the Skydance deal. Mr. Trump, for his part, told reporters on Wednesday that the two were not linked.National Amusements, Paramount’s parent company, declined to comment, and Paramount has said that its legal battle with Mr. Trump is unrelated to its deal with Skydance.Ms. Redstone’s carefully written statement did not mention Paramount’s deal with Skydance — but it did underscore the fact that a pending multibillion-dollar lawsuit from the president made it difficult for Paramount to do business. She also said that she was removing herself from day-to-day discussions about the lawsuit.This week, The Times reported that Paramount had agreed to bring in a mediator.Any settlement could be perceived as the latest corporate concession to the White House, including Disney’s $15 million settlement in December and Meta’s $25 million settlement last month. The possibility of a settlement, which is likely to further embolden Mr. Trump’s crusade against the media, has been met with a strong backlash within the CBS ranks and outside the company.Though Ms. Redstone didn’t mention the Skydance deal in her remarks, people familiar with her thinking believe she’s focused on closing the deal.Paramount is also navigating the consequences of doing business under a retributive president. Beyond the Skydance deal, Mr. Trump has made clear his willingness to exact revenge when it comes to companies.“Corporations — particularly these days are often in the cross hairs of policymakers — and they have to navigate that,” Jill Fisch, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, told DealBook. “And that’s not easy.” More

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    Citigroup Makes (and Then Fixes) an $81 Trillion Mistake

    The bank temporarily credited a customer’s account with trillions of dollars, adding to scrutiny of risk management systems after a series of errors.We all make mistakes on the job. But rarely do they involve moving funds that dwarf the gross domestic product of every country in the world.Citigroup accidentally credited a client’s account with $81 trillion when it meant to send only $280, the latest mistake at a bank that is struggling to repair its reputation after a string of errors in recent years.The massive transfer, which occurred last April and far exceeds Citi’s stock market value of about $150 billion, was initially missed by two employees and was caught 90 minutes after it was posted, The Financial Times first reported. No funds left the bank, and Citi told the Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency about the error, calling it a “near miss.”The mistake was the latest in a string of glitches at the bank. In 2022, a Citi employee caused a crash in Europe by accidentally adding a zero to a trade, igniting a sell-off that at one point erased 300 billion euros, or about $322 billion, from European stocks. Last year, British regulators fined Citi 62 million pounds, about $78 million, for the incident.In 2020, Citigroup accidentally wired $900 million to a group of lenders locked in a bitter fight with Revlon, the beauty company.That year, U.S. regulators also fined Citi $400 million, saying the bank had failed to address issues in its risk management procedures and internal controls.Citi’s problems with technology and internal systems contributed to the departure of Michael Corbat as chief executive of the bank in 2021. Jane Fraser, who succeeded Mr. Corbat, has said improving risk and controls is a priority, but regulators fined Citi $136 million last year for not making enough progress in fixing its data-management issues.Citi said in a statement that its systems prevented the transfer from actually being made. “Despite the fact that a payment of this size could not actually have been executed, our detective controls promptly identified the inputting error between two Citi ledger accounts and we reversed the entry,” the company said.Isabella Kwai More

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    Inflation Is Rising. What Will That Mean for Trump’s Tariffs?

    Consumer sentiment has turned south as high prices weigh on households. Could that crimp big pieces of the president’s economic agenda, including tariffs?Stubbornly high inflation is beginning to weigh on households, with sentiment souring fast, economists note.Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesRising prices hit a trade war President Trump isn’t backing off his tariff threats, despite the potential risk to the U.S. economy and financial markets.That puts additional focus on the latest Personal Consumption Expenditures report, the Fed’s favored inflation measure. It’s due for release at 8:30 a.m. Eastern.The question is whether lingering inflation also will have big implications for the Trump agenda, with some economists predicting that tariffs will raise inflation and lower growth, even if the target countries don’t retaliate. Friday’s report is expected to show only slight relief for consumers.Economists worry about a hot P.C.E. reading, which could push the central bank to keep borrowing costs higher well into the second half of the year, even as consumer confidence and the mood in the C-suites increasingly turn south and the economy shows signs of slowing.A recession is seen as unlikely, but there are other concerns. Recent data shows a growing affordability crunch with egg prices spiking (more on that below), home sales plummeting and jobless claims climbing. Watch next week’s jobs report for more, including which parts of the country could be hardest hit by Elon Musk-led cuts to the federal government. (Alaska is among them.)“With 3 million federal employees potentially worrying about their jobs and 6 million federal contractors worrying about their jobs, the risks are rising that households may begin to hold back purchases of cars, computers, washers, dryers, vacation travel plans, etc.,” Torsten Slok, Apollo’s chief economist, wrote in a research note on Thursday. Sentiment, he added, is “bad.”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