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    China’s First Quarter Results Show Growth Propelled by Its Factories

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    China’s big bet on manufacturing helped to counteract its housing slowdown in the first three months of the year, but other countries are worried about a flood of Chinese goods.The Chinese economy grew more than expected in the first three months of the year, new data shows, as China built more factories and exported huge amounts of goods to counter a severe real estate crisis and sluggish spending at home.To stimulate growth, China, the world’s second-largest economy, turned to a familiar tactic: investing heavily in its manufacturing sector, including a binge of new factories that have helped to propel sales around the world of solar panels, electric cars and other products. But China’s bet on exports has worried many foreign countries and companies. They fear that a flood of Chinese shipments to distant markets may undermine their manufacturing industries and lead to layoffs.On Tuesday, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said the economy grew 1.6 percent in the first quarter over the previous three months. When projected out for the entire year, the first-quarter data indicates that China’s economy was growing at an annual rate of about 6.6 percent.“The national economy made a good start,” said Sheng Laiyun, deputy director of the statistics bureau, while cautioning that “the foundation for stable and sound economic growth is not solid yet.”Retail sales increased at a modest pace of 4.7 percent compared with the first three months of last year, and were particularly weak in March. 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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      NYT Crossword Answers for April 16, 2024

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      Adam Vincent keeps us young at heart.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — Today marks the first anniversary of my first day at The New York Times, a cause for celebration, certainly. But the milestone that comes to mind when I think about my beginnings here is the first appearance of one of my Wordplay BYLINES (20A) in print. And no, “milestone” is no exaggeration: I had a clipping of the column professionally framed and hung it in my apartment.That day’s crossword — a Monday collaboration by Alina Abidi and Matthew Stock — featured common expressions using the names of animals, and to this day I retain a special fondness for any puzzle that uses animals in its theme. Imagine my delight, then, when I discovered what Adam Vincent had in store for us today.There’s more to Mr. Vincent’s trick than just animals — depending on your interpretation of the term, I suppose — but I found it to be the perfect accompaniment to a happy occasion.So, shall we brighten the day with a solve? Better ELATE (1A) than never, as they say.Today’s ThemeThe term for a “Certain immature adult” hints at each of today’s four themed entries at 16- and 62-Across, and 10- and 24-Down. Let’s take a look at one of our clues: The “Actor who played Oscar Wilde in ‘Wilde’” (16A) is STEPHEN FRY, which somehow also refers to a “fish.” At 10-Down, the “Mouseketeer peer of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake,” RYAN GOSLING, is related to a “gander.” The tie-in here is clearer: a GOSLING is a young gander.A “Certain immature adult” is a MAN BABY (see also: man child), the definition of which is self-evident; it’s a MAN who behaves like a BABY. The term seems to have emerged in its current definition in the 2010s. Google’s Ngram Viewer shows an odd spike in the term MAN BABY in the mid-19th century, though the term probablyhad a different meaning at the time: The New York Times, for instance, used the term in 1878 to refer to a medical anomaly.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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      Under Pressure From Trump, Arizona Republicans Weigh Response to 1864 Abortion Ban

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      Facing mounting pressure to strike down a near-total abortion ban revived last week by Arizona’s Supreme Court, Republican state legislators are considering efforts to undermine a planned ballot measure this fall that would enshrine abortion rights in the Arizona Constitution, according to a presentation obtained by The New York Times.The 1864 law that is set to take effect in the coming weeks bans nearly all abortions and mandates prison sentences of two to five years for providing abortion care. The proposed ballot measure on abortion rights, known as the Arizona Abortion Access Act, would enshrine the right to an abortion before viability, or about 24 weeks. Supporters of the measure say they have already gathered enough signatures to put the question on the ballot ahead of a July 3 filing deadline.Republicans in the Legislature are under tremendous pressure to overturn, or at least amend, the 1864 ban. Former President Donald J. Trump, the national standard-bearer of the Republican Party, directly intervened on Friday, calling on Republican legislators, in a frantically worded post online, to “act immediately” to change the law. A top Trump ally in Arizona who is running for the Senate, Kari Lake, has also called for the overturning of the 1864 law, which she had once praised.Abortion rights have been a winning message for Democrats since the Supreme Court, with three justices appointed by Mr. Trump, overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. And even though it is an objectively unpopular aspect of his White House legacy, Mr. Trump has repeatedly bragged that he is personally responsible for overturning Roe.Republicans in Arizona, however, have already resisted efforts to repeal the 160-year-old law and are bracing for the potential for another floor battle on the ban that is looming for the Legislature, which is set to convene on Wednesday. The plans that circulated among Republican legislators suggest the caucus is considering other measures that would turn attention away from the 1864 law.The presentation to Republican state legislators, written by Linley Wilson, the general counsel for the Republican majority in the Arizona State Legislature, proposed several ways in which the Republican-controlled Legislature could undermine the ballot measure, known as A.A.A., by placing competing constitutional amendments on the ballot that would limit the right to abortion even if the proposed ballot measure succeeded.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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      Johnson Says House Will Vote on Stalled Aid to Israel and Ukraine

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      The speaker, who has delayed for months amid G.O.P. opposition to funding for Kyiv, said he would bring up foreign aid legislation along with a bill aimed at appeasing Republican skeptics.Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday said he planned this week to advance a long-stalled national security spending package to aid Israel, Ukraine and other American allies, along with a separate bill aimed at mollifying conservatives who have been vehemently opposed to backing Kyiv.Mr. Johnson’s announcement, coming after he has agonized for weeks over whether and how to advance an infusion of critical aid to Ukraine amid stiff Republican resistance, was the first concrete indication that he had settled on a path forward. It came days after Iran launched a large aerial attack on Israel, amplifying calls for Congress to move quickly to approve the pending aid bill.Emerging from a meeting in which he briefed G.O.P. lawmakers on his plan, Mr. Johnson said he would cobble together a legislative package that roughly mirrors the $95 billion aid bill the Senate passed two months ago but that is broken down into three pieces. Lawmakers would vote separately on a bill providing money for Israel, one allocating funding for Ukraine and a third with aid for Taiwan and other allies. They would cast a fourth vote on a separate measure containing other policies popular among Republicans.“We know that the world is watching us to see how we react,” Mr. Johnson told reporters. “We have terrorists and tyrants and terrible leaders around the world like Putin and Xi and in Iran, and they’re watching to see if America will stand up for its allies and our interests around the globe — and we will.”It is not clear whether the complex strategy will be successful in the House, where Mr. Johnson has a tenuous hold on his divided conference and a bare majority. Republicans could try to block it from coming to the floor. Even if they did not, the success of the aid package would hinge on a complicated mix of bipartisan coalitions that support different pieces, given resistance among hard-right Republicans to Ukraine funding and among left-wing Democrats to unfettered aid to Israel.And the plan could imperil Mr. Johnson’s speakership, which is teetering under a threat to oust him.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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      Boeing Defends Safety of 787 Dreamliner After Whistle-Blower’s Claims

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      After a Boeing engineer went public with safety concerns, the company invited reporters to its South Carolina factory and top engineers vouched for the plane.Boeing sought on Monday to reassure the public of the safety of its 787 Dreamliner plane days before a whistle-blower is scheduled to testify before Congress about his concerns regarding the jet’s structural integrity.In a briefing for reporters at the factory in North Charleston, S.C., where the plane is assembled, two top Boeing engineers said the company had conducted exhaustive tests, inspections and analyses of the plane, both during its development and in recent years, and found no evidence that its body would fail prematurely.The presentation came just under a week after The New York Times reported the allegations by the whistle-blower, Sam Salehpour, who works as a quality engineer at Boeing and is set to testify before a Senate panel on Wednesday. Mr. Salehpour said that sections of the fuselage of the Dreamliner, a wide-body plane that makes extensive use of composite materials, were not properly fastened together and that the plane could suffer structural failure over time as a result. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating his allegations.Mr. Salehpour’s claims instantly created another public-relations problem for Boeing, which has been facing intense scrutiny over its manufacturing practices after a panel came off a 737 Max during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.Mr. Salehpour said that the gaps where sections of the Dreamliner’s fuselage were fastened together did not always meet Boeing’s specifications, something that he said could weaken the aircraft over time. The Boeing engineers disagreed with his assessment, without naming him. They said the plane had gone through extensive testing that showed that, in a vast majority of cases, the gaps met the specifications. Even if the gaps exceeded the specifications by a reasonable amount, they would not affect the plane’s durability, the engineers added.“Not only did we interrogate those airframes — we were taking out fasteners, we were looking for damage, we’re also doing the approval inspections to understand the build condition, and we didn’t find any fatigue issues in the composite structure,” said Steve Chisholm, a vice president and the functional chief engineer for mechanical and structural engineering at Boeing.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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      Israel Weighs Response to Iran’s Attack as Allies Push for Restraint

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      Israel’s war cabinet on Monday met to weigh possible responses to Iran’s missile and drone attack over the weekend, as the United States, Britain and other allies strongly urged Israel to show restraint and sought to de-escalate tensions between the two regional powers.Some far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government called for a swift and forceful retaliation in response to Iran.An Israeli official briefed on the cabinet discussions, speaking anonymously in order to talk about security matters, said several options were being considered, ranging from diplomacy to an imminent strike, but gave no further details. There was no immediate public statement by the ministers, or by the Israeli prime minister.“We are weighing our steps,” Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military chief of staff, told Israeli soldiers on Monday in televised remarks during a visit to an Israeli air base. “The launching of so many missiles, cruise missiles and drones toward Israeli territory will be responded to.”Mr. Netanyahu faces a delicate calculation — how to respond to Iran in order not to look weak, while trying to avoid alienating the Biden administration and other allies already impatient with Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza.While the United States, Britain and France strongly condemned Iran’s assault and stepped in to help thwart it on Saturday, their calls for restraint highlighted the pressure Israel was facing to avoid a more direct confrontation with Iran.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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      Inside the Manhattan Courtroom Where Trump Is on Trial

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      Protesters railed outside, media and security swarmed the area, and inside the courtroom, Donald J. Trump appeared to nod off.It was about 2:30 on Monday afternoon when the first 96 potential jurors filed into a drab courtroom in Lower Manhattan to encounter the world’s most famous defendant: Donald J. Trump.Some craned their necks to catch a glimpse, an indication of the undeniable power of Mr. Trump’s celebrity.But not long after, more than 50 of those same prospective jurors — drawn from one of the nation’s most liberal counties — were dismissed because they said they could not be impartial about the 45th president.The beginning of the first criminal trial of a former American president drew intense security, loud demonstrations and smothering media coverage to a dingy Lower Manhattan courthouse that will be the unlikely center of American politics for the next six weeks.Who Are Key Players in the Trump Manhattan Criminal Trial?The first criminal trial of former President Donald J. Trump began Monday. Take a closer look at central figures related to the case.And if the first day is any indication, the trial may well be a surreal experience, juxtaposing the case’s mundane-sounding criminal charges — falsifying business records — against the potentially seismic effect it could have on the presidential 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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      Israeli Civilians Kill Two Palestinian Men in the West Bank, Officials Say

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      Israeli civilians fatally shot two Palestinians in the West Bank on Monday, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials, as tensions continued to spike in the Israeli-occupied territory.The Palestinian Authority Health Ministry identified the two men as Abdelrahman Bani Fadel, 30, and Mohammad Bani Jama, 21. The circumstances of their deaths near the town of Aqraba remained unclear.The Israeli military said the two men had been killed during a “violent exchange” between Israeli civilians and Palestinians that followed a report of a Palestinian attacking an Israeli shepherd. An initial probe indicated that the gunfire “did not originate” from Israeli soldiers, the military said.The two Palestinians appeared to have been shot by Israeli civilians on the scene, said an Israeli security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was still underway.The killings fed fears that the West Bank could become another front for a country already in its seventh month of war in the Gaza Strip.About 500,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank live alongside roughly 2.7 million Palestinians under Israeli military occupation. Since the war began on Oct. 7, more than 400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces there and in East Jerusalem, according to the United Nations.Jihad Abu Aliya, 25, was killed in a mob attack, according to the village mayor.Nasser Nasser/Associated PressOver the past few days, a renewed wave of violence has swept through the West Bank.On Friday, a 14-year-old Israeli teenager went missing, prompting Israeli settlers to riot inside a Palestinian village, Al Mughayir. Jihad Abu Aliya, a 25-year-old resident, was fatally shot during a mob attack, according to the village mayor, Amin Abu Aliya.The teenager, Binyamin Achimair, was found dead on Saturday after an intensive search; Israeli officials said he had been murdered in an act of terrorism and vowed to track down the perpetrators. In response, Israeli settlers, some of them armed, conducted a series of mob assaults in Palestinian towns, torching homes and cars, according to Palestinian witnesses.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Israelis to allow security forces to search for Mr. Achimair’s killers, but he did not denounce the mob attacks against Palestinians. Human rights groups have long charged that Israel turns a blind eye to settler violence and rarely brings perpetrators to justice.In footage distributed on Sunday by Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group that tracks Jewish extremist violence in the West Bank, hooded figures can be seen setting a car ablaze while Israeli soldiers watch nearby without intervening.Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, condemned Mr. Achimair’s killing in a statement on Monday. But he also said Washington was “increasingly concerned by the violence against Palestinian civilians and their property that ensued in the West Bank after Achimair’s disappearance.”“We strongly condemn these murders, and our thoughts are with their loved ones,” Mr. Miller said. “ The violence must stop. Civilians are never legitimate targets.” More

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      Audit Questions Purchase of $19,000 Lectern by Arkansas Governor’s Office

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      The legislative audit found several ways that the heavily scrutinized purchase potentially violated state law. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders criticized the findings.Legislative auditors in Arkansas found that the purchase last year of a $19,000 lectern by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s office potentially violated state laws, according to a report released on Monday.But the findings may be moot after the state attorney general, Tim Griffin, said last week that state purchasing laws do not apply to the governor or other executive branch officials.Ms. Sanders, a Republican, faced sharp scrutiny for the purchase, even from members of her own party. But on Monday, she appeared eager to fling away those attacks, posting a video montage seemingly mocking the lectern controversy on social media, complete with hype music and dramatic edits.Her office described the report as “deeply flawed” and said that “no laws were broken.”The potential violations found by the audit include shredding a document that should have been preserved and mishandling the purchase process. The legislative auditors said that their report would be forwarded to the Sixth Judicial District prosecuting attorney and to Mr. Griffin’s office.State lawmakers approved the audit last year after it was revealed that the governor’s office had purchased the lectern and an accompanying traveling case in June, using a state-issued credit card to pay $19,029.25 to Beckett Events L.L.C., an event management company with ties to Ms. Sanders.Matthew Campbell, a lawyer and blogger who had filed a broad public records request, was the first to obtain the information.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