Elections

The nominees for president and many other offices will be decided today, Super Tuesday, as voters in California and 14 other states head to the polls.Super Tuesday voting in 2020.Max Whittaker for The New York TimesWelcome to Super Tuesday.California and 14 other states are casting ballots for presidential nominees and many down-ballot races today, on the busiest day of the primary season.California, which used to hold its primaries in June, switched in 2020 to holding primaries in presidential election years in March in the hope of increasing the state’s influence on the national outcome. But that part of the primary is a little anticlimactic this year, with President Biden and Donald Trump already on glide paths to secure their parties’ nominations. (You can follow nationwide Super Tuesday results and the latest developments here.)What’s likely to be more interesting this time are the many other races and questions on the California ballot.Voters will have their say on State Assembly and State Senate candidates, and on a ballot measure championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that would finance mental health treatment in the state. And congressional races in the state could help determine control of the U.S. House, where Republicans now have only a seven-seat majority.California’s delegation currently has 40 Democrats, 11 Republicans and one vacant seat. And 10 of the 74 most competitive House races in the nation are in California, according to the Cook Political Report, including several in the Central Valley and Orange County.The two top vote-getters in each race today, regardless of party, will compete in the general election — effectively a runoff — in November. This CalMatters tool lets you find your district and see whether it has a competitive 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

Mr. Wildenstein hid a prized art collection and other assets from French authorities to avoid paying millions in inheritance taxes, a Paris court ruled.Guy Wildenstein, the international art dealer, was found guilty in France on Tuesday of massive tax fraud, the latest twist after years of legal entanglements that have unraveled the secrecy that once surrounded his powerful family dynasty.Mr. Wildenstein, 78, the Franco-American patriarch of the family and president of Wildenstein & Co. in New York, was sentenced by the Paris Appeals Court to a four-year prison sentence, with half of it suspended, and the other half to be served under house arrest with an electronic bracelet. The court also sentenced him to pay a one million euro fine, or about $1.08 million.He stood accused of hiding significant chunks of his family’s art collection and other assets in a maze of trusts and shell companies when his father, Daniel, died in 2001, and after his brother, Alec, died in 2008.Prosecutors had said that he was trying to dodge hundreds of millions of euros in inheritance taxes. At the trial, which was held in the fall, they had requested a slightly more lenient prison sentence for Mr. Wildenstein, but they had also requested a much larger €250 million fine, or about $270 million.The Wildensteins, a family of French art dealers spanning five generations, were historically secretive about the exact details of their collection, which has included works by Caravaggio, Fragonard and many other blue-chip artists.Prosecutors said that the family was responsible for “the longest and most sophisticated tax fraud” in modern French history, by concealing art and other assets under complex foreign trusts and by shielding artworks worth millions of dollars in tax havens. By doing this, prosecutors said, the family grossly underestimated its enormous wealth when the time came to pay inheritance taxes.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

Beijing unveiled an annual economic target in line with last year’s, as it looks to refocus on strategically important sectors.With troubles brewing at home, China has set the same growth target as last year, reflecting its continuing economic challenges.Lintao Zhang/Getty ImagesChina’s real growth agenda China announced an official growth target of about 5 percent on Tuesday that’s already looking hard to pull off. The world’s second-biggest economy is facing headwinds, from a consumer slowdown to weak investor confidence and a trade war with the West.But the growth target only tells part of the story of how Beijing is rethinking economic policy.Left out of the pronouncements: a stimulus package. Investors watch the annual gathering of the National People’s Congress, the country’s rubber-stamp parliament, and a parallel meeting of China’s top policy body, for clues on the government’s priorities. Spending is set to remain at roughly last year’s level, suggesting that there’s no big-bang boost on the horizon.That’s not great news for Western brands that have ridden a surge in Chinese consumer spending to big growth in recent years. Apple reportedly has seen its Chinese iPhones sales plummet this year.The growth target matches last year’s too, when the post-lockdown economy grew 5.2 percent. (Some analysts say the real growth rate is much lower.) Global investors need to accept that slow growth is the new norm, says Yu Jie, a senior fellow on China at Chatham House, a think tank. “Beijing wants to draw a line under the past economic model which focused on infrastructure and property,” she told DealBook.Beijing’s real focus is reshaping the economy. The government knows that it faces a raft of challenges, but China’s leader, Xi Jinping, is trying to move away from debt-fueled sectors like property and move toward strategically important industries. The terms it uses are “high-quality development” and “new productive forces,” which includes electric vehicles, climate tech, life sciences, and artificial intelligence. The latest measures to achieve that: Premier Li Qiang, China’s second-highest official, said on Tuesday that the government would increase spending for science and technology research by 10 percent.More state-led investment is the priority, rather than “other kinds of more politically painful reforms,” George Magnus, a research associate at Oxford University’s China Center and a former chief economist at UBS, told DealBook.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

Above is an image related to one of the news stories we followed this past week. Do you know what it shows? At the bottom of this quiz, you’ll find the answer.Have you been paying attention to current events recently? See how many of these 10 questions you can get right. More

Police believe the blaze at a high-voltage power pylon had been deliberately set, amid ongoing turmoil over the automaker’s plans to expand its assembly plant near Berlin.Tesla was forced to halt production at its assembly plant outside Berlin early Tuesday after someone set fire to a nearby high-voltage pylon, causing a blaze that cut off electricity to the factory and surrounding region, the police said.The Brandenburg police said they responded to the fire at a high-voltage power mast in a field near Tesla’s plant. The building was not damaged by the fire, but it caused the power to be cut at the plant and across the wider region, home to some 60,000 people.Tesla did not respond to requests for comment, but a spokeswoman for the U.S. automaker confirmed to German media that production had been halted and all employees evacuated. Some 12,500 people work at the plant, according to Tesla, but not all of them would have been present at the time the power went down.By early afternoon, residents reported said that power had been restored to some areas.Authorities said that investigators from the Brandenburg state Office of Criminal Investigation had started an inquiry, but urged against speculation about who might be behind the arson, even as social media exploded with accusations blaming environmental activists.Since last week, several dozen protesters have camped out in cabins and platforms built in the branches of trees in a forested area adjacent to the plant that Tesla would like to raze in order to build a rail yard, warehouses and educational facilities.Last month, 65 percent of eligible voters in Grünheide, the community that surrounds the factory, cast ballots opposing Tesla’s expansion plans. The vote was nonbinding, but local officials said they would honor it by heading back to the drawing board to try to find an acceptable solution.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

Premier Li Qiang targets growth of about 5 percent this year but signals continued reluctance to use deficit spending for economic stimulus.China’s top leaders on Tuesday set an ambitious target for economic growth but they signaled only modest stimulus measures, not the aggressive support for China’s domestic economy that many analysts believe is necessary to halt a steep slide in the housing market and ease consumer malaise and investor wariness.Premier Li Qiang, the country’s No. 2 official after Xi Jinping, said in his report to the annual session of the legislature that the government would seek economic growth of “around 5 percent.” That is the same target that China’s leadership set for last year, when official statistics ended up showing that the country’s gross domestic product grew 5.2 percent.The country’s program for state spending showed little change. Mr. Li said that the central government’s deficit would be set at 3 percent of economic output, but that the government was ready to issue another $140 billion worth of bonds to pay for unspecified projects of national importance. The more the government borrows, the more it can spend on initiatives that could boost the economy.China had also set the deficit at 3 percent early last year, before raising it in October to 3.8 percent when the government approved $140 billion in additional bonds to pay for disaster relief and prevention measures after severe summer flooding.Conspicuously missing from the premier’s agenda for this year was a move to shore up the country’s social safety net or introduce other policies, like vouchers or coupons, that would directly address Chinese consumers’ very weak confidence and unwillingness to spend money.“There’s a lot of positive noises for the economy, but not a lot of concrete proposals for how to resolve the country’s growth difficulties,” said Neil Thomas, a fellow at the Center for China Analysis of the Asia Society.

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China consumer confidence index
Source: China National Bureau of StatisticsBy 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

Donald J. Trump defeated Nikki Haley in the North Dakota Republican caucuses on Monday, according to The Associated Press, as he resumed his march to the nomination after a victory by Ms. Haley in the Washington, D.C., primary the day before.Mr. Trump received over 84 percent of the vote, according to The A.P., an overwhelming victory that awarded the former president all 29 of the state’s delegates because he earned more than 60 percent of the vote.Turnout was very low in this election. Just under 2,000 votes have been counted. The numbers are not directly comparable, but the Democratic caucuses in North Dakota tallied more than 14,000 votes in 2020, and North Dakota is a deep-red state.Mr. Trump now has 273 delegates. Ms. Haley, who received no delegates from the North Dakota caucuses, has 43.The contest resumed Ms. Haley’s string of defeats in the nominating contests so far, most by double-digit margins, beginning with the Iowa caucuses in January and continuing through the Michigan primary last Tuesday.Ms. Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, had briefly interrupted her losing streak with a victory in the nation’s capital, winning about 63 percent of the vote on Sunday. The contest was small — just over 2,000 Republicans voted in the overwhelmingly Democratic city — but awarded Ms. Haley 19 delegates, nearly doubling her total.But it is unclear if Ms. Haley can win any of the coming state contests. North Dakota was the last state to hold a nominating contest before Super Tuesday, when 15 states will hold Republican primaries and caucuses that will distribute about a third of all delegates. Mr. Trump leads by wide margins in polls both nationally and in states that will vote on Tuesday. Recent polls in Texas, for example, show him with about 80 percent support.While Mr. Trump won’t be able to clinch the nomination on Super Tuesday, a strong performance could put him very close to the majority of delegates he needs. If Ms. Haley doesn’t win some states soon, Mr. Trump could secure the nomination by the end of March. More

You can find several ways through this puzzle by Christina Iverson.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — How Christina Iverson manages to balance her time between editing crosswords for The New York Times and constructing puzzles of her own, I will never understand. I can barely carve out the mental space to journal when I wake up before the crush of formal writing obligations overtakes me.As it turned out, having a mind consumed by the day-to-day of office life was exactly what I needed in order to discover the theme of Ms. Iverson’s latest crossword. It took only the knowledge of a certain workplace item — and understanding a clue’s witty reinterpretation of its purpose — to discover this crossword’s secrets.Shall we uncover them together?Today’s ThemeAs a former competitive punner, I am consistently impressed by the myriad ways in which constructors execute wordplay within the constraints of a standard crossword grid. Some attempts may inspire more groans than others, but their creativity is always to be admired.In today’s grid, Ms. Iverson has taken great pains to make a certain “Spring-loaded office device” serve as “a collective hint to 16-, 26-, 34- and 41-Across” (54A). That device is a THREE-HOLE PUNCH. Let’s take a look at the entries cited in this revealer to see how it all binds together, shall we?The “Flaw in an argument” (16A) is a LOGICAL FALLACY, which is a rhetorical hole.A “Void” (26A) is a physical hole (but contemplate it too long, and it can become an existential one): EMPTY SPACE.One’s “Messy living area” (34A) might be referred to as a PIGSTY — a hole (derogatory).“Many a beverage ending in ‘-ade’” (41A) is a FRUIT DRINK. And this, reader, is the punch.Tricky Clues14A. “France’s longest river” is not the one seen — or Seine, I should say — in Paris. It is the LOIRE, which stretches just over 625 miles across the country.29A. My fitness regimen consists of walking the dog and taking public transit in New York City, so this “Weightlifting item for a biceps routine” was unfamiliar to me. It’s called a CURL BAR, apparently — just like the place I get my hair styled.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