Elections

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares47 Views

      in Elections

      European Central Bank Cuts Rates Amid ‘Exceptional’ Tariff Uncertainty

      by

      Policymakers lowered rates a quarter point and said that the region’s growth outlook had “deteriorated” because of rising trade tensions.The European Central Bank cut interest rates on Thursday as policymakers grappled with heightened economic uncertainty, particularly from President Trump’s chaotic trade policies, that is expected to weaken the region’s economy.Policymakers, who set rates for the 20 countries that use the euro, lowered their key rate a quarter point to 2.25 percent. It was the seventh consecutive cut since June as the economic outlook has darkened and inflation has slowed.The region faces the dual challenges of tariffs on goods sent to the United States and diminished demand for exports to other countries as trade uncertainty weighs on the global economy. Europe’s largest economy, Germany, is heavily oriented toward exports.“The economic outlook is clouded by exceptional uncertainty,” Christine Lagarde, the president of the central bank, said on Thursday at a news conference in Frankfurt, adding that all members of the bank’s Governing Council unanimously agreed to the rate cut.Mr. Trump has raised tariffs on nearly all imports to the United States from most countries to 10 percent, increasing the specter of a global trade war. There are also higher tariffs on certain goods like cars and steel, while a trade war with China has pushed import levies between each country above 100 percent.There is still the threat that higher tariffs will once again be imposed on dozens of countries after Mr. Trump’s 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs expires. The Trump administration is negotiating with countries, but the European Union could face a 20 percent tariff again.

      Source: European Central BankBy 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

    • 138 Shares42 Views

      in Elections

      White House Eyes Overhaul of Federal Housing Aid to the Poor

      by

      The White House is considering deep cuts to federal housing programs, including a sweeping overhaul of aid to low-income families, in a reconfiguration that could jeopardize millions of Americans’ continued access to rental assistance funds.The potential changes primarily concern federal housing vouchers, including those more commonly known as Section 8. The aid generally helps the poorest tenants cover the monthly costs of apartments, town homes and single-family residences.Administration officials recently discussed cutting or canceling out the vouchers and other rental assistance programs and potentially replacing them with a more limited system of housing grants, perhaps sent to states, according to three people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the confidential discussions. The overhaul would be included in President Trump’s new budget, which is expected to be sent to Capitol Hill in the coming weeks.The exact design and cost of the retooled program is unclear, and any such change is likely to require approval from Congress, as White House budgets on their own do not carry the force of law.But people familiar with the administration’s thinking said the overhaul under discussion would most likely amount to more than just a technical change, resulting in fewer federal dollars for low-income families on top of additional cuts planned for the rest of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.Federal voucher programs currently provide assistance to about 2.3 million low-income families, according to the government’s estimates, who enroll through their local public-housing authorities. The aid is part of a broader universe of rental assistance programs that are set to exceed $54 billion this fiscal year. But the annual demand for these subsidies is far greater than the available funds, creating a sizable wait list as rents are rising nationally.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

    • 125 Shares23 Views

      in Elections

      Google Is a Monopolist in Online Advertising Tech, Judge Says

      by

      The ruling was the second time in a year that a federal court had found that Google had acted illegally to maintain its dominance.Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in some online advertising technology, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, adding to legal troubles that could reshape the $1.88 trillion company and alter its power over the internet.Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a ruling that Google had broken the law to build its dominance over the largely invisible system of technology that places advertisements on pages across the web. The Justice Department and a group of states had sued Google, arguing that its monopoly in ad technology allowed the company to charge higher prices and take a bigger portion of each sale.“In addition to depriving rivals of the ability to compete, this exclusionary conduct substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web,” said Judge Brinkema, who also dismissed one portion of the government’s case.Google has increasingly faced a reckoning over the dominant role its products play in how people get information and conduct business online. Another federal judge ruled in August that the company had a monopoly in online search. He is now considering a request by the Justice Department to break the company up.Judge Brinkema, too, will have an opportunity to force changes to Google’s business. In its lawsuit, the Justice Department pre-emptively asked the court to force Google to sell some pieces of its ad technology business acquired over the years.Together, the two rulings and their remedies could check Google’s influence and result in a sweeping overhaul of the company, which faces a potential major restructuring.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

    • 113 Shares28 Views

      in Elections

      Israel Strikes Area With Tent Camps for Displaced Gazans

      by

      The attack on the Mawasi area of southern Gaza killed at least a dozen people, according to the emergency rescue service in the territory. Israel did not confirm the location of the attack.Gaza’s Civil Defense, the local emergency rescue service, reported that an Israeli strike overnight into Thursday in the Mawasi encampment area killed at least a dozen people, including children. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Nader IbrahimIsrael bombarded an area in southern Gaza with large tent encampments for Palestinians displaced by the war and killed at least a dozen people, including children, the Civil Defense emergency rescue service in the territory said on Thursday.The strike was part of the latest round of attacks on Gaza that killed more than 20 people overnight between Wednesday and Thursday, according to Palestinian officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants in death tolls.One of the strikes hit the coastal area of Mawasi near the city of Khan Younis, an area largely designated by the Israeli military as a “humanitarian zone” where tens of thousands of displaced people have been sheltering in tents.In video distributed by wire agencies, the strike appeared to ignite a fire that burned some tents and rescue workers attempted to douse the flames in the wake of the strike on Mawasi before driving off with the dead and wounded.Atef al-Hout, the director of the Nasser hospital, said in a telephone interview that the bodies of at least 14 people had arrived at the medical facility overnight on Thursday, including seven children. Most were believed to have been killed in the strike on Mawasi, he said.Inspecting damage at the site of an Israeli strike in an area of tent camps for displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza on Thursday.Hatem Khaled/ReutersWe 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

    • 113 Shares45 Views

      in Elections

      LVMH Names Jonathan Anderson as Dior Men’s Artistic Director

      by

      A one-sentence statement served as the notice that Mr. Anderson, who reimagined LVMH’s Loewe brand, would lead men’s wear design at Dior.On Thursday, one of the worst-kept secrets in the fashion industry was confirmed, in a brief unceremonious manner. At least part of it.During a shareholders’ meeting, Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of the LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton luxury goods empire, let fly that Jonathan Anderson, the former Loewe designer who built that brand from a niche collection into a fashion powerhouse, would officially be stepping in as the head men’s wear designer at Dior.In a terse, one-sentence statement, the brand confirmed that Mr. Anderson had been named the artistic director of its men’s collections and that his first show for the label would be presented June 27 in Paris. The release did not include any quotes from Mr. Arnault or Mr. Anderson, furthering speculation that there was more to the story.Mr. Anderson has long been rumored to be taking over not just Dior Men, but also Dior’s women’s line. For now, Maria Grazia Chiuri is still, officially, the label’s women’s wear designer. She presented her Fall collection for the brand in Kyoto on Tuesday, and is slated to present her 2026 Cruise show in Rome, her hometown, late next month.The truncated announcement for Mr. Anderson comes as LVMH broadly is feeling the pressure. This week it reported a 3 percent year-over-year sales dip, caused by slipping sales in Asia and the United States (though, the declines are heftiest in its liquor businesses) sending its stock down around 8 percent. Dior in particular was said by Cécile Cabanis, the LVMH chief financial officer, to have performed “below the average.”At the shareholders’ meeting, Mr. Arnault announced Mr. Anderson’s appointment in response to a question from an investor, and it may have been an attempt to quell investor fears that the brand wasn’t doing enough to right the ship. Still, it adds to the impression that LVMH, the world’s largest luxury company, is handling news about its loftiest jobs in a reactive, piecemeal manner, in which the rumor mill is often well ahead of official announcements.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

    • 125 Shares42 Views

      in Elections

      IMF Warns Trump Tariffs Will Weaken Economy and Increase Inflation

      by

      Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, warned in a speech that protectionism erodes productivity.The world economy is expected to grow slower this year and experience higher inflation than previously anticipated, according to new forecasts to be released by the International Monetary Fund that will show the global fallout of the U.S. trade war.The growth projections, to be released early next week, will offer the clearest indication to date of the damage that President Trump’s economic policies are having on global output. Since taking office in January, Mr. Trump has imposed a wide range of tariffs on most of America’s trading partners, while ratcheting levies even higher on imports from China, Canada and Mexico.“Our new growth projections will include notable markdowns, but not recession,” Kristalina Georgieva, the I.M.F. managing director, said on Thursday in a speech ahead of the spring meetings of the I.M.F. and the World Bank. “We will also see markups to the inflation forecasts for some countries.”Ms. Georgieva’s comments added to a growing chorus of top economic officials, including the heads of the Federal Reserve and the World Bank, who have sounded alarms this week about the potential harm that Mr. Trump’s policies could cause.The European Central Bank on Thursday lowered interest rates, saying that “the outlook for growth has deteriorated owing to rising trade tensions.” Central bankers, finance ministers and other policymakers will gather in Washington next week as they continue to grapple with how to respond.Ms. Georgieva was careful in her criticism of the Trump administration’s policies, which have created widespread uncertainty for businesses and are disrupting international supply chains. But she made clear her concerns about the costs of protectionism.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

    • 113 Shares35 Views

      in Elections

      More Than Half of Puerto Rico Remains Without Power

      by

      It will take at least another day to fully restore service after a series of failures blacked out the whole island on Wednesday, officials said.Nearly 60 percent of Puerto Rico’s more than 1.4 million utility customers remained without power on Thursday, the morning after a blackout knocked all of the island’s functioning power plants offline and left the entire island in the dark.Service was unlikely to be fully restored before the early hours of Friday, Josué Colón, Puerto Rico’s energy czar, said in a news conference early Thursday. That was how long it would take, he said, to get all the power plants back online after the systemwide shutdown.“There’s still a long road for the recovery of more than 50 percent of the island,” Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón said.As of 7 a.m. Thursday, about 610,000 customers — about 41.5 percent of the total — had electricity, according to Luma Energy, the private contractor that operates the island’s power transmission system. A utility customer may be a house, an apartment building, a business, a government building or some other facility.Critical institutions that were back online Thursday included a number of hospitals and the airport in San Juan, the capital, Luma said in a statement.The blackout happened because of a series of failures in the power transmission system, the company said, but why they happened has not yet been established. Luma has asked for three days to identify the likely cause.The utility said that a preliminary review showed that something had gone wrong with a protective system that is intended to keep the entire power grid from shutting down when there is a breakdown on a single line — and that a transmission line in western Puerto Rico might have been affected by overgrowth.Ms. González-Colón, who was elected last year after campaigning on a promise to cancel Luma’s contract, said the utility was required to patrol its lines by helicopter to spot overgrowth and prevent it from causing disruptions. Luma said it had been complying with that requirement, but the governor said she was skeptical and exasperated.“It can’t happen that every time there’s a little branch, it knocks out not just a line but the entire system,” she said.The governor also questioned whether the system was able to handle the higher demand for power during holidays, noting that the blackout on Wednesday happened during Holy Week, when many Puerto Ricans are on vacation, and that a similar blackout happened on New Year’s Eve.Puerto Rico faces a looming power generation shortage. Officials warned last month that there would probably be insufficient power supply to meet peak demand over the summer. The government has solicited bids for an additional operator or operators to provide more power on the island. More

    • 100 Shares35 Views

      in Elections

      Sculpture Museum in Dallas Names a New Director

      by

      Carlos Basualdo, a veteran curator who has spent most of his career at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will take over the Nasher Sculpture Center next month.Carlos Basualdo visited Dallas for the first time in October with interest in seeing the Nasher Sculpture Center, a prized small museum. It mingles 20th-century European sculpture by Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi and Alberto Giacometti with contemporary works by American artists like Arlene Shechet and Carol Bove.“I fell in love with the building and the garden,” said Basualdo, a veteran curator who has spent most of his career at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.He will be returning to the Nasher on May 12 with the title of director, his first time overseeing an institution.The Nasher is relatively intimate, with a collection of about 500 works and an annual operating budget of about $13 million, but it has long commanded an outsize reputation for its holdings. It is housed in a jewel of a building: a light-flooded, travertine-and-glass structure by Renzo Piano. From the museum’s entrance you can see, in a nearly seamless glance, through the interior and across the length of the sculpture garden out back.A sculpture by Otobong Nkanga at the Nasher, which has a collection of about 500 works.Nitashia Johnson for The New York Times“When I walked into the place, coming out of the street, it was super-powerful,” Basualdo said. “It’s open, it’s very present, it’s not ostentatious, it’s generous, it’s full of light.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