Elections

The Securities and Exchange Commission gave its blessing to a fund that tracks the price of the most valuable cryptocurrency after Bitcoin.Federal regulators on Thursday approved an investment product tied to the cryptocurrency Ether, the most valuable digital asset after Bitcoin, in a major boost for the crypto industry.The Securities and Exchange Commission said a group of exchanges could begin listing investment products known as exchange-traded funds, or E.T.F.s, linked to the price of Ether. The products would offer an easier and simpler way for people to invest in crypto, potentially boosting prices and promoting wider adoption of digital currencies.In January, the S.E.C. approved similar products that track the price of Bitcoin, leading to a flurry of new investment that helped propel Bitcoin’s price to a record high.The impact of the Ether approval could take longer to hit the market. Before the exchanges can start offering Ether E.T.F.s, the S.E.C. must also approve a separate set of applications from companies that want to issue them, including from major financial firms like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton. That process could take weeks or months, according to financial experts.An S.E.C. spokeswoman said the agency had no comment beyond a formal order approving the products.The news prompted celebration in the crypto industry. A representative for 21Shares, one of the companies seeking to offer the Ether investment product, called it an “exciting moment for the industry at large.”But industry critics called the approval a dangerous development that would encourage wider investment in a volatile market.“The S.E.C. failed to live up to its mission to protect investors and the markets,” Benjamin Schiffrin of Better Markets, a nonprofit that fights for stricter financial regulations, said in a statement.Offered by mainstream financial services firms, E.T.F.s are essentially baskets of assets — rather than buying the assets directly, customers buy shares in these baskets. The products are easy to trade, from brokerage accounts with companies like Vanguard or Charles Schwab, and are popular with wealth advisers and other financial mangers.In the crypto world, E.T.F.s offer another key advantage: simplicity. Rather than navigating the complexities of an online crypto wallet, a customer could go online and buy shares in a Bitcoin or Ether E.T.F. alongside stocks traded on Wall Street.For years, crypto advocates have seen these products as a promising way to encourage wider use of digital currencies. Before the Bitcoin E.T.F.s were approved, crypto companies battled the S.E.C. in the courts, securing a legal victory in August that forced the agency to allow the products.The Bitcoin E.T.F.s have proved to be enormously popular, attracting billions of dollars in investment.The price of Ether has rebounded over the last few months, after a crypto downturn that started in 2022. Ether currently trades at about $3,800 per coin, more than 20 percent off its high of just under $4,900.That’s a small fraction of the price of Bitcoin, which trades at about $68,000 per coin. More

Pope Francis attributed a second miracle to Carlo Acutis, one of the last steps toward canonization.Pope Francis cleared the way for an Italian teenager to become the first millennial saint by attributing a second miracle to him, the Vatican announced Thursday.The teenager, Carlo Acutis, is often called the patron saint of the internet among Roman Catholics because of his computer skills, which he used to share his faith. He died of leukemia in 2006 when he was just 15.Carlo was born in London to Italian parents and moved with his family to Milan when he was a child. His passion for Catholicism bloomed early, his mother, Antonia Acutis, told The New York Times in an interview in 2020. At 7, he began attending daily mass. His faith inspired his mother to rejoin the church, she said.He was called to serve, finding ways to help those less fortunate and donating to the unhoused, she said. In the months before his death, Carlo used his self-taught digital skills to create a website archiving miracles. He also enjoyed playing soccer and video games.After he died, Ms. Acutis told The Times that people from all over the world had told her about medical miracles, including cures for infertility and cancer, that happened after they prayed to her son.“Carlo was the light answer to the dark side of the web,” his mother said, adding that some admirers had called him an “influencer for God.”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

Starwood Real Estate Income Trust is restricting what investors can redeem rather than sell its properties to raise cash.A giant real estate fund managed by the company of the billionaire investor Barry Sternlicht is limiting the amount of money that investors can redeem, in an attempt to fend off a potential cash crunch as high interest rates pummel the market for commercial properties like office buildings.Starwood Real Estate Income Trust, which manages about $10 billion and is one of the largest real estate investment trusts around, said on Thursday that it would buy back only 1 percent of the value of the fund’s assets every quarter, down from 5 percent earlier.Starwood said that it had chosen to tighten the limit because it was facing more withdrawals than it could meet with its cash on hand, and that it was a better option than raising money by selling properties at discounted prices. The value of commercial properties has fallen — hit both by lower occupancy since the coronavirus pandemic and by high interest rates that make real estate less affordable.In a letter to shareholders, Mr. Sternlicht, who leads the Starwood Capital Group, and Sean Harris, the chief executive of Starwood’s REIT, said: “We cannot recommend being an aggressive seller of real estate assets today given what we believe to be a near-bottom market with limited transaction volumes, and our belief that the real estate markets will improve.”Any such gates tend to spook investors.“This will have a negative effect on fund-raising,” said Kevin Gannon, chief executive of the investment bank Robert A. Stanger & Company, which follows the REIT market. “I think it will give people more pause.” He added that “no one anticipated that redemptions would stay this big this long.”Real estate investment trusts buy and own commercial or industrial properties and generate dividends for investors. They are typically publicly traded entities. But the Starwood REIT and one created by the private equity behemoth Blackstone are privately held and instead sold by financial advisers, mostly to individual investors. Some churn is normal in the business, as investors make decisions about what to buy and sell.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

Nearing the end of the criminal trial that has kept him in New York City for much of the last five weeks, former President Donald J. Trump held a rally in the Bronx on Thursday, where he made a litany of promises to improve New York, railed against the Biden administration and made overtures to Black and Latino voters.Speaking to a more diverse crowd than is typical of his rallies, Mr. Trump lamented the surge of migrants across the southern border and criticized President Biden’s economic policies as disproportionately hurting people of color, whose support he is eager to win from Democrats.“African Americans are getting slaughtered. Hispanic Americans are getting slaughtered,” Mr. Trump said to a crowd with large numbers of Black and Hispanic voters.As he has before, he insisted that the migrant influx, which has prompted a crisis in New York, was disproportionately hurting “our Black population and our Hispanic population, who are losing their jobs, losing their housing, losing everything they can lose.”The Trump rally drew at least a thousand people to Crotona Park in the South Bronx.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesMr. Trump’s screeds against those crossing the border illegally and his vow to conduct the “largest deportation operation” in U.S. history — both staples of his campaign rallies — were met with cheers.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

In José Rivera’s latest play, a Puerto Rican family moves to Long Island in 1960, contending both with Hurricane Donna and their neighbors’ hostility.When it is revealed, the meaning of “The Hours are Feminine,” the title of José Rivera’s latest play, is an apt encapsulation of the work. A newly immigrated Puerto Rican mother is explaining the Spanish language’s gendered grammar to her neighbor within a larger conversation about how bored they are as housewives on Long Island: “Time is masculine, but …”It’s a poetic phrase that is almost too perfect, bordering on trite. Yet it contains such insight that it evokes a nodding mm-hmm from the audience. Like this line, the whole play, in its premiere production at Intar Theater in Manhattan, strikes a delicate balance between truism and genuine feeling.Rivera writes and directs it as a remembrance of his family’s move to Long Island in the summer of 1960, which ended with the arrival of Hurricane Donna. His stand-in, 5-year-old Jaivin (Donovan Monzón-Sanders), and his mother, Evalisse (Maribel Martinez), arrive in Lake Ronkonkoma from their native island a year after his father, Fernán (Hiram Delgado), has settled into their new home.Fernán has secured for them a ratty, illegally rented shack in the backyard of a picturesque house owned by Charlie (Dan Grimaldi), an aging Italian American creep who taunts them with slurs he knows they don’t understand. (The three family members perform their Spanish dialogue in English, so that their language barrier is revealed, poignantly, as a ghost might realize he’s invisible).At the diner where Fernán works for $99 a month, he overhears patrons worrying about the Black and Puerto Rican families moving into their white idyll. That’s also the reason Charlie’s son, Anthony (Robert Montano), has moved himself and his wife, Mirella (Sara Koviak), into the big house, fleeing an integrating Brooklyn.Mirella, though, is worldlier than that, and eagerly strikes up a friendship with Evalisse. Their interactions, hinged on the commonalities of midcentury womanhood, form the play’s tender core, before the families’ increasing friction culminates with the storm’s climactic arrival.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

Thursday’s legal filing by Fani Willis creates a second substantive set of issues that must now be considered by the Georgia Court of Appeals before the election case can go to trial.Fani T. Willis, the lead prosecutor in the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald J. Trump and 14 of his allies, said on Thursday that her office would appeal a judge’s decision earlier this year to throw out six of the dozens of counts in the sprawling indictment.Thursday’s legal filing by Ms. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, creates a second substantive set of issues that must now be considered by the Georgia Court of Appeals before the election case can go to trial. This month, the court agreed to hear the appeal of another ruling by the judge, Scott McAfee, that allowed Ms. Willis to remain on the case despite defense lawyers arguing that she should be disqualified.Ms. Willis’s decision to file the appeal was yet another indication that the closely watched election interference case was unlikely to go to trial before the upcoming presidential election. “In some ways it’s an implicit concession that it’s not going to happen before November,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University who has been following the case closely.A spokesman for the district attorney’s office declined to comment on the filing on Thursday.The original indictment, which was handed up by a grand jury in August, included 41 counts against Mr. Trump and 18 co-defendants. Four of those co-defendants have since pleaded guilty.In March, Judge McAfee, of Fulton County Superior Court, quashed six of the charges for lacking sufficient detail. Those charges asserted that Mr. Trump and other defendants had solicited public officials to break the law by violating their oaths of office.For example, one count against Mr. Trump said that he “unlawfully solicited, requested and importuned” the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to violate his oath of office by decertifying the election. Judge McAfee ruled at the time that the six charges “do not give the defendants enough information to prepare their defenses intelligently.”Though the quashing of the six charges was a setback for prosecutors, it left intact the most important element of the indictment: the state racketeering charge that was brought against all of the defendants.It is unclear how much more time it will take for the appellate court to handle Ms. Willis’s appeal, but legal experts have said that the appeal of the disqualification matter alone could take months.Defense lawyers in the case had argued that Ms. Willis should be disqualified from prosecuting it on the grounds that she had created an untenable conflict of interest when she engaged in a romantic relationship with Nathan J. Wade, a lawyer she had hired to manage the prosecution team.Judge McAfee ruled in March that Ms. Willis could keep the case if Mr. Wade stepped away from it. Mr. Wade resigned hours after the judge issued his ruling. More

Former President Donald J. Trump claimed that, if re-elected, he could draw on his relationship with President Vladimir V. Putin to press Russia into releasing Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who has been detained in a Moscow jail for more than a year.Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post that Mr. Gershkovich would be “released almost immediately after the election, but definitely before I assume office,” suggesting that his securing Mr. Gershkovich’s release was contingent on his defeating President Biden in November.“Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will do that for me, but not for anyone else,” Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, added. Mr. Trump has frequently bragged about his positive relationship with Mr. Putin, whose strongman tendencies he has praised in interviews and on the campaign trail.Asked about Mr. Trump’s post, a spokesman for the Kremlin, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters that “Putin has no contact with Donald Trump, of course.”Mr. Gershkovich, who was arrested in March last year in Russia and charged with espionage shortly after, has been designated by the White House as “wrongfully detained,” a label signifying that the United States views him as the equivalent of a political hostage and believes the charges against him are fabricated.Russia has not presented any evidence to support the spying charge, which Mr. Gershkovich and The Journal have vociferously rejected. The Biden administration has said it is working to secure his release.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

Accused of violating antitrust laws, Live Nation Entertainment faces a fight that could reshape the multibillion-dollar live music industry.The Justice Department on Thursday sued Live Nation Entertainment, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, asking a court to break up the company over claims it illegally maintained a monopoly in the live entertainment industry.In the lawsuit, which is joined by 29 states and the District of Columbia, the government accuses Live Nation of dominating the industry by locking venues into exclusive ticketing contracts, pressuring artists to use its services and threatening its rivals with financial retribution.Those tactics, the government argues, have resulted in higher ticket prices for consumers and have stifled innovation and competition throughout the industry.“It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster,” Merrick Garland, the attorney general, said in a statement announcing the suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The suit asks the court to order “the divestiture of, at minimum, Ticketmaster,” and to prevent Live Nation from engaging in anticompetitive practices.The lawsuit is a direct challenge to the business of Live Nation, a colossus of the entertainment industry and a force in the lives of musicians and fans alike. The case, filed 14 years after the government approved Live Nation’s merger with Ticketmaster, has the potential to transform the multibillion-dollar concert industry.Live Nation’s scale and reach far exceed those of any competitor, encompassing concert promotion, ticketing, artist management and the operation of hundreds of venues and festivals around the world.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