United States

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      U.S. Open: What You Need to Know

      by

      The tournament runs Aug. 26 to Sept. 8 at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York City.For much of the year, the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, New York, is mostly quiet. But for two weeks late in the summer, the place becomes the center of the tennis world as thousands of fans flock to Flushing Meadows for the U.S. Open.Qualifying matches are already underway, and the main draw of the U.S. Open begins on Aug. 26. The Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon Championships and the Olympics are in the books, so this is the last chance for the world’s top tennis players to win a major title this year.A few are favored to win this year, but the U.S. Open has been known for upsets, thrilling matches that can run late into the night.Here’s what to know about this year’s tournament.Riders on the No. 7 train pass the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesAll aboard the No. 7 train.From Manhattan, one of the simplest — and fastest — ways to travel to the U.S. Open is by taking an eastbound No. 7 subway train to the Mets-Willets Point station. Once you’re there, just follow the crowds to the tennis grounds.Those in Long Island or Manhattan can also take Long Island Rail Road to Mets-Willet Point. The Port Washington Branch departs Manhattan from Penn Station, with a stop at Grand Central Terminal.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

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      New Real Estate Rules Sow Confusion, at Least in Short Term

      by

      Changes in how real estate commissions are advertised and paid went into effect this weekend. Buyers and even some agents aren’t sure what they mean.An hour before the open house on Saturday afternoon, a real estate agent paced across the dark bamboo floors, straightening the throw blanket, fluffing the pillows and lighting a scented candle.The last-minute sprucing at the $1.2 million condo in Jersey City, N.J., was exactly what agents have done at open houses for decades before this weekend.The difference now is the information they are required to disclose and where they can disclose it when it comes to real estate commissions — a charge that had hovered between 5 to 6 percent of the sales price, and until now was typically paid by the seller and split between the seller’s agent and the buyer’s agent.The changes that went into effect this weekend decouple the two commissions: Sellers are no longer expected to pay buyers’ commissions, though they can still choose to do so, and the proposed commission split can no longer be advertised on the online database commonly used to sell homes, the M.L.S.The new rules went into effect across the United States as part of a $418 million settlement agreement with the National Association of Realtors, a powerful real estate trade group that was successfully sued by a group of homeowners in Missouri who argued that the longtime practice requiring them to pay agents’ commissions led to inflated fees. Brokerages have spent months trying to educate agents and consumers on the looming changes.But when they were implemented nationwide this Saturday, buyers remained befuddled.Sarthak Jain, left, and his wife, Aditi Maheshwari, touring a duplex in Jersey City alongside their Realtor.Andres Kudacki for 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

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      U.S., Egypt and Qatar Say Gaza Cease-Fire Talks Will Resume Next Week

      by

      Top officials from the U.S., Israel, Egypt and Qatar ended two days of talks in Doha aimed at trying to resolve remaining disagreements between Israel and Hamas.High-level talks to halt the war in Gaza ended without an immediate breakthrough on Friday, but the United States, Egypt and Qatar said the negotiations would continue next week as mediators raced to secure a truce that they hope will avert a wider regional conflagration.The announcement came after top American, Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari officials ended two days of talks in Doha, the Qatari capital, aimed at trying to resolve remaining disagreements between Israel and Hamas. U.S. and regional officials hope that movement in the negotiations will blunt or stop a widely anticipated Iranian-led retaliation for the killing of senior leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, militant groups backed by Iran.U.S., Iranian and Israeli officials said on Friday said that Iran had decided to delay its reprisal against Israel to allow the mediators to continue working toward a cease-fire in Gaza.After the first day of talks ended on Thursday night, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the Qatari prime minister, called the acting Iranian foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, to encourage Iran to refrain from any escalation given the cease-fire talks in Doha, according to two Iranian officials and three other officials familiar with the call who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.Mr. Al Thani spoke with Mr. Bagheri Kani again on Friday, and both officials “stressed the need for calm and de-escalation in the region,” according to the Qatari Foreign Ministry. Mr. Bagheri Kani said in a statement that the Qatari prime minister had described the cease-fire negotiations on Thursday as being at a “sensitive” phase.On Friday, Egypt, Qatar and the United States said in a joint statement that the mediators had presented Israel and Hamas with “a bridging proposal” consistent with the terms laid out by President Biden on May 31 and later endorsed by the U.N. Security Council.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

    • 63 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      The Price of Getting Inked

      by

      Whether it’s the expense of getting tattooed or the cost to have one removed, Americans are paying for their ink.Julia Rothman and Aug. 16, 2024Mike Weiss has at least 70 tattoos, stretching from his shoulders to his ankles. Since getting his first in 2011, he has spent roughly $13,000 on them.Mr. Weiss, 31, a group fitness instructor based in Larchmont, N.Y., is one of millions of Americans who have gotten inked. Once considered countercultural — something for sailors and misfits — tattoos are now culturally ubiquitous: Nearly one-third of American adults have at least one, according to a survey by Pew Research.And business is booming like never before. The global tattoo market, which currently brings in about $2.2 billion, is expected to grow to more than $4 billion by 2032, according to Fortune Business Insights, a market research firm. There are over 20,000 tattoo parlors in the United States. Kari Barba, 64, is a tattoo artist and the owner of Outer Limits, which has two locations in California. She opened her first shop in 1983.

      .img-sz-small {
      max-width: 90px;
      margin: 0 auto;
      }

      .img-sz-small div {
      width: 100%!important;
      max-width: 100%!important;
      }

      @media screen and (min-width: 700px) {
      .img-sz-full {
      max-width: 920px;
      }

      .img-sz-small {
      max-width: 110px;
      margin: 0 auto;
      }

      .img-sz-small div {
      max-width: 100%!important;
      }

      }

      time {
      display: none!important;
      }

      section time {
      display: inline-block!important;
      }

      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

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      JD Vance Has Right-Wing Friends in High Places

      by

      The single most troubling thing about Senator JD Vance — his bizarre understanding of the work of J.R.R. Tolkien notwithstanding — is his close relationship with some of the most extreme elements of the American right.When asked to explain his worldview, Vance has cited his former boss, Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist who has written passionately against democracy (“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible”), and Curtis Yarvin, a software developer turned blogger and provocateur who believes the United States should transition to monarchy (“If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia”). Yarvin has also written favorably of human bondage (slavery, he once wrote, “is a natural human relationship”) and wondered aloud if apartheid wasn’t better for Black South Africans.While Vance’s admirers see him as a uniquely intellectual presence in American politics — a thinker as much as a politician — his right-wing, authoritarian views are largely derivative of the views and preoccupations of Thiel, Yarvin and their community of “postliberal” ideologues and reactionary venture capitalists. Take Vance’s view that the United States is in a period of Romanesque decline. “We are in a late republican period,” Vance said on a podcast in 2021. “If we’re going to push back against it, we’re going to have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.”Compare this to Thiel’s view that “liberalism” and “democracy” are “exhausted,” and that to restore the nation “we have to ask some questions very far outside the Overton window.” Is this a call for new tax cuts, or does it represent a fundamental hostility toward popular constitutional government in the United States?In addition to relationships with Thiel and Yarvin, Vance is also in close contact with the bottom feeders on the far right. For nearly two years, according to The Washington Post, Vance was in regular conversation by text message with Chuck Johnson, a notorious Holocaust denier who has spent the better part of a decade promoting right-wing conspiracy theories.And as my colleague Michelle Goldberg wrote this week, Vance is close enough to Jack Posobiec — an alt-right lunatic who pushed the vile and absurd Pizzagate conspiracy theory and collaborated with online neo-Nazis to spread antisemitic hate — to blurb his latest book, a polemic devoted to the idea that liberals and leftists are Untermenschen who must be stopped lest they destroy civilization. “As they are opposed to humanity itself,” Posobiec and his co-author, Joshua Lisec, write, “they place themselves outside of the category completely, in an entirely new misery-driven subdivision, the unhuman.”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

    • 75 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      There Is Still a Biden Scandal

      by

      One of the Biden White House’s greatest achievements, from the perspective of its staffers, if not necessarily the country, has been to deny the press the kind of juicy leaks that were constant under Donald Trump and frequent under his predecessors. Save for a very narrow period of time, that is, when there was a push to force an aging president toward the exits: Then and only then we got a drip-drip-drip of fascinating inside information.For instance, we learned that Biden hadn’t held a full cabinet meeting since last October and that his handlers expected scripted questions from his cabinet officials. We learned that his capacities peak between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and diminish outside that six-hour window. We learned that congressional Democrats, liberal donors and some journalists all had exposure to Biden’s decline that they didn’t discuss publicly until the debacle of the June debate. We learned that none other than Hunter Biden was acting as a close adviser to his father in the crucial days after that debate.We even learned that from early in his presidency, the first lady’s closest aides worked to shield her husband from the staff that serves the first family in its living quarters, even as the aides themselves were given unusual access to the residence — as though it were essential to create a cocoon of loyalty and silence around the nation’s chief executive even when he isn’t on the job.These are all interesting and pertinent facts about the man who officially leads the United States in a time of global danger — and they have not ceased to be pertinent because that president is no longer running for re-election.For a few weeks the media coverage of the Biden White House built up the idea that there was a major scandal here, implicating the inner circle that encouraged the president to run for re-election and practiced deception amid his obvious decline.The potential scale of that scandal has diminished now that the country is no longer being asked to entrust the Oval Office to Biden for another four years. And concerns about the capacities of Donald Trump, the aging candidate actually running for the White House, are naturally going to claim more attention now that they’re contrasted with a younger rival.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 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Sheriff Resigns After Backlash Over Sonya Massey’s Shooting Death

      by

      Jack Campbell, the sheriff of Sangamon County, was criticized for hiring the deputy, who has now been charged with murdering Sonya Massey in her home last month.Jack Campbell, the Illinois sheriff whose deputy was charged with murder after fatally shooting a Black woman in her home last month, said Friday that he would leave his position by the end of the month amid calls from the public and the governor that he do so.The sheriff said in a statement obtained by WAND, a local television news station, that the “current political climate” made it impossible for him to continue in his role leading the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office and that he would retire no later than Aug. 31.Sheriff Campbell had previously said he would not resign as he faced criticism for having hired Sean Grayson, the white deputy who shot Sonya Massey, 36, despite knowing that Mr. Grayson, 30, had two convictions for driving under the influence on his record, including one that had led to Mr. Grayson’s premature discharge from the Army in February 2016.Mr. Grayson fatally shot Ms. Massey at her home in Springfield, Ill., on July 6 after she had called the emergency services because she believed an intruder was in her home.The day before, Ms. Massey’s mother, Donna Massey, had called 911 to alert the authorities that her daughter had been having a mental breakdown and was in a vulnerable state.“I don’t want you guys to hurt her, please,” she told a dispatcher on the morning of July 5.Sheriff Campbell, who was elected in 2018, fired Mr. Grayson on July 17 after an investigation into the deputy’s shooting of Ms. Massey by the state police resulted in a murder charge. On July 22, his department released footage of the shooting from Mr. Grayson’s body-worn camera.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

    • 238 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Fed Rate Cuts Are Expected Soon, as Inflation Cools. But Will They Be Early Enough to Avoid a Recession?

      by

      The Federal Reserve was about to cut interest rates, turning the corner after a long fight with inflation. But now, its soft landing is in question.The Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation was going almost unbelievably well. Price increases were coming down. Growth was holding up. Consumers continued to spend. The labor market was chugging along.Policymakers appeared poised to lower interest rates — just a little — at their meeting on Sept. 18. Officials did not need to keep hitting the brakes on growth so much, as the economy settled into a comfortable balance. It seemed like central bankers were about to pull off a rare economic soft landing, cooling inflation without tanking the economy.But just as that sunny outcome came into view, clouds gathered on the horizon.The unemployment rate has moved up meaningfully over the past year, and a weak employment report released last week has stoked concern that the job market may be on the brink of a serious cool-down. That’s concerning, because a weakening labor market is usually the first sign that the economy is careening toward a recession.The Fed could still get the soft landing it has been hoping for — weekly jobless claims fell more than expected in fresh data released on Thursday, a minor but positive development. Given the possibility that everything will turn out fine, central bank officials are not yet ready to panic. During an event on Monday, Mary C. Daly, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, suggested that officials were closely watching the job market to try to figure out whether it was cooling too much or simply returning to normal after a few roller-coaster years.“We’re at the point of — is the labor market slowing a lot, or slowing a little?” Ms. Daly said, as she pointed to one-off factors that could have muddled the latest report, like Hurricane Beryl and a recent inflow of new immigrant workers that left more people searching for jobs.“It’s clear inflation is coming down closer to our target, it’s clear that the labor market is slowing, and it’s to a point where we have to balance those goals,” she said.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