Author: NY TIMES

President Trump’s tariffs are already taking a toll on China’s factories.Three weeks into a trade war that pushed import tariffs of Chinese-made goods to 145 percent, an official report on manufacturing activity signaled that in April, Chinese factories experienced the sharpest monthly slowdown in more than a year.The report, a survey of industrial firms published on Wednesday by the National Bureau of Statistics, provides the first official indication of how the U.S. tariffs are affecting the Chinese economy. China has responded to the U.S. tariffs with 125 percent tariffs of its own on American goods.The trade brinkmanship threatens U.S. and…

A former athletic director at a Baltimore area high school who was accused of using artificial intelligence to create a racist and antisemitic audio clip impersonating the school’s principal was sentenced on Monday to four months in jail as part of a plea deal, according to prosecutors.The former director, Dazhon Darien, 32, pleaded guilty to disturbing school operations, a misdemeanor charge, according to the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office. Mr. Darien had previously faced additional charges, including theft, stalking and retaliating against a witness.According to The Associated Press, Mr. Darien entered an Alford plea to the disturbing school operations charge,…

Environmental Health Perspectives, widely considered the premier environmental health journal, has announced that it would pause acceptance of new studies for publication, as federal cuts have left its future uncertain.For more than 50 years, the journal has received funding from the National Institutes of Health to review studies on the health effects of environmental toxins — from “forever chemicals” to air pollution — and publish the research free of charge.The editors made the decision to halt acceptance of studies because of a “lack of confidence” that contracts for critical expenses like copy-editing and editorial software would be renewed after their…

The last time Beyoncé performed “Daddy Lessons,” the stomping, biting number from her 2016 album, “Lemonade,” was at that year’s C.M.A. Awards, in a blistering rendition alongside the Dixie Chicks (now the Chicks).Not everyone in country music embraced Beyoncé’s experimentation. “I did not feel welcomed,” she wrote in album notes leading up to the release last year of “Cowboy Carter,” her eighth solo album, an exploration of the many tendrils of American roots music and their connections to Black music of all stripes and generations.So it was meaningful, and pointed, that at the opening night of the Cowboy Carter Tour…

Deadly clashes fueled by sectarian tensions erupted on the outskirts of the Syrian capital, Damascus, killing at least nine people, Syrian officials and a war monitoring group said on Tuesday.The violence erupted overnight from Monday to Tuesday in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, which has a large population from the minority Druse sect. It began after an audio clip circulated on social media of a man insulting the Prophet Muhammad. The clip was attributed to a Druse cleric.The cleric and Druse religious figures in Jaramana denied the accusation. The Syrian Interior Ministry said that its initial findings showed that the…

Joseph Gonzalez, a cowboy wandering around the Outlaw Oasis, a merchandise area at the rodeo, was hopeful that exposure to a new crowd would be a good thing.“Not necessarily a crisis, but the rodeo culture is kind of dying,” he said. “This rodeo is a good way to get people here — young kids, families — you don’t have to own a horse, you don’t even have to live the life, as long as you like horses, cowboys and rodeo. I mean, social media, the internet, it’s a good way for people to learn about rodeo culture.”

A major power outage hit Spain and Portugal on Monday afternoon, abruptly shutting down daily activities, halting trains and subways, cutting off traffic lights, closing stores and canceling or delaying some flights.The cause of the blackout, which stranded tens of millions of people across the Iberian Peninsula, was still unknown by Tuesday morning, though several officials said there were no signs of foul play.“At this point, there are no indications of any cyberattack,” António Costa, the president of the European Council, wrote on X after communicating with the leaders of Spain and Portugal, who both assembled emergency meetings. “Grid operators…

Canada chooses a leader to take on Trump Canadians vote on Monday to determine which political party forms their next government.But President Trump’s tariff assault on Canada and his vow to annex the country and make it the 51st state have turned the federal election into a referendum on which of the two contenders — Prime Minister Mark Carney of the Liberal Party or Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservatives — can best handle the American president, Ian Austen writes for DealBook.The only English-language election debate last week opened with the moderator asking Carney, who has been the prime minister…

The battle of billionaires in space between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk has entered a new arena: satellite internet.Amazon, the company that Mr. Bezos started as an online bookseller three decades ago, is now a merchandising behemoth, the owner of the James Bond franchise, a seller of electronic gadgets like Echo smart speakers and one of the most powerful providers of cloud computing.So perhaps it is not a surprise that Amazon has now launched the first few of thousands of satellites known as Project Kuiper to provide another option for remaining connected in the modern world. The market for beaming…

Late yesterday, Sethuraman Panchanathan, whom President Trump hired to run the National Science Foundation five years ago, quit. He didn’t say why, but it was clear enough: Last weekend, Trump cut more than 400 active research awards from the N.S.F., and he is pressing Congress to halve the agency’s $9 billion budget.The Trump administration has targeted the American scientific enterprise, an engine of research and innovation that has thrummed for decades. It has slashed or frozen budgets at the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and NASA. It has fired or…