Author: NY TIMES

After more than a week of ratcheting up tariffs on products imported from China, the Trump administration issued a rule late Friday that spared smartphones, computers, semiconductors and other electronics from some of the fees, in a significant break for tech companies like Apple and Dell and the prices of iPhones and other consumer electronics.A message posted late Friday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection included a long list of products that would not face the reciprocal tariffs President Trump imposed in recent days on Chinese goods as part of a worsening trade war. The exclusions would also apply to…

So sharp are partisan divisions these days that it can seem as if people are experiencing entirely different realities. Maybe they actually are, according to Leor Zmigrod, a neuroscientist and political psychologist at Cambridge University. In a new book, “The Ideological Brain: The Radical Science of Flexible Thinking,” Dr. Zmigrod explores the emerging evidence that brain physiology and biology help explain not just why people are prone to ideology but how they perceive and share information.This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.What is ideology?It’s a narrative about how the world works and how it should work. This potentially…

Alice Tan Ridley, who rose to fame after decades singing for tips in the New York City subway with an unexpected run on the television show “America’s Got Talent,” died on March 25 in New York City. Ms. Ridley, who was the mother of the Oscar-nominated actress Gabourey Sidibe, was 72.Her family announced the death in an obituary published online. It did not cite a cause or say where in New York City she died.Ms. Ridley’s public life as a singer began underground in the mid-1980s, and she spent decades belting out songs in New York City subway stations. At…

Preliminary diplomatic talks between American and Iranian officials over Tehran’s nuclear program ended on Saturday with a senior Iranian official calling them “positive” and saying they would resume next week.Depending on what comes next, they could lead to the first official face-to-face negotiations between the two countries since President Trump abandoned a landmark nuclear accord seven years ago.Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said just after 10:15 a.m. Eastern on Saturday that the indirect talks had concluded. Iran’s official media said that the talks had been “constructive and positive, and based on mutual respect,” and had included a discussion of the…

What do you wear for your first trip to space?If you are like most people, probably whatever spacesuit or astronaut outfit the company (or government agency) you are flying with provides. However, if you are Lauren Sánchez — journalist, pilot, children’s book author, philanthropist and fiancée of Jess Bezos — the second-richest man on the planet, you have another idea. You think, “Let’s reimagine the flight suit.”“Usually, you know, these suits are made for a man,” Ms. Sánchez said recently on a video call from the West Coast. “Then they get tailored to fit a woman.” Or not tailored: an…

“It’s not my cello,” Rosie O’Donnell said over a video call, sitting on a gray love seat in a gray hoodie and a pair of chic brown glasses.In New York, it was a Thursday morning. In Dublin, where the actress, comedian and former talk show host has been staying since mid-January, afternoon light streamed through a nearby window. The cello came with the rental.Lots of celebrities talked during the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections about moving abroad if Donald J. Trump won — among them, Barbra Streisand, Cher, and Amy Schumer.Ms. O’Donnell actually went through with it.“I never thought he…

The Memphis Grizzlies star found a new way to commemorate the three-pointer after the NBA fined JA Morant $75,000 last week for holding a finger gesture celebration.On Thursday night, the Grizzlies lost 141-125 to the Minnesota Timberwolves, Morant imitated the dowel, threw a grenade, threw a grenade and covered his ears 3. This is Morant’s second straight match, making the grenade pose the grenade pose, unveiled in the Charlotte game in Memphis on Tuesday.”It’s my celebration and I’ll find another one until someone else has a problem with it,” Morant said after Thursday’s shooting.The NBA fined $75,000 on April 4,…

A federal appeals panel on Friday halted parts of a district court judge’s injunction blocking the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, allowing officials to move ahead with firing some agency employees.Russell T. Vought, the White House budget office director, was named the consumer bureau’s acting director in February and immediately began gutting the agency. He closed its headquarters and sought to terminate its lease, canceled contracts essential to the bureau’s operations, terminated hundreds of employees and sought to lay off nearly all of the rest.In a lawsuit brought by the bureau’s staff union and other…

The biggest technology companies and their chief executives donated millions to President Trump’s inauguration, hosted black-tie parties and dinners in his honor, and allowed him to announce and take credit for new multibillion-dollar manufacturing projects.But less than three months into the president’s second term, Mr. Trump has hardly returned their lavish gestures with favors.The sweeping tariffs he imposed last week will squeeze Apple’s iPhone supply chain and make it much more expensive for Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft to build supercomputers to power artificial intelligence. The president has slashed federal funding for research into emerging technologies like A.I. and quantum…

In a speech broadcast to the Food and Drug Administration’s Maryland campus on Friday morning, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. introduced himself as the nation’s health secretary with a meandering speech touching on everything from birds of prey to pollution in Lake Erie to the C.I.A.Mr. Kennedy told the agency staff members, in the throes of losing 20 percent of their work force under his overhaul of the Health and Human Services Department, to boldly avoid the impulse to protect the corporations they regulate.The layoffs, voluntary departures and cutbacks in funding have already decimated divisions that govern oversight of tobacco, the…