Author: NY TIMES

Private equity likes the long ball The San Francisco Giants, one of Major League Baseball’s most successful franchises, have sold about 10 percent of the team to the private equity group Sixth Street, Ken Belson and Lauren Hirsch are first to report.The team will use the cash to help pay for upgrades to the franchise’s 25-year-old stadium and other facilities, as well as the Mission Rock real estate development adjacent to the ballpark.Details of the purchase, which was approved by Major League Baseball Monday, were not disclosed. But the team was last valued at $3.8 billion by Forbes. The Giants…

European Union regulators on Wednesday ramped up their efforts to force Apple and Google to change key parts of their businesses, despite potential pushback from the Trump administration over the regulation of American tech companies.The European Commission, the executive branch of the 27-nation bloc, said Apple and Google had violated a law passed in 2022 that was intended to ensure fair competition in the digital economy.The decisions add a new layer to geopolitical tensions between the United States and European Union on issues ranging from trade and tariffs to Ukraine and military defense.The commission said a preliminary judgment had found…

During his first term, President Donald J. Trump unveiled a bold initiative to end the H.I.V. epidemic in the United States by 2030 by focusing on 57 jurisdictions with the most urgent needs.The plan, which Mr. Trump announced in 2019 at a State of the Union address, surprised advocacy groups. But it was widely lauded, and successful.By 2022, the plan had driven down new infections nationwide by 30 percent in adolescents and young adults, and by roughly 10 percent in most other groups.This time around, the Trump administration’s stance on H.I.V. appears to be much the opposite.The Department of Health…

“We all discovered what a powerful vehicle it is to have her singing these songs, and to calm the flurries of notes down a little bit,” he added. “It’s there and it’s hiding, bubbling underneath, ready to come out and gobble up everything at any point. But another thing about it is knowing that you can do that — but not doing it.”Douglas — whose dobro and steel guitar often answer Krauss’s voice with keening, sighing alternate melodies — has long been a first-call Nashville studio musician, bandleader, collaborator and producer. Among his recent projects are “The Set,” his 2024…

Israelis were gathering on Wednesday outside the Parliament building in Jerusalem to protest moves by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that they say undermine the country’s democracy and to call for a renewed cease-fire deal for Gaza to bring the remaining hostages there home.The convergence of popular anger over both domestic and national security issues comes after Israel carried out deadly aerial attacks across the Gaza Strip early Tuesday, ending a temporary truce with Hamas that began in January.The broad sense of national solidarity that had surrounded the war in Gaza, set off on Oct. 7, 2023, by the Hamas-led attack…

Before Bill Cunningham rode his bicycle around the city taking photos of fashionable New Yorkers for The New York Times, he helped dress some of them as William J., the milliner.Along with socialites and Old Hollywood stars — Doris Duke, Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe and Ginger Rogers among them — his fans included people like Venera Macaluso of Queens, who died in 2018 and went by Netty. Eight of her one-of-a-kind hats designed by Mr. Cunningham are now up for auction as part of a sale ending on March 21.Styles on the block include a hat resembling a small purple…

On Tuesday night, outside the Rome hospital where Pope Francis is being treated for a complex lung infection, the 8th King of Rome, a self-described “trash influencer” embarked on a secret mission. He wore a wig, hid his pink-and-blue-dyed beard behind a surgical mask and then ventured inside the hospital to show his followers what he thought was the truth: that the pope was not actually there.The 8th King of Rome, a former funeral home worker whose real name is Simone Basile, is one of many Italians who have flooded social media, telegram channels and WhatsApp chats with unsubstantiated claims…

When Eleanor H., 66, called the Social Security Administration last month seeking details about her retirement benefits, she didn’t expect to comfort the representative who answered. The woman started sobbing.“I asked her what was wrong, and she said she and her co-workers were informed by email to accept a taxable $20,000 payout or risk termination,” said Eleanor, who lives in New Jersey (she asked to use only her first name out of privacy concerns).The rep still answered all of Eleanor’s questions. “Through her tears she said, ‘What am I going to do?’”The Social Security Administration, which sends retirement, survivor and…

President Trump fired the two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday, a rejection of the corporate regulator’s traditional independence that may clear the way for the administration’s agenda.The White House told the Democrats, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, that the president was terminating their roles, according to statements from the pair. The F.T.C., which enforces consumer protection and antitrust laws, typically has five members, with the president’s party holding three seats and the opposing party two.Members of the F.T.C. and other independent regulatory boards are protected from removal under a 1935 Supreme Court precedent that says…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, has an unorthodox idea for tackling the bird flu bedeviling U.S. poultry farms. Let the virus rip.Instead of culling birds when the infection is discovered, farmers “should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it,” Mr. Kennedy said recently on Fox News.He has repeated the idea in other interviews on the channel.Mr. Kennedy does not have jurisdiction over farms. But Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, also has voiced support for the notion.“There…