Author: NY TIMES

The Federal Reserve is considering when and how much to cut interest rates, and the employment report on Friday will give policymakers an up-to-date hint at how the economy is evolving ahead of their next policy meeting.Fed officials meet on March 19-20, and they are widely expected to leave interest rates unchanged at that gathering. But investors think that they could begin to lower interest rates as early as June, a view that Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, did little to either strongly confirm or upend during his congressional testimony this week.“We’re waiting to become more confident that inflation…

Buddy Duress, a small-time heroin dealer living on the streets of the Upper West Side who became a sensation in the New York film scene as an actor and muse for the movies “Heaven Knows What” and “Good Time,” which helped launch the careers of the filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie, died in November at his home in Astoria, Queens. He was 38.The death, which was disclosed only in late February, was from cardiac arrest caused by a “drug cocktail” including heroin, his brother, Christopher Stathis, said.Mr. Stathis said their mother, Jo-Anne Stathis, was seriously ill in November, so he…

As the United States military rushes to assemble a temporary port on the Gaza coast, daunting practical challenges to the seaborne humanitarian effort to stave off famine in the territory are becoming increasingly apparent. The obstacles include logistics, cost and security issues, diplomats and aid officials say.But the desperate conditions in Gaza, depicted in images of starving children, make the American-led international plan a necessity, they say, especially given the tight security imposed by Israel that is slowing land shipments of food, water and medicine. Even if it can overcome the hurdles, the international initiative is likely to take several…

My young adult son Jason and I are crossing Riverside Drive to get to the park on the other side.This part of Riverside Drive comprises four lanes separated by a median that’s too narrow to make for a good stopping place; the whizzing cars and buses make you feel like either your toes or your heels or even both might get grazed as you wait for the light to change in your favor. I thus always plan to make the journey in one go.However, Jason has nonspeaking autism, and we don’t know why he does some of the things he…

President Biden used his State of the Union speech on Thursday to remind Americans of his efforts to steer the nation’s economy out of a pandemic recession, and to lay the groundwork for a second term focused on making the economy more equitable by raising taxes on companies and the wealthy while taking steps to reduce costs for the middle class.Mr. Biden offered a blitz of policies squarely targeting the middle class, including efforts to make housing more affordable for first-time home buyers. The president used his speech to try and differentiate his economic proposals with those supported by Republicans,…

David Bordwell, a film studies scholar whose immersive, accessible writing transcended the corridors of academia and illuminated the mechanics of moviemaking to a generation of cinephiles and filmmakers, died on Feb. 29 at his home in Madison, Wis. He was 76.The cause was interstitial pulmonary fibrosis, said his wife, Kristin Thompson, a prominent film scholar who frequently collaborated with him.Dr. Bordwell taught at the University of Wisconsin for 30 years and wrote or co-wrote more than 20 books, including “Film Art: An Introduction” (1979), a textbook written with his wife that is widely used in film studies programs. After retiring…

Canada and Sweden are resuming funding for the main United Nations agency supporting Palestinian refugees in Gaza, citing the spiraling humanitarian catastrophe there and saying that the agency had taken steps to improve accountability amid accusations that some of its employees had links to Hamas.The countries were among more than a dozen that suspended payments to the aid organization, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, known as UNRWA, after accusations in January by Israel that a dozen of its 13,000 employees in Gaza had been involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel or their aftermath.Israel’s…

Theresa May, the former British prime minister whose time in Downing Street was scarred by a protracted battle over Brexit, is to leave Parliament at the next general election after 27 years as a lawmaker.With the Conservative Party trailing badly in opinion polls before an election that many analysts expect it to lose, Mrs. May is the most senior of the approximately 60 lawmakers from the party who have so far announced plans to leave Parliament.Mrs. May, Britain’s second female prime minister, said in a statement to her local newspaper that she had “taken the difficult decision” to stand aside…

In January, Tessa Tookes tried on her dream wedding dress at a bridal boutique in Ontario. When the store employees told her she would have to pay $200 for the bra cups of the gown to match her skin color, her heart sank. The beige cups that had already been built into the dress, however, were free. Ivory cups were also a free option.Ms. Tookes, who is Black, loved the dress so much that she put down a deposit for half the price of the gown. But when she returned home, she had time to process what had happened.“When the…

“Our Georgia site remains really important to us,” Rivian’s chief executive, R.J. Scaringe, said at an event on Thursday where he unveiled two new sport-utility vehicles. “It’s core to scaling across all these vehicles.”One of the S.U.V.s, called the R2, is a five-passenger vehicle that is expected to be available in the first half of 2026. Originally, the R2 was supposed to be the first vehicle produced in Georgia. Shifting production to Normal, Ill., where the company has an operating factory, will allow Rivian to begin delivering the vehicle to customers sooner, Mr. Scaringe said.The R2 will have a starting…