Author: NY TIMES

Six trade groups sued the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday over a new rule that would cap most credit card late fees at $8 a month.The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Fort Worth, asks the court to vacate the rule, which the consumer bureau completed two days ago. The complaint says the bureau violated laws about agency rule-making and exceeded its statutory authority, and argues that consumers will be financially harmed if the rule takes effect.“Late fees encourage timely payments, which in turn help card issuers both to manage credit risk and to lower costs, allowing them to…

Jool Baby, a brand of children’s products, has recalled about 63,000 infant swings that were sold at Walmart stores and online because they posed a suffocation risk, federal safety regulators said.The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said on Thursday that the Jool Baby Nova Baby Infant Swing that was marketed, intended or designed for infant sleep posed a suffocation risk because it had an incline angle greater than 10 degrees.The product was in violation of the commission’s Infant Sleep Products Regulation and the Safe Sleep for Babies Act, the agency said.A study cited in the federal regulation of infant sleep…

After a very long and busy awards season, we have finally made it to end — wrapping things up with the biggest night for film honors.The 96th Academy Awards are set to begin one hour earlier than usual this year — 7 p.m. Eastern (4 p.m. Pacific) — from the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. Like last year, the show will be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, with ABC broadcasting the ceremony live.According to our Oscars expert, Kyle Buchanan, “Oppenheimer” is the front-runner for best picture, actor and supporting actor; and the director Christopher Nolan might finally take home his first…

In early February, as a referendum approached that had been called by Ireland’s coalition government to consider two proposals to alter the country’s Constitution, polls showed that a clear majority of voters intended to support it.Many analysts assumed it would be the latest in a series of votes in recent years amending the country’s 1930s-era Constitution to reflect Ireland’s increasingly secular and liberal identity.But as the day of the referendum, held to coincide with International Women’s Day, drew closer, public opinion seemed to turn, with polls showing support for the “yes” vote plummeting. When voters cast their ballots on Friday,…

Some attendees of the Academy Awards on Sunday night plan to wear red pins calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war, a notable exception to an awards season in which many Hollywood stars have been reluctant to draw attention to the conflict.The pins represent the attendees’ alignment with Artists4Ceasefire, a group of celebrities and members of the entertainment industry who signed an open letter urging President Biden to call for a cease-fire. The nearly 400 signatories include Bradley Cooper and America Ferrera, who are both Oscar nominees this year, as well as Cate Blanchett, Drake, Ben Affleck and Jennifer…

Washington lawmakers introduced a bill this week calling for TikTok to cut ties with its Chinese parent company or face a ban in the United States. When many users opened the popular app on Thursday, the company greeted them with a message to oppose the legislation, prompting a flood of phone calls to several Capitol Hill offices.“Stop a TikTok shutdown,” the message on the app read. It included a button for people to call their representatives, saying: “Let Congress know what TikTok means to you and tell them to vote NO.”By noon, the phone lines for members of Congress were…

Kathy Goldman, who devoted her career as a civic leader to establishing food banks, pantries and free breakfast and lunch programs in public schools to sustain low-income New Yorkers, died on March 5 in Brooklyn. She was 92.The cause of death, in a hospital, was congestive heart failure, her daughter, Julie Goldman, said.Ms. Goldman was determined to confront the collective indifference that she felt had contributed to the Holocaust. Over five decades she worked with many collaborators to successfully lobby for federal subsidies like food stamps and nutrition assistance for women, children and infants; create partnerships between corporate providers of…

In “Space: The Longest Goodbye,” scientists researching the problems of long-term space exploration go where movies have gone before. Sending astronauts into hibernation to conserve scarce resources? Pairing them with an artificially intelligent entity that can act as a pal and sounding board? Screenwriters have tried these things already, with results probably best kept in fiction.But such gambits may offer real solutions for getting humans to Mars. And they are gambits that this fitfully intriguing, sometimes wide-eyed documentary, directed by Ido Mizrahy, takes seriously.“Soft, squishy humans are completely unfathomable to engineers,” says Jack Stuster, an anthropologist who asked residents of…

The U.S. military said on Sunday that a ship had set sail carrying equipment to build a floating pier on Gaza’s coast, part of a Biden administration effort to deliver aid to the enclave by sea and help ease its hunger crisis.The administration’s plan for a pier and causeway, announced last week, could eventually help deliver as many as two million meals a day for residents of Gaza. But the Pentagon has said that the project will take weeks to complete, and humanitarian officials have criticized the plans, saying delivering aid by truck is far more efficient.On Sunday, the U.S.…

Nearly two months after undergoing abdominal surgery, Catherine, the princess of Wales, appeared in an official photograph, released on Sunday by Kensington Palace to mark Mother’s Day in Britain.Catherine, who posed with her three children, George, Charlotte and Louis, has not been seen in public since before she entered the hospital on Jan. 16, provoking a swirl of increasingly far-fetched rumors on social media about her condition.The image of a smiling Catherine, surrounded by her family, will most likely quiet what had become an extraordinary distraction for the British royal family, which is also dealing with a cancer diagnosis for…