Author: NY TIMES

The Federal Reserve may have a housing problem. At the very least, it has a housing riddle.Overall inflation has eased substantially over the past year. But housing has proved a tenacious — and surprising — exception. The cost of shelter was up 6 percent in January from a year earlier, and rose faster on a monthly basis than in December, according to the Labor Department. That acceleration was a big reason for the pickup in overall consumer prices last month.The persistence of housing inflation poses a problem for Fed officials as they consider when to roll back interest rates. Housing…

At the Kawasaki Disease Clinic at Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego, led by Dr. Burns, caring for children affected by Kawasaki disease is always linked to the search for the cause.On a recent Wednesday morning, Dr. Kirsten Dummer, a pediatric cardiologist, was examining the heart scans of a 2-year-old who showed signs of a large aneurysm on the right side of the heart.“The biggest question from parents is: How did this happen? How did my child get this? In every patient room, that’s what they fundamentally want to know,” she said. “Year after year after year, they come back and ask…

Ye, the rapper and provocateur formerly known as Kanye West, has the No. 1 album for a second week with “Vultures 1,” narrowly beating out a new release from the Oregon rapper Yeat.“Vultures 1,” a joint LP with the singer Ty Dolla Sign, holds the top spot on the Billboard 200 chart with the equivalent of 75,000 sales in the United States, including 95 million streams and 2,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate.A year and a half ago, the always-controversial Ye became radioactive in the music industry after a series of antisemitic remarks…

Iran has made a concerted effort to rein in militias in Iraq and Syria after the United States retaliated with a series of airstrikes for the killing of three U.S. Army reservists this month.Initially, there were regional concerns that the tit-for-tat violence would lead to an escalation of the Middle East conflict. But since the Feb. 2 U.S. strikes, American officials say, there have been no attacks by Iran-backed militias on American bases in Iraq and only two minor ones in Syria.Before then, the U.S. military logged at least 170 attacks against American troops in four months, Pentagon officials said.The…

Hungary’s Parliament voted on Monday to accept Sweden as a new member of NATO, sealing a major shift in the balance of power between the West and Russia set off by war in Ukraine.The vote allowed Sweden, which has long been nonaligned, to clear the final hurdle that had blocked its membership in NATO and held up the expansion of the military alliance.Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, whose Fidesz party has a large majority in Parliament, has maintained cordial relations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia despite the war in Ukraine and had stalled for 19 months on…

Companies that produce the most advanced semiconductors have requested more than $70 billion in federal subsidies, roughly twice the amount of funding that is available, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Monday.In an effort to revitalize domestic manufacturing of semiconductors, the federal government is distributing $39 billion in subsidies as an incentive for companies to produce more of the tiny chips that power everything from smartphones to cars and fighter jets. The funding is meant to strengthen the U.S. supply chain and reduce the country’s reliance on foreign sources of chips. Currently, just 12 percent of chips are made in…

The New Mexico attorney general, who last year sued Meta alleging that it did not protect children from sexual predators and had made false claims about its platforms’ safety, announced Monday that his office would examine how the company’s paid-subscription services attract predators.Attorney General Raúl Torrez said he had formally requested documentation from the social media company about subscriptions on Facebook and Instagram, which are frequently available on children’s accounts run by parents.Instagram does not allow users under 13, but accounts that focus entirely on children are permitted as long as they are managed by an adult. The New York…

Roni Stoneman, a virtuoso banjo player, mainstay of the country music television show “Hee Haw” and one of the last surviving members of the Stoneman Family, a renowned Appalachian string band, died on Thursday at her home in Murfreesboro, Tenn. She was 85.Her death was confirmed by Julie Harris, a family friend. No further details were available; a cause was not given.Ms. Stoneman made her mark in 1957 with her driving instrumental version of “Lonesome Road Blues,” which made her the first woman to play modern bluegrass banjo on a phonograph record. Also known as “Going Down the Road Feeling…

Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh of the Palestinian Authority, the body that administers part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, tendered the resignation of his cabinet on Monday, according to the authority’s official news agency.The decision follows diplomatic efforts involving the United States and Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, to persuade the authority to overhaul itself in a way that would enable it to take over the administration of Gaza after the war there ends.But it was unclear whether Mr. Shtayyeh’s resignation would be enough to revamp the authority or persuade Israel to let it govern Gaza. President Mahmoud Abbas, the most…

President Emmanuel Macron of France on Monday said “nothing should be ruled out” after he was asked about the possibility of sending Western troops to Ukraine in support of the embattled nation’s war against Russia.Mr. Macron, speaking after a meeting of European leaders in Paris to bolster support for Ukraine, stressed that the talks had not resulted in any consensus on putting troops on the ground “in an official, approved and endorsed way.”But he insisted that “anything is possible if it is useful to reach our goal,” which he said was to ensure that “Russia cannot win this war.” Neither…