Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman discusses the U.S-China trade war and China's economy, which he says has operated in a way that is inconsistent with other parts of the developed world. He says the the outcome of U.S.-China negotiations are largely dependent on whether China wants to change its system.
The delay comes after the proposed ban drew fire from tobacco companies and other groups that argued an end to menthol cigarette sales could create an illicit market that would impact minorities the hardest.
The start date for the $15 toll most drivers will be charged to enter Manhattan's central business district will be June 30, transit officials said Friday. Under the so-called congestion pricing plan, the $15 fee will apply to most drivers who enter Manhattan south of 60th Street during daytime hours. The program, which was approved by the New York state Legislature in 2019, is supposed to raise $1 billion per year to fund public transportation for the city’s 4 million daily riders.
An aspiring challenger to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán renewed his calls for change Friday as he led a protest of several thousand people demanding a more robust child protection system and the resignation of Orbán's government. The demonstrators gathered outside Hungary's Interior Ministry in Budapest and called for its head, Sándor Pintér, to step down over what they see as his failure to prevent the sexual abuse of children in state-run institutions, a crime which has led to political upheaval in Hungary in recent months.
A judge upheld the disqualification of a candidate who had had planned to run against the judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s 2020 Georgia election interference case. Tiffani Johnson is one of two people who filed paperwork to challenge Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee. An administrative law judge earlier this month found that she was not qualified to run for the seat after she failed to appear at a hearing on a challenge to her eligibility, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger adopted that decision.
U.S. and South Korean officials outlined respective visions for a new agreement on sharing the cost of keeping American troops in South Korea in talks this week and will continue to consult as necessary, the chief U.S. negotiator said on Friday. Ahead of a first round of talks in Hawaii from Tuesday to Thursday on a so-called 12th Special Measures Agreement (SMA), chief U.S. negotiator Linda Specht said Washington was seeking "a fair and equitable outcome." In a brief statement on Friday, Specht said: "The United States and Republic of Korea outlined their respective visions for the 12th SMA ... We will continue to consult whenever necessary to further strengthen and sustain the Alliance under the 12th SMA."
Burkina Faso has blocked local internet access to the BBC and Voice of America after they aired a rights report accusing the army of attacks on civilians in its battle against jihadists.It said the decision had been taken because BBC and the VOA had aired and also published reports on their digital platforms "accusing the Burkina army of abuses against the civilian population".
Columbia's embattled president came under renewed pressure on Friday as a university oversight committee met to address her attempt two weeks ago to clamp down on protests that have roiled the Ivy League school and spread across the country and aboard. President Nemat Minouche Shafik faced an outcry from many students, faculty and outside observers for summoning New York police to campus on April 18 to dismantle an encampment of tents set up by protesters against Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza. Police arrested more than 100 people that day and removed the tents from the main lawn of the school's Manhattan campus, but the protesters quickly returned and set up the encampment again, narrowing Columbia's options on shutting down the protest.
Intel's negative earnings surprise caught a few of the newfound bulls to the story by surprise.
The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the decision, said it came after the White House weighed the potential public-health benefits of banning the cigarettes against the political risk of angering Black voters in an election year. For decades, menthol cigarettes have been in the crosshairs of anti-smoking groups who argue that they contribute to disproportionate health burdens on Black communities and play a role in luring young people into smoking. "This rule has garnered historic attention and the public comment period has yielded an immense amount of feedback, including from various elements of the civil rights and criminal justice movement," U.S. health secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement on Friday.
A Belarusian hacker activist group claims to have infiltrated the network of the country’s main KGB security agency and accessed personnel files of over 8,600 employees of the organization, which still goes under its Soviet name. The authorities have not commented on the claim, but the website of the Belarusian KGB was opening with an empty page on Friday that said it was “in the process of development”. Seeking to back up its claim, the Belarusian Cyber-Partisans group published a list of the website's administrators, its database and server logs on its page in the messaging app Telegram.
More research is needed, but a small new study has encouraging results.
"If we are to reclaim our university, faculty and students must do it together," writes Barnard professor Nara Milanich.
A multi-day severe thunderstorm event is underway as the central US endures damaging wind gusts, large hail and tornadoes and the danger posed by these fierce storms will only increase into the weekend.
Protests are currently happening at college campuses around the country as students show support for Palestinians in Gaza.
Netflix's true crime drama “The Asunta Case” examines the murder of Asunta Fong Yang, whose adoptive parents, Rosario Porto and Alfonso Barrera, were found guilty.
A lawmaker from Poland's former ruling party is among 31 people prosecutors have summoned because they were victims of phone hacking while the party was in power, Gazeta Wyborcza daily reported on Friday. A Polish parliamentary commission has been investigating accusations the Law and Justice (PiS) party illegally hacked the phones of targets including political opponents.
As Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming opens for the busy summer season, wildlife advocates are leading a call for a boycott of the conservative ranching state over laws that give people wide leeway to kill gray wolves with little oversight. The social media accounts of Wyoming's tourism agency are being flooded with comments urging people to steer clear of the Cowboy State amid accusations that a man struck a wolf with a snowmobile, taped its mouth shut and showed off the injured animal at a Sublette County bar before killing it. While critics contend that Wyoming has enabled such animal cruelty, a leader of the state’s stock growers association said it's an isolated incident and unrelated to the state's wolf management laws.
A real estate company owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has agreed to pay $250 million to settle lawsuits nationwide claiming that longstanding practices by real estate brokerages forced U.S. homeowners to pay artificially inflated broker commissions when they sold their homes. HomeServices of America said Friday that the proposed settlement would shield its 51 brands, nearly 70,000 real estate agents and over 300 franchisees from similar litigation. The real estate company had been a major holdout after several other big brokerage operators, including Keller Williams Realty, Re/Max, Compass and Anywhere Real Estate, agreed to settle.
Thousands took to the streets in downtown Budapest on Friday to demand child-protection reform, led by Peter Magyar, a former government insider who recently launched a political movement challenging the prime minister. Magyar swooped into Hungary's political scene in February as the government of Prime Minister Victor Orban was already reeling from a sex abuse scandal at a children's home that led to the resignation of President Katalin Novak. As a follow-up of the scandal, ruling party Fidesz submitted a draft bill to the legislature on Tuesday that would mandate stricter penalties for sexual abuse of children, including the inability to obtain parole.
The first week of arguments in Donald Trump's criminal trial was wrapping up on Friday following four days of gripping testimony from a colorful ex-tabloid publisher who said he squashed potentially embarrassing stories about the former president.- 'Rigged trial' - The high-stakes trial requires Trump to report to the drafty Manhattan courtroom multiple times a week, restricting his time on the campaign trail less than seven months before his likely election rematch with President Joe Biden.
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