Business

In an interview released on Thursday, Tucker Carlson urged President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to release an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal who has been held in a notorious Moscow prison for nearly a year.Mr. Carlson’s appeal on behalf of the reporter, Evan Gershkovich, was only the second time that Mr. Putin directly addressed a case that has galvanized press freedom groups and strained diplomatic relations with the United States.Large portions of the two-hour interview were taken up by Mr. Putin’s recounting hundreds of years of Russian history. But in the final minutes, Mr. Carlson asked, “as a sign of your decency,” if he “would be willing to release him to us and we’ll bring him back to the United States.” Mr. Carlson added: “This guy’s obviously not a spy. He’s a kid...

Toni Irizarry recognizes that the economy has improved. Compared with the first wave of the pandemic, when Las Vegas went dark, and joblessness soared to levels not seen since the Great Depression, these are days of relative normalcy.Ms. Irizarry, 64, oversees a cafe at the Orleans Hotel and Casino, a property just off the Las Vegas Strip that caters mostly to locals. Guests have returned, filling the blackjack and roulette tables amid the cacophony of jingling slot machines — the sound of money.She started in the hospitality industry busing tables when she was only 16. Her paychecks have allowed her to purchase a home, raise three children and buy each of them their first car. But as she contemplates the future, she cannot shake a sense of foreboding.The outlook of people like Ms. Irizarr...

As the one-year anniversary of a crisis that brought down several midsize banks approaches, trouble at another lender is putting unwelcome attention on the industry again.Concerns now center on New York Community Bancorp, which operates roughly 400 branches nationwide under brands such as Flagstar Bank and Ohio Savings Bank. The bank ballooned in size over the past year, to more than $100 billion in assets, after taking over the fallen Signature Bank last spring in an auction organized by federal regulators.New York Community Bancorp’s stock nose-dived after it released an ugly earnings report that included unexpected losses on real estate loans tied to both office and apartment buildings. Its shares have lost about half their value over the past week.Shares of other lenders with portfolio...

Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, made clear during a “60 Minutes” interview aired on Sunday night that the central bank is moving toward cutting interest rates as inflation recedes, but that policymakers need to see continued progress toward cooler price increases to make the first move.Mr. Powell was interviewed on Thursday, after the Fed’s meeting last week but before Friday’s blockbuster jobs report. He reiterated his message that lower borrowing costs are coming. But he also said that the Fed’s next meeting in March is probably too early for policymakers to feel sure enough that inflation is coming under control to reduce rates.“We think we can be careful in approaching this decision just because of the strength that we’re seeing in the economy,” Mr. Powell said duri...

“I feel like I’m in a fairy tale,” Sean Wang said to the sold-out crowd gathered at the Ray Theater in Park City, Utah, last month for his Sundance Film Festival debut.Mr. Wang, a 29-year-old filmmaker, was dressed in a black suit and white Vans (a nod to his skateboarding roots). He grabbed his chest in a show of how fast his heart was beating as he introduced his film, “Dìdi.” It is a coming-of-age story about an angsty, insecure 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy trying to find his place in the world.“I’m just going to take a few seconds to take this all in,” he said before snapping a photograph of the audience. The warm crowd included Mr. Wang’s family and friends, the film’s cast and crew, and a handful of potential buyers who have the power to transform his station in life from aspir...

Walmart will add 150 stores in the United States over the next five years, a major expansion drive for the retail giant.The company said the move, which it announced in a statement on Wednesday, would involve millions of dollars in investment. Walmart employs roughly 1.6 million people in the United States, and said it hires hundreds of people each time it opens a new store.Walmart had just over 4,600 stores nationwide at the end of October, down from more than 4,700 a year earlier. The company has not opened a new U.S. store since late 2021.Most of the stores that Walmart plans to open will be newly built, while others will be conversions of existing locations to new formats. The first two new stores will open in the spring, in Florida and Georgia, and the company is completing constructi...

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, suffered a stunning rebuke Tuesday when a Delaware judge voided the pay package that helped make him a billionaire many times over and the world’s wealthiest human being.In a decision that cast a harsh light on the behavior of Mr. Musk and Tesla’s board of directors, Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery said the chief executive had effectively overseen his own compensation plan with the help of compliant board members.“The process leading to the approval of Musk’s compensation plan was deeply flawed,” the judge said. She ordered that the contract that gave Mr. Musk “the largest potential compensation plan in the history of public markets” be voided, and told parties in the case to work out how Mr. Musk would return...

In 2018, Anna-Lisa Miller was working with agricultural cooperatives in Hawaii, helping them reinvest in their communities through shared ownership.Ms. Miller, who had gone to law school and had planned to do civil rights litigation, loved the principle of workers partaking in the financial success of their employers, and the next year joined Project Equity, a nonprofit that helps small businesses transition to worker ownership. But it was slow going, with each transaction requiring customized assistance.Then she came across an investor presentation from a different universe: KKR, one of the world’s largest private equity firms. In it, a KKR executive, Pete Stavros, discussed a model he had been developing to provide employees with an equity stake in companies it purchased, so the workers ...

After a portion of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliner’s fuselage blew out in midair minutes after the plane had taken off from Portland, Ore., on Jan. 5, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded about 170 Max 9 planes, causing airlines that rely heavily on the aircraft to cancel thousands of flights and inconveniencing many passengers.On Wednesday, the F.A.A. approved inspection and maintenance procedures for the planes, clearing the way for the grounded Max 9 planes to fly again.Airlines said they planned to resume flying the Max 9s this week, and Alaska Airlines began using the aircraft again on Friday with a flight from Seattle to San Diego. Here’s what passengers should know about the plane and their rights if they want to avoid flying on it.Which airlines use the Max 9?O...

Boeing hoped 2024 would be the year it would significantly increase production of its popular Max jets. But less than a month into the year, the company is struggling to reassure airline customers that it will still be able to deliver on its promises.That’s because the Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday said it would limit the plane maker’s output until it was confident in Boeing’s quality control practices. That announcement came about three weeks after a panel blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 body shortly after takeoff, terrifying passengers on an Alaska Airlines flight and forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing at the Portland International Airport in Oregon. Almost immediately, the F.A.A. grounded some Max 9s.Since then, details have emerged about the jet’s production at ...