Trump Organization fires lawyer as president blasts Harvard work - The Boston Globe (2025)

AVIATION

Major US airlines are reducing their flight schedules and revising or withdrawing their profit outlooks for the year due to less domestic travel demand as sentiment about the national and global economies sours. American Airlines pulled its financial guidance for 2025 on Thursday, joining rivals Southwest and Delta in declaring the economic outlook too uncertain to provide full-year forecasts. All three airlines cited weakening sales among economy class leisure travelers. “We came off a strong fourth quarter, saw decent business in January, and really domestic leisure travel fell off considerably as we went into the February time frame,” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom told CNBC. Consumer reluctance to book vacations would correspond with a new poll that showed many people fear the United States is being steered into a recession and that President Trump’s broad and haphazardly enforced tariffs will cause prices to rise. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

ECONOMY

US applications for jobless benefits rose modestly last week as business continue to retain workers despite fears of a possible economic downturn. Jobless claim applications inched up by 6,000 to 222,000 for the week ending April 19, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s just barely more than the 220,000 new applications analysts forecast. Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered a proxy for layoffs, and have mostly stayed in a healthy range between 200,000 and 250,000 for the past few years. Even though President Trump has paused or pulled back on many of his tariff threats, concerns remain about a global economic slowdown that could upend what has been an historically resilient labor market. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

VATICAN

How do you process the death of a world figure like Pope Francis? With prayers, rituals and, apparently, movies. Streaming minutes for the 2024 Oscar-winning film “Conclave,” which explores the process of selecting a new pope, jumped this week after the news of the pope’s death, according to the tracking firm Luminate. Viewership also jumped for Netflix’s 2019 picture “The Two Popes.” Even before Amazon Prime Video made “Conclave” available at no extra cost to subscribers Tuesday, the film’s total daily US streaming viewership jumped Monday to 6.9 million minutes watched, compared with 966,000 the previous Monday. On Tuesday, the number of minutes watched jumped to 18.3 million, compared with 574,000 the previous Tuesday. “The data shows an increase of +3,200 percent in week-over-week viewership,” Luminate said. Given the jump that “Conclave” saw Monday, Luminate said that viewership was influenced both by the pope’s death and Amazon’s decision to make the film free to Prime subscribers. — NEW YORK TIMES

ENTERTAINMENT

Actor Jon Voight and his manager, Steven Paul, plan to present President Trump with ideas to help boost US film and TV production as early as next week. Their suggestions will go beyond the film tax credits typically offered by states and could include incentives for infrastructure investments, job training, and changes to the tax code. “It’s important that we compete with what’s going on around the world so there needs to be some sort of federal tax incentives,” Paul said in an interview. The group is trying to address the current situation where states compete with each other to lure film productions with ever more generous tax credits. Their approach includes national initiatives that would help the United States win business that might have gone overseas, Paul said. Film and TV production has fallen in California and elsewhere in the United States as studios cut back and other countries solicit the business, often through tax incentives. Some countries, including the UK, Australia, Hungary, and Spain, have seen their film and TV business climb in recent years. Voight, along with actors Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone, were appointed in January to be special ambassadors to what Trump called “a great but very troubled place, Hollywood, California.” — BLOOMBERG NEWS

AUTOMOTIVE

US automakers developing self-driving cars will be allowed more exemptions from certain federal safety rules for testing purposes to help them compete against Chinese rivals, the Transportation Department said Thursday. The department also said it will streamline crash reporting requirements involving self-driving features and will move toward national rules for the technology to replace a patchwork of state regulations. The new exemption procedures will allow US automakers to apply to skip certain safety rules for self-driving vehicles if they are used only for research and other non-commercial purposes. The exemptions were in place previously for foreign, imported vehicles whose home country rules may be different than those in the US. The crash reporting rule being changed has drawn criticism from Trump advisor Elon Musk as onerous and unfair. His car company, Tesla, has reported many of the total crashes under the rule in part because it is the biggest seller of partial self-driving vehicles in the US. Traffic safety watchdogs had feared that the Trump administration would eliminate the reporting rule, but the transportation department statement Thursday emphasized that only the paperwork will change, not the reporting requirement itself. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

ENTERTAINMENT

US preorders for the Nintendo Switch 2 kicked off shortly after the clock struck midnight Thursday. But chaos soon ensued amid high demand. Scores of consumers hoping to be among the first to own Nintendo’s latest gaming console — which is set to officially launch June 5 — jumped online to try and snag a preorder. And while some lucky buyers found success, many others ran into frustrating delays or saw listings appear to quickly sell out at participating retailers like Target, Walmart and Best Buy in the wee hours of the night. Among the headaches, social media users shared painfully-long wait times, screenshots of error messages or carts that suddenly appeared empty — while some reported receiving confirmation emails that were soon followed by notices about the orders being canceled. Nintendo acknowledged the “very high demand” in an update about those interested in purchasing the Switch 2 from its own My Nintendo Store. The company said it would be “working diligently to fulfill orders,” but noted that delivery by June 5 was not guaranteed — urging those who want to increase their chances of getting the console at the launch date to visit a participating retailer. — ASSOCIATED PRESS