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Russian Hackers Read Obama’s Unclassified Emails, Officials Say

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WASHINGTON — Some of President Obama’s email correspondence was swept up by Russian hackers last year in a breach of the White House’s unclassified computer system that was far more intrusive and worrisome than has been publicly acknowledged, according to senior American officials briefed on the investigation. The hackers, who also got deeply into the State Department’s unclassified system, do not appear to have penetrated closely guarded servers that control the message traffic from Mr. Obama’s BlackBerry, which he or an aide carries constantly. But they obtained access to the email archives of people inside the White House, and perhaps some outside, with whom Mr. Obama regularly communicated. From those accounts, they reached emails that the president had sent and received, according to officials briefed on the investigation. White House officials said that no classified networks had been compromised, and that the hackers had collected no classified information. Many ...
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Laughter (and a Few Boos) as Obama Takes Aim at Correspondents’ Dinner

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WASHINGTON — President Obama might have that cool, professorial exterior. But what would happen if he ever got really mad? On Saturday night, Mr. Obama offered a humorous answer to that hypothetical question as he roasted himself, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the potential 2016 Republican presidential field and his journalistic adversaries at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. With the help of Keegan-Michael Key, half of Comedy Central’s irreverent “Key and Peele” show, Mr. Obama gave the thousands of journalists, politicians, government officials and celebrities at the Washington Hilton a sense of what he really thinks when he gives one of his famously restrained speeches. With Mr. Key behind him, a straight-faced Mr. Obama talked about counting on reporters to do their honorable jobs despite any differences he may have with them. “Count on Fox to terrify all white people with some nonsense!” Mr. Key yelled, reprising his TV role as Luther, the p...
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Lee Friedlander Captures the City’s Hustle and Flow

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If you’re walking around New York with the intention of taking photographs, you notice how different the city looks every few steps. Your progress is not a line, direct or winding, from one point to another, but a flickering series of scenes. A street is not only its tarred surface, the buildings alongside it, the cars fast or slow, the people around you. It is also the way those things relate to one another, the way they combine and recombine. As some elements slip out of view, new ones become visible: You are moving, the cars are moving, other people are moving, even the sun is moving, slowly, and in the middle of this movable feast you must decide when to press the shutter, decide which of these rapidly refreshing instants is more interesting than the others around it. A second before, it has not yet arrived. A second later, it is already gone. Henri Cartier-Bresson called it “a joint operation of the brain, the eye and the heart.” Cartier-Bresson’s own approach, the famous ...
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Changing Tactics, Apple Promotes Watch as a Luxury Item

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SAN FRANCISCO — Apple has scrapped its usual routine for releasing products with its new device, the Apple Watch. The company is instead taking a page from the playbook of another industry: luxury goods makers. Gone are the long lines in front of Apple stores that would accompany a typical iPhone release. Gone is the flooding of a vast worldwide distribution network where Apple would make a new iPhone available. The company is selling the Apple Watch, which goes on sale on Friday, in just nine countries and exclusively through its own channels, not through third-party retailers like Best Buy. In contrast, Apple unveiled new iPhones in September in more than 30 countries and in numerous retail outlets. For the first time, Apple is also bringing personal attention and tailoring into the mix through a process for trying on the watch. While consumers typically couldn’t touch a new Apple device until it was publicly available, the company this month began inviting customers into...
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Trader Arrested in Manipulation That Contributed to 2010 ‘Flash Crash’

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Five years ago, the global financial system was rocked by the “flash crash,” 15 minutes of chaos that shook the world’s biggest markets and prompted investors both big and small to question how such a vital part of the economy could be brought to its knees. On Tuesday, United States prosecutors said that much of the blame for the event could be pinned on a single person: a 36-year-old man who had been boldly manipulating markets from his suburban rowhouse just a few minutes from Heathrow Airport outside London, where he was arrested. Regulators said that their prosecution of the trader, Navinder Singh Sarao, demonstrated their aggressiveness in rooting out market manipulation. But news of the arrest, if anything, has raised anew concerns about how an individual could manage to exert such influence over the world’s financial markets. The case also played into worries that have swirled around the increasingly automated and complex financial markets, where regulators have stru...
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Deal on Trade Pact Gives Obama Authority but Builds In a Delay

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WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers and the White House have agreed to subject any trade deal negotiated by President Obama to a monthslong review by Congress and the public, a concession aimed at winning the support of Democrats who view trade agreements as a threat to American workers. That provision, expected to be formally approved Wednesday by the Senate Finance Committee, would give Mr. Obama the “fast-track” authority he has been seeking to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership with a dozen Pacific Rim nations, potentially expanding markets for American companies. But the compromise will almost certainly push a major trade accord with Asia into the presidential election season, a politically charged prospect that trade supporters had hoped to avoid. As a result of the delays built into the legislation, final consideration of the trade pact could fall to the next president, just as the North American Free Trade Agreement, completed by President George H. W. Bush, was ...
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Comcast’s Track Record in Past Deals May Be Hitch for Merger With Time Warner Cable

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In July 2013, executives from the three companies that co-owned Hulu — Comcast, 21st Century Fox and Walt Disney — had a conversation about their joint venture. Hulu, the video streaming service, had been on the auction block, and lucrative bids had come in from two Comcast rivals, AT&T and the satellite operator DirecTV, among other potential buyers. Comcast told its counterparts that it could enhance Hulu’s value, which influenced their thinking about the fate of the service, according to several people with knowledge of the conversation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were confidential. The issue was not money; some of the bids came in at more than $1 billion, one person said. Within days, Fox and Disney announced that the sale of Hulu had been called off for the second time in two years. The discussion among the companies, which took place at the Allen & Company conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, raises questions about the degree t...
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