Author: NY TIMES

In a lively Supreme Court argument on Tuesday that included references to cookies, cocktails and toxic mushrooms, the justices tried to find the line between misleading statements and outright lies in the case of a Chicago politician convicted of making false statements to bank regulators.The case concerned Patrick Daley Thompson, a former Chicago alderman who is the grandson of one former mayor, Richard J. Daley, and the nephew of another, Richard M. Daley. He conceded that he had misled the regulators but said his statements fell short of the outright falsehoods he said were required to make them criminal.The justices…

U.S. securities regulators sued Elon Musk in federal court in Washington on Tuesday in an enforcement action arising from his $44 billion purchase of Twitter, now called X.The lawsuit against Mr. Musk, who has become a close adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, is likely to be one of the more contentious final acts of the Securities and Exchange Commission under Gary Gensler, its departing chair. It could also be undercut in just a few days, when Mr. Trump appoints new leadership to take charge of the regulator.The S.E.C. contends that in buying Twitter in 2022, Mr. Musk violated securities…

The number of Americans receiving psychotherapy increased by 30 percent during the pandemic, as virtual sessions replaced in-person appointments — but new research dampens the hope that technology will make mental health care more available to the neediest populations.In fact, the researchers found, the shift to teletherapy has exacerbated existing disparities.The increase in psychotherapy has occurred among groups that already enjoyed more access: people in higher-income brackets, living in cities, with steady employment and more education, researchers found in a series of studies, the most recent of which was, published Wednesday in The American Journal of Psychiatry.Among those who have…

Annoyed moviegoers may be making incorrect assumptions about why others in the theater are laughing. Some audience members might be chuckling because something onscreen is funny ha-ha; others may be laughing out of discomfort, surprise, or recognition; still others might titter to convey that they understood an obscure reference. Or maybe laughter is just contagious.“Sometimes I just hear someone else laugh and then it makes me think, maybe that was actually funny,” said Jordan Linekar, a manager for scripted and unscripted content at Paramount who sees movies in Los Angeles theaters about every other week. “Or sometimes people’s laughs are…

On the cover of his latest album, Alexandre Kantorow’s left arm falls back behind a piano bench. A wave builds slowly from his dangled palm, up through the straight line of his bare forearm, and crests around his shoulders before breaking, down through his arched neck and deeply bowed head, leaving, in the wash, his right hand at the keys.In this strikingly fluid photograph, taken by Fadi Kheir during Kantorow’s Carnegie Hall debut in 2023, he appears first as an unusually relaxed performer in flow. But the image reveals a second character. In the long hair draped messily over the…

Israel and Hamas appeared close to an agreement to declare a cease-fire in Gaza and release hostages held there, the Qatari government, a key broker in the talks, said on Tuesday, raising hopes after more than 15 months of war for some respite in the fighting.The latest round of negotiations follows repeated failed attempts to reach a breakthrough. But in recent weeks, officials familiar with the talks have voiced hope that a looming deadline was helping to close the gap: the end of President Joe Biden’s term and President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.Mediators had “managed to minimize…

MELBOURNE, Australia — On the island that was once the center of the world of men’s tennis — the land of Laver and Rosewall, Emerson and Newcomb and other tennis gods — the strangest dynamic has emerged.The rest of the world is obsessed with Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz. Here, it’s all about their own tennis yin and yang.One of them is a top-10 player who will do whatever it takes to avoid controversy while dedicating every ounce of his energy to the sport. The other is an unranked unicorn who is best at the middle ring of a three-ring…

While many of Mr. Musk’s posts, particularly those on grooming gangs, originated in the ecosystem of far-right bloggers and activists, they are also tempting to mainstream politicians in search of a cudgel to use against their opponents. And they appeal to editors and broadcasters looking for a good story.“The British press and the broadcasters, to a degree, fell all over themselves to give Elon Musk publicity,” said David Yelland, a former editor of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid, The Sun. “In the print press, they did it because they are extremely hostile to Keir Starmer. This is plain old Fleet Street bias.”Claire…

Matthew Giachelli got the call he anticipated on Thursday morning: The N.F.L. was moving the Rams’ playoff game to Arizona because of the wildfires raging in Los Angeles, and the league needed 200 gallons of paint pronto.The game on Monday between the Rams and the Minnesota Vikings would now be held at State Farm Stadium outside Phoenix, and it had to look and feel as if it were being played in the Rams’ usual home, SoFi Stadium. That included painting the field with the team’s and league’s logos and colors. The hometown Cardinals, though, did not have some of the…

The Biden administration issued sweeping rules on Monday governing how A.I. chips and models can be shared with foreign countries, in an attempt to set up a global framework that will guide how artificial intelligence spreads around the world in the years to come.With the power of A.I. rapidly growing, the Biden administration said the rules were necessary to keep a transformational technology under the control of the United States and its allies, and out of the hands of adversaries that could use it to augment their militaries, carry out cyberattacks and otherwise threaten the United States.Tech companies have protested…