Author: NY TIMES

In a move that would further consolidate the luxury retail market, the parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue has agreed to acquire Neiman Marcus in a $2.65 billion deal, creating the ultimate high-end department store behemoth, two people close to the negotiations said on Wednesday.The deal, which had been rumored since Neiman Marcus filed for bankruptcy protection during the pandemic, comes just over four years after Saks bought the license for the Barney’s name following the bankruptcy of that group. It also follows a wave of luxury e-tail failures, including that of FarFetch and Matches.com. Saks is owned by HBC,…

A federal judge on Wednesday backed an initial legal challenge to the Federal Trade Commission’s ban on noncompete agreements, which is scheduled to take effect in September.Judge Ada Brown granted an injunction requested by several plaintiffs, saying the ban cannot be enforced against them pending a final ruling.But while the ruling is preliminary, she said that the F.T.C. lacked “substantive rule-making authority” with respect to unfair methods of competition and that the plaintiffs were “likely to succeed on the merits” of their challenge.Judge Brown, of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, said she expected to issue a…

His family moved to Cedarhurst, N.Y., on Long Island, when he was a child. As a student at Lawrence High School, he was a soccer and basketball standout. He also fostered a growing love of rap music, taping shows by influential New York disc jockeys like DJ Red Alert.“I realized that hip-hop culture could move the world,” he told Forbes, “because it was moving me.”Soon after graduating from Albany State University in 1990 with a bachelor’s degree in business, he followed Mr. Cohen, who had recently taken a job at SBK Records, the label founded by the industry heavyweight Charles…

Israeli forces killed a senior Hezbollah commander on Wednesday in a drone strike in southern Lebanon, prompting the Lebanese militia to retaliate with a heavy rocket barrage across the border.The flare-up came as Western diplomats worked to avoid a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah, a danger that appears to have grown in recent weeks. Cross-border exchanges of fire have intensified, and Israeli officials have publicly spoken of shifting their military focus from Hamas in the Gaza Strip to Hezbollah, a far more advanced and potent threat.Amos Hochstein, a senior White House adviser who has become the de facto U.S.…

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have identified an Israeli air base as a key source of GPS attacks that have disrupted civilian airline navigation in the Middle East.The attacks, known as spoofing, send out manipulated GPS signals that make airplane instruments misread their location.The researchers, Todd Humphreys and Zach Clements, said they are “highly confident” that the spoofing attacks originated from Ein Shemer Airfield in northern Israel. The Israeli military declined to comment on Tuesday.The researchers used data that was emitted by the spoofer and picked up by satellites in low-Earth orbit to determine its location. They…

For a moment, Cristiano Ronaldo looked like he was about to cry. And then all of a sudden, no, he’s gone over the edge. The floodgates have opened and he is now wailing. In front of a packed crowd in Frankfurt and a massive global television audience, arguably the most famous athlete on earth broke down in tears.And there’s still a game to win and a place in the Euro 2024 quarter-finals to secure.It’s amazing to witness. The Portugal captain endured another frustrating night, still chasing his first goal of the World Cup, and now had the chance to break…

Right before they filmed the loogie heard around the world, Tim Dickerson and DeArius Marlow were getting ready to go home.They were on the corner of Broadway and 3rd Avenue in the downtown area of Nashville, and as it crept past midnight, the pair, who shoot person-on-the-street interviews at nightlife hot spots around the country, thought they had enough footage for a good video.Then, two women approached them from across the street, asking to be interviewed.At that moment, a viral star was born.That star, of course, is Hailey Welch, better known online as “Hawk Tuah Girl.” “Hawk tuah” is an…

As Hurricane Beryl headed toward Jamaica and the Cayman Islands early Wednesday as a powerful Category 4 storm, a clearer picture emerged of the devastation it had caused on two small islands in Grenada, with that country’s leader calling the destruction “unimaginable” and “total.”“We have to rebuild from the ground up,” Grenada’s prime minister, Dickon Mitchell, said at a briefing after visiting the islands of Carriacou and Petite Martinique, which were ravaged by Beryl on Monday.Officials said about 98 percent of the buildings on the islands, where about 6,000 people live, had been damaged or destroyed, including Carriacou’s main health…

The 2024 WNBA All-Star Game roster has been confirmed, with Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese set to debut at the annual showcase later this month.Clark, the No. 1 pick by the Indiana Heat in this year’s WNBA draft, received the most votes in the fan voting portion. She already won Rookie of the Month in May, leads all first-year players in points (16.2 points per game), assists (6.9 per game) and ranks first in three-pointers made (56). Second in the league.Reese, the Chicago Sky’s seventh overall pick, was named June’s Rookie of the Year on Tuesday. Over the weekend, she…

The trajectory of FX’s “The Bear” has mirrored the fortunes of its characters. Over three seasons, what started as a scrappy half-hour comedy about a band of gritty Chicagoans running a sandwich shop has now become a cultural phenomenon about those same characters running a fancy restaurant — in suits and Thom Browne chef’s whites, no less.The show has always had an elegant, consumer-friendly sheen (see: the internet frenzy over the T-shirts that its star, Jeremy Allen White, wore in the first season). But its cast members are now household names: Mr. White, who plays Carmy, is a Calvin Klein…