Author: NY TIMES

Shareholders of Norfolk Southern, the beleaguered freight railroad, on Thursday voted down an attempt by an activist investment firm to remove the company’s chief executive and take control of its board.But the activist, Ancora, a Cleveland firm, managed to secure a foothold at the company, after shareholders voted to place three of its directors onto Norfolk Southern’s 13-member board. Ancora had hoped to take control of the company’s leadership with an aim to cut costs and increase Norfolk Southern’s profits and stock price.The result is a partial victory for Norfolk Southern’s executives, who had to defend themselves against criticisms of…

When an administrator says “I’m sorry” at a shelter for asylum seekers in “Aisha,” the phrase has seldom sounded so galling. An exemplar of the upending power people can wield in bureaucracies, the administrator repeatedly makes things difficult for Aisha, a young Nigerian woman petitioning for permanent residence in Ireland.The “Black Panther” star Letitia Wright descends from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to give a quietly fierce performance as Aisha, an asylum seeker in the writer-director Frank Berry’s drama. The reasons for her request unfold during visits with her legal counsel, in video talks with her mother in Lagos and at…

The main United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, known as UNRWA, said on Thursday that it had temporarily closed its headquarters in East Jerusalem for the safety of its staff after parts of the compound were set on fire following weeks of attacks.“This evening, Israeli residents set fire twice to the perimeter of the UNRWA Headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem,” said the leader of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, on social media. The fire caused extensive damage to the outdoor areas of the compound, Mr. Lazzarini said, but that no workers from UNRWA or other U.N. agencies suffered injuries. He added…

Ukrainian drones struck two oil depots and a refinery across Russia in a 24-hour period, including one deep in Russian territory, officials on both sides said Thursday, as Kyiv presses a campaign aimed at hampering the country’s military operations and putting strain on its most important industry.Radiy Khabirov, the head of Russia’s Bashkiria region, near Kazakhstan, said a drone hit the Neftekhim Salavat oil refinery, one of the country’s largest, around midday on Thursday, sending plumes of smoke into the sky. The facility is more than 700 miles from the Ukrainian border, in a sign that Ukraine is increasingly capable…

Rober Lawrence had seen Shawna Rodrigues around Phoenix High School in Phoenix, Ore., for a couple of years, but hadn’t approached her until his junior year in May 1991, when she was at her locker talking with a friend. The night before, Mr. Lawrence said, he had a dream about Ms. Rodrigues and wanted to tell her about it. Unbeknown to Mr. Lawrence, now 49, Ms. Rodrigues, 47, had long thought he was a “hot jock.”“When he and I met eyes, there was definitely lightning for me,” Ms. Rodrigues said. “I just never would have imagined that he had the…

The Senate on Thursday passed legislation to reauthorize federal aviation programs for the next five years and put in place new safety measures and consumer protections for passengers, at a moment of intense uncertainty and disruption in the air travel system.The bill, which still must win final approval in the House before becoming law, would provide more than $105 billion to the Federal Aviation Administration and another $738 million to the National Transportation Safety Board for airport modernization, technology programs and safety. It would also bolster the hiring and training of air traffic controllers, codify airlines’ refund obligations to passengers,…

How often do exes get back together at destination weddings? Based on Hollywood rom-coms, one might assume it’s an epidemic. The last few years alone have seen rancorous pairs reconcile on the tropical beaches of Bali (“Ticket to Paradise”), the tropical coastline of Sydney, Australia (“Anyone But You”) and in the tropical jungles of the Philippines (“Shotgun Wedding”). What a surprise to see the trend reappear in Netflix’s “Mother of the Bride,” set in Phuket, Thailand, at a tropical resort.These movies, as critics have pointed out, are themselves rehashing an older Hollywood trope: the comedy of remarriage, in which a…

To understand what is happening now in the Middle East, it may be helpful to remember the dead cat.That was a favorite metaphor for Secretary of State James A. Baker III as he shuttled around the region in 1991 trying to negotiate a complicated deal. With each recalcitrant player, Mr. Baker would threaten to “leave the dead cat” at their door — in other words, to make sure they were the ones blamed if the whole thing fell apart.The question three decades later is whether today’s players are at that stage of the U.S.-brokered effort to negotiate a cease-fire in…

An American vessel carrying aid intended for Gaza has departed from Cyprus, the Pentagon said on Thursday, but the temporary floating pier constructed by the U.S. military is not in place to unload the food and supplies meant for the enclave.Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said in a news briefing on Thursday afternoon that while the construction of the floating pier and the causeway has been completed, weather conditions have made it unsafe to actually place them off the coast of Gaza.General Ryder said that the aid on the vessel, called Sagamore, eventually would be loaded onto…

El lunes por la mañana ya se conocía la respuesta a una de las grandes interrogantes que se cernían sobre la gala del Met en el Museo Metropolitano de Arte de Nueva York.¿Los miembros del sindicato que representa a los empleados de Vogue y otras publicaciones de Condé Nast seguirían adelante con las amenazas de interrupción de la gala orquestadas por la editora de Vogue Anna Wintour? No: Condé Nast y los líderes sindicales llegaron a un acuerdo provisional horas antes del evento.Pero había otras preguntas: ¿qué famosos asistirían?, ¿cómo interpretarían los invitados el código de vestimenta del “Jardín del…