Author: NY TIMES

There is a certain irony to the fact that the most consequential role Stormy Daniels, the adult entertainer at the heart of the Trump criminal trial, may ever play is taking place off screen. There are no cameras allowed in the courtroom where she is a crucial witness, as she tells her story of her sexual encounter with Mr. Trump and the hush-money payments and the nondisclosure agreement his fixer arranged to keep her silent.That means that on Tuesday, the first day of her testimony, the watching world could catch only glimpses of her as she left State Supreme Court…

A federal jury in Manhattan on Thursday convicted a financial executive on securities fraud charges arising from a multimillion-dollar insider trading scheme that involved the merger of former President Donald J. Trump’s social media company with a publicly traded shell company.Federal prosecutors had charged Bruce Garelick with five counts of securities fraud and conspiracy. The authorities claimed Mr. Garelick leaked confidential information to his boss and at least one other person that Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, was getting close to announcing a merger in October 2021 with Digital World Acquisition Corporation, the shell…

Dr. Herbert Pardes, a psychiatrist and a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health who brought order to the merger of two major medical centers that became New York-Presbyterian Hospital and ran it for 11 years, died on April 30 at his home in Manhattan. He was 89.His son Steve said the cause was aortic stenosis.Dr. Pardes (pronounced par-diss) was named president and chief executive of the hospital in late 1999, nearly two years after the merger of New York Hospital and Presbyterian Hospital. The previous decade, he had been the dean of the faculty of medicine at…

If you asked a child to draw a car, the result would probably be something that looked like the Chevrolet Malibu.For decades, this dependable midsize vehicle was a stalwart of the American road. Because that kind of thing is no longer in demand, it came as no surprise when General Motors announced on Wednesday that it would discontinue the model as it shifts its focus to sport utility vehicles and electric cars.The Malibu never had the back-alley glamour of the Chevrolet Camaro or the brute force of the Chevrolet Impala. It was the ultimate normcore-mobile, made for a time when…

President Biden’s warning over halting weapons supplies has tightened the bind that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel faces, as he is increasingly caught between international calls for a cease-fire and right-wing Israeli demands to proceed with a wide-scale invasion of Rafah, in southern Gaza.Mr. Netanyahu, who has insisted over American objections that invading Rafah is necessary, now finds the U.S.-Israel relationship at a moment of crisis that could affect how he conducts the next phase of the war against Hamas.On Thursday, the Israeli leader, alluding to Mr. Biden’s remarks, said in a statement: “If we need to stand alone,…

President Xi Jinping of China on Thursday found another safe zone in a continent increasingly wary of his country, meeting in Budapest with the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, the European Union’s perennial odd-man-out as a vocal supporter of warm relations with both China and Russia.As happened at his previous stop in Serbia, Mr. Xi received a rapturous welcome and was spared from protesters, with his motorcade from the airport on Wednesday evening taking a roundabout route into the Hungarian capital, avoiding Tibetan protesters.Police banned a protest planned for Thursday in the center of Budapest and a large Tibetan flag…

This article is part of our Design special section about water as a source of creativity.Years of abnormally low rainfall, higher-than-normal temperatures and aging infrastructure have led to a dangerously low water supply for Mexico City. The issue isn’t a new one for the Mexican capital — in 2014, it was ranked as the third most water-stressed of more than 150 of the planet’s largest cities. Now, the metropolis faces a water crisis so severe that local authorities recently began imposing rations.For Javier Sánchez, a low-slung earthen house just west of Mexico City, designed by his architectural firm JSa, reflects…

Home prices were already high when Ellen Harper, a software architect living in Atlanta, started searching for a house in 2021. But she couldn’t have anticipated the quick surge in interest rates the following year and, even with a large down payment, the new math made her uneasy.Earlier this year, however, she stumbled upon what felt like a portal to the not-so-distant past: listings of thousands of homes that come with a low-rate mortgage, which can be transferred from the existing homeowner to a new home buyer, known as an assumable mortgage.Ms. Harper, who is in her 50s, managed to…

By Kevin RooseTechnology columnist and co-host of the Times podcast “Hard Fork”Artificial intelligence, we are told, is a transformative economic force; it will change workers’ jobs, boost corporate profits and reshape industries. But for the last month, I’ve been investigating its social side — by making more than a dozen A.I. “friends.”I created these friends on apps like Nomi, Kindroid and Replika, all of which use technology similar to that found in apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. They allow users to build their own personalized A.I. companions and chat with them by talking or texting back and forth. (Basic versions of…

The Philharmonic had never performed the symphony before Wednesday, and under Glover’s baton it flowed with the same nimble, unaffected naturalness as the rest of the program: four pieces, including three Mozart symphonies, from the final three decades of the 18th century. Glover’s tempos throughout the concert were sensible and unexaggerated, with ample room to breathe but no dragging, and the playing was lovely — though the violins sometimes took on a slightly thin, wiry edge, highlighted by the cool clarity of Geffen Hall’s acoustics.In the work not by Mozart — Beethoven’s “Ah! perfido,” a concert scene from five years…