Author: NY TIMES

On Monday night, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will play host to one of the biggest fund-raising events and starriest parties of the year: the annual Costume Institute Benefit or, as it’s been known for years, the Met Gala.The event, which raises millions of dollars for the museum’s self-funding fashion wing, has become known for its audacious red carpet, with a highly exclusive guest list handpicked by Anna Wintour, the longtime Vogue editor and Condé Nast executive.But this year’s event has been unusually shadowed by drama. The union representing employees of Condé Nast publications including Bon Appétit, GQ, Vanity Fair…

Peloton said on Thursday that its chief executive, Barry McCarthy, was stepping down and that it would lay off more workers, as it continued to struggle in the fitness market.The connected-fitness company announced disappointing quarterly earnings on Thursday, with revenue down 4 percent from last year. The company, which has not turned a profit since December 2020, is also looking to refinance more than $1 billion in debt.Peloton had a spectacular rise at the start of the pandemic, when gyms and fitness centers closed and consumers were hungry for at-home workout options. But after gyms reopened, Peloton began to face…

Sohail Prasad, an entrepreneur, launched a fund in March called the Destiny Tech100. The fund owns shares in hot tech start-ups like the payments firm Stripe, the rocket maker SpaceX and the artificial intelligence company OpenAI.Few people get the chance to invest in these privately held companies since their shares are not openly traded. Mr. Prasad’s intention with Destiny was to let the rest of the world get a piece of them through his fund.But soon after Destiny debuted, two tech start-ups — Stripe and Plaid, a banking service — said the fund did not legally own their shares. A…

When Surgeon General Vivek Murthy went on a nationwide college tour last fall, he started to hear the same kind of question time and again: How are we supposed to connect with one another when nobody talks anymore?In an age when participation in community organizations, clubs and religious groups has declined, and more social interaction is happening online instead of in person, some young people are reporting levels of loneliness that, in past decades, were typically associated with older adults.It’s one of the many reasons loneliness has become a problem at both the beginning and end of our life span.…

Looking back at the last decade, Tom Neuwirth is amazed by how far his 2014 Eurovision win as the drag queen Conchita Wurst has reverberated.“I think this moment, the win, happened to all of us,” Neuwirth said in a recent interview at his team’s offices in Vienna. Dressed in pink corduroys, a black hoodie and white sneakers, he was charming and sweet, jokey one second and quietly reflective the next. “People will tell me where they were and how their life took a turn from then on,” he said. “There are always big stories and emotions.”That May, 10 years ago,…

Amjad Abu Daqqa was among the top students at his school in Khan Younis, excelling in math and English, and he was applying for a scholarship to study in the United States when war erupted in the Gaza Strip last October.Teachers used to reward his good grades with trips to local historical sites or to the pier, where they would watch boats and take pictures of the sunset. He dreamed of going into medicine like his big sister, Nagham, who studied dentistry in Gaza City.But his old life and old dreams now feel far away. His school was bombed, many…

Paris put inclusivity and accessibility at the center of its bid to host the Summer Games, and the city has made a great deal of headway. For example, the newly built 128-acre Olympic and Paralympic Village, hailed by the organizers and advocacy groups as a shining example of universal design, offers accessible buildings, multisensory signage and zones for assistance dogs. The city plans to have 1,000 wheelchair-accessible taxis by the time the Games open (it had just 250 in 2022), and Uber will increase its fleet of accessible vehicles to 170, from 40.Despite this progress, advocacy groups like APF France…

The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday approved Exxon Mobil’s acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources as long as Exxon excludes Pioneer’s chief executive from its board.The $60 billion deal between the two Texas companies, which may become final as early as this week, would produce the dominant oil and gas producer in the Permian Basin, the country’s largest oil field, which is in Texas and New Mexico. Exxon’s purchase of Pioneer is one of several large mergers and acquisitions in the oil and gas industry in recent years.The F.T.C. accused Pioneer’s chief executive, Scott Sheffield, of colluding with officers of the…

We’ve forgotten how hard being a fan used to be. You had to labor at it in multiple media: scouring listings and keeping tabs on schedules, reading books of lore and compiling episode recaps. Pop culture was built around presence, real physical presence: To see the latest episode of “The X-Files” or “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” you had to show up at your TV when it aired. If you missed a key episode, you were out of luck, unless someone remembered to tape it for you, at least until it went into reruns or syndication. And if your taste ran…

Three bodies that were found in the Mexican state of Baja California last week have been identified as those of three tourists from Australia and the United States who had disappeared days earlier, the Mexican authorities said on Sunday.The bodies were confirmed to be those of Callum and Jake Robinson, two brothers from Perth, Australia, and Jack Carter Rhoad, the Baja California attorney general’s office said in a statement. “The confirmation comes after the victims’ families were able to identify them, without the need for genetic testing,” the statement read.The Robinsons and Mr. Rhoad, a U.S. citizen, had been on…