Author: NY TIMES

When I was 22 years old, I went into a smoke-filled house and persuaded a girl to leave with me. I wanted to save her from pointless bravery; I’d begun to learn what that cost.My husband was old enough to be my father. When we met, Jack was a professor of philosophy at the college I attended. A charismatic presence on campus with an ardent following, he was tall and trim, black-haired and beautifully tailored. A friend who had a crush on him invited him to a party. Jack turned the evening into a live Socratic dialogue on the nature…

Berkshire Hathaway on Saturday reported strong operating earnings, which track the actual profit that its array of businesses produce, and a record pile of cash in the first quarter, underscoring the health of the conglomerate run by Warren E. Buffett.The results provided a positive backdrop for Berkshire’s annual shareholder meeting in downtown Omaha, the company’s hometown. It is the first such gathering for Mr. Buffett’s business empire since the death in November of Charles Munger, Mr. Buffett’s longtime business partner and alter ego, at age 99.Saturday’s results underscore Mr. Buffett’s repeated admonition that the best way to judge Berkshire —…

Jerry Seinfeld became a mic-cradling, cereal-eating, “did-you-ever-notice”-ing avatar of American Jewish life with a brazenly shrugging persona: a merry indifference to weighty material as a comedian and in his megahit TV show about nothing, as petty and apolitical as he seemed to be.Now — off-camera, at least — Mr. Seinfeld appears to have reached his post-nothing period.Since the attacks of Oct. 7 in Israel, and through their bloody and volatile aftermath in Gaza, Mr. Seinfeld, 70, has emerged as a strikingly public voice against antisemitism and in support of Jews in Israel and the United States, edging warily toward a…

The American investment firm 777 Partners, whose bid to buy the English Premier League soccer team Everton has been on hold for months amid doubts about the company’s finances, was accused by one of its lenders on Friday of running a yearslong fraud scheme worth hundreds of millions of dollars.The accusation came in a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in New York by Leadenhall Capital Partners, a London-based asset management company. It said that it had provided 777 Partners with more than $600 million in financing, only to discover that roughly $350 million in assets serving as collateral for…

Josh Friesen, 33, who works in marketing and communication and lives in Portland, Ore., said he was comfortable giving his children, 8 and 4, mocktails at home. “Every now and then I will whip up something that either has Lacroix or kombucha, and I’ll put a little cocktail cherry and make it fancy with a toothpick and a lime wedge,” he said.But he doesn’t let them order them in restaurants.“I feel like these places that make these nonalcoholic spirits and these places that serve mocktails, they don’t do it for kids,” he said. “I don’t want my kid co-opting this…

Paramount’s proposed merger with Skydance has been the most tumultuous media deal in years. Now it has taken yet another turn after the exclusivity period for negotiations expired without an agreement in hand.A month ago, a special committee of Paramount’s board agreed to enter into exclusive talks with Skydance — a Hollywood studio run by the tech scion David Ellison — even as the private equity giant Apollo Global Management reached out with a $26 billion offer. Paramount shareholders grumbled that granting exclusivity was a mistake, and that the company should have engaged with Apollo instead.This week, the special committee…

Not a lot of Lincoln Center Theater shows call for setting the preperformance mood with the Grateful Dead, but when “Uncle John’s Band” came over the speakers the other evening before the Bengsons took the stage, it was such an ideal match for their crunchy, mellow, kindhearted, folk-rock vibe that I had to smile.In Abigail and Shaun Bengson’s “The Keep Going Songs,” though, it’s the dead with a lowercase “d” who are integral. This married couple of music-makers, known for shaggy, melodic, autobiographically inspired theater, wanted to create what they call “a concert. That’s also a wake.”Directed by Caitlin Sullivan…

The director of the World Food Program, Cindy McCain, says that parts of the Gaza Strip are experiencing a “full-blown famine” that is rapidly spreading throughout the territory after almost seven months of war.Ms. McCain is the second high-profile American leading a U.S. government or U.N. aid effort who has said that there is famine in northern Gaza, although her remarks do not constitute an official declaration, which is a complex bureaucratic process.“There is famine — full-blown famine in the north, and it’s moving its way south,” said Ms. McCain in an interview on Meet The Press on Friday. The…

It was still early on Thursday evening at Casa Cipriani in downtown Manhattan, but Lionel Richie thought he knew how his night would end: “Buckingham Palace is going to call us and ask, ‘How did it go?’”Mr. Richie, who had just walked a red carpet and was getting bombarded with selfie requests, was co-hosting the King’s Trust Global Gala, a fund-raiser for the organization started in 1976 by then Prince Charles that helps millions of underserved youth globally.The night drew more than 300 people including the actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Drew Barrymore, the musician John Legend, the stylist Law Roach…

Something was very wrong with Jackie Kirks’s food stamp card.While standing at the checkout line in a cavernous Albertsons grocery store in Long Beach, Calif., last December, Ms. Kirks was told that she didn’t have enough money in her account to pay for food.“That’s impossible,” she told the cashier.Ms. Kirks, 70, knew that she had saved up a sizable sum in monthly benefits from the federal food assistance program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Until September, she had been homeless, bouncing between weeklong stays at motels and sleeping in her car. To eat, she would…