Author: NY TIMES

A rash of lawsuits are threatening to stall a shareholder vote on the long-delayed merger of former President Donald J. Trump’s social media company and a cash-rich shell company.Two early founders of Trump Media & Technology Group have filed suit to preserve their ownership stake in the business, the parent company of the Truth Social online posting platform. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday under seal in Delaware Chancery Court by a partnership led by Wes Moss and Andy Litinsky, claims that Trump Media is trying to dilute its ownership stake in the company, of which Mr. Trump is a majority shareholder.The…

This stuff really should be allowed to be funny because it inarguably is. Imagine Adam Sandler, big earnest eyes, drawn and haggard face from nearly 200 days in space, sitting down to converse with a massive spider. That, my friends, is funny.Yet almost the whole movie is Jakub dourly remembering his life on earth — notably his wife, Lenka (Mulligan), who is down there on the planet pregnant and miserable and planning to leave him — in aphoristic realizations, helped along by his possibly-imaginary friend. Jakub has been a lousy husband, and the space spider, whom he dubs Hanus, helps…

Iran held parliamentary elections on Friday, but despite officials’ last-minute attempts to increase voter turnout with pleas on social media and roses at polling stations, many people stayed away from the ballot in an act of protest against the government, according to witnesses, interviews and news reports.In the capital, Tehran, the turnout was estimated at 11 percent, the hard-line parliamentary candidate Ali Akbar Raefipour said in a post on social media, and across the country, turnout was around 40 percent, according to IRNA, the official Iranian news agency — even with polls extending their opening hours to 10 p.m. from…

President Biden said on Friday that the United States would begin airdropping humanitarian relief supplies into Gaza, a decision prompted by the dozens of Palestinians who were killed as Israeli forces opened fire near an aid convoy in Gaza City a day earlier.“Innocent people got caught in a terrible war unable to feed their families, and you saw the response when they tried to get aid in,” Mr. Biden said before meeting with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy. “And we need to do more, and the United States will do more.”Mr. Biden said that the United States would work…

Iris Apfel, a New York society matron and interior designer who late in life knocked the socks off the straight fashion world with a brash bohemian style that mixed hippie vintage and haute couture, found treasures in flea markets and reveled in contradictions, died on Friday in her home in Palm Beach, Fla. She was 102.Stu Loeser, a spokesman for her estate, confirmed her death.Calling herself a “geriatric starlet,” Ms. Apfel in her 80s and 90s set trends with clamorous, irreverent ensembles: a boxy, multicolored Bill Blass jacket with tinted Hopi dancing skirt and hairy goatskin boots; a fluffy evening…

Shares of New York Community Bank slid more than 25 percent on Friday, a day after the lender said its loss in the fourth quarter was $2.4 billion more than it had previously reported, and also announced the departure of its chief executive and a board member.Shares of other regional banks were also lower: Valley National Bank and Columbia Banking System both fell more than 2 percent. The KBW Regional Bank Index, which tracks performance of U.S. regional banks, fell more than 1 percent.The drop in shares of other banks is a sign investors are still nervous about the potential…

Robert M. Young, an eclectic director whose documentary subjects included civil rights lunch counter sit-ins and sharks, and whose feature films included one about a Mexican American farmer who kills a Texas lawman and one about a woman who takes revenge on her attacker, died on Feb. 6 in Los Angeles. He was 99.The death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his son Andrew.In an interview with the Directors Guild of America in 2005, Mr. Young recalled what attracted him to filmmaking.“I wanted to be in life,” he said. “I wanted to be having adventures, I wanted to be living…

They went out by the thousands, camping overnight along a coastal road in the cold Gaza night, huddled together by small fires, waiting for supplies to come so they could feed their families.What they encountered was death and injury by the hundreds, according to witnesses and a doctor who treated the wounded, as Israeli forces opened fire toward desperate Palestinians who surged forward when aid trucks finally arrived before dawn on Thursday.“I saw things I never, ever thought I would see,” said Mohammed Al-Sholi, who had camped out overnight for a chance to get food for his family. “I saw…

This image of Aleksei A. Navalny’s body in a coffin, at a church in southern Moscow, conveys many of the traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church, an institution that has bound itself closely to the Kremlin but that also counted opposition figures, including Mr. Navalny, among its faithful.“I, to my shame, am a typical post-Soviet believer,” Mr. Navalny said in an interview in 2012. “I keep fasts, I got baptized at church, but I go to church quite rarely.”Being an Orthodox Christian, he said, made him feel “like I am part of something big and shared.”He added: “I like that…

The next act in the career of Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern turned anti-bullying activist, writer and producer? Modeling. Ms. Lewinsky is the star of a new campaign introduced this week by Reformation, a fashion brand.The campaign, called “You’ve Got the Power,” is meant to promote not only the brand, but also voter registration ahead of the 2024 election. Ms. Lewinsky, 50, told The New York Times that she was flattered, if a bit stunned, to be tapped for the project, which is — not incidentally — the latest marker on her path toward self-acceptance.Growing up in Los Angeles,…