Author: NY TIMES

Sean Combs was sued on Monday by a music producer who accused the hip-hop mogul of making unwanted sexual contact and of forcing him to hire prostitutes and participate in sex acts with them.The latest misconduct allegation against Mr. Combs was filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan by Rodney Jones Jr., also known as Lil Rod. In 2022 and 2023, Mr. Jones says in his suit, he worked on what became “The Love Album: Off the Grid,” the latest album by Mr. Combs, the hip-hop and R&B impresario who has variously been known as Puff Daddy and P. Diddy.…

Israeli negotiators have offered a significant concession in cease-fire talks with Hamas, signaling that they might be open to releasing high-profile Palestinians jailed on terrorism charges in exchange for some Israeli hostages still being held in the Gaza Strip, according to two officials with knowledge of the talks.President Biden said Monday that he believed negotiators were nearing an agreement that would halt Israel’s military operations in Gaza within a week, though earlier in the day, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was still talking about further military action.Mr. Netanyahu said that the Israeli military had presented a plan to the…

Aides to Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died this month, asserted on Monday that he had been on the verge of being freed in a prisoner exchange with the West. A Western official familiar with the negotiations said “early discussions” on the possibility of freeing Mr. Navalny through such a swap had been underway when Russian authorities reported him dead on Feb. 16. But the official pushed back on the Navalny team’s portrayal of the talks as having been in their final stages.In a video posted to the Navalny team’s YouTube channel on Monday, a top aide…

Not all defeats are created equal – there is nothing worse in football than a teasing defeat.”In extra time it was Klopp’s boys against the blue bottle worth billions of pounds,” Sky Sports co-commentator Gary Neville said, almost before Virgil van Dijk’s header flashed past Out of time, he succinctly and indisputably established the dominant narrative of a surreal Carabao Cup final. It landed in the far corner of Djordje Petrovich’s net.Not only did Liverpool beat Chelsea again at Wembley, the way they did it was validation of the ‘mentality monster’ culture that Jurgen Klopp has fostered over the past…

On Saturday night, Stephen K. Bannon grabbed the microphone on the upper level of Tom’s Watch Bar, a sports bar in National Harbor, Md., to close out the final after-party of the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference.“The management is upset,” Mr. Bannon, the former Trump adviser turned podcaster, said to a crowd of a few hundred college Republicans, young political operatives and middle-aged MAGA-sphere celebrities. “You all aren’t drinking enough. I told them I was throwing a party, but you all are a bunch of pencil-necks. Are we drinking or not?”The room roared back. They were definitely drinking. A college…

Former President Donald J. Trump’s stake in Trump Media & Technology Group, his social media company, could be worth as much as $4 billion once a long-delayed merger closes.The deal, with Digital World Acquisition Corporation — a publicly traded shell company — could provide him with a potential financial lifeline at a time when he must come up with the cash to pay a $454 million penalty after a New York judge’s ruling in a civil fraud case.Digital World has scheduled a March 22 shareholder vote on the merger with Trump Media, whose flagship product, Truth Social, has become the…

“So, who’s the pig lover here?”Wandering the grounds of Ross Mill Farm, a foster home and boarding spot for porcine pets about an hour outside Philadelphia, the four members of the band Mannequin Pussy answered the facility’s owner nearly in unison: “We all are!”Pigs are pack animals — not so different from being in a touring rock band, the singer and guitarist Marisa Dabice, 36, noted playfully. Maxine Steen, 34, who plays synths and guitar, felt an instant kinship with a hesitant hog named Max, proclaiming them both “so aloof.” The band, which also includes the drummer Kaleen Reading, 31,…

Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel had many unpredictable consequences, but the elevation of the International Court of Justice to global public attention is a particularly unexpected one.In December, South Africa brought a case against Israel alleging violations of the Genocide Convention, and last week the court held hearings on a separate matter regarding Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.The two matters have turned the court into a new arena for the political disputes and legal arguments over Israel’s actions in Gaza, where over 29,000 people have been killed, many by heavy Israeli bombardment. And although the court’s enforcement powers are…

BERLIN — Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago was an enormous shock to Europeans. Used to 30 years of post-Cold War peace, they had imagined European security would be built alongside a more democratic Russia, not reconstructed against a revisionist imperial war machine.There was no bigger shock than in Finland, with its long border and historical tension with Russia, and in Sweden, which had dismantled 90 percent of its army and 70 percent of its air force and navy in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.After the decision by Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to…

The Federal Trade Commission on Monday sued to block Kroger, the supermarket giant, from completing its $24.6 billion acquisition of the grocery chain Albertsons, saying the deal would hurt competition in the industry.The agency said the deal, which would be the largest supermarket merger in U.S. history, would also likely result in higher prices for groceries for consumers and, with fewer supermarkets, reduce the ability for grocery-store employees to negotiate higher wages and better working conditions.“This supermarket mega merger comes as American consumers have seen the cost of groceries rise steadily over the past few years,” Henry Liu, director of…