Author: NY TIMES

Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the largest U.S. energy companies, on Friday reported sizable profits for the final quarter of last year, showing that the oil and gas industry remained robust at a time of doubts because of climate change concerns.The companies’ earnings were down from the bonanza year of 2022, when a surge in prices pushed up profits, but were otherwise the strongest in recent history.Exxon earned $7.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023, a 40 percent fall from a year earlier. For all of 2023, the company reported $36 billion in earnings, compared with $55.7 billion in 2022.…

“I am about to get laid off,” Folashade Ade-Banjo spoke to the camera while positioning her phone, “and you are about to see it.”In a five-minute TikTok video this month, Ms. Ade-Banjo, a 30-year-old Los Angeles marketing professional, was shown sitting quietly at her desk and staring at her computer, a pained look on her face as she nodded that she was ready to start. She was being laid off by a tech giant. The video racked up a half million views and thousands of comments within hours.“One of my resolutions for this year was to be a lot more…

Sergei Rachmaninoff composed two versions of “Symphonic Dances,” his last major work. One was the grand, orchestral score most often performed today; the other, a piano duet.But could it also work on one piano?Solo transcriptions have popped up in the decades since the 1941 premiere of “Symphonic Dances” — a colorful, harmonically adventurous journey through nostalgic melodies and grotesque waltzes, culminating in a cosmic showdown between life and death. And there exists a poor but precious recording of Rachmaninoff playing through the piece at the piano, vocalizing with his music as he ran through it for the conductor Eugene Ormandy…

Ben-Gvir and others on the Israeli right have said that they would like settlers to move into Gaza and rebuild it to expand Israel’s borders. That is far-fetched. The formal position of the government is vague, but it has suggested that it does not want to administer the territory beyond controlling it enough to prevent terror attacks. The most plausible candidate for administering a postwar Gaza, then, is the Palestinian Authority, an idea the Biden administration has advanced but Netanyahu has rejected.Of course, this Gaza scenario would more or less reproduce the dysfunctional arrangement in the West Bank, where Israeli…

The new president of European soccer’s governing body settled into a chair in his glass-walled office in Switzerland, glanced out at the sweeping views of Lake Geneva and insisted he would not be there long enough to get comfortable.It was 2017, soccer was still emerging from its greatest scandal and Aleksander Ceferin, only a few months into his presidency, was unequivocal that he was already on the clock. The sport, he said, could no longer accept leaders who grew so comfortable with the trappings of power and luxury that they worked the system to remain in their jobs. He would…

Ryan Murphy’s new limited series, “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans,” takes viewers into a defunct world, set in the rooms once inhabited by the carefully coifed fixtures of Manhattan’s high society.The show examines the rift between the writer Truman Capote and his friends — a pack of socialites whom he called his “Swans” — after a fictionalized excerpt from his unfinished novel spilling their secrets was published in Esquire magazine in 1975.The Swans, each dressed in her own polished, throwback style, are played by an impressive cast: Diane Lane as Nancy “Slim” Keith, Calista Flockhart as Lee Radziwill, Naomi Watts…

Federal Reserve officials left interest rates unchanged this week and signaled that their next move was likely to be a cut — but they also suggested that they were in no hurry to make that change. Friday’s jobs data is likely to reinforce their cautious stance.Employers hired much more rapidly than expected in January, and average hourly earnings climbed 4.5 percent over the year, the fastest pace since September and a reversal after months of cooling.Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, made it clear during his news conference on Wednesday that the central bank was not bent on keeping interest…

Lawmakers on Wednesday denounced the chief executives of Meta, TikTok, X, Snap and Discord, accusing them of creating “a crisis in America” by willfully ignoring the harmful content against children on their platforms, as concerns over the effect of technology on youths have mushroomed.In a highly charged 3.5-hour hearing, members of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee raised their voices and repeatedly castigated the five tech leaders — who run online services that are very popular with teenagers and younger children — for prioritizing profits over the well-being of youths. Some said the companies had “blood on their hands” and that…

In his first new rock song in nearly two decades, Billy Joel sings about striving to rekindle a romance that has faded to indifference or worse. He blames himself; he longs for forgiveness; he wonders if there’s a second chance; he vows not to give up on “trying to find the magic that we lost somehow.” It’s a stately piano ballad, an heir to “Piano Man,” with Joel’s forthright, unmistakable voice and an orchestral buildup to match the narrator’s rising heartache. JON PARELES“It was a big love, she said,” Tracyanne Campbell sings on Camera Obscura’s new single. “That’s why it…

The PGA Tour announced on Wednesday that it had reached a deal to raise at least $1.5 billion from a group of U.S. investors, a move that raises new questions about whether a proposed alliance with a rival tour backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund will come to fruition.The influx of money into the PGA Tour, which could end up being as much as $3 billion, is led by the Fenway Sports Group, the parent company of the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool Football Club. The tour is simultaneously negotiating a partnership with its well-funded competitor, LIV Golf.That deal,…