Author: NY TIMES

The money flowing out of funds that invest in companies with environmental, social and governance principles has gone from a trickle to a torrent as investors sour on a sector hit by green-washing concerns, red-state boycotts and boardroom debates.The investing strategy has become increasingly politicized after being used by companies to address E.S.G. issues among their employees, customers and other stakeholders. In a sign of the times, the phrase has been scrubbed from the World Economic Forum’s official program in Davos, Switzerland, after being on the agenda in previous years.Investors pulled $5 billion out of E.S.G.-focused “sustainable” investment funds last…

The vitality and bonhomie that characterize many scenes in “The Kitchen,” a dystopian drama set in a near-future London, might seem at odds with the film’s focus on deprivation and persecution. Yet there’s nothing despairing about the close-knit, mostly nonwhite community that swarms and surges inside the titular public housing project, one of the last to be swallowed by private developers.It’s an estate under siege. From the authorities, who block essential services and food deliveries, and from the police, who deploy surveillance drones and armed raids. Inside this vibrant warren of market stalls and cell-like living spaces, though, the air…

Two members of the Navy SEALs who were reported missing last week off the coast of Somalia were part of a nighttime commando operation that seized a small boat carrying lethal aid from Iran to the Houthi militia in Yemen, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.Navy commandos, backed by helicopters and drones hovering overhead, boarded the small boat, called a dhow, on Thursday and seized Iranian-made ballistic-missile and cruise-missile components bound for Yemen, the Pentagon’s Central Command said in a statement.The seized items included propulsion and guidance systems and warheads for Houthi medium-range ballistic missiles and anti-ship cruise missiles, as…

Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, the leader of a notorious paramilitary force fighting for supremacy in Sudan’s civil war, is not the president of his country. Yet on a recent whirlwind tour of six African nations, he was treated just like one.Some of the continent’s most powerful leaders rolled out the red carpet for General Hamdan after he arrived on a luxury jet for meetings in late December and early January, having swapped his military fatigues for business suits. In Kenya, traditional dancers waited at the plane steps. In South Africa, he sank into an armchair beside a smiling President Cyril…

Susana Simonpietri, the creative director of Chango & Co., an interior design firm in Brooklyn, often electrifies social media by posting photos of children’s rooms. With their eye-catching colors, unexpected patterns and playful elements, it’s hard not to love the spaces she creates.“I enjoy designing them so much, because I feel like every time we do a kids’ room is an opportunity for me to be a child again,” said Ms. Simonpietri, 44. “We spend just as much time on kids’ rooms as we do any other room in a house.”But children come with a lot of stuff — and…

The Davos consensus on the presidential election Publicly, the global business leaders who gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, haven’t wanted to predict the winner of the upcoming U.S. presidential election. The closest they’ve come? Referring to it as a “geopolitical risk.”But talk to executives privately, and they’re more explicit: They expect Donald Trump to win and while many are worried about that, they are also resigned to it.The predictions of a Trump victory came in different forms. Many pointed to the headlines and the mood in the U.S. One senior banker told DealBook that you only…

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“The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel of garish glamour and dashed dreams, is coming to Broadway as a musical this spring.The show — the latest in a long string of adaptations of this widely read story — had a pre-Broadway run last fall at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., where it opened to mixed reviews. (As it happens, the book also arrived to mixed reviews, and is now widely considered a great classic of American literature.)The lavish production will join a spring Broadway season packed with new musicals at a moment when many industry leaders are…

A leading Turkish soccer club, Basaksehir, has fined and suspended an Israeli player over a social media post about hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. It is the second time this week that an Israeli player in Turkey has been dismissed over a message related to the Israel-Hamas war.The player, Eden Karzev, a 23-year-old midfielder, was briefly questioned in Istanbul earlier this week after reposting an Instagram story that called for the release of the hostages, the private Demiroren news agency reported. He was marking the 100th day since the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, during which…

In death, as in life, it is expensive to have famous people as your neighbors.There is hardly any space left at Highgate Cemetery, a Victorian graveyard in north London where Karl Marx, George Michael and George Eliot are buried, along with 170,000 other Londoners. The price of a grave to rest in esteemed peace? It starts at 25,000 British pounds, or $31,700. That cost gained attention in British media this week, after the historic site notified the public it had begun a process of adding new gravesites.Many pointed out the capitalist irony of such a high price tag, suggesting that…