Author: NY TIMES

“I was pleasantly surprised at how much chemistry we had,” she said.After they each spent a rainy New Year’s Eve with friends the next evening, she stopped by his new apartment in Hancock Park to celebrate with Champagne. They soon began dating exclusively.“How much time would you like to spend together?” she asked a few weeks later. His reply: “As much as possible,” to which she said, “How about every night?”So they broke their leases and moved into a three-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood together in late April.“It made our relationship better and stronger,” he said.On Dec. 1, 2023, he…

When Jan Sramek walked into the American Legion post in Rio Vista, Calif., for a town-hall meeting last month, everyone in the room knew that he was really just there to get yelled at.For six years a mysterious company called Flannery Associates, which Mr. Sramek controlled, had upended the town of 10,000 by spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to buy every farm in the area. Flannery made multimillionaires out of some owners and sparked feuds among others. It sued a group of holdouts who had refused its above-market offers, on the grounds that they were colluding for more.The…

‘Tropic’Rent or buy it on Vudu or Microsoft.We are in the near future and the European space agency is preparing to launch a mission that will last years if not decades — a length that means filling it with a young crew. Teenage twins Lázaro (Pablo Cobo) and Tristán (Louis Peres) are training together for spots in the program. They are equally dedicated, but the confident Tristán is doing just a little better than his brother. Just as you settle for “Space Academy: The Early Years,” director Edouard Salier makes a sharp turn.One night, a strange green object — a…

Zvi Zamir, who as the director of Israel’s Mossad spy agency led a violent campaign to crush Palestinian terrorism after 11 Israelis were killed at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics — and who a year later relayed a warning to his government that Egypt and Syria were about to start the Yom Kippur War but was not taken seriously — died on Jan. 2. He was 98.His death was announced by the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The announcement did not say where he died.“Zamir led a determined and initiative-taking approach in the State of Israel’s fight against Palestinian…

In the summer of 2025, after Manchester City’s acquittal via appeal on 115 charges of breaching the Premier League’s financial regulations, the league’s clubs voted to abolish their discredited Profit and Sustainability Rules, the set of guidelines created years earlier in the failed hope they might prevent teams from spending themselves — and everyone else — into ruin.The decision brought an end to more than a year of increasingly bitter infighting among the league’s members, and even the final vote was hardly unanimous. Six teams lobbied furiously to retain the cost controls, though that number did not include City or…

Josh Radnor and Jordana Jacobs were married outdoors this month, amid a snowstorm, with their 164 snow-drenched guests shivering in the 20-degree evening air, as Dr. Jacobs read a 10-minute monologue about her beloved, and Mr. Radnor responded with a 10-minute soliloquy.No strangers to extraordinary circumstances, the couple fell for each other while tripping on mushrooms.It was February 2022, and Dr. Jacobs, a clinical psychologist, and Mr. Radnor, an actor and musician, were at a sound meditation retreat held in upstate New York, along with about 30 other people. There, they ingested a psychedelic mixture before lying on the floor…

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…