Author: NY TIMES

A couple of days after Aishat Bolomope’s wedding on Dec. 31, the newlywed realized that she might be spending her honeymoon on the choppy seas of internet outrage. Friends from as far as her native Nigeria said they recognized her in a video clip that drew millions of views online.A dispute between a wedding party and a coffee shop in Indianapolis had turned into a referendum on wedding etiquette and cultural norms, all of it warped by the distorting lens of social media.“The more I read, the more it broke my heart,” said Ms. Bolomope, a 28-year-old engineer.At the center…

By now, they were supposed to be well into the first leg of the three-year Life at Sea cruise, sailing from Ushuaia, Argentina, to Punta Arenas in Chilean Patagonia.Instead, more than a month after the cruise was abruptly canceled, one couple is stranded in an Istanbul hotel and on the verge of becoming homeless; another woman has moved to Ecuador because she can’t afford to pay her mortgage; and a man, recently diagnosed with cancer, has delayed his treatment because he doesn’t have the money to pay for it.On Tuesday, 78 would-be Life at Sea passengers sent a letter to…

Sheryl Sandberg said on Wednesday that she would not stand for re-election to Meta’s board of directors in May, ending her 14½-year run in a formal role at the social networking company.Ms. Sandberg had remained on the nine-seat board after stepping down as Meta’s chief operating officer in 2022. In a post to her personal Facebook page on Wednesday, she said she would still be an adviser to the company and would “always be there to help the Meta teams.”“The Meta business is strong and well positioned for the future, so this feels like the right time to step away,”…

One of the newest battlefields in the abortion debate is a decades-old federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, known by doctors and health policymakers as EMTALA.The issue involves whether the law requires hospital emergency rooms to provide abortions in urgent circumstances, including when a woman’s health is threatened by continuing her pregnancy. But, as with many abortion-related arguments, this one could have broader implications. Some legal experts say it could potentially determine how restrictive state abortion laws are allowed to be and whether states can prevent emergency rooms from providing other types of medical care, such…

When Nadya Tolokonnikova, one of the founding members of the anti-establishment punk collective Pussy Riot, reached out to John Caldwell on Discord, an encrypted messaging app, he asked if she was a bot.“She just said ‘haha,’” said Mr. Caldwell, who was already familiar with her work. “I was very suspicious.”Ms. Tolokonnikova had developed an interest in cryptocurrency and blockchain and had heard about Mr. Caldwell, a partner at a financial services company who specialized in crypto, from a friend. “I was jumping on Zooms with random people with no romantic intentions, just learning about crypto,” she said.They met for dinner…

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Thursday appeared to rule out a postwar peace process that would lead to the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state, rebuffing calls from the United States to start working toward that ultimate goal.“In any arrangement in the foreseeable future — with an arrangement or without one — Israel must have security control over all the territory west of the Jordan,” Mr. Netanyahu said at a news conference, referring to an area including occupied territory that Palestinians hope will one day become their independent state. “This clashes with the idea of sovereignty. What can…

In an expansion of hostilities rippling through the region, Pakistan said on Thursday that it had carried out airstrikes inside Iran, a day after Iranian forces attacked what they said were militant camps in Pakistan.The Pakistani Foreign Affairs Ministry said that the country’s forces had conducted “precision military strikes” against what it called terrorist hide-outs in southeastern Iran.A senior Pakistani security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Pakistan had struck at least seven locations used by separatists from the Baluch ethnic group about 30 miles inside the Iranian border. The official said that air force fighter jets and…

Maybe one day, when Leila Fernandez and Emma Raducanu enter the draw for a major tournament, one of their names won’t immediately pop up in the tennis consciousness.Maybe, but not yet. One of them has been working her way up and down the ever-changing ladder of women’s professional tennis. Another struggled for a year and a half to win, then called it a season and had three surgeries — one on each wrist and one on an ankle — on one grim day last spring. Soon after, another person realized she needed to hit the reset button on her career,…

What will 2024 mean to the luxury watch business?On a video call last month arranged by The Times, some best guesses were offered by two well-known resale dealers: Silas Walton, founder and chief executive of A Collected Man (A.C.M.), a company in London that specializes in rare pieces by independent makers, and Austen Chu, founder and chief executive of Wristcheck, a consignment platform headquartered in Hong Kong that emphasizes popular steel sport models.Mr. Walton and Mr. Chu met in person for the first time in August in Geneva, where they were attending a series of watch events, but they both…

There’s an old saying about the news business: If you want to make a small fortune, start with a large one.As the prospects for news publishers waned in the last decade, billionaires swooped in to buy some of the country’s most fabled brands. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, bought The Washington Post in 2013 for about $250 million. Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a biotechnology and start-up billionaire, purchased The Los Angeles Times in 2018 for $500 million. Marc Benioff, the founder of the software giant Salesforce, purchased Time magazine with his wife, Lynne, for $190 million in 2018.Each time, the…