Author: NY TIMES

Gadi Haggai, a 73-year-old man taken hostage in the Hamas-led invasion of Israel, is now believed to have died in the Oct. 7 attack, the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum said in a statement on Friday.It said his body was still being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.The forum said Mr. Haggai and his wife, Judih Weinstein Haggai, citizens of both Israel and the United States, were shot during the Hamas terror attack while they were on their regular morning walk in the fields and vineyards of Kibbutz Nir Oz.Ms. Haggai contacted friends to tell them they had…

The Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny has been moved to a remote Arctic prison and “is doing well,” his spokeswoman said on Monday, ending a 20-day mystery over his whereabouts that had many supporters fearing the worst.“We have found Aleksei,” the spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said on social media. “His lawyer saw him today.”Ms. Yarmysh’s announcement ended a frantic search through Russia’s vast prison system for Mr. Navalny, who disappeared on Dec. 5. Mr. Navalny’s exiled allies said that they had found him in the remote penal colony in the Arctic after sending more than 600 requests to prisons and…

When Maxwell Storey Dubler and Carl Theophilus Cade caught each other’s eye at a Los Angeles bar, both were looking for lasting love but neither expected to find it with each other. On paper, at least, they looked like opposites.It was March 2015 and Mr. Dubler was then a professional downhill skateboarder and photographer. Mr. Cade was deep into his career as a real estate developer.The two talked for quite a while before Mr. Dubler offered Mr. Cade a ride home. But as the men prepared to leave the bar, the D.J. started spinning “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”…

Wall Street strategists are issuing forecasts for the performance of the stock market in 2024.Pay them no mind.The predictions are usually wrong, and when they’re right it’s only by accident.Consider their prophecies for 2023. At the end of 2022, strategists predicted that the S&P 500 would end 2023 at 4,078, a gain of 6.2 percent from where it started, according to data from Bloomberg.At the moment, the market is above 4,700, a gain of more than 22 percent. These forecasts were so deeply off the mark undoubtedly because 2022 was a truly terrible year for stocks — and also one…

A well-timed holiday remix that doubles as shameless Oscar campaigning? Yes, they Ken! Ryan Gosling and Mark Ronson’s “Barbie” showstopper “I’m Just Ken” is reimagined in three different formats — acoustic lament, club banger and Christmas novelty — on the newly released “I’m Just Ken” EP. “I’m Just Ken (Merry Kristmas Barbie)” reworks the arrangement into a stately, vaguely festive bit of chamber-pop; Gosling doesn’t fill the lyrics with Christmas puns, thankfully, but merely mutters in conclusion a wistful, “Merry Christmas, Barbie … wherever you are.” LINDSAY ZOLADZ“We put the trap in entrapreneur,” the British drill rapper Central Cee spits…

Mr. Guterres said he hoped that the resolution would help the U.N. and aid agencies deliver more food, water and medicine to people in Gaza, but said that the only way to truly address the crisis was to end the fighting.“A humanitarian cease-fire is the only way to begin to meet the desperate needs of people in Gaza and end their ongoing nightmare,” he told reporters after the vote.The Israeli ambassador to the U.N., Gilad Erdan, thanked President Biden and other U.S. officials for “standing on Israel’s side” throughout the negotiations and “maintaining defined red lines.”“The resolution maintains Israel’s security…

Pope Francis on Monday focused his Christmas address on the violence in Israel and war in Gaza that had caused an “appalling” loss of civilian life and brought “sorrow” to Bethlehem, traditionally seen as the birthplace of Jesus, as he called for the release of Israeli hostages and an end to devastating military attacks.Delivering his “Urbi et Orbi” — or “to the city and to the world” — Christmas blessing on the birth of Jesus as a symbol of peace, Francis, who turned 87 last week, spoke from a balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica under gray clouds on an unseasonably…

She flirted with Brando and even Prince Charles. She has been romantically linked with a succession of Hollywood hunks — think Warren Beatty and Ryan O’Neal.But there are no steamy boudoir scenes in “My Name Is Barbra,” Barbra Streisand’s exhaustively detailed doorstop of a memoir. Instead, the multi-hyphenate star — singer actress, producer, director, philanthropist — lavishes attention on her wardrobe, which she documents, page after page, down to each sparkly paillette.Growing up, this self-proclaimed “skinny marink” from Brooklyn cherished her burgundy sweater with wooden buttons that “set her apart from the other kids on her first day at camp.”Her…

Raymond L. Dirks, a maverick Wall Street analyst who was accused of insider trading by securities regulators but then vindicated by the U.S. Supreme Court as a whistle-blower in a major fraud, died on Dec. 9 in Manhattan. He was 89.His death was confirmed by his brother, Lee. He died in a nursing home, where he had lived since being diagnosed with dementia in 2018.Mr. Dirks, whom Bloomberg News once called “arguably Wall Street’s most famous securities analyst,” figured in exposing one of the largest corporate frauds in American history.He was a 39-year-old senior vice president of Delafield Childs, a…

On the heels of the new film “Maestro,” an American director will stage Leonard Bernstein’s often-reworked operetta in its “concert version.” Source link