Author: NY TIMES

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

Days of intense negotiations enabled the Biden administration to avoid casting a veto at the United Nations Security Council in defense of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.But abstaining from a resolution designed to help more humanitarian aid reach Gaza only limited the damage to America’s standing around the world as it becomes an increasingly lonely protector of Israel.The outcome was a relief to U.S. officials loath to exercise America’s veto power in defense of Israel for what would have been the third time since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks. Abstaining from a 13-0 vote may look better than casting a veto…

After seven days hiding in a dank and dark tunnel deep in the bowels of the sprawling Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol as the city burned around him, Pfc. Oleksandr Ivantsov was on the verge of collapse.President Volodymyr Zelensky had ordered Ukrainian soldiers to lay down their weapons after 80 days of resistance and surrender. But Private Ivantsov had other ideas.“When I signed up for this mission, I realized that most likely I would die,” he recalled. “I was ready to die in battle, but morally I was not ready to surrender.”He knew his plan might sound a little crazy,…

The Covid-19 public health emergency officially expired in the United States in May, and it seemed the celebrations were nonstop.Night after night, a cohort of shiny and (and often deep-pocketed) city dwellers escaped into lavish, invite-only parties, galas and benefits that gleamed like 2019. These elaborate fever dreams were made all the more feverish and dreamy by looks often spun from the runways: fire-engine reds, overblown silhouettes, yards of tulle and a grab bag of bijoux.Whether at a Fashion Week party at Gracie Mansion or a benefit for Elmhurst Hospital at the American Museum of Natural History, guests swanned around…