Author: News Room

Rarely in Olympic history had a single company been as ubiquitous as LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the luxury goods empire owned by France’s richest family.As the Paris Olympics’ biggest corporate sponsor, LVMH was everywhere. Its Moët & Chandon champagne flowed in V.I.P. suites. French athletes were clothed by LVMH’s Berluti fashion house. And, in contravention of at least the spirit of the Olympic charter, Louis Vuitton luggage was trotted out during the opening ceremony and seen by more than one billion people worldwide.But its most significant role involved the Olympic medals, which were designed by Chaumet, a luxury jewelry…

The Trump family’s new crypto tokens are worth well over $10 billion on paper, after a frenzied rally pushed up the value of the digital assets in the days before the inauguration.The so-called memecoins got another boost on Monday when Robinhood, the trading platform that made a big donation to Mr. Trump’s inauguration fund, began letting its customers trade the $TRUMP coin. Memecoins, a type of cryptocurrency tied to an online joke or a celebrity mascot, are not often available to trade on major platforms.Mr. Trump announced the launch of the new token, known as $Trump, on Friday night. Another…

An Indian court on Monday sentenced to life in prison the man convicted of raping and murdering a trainee doctor in Kolkata, sparing him the death penalty in a case that was a chilling example of how the country remains unsafe for women.The killing in August led to months of protests and political turmoil in the state of West Bengal, of which Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, is the capital.India’s Central Bureau of Investigation, its equivalent of the F.B.I., had asked the court to hand down a death penalty for Sanjay Roy, the perpetrator. So had the victim’s family, and the powerful…

TikTok got an apparent reprieve from being forced to shut down, but Americans on Monday were still using and downloading Xiaohongshu, the Chinese social media app that surged in popularity last week in anticipation of TikTok’s closure.TikTok, owned by the Chinese internet company ByteDance, went dark in the United States ahead of a federal law requiring it to be sold or banned on Sunday. TikTok soon came back online after President-elect Donald J. Trump said he would issue an executive order to put off a ban once he took office on Monday.Many questions remain about TikTok’s fate in the United…

The questions facing a new Trump era Good morning on this Inauguration Day. Welcome to Round 2 of President Donald Trump. No matter your politics, it is likely to be a historic ride.For business and policy leaders, the next administration is expected to be filled with deals of all sorts — from White House agreements brokered over secure phone lines with foreign powers to congressional backroom pacts to headline-making deals negotiated by Wall Street.This is a transactional president, perhaps the most transactional ever. He wants to engage with the business community, which is a big distinction from the Biden administration.…

The retail industry’s report card for the critical holiday shopping season is in.American shoppers surprised analysts, economists and even retail executives by spending more than expected in November and December. But a closer read shows that not all retailers are benefiting.Retail sales during the holiday season increased 4 percent from a year earlier, according to data from the Commerce Department. Purchases of cars, clothes and electronics helped bolster sales.Over the last week or so, some retailers have signaled how business went during the holidays — with more reports to come in February. Target’s November and December total sales rose nearly…

As the second presidency of Donald J. Trump begins, America’s largest banks and asset managers have abandoned one of the most overt symbols of their commitment to reaching green goals: climate action networks.In the month leading up to Mr. Trump’s inauguration on Monday, the six largest U.S. banks, including JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, left their Net Zero Banking Alliance, while BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, quit a similar initiative. And on Friday, the Federal Reserve withdrew from a network of regulators that studied climate change risk.The exodus comes after years of growing political and legal pressure to ditch environmental,…

The Chinese social media app RedNote is full of cute, heartwarming moments after about 500,000 American users fled to it last week to protest the looming U.S. government ban on TikTok.Calling themselves “TikTok refugees,” these users paid the “cat tax” to join RedNote by posting cat photos and videos. They answered so many questions from their new Chinese friends: Is it true that in rural America every family has a large farm, a huge house, at least three children and several big dogs? That Americans have to work two jobs to support themselves? That Americans are terrible at geography and…

For months, Instagram has watched and waited to see what would happen to rival TikTok under a new federal law that would ban the app in the United States. On Sunday, the day that law took effect, Instagram pounced.The social media app, which is owned by Meta, announced a new app called Edits, a video-editing product that appeared to be a clone of CapCut, which is used by millions of people to stitch together short videos for TikTok. CapCut and TikTok are owned by ByteDance, the Chinese internet giant, which led to U.S. scrutiny of the apps for national security…

David Schneiderman, an editor turned publisher turned chief executive of The Village Voice, the granddaddy of alternative newspapers, whose 28-year tenure ran from its era of downtown-bestriding indispensability to a long, slow fade in the internet era, died on Friday in Edmonds, Wash., near Seattle. He was 77.His daughter, Kate Schneiderman, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was pneumonia brought on by chronic lymphocytic leukemia, with which he was diagnosed two years ago. He lived in Woodway, Wash.After being named editor in chief in 1978, Mr. Schneiderman elevated The Voice’s journalistic game, diversified a newsroom that was…