States, businesses and religious groups have challenged a Biden administration rule requiring larger businesses to mandate vaccines or weekly testing for employees.Credit…Gabby Jones for The New York Times The Supreme Court said on Wednesday evening that it would hold a special hearing next month to assess the legality of two initiatives at the heart of […]

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is aiming for “deep compatibility” with blockchain technology, according to an internal post on Tuesday from a top executive. In the note to employees, which was obtained by The New York Times, Andrew Bosworth, who will become Meta’s chief technology officer next year, laid out a vision for the social network […]

Europe’s energy crunch shows little sign of easing. Natural gas markets, the root of the problem, remain on edge because supplies are tight, and traders doubt whether the continent has enough of the fuel stored to last a cold winter without disruption. The buildup of Russian troops on the border of Ukraine, through which Russian […]

The surge in coronavirus cases is starting to take a real financial toll on Broadway, just as the industry is attempting to rebound from its lengthy shutdown. The Broadway League, a trade association, said on Tuesday that its theaters brought in $22.5 million last week. That’s a 26 percent drop from the $30.5 million in […]

The terrace at Gordon’s Wine Bar in central London is serving only outside.Credit…Andrew Testa for The New York Times Restaurants, pubs and retail stores in Britain are urgently calling for more government assistance, complaining that stepped-up restrictions announced this month to combat a Covid surge are choking off business. Organizations representing more than 100,000 businesses […]

And, with the Omicron variant driving a surge in cases, there were multiple Covid-prompted cancellations Off Broadway, as well as in Chicago, Houston, Denver, Los Angeles and other cities. “Hamilton,” a sold-out juggernaut that had been the top-grossing show on Broadway, cited breakthrough Covid-19 cases in its company as the reason for the cancellation. The […]

Global markets sunk on Monday, and Wall Street was poised for a drop, as investors took in the latest grim forecasts about the sudden surge in the Omicron variant and a critical setback in President Biden’s efforts to pass a massive domestic policy bill. The S&P 500 was set to fall more than 1 percent […]

My colleague, the columnist John McWhorter, a trained linguist, noted in a recent essay that the catchphrase was an American instance of a euphemistic language practice known in South Africa as hlonipha, in which an innocuous word or phrase is substituted for an utterance that may give offense. “Let’s Go, Brandon!” also functions as “in-group […]

What’s Up? (Dec. 12-18) Central Banks Act on Inflation The Federal Reserve signaled on Wednesday that it would take more serious measures to address rapidly rising inflation. The central bank said it would speed up its plans to ease pandemic support measures, by ending its bond-buying program in March. In a new set of economic […]

A huge fire broke out at a distribution center for QVC, the home shopping network, on Saturday morning in Rocky Mount, N.C., ripping through the 1.2 million-square-foot building and damaging three-quarters of it, officials said. The fire was reported at about 2 a.m., Eric Evans, the manager for Edgecombe County, N.C., told reporters. “Significant loss […]