Ex-president’s former communications director says Access Hollywood tape ‘was a crisis’ for his campaign

Hope Hicks, Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign press secretary, broke into tears Friday while testifying in the ex-president’s New York criminal hush-money trial , hours after she described his complete control over the campaign.

Hicks, who cut a skittish figure in judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom, is a key prosecution witness. She described Trump campaign staffers’ panic when a recording emerged in which Trump bragged about groping women. “This was a crisis” for his presidential bid, she said, describing the sentiment among the campaign staff.

Eric Adams under pressure to say how many of 282 arrested on Tuesday were non-students after he blamed ‘outside agitators’

Police began clearing out protesters at New York University (NYU) in downtown Manhattan on Friday as pressure continued to build on the city’s mayor, Eric Adams , to divulge how many of the 282 people arrested at uptown Columbia and City College of New York (CCNY) on Tuesday night were non-students – after he blamed “outside agitators” for prompting a crackdown.

Campuses elsewhere were relatively quiet overnight, while the recent weeks of escalated pro-Palestinian protests across more than 40 campuses nationwide have resulted in almost 2,200 arrests , according to an Associated Press tally.

Fitness company’s sales boomed during the Covid pandemic as gyms closed but sales collapsed as the world reopened

Barry McCarthy has stepped down as CEO of Peloton, the company said on Thursday, as it decided to cut 15% of its workforce to tackle a post-pandemic slump in demand for its connected fitness equipment.

Shares of the beleaguered New York-based company rose 8% before the markets opened as it also plans to cut back its retail presence, owing to weak demand that has forced Peloton to push back its goal of returning to positive cash flow.

Keith Davidson, who also represented Karen McDougal, gave colorful testimony about how agreements came together in 2016

The lawyer who negotiated hush-money deals on behalf of two women alleged to have had affairs with Donald Trump is set to continue testifying in Donald Trump’s criminal trial on Thursday in Manhattan.

Keith Davidson has already given colorful testimony about how deals to pay Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels came together in 2016. Prosecutors are using his testimony to help jurors understand the mechanics of Trump’s efforts to pay off women and convince jurors that it was done in service of his campaign.

After major police raids on universities in New York and Los Angeles on Tuesday, students continued to demonstrate against the war in Gaza

Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, says his team is determined to retry case against the disgraced movie mogul

Harvey Weinstein will be retried in New York, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said on Wednesday, a week after the state’s highest court threw out his 2020 rape conviction.

Weinstein arrived at a Manhattan courthouse in the afternoon, his first appearance since the decision by the appeals court last week.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

The critically acclaimed American writer has died aged 77 . Here, contemporaries pay tribute to his life and work

• Paul Auster – a life in quotes

• Paul Auster – a life in pictures

British novelist
The exquisite chapter of domestic accidents that opens Paul Auster’s final novel, Baumgartner, leaves us with a microcosm of all that drew a worldwide, discerning readership to this super-abundantly gifted, big-hearted novelist: a limpid present tense; a subtle awareness, comic as well as tragic, of what Virgil identified as “ sunt lac rimae rerum ” – there are tears in the nature of things – which, in Paul’s version, proposed pratfalls as well as death; a perfect expression of a hovering consciousness in the still moment; and finally, a honed prose that seemed to hint that just below its surface were instructions on how to read it and how it was written. The adroit self-consciousness of his writing made him our supreme post-modernist. If his imagination seemed so spacious it was because he was as much a European as an American writer. If he had Thoreau at his back, he also had Beckett. It is possible to cross a Paul Auster Platz and walk down a rue Paul Auster . Not many novelists have been so honoured. As a presence he was ridiculously handsome, worldly, generous, funny and, unlike most great talkers, a highly attuned listener.

New York police moved on to the campus to clear out Hamilton Hall, an academic building that had been taken over as part of pro-Palestine protests. Police arrested nearly 100 people as they cleared Columbia University of demonstrators who were issued a notice to disband their encampment after negotiations failed to come to a resolution

Hush-money trial hears about ex-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard asking Keith Davidson: ‘Did he cheat on Melania?’

Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial heated up on Tuesday afternoon as Keith Davidson, former attorney for both Stormy Daniels, the adult film actor, and Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model, was questioned by prosecutors about texts in which he was asked whether Trump had cheated on his wife.

In those texts, former National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard asked Davidson: “Did he cheat on Melania?” and “Do you know if the affair was during his marriage to Melania?”