Author: NY TIMES

For close to a century, putting your savings into a federally insured bank has been a sure thing: If the institution fails, up to $250,000 of your money will be protected.What if it isn’t anymore?The promise of bank insurance — a tenet of U.S. consumer protection since the Great Depression — is now being tested by a crisis swirling around online-only lenders with hundreds of millions of dollars of deposits between them. Customer accounts have been frozen, preventing people from cashing out their life savings. Most depositors have little clue where their money has gone, and whether they will get…

In 1994, when Sumner M. Redstone bought Paramount Pictures for about $10 billion, the equivalent of about $22 billion today, he did more than just take over a company. He ascended a cultural throne.Studios like Paramount — founded in the 1910s, operating soundstage complexes and controlling vast film libraries — were valuable businesses on the verge of hitting a mother lode: the DVD. Perhaps more important, however, they gave their owners a precious identity as certified members of the cultural elite.Movies still towered above everything. Top ticket sellers in 1994 included touchstones like “The Lion King,” “Schindler’s List,” “Interview With…

The flight to Cleveland was quick. Her father picked her up at the airport and drove directly to the Cleveland Clinic Children’s hospital. Her regular doctor, Ellen Rome, the head of the Center for Adolescent Medicine there, wasn’t in the office that holiday week but arranged for the young woman to see a pediatric gastroenterologist. She immediately admitted her to the hospital. The doctor who admitted her that night considered the possible causes of this kind of unremitting vomiting. The patient was taking medications for anxiety, so maybe the doctors in Atlanta were right — maybe this was psychogenic vomiting,…

Lappin marveled at Jenkins’s willingness to reimagine every track, and in early October he arrived in New York to cut a few songs. They sat at her apartment piano and rearranged “Clams Casino,” a bittersweet tune about her grandmother, loneliness and the exhausting search for silver linings. It suddenly sounded like Tom Petty, perched on a cumulus cloud.When they recorded it the next day, Jenkins finally recognized a route into her album, out of her Valley of Despair. After 18 months of false starts (and a month after another missed deadline), they remade the record in a two-week rush. “I…

As the Arabian Peninsula’s fastest camels galloped around a track in the Saudi desert, Kasseem Dean, a Grammy Award-winning hip-hop producer from the Bronx, watched nervously from an air-conditioned V.I.P. viewing hall.Waiters in black vests plied the crowd with lemonade and red velvet cupcakes. Women in sundresses milled around off-white sofas, sipping fizzy mocktails.Though the camels sprinting past were the main event, Mr. Dean, better known as Swizz Beatz, felt as if all eyes in the room were on him — one of the newest competitors in Saudi Arabia’s deep-pocketed camel racing scene. Four years since he entered and won…

When he takes over as secretary general in October, Mark Rutte will face strains over Russia, Ukraine and the potential return of Donald J. Trump. Source link

It was a carefully staged display of big-power theatrics — or more precisely, of middle-power-meets-big-power theatrics.“You are now connected to Air Force One,” said a White House operator, as Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain hunched over a speakerphone, in a short video released on Saturday by 10 Downing Street.“Mr. Prime Minister, congratulations,” said President Biden, who was flying to Wisconsin for a campaign rally. “What a hell of a victory!”The two leaders spoke warmly about the importance of the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States, their shared commitment to defending Ukraine and an upcoming rendezvous: Mr. Starmer…

The pictures are haunting: black-and-white prints of a snow-covered barracks and paintings bordered by wire fences and skeletal trees, grim depictions of a World War II camp in France where Jews were interned before being transported to concentration camps.The artist, Jacques Gotko, created one picture using a background of crushed eggshells glued to a wooden board; for others he used a piece of old tire as a printing block. Those were just some of the few materials available to him at the camp where he was held before being transported to Drancy, another camp in France, then Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Poland,…

When President Biden and his aides planned the 75th anniversary of NATO, which opens on Tuesday evening in Washington, it was intended to create an aura of confidence.The message to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and other potential adversaries would be that a larger, more powerful group of Western allies had emerged, after more than two years of war in Ukraine, more dedicated than ever to pushing back on aggression.But as 38 world leaders began arriving here on Monday, that confidence seems at risk. Even before the summit formally begins, it has been overshadowed by the uncertainty about whether…

Follow now for live coverage of day eight of Wimbledon 2024WIMBLEDON – For seven stunning days, it has become tennis’s deadliest blow. This is a serve from 21-year-old French player Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, and the player waiting to serve needs to hit the ball over the net.Or, get, cajole, persuade, will, pray back. It’s a rocket explosion that’s hard to watch, let alone put on a racket, let alone return from a 3-foot-high piece of net from 39 feet away. As for making quality returns to control a point, or making enough returns on Mpetshi Perricard’s serve to win the…