Author: NY TIMES

PRIVATE REVOLUTIONS: Four Women Face China’s New Social Order, by Yuan YangThere’s an unforgettable moment in Yuan Yang’s new book, when an idealistic university student is tasked with conducting a survey by going door-to-door to random addresses in Shenzhen, China’s manufacturing megalopolis.In one poor neighborhood, the female student asks a young man, living in a tiny apartment with four other adults and a baby, to rate his current job satisfaction. His immediate reaction is to ask whether she has been sent by the Communist Party.Though she denies it, he responds, “I’m guessing they did send you, so let’s just say…

Gerardo Medina runs the Taquería Los Amigos, a 24-hour stand that sits at a busy intersection in an upscale neighborhood in Mexico City.With more customers from abroad eating his tacos, he began noticing similar reactions to his pico de gallo: red faces, sweat, complaints about the spiciness.So Mr. Medina, 30, got rid of the serrano peppers, leaving just tomatoes, onions and cilantro. While he still offers an avocado salsa with serrano and a red salsa with morita chiles and chiles de árbol, he wanted to provide a non-spicy option for international visitors unaccustomed to intense heat.“It attracts more people,” he…

The labor market has maintained surprising vigor over the past year, but as fewer jobs go unfilled and a growing number of people linger on unemployment insurance rosters, Federal Reserve officials have begun to watch for cracks.Central bankers have recently begun to clearly say that if the labor market softens unexpectedly, they could cut interest rates — a slight shift in their stance after years in which they worked to cool the economy and bring a hot job market back into balance.Policymakers have left interest rates at 5.3 percent since July 2023, a decades-long high that is making it more…

As legend has it, a sword from God given to Roland, an 8th century military leader under Charlemagne, was so powerful that Roland’s last mission was to destroy it.When the blade, called Durandal, proved indestructible, Roland threw it as far as he could, and it sailed over 100 miles before slicing through the side of a rock face in the medieval French village of Rocamadour.That sword, as the story goes, sat wedged in the stone for nearly 1,300 years, and it became a landmark and tourist attraction in Rocamadour, a very small village in southwestern France, about 110 miles east…

At the corner of Iris Ave and Folsom in North Boulder, my Model 3 Tesla was self-driving when it showed up two human drivers in the lane just in front of us. All three of us were turning left — two flesh-and-blood drivers and my robot — when the two humans violated a basic traffic rule by swinging wide and turning into the right hand lane.The Tesla hugged the inside lane, as the driver manual indicates is the proper rule of the road. I wished my teenage son had been watching.Milo is 15, with a learner’s permit. It is my…

West made several, often for very little money, and usually — in part because he is an only child and has trouble giving up control, but also because it’s cost-effective — he wrote and edited the movies too. One, about a trio of hunters who fear that they are being hunted, he made for about $10,000 in the Delaware woods. Another, about two friends investigating hauntings in a creepy old inn, was inspired in part by the creepy old inn he and the crew stayed in while making a different film entirely. The result, “The Innkeepers” (2011), was the first…

Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain will barely get his feet under the desk in 10 Downing Street before he flies to Washington this coming week to attend a NATO summit. A week after that, he will play host to 50 European leaders at a security meeting at Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill.It’s a crash course in global statecraft for Mr. Starmer, Britain’s first Labour prime minister in 14 years. But it will also give him the chance to project an image of Britain that is uncharacteristic in the post-Brexit era: a stable, conventional, center-left country amid a…

In February, Patrice Motz, a veteran Spanish teacher at Great Valley Middle School in Malvern, Pa., was warned by another teacher that trouble was brewing.Some eighth graders at her public school had set up fake TikTok accounts impersonating teachers. Ms. Motz, who had never used TikTok, created an account.She found a fake profile for @patrice.motz, which had posted a real photo of her at the beach with her husband and their young children. “Do you like to touch kids?” a text in Spanish over the family vacation photo asked. “Answer: Sí.”In the days that followed, some 20 educators — about…

Gliding on robotic haulers, a line of Ferrari frames maneuvers through a gleaming new factory in Northern Italy. At each station, engineers in cherry red uniforms add a component — an engine block, a dashboard, a steering wheel — as they transform the bodies into hybrid vehicles. Up next: fully electric.A lot is riding on Ferrari’s 200-million-euro “e-building,” which went into operation last month and is nearly twice the size of Rome’s Colosseum. The factory is intended to bring the 77-year-old sports-car maker, known for the sonorous vroom of its gas engines, into the age of electrification.But the effort comes…

About a month ago, Judith Hansen popped awake in the predawn hours, thinking about her father’s brain.Her father, Morrie Markoff, was an unusual man. At 110, he was thought to be the oldest in the United States. His brain was unusual, too, even after he recovered from a stroke at 99.Although he left school after the eighth grade to work, Mr. Markoff became a successful businessman. Later in life, his curiosity and creativity led him to the arts, including photography and sculpture fashioned from scrap metal.He was a healthy centenarian when he exhibited his work at a gallery in Los…