Author: NY TIMES

“Are you Laufey?”A fan approached the table at a cafe in the East Village, hoping for a picture with Laufey (pronounced LAY-vay), the musician beloved among Gen Z listeners for her nostalgic combination of pop and jazz.The woman dining there had the singer’s middle part, her mannerisms and her retro-femme style of dress. She was not Laufey, but her identical twin, Junia.The fan recovered quickly: “Do you steal all of her shoes?”This resemblance comes in handy, Junia (pronounced YOO-nia) explained last month over eggs and kimchi on a thick slice of sourdough. She can test camera angles while her sister…

Last month, Sophie-Laurence Roy, a conservative Paris lawyer with roots in Burgundy, decided to cross the political dividing line that defined postwar France and dedicate herself to a nationalist, far-right political movement that seems poised to dominate parliamentary elections on Sunday.“I realized I would reproach myself for the rest of my life if I did not offer my services to the great movement of change that is the National Rally,” she said as she ate a sausage of pork intestines in a cafe in Chablis, the northern Burgundy town known for its fine white wine. “It was now or never.”So,…

Many couples are no longer waiting until after their weddings to take a trip. Source link

It was, in the end, an interview as personal as it was political, a cross-examination more focused on the psyche and the inescapable reality of aging than on any points of policy or governance.Respectfully but firmly, the ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos on Friday pressed President Biden, again and again, on the basic questions that Americans had asked themselves over the past eight days, since 51 million people saw a diminished Mr. Biden struggle to perform on the debate stage.“Are you more frail?”“Have there been more lapses?”“Have you had a neurologist, a specialist, do an examination?”And as Mr. Biden dismissed all…

One activist was taken while organizing a blood drive for wounded protesters. Another said he was snatched as he worked at home after midnight, his wife and three children sleeping nearby. A third said he was beaten and blindfolded before being tossed into the trunk of a car.All of them said they were swept up by government security forces in Kenya over the past two weeks after they had spoken out against a contentious bill to raise taxes in the cash-strapped East African nation.Some had participated in the wave of antigovernment protests that rocked Kenya after the bill was first…

The world’s best athletes will receive their gold medals at the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games this summer while standing on trash. Recycled food containers, to be exact.The silver-colored Olympic podiums, currently being raised across France, were made in a small factory on the outskirts of Paris by a start-up called Le Pavé using 100 percent recycled plastic. It’s a first for any Olympic Games.“There is an overabundance of plastic that is harming the environment, but which also has proven economic potential if it can be repurposed,” said Maurius Hamelot, 29, a co-founder of Le Pavé, as he darted around…

Hours after a battle in eastern Ukraine in August, a wounded and unarmed Russian soldier crawled through a nearly destroyed trench, seeking help from his captors, a unit of international volunteers led by an American.Caspar Grosse, a German medic in that unit, said he saw the soldier plead for medical attention in a mix of broken English and Russian. It was dusk. A team member looked for bandages.That is when, Mr. Grosse said, a fellow soldier hobbled over and fired his weapon into the Russian soldier’s torso. He slumped, still breathing. Another soldier fired — “just shot him in the…

After 14 years in the shadows, Britain’s Labour Party has returned to governing. And the country’s first female chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, is faced with the tough job of restoring Britain’s economic growth prospects and ending a decade and a half of stagnation.For inspiration, she has turned to another glass-ceiling-shattering woman, on the other side of the Atlantic: the U.S. Treasury secretary, Janet L. Yellen.Ms. Reeves was named chancellor on Friday after the Labour Party won a majority in Thursday’s general election. Now in charge of Britain’s budget, she is expected to pursue an economic agenda influenced by…

If not left to die of dehydration or illness, migrants on the dangerous land routes through northern Africa toward the Mediterranean and Europe risk rape, torture, sex trafficking and even organ theft, according to a new report produced in part by the United Nations.Migrant deaths on the Mediterranean have drawn global attention over the past decade, but “the number of those who die in the desert may well be at least double” those, said the report released Friday by two United Nations agencies and the Mixed Migration Centre, a non-governmental research group based in Denmark.Based on interviews with more than…

In an election upset in Iran, the reformist candidate, Masoud Pezeshkian, who advocated for moderate policies at home and improved relations with the West, won the presidential runoff election, beating his hard-line rival, the Ministry of Interior said on Saturday morning.Mr. Pezeshkian, 69, a cardiac surgeon, got 16.3 million votes to defeat the hard-line candidate, Saeed Jalili, delivering a blow to the conservative faction and a major victory for the reformist faction that had been sidelined from politics for the past few years. Mr. Jalili received 13.5 million votes.After polls closed at midnight, turnout stood at 50 percent, about 10…