Author: NY TIMES

Towa Bird — a rock songwriter, guitarist and prolific TikToker who was born in Hong Kong and grew up there, in Thailand and in Britain — uses “Deep Cut” to take lucrative revenge on an ex. “I’ll take your words, turn ’em into a verse and get my check,” she announces, going on to declare, “I wish you the worst/I’ll make sure that it hurts ’cause I’m bitter.” With splashy cymbals and a nyah-nyah guitar hook, it’s victoriously spiteful.Mia Berrin, the singer who leads Pom Pom Squad, balances between regrets and the perverse pleasures of self-destruction in “Downhill.” Over a…

Amid a faltering performance by President Biden in the presidential debate Thursday night, former President Donald J. Trump caused anxiety among America’s allies with a simple shrug.Mr. Trump has regularly disparaged NATO and even threatened to withdraw the United States from it, and during the debate, he did nothing to assuage European concerns about his antipathy toward the military alliance.Asked by Mr. Biden if he would pull out of NATO, Mr. Trump did not answer but shrugged.“I was very worried prior to this debate and I’m even more worried now,” said Jana Puglierin, director of the German office of the…

Nowhere is safe. Not a cafe, not a train and not a plane.Unwittingly and without your consent, at any moment you could become social media’s main character of the day — not the good kind.Such was the case for two people this week, when a woman posted several videos to TikTok of a man and a woman on a flight from Houston to New York City, claiming that they were having an affair and calling them out by name. (The videos have since been deleted.)The man, she said in the videos, was wearing a wedding ring while the pair flirted…

The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure continued to cool as consumer spending grew only moderately, good news for central bankers who have been trying to weigh down demand and wrestle price increases under control.The Personal Consumption Expenditures index climbed 2.6 percent in May from a year earlier, matching what economists had forecast and down from 2.7 percent previously.After stripping out volatile food and fuel prices to give a better sense of the inflation trend, a “core” price measure was also up 2.6 percent from a year ago, down from 2.8 percent in the April reading. And on a monthly basis,…

Near the end of Stephen Sondheim’s musical “A Little Night Music,” the orchestra swells to what he is said to have called his Max Steiner moment, something out of “Casablanca” or “Gone With the Wind.”Désirée and Fredrik, former lovers who reconnect but nearly miss out on happiness again, come together and kiss. The instruments respond with a grand, emotive reprise of the show’s 11 o’clock number, “Send in the Clowns.”At a concert performance of “A Little Night Music” at David Geffen Hall on Thursday, the premiere of a new orchestration by Sondheim’s longtime collaborator Jonathan Tunick, the 53-piece Orchestra of…

The United States is in the midst of an intense diplomatic push to prevent full-on war between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, as the risks rise that either side could initiate a broader regional fight.In recent days, U.S. officials have pressed their Israeli counterparts and passed messages to Hezbollah’s leaders with the goal of averting a wider regional conflict that they fear could draw in both Iran and the United States.Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, met with several Biden administration officials in Washington this week, in large measure to discuss the escalating tensions along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.…

The Dutch Volleyball Association and Dutch Olympic organizers are standing by their decision to send a man convicted of rape to the Paris Olympics this summer to represent the Netherlands in beach volleyball.In 2014, the man, Steven van de Velde, now 29, traveled to England, where he raped a 12-year-old girl whom he had met on Facebook. A British court sentenced him in 2016 to four years in prison. After a year, he was transferred to the Netherlands, where his sentence was adjusted based on Dutch law. In total, Mr. van de Velde spent just over a year in prison.Afterward,…

But “it wasn’t the puppies that made us get back together,” Ms. Lal said. “It was spending that time together, talking and getting really vulnerable with each other.” Lives built around travel, Mr. Riglin said, “can sometimes keep things surface level.” In Bali, they went deep. By early June, the puppies had been adopted and they were a couple again.This time, Mr. Riglin felt a sense of urgency. “I was like, we’re back together,” he said. “Let’s move this train forward.” On Aug. 31, at the Burning Man festival, he proposed. “The moment felt timeless,” Ms. Lal said.On May 22,…

This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.To many fashionable women in the mid-20th century, no hat was worth wearing unless it was made by Otto Lucas.A London-based milliner, Lucas designed chic turbans, berets and cloches, often made from luxe velvets and silks and adorned with flowers or feathers.His designs made it onto the covers of magazines like British Vogue, and onto the heads of clients who reportedly included the actresses Greta Garbo and Gene Tierney, and the Duchesses of Windsor and Kent.The name Otto…

Israel has dealt blow after financial blow to the Palestinian Authority, alarming the United States, which wants it to have a role in running postwar Gaza. Source link