Author: NY TIMES

Melissa & Doug had a situation. For decades, the American toy brand had leaned heavily on factories in China to make its products — wooden puzzles, stuffed animals, play mats. Suddenly, that course looked risky.It was February 2021, and the world was besieged by a pandemic. Lockdowns disrupted Chinese factories. Trade hostilities between Washington and Beijing were undermining the benefits of depending on plants in China. President Donald J. Trump had slapped tariffs on a broad variety of Chinese imports, increasing their prices, and President Biden extended that policy.Melissa & Doug was eager to shift some production to other countries.…

Oh, to have the self-confidence of Kevin Costner.There are few actors in the final chapter of their career who would turn down a consistent $1 million-an-episode payday to pursue the vagaries of the Wild West. Yet there are few actors who are as single-minded as Costner.For the 69-year old star and director, who has made a career of taking the road less traveled, has embarked on what many would call a foolhardy quest to turn his long-percolating story of the settling of the West post-Civil War into four theatrical films. It’s an endeavor he’s undertaking without the true support of…

During the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, one of the most important events on the Muslim calendar, at least 450 people died under a scorching sun as they prayed at sacred sites around the holy city of Mecca.Amid maximum temperatures that ranged from 108 Fahrenheit to 120, according to preliminary data, and throngs of people, many passed out and needed medical care. The pilgrims, some who have saved their whole lives for the hajj, spend days walking and sleeping in tents during their journey to Mecca, the holiest city for Muslims. The hajj is one of Islam’s five pillars,…

Eric Hazan, an influential publisher who brought to France’s attention some of the country’s most incendiary left-wing writers and who was himself a distinctive historian of Paris, died there on June 6. He was 87.His death was confirmed by the publishing house he founded, La Fabrique, which released no other details. Mr. Hazan had been treated for cancer.From an old building in a working-class neighborhood of Paris, Mr. Hazan’s tiny firm wielded an outsize influence, publishing provocative writers like the leftist philosophers Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière, the scholar Edward Said and the historian Enzo Traverso.La Fabrique has tackled colonialism,…

Kevin Kwan used to do some of his best napping in jewelry stores.This was decades before Mr. Kwan, 50, wrote his new novel “Lies and Weddings”; before the three books in his “Crazy Rich Asians” trilogy became best-sellers; before it was announced that Jon M. Chu, the director of the “Crazy Rich Asians” movie, would also direct its Broadway adaptation. It was even before Mr. Kwan’s previous job as a photo editor for Elizabeth Taylor’s 2002 book “My Love Affair With Jewelry.”“In the strangest way, jewelry has always been a part of my life,” Mr. Kwan said on a recent…

The National Transportation Safety Board issued a series of recommendations on Tuesday aimed at preventing the type of freight train derailment that occurred last year in East Palestine, Ohio, when 38 rail cars operated by Norfolk Southern came off the tracks.The safety agency also faulted Norfolk Southern for concluding that the hazardous material being transported on 11 of the rail cars was at risk of exploding. That conclusion led to a “vent and burn,” in which toxic chemicals were released and incinerated, resulting in vast plumes of dark smoke rising above the town.The controlled burn forced many residents of the…

In “White Chicks,” the identity switch works in similar fashion with the added twist of a gender swap. When Kevin and Marcus become Brittany and Tiffany, they’re given the privileges of white femininity. In an early scene, set in the Hamptons, a concierge asks for a credit card to hold the room. Kevin and Marcus, stuck with their own debit cards, threaten to throw a “bitch fit” if the hotel doesn’t allow them to check-in. After a tantrum, they’re allowed in their rooms.They also pull the curtain, showing how white people might act when Black people aren’t present: When a…

After months of escalating violence along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, the chief of the United Nations warned on Friday that “the risk for the conflict in the Middle East to widen is real — and must be avoided.”Speaking to reporters in New York, the chief, Secretary General António Guterres, said that “one rash move” by Israel or Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese group targeting Israel in allegiance with Hamas fighters in Gaza, could trigger a “catastrophe that goes far beyond the border and, frankly, beyond imagination.”World leaders have tried for months to calm tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, trying to…

Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the military must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, a decision that threatened to split Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government amid the war in Gaza.In a unanimous decision, a panel of nine judges held that there was no legal basis for the longstanding military exemption given to ultra-Orthodox religious students. Without a law distinguishing between seminarians and other men of draft age, the court ruled, the country’s mandatory draft laws must similarly apply to the ultra-Orthodox minority.In a country where military service is compulsory for most Jewish Israelis, both men and women, the…

For the last few summers in East Hampton, N.Y., many people have gotten up early in hopes of glimpsing Jay-Z on one of his early morning walks amid the shingled mansions of moguls such as David Zaslav, David Geffen and Ron Perelman.But this season, the world’s most successful rapper has seemingly been upstaged by a new star in town: a wild American flamingo that has drawn hundreds of spectators in recent weeks.It apparently made its way to this moneyed enclave of celebrities, plutocrats and tourists last month, taking up residence in Georgica Pond, a brackish coastal pond that lies between…