Author: NY TIMES

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to a felony charge of violating the U.S. Espionage Act, securing his freedom under a plea deal that saw its final act play out in a remote U.S. courtroom in Saipan in the Western Pacific.He appeared in court wearing a black suit with his lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, and Kevin Rudd, the Australian ambassador to the United States. He stood briefly and offered his plea more than a decade after he obtained and published classified secret military and diplomatic documents in 2010, moving a twisted case involving several countries and U.S.…

When Suzette Mullen finally acknowledged her complicated feelings for the woman she considered her best friend, she felt the weight of a significant question: Am I gay?Ms. Mullen, then 54, had been married for more than two decades to her husband, whom she loved. They lived together in Montauk, N.Y., and had two adult sons. She didn’t have anyone she could talk to about the feelings she had been harboring.So Ms. Mullen, an author and editor with a law degree from Harvard, went online, searching “late in life and coming out” and “How to know if you are gay?” on…

Some Wall Street banks, worried that landlords of vacant and struggling office buildings won’t be able to pay off their mortgages, have begun offloading their portfolios of commercial real estate loans hoping to cut their losses.It’s an early but telling sign of the broader distress brewing in the commercial real estate market, which is hurting from the twin punches of high interest rates, which make it harder to refinance loans, and low occupancy rates for office buildings — an outcome of the pandemic.Late last year, an affiliate of Deutsche Bank and another German lender sold the delinquent mortgage on the…

Major record companies, including the Sony, Universal and Warner conglomerates, sued two digital music generation companies on Monday, accusing them of using copyrighted sounds and songs to train the artificial intelligence that powers their businesses.The two companies being sued, Udio and Suno, allow users to create songs almost instantly by submitting a text command, much like how A.I. services such as Midjourney produce images based on text prompts.The power of artificial intelligence is upending numerous industries, and companies that are able to take advantage of the technology can financially benefit. But the music industry plaintiffs argued in their lawsuits that…

After hundreds of pilgrims died in the scorching desert heat during the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, the Egyptian government announced on Saturday that it had suspended the licenses of 16 tour companies that had facilitated travel for some pilgrims to Saudi Arabia.At least 450 people have died during this year’s pilgrimage, in which travelers endured maximum temperatures that ranged from 108 degrees to 120 degrees Fahrenheit (42 to 49 degrees Celsius). But the actual number of fatalities is expected to climb as governments get more accurate tallies of the deaths. (Egypt, for one, has officially acknowledged only 31 deaths.)In…

When Emperor Naruhito and of Japan will visit Kew Gardens on Thursday as part of a state visit to Britain, the links between his island nation and the famed London landmark will be on full display.Dotted through the botanic gardens’ 330 acres are constant reminders of that longstanding relationship. In a large greenhouse, bronze sculptures of bonsai trees — some nearly the height of the room — stand in tribute to the Japanese horticultural art form. A short walk away is the Japanese Gateway, an intricately carved cypress replica of a Kyoto temple. Nearby, gravel neatly raked into waves and…

Chappell Roan was molting. As Ms. Roan, a pop artist on the rise, walked onstage to appear on “The Tonight Show” last week, raven-black feathers drifted from her minidress onto the stage at 30 Rock. Feathers at least three feet long stuck out from her neckline all the way to Jimmy Fallon’s desk, nearly brushing his coffee mug.“I was like, Fallon’s going to get his eye poked out,” said Genesis Webb, who had spent the past three months gathering plumage in her capacity as Ms. Roan’s stylist. She outfitted the singer in an eerie black swan dress for the interview…

High-end gyms are no longer just places to sweat it out.The most exclusive ones offer not only state-of-the-art equipment, exercise classes and spacious locker rooms with cold eucalyptus-scented towels and fancy soaps but also “third places,” locations outside home and work where people can mingle and socialize. That means gyms are now also recreational centers and event spaces. They’re salons and spas. They’re hotels and workspaces. And they’re child care facilities.At Chelsea Piers in New York, the sports and entertainment complex along the Hudson River, members can get work done before, in between or after workouts at the gym’s lounge…

Cruise, the driverless car subsidiary of General Motors, said on Tuesday that a veteran of the video game industry will become its new chief executive officer, eight months after its previous C.E.O. resigned following a string of safety issues with its vehicles.The appointment of Marc Whitten, who was most recently an executive for the video game technology company Unity, follows a tumultuous year for Cruise, which was ordered by California regulators in October to pull its fleet of vehicles off the road after a series of traffic mishaps. The worst incident was on Oct. 2, when a pedestrian was dragged…

The spring of Taylor Swift has become the summer of Taylor Swift as the singer’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” holds for a ninth straight week at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart.The 31-track LP, released on April 19, has continued to rack up sales and streams — thanks in part to special edition “versions” with bonus tracks — earning another 126,000 sales units, including 121 million streams and 33,000 copies sold as a full package, according to the tracking service Luminate.Album sales were up 42 percent with a boost from two new CD variations, sold exclusively by…