Author: NY TIMES

Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicThe iconoclastic pop star Charli XCX has long flirted with mainstream success — helping write Icona Pop’s omnipresent 2012 hit “I Love It,” appearing on the hook of Iggy Azalea’s smash “Fancy” and in 2014 scoring a Top 10 hit of her own with “Boom Clap” — but largely exists as a self-proclaimed “cult classic,” a denizen of the club underground known for a string of innovative but niche records. Charli’s brash, strobe-lit sixth album, “Brat,” is in some ways her most daring release yet, but — improbably — it’s also her…

Iran’s election for its next president will take place a year early, on June 28, after President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash last month. The vote will usher the Islamic republic into new leadership amid domestic discontent, voter apathy and regional turmoil.While the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has the final say on all state matters, the Iranian president sets domestic policy and has some influence over foreign policy.Why is this election important?The election gives the Iranian leadership the chance to show it can handle a disaster like the unexpected death of a president without destabilizing the country,…

The sidelining of Anne will deprive the royal family of one of its most indomitable workers. She routinely logs more than 400 public events a year — often the most of any family member — and with the thinning of the ranks of senior royals in recent years, Anne has shouldered an even heavier load.With the deaths of Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, the illnesses of Charles and Catherine, and the departure of Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, for the United States, the royal family has had a much smaller pool of members to pick up…

It started like any other pick-up basketball game in an open gym—players sweating it out on the court, others waiting on the sidelines, and spectators watching nonchalantly. Jessica Brogan, who has participated in similar practice sessions with her two basketball-hungry sons, said it was just a “normal open game.”On this particular Saturday, however, there was an unusual electricity in the air at Life Time Arena in Folsom, Calif., as rumors circulated throughout the greater Sacramento community that a global basketball star was in town and might be stopping by. . Still, there are reasons to be skeptical.”I didn’t even tell…

When Ivy Karlsgodt set out to make her first vintage-inspired lampshade, she took her time: She sketched out a design, gathered her materials and spent hours carefully cutting and stitching pieces of chiffon, silk and velvet onto a metal frame in the shape of a drooping tulip. The end result had gold and red fabrics overlaid with sheer pleating and long black fringe.“I was very proud of how it turned out, and I’m still really proud of it,” Karlsgodt said.It was December 2020, and she had recently lost her job as a costume maker when Broadway went dark at the…

The E.U. bites into Apple Apple’s feud with global regulators escalated after the European Union on Monday charged the iPhone maker with stifling competition on its App Store, a breach that carries potentially big penalties and could upend a hugely profitable area of the tech giant’s business.The $3 trillion company is the first to be charged under the Digital Markets Act, a landmark 2022 E.U. law that was designed to reduce the dominance of six mostly American “online gatekeepers.” Of those, Amazon, Google and Meta are also under investigation, and The Financial Times reports that Microsoft could face charges tied…

Amy Conroy sat alone in a veterinary exam room, hands clutching a water bottle, eyes blinking back tears. Her 16-year-old cat, Leisel, had been having trouble breathing. Now, she was waiting for an update.The door opened, and Laurie Maxwell came in.Ms. Maxwell works for MedVet, a 24-hour emergency veterinary hospital in Chicago. But when she took a seat opposite Ms. Conroy on a Monday evening in May, she explained that she wasn’t there for the cat. She was there for Ms. Conroy.Ms. Maxwell is a veterinary social worker, a job in a little-known corner of the therapy world that focuses…

The title of the singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams’s second album, “The Secret of Us,” comes from this feverish duet with her friend and onetime tour mate Taylor Swift. “If history’s clear, someone always ends up in ruins,” Abrams, 24, sings breathily through a thicket of fingerpicked notes, the signature sound of her and Swift’s mutual collaborator Aaron Dessner, who co-produced the track with Jack Antonoff. (Dessner’s band the National gets a shout out toward the end of the song, when Abrams sings of being “mistaken for strangers.”) Midway through, the wise elder Swift swoops in to put Abrams’s youthful heartbreak in…

Iran’s supreme court has overturned the death sentence of a dissident rapper who backed nationwide protests, according to his lawyer, reversing an April decision that had brought widespread criticism and outrage from human rights organizations and others.Amir Raesian, the lawyer for the rapper, Toomaj Salehi, said in a post on X that by overturning the sentence, the court “avoided an irreparable judicial error.” He added that the court found that Mr. Salehi’s earlier prison sentence of six years and three months to be excessive, and that the case would be sent back to a lower court for review.Mr. Salehi, 33,…

At least 15 law enforcement officers and four civilians were killed in two seemingly coordinated attacks by gunmen in Russia’s southern republic of Dagestan, Russian investigators said on Monday.Wielding rifles and Molotov cocktails, the attackers assaulted synagogues and Orthodox churches on Sunday night in two major cities of Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim region on the Caspian Sea.One of the civilians killed was Nikolai Kotelnikov, a priest in the city of Derbent. The attackers also set fire to a synagogue in the city.For hours, the gunmen were on the loose, engaging in shooting sprees with members of the law enforcement, according…