Author: NY TIMES

“Our economy has truly turned a corner,” Rishi Sunak, Britain’s prime minister, said last week as he introduced his party’s election manifesto, buoyed by recent data showing that Britain’s economy had exited from a recession more strongly than expected in the beginning of the year and that inflation had slowed substantially.Justifying the optimism, data released on Wednesday showed that consumer prices rose 2 percent in May from a year earlier, touching the Bank of England’s target for the first time since 2021. That was also way down from 11.1 percent in October 2022, when Mr. Sunak started his premiership.Many economists…

Tenderness in Three Minutes or LessI love my husband, Igael, and like to show him attention, but what can I say? I’m busy! I’m a practicing physician and the president and chief executive of NYC Health & Hospitals, the nation’s largest municipal health care system. I also have two children and a futile desire to die with perfect abs. So there’s little time to be affectionate. That’s where our microwave comes in. In the 90 seconds it takes to warm coffee or the three minutesto heat dinner, I find my husband, then hug and kiss him. In our family this…

A California labor regulator said on Tuesday that it had fined Amazon nearly $6 million for thousands of violations of a safety law that took effect in 2022.The measure, known as the Warehouse Quotas Law, lets employees request written explanations of any productivity quotas that apply to them, as well as explanations of any discipline they may face in failing to meet the quotas.The state labor commissioner’s office said Amazon violated the law more than 59,000 times at two Southern California warehouses between October and March.The system that Amazon used in the two warehouses “is exactly the kind of system…

Move over, Microsoft and Apple. The stock market has a new king.On Tuesday, Nvidia leapfrogged two of tech’s most storied names to become the world’s most valuable public company, according to data from S&P Global. Its ascent has been powered by the boom in generative artificial intelligence and surging demand for the company’s chips — known as graphics processing units, or GPUs — which have made it possible to create A.I. systems.Nvidia’s rise is among the fastest in market history. Just two years ago, the company’s market valuation was over $400 million. Now, in the span of a year, it…

“The Heart of Rock and Roll,” a new jukebox musical powered by the songs of Huey Lewis and the News, will close on Broadway on Sunday.The show is the second to announce plans to close in the wake of this year’s Tony nominations, joining “Lempicka” on the list of productions that could not find an audience during this jam-packed spring. “The Heart of Rock and Roll” opened on April 22 to better-than-expected reviews, but picked up zero Tony nominations. The show will have played 24 previews and 72 performances.During a very crowded period on Broadway, the show was unable to…

Has the pause made a difference?Aid groups say the pause has appeared to take hold, but will not automatically translate into the free flow of aid.Supplies are held at warehouses before distribution. Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, said on Tuesday that it was “almost impossible” to find warehouses in Rafah, the epicenter of the aid effort, because they had been destroyed or were inaccessible.The spokesman for Israel’s military, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said on Tuesday that 1,400 trucks of aid that had been transferred from Israel into Gaza “remain uncollected” by international organizations. Before the war, the enclave had…

Biden will give protections to undocumented spouses of U.S. citizensPresident Biden announced sweeping new legal protections yesterday for undocumented immigrants who have been living in the U.S. for years and are married to Americans. It is one of the most expansive presidential actions to protect immigrants in more than a decade.Under the new policy, 500,000 people would be shielded from deportation, given work permits and offered a pathway to citizenship. The benefits would also extend to the roughly 50,000 children of undocumented spouses who became stepchildren to American citizens. Biden administration officials said they expected the program to launch by…

Wanting what we do not need (and what, in a biblical sense, is not ours) is at the core of luxury-goods consumption. And want, more than anything more evolved or cerebral, was the emotion stimulated by the men’s wear shows in Milan this season. Does the world require a linen field jacket with Breton stripes or a navy blazer made from terry cloth piped in white or a safari jacket styled as evening wear and worn with Gurkha trousers and a slightly ludicrous shawl collar waistcoat? It does not.Yet viewing this stuff at a Ralph Lauren Purple Label presentation at…

The United States is on pace to add trillions of dollars to its national debt over the next decade, borrowing money more quickly than previously expected, at a time when big legislative fights loom over taxes and spending.The Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday that the U.S. national debt is poised to top $56 trillion by 2034, as rising spending and interest expenses outpace tax revenues. The mounting costs of Social Security and Medicare continue to weigh on the nation’s finances, along with rising interest rates, which have made it more costly for the federal government to borrow huge sums…

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube4. Janis Joplin: “Ball and Chain (Live)”Though Big Brother and the Holding Company and its lead singer Janis Joplin were some of Monterey’s biggest breakout stars — the band got a record deal with Columbia on the strength of its performance — their initial Saturday afternoon set had not been captured on film. When it became clear that Joplin’s ragged rendition of Big Mama Thornton’s “Ball and Chain” (performed here in 1970 at Calgary’s McMahon Stadium) would go down as one of the weekend’s highlights, she and the band were given a two-song…