Author: NY TIMES

“This is a video for anyone that’s coming to Paris Olympics 2024,” a woman says in a clip posted to TikTok. She pauses briefly, and then continues: “Don’t come. Cancel everything.”The video, which was uploaded in November, now has more than 700,000 views.The creator, Miranda Starcevic, is a 31-year-old French American who lives in Paris. She usually records herself speaking French, but thought a message about the Olympics would reach more people if it were in English.And Ms. Starcevic wanted her viewers to know that from her perspective, of French citizens who “are kind of middle class,” as she put…

The Federal Reserve has disappointed investors this year, but no matter. The markets have adjusted.Even without any interest rate cuts so far in 2024 — and with the likelihood of just one meager rate reduction by the end of the year — the stock market has been purring along. That’s quite an achievement, given the expectation in January that the Fed would trim rates six or seven times in 2024 — and that interest rates throughout the economy would be much lower by now.Buoyant as the stock market may seem, when you look closely, it’s apparent that the S&P 500’s…

Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTubeThis week we go to Cupertino, Calif., for Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference and talk with Tripp Mickle, a New York Times reporter, about all of the new features Apple announced and the company’s giant leap into artificial intelligence. Then, we explore what was another tumultuous week for Elon Musk, who navigated a shareholders vote to re-approve his massive compensation package at Tesla, amid new claims that he had sex with subordinates at SpaceX. And finally — let’s play HatGPT.Guests:Additional Reading:Credits“Hard Fork” is hosted by Kevin Roose and Casey…

I found Joy’s ingenuous thrill to be strongly endearing, but I, like many others, was also a bit terrified of her nose. The radio journalist Alix Spiegel met Joy several years ago for a story on NPR. Alzheimer’s, which Joy can detect, runs in Spiegel’s family. “If she did smell it, would I be able to tell?” Spiegel wondered in her report. “How good was her poker face?” It is Joy’s policy not to disclose disease odors to the people she meets, and she politely evaded Spiegel’s questions. For whatever reason, she was more direct with me. One morning in…

Because of discounts offered on some tickets, the Met’s box office has further to go to recover: It took in about 64 percent of its potential income this year, up from 57 percent last year but still below the 69 percent it took in for last full season before the pandemic.When Moody’s downgraded the Met’s credit rating in February to Ba3, from Ba2, and revised its outlook to negative from stable, it noted that while the company was working to save money, “the Met’s programs remain relatively high cost stemming from a commitment to programmatic excellence that remains expensive to…

On Tuesday, an Israeli strike targeted and killed Taleb Abdallah, one of Hezbollah’s senior commanders, prompting the group to step up its attacks on Israel in retaliation. On Wednesday, it fired more than 200 rockets at Israel, according to the Israeli military, but they did minimal damage.The Israeli military said on Thursday that its fighter jets had struck “Hezbollah military structures” overnight in Lebanese border villages.Israeli officials have threatened stronger action against Hezbollah, and pressure to do so — from the political right and from displaced civilians — has been rising. But so far, both sides have stopped well short…

With picture-postcard villages, country pubs and an unmistakable air of affluence, there are few greater strongholds for Britain’s Conservative Party than Surrey, where voters have chosen Jeremy Hunt, the current chancellor of the Exchequer, as a lawmaker in five consecutive elections.But even he admits that he may be out of Parliament after July 4.“I’m very well known locally, I’m knocking on doors, I’m talking to people and I’ve got a certain following from my 19 years as a member of Parliament,” Mr. Hunt told The New York Times last week as he prepared to appeal for votes in Chiddingfold, 50…

Just that morning, before we left for school, I had woken him up and he’d jolted upright out of a nightmare, as he did nearly every morning. I grew to hate that chore, wishing his alarm would do a better job and spare me the futile task of trying to prevent his panic.It was in the context of that daily experience that I watched my father recite his canned answer to my classmate’s question, and for the first time I thought, “You’re lying.”Now, though, I think he wasn’t lying. He was just saying what he believed — that anyone plagued…

A court in southern China on Friday found a prominent feminist journalist guilty of endangering national security and sentenced her to five years in prison, Beijing’s latest blow to civil society. A labor activist convicted of the same charge got a sentence of three years and six months.The activities that prompted the arrest and conviction of the two, Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing, involved organizing discussions, providing support to other activists and receiving overseas training. The subversion charges and the sentences, handed down by the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court, were confirmed by Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect…

A facial recognition start-up, accused of invasion of privacy in a class-action lawsuit, has agreed to a settlement, with a twist: Rather than cash payments, it would give a 23 percent stake in the company to Americans whose faces are in its database.Clearview AI, which is based in New York, scraped billions of photos from the web and social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram to build a facial recognition app used by thousands of police departments, the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. After The New York Times revealed the company’s existence in 2020, lawsuits were filed…