Author: NY TIMES

What’s a five-letter word for an activity that media and technology companies are increasingly relying on to gain subscribers and keep them coming back?GAMESApple released a series of word-focused puzzles in its subscription news service last fall. LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, debuted a set of word games this spring. News sites including Morning Brew, The Washington Post, Vox Media and The Boston Globe have added new puzzles beyond the crossword and hired staff to work on games. The publication you are reading has also invested in a collection of brainteasers.It isn’t all fun and games, exactly. For media…

In the summer of 2020, as a reckoning on racial justice swept the country, Disney said it would rip out Splash Mountain, a wildly popular flume ride with a racist back story.Some people cheered, saying the move was long overdue: After 31 years at Disneyland in California and 28 at Walt Disney World in Florida, the attraction — with its animal minstrels from “Song of the South,” the radioactive 1946 movie — had to go.But Disney also faced blowback. Last year, when Splash Mountain finally closed, someone started a makeshift memorial near its entrance — the kind that pops up…

U.S.WorldBusinessArtsLifestyleOpinionAudioGamesCookingWirecutterThe AthleticJune 11, 2024Updated 7:36 a.m. ETThe office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights is “profoundly shocked” by the impact on civilians of Israel’s raid in which four hostages were freed, a spokesman, Jeremy Laurence, said on Tuesday. Gazans have described intense bombardment during the operation on Saturday in central Gaza, in which more than 200 Palestinians were killed, according to local health officials. The office also said it was “deeply distressed” that armed groups in Gaza hold hostages in violation of international law. “All these actions, by both parties, may amount to war crimes,” Mr. Laurence said.Israel’s…

As the war in Gaza enters its eighth month, Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank continue to face onerous restrictions, economic difficulties and an increased military presence — changes that some worry may become the new normal.Throughout the West Bank, daily life — restricted before Oct. 7 — has been further complicated by a myriad of factors. These include regular raids and arrests conducted by Israeli forces, emboldened settlers and regulations that have hampered the economy, such as the cancellation of permits to work in Israel and an increase in internal checkpoints and roadblocks, complicating movement throughout…

The World Bank on Tuesday raised its outlook for the world economy this year but warned that the rise of new trade barriers and protectionist policies posed a long-term threat to global growth.In its latest Global Economic Prospects report, the World Bank projected global growth to hold steady at 2.6 percent this year, an upgrade from its January forecast of 2.4 percent, and predicted that output would edge higher to 2.7 percent in 2025. The forecasts showed the global economy stabilizing after being rocked in recent years by the pandemic and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.“Four years…

Mitsuko Uchida sat at the piano with her back to the audience.It was an unusual look for a reigning pianist who can fill a concert hall, or sell a new album of 200-year-old sonatas, on the strength of just of her name and face. But over four evenings of performances at the Ojai Music Festival in California, that’s how Uchida played.It was especially strange, given that she was the festival’s music director, an annual post given to an artist to organize programming and the roster of performers. Throughout the festival’s outdoor campus, her name was on T-shirts and signs, not…

CAIRO — The sinking of a boat carrying migrants off the coast of Yemen has left at least 49 people dead and 140 missing, the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration said on Tuesday.The boat was carrying some 260 Somalis and Ethiopians from the northern coast of Somalia on the 200-mile journey across the Gulf of Aden when it sank on Monday off Yemen’s southern coast, the U.N. agency said in a statement.It said search efforts were continuing and so far 71 had been rescued. The statement counted 31 women and six children among the dead.Yemen is a major route…

The head of France’s mainstream conservative party on Tuesday called for an alliance with the far right in upcoming snap elections, throwing his party into deep turmoil as the shock waves from President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to dissolve the lower house of Parliament continue to course through French politics.The announcement, by Éric Ciotti, the head of the Republicans, was a historic break with the party’s longstanding line and its ties to former President Charles de Gaulle. Mr. Ciotti’s call was immediately met with a chorus of angry disapproval from within his own ranks.No leader of any mainstream French political party…

The Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday added three Chinese companies to a list of firms whose products can no longer be exported to the United States, as part of what it described as an escalating crackdown on companies that aid in forced labor programs in Xinjiang.The companies include a seafood processor, Shandong Meijia Group, that an investigation by the Outlaw Ocean Project identified as a business employing laborers brought to eastern China from Xinjiang — a far-western region of China where the government has detained and surveilled large numbers of minorities, including Uyghurs.Another firm, Xinjiang Shenhuo Coal and Electricity,…

I’m Richard Linklater, director and co-writer of ‘Hit Man.’ So in this scene, Glen Powell, who’s playing Gary Johnson, the undercover hit man, is under threat from Jasper, played by Austin Amelio, the New Orleans police officer who he works with undercover, who’s totally on to him. Gary has been dating Madison, whose husband has turned up dead. We know Gary didn’t do it and the audience knows she did it. But the police force doesn’t know. But Jasper sure has a hunch what happened, and he’s kind of created this entrapment scene where Gary goes in and records their…