Author: NY TIMES

Last year, Americans bought a half a billion packets of Shin Ramyun, the spicy, beefy Korean instant noodle. The bold red-and-black packaging feels inescapable: It’s a staple of college dorm rooms, bodegas, middle-of-the-country Walmarts and viral TikTok videos.But 30 years ago, the noodles were largely unknown in the United States. No grocery store would stock them, said Kevin Chang, the director of marketing for Nongshim, Shin Ramyun’s parent company. Except, that is, for a few small Korean grocers, including a fledgling shop in Woodside, Queens, called H Mart.In the 1970s and ’80s, as Asian immigration to the United States soared,…

Federal Reserve officials are entering an uncertain summer. They are not sure how quickly inflation will cool, how much the economy is likely to slow or just how long interest rates need to stay high in order to make sure that quick price increases are fully vanquished.What they do know is that, for now, the job market and broader economy are holding up even in the face of higher borrowing costs. And given that, the Fed has a safe play: Do nothing.That is the message central bankers are likely to send at their two-day meeting this week, which concludes on…

TikTok has briefly suspended the account of Hey Jane, a prominent telemedicine abortion service, four times without explanation. Instagram has suspended Mayday Health, a nonprofit that provides information about abortion pill access, without explanation as well. And the search engine Bing has erroneously flagged the website for Aid Access, a major seller of abortion pills online, as unsafe.The groups and women’s health advocates say these examples, all from recent months, show why they are increasingly confused and frustrated by how major technology platforms moderate posts about abortion services.They say the companies’ policies on abortion-related content, including advertisements, have long been…

Still, the house worked out an arrangement to broadcast new productions, performed to an empty hall. Viewership was high, about 500,000 for the first show. So, the State Opera continued, in the end reaching millions.A major change will come in December, when the State Opera opens a new theater nearby, the Französischer Saal, or French Hall, in the Künstlerhaus. Roscic said that the 250-seat space will be for “people who need a path into the world of opera,” including children. Its first season will contain five world premieres. (By comparison, only one newly commissioned work, “Animal Farm” has played on…

In the occupied West Bank, Palestinians live in the shadow of the ongoing war in Gaza. For them, this has meant increased raids and arrests, tightening security restrictions, settler violence and economic turmoil. We spent time with two Palestinians whose lives and livelihoods are being reshaped by the war and who worry that some of these changes may be long lasting. 29-year-old taxi driver and tour guide Laith Al-Muti now waits all day here at one of the Israeli-controlled checkpoints into Bethlehem. But these days, barely any visitors come through. Thirteen miles away in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron,…

Rescuers combed through dense forest in northern Malawi for a second day on Tuesday, searching for an aircraft carrying the country’s vice president, Saulos Chilima, that disappeared in bad weather.The Malawian military aircraft carrying Mr. Chilima and nine others took off at 9:17 a.m. on Monday from the capital, Lilongwe. It was bound for Mzuzu, less than an hour’s flight away, according to the government.The plane was unable to land because of poor visibility caused by bad weather, President Lazarus Chakwera said in a televised address late on Monday. The pilot was instructed to turn back, but within minutes, the…

You may not know exactly what “slop” means in relation to artificial intelligence. But on some level you probably do.Slop, at least in the fast-moving world of online message boards, is a broad term that has developed some traction in reference to shoddy or unwanted A.I. content in social media, art, books and, increasingly, in search results.Google suggesting that you could add nontoxic glue to make cheese stick to a pizza? That’s slop. So is a low-price digital book that seems like the one you were looking for, but not quite. And those posts in your Facebook feed that seemingly…

Attention, bibliophiles: Put Strasbourg, the largest city in eastern France, on your radar. Once home to the godfather of publishing — the 15th-century printing-press pioneer Johannes Gutenberg — the city is the UNESCO World Book Capital for 2024. Through next April, more than 200 events and activities will take place in and around Strasbourg, a polyglot city on the German border whose half-timbered gingerbread houses, gabled roofs, picturesque canals and church spires seem to have sprung from a storybook of their own.Among the events are exhibitions devoted to Gustave Doré — a Strasbourg native and perhaps the 19th-century’s most celebrated…

Beneath a row of fir trees River Shannon Aloia walks along a remote dirt road on national forest land, scanning the ground for morels.“Find it,” she commands her dog, Jasper.The search pays off for Ms. Aloia, an avid forager: She spies a solitary honey-colored morel, and plucks it.“Foraging changes your relationship with nature,” she said. “You are out in the woods using all of your senses. And it’s gratifying when you can identify something and take it home and prepare it for your family.”Spring in the northern hemisphere is a favorite time of year for foragers like Ms. Aloia. It…

The hostages in Gaza are being moved around, with Hamas shuttling some from one apartment to another to obscure their whereabouts, while others are believed to be in tunnels underground.All the while, at a “fusion cell” quietly formed in Israel last fall, American and Israeli intelligence and military analysts share imagery from drones and satellites, along with communications intercepts and any other information that comes their way that might offer a hint to the hostages’ locations.More than one war is being waged in the Gaza Strip.For the most part, the world sees the airstrikes and the ground invasion, which Israel…