Author: NY TIMES

A week after losing a hard-fought election at two Mercedes-Benz factories in Alabama, the United Automobile Workers asked federal officials on Friday to order a new vote, saying the German carmaker violated labor laws to suppress support for the union.Mercedes-Benz conducted a “relentless anti-union campaign” marked by “wanton lawlessness,” the U.A.W. said in a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board. Among other things, the union said, Mercedes fired four employees who supported the union, prevented pro-union employees from campaigning and forced employees to watch anti-union videos.Workers at the Mercedes factories outside Tuscaloosa, which manufacture sport utility vehicles and battery…

A one-man startup believes it has an answer to U.S. government concerns over the Chinese-made drones that dominate commercial sales in the American market.Anzu Robotics’s chief executive and founding partners are all American, and the company’s headquarters is in Texas. The company’s drones, which are expected to be used by law enforcement agencies, utilities, architects and others, are assembled in Malaysia, and they run on servers sitting in Virginia.There’s just one problem: Anzu has multiple close ties to China and to DJI, the Shenzhen-based firm being targeted by legislative and regulatory efforts to curb sales of Chinese drones in the…

Beef tissue from a sick dairy cow has tested positive for the bird flu virus, federal officials said on Friday.The cow had been condemned to be culled because it was sick, and the meat did not enter the food supply, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The department continued to stress that the commercial food supply remained safe.But the positive test, which came as part of an ongoing federal study of beef safety, raises concerns about whether the virus might make its way into the commercial beef supply, posing a health risk to humans.So far, the virus, which is…

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube5. Scott McKenzie: “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)”Written by the Mamas & the Papas’ John Phillips to drum up excitement for the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival, this song by the folk musician Scott McKenzie quickly became an era-defining anthem — although the Coachella generation seems to have heeded its sartorial advice, too.▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube6. Hurray for the Riff Raff: “Rhododendron”Alynda Segarra shouts out some imaginatively named flora — “rhododendron, night-blooming jasmine, deadly nightshade” — on this rollicking track from their 2022…

Egypt has agreed to allow fuel and humanitarian aid to move from its territory into Gaza via Israel, the White House and the Egyptian presidency announced on Friday, reopening a vital channel for relief into the devastated Palestinian enclave.The agreement was reached during a telephone call on Friday between President Biden and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Egyptian president, according to the White House readout of the call, which said that fuel and humanitarian aid would be able to enter Gaza through an Israeli-operated crossing, Kerem Shalom, which sits at the junction of Egypt, Gaza and Israel. For months, Kerem Shalom…

An Oklahoma-based missionary group working in Haiti’s capital was attacked by gangs on Thursday night, leaving two Americans and the group’s director dead, the organization, Missions in Haiti, announced on Facebook.Missions in Haiti runs a school for 450 children, as well as two churches and a children’s home in the Bon Repos neighborhood in the northern outskirts of Port-au-Prince, which is widely known to be controlled by two local gangs. The independent nonprofit was founded by an Oklahoma couple, David and Alicia Lloyd, in 2000.The attack occurred Thursday, after two different groups of gangs descended on the organization’s compound, attacked…

Late last year, Zackary Smigel, a YouTube creator, made a video titled “Why Is YouTube Like This?” By “this” he meant that the platform was filled with videos that have sensationalized titles, heavily edited content and grabby thumbnails, often featuring a person’s emotive face.A more succinct way of putting it: Why is everyone on YouTube doing an imitation of MrBeast?MrBeast — whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson — is the most popular YouTuber on the planet, with a grip on younger people (and the internet in general) that can be hard for some adults to comprehend. He produces videos known…

This has already been a challenging year for college applicants, starting with the problems with a crucial federal form that delayed financial aid offers. Now, students and families have more to worry about: The cost of borrowing for college for the next school year is rising to the highest rate in more than a decade.The interest rate on new federal student loans for undergraduates will be 6.53 percent as of July 1, up from 5.5 percent this year, the Education Department announced last week.Rates on loans for graduate and professional students will rise to 8.08 percent. And rates on PLUS…

Last week, Google unveiled its biggest change to search in years, showcasing new artificial intelligence capabilities that answer people’s questions in the company’s attempt to catch up to rivals Microsoft and OpenAI.The new technology has since generated a litany of untruths and errors — including recommending glue as part of a pizza recipe and the ingesting of rocks for nutrients — giving a black eye to Google and causing a furor online.The incorrect answers in the feature, called AI Overview, have undermined trust in a search engine that more than two billion people turn to for authoritative information. And while…

Countries around the globe have failed to reach consensus on the terms of a treaty that would unify the world in a strategy against the inevitable next pandemic, trumping the nationalist ethos that emerged during Covid-19.The deliberations, which were scheduled to be a central item at the weeklong meeting of the World Health Assembly beginning Monday in Geneva, aimed to correct the inequities in access to vaccines and treatments between wealthier nations and poorer ones that became glaringly apparent during the Covid pandemic.Although much of the urgency around Covid has faded since the treaty negotiations began two years ago, public…