Author: NY TIMES

MSNBC placed a big bet on becoming comfort TV for liberals. Then it doubled down.Time slots on the cable network once devoted to news programming are now occupied by Trump-bashing opinion hosts. The channel has become a landing spot for high-profile alumni of President Biden’s administration like Jen Psaki, who went from hosting White House press briefings to hosting her own show. On Super Tuesday, when producers aired a portion of a live speech by former President Donald J. Trump, Rachel Maddow chastised her bosses on the air.The moves have been a hit with viewers. MSNBC has leapfrogged past its…

Dystopia has rarely looked as grim and felt as exhilarating as it has in George Miller’s “Mad Max” cycle. For decades, Miller has been wowing viewers with hallucinatory images of a ravaged, violent world that looks enough like ours to generate shivers of recognition. Yet however familiar his alternative universe can seem — feel — his filmmaking creates such a strong contact high that it’s always been easy to simply bliss out on the sheer spectacle of it all. Apocalypse? Cool!The thing is, it has started to feel less cool just because in the years since the original “Mad Max”…

On Saturday, revelers across Spain and Portugal ventured into the temperate springtime evening, hoping for a memorable night. None were expecting a visitor from outer space exploding above their heads.At 11:46 p.m. in Portugal, a fireball streaked across the sky, leaving a smoldering trail of incandescent graffiti in its wake. Footage shared on social media shows jaws dropping as the dark night briefly turns into day, blazing in shades of snowy white, otherworldly green and arctic blue.Rocky asteroids cause sky-high streaks as they self-destruct in Earth’s atmosphere with some frequency. But over the weekend, the projectile was plunging toward Earth…

Bruce Nordstrom, who along with three other members of the Nordstrom family transformed a small chain of Pacific Northwest shoe stores into an international fashion retail giant with more than 150 locations worldwide, died on Saturday at his home in Seattle. He was 90.His death was confirmed by a company spokeswoman.As a grandson of John W. Nordstrom, the company’s Swedish immigrant founder, Mr. Nordstrom was part of the third generation of the family to run the company jointly, sharing power and making decisions by consensus, an unusual but successful Nordstrom tradition that continues to this day.He shared leadership with his…

“Babes” is, obviously, about pregnancy, which gives plenty of opportunity for body humor involving fluids and openings and other matters. But it’s just as much about friendship, and about the struggle to maintain connections when life circumstances change. It’s also about how frustrating young parenthood can be, even if you have the ability to pay for help and don’t worry about the roof over your head. In sum, you can almost hear the movie saying, adult life is a land of contrasts, and you’d better just hang on for the bumpy ride.All of which is funny. Pregnancy is still relatively…

A helicopter carrying Iran’s president crashedA helicopter carrying President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran crashed in a remote part of the country yesterday, according to state media. The helicopter — which was also carrying the foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian — has not yet been found.Here’s the latest.It was not immediately known what caused the crash. State news reported that an enormous operation involving at least 20 search-and-rescue teams was underway, but that inclement weather was hampering the effort.A delegation of ministers traveled with him in a convoy of three helicopters, state media reported, adding that the other two had reached…

Ming Lampson was sitting in her Notting Hill studio in West London, peering at the Nigerian aquamarines, sapphires from Madagascar, fire opals and other gems sprinkled across sheets of white paper on her desk. “I am trying to honor the stone, thinking, ‘How do I make a home for the gem in the most unique and interesting way possible that still just makes it something I want to wear?’” she said during a recent video call.Ms. Lampson, 49, was born in Sydney, Australia, and grew up in England. She learned goldsmithing the old-fashioned way, arriving in the Indian gem center…

There’s a three-letter abbreviation that economists have started pronouncing with the energy of a four-letter word: “O.E.R.”It stands for owner’s equivalent rent, and it has been used to measure American housing inflation since the 1980s. As its name suggests, it uses a combination of surveys and market data to estimate how much it would cost homeowners to rent the house they live in.But three years into America’s price pop, it has become almost cliché for economists to hate on the housing measure. Detractors blast if for being so slow-moving that it does not reflect up-to-date conditions in the economy. Critics…

MILLER ORIGINALLY PLANNED to make “Fury Road” in Broken Hill, Australia, where he had shot the second “Mad Max” film, “The Road Warrior.” When a freak superstorm turned the red, flat earth there into a flower garden, the production decamped to Namibia, but years later on “Furiosa,” the filmmakers vowed to shoot in Australia, come rain or come shine.“Furiosa” began filming in spring 2022, and once again, the typically arid region was beset by record storms and flooding. “If we need to stop making films, we could become water diviners,” said the film’s action designer, Guy Norris.The new reality required…

Even before the announcement on Sunday of the crash of a helicopter believed to be carrying Iran’s president, relations between Tehran and the United States had come perilously close to open conflict. What unfolds in the next few days — whether President Ebrahim Raisi and other leaders survive, and what Iran declares was the cause of the crash — could well determine whether the two countries are able to grope their way out of several simultaneous crises.Over the long term, the struggle that matters most is the one that centers on Iran’s nuclear program. The program had largely been contained…