Author: NY TIMES

Chinese officials signaled their growing alarm over the country’s worsening property market on Friday, unveiling a plan to step in to buy up some of the vast housing stock and announcing even looser rules for mortgages.The flurry of activity came just hours after new economic data revealed that Chinese authorities are staring at a hard truth: No one wants to buy houses right now.Policymakers have tried dozens of measures to entice home buyers and reverse a steep decline in the property market that has shown few signs of recovering soon.On Friday China’s vice premier, He Lifeng, indicated a shift in…

Robert H. Dennard, an engineer who invented the silicon memory technology that plays an indispensable role in every smartphone, laptop and tablet computer, died on April 23 in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y. He was 91.The cause of death, at a hospital, was a bacterial infection, said his daughter, Holly Dennard.Mr. Dennard’s pioneering work began at IBM in the 1960s, when the equipment to hold and store computer data was expensive, hulking — often room-size machines — and slow. He was studying the emerging field of microelectronics, which used silicon-based transistors to store digital bits of information.In 1966, Mr. Dennard invented a…

Late in “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola’s plaintively hopeful movie about — well, everything under the sun — a character speaks to the power of love. It’s a wistful moment in a fascinating film aswirl with wild visions, lofty ideals, cinematic allusions, literary references, historical footnotes and self-reflexive asides, all of which Coppola has funneled into a fairly straightforward story about a man with a plan. It is a great big plan from a great big man in a great big movie, one whose sincerity is finally as moving as its unbounded artistic ambition.“Megalopolis,” which had its world premiere at the…

The Arab League called on Thursday for a United Nations peacekeeping force to be deployed in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied West Bank until a two-state solution can be negotiated, in a statement that also called for the U.N. Security Council to set a time limit for that political process.The notion of deploying U.N. peacekeepers into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been mentioned occasionally by diplomats. But the Arab League’s statement appeared to be the first time the group had officially made such a request in a written document, according to Farhan Haq, a U.N. spokesman.It’s unlikely that U.N. peacekeepers…

NATO allies are inching closer to sending troops into Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces, a move that would be another blurring of a previous red line and could draw the United States and Europe more directly into the war.Ukraine’s manpower shortage has reached a critical point, and its position on the battlefield in recent weeks has seriously worsened as Russia has accelerated its advances to take advantage of delays in shipments of American weapons. As a result, Ukrainian officials have asked their American and NATO counterparts to help train 150,000 new recruits closer to the front line for faster deployment.So…

In 2014, Fie Isolde’s future husband wrote her a 28th birthday card that, she said, was “full of dreams about all the things we were going to do.”“When I got the card,” the Danish jewelry designer recalled last month during a video interview from her boutique in the Sycamore neighborhood of Los Angeles, “my first thought was actually my fear: One day, this ink will be gone.”So in 2020, she had the words microscopically engraved on the 14-karat gold ring that she now wears on her right pinkie.“You can’t read it with the naked eye, only with a loupe,” Ms.…

Often, the pets make an understated entrance. “A lot of times, you won’t even see the dog” until you seat the owners, said Ally Gallegos, a former maître d’ at an upscale neighborhood restaurant in the West Village. “And you’re like, ‘Oh, God.’”What happens next is straightforward, at least in theory. The Americans With Disabilities Act allows the staff to ask just two questions: Is the dog a service animal, required because of the owner’s disability? And what work or task has the dog been trained to perform? This should mean that service dogs get in with no problems, and…

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved an innovative new treatment for patients with a form of lung cancer. It is to be used only by patients who have exhausted all other options to treat small cell lung cancer, and have a life expectancy of four to five months.The drug tarlatamab, or Imdelltra, made by the company Amgen, tripled patients’ life expectancy, giving them a median survival of 14 months after they took the drug. Forty percent of those who got the drug responded.After decades with no real advances in treatments for small cell lung cancer, tarlatamab offers the…

“Megalopolis,” the first film from the director Francis Ford Coppola in 13 years, premiered Thursday at the Cannes Film Festival. Self-financed by Coppola, the $120 million passion project has earned headlines about a reportedly chaotic shoot, allegations of misconduct and questions about the film’s commercial prospects.But what exactly are we dealing with here? Now that I’ve seen “Megalopolis,” let me try to answer the questions you might be asking.What is “Megalopolis” about?Any attempt to sum up “Megalopolis” will impose more narrative onto this movie than it actually contains, but here goes. Adam Driver plays Cesar Catalina, a visionary architect who…

NATO is considering sending military trainers to UkraineNATO allies are inching closer to sending military trainers into Ukraine. The move could draw the U.S. and Europe more directly into the war with Russia.Ukrainian officials have asked their U.S. and NATO counterparts to help train 150,000 new recruits closer to the front line for faster deployment. So far the U.S. has been adamant that it will not put U.S. troops on the ground in Ukraine, and has urged NATO allies not to do so either.But yesterday, Gen. Charles Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that a NATO…