Author: NY TIMES

The trial of former President Donald J. Trump has all the elements of a made-for-TV thriller: sex, politics and potential consequences for the future of the republic.One problem: no TV.Cameras and audio recording devices have been banned from the Lower Manhattan courtroom that is hosting the first-ever criminal proceeding against a former president, creating something of a headache for the cable news anchors and producers assigned with covering a monumental event in American life via a decidedly visual and aural medium.The testimony on Monday of Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s lawyer-turned-witness for the prosecution, was the kind of highly anticipated, high-drama…

President Biden on Monday ordered a company with Chinese origins to shut down and sell the Wyoming cryptocurrency mine it built a mile from an Air Force base that controls nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles.The cryptomining facility, which operates high-powered computers in a data center near the F.E. Warren base in Cheyenne, “presents a national security risk to the United States,” the president said in an executive order, because its equipment could be used for surveillance and espionage.The New York Times reported last October that Microsoft, which operates a nearby data center supporting the Pentagon, had flagged the Chinese-connected cryptocurrency mine…

David Sanborn, whose fiery alto saxophone flourishes earned him six Grammy Awards, eight gold albums and a platinum one, and who established himself as a celebrity sideman, lending indelible solos to enduring rock classics like David Bowie’s “Young Americans,” died on Sunday. He was 78.He died after a long battle with prostate cancer, according to a statement on his social media channels. He had received the diagnosis in 2018 but had maintained his regular schedule of concerts until recently, with more planned for next year.The statement did not say where Mr. Sanborn died.Drawing from jazz, pop and R&B, Mr. Sanborn…

President Biden’s national security adviser said on Monday that while the United States was committed to Israel’s defense, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had still failed to provide the White House with a plan for moving nearly a million Gazans safely out of Rafah before any invasion of the city.In a lengthy presentation to reporters, the adviser, Jake Sullivan, also said Israel had yet to “connect their military operations” to a political plan for the future governance of the Palestinian territory.Mr. Sullivan, who has been at the center of the administration’s response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel…

Israelis gathered across the country on Monday for the first national day of mourning since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks, with protesters disrupting several ceremonies as they demanded that government ministers do more to secure the release of hostages.Israel’s Memorial Day is normally one of the most somber on the country’s calendar, a date when Israelis put aside their differences to grieve fellow citizens killed in war or terrorist attacks. But the protests on Monday underscored how feelings of wartime unity have given way to deep disputes over the war in the Gaza Strip, the fate of hostages taken on…

Ultimately, Mbappe bid farewell to the Parc des Princes, echoing his time at PSG.Another goal, another trophy, one step closer to another record – the first player in the history of French football to win the top flight Golden Boot for six consecutive seasons. Before kick-off, the club’s fans prepared a ceremony in the Auteuil Stand to mark his legacy – featuring his trademark arms-crossed celebration. There was also a banner that read: “Child from the Paris suburbs, you became a Paris Saint-Germain legend.” But the game was not a complete celebration of his seven years in Paris. Yes, there…

The branding of the W.N.B.A. as the hottest league in any game continues apace, as does the growing convergence of fashion and sports.The latest step in the relationship: a Skims ad campaign released just ahead of the start of the women’s basketball season and featuring the rookie Cameron Brink, the newly retired three-time W.N.B.A. champion-turned-president of Adidas basketball Candace Parker and the All-Stars and Olympians Kelsey Plum of the Las Vegas Aces and Skylar Diggins-Smith of the Seattle Storm and DiJonai Carrington of the Connecticut Sun.The campaign depicts the players in various skin-tone undies — bikini and high-waist briefs, boy…

Nick Wilson has closely followed news on the war in Gaza since October. But Mr. Wilson, a Cornell student, is picky when it comes to his media diet: As a pro-Palestinian activist, he doesn’t trust major American outlets’ reporting on Israel’s campaign in Gaza.Instead, he turns to publications less familiar to some American audiences, like the Arab news network Al Jazeera.“Al Jazeera is the site that I go to to get an account of events that I think will be reliable,” he said.Many student protesters said in recent interviews that they were seeking on-the-ground coverage of the war in Gaza,…

The men’s engagement with the ads did not surprise some small business owners interviewed by The Times. Morgan Koontz, a founder of Bella & Omi, a children’s clothing business in West Virginia that promotes itself on social media, said the company received “inappropriate, almost pedophile-type, perverted comments” from men when they started advertising on Facebook in 2021.“It made our models uncomfortable, and it made us uncomfortable,” she said.When the company expanded to Instagram, she and her fellow owner, Erica Barrios, decided to avoid the problem by targeting only women, even though fathers and grandfathers are among their regular customers.Lindsey Rowse,…

Half a century ago, one of the hottest questions in science was whether humans could teach animals to talk. Scientists tried using sign language to converse with apes and trained parrots to deploy growing English vocabularies.The work quickly attracted media attention — and controversy. The research lacked rigor, critics argued, and what seemed like animal communication could simply have been wishful thinking, with researchers unconsciously cuing their animals to respond in certain ways.In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the research fell out of favor. “The whole field completely disintegrated,” said Irene Pepperberg, a comparative cognition researcher at Boston University,…