Author: NY TIMES

Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicSteve Albini, who died last week at 61, was one of the most admired, and most divisive, figures in rock. He was an expert audio engineer who recorded ultra-classics by Nirvana, PJ Harvey and Pixies, along with key underground releases by the Jesus Lizard, Slint, Low, Neurosis and many, many others. For decades, he also relished his role as a brutally insulting critic — sometimes of the bands he worked with — and a gadfly who pushed uncomfortable buttons about race, politics and sex. He came to regret that, owning up to…

At least two prison officers were killed in northern France on Tuesday after armed assailants ambushed a convoy at a road tollbooth and freed an inmate, the French authorities said.Éric Dupond-Moretti, France’s justice minister, said on the social media platform X that three other prison officers had been seriously injured in the episode, which occurred near Incarville, a town in the Eure area northwest of Paris.President Emmanuel Macron said the attack was a “shock to us all.”“The Nation stands by the families, the injured and their colleagues,” he said on X.Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, said on X that “hundreds”…

Sue Bird hopes that when she’s in her 50s and 60s, she can have a voice on television like a former NBA player. One model Bird saw in person was Charles Barkley. She remembers hearing the Naismith Hall of Famer talk about his playing career many times on TNT’s “Inside the NBA.””He said, ‘Oh, I have to fly commercial. I don’t have these charter flights. Or, ‘Oh, these guys are making $40 million. Like, my contract is only for – I don’t know, $10 million.’ He listens It’s a little dissatisfying,” Bird said on NPR’s Fresh Air last month.She hopes…

When the actress Nicola Coughlan joined the cast of Shondaland’s period costume drama “Bridgerton,” as the young socialite and secret gossip pamphleteer Penelope Featherington, the hair and makeup artist Marc Pilcher informed her that the creative brief they had for her character was only one word: “dowdy.”Penelope, the demure youngest daughter of the domineering matriarch Lady Portia Featherington, was to be done up in garish pastel dresses and gaudy jewelry, with a hairdo clogged with curls — none of it particularly flattering. “For the first two seasons, the objective, in the nicest way, was not meant to make me look…

Biden fires a new round at China President Biden announced on Tuesday a wave of new tariffs on billions of dollars in Chinese products, ramping up duties on industries like electric cars and solar energy that are core to his economic agenda.The restrictions build on Trump-era measures, and many are likely to appeal to voters in battleground states ahead of the election. But it’s less clear if they are enough to rebuild America’s industrial base in a global race with China to lead in the new economy.The new duties will apply to about $18 billion of annual Chinese imports, the…

In 2017, Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” was a critical and commercial smash that immediately became one of the defining movies of the Trump Era. The next year, Boots Riley’s masterful “Sorry to Bother You” seemed to herald a new golden age for Black satire films. But as those movies stood out for using surreal plot twists to humorously — and horrifically — unpack complex ideas like racial appropriation and consumer culture, the crop that has followed hasn’t kept pace. The current moment is defined by a central question: What does the “Black” look like in Black satire films today? Too…

The celebrated Iranian film director Mohammad Rasoulof said he had fled the country, after a court sentenced him to eight years in prison for his movies.Mr. Rasoulof — known for his award-winning film “There Is No Evil” — had been barred from leaving Iran after his work criticized life under authoritarian rule in the country. His lawyer, Babak Paknia, wrote last week on social media that a court had sentenced Mr. Rasoulof to imprisonment, whipping and a fine for movies that it called “examples of collusion with the intention of committing a crime against the country’s security.”On Monday, Mr. Rasoulof…

The Parliament of Georgia gave final approval on Tuesday to a contentious bill that has prompted a series of tense protests in the capital, Tbilisi, spurred by fears that the legislation could push the country back into the Kremlin’s orbit.President Salome Zourabichvili has promised to veto the bill. But Georgian Dream, the governing party in Georgia since 2012, has enough votes to override her veto.Both the opposition and the government have presented the passage of the innocuous-sounding bill, titled “On Transparency of Foreign Influence,” as a momentous step in the history of Georgia, a mountainous country of 3.6 million saddled…

Jesmine Hall is director of communications for Raffles Singapore. “We see a hotel being a destination for not just rest and rejuvenation,” she said, “but a setting for cultural immersion.” The hotel’s Enlightenment Retreat (from 7,800 Singapore dollars, or about $5,745) features four days of holistic treatments — including yoga, meditation, hydrotherapy herbal body wraps — along with personalized menus from the hotel’s restaurants. It also includes visits to the Singapore Botanic Gardens, a UNESCO World Heritage site and the Intan, a private house museum devoted to Peranakan culture — a mix of local and Chinese heritage. Tea with the…

For decades, China has moved methodically to dominate ever more industries, from toys and clothing in the 1980s to semiconductors and renewable energy today. China now produces a third of the world’s manufactured goods — more than the United States, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Britain combined. Its trade surplus in these goods is equal to a tenth of the entire Chinese economy.And those exports keep increasing, causing alarm about China’s manufacturing “overcapacity” among its biggest trading partners. Top leaders in the United States and Europe have begun calling on China to dial back how much it sells to the…