Author: NY TIMES

“I want to be different from everyone else,” Ben Shelton said recently in Madrid.He was actually talking about last year’s decision to sign a major deal with On, a small but growing Swiss footwear and apparel maker, rather than go after some American giant bearing the famous Nike logo. (More on that later.) The Floridian is in the early stages of a three-month stay in Europe that will be as long as his stay at Wimbledon, which ends in mid-July. But the 21-year-old Shelton could have talked about anything to do with his fledgling tennis career, which was the opposite…

Call it the millennial mother midlife crisis, or M.M.M.C. The hallmark of an M.M.M.C. isn’t going off the grid, à la Rachel Fleishman, the strung-out mother in the novel (and hit streaming TV series) “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” or meeting up with other moms to release primal screams.After all, rage and angst are out, and wellness, equanimity and mental health are in. For lots of moms, the M.M.M.C. is about maintaining a chipper facade, the appearance of having it together while quietly imploding. If the M.M.M.C. had a mascot, it would be a swan, an animal gliding easily on the…

At the Milken Institute’s Global Conference this week, a little-known risky financial tool became the subject of a hot debate among Wall Street titans.Many private equity firms have quietly begun mortgaging their investment funds, piling leverage upon leverage. In other words, they’re taking out loans against the businesses they’ve already taken out loans to buy.At a time when dealmakers are desperate to raise new cash after the boom of the pandemic era, this mechanism — known as a net asset value loan — is allowing them to do it overnight.More P.E. firms are using the tool as they set out…

The ever-adaptable Post Malone moves into country with this duet with Morgan Wallen. It’s jovial on the surface, with cheerful steel-guitar hooks. But it’s deeply surly at heart, as Malone and Wallen take turns lashing out at an ex who blames them after a relationship crumbles. “It ain’t like I can make this kind of mess all by myself,” they insist. “Don’t act like you ain’t helped me pull that bottle off the shelf.” Personal responsibility? Nah.Willow embraces her outsize emotions in the full-tilt finale of her new album, “Empathogen,” which veers from her old pop-punk into jazz and prog-rock.…

The emir of Kuwait announced on Friday that he would suspend the elected Parliament for up to four years, stoking fears that he could move to dismantle one of the Middle East’s last semi-democratic political systems.“I will not permit for democracy to be exploited to destroy the state,” the emir, Sheikh Mishal Al Ahmed Al Sabah, said in a televised speech, declaring that a recent period of political turmoil required “hard decisions to save the country.”The emir also suspended several articles of the Constitution and said that the transitional period would be used to review “all aspects of the democratic…

Heavy seasonal rains have set off flash floods across Afghanistan, killing at least 137 people in one province, leaving at least 100 more missing and displacing thousands of others this weekend, officials said.The flood’s toll in the northern province of Baghlan, which appeared to have suffered the worst devastation, was likely to rise, said Hedayatullah Hamdard, the director of the provincial disaster management department. Most of the dead there were women and children, he said.Flooding began around 4 p.m. Friday and continued into the evening in Baghlan Province. Abdul Aziz Ayyar, a tribal elder, was in his home in the…

On January 9, Tonja Stelly had to be in two places at once. This is nothing new to her.This has become a tradition for the past three years The NBA and NHL schedules collided at just the right time.The Knicks take on the Portland Trail Blazers on Tuesday at Madison Square Garden, the most famous arena in the world. Her son, Quentin Grimes, who was a guard for the Knicks and now plays for the Detroit Pistons, was reported at 7:30 p.m.Twenty miles east, her son Tyler Myers, a defenseman for the Vancouver Canucks, was in Elmont, N.Y., for a…

This article is part of our Design special section about water as a source of creativity.In the science fiction epic “Dune” (books and movies alike), the people who inhabit the brutally harsh desert planet Arrakis wear garments called stillsuits that allow them to drink their own recycled bodily waters.These full-body survival suits, which look a bit like a techy version of an insect’s hard upper shell, absorb moisture from sweating and urination and filter out impurities to make potable water. This water is stored in pockets and sucked through a tube.If this sounds like magical sci-fi thinking, the principle is…

For decades, Munch’s Make Believe Band at Chuck E. Cheese has performed for countless birthdays, end-of-season Little League parties and other celebrations. There’s been Chuck E. Cheese and Helen Henny on vocals, Mr. Munch on keys, Jasper T. Jowls on guitar, and Pasqually on drums.The band of robot puppets has been a mainstay at the colorful pizzeria-arcade chain where children run amok and play games for prizes in between bites of pizza slices.Their final curtain call is coming soon.By the end of 2024, the animatronic performances — endearing and nostalgia-inducing, if perhaps slightly creepy to their audiences — will be…

Bill Holman, an arranger and composer whose work with Stan Kenton, Gerry Mulligan and other jazz greats established him as a transformative figure in the cool jazz sound associated with 1950s California, died on Monday at his home in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles. He was 96.Kathryn King, his stepdaughter, announced the death.Mr. Holman’s longtime collaboration with Mr. Kenton, first as a saxophonist in his band and later as an arranger, provided the foundation of his reputation, but he also went on to arrange for Maynard Ferguson, Count Basie, Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett, Michael Bublé and many others,…