Author: NY TIMES

On Monday night, a gaggle of celebrities attended the annual Met Gala. As they entered, throngs of photographers and reporters captured the arrival and ascent of guests up the Met’s famed stairs. Bad Bunny! Chris Hemsworth! J-Lo! Zendaya! Zendaya, again, but in a different dress!Notably not among them was the singer Katy Perry.The issue wasn’t that Ms. Perry was rumored to be attending and ultimately did not. (Looking at you here, Rihanna.) Rather, her absence was notable because A.I.-generated photos of the “Teenage Dream” singer posing on the Met steps are now circulating online and many people are falling for…

AstraZeneca has started to pull its Covid-19 vaccine from global markets because of low demand, the pharmaceutical giant said. The decision closes the chapter on a shot that was widely used in the early stages of vaccination drives in many parts of the world before being supplanted by rivals that were better suited to take on an evolving virus.The move was not related to any concerns about the shot’s side effects, the company said.Since the vaccine was approved in Britain in December 2020, over three billion doses have been supplied globally. But in the past few years, demand has plummeted…

Customers of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX are poised to recover all of the money they lost when the firm collapsed in 2022 and receive interest on top of it, the company’s bankruptcy lawyers said on Tuesday.The announcement was a landmark in the attempt to recover the $8 billion in customer assets that disappeared when FTX imploded virtually overnight, setting off a crisis in the crypto industry. Under a plan filed in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware, virtually all FTX’s creditors, including hundreds of thousands of ordinary investors who used the exchange to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, would receive cash…

Steve Albini, a rock musician and revered audio engineer who played a singular role in the development of the sound of alternative rock music in the 1980s, the ’90s and beyond — recording acclaimed albums by Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Pixies and hundreds of others — while becoming an outspoken critic of the music industry, died on Tuesday at his home in Chicago. He was 61.The cause was a heart attack, according to Taylor Hales of Electrical Audio, the studio in Chicago that Mr. Albini founded in 1997.With a sharp vision for how a band should be recorded, and an even…

In February of last year, President Biden changed the U.S. standard for cutting off weapons deliveries to foreign militaries that harm civilians during wartime.Under the new arms transfer policy, Mr. Biden said countries that were “more likely than not” to violate international law or human rights with American weapons should not receive them. Previously, U.S. officials were required to show “actual knowledge” of such violations, a higher bar to clear.A few months later, in August, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken issued a directive instructing State Department officials overseas to investigate incidents of civilian harm by foreign militaries using American…

Israel has been downplaying the United States’ decision to withhold delivery of some 2,000-pound and 500-pound bombs, insisting that the deep relationship between the allies would outlast current tensions.But experts on the U.S.-Israeli relationship say the pause in delivering the high-payload munitions, and the timing of its confirmation from the White House on Tuesday, showed that the alliance is facing new strains, with more ruptures possibly to come.“It’s pent-up frustration on Biden’s part, which eventually broke,” said Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser in Israel, on Wednesday. “The administration has been walking a tightrope between its very strong…

Barry Keoghan was the scheming heart of one of last year’s most talked-about movies and played a major role in stirring up a general thirst for Irish actors. Sabrina Carpenter, fresh off her opener duties on what may go down as the most profitable music tour in history, has a top 10 Billboard hit and the TikTok song du jour.So when Ms. Carpenter and Mr. Keoghan, a buzzy young couple, walked the red carpet separately at this year’s Met Gala, posing for their own pictures, fans took notice.Ms. Carpenter arrived wearing a custom bustier gown with a light blue bouffant…

Uber reported earnings on Wednesday that disappointed investors, as mounting legal bills and weaker ride demand in some parts of the world led to a shortfall compared with analysts’ forecasts.Uber recently settled a lawsuit brought by Australian taxi drivers and is facing a new one from cabdrivers in London. Some regulators have also challenged the way it classifies workers, which shields it from providing drivers with some benefits.The company also cited softer-than-expected demand and took a hit because some of its investments had lost value during its latest quarter.Uber’s operating profit in the first quarter was $172 million. That was…

Artificial intelligence is giving machines the power to generate videos, write computer code and even carry on a conversation.It is also accelerating efforts to understand the human body and fight disease.On Wednesday, Google DeepMind, the tech giant’s central artificial intelligence lab, and Isomorphic Labs, a sister company, unveiled a more powerful version of AlphaFold, an artificial intelligence technology that helps scientists understand the behavior of the microscopic mechanisms that drive the cells in the human body.An early version of AlphaFold, released in 2020, solved a puzzle that had bedeviled scientists for more than 50 years. It was called “the protein…

This week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The backstory of the tension between Kendrick Lamar and DrakeThe early songs: “First Person Shoter,” “Like That” and “7 Minute Drill”Drake responds: “Push Ups” and “Taylor Made FreestyleKendrick Lamar responds: “Euphoria” and “6:16 In LA”Drake responds, and shifts the tone of the battle to the personal: “Family Matters”Kendrick responds, upping the personal ante: “Meet the Grahams” and “Not Like Us”Drake bows out?: “The Heart Part 6”How this battle will play out for Drake and Kendrick Lamar as musiciansHow…