Author: NY TIMES

In March, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that a new federal rule would cap fees on late credit card payments at $8 a month, estimating that the change would save American households $10 billion a year.On Friday, a federal judge in Fort Worth temporarily blocked the rule, siding with bank and credit card company lobbyists who contend in a lawsuit that it is unconstitutional.The rule was scheduled to take effect on Tuesday. Now, the lobbyists can continue their legal fight in U.S. District Court before Judge Mark T. Pittman, who granted the preliminary injunction.The consumer bureau’s new rule would…

Apple’s top software executives decided early last year that Siri, the company’s virtual assistant, needed a brain transplant.The decision came after the executives Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea spent weeks testing OpenAI’s new chatbot, ChatGPT. The product’s use of generative artificial intelligence, which can write poetry, create computer code and answer complex questions, made Siri look antiquated, said two people familiar with the company’s work, who didn’t have permission to speak publicly.Introduced in 2011 as the original virtual assistant in every iPhone, Siri had been limited for years to individual requests and had never been able to follow a conversation.…

Nancy Neveloff Dubler, a medical ethicist who pioneered using mediation at hospital bedsides to navigate the complex dynamics among headstrong doctors, anguished family members and patients in their last days, died on April 14 at her home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She was 82.The cause was heart and lung disease, her family said.A Harvard-educated lawyer who won her college student presidency by campaigning to dissolve the student government, Ms. Dubler was a revolutionary figure in health care who sought, in her words, to “level the playing field” and “amplify nonmedical voices” in knotty medical situations, especially when…

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube4. Tinariwen: “Matadjem Yinmixan”The Mali-based collective Tinariwen is part of the fabric of modern Tuareg history; its founder, Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, fled the country as a child after his rebel father was killed by government forces in an uprising. For decades now, Tinariwen has set the standard for Tuareg bands with tightly coordinated rhythms led by Ag Alhabib, whose electric guitar sometimes seems to humbly pray. “Matadjem Yinmixan,” about Tuareg unity, has a groove so locked-in it could practically be a dance hit — when I saw the band at Coachella 15 years…

Talks involving Israeli and Hamas negotiators on a cease-fire and hostage release deal remain snagged over whether a truce would be permanent or temporary, and how many hostages would be freed in the first phase of an agreement, officials briefed on the matter said.Israel and Hamas representatives left Egypt on Thursday after the latest round of indirect talks — they do not communicate with each other directly — without any deal in sight, the officials said. But U.S., Egyptian, and Qatari teams were still holding further discussions in Egypt.Hamas is still demanding that Israel abide by a permanent cease-fire and…

Keep an eye on the skies starting Friday night for what could be a dazzling display of nature — or not, depending on your location and weather conditions.An unusual amount of solar flare activity means that the aurora borealis (also known as the northern and southern lights, depending on your hemisphere) could appear in the sky as an arc of green light.If you’re in a place with a lot of bright lights — like a city — it’s going to be hard to see anything. And then there are other complications, like the weather.The Northeast is likely to be blanketed…

The art gallery had barely closed for the business day when guests started wandering into the space on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Before them was a curiosity that made passers-by pause for a peek: amid the paintings on the walls was a long dinner table with place settings for 30 people.Toward the entry way, Alex Delany, host of the Sound Radio show, was spinning 1970s-era Guinean and Ethiopian jazz and funk as invitees in Balenciaga, Prada and high-end Adidas sneakers mingled. And in the back of the gallery was the chef Roze Traore, spinning plates of poached lobster…

A failed crop, followed by a wave of financial speculation, put cocoa prices on a roller coaster this year, rattling an industry reliant on inexpensive crops and labor.This is not how things normally go in the cocoa market. For much of the past decade, the price of cocoa in one key global benchmark hovered around $2,500 per metric ton. Last year, after poor harvests in West Africa, the price began to creep up — rising to $4,200 a ton by December, a threshold that hadn’t been crossed since the 1970s.Then the financial speculators began to pile in — betting prices…

Days before Christie’s expected to sell as much as $840 million worth of art at an auction set to include paintings by Warhol and Basquiat, the auction house experienced what it described as a “technology security issue” that took its website offline.Some collectors and art advisers noticed the problem on Thursday evening. By the next morning, the website was redirecting visitors to a temporary page outside of its own web domain. “We apologize that our website is currently offline,” it said. “We are working to resolve this as soon as possible and regret any inconvenience.”Edward Lewine, a Christie’s spokesman, said…

“I hope you fall in love, I hope it breaks your heart” is the refrain (in English translation) of “Pasoori,” Ali Sethi’s 2022 global hit. Is this a curse or a blessing? The song, performed as a duet with the Pakistani singer Shae Gill, defies such simple classifications — it’s a pop banger sung in Urdu and Punjabi, punctuated with flamenco handclaps and driven by a reggaeton beat. Sethi, a Pakistani-born artist who lives in Manhattan’s East Village, composed it in the wake of a thwarted collaboration with an Indian organization that feared reprisal (because of a 2016 ban on…