Author: NY TIMES

Britain’s diplomatic feud with Russia escalated on Wednesday after the British government announced it would expel a senior Russian diplomat who officials claim is an “undeclared” military intelligence officer, and also shut down several Russian diplomatic facilities in the country.The government accused Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., of a pattern of “malign activity” in Britain and Europe, including hacking and leaking trade documents relating to the United States, and targeting of British lawmakers through malicious email campaigns.James Cleverly, the British home secretary, told Parliament that the government was announcing the retaliatory measures “to make clear…

When Camille Charrière designed a capsule collection for the British intimates brand Stripe & Stare last year, she was not expecting the line to cause controversy — and certainly not expecting to start a public fight with Kim Kardashian and her billion-dollar brand, Skims. But after Ms. Charrière accused Skims of copying her work in a post on X that has since been widely shared on social media, that’s exactly what happened.Here’s everything you need to know about the internet’s latest fashion drama, and why Ms. Charrière thinks her point has been misconstrued.What’s going on?Ms. Charrière is a fashion influencer,…

TikTok takes its fight to courtTikTok fired the latest broadside in its battle with Washington, suing to block a law that could force the company to split from ByteDance, its Chinese owner, or face a ban in the U.S.The company argues that the law violates the First Amendment by effectively killing an app in the U.S. that millions of Americans use to share their views. Another problem: a divestiture within 270 days is practically impossible, Sapna Maheshwari and David McCabe report for The Times.DealBook spoke with Maheshwari about the lawsuit filed yesterday and what happens next.Do legal experts think TikTok…

Academic conferences are usually staid affairs, but the 1973 International Symposium on Gender Identity, held in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, was an exception. Everything was peaceful until a psychologist named John Money stood and yelled, “Mickey Diamond, I hate your guts!”Milton Diamond, a sexologist who had gone by Mickey since childhood, was sitting on the other side of the room. Dr. Money and Dr. Diamond were bitter rivals: Dr. Money, a nationally recognized researcher at Johns Hopkins University, had long argued that sexual and gender identity are neutral at birth and shaped primarily by an infant’s surroundings.Dr. Diamond, who was just beginning…

And there’s this sense, true or not, that Kendrick saw the whole field and moved accordingly.CARAMANICA It’s not simply that he did that, it’s that no one expected him, the only rapper to win a Pulitzer Prize, to do that. People didn’t think Kendrick was a gamer in this way. He might be like, “I’m the best rapper,” but “I’ve been collecting dirt on you for weeks and weeks and weeks, potentially months, potentially years, in order to absolutely ether you in your own house”? That’s different. No one expected that of Kendrick. So he gets a tremendous amount of…

With its seizure of the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Tuesday, Israel has now closed two key crossings for aid into Gaza, drawing sharp warnings from international agencies and officials who said the moves could exacerbate an already dire humanitarian crisis in the enclave.Since the start of the war, Israel had limited aid entering the Gaza Strip to the two tightly controlled border crossings: Kerem Shalom and Rafah, which both access the enclave’s south. But Israel closed the Kerem Shalom crossing after a Hamas attack on Sunday killed four soldiers in the area, then mounted…

Before a crowd thronging the waterfront and hilltops of this ancient port city of Marseille, the Olympic flame arrived in France on Wednesday, beginning a 79-day relay across the country and its territories that will culminate in Paris with the start of the Olympic Games on July 26.In an elaborate ceremony attended by President Emmanuel Macron and a crowd estimated at more than 150,000 people, all eyes were on the Belem, a historic three-masted ship that bore the flame, and was greeted by more than 1,000 boats in a forest of masts filling Marseille’s harbor.The Belem, which spent much of…

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…