Author: NY TIMES

Usually, the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner features Hollywood stars, a zinger-filled comedy set and a public display of comity between the White House and the press corps that covers it.On Saturday, the dinner had no comedian and no president. Among the smattering of celebrities on hand was Michael Chiklis, whose best-known television role, in “The Shield,” concluded in 2008.“It’s just us,” Eugene Daniels, the association’s president and an MSNBC host, told his fellow journalists at the start of the night.The reporters who spoke from the dais emphasized the importance of the First Amendment, garnering repeated ovations from the black-tie…

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions.kevin rooseCasey, I miss you. You’re in New York this week.casey newtonI’m in New York. I thought it was time to finally come back to the offices of “The New York Times,” and see what I could find out about your performance review.kevin roose[LAUGHS]: Our studio in San Francisco feels very empty without you. What are you up to there?casey newtonIt’s so empty, you can…

Insulin, heart treatments and antibiotics have flowed freely across many borders for decades, exempt from tariffs in a bid to make medicine affordable. But that could soon change.For months, President Trump has been promising to impose higher tariffs on pharmaceuticals as part of his plan to reorder the global trading system and bring key manufacturing industries back to the United States. This month, he said pharmaceutical tariffs could come in the “not too distant future.”If they do, the move would have serious — and wildly uncertain — consequences for drugs made in the European Union.Pharmaceutical products and chemicals are the…

A third round of talks between Iran and the United States over Tehran’s nuclear activities concluded Saturday after several hours of indirect negotiations, partly in writing, between senior officials and teams of technical experts from both sides.Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said in an interview with Iran’s state television that the talks were “very serious” and focused on details of a potential agreement. He said disagreements remained between Tehran and Washington, but that he was “cautiously optimistic that we can progress.”Mr. Araghchi said the negotiations would resume next Saturday with Oman continuing to mediate the talks, which include Steve Witkoff,…

David Briggs, a keyboardist and studio operator who played a pivotal role in establishing Muscle Shoals, Ala., as a recording hub in the 1960s before helping to revitalize mainstream country music, died on Tuesday in Nashville. He was 82.His brother, John, said his death, in a hospice facility, was caused by complications of renal cancer.Mr. Briggs contributed to not just one but two major developments in popular music. As a member of the original rhythm section at Fame Recording Studios, he helped put the northern Alabama hamlet of Muscle Shoals on the musical map. He played on landmark R&B recordings…

As he played a chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk on “Saturday Night Live” in March, the veteran Canadian comedian Mike Myers was not intending to make a personal political statement. But when he stood onstage for the closing credits of the show, he said, “I got angrier and angrier.”He thought about Mr. Musk’s remark that Canada is “not a real country,” and about how President Trump had called the former Canadian prime minister “Governor Trudeau” and rudely referred to Canada as “the 51st state.” He thought about tariffs, and about graffiti he’d seen in Winnipeg: “There’s no greater pain than being betrayed…

The life and legacy of Pope Francis — a pontiff who defied easy definition and led the Roman Catholic Church through a dozen years of different phases and contradictions — are not easy to fit into a single homily.But that was the task for Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the dean of the College of Cardinals, on Saturday.“He was a pope among the people, with an open heart toward everyone,” Cardinal Re said beside Francis’ coffin from the steps of St. Peter’s Square. “He was also a pope attentive to the signs of the times and what the Holy Spirit was…

Virginia Giuffre, a former victim of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring who said she was “passed around like a platter of fruit” as a teenager to rich and powerful predators, including Prince Andrew of Britain, died on Friday at her farm in Western Australia. She was 41.Ms. Giuffre died by suicide, according to a statement by the family. Ms. Giuffre (pronounced JIFF-ree) wrote in an Instagram post in March that she was days away from dying of renal failure after being injured in an automobile crash with a school bus that she said was traveling at nearly 70 m.p.h.In 2019, Mr.…

In late 2023, Israel was aiming to assassinate Ibrahim Biari, a top Hamas commander in the northern Gaza Strip who had helped plan the Oct. 7 massacres. But Israeli intelligence could not find Mr. Biari, who they believed was hidden in the network of tunnels underneath Gaza.So Israeli officers turned to a new military technology infused with artificial intelligence, three Israeli and American officials briefed on the events said. The technology was developed a decade earlier but had not been used in battle. Finding Mr. Biari provided new incentive to improve the tool, so engineers in Israel’s Unit 8200, the…

David Paton, an idealistic and innovative ophthalmologist who started Project Orbis, converting a United Airlines jet into a flying hospital that took surgeons to developing countries to operate on patients and educate local doctors, died on April 3 at his home in Reno, Nev. He was 94.His death was confirmed by his son, Townley.The son of a prominent New York eye surgeon whose patients included the Shah of Iran and the financier J. Pierpont Morgan’s horse, Dr. Paton (pronounced PAY-ton) was teaching at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins University in the early 1970s when he became discouraged by…