Author: NY TIMES

Sam Ash, the family-owned chain of music stores that supplied countless beginners and working musicians with guitars, drums and other instruments, is closing all of it locations after 100 years in business, it announced this week.Derek Ash, whose great-grandparents, Sam and Rose Ash, opened the first Sam Ash store in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn in 1924, said the company’s 42 locations could not compete in the era of online shopping.In March, Sam Ash announced it was closing 18 locations, with the hope of buying the company time to survive, Mr. Ash said. But he said that closing all the…

A landmark antitrust trial against Google concluded on Friday after a federal judge heard final arguments, setting the stage for a ruling that could fundamentally shift the tech industry’s power.“The importance and significance of this case is not lost on me, not only for Google but for the public,” Judge Amit P. Mehta said in the final moments of the proceedings on Friday. He thanked the lawyers who argued the case, and then added, “I guess you’ve passed the baton to us.”Now, he must decide the case in which the Justice Department and state attorneys general say that Google has…

Like a certain energized bunny, Ryan Gosling’s charmer in “The Fall Guy” just keeps going as he runs and leaps, tumbles and punches and vaults through the air like a rocket. The actor has shed his “Barbie” pretty-in-pink look, if not his signature heat-seeking moves to play Colt Seavers, a stuntman with a long résumé, six-packs on his six-packs and a disregard for personal safety. Plunging 12 stories in a building atrium, though, is just another bruising day on the job for Colt until, oops, he nearly goes splat.Directed by David Leitch, “The Fall Guy” is divertingly slick, playful nonsense…

Turkey said on Friday that it would suspend all trade with Israel until there was a “permanent cease-fire” in the Gaza Strip, the latest international sanction against Israel and one that underscores the mounting global pressure to end the war in the territory.Turkey’s announcement built on statements the previous day that it had halted all trade with Israel until “uninterrupted and adequate humanitarian aid is allowed into Gaza.” But even as Turkey announced the measures, Israel continued its repeated warnings that it was preparing for an offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah that the United Nations said on…

The world is watching what is happening on American campuses with shock, pride, relish and alarm. Scenes from the protests — and of the arrests of protesters — have been top news around the world from Bogotá to Berlin, Tehran to Paris.In some countries, including France, students have staged protests of their own, though not with the scale and intensity of those in the United States.Some applaud the protests. Others, particularly in countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, view the crackdowns as proof of America’s hypocrisy on human rights and freedom of speech. Still others see them as the latest sordid…

“What’s Hate Reads?” a patron at The River, a bar on Bayard Street in Manhattan’s Chinatown, asked early on Wednesday evening. She and a friend had no idea they had wandered into the beginning of a party.It was perhaps the perfect question to kick off the evening’s event: a reading to celebrate the limited run of Hate Reads, a pop-up newsletter within a newsletter and the brainchild of Delia Cai, a writer for Vanity Fair. (Hate Reads was published as a limited-run on Ms. Cai’s regular newsletter, Deez Links, which she publishes on Substack, the sponsor of the evening’s fete.)In…

Their updates come in harried bursts. Real-time narrations of the scene at Columbia University’s protest encampment in Manhattan, interspersed with the calmer voice of a host in the studio, directing live on air the dozen or so student journalists covering the moment police officers in riot gear moved in to clear an occupied university building Tuesday night.“Do we have a field reporter over on Amsterdam? We have word that arrests are happening on Amsterdam, if we could get a field reporter over there.”“Sorry, Sarah, do you need to go?”“It’s getting really hard for us to report from this vantage.”The stream…

Ahmed Best recalls the painful backlash to the “Phantom Menace” character that was considered a racial stereotype at the time, but is now embraced by fans. Source link

Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas, and his wife were charged with participating in a yearslong $600,000 bribery scheme involving Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank, according to a federal indictment unsealed in Houston on Friday.Mr. Cuellar, 68, and his wife Imelda, 67, are accused of bribery and money laundering in connection with their efforts on behalf of a bank based in Mexico City and an energy company owned by Azerbaijan, according to the 54-page complaint.Mr. Cuellar is also accused of acting as an agent of a foreign entity while serving as a U.S. government official.Payments made from 2014 to 2021…

There’s no way of knowing what Real Madrid’s Jude Bellingham said as he approached Harry Kane as the Bayern Munich striker prepared to take a penalty in the first leg of their Champions League semi-final on Tuesday night.Whatever the precise wording, it was unlikely that Bellingham wished his international team-mates good luck and referee Clement Turpin had to step in to tell the midfielder to get out of the way.Kane isn’t overly worried. In his first post-match interview with British match broadcaster TNT Sport, the England captain said he did not hear what Bellingham said. Bellingham didn’t reveal anything until…