Author: NY TIMES

A tornado that swept through the southern Chinese economic hub of Guangzhou killed five people and damaged scores of factory buildings on Saturday.The tornado struck at about 3 p.m. and injured another 33 people as it slammed through the Baiyun district, in the city’s northern suburbs, the local government said. It lasted about four minutes. Hailstones, some with diameters of around 2 inches, also fell over parts of the city.Videos shared by Chinese official media showed transmission towers and power lines igniting and debris swirling in the air, against a backdrop of a giant funnel that had darkened the midafternoon…

In conversations with colleagues, fellow entrepreneurs and even musicians over the past decade, Daniel Ek would often abruptly shift the subject to something that really bugged him: health care. “I was like adamant to fix it,” Mr. Ek, the Spotify chief, told DealBook. He saw the industry as a bloated and inefficient colossus in need of disrupting.The problem: Mr. Ek had neither a plan, nor the time or money to do much about it. He was busy taking on Apple, YouTube and Amazon Music in the streaming wars. In his spare time, Mr. Ek pored over medical journals. And he…

There’s a locked door on the eastbound platform of the Chancery Lane station of the London Underground. The door is unassuming, sturdy and white.Behind it is a wide set of stairs leading to a roughly mile-long maze of tunnels built in the 1940s that were first intended to serve as a World War II shelter and later used for espionage, the storage of 400 tons of government documents and telecom services.Welcome to the Kingsway Exchange tunnels, set roughly 100 feet below street level in the center of London, sprawling beneath the Underground’s Central Line. Soon they could enter a new…

It hasn’t been the “nerd prom” for a while. Once a popular target of jokes about bad fashion (and not just from the evening’s featured comedian host), the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner has morphed in recent years into a less campy, more staid prelude to the Met Gala, which takes place days later. It’s only fitting, really, given the subtext of journalists being jailed around the world.Still, the bar for serious style has been raised by the mix of media, political and Hollywood figures that populate the guest list. Consider this year’s roster, which included Rufus Sewell and Keri…

Walking past empty pews and stained-glass windows, the Rev. Victor Cyrus-Franklin, pastor of Inglewood First United Methodist Church in Inglewood, Calif., talked about how housing prices were threatening his flock.Congregants were being priced out of the neighborhood, he said. Many of those who remained were too burdened by rent to give to the church.As Mr. Cyrus-Franklin spoke, a 78-year-old man named Bill Dorsey was a few yards away in an outdoor corridor that led to the chapel, amid tarps and piles of clothes. Mr. Dorsey’s makeshift residence, which the church tolerates, is one of several homeless encampments that sit in…

Complex 20th-century scores like Stravinsky’s 1946 Symphony in Three Movements held no terrors for him. A 2022 recording with the BBC Philharmonic demonstrates his mastery of the work’s turbulent polyphony. When he was a student at Cambridge, he was casually asked if he wanted to conduct Schoenberg’s fearsome Five Pieces for Orchestra; he blithely accepted, and it was only “years later you realize how fiendishly difficult it is,” he remembered, laughing at himself, in an interview with Peter Sagal of NPR two years ago.“Whenever he comes to conduct, you can just see his love of the music, He’s so excited.…

Hamas said on Saturday that it was reviewing a new Israeli proposal for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, a move that comes amid efforts to break a deadlock in the talks between the armed group and Israel.The statement came as anticipation was growing of an Israeli invasion of Rafah, a city in southern Gaza where more than a million people have been displaced. Humanitarian groups have warned that such an offensive would have catastrophic consequences for civilians.In a statement, Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, said the group had received an Israeli response to a proposal it delivered to…

A heat wave in the Gaza Strip this week, with temperatures soaring above 100 degrees Fahrenheit the past few days, has not only made life intolerable for the hundreds of thousands of displaced people trying to rebuild their lives in tent cities but has made it hard for some businesses to operate.By Saturday, the heat had significantly eased and the forecast was for more moderate temperatures in coming days. But the recent highs offered a vision of what the summer most likely holds.“This hot weather is a challenge for us,” said Mohammed Fayyad, a displaced pharmacist who started selling medications…

The early arrivals at a party thrown by the Hollywood powerhouse Creative Artists Agency on Friday night seemed to be weighing same question: Just how much could they expect to let loose during this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner weekend?Their game of chicken did not go on long. By 8 p.m., guests at the talent agency’s event, held at La Grande Boucherie in Washington, were applying temporary tattoos to one another’s necks and trying to prevent their drinks from sloshing onto a baby grand piano.The weekend’s main event, known as “nerd prom,” is a Saturday night banquet at the…

A Boeing 767 plane flown by Delta Air Lines lost an emergency slide on Friday, prompting it to return to New York not long after taking off, officials said.The flight, Delta Air Lines 520, had left Kennedy International Airport in New York and was headed to Los Angeles when its crew discovered an issue related to the aircraft’s right wing emergency exit slide. Crew members also detected an unusual sound near the wing, Delta Air Lines said.Pilots declared an emergency to air traffic controllers and the flight returned to Kennedy and landed safely, the airline said.After the plane landed, it…