Author: NY TIMES

Not surprisingly, businesses lined up along the arena railings like fans to get Kaitlyn Clark’s autograph. The former Iowa State star is a transcendent talent who has proven she can not only break ratings records but also draw huge crowds home and away, even pulling in 17,000 viewers at an open practice on Final Four weekend . After she was drafted first overall by the Indiana Fever, her WNBA jerseys sold out within hours and multiple teams have moved upcoming games to larger venues to accommodate the Indiana Fever “Unprecedented demand” for team games.So it makes perfect sense to hire…

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.archived recording 1Love now and for always.archived recording 2Did you fall in love?archived recording 3Just tell her I love her.archived recording 4Love is stronger than anything.archived recording 5[SIGHS]: For the love.archived recording 6Love.archived recording 7And I love you more than anything.archived recording 8(SINGING) What is love?archived recording 9Here’s to love.archived recording 10Love.anna martinFrom “The New York Times,” I’m Anna Martin. This is “Modern Love,” and…

Honda Motor on Thursday said it and several suppliers would invest $11 billion to build batteries and electric cars in Ontario, a significant commitment from a company that has been slow to embrace the technology.Like Toyota and other Japanese carmakers, Honda has emphasized hybrid vehicles, in which gasoline engines are augmented by electric motors, rather than cars powered solely by batteries. The Honda Prologue, a sport-utility vehicle made in Mexico, is the company’s only fully electric vehicle on sale in the United States.But the investment adjacent to the company’s factory in Alliston, Ontario, near Toronto, is a shift in direction,…

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted to restore regulations that expand government oversight of broadband providers and aim to protect consumer access to the internet, a move that will reignite a long-running battle over the open internet.Known as net neutrality, the regulations were first put in place nearly a decade ago under the Obama administration and are aimed at preventing internet service providers like Verizon or Comcast from blocking or degrading the delivery of services from competitors like Netflix and YouTube. The rules were repealed under former President Donald J. Trump, and have proven a contentious partisan issue over…

The bird flu outbreak in American dairy cattle may have begun in January, or even as early as December, a new analysis of genetic data suggests.The Department of Agriculture announced in late March that dairy cattle in Texas and Kansas had tested positive for the virus, called H5N1. It has since reported cases in dozens of herds in eight states.On Tuesday, federal health officials said they had discovered fragments of H5N1 in milk samples obtained at various sites across the nation. The fragments pose no threat to consumers, the officials said.It is unclear exactly how the cows became infected, but…

Anthony Roth Costanzo, the celebrated American countertenor who is one of opera’s biggest stars, will lead Opera Philadelphia as its next general director and president, the company announced on Thursday.Costanzo, 41, whose tenure starts in June, will be a rare figure in the classical music industry: an artist in his prime who is also working as an administrator. He said he would continue to perform widely even as he works to reshape Opera Philadelphia, which has struggled to recover from the disruption of the pandemic.“I’m really interested in how I can have the most impact,” Costanzo said in an interview.…

The Biden administration has repeatedly urged Israel to hold off on a major military assault on Rafah, including in a virtual meeting last week. During that meeting, U.S. officials evaluated options for the attack presented by Israel, but were not convinced that those plans met President Biden’s insistence that any operation be calibrated to minimize civilian casualties, according to a White House statement.At a news conference in Washington on Tuesday, David Satterfield, the U.S. special envoy for humanitarian issues in Gaza, reiterated the Biden administration’s concerns about Israel’s plans to invade Rafah.“We could not support a Rafah ground operation without…

The Pentagon will withdraw dozens of Special Operations forces from Chad in the next few days, the second major blow in a week to American security and counterterrorism policy in a volatile swath of West and Central Africa, U.S. officials said on Thursday.The decision to pull out about 75 Army Special Forces personnel working in Ndjamena, Chad’s capital, comes days after the Biden administration said it would withdraw more than 1,000 U.S. military personnel from Niger in the coming months.The Pentagon is being forced to draw down troops in response to the African governments’ demands to renegotiate the rules and…

Alex Meruelo is as defiant as ever.Whether it was meeting with Arizona Coyotes staff last Thursday, doing an interview with a local radio station later that afternoon, or sitting next to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman at a hotel in Phoenix the next day, it’s been 2019 since Merullo, who is the owner of the Coyotes, reacted to being forced by the league to sell the team by insisting that he did not lose the team at all.Of course, the Arizona Coyotes are moving to Salt Lake City. Sure, players and hockey operations staff are already meeting with the new owners…

By any standard, Scooter, 22, is a world traveler. After spending his early years in Weston, Conn., he moved to Syracuse, N.Y., for college before settling in New York City. He has also traveled to Hawaii, Dubai, Ecuador, South Africa and Australia.Nearly two years ago, he ventured to the Maldives, Singapore and South Korea, accompanying a couple on their honeymoon. He even slept in their bed.Scooter is not a person. He is the beloved stuffed animal — a brown, 16-inch-long Beanie Babies dog — of my friend Jaclyn Roth, an entertainment journalist in New York.“It’s nice knowing something safe is…