Author: NY TIMES

FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, is close to an agreement with Apple that would give the tech company worldwide television rights for a major new tournament, a monthlong, World Cup-style competition for top teams that will be played for the first time in the United States next summer.The agreement could be announced as soon as this month, according to three people familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to discuss the deal publicly because it has yet to be officially confirmed. It comes after several false starts for a competition championed by FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino. Plans to hold…

In the dizzying race to build generative A.I. systems, the tech industry’s mantra has been bigger is better, no matter the price tag.Now tech companies are starting to embrace smaller A.I. technologies that are not as powerful but cost a lot less. And for many customers, that may be a good trade-off.On Tuesday, Microsoft introduced three smaller A.I. models that are part of a technology family the company has named Phi-3. The company said even the smallest of the three performed almost as well as GPT-3.5, the much larger system that underpinned OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot when it stunned the world…

Future and Metro Boomin, two of the big kahunas of Atlanta hip-hop, have released a pair of joint albums in the last month — wisely getting them to market ahead of Taylor Swift’s new “The Tortured Poets Department,” which has the music industry braced for gigantic sales figures.“We Don’t Trust You,” the first LP by the rapper Future and the producer Metro Boomin, went to No. 1 three weeks ago with solid streaming numbers. “We Still Don’t Trust You,” its sequel, opens at No. 1 this week with the equivalent of 127,500 sales in the United States, largely from its…

Three German citizens who are believed to have gathered sensitive naval data and obtained a high-powered laser on behalf of the Chinese security services were arrested on Monday, prosecutors said, underscoring the fragile nature of the relationship between the two countries.A man identified as Thomas R., in keeping with German privacy rules, acted as an “agent” for the Chinese Ministry of State Security, and engaged two others — a married couple identified as Herwig and Ina F. — who ran an engineering company in Düsseldorf, the authorities said.The arrests come at an awkward time for the German government: Chancellor Olaf…

NEW ORLEANS — Fresh off redemptively destroying the heavily favored Golden State Warriors in a win-or-go-home game — stomping as bluntly as it did to them in the same building a year ago. Opponent’s Season – The Sacramento Kings skipped last week’s game and entered New Orleans with growing confidence.There are organizations that believe they can and should Defeated the Pelicans, who were without the injured Zion Williamson. And, if that initial mission is accomplished, they have enough talent to at least threaten the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round of the NBA playoffs. They built a winning streak…

Last week at the Venice Biennale, the milliner Giuliana Longo wore gold earrings in the shape of hats as she showed off a hat sculpture made of natural agave. Ms. Longo, who has worked as a milliner since 1969, said through a translator that she fell in love with hats because “if you wear a hat, you become a different person.”Dotted with 500 “pebbles,” each hand stitched to the fabric, the hat was in fact not just a hat but a tribute to a shoe: the Tod’s Gommino driving shoe, a hand-stitched loafer in leather or suede with rubber pebbles…

Inside a canteen for seniors in downtown Shanghai, a worker brandishing a sponge inched closer to Maggie Xu, 29, as she was finishing her rice and garlic-and-oil-soaked broccoli. Ms. Xu ignored her.“If you come at 12 o’clock, the aunties will give you less food,” Ms. Xu said, speaking softly. After 1:30 p.m., they give away soup. They also start to hover — like the auntie with the sponge — hurrying laggards out the door.Ms. Xu is familiar with the rhythms of the Tongxinhui Community Canteen because she eats there every day to save money. She has a good job as…

Caroline Mullet, a ninth grader at Issaquah High School near Seattle, went to her first homecoming dance last fall, a James Bond-themed bash with blackjack tables attended by hundreds of girls dressed up in party frocks.A few weeks later, she and other female students learned that a male classmate was circulating fake nude images of girls who had attended the dance, sexually explicit pictures that he had fabricated using an artificial intelligence app designed to automatically “strip” clothed photos of real girls and women.Ms. Mullet, 15, alerted her father, Mark, a Democratic Washington State senator. Although she was not among…

Four new studio albums. Four rerecorded albums, too. A $1 billion oxygen-sucking world tour with a concert movie to match. And, of course, one very high-profile relationship that spilled over into the Super Bowl.For some, the constant deluge that has peaked in the past year is starting to add up to a new (and previously unthinkable) feeling: Taylor Swift fatigue.And it is a feeling that has only solidified online in the days following the release of “The Tortured Poets Department,” which morphed from a 16-song album into a 31-song, two-hour epic just hours after its release.Many critics (including The New…

“Everyone is risking their lives for the sake of a little bag of flour,” he recalled. In those moments, he said, he felt as if he was doomed either to be crushed under the trucks’ wheels or killed by Israeli forces.At one point over the winter, Mr. Barda said he succeeded in grabbing two bags of flour from a convoy. Then someone threatened him, saying that unless he gave one up, the stranger would take both by force.In February, Mr. Barda was lunging for a bag of flour from a U.N. truck when he collided with another man who was…