Author: NY TIMES

The Senate on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to move toward a final vote on the long-stalled $95.3 billion package of aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, taking a crucial step toward approving the measure and sending it to President Biden for his signature.The critical test vote reflected the wide bipartisan support for the measure, which passed the House on Saturday by lopsided margins after a tortured journey on Capitol Hill, where it was nearly derailed by right-wing resistance. The Senate’s action, on a vote of 80 to 19, teed up a vote on final passage as early as Tuesday evening, which…

These claims have driven her fans, her hairstylist and even her mother, Tina Knowles, to attest publicly that Beyoncé is wearing weaves by choice, not out of necessity. In a since-deleted video shared on Instagram in 2019, Ms. Knowles combs through her daughter’s dark brown, waist-length hair in an effort to shut down rumors. The video was reposted by Mr. Farinah, who captioned the video: “WHAT WEAVE WHAT WIG. YES YES ALL NATURAL.”And in 2017, Ms. Knowles posted a photo on Instagram showing her daughter’s real blond hair in a low ponytail.“INCHES!!!! So happy my baby’s hair grew back!! She…

Howie Schwab, a sports nerd who parlayed his love of statistics into a long stint at ESPN that was most notable for his starring role as the ultimate trivia expert on the game show “Stump the Schwab,” died on Saturday in Aventura, Fla. He was 63.His death was announced on social media by his wife, Suzie Davie-Schwab. His mother, Dona (Bressner) Schwab, said he was in a hospital being treated for an infection when he died, apparently of a heart attack.Mr. Schwab had been at ESPN for 17 years in behind-the-scenes roles as a researcher and producer when he was…

When you walk into a financial adviser’s office, you expect them to put your best interests above all else — in the same way a doctor would, rather than, say, a car salesman. But many people don’t realize that the rules financial professionals must follow vary, depending on where they work and what products they’re selling.One of those federal regulations, which governs retirement plans, was just tightened: The Biden administration announced new rules on Tuesday that will require more financial professionals to adhere to the highest standards when providing financial advice about your retirement money.Starting Sept. 23, investment professionals who…

THERE IS PLENTY that Hanna did not want to recount in the book. She was not eager to relitigate the Courtney Love incident, but “if Santa came up and hit you with a baseball bat, you’d have to put it in your autobiography,” she said. She titled her memoir “Rebel Girl” with reluctance; it feels so close to “riot grrrl,” and she remains conflicted about being overemphasized in that vast and leaderless movement.Also, she had never before spoken publicly about being a mother. “I didn’t want to get asked work-life balance questions at every single interview,” she said. Motherhood, like…

The United Nations’ human rights office on Tuesday called for an independent investigation into two mass graves found after Israeli forces withdrew from hospitals in Gaza, including one discovered days ago over which Israeli and Palestinian authorities offered differing accounts.Palestinian Civil Defense said over the weekend that it had found a mass grave containing 283 bodies on the grounds of Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, two weeks after a similar mass grave was found at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for Palestinian Civil Defense — an emergency services organization run by the Palestinian…

Administrators at some of the most influential American universities — including New York University, Yale and Columbia — were struggling, and largely failing, on Monday to calm campuses torn by the war in Gaza.During the turmoil on Monday, which coincided with the start of Passover, protesters called on their universities to become less financially tied to Israel and its arms suppliers. Many Jewish students agonized anew over some protests and chants that veered into antisemitism, and feared again for their safety.Some faculty members denounced clampdowns on peaceful protests and warned that academia’s mission to promote open debate felt imperiled. Alumni…

In the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of “El Niño,” which reimagines the story of Jesus’ birth and early childhood, there are singing and dancing Virgin Marys, Marys of the land and sea; there’s an Indigenous Mary, a Tropical Mary, a Golden Mary.For the costume designer Montana Levi Blanco, differentiating this flock of Virgins was just one challenge in bringing to life this new vision of the composer John Adams and the director Peter Sellars’s eclectic Y2K-era oratorio, which draws just as liberally from Latin American poetry and mystic hymns as it does from the New Testament. In the director Lileana…

Tesla is expected to report on Tuesday that it made less money in the first three months of the year because of its tepid car sales, reinforcing concern among investors that the company led by Elon Musk is losing ground in the market for electric vehicles.A slump in earnings was seen as inevitable after Tesla said this month that sales in the first quarter fell 8.5 percent from a year earlier, and after the company announced plans to lay off more than 10 percent of its employees worldwide, or about 14,000 people. The job cuts were interpreted as a sign…

Automakers have been selling data about the driving behavior of millions of people to the insurance industry. In the case of General Motors, affected drivers weren’t informed, and the tracking led insurance companies to charge some of them more for premiums. I’m the reporter who broke the story. I recently discovered that I’m among the drivers who was spied on.My husband and I bought a G.M.-manufactured 2023 Chevrolet Bolt in December. This month, my husband received his “consumer disclosure files” from LexisNexis Risk Solutions and Verisk, two data brokers that work with the insurance industry and that G.M. had been…