Author: NY TIMES

And then, of course, there is Swift’s fascinating pushback against her more judgmental fans. She’s defiant on the much-discussed “But Daddy I Love Him” — “I’ll tell you something about my good name, it’s mine alone to disgrace,” she tells all the “wine moms” and “Sarahs and Hannahs” who clutch their pearls when Swift is seen with someone they don’t approve of — but I’ve also been thinking about its sister song on the second LP, the forlorn “How Did It End?” On that one, Swift woefully braces herself for all the chatter that will accompany the public announcement of…

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah on Tuesday claimed that it had made its deepest attack into Israel since October, striking with aerial drones north of the city of Acre and setting off sirens across the country’s northern coastline.The militant group, Iran’s most powerful regional proxy, has been engaged in escalating cross-border strikes with Israeli forces since the war in Gaza began more than six months ago. In the latest strike, it said had launched a drone attack on an Israeli military barracks roughly 10 miles from the Lebanese border. The extent of any damage was not immediately clear.The Israeli military…

It looked like a corgi convention.On Sunday afternoon in Oakham, a quaint English market town, hundreds of local residents stood behind a temporary barrier and craned their necks to see the 50 or so dogs waddling past in the local library’s gardens.The yapping mutts were just a sideshow, however, to the main event, which was announced from a dais by Sarah Furness, a local dignitary: the unveiling of Britain’s first memorial statue to Queen Elizabeth II.The seven-foot bronze work, by the London-based sculptor Hywel Pratley, shows the queen in flowing robes, with three corgis at her feet. “What most of…

The handbag designer Nancy Gonzalez built a cult following among celebrities and the South American superrich thanks to her use of brilliantly dyed precious skins. Once one of the largest purveyors of crocodile skin accessories in the world, her namesake brand sold totes and clutches in lime green alligator and lavender python skin for thousands of dollars, often through big-name retailers like Saks and Bergdorf Goodman.Now Ms. Gonzalez, 71, is facing considerable time in bright orange coveralls.On Monday, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty in a Miami federal court to charges of smuggling hundreds of…

The Supreme Court is set to hear Starbucks’s challenge on Tuesday to a federal judge’s order to reinstate workers who were attempting to unionize a store in Memphis.Starbucks is asking the court to make it harder for the National Labor Relations Board to obtain intervention by judges in cases where a company is accused of violating labor law. The case stems from the February 2022 firing of seven workers who let local journalists into a closed store to conduct interviews about their unionization efforts.Starbucks, which has faced hundreds of accusations of labor law violations across the country, argues that there…

General Motors on Tuesday reported a big jump in profits for the first three months of the year, based on the strength of its gasoline vehicle business, and raised its outlook for the rest of the year.The company saw slow growth in electric vehicles, but robust sales of internal combustion vehicles, especially pickup trucks, helped raise its profit to $3 billion in the first quarter, a 24 percent jump from the same period a year ago. G.M. also said that it now expects to make $10.1 billion to $11.5 billion in profit this year, up from a previous forecast of…

Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin star in a buzzy Broadway revival that rips the skin off the 1966 musical. Source link

After a prolonged battle in the courts and in Parliament, Britain’s Conservative government secured passage of legislation on Monday that is intended to allow the country to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.The legislation is intended to override a Supreme Court ruling last year that deemed the plan to send asylum seekers to the African nation unlawful. The judges ruled that Rwanda was not a safe country in which refugees could resettle or have their asylum cases heard.The Rwanda plan, which has become a flagship policy of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at a time when his party’s approval ratings have floundered,…

Every few years, it rides into town on a glossy white horse with the whole mixed-up mythology of frontier America crammed into its saddle bags: cowboy-core. We saw it most recently in late March, when Beyoncé turned country music on its head with the release of “Cowboy Carter.” That country-inflected album, still holding firm at No. 1 on the Billboard charts, not only lit up the BeyHive but simultaneously loosed a torrent of tropes and memes and posts and pictorials about cowboy style.What is it? What does it stand for? Who owns it? How do you arrive at any single…

Campus unrest spreadsTop American colleges are in turmoil, with dozens of pro-Palestinian student protesters having been arrested at N.Y.U. and Yale amid new worries about antisemitism on campus.University administrators have been struggling to restore calm, and have taken heavy criticism from students and lawmakers alike. The growing question is whether wealthy donors to these schools — who helped topple the leaders of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard last year — will speak out as well.The latest: Police were called in to break up pro-Palestinian protests at N.Y.U. and Yale on Monday, days after more than 100 people were arrested…