Author: NY TIMES

Apple said Thursday that it would relax limits on repairing newer iPhones with used parts like screens, batteries and cameras, a reversal from its previous practice of using software to encourage people to work with new and more expensive Apple-approved parts.The change comes weeks after Oregon passed a law outlawing Apple’s practice of tying parts to software, which is known as “parts pairing.” Similar bills are being considered in Colorado and more than a dozen other states. Apple had objected to the Oregon legislation before its passage, saying customers could be made vulnerable to security risks if Apple was required…

For decades, Dr. J. Steve Bynon Jr., a transplant surgeon in Texas, gained accolades and national prominence for his work, including by helping to enforce professional standards in the country’s sprawling organ transplant system.But officials are now investigating allegations that Dr. Bynon was secretly manipulating a government database to make some of his own patients ineligible to receive new livers, potentially depriving them of lifesaving care.Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center in Houston, where Dr. Bynon oversaw both the liver and kidney transplant programs, abruptly shut down those programs in the past week while looking into the allegations.On Thursday, the medical center,…

When Universal Music Group, the world’s biggest music company, went to war with TikTok earlier this year over licensing terms, songs by hundreds of its artists were removed from the platform, and have remained absent.But on Thursday, music by one very special Universal artist returned: Taylor Swift.A number of songs by Swift — whose new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” comes out next week — have reappeared in TikTok’s official music library, where they are available for the service’s millions of users to place in the background of their own videos. Those videos have become one of the music industry’s…

Since 2004, when the system was set up, there have been two famines, according to that definition. In 2011, the I.P.C. declared famine in parts of Somalia, which had endured decades of conflict. Years of drought wrecked the agricultural sector and the economy, forcing many people to leave their homes in search of food. At the same time, an Islamist insurgent group blocked starving people from fleeing and forced out Western aid organizations. In all, around 250,000 people died.Six years later, a famine was declared in parts of South Sudan. The country had suffered years of drought, but the U.N.…

After months of political wrangling, Ukraine’s Parliament passed a new law on Thursday that aims to replenish the nation’s exhausted and depleted fighting forces, which are struggling to hold back relentless Russian assaults that are expected to intensify into the summer.The mobilization law is a carefully crafted attempt to expand the size of Ukraine’s military while avoiding a public backlash. It offers a mix of financial incentives for those taking up arms, including a special bonus for soldiers at the front and death benefits for the families of those who fall in battle. It also imposes new penalties on Ukrainian…

The latest erosion of the NCAA’s founding principle of amateurism comes from an unlikely place: Monaco.Track and field gold medalists will become the first athletes to receive international bonuses at the Olympics, the international athletics governing body said on Wednesday. Each gold medalist will receive a $50,000 bonus for their individual win. Monaco-based World Athletics has also pledged to award bonuses to silver and bronze medalists from the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said in a statement: “It is important that we start somewhere by ensuring that some of the revenue generated by our athletes at…

Designers brought a bit of theater to New York Bridal Fashion Week, which was held April 2-4 and showcased their spring and summer 2025 collections.Justin Alexander kicked things off with an interactive collaboration with the street artist Gioele Corradengo, known as Sexsdreams. Attendees at his show spray-painted a wedding dress, creating their own work of art. And Cinq unveiled its new collection with a candlelit dinner-style presentation that was part Shakespearean drama, part Hitchcock film.One of the week’s highlights was a marriage proposal by the model Erica Honing’s boyfriend during Galia Lahav’s presentation.There were bridal brand debuts from the designers…

Federal prosecutors released a detailed complaint on Thursday that claimed Ippei Mizuhara, the former interpreter for Shohei Ohtani, orchestrated a sprawling scheme over years to steal $16 million of the baseball star’s money to feed his gambling addiction. The money that Mizuhara took from Ohtani came directly from an account where Ohtani’s baseball salary was paid, the authorities said. There is no indication that Mizuhara bet on baseball, they said.“There’s no indication Mr. Ohtani authorized the $16 million from his account to the bookmakers,” said E. Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California.The authorities charged Mizuhara…

Jackson Hinkle has cultivated an online persona so incendiary that he has been kicked off YouTube, Twitch and Instagram.He rages on undaunted, even energized. He produces a regular podcast on Rumble, a website popular with many prominent conservatives. He writes dozens of posts a day on X, where his following has surged to 2.5 million from 417,000 in the six months since Oct. 7 — the day Hamas fighters mounted their assault on Israel.Along the way, he has employed false or misleading content, promoted manipulated images and made comments that watchdog organizations have denounced as antisemitic. He calls himself an…

The outbreak of dengue fever that has unfolded in Latin America over the past three months is staggering in its scale — a million cases in Brazil in a matter of weeks, a huge spike in Argentina, a state of emergency declared in Peru, and now another, in Puerto Rico.It forewarns of a changing landscape for the disease. The mosquitoes that spread dengue thrive in densely populated cities with weak infrastructure, and in warmer and wetter environments — the type of habitat that is expanding quickly with climate change.More than 3.5 million cases of dengue have been confirmed by governments…