Author: NY TIMES

The independence cost him. The initial response to “Heavy Metal” from important people in his life and from his label did not bode well. “I’d never faced that much pushback and I didn’t know how to handle it,” he recalled. “I was really scared.” Friends and confidants told Mr. Winter the album would flop. “I’d sunk so much time into this, I just felt like an idiot,” he said.It was suggested that he release the songs as an EP, or shelve everything but the poppiest song on the album: the exquisite and sunny “Love Takes Miles.” In the end, he…

It was not long ago that President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was marshaling European allies to resist the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He illustrated the point that a top American diplomat, R. Nicholas Burns, recently summarized as the way the United States wins the global competition for power and prosperity: “Be nice to your allies.”President Trump clearly has a different view. His antagonism toward Europe has been public for decades, seeing allies as economic competitors and geopolitical parasites. And his decision on Thursday to impose controversially calculated tariffs on America’s partners, including Ukraine — but not on Russia or North…

Volkswagen, the German automaker, has told its car dealers that it plans to add an import fee later this month to the price of imported cars sold in the United States.The company’s move is one of the first and clearest examples of automakers using price increases to deal with the 25 percent tariffs President Trump imposed on car and auto parts imports. The tariffs on vehicles went into effect on Thursday and the levies on parts will become effective on May 3.In an April 1 memo to dealers, Volkswagen said that the exact fees would be determined by the middle…

Jerome Dewald sat with his legs crossed and his hands folded in his lap in front of an appellate panel of New York State judges, ready to argue for a reversal of a lower court’s decision in his dispute with a former employer.The court had allowed Mr. Dewald, who is not a lawyer and was representing himself, to accompany his argument with a prerecorded video presentation.As the video began to play, it showed a man seemingly younger than Mr. Dewald’s 74 years wearing a blue collared shirt and a beige sweater and standing in front of what appeared to be…

The Trump administration on Friday rejected a Biden plan that would have required Medicare and Medicaid to cover obesity drugs and expanded access for millions of people.Under the law that established Medicare’s Part D drug benefits, the program was forbidden from paying for drugs for “weight loss.” But the Biden administration’s proposal last November had attempted to sidestep that ban by arguing that the drugs would be allowed to treat the disease of obesity and its related conditions.Expanding coverage of the drugs would have cost the federal government billions of dollars. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the federal expense would…

Of course there will be bagpipes on Saturday, the eve of Tartan Day, when Carnegie Hall will host a lineup of stars. Among the luminaries of Scottish traditional music will be Julie Fowlis, who was featured in the soundtrack to Disney’s “Brave”; and Dougie MacLean, the singer-songwriter whose “Caledonia” has became an anthem for Scottish sports fans.The event, “Scotland’s Hoolie in New York,” will also be the Carnegie Hall debut of an aging celebrity who flew into New York on Tuesday, accompanied by a personal bodyguard, before taking up residence at a high-security location on the Upper East Side. This…

The Israeli military pressed deeper into northern Gaza by ground on Friday after issuing a series of evacuation orders calling on Palestinians to flee, part of its escalating offensive against Hamas in the war-battered Gaza Strip.The expansion of ground operations came after the Palestinian health authorities said on Thursday that dozens of people, including children, were killed in Israeli strikes on a school turned shelter in the Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City. On Friday, the Israeli military said the strikes were targeting well-known militants in a Hamas command and control center, without naming them.The evacuation orders have brought renewed hardship…

In the wake of President Trump unleashing a new series of tariffs that sent markets into a steep decline, a group of stars shoved into the Winter Garden Theater in Midtown Manhattan to see a play that lionizes the press, takes aim at right-wing politicians, and features actors talking about how they wake up in the morning unable to recognize the world around them.Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC were on the right side of the theater, a few rows behind Gayle King of CBS. Uma Thurman and Kylie Minogue hovered nearby.Even Jennifer Lopez was in the house, though…

A pungent smell of rotting garbage fills the air. Bulging sacks of trash pile high, some spilling their festering contents. And, with vermin plaguing parts of the city, at least one resident has claimed to have been bitten by a rat.With its heritage as a manufacturing powerhouse and its proud civic history, Birmingham likes to call itself Britain’s second city.Right now, it’s the nation’s garbage capital.A standoff between striking refuse workers and city officials has left an estimated 17,000 tons of trash piled on city streets that is attracting rats, foxes, cockroaches and maggots. On Monday, Birmingham’s municipality declared it…

John Thornton, a financier who leveraged his wealth and influence to embark on the seemingly quixotic mission of reviving local journalism in a time of crisis, by founding The Texas Tribune, a seminal regional nonprofit news organization, and the American Journalism Project, which supports local digital newsrooms around the country, died on Saturday in Austin, Texas. He was 59.His death, by suicide, followed a long mental health struggle, a spokesman for the American Journalism Project said.Mr. Thornton helped change the financial model for sustainable local journalism when, in 2009, he founded The Texas Tribune, a member-supported, digital-only, nonpartisan media organization.…