Author: NY TIMES

Like many American teenagers, Noah Faulkner, 16, is obsessed with music. He’ll spend hours going down rabbit holes, listening to every note played by his favorite artists and studying new discoveries. He recently came out of a monthslong deep dive on Clarence Ashley, a banjo player who recorded during the Great Depression and “makes me feel like I’m an old man,” Faulkner said. Ashley’s music “feels very spooky, and I imagine it’s like an abandoned place somewhere.”Unlike most teenagers, Faulkner is translating these influences into a dedicated music career. Using the handle Pedal Steel Noah, he posts daily covers of…

As the war between Israel and Hamas approaches the six-month mark, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is confronting rising pressure on multiple fronts, at home and abroad.He has encountered resistance from protesters, relatives of hostages held by militants in Gaza, the international community, and elements of his own governing coalition, as criticism mounts over his prosecution of the war against Hamas.“He’s facing a pile-on,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a political scientist based in Tel Aviv. “But he’s responding with maximum possible defiance and minimum possible decision-making.”Although many Israelis have refrained from protesting against the government during the war, thousands of Israelis on…

Israeli soldiers withdrew from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City after two weeks of fighting in which they killed around 200 Palestinians and arrested hundreds of others, the Israeli military said on Monday. The troops left widespread devastation in their wake after extended gun battles with Palestinian militants in and around the complex.Taysir al-Tanna, a longtime vascular surgeon at Al-Shifa, said many of the hospital’s main buildings — including the emergency, obstetrics and surgical wards — had been badly damaged in the fighting, and the main gate had been smashed.“Now it looks like a wasteland,” Dr. al-Tanna said.A satellite image of…

BROOKSVILLE, Fla. – Not every great golf course lasts forever. Even fewer do it well.World of the Woods was a booming bet when it opened in 1993, in the midst of one of America’s biggest golf booms, when the convergence of real estate development and suburban flying created an environment where a new golf course was opening every day Open throughout the United States. nation.World Woods, owned by a deep-pocketed Japanese businessman and one of the greatest golf course designers of our time, designed two courses just an hour outside of growing Tampa. World Woods is adjacent to Bandon Dunes.…

For many, an umbrella may seem a pedestrian, often disposable object.Not so for the umbrella maker Carlo Suino, 60, who believes an umbrella should not only last a lifetime but should also reflect the personality of its owner.“It’s a bit like a business card,” Mr. Suino said on a recent cloudless morning in his curiosity-filled shop on Turin’s narrow Via Sesia.“I have an umbrella that says I’m an exuberant person, or I’m a person who loves elegance, that I’m a very classic person, or that I’m crazy,” said Mr. Suino, whose offerings are meticulously handcrafted according to his clients’ build,…

Sports Illustrated’s owner on Monday sued Manoj Bhargava, the energy drinks mogul whose foray into media has been rife with chaos and conflict, accusing him of failing to pay millions of dollars for the rights to publish the iconic magazine.The 51-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, says that Mr. Bhargava and Arena Group, the publisher he controls, owe $48.75 million in missed payments, as well as damages for infringing on Sports Illustrated’s copyrights and trademarks.The lawsuit represents the latest public skirmish between Authentic Brands Group, which owns Sports Illustrated, and Mr. Bhargava,…

First, OpenAI offered a tool that allowed people to create digital images simply by describing what they wanted to see. Then, it built similar technology that generated full-motion video like something from a Hollywood movie.Now, it has unveiled technology that can recreate someone’s voice.The high-profile A.I. start-up said on Friday that a small group of businesses was testing a new OpenAI system, Voice Engine, that can recreate a person’s voice from a 15-second recording. If you upload a recording of yourself and a paragraph of text, it can read the text using a synthetic voice that sounds like yours.The text…

At least one person in Texas has been diagnosed with bird flu following contact with dairy cows presumed to be infected, state officials said on Monday.The announcement adds a worrying dimension to an outbreak that has affected millions of birds and sea mammals worldwide and, most recently, cows in the United States.So far, there are no signs that the virus has evolved in ways that would help it spread more easily among people, federal officials have said.The patient’s primary symptom was conjunctivitis; the individual is being treated with an antiviral drug and is recovering, according to the Centers for Disease…

Future and Metro Boomin, two of the biggest stars of Atlanta hip-hop, have scored the best opening of the year so far with their joint album “We Don’t Trust You,” though Beyoncé is on deck for next week’s chart with potentially even bigger numbers.“We Don’t Trust You” opens at No. 1 with the equivalent of 251,000 sales in the United States, a better opening than Ariana Grande’s “Eternal Sunshine” had two weeks ago (with 227,000). According to the tracking service Luminate, the vast majority of fans’ consumption of “We Don’t Trust You” was through streaming platforms, with 324 million clicks…

Hundreds of small silver tents were clustered on the pavement outside Israel’s Parliament in Jerusalem on Monday, stretching at least a city block. Many had Israeli flags taped to their roofs, along with stickers bearing slogans. “There is no greater mitzvah than the reception of captives,” reads one. Another is more to the point, saying simply: “ELECTIONS.”The tents are temporary homes for some of the thousands of Israelis who began a four-day protest on Sunday night calling for early elections to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Many of them believe he has put his political survival ahead of the broader…