Author: NY TIMES

Microsoft unbundles, again Microsoft is separating Teams, its popular video and chat app, from its Office software suite in markets around the world, broadening a split that began in the European Union last fall.It appears to be the latest effort by the software giant to head off investigations by global antitrust enforcers as regulators examine the power of Big Tech.Rivals have complained about the Teams-Office bundle for years. Microsoft first added the video and document collaboration program to its business software suite in 2017, and saw Teams’s popularity soar after the coronavirus pandemic unleashed a boom in hybrid and remote…

In recent years, podcasts and radio shows devoted to hip-hop culture have risen in prominence, particularly those which lean into interviews and commentary. Black-led shows have carved out a lucrative industry for their fun, informal insider tone and perspective unavailable on other mass-audience platforms.“You have this space that opens up where all of the journalism is just rampant fandom,” said A.D. Carson, an associate professor of hip-hop at the University of Virginia. “Fan service can exist where people who were formerly artists or who have that kind of access might still leverage that access to be able to have something…

Aid groups in Gaza said on Tuesday that they were more concerned than ever about the safety of their staff members there after seven World Central Kitchen workers were killed in an airstrike, saying that the deaths underscored the growing challenges of meeting Palestinians’ basic needs.Humanitarian workers have been killed throughout the war in Gaza. Since the war started, 176 workers for UNRWA, the United Nations body that provides aid to Palestinians, have been killed, including in the line of duty, said Juliette Touma, the agency’s director of communications. Several other aid groups say their staff members have been killed…

A young student fatally shot a 12-year-old and wounded two others at a school in Finland on Tuesday, the police said, a rare act of violence by a child in a country that changed its gun laws after earlier school shootings but where gun ownership remains widespread.The police said they had arrested a suspect, also 12 years old, who had a handgun, about an hour after arriving at the Viertola school, in the city of Vantaa, about 10 miles north of Helsinki.“The shooting incident in Vantaa is deeply distressing,” Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said on X.Finland tightened its gun laws…

When Cailey Heaps wants to get away from it all, one place comes to mind: the island of Newfoundland in Canada.Although she spends most of the year in Toronto, where she runs the real estate brokerage Heaps Estrin and raises her three children — 17-year-old Mimi and 13-year-old twins Declan and Pippa — the craggy, saltwater-sprayed eastern coast of Newfoundland has long held special appeal.“It’s this very romantic, peaceful part of the world where it feels like time moves at a different pace,” said Ms. Heaps, 47. “I can go there for three days and feel like I’ve taken a…

Michele Heisler, 61, is an avid swimmer, putting in 45 minutes three times a week in a local 25-yard-long pool. But swimming while traveling can be challenging. “Most hotel pools are too tiny or too crowded,” she said.Then, while planning a trip to Chicago, Ms. Heisler, from Ann Arbor, Mich., came across a photo of the hotel pool of her dreams. In the Intercontinental Hotel, the 25-yard-long pool, built in 1929, is one of the oldest in Chicago and is surrounded by Greek-inspired marble decoration. “You feel like you’re swimming in an ancient Greek temple. It’s a magical experience,” said…

They may look impromptu. But they are not. Pop-up performances in Times Square aren’t quite the spontaneous events the term suggests.Shakira’s performance on Tuesday evening lasted barely longer than a subway trip from the Port Authority bus terminal to Grand Central and went off without a hitch. But that was largely because of months of behind-the-scenes planning that included securing permits, meeting multiple times with city officials and the police, and carefully calibrating when, exactly, to announce the secretly planned show.Overseeing those preparations was Nick Holmsten, the co-founder and co-chief executive of TSX Entertainment, which operates a large concrete stage…

President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran said on Tuesday that Israel’s airstrikes on an Iranian embassy compound in Damascus, Syria, which killed three top Iranian commanders, will not go unanswered. Government supporters took to the streets and called for retaliation against Israel.The strike, on part of the Iranian Embassy complex in Damascus, killed three generals in Iran’s Quds Force and four other officers, making it one of the deadliest attacks of the yearslong shadow war between Israel and Iran.Mr. Raisi said it was an “inhumane assault in brazen violation of international law,” in comments reported by Tasnim, a semiofficial news agency.…

King Charles III attended the Easter church service on Sunday at Windsor Castle with Queen Camilla, later greeting well-wishers who had turned out to see his first significant public appearance since disclosing last month that he has cancer.Charles, 75, has continued to work while undergoing treatment, greeting visitors and holding his weekly meetings with the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak. But he has suspended public engagements on the advice of his doctors.Strolling out of the church after the service ended, Charles shook hands and chatted with the people who had gathered outside, telling one, “You’re very brave to stand out…

And now? Wrap dresses occupy a more curious category, like skinny jeans or ankle booties or long cardigans: once a closet staple, now a staple of closet clean-outs. Ms. Sanders may not be able to find them in New York department stores, but they’re readily available in Ohio thrift stores, said Kathleen Martin, who lives in Columbus and makes YouTube videos about thrifting.“Specifically, I’m seeing the kind you might connote with 2010s business casual,” she said — with slinky fabric and ditsy prints. Sometimes the stores miscategorize them, Ms. Martin added, as robes instead of dresses. In 2020, during the…