Author: NY TIMES

In recent months, Google has raced to settle a backlog of lawsuits ahead of major antitrust showdowns with the Justice Department later this year.On Tuesday, the company resolved its fourth case in four months, agreeing to delete billions of data records it compiled about millions of Chrome browser users, according to a legal filing. The suit, Chasom Brown, et al. v. Google, said the company had misled users by tracking their online activity in Chrome’s “Incognito” mode, which they believed would be private.Since December, Google has spent well over $1 billion to settle lawsuits as it prepares to fight the…

You don’t need opera glasses to see that Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” takes on more than just country music.Nearly two minutes into “Daughter,” a track of ballad-like storytelling, she inserts a famous operatic song from the 18th century: “Caro Mio Ben.” And, in Beyoncé fashion, she makes it her own.Singers of all vocal types have performed “Caro Mio Ben”; most of them have been from the opera world, including it on recital programs. But as the song has been adapted for high and low ranges, its sound has stayed more or less the same.It was written in the early 1780s by…

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.Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman…

Blocking solar rays. Sucking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Ideas that sound like science fiction are now starting to become reality, raising concerns about safety. Source link

NEW YORK — LeBron James isn’t sure when he will retire — but he knows it will come soon.James tied a career high with 40 points and nine 3-pointers as the Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Brooklyn Nets 116-104 on Sunday at Barclays Center. James was asked how long he plans to continue playing in the NBA.”It won’t be long,” James said. “Not for a long time. Obviously, I’m on the other side of the mountain. I won’t play another 21 years, that’s for sure. But not for a long time. I don’t know when that door will close and…

“I can easily tell when the tiles were made by their thickness,” Mr. Rego said, illustrating his point by lifting up some azulejos to show how they became thinner over time, from around 2.5 centimeters (just under an inch) in the 16th century, 1.2 centimeters in the 17th, 1 centimeter in the 18th and even thinner today.No commission, restoration or custom order is too small, Mr. Rego said. “We will reproduce four tiles or 4,000” at a cost of about 20 euros, or $22, per tile, he said.The company also restores azulejos, Mr. Rego said, like those in the U.S.…

Betty Cole Dukert, who began her career in Washington as a secretary in the 1950s and later became the top producer of the weekly NBC News public affairs program “Meet the Press,” died on March 16 at her home in Bethesda, Md. She was 96.Her late husband’s niece Barbara Dukert Smith said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.In her 41 years at “Meet the Press,” a Sunday-morning fixture on the NBC schedule, Mrs. Dukert booked politicians, diplomats, foreign dignitaries, cultural figures and heart surgeons to be interviewed by a moderator and a panel of journalists; sought out the most…

At 87, the dapper insider is releasing a new book of interviews conducted in 1980 and 1981 with the band and people nearest to it. Source link

At least three senior commanders and four officers overseeing Iran’s covert operations in the Middle East were killed on Monday when Israeli warplanes struck a building in Damascus that is part of the Iranian Embassy complex, according to Iranian and Syrian officials.The strike in Damascus, the Syrian capital, appeared to be among the deadliest attacks in a yearslong shadow war between Israel and Iran that has included the assassinations of Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists. That covert war has moved into the open as tensions between the countries have intensified over Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip against…

Speaker Mike Johnson has begun publicly laying out potential conditions for extending a fresh round of American military assistance to Ukraine, the strongest indication yet that he plans to push through the House a package that many Republicans view as toxic and have tried to block.His terms may include tying the aid for Kyiv to a measure that would force President Biden to reverse a moratorium on new permits for liquefied natural gas export facilities, something that Republicans would see as a political victory against the Democratic president’s climate agenda. The move would also hand Mr. Johnson a powerful parochial…