Author: NY TIMES

The ambitious law, which supporters hope to see replicated nationwide, has been characterized by opposing sides in stark terms. To backers, it is a step toward fair compensation for low-wage workers who faced significant risk during the pandemic. To opponents, it is a cataclysmic move that will raise food prices, lead to job losses and force some franchisees to consider closing.“People don’t understand that when wages rise, so do the prices,” Mr. Bynum said.Mr. Bynum has, in recent years, raised prices to try to maintain profit margins — and each time, he said, he has noticed a drop in customers.…

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Ashlee Wiseman, a waitress at a Sizzler in Idaho Falls, Idaho, was 10 weeks pregnant when a nurse phoned with crushing news: a test of fetal DNA in her blood had found that her baby girl had trisomy 18, a catastrophic genetic abnormality, and was unlikely to survive.Devastated, she called her partner, Clint Risenmay, who was at work. He broke down in tears.Ashlee’s response was different.“A still small voice took over me,” she said. “I’m like, ‘I’m not going to listen to them. There has to be something that can help her. And there has to be someone who can…

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Death be not tragic in “Lousy Carter,” a repellently watchable curiosity from the Austin cult filmmaker Bob Byington. Carter (David Krumholtz) is a self-involved literature professor with little interest in his students, his family, and his past and present lovers. So when he’s given six months to live, no one cares. Turn the concept of a laugh-out-loud comedy inside-out and you’ll have a feel for Byington’s sense of humor: a sustained cruel hum, the room tone of a crypt.There are no hugs here, no lessons to glean before dying, not even anything as impassioned as despair. Carter fills his final…

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Two men accused in the terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall spent time in Istanbul just weeks before the assault, a senior Turkish security official said on Tuesday, adding that the shortness of the men’s visits suggested that they had not been radicalized in Turkey.The information came on the same day that the Turkish Interior minister, Ali Yerlikaya, wrote on the platform X that the Turkish security services had caught 147 people alleged to have connections to the Islamic State since last June.Mr. Yerlikaya did not say how many of those suspects had been apprehended since the concert hall…

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It began as ideas, good and bad, often do: in a bar.My soccer club — a group of mostly middle-aged dads in suburban New Jersey — was enjoying its weekly post-match pint when we began talking about how fun it would be to play against a similar team in Mexico City, where several of our players grew up. The idea gradually gained momentum until, suddenly, one day last December, we were buying airplane tickets.But let me back up: A few years ago, I moved to Madison, N.J., after decades in New York City. I knew no one there outside of…

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Kushner and Kloss take over Life magazineLife, the iconic photography-focused chronicler of the 20th century, has taken on many forms, including a weekly magazine, a website and the occasional special issue.Now, it is set to resume regular print publication, thanks to a deal between Barry Diller’s IAC and Josh Kushner, the venture capitalist whose Thrive Capital is one of the biggest investors in OpenAI, and his wife, the entrepreneur and model Karlie Kloss.Kushner and Kloss are buying the publication rights to Life from Dotdash Meredith, the print and digital publisher. The deal is being done through Bedford Media, the media…

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In February last year, a new Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 Max plane was on one of its first flights when an automated stabilizing system appeared to malfunction, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing soon after they took off.Less than two months later, an Alaska Airlines 737 Max plane with eight hours of total flight time was briefly grounded until mechanics resolved a problem with a fire detection system. And in November, an engine on a just-delivered United Airlines 737 Max failed at 37,000 feet.These incidents, which the airlines disclosed to the Federal Aviation Administration, were not widely reported.…

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A White House spokeswoman said on Wednesday that the Israeli government had agreed to try to reschedule a visit by a group of officials whose trip to Washington to discuss a possible assault on a key southern city in Gaza was scrapped over the U.S. decision not to veto a U.N. resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire.President Biden had asked Israel to send a delegation to Washington to discuss alternatives to a ground offensive in Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than a million people have sought refuge. But Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called off the delegation’s trip…

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The Israeli military has confirmed that Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza and a presumed mastermind of the Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel, was killed in an Israeli airstrike this month.A senior U.S. official, Jake Sullivan, had previously told reporters that Mr. Issa, one of the highest-ranking officials in Hamas, had been killed. But before a statement Tuesday, Israel’s military had said only that its warplanes had targeted Mr. Issa and another senior Hamas official in an underground compound in central Gaza.With his death, Mr. Issa, who had been among Israel’s most wanted men,…

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