Author: NY TIMES

Which is not surprising. This series’ track record induces whiplash. The 2014 film “Godzilla,” a kind of reboot of the original Toho series featuring the character, was a legitimately excellent film, balancing spectacle and human pathos. But then came “Kong: Skull Island” and “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” both meant to build toward a shared universe, both of which were not just bad but real bummers. Next was “Godzilla vs. Kong” which wasn’t, technically speaking, good — but it promised confrontation and delivered it, with a late-breaking coda of unwilling and visually spectacular cooperation between massive ape and nuclear lizard.…

An influential United Nations human rights body delivered a scathing assessment Thursday on the protection of civil rights in Britain, accusing the Conservative government of backsliding and urging the country to abandon its controversial legislation to allow asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda.The criticisms from the U.N. Human Rights Committee came as it presented its conclusions from two days of meetings in Geneva this month with a delegation of 24 British officials to review the country’s compliance with an international treaty for the protection of civil and political rights.“We are witnessing a really regressive trend and trajectory” in Britain,…

A series of viral videos from several young female TikTok users, who posted emotional dispatches about getting punched on city streets, caused concern this week about the topic among fans online.Halley Kate Mcgookin, a social media influencer with more than a million followers, posted on Monday morning that she was sending an email on her phone while walking in Manhattan when a man with a dog came up to her and hit her in the face without warning.“You guys, I was literally just walking and a man came up and punched me in the face,” Ms. Mcgookin said in a…

Here’s the first thing to know about the new Robinhood credit card that promises 3 percent cash back on all purchases, without limits: Yesterday, when I asked Vlad Tenev, the company’s chief executive, to guarantee that it would stay at that level for 18 months, he would not.I hope it sticks. It’s incredibly generous as these things go. Cash-back offers from big card issuers like Citibank generally top out at about 2 percent, and it’s hard to make money even at that level. Charles Schwab gave up on its 2 percent card in 2010.The Robinhood Gold Card is the company’s…

Two years in prison for tax and securities violations. Eleven years for deceiving investors. A 150-year sentence for the largest Ponzi scheme in history.The country’s most notorious white-collar fraudsters — like Bernie Madoff and Elizabeth Holmes — have received a range of punishments for their crimes, from relatively short prison terms to effectively a life sentence.On Thursday, Sam Bankman-Fried, the onetime cryptocurrency mogul, joined their ranks, receiving a 25-year sentence for fraud, conspiracy and money laundering.Mr. Bankman-Fried was convicted of stealing $8 billion from customers of his international crypto exchange, FTX — charges that carry a maximum sentence of 110…

Peter Eotvos, a towering Hungarian composer and conductor who linked modernist traditions in 20th-century European music and whose multifaceted work was singularly evocative, died on Sunday at his home in Budapest. He was 80.His wife, the librettist Maria Eotvosne Mezei, announced his death.Mr. Eotvos (pronounced OAT-voesh) was a tireless advocate of contemporary music and composed in almost every conceivable genre. At the dawn of the 21st century, he found widespread acclaim as an opera composer. His final work in that genre, “Valuska,” premiered at the Hungarian State Opera in December 2023. Based on the novel “The Melancholy of Resistance,” by…

A Paris school principal’s decision to step down after he received online death threats over an incident involving a Muslim student’s head scarf has prompted national outrage this week in France.Camera crews have descended on the school and the government said it planned to sue the student, accusing her of making false accusations — the latest flashpoint in a debate over French secularism and the treatment of the country’s Muslim minority.Officials say the incident occurred on Feb. 28 at the Lycée Maurice-Ravel when the school’s principal asked three students to remove their head scarves on school grounds. Two of the…

Long before he was accused of sexual misconduct in a series of lawsuits, and long before federal agents in military gear raided his homes in Miami and Los Angeles, Sean Combs was unforgivable.That was the name he had selected for his first fragrance, which he sold through a partnership with Estée Lauder.It was promoted as a scent that “exudes the energy, sexiness and elegance of Sean Combs,” and he was supposed to give it a publicity boost in April 2006 by ringing the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange alongside William Lauder, the Estée Lauder chief executive, and…

On Tuesday, the largest credit card companies in the United States reached an agreement with merchants to reduce the so-called swipe fees retailers pay for accepting credit card payments, potentially saving the retailers $30 billion.These fees also help fund the credit card rewards programs that many travelers redeem for things like free flights and hotel stays, leading points hawks to wonder: Are loyalty programs at risk?Here’s what we know so far about the changes.What are the terms of the deal?Last year, credit card payments generated an estimated $72 billion in fees paid by merchants, which are generally passed along to…

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange who was convicted of stealing billions of dollars from customers, was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday, capping an extraordinary saga that upended the crypto industry and became a cautionary tale of greed and hubris.Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sentence was shorter than the 40 to 50 years that federal prosecutors had sought after a jury found him guilty of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering — charges that carried a maximum penalty of 110 years behind bars. But the punishment was far above the six and a half years requested by his…