Author: NY TIMES

In India, a country of 1.4 billion, it took TikTok just a few years to build an audience of 200 million users. India was its biggest market. Then, on June 29, 2020, the Indian government banned TikTok, along with 58 other Chinese apps, after a simmering conflict between India and China flared into violence at their border.A popular form of entertainment, which had not been the subject of political debate, vanished overnight. Now, as politicians are wrangling in Washington over a plan that could shut access for the 170 million Americans using TikTok, the example set by India gives a…

Amid debate in Washington over whether TikTok should be banned if its Chinese owner doesn’t sell it, one group is watching with particular interest: the many brands — particularly in the beauty, skin care, fashion, and health and wellness industries — that have used the video app to boost their sales.Youthforia, a makeup brand with more than 185,000 followers on TikTok, is thinking about moving more marketing to other platforms, like YouTube and Instagram. Underlinings, which makes the popular brand Nailboo, planned to use TikTok to launch a product with a major retailer in August and is now wondering if…

When Beyoncé confirmed that she would be going all-in on country music with “Cowboy Carter,” the second part of a project that began with her 2022 album “Renaissance,” conversation about pop artists turning to the genre — and how Black artists are received in Nashville — began to heat up.Country remains a cloistered segment of the music industry where Black performers continue to face an especially challenging path — despite the fact that Black pioneers have been essential to the genre, including Lesley Riddle, known as Esley, a guitarist and folklorist who taught the Carter Family in the 1930s and…

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, traveling in the Middle East on Thursday, pressed for a halt to fighting in the Gaza Strip as the United States prepared to introduce a resolution at the United Nations on Friday calling for “an immediate and sustained cease-fire.”The Security Council resolution drafted by the United States contains the strongest language that Washington has supported so far, and was an apparent shift for Israel’s closest ally. In February, the United States vetoed a Council resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire.The new resolution also condemns the Hamas-led attacks on Israel of Oct. 7 that set…

For those striking at the gates of the SRW scrap metal plant, just outside Germany’s eastern city of Leipzig, time can be counted not just in days — 136 so far — but in the thousands of card games played, the liters of coffee imbibed and the armfuls of firewood burned.Or it can be measured by the length of Jonny Bohne’s beard. He vows not to shave until he returns to the job he has held for two decades. Wearing his red union baseball cap and tending the blaze inside an oil drum, Mr. Bohne, 56, looks like a scruffy…

“So you want me to comment on how important a person’s butt is in an evaluation?” Mike Mayock asked with a laugh. “You’re really doing this, aren’t you?”For years, the humble human behind has been a key metric used by football scouts to evaluate players. Former Las Vegas Raiders general manager Mayock has been reluctantly named leader of the caboose cult since his many hip mentions as an NFL Network draft analyst in the 2010s, making him the subject of stories about the seats. Important sources.”I’ve called it a dynamo on TV for years, and actually, it’s kind of cute…

After Tiffany Quynhnhu Langlinais and Michael Steven Graves had their first date in central New Orleans, Mr. Graves drove off to Chicago in a green 2008 Kia Sedona minivan to officiate a friend’s wedding. And so, to Ms. Langlinais’s friends, he was known as “minivan Mike.”Ms. Langlinais, 33, wasn’t used to dating a man who drove a minivan, but she said she appreciated seeing him in an “unfiltered way” throughout the date. She found him forthright and intentional, plus she was “a fan” of his beard.The two met in June 2021 on Magazine Street, a six mile-long, major thoroughfare in…

Streaming services have transformed the way we view film and television, leaving us isolated on our couches, subject to the suggestions of an algorithm. But a small group of film buffs with a fondness for physical media are hoping to lure people back into the real world — one abandoned newspaper box at a time.The Free Blockbuster project began in 2019, when Brian Morrison, a film and television producer in Los Angeles, and a former Blockbuster employee, painted the company’s blue-and-yellow logo onto an old box and filled it with DVDs. For many, the brand evokes memories of the trip…

Surgeons in Boston have transplanted a kidney from a genetically engineered pig into an ailing 62-year-old man, the first procedure of its kind. If successful, the breakthrough offers hope to hundreds of thousands of Americans whose kidneys have failed.So far, the signs are promising.Kidneys remove waste products and excess fluid from the blood. The new kidney began producing urine shortly after the surgery last weekend and the patient’s condition continues to improve, according to physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital, known as Mass General. He is already walking the halls of the hospital and may be discharged soon.The patient is a…

Amnon Weinstein, an Israeli luthier who restored violins belonging to Jews during the Holocaust so that musicians around the world could play them in hopeful, melodic tributes to those silenced in Nazi death camps, died on March 4 in Tel Aviv. He was 84.His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by his son Avshalom Weinstein.Mr. Weinstein was the founder of Violins of Hope, an organization that provides the violins he restored to orchestras for concerts and educational programs commemorating the Holocaust. The instruments have been played in dozens of cities worldwide, including Berlin, at an event marking the liberation of…