Author: NY TIMES

Several gunmen opened fire at a popular concert venue on the Moscow outskirts on Friday, Russia’s state news agencies reported. Russia’s top security agency said that 40 people had been killed and more than 100 wounded as a result of the attack, state news agencies reported.More than a third of the building, which hosts one of the largest and most popular concert halls in Moscow, was on fire on Friday night, according to Tass, as emergency services tried to rescue people from its roof. Three helicopters were dispatched to the scene, the agency reported. An explosion was reported at 9:32…

Aclaremos algunas cosas.Heidi Agan no es Catalina, princesa de Gales. Nunca ha conocido a Catalina, antes conocida como Kate Middleton. Nunca ha sido contactada por el palacio de Kensington, ni está trabajando en secreto con la familia real como parte de un encubrimiento ideado para ocultar a la princesa de la vista del público.Sin embargo, Agan es una esbelta mujer británica de cabello castaño de 43 años cuyo rostro guarda cierto parecido con el de Catalina.Agan ha convertido en un trabajo el parecerse a una de las mujeres más famosas del mundo, actuando en fiestas y eventos como doble de…

The software was called “Tax Bandits.” The scheme, which was run out of a prison in California, attempted to fraudulently claim more than half a billion dollars in tax refunds.The method was a familiar one: erroneous claims of the Employee Retention Tax Credit.The I.R.S. said on Friday that it was intensifying its efforts to root out such cases of fraud as it tries to safeguard taxpayer money, but it acknowledged that without an intervention by Congress, the agency would continue to be flooded with potentially improper claims.One of the most brazen cases of alleged fraud in the program emerged in…

Joni Mitchell’s music has quietly returned to Spotify, more than two years after she followed Neil Young in protest of what she called “lies” about Covid-19 vaccines being spread on the streaming platform.There was no official announcement of Mitchell’s decision, but on Thursday fans on social media began to note with excitement the reappearance of some of her albums on Spotify. By Friday morning, most if not all of Mitchell’s original albums had returned, including classics like “Blue” (1971), “Court and Spark” (1974) and “Mingus” (1979).Representatives of the singer-songwriter, her record labels and Spotify either did not answer or had…

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube3. The Pretenders: “Message of Love”From 1981, “Pretenders II” — which I gladly added to my haul — is the final Pretenders album featuring the band’s original lineup; the guitarist James Honeyman-Scott and the bassist Pete Farndon would both die of drug-related causes within the next two years. Given those tragedies on the horizon, “Pretenders II” is a lasting document of the original group’s particular chemistry and spirit, which comes through on this wry single that finds the whole band moving together with the lurching rhythm of an old train.▶ Listen on Spotify,…

The iron rock’s journey from the depths of space ended with a thud in a dense pine forest, about an hour north of Stockholm, around 10 on a November night four years ago.Unusually, its trajectory was caught on several cameras in the region used to track meteoroids. That led to a weekslong hunt and an even longer court battle over an unusual question: Who owns an unearthly object that falls to Earth?The legal case took another turn on Thursday, when an appeals court ruled in favor of the landowner, overturning a decision that had sided with the two men who…

This month, Airbnb announced that, starting April 30, the company would ban the use of surveillance cameras in its rentals. The news was welcomed by those concerned about privacy.“Cameras are both creepy and a threat,” said Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, which has campaigned for a ban on cameras in Airbnbs since 2022. “People are terrified about having their intimate moments photographed without their consent and having owners able to monitor their activities within a rental.”For many travelers, Airbnb’s new policy has prompted some fundamental questions: What were the cameras doing there in…

Former President Donald J. Trump’s social media company on Friday completed a long-awaited merger with a cash-rich shell company, raising Mr. Trump’s wealth by billions and potentially providing him a fresh source of cash to pay his mounting legal bills.In approving the merger, shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corporation will become shareholders of Trump Media & Technology Group, which will trade on the stock market under the stock symbol DJT. The deal will pump more than $300 million into Trump Media, which has all but exhausted its available cash and will allow Truth Social, the company’s flagship digital media platform,…

Rat droppings from New York City. Poop from dog parks in Wisconsin. Human waste from a Missouri hospital. These are some of the materials that are readying us for the next chapter of the coronavirus saga.More than four years into the pandemic, the virus has loosened its hold on most people’s bodies and minds. But a new variant better able to dodge our immune defenses may yet appear, derailing a hard-won return to normalcy.Scientists around the country are watching for the first signs.“We’re not in the acute phases of a pandemic anymore, and I think it’s understandable and probably a…

Halfway through a recent Zoom interview with Radu Jude, the acclaimed Romanian director of “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World,” he offered a glimpse into his creative process. He pulled out one of the books he’s reading, an illustrated tome about commedia dell’arte. Then he shared his screen to reveal a collection of texts and images — Van Gogh still lifes, Giacometti sculptures, Japanese haikus — saved in folders on his computer. Jude stopped scrolling at a picture he took of a sign posted on an apartment building entrance.“It says ‘Please have oral sex so…