Author: NY TIMES

Kate Middleton has long been a magnet for unproven rumors: She pressured an art gallery to remove a royal portrait! She split from her husband! She changed her hairstyle to distract from pregnancy rumors! She did not give birth to her daughter!This year, speculation kicked into overdrive. Ms. Middleton — now Catherine, Princess of Wales — has lain low since Christmas. Kensington Palace said she was recovering from “a planned abdominal surgery” and unlikely to resume royal duties until after Easter. Conspiracy theorists had other, more sinister ideas. The only explanation for the future queen’s long absence, they said, was…

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.As a reporter covering psychedelic medicine for the Health and Science desk at The New York Times, the drugs that often command my attention are familiar to any veteran psychonaut: ketamine; LSD; psilocybin, or “magic mushrooms”; and MDMA, also known as Molly or Ecstasy.Many of these psychoactive substances have been the subjects of research for years, if not decades. And a growing tranche of scientific evidence suggests these drugs have the potential to treat some mental health issues, among them depression,…

Cola Boyy, the California singer-songwriter who collaborated with MGMT and the Avalanches and advocated for people with disabilities, has died. He was 34.Cola Boyy, who was born Matthew Urango, died Sunday at his home in Oxnard, his mother, Lisa Urango, said. No cause was given.A self-described “disabled disco innovator,” Mr. Urango assembled diverse instruments to create a brimming mixture of funky rhythm and colorful sounds that accompanied his alluring voice, a striking balance of silk and chirp.Mr. Urango was born spina bifida, kyphosis and scoliosis and had used a prosthetic leg since he was 2.As Cola Boyy, he released a…

Once one of Asia’s most high-flying cities, Hong Kong is now grappling with a deep pessimism.The stock market is in the tank, home values have tumbled and emigration is fueling a brain drain. Some of the hottest restaurants, spas and shopping malls that local residents are flocking to are across the border, in the mainland Chinese city of Shenzhen.“It pains me to say Hong Kong is over,” Stephen Roach, an economist and a former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia long known for his optimism about the city, wrote in a recent commentary in The Financial Times.The government needs to revive…

The grief of miscarriage is largely invisible. And with each loss, the longing multiplies. Source link

Two major American newspaper chains, Gannett and McClatchy, plan to drastically curtail their business relationships with The Associated Press, which supplies news reports and images to outlets around the world.Gannett, the largest newspaper company in the United States and the publisher of USA Today, said on Tuesday that, starting Monday, it would no longer use articles, photos and videos from The A.P. in its hundreds of publications.“Between USA Today and our incredible network of more than 200 newsrooms, we create more journalism every day than The A.P.,” Kristin Roberts, the chief content officer of Gannett, wrote in a company memo.Ms.…

Over the past decade, some of Apple’s biggest regulatory headaches have come from a little-known federal agency called the U.S. International Trade Commission. The agency’s patent judges have found Apple guilty of appropriating innovations in smartphones, semiconductors and smartwatches. And recently, they forced Apple to remove a health feature from Apple Watches.Now the tech giant is pushing back. While it defends itself from patent complaints before the I.T.C., Apple has begun lobbying lawmakers to help rewrite the agency’s rules.The company has been campaigning across Washington for legislation that would make some patent owners ineligible to bring complaints before the I.T.C.…

Ariana Grande’s long-awaited new album, “Eternal Sunshine,” opens at the top of the latest Billboard chart with the biggest debut of the year so far, kicking off a season of expected blockbusters from Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa.“Eternal Sunshine,” Grande’s seventh studio album and her first in almost four years, starts at No. 1 with the equivalent of 227,000 sales in the United States, including 195 million streams and 77,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate. After a first single, “Yes, And?,” went to No. 1 in January, the full album arrived with…

The head of Israel’s delegation has returned home from cease-fire talks in Qatar, an Israeli official said on Tuesday, but talks there are continuing amid another intensive diplomatic push to secure a pause in the fighting in Gaza as famine looms.Warnings from the United Nations that a “famine is imminent” have added urgency to efforts to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, and get more humanitarian aid into Gaza. In addition to the discussions in Qatar, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will visit Saudi Arabia and Egypt this week to discuss postwar plans for Gaza and the wider…

Three millenniums ago, a small, prosperous farming community briefly flourished in the freshwater marshes of eastern England. The inhabitants lived in a clutch of thatched roundhouses built on wooden stilts above a channel of the River Nene, which empties into the North Sea. They wore clothes of fine flax linen, with pleats and tasseled hems; bartered for glass and amber beads imported from places as far-flung as present-day Iran; drank from delicate clay poppyhead cups; dined on leg of boar and honey-glazed venison, and fed table scraps to their dogs.Within a year of its construction, this prehistoric idyll met a…