Author: NY TIMES

The subsequent move to North Carolina represented the ultimate no. The night before the family left, Shook had their first beer, cigarette and kiss. A year later, at 21, they gave birth to Jonah. The acrimonious marriage soon ended, leaving Shook broke and broken.But it also led, in 2008, to a romance with an upright bassist who played Johnny Cash; it was the first time Shook, then 23, had knowingly heard country. They learned “Long Black Veil” and sensed a kinship. “I had been writing songs that felt like that already,” Shook remembered, “but I didn’t know what that meant.”New…

Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has repeatedly spoken of the need to topple Hamas but has done little to address the power vacuum that would leave — especially after Israeli forces withdraw.That is already apparent in Gaza City, where a deadly battle at the territory’s largest hospital complex stretched into a third day on Wednesday, after the Israeli military said the re-emergence of Hamas fighters had forced it to return to a site it first stormed in November.The military said on Wednesday that it had killed dozens of militants…

As Beyoncé gears up for the release of her next solo album, “Cowboy Carter,” she teased fans on Tuesday with the new record’s cover, which, like her previous album, shows her sitting on a horse. But unlike on that record, “Renaissance,” this time she’s in full rodeo gear, riding a white stallion, kicking off a new era of her three-act project.It has been nearly two years since she dropped “Renaissance,” which birthed a world tour and inspired an array of sequined and chrome-heavy looks among fans internationally. If Act I, as she called that album, paid homage to disco and…

Angela Chao, the chief executive of a shipping company and part of a prominent family in American politics, was legally intoxicated when she drove into a pond in Texas and died last month, according to a police report released on Wednesday, which called the episode an “unfortunate accident.”The report, released by the Blanco County Sheriff’s Office, describes a harrowing scene on the night of Feb. 10 as friends and deputies tried frantically to pull Ms. Chao from her Tesla, after she drove it into the pond at a family ranch in Johnson City, Texas.Earlier that night, Ms. Chao, 50, had…

Reddit on Wednesday priced its shares at $34 for its initial public offering, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The pricing was at the high end of expectations, in a sign of investor demand for growing tech companies.The San Francisco-based social media company had estimated that its shares would be priced at $31 to $34. The $34 price put Reddit’s value at $6.4 billion, below the $10 billion valuation it fetched in a private fund-raising round in 2021. The company raised $748 million in the offering, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.Its shares will…

A young woman visited New York Eye & Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai Hospital shortly after the eclipse of Aug. 21, 2017. She told Dr. Avnish Deobhakta, an ophthalmologist, that she had a black area in her vision, and then drew a crescent shape for him on a piece of paper.When Dr. Deobhakta examined her eyes, he was astonished. He saw a burn on her retina that was exactly the same shape. It was “almost like a branding,” he said.She had looked at the sun during the eclipse without any protection. The burn was an image of the sun’s outer…

From the first seconds of Vampire Weekend’s new album, “Only God Was Above Us,” it’s clear that something has changed. “Ice Cream Piano” starts with hiss, buzz, feedback and a hovering, distorted guitar note — the opposite of the clean pop tones that have been the band’s hallmark. It’s the beginning of an album full of startling changes and wild sonic upheavals, all packed into 10 songs.The new album, like all of Vampire Weekend’s work, is meticulous, self-conscious and awash in musical and verbal allusions — sometimes direct, sometimes cryptic. But it’s also a broad pendulum swing from its 2019…

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken arrived in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, the first stop of a Mideast trip amid efforts to broker a deal between Israel and Hamas for a pause in Israel’s offensive in Gaza, the release of Israeli hostages and a flow of more humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory.The visit to the city of Jeddah comes as the Biden administration hopes it can convince Saudi Arabia to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, a long-term objective that the United States considers important to stabilizing the broader Middle East.The State Department said that Mr. Blinken would be in…

The Blue Lagoon resort in the south of Iceland is a scenic network of steaming azure pools surrounded by dark rocks, where tourists dip in the geothermal water, have spa treatments and enjoy what the resort advertises as “a universe of radiant well-being.”But last week, a stream of radiant lava burst from a crater a few miles from the resort, forcing it to evacuate hundreds of guests, in yet another eruption of a volcano system in the Reykjanes Peninsula that had been dormant for 800 years.The outbursts began in 2021, and the eruptions and earthquakes in the peninsula have destroyed…

Superiority Burger, the popular East Village restaurant, has dropped its managing partner, Ashwin Deshmukh, following a New York Times story about a network of people who have accused Mr. Deshmukh of stealing from them over the years.In a letter to investors on Tuesday, Brooks Headley, the chef at Superiority Burger, and Sheryl Heefner, the general manager, said they had parted ways with Mr. Deshmukh and announced that they would conduct an internal review of the business’s records.Superiority Burger has been sued three times this year: twice by an investor, June Kwan, who asserted that she had not been paid back…