Author: NY TIMES

Joann, the arts-and-crafts retailer that has operated for more than 80 years, has filed for bankruptcy as consumers pare back on D.I.Y. projects, leaving the company with mounting debt.The chain, which is based in Hudson, Ohio, said in a statement on Monday that it had struck a deal with its lenders for a $132 million cash injection to help reduce its debt by $505 million, a process that will result in the retailer, which is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, being taken into private ownership. Its filing listed liabilities of $1 billion to $10 billion, and assets of $500…

Elon Musk appeared to be in a defiant mood Wednesday when he stood before employees at Tesla’s factory near Berlin a week after an arsonist set fire to a high-voltage power pylon and brought production to a standstill.“They can’t stop us,” Mr. Musk, the company’s chief executive, told workers in a giant tent beside the plant.But there are proliferating signs that Tesla may not be as unstoppable as it once seemed. The company’s car sales are no longer growing at a torrid pace. Chinese automakers and established brands like BMW and Volkswagen are flooding the market with electric cars. And…

Camera traps, which automatically snap photos of wild animals when they detect motion and body heat, have become key research tools for wildlife biologists. The new study is based on data from 102 different camera trapping projects in 21 countries. (Most were based in North America or Europe, but South America, Africa and Asia were also included.) The data allowed the scientists to study the activity patterns of 163 different species of wild mammals — and to keep tabs on how often humans were showing up at the same locations.“One of the core strengths of this paper is that you…

For Shakira, 2022 was a year of heartbreak. Decades of hit singles and groundbreaking Latin-pop crossovers couldn’t insulate the Colombian pop star from personal upheavals. In the glare of celebrity coupledom, she broke up with the soccer player Gerard Piqué, her partner for 11 years and the father of her two sons, Milan and Sasha. Her father was hospitalized twice for a fall that caused head trauma; he went on to require further brain surgery in 2023.Shakira was also facing charges of tax evasion in a long-running case disputing whether she had lived primarily in Spain from 2012 to 2014;…

Israeli negotiators were traveling to Qatar on Monday to participate in a new round of in-person talks aimed at achieving a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and the release of hostages held by Palestinian militants, according to two senior Israeli officials and another official briefed on the negotiations.The Israeli delegation’s trip to Doha, Qatar, comes after Israel and Hamas failed to reach an agreement ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began last week.The delegation from Israel is led by the head of Mossad, the foreign intelligence agency, and includes the director of the Shin Bet, the internal…

The Israeli military said on Monday that it was conducting a “high-precision” operation at Al-Shifa Hospital, claiming that senior Hamas officials had regrouped at the medical facility, which is Gaza’s largest and has been a flashpoint of the war.In a video address posted to social media at about 3:30 a.m. local time on Monday, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military’s chief spokesman, said the military was in the process of conducting a raid in “limited areas” of the hospital complex, which is in northern Gaza. The Israeli military said that during the operation, Hamas fighters shot at its soldiers…

Even in the context of the current pantsless trend prevalent on the runway and in some celebrity circles, as well as the vogue for thematic dressing at movie openings, Kristen Stewart’s looks during her press tour for “Love Lies Bleeding” have stood out. Rarely has an actress been so unapologetically, gloriously undressed.Ms. Stewart and her stylist, Tara Swennen, have taken the film’s carnality and covert politics and translated them for the promotional panopticon, forcing anybody watching to confront their own preconceptions about women’s bodies, their sexuality and exactly what empowerment means, while at the same time undermining the whole circus…

A different kind of battle for Third PointA small computer chip design company, R2 Semiconductor, has been notching wins in a potentially big patent fight against Intel over the past few months — a dispute that could force Intel to stop selling several chip lines in Europe.Behind R2’s legal war is one of the biggest names in hedge funds, DealBook is first to report: Dan Loeb’s activist hedge fund Third Point, the company’s majority owner, is bankrolling the lawsuits, including two new ones against Amazon Web Services and Fujitsu that haven’t been previously reported.The context: R2 sued Intel, as well…

The Department of Homeland Security has seen the opportunities and risks of artificial intelligence firsthand. It found a trafficking victim years later using an A.I. tool that conjured an image of the child a decade older. But it has also been tricked into investigations by deep fake images created by A.I.Now, the department is becoming the first federal agency to embrace the technology with a plan to incorporate generative A.I. models across a wide range of divisions. In partnerships with OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta, it will launch pilot programs using chatbots and other tools to help combat drug and human…

The artist and musician Cody Critcheloe (who records as Ssion), has worked with Gossip for years, painting its portrait for the “Real Power” cover and directing videos for the album’s first two singles. In a phone interview, he said that Gossip’s members have been authentically themselves from the start. “Whatever they were bringing to a basement in the early 2000s,” with Ditto “in her bra and panties, that soul and spirit never changed when they were playing to, like, an arena in Italy,” he said.Gossip’s influence reverberated widely, even for fans who never experienced a show. Jessamyn Stanley, the yoga…