Author: NY TIMES

Gwen McCrae, whose gospel-infused R&B hits of the early 1970s like “Lead Me On” and “Rockin’ Chair” featured bouncing, dance-floor-friendly grooves that helped open the door to disco, died on Feb. 21 in Miami. She was 81.Her former husband and frequent singing partner, George McCrae, said she died in a care facility from complications of a stroke she had in 2012.Though she had her share of nationwide hits, Ms. McCrae was best known on the music scene in the Miami area, where her upbeat R&B fit perfectly with the hot nights and subtropical vibe.She released most of her best-known songs…

Itay Svirsky, 40, was a therapist who loved philosophy. Eden Yerushalmi, 24, was training to become a Pilates instructor. Alex Lobanov, 32, a father of three, never met his youngest child.They are among the 41 hostages killed since being taken captive by Hamas and its allies during their Oct. 7 attack on Israel, according to an analysis by The New York Times of forensic reports and military investigations into their deaths, as well as interviews with more than a dozen Israeli soldiers and officials, a senior regional official and seven relatives of hostages.Some were killed by Hamas, some by Israeli…

There really was a woman who photocopied her butt at a workplace in the 1980s.Curtis Sittenfeld, 49, heard about the incident when she was a girl and filed it away. Four decades later, the Great Butt Xeroxing makes an appearance in her new short story collection, “Show Don’t Tell.”She mentioned it one day last week when she met up with her oldest childhood friend, Anne Morriss, in Cincinnati, where they had both grown up. Ms. Sittenfeld, who lives in Minneapolis with her husband and two daughters, was back in town while on tour for her latest book. Ms. Morriss, a…

Ki’lolo Westerlund knows she played the lead role in the NFL Flag 50 commercial football game, which will air during Super Bowl Lix. She knew she would show up with past and present NFL players like Myles Garrett, Justin Jefferson and Marshawn Lynch. She just didn’t sone it. It immediately aired millions of screens worldwide after the half-time, but the 17-year-old flagpole star actually played in New Orleans with her father.Westerlund is an outstanding receiver and defensive back at Las Vegas Free high school. She also helped the U.S. Women’s Junior National Team win gold medals in the 15U and…

For decades a core objective of the Soviet Union was to “decouple” the United States from Europe. Decoupling, as it was called, would break the Western alliance that kept Soviet tanks from rolling across the Prussian plains.Now, in weeks, President Trump has handed Moscow the gift that eluded it during the Cold War and since.Europe, jilted, is in shock. The United States, a nation whose core idea is liberty and whose core calling has been the defense of democracy against tyranny, has turned on its ally and instead embraced a brutal autocrat, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Gripped by…

Sitting beneath a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, more than two dozen of the most powerful figures in the U.S. cryptocurrency industry, together worth many billions of dollars, gathered in the White House on Friday for an audience with President Trump.When Mr. Trump entered the ornate State Dining Room after a short wait, the executives rose to applaud him.“Many of you have been fighting for years for this,” Mr. Trump said as the room quieted. “It’s an honor to be with you at the White House.”Mr. Trump was holding a first-of-its-kind “crypto summit,” meeting face to face with the leaders of…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is planning to conduct a large-scale study to re-examine whether there is a connection between vaccines and autism, federal officials said Friday.Dozens of scientific studies have failed to find evidence of a link. But the C.D.C. now falls under the purview of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long expressed skepticism about the safety of vaccines and has vowed to revisit the data.“As President Trump said in his Joint Address to Congress, the rate of autism in American children has skyrocketed. C.D.C. will leave no stone unturned in…

Betty Bonney was already a veteran big-band vocalist at 17 when she joined Les Brown and His Orchestra in 1941 — in time to sing the praises of the New York Yankees star Joe DiMaggio as he was racking up his major-league-record 56-game hitting streak.While performing that summer at a club in Armonk, N.Y., in Westchester County, the band “got caught up in the streak,” Mr. Brown told Newsday in 1990, and “would announce it from the bandstand every night if Joe had gotten another hit, or if he was coming to bat late in the game still without a…

President Trump said he had sent a letter to the Iranian government seeking to negotiate a deal to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.He said the letter was sent Wednesday and addressed to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader. The White House did not immediately respond to a request to provide the letter or further describe its contents.“There are two ways Iran can be handled: militarily, or you make a deal,” Mr. Trump told Maria Bartiromo in an interview aired Friday on Fox Business. “I would prefer to make a deal, because I’m not looking to hurt Iran. They’re…

Wow, that’s one way to hip check someone, I thought, when the first look of the Alaïa show appeared.The designer Pieter Mulier had dropped the waistbands of his skirts below the belly button and then added a sort of inflatable doughnut inside, so the result resembled a cross between a futuristic pannier and a hula skirt, swaying back and forth with each step. It was both mesmerizing and startling. And, it transpired, a sign of what was to come.This is turning into the season of the power curve: giant, rounded shoulders; enormous, overblown ruffles; hips that stick out far beyond…