Author: NY TIMES

To celebrate his wife’s birthday in 2022, Brian Azara, a mechanical engineer in New York City, booked a table for two at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Brooklyn. But when their son was suddenly hospitalized with severe asthma, Mr. Azara had to cancel the reservation. A few minutes later, he checked his credit card account and saw a $200 fee.“It was probably 23½ hours before we were supposed to be there,” Mr. Azara said, yet the restaurant refused to reverse the charge, citing its 24-hour cancellation deadline. While he sympathizes with the financial challenges restaurants are facing, he said the charge…

Fittingly for an Academy Awards celebrating 2023, the year of “Barbenheimer,” the movies that made up that phenomenon commanded our attention on Sunday night, too. None of it was a surprise, exactly — we knew Ryan Gosling was going to perform the song “I’m Just Ken,” from “Barbie.” And “Oppenheimer” had been the ceremony’s front-runner since awards season started last fall. Still, we weren’t prepared for just how much the ceremony, which for the most part ran smoothly, would get a boost from those twin blockbusters. Here are the highs and lows as we saw them.Most Charming Performance: Ryan Gosling,…

A day after President Biden asserted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was “hurting Israel more than helping Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu dismissed that contention as “wrong,” escalating the leaders’ increasingly public dispute.Mr. Netanyahu, in an interview with Politico, challenged Mr. Biden’s assessment of Israel’s military strategy in the Gaza Strip, and said that his policies represented what the “overwhelming majority” of Israelis wanted.“I don’t know exactly what the president meant, but if he meant by that that I’m pursuing private policies against the majority, the wish of the majority of Israelis, and that this is hurting the interests of…

“This is made of success — not everyone can have it,” the actress and comedian Tiffany Haddish said Sunday night, as she held the train on her dress and danced her way through the crowd inside the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills.At around 11 p.m., hundreds of people were smiling and nodding and bobbing and weaving their way across a red carpet that snaked its way from Santa Monica Boulevard through the main room of a customized event space where Vanity Fair’s annual post-Oscars party was taking place.Barry Keoghan, the star of “Saltburn,” stood near…

Trump’s TikTok U-turn TikTok users have continued to flood the social media platform — and lawmakers’ inboxes — with pleas to halt a bill that would force its Chinese owners to divest or face a ban in the U.S.That effort to keep TikTok online has now attracted some unlikely backers, including Donald Trump.A recap: Last week, a powerful House committee voted 50-0 to remove TikTok from U.S. app stores by Sept. 30 unless its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, sold its stake. A large contingent of Republicans and moderate Democrats see the app as a national security risk.President Biden said on…

When the singer and songwriter Adrianne Lenker was 21, she was involved in a bike accident that knocked out one of her incisors. For a while, she walked around with a fake, gold-colored cap in her mouth. But after she was able to invest in a porcelain tooth, Lenker realized she actually didn’t want to forget about the injury.“After all that time with just a gap, it kind of felt strange to not see the scar,” she said in a recent interview.Today, Lenker’s grin twinkles with a permanent gold replacement. And over the past several years, she has earned a…

Ramadan, the holiest month of the Muslim calendar, starts on Monday in some countries but on Tuesday in others. How is that possible?The exact timings depend on when local Islamic authorities around the world declare the sighting of the new moon, the astronomical event that marks the start of the observance.Here’s why there’s so much variation from place to place.The basicsIslamic countries, and Muslims around the world, use the traditional Hijri calendar to mark religious events. Each month of that calendar begins with the sighting of the early crescent moon, and the holy month of Ramadan begins at the start…

Catherine, the Princess of Wales, apologized on Monday for doctoring a photo of her with her three children, which was recalled by several news agencies on Sunday after they determined the image had been manipulated.The decision to recall the photo reignited a storm of speculation about Catherine, who has not been seen in public since she had abdominal surgery nearly two months ago. In her statement, the 42-year-old princess chalked up the alteration to a photographer’s innocent desire to retouch the image.“Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing,” Catherine wrote in a post on social media. “I…

At the 96th Academy Awards on Sunday, the red carpet showed not only its true color but also its reputation as a vehicle for elegant, over-the-top and even political fashion.Though there were bright moments — Cynthia Erivo’s dress was a “Wicked” shade of green, Taylor Zakhar Perez wore powder blue Prada — many of the gowns and tuxedos that graced the carpet were black. Some stars’ ensembles harked back to attire they wore at prior Oscars ceremonies. Marlee Matlin said that her shimmering lilac Rodarte gown nodded to the dress she wore when she won the best actress award in…

President Biden on Monday will propose a budget packed with tax increases on corporations and high earners, new spending on social programs, and a wide range of efforts to combat high consumer costs like housing and college tuition.The new spending and tax increases included in the fiscal 2025 budget stand almost no chance of becoming law this year, given that Republicans control the House and roundly oppose Mr. Biden’s fiscal agenda. Last week, House Republicans passed a budget proposal outlining their priorities, which are far afield from what Democrats have called for.Instead, the document will serve as a draft of…