Author: NY TIMES

Last month, Kyle Buchanan was seated at a table at the Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica, Calif., when, midway through the ceremony, a chant erupted outside.Mr. Buchanan could hear the chant — “Free Palestine” — humming in the background of acceptance speeches. He exited the tent to find two protesters behind a barricade, playing the recorded chant over a bullhorn, and began filming them with his phone. Security guards soon yelled at him for filming and threatened to oust him from the premises.Such is a day in the life of Mr. Buchanan, a pop culture reporter for The New…

Iranians have delivered a stinging rebuke to Iran’s ruling conservatives, an analysis of parliamentary election results shows, with millions of Iranians having boycotted the vote and a far-right faction making striking gains.Many well-known conservative lawmakers, including the current speaker of Parliament, Gen. Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, a former Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, saw their vote counts drop steeply in the voting last week, and in many instances were defeated in their bids for re-election.In numerous cities, including the capital of Tehran, so many blank ballots were cast that some politicians joked that several seats in Parliament should be left empty to…

As the teacher started to count down, the students uncrossed their arms and bowed their heads, completing the exercise in a flash.“Three. Two. One,” the teacher said. Pens across the room went down and all eyes shot back to the teacher. Under a policy called “Slant” (Sit up, Lean forward, Ask and answer questions, Nod your head and Track the speaker) the students, aged 11 and 12, were barred from looking away.When a digital bell beeped (traditional clocks are “not precise enough,” the principal said) the students walked quickly and silently to the cafeteria in a single line. There they…

Last week, U.S. soccer was dealt with two high-profile incidents of extreme weather disrupting professional matches. In both cases, play continued despite conditions not allowing anything close to normal play.The latest two occurred on Wednesday, when persistent heavy rain flooded the pitch at Caife Santiago’s Snapdragon Stadium. The U.S. Women’s National Team’s Gold Cup semifinal matchup against Canada. Due to the conditions, the ball could not travel more than a few feet on the ground in much of the field, which played a direct role in the U.S.’s first goal. JAEDYN SHAW Ride the Storm MMMM 🔥🤩 pic.twitter.com/0gq2tkR2sa – Attacking…

Monique Forster, 25, an author of the recently published primer, “Learn the 1-2-3s of High Fashion,” likes to claim that the book and its companion volume, “Learn the ABCs of High Fashion,” are aimed at toddlers, preschoolers and overreaching parents who may cherish a hope that their little ones will learn numbers by counting Hermès bags or start chanting “C is for Chanel” before they have learned to spell cat.The idea, Ms. Forster said, “is to immerse your child a world where learning meets luxury.”Are she and her co-author, Tilan Rajapakse, who together run the company Lil Spoiled Social Club,…

China unleashed the full might of its solar energy industry last year. It installed more solar panels than the United States has in its history. It cut the wholesale price of panels it sells by nearly half. And its exports of fully assembled solar panels climbed 38 percent while its exports of key components almost doubled.Get ready for an even bigger display of China’s solar energy dominance.While the United States and Europe are trying to revive renewable energy production and help companies fend off bankruptcy, China is racing far ahead.At the annual session of China’s legislature this week, Premier Li…

The Food and Drug Administration is telling consumers to throw out certain brands of cinnamon that were found to have elevated levels of lead, and it urged companies to recall the products from store shelves.The agency conducted tests across the country after at least 460 children were sickened last year by illnesses linked to applesauce pouches. Those products had been contaminated with very high levels of lead from cinnamon processed in Ecuador.The F.D.A.’s latest tests, however, detected far lower levels, 2 to 3 parts per million, in the cinnamon. In contrast, the cinnamon from Ecuador that sickened children last year…

The band has longtime fans waiting for them: “I love the Black Crowes, and have since hearing ‘Hard to Handle’,” said Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, who booked the band to headline his annual Grammy-night charity event this year. “Chris and Rich share our band’s love of English blues, R&B and flat-out, kick-ass rock ’n’ roll. They’re the real deal.”AFTER THE CHATEAU MARMONT lunch, the band headed to an evening event in Burbank to promote “Happiness Bastards” with a mini concert for a few hundred contest winners and invited guests that would be broadcast live on iHeartRadio.Rich quietly noodled on his guitar…

Israeli soldiers “fired precisely” at Gazans who approached them during a chaotic scene near an aid convoy in northern Gaza last week that led to the deaths of dozens of Palestinians, but they did not fire on the convoy itself, the Israeli military said on Friday after an initial internal review.The account differs sharply from those of witnesses and Palestinian officials who described extensive shooting after thousands of desperate Gazans massed around an Israeli-organized aid convoy. The deaths prompted global outrage and underscored the widespread hunger and hopelessness in northern Gaza, where five months of war and little aid have…

That dovetailed with an account given by an aid group, ActionAid, which said that a doctor at Al-Awda maternity hospital in northern Gaza had told the group that malnourished mothers were giving birth to stillborn children.Yazan’s parents had struggled for months to care for their son, whose condition, experts say, would have meant he had trouble swallowing and needed a soft, high-nutrition diet. After the Israeli bombardment on Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas-led assault on Israel, his parents fled their home, taking Yazan and their three other sons to somewhere they hoped would be safer.Then they fled again, and…