Author: NY TIMES

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…

Naomi Osaka shows she is recovering from a abdominal injury that forced her to leave the Australian Open in January, but becoming keen and tough will take more time.Osaka is a four-time Grand Slam champion and former world No. 1, losing to Colombia’s Camila Osorio in the first round of the Indian Wells, and the 53rd World Time (6-4, 6-4). On social media, she later described the failure as “the worst competition I’ve ever played in my life.”Osaka ranked 56th, and Osorio also died in the first eight games, but Osaka made a series of mistakes with a 4-4 record.…

Traffic ground to a halt at one of France’s busiest train stations on Friday after an unexploded World War II bomb was uncovered just north of Paris, the authorities said.The bomb was discovered overnight in the Saint-Denis suburb near tracks that lead into the Gare du Nord, a major Parisian transit hub that serves northern France and Europe.Traffic on high-speed and commuter railways was stopped for hours as the Paris police sent in mine-sweeping crews to clear out the bomb. Eurostar trains, which connect France to Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands, were also disrupted, stranding travelers at the station, which…

Starship — the huge spacecraft that Elon Musk says will one day take people to Mars — failed during its latest test flight on Thursday when its upper stage exploded in space, raining debris and disrupting air traffic at airports from Florida to Pennsylvania.It was the second consecutive test flight of the most powerful rocket ever built where the upper-stage spacecraft malfunctioned. It started spinning out of control after several engines went out and then lost contact with mission control.Photographs and videos posted on the social media site X by users saying they were along the Florida coast showed the…

President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to create a national stockpile of Bitcoin and other digital currencies, an adviser said, an audacious idea that has been widely criticized as a scheme to enrich crypto investors.The basis of the stockpile will be a stash of Bitcoin, estimated to be worth as much as $17 billion, that the United States has seized in legal cases over the years, according to a summary of the order posted on social media by David Sacks, the White House’s crypto and A.I. policy czar.The order also calls for federal agencies to develop “budget-neutral strategies”…

The Ebola outbreak in Uganda has worsened significantly, and the country’s ability to contain the spread has been severely weakened by the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign assistance, American officials said this week.The officials, representing a variety of health and security agencies, made the assessment during a meeting with U.S. Embassy staff in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, on Wednesday. An audio recording of the session was obtained by The New York Times.There have been two more deaths, the mother and newborn sibling of a 4-year-old who died last week, an American official said. The mother and sibling died earlier than…

Roy Ayers, a vibraphonist who in the 1970s helped pioneer a new, funkier strain of jazz, becoming a touchstone for many artists who followed and one of the most sampled musicians by hip-hop artists, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 84.His death, in a hospital, was announced by his son Mtume, who said he died after a long illness.In addition to being one of the acknowledged masters of the jazz vibraphone, Mr. Ayers was a leader in the movement that added electric instruments, rock and R&B rhythms, and a more soulful feel to jazz. He was also one of…

Nearly a week after the first stage of Israel and Hamas’s cease-fire expired, both Palestinians and Israelis are in limbo, uncertain how long the truce will hold.The Trump administration, the Arab world, Israel, Hamas and others are now wrangling over the future of the Gaza Strip in a complex series of negotiations — some of which are unfolding along different channels, adding to the confusion.Here’s a look at the state of the cease-fire talks and who is involved.Israel and Hamas are negotiating through mediators.In mid-January, after 15 months of devastating war, Israel and Hamas agreed to a truce that would…