Author: NY TIMES

If you turned on MTV for any length of time in 2001, you almost certainly saw Christopher Walken flying around the lobby of a Marriott in Los Angeles. Even in an era when music videos were far more hotly discussed than they are now, it was a weird sight. Walken’s trim shock of gray hair matched his gray suit, punctuated by a red tie; he looked less like the movie star he was than some guy on a long layover.The music was Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice,” a weird little ditty that did make you want to dance. Having trained…

Marina, a Moscow lawyer, decided to stay home when the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny was buried last Friday. She had expected a big crowd and widespread arrests at the Borisovsky Cemetery, given Russia’s current climate of repression, and thought it would be better to pay her respects another day.She wasn’t alone in that thought. When she came to lay flowers on Sunday, she had to wait in line for up to 40 minutes, Marina said in a phone interview from Moscow. (Like others, she asked that her last name be withheld for fear of retribution.)After Mr. Navalny’s funeral…

On a chilly afternoon in February, Logan McGrath and Mack Fritz were preparing to shoot a video advertising the green Austrian army fatigue shirts they were selling on Americana Pipedream Apparel, the online military surplus store Mr. McGrath started out of his parents’ basement in Appleton, Wis., three years ago.After outgrowing their last two locations and grabbing the attention of customers like the singer Post Malone, they had recently settled into a new venue: a onetime furniture showroom that was repurposed as a 24,000-square-foot warehouse. The large space was already filling up. Afghan war rugs were piled up in one…

The chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board told a Senate committee on Wednesday that Boeing was dragging its feet in providing some information to the agency as it investigates what caused a door panel to come off an Alaska Airlines plane during a flight in January.The official, Jennifer Homendy, told the Senate Commerce Committee that her agency had requested any documentation that exists regarding the opening and closing of the panel, known as a door plug, at Boeing’s factory in Renton, Wash. Ms. Homendy said the safety board had also requested the names of certain workers at the factory.Boeing…

When the European Union passed a 2022 law to loosen Apple’s grip on the app economy, Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, began planning to launch a competing app store for developers.But before that law could go into effect this week, Apple has blocked Epic’s European subsidiary from using iPhone software tools, making it impossible for the game developer to create the Epic Games Store.In correspondence from Apple to Epic Games, the tech giant said that Epic had shown in the past that it was unwilling to follow Apple’s rules to protect the App Store and that it couldn’t return…

The Alabama legislature on Wednesday is expected to pass legislation that will make it possible for fertility clinics in the state to reopen without the specter of crippling lawsuits.But the measure, hastily written and expected to pass by a huge bipartisan margin, does not address the legal question that led to clinic closings and set off a stormy, politically fraught national debate: Whether embryos that have been frozen and stored for possible future implantation have the legal status of human beings.The Alabama Supreme Court made such a finding last month, in the context of a claim against a Mobile clinic…

The first two songs Zach Bryan played at the United Center on Tuesday night were from the more muscular end of his catalog. They landed hard and quick — Bryan was singing with a rugged howl, guitars were churning, the fiddle poked through the top like a squeal. This was opening night of The Quittin Time Tour, and the first of three sold-out shows here, and he was wasting no time pumping the audience into a frenzy.Then he needed them to breathe — maybe he needed to breathe — and so next came “God Speed,” one of the most delicate…

President Biden said Tuesday that cease-fire talks were “in the hands of Hamas right now,” and a Hamas leader in Lebanon appeared to publicly reject the deal, insisting that Israeli hostages would be released only after a cease-fire was in place and Israeli forces have withdrawn, a condition Israel has rejected. But the militant group signaled on Wednesday in a statement that it was still open to negotiations “until an agreement is reached that realizes our people’s interests and demands.”Nidal Kuhail, 29, a resident of Gaza City who is sheltering in Rafah, said people were closely monitoring their phones and…

A Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Odesa on Wednesday occurred while President Volodymyr Zelensky and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece were visiting the strategic port city.Neither was hurt, and they appeared to have continued their visit. It is unclear whether the Russian Army specifically targeted them or how close they were to the explosion.Mr. Mitsotakis told reporters in Odesa that he and Mr. Zelensky were visiting a port at the time of the assault. “We heard the sound of sirens and explosions that were very close to us,” he said, according to Sulspine, a public broadcaster. “We…

Our only child is 33 and unmarried. We have a good relationship with her. She lives 30 minutes away from us, and we see her frequently. She met a man three months ago, and he has now moved in with her. The problem: We would love to meet him and become part of their lives together, but she says she is not ready to introduce us yet. We have tried to set up various opportunities to meet him, but she refuses. She says it’s not him, it’s her. She wants the encounter to be “perfect” and is anxious that it…