Author: NY TIMES

HAMPTON, Ga. — The move was hair-raising. Shocking. Austin Cindric fought hard and was four wide heading into turn one on the tri-oval. This is sure to end in disaster.But on Sunday night, in the second race of the 2024 NASCAR season, to everyone’s surprise, the cheeky move actually gave Cindric the unsurprising lead.”That’s cool, isn’t it?” Cindric said. “… It’s not easy to do, but I guess that’s why they call us the best in the world.”At this moment, the much-criticized Atlanta Motor Speedway has become the new favorite track among NASCAR fans. Cindric’s passing is not of the…

Una mañana cualquiera, Susan Glass puede sentarse en el patio de su complejo de apartamentos en Saratoga, California, e identificar de oído hasta 15 especies distintas de aves: un arrendajo de Steller, un pájaro carpintero, un herrerillo unicolor.Para ella, la observación de aves es más que un pasatiempo. “Las aves son mi vista”, afirmó Glass, poeta y profesora de inglés en el West Valley Community College quien es ciega de nacimiento. “Cuando me hospedo en un hotel de Pittsburgh, puede que me acuerde más de la paloma bravía y el pinzón casero del estacionamiento que de la arquitectura”.Glass, de 67…

Sean Bailey, the longtime president of Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Production, resigned Monday amid a leadership shuffling at Disney’s film division, which has been under attack by some investors for disappointing results at the box office.“The time is right for a new chapter,” Mr. Bailey said in a statement.Disney named David Greenbaum, a co-president of Disney’s art film division, Searchlight Pictures, as Mr. Bailey’s successor. Mr. Greenbaum, however, was given a bigger job, overseeing both Mr. Bailey’s slate of live-action remakes of animated classics and 20th Century Studios, a Disney film division that manages the “Avatar” and “Planet of…

A cyberattack on a unit affiliated with UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest insurer, has disrupted drug prescription orders at thousands of pharmacies for nearly a week.The assault on the unit, Change Healthcare, a division of United’s Optum, was discovered last Wednesday. The attack appeared to be by a foreign country, according to two senior federal law enforcement officials, who expressed alarm at the extent of the disruption on Monday.UnitedHealth Group, the conglomerate, said in a federal filing that it had been forced to disconnect some of Change Healthcare’s vast digital network from its clients, and as of Monday, had not been…

Sean Combs was sued on Monday by a music producer who accused the hip-hop mogul of making unwanted sexual contact and of forcing him to hire prostitutes and participate in sex acts with them.The latest misconduct allegation against Mr. Combs was filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan by Rodney Jones Jr., also known as Lil Rod. In 2022 and 2023, Mr. Jones says in his suit, he worked on what became “The Love Album: Off the Grid,” the latest album by Mr. Combs, the hip-hop and R&B impresario who has variously been known as Puff Daddy and P. Diddy.…

Israeli negotiators have offered a significant concession in cease-fire talks with Hamas, signaling that they might be open to releasing high-profile Palestinians jailed on terrorism charges in exchange for some Israeli hostages still being held in the Gaza Strip, according to two officials with knowledge of the talks.President Biden said Monday that he believed negotiators were nearing an agreement that would halt Israel’s military operations in Gaza within a week, though earlier in the day, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was still talking about further military action.Mr. Netanyahu said that the Israeli military had presented a plan to the…

Aides to Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died this month, asserted on Monday that he had been on the verge of being freed in a prisoner exchange with the West. A Western official familiar with the negotiations said “early discussions” on the possibility of freeing Mr. Navalny through such a swap had been underway when Russian authorities reported him dead on Feb. 16. But the official pushed back on the Navalny team’s portrayal of the talks as having been in their final stages.In a video posted to the Navalny team’s YouTube channel on Monday, a top aide…

Not all defeats are created equal – there is nothing worse in football than a teasing defeat.”In extra time it was Klopp’s boys against the blue bottle worth billions of pounds,” Sky Sports co-commentator Gary Neville said, almost before Virgil van Dijk’s header flashed past Out of time, he succinctly and indisputably established the dominant narrative of a surreal Carabao Cup final. It landed in the far corner of Djordje Petrovich’s net.Not only did Liverpool beat Chelsea again at Wembley, the way they did it was validation of the ‘mentality monster’ culture that Jurgen Klopp has fostered over the past…

On Saturday night, Stephen K. Bannon grabbed the microphone on the upper level of Tom’s Watch Bar, a sports bar in National Harbor, Md., to close out the final after-party of the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference.“The management is upset,” Mr. Bannon, the former Trump adviser turned podcaster, said to a crowd of a few hundred college Republicans, young political operatives and middle-aged MAGA-sphere celebrities. “You all aren’t drinking enough. I told them I was throwing a party, but you all are a bunch of pencil-necks. Are we drinking or not?”The room roared back. They were definitely drinking. A college…

Former President Donald J. Trump’s stake in Trump Media & Technology Group, his social media company, could be worth as much as $4 billion once a long-delayed merger closes.The deal, with Digital World Acquisition Corporation — a publicly traded shell company — could provide him with a potential financial lifeline at a time when he must come up with the cash to pay a $454 million penalty after a New York judge’s ruling in a civil fraud case.Digital World has scheduled a March 22 shareholder vote on the merger with Trump Media, whose flagship product, Truth Social, has become the…