Author: NY TIMES

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube3. Remi Wolf: “Grumpy Old Man”Thank you, Olivia Rodrigo, for picking the 28-year-old alt-pop star Remi Wolf as one of your openers and reminding me how much I loved her zany, hilarious and absurdly catchy 2021 album, “Juno.” This is still my favorite track: a tuneful showcase of Wolf’s audacious personality that sounds, in all the best ways, like some long-lost ’90s novelty hit.▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube4. PinkPantheress: “Internet Baby (Interlude)”“I am not your internet baby,” the 22-year-old viral sensation PinkPantheress warns on this electro ear worm from her…

The spending showdown that has brought the government to the brink of a partial shutdown this week is being fueled by Republicans in Congress, who, after failing in their efforts to slash federal funding, are still insisting on right-wing policy dictates.House Republicans loaded up their spending bills with hundreds of partisan policy mandates, a vast majority of which had no chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate or being signed by President Biden.They include measures to target various pieces of Mr. Biden’s agenda, such as one to restrict access to abortion medication and another to restrict the Department of Veterans Affairs…

Madison Square Garden went very quiet when my face appeared on the giant screen above center court. The silence was noticeable. A few seconds earlier, Kenan Thompson’s face had brought down the house.It wasn’t like anyone gasped or got angry — no one seemed taken aback. It was just that no one knew who the hell I was. And why should they? I’m not famous. I had no right to be up there in the first place.Still, it was hard not to take it personally. Eighteen thousand people — New Yorkers, no less — had decided to silence their cheers.…

When the Alabama Supreme Court issued a surprising decision this month that led doctors to restrict in vitro fertilization treatments in the state, it raised a host of questions that the court did little to answer.In the wake of the decision, doctors and patients have worried that they could be vulnerable to prosecution in any number of medical scenarios that were once routine. Some Alabama facilities have halted or restricted treatment, and patients elsewhere worry that similar rulings or laws may soon come to their states.And because so many people pay so much for health care, the fallout from the…

OpenAI filed a motion in federal court on Monday that seeks to dismiss some key elements of a lawsuit brought by The New York Times Company.The Times sued OpenAI and its partner Microsoft on Dec. 27, accusing them of infringing on its copyrights by using millions of its articles to train A.I. technologies like the online chatbot ChatGPT. Chatbots now compete with the news outlet as a source of reliable information, the lawsuit said.In the motion filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the defendants argue that ChatGPT “is not in any way a…

As dramatic music swirled late Monday evening, the woman trudged a few steps pushing a filthy shopping cart — so hunched and bedraggled that she seemed like an extra, sent onstage to set the scene before the star entered.Then she opened her mouth, and a note emerged so pure and clear, widening into a cry before narrowing back into a murmur, that it could only be the soprano Lise Davidsen, cementing her stardom in a new production of Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino” at the Metropolitan Opera.In her still-young Met career, Davidsen has triumphed in works by Tchaikovsky, Wagner and…

The Crooked House, a pub in England’s West Midlands that was demolished last year after a suspicious fire, could soon be rising from the rubble after its owners were ordered to restore the pub to its former lopsided glory.The tavern, known as “Britain’s wonkiest pub” for its slanting walls and floors, was sold to a private developer in July 2023. Around two weeks later, the pub caught fire in a suspected arson attack and the developers who had bought it brought in the bulldozers. Locals were outraged. With the support of local politicians, they launched a public campaign to see…

About four years ago, the D.J.s Malinder Tooray, Omar Ahmed and Bianca Maieli hosted a night of music and dancing in Los Angeles.They were living in the city and loved attending dance parties that played rhythmic genres from around the world, like Afrobeats, reggaeton, and Brazilian baile funk, but they wanted to hear more sounds from Asia, including the Indian music of their formative years.Their show, “No Nazar,” attracted a wide following and filled in what many saw as a gap in the music and nightlife scene.“Nazar” is an Arabic word borrowed by many languages and cultures. It invokes the…

America’s two largest energy companies, Exxon Mobil and Chevron, are jousting over a prized new source of oil in the waters off Guyana, in Latin America.The conflict is creating doubts over Chevron’s bid to acquire Hess Corp. for $53 billion, announced in October. Chevron this week warned of the possibility that “the merger would not close” because of the dispute.At the heart of the deal is Hess’s investment in Guyana, where an Exxon-led group has discovered a massive 11 billion barrels of oil and gas in an area known as the Stabroek block. With just 800,000 people, Guyana, long one…

Since Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud last year, he has hired a new lawyer known for courtroom showmanship. A group of sympathetic law professors has pushed for a reappraisal of his actions. And his parents have turned for help to former employees of FTX, the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange he founded.From a federal detention center in Brooklyn, Mr. Bankman-Fried, 31, has continued to fight his case behind the scenes, as he argues for a lenient sentence and prepares to appeal his conviction. On Tuesday, his lawyers are scheduled to file a legal memo in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan,…