Author: NY TIMES

The song SZA introduced in a commercial during the Grammy Awards, “Saturn,” has now been separated from its credit-card plug and released to streaming services in multiple versions; one, the sped-up version, brings out its clear pop structure. But the real-time version is better. The song is about a longing for the better place that her karma has earned: “Stuck in this paradigm/Don’t believe in paradise,” she sings. Arpeggios glimmer around her; a boom-bap beat brings an undertow. Her vocal lines argue with the beat as she joins generations of Afrofuturists like Sun Ra, looking beyond Earth and insisting, “There’s…

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s framework released Friday for a postwar order in Gaza appeared to keep his government on a collision course with the United States and much of the rest of the world over the enclave’s future. Here are some of the major points of friction between what the Israeli leader has proposed and what other governments have said they want after the war in Gaza is over:Palestinian statehoodThe Biden administration and Arab states have called for both Gaza and the occupied West Bank to become part of a future Palestinian state alongside Israel, arguing that decades of Israeli-Palestinian…

Gabriel Attal, 34, is a new kind of French prime minister, more inclined to Diet Coke than a good Burgundy, at home with social media and revelations about his personal life, a natural communicator who reels off one-liners like “France rhymes with power” to assert his “authority,” a favorite word.Since taking office in early January, the boyish-looking Mr. Attal has waded into the countryside, far from his familiar haunts in the chic quarters of Paris, muddied his dress shoes, propped his notes on a choreographed bale of hay, and calmed protesting farmers through adroit negotiation leavened by multiple concessions.He has…

Victoria Sass, an interior designer in Minneapolis, had long dreamed of owning an R.V. so she and her family could hit the open road with their living quarters attached.“I grew up in Santa Cruz, California, with a Volkswagen van,” said Ms. Sass, 40, who had fond memories of traveling with her family in their mobile vacation home. She wanted her husband, Torben Rytt, and their three children, Duncan, 3, Irene, 8, and Walter, 13, to enjoy the same experience.Mr. Rytt, who grew up outside Copenhagen, had other ideas: He wanted a sailboat.“I’m from a boating family,” said Mr. Rytt, 45,…

The United States on Friday unleashed its most extensive package of sanctions on Russia since the invasion of Ukraine two years ago, targeting Russia’s financial sector and military-industrial complex in a broad effort to degrade the Kremlin’s war machine.The sweeping sanctions come as the war enters its third year, and exactly one week after the death of the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, for which the Biden administration blames President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. With Congress struggling to reach an agreement on providing more aid to Ukraine, the United States has become increasingly reliant on financial tools to slow…

Listen and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTubeThis week’s episode is a conversation with Demis Hassabis, the head of Google’s artificial intelligence division. We talk about Google’s latest A.I. models, Gemini and Gemma; the existential risks of artificial intelligence; his timelines for artificial general intelligence; and what he thinks the world will look like post-A.G.I.Additional listening and reading:Credits“Hard Fork” is hosted by Kevin Roose and Casey Newton and produced by Davis Land and Rachel Cohn. The show is edited by Jen Poyant. Engineering by Chris Wood and original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano and Pat McCusker.…

On the film side, Bradley Cooper (“Maestro”), Colman Domingo (“Rustin”), Paul Giamatti (“The Holdovers”), Cillian Murphy (“Oppenheimer”) and Jeffrey Wright (“American Fiction”) will square off for best actor, while Annette Bening (“Nyad”), Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Carey Mulligan (“Maestro”), Margot Robbie (“Barbie”) and Emma Stone (“Poor Things”) will duke it out for best actress.On the TV side, it looks to be a big night for “Succession,” which earned five nominations. The audience favorites “Ted Lasso,” “The Bear” and “The Last of Us” aren’t far behind, though, picking up four nods apiece.What award is Barbra Streisand receiving?Streisand, the…

An Israeli delegation arrived in Paris on Friday for talks with senior officials from Egypt, Qatar and the United States, the latest attempt to advance a deal for a cease-fire with Hamas and the release of hostages held in Gaza, an Israeli official said on Friday.The Mossad chief, David Barnea; the C.I.A. director, William Burns; the Qatari prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani; and Abbas Kamel, the head of Egyptian intelligence, are expected to attend the talks, according to a second Israeli official and a person briefed on the talks. All the officials spoke on the condition of…

A day after a fire roared through a high-rise residential complex in the Spanish city of Valencia, killing at least four people and leaving at least 14 missing, there were fears on Friday that those numbers could rise, because high temperatures inside the charred structure initially prevented emergency workers from searching inside.Firefighters and police officers rushed to the scene shortly after 5.30 p.m. on Thursday as the fire engulfed the entire pair of buildings, one of which was 14 stories tall, within half an hour.The complex, made up of two tower blocks with a total of 138 apartments, was built…

It has become a common scene. Your phone dings, but instead of a text, it’s a forewarning that someone has orated just for you a private podcast of any imaginable length, the subject unknown until you press play. It could be a juicy morsel of gossip, a yarn replete with twists and turns, or a totally mundane account from someone who simply didn’t have their hands free to type it out.It’s a voice note — somehow one of the most divisive forms of modern communication. More intimate than a text and less urgent than a call, the audio messages don’t…