Author: NY TIMES

Little by little over the last few years, “A Year on Earth With Mr. Hell,” a self-published, sex-heavy memoir by an unknown author, has become a word-of-mouth hit among artists and writers.The novelist and screenwriter Nick Hornby called it “gripping.” The critic Greil Marcus described it as “the most graphically effective sex writing I’ve read in a long time.” Capitalizing on its cult success, the Standard, High Line, a hotel in New York that makes an appearance in its pages, has placed copies in some suites and is selling the book through its website.The author is Young Kim, who was…

A $14 trillion exit Climate hawks have long questioned the financial industry’s commitment to sustainable investing. But few foresaw JPMorgan Chase and State Street quitting Climate Action 100+, a global investment coalition that has been pushing companies to decarbonize. Meanwhile, BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, scaled back its ties to the group.All told, the moves amount to a nearly $14 trillion exit from an organization meant to marshal Wall Street’s clout to expand the climate agenda.The retreat jolted the political landscape. Representative Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who compared the coalition to a “cartel” forcing businesses to cut emissions,…

Artificial intelligence companies have been at the vanguard of developing the transformative technology. Now they are also racing to set limits on how A.I. is used in a year stacked with major elections around the world.Last month, OpenAI, the maker of the ChatGPT chatbot, said it was working to prevent abuse of its tools in elections, partly by forbidding their use to create chatbots that pretend to be real people or institutions. In recent weeks, Google also said it would limit its A.I. chatbot, Bard, from responding to certain election-related prompts to avoid inaccuracies. And Meta, which owns Facebook and…

Recognizing that discomfort, it would be easy to assume that Menzies is a technical actor, an analytical one, someone who doesn’t let his own emotional life seep into a character. But for Menzies, acting is a deeply personal endeavor. If he is private in his public life, he is far more open onstage.“I certainly use a lot of myself in my work,” he said. “That’s the quickest way to make it as real as possible. If you’re using memories of your own or experiences of your own, you’re right there. So, yeah, theater has always been quite personal for me.”Asked…

The satellite imagery clearly shows newly graded land south of the Rafah border crossing. An analysis of the satellite images indicated that the work began around Feb. 5.But the Egyptian government, which has looked on with concern as Gazans displaced by the war between Israel and Hamas mass in Rafah, has declined to discuss the new construction. A spokesman for the government would only refer to statements by the government in recent weeks highlighting its fortification of the border.It was not clear whether the structure might be intended to hold Gazans who crossed the border, but if it were to…

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is making a whirlwind trip through Berlin and Paris on Friday in a bid to shore up European backing at a critical moment for his country’s fight against Russia, with United States support wavering and Ukraine desperately in need of more arms.Mr. Zelensky is expected to sign security agreements with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France during his visits to the two leaders’ capitals, before an expected appearance at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.European leaders have been scrambling to offer more support to Ukraine amid growing concerns that a…

Is your living room drab? Is your bedroom a bit blah? How about your bathroom? Could it use a touch of panache?Try adding something red.At least that’s the theory held by Taylor Migliazzo Simon.Ms. Migliazzo Simon, a designer in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, made the case for her notion in a recent TikTok video that has been viewed nearly a million times.“The ‘unexpected red’ theory is basically adding anything that’s red, big or small, to a room where it doesn’t match at all, and it automatically looks better,” Ms. Migliazzo Simon, 30, says at the start of the video.She…

The Japanese economy contracted at the end of last year, defying expectations for modest growth and pushing the country into a recession.Japan’s unexpectedly weak economy in the fourth quarter was a result of a slowdown in spending by businesses and consumers who are grappling with inflation at four-decade highs, a weak yen and climbing food prices.The end of the year also marked a moment that had been expected: Japan’s economy, now slightly smaller than Germany’s, fell one notch to become the world’s fourth largest.On an annualized basis, gross domestic product fell 0.4 percent in October through December after a revised…

The South Korean government unleashed a wave of panic across the internet industry: The country’s antitrust regulator said it would enact the toughest competition law outside Europe, curbing the influence of major technology companies.The Korea Fair Trade Commission, with the backing of President Yoon Suk Yeol, said in December that it planned to make a proposal modeled after the 2022 Digital Markets Act, the European Union’s landmark law to rein in American tech giants. This bill also seemed to target South Korea’s own internet conglomerates just as much as the Alphabets, Apples and Metas of the world.The commission said the…

The researchThe study, led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, looked at the experience of more than 6,000 patients in the months after the federal government began allowing abortion pills to be mailed, from April 2021 to January 2022.The patients used one of three telemedicine abortion organizations — Hey Jane, Abortion on Demand or Choix — that served 20 states and Washington, D.C. The research, published on Thursday in Nature Medicine, ended five months before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, igniting a wave of state abortion bans and restrictions. Since then, more telemedicine services have…