Author: NY TIMES

The team store: A glorified souvenir shop at stadiums and arenas, where sports fans shop for official jerseys, snapback hats and a variety of magnets and key chains.Also: rather passé.“That is very out,” said Lily Shimbashi of Sportsish, a pop-culture newsletter and podcast aimed to female sports fans. “No one is buying apparel from the teams anymore, because it’s boring. It’s ugly.”For more and more fans, official game-day apparel has been replaced by less official, trendier gear sold online. This shift has created a particular frenzy around vintage sportswear, like graphic tees circa 2001 — the Mets opening day or…

As the one-year anniversary of a crisis that brought down several midsize banks approaches, trouble at another lender is putting unwelcome attention on the industry again.Concerns now center on New York Community Bancorp, which operates roughly 400 branches nationwide under brands such as Flagstar Bank and Ohio Savings Bank. The bank ballooned in size over the past year, to more than $100 billion in assets, after taking over the fallen Signature Bank last spring in an auction organized by federal regulators.New York Community Bancorp’s stock nose-dived after it released an ugly earnings report that included unexpected losses on real estate…

The United States government has placed detained immigrants in solitary confinement more than 14,000 times in the last five years, and the average duration is almost twice the 15-day threshold that the United Nations has said may constitute torture, according to a new analysis of federal records by researchers at Harvard and the nonprofit group Physicians for Human Rights.The report, based on government records from 2018 through 2023 and interviews with several dozen former detainees, noted cases of extreme physical, verbal and sexual abuse for immigrants held in solitary cells. The New York Times reviewed the original records cited in…

Miley Cyrus won the Grammy for record of the year on Sunday for the kiss-off anthem “Flowers,” her first win in the category.The husky-voiced former Disney Channel star — and daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus, himself a record of the year nominee in 1993 for “Achy Breaky Heart” — had never won a Grammy before Sunday night. She also won for best pop solo performance, also for “Flowers.”During a performance of “Flowers” at the ceremony, Cyrus ad-libbed several times, shouting, “Don’t act like you don’t know this song!” and “I just won my first Grammy!”Cyrus bested nominees from several other…

A group of U.S. ambassadors stationed in the Indo-Pacific region is urging congressional leaders to secure passage of legislation providing assistance to Ukraine, Israel and allies in the Pacific, saying America’s credibility with its strategic partners is on the line.“Governments are watching what we do at this pivotal moment in history — a time when decisions that we take now will have lasting impacts for years to come,” said the letter from nine diplomats sent to Capitol Hill on Monday. “They want to see that when the chips are down, the United States will be there for our allies and…

Queen Elizabeth II liked to say that she needed to be seen to be believed. Now it falls to her son King Charles III to test that principle, after a cancer diagnosis that will force him out of the public eye for the foreseeable future.For a family that has cultivated its public image through thousands of appearances a year — ribbon-cuttings, ship launchings, gala benefits, investiture ceremonies, and so on — the sidelining of Charles may finally force the royals to rethink how they project themselves in a social-media age.The king’s illness is the latest blow to the British royal…

Julia Lippman and Mathew Eapen love antique homes, but they’re not typical old-house enthusiasts — or purists when it comes to decorating.“I love old houses, the quirks and the tall ceilings,” Ms. Lippman, 37, said. But “I did not want a house full of really big, dark antiques.”The couple, who are both lawyers, were living in an apartment in downtown Boston with their dog, Scout, when Ms. Lippman became pregnant with their first child, Sammy, now 4. They needed more space, and they knew where they wanted to move: Salem, Mass., the small city north of Boston known for its…

A cat meowing for Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Peyton Manning chucking Bud Light beers to patrons in a bar and Kris Jenner stacking Oreo cookies. They all have one thing in common: Those companies paid seven figures to get their products in front of viewers during this year’s Super Bowl.For the second consecutive year, the average cost of a 30-second ad spot during the Super Bowl was $7 million. Even as many businesses are being more disciplined with the money they have for marketing, and with spending on advertising slowing in recent years, the cost of a Super Bowl ad continues to…

Last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, called a nascent effort to detect artificially generated content “the most urgent task” facing the tech industry today.On Tuesday, Mr. Clegg proposed a solution. Meta said it would promote technological standards that companies across the industry could use to recognize markers in photo, video and audio material that would signal that the content was generated using artificial intelligence.The standards could allow social media companies to quickly identify content generated with A.I. that has been posted to their platforms and allow them to…

Seizures of psychedelic mushrooms across the nation by law enforcement officials have increased significantly in recent years as attitudes regarding their use have grown more permissive, according to a government-funded study released Tuesday.Researchers found that law enforcement officials confiscated 844 kilos of mushrooms containing psilocybin in 2022, an increase of 273 percent from 2017. Psilocybin is the psychoactive component in the fungi commonly known as magic mushrooms.Officials at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which commissioned the study, said that the increase in seizures of magic mushroom reflected rising use of the drugs, rather than an indication that counternarcotics officials…