Author: NY TIMES

Snap, the parent of messaging app Snapchat, on Monday said it would lay off more than 500 employees, joining other tech companies in a wave of new cost-cutting measures.The layoffs amount to 10 percent of its global work force; the majority will occur in the first quarter of 2024. “We have made the difficult decision to restructure our team,” the company said in a securities filing, adding that it would take pretax charges of $55 million to $75 million, primarily for severance and related costs.Amazon, Google and Microsoft have announced layoffs this year, following tens of thousands across the sector…

In a major coup for the Grammys, an influential artist who walked away from the spotlight made a grand return to the awards stage on Sunday night: Tracy Chapman.Chapman, 59, released eight albums between 1988 and 2008, starting with her blockbuster debut — the self-titled album that featured “Talkin’ ’Bout a Revolution,” “Baby Can I Hold You” and what is perhaps her signature song, “Fast Car.” She won the Grammy for best new artist in 1989, and “Fast Car” was nominated for both record and song of the year.While the song has had notable staying power — it’s inspired dance…

At the Leon’s Centre arena, home to the junior hockey team in Kingston, Ontario, a sense of outrage mixed with anticipation as fans who had gathered for a game grappled with the news that five former Canadian junior hockey players — four of whom played in the National Hockey League — had been charged last week with sexual assault.The first hearing for the five accused, a proceeding attended only by lawyers to schedule a hearing at the end of April, was held on Monday at the Ontario Court of Justice in London, Ontario. There the police, who first investigated but…

The awards show red carpet has become such an access game, such a race of clout and connections to see who can wear the most never-before-seen or sizzlingly-hot-off-the-runway look — the answer, this time, was Beyoncé, in Louis Vuitton men’s wear from Pharrell Williams’s January show — that any other approach can seem like a shock.But recently a different trend has been emerging, and at the 66th Grammys it reached critical mass. Indeed, it’s so applause worthy, here’s hoping it isn’t a trend at all but rather the signal of a permanent shift in the fashion-Hollywood industrial complex.I am speaking…

Boeing said that a new problem with the fuselages of some unfinished 737 jets would force the company to rework about 50 planes, potentially delaying their delivery and raising further concerns about quality at the manufacturer and its suppliers.Stan Deal, the chief executive of Boeing’s commercial plane unit, said in a memo to employees on Sunday that a supplier last week had identified that “two holes may not have been drilled exactly to our requirements.” Joe Buccino, a spokesman for Spirit AeroSystems, Boeing’s fuselage supplier, said on Monday that a member of its team had identified an issue that did…

When Diane Hirsh Theriault’s co-worker returned from lunch to Google’s Cambridge, Mass., office one afternoon in October, his work badge couldn’t open a turnstile. He quickly realized it was a sign that he had been laid off.Ms. Hirsh Theriault soon learned that most of her fellow Google News engineers in Cambridge had also lost their jobs. More than 40 people in the news division were cut, a company union said, though a number of them were later offered jobs elsewhere inside Google.Ms. Hirsh Theriault’s experience is increasingly common at Google, where rolling job cuts in recent months, after a year…

“If I get back in harness, it’s not just about singing, it’s about promotion, it’s about playing, it’s about the radio, politics, business, blah, blah, blah,” he said, with a wave of his hand. “I didn’t want to be back in harness, but if you’re going to commit, you’ve got to commit a hundred percent. So I said [expletive] it.”“Turn the Lights Back On,” which Joel premiered live at the Grammy Awards on Sunday night in Los Angeles and was released on his longtime label, Columbia, drew him in with its lyrics about a relationship teetering on the brink. “There’s…

Voters in Paris have approved an effort to drastically increase parking fees for large sport utility vehicles and other heavy cars, the latest move by Mayor Anne Hidalgo to reshape the French capital with environmentally conscious and pedestrian-friendly policies.The new parking fees are expected to be approved in May by the Paris City Council, where Ms. Hidalgo’s Socialist Party and Green allies have a majority. The new fees are then expected to come into effect in September, Ms. Hidalgo said.Some car owners have complained that they are being shut out of the capital, but Ms. Hidalgo was unrepentant at a…

Sometimes a pine cone is just a pine cone.But on a January day, the rough edges of the cone — and the lone feather sticking out of it — meant something different to Rachel Oppenheimer, 25, a counselor at the Chesapeake Mental Health Collaborative in Towson, Md.“Growing up, I had some challenges,” Ms. Oppenheimer said, referring to her prickly teenage past, “some struggles with managing my emotions.”But her grandmother, who died four years ago, was soft like the feather, and gave her unconditional love that reminded Ms. Oppenheimer how important it was to treat herself with “soothing tenderness,” especially when…

The Biden administration is dispatching a high-level delegation of Treasury Department officials to Beijing this week for a round of economic talks as the world’s largest economies look to continue engagement efforts that President Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, agreed to pursue last year.A Treasury official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the trip has not been publicly announced, said that the two days of meetings would include “frank conversations” about China’s use of nonmarket economic practices like government subsidies. The U.S. officials also plan to discuss concerns about industrial overcapacity, which could flood international markets with…