Author: NY TIMES

What comes to mind when you hear the word “K-pop”? Is it the global boy band phenomenon BTS, wearing studded jackets and dancing in perfect sync? Or the girl group Blackpink, performing at Coachella in trendy fashions and perfectly curled hair?How about an “independent music collective” of casually dressed people, crowded around a mixing board in a one-room studio, across the street from a Seoul restaurant specializing in fried chicken?“Give me some more bass,” said Omega Sapien, a vocalist with electric-green hair and grills, swaying his hips and grunting to the beat. The studio was cluttered with art, vinyl records,…

Leaders of the largest United Nations agency in Gaza warned on Monday that it may soon run out of money as new allegations emerged about Hamas’s influence on the organization.As U.N. officials fretted over the future of UNRWA, the main aid agency for Palestinians, Israeli officials debated whether it made sense to publicly air accusations that a group of the agency’s workers were involved in the Oct. 7 terror attack. Some Israeli military leaders believed it was a mistake to unleash a furor, according to three Israeli officials involved in the discussions, because the agency’s collapse would leave a huge…

Biden weighs a response to Iran. Source link

Taylor Swift has logged a lot of miles on her record-breaking Eras Tour around the world, and she may soon add more than 5,500 miles to her one-way trip.Presumably the pop star will travel from the stage in Tokyo on February 10 to Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas to watch boyfriend Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs play the next day Super Bowl game.Kansas City will make its fourth Super Bowl appearance in five years as the Chiefs defeat the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship Game on Sunday. The Chiefs will take on the San Francisco 49ers on…

Jeffrey Dugas, who cuts hair at Obsidian Barbers in New Brunswick, Canada, has received a very specific request from clients in the past few weeks: They want the same style as Travis Kelce.“They usually come in with a picture of him,” Mr. Dugas said. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, I know who that is.’”It’s not the first time Dr. Dugas has been asked to replicate the hairstyles of celebrities. “When Bryce Hall was popular on TikTok and had that long, curly fringe in the front, all the kids were getting it,” he said, referring to the social media personality with almost 25…

Neuralink, a company working to develop computer interfaces that can be implanted in human brains, placed its first device in a patient on Sunday, said its founder, Elon Musk.Mr. Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, said on Monday that the company’s first product was called Telepathy and would allow a human to control a phone or computer “just by thinking.”“Initial users will be those who have lost the use of their limbs,” Mr. Musk wrote in a series of posts on X, his social media platform. “Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist…

Canada is postponing a plan to offer people suffering from mental illnesses the option of a medically assisted death, two cabinet ministers said on Monday.The announcement by Mark Holland, the health minister, and Arif Virani, the justice minister, came after a special parliamentary committee looking into the plan concluded that there are not enough doctors, particularly psychiatrists, in the country to assess patients with mental illnesses who want to end their lives and to help them do so.“The system needs to be ready, and we need to get it right,” Mr. Holland told reporters. “It’s clear from the conversations we’ve…

In late 1984 the singer and activist Harry Belafonte was both impressed and perturbed by “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” a British charity single featuring a cast of pop stars. The proceeds from the project went to Ethiopian famine relief. Belafonte complained to the music manager Ken Kragen, “We have white folks saving Black folks and we don’t have Black folks saving Black folks.”Such was the spur for the 1985 song “We Are the World.” The creative nucleus was Black: its writers, Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson; Stevie Wonder (who didn’t get a writing credit but, as relayed in the…

The Pentagon on Monday identified the dead soldiers as Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Ga.; Spec. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Ga.; and Spec. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Ga. The three were assigned to the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade, an Army Reserve unit based in Fort Moore, Ga.The drone strike on the outpost in northeast Jordan near its borders with Syria and Iraq, called Tower 22, escalated hostilities in the region that have been mounting since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.Mr. Biden…

An Albanian court on Monday gave the green light to an agreement allowing Italy to send migrants who are rescued in the Mediterranean by Italian ships to detention centers in Albania while their asylum claims are considered.The deal is part of the Italian government’s multipronged efforts to stem migration, in particular Mediterranean Sea crossings, sending the message that many undocumented migrants will not be allowed directly into Italy, even temporarily.The agreement was signed in November by the leaders of the two countries, but challenged by opposition lawmakers in Albania, who argued that it violated the country’s Constitution.On Monday, the Albanian…