Author: NY TIMES

Soon after Yemen’s Houthi militia hijacked a commercial ship in the Red Sea, taking it and its 25-member crew hostage, the armed group used the vessel to record a music video.In the slick production, called “Axis of Jihad,” a drone camera pans over the hulking ship. Then a famous Houthi poet appears on the deck — accompanied by what appears to be a cardboard cutout of Qassim Suleimani, the Iranian commander assassinated in 2020 — and begins to sing.“Death to America and hostile Zion,” the poet, Issa al-Laith, calls out, backed by a relentless beat. “By God, we shall not…

As the traveling brass band ended San Giovanni Lipioni’s annual holiday concert with a rendition of Wham’s “Last Christmas,” the gray-haired villagers seated in the old church of the central Italian hill town gazed dotingly at the few young children clapping to the music.“Today there is a little movement,” Cesarina Falasco, 73, said from the back pew. “It’s lovely. It’s different.”San Giovanni Lipioni used to be known — if at all — for the discovery in its countryside of a third-century B.C. Samnite bronze head, a rare Waldensian Evangelical community and an ancient annual pageant with pagan roots that venerates…

Am I that guy? The question is both nagging and inescapable if you follow the men’s wear circuit, as I recently did — attending roughly 50 shows or presentations displayed in settings as disparate as school auditoriums, gilded ballrooms and construction sites where niceties like fire safety are notional at best.Trekking through Milan and Paris, I joined the throng of those who make a profession of tracking the latest doings of designers who often share little in common besides an urge to make clothes for masculine-presenting humans. Like them, I took pleasure in off time scrolling through quick-take reels on…

Federal regulators have ruled that Intuit, the maker of the tax-filing software TurboTax, must stop marketing its services as free, unless they are free to everyone or exceptions are clearly disclosed.TurboTax had for years claimed customers could file their taxes online for free. The Federal Trade Commission said in an opinion and final order issued on Monday that its advertising was deceptive because two-thirds of taxpayers were not eligible to file with the free product.The commission also found that the company’s attempts to disclose that not everybody qualified for free services were “ineffective and often inconspicuous.”Examples of ineligible taxpayers include…

Will this UNESCO distinction help protect it in the future?I certainly hope so. Opera can often be stereotyped as this archaic museum piece. We think of it as very elitist nowadays. But it was originally a people’s art form. Just a few generations ago, it was in cartoons: The youngest of the young were learning about characters such as the Barber of Seville.Nowadays, a lot of young people when first exposed to opera say, “This is so pompous and old-fashioned, and it doesn’t speak to me.” What is your response?I believe opera doesn’t get marketed properly. I don’t think there…

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel doubled down on his opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state this weekend, again rebuffing pressure from President Biden to agree to that path after the war in Gaza is over.“My insistence is what has prevented — over the years — the establishment of a Palestinian state that would have constituted an existential danger to Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement in Hebrew on Sunday. “As long as I am prime minister, I will continue to strongly insist on this.”The statement reiterated comments he made on social media the previous day, when…

The police in South Africa said on Wednesday that they had arrested a man who confessed to starting a fire in a derelict Johannesburg building last August that killed dozens of people, some of whom leaped to their deaths or were trapped behind locked security gates.The 29-year-old man was arrested on Tuesday on 76 counts of murder and 120 counts of attempted murder, said Col. Dimakatso Nevhuhulwi, a spokeswoman for the police in Gauteng Province, which includes Johannesburg. The man’s name has not been released.Officials originally said that the fire, which tore through an overcrowded four-story building in the early…

The men’s fashion weeks in Milan and Paris offered a look at how originals dress.By Simbarashe ChaSimbarashe Cha wrote the text and made these photographs and videos for Style Outside, a visual column that explores street style around the world. card:1 of 12Simbarashe ChaReporting from Milan and ParisThe men’s fashion weeks in Europe, which were held this month, offered a look at how originals dress.Double-breasted overcoats — some cropped, others long — were some of the most popular outerwear.Embellishments like big safety pins, bows on earrings and blossoming boutonnieres gave looks personal flair.Lots of jeans were ripped, shredded, layered, creased,…

HBO is renting out one of its most valuable series to Netflix.Every season of “Sex and the City,” the HBO comedy that aired from 1998 to 2004, will begin streaming on Netflix for the first time in early April, according to three people familiar with the deal.HBO had a longstanding policy of not licensing its shows to Netflix until last year, when it sent over titles including “Six Feet Under,” “Insecure,” “Band of Brothers,” “The Pacific” and “Ballers.” Several of these older series quickly leaped into Top 10 most-watched streaming lists after they began appearing on Netflix.Now “Sex and the…

Praising a return to form is a barbed compliment at best. It implies recent missteps, a decline, the waning of youthful inspiration, the toll of a long career — perhaps all of them at once. It suggests that the sensible way forward is to double back. Still, “Saviors,” Green Day’s new album, is a decisive, even overdetermined return to form.Ever since its beginnings in the late 1980s, Green Day has stayed contentious. Billie Joe Armstrong has sung about personal grievances — including struggles with himself — as well as the ways they intersect with larger political currents, most ambitiously on…