Author: NY TIMES

In the chilly dusk on a recent Saturday, nine people were creeping through the California hills. Their faces were painted in shades of green, yellow, brown and black, so that they blended into their surroundings. Moving uphill through thickets of trees, they tried to be silent, as if not to draw the attention of some unseen enemy. They were conscious of every breath, every dry leaf that crunched underfoot, every snapped twig.These people were not military personnel. They were just civilians — biotech workers, a masseuse, an entrepreneur — who had decided to spend a weekend preparing themselves for a…

Spirit Airlines, once a fast-growing low-cost carrier, is struggling to convince investors that it has a clear path forward after an antitrust ruling blocked the sale of the company to JetBlue Airways.A federal judge in Boston blocked the proposed merger on Tuesday, concurring with the Justice Department that the deal would hurt consumers by reducing their choices and raising fares. The airlines, which could appeal, say they are considering their options.Before it struck a deal with JetBlue in July 2022, Spirit was struggling. Unlike larger airlines, it never fully recovered from the early days of the pandemic in 2020. The…

When Apple released the Apple Watch in 2015, it was business as usual for a company whose iPhone updates had become cultural touchstones. Before the watch went on sale, Apple gave early versions of it to celebrities like Beyoncé, featured it in fashion publications like Vogue and streamed a splashy event on the internet trumpeting its features.But as Apple prepares to sell its next generation of wearable computing, the Vision Pro augmented reality device, it is marching far more quietly into the consumer marketplace.The company said in a news release this month that sales of the device would begin Friday.…

For decades, Uganda’s campaign against H.I.V. was exemplary, slashing the country’s death rate by nearly 90 percent from 1990 to 2019. Now a sweeping law enacted last year, the Anti-Homosexuality Act, threatens to renew the epidemic as L.G.B.T.Q. citizens are denied, or are too afraid to seek out, necessary medical care.The law criminalizes consensual sex between same-sex adults. It also requires all citizens to report anyone suspected of such activity, a mandate that makes no exceptions for health care providers tending to patients.Under the law, merely having same-sex relationships while living with H.I.V. can incur a charge of “aggravated homosexuality,”…

So far in 2024, the Billboard album chart is looking a lot like 2023.For the first two weeks of the year, Taylor Swift held at No. 1 with her “1989” remake. Now, the country star Morgan Wallen returns with “One Thing at a Time,” which dominated the chart for 16 weeks last year and now logs its 17th time in the top spot.“One Thing at a Time,” which had a blockbuster opening last March and remained a steady hit for months, rose to No. 1 with the equivalent of 61,000 sales in the United States, including 80 million streams and…

Hamas fighters in the northern Gaza Strip fired at least 25 rockets toward a nearby Israeli city on Tuesday, renewing right-wing criticism in Israel of the government’s decision to scale back some military operations in the war.Hamas said in a statement that it had targeted the Israeli city of Netivot, about six miles from the Gaza border. Most of the rockets were either intercepted by Israel’s missile defense system or fell into open areas, and there were no immediate reports of casualties. But the Israeli police said that at least one building had been damaged.The attack highlighted Hamas’s continuing ability…

Pushing a walker through a television studio in central Tokyo earlier this week, Tetsuko Kuroyanagi slowly climbed three steps onto a sound stage with the help of an assistant who settled her into a creamy beige Empire armchair.A stylist removed the custom-made sturdy boots on her feet and slipped on a pair of high-heeled mules. A makeup artist brushed her cheeks and touched up her blazing red lipstick. A hairdresser tamed a few stray wisps from her trademark onion-shaped hairstyle as another assistant ran a lint roller over her embroidered black jacket. With that, Ms. Kuroyanagi, 90, was ready to…

Fashion criticism, if you’re privileged enough to do it, is a pretty cool practice. It brings you into constant contact with creativity and beauty. It allows you to think and write about the ways that what humans choose to put on their bodies affect almost everything about how we move through social and cultural space. Often enough, it’s fun.Yet there’s a flaw in the process, and it is that, unlike those who write about art, music, dance, architecture and, especially, food — fashion critics approach their subjects at an unfortunate remove. We look at clothes all the time, and yet…

Airbus cemented its position last week as the world’s biggest plane maker for the fifth straight year, announcing that it had delivered more aircraft and secured more orders than Boeing in 2023. At the same time, Boeing was trying to put out a huge public-relations and safety crisis caused by a harrowing near disaster involving its 737 Max line of airliners.In the long-running duel between the two aviation rivals, Airbus has pulled far ahead.“What used to be a duopoly has become two-thirds Airbus, one-third Boeing,” said Richard Aboulafia, the managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory in Washington, D.C. “A lot of…

“Harmony,” Barry Manilow’s long-in-the-works musical about an early-20th-century German sextet that ran afoul of the Nazi regime, will end an abbreviated Broadway run on Feb. 4.Manilow and his longtime collaborator Bruce Sussman have been working on the show for more than a quarter-century, inspired by a documentary film about the Comedian Harmonists, an ensemble that included some Jewish members, which was unacceptable to the Nazis.The musical, directed by Warren Carlyle, opened on Nov. 13; at the time of its closing it is expected to have played 24 previews and 96 regular performances. It was capitalized for up to $15 million,…