Author: NY TIMES

She was born Alice Christmas on Oct. 26, 1923, in Philadelphia “to a bourgeois family of color,” as she wrote in an unpublished memoir. Her father, Lawrence Duke Christmas, was a dentist; her mother, Alice (Meyers) Christmas, managed the household. In Alice’s telling, the family was so light-skinned that they were known as the White Christmases.Yet Alice’s world was circumscribed and sheltered, she said, and she didn’t interact with any white people until she attended Colby College, in Maine. It was her race-conscious mother who decided that Alice should “pass” and live her life in the white world, so as…

Joelle Emerson’s D.E.I. consultancy, Paradigm, works with more than 500 companies. The growing backlash against D.E.I., she said, “is usually the first agenda item on every call.”Critics of D.E.I., or diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, have tried to scapegoat it for everything from regional bank failures to a panel’s ripping off a Boeing plane in flight last week. That debate gathered pace this month as three famous billionaires clashed over D.E.I.’s merits on social media: Elon Musk and Pershing Square’s chief executive, Bill Ackman, have attacked D.E.I. efforts as “racist,” while the investor Mark Cuban argued that they were “good…

For more than a decade, Apple was the stock market’s undisputed king. It first overtook Exxon Mobil as the world’s most valuable public company in 2011 and held the title almost without interruption.But a transfer of power has begun.On Friday, Microsoft surpassed Apple, claiming the crown after its market value surged by more than $1 trillion over the past year. Microsoft finished the day at $2.89 trillion, higher than Apple’s $2.87 trillion, according to Bloomberg.The change is part of a reordering of the stock market that was set in motion by the advent of generative artificial intelligence. The technology, which…

Marijuana is neither as risky nor as prone to abuse as other tightly controlled substances and has potential medical benefits, and therefore should be removed from the nation’s most restrictive category of drugs, federal scientists have concluded.The recommendations are contained in a 250-page scientific review provided to Matthew Zorn, a Texas lawyer who sued Health and Human Services officials for its release and published it online on Friday night. An H.H.S. official confirmed the authenticity of the document.The records shed light for the first time on the thinking of federal health officials who are pondering a momentous change. The agencies…

Jay Clayton, a singer whose six-decade career encompassed freewheeling improvisation, lyrical songs and poetry, and the prescient use of electronics, died on Dec. 31 at her home in New Paltz, N.Y. She was 82.Her daughter, Dejha Colantuono, said the cause was small-cell lung cancer.Ms. Clayton established herself as an innovator in the 1970s and ’80s, sparring with instrumentalists in avant-garde settings and using electronics to alter and extend her vocal palette well before the practice became common. She worked frequently with other singers — she formed an especially close bond with Sheila Jordan, an early mentor — and she sang…

The twin specters of a widening regional war and intensified suffering of civilians loomed over the Middle East on Saturday as the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen threatened to respond to American airstrikes, and a senior U.N. official warned of a “horrific” humanitarian crisis in Gaza that he said was hurtling toward famine.An American missile strike, launched from a warship in the Red Sea, hit a radar station outside the Yemeni capital, Sana, early on Saturday. The solitary strike came about 24 hours after U.S.-led strikes against nearly 30 sites in northern and western Yemen that were intended to deter…

Russia attacked Ukraine with several waves of missiles on Saturday morning, the Ukrainian military said, putting the entire country under an air raid alert and sending people rushing for shelter as bangs were heard in several cities.The attack, which started around 5 a.m. local time and lasted about three hours, involved cruise and hypersonic missiles directed at cities including Kyiv, the capital, and Lviv, near the border with Poland. It seemed to follow Russia’s recent strategy for large-scale air assaults: waves of different types of aerial weapons launched almost simultaneously from multiple locations and aimed at various targets.The Ukrainian Air…

Carter Gauthier has been the subject of ridicule in some circles from the moment he was traded to the Anaheim Ducks on Monday, with social media taking a shine to his character after the Philadelphia Flyers effectively shed their former award-winning prospect launched an attack.Gauthier answered questions Wednesday about the shock trade in which the Flyers traded the 19-year-old Boston College standout and recent U.S. World Junior gold medalist to the Ducks for young guard Jamie Jamie Drysdale and a 2025 second-round pick.Reaction to reports of Gauthier’s recent dealings with Philadelphia (or perhaps the lack of such a deal) was…

Reggie Wells, who parlayed a background in fine art into a trailblazing career as a makeup artist for Oprah Winfrey, Whitney Houston, Beyoncé, Michelle Obama and other Black celebrities, died on Monday in Baltimore. He was 76.His death was confirmed by his niece Kristina Conner, who did not specify a cause or say where he died.For Mr. Wells, every face was a canvas to explore. One of his most famous clients was Ms. Winfrey, for whom he worked as a personal makeup artist for more than 20 years at the height of her television career.“Reggie Wells was an artist who…

The trailer for “Annapoorani: The Goddess of Food” promised a sunny if melodramatic story of uplift in a south Indian temple town. A priest’s daughter enters a cooking tournament, but social obstacles complicate her inevitable rise to the top. Annapoorani’s father, a Brahmin sitting at the top of Hindu society’s caste ladder, doesn’t want her to cook meat, a taboo in their lineage. There is even the hint of a Hindu-Muslim romantic subplot.On Thursday, two weeks after the movie premiered, Netflix abruptly pulled it from its platform. An activist, Ramesh Solanki, a self-described “very proud Hindu Indian nationalist,” had filed…