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‘99 Problems but My ABCs Ain’t One’: Jay-Z Sues Over Children’s Book

Australia|‘99 Problems but My ABCs Ain’t One’: Jay-Z Sues Over Children’s BookThe Little Homie, a small Australian online retailer, says it is celebrating hip-hop. Jay-Z, who has spoken out about black identity and equality, says it is engaging in theft.Jay-Z and his wife, Beyoncé.Credit...Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for DisneyNov. 28, 2019SYDNEY, Australia — When the children’s…

Ho Chi Minh City’s Hilarious Side

heads upStand-up comedy is sweeping Vietnam’s largest city, often called Saigon, with locals braving open-mic nights in the city’s hippest cafes and bars. Uy Le, above right, is among the local comedians making stand-up comedy a new tradition in Ho Chi Minh City.Credit...Justin Mott for The New York TimesVietnam’s largest metropolis, Ho Chi Minh City,…

Radar Points to a Long-Lost Black Cemetery in Tampa

“We feel as though our ancestors are coming back and talking to us,” said a member of a historical committee that is investigating the discovery of about 145 coffins at a high school. Ground-penetrating radar was used to search the site of King High School in Tampa, Fla. Evidence of about 145 coffins was found…

How Russia Meddles Abroad for Profit: Cash, Trolls and a Cult Leader

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — The Russians were hard to miss. They appeared suddenly last year in Madagascar’s traffic-snarled capital, carrying backpacks stuffed with cash and campaign swag decorated with the name of Madagascar’s president.It was one of Russia’s most overt attempts at election interference to date. Working from their headquarters in a resort hotel, the Russians…

How Rising Temperatures Due to Climate Change are Shortening Pregnancies

It’s bad enough that adults have made a climatological mess of the world. It’s worse that the mess is having a disproportionate impact on kids—who did nothing to create the problem, but are more susceptible to health issues caused by rising temperatures than adults are. Now, it appears, global warming is doing its damage even…

China Says U.S. Will, and Must, Cut Tariffs to Reach a Trade Deal

The development suggests progress toward an interim agreement that would provide relief to businesses and consumers.A container ship docked at a port in Shanghai.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesWASHINGTON — The United States and China have agreed that an initial trade deal between the two countries would roll back a portion of the…

Arkady Renko Has Been Sent to Siberia. And He’s Fine With That.

CrimeCredit...Pablo AmargoPublished Nov. 15, 2019Updated Nov. 18, 2019If this is a Martin Cruz Smith mystery, we must be in Moscow, maybe in Gorky Park. But in a thrilling change of pace, THE SIBERIAN DILEMMA (Simon & Schuster, $27) takes us out of the city and into Russia’s untamed wilderness in search of a journalist who’s…

Saving Birds by Ruffling Some Feathers

Children’s BooksWe hear so much about the challenges of young female friendships. But STRANGE BIRDS: A Field Guide to Ruffling Feathers (Kokila, 350 pp., $16.99; ages 8 to 12), Celia C. Pérez’s second middle-grade novel (after “The First Rule of Punk”), is a story about the magic and beauty of these bonds, especially when they…

Report: Black Crime Victims Are Much Less Likely to Have Legislation Named in Their Honor

(CLEVELAND) — The slayings of Reagan Tokes and Alianna DeFreeze had much in common. Both were abducted, raped and killed in Ohio in 2017. Tokes was a 21-year-old college student, DeFreeze a 14-year-old seventh grader. Both their killers were previously convicted sex offenders. Yet only one victim got a law with her name on it…

Massachusetts Becomes the First State to Ban Flavored Tobacco and Vaping Products

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts became the first state to ban flavored tobacco and nicotine vaping products, including menthol cigarettes, after Republican Gov. Charlie Baker signed into law on Wednesday a bill that’s meant to reduce the appeal of the products to young people amid a rash of illnesses and deaths linked to vaping. Anti-smoking groups…

Chicago Mayor Fires City’s Police Superintendent Over ‘Ethical Lapses’

(CHICAGO) — Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot fired the city’s retiring police superintendent Eddie Johnson on Monday, citing “ethical lapses” that included telling lies about a recent incident in which Johnson was found asleep at the wheel of his car after having drinks. Named to the job in the wake of a police shooting that killed…

Michael Bloomberg Launches Democratic Presidential Bid

NEW YORK — Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the world’s richest men, has formally launched a Democratic bid for president. Ending weeks of speculation, the 77-year-old former Republican announced his candidacy Sunday in a written statement posted on a campaign website describing himself as uniquely positioned to defeat President…

14,000 Lives: ‘Rare Case Where Racial Biases’ Protected Blacks

The New health CareFewer opioid prescriptions meant fewer deaths (possibly 14,000), but the episode also reveals how prevalent and harmful stereotypes can be, even if implicit.Published Nov. 25, 2019Updated Dec. 2, 2019When the opioid crisis began to escalate some 20 years ago, many African-Americans had a layer of protection against it.But that protection didn’t come…

What the 2019 Election Means for 2020 – The New York Times

On PoliticsFour lessons from Tuesday night.Credit...Tim LahanNov. 6, 2019There was at least one clear loser in last night’s elections: my dream of reaching Inbox Zero.My email (current unread count: 40,149!) is now flooded with hundreds more messages, all from overjoyed Democratic organizations, strategists and candidates eager to get their piece of the credit for the…

Walmart’s Strategy When Wading Into Culture Wars: Offend Few

A Walmart in Secaucus, N.J. The retailer’s approach to public policy issues is more nuanced than a desire to simply do the right thing, interviews show.Credit...Gabby Jones for The New York TimesPublished Nov. 4, 2019Updated Nov. 5, 2019Walmart is getting out of the vaping business, but still sells cigarettes. It is working to reduce plastic…

Fiona Hill and the American Idea

A naturalized American exposes Trump’s attack on what America is and must be.Nov. 22, 2019Fiona Hill leaving a closed hearing on Capitol Hill early this month.Credit...T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesFor a naturalized American, raised in Britain, I found Fiona Hill’s testimony at impeachment hearings this week to be a powerful reminder of what…

Noose Found in Locker Brings Unrest to Mississippi Fire Department

(HATTIESBURG, Miss.) — There’s little disagreement that the object found in a white Mississippi firefighter’s locker was a hangman’s noose. But as with many things in America these days, there’s deep disagreement about what it meant. To some it was a reminder of lynchings that took hundreds of black lives in Mississippi, and it had…

Popeyes Sandwich Strikes a Chord for African-Americans

Credit...Nick Kindelsperger/Chicago Tribune, via Getty ImagesKANSAS CITY, Mo. — The videos of mind-numbing first bites and long lines, the celebratory memes and fawning reviews: The return of the Popeyes chicken sandwich on Sunday has met with the same social-media frenzy that first greeted it last summer.But embedded in many of the catchy memes and witty…

Overlooked No More: Lillian Harris Dean, Culinary Entrepreneur Known as ‘Pig Foot Mary’

From a baby carriage on a Manhattan street corner, she sold Southern food to African-Americans who, like her, had moved to New York during the Great Migration. Left, the corner of 135th Street and what is now Malcolm X Boulevard in the 1920s, near where Lillian Harris sold her traditional Southern meals. Above, Benja Kay…

William Loren Katz, Historian of African-Americans, Dies at 92

He documented the often overlooked contributions of black people in books for young adults, helping to refashion social studies curriculums across the country.William Loren Katz in an undated photo. He wrote some 40 books about the integral roles that black people played in American history.Published Nov. 21, 2019Updated Nov. 22, 2019The fountainhead of the historian…

That Recruitment Letter From Harvard Probably Doesn’t Mean Much

Especially if you’re African-American, according to a new study.A working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research argues that Harvard intentionally draws applications from African-Americans who effectively have no chance of getting in.Credit...Cody O'Loughlin for The New York TimesNov. 29, 2019The message, emailed to more than 100,000 high school students, was seductive and flattering:…

How Advocates of Reproductive Justice Found Their Spotlight

The hotel ballroom is packed when the spoken-word poet Staceyann Chin takes the stage on a Saturday morning in late October. At least 1,100 mostly women and nonbinary people of color have filled the vast space in the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta in anticipation of her performance and of Stacey Abrams’ keynote address, which will…

Battlefields: Recent Books in Military History

NonfictionEugene BullardCredit...US Air ForcePublished Nov. 5, 2019Updated Nov. 7, 2019Watching the recent resurgence of white supremacism in America, I have come to think that much of what I was taught about our history is wrong. For example, Reconstruction did not collapse because of its inherent faults, as my high school teachers said. Rather, it was…

The Pork Chops You’ll Make Again and Again

EatPork chops in lemon-caper sauce.Credit...Sarah Anne Ward for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Paola Andrea.There are precious few feelings as nice as the one that comes from falling in love with a cookbook — with its aesthetics and point of view, with its larder and stories, above all with the…

Five Places to Visit in Washington, D.C. With a Black Digital Storyteller

Travel|Five Places to Visit in Washington, D.C. With a Black Digital Storyteller5 PlacesLanae Spruce made a name for herself as a social media specialist at the Smithsonian’s African American Museum. Here are her top D.C. spots.Lanae Spruce, a social media storyteller, lists the Anacostia Arts Center as one of her favorite spots in Washington. “It’s…

‘Our Nation Is Being Torn Apart. Truth Is Questioned.’

Fiona Hill’s warnings challenge Trump to keep America safe from Moscow’s efforts to destabilize democracy and snare influence around the globe. By Jeffrey A. StaceyDr. Stacey is a former State Department official and is working on a book titled “Rise of the East, End of the West?”Nov. 23, 2019Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council…

Surviving Droughts, Tornadoes and Racism

TANNER, Ala. — “There are easier ways to make a living than farming,” Greg Bridgeforth said as he drove a combine through fields he farms in northern Alabama. “But this is what I truly love to do — till the soil and grow things, just like my father, grandfather and great-grandfather did. You know, when…

What Were the Most Memorable Moments From Last Night’s Debate? – The New York Times

Politics|What Were the Most Memorable Moments From Last Night’s Debate?For a Democratic debate that was without major fireworks, there were several memorable moments. Here are the lines that stood out. Videotranscripttranscript‘Donald Trump Got Punked’: The Best One-Liners From the DebateFrom Cory Booker’s buzzkill response to Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s stance on marijuana legalization to Andrew…

30 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia Is Only Pretending to Be a Major Power

Vladimir Yakunin, the former Russian Railways boss and KGB spy, leaned forward to describe the way the world is going. It was the middle of October, and he had just convened an annual gathering of statesmen from countries that are, as a rule, sympathetic to the Kremlin. Held each fall on the Greek island of…

The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the 2010s

Many of the best nonfiction books of the decade tap into the lives of individuals to speak to universal human experiences — those of grief and recovery, hubris and failure, dreams and disappointments. Some, in their intimate specificity, open doors to worlds that only few have seen. All employ dazzling prose to draw readers further…