Stern, credited with designing 15 Central Park West, sought to design buildings that invoked pre-war splendor
Robert AM Stern, an architect who fashioned the New York City skyline with buildings that sought to invoke pre-war splendor but with modern luxury fit for billionaires and movie stars, has died at the age of 86.
Dubbed “The King of Central Park West” by Vanity Fair, Stern was credited with designing 15 Central Park West that, in 2008, was credited as being the highest-priced new apartment building in the history of New York.
The 99th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, one of the largest in the world, dazzled crowds in Manhattan, New York, on Thursday. Thirty-two balloons, three giant balloons, 27 floats, four special units, 33 clown groups, 11 marching bands, performance groups, and music stars parade to welcome ‘Santa Claus and the holiday season’
Study finds that a week of political content can bring about a shift in views that previously would have taken three years
Small changes to the tone of posts fed to users of X can increase feelings of political polarisation as much in a week as would have historically taken at least three years, research has found.
A groundbreaking experiment to gauge the potency of Elon Musk’s social platform to increase political division found that when posts expressing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity were boosted, even barely perceptibly, in the feeds of Democrat and Republican supporters there was a large change in their unfavourable feelings towards the other side.
Carriers accused of joining ‘actions of state terrorism promoted by US’ after they suspended flights to Venezuela
Venezuela has banned six international airlines, accusing them of “state terrorism” after the carriers suspended flights to the country following a warning from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Venezuela’s civil aviation authority announced late on Wednesday that Spain’s Iberia, Portugal’s Tap, Colombia’s Avianca, Chile and Brazil’s Latam, Brazil’s Gol and Turkish Airlines would have their operational permits revoked for “joining the actions of state terrorism promoted by the United States government and unilaterally suspending air commercial operations”.
Russian president says latest draft peace plan ‘can be basis for future agreements’ if Kyiv gives up unspecified areas
Vladimir Putin has said that the outline of a draft peace plan discussed by the US and Ukraine could serve as a basis for future negotiations to end the war – but insisted Ukraine would have to surrender territory for any deal to be possible.
State department has told employees and grant recipients to not publicly promote or make event on 1 December
For the first time since 1988, the US government will no longer commemorate World Aids Day, according to reports.
The state department has directed its employees and grant recipients not to use US government funds to mark the event – which falls annually on 1 December – and not to promote the day publicly. The news was first reported by the journalist Emily Bass and confirmed in an email viewed by the New York Times.
Charles Stanish surmised indentations were rudimentary market place and later adapted as accounting and storage system
A Florida archaeologist’s decades-long persistence has helped solve one of Peru’s most puzzling geographical conundrums: the origin and purpose of the so-called Band of Holes in the country’s mountainous Pisco Valley.
Charles Stanish, professor of archaeology at the University of South Florida, and an expert on Andean culture, spent years studying the more than 5,200 curious hillside shallow pits known to local residents as Monte Sierpe - serpent mountain.
The suspected shooter of two national guard members in Washington DC on Wednesday worked with CIA-backed military units during the US war in Afghanistan, the agency has confirmed.
The alleged gunman, identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, came to the US in September 2021 under an Operation Allies Welcome program that gave some Afghans who had worked for the US government entry visas to the US. He was granted asylum in April this year, under the Trump administration, Reuters reported.
Israeli soldiers had taken Mohammed Ibrahim from his home in a night raid when he was only 15 years old
A 16-year-old American citizen was freed on Thursday after spending nine months in an Israeli prison.
Mohammed Ibrahim, a Palestinian-American teenager from Florida whose case was first exposed by the Guardian in July, was released following a guilty plea and suspended sentence, according to his family. Relatives said he was taken to a hospital for intravenous therapy and blood work immediately after his release, and noted he is severely underweight, pale and is still suffering from scabies contracted during his detention.Ibrahim had lost a quarter of his body weight in detention, his family said.
She left Silicon Valley to master pie, became Hollywood’s baker and now films its healing power
Thanksgiving may be a holiday steeped in myth and controversy – but there’s still something Americans largely agree on: there’s nothing wrong with the holiday’s traditional dessert. So says Beth Howard, expert pie maker, cookbook author, memoirist, and now documentary film-maker.
“No matter what, pie brings us together. Pie is love,” says Howard, who never tires of talking about anything with a flaky crust and filling. She’s spent the last few months at community screenings – over 100 and counting – of her new documentary – Pieowa – that’s Pie + Iowa (her home state). The film chronicles the history of pie and how it brings people together. It’s full of church ladies, blue ribbon winners, home bakers, expert pie makers and cyclists, which is where Iowa comes in.
Pieowa is now screening in Iowa and across the US, find out more info at https://theworldneedsmorepie.com/pieowa/
2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour (plus approximately 1/2 cup more for rolling)
1/2 cup butter, chilled
1/2 cup vegetable shortening or lard
1/2 tsp salt
Ice water (fill one cup but use only enough to moisten dough)
3lbs Granny Smith apples, peeled (approx. 7 or 8 apples depending on size)
*It’s also okay to use a variety of apples. Try Braeburn, Jonathan and Gala. Avoid Fuji or Delicious as they’re too juicy and not tart enough.
3/4 cup sugar (or more, depending on your taste or tartness of apples)
4 tablespoons flour (to thicken the filling)
1/2 teaspoon salt (you’ll sprinkle this on so don’t worry about precise amount)
1 to 2 teaspoons cinnamon (or however much you like)
1 tablespoon butter (put dollop on top before covering with top crust)
1 beaten egg (you won’t use all of it, just enough to brush on pie before baking)
Senior figure allegedly referred to customers buying ‘highly processed food’ and denigrated Indian employees
Campbell’s has dismissed an executive who allegedly referred to the soup company’s products as being made for “poor people” and denigrated its Indian employees.
Martin Bally, who was the vice-president of Campbell’s information technology department, was recorded making the alleged comments by another employee.
US president’s threat to seize territory prompts intelligence briefings reminiscent of Game of Thrones patrol
The Danish government has set up a “night watch” in the foreign ministry, not to keep out the wildlings and White Walkers like the Night’s Watch of Game of Thrones, but rather to monitor Donald Trump’s pronouncements and movements while Copenhagen sleeps.
The night watch starts at 5pm local time each day and at 7am a report is produced and distributed around the Danish government and relevant departments about what was said and took place, the Politiken newspaper reported.
Dining at 3pm allows for an ideal holiday schedule. Let’s retire the term ‘dinner’ from our Thanksgiving lexicon
Without question, my favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. I relish the opportunity to appreciate all the wonderful things about life. I also love that it is simultaneously a holiday all about complaints, criticism and arguments. Every holiday should contain such multitudes. I might be feeling grateful for my blessings while also wishing the gravy had more salt in it. There’s something uniquely American about turning a holiday that’s meant to be a joyous celebration of abundance into a chance to vehemently disagree about something trivial.
Of course, I love arguing about trivial things. In fact, that might be what I’m most grateful for. Thanksgiving traditions are fertile ground for arguments. What to eat and, even more crucially, when to eat. Every year, someone in your life – a family member, friend, know-it-all writer – will tell you they have settled the eternal debate about when to commence Thanksgiving dinner. Some (wrong) people think the word “dinner” should be taken literally, in the American sense. These strict constitutionalists can see no nuance in the holiday traditions and believe (falsely) that the meal should begin between 5pm and 7pm, when it’s properly dark outside.
Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist
Advocates allege navy knew levels of airborne plutonium at Hunters Point shipyard were high before it alerted officials
The US navy knew of potentially dangerous levels of airborne plutonium in San Francisco for almost a year before it alerted city officials after it carried out testing that detected radioactive material in November last year, public health advocates allege.
The plutonium levels exceeded the federal action threshold at the navy’s highly contaminated, 866-acre Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. It was detected in an area adjacent to a residential neighborhood filled with condos, and which includes a public park.
Oleksandra Matviichuk warns any amnesty could encourage authoritarian leaders to attack their neighbours
Any peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine that includes an amnesty for war crimes could encourage other authoritarian leaders to attack their neighbours, Ukraine’s only Nobel peace prize winner has warned.
Oleksandra Matviichuk said the leaked 28-point US-Russia plan did not account for “the human dimension” and she supported President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s efforts to rewrite it in dialogue with White House.
Twenty years after the first face transplant, patients are dying, data is missing, and the experimental procedure’s future hangs in the balance
In the early hours of 28 May 2005, Isabelle Dinoire woke up in a pool of blood. After fighting with her family the night before, she turned to alcohol and sleeping tablets “to forget”, she later said.
Reaching for a cigarette out of habit, she realized she couldn’t hold it between her lips. She understood something was wrong.
If support for Israel is no longer de rigueur in New York, it may soon not be obligatory in Washington. That is good news for Palestinians
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be quaking in his boots at the decisive victory of Zohran Mamdani in the 4 November New York City mayoral election. Not because of absurd allegations of antisemitism for which there is no evidence, but because Mamdani has broken the longstanding taboo for successful New York candidates against criticizing the Israeli government. And he has only reinforced his approach in the month since his election.
New York has the largest Jewish population in the United States – and the second-largest of any city in the world after Tel Aviv. The longstanding assumption was that many Jewish voters prioritized the defense of the Israeli government over other issues, so criticism of Israel would set them against a politician.
Documentary series of Interview with the Vampire writer available to stream with potential for further releases
The worst heartbreak and most riveting triumph of Anne Rice’s life happened in relatively quick succession, each beginning when the US novelist’s daughter – Michele, then about three – told her she was too tired to play.
Rice had never heard such a comment from a child that age, and subsequent blood tests ordered by a doctor revealed that her beloved “Mouse” had acute granulocytic leukemia, considered untreatable for her.
Diplomatic row worsens after US president says member state will not be invited to 2026 summit
Donald Trump has said that South Africa will not be invited to G20 events in the United States when it presides over the forum next year, a measure the African nation described as “punitive”.
The US president repeated widely discredited claims that South Africa is “killing white people”, extending a diplomatic row between the countries after the US boycotted the summit in Johannesburg last weekend.
This nebulous study of Luigi Mangione veers close to romanticising him as a latter-day Robin Hood
On 5 December 2024, the New York Timesran the headline “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The newspaper then noted that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then walked coolly away”. The murder in broad daylight was indeed both cold and shocking. But many Americans had a different response: for those who had been denied health insurance or faced exorbitant healthcase costs, the news felt cathartic. Social media blew up. One post read: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who deserves to live or die. That’s the job of the AI algorithm the insurance company designed to maximize profits on your health.”
Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a master’s in computer science, was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He awaits trial on federal and state charges of murder, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. So who is Mangione? And what might have motivated the alleged crime? These are the questions John H Richardson attempts to answer in an investigation that explores broader themes, too.
US group Dekleptocracy identifies chemicals used for military vehicles’ lubricants and tyres as potential vulnerabilities
A US group has identified several obscure but potentially key sanctions it says could seriously disrupt Russia’s war effort in Ukraine after last month’s targeting of the Kremlin’s biggest oil firms.
Previous rounds of sanctions have been applied to Russian energy companies, banks, military suppliers and the “shadow fleet” of ships carrying Russian oil.
Anastasia Samoylova took a photographic journey up the US east coast – and found herself in America’s unreconciled past just as much as its fragmented present
President calls the shooting in Washington an ‘act of terror’, as officials name Rahmanullah Lakanwal as suspected shooter
Donald Trump has called for his government to re-examine every Afghan immigrant who entered the US during Joe Biden’s administration, after law enforcement officials identified the suspect in the shooting of two national guard members in Washington as a man from Afghanistan.
A statement from the Department of Homeland Security named the suspect as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national who entered the US under a Biden-era policy set up after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Immigration authorities granted Lakanwal asylum earlier this year, according to CNN.
Filing contained errors known as ‘hallucinations’, with attorneys arguing prosecutors’ office used AI in other cases
A California prosecutors’ office used artificial intelligence to file a motion in at least one criminal case, which contained errors known as “hallucinations”.
A prosecutor at the Nevada county district attorney’s office in northern California “recently used artificial intelligence in preparing a filing, which resulted in an inaccurate citation,” district attorney Jesse Wilson said in a statement to the Sacramento Bee. “Once the error was discovered, the filing was immediately withdrawn.”
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