Author: News Room

A Jeju Air crash in South Korea last week, the deadliest plane accident in years, has stunned the global aviation industry. The country is regarded as a model for how to turn poor air safety practices into some of the world’s best.Three decades ago, South Korea had a dismal record of air safety. Its flagship airline, Korean Air, experienced several deadly crashes in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2001, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration downgraded South Korea’s air safety rating for failing to meet international standards.Around the turn of the century, South Korea began an immense project to overhaul its…

Amazon said on Sunday that its Prime Video streaming service will release a “behind-the-scenes” documentary about Melania Trump’s life.The film will head to movie theaters and stream on Amazon Prime in the second half of this year, the company said in a statement. Mrs. Trump will be an executive producer of the documentary, which started filming in December, the month after her husband, Donald J. Trump, won the presidential election.Amazon said it was “excited to share this truly unique story.”The company and its founder, Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, had a rocky relationship with Mr. Trump during…

Do you have a question for our culture writers and editors? Ask us here.Q: Why do the Oscars honor producers when a movie wins best film? What did they do exactly?You’re confused for good reason: Producers themselves have a hard time describing their job.“I do the impossible for the ungrateful,” one cracked when I asked. “You can learn it, but you can’t teach it,” another told me, referencing something the pro wrestler Maurice “Mad Dog” Vachon used to say about his profession. One longtime producer advised me to abandon this assignment entirely. “Forget it, Jake — it’s Chinatown,” he said,…

When Jeju Air’s status as South Korea’s biggest low-cost carrier seemed under threat from the merger of the country’s two biggest airlines last year, the company’s chief executive assured employees that it would “actively respond,” possibly by acquiring smaller rivals.Now, a week after a crash that killed 179 people on Dec. 29, Jeju Air’s future is clouded by even deeper questions.South Korean officials on Thursday raided the company’s offices and imposed a travel ban on Kim E-bae, the chief executive, as part of the investigation into the country’s worst air disaster in almost three decades. Passengers are canceling bookings, adding…

More than two feet of fresh snow fell on Park City, Utah, this past week, perfectly timed for the throngs of holiday skiers gathering at Park City Mountain, the largest ski resort in the United States. But instead of experiencing a powder high, skiers and snowboarders encountered long lift lines, limited terrain and widespread frustration brought on by a strike by ski patrollers.“Five minutes of bliss for 50 minutes of waiting in line,” said one Park City skier on Instagram.The Park City Professional Ski Patrollers Association, representing 204 ski patrollers and mountain safety personnel, went on strike on Dec. 27…

Andrew here. Happy New Year and happy Saturday. This morning, we’re taking a look at what may — or may not — happen in 2025. This is not an effort to crystal-ball the future so much as it is a rundown of big topics that the DealBook team and I have on our radar screen in the new year. On this list: Changes to deal-making in the new Trump era, the future (or end) of D.E.I. efforts, the growing momentum of workers returning to the office, the evolving relationship between China and the U.S., new investments in artificial intelligence, and…

Around 2010, Dick Wolf’s vast television empire was suddenly coming undone.First, NBC abruptly canceled his network mainstay, “Law & Order,” which had been on the air for two decades, a move that stunned Mr. Wolf’s small production company. A year later, two “Law & Order” spinoffs were unceremoniously shown the door. All that was left was “Law & Order: SVU,” a relatively slim slate for a company that prized multiple lines of revenue and that had made Mr. Wolf a very rich man. After all, Mr. Wolf has repeated a mantra for decades: “No show, no business.”“It was a little…

Late last month, two days before Christmas, the Rev. Dr. Katrina D. Foster, pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint, was showing off her church’s recent renovations. The neo-Gothic church was built in 1891, and the original blue, vaulted ceiling; wooden pews; stained-glass windows; and a Jardine & Son pipe organ all looked relatively new.“On Dec. 7 we had a huge rededication service,” said Pastor Foster, 56, who walked around the church with quick, sprightly steps and could not stop beaming. “It was the same day as Notre-Dame had theirs.”Since 1994, when Pastor Foster was…

For 20 years, Marina Khidekel worked at magazines like Cosmopolitan and Women’s Health, and as chief content officer for Thrive Global. While her work centered on helping readers manage their mental wellness, she faced her own struggles, too. “I had a lot of nighttime anxiety,” she said. “So I tried a weighted blanket, but it was too smothering for me.”Seeking something more cuddly, Ms. Khidekel designed a weighted stuffed animal. In 2022, she left her journalism career and founded Hugimals World.Ms. Khidekel, who is in her mid-40s, worked with occupational therapists and psychologists to design stuffed animals with sweet expressions…

Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for The Washington Post, said on Friday evening that she was resigning after the newspaper’s opinions section rejected a cartoon depicting The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, genuflecting toward a statue of President-elect Donald J. Trump.In a brief statement posted to Substack, Ms. Telnaes — who has worked at The Post since 2008 — called the newspaper’s decision to kill her cartoon a “game changer” that was “dangerous for a free press.”“In all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at,” she wrote.…