Author: NY TIMES

The Compassion of ChildrenOver dinner, my children finally talk about the car accident that paralyzed me in my teens. My 10-year-old queries; I explain someone died. “Where were they sitting?” “Next to me.” He melts into a puddle. “I’m glad you weren’t … hurt that bad,” my 5-year-old adds. He can’t bear to say dead. I don’t want him to say it either. He kisses my shoulder, kneels, then kisses my wheelchair. “I’m glad for your wheelchair, too.” Understanding the horror of the alternative. I stay composed, not wanting them to know the pain I’ve had. Their pure, boundless compassion…

The 6th Street Bridge in Los Angeles is wired to glow with colorful lights celebrating the city’s spirit. But the bridge, known as the “Ribbon of Light,” goes dark at night now. So do stretches of the busy 405 freeway and dozens of street blocks across the city.In St. Paul, Minn., a man was recently hit by a car and killed while crossing a street near his home where streetlights had gone out.And in Las Vegas and surrounding communities, more than 970,000 feet of electrical wiring, the equivalent of 184 miles, have gone missing from streetlights over the past two…

The Biden administration said on Tuesday that it would direct up to $1.6 billion in funding toward developing new technology for packaging computer chips, a major thrust in U.S. efforts to stay ahead of China in creating components needed for applications like artificial intelligence.The proposed funding, part of the money authorized under the 2022 legislation called the CHIPS Act, will help companies innovate in areas such as creating faster ways to transfer data between chips in a package and managing the heat they generate, said Laurie Locascio, an under secretary in the Commerce Department who is also the director of…

The actor Alec Baldwin was filming the movie “Rust” in New Mexico in 2021 when the gun that he was rehearsing with, which was not supposed to contain live ammunition, went off, firing a bullet that killed the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins. The film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was responsible for weapons and ammunition on the set, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 18 months in prison. Now Mr. Baldwin is going on trial for involuntary manslaughter; he has pleaded not guilty. Opening arguments begin on Wednesday. Here are some key players.The ‘Rust’ ProductionAlec BaldwinCredit…Ross D. Franklin/Agence France-Presse…

Daryna Vertetska was sitting with her 8-year-old daughter in Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital on Monday morning when Russian missiles began to ring out in the sky.Her daughter, Kira, was receiving treatment for her cancer as the explosions boomed across the capital, Kyiv.“We decided not to interrupt it,” Ms. Vertetska said of the treatment.As Kira continued her treatment, a missile slammed directly into the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital, triggering an explosion so loud it defied description, she said. Shards of flying glass cut into the child’s skin.“She was very frightened,” said Ms. Vertetska, 33. Bloodied but alive, the pair scrambled through the…

Tesla’s once-commanding share of the market for electric vehicles in the United States slipped below 50 percent in the second quarter of the year even as sales of battery-powered cars surged to a record, according to new estimates published Tuesday by a research firm.Tesla accounted for 49.7 percent of electric vehicles sales from April through June, down from 59.3 percent a year earlier as the company led by Elon Musk lost ground to General Motors, Ford Motor, Hyundai and Kia, the research firm, Cox Automotive said. It was the first time the company’s market share fell below 50 percent in…

A 54-year-old New Jersey woman who was the second person to receive a kidney transplanted from a genetically modified pig, and who lived with the organ for 47 days, died on Sunday, surgeons at NYU Langone Health announced on Tuesday.The patient, Lisa Pisano, was critically ill, suffering from both kidney failure and heart failure. She received the pig kidney on April 12, just eight days after implantation of a mechanical heart pump.Surgeons were forced to remove the kidney on May 29 after it was damaged by inadequate blood flow related to the heart pump. After the explantation, Ms. Pisano resumed…

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube8. Teddy Swims: “Lose Control”A soulful vocal, a bluesy progression, a few choppy chords — the Southern singer-songwriter Teddy Swims scored with this breakout from his debut, “I’ve Tried Everything but Therapy (Part 1).”▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube9. Future, Metro Boomin and Kendrick Lamar: “Like That”The song that kicked off the beef of the year. Kendrick Lamar joined the Atlanta rapper Future and the producer Metro Boomin on their first joint release of 2024, “We Don’t Trust You,” and tossed some shade at Drake and J. Cole over menacing synths…

A Russian court on Tuesday ordered the arrest in absentia of Yulia B. Navalnaya, the widow of Aleksei A. Navalny, who was a key figure in the country’s political opposition, accusing her of “participating in an extremist community.”The court order against Ms. Navalnaya, who left Russia in 2021, comes five months after her husband died under murky circumstances in a harsh Russian penal colony. He was imprisoned after being convicted of various trumped-up charges when he returned to Russia after a near-fatal attempt to poison him in August 2020.Ms. Navalnaya has repeatedly accused President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia of…

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday barred an online service for the first time from serving users under the age of 18, saying the app had violated child privacy and consumer protection laws and had harmed children and teenagers.The F.T.C. said it had reached a settlement with the maker of the anonymous messaging app NGL over privacy and consumer protection violations. NGL Labs, the maker of NGL, had aggressively marketed the app as a “safe space for teens” with robust moderation practices, but instead, it exposed users to cyberbullying and other harms, the agency said.NGL, a common acronym used for…