Author: NY TIMES

Israel “has effectively lost sovereignty” in its north because Hezbollah attacks launched from southern Lebanon have driven much of the population away, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said this week, underscoring the stakes of cross-border attacks that have threatened to ignite a larger regional war alongside the conflict in Gaza.Mr. Blinken spoke ahead of a trip by a senior White House official, Amos Hochstein, for talks in Paris on how to defuse the escalating border fire between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. Mr. Hochstein, the top White House official for global energy and infrastructure, has become…

Swedish grandparents became eligible for paid parental leave this week after the country enacted a trailblazing new law aimed at extending child care benefits beyond a child’s immediate family.Under the change, which took effect Monday, parents are able to transfer a portion of their parental leave days to other caretakers, cementing Sweden’s reputation as a global trendsetter in progressive parental leave policies.The law enables single parents to transfer up to 90 days of paid leave to other caregivers and a parental couple to transfer up to 45 days, according to the Swedish government’s Social Insurance Agency. The law was approved…

After an unprecedented three-year timeout on federal student loan payments because of the pandemic, millions of borrowers began repaying their debt when billing resumed late last year. But nearly as many have not.That reality, along with court decisions that regularly upend the rules, has complicated the government’s efforts to restart its system for collecting the $1.6 trillion it is owed.At the end of March, six months after the hiatus ended, nearly 20 million borrowers were making their payments as scheduled. But almost 19 million were not, leaving their accounts delinquent, in default or still on pause, according to the latest…

The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved a new drug for Alzheimer’s disease, the latest in a novel class of treatments that has been greeted with hope, disappointment and skepticism.The drug, donanemab, to be sold under the brand name Kisunla, was shown in studies to modestly slow the pace of cognitive decline in early stages of the disease. It also had significant safety risks, including swelling and bleeding in the brain.Kisunla, made by Eli Lilly, is similar to another drug, Leqembi, approved last year. Both are intravenous infusions that attack a protein involved in Alzheimer’s, and both can slow…

In late June, the Sun Ra Arkestra was onstage at Roulette in Brooklyn, swinging its way through “Queer Notions,” a jaunty big-band tune by the saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. The rendition hewed closely to the relaxed, seesaw riffing of the original, recorded by Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra in 1933. But there was one prominent difference: the barrage of bleeps, whooshes and wobbly theremin-like tones emanating from an EVI — short for electronic valve instrument — played by Marshall Allen, the multi-instrumentalist and longtime Arkestra mainstay who had recently celebrated his 100th birthday.Allen’s longevity onstage would be noteworthy on its own.…

For the second time in seven weeks, a German court has convicted the prominent far-right leader Björn Höcke of using a banned Nazi slogan.The conviction — at a time when the far right is on the ascent in Europe — is the latest in a series of legal setbacks for Mr. Höcke, the leader of the nationalist Alternative for Germany party in the eastern state of Thuringia.After a three-day trial, Mr. Höcke was found on Monday to have willfully ignored the ban on using the banned Nazi slogan — “Everything for Germany” — and was fined 16,900 euros, about $18,100,…

There is a scene in the new documentary “I Am: Celine Dion” in which Ms. Dion describes her dedication to designer heels.“When a girl loves her shoes, she always makes them fit,” the singer said, spreading her fingers to demonstrate how she has contorted her toes to accommodate shoes ranging from size 6 to 10. Asked for her size while shopping, she said, she would respond to sales associates: “What size do you have? I’ll make them work. I’ll make them fit.”It is a feeling well-known to women who relish playing dress-up: determination so great it pushes up against delusion.That…

Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, said that inflation was once again coming down in the United States and that the Fed had “made quite a bit of progress” in cooling price increases back toward its goal.Inflation “now shows signs of resuming its disinflationary trend,” Mr. Powell said on Tuesday at the European Central Bank’s annual conference in Sintra, Portugal. It was an optimistic message after the Fed’s fight against inflation hit a speed bump earlier this year.Fed officials have been waiting to see further progress on inflation before they begin to lower interest rates, which are…

The life of a Florida carpenter ant can be brutal. These half-inch ants are territorial and have violent bouts with ants from rival colonies in the Southeast.Combat can leave the ants with leg injuries. But as scientists recently discovered, these ants have evolved an effective wound treatment: amputation.In the journal Current Biology, on Tuesday, researchers report that the ants bite off the injured limbs of their nest mates to prevent infection. Although other ant species are known to tend to the wounds of their injured, typically by licking them clean, this is the first time that an ant species has…

The Ninth does away with many of those conventions, retaining some elements of Classical style while blazing a path for the Romantic period that followed. Unfurling over 20 minutes, its “Ode” looks like recognizable forms while resisting categorization. With a remarkably free spirit, the music comments on the poem’s text and spins fantasies from it, as the historian Harvey Sachs has written.Those fantasies most closely resemble a theme and variations, a musical form in which a melody is put through a series of stylistic transformations; the melody, in this case, is the famous song we know as the “Ode.” After…