Author: NY TIMES

Rishi Sunak’s gamble was a considerable one. Five weeks ago, the British prime minister bet the house on his belief that a summer election might offer his Conservative Party a better chance of holding onto power than waiting until the fall.Calling a snap election served as Mr. Sunak’s last roll of the dice. But it has since emerged that in the days before he stood forlornly in the pouring rain on May 22 and told the country he was going to the polls, a number of colleagues and underlings were placing bets of the more literal kind.Reviewing data from the…

Sewell Chan, the editor in chief of The Texas Tribune, will become the next executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review.Mr. Chan, 46, has helmed The Tribune, a pioneering nonprofit newsroom, since October 2021. He will join CJR on Sept. 16, the publication announced on Thursday.CJR, which covers the media industry, has been published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961. It now prints two magazines a year and runs a digital operation.“It’s always been an intellectual leader in our field, especially on news ethics and decision-making,” Mr. Chan told The New York Times. “I want CJR…

In 1960, Israeli agents smuggled the Nazi official Adolf Eichmann from Buenos Aires to Jerusalem to stand trial for his role in the Holocaust. Rather than focus on the operation, or on Eichmann’s notorious defense, “June Zero” thoughtfully braids three stories that relate to the events around Eichmann’s execution by hanging in 1962.Jake Paltrow’s film, which premiered at festivals in 2022, might sound like an exercise in hagiography: Drawing on actual accounts, it’s framed by the tale of David, a plucky Israeli teenager who finds himself involved in Eichmann’s fate. But the shifting story, written by Paltrow and Tom Shoval,…

At least 11 Americans were among those who died while making the Islamic pilgrimage of hajj to Saudi Arabia this month in searing temperatures, the U.S. State Department said on Tuesday, adding that it was possible that more deaths could be confirmed in the coming days.In Maryland, the daughter of one couple was still searching for answers about the exact circumstances of her parents’ deaths, and about the actions of the tour operator whom the couple had paid tens of thousands of dollars to help them make the trip.The daughter, Saida Wurie, said she and her brothers had not yet…

His prime minister was among the last to know. That is how secretive, how confined to a small group of advisers President Emmanuel Macron’s shock decision to dissolve Parliament and call French legislative elections was.Gabriel Attal, 35, was a personal favorite, his wunderkind, when Mr. Macron named him prime minister in January. Yet, just months after entrusting Mr. Attal with the task of revitalizing his government, Mr. Macron snubbed him as he considered one of the most important decisions of his presidency: whether to call an election at the very moment the anti-immigrant National Rally party had surged.Mr. Macron’s style…

Partisan media outlets have fixated this week on Thursday night’s first presidential debate — and how their preferred candidate could prevail.Many conservative media outlets have parroted former President Donald J. Trump by questioning the fairness of the debate, which CNN will host, as well as President Biden’s fitness for it. Several publications piled on Mr. Trump’s longstanding criticism that CNN is biased against him. Many also repeated Mr. Trump’s baseless claim that Mr. Biden would be under the influence of performance-enhancing drugs during the event.Liberal outlets criticized Mr. Trump and his campaign for making the claims about CNN and for…

Uber and Lyft settled a yearslong legal dispute with the attorney general in Massachusetts on Thursday, agreeing to pay their drivers in the state a minimum rate with some benefits.As part of the settlement, Uber and Lyft will pay $175 million to resolve claims that the companies violated state labor laws, with most of the money to be distributed to gig workers, state officials said in a statement. But in a win for the ride-hailing companies, drivers will continue to be classified as independent contractors and not employees.Among the benefits that the state won for its gig workers were a…

Would you donate a kidney to a stranger? Early in “Confessions of a Good Samaritan,” the filmmaker Penny Lane (“Hail Satan?”) flips the question around. With so many people in need of transplants, why wouldn’t you give one of yours?In the film, Lane puts this conviction to the test. Seated before a backdrop, she mulls over her drive to donate — she cringes at the idea that people will think she’s only doing it for a film — and explores the practice more broadly by interviewing doctors and other non-directed donors (a.k.a. altruistic donors). She pairs these testimonies with the…

Dear Tripped Up,I am a single American mother living in Jordan and working for the United Nations. In September 2019, I adopted my then 5-year-old son from China, and promised him we would return to visit his country every year. But the pandemic broke out. When China finally reopened to tourists in 2023, we got visas and booked a July flight to Beijing via Doha on Qatar Airways, paying about $1,400 total. My now 9-year-old had worked hard to maintain his language and was excited, but nervous. At that time, the Chinese government required passengers to fill out a “Health…

At first, they heard the sirens. Then, peering out over the country’s main political plaza on Wednesday, Bolivia’s top ministers saw the armored vehicles and troops spilling out their doors. A shiver ran down the interior minister’s spine, she later said.Within moments, the president, Luis Arce, addressed his inner circle — “We are facing a coup!” — before heading to the presidential palace to confront, face to face, the general trying to remove him from power.The coup attempt failed, lasting a mere three hours, and ended in the arrest of the general, whose motivation for the attack appeared to be,…