Author: NY TIMES

A spate of decisions over the past two years by the Supreme Court has significantly impaired the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to limit pollution in the air and water, regulate the use of toxic chemicals and reduce the greenhouse gasses that are heating the planet.This term, the court’s conservative supermajority handed down several rulings that chip away at the power of many federal agencies.But the environmental agency has been under particular fire, the result of a series of cases brought since 2022 by conservative activists who say that E.P.A. regulations have driven up costs for industries ranging from electric utilities…

In September 1815, Karl von Müffling, the Prussian governor of Paris, presented himself at the doors of the Louvre and ordered its French guards to step aside.Belgian and Dutch officials, backed by Prussian and British troops, had arrived to reclaim art treasures plundered by the French during the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.This moment is recognized by many scholars as a sea change in political attitudes toward the spoils of war and is seen as the birth of repatriation, the concept of returning cultural goods taken in times of conflict to the countries from which they were stolen.“It had been universally…

Tropical Storm Beryl officially became Hurricane Beryl on Saturday afternoon, having strengthened since its formation late on Friday night and reaching sustained winds of 75 miles per hour, with higher gusts.Hurricane Beryl, the first hurricane of the season, is expected to bring “life-threatening winds and storm surge” to the Windward Islands, southeast of Puerto Rico and north of Venezuela, as it continues moving west, the National Hurricane Center said on Saturday.The winds could be up to 30 percent stronger across the higher elevations of the islands, forecasters said.A hurricane warning was issued for Barbados, and several other Caribbean islands were…

For the past 14 years, Conservative-led governments in Britain said they wanted to maintain the country’s status as a cultural powerhouse, to foster new talent and to keep the home of the Beatles and Harry Potter in the global spotlight.Their actions haven’t matched those words.Successive governments slashed subsidies for theaters, museums and opera houses. The number of children studying art, music and drama plummeted. New border rules after Brexit meant musicians struggled to tour abroad.These days, nobody is talking about “Cool Britannia”; instead, there has been chatter of an arts scene in crisis.Yet for many artists and cultural administrators, there…

Waters have been choppy recently for some of Ontario’s museums. This week, the provincial government abruptly, and permanently, closed the Ontario Science Centre over what it said were dangers posed by the stability of the concrete used in some of its roof panels.The fate of the building, which is integrated into a ravine in one of the city’s inner suburbs, remains uncertain. But the provincial government, led by Premier Doug Ford, had said that the museum was being moved to a new, smaller building as part of its redevelopment of Ontario Place on the Lake Ontario shoreline. (Last month, I…

R.O. Kwon asks her ancestors for help. Two jade rings in particular, passed down by her mother, serve as a direct line and source of comfort.Ms. Kwon, an award-winning author, wanted to be a Christian pastor or a religious recluse when she was growing up. She had, as she put it, “what felt like a conversation with the Lord going.” But she lost her faith as a teenager. Now, in her writing, Ms. Kwon explores the challenge of questioning long-held beliefs.Her first novel, “The Incendiaries,” tackled religion, while her second, “Exhibit,” out last month, is about hidden desire. She wanted…

Ann Lurie, a self-described hippie who went on to become one of Chicago’s most celebrated philanthropists, in one instance giving more than $100 million to a hospital where she had once worked as a pediatric nurse, died on Monday. She was 79.Her death was announced in a statement by Northwestern University, to which Ms. Lurie, a trustee, had donated more than $60 million. The statement did not say where she died or specify a cause.An only child raised in Miami by a single mother, Ms. Lurie protested the Vietnam War while in college and planned to join the Peace Corps…

It’s been a while since I did a “what I’m reading” roundup. (After the newsletter went to once a week, it became harder to slot them in.) But today I wonder if you’re feeling like I am, worried about the state of the world and eager to find answers — or at least a way to escape searching for them — in books.Some of that means reading work that’s new to me, including “Small Wars, Big Data: The Information Revolution in Modern Conflict” by Eli Berman, Joseph H. Felter and Jacob N. Shapiro.Covering the war in Gaza has inevitably brought…

Cuando mi mujer propuso que dejáramos de ser monógamos, dijo que eso nos haría más fuertes. Yo dije que nos llevaría al divorcio. Ambos teníamos razón.Ella había plantado la semilla a los siete años de casados, cuando yo estaba terminando el seminario. En ese momento, yo estaba saliendo de una fase de mi vida que quizás se describa mejor como “bro pastor de alabanza”. Mi fe cristiana estaba sufriendo una deconstrucción meticulosa y erudita. Podía empezar a imaginar una vida sin Dios, pero con mi nueva y costosa maestría en teología, me costaba imaginar una carrera sin Él.En cambio, el…

Kristin Lunz Trujillo grew up proud of her family’s way of life. She spent summers getting ready to show cattle at the county fair. During the school year, she rushed home after class to feed the chickens on her family’s corn and soybean farm. Neither of her parents went to college, but they encouraged their daughter when she decided to go to Carleton, a liberal arts school a two-hour drive from their farm in Minnesota.Despite being physically close to home, Ms. Lunz Trujillo was surprised by how foreign her upbringing seemed at the college. She was dismayed when she checked…