Author: NY TIMES

For millions of years, mammoths lumbered across Europe, Asia and North America. Starting roughly 15,000 years ago, the giant animals began to vanish from their vast range until they survived on only a few islands.Eventually they disappeared from those refuges, too, with one exception: Wrangel Island, a land mass the size of Delaware over 80 miles north of the coast of Siberia. There, mammoths held on for thousands of years — they were still alive when the Great Pyramids were built in Egypt.When the Wrangel Island mammoths disappeared 4,000 years ago, mammoths became extinct for good.For two decades, Love Dalén,…

Kinky Friedman, a singer, songwriter, humorist and sometime politician who with his band, the Texas Jewboys, developed an ardent following among alt-country music fans with songs like “They Don’t Make Jews Like Jesus Anymore” — and whose biting cultural commentary earned him comparisons with Will Rogers and Mark Twain — died on Wednesday at his ranch near Austin, Texas. He was 79.Little Jewford, a member of his band and a longtime friend, confirmed the death. He did not specify a cause, but he said that Mr. Friedman had been ill in recent months.Mr. Friedman occupied a singular spot on the…

An Israeli soldier was killed and another was severely wounded overnight during a raid in the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, the military said on Thursday. It was the latest in a series of violent Israeli raids in the city.The soldier who was killed, a sniper team commander, “fell during operational activity,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a brief statement, which gave few details. Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, reported that one Palestinian man had been wounded in the raid. Jenin, in the north of the West Bank, houses a refugee camp founded more than…

He didn’t have any documents.Or money.Or even a phone.He was wrapped in bandages and 2,500 miles from his village in the Himalayas.But as he lay in a Russian military hospital, wounded in battle and surrounded by people speaking an alien language, Krishna Bahadur Shahi, an out-of-work engineer from Nepal who had committed the mistake of joining Moscow’s army, made a vow.Somehow, he told himself, I’m getting home.“I had to get out,” he said in a recent interview. “I was even thinking of killing myself. I knew if I didn’t leave that hospital, they would send me back to the front…

The future of basketball strolled into Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Wednesday night decked out in suits by Armani, Versace and Dolce & Gabbana, among others. The towering, baby-faced athletes were dressed in their best for the night of their lives: the N.B.A. draft.Their arrival at the draft was a culmination of years of hard work and dedication. On draft night the young men could finally show up as who they have always aspired to be. While a handful of players hired stylists to dress them, the majority chose their own outfits, from their jewels to their nail polish, trying…

Walgreens is planning to close more of its roughly 8,700 stores in the United States, its parent company said on Thursday, after the retail pharmacy giant reported third-quarter earnings that fell short of analyst expectations.The pharmacy chain also cut its profit outlook for the year, citing worse-than-expected consumer spending.“We witness continued pressure on the U.S. consumer,” Tim Wentworth, the chief executive of Walgreens Boots Alliance, told investors during an earnings call on Thursday. “Our customers have become increasingly selective and price-sensitive in their purchases.”As of February, Walgreens has closed 625 U.S. stores. The company did not specify how many additional…

The hard-fought settlement of thousands of lawsuits against Purdue Pharma was close to capsizing on Thursday, after the Supreme Court rejected liability protections for the company’s owners. The ruling effectively prevents the release of billions of dollars that could help alleviate the ravages of opioid addiction.The future of the cases, some of which are a decade old, is now in limbo, as states, local governments, tribes and more than 100,000 individuals who sued the company, best-known for its prescription painkiller OxyContin, figure out next moves.The court effectively upended the settlement by striking down a provision that Purdue’s owners, members of…

Killer Mike will not face charges for the altercation with a security guard that led to his arrest at the Grammys on the same February night he won three awards, Los Angeles authorities announced this week.In a statement, Ivor Pine, a spokesman for the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, said the veteran rapper had fulfilled “a community service requirement that was imposed.” The office declined to comment further.Representatives for Killer Mike, born Michael Render, declined to comment.News of the arrest disrupted an otherwise triumphant night for Killer Mike. Minutes before he was escorted from Crypto.com Arena in handcuffs, he had…

With the rest of the world distracted by wars in Gaza and Ukraine, Iran has moved closer than ever to the ability to produce several nuclear weapons, installing 1,400 next-generation centrifuges in recent weeks inside a facility buried so deep that it is all but impervious to bunker-busting bombs.The sharp technological upgrade goes hand in hand with another worrisome change: For the first time, some members of Iran’s ruling elite are dropping the country’s decades-old insistence that its nuclear program is entirely for peaceful purposes. Instead, they are publicly beginning to embrace the logic of possessing the bomb, arguing that…

May was a particularly deadly month for the Russian army in Ukraine, with an average of more than 1,000 of its soldiers injured or killed each day, according to U.S., British and other Western intelligence agencies.But despite its losses, Russia is recruiting 25,000 to 30,000 new soldiers a month — roughly as many as are exiting the battlefield, U.S. officials said. That has allowed its army to keep sending wave after wave of troops at Ukrainian defenses, hoping to overwhelm them and break through the trench lines.It is a style of warfare that Russian soldiers have likened to being put…