Author: NY TIMES

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,…

When Erin Tobiasz, a children’s librarian in Pittsburgh, was planning her September 2022 wedding with Matt Oas, a lawyer, she thought about the goldenrod growing in the fields outside the library where she led story time in the fall.“It just looks like Pennsylvania,” said Ms. Tobiasz, 37, a youth services manager at C.C. Mellor Memorial Library. She decided to include the yellow flowering plant in her bridal bouquet, along with Jewels of Opar, foraged rose hips, zinnias and Chabaud La France carnations. All were sourced from local flower farmers.“I had roots in Pennsylvania but my family did not, so it…

The N.F.L. must pay almost $5 billion in damages for artificially inflating the price of Sunday Ticket, a subscription service offered by DirecTV that showed out-of-market games, a federal jury in Los Angeles decided on Thursday.The verdict, which capped a monthlong class-action trial and almost a decade of legal wrangling, includes about $96 million in damages for the bars and restaurants that subscribed to the service, and more than $4.6 billion for roughly 2.4 million residential subscribers. Damages in antitrust cases like this are tripled by law, which means the league may have to pay more than $14 billion.The jury’s…

Joey King is a bit of a unicorn: a genuine movie star brought into being by Netflix. As far as movies are concerned, the streamer does make a lot of them, but often seems at a loss to promote them or the actors. But in 2018, King starred in the Netflix-produced “The Kissing Booth” and made enough of an impression to power two sequels.“A Family Affair,” King’s newest film on the streaming service, may appear to be a kind of lab experiment — how does the buoyant actress react when thrown into a pool with Hollywood luminaries? King is not…

Early in the war against Hamas, as Israeli forces made their way from the north of the Gaza Strip toward the south, a neighborhood in Gaza City called Shajaiye loomed large in the battle. In December, nine soldiers were killed there on what Israel’s military said was one of the deadliest days of the war for its forces.Later, with Shajaiye ravaged and the Gaza City appearing pacified, the soldiers moved on, eventually taking the fight to Gaza’s southernmost city, Rafah, described as Hamas’s last major stronghold. In turn, Palestinian civilians who had fled the fighting in Gaza City began making…

European Union leaders on Thursday picked three senior politicians to head up the bloc’s institutions for the next five years, signaling commitment to Ukraine and a need for stability amid electoral upsets in Europe and, potentially, the United States.At a summit in Brussels, the heads of the 27 E.U. member governments agreed to put forward Ursula von der Leyen, a German conservative, for a second term at the helm of the powerful European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch.António Costa, a Socialist and until recently the prime minister of Portugal, was selected as the president of the European Council, which includes…

In a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Paris Hilton recounted the physical and psychological abuse she said she suffered at group care facilities as a teenager.Ms. Hilton, who was sent to a series of youth residential treatment facilities starting at age 16, calmly testified to being violently restrained, stripped naked and thrown into solitary confinement during her stays.“These programs promised healing, growth and support, but instead did not allow me to speak, move freely or even look out a window for two years,” she said. “I was force-fed medications and sexually abused by the staff.”Ms. Hilton, 43, the reality TV star…

Jamie Kellner, a media executive who helped build Fox Broadcasting into a thriving television network with shows such as “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “The Simpsons” — and who went on to create the WB network, known for the angsty “Dawson’s Creek” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” — died on June 21 at his home in Montecito, Calif., near Santa Barbara. He was 77.The cause was cancer, said Brad Turell, a family spokesman.Mr. Kellner was one of the most successful television executives of his generation, whose knack for capturing young viewers — first men at Fox, then women at WB —…

All Americans ages 6 months and older should receive one of the new Covid-19 vaccines when they become available this fall, scientific advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday.The recommendation comes as the nation faces a summer wave of Covid, with the number of infections rising in at least 39 states and territories.Most Americans have acquired layers of immunity against the coronavirus from repeat infections or vaccine doses, or both. The vaccines now offer an incremental boost, remaining effective for only a few months as immunity wanes and the virus continues to evolve.Still, across every…