Author: NY TIMES

My grandmother’s funeral and my niece’s first-birthday party are scheduled for the same date and time in New York. (The baby is my brother-in-law’s daughter.) Neither side will shift the start time by even an hour. We live in California with the rest of my family, so my husband, two children (7 and 9) and I are flying in for these events. I proposed dropping off my kids at the party where their grandparents and another uncle and aunt (not the baby’s parents) could watch them while my husband and I attend the funeral. But my brother-in-law says it’s disrespectful…

The immediate trigger for the raging protest that gripped Kenya’s capital city on Tuesday was a raft of tax increases — additional shillings that ordinary citizens would owe their government. The underlying cause, though, are the billions of dollars their government owes its creditors.Kenya has the fastest growing economy in Africa and a vibrant business center. But its government is desperate to stave off default. The country’s staggering $80 billion in domestic and foreign public debt accounts for nearly three-quarters of Kenya’s entire economic output, according to a recent report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Interest…

A Broadway revival of “The Who’s Tommy” that opened in March will end its run on July 21. The show had started strong at the box office but was facing dwindling sales during a summer when Broadway is packed with shows but still has fewer patrons than before the pandemic.The production, which had a successful pre-Broadway run in Chicago, will now pin its hopes on a national tour, beginning in Providence, R.I., in the fall of 2025.With a rock score by Pete Townshend, “Tommy” dates back to a 1969 album from the Who; the original Broadway production opened in 1993…

United Nations aid agencies have been demanding that the Israeli authorities do more to protect aid workers in the Gaza Strip and ensure that assistance reaches those who need it, Stéphane Dujarric, a U.N. spokesman, said on Tuesday.The agencies are struggling to deliver food and other basic necessities. A report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or I.P.C., a partnership of U.N. bodies and relief agencies, concluded on Tuesday that Gaza was at high risk of famine. It also found that almost 500,000 people there, almost a quarter of the population, faced starvation.On Monday, a high-ranking U.N. security official…

The International Criminal Court said on Tuesday that it had issued arrest warrants for two top Russian security officials over strikes against civilian targets, delivering a stinging, if largely symbolic, condemnation of the Kremlin’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine.The Hague-based court accused Russia’s most senior military officer, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, and a senior member of the country’s Security Council, Sergei K. Shoigu, of directing a campaign of strikes against Ukraine’s power plants in the winter of 2022.“The expected incidental civilian harm and damage would have been clearly excessive to the anticipated military advantage,” the court said in a statement on…

Be careful: The garden wants to have its own way, to blur the lines and refocus those pictures you planned so carefully and then planted.Anyone who has ever tried to create a garden — especially a naturalistic one — learns a few things very quickly. Most emphatically, that change is the only constant. But also that the skills of observation and anticipation are the gardener’s most essential horticultural tools in any effort to stay ahead of it.Try working in this loose, nature-inspired manner in an urban setting — in man-made beds 30 feet above street level, filled with a mere…

Quiet in the C-suite Three years ago, corporate leaders openly spoke out against Donald Trump over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. But as the former president leads in many polls this time around, most in the C-suite are staying quiet.In 2021, C.E.O.s including Mary Barra of General Motors and Doug McMillon of Walmart publicly urged a peaceful transition of power. This time, leaders have largely stayed out of the political fray. Only a handful of executives have publicly supported Trump, who was willing to go after perceived enemies in corporate American when he was in office.…

Baldwin may not have a bounty on his head, but he has long felt under siege from his more contemporary tormentors — the tabloid media and political conservatives — and it has never been easy for him to let things go. His “Rust” journey has been a protracted, higher-stakes form of a familiar Baldwin ritual: He does or says something controversial; then, in an attempt to be understood, he doubles down on whatever he said or did, inviting further scrutiny; finally, feeling victimized and aggrieved, he vows to stop engaging with the media. By the time I started working on…

Agencies are struggling to deliver food and other basic necessities, and a report concluded that the territory was at high risk of famine. Source link

There was a Cybertruck parked on Main Street in East Hampton, outside the Altuzarra store. It was a Sunday afternoon in June, and traffic stalled for a moment. Even the rich are not immune to rubbernecking a brutalist behemoth.The monster truck marked the end of an avenue of monograms — the island’s main luxury shopping drag, with $850 raffia handbags and $15,000 decorative surfboards. You know their names: Louis Vuitton, Loewe, Lululemon.Two and a half miles down this same street, however, quaintness emerged. East Hampton turned into Amagansett, and that flashy boutique strip became a town square with white wood-paneled…