Author: NY TIMES

The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. This week’s issue is written by Julia Bergin, a reporter based in the Northern Territory.A vehicle swerves from left to right across three lanes on the highway.“You’ve got 100 millimeters on your left side. Keep steady, keep straight,” its driver says into a radio.He is tailed by two vehicles fitted with rooftop road signs that warn of an “oversize load ahead.” Next comes a police escort two cars strong, and finally, the centerpiece of the convoy: a huge truck coasting along with…

On the morning of November 20, a groggy Joey Slackman woke up from anesthesia sleep. He had just spent three hours in surgery to repair a torn bicep.That day, Slackman’s name also happened to pop up in the transfer portal, the marketplace where college football players are looking for a new school. Slackman, who graduated from Penn State with a degree in political science, decided to pursue a master’s degree and now coaches can contact him.”It’s totally surreal,” said Joey’s father, Paul Slackman. “We got there at about 4:30 in the morning. I said goodbye. They got him ready. It…

As Alexis Major walked down the aisle to a violinist’s rendition of John Legend’s “All of Me,” she could see her beloved, Karim Butler, seated beneath the ceremonial white floral arch, crying. She settled into the chair across from him, wiped the tears from his face, and the traditional Muslim wedding ceremony commenced.From the ceremony to the after-party, the entire evening was a lavish affair — and the logo of their cannabis company, Gumbo, was a motif throughout the wedding.The idea for Gumbo — the couple’s “baby,” as Mr. Butler called it — started in October 2019, after they noticed…

The Internal Revenue Service is expanding its efforts to crack down on fraud in a pandemic-era tax credit program following an internal analysis that found a majority of outstanding claims appeared to be improper.The agency said on Thursday that it was extending its freeze on new claims for the program, the Employee Retention Tax Credit, which was created in 2020, during the throes of the pandemic and allows businesses to collect up to $26,000 for each employee on its payroll. The I.R.S. is also denying tens of thousands of claims that it determined to be erroneous.The original program, which was…

James Chance, the singer, saxophonist and composer who melded punk, funk and free jazz into bristling dance music as the leader of the Contortions, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 71.His brother, David Siegfried, said Mr. Chance had been in declining health for years and succumbed to complications of gastrointestinal disease at the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center in East Harlem.During the late 1970s explosion of punk culture in New York City, the Contortions were at the forefront of a style called no wave — music that set out to be as confrontational and radical in sound and…

The extreme anarchy that has gripped the Gaza Strip is making it too dangerous and difficult to distribute desperately needed aid in the south, relief groups and others say, despite a daily pause in fighting that Israel is observing along a key road there.Days after the pause took hold, over 1,000 truckloads of supplies remained stranded in Gaza near the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Israel, with thousands of tons of food, medicine and other goods mere miles from Palestinians who need them, aid groups and Israeli officials say.The threat of looting and attacks by armed gangs have forced relief…

The Biden administration will rush air defenses to Ukraine by delaying certain weapons shipments to other countries, a move that a White House spokesman described on Thursday as a “difficult but necessary decision” given Russian advances in the war.The spokesman, John F. Kirby, said Ukraine had a critical need for Patriot interceptor missiles as Russia has accelerated attacks against cities and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.“This decision demonstrates our commitment to supporting our partners when they’re in existential danger,” Mr. Kirby told reporters. He said the move would not affect weapons shipments to Israel or Taiwan.The Patriot is the Pentagon’s standard…

In 2012, Aaron Lammer, Max Linsky and Evan Ratliff decided to try their hand at a relatively untested form: podcasting. As editors and writers in their 30s who were navigating the churning waters of digital media, they wanted to understand how their favorite types of stories — long-form magazine articles — came together.So they bought a microphone, placed it in the middle of a desk at their makeshift studio in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn, which was really just a spare room in the office of The Atavist, a magazine Mr. Ratliff helped found, and invited journalists and narrative nonfiction…

Both the far-right National Rally party in France and its competing left-wing New Popular Front coalition are promising to save the country from financial ruin.But French executives gave a chilly reception Thursday to competing economic platforms from the rival parties, warning that both could endanger the French economy and distance France from the European Union.With less than two weeks before pivotal legislative elections, members of MEDEF, the main employers association in France, held an “audition” for candidates from the main political parties that are vying to seize power from President Emmanuel Macron, whose government has been severely weakened after his…

TikTok, the popular video app facing a new law that could lead it to being banned in the United States, released details Thursday about numerous confidential meetings with top federal officials as it tried to address concerns about the company’s Chinese ownership.The details of those interactions, TikTok said in a court filing, show that the federal government “ceased substantive engagement” with the company on its efforts in September 2022.The company said the details support its argument, first made in its lawsuit to block the law in May, that the law is effectively a ban because U.S. officials have been aware…