Author: NY TIMES

A Russian court sentenced a U.S. Army sergeant to nearly four years in jail on Wednesday for stealing the equivalent of about $100 from a woman with whom he was romantically involved and for making death threats against her.Staff Sgt. Gordon Black, 34, was arrested in the Pacific port of Vladivostok last month after a criminal complaint made by the woman, who has not been publicly identified by the authorities. He had traveled to Russia to visit her after completing a posting in South Korea.A statement published by a Vladivostok court said that Sergeant Black had stolen the money and…

The Unstoppables is a series about people whose ambition is undimmed by time. Below, Grace Coddington explains, in her own words, what continues to motivate her.I’m not modern. Now is not the moment for people who are very particular and very precise. Now is about being on the move and not being tied to anything.At Vogue, I didn’t want to be part of that. And on the other side, they didn’t want me. For me, it’s never been “Oh, I want to just get this done.” It’s “I want it done better than I did it last time.”It’s important to…

A last-minute political compromise has headed off an effort to repeal a California law allowing workers to sue employers for workplace violations — a legal tool that has cost companies billions of dollars.The compromise, announced on Tuesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom, followed meetings with business leaders and the powerful California Labor Federation over ways to modify the 2004 law, the Private Attorneys General Act.The law, known as PAGA, lets employees file civil complaints — on their own behalf and for fellow workers — against businesses, sometimes costing them tens of millions of dollars in settlements.“We came to the table and…

South Africa’s public health care system has run out of the human insulin pens that it provides to people with diabetes, as the pharmaceutical industry shifts production priorities to blockbuster weight-loss drugs that use a similar device for delivery.Novo Nordisk, the company that has supplied South Africa with human insulin in pens for a decade, opted not to renew its contract, which expired last month. No other company has bid on the contract — to supply 14 million pens for the next three years, at about $2 per pen.“Current manufacturing capacity limitations mean that patients in some countries, including South…

For more than four decades, Lagueria Davis’s aunt, Beulah Mae Mitchell, worked at Mattel. Davis, the director of the new Netflix documentary “Black Barbie,” was not a fan of dolls, but was drawn to the subject by her aunt, who is a devoted collector.On the surface, the documentary is about what led to the 1980 release of Black Barbie, but the issues it explores run much deeper: the harm of lacking a “social mirror,” the slow pace of progress and the tensions around darkening a white fictional character.There were already Black dolls in the Barbie universe before Black Barbie, but…

A Biden administration plan to sell $18 billion worth of F-15 fighter jets to Israel is moving forward after two top Democratic holdouts in Congress signed off on the deal, according to multiple people familiar with the sale.Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, who had publicly opposed the transfer by citing Israel’s tactics during its campaign in Gaza, has lifted his hold on the deal, one of the largest U.S. arms sales to Israel in years. Mr. Meeks said that the sale would take years to deliver and that he supported…

The center of Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, a Balkan country born just 33 years ago as an independent state, is awash in history.A statue of Alexander the Great looms over the central square. One of his father, Philip II of Macedon, towers above a nearby piazza atop an oversize pedestal. The city is also littered with tributes in bronze, stone and plaster to generations of other heroes from what the country sees as its glorious and very long history.The problem, though, is that most of the history on display is claimed by other countries. Present-day North Macedonia, birthed…

There is a scene late in “Becoming Karl Lagerfeld,” the six-part streaming series on Hulu about the early Paris career of the famed German designer, that features a youngish Karl talking to his mother, who has just had a stroke and whom he has installed in an elaborate château in the French countryside. He is in despair. Without her, Mr. Lagerfeld says, there will be no one who knows the real him.“Who cares?” she effectively replies, suggesting that the created self is so much more interesting.For decades, this was essentially dogma in fashion. Great designers were often synonymous with fantasists…

Last May, Samir Bhavnani, a 47-year-old tech executive from San Diego, was planning a trip to Palm Springs, Calif., where he planned to propose to his girlfriend. He found the perfect spot on Vrbo: It offered a “spa in a grotto,” a slide and a swim-up bar and had plenty of five-star reviews.He decided to book two nights, at $595 a night. But somehow, the total came to about $2,300.“And $595 plus $595 doesn’t equal $2,300,” Mr. Bhavnani said. “Taxes, host fees and service fees basically doubled the price. I asked the owner what the fee breakout was, and they…

When the U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, announced on Monday that he was planning to push for a mental health warning label on social media platforms, he was met with cheers from many parents and teachers, who described a long, lonely struggle to wrench children away from a habit that was hurting them.He got a cooler reaction, however, from some scientists who study the relationship between social media and mental health. In interviews, several researchers said the blanket warning Dr. Murthy has proposed — “social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents” — stretches and oversimplifies…