Author: NY TIMES

Do real hit men exist?Yes, but not in the way Hollywood would have you think of them. While history is certainly riddled with enforcers for gangs and organized crime families, the average person can’t just Google “how to hire a hit man” and pay someone to do the deed. (Dark-web murder commission sites like Slayers Hitmen and Azerbaijani Eagles, are, in fact, scams, with no known murder attributed to any of them.)Earlier this year, Dennis Kenney, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told The New York Times that the average person’s idea of a slick, skilled hit…

Israeli soldiers and special operations police rescued four hostages from Gaza on Saturday amid a heavy air and ground assault and flew them back to Israel by helicopter to be reunited with their families. The news was met with jubilation in Israel, where anxieties over the fate of the roughly 120 remaining captives have been rising after eight months of war.Residents in the town of Nuseirat, where the hostages were being held, reported intense bombardments during the rescue operation. Khalil al-Daqran, an official at a hospital in the city, told reporters that scores of Palestinians had been killed and that…

Sigmund Rolat, a Polish Holocaust survivor who tapped the wealth he accumulated as a businessman in the United States to support cultural projects in his homeland, most notably a museum devoted to the history of Jews in Poland that stands on the grounds of the Warsaw Ghetto, died on May 19 at his home in Alpine, N.J. He was 93.His son, Geoffrey, confirmed the death.Mr. Rolat believed that except for the dark chapter of World War II, with Nazi atrocities at concentration camps like Auschwitz and Treblinka in occupied Poland, the history of Polish Jewry was a mystery to most…

Ally Moreo and Matthew Gutierrez met as student reporters. It was on a cross-country road trip that she knew she wanted to marry him. Source link

A footnote in the Palantir compensation disclosure made me laugh, which was noteworthy because these compensation disclosures usually make me frown.Referring to Mr. Karp’s apparently gargantuan payday, it said: “The term ‘compensation actually paid’ or ‘CAP’ does not reflect the amount of compensation actually paid, earned or received by him during the applicable year.”In reality, Palantir said, the numbers reported for Mr. Karp and a handful of other Palantir executives “are driven primarily by changes in our stock price,” which rose more than 100 percent in 2023, producing big gains for shareholders and so, “following S.E.C. disclosure rules, the fiscal…

There is a platitude, beloved of the documentary community, that truth is stranger than fiction. It’s often correct. But lately I’ve been worried that the glut of documentary content required to fill the yawning maw of streamers is putting this axiom to the test more frequently. Not all stories are worthy of the documentary treatment.Such, unfortunately, is the issue with “How to Rob a Bank” (on Netflix), yet another true-crime documentary. Its directors, Seth Porges and Stephen Robert Morse, have turned out great work in the past — Porges as co-director of the fascinating “Class Action Park”; Morse as producer…

The few overwhelmed hospitals still functioning across the Gaza Strip could be completely out of service if diesel generators needed to keep lights on and to run lifesaving medical equipment are not replaced or maintained soon, the Gaza Health Ministry warned on Saturday.The ministry said it expected a number of generators at the hospitals to fail soon because Israel, as part of its siege of the territory, was preventing the entry of necessary spare parts.“This means certain death for the sick and injured and the complete end of the health service,” the ministry said in a statement.One of the main…

A key member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli war cabinet who has threatened to depart amid serious differences over the war in Gaza has indefinitely postponed an expected news conference planned for Saturday evening, citing “recent events.”The decision comes as Israeli authorities announced that they had rescued four hostages who had been held in Gaza since Oct. 7 in a “complex” operation in central Gaza.Benny Gantz, a centrist opposition leader, has said he would quit unless Mr. Netanyahu addressed his concerns about how the war would end and what would follow it, with pressure rising on Mr. Netanyahu to…

But a week later, his roommates convinced him to ask her on a date. “We made a bet that if I didn’t text her, I’d have to run a 5K,” he said. “I’m not a big runner. So the text was sent.” As it whooshed from his screen, he threw the phone across the room. It sat on a sofa cushion for a half-hour.[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]Meghan Brownlie had been quick to say yes for her sister. “She was just like, ‘Katie, just go and use it as a practice date. What’s the worst that…

The Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is seeking permission from a bankruptcy court to liquidate his personal assets and deliver the proceeds to the Sandy Hook families who are owed more than $1.4 billion in damages for his lies about the 2012 school shooting.Mr. Jones also filed a separate bankruptcy for his company, Free Speech Systems, and in a hearing next Friday a judge is to rule whether the company will also be liquidated, an outcome favored by a majority of the families. That would shutter Infowars, effective the day of the ruling. It would also place assets from Infowars’…