Author: NY TIMES

At a two-hour drive from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital, rows of solar panels extend to the horizon like waves on an ocean. Despite having almost limitless reserves of oil, the kingdom is embracing solar and wind power, partly in an effort to retain a leading position in the energy industry, which is vitally important to the country but fast changing.Looking out over 3.3 million panels, covering 14 square miles of desert, Faisal Al Omari, chief executive of a recently completed solar project called Sudair, said he would tell his children and grandchildren about contributing to Saudi Arabia’s energy transition. “I’m…

In subsequent years, Walton traveled with the Dead when the band performed at the pyramids in Egypt, drummed onstage with Hart and fellow percussionist Bill Kreutzmann, and appeared at a Dead & Company concert as Father Time as the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve in 2019. (Walton was also a fan of other musicians, including Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Phish.)After Walton joined the Celtics before the 1985-86 season, Larry Bird, the Celtics star, organized a team outing to a Dead show in Worcester, Mass., as part of welcoming the new guy. Years later, Walton was inducted into…

Israel’s national security adviser said Wednesday that he expected military operations in Gaza to continue through at least the end of the year, appearing to dismiss the idea that the war could come to an end after the military offensive against Hamas in Rafah.“We expect another seven months of combat in order to shore up our achievement and realize what we define as the destruction of Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s military and governing capabilities,” Tzachi Hanegbi, the national security adviser, said in a radio interview with Kan, the Israeli public broadcaster.The Israeli military also said Wednesday that it had seized…

Barry Kemp, an archaeologist whose decades of painstaking digging at the abandoned capital of a mysterious pharaoh helped revolutionize understanding of how everyday ancient Egyptians lived, worked and worshiped, died on May 15 in Cambridge, Britain, one day after his 84th birthday.The death was announced by the Amarna Project, an archaeology nonprofit where Mr. Kemp was director. It did not specify a cause or say where he died.Almost from the moment he arrived to teach at the University of Cambridge in 1962, fresh out of college, Mr. Kemp was a phenomenon. When he was just 26, he published an article…

In 2004, four boys’ Grand Slam titles were divided between two 17-year-olds.Three of them are considered the most talented, and the last one is probably the second-best player – and even then, he’s not prepared to accept being the second-best player.The first guy went on to have a very good career: a regular in the top 20 in the world, ranked sixth at his peak, and reached two Grand Slam semi-finals. The second player was an inferior teenager who had a stellar career: three Grand Slam titles, two Olympic gold medals, a Davis Cup title, and a world No. 1…

My boyfriend and I have been dating for nearly a year. It’s going really well! But his close-knit group of friends is not welcoming to me. They are all bilingual, and when they hang out together, they speak Spanish. I am studying Spanish, but when people speak quickly or use slang, I can’t follow the conversation. Even beyond the language barrier, though, they don’t seem all that interested in getting to know me. My boyfriend has asked what he can do to help, but I’m not sure. I’m afraid his friends may resent me if he asks them to switch…

For the past decade, thousands of wealthy Americans have been flocking to Puerto Rico to take advantage of a tax break that can cut their tax bills to zero. For nearly as long, there have been allegations that the benefit enables multimillionaires to avoid paying what they owe when they reap big investment profits.Now, an Internal Revenue Service insider has accused the agency of failing to police the tax break. Despite a high-profile campaign announced more than three years ago to unearth possible abuse, the agency has audited barely two dozen people and has collected back taxes from none, according…

When Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, announced last year that his company would release an artificial intelligence system, Jeffrey Emanuel had reservations.Mr. Emanuel, a part-time hacker and full-time A.I. enthusiast, had tinkered with “closed” A.I. models, including OpenAI’s, meaning the systems’ underlying code could not be accessed or modified. When Mr. Zuckerberg introduced Meta’s A.I. system by invitation only to a handful of academics, Mr. Emanuel was concerned that the technology would remain limited to just a small circle of people.But in a release last summer of an updated A.I. system, Mr. Zuckerberg made the code “open source”…

The chairmen of two Senate committees overseeing health policy, concerned about companies “padding their own profits” at the expense of patients, are looking into the practices of a data analytics firm that works with big insurers to cut payments to medical providers.The firm, MultiPlan, recommends what it says are fair payments for medical care, but the firm and the insurers can collect higher fees when payouts are lower. This business model could “result in an improper conflict of interest,” the chairmen of the two committees, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, wrote in a letter to the…

This week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes discussion of:The imperfect rollout of Dua Lipa’s latest album, “Radical Optimism,” and how the narrative around it became poisoned before it was even releasedDua Lipa’s career of smooth and frictionless popThe current pop marketplace favoring eccentricity, humor and meme-abilityWhat it will take for Dua Lipa to break free of her cycleThe struggle of making movies about pop music, including “Back to Black,” the new biopic about Amy Winehouse and “The Idea of You,” about a divorced woman who falls…