Author: NY TIMES

The wall in the police station was covered in sheets of paper, one for every building in the sprawling Beijing apartment complex. Each sheet was further broken down by unit, with names, phone numbers and other information on the residents.Perhaps the most important detail, though, was how each unit was color-coded. Green meant trustworthy. Yellow, needing attention. Orange required “strict control.”A police officer inspected the wall. Then he leaned forward to mark a third-floor apartment in yellow. The residents in that unit changed often, and therefore were “high risk,” his note said. He would follow up on them later.“I’ve built…

Chase Elliott, the most popular driver in NASCAR, has criticized NASCAR after the sanctioning body fined Ricky Stenhouse Jr. a record-breaking amount earlier this week. Involved in a fight after the All-Star game in Nippon Wilkesboro.Elliott knew Stenhouse had been fined for punching Kyle Busch, but the 2020 Cup Series champion held his own on Friday at Charlotte Motor Speedway, site of Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600. The exact amount was not known until the press conference.Stenhouse was fined $75,000, the largest fine issued for a driver fight in NASCAR history. Elliott looked in disbelief when told the exact dollar figure.”Seventy-five thousand?…

Former President Donald J. Trump relentlessly criticized the Federal Reserve and Jerome H. Powell, its chair, during his time in office. As he competes with President Biden for a second presidential term, that history has many on Wall Street wondering: What would a Trump victory mean for America’s central bank?The Trump campaign does not have detailed plans for the Fed yet, several people in its orbit said, but outside advisers have been more focused on the central bank and have been making suggestions — some minor, others extreme.While some in Mr. Trump’s circles have floated the idea of trying to…

After 28 years of peering nervously at the skies, the I.C.N. captures an A.I. bot known to be associated with Harlan. Something is afoot. A scientist named Atlas Shepherd (Jennifer Lopez) is called in as the world’s leading expert on Harlan — in part because her mother, Val Shepherd, the founder of Shepherd Robotics, created Harlan and raised him alongside Atlas. At the request of Gen. Jake Boothe (Mark Strong), Atlas boards a spacecraft commanded by Col. Elias Banks (Sterling K. Brown), headed for the planet where they’ve discovered Harlan has been hiding out.You can tell from these names that…

The decision by Spain, Norway and Ireland to recognize an independent Palestinian state reflects growing exasperation with the Israel of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even from traditional friends, and suggests that international pressure on him will grow.It does not, however, make it inevitable that other larger European states will follow suit. This year President Emmanuel Macron of France has said such recognition is “not a taboo,” a position reiterated by the French Foreign Ministry on Wednesday. In February, David Cameron, Britain’s foreign secretary, said that such recognition “can’t come at the start of the process, but it doesn’t have to…

It’s rare to see a film that feels not just poetic in nature, but like actual poetry. The rhythm and cadence, the imagery and metaphor, even the sense of movement and time that often accompany a great poem don’t translate easily to the screen. Filmmakers need a light touch and trust in the viewer to lean in and let their work wash over them, rather than trying to decode everything.Margreth Olin somehow pulled it off — and in a documentary, no less. Her “Songs of Earth” (in theaters) is tough to categorize as anything other than poetry, though there are…

Harvard’s governing body won’t let 13 pro-Palestinian student protesters graduate. The Harvard Corporation rejected a bid by faculty to award degrees to the students, who face disciplinary action for participating in a protest encampment. In related news, the hedge fund mogul Ken Griffin, an alumnus who paused his financial support for the school over its handling of antisemitism on campus, urged graduates to “constructively debate ideas even in moments of heated disagreement.”The case for an antitrust fight against Live NationThe Justice Department and several states plan to sue Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster, as soon as Thursday,…

Following up what is considered one of the greatest action movies of the last decade is no easy feat. But that was the task facing George Miller as he set out to make a prequel to his Oscar-winning 2015 blockbuster, “Mad Max: Fury Road.” The result, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” tells the origin story of the Imperator Furiosa, the breakout character who first appeared in “Fury Road” — played by Charlize Theron then and Anya Taylor-Joy now.The new film hits theaters on Friday, but critics weighed in when it premiered at Cannes last week. Comparisons with the other films…

Israel took several tough diplomatic blows over the past week, some of which had been feared for years. Yet the rising outcry against Israel abroad appears not to have swayed the Israeli public, whose views on the country’s military campaign in Gaza are largely different from those of the rest of the world.Just this week, Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, announced he was seeking arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defense minister on charges of crimes against humanity, alongside three leaders of Hamas; three European countries announced they would recognize a Palestinian state; and…

In 2011, a former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, warned that Israel faced a “diplomatic-political tsunami” of censure if its conflict with the Palestinians went unresolved, as peace talks faltered and revolution spread across the Middle East.To Israeli foreign policy analysts, that tsunami has never seemed closer.On Friday, the International Court of Justice, an arm of the United Nations, ordered Israel to suspend its military campaign in Rafah in southern Gaza, adding to a growing list of diplomatic and legal moves against Israel that have undermined its international standing.The ruling came just days after prosecutors at the International Criminal Court,…