Author: NY TIMES

Terry Anderson, the American journalist who had been the longest-held Western hostage in Lebanon when he was finally released in 1991 by Islamic militants after more than six years in captivity, died Saturday at his home in Greenwood Lake, N.Y., in the Hudson Valley. He was 76.The cause was apparently complications of recent heart surgery, said his daughter, Sulome Anderson.Mr. Anderson, the Beirut bureau chief for The Associated Press, had just dropped his tennis partner, an A.P. photographer, at his home after an early morning tennis match on March 16, 1985, when men armed with pistols yanked open his car…

The United States is considering imposing sanctions on one or more Israeli battalions accused of human rights violations during operations in the occupied West Bank, according to a person familiar with the deliberations.Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on Saturday called the possibility of the Biden administration’s placing such sanctions “the peak of absurdity and a moral low” at a time when Israeli forces are fighting a war in Gaza against Hamas. Mr. Netanyahu said in a social media post that his government would “act by all means” against any such move.The news about the possible sanctions, reported earlier…

Getting to know someone used to take many forms: handwritten letters, phone conversations, in-person heart-to-hearts. Today, we text. We slide into D.M.s. Dating apps and social media have made it effortless to start a conversation. Still, it can be hard to know what exactly to say. We asked readers of the Modern Love column to share the early messages — the banter, emojis and wit — that made them fall for each other. — Kate LaRue The texts below are from real threads that have been carefully excavated (screengrabbed) from the phones of readers. They’ve been lightly edited — and…

Bill Bradley, the basketball Hall of Famer and former United States senator known as a staunch opponent of legalized sports betting, was speaking about the topic back in January. But he might as well have been predicting the future.“Well there hasn’t been a scandal, yet,” he said, discussing how professional sports have become ever more entwined with the gambling industry in recent years. “So the worst has been avoided, but all of the conditions are there for the untoward to occur.”On Wednesday, the National Basketball Association confirmed the untoward had occurred, issuing a lifetime ban to Jontay Porter, a seldom-used…

Beyond this reminder of Britten, Neuwirth folds in nods to other styles and works — crisp, courtly echoes of Baroque music; touches of louche, dirty blues; the solemn bells of Wagner’s “Parsifal” — in the eclectic manner of Berio’s 1968 “Sinfonia” or Mahler’s symphonies, to give a sense of the weight of history on modernity, sometimes oppressive and sometimes inspiring.It struck me that the main structural challenge of “Hippogriff” is that, with the voices representing activism and virtue, Neuwirth looks to her orchestra to provide evocations of both the world’s repressive forces and the fertile, creative wildness out of which…

The Greek government on Friday published a list of 198 “untrodden beaches” that it said are now off limits to bars, restaurants and large public gatherings in its latest attempt to contain development and address the backlash to the throngs of tourists that descend on the country’s coastlines each year.The move comes amid growing frustration among residents of Greek islands and parts of the coastal mainland that are popular with foreign visitors. Protests ballooned into a nationwide “beach towel movement” last summer as disgruntled locals complained that they were being pushed off their own beaches by businesses seeking to take…

It was shape that drove the development of the Cut, the women’s wristwatch recently introduced by Hermès.“The transformation and the creation of the shape was really the starting point for me,” said Philippe Delhotal, director of creation at Hermès Horloger. “We didn’t want to go back to an icon of the maison — the stirrup-shape lugs for Arceau or something obvious with the anchor chain link on the Cape Cod.“We really wanted to have something special and singular with its own personality.”So Hermès created a shape all its own by taking four slivers off the sides of a round case,…

Researchers who study social networks in workplaces have found that having friends at work can make employees more productive and successful, not to mention happier. Friends can hold one another accountable in ways that acquaintances can’t, and a friend can help a new employee understand the workplace more quickly.So it was when Donte DiVincenzo signed with the N.B.A.’s New York Knicks in July. He didn’t need to figure out on his own how to get to know Julius Randle, one of the team’s leaders, or how to decode Coach Tom Thibodeau’s idiosyncrasies. He had a pair of tour guides already…

Israeli airstrikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Saturday killed several civilians, including women and children, according to Palestinian state media, sending more fear through an area where over one million displaced Palestinians are crowded into tents and temporary quarters.For many weeks, Palestinians have been bracing for an announced Israeli ground offensive on Rafah, the southernmost part of Gaza, where more than half of the strip’s 2.2 million residents fled after being forced from their homes by more than six months of Israeli bombardment and a ground invasion.The airstrikes hit two family homes, killing 10 residents, and missiles…

A hand-embroidered strap embedded with microcapsules of bespoke perfume is the highlight of a new concept watch, Égérie — The Pleats of Time, created by Vacheron Constantin in collaboration with the Paris couturier Yiqing Yin.Ms. Yin, an ambassador for the brand who designed its Égérie model in 2020, worked for several months with the Parisian perfumer Dominique Ropion and the brand’s creative team to develop a fragrance for the timepiece.“It was important to add layers of emotional and sensory depth to the Égérie collection that could resonate with my own creative universe,” she said, referring to scent as “something really…