Author: NY TIMES

Israeli warplanes fired missiles on Iran during a retaliatory strike early Friday morning, one Western official and two Iranian officials said, suggesting that the attack included more advanced firepower than initial reports indicated.It was not immediately clear the types of missiles used, from where they were fired, whether any were intercepted by Iran’s defenses or where they landed.The Western official and the Iranian officials requested anonymity to discuss classified information.Previously, Iranian officials said Friday’s attack on a military base in central Iran was conducted by small aerial drones, most likely launched from inside Iranian territory. A separate group of small…

Read More

Twenty-three top Chinese swimmers tested positive for the same powerful banned substance seven months before the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021 but were allowed to escape public scrutiny and continue to compete after top Chinese officials secretly cleared them of doping and the global authority charged with policing drugs in sports chose not to intervene.Several of the athletes who tested positive — including nearly half of the swimming team that China sent to the Tokyo Games — went on to win medals, including three golds. Many still compete for China and several, including the two-time gold medalist Zhang Yufei, are…

Read More

SONOMA, Calif. — There were no radar guns in Art Sharrock’s day, and even if they had, the soft-throwing lefty knew he would hardly notice any blips. The 5-foot-9, 155-pound New York Yankees pitcher used cunning to get by.”I’m crafty,” Sharrock said Monday.But now, in Very Finally, the crafty lefty is on the verge of hitting triple digits. Sharrock turns 100 this month, a milestone for the oldest living former Major League Baseball player.Sharrock is the resident celebrity at this senior living center, and they’re about to host his party of the century. “Oh, it’s such a buzz,” said Wendy…

Read More

In a landmark victory for organized labor, workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee have voted overwhelmingly to join the United Automobile Workers union, becoming the first nonunion auto plant in a Southern state to do so.The company said in a statement late Friday that the union had won 2,628 votes, with 985 opposed, in a three-day election. Two earlier bids by the U.A.W. to organize the Chattanooga factory over the last 10 years were narrowly defeated.The outcome is a breakthrough for the labor movement in a region where anti-union sentiment has been strong for decades. And it comes six…

Read More

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions.kevin rooseI’m Kevin Roose, a tech columnist at “The New York Times.”casey newtonI’m Casey Newton from “Platformer.”kevin rooseAnd this is “Hard Fork.”casey newtonThis week, it’s the music show. The mega mix of “Hard Fork” songs that you’ve been asking for has arrived. Plus, we’ll go behind the scenes and talk to some of the composers that make the music for this show.[MUSIC PLAYING]kevin rooseHello, Casey.casey…

Read More

Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen has a problem: Too many people want what he’s selling.Mr. Jorgensen is the chief executive of Novo Nordisk, the Danish drugmaker. Even if the company isn’t quite a household name, the TV jingle for its best-selling drug — “Oh-oh-ohhh, Ozempic!” — might ring in your ears. Across the United States, Novo Nordisk’s diabetes and weight-loss drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy, have soared to celebrity status and helped make the company Europe’s most valuable public firm. It can’t make enough of the drugs.Mr. Jorgensen’s problem is one many top executives wouldn’t mind, but the success caught him off guard.…

Read More

Peering behind the mystique of rock ’n’ roll has undeniable voyeuristic appeal. So there is an immediate thrill to seeing the mahogany-paneled control room and glassed-in sound booth that fill the Golden Theater stage, where “Stereophonic” opened on Friday. But David Adjmi’s astonishing new play, with songs by the former Arcade Fire member Will Butler, delivers far more than a dishy glimpse inside the recording studio during rock’s golden age.A fly-on-the-wall study of how people both need and viciously destroy each other, “Stereophonic” is a fiery family drama, as electrifying as any since “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Its real-time…

Read More

A group of left-leaning House Democrats is urging its colleagues to oppose the $26 billion aid package for Israel, hoping to maximize the number of “no” votes from the party and send a warning to President Biden about the depth of his political coalition’s discontent over his support for Israel’s tactics in Gaza.Framing the upcoming vote as a make-or-break moral choice akin to Congress’s votes to authorize and fund the Iraq war, progressive leaders in the House are working to muster a sizable bloc of Democratic opposition to the aid measure, which is expected to pass on Saturday and become…

Read More

World leaders, who had been urging Israel and Iran to de-escalate tensions, once again implored both countries to avoid any taking any further action that could set off a wider war in the Middle East while Israel is fighting Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both allies of Iran.“Significant escalation is not in anyone’s interests,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain, whose military participated in defending Israel against Iran’s missile-and-drone attack last weekend, told reporters on Friday. “What we want to see is calm heads prevail across the region.”Early Saturday, there was an air attack on a base used…

Read More