Author: NY TIMES

An estimated 20 million people in southern Africa are facing what the United Nations calls “acute hunger” as one of the worst droughts in more than four decades shrivels crops, decimates livestock and, after years of rising food prices brought on by pandemic and war, spikes the price of corn, the region’s staple crop.Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe have all declared national emergencies.It is a bitter foretaste of what a warming climate is projected to bring to a region that’s likely to be acutely affected by climate change, though scientists said on Thursday that the current drought is more driven by…

Nine years ago, while recovering from a serious health crisis, the British society photographer Dafydd Jones decided to return to his archive of negatives and print a few of his old party pictures. Mr. Jones had spent three decades documenting the social scenes of British and American upper classes for The Tatler, The New York Observer and Vanity Fair under Tina Brown and Graydon Carter, but the frenetic pace of society photography had never given him time to look back on his own work.In 2020, he published his first book of these photos, “Oxford: The Last Hurrah.” It was a…

Katherine Maher, who took over the public network last month, posted years ago on Twitter that “Donald Trump is a racist.” Source link

Navigating the health care system in the United States can often feel like being lost in a maze. What kind of doctor should I see? Who takes my insurance? What even is a co-pay, anyway?For that reason, Chris Hamby, an investigative reporter, has devoted much of his five-year career at The New York Times to guiding readers through such dizzying questions. His latest article, which was published online this month, explored the complex subject of insurance bills.Last year, Mr. Hamby began investigating MultiPlan, a data firm that works with several major health insurance companies, including UnitedHealthcare, Cigna and Aetna. After…

Ukraine’s top military commander has issued a bleak assessment of the army’s positions on the eastern front, saying they have “worsened significantly in recent days.”Russian forces were pushing hard to exploit their growing advantage in manpower and ammunition to break through Ukrainian lines, the commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, said in a statement over the weekend.“Despite significant losses, the enemy is increasing his efforts by using new units on armored vehicles, thanks to which he periodically achieves tactical gains,” the general said.At the same time, Ukraine’s energy ministry told millions of civilians to charge their power banks, get their generators out…

Patti Astor, the downtown Manhattan “It” girl, indie film star and co-founder of Fun Gallery, the scruffy East Village storefront space that in the early 1980s nurtured young graffiti artists like Futura2000, Zephyr, Lee Quinones, Lady Pink and Fab 5 Freddy, as well as showcasing artists like Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat, died on April 9 at her home in Hermosa Beach, Calif. She was 74.Her death was confirmed by Richard Roth, a friend. No cause was given.With her platinum hair, raspy voice and glamorous ’50s-style dresses, Ms. Astor was a formidable presence among the music, film and…

Google on Wednesday fired 28 workers after dozens of employees participated in sit-ins at the company’s New York and Sunnyvale, Calif., offices to protest the company’s cloud computing contract with the Israeli government.A day earlier, nine employees were arrested on charges of trespassing at the two offices.“Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior,” a Google spokeswoman said in a statement.Years before the dismissals, tensions had been simmering between the company’s management and some activist employees over Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion Google and Amazon…

For a glimpse of where artificial intelligence is headed in election campaigns, look to India, the world’s largest democracy, as it starts heading to the polls on Friday.An A.I.-generated version of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that has been shared on WhatsApp shows the possibilities for hyperpersonalized outreach in a country with nearly a billion voters. In the video — a demo clip whose source is unclear — Mr. Modi’s avatar addresses a series of voters directly, by name.However, it is not perfect. Mr. Modi appears to wear two different pairs of glasses, and some parts of the video are pixelated.Down…

When Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, took office in 2021, he pledged that his government would shift his country’s relationship with China away from one of economic dependence. Three years later, talk of scaling back reliance on China has been replaced with calls for equal access to China’s market for foreign firms.That strategy puts the Germans at odds with many of their closest allies, including the United States and other European countries, which would like to see China scale back its recent surge of exports in the green energy sector, including electric vehicles. The U.S. Treasury secretary, Janet L. Yellen, has…

This article contains spoilers for the film “Civil War.”When Alex Garland was writing the script for “Civil War,” he started with the ideas in the last moments. “In some ways the film was kind of reverse engineered from the ending,” he said during an interview in New York.The path to that ending finds the rebel Western Forces reaching Washington, D.C., laying siege to the White House and cornering the president (Nick Offerman), all while the journalists at the center of the film capture it through their own lenses. It’s a relentless, loud 20 minutes of screen time, during which the…