Author: NY TIMES

Iran has pardoned and begun freeing four environmental activists who spent several years in prison on espionage charges, Iranian state media said on Monday. The pardons were granted to commemorate Eid al-Fitr, the Islamic holiday celebrated at the end of Ramadan, according to their lawyer.Iran has a tradition of freeing prisoners, but not political ones, around religious holidays. The releases came months after high-stakes negotiations with the United States led to the freeing of a prominent Iranian American wildlife conservationist, Morad Tahbaz, and four others in exchange for the unfreezing of billions in Iranian assets by the United States.The four…

Public safety officials in England, France and Spain said Tuesday that they would step up security for matches this week in the Champions League, Europe’s marquee soccer competition, after ISIS-related groups called for violent attacks against them.The first of four quarterfinal matchups were scheduled in London and Madrid on Tuesday, and were to feature some of the top clubs in world soccer: Spain’s Real Madrid; the English giants Arsenal and Manchester City; and Germany’s Bayern Munich. Two other high-profile matches will take place on Wednesday in Paris and Madrid.“We don’t know what location might be particularly targeted, neither in what…

PENN STATE COLLEGE — When Adisa Isaac was a junior, he asked a lot of questions like a junior.There’s an explanation that requires some thought: “Why are my brothers and my sisters different?”His mother, Lisa Wiltshire-Isaac, expected this day to come. Of her four children, Adisha is the only one who can speak. She asked him to sit down.She told him that his eldest brother, Kyle Wiltshire, was born with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. A lack of oxygen at birth resulted in autism, mental retardation, developmental disabilities and cerebral palsy.Adisa’s next brother, Y’ashua Isaac, did not hit…

After Doris Kearns Goodwin’s husband died nearly six years ago, the couple’s home, a 19th-century farmhouse in Concord, Mass., no longer felt right.“We were there for 20 years,” said Ms. Kearns Goodwin, 81, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose new book, “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s,” will be published April 16.“It was a house we had loved, and a house that in many ways we had built together,” she continued, referring to assorted refinements, including the three-car garage that became a library and the addition of a tower inspired by her husband’s fascination with Galileo.There was…

Norfolk Southern announced on Tuesday that it agreed to pay $600 million to settle a class-action lawsuit stemming from a February 2023 derailment of a train carrying hazardous materials in East Palestine, Ohio.The settlement, which must be approved by a judge, includes payments to residents and businesses within 20 miles of the derailment. It also resolves personal injury claims within a 10-mile radius of the derailment.“Individuals and businesses will be able to use compensation from the settlement in any manner they see fit to address potential adverse impacts from the derailment,” Norfolk Southern said in a statement. “This could include…

Online data has long been a valuable commodity. For years, Meta and Google have used data to target their online advertising. Netflix and Spotify have used it to recommend more movies and music. Political candidates have turned to data to learn which groups of voters to train their sights on.Over the last 18 months, it has become increasingly clear that digital data is also crucial in the development of artificial intelligence. Here’s what to know.The more data, the better.The success of A.I. depends on data. That’s because A.I. models become more accurate and more humanlike with more data.In the same…

Fifteen words are roiling the global alcohol industry.Beginning in 2026, containers of beer, wine and liquor sold in Ireland will be required by law to bear a label in red capital letters with two warnings: “THERE IS A DIRECT LINK BETWEEN ALCOHOL AND FATAL CANCERS” and “DRINKING ALCOHOL CAUSES LIVER DISEASE.”The requirement, signed into law last year, is backed by decades of scientific research and goes much further than any country has thus far communicated the health risks of alcohol consumption. It has sparked fierce opposition from alcohol businesses worldwide, but it is also inspiring a push in some other…

For decades the effort to revitalize downtown Los Angeles has been tied to arts projects, from the construction of the midcentury modern Music Center in 1964 to the addition of Frank Gehry’s soaring stainless steel Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2003.But the pandemic was tough on downtowns and cultural institutions around the country, and Los Angeles has been no exception.Its downtown office vacancy rates climbed above 25 percent. Storefronts are empty. Homelessness and crime remain concerns. Many arts organizations have yet to recover their prepandemic audiences. And there have been vivid displays of the area’s thwarted ambitions: Graffiti artists covered…

Germany on Tuesday defended itself at the International Court of Justice against accusations that it was furthering genocide in Gaza by supplying arms to Israel, saying that such claims were at worst a “deliberate distortion” of reality and arguing that it had long been a staunch supporter of Palestinian rights.Nicaragua brought the case against Germany to the court in The Hague. In hearings that opened on Monday, Nicaragua argued that Germany was facilitating the commission of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza by providing Israel with military and financial aid, and it asked for emergency measures ordering the German government to…

Four days after Israel promised to enable a major increase in aid reaching the Gaza Strip, it was unclear on Monday whether much had changed, or when it might, amid widely divergent claims about the amount of food and other vital supplies entering the territory.Israeli airstrikes a week ago killed seven aid workers who had been delivering food in Gaza, renewing the international focus on the hunger crisis there. Under pressure from President Biden, the Israeli government, which insists on inspecting all supplies to Gaza, said last Thursday that it would take steps to increase aid deliveries, though it gave…