Author: NY TIMES

Within minutes of walking through an Israeli military checkpoint along Gaza’s central highway on Nov. 19, the Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha was asked to step out of the crowd. He put down his 3-year-old son, whom he was carrying, and sat in front of a military jeep.Half an hour later, Mr. Abu Toha heard his name called. Then he was blindfolded and led away for interrogation.“I had no idea what was happening or how they could suddenly know my full legal name,” said the 31-year-old, who added that he had no ties to the militant group Hamas and had…

Killer whales are some of the most cosmopolitan creatures on the planet, swimming through every one of the world’s oceans. They patrol the frigid waters near both poles and periodically pop up in the tropics, in locations from western Africa to Hawaii.Although their habitats and habits vary widely, all killer whales are considered part of a single, global species: Orcinus orca. (Despite their common name, killer whales are actually part of a family of marine mammals known as oceanic dolphins.)Now, scientists have drawn upon decades of research to suggest that two killer whale populations often observed off the Pacific Coast…

A lawyer for Sean Combs, the hip-hop mogul whose homes were raided by federal agents on Monday, called the searches “a gross overuse of military-level force” and criticized them as “nothing more than a witch hunt based on meritless accusations made in civil lawsuits.”“There is no excuse for the excessive show of force and hostility exhibited by authorities or the way his children and employees were treated,” the lawyer, Aaron Dyer, said in a statement on Tuesday. “Mr. Combs was never detained but spoke to and cooperated with authorities. Despite media speculation, neither Mr. Combs nor any of his family…

Relations between President Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel appear to have sunk to a new low, with both men pressed hard by domestic politics and looming elections.Mr. Biden is facing outrage from global allies and his own supporters about the toll of civilian deaths in the war against Hamas and Israel’s restrictions on allowing food and medicine into Gaza amid critical shortages. On Monday, Mr. Biden allowed the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, as the U.S. ambassador abstained rather than vetoing the measure, as the United States had done…

A court in Moscow on Tuesday extended the pretrial detention of an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal by three months, nearly a year to the day after he was detained on accusations of espionage. The United States government has said the charge is politically motivated and unfounded.The reporter, Evan Gershkovich, 32, was ordered to stay in prison until at least June 30, according to a statement by the news service of the Moscow court system. It was the fifth time that Mr. Gershkovich’s detention had been extended since his arrest in March of last year during a reporting…

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Houston senior backup Ryan Elvin stepped to the free throw line with 17 seconds left in overtime to take a three-second lead and advance to the Sweet 16.Irvin played a total of 60 minutes all season, almost all in garbage time. But a second later, head coach Kelvin Sampson was forced to send him to the scorer’s table when a fourth Cougar player, All-American point guard and Big 12 Player of the Year Jamal Shedd – Fouled and left the game. Houston swapped the last man off the bench for its star player, and suddenly, he was…

Like the plot of “Succession,” Ilia Malinin’s winning program for the men’s singles competition at the World Figure Skating Championships on Saturday had a lot of twists: six quadruple jumps that included a quadruple axel, a feat involving four and a half rotations in the air.That those elements were set to the HBO series’ theme song only heightened the drama of Mr. Malinin’s performance.The moody string music that opens the song had been playing for about 30 seconds when Mr. Malinin, a 19-year-old student at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., executed a quad axel in a costume that resembled…

There’s a new high-flying stock on Wall Street that some investors are eagerly piling into. Its largest shareholder is former President Donald J. Trump.His social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, began trading on the Nasdaq on Tuesday, under the ticker DJT, and immediately surged in value, gaining 40 percent in early trading.Trump Media — the parent of Truth Social, the online platform that is Mr. Trump’s main megaphone for reaching supporters and going after critics — closed its merger with a cash-rich public shell company on Monday.The shell company’s stock had jumped higher ahead of the deal, in…

For years, the U.S. investors who backed ByteDance, the Chinese internet company that owns TikTok, have wrestled with the complexities of owning a piece of a geopolitically fraught social media app.Now it’s gotten even more complicated.A bill to force ByteDance to sell TikTok is winding its way through the Senate after sailing through the House this month. Questions about whether TikTok’s Chinese ties make it a national security threat are mounting. And U.S. investors including General Atlantic, Susquehanna International Group and Sequoia Capital — which collectively poured billions into ByteDance — are facing increased pressure from state and federal lawmakers…

The new horror-thriller “Late Night With the Devil” stars David Dastmalchian as the host of “Night Owls With Jack Delroy” where, on Halloween night 1977, an occult-themed episode takes a dark turn during the live broadcast. Shot in a found-footage way that unearths the “lost” episode, the movie (now in theaters, streaming on Shudder on April 22) is a satirical throwback to the era’s supernatural and religious fanaticism, with a notable nod to “The Exorcist.” And it is one of the most recent in a string of late-night moments that make their way to the big and small screens.Late-night hosts…