Author: NY TIMES

My brother, in his 50s, was a successful professional for many years. He was laid off from his job four years ago and has been unable to find regular employment since then. He has now depleted his savings. He says it’s challenging to find work in his field as an older person, so I suggested taking a lower-paying job — in any field — to support himself, but he doesn’t appear to be looking for work. And ever since we moved our father to an assisted living facility, my brother has been living in his house. Keeping the house is…

The World Bank’s internal watchdog on Thursday criticized the organization’s handling and oversight of its investment in a chain of Kenyan schools that were subject to an internal investigation after allegations that students were abused.The investigation, which started in 2020, has consumed World Bank officials and shareholders in recent months and led to scrutiny of its investment arm, the International Finance Corporation, which invested in the educational project a decade ago.Countries that make up the board of the I.F.C. have been debating how to compensate victims of the abuse. While the scandal predates the tenure of Ajay Banga, the World…

By the time “The Animal Kingdom” opens, the enigmatic disease troubling the world has been circulating for years. It’s unclear where and how it started, much less why or just how far it has spread. Is a virus or bacteria to blame, or is it something in the air, the water, our genes? If we’ve learned anything from our recent pandemic it is that sometimes the most urgent questions aren’t immediately answerable. The big freaky unknown here is why people have begun mutating into beguiling, sometimes terrifying part-human, part-animal creatures.The furred and the hoofed, the feathered and the chaotically tentacled…

A ship hauling more than 200 tons of food for the Gaza Strip left Cyprus on Tuesday morning, in the first test of a maritime corridor designed to bring aid to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who the United Nations says are on the brink of starvation.The ship, named Open Arms, for the Spanish aid group that provided it, was the first vessel authorized to deliver aid to Gaza since 2005, according to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive arm, which has supported the effort and describes it as a “pilot project” that could clear…

A federal bank that finances projects overseas voted Thursday to put $500 million toward an oil and gas project in Bahrain, a transaction that critics said was out of step with President Biden’s climate commitments.Just days before the vote, six lawmakers had urged the bank, the Export-Import Bank of the United States or ExIm, not to move ahead with the financing, given the project’s negative effects on the climate. “We cannot afford to have ExIm undermine domestic and international climate progress,” lawmakers led by Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, said in a letter to the bank’s board of directors…

Sydell L. Miller, a self-made beauty mogul who went from the stay-at-home wife of a Cleveland salon owner to a Palm Beach mansion so immense that it was said to take an hour to walk through all of its rooms, died on Feb. 25 at her home in Cleveland. She was 86.Her daughter Stacie Halpern confirmed the death. Ms. Miller had various health issues, including serious heart problems dating to the early 1990s; Ms. Halpern said that a combination of factors had recently caused her mother’s health to decline.Ms. Miller and her husband, Arnold Miller, created two dominant brands: Ardell,…

TikTok is one of the most popular and largest social media apps around the globe — with great brand recognition and loyal users.It may also be one of the hardest to sell.That’s the conundrum facing TikTok as Washington lawmakers push a bill that would force the app’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell it or face having it banned in the United States. The bill passed the House on Wednesday but could face an uphill climb in the Senate.Rumors are already swirling on Wall Street about who could be interested in buying TikTok. The rumblings grew louder on Thursday after…

When Romeo Chicco tried to get auto insurance in December, seven different companies rejected him. When he eventually obtained insurance, it was nearly double the rate he was previously paying. According to a federal complaint filed this week seeking class-action status, it was because his 2021 Cadillac XT6 had been spying on him.Modern cars have been called “smartphones with wheels,” because they are connected to the internet and packed with sensors and cameras. According to the complaint, an agent at Liberty Mutual told Mr. Chicco that he had been rejected because of information in his “LexisNexis report.” LexisNexis Risk Solutions,…

To hear a tuba is to feel it. The vibrations pulse through your body, and its giant bell is even designed to make the air shudder a bit. A tuba is also much harder for a thief to pilfer than, say, a piccolo, or even a trumpet. Yet from 2011 to 2013, tubas started disappearing from high schools in Southern California, for no obvious reason and with no explanation.The news of the tuba thefts formed a jumping-off point for the artist Alison O’Daniel, who used it as the central hub in a wheel with many spokes. The resulting film, “The…

The White House denied on Tuesday that President Biden had set any “red lines” for Israel in its campaign against Hamas in Gaza but warned again that Israel should not attack the city of Rafah, the southernmost city in the enclave, without protections for more than a million people sheltering there.“The president didn’t make any declarations or pronouncements or announcements,” said Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, referring to an interview Mr. Biden gave over the weekend in which he was asked whether he had a “red line” Israel should not cross in its prosecution of the war.In the…