Author: NY TIMES

When Mohammed Sweirky prepared to leave for a work trip in January to repair telecommunications infrastructure that had been destroyed in northern Gaza, his wife and children pleaded with him not to go.Fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas members was still raging in the area, said Mr. Sweirky, who is a technician for Paltel, the largest telecommunications company in Gaza, and his family worried he might not return. But he said he felt he had no choice given that residents there desperately needed their phone services restored.“It was painful to say bye,” said Mr. Sweirky, 50, who fled Gaza City…

For Germany — a country that knows something about how extremists can hijack a government — the surging popularity of the far right has forced an awkward question.How far should a democracy go in restricting a party that many believe is bent on undermining it?It is a quandary that politicians and legal experts are grappling with across the country as support surges for Alternative for Germany, a far-right party whose backing now outstrips each of the three parties in the governing coalition.Not only is the AfD the most popular party in three states holding elections this year, it is polling…

A singed eyebrow or two did nothing to extinguish Mr. Neeley’s enthusiasm for jewelry. By age 14, he was participating in art shows across Colorado, including one in Telluride, where the actress Daryl Hannah bought a piece from his first collection.It was around this time, in the late 1990s, when Mr. Neeley paid his first visit to the Tucson gem shows and met Mr. Avery, the lapidary, a fellow Coloradan.In Tucson early this year, Mr. Avery reminisced with Mr. Neeley about that first encounter, when the young rock hound purchased an aquamarine. “I remember your father was with you,” Mr.…

A prominent Boeing whistle-blower, a former quality manager who raised concerns about manufacturing practices at the company’s 787 Dreamliner factory in South Carolina, was found dead on Saturday with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to local officials.The whistle-blower, John Barnett, was in Charleston for a deposition for a lawsuit in which he accused Boeing of retaliating against him for making complaints about quality and safety.Quality problems involving both design and manufacturing have plagued Boeing for years — most prominently after the crashes of two Boeing 737 Max jets in 2018 and 2019, and again since a…

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube3. Silver Jews: “People”“It’s sunny and 75, it feels so good just being alive,” sings the late, great poet and songwriter David Berman on this standout from “American Water,” the 1998 album by his band the Silver Jews. This song is, admittedly, about a lot of other things too, but it’s always my personal soundtrack for those early and enlivening good weather days: “Come on, baby, don’t stay inside — everybody’s coming out tonight.”▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube4. Roy Ayers Ubiquity: “Everybody Loves the Sunshine”From Roy Ayers and his group’s…

As a young girl growing up in colonial Algeria, Marnia Lazreg was enjoined by her grandmother to wear a veil, to “protect” herself. Ms. Lazreg refused. She didn’t feel the need for such protection, and the veil wouldn’t provide it anyway.Decades later, as a Hunter College sociologist, she looked more deeply into an aspect of Muslim society that had haunted her since that childhood moment: Was the veil imposed on women really necessary, from either a religious or a security perspective?The answer she came up with in a collection of five essays, “Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women,”…

A deployment of 1,000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti to help quell gang-fueled lawlessness is on hold until a new government is formed in the Caribbean nation, officials in Kenya said Tuesday, as leaders tried to figure out a difficult question: Who is going to run Haiti?Kenya had agreed to send a security force to Haiti, but that deal had been reached with Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who on Monday night agreed to step down once a new transitional government is formed.Haiti’s embattled prime minister announced his intention to resign after being stranded for days in Puerto Rico following a…

The best striker in the Premier League going one-on-one with the best defender in the Premier League in front of millions of people around the world watching?Liverpool faced a greater threat against Manchester City on Sunday (the final score was 1-1 for those of you living on Mars), but those few seconds Erling Haaland’s match against Virgil van Dijk was explosive and exciting. The two artistic masters have exclusive use of nearly 3,500 square meters of Anfield’s sacred lawn. Haaland thundered towards goal, dancing around the ball with long strides and feints, desperately trying to draw the challenge from the…

Se ha convertido en una escena habitual. Tu teléfono suena, pero en lugar de un mensaje de texto, es un aviso de que alguien ha grabado un pódcast privado solo para ti, de cualquier extensión imaginable y de tema desconocido hasta que pulses play. Puede ser un chisme jugoso, una anécdota repleta de giros y sorpresas, o un relato totalmente rutinario de alguien que simplemente no tenía las manos libres para escribirlo.Es un mensaje de audio, una de las formas más controvertidas de comunicación moderna.Más íntimos que un mensaje de texto y menos urgentes que una llamada, los mensajes de…

A day before the door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5, engineers and technicians for the airline were so concerned about the mounting evidence of a problem that they wanted the plane to come out of service the next evening and undergo maintenance, interviews and documents show.But the airline chose to keep the plane, a Boeing 737 Max 9, in service on Jan. 5 with some restrictions, carrying passengers until it completed three flights that were scheduled to end that night in Portland, Ore., the site of one of the airline’s maintenance facilities.Before the plane…