Author: NY TIMES

In December 2018, a team of federal law enforcement agents flew to Amsterdam to interview a witness in a yearslong criminal investigation into Caterpillar, which had avoided billions of dollars of income taxes by shifting profits to a Swiss subsidiary.A few hours before the interview was set to begin, the agents were startled to hear that the Justice Department was telling them to cancel the long-planned meeting.The interview was never rescheduled, and the investigation would limp along for another few years before culminating, in late 2022, with a victory for Caterpillar. The Internal Revenue Service told the giant industrial company…

In today’s high-tech, high-stakes auto industry, fortunes can change quickly, and there’s no better example of that right now than Toyota Motor.Not long ago, it looked as if Toyota had fallen dangerously behind in electric vehicles. Tesla, the electric car pioneer, has grown rapidly and become the world’s most valuable automaker. Seeing Tesla’s success, other companies, such as General Motors and Ford Motor, concluded that large numbers of consumers were poised to switch to battery-powered cars and trucks and began investing tens of billions of dollars to catch up.Toyota, however, was more deliberate — or lethargic, its critics would say.…

A bar set built for “The Banshees of Inisherin” was discarded in a backyard after filming, then resurrected by a pub in Ireland. It’s up for sale. Source link

Hamas negotiators left Cairo on Thursday without a breakthrough in talks over a cease-fire in Gaza, the group said, as hopes for an imminent truce in its five-month-long war with Israel continued to dim.International mediators have sought to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas that would see the release of some hostages held in Gaza and Palestinians detained in Israeli jails, but weeks of indirect negotiations appear to have stalled. Hamas wants Israel to commit to a permanent cease-fire during or after hostage releases, a demand that Israel has rejected.“The Hamas delegation left Cairo today to consult with the…

President Biden said on Thursday that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel were headed toward a “come-to-Jesus meeting” over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, according to an audio clip of the president’s remarks posted on social media on Friday.Mr. Biden’s comment highlights the rising tensions between him and Mr. Netanyahu in recent weeks, as the civilian death toll in Gaza has risen inexorably and Mr. Biden has come under political pressure at home and abroad to do more to compel Israel to agree to a cease-fire.In recent days, Mr. Biden had expressed hope that at least a six-week…

Now and then during an election cycle, a Republican pundit becomes something of a hero to Democrats.Peggy Noonan, a conservative Wall Street Journal columnist and former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, filled that role in the months leading up the 2008 election, after she had pilloried the second Bush administration over its invasion of Iraq and criticized Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee.Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt, veterans of John McCain’s failed 2008 presidential campaign, reached pundit primacy on MSNBC excoriating the tea party activists then in ascendance.A rising star of the current season…

For years, the Yimbytown conference was an ideologically safe space where liberal young professionals could talk to other liberal young professionals about the particular problems of cities with a lot of liberal young professionals: not enough bike lanes and transit, too many restrictive zoning laws.The event began in 2016 in Boulder, Colo., and has ever since revolved around a coalition of left and center Democrats who want to make America’s neighborhoods less exclusive and its housing more dense. (YIMBY, a pro-housing movement that is increasingly an identity, stands for “Yes in my backyard.”)But the vibes and crowd were surprisingly different…

As BMW car bodies glided down an assembly line in Munich recently, showered by sparks from robotic welders, it was hard to tell which vehicles would be powered by batteries, fuel-burning engines or both. In the view of many analysts, that is not a good thing.The German automaker’s electric vehicles are made on the same assembly line as gasoline cars and look similar from the outside. That approach, using the same basic body for electric, hybrid, gasoline and diesel cars, has been viewed as an awkward and inefficient compromise some established carmakers have deployed as they struggle to compete with…

You can’t forgive the Academy for passing up “Brokeback Mountain” or omitting Amy Adams in “Arrival,” among other oversights that still sting. Source link

Olive trees are common in Northern Lebanon, but in the village of Bshaaleh, a handful look downright ancient. Their branches grow in wildly unpredictable directions, and the trees’ gray, gnarled trunks are shot through with holes and crevasses large enough to hide a sleeping child. Many people believe these sentinel trees are thousands of years old. They are known as “Noah trees” because of some people’s belief that the trees are the source of the olive branch carried by the dove back to Noah’s ark.Scientists have now established a more certain age for several of the trees of Bshaaleh (also…