Author: NY TIMES

Shortly after bargaining his way out of free agency purgatory and signing a new contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Kique Hernandez asked his wife, Mariana, to investigate another market. She contacted former Dodge Ridge Hill’s wife, Caitlin, with a request: Could the Hernandez family live in Hill’s house again? The Hills purchased the property near Toluca Lake in 2017, shortly after Rich signed a $48 million contract. After Hill’s final season with the team in 2019, the family decided not to sell the house. The house has since become a popular destination for Dodgers personnel. Catcher Austin Barnes lived…

This article is part of our Design special section about innovative surfaces in architecture, interiors and products.In the lineup of climate villains, architecture towers above many. The building and construction industries account for some 37 percent of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions, according to the United Nations Environment Program. Three of the most commonly used building materials — concrete, steel and aluminum — generate nearly a quarter of all carbon output.But there is progress. The use of renewable organic materials like wood, hemp and bamboo is expanding. Carbon-absorbing plants and trees are more widely integrated into architectural design. And even concrete…

The trade relationship between China and the United States has plenty of friction. But at least one area is booming: Chinese start-ups looking to establish a presence in the West are spending billions of dollars for advertisements on services owned by some of Silicon Valley’s biggest technology companies.Temu, the international arm of the Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo, is flooding Google with ads for absurdly inexpensive goods. With an initial public offering looming, the fast-fashion merchant Shein is inundating Instagram with ads for clothes and accessories at rock-bottom prices. Developers of China’s video streaming and gaming apps are dumping marketing dollars…

A Chinese citizen who recently quit his job as a software engineer for Google in California has been charged with trying to transfer artificial intelligence technology to a Beijing-based company that paid him secretly, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Wednesday.Prosecutors accused Linwei Ding, who was part of the team that designs and maintains Google’s vast A.I. supercomputer data system, of stealing information about the “architecture and functionality” of the system, and of pilfering software used to “orchestrate” supercomputers “at the cutting edge of machine learning and A.I. technology.”From May 2022 to May 2023, Mr. Ding, also known as…

The Los Angeles police said it would increase its presence at the Academy Awards on Sunday night to make sure that potential protests related to the Israel-Hamas war do not disrupt the Oscars ceremony.Cmdr. Randy Goddard of the Los Angeles Police Department said it had gathered intelligence, based partially on social media posts, suggesting that at least one group “would like to stop the Academy Awards.”“It’s going to be our goal to ensure that the Academy Awards is successful, that guests can arrive safely and get into the venue,” said Commander Goddard, the police official leading the department’s management of…

The International Monetary Fund has agreed to more than double a bailout package for Egypt, which is going through its worst economic crisis in decades, exacerbated by war in the neighboring Gaza Strip and in Ukraine.The fund now plans to provide Egypt $8 billion, up from an initial $3 billion announced in October 2022.The I.M.F.’s mission chief to Egypt, Ivanna Vladkova Hollar, noted at a news conference that the already-struggling Egyptian economy had been further hurt by the conflict between Israel and Hamas, which has cut into the country’s vital tourism trade.At the same time, revenue from the Suez Canal…

In March of 1961, Dr. Anthony Epstein, a pathologist at Middlesex Hospital in London, almost skipped a visiting physician’s afternoon lecture about children with exceptionally large facial tumors in Uganda.The physician, Dr. Denis Burkitt, a native of Ireland who called himself a bush surgeon, showed slides of bulbous tumors that emerged along the jawline and occurred in tropical African regions where rainfall was high. During his lecture, Dr. Burkitt mapped a veritable pediatric cancer belt that extended across equatorial Africa.Despite Dr. Epstein’s initial reluctance to attend the talk — he sat in the rear to make a quick escape —…

In a major step forward for college athletes’ rights, the Dartmouth men’s basketball team voted 13-2 on Tuesday in favor of unionizing.The historic election is the latest event to challenge the founding principles of the NCAA, which has long prided itself on protecting the concept of amateurism in college sports. Now, with the NCAA engaged in several simultaneous legal battles over its relationships with athletes, that appears to be about to change.While the unionization process is far from complete, Tuesday’s vote could mark a turning point as the decision reverberates throughout the college athletics world.So, how did we get here,…

Lucien Pellat-Finet, the French fashion designer whose brash, irreverent and unapologetically expensive sweaters earned him the nickname King of Cashmere, died on Feb. 26 in Trancoso, Brazil, where he had owned a home for more two decades. He was 78.A niece, Camille Dauchez, said that Mr. Pellat-Finet (pronounced pell-ah fee-NAY), who had Parkinson’s disease, died in a swimming accident.The sweaters in Mr. Pellat-Finet’s collection, which was introduced in 1994, combined two seemingly disparate elements: extremely high-quality cashmere and provocative symbols like marijuana leaves, peace signs and, most frequently, skulls, all of which were occasionally embellished with crystals. Sometimes, skulls were…

Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin swooped in to rescue New York Community Bank on Wednesday, leading a group of investors who injected more than $1 billion into a lender flailing from its exposure to a softening real estate market and internal management mistakes.Mr. Mnuchin, through his private equity firm, Liberty Street Capital, put up $450 million, with other investors, including the billionaire Kenneth Griffin’s hedge fund Citadel, throwing in the rest. As part of the deal, NYCB will also get its third chief executive in a month — Joseph Otting, a longtime banking executive and close ally of Mr. Mnuchin.The…