Author: NY TIMES

What is ibogaine?A naturally occurring psychoactive compound, ibogaine comes from the iboga tree, a rainforest shrub native to Central Africa. The drug comes from the bark of the root, which is crushed and consumed as a powder or given in an extracted form.Iboga has long been used for medicinal and ritual purposes in Gabon, Cameroon and the Republic of Congo. After its discovery by French and Belgian explorers in the 19th century, it was sold as a stimulant in France. In recent decades, ibogaine has shown promise for treating opioid addiction, with several small studies suggesting that a third to…

Upon first glance, you might not think Kahil El’Zabar, 70, is a spiritual jazz musician. Tall and sprightly with taut skin and a thick mustache, wearing dark sunglasses and a stylish black suit on a January afternoon, he looked more like a fashion model or a recently retired athlete. That’s not to say avant-jazz guys can’t be chic, but rarely do they look this dapper.“My mother owned a bridal formal-wear business, so fashion was always a part of my life since I was a little kid,” he said over cups of green tea at the Moxy Hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.…

Inside the wood-paneled shop in Cairo’s famed Khan el-Khalili market, the price of gold was slumping fast, and Rania Hussein was feeling the future slip through her fingers.She and her mother watched the gold merchant weigh the necklace and three bangles they had brought in — jewelry Ms. Hussein had bought for her mother as a present five years ago but which they now needed to sell. Her brother was getting married, an expensive undertaking even in normal times, but the economic crisis and soaring inflation that have gripped Egypt for more than two years left the family no choice.Years…

The Ukraine war has been fought largely on the ground in the past two years, with troops often locked in back-and-forth battles with heavy artillery and drone support. The countries’ air forces have played second fiddle because of Ukraine’s limited fleet of planes and Russia’s inability to gain the air supremacy it once expected.But as the Russian military presses on with attacks in the east, its air force has taken on a greater role. Military analysts say Russia has increasingly used warplanes near the front lines to drop powerful guided bombs on Ukrainian positions and clear a path forward for…

As families grow and space needs change, the conventional move is to trade one home for another. Rebecca Rudolph and Colin Thompson would say it doesn’t have to be that way.Instead of moving, you can change your home, time and again, to meet those evolving needs.“We’ve been in our house almost 24 years,” said Mr. Thompson, 50, an architect at Gensler in Los Angeles. “But it has not been the same house.”The story of the couple’s home, which has expanded and shifted shape many times over the years, began in the summer of 2000. As young architects who had recently…

One year after a series of bank runs threatened the financial system, government officials are preparing to unveil a regulatory response aimed at preventing future meltdowns.After months of floating fixes at conferences and in quiet conversations with bank executives, the Federal Reserve and other regulators could unveil new rules this spring. At least some policymakers hope to release their proposal before a regulation-focused conference in June, according to a person familiar with the plans.The interagency clampdown would come on top of another set of proposed and potentially costly regulations that have caused tension between big banks and their regulators. Taken…

Sonia Elyss, a 38-year-old beauty marketing specialist in New York City who has worked in influencer marketing for a decade, acknowledged the problem. “This isn’t the first time that I personally have witnessed influencer fatigue,” she said. “At peak influencer culture for Instagram, before TikTok was even a thing, we had the same scenario.”The difference now, Ms. Elyss pointed out, is the scale of influence made possible by TikTok, which has more than 150 million users in the United States, according to the company. On Instagram, people typically seek out or follow influencers. On TikTok, influencers’ content is more likely…

The drug company Atai Life Sciences is spending millions to research the compound, and congressional lawmakers from both parties have been pushing the government to promote ibogaine research for substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health problems.For Dr. Deborah Mash, a professor of neurology at the University of Miami who began studying ibogaine in the early 1990s, the soaring interest is a vindication of her belief that the compound could help ameliorate the opioid crisis. “Ibogaine is not a silver bullet, and it won’t work for everybody, but it’s the most powerful addiction interrupter I’ve ever seen,” she…

The most prized pigment of antiquity was processed not from a tangle of root or the frothy extract of a weed, but by drawing out a slimy secretion from the mucus glands behind the anus of murex sea snails — “the bottom of the bottom-feeders,” the historian Kelly Grovier has written. The common name of the dyestuff, Tyrian purple, derives from the habitat of the mollusks, which the Phoenicians purportedly began harvesting in the 16th century B.C. in the city-state of Tyre in present-day Lebanon.Because each snail yielded little more than a drop of the discharge — a clear, malodorous…

Taylor Swift has descended on Southeast Asia, or one small part of it at least: All of her six sold-out shows are in Singapore, the region’s wealthiest nation.Many of her fans in this part of the world, which is home to more than 600 million people, are disappointed. But the Singapore leg of Ms. Swift’s wildly popular Eras Tour, which began last weekend and ends on Saturday, is a soft power coup and a boost for the country’s post-pandemic economic recovery.The shows — and the undisclosed price that Singapore paid to host them — have also generated diplomatic tension with…