Author: NY TIMES

“People will die,” said Dr. Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center, “but we will never know, because even the programs to count the dead are cut.”The projects terminated include H.I.V. treatment programs that had served millions of people, the main malaria control programs in the worst-affected African countries and global efforts to wipe out polio.Here are some of the projects that The New York Times has confirmed have been canceled:A $131 million grant to UNICEF’s polio immunization program, which paid for planning, logistics and delivery of vaccines to millions of children.A $90 million contract…

Field: Complete NocturnesAlice Sara Ott, piano (Deutsche Grammophon)The Irish composer John Field (1782-1837) is commonly said to have invented the nocturne as a piece for piano, passing the form along for his younger contemporary Frédéric Chopin to perfect. If sometimes forgotten, Field’s contributions have hardly escaped notice. Liszt himself published an edition of nine of them­ — “where else would we encounter such perfection of incomparable naïveté?” he asked in a preface — and recordings periodically appear to remind listeners of their many virtues.Alice Sara Ott, perhaps the most prominent pianist yet to set them to disc, gives them all…

The imprisoned leader of a Kurdish guerrilla movement that has been waging a bloody insurgency against the Turkish state for decades called on Thursday for his fighters to lay down their arms.The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., is classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and other countries. The group’s leader, Abdullah Ocalan, made his appeal in a written statement that was read aloud during a news conference by members of Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish political party who had just visited him in prison.Mr. Ocalan called for the P.K.K. to lay down its weapons, saying in the statement…

One of the tests of a great fashion brand is how its clothes look off the runway, on regular people — not celebrities paid to wear the clothes, or models styled in the clothes, but fans who most likely put their money where their taste was, bought a piece, and wear it as they want.So it was instructive that before the Diesel show on Wednesday a host of otherwise anonymous attendees in various versions of designer Glenn Martens’ shredded, lasered and otherwise altered denim were wandering around the cavernous show space taking selfies and looking not just cool or confident…

Now it’s Keir Starmer’s turn.After President Emmanuel Macron of France navigated his meeting with President Trump on Monday, skirting the rockiest shoals but making little headway, Mr. Starmer, the British prime minister, will meet Mr. Trump on Thursday to plead for the United States not to abandon Ukraine.Mr. Starmer will face the same balancing act as Mr. Macron did, without the benefit of years of interactions dating to 2017, when Mr. Trump greeted the newly elected French president with a white-knuckle handshake that was the first of several memorable grip-and-grin moments.Unlike Mr. Macron, Mr. Starmer will arrive in the Oval…

The founding family of 7-Eleven’s Japanese parent company has failed to secure the money to buy it out, the company said Thursday, months after they launched a bid worth over $50 billion to fend off a foreign takeover.Seven & i Holdings, which sits atop a vast network of 85,000 convenience stores, primarily in Asia and the United States, said in a statement that it would assess alternatives, including the proposal from Canada’s Alimentation Couche-Tard that the founding family had rejected.Junro Ito, an executive at Seven & i and the son of its founder, and Ito-Kogyo, the family’s asset management company,…

Intuitive Machines landed a robot on the moon last year. Can the Houston company do it again, but keep the spacecraft upright this time?The company’s second lander, named Athena, launched on Wednesday evening on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It is now on an arcing path to the moon.The spacecraft turned itself on, but then several minutes of suspense followed when it was late to check in. Eventually, data from the probe arrived, accompanied by relief at Intuitive Machines’ mission control.On March 6, the spacecraft will attempt to land in Mons Mouton, a…

An obscure but influential program that gave detailed public health information to about half of the world’s nations will fold as a result of the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid.With funding from the United States Agency for International Development, the Demographic and Health Surveys were the only sources of information in many countries about maternal and child health and mortality, nutrition, reproductive health and H.I.V. infections, among many other health indicators.The surveys collected data in 90 low- and middle-income nations, which then used the information to set health benchmarks at the local, national and global levels, including the 2030…

Luxury accommodations at a tropical resort. World-class hospitality. “Boundary-pushing” excursions by day. Beachside musical performances by night. And exorbitant ticket prices to boot.All of that might sound familiar to anyone who followed the well-chronicled saga of the Fyre Festival, an ill-fated musical carnival that, in 2017, was such a spectacular failure that it spawned dueling documentaries on Netflix and Hulu. Billy McFarland, the festival’s organizer, wound up going to prison for nearly four years after he entered a guilty plea to charges that included wire fraud.But Mr. McFarland, 33, a self-described tech entrepreneur, is back — and he is trying…

Hamas has agreed to release the remains of four Israeli hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, Israeli officials and the group said, resolving a dayslong impasse between the two sides.The agreement comes as the first phase of a fragile cease-fire deal draws to a close. Negotiators have yet to reach terms to extend the deal into a more comprehensive truce, raising concerns that the fighting in Gaza could resume.During the first phase, Hamas had agreed to free 25 Israeli hostages and hand over the bodies of eight more in exchange for more than 1,500 Palestinians jailed by Israel.…