Author: NY TIMES

For decades, privacy experts have been wary of snooping from space. They feared satellites powerful enough to zoom in on individuals, capturing close-ups that might differentiate adults from children or suited sunbathers from those in a state of nature.Now, quite suddenly, analysts say, a startup is building a new class of satellite whose cameras would, for the first time, do just that.“We’re acutely aware of the privacy implications,” Topher Haddad, head of Albedo Space, the company making the new satellites, said in an interview. His company’s technology will image people but not be able to identify them, he said. Albedo,…

For years, strongmen and autocrats had a novel weapon in their hunt for political enemies. They used Interpol, the world’s largest police organization, to reach across borders and grab them — even in democracies.An award-winning Venezuelan journalist was detained in Peru. An Egyptian asylum seeker was stopped in Australia. And Russia has tried repeatedly to secure the arrest of William F. Browder, a London-based human rights campaigner.In response, Interpol has toughened oversight of its arrest alerts, known as red notices, making it harder than ever to misuse them. But as Interpol adapted, so did strongmen. They have turned to the…

El domingo, los Jefes de Kansas City ganaron su tercer Super Bowl en las últimas cinco temporadas al vencer 25-22 a los 49ers de San Francisco en tiempo extra. Y, aunque algunos jugadores de la NFL pasan toda su carrera sin ganar un campeonato, alguien que acaba de llegar a Kansas City probó las mieles de la victoria en su décimo tercer partido.Taylor Swift, quien ha estado saliendo con Travis Kelce, el ala cerrada estrella de Kansas City, cambió la conversación de la NFL durante toda la temporada, pues atrajo a un nuevo público a la liga e inspiró fuertes…

Nine months ahead of the presidential election, investors are already thinking about how financial markets might respond to the outcome of the vote, and how they should trade to prepare for it.Stock markets have soared to record highs in recent weeks, while government bond yields, which underpin interest rates for consumers and companies, are down from a recent peak in October. Despite the uncertainty of making political predictions, money managers are already contemplating how the election could alter the mood in markets.Red wave, blue wave or divided government?The combination investors see as the most likely to spur a shift in…

An Israeli raid last week has reduced one of Gaza’s biggest hospitals to little more than a shelter for a small, terrified crew of patients and medical staff, while health officials warned on Monday that food and fuel supplies were almost gone at another hospital that has endured a nearly monthlong siege in the same city, Khan Younis.Israel says it is rooting out Hamas activity at the medical centers, which it says Hamas has used to hide military operations — accusations it has made about multiple hospitals in Gaza, backing up some claims with evidence of Hamas tunnels. Hamas and…

Since 2019, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has been held in a high security prison in southeast London while his lawyers fight a U.S. extradition order. Now, that particular battle may be nearing its end.On Tuesday and Wednesday, Mr. Assange’s case returns to a British court for a two-day hearing that will determine whether he has exhausted his right to appeal within the U.K. and whether he could be one step closer to being sent to the United States.In America, Assange, 52, faces charges under the Espionage Act of 1917 that could amount to a sentence of up to…

Parisians are already grumbling about the crowds for this summer’s Olympics. They envision sweaty tourists jamming the subway cars, making the hell of commuting even more, well, hellish. They are planning their summer escapes; at worst a “télétravail” schedule to work from home.But not Ivan Buyukocakm. Glancing out at a corner known for drug dealing near his family’s kebab shop in the low-income district just north of Paris, he sees the upcoming Olympics as heralding something totally different: opportunity.“They are redoing the streets and refurbishing buildings,” said Mr. Buyukocakm, as a woman in a thin coat dragged a grocery trolley…

It was August 2020, and Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of Russia’s most famous opposition leader, was striding through the battered, gloomy hallways of a provincial Russian hospital, looking for the room where her husband lay in a coma.Aleksei A. Navalny had collapsed after being given what German medical investigators would later declare was a near-fatal dose of the nerve agent Novichok, and his wife, blocked by menacing policemen from moving around the hospital, turned to a cellphone camera held by one of his aides.“We demand the immediate release of Aleksei, because right now in this hospital there are more police…

A friend recently showed me one of the handmade sake cups that he adores. It was a deep midnight blue rounded copper cup sprinkled with gold flecks, like a starry sky. And it was made by Gyokusendo, a family company established in 1816 that specializes in tsuiki, the Japanese term for copperware hammered by hand.“The cups’ design was actually started during my generation,” said Motoyuki Tamagawa, the company’s president and the seventh family member to lead the business. “The designs and colors are thought up by the artisans themselves.”And if the sake cup (16,000 yen, or about $110) isn’t the…

In Munich, world leaders were left hushed and hollow-eyed, their annual security conference suddenly transformed into a wake. In London, demonstrators projected a giant image of Aleksei A. Navalny on to the facade of the Russian embassy. In Washington, an angry President Biden called a news conference to declare, “Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death.”Rarely has the death of a single man summoned such a cascade of grief, anger and demands for justice.While many feared the worst for Mr. Navalny when he returned to Russia in early 2021 from Germany, where he had recovered from being poisoned,…