Author: NY TIMES

The United States carried out a new military strike against Houthi ballistic missiles in Yemen on Tuesday, the U.S. military said, but the latest salvo against the Iran-backed group left the White House grappling with how to stop a battle-hardened foe from disrupting shipping lanes critical for global trade.The strikes on Tuesday, the third overall against the group since a U.S.-led air and naval barrage hit dozens of targets last week, destroyed four missiles that the Pentagon’s Central Command said posed an imminent threat to merchant vessels and Navy ships traveling through the Red Sea and nearby waters.But the pre-emptive…

“Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s movie about the development of the atomic bomb, on Thursday received the highest number of nominations for this year’s EE British Academy Film Awards, known as the BAFTAs.The film secured 13 nods for Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars, including for best film, where it is up against four other titles including “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Martin Scorsese’s epic about the Osage murders of the 1920s, and “Poor Things,” Yorgos Lanthimos’s sexually charged take on a Frankenstein story starring Emma Stone. “Poor Things” followed “Oppenheimer” with 11 nominations overall.The other titles nominated for best film are “Anatomy…

He and his fiancée never got married. I moved away. But we stayed close. It’s been almost a decade since graduate school, and he and I have not lived in the same state since. He has a partner and a family. I have a budding career in television and a busy social life. The last time we had sex was five years ago. (Ethically, that time!)A while back, I texted him to see if he wanted to chat on the phone. I love talking on the phone and ask for it often. It was Monday. He said he was visiting…

An unlikely coalition of banks, community groups and racial justice advocates is urging federal regulators to rethink the plan they proposed in July to update rules governing how U.S. banks protect themselves against potential losses.Regulators are calling for an increase in the amount of capital — cash-like assets — that banks have to hold to tide them over in an emergency to avoid needing a taxpayer-funded bailout like the one in the 2008 financial crisis. The demise of three midsize banks and a fourth smaller one last year, under pressure from rising interest rates and losses from cryptocurrency businesses, bolstered…

His opera “Thomas,” which premiered in May 2013, encapsulates that feeling of suffocation. Based on a libretto by Händl Klaus, the work focuses on the title character, whose boyfriend, Matthias, has just died in a hospital. Thomas grieves but must interact with the businesslike functionaries of death. The instrumental music is often skeletal, with an ensemble consisting almost entirely of plucked instruments, their quick decays a reminder of transience. The opera expresses an existential loneliness eased only by the gentle shimmer of its microtonal harmonies.Once Haas began teaching at Columbia, his life changed rapidly. He met Mollena Williams, a writer,…

Iran hit its neighbors Pakistan and Iraq with missile strikes on Tuesday, prompting strong denunciations from both countries and raising fears that upheaval in the Middle East could spiral out of control.Since the war in Gaza began in October, Iran has used its proxy forces against Israel and its allies. But on Tuesday, it said its latest missile strikes had been in response to terrorist attacks within its borders.The missile strikes, nevertheless, raised tensions in a region where conflict has now touched at least five nations.“They are contributing to the escalation of regional tensions — and it must stop,” the…

Greenland’s expansive ice sheet is known to be shrinking, especially since the 1990s, because of warming from climate change. It’s a fate shared by the Antarctic Ice Sheet as well as glaciers around the world. Now, a new study reveals that about 20 percent more of the Greenland ice sheet has disappeared than previous estimates show.The missing ice has been breaking and melting from the ends of glaciers around Greenland’s perimeter. The new research, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, provides a detailed accounting of a process that scientists knew was happening but had struggled to measure comprehensively.“Almost every glacier…

On Alexandria Angco’s 28th birthday in September 2022, she declared that she would not date anyone for a whole year. Dating wasn’t going so well for her, and she wanted to focus on herself instead.Twelve days later, she met Christian Chai Chua in person for the first time. And five months later, they were engaged.“I failed,” she said of her goal. But ultimately, that turned out to be a good thing.The two first met on Zoom in August 2020 at an annual conference organized by Singles for Christ, a group for young Catholic adults.Ms. Angco, who is from Toronto and…

At the Taipei train station, a Chinese human rights activist named Cuicui watched with envy as six young Taiwanese politicians campaigned for the city’s legislative seats. A decade ago, they had been involved in parallel democratic protest movements — she in China, and the politicians on the opposite side of the Taiwan Strait.“We came of age as activists around the same time. Now they’re running as legislators while my peers and I are in exile,” said Cuicui, who fled China for Southeast Asia last year over security concerns.Cuicui was one in a group of eight women I followed last week…

Synopsys, a key Silicon Valley supplier to the chip industry, said on Tuesday that it had agreed to pay $35 billion for Ansys, a Pennsylvania company that makes software used to simulate and analyze product designs for electronics manufacturers, car makers, defense contractors and others.The deal, which was struck for a combination of cash and stock, follows a $14 billion deal this month by Hewlett Packard Enterprise to buy Juniper Networks, uniting a big computer maker with a specialist in networking gear. It was the latest sign of changing times in the technology sector, which is experiencing slow sales for…