Author: NY TIMES

The explosions that killed more than 100 people in Iran on Wednesday took place at an anniversary commemoration for Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the top Iranian commander who was killed by a U.S. drone strike four years ago.General Suleimani, the most powerful Iranian commander at the head of the foreign-facing arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, was considered a hero by some in Iran and in other parts of the region for building an axis of allied militias to defend Iran’s interests across the Middle East and for helping to defeat the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.That network, with…

Thousands of young doctors walked off the job in England on Wednesday, dealing another blow to the country’s already-reeling National Health Service and raising concerns about a cascade of canceled medical appointments and surgeries.The strike, which started at 7 a.m. and was scheduled to last six days, would be the longest labor action yet by the doctors, who have been clashing with the government over wages and work conditions since December 2022. It comes at an especially difficult moment for the health service, when the flu and other illnesses are filling up emergency rooms, outpatient clinics and other medical facilities.The…

Editor’s note: This article is part of our “Origin Stories” series, which focuses on athletes’ backstories and topics related to the Summer Olympics.COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — After the 2022 World Aquatics Championships in Budapest, Regan Smith returned to her home state of Minnesota feeling dejected. Her first year at Stanford University, her dream school, was not a happy one. In swimming meets, her performance stagnated. In her father’s words, she was “very disappointed” with her performance at worlds, where she won two gold medals but also missed the podium twice. She felt sad. stuck.”I just swam too much,” she said.Regan’s…

Ms. Czech, an aesthetician trained in Eastern European facial massage, compares skin to dough that one can knead, mold and manipulate manually. Her experience proved prescient; she has worked on the faces of Kim Kardashian, Hailey Bieber and Jennifer Aniston, and, in March, she will open a third spa in Los Angeles. (The other two are in New York and Dallas.)Ms. Greene, the founder of Crystal Greene Studio in SoHo, practices a similar method. La Sculpture, a manual facial priced at $525 for 60 minutes, makes up nearly 85 percent of her treatments, she said. In February she is introducing…

Prices climbed rapidly in 2021 and 2022, straining American household budgets and chipping away at President Biden’s approval rating. But inflation cooled in late 2023, a spurt of progress that happened more quickly than economists had expected and that stoked hopes of a gentle economic landing.Now, the question is whether the good news can persist into 2024.As forecasters try to guess what will happen next, many are looking closely at where the recent slowdown has come from. The details suggest that a combination of weaker goods prices — things like apparel and used cars — and moderating costs for services…

General Motors said on Tuesday that its sales of new vehicles in the United States jumped 14 percent last year, amid a broader rebound in the auto industry driven by a strong economy and an improved supplies of critical components.The company sold 2.6 million cars and light trucks in 2023, up from 2.3 million in 2022, when a shortage of computer chips prevented G.M. and other manufacturers from producing as many cars as consumers were looking to buy.But in a potentially worrying sign for the company, sales rose just 0.3 percent in the last three months of the year. That…

Behind the NumbersData from September 2021 through April 2023 showed 48,404 advance provision requests and 147,112 requests from women seeking to terminate existing pregnancies. (Women in both categories completed telehealth consultations and Aid Access evaluated their medical information before prescribing pills.)Advance provision requesters were more likely than those already pregnant to be 30 or older, white and childless, and to live in urban neighborhoods with lower poverty rates than the national average. That might be partly because Aid Access offers free or reduced-price services to pregnant patients who need financial assistance, while advance provision requesters were expected to pay the…

After Yuval Sharon became the artistic director of Michigan Opera Theater in 2020, the company renamed itself the Detroit Opera — perhaps the most visible among moves that have led to a remarkable streak of successes based on a new, ambitious approach.The house has placed itself at the center of operatic conversation with productions like a drive-through “Götterdämmerung” and a virtual-reality “Walküre.” It has broken fund-raising records, drawn first-time ticket buyers by the thousands and collaborated more with companies elsewhere. Robert O’Hara’s staging of Anthony Davis’s “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” at the Metropolitan Opera last November,…

The killing of Saleh al-Arouri, a top Hamas leader, on Tuesday deprives the group of one of its most skilled tacticians, who helped route money and weapons to its operatives in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere in the Middle East and integrated Hamas more tightly into Iran’s network of forces committed to fighting Israel, according to analysts.But it was far from clear on Wednesday that his death would be a debilitating blow to the organization, which has rebuilt again and again after assassinations of its leaders, and remained agile enough to plot the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel.Still,…

On certain rare occasions, ordinary people in the midst of an average day have changed history.In 1947, Muhammad edh-Dhib, a young Bedouin shepherd looking for a sheep gone astray, discovered a hidden cave that contained the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest known version of most of the Hebrew Bible. Making his rounds one night in 1972, Frank Wills, a Washington, D.C., security guard, noticed a piece of tape holding a lock open in a building where he worked — and as a result he exposed the Watergate break-in, ultimately leading to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon.But neither of…