Author: NY TIMES

I visited my family overseas for three weeks. It was our first Christmas together in 10 years. A close friend offered to take my dog while I was away. During the first week, my friend’s mother died. I offered to make other arrangements for my dog, but she said it wasn’t necessary. By the second week, she was struggling. She asked if she could return the dog to my house and visit twice a day. I asked another person to help her so my dog would get more visits and my friend could deal with her loss. Then, my neighbors…

What Harvard’s drama says about D.E.I. The resignation yesterday of Claudine Gay, Harvard’s first Black president and the second woman to lead the university, was tied to a mounting crisis over plagiarism allegations. But she had also been under fire for months over what critics said was an insufficient response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.Her departure, weeks after Liz Magill stepped down as the University of Pennsylvania’s president, casts a spotlight on the increasingly rocky landscape for the policies known as D.E.I. — diversity, equity and inclusion — and spurs questions about the power of donors over…

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. devoted his annual year-end report on the state of the federal judiciary, issued on Sunday, to the positive role that artificial intelligence can play in the legal system — and the threats it poses.His report did not address the Supreme Court’s rocky year, including its adoption of an ethics code that many said was toothless. Nor did he discuss the looming cases arising from former President Donald J. Trump’s criminal prosecutions and questions about his eligibility to hold office.The chief justice’s report was nevertheless timely, coming days after revelations that Michael D. Cohen, the…

A few days later, when she was not imminently dying anymore, Naomi announced that she was going home — and the hospital responded by placing her on a 72-hour mental-health hold. Clinicians then obtained what Colorado calls a short-term certification, which required, by judicial order, that Naomi be detained and treated, in her case until she reached what physicians determined to be 80 percent of her “ideal body weight.” In Colorado, as in most states, a patient can be treated against her will if she is mentally ill and found incapable of making informed decisions. That day, Naomi was transferred…

Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Jeff Parker, guitarist, composer and producer“Hopscotch” by Charles RouseBack in 2001, Tortoise was performing at one of the early iterations of the Detroit Electronic Music Festival. The festival was packed with folks — supposedly about a million people were in attendance throughout the course of the weekend. We were hanging after our show and I heard this insane music come over the gigantic P.A.: a hypnotic groove with an angular melody atop, and unconventional instrumentation of tenor saxophone, electric guitar, acoustic bass and drums. Someone made their way to the D.J. booth and found out that…

Israel and the surrounding region were on edge Wednesday, a day after the assassination of a top Hamas leader in Lebanon heightened worries that the war in Gaza could spill over into a broader conflict.Hamas blamed Israel for the death of Saleh al-Arouri, the senior-most official of the group to be killed since the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel. Officials with the Israeli military would not comment on whether their forces were behind the explosion that killed him in a suburb of Beirut. Lebanese and U.S. officials also ascribed the attack to Israel.Mr. al-Arouri was killed in the heart of…

Since the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the people of Ukraine have had access to a single source of television news — an all-day broadcast packed with footage of Ukrainian tanks blasting Russian positions, medics operating near the frontline and political leaders rallying support abroad.The show, Telemarathon United News, has been a major tool of Ukraine’s information war, praised by the government officials who regularly appear on it for its role in countering Russian disinformation and maintaining morale.“It’s a weapon,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said last January of the program, which is jointly produced and broadcast…

Falling UpwardIt all began so innocently: snow falling at dusk, a crackling fire, an embrace between three old friends. Soon, I was floating away on a river of love with my husband and our friend. Both men insisted that everything was aboveboard, open and non-possessive. Still, I worried: What would our friend’s girlfriend say about our ménage à trois? “How could you do something so stupid?” she said when she came home later. “We just, uh, fell into bed,” he stammered. “You fell into that bed?” she yelled, pointing to the ladder leading to the high loft. Oops. — Pamela…

Tesla sales jumped during the last three months of 2023 after the carmaker slashed prices and customers rushed to take advantage of tax breaks on electric vehicles — provisions that will be harder to come by in 2024.The company said on Tuesday that it sold 484,500 cars in the fourth quarter, up from 435,000 in the third quarter and 405,000 in the fourth quarter of 2022. For the full year, Tesla sold 1.8 million vehicles. The gains put Tesla on track to sell more than two million cars in 2024, potentially overtaking established carmakers like Mercedes-Benz and Renault.The rebound in…

Crucial Events on the Path Back to the MoonNASA wants to put American astronauts on the moon’s surface in the years ahead with the Artemis III mission. Before that can happen, though, many things have to go right, and two of the most important are scheduled for 2024.The first is the Artemis II mission. NASA introduced the four astronauts of Artemis II last year. As soon as November, the four could travel around the moon and back. They would be the first humans to travel near the moon since 1972, when the Apollo 17 mission concluded. To fly in 2024,…