THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (June 23, 2023) – In this issue, Christopher Cox on the risk that California’s dams will fail; Charlie Savage on his connection to Pink Floyd and “The Wizard of Oz”; Dan Kois on Lorrie Moore; and more.
At the White House, the president emphasized common ground with India’s prime minister and announced joint initiatives without making progress in enlisting help against Russian aggression.
The vast multinational search for the missing submersible ended after pieces of it were found on the ocean floor, 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic.
Yeonmi Park’s account of the horrors of North Korea made her a human rights celebrity. Her new claims that America is on the same path have made her a right-wing media star.
Black and Hispanic college graduates, whose lives were directly shaped by race-conscious college admissions, have complicated thoughts about the expected Supreme Court decision.
The Indian leader, who visits Washington this week, has softened his image at home with an old-fashioned radio show, which feeds a vast social media apparatus.
The judge, Aileen M. Cannon, set an aggressive schedule for moving the case forward, though the proceedings are likely to be delayed by pretrial clashes.
Under an agreement with the Justice Department, the president’s son agreed to probation for filing his taxes late, and he can avoid a charge that he lied about his drug use when he bought a gun.
The case had been closely watched as an important test of whether bans on transition care for minors, enacted by more than a dozen states, could withstand challenges.
A nearly two-mile walk circumnavigating Zadar’s Old Town is a journey across a timeline that spans nearly every stage of Croatian history. And it’s a long history, dating back to the 9th century B.C., when the Liburnians first settled this peninsular spit of land on Croatia’s spectacular Dalmatian coast.
Start your stroll on the northwest corner of the peninsula at the Morske Orgulje, or Sea Organ: a set of 35 pipes spread under a 230-foot section of the city’s seaside promenade, known as the Riva. Awarded the 2006 European Prize for Urban Public Space, the Morske Orgulje plays beautifully discordant melodies as the Adriatic laps the stone and pushes air through the pipes beneath — converting the walkway into an invisible, ethereal orchestra.
The wail of snake charmers’ horns will lead you to your departure point: Jemaa El Fna. This carnivalesque, open-air market in the medina — the ancient neighborhood where Marrakesh was born — brims with juice stands, restaurants and souvenir shops, to say nothing of musicians and performers.
Before you embark on this meandering 2.2-mile walk, you should have water and sunscreen (summer temperatures can pass 100 degrees Fahrenheit in this Moroccan city); outfits that cover most of your skin (doubly useful in Islamic societies, which discourage revealing clothes); and a willingness to lose your bearings. Nearly twice the size of Central Park, the medina enfolds a vast spider web of passageways that seem designed to disorient outsiders.
To walk along the Seoul City Wall is to walk in the footsteps of scholars of bygone centuries, trace scars of war and take in the modern behemoth of a city built around it all. Its history stretches back to 1396, to when present-day Seoul first became the capital of what was then a kingdom called Joseon.
Then, the wall encircled an area that’s but a small fraction of today’s sprawling city, incorporating the slopes of the four mountains that afforded natural fortification. Like Seoul itself, the wall has been destroyed and rebuilt several times — and after restorations in recent decades, it’s become a popular urban walk.
A legal campaign against universities and think tanks seeks to undermine the fight against false claims about elections, vaccines and other hot political topics.
Details of the former president’s agreement to work with a Saudi firm to develop a hotel and golf complex overlooking the Gulf of Oman highlight the ways his business and political roles intersect.
U.S. diplomats visited Beijing to try to ensure that competition “does not veer into conflict.” The talks pave the way for a possible Biden-Xi meeting.
The president and his aides are pressing an aggressive diplomatic effort as Riyadh makes significant demands in exchange for normalization, including a nuclear deal and a robust U.S. security pact.
After Justice Clarence Thomas cast doubt on the Supreme Court decision that established a right to contraception, reproductive rights advocates are pressing for new protections at the state level.
Families in Indonesia thought they were sending their sons to a rehab facility run by a powerful local official. Those who stayed there say it was a brutal human slavery operation.
Moscow’s forces remain uneven. But while bracing for a counteroffensive, they have improved discipline, coordination and air support, foreshadowing a changing war.
The first foreign firefighters to reach Quebec amid Canada’s worst wildfire season on record said that some of the blazes were 100 times bigger than any they had ever seen.
The city said it would try to negotiate a court-enforced consent decree with the federal government that would require an overhaul of its police force.
Greek authorities blamed smugglers for a disaster that may have been one of the worst of its kind. Critics say tougher policies are increasing the risks.
Mr. Christie left the governor’s office in New Jersey and set out to, as he put it, “make money.” He successfully traded on his political profile — and on his ties to the man he now wants to defeat.
Stephen King reviews S.A. Cosby’s latest novel, “All the Sinners Bleed.”
Titus Crown is an ex-F.B.I. agent who gets a sheriff’s job, almost by accident, in a rural Virginia community. He’s Black. Mr. Spearman teaches geography and wears a coat of many countries on Earth Day. He’s white. Given the name of the town and county where these two live — Charon — one can expect bad things to happen, and they certainly do. As in S.A. Cosby’s previous two novels, “Blacktop Wasteland” and “Razorblade Tears,” the body count is high and the action pretty much nonstop.
In Melissa Sevigny’s “Brave the Wild River,” we meet the two scientists who explored unknown terrain — and broke barriers.
Let’s start this story on a sun-blistered evening in August 1938. A small band of adventurers had just concluded a 43-day journey from Utah to Nevada — although perhaps “journey” is too tame a description for a trip that had required weeks of small wooden boats tumbling down more than 600 miles of rock-strewn rivers. The goal was twofold. First, to simply survive. And then, to chart the plants building homes along the serrated walls of the Grand Canyon.
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