Elections

The analysis found that former students at most colleges had an annual income higher than high school graduates a decade after enrollment.Most people go to college to improve their financial prospects, though there are other benefits to attending a postsecondary institution. But as the average cost of a four-year degree has risen to six figures, even at public universities, it can be hard to know if the money is well spent.A new analysis by HEA Group, a research and consulting firm focused on college access and success, may help answer the question for students and their families. The study compares the median earnings of former college students, 10 years after they enrolled, with basic income benchmarks.The analysis found that a majority of colleges exceed minimum economic measures for their graduates, like having a typical annual income that is more than that of a high school graduate with no higher education ($32,000, per federal Scorecard data).Still, more than 1,000 schools fell short of that threshold, though many of them were for-profit colleges concentrating in short-term credentials rather than traditional four-year degrees.Seeing whether a college’s former students are earning “reasonable” incomes, said Michael Itzkowitz, HEA Group’s founder and president, can help people weigh whether they want to cross some institutions off their list. Someone deciding between similar colleges, for example, can see the institution that has produced students with significantly higher incomes.While income isn’t necessarily the only criteria to consider when comparing schools, Mr. Itzkowitz said, “it’s a very good starting point.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

A conversation with Robin Pogrebin, a Los Angeles-based arts writer for The New York Times.The Frieze Art Fair at Paramount Studios in 2019.Graham Walzer for The New York TimesThough New York is often thought of as the center of the art world, there’s plenty going on in California.The New York Times has been covering California’s ambitious museums, top-notch art schools and adventurous galleries for years. Some of my favorite recent articles discussed how the Los Angeles art scene is eclipsing the Bay Area’s, how old San Francisco theaters are rethinking the size of their seats and how San Diego is finally getting its answer to the Hollywood Bowl.Robin Pogrebin, a longtime arts writer for The Times, moved to Los Angeles from New York last fall to bolster the coverage, reporting on art, architecture, music, theater and cultural institutions in California.Just this week, she published an article on the Resnicks, an L.A. couple who have made big donations to cultural organizations but have come under scrutiny for their water use, and another on the increasing recognition of Asian artists at the Frieze Art Fair, which opens today in Santa Monica.I spoke to Robin about her impressions of the West Coast art scene. Here is our conversation, lightly edited:In such a big state, how do you think about what to focus on?I had always considered the West Coast an important part of our cultural coverage, given that many important museums and galleries are here and that Los Angeles has a long tradition of producing artists. Hollywood also has the potential to feed the theater and dance worlds, and classical music as well as opera have their own vibrant followings here.Now that I’m based here, I’m exploring, discovering, learning and responding to what strikes me as newsworthy or interesting. I am out for lunches and dinners every day with people who can help me understand the cultural ecosystem here, attending events almost every night in many different arts disciplines. I’m keeping track of potential trends worth noting and individual stories worth telling.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The tech mogul wants to force the A.I. start-up to reveal its research to the public and prevent it from pursuing profits.Elon Musk, the tech billionaire, has escalated his feud with OpenAI and its C.E.O., Sam Altman.Jonathan Ernst/ReutersMusk takes aim at OpenAI The gloves have really come off in one of the most personal fights in the tech world: Elon Musk has sued OpenAI and its C.E.O., Sam Altman, accusing them of reneging on the start-up’s original purpose of being a nonprofit laboratory for the technology.Yes, Musk has disagreed with Altman for years about the purpose of the organization they co-founded and he is creating a rival artificial intelligence company. But the lawsuit also appears rooted in philosophical differences that go to the heart of who controls a hugely transformative technology — and is backed by one of the wealthiest men on the planet.The backstory: Musk, Altman and others agreed to create OpenAI in 2015 to provide an open-sourced alternative to the likes of Google, which had bought the leading A.I. start-up DeepMind the year before. Musk notes in his suit that OpenAI’s certificate of incorporation states that its work “will benefit the public,” and that it isn’t “organized for the private gain of any person.”Musk poured more than $44 million into OpenAI between 2016 and 2020, and helped hire top talent like the researcher Ilya Sutskever.Altman has moved OpenAI toward commerce, starting with the creation in 2019 of a for-profit subsidiary that would raise money from investors, notably Microsoft. The final straw for Musk came last year, when OpenAI released its GPT-4 A.I. model — but kept its workings hidden from all except itself and Microsoft.“OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft,” Musk’s lawyers write in the complaint.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Mr. Galloway is likely to be a thorn in the main opposition party’s side. Labour was forced to disown its candidate in the special election over antisemitic remarks.A parliamentary district held recently by Britain’s main opposition Labour Party has slipped from its grip after a chaotic election campaign that became emblematic of the anger that has swept through British politics over the war in Gaza.George Galloway, a left-wing firebrand, won the seat in Rochdale, north of Manchester, with 12,335 votes, according to official results announced early Friday. Voting had taken place on Thursday to replace Tony Lloyd, a Labour Party lawmaker who had represented the district but died of blood cancer in January.Mr. Galloway, founder of the far-left Workers Party of Britain, once represented Labour in Parliament but was forced out of the party in 2003 over his outspoken criticism of the Iraq war.In his campaign in Rochdale, Mr. Galloway appealed directly to the district’s Muslim voters, who make up around 30 percent of the electorate. Many of them are angry about the war in Gaza and want Britain to press harder for an immediate cease-fire.In his campaign literature, Mr. Galloway described Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, as a “top supporter of Israel” and suggested his leadership could be weakened by the outcome of the vote. “Imagine — the people of Rochdale coming together to topple the hated Labour leader,” the leaflet added.That prospect may be fanciful, as recent polling suggests Mr. Starmer is more popular with voters than any other leading politician in Britain. But Mr. Galloway’s victory followed a chaotic campaign for Labour. The party was forced to disown its own candidate, Azhar Ali, after a recording revealed that he had claimed that Israel had “allowed” Hamas to go ahead with the Oct. 7 attacks as a pretext to invade Gaza.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Julian Xiao opens our solving weekend with a challenging Friday puzzle.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — Before we discuss Julian Xiao’s excellent puzzle, I would like to ask you all a question.How is it March already?As I get older, time seems to pass more quickly, and I feel rushed to pack in all of the things I want to do with my life. We all move at higher speeds now, too. With the pages of the calendar flying off at an ever-increasing speed, I decided that it was time to reflect upon my original stance on the nature of speed solving, which, by definition, is also rushed. It has its place at tournaments, of course, but I have always felt that a crossword puzzle is like a glass of fine wine: It should be savored, not chugged.When you rush through a crossword — whether there’s a prize in it for you or not — you miss out on some of its best qualities, such as entries you’ve never seen before, clues that are so clever that you wish you had thought of them and the high-wire act that constructors and puzzle editors pull off to make a creative theme idea work.I’m happy to say that my opinion has not changed. To continue the wine metaphor, crosswords should be enjoyed. Puzzle lovers should take their time moving through the clues to appreciate the wordplay and the mental tug of war between the constructor and the solver. They should, in a sense, swish the puzzle around in their mouths and allow its essence to roll over their tongues before spitting it discreetly into the bucket at their sides.You get the idea. Sitting down to fully enjoy a crossword is a time commitment, but it is time well spent.Julian Xiao made his New York Times Crossword debut in January in a collaboration with Ben Tolkin. This is the first one he constructed on his own, and it’s a good one. I found it fairly challenging until I hit the halfway mark, and then I had a breakthrough and was able to fill in a lot of the puzzle.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The journalist, Catherine Herridge, had reported on an F.B.I. investigation of a scientist’s Chinese ties. She was held in contempt of court.A federal judge held a veteran investigative reporter in contempt of court on Thursday for not revealing her sources for articles she wrote about a scientist who was investigated by the F.B.I.The journalist, Catherine Herridge, formerly of CBS News and Fox News, was ordered to pay $800 a day until she divulged the information. The judge, Christopher Cooper of U.S. District Court in Washington, stayed the fine for 30 days to give Ms. Herridge time to appeal.The case, which has alarmed First Amendment advocates, relates to a series of articles that were written by Ms. Herridge and her colleagues in 2017, while she worked at Fox News. The articles revealed that the F.B.I. had investigated the scientist, Dr. Yanping Chen, a Chinese American who is the president of the University of Management and Technology in Arlington, Va., over suspicions of Chinese military ties and whether she had lied on U.S. immigration forms.The F.B.I. ended its investigation without bringing charges against Dr. Chen, a year before Ms. Herridge and her colleagues published and aired their reporting.In 2018, Dr. Chen sued the F.B.I. and other government agencies, accusing them of violating the Privacy Act by leaking information to Ms. Herridge. The Privacy Act has protections for personal information collected by federal agencies.Judge Cooper ruled last year that Ms. Herridge must reveal her confidential sources. On Thursday, he held her in civil contempt for disobeying that order. He said he had not issued the order lightly, deciding that Dr. Chen’s need for the information overcame Ms. Herridge’s First Amendment protections.“Herridge and many of her colleagues in the journalism community may disagree with that decision and prefer that a different balance be struck, but she is not permitted to flout a federal court’s order with impunity,” Judge Cooper wrote in Thursday’s ruling.A lawyer for Ms. Herridge did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Ms. Herridge, who left Fox in 2019 to join CBS News as a senior investigative correspondent, was among nearly two dozen CBS News journalists who were laid off by the network this month.“Holding a journalist in contempt for protecting a confidential source has a deeply chilling effect on journalism,” a Fox News spokeswoman said in a statement. “Fox News Media remains committed to protecting the rights of a free press and freedom of speech and believes this decision should be appealed.”Gabe Rottman, a senior lawyer at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said in a statement on Thursday that while he disagreed with the ruling against Ms. Herridge, “it’s a relief that Judge Cooper is enabling her to pursue an appeal without the financial pressure of daily fines.”“The court’s opinion makes clear that the answer here has to be Congress passing a federal shield law,” Mr. Rottman said. More

Their approaches to immigration represent a test of voters’ appetite for the messiness of democracy, pitting the president’s belief in legislating against his rival’s pledge to be a “Day 1” dictator.Even the participants in President Biden and Donald J. Trump’s overlapping visits to Texas on Thursday seemed to sense there was something remarkable about their near encounter along the southern border.Rarely do the current and former commanders in chief arrive on the same scene on the same day to present such sharply different approaches to an issue as intractable as immigration. Even rarer still was the reality that the two men are most likely hurtling toward a rematch in November.“Today is a day of extraordinary contrast,” declared Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, who had appeared alongside Mr. Trump.But the dueling border events were about something even more fundamental than immigration policy. They spoke to the competing visions of power and presidency that are at stake in 2024 — of autocracy and the value of democracy itself.Perhaps the most surprising facet of the split screen was that Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden agreed on some of the basic contours of the border problem: that the current situation, with migrant crossings setting a new monthly record of nearly 250,000 in December, is unsustainable.“It’s long past time to act,” Mr. Biden said.“I didn’t get everything I wanted in that compromise bipartisan bill, but neither did anybody else,” President Biden said on Thursday as he visited the border, in Brownsville, Texas. “Compromise is part of the process. That’s how democracy works.”Kenny Holston/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Officials said the deadly fire broke out just before 10 p.m. on Thursday night. Crews took about two hours to extinguish the multistory fire, which left dozens injured and many in critical condition.At least 43 people were killed and dozens were injured when a fire ripped through a shopping mall late Thursday night in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, officials said.“So far, we know that 43 have died,” Dr. Samanta Lal Sen, the health minister, told reporters outside a hospital where some of the injured were being treated. “The condition of those who are wounded is not good,” he added.At least 75 people were injured, fire officials said. Some were being treated at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital, Mr. Sen said.The fire erupted at about 9:51 p.m. on the mall’s second floor, which features a popular biryani restaurant. It quickly spread to the rest of the seven-story building, fire officials said, ripping through a clothing store on the third floor.It took crews at least two hours to put the fire out, officials said.Videos showed that most of the floors were charred by the flames. A firefighter atop a fire engine ladder could be seen trying to extinguish a small fire that was still burning near one of the upper floors.The shopping mall, on Bailey Road, houses a mix of eateries and stores. Almost every floor has a restaurant and most have gas cylinders, a fire official told a television news reporter. He added that the cylinders may have played a role in the fire spreading so quickly.The mall is a popular spot on Thursdays, the end of the workweek in Bangladesh.Alamgir Hossain, an assistant director at the fire department, told The New York Times that a restaurant called Kacci Bhai had been offering a special on Thursday night.Mass-casualty fires and industrial disasters, particularly in garment factories, have been a recurring problem in Bangladesh. The steady economic growth of the country of 170 million people has been a regional success story in recent years, but human rights and labor organizations have long expressed concern about poor working conditions and workplace safety measures.The worst of the disasters happened in 2013, when the collapse of an eight-story garment factory killed more than 1,100 people. In 2021, a factory fire in the city of Narayanganj killed at least 51 people. More