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      Israeli Strikes Threaten Lebanon’s Archaeological Treasures

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      The country is home to thousands of years’ worth of antiquities. Some have already been damaged or destroyed in the war, alarming the conservationists trying to protect them.For Mohammad Kanso, the ancient Roman temples of Baalbek felt like home.The 2,000-year-old ruins, the pride of Lebanon and considered some of the grandest of their kind in the world, were his childhood playground. When he grew up, he got the same job his father had, running the lights that illuminate the towering columns at night.But as Israeli airstrikes crept closer to the site, his family was forced to flee earlier this month. Days later, a missile landed yards away from the temple complex, obliterating a centuries-old Ottoman-era building.“My entire world went black,” said Mr. Kanso.Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah has triggered a humanitarian crisis. Almost a quarter of Lebanon’s population of about five million has been displaced and more than 3,700 people have been killed, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. But it has also gravely threatened the tiny Mediterranean nation’s antiquities, a shared source of pride in a country long divided by sectarian strife.The temple complex of Baalbek, which is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, is just one of the sites that are at risk. Archaeologists, conservationists and even the Lebanese military are now racing to protect thousands of years worth of Phoenician, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman treasures.Lebanese troops piling up sandbags around an ancient water well during a drill at an army base near Beirut. A specialist regiment has been transporting artifacts out of the country’s hard-hit south. Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York TimesLast week, UNESCO placed 34 cultural sites in Lebanon under what it calls “enhanced protection,” a measure that defines an attack on them as a serious violation of the 1954 Hague Convention and “potential grounds for prosecution.” But many antiquities are not on the list, and some have already been damaged or destroyed by Israeli strikes, according to Lebanese officials and the United Nations, including historic churches and cemeteries, centuries-old markets and castles from the Crusades.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

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      NYT Crossword Answers for Nov. 26, 2024

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      Killian Olson makes his Crossword debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — Many readers of this column know that I spent several years as a competitive punner. I would go onstage at various local or national tournaments and come up with wisecracks for spontaneously announced categories such as “finger foods” or “headwear” — beret-ve of me, I know.I now prefer to be in the peanut gallery, with a Statler and Waldorf-style vantage point of the action (and license to shout my opinions at it). I can say with confidence that the punchline of today’s crossword, constructed by Killian Olson, would have made him a strong contender for championships. Congratulations to Mr. Olson on his wonderfully witty debut; I look forward to enjoying more of his puns in puzzles to come.Today’s ThemeOnce you’ve solved 16-, 22-, 35- and 46-Across, the shaded squares in the grid should read FORD, TESLA, HONDA and GMC.The function of these car brands vis-à-vis their shaded backgrounds becomes apparent at 58-Across, where a word that means [Completed without manual, input as an online form] doubles as a description of the shaded squares — they’re AUTO-FILLED.As cute car puns go, that’s satisfying as anything. And if you didn’t like it, one might say you took the cynic route. Eh? I’ll show myself out.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

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      There Is No Excuse for the Bullying of Sarah McBride

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      It’s hard to imagine how terrifying it must be to be a trans person, or the parent of one, in America right now.Donald Trump and his party, having triumphed in an election in which they demonized trans people, seem hellbent on driving them out of public life. Democrats, some of whom blame the party for staking out positions on trans issues that they couldn’t publicly defend, are shellshocked and confused. Democratic leaders have been far too quiet as congressional Republicans, giddy and vengeful in victory, seek to humiliate their new colleague, Representative-elect Sarah McBride, a Democrat from Delaware, by barring her and other trans people from using the appropriate single-sex bathrooms in the Capitol.I say this as someone who has been called a TERF, a contemptuous acronym that stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist, more times than I can count. For a decade now, I’ve been trying to balance a belief in the rights of trans people with my skepticism of some trans activist positions. I’ve written with a degree of sympathy about feminists who’ve been ostracized for wanting to maintain women’s-only spaces. I believe that the science behind youth gender medicine is unsettled, and I dislike jargon like “sex assigned at birth” that tries to mystify or elide the reality of biological sex. (Except for rare exceptions, doctors don’t “assign” sex, they identify it.) I care very little about sports, but it seems dishonest to deny that male puberty tends to confer advantages on trans women athletes.Occasionally, I receive angry or plaintive messages from trans people accusing me of helping America down a slippery slope that has brought us to our lamentable present, when discrimination against trans people has been normalized to a degree that recently seemed unthinkable. During Trump’s first presidential campaign, he said his trans supporter Caitlyn Jenner was welcome to use whatever bathroom she wanted at Trump Tower. At the time, North Carolina’s bathroom bill, which resulted in economically painful boycotts of the state, was widely seen as a self-inflicted wound.Eight years later, anti-trans rhetoric was a central part of the Trump campaign; between Oct. 7 and Oct. 20, more than 41 percent of pro-Trump ads promoted anti-trans messages. Over a dozen states now have laws restricting trans people’s access to single-sex bathrooms. In the face of this onslaught against a tiny and vulnerable group of people, there’s pressure on liberals to keep any qualms we might have about elements of progressive gender ideology to ourselves.That’s one reason, despite my interest in sex and gender, I haven’t written about these debates as much as I otherwise might have. But I’m increasingly convinced that this widespread reticence hasn’t served anyone very well. The basic right of trans people to live in safety and dignity, free from discrimination, should be uncontested. But evolving ideas about sex and gender create new complexities and conflicts, and when progressives refuse to talk about them forthrightly, instead defaulting to clichés like “trans women are women,” people can feel lied to and become radicalized.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

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      At the Brooklyn Academy, Musical Journeys Through Minefields

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      The Silkroad Ensemble’s “American Railroad” and Alarm Will Sound’s “Sun Dogs” used music and images to engage with difficult topics.The completion of the transcontinental railroad was a herculean achievement. In 1850, the United States had 10,000 miles of track; by 1900, trains carried people, goods and ideas from coast to coast over 215,000 miles of track. Recently, historians have begun to tally the human cost of this construction project, especially among the people who performed the dangerous and backbreaking labor and the Native tribes whose lands and livelihoods were slashed through by the tracks.On Saturday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Silkroad Ensemble brought this history to life in “American Railroad,” an evening of multimedia storytelling that probed collective scars while letting musical lineages tangle in beguiling ways. Carried by the joyful collaboration of brilliant improvisers, the performance proved that this ensemble has lost none of its verve since Rhiannon Giddens, a musical polymath and scholar of Appalachian music, became artistic director in 2020. (The ensemble was founded in 1998 by Yo-Yo Ma to celebrate the cultures along the ancient Silk Road.)A haunting tune from Appalachia, “Swannanoa Tunnel,” anchored the program. A work song created by incarcerated Black laborers, it describes the deadly cave-in of a railroad tunnel. Giddens sang it with a voice splintering with emotion over a background of harsh percussive thuds.Individual numbers paid tribute to dispossessed Native Americans, Irish famine refugees and Chinese laborers cut off from their families by racist immigration laws. While each time the cultural context was deftly sketched through specific sounds — a Celtic harp, a pentatonic tune — the interplay of instruments native to other regions revealed new affinities. Historical photographs, projected above the stage, added visual poignancy.Rhiannon Giddens, the artistic director of the Silkroad Ensemble, singing “Swannanoa Tunnel.”Ellen QbertplayaAt times, though, the program had a didactic streak that felt at odds with the polycentric spirit of the music making. The inclusion of an Indian-inspired segment with fiery tabla solos by Sandeep Das was a musical highlight. But the accompanying text slide, drawing links between the transcontinental railroad and industrialization in British-ruled India, brought an unnecessary whiff of the classroom. Silkroad is involved in curriculum design in middle schools in underserved communities across the country, and at moments like these, the desire (stated in its publications) to “reset the narrative” in historiography feels heavy-handed.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

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      End of Trump Cases Leaves Limits on Presidential Criminality Unclear

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      Donald J. Trump is set to regain office without clarity on the scope of presidential immunity and with a lingering cloud over whether outside special counsels can investigate high-level wrongdoing.The end of the two federal criminal cases against President-elect Donald J. Trump on Monday left momentous, unsettled questions about constraints on criminal wrongdoing by presidents, from the scope of presidential immunity to whether the Justice Department may continue to appoint outside special counsels to investigate high-level wrongdoing.Both cases against Mr. Trump — for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and his later hoarding of classified government documents and obstruction of efforts to retrieve them — were short-circuited by the fact that he won the 2024 election before they could be definitively resolved.Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought both cases against Mr. Trump, asked courts on Monday to shut them down. The prosecutor cited the Justice Department’s longstanding view that the Constitution implicitly grants temporary immunity to sitting presidents, lest any prosecution distract them from their official duties.The result is not just that Mr. Trump appears set to escape any criminal accountability for his actions. (Mr. Smith left the door open to, in theory, refiling the charges after Mr. Trump leaves office, but the statute of limitations is likely to have run by then.) It also means that two open constitutional questions the cases have raised appear likely to go without definitive answers as Mr. Trump takes office.One is the extent of the protection from prosecution offered to former presidents by the Supreme Court’s ruling this summer establishing that they have a type of broad but not fully defined immunity for official acts taken while in office.The other is whether, when a president is suspected of committing crimes, the Justice Department can avoid conflicts of interest by bringing in an outside prosecutor to lead a semi-independent investigation into the matter.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

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      Crony Capitalism Is Coming to America

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      It’s late 2025, and Donald Trump has done what he said he would do: impose high tariffs — taxes on imports — on goods coming from abroad, with extremely high tariffs on imports from China. These tariffs have had exactly the effect many economists predicted, although Trump insisted otherwise: higher prices for American buyers.Let’s say you have a business that relies on imported parts — maybe from China, maybe from Mexico, maybe from somewhere else. What do you do?Well, U.S. trade law gives the executive branch broad discretion in tariff-setting, including the ability to grant exemptions in special cases. So you apply for one of those exemptions. Will your request be granted?In principle, the answer should depend on whether having to pay those tariffs imposes real hardship and threatens American jobs. In practice, you can safely guess that other criteria will play a role. How much money have you contributed to Republicans? When you hold business retreats, are they at Trump golf courses and resorts?I’m not engaging in idle speculation here. Trump imposed significant tariffs during his first term, and many businesses applied for exemptions. Who got them? A recently published statistical analysis found that companies with Republican ties, as measured by their 2016 campaign contributions, were significantly more likely (and those with Democratic ties less likely) to have their applications approved.But that was only a small-scale rehearsal for what could be coming. While we don’t have specifics yet, the tariff proposals Trump floated during the campaign were far wider in scope and, in the case of China, far higher than anything we saw the first time around; the potential for political favoritism will be an order of magnitude greater.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

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      Kohl’s Picks C.E.O. of Michaels to Help It Turn Around

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      Ashley Buchanan will be the third chief executive of the department store chain since 2018.Kohl’s has hired Ashley Buchanan, chief executive of the crafts retailer Michaels, to be its next chief executive, the department store chain said on Monday. Mr. Buchanan, who has run Michaels since 2020, will start on Jan. 15.Mr. Buchanan will be the third chief executive at Kohl’s since 2018. Tom Kingsbury has served as interim chief executive since Michelle Gass left in December 2022 to run Levi Strauss & Company. Mr. Kingsbury will retain his seat on the board of directors until he retires in May.Mr. Buchanan, 50, is a familiar name in the retail industry. He joined Michaels at the start of 2020, not long before the Covid pandemic forced millions of Americans to stay at home and led them to pick up a hobby. He helped Michaels increase its digital presence with its online marketplace, improved its merchandising and focused on smaller format stores.Previously, Mr. Buchanan spent 13 years at Walmart, holding several senior roles, including chief merchandising officer and chief operating officer for Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce. He was on Macy’s board of directors from October 2021 until Monday, when he resigned as part of his new role at Kohl’s.“I am thrilled to join Kohl’s, a storied and respected brand in the retail industry,” Mr. Buchanan said in a statement. “We have the privilege of serving millions of families all across the country, and I’m excited to work with the teams to evolve our business — building off the strength of our brand and loyal customer base while also creating a compelling retail experience for the future.”Kohl’s is facing a decline in comparable sales and challenges with profitability as customers pull back on discretionary spending. Its tie-up with the beauty retailer Sephora has helped buoy sales by bringing in younger customers. Still, the retailer has said it expects sales for this year to be down 4 to 6 percent.The retailer is set to announce its third-quarter earnings on Tuesday morning. More

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      Steel Maker ThyssenKrupp to Slash 11,000 Jobs in Germany

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      The venerable steel producer, which has been struggling against high energy prices at home and growing competition from abroad, is the latest company in Europe to cut its work force.ThyssenKrupp, the largest steel maker in Germany, said Monday that it would eliminate up to 11,000 jobs by 2030, a decision that comes as the country struggled to overcome economic weakness that has hindered growth for nearly two years.The overhaul is aimed at returning ThyssenKrupp to profitability in the face of pressure from Asian competitors and high energy prices. Compounding the challenges, President-elect Donald J. Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on all goods imported to the United States. ThyssenKrupp was among those hurt by the tariffs Mr. Trump imposed on steel and aluminum during his first term in office.ThyssenKrupp said that it would reduce the amount of steel it produced each year down to no more than 10 U.S. tons, from the current level, 12.6 U.S. tons, which would allow it to eliminate 5,000 jobs. Another 6,000 jobs will be cut through the sale of business activities or turning to external providers, the company said without elaborating.“Urgent measures are required to improve ThyssenKrupp Steel’s own productivity and operating efficiency and to achieve a competitive cost level,” the company said in a statement.On Tuesday, ThyssenKrupp reduced the value of its steel division by 1 billion euros, or $1.04 billion, after posting a yearly net loss of €1.4 billion, or $1.2 billion. The company has been struggling for years to decarbonize its steel production, as the price of powering its existing coking plants has soared.Germany, Europe’s largest economy, has not had significant growth in the past two years. On Friday, the economy recorded 0.1 percent growth from July to September, but it was forecast to contract over the entire year. Economists do not expect to see a return to growth in 2025, unless the government can make significant changes quickly.Dozens of companies have announced plans over the past few months to reduce their work forces in Germany. On Friday, the auto supplier Bosch said it would cut 5,500 jobs beginning in 2027. Ford Motor said Wednesday it would eliminate 4,000 jobs in Europe, primarily in Germany.Workers at Volkswagen, Germany’s biggest automaker, are planning to begin staging warning strikes in the coming days, as they fight management plans to reduce their numbers and close up to three of the company’s 10 factories in Germany. In October, Volkswagen reported a 42 percent drop in quarterly profit and warned of an “urgent need” to cut costs amid growing competition from Chinese automakers. More