Elections

Cricket faces notable obstacles before it can obtain widespread popularity in America, but its most passionate supporters feel positive about its future.When Harmeet Singh left India in 2020, he was looking for a fresh start. His career as a cricket player had stagnated, and his dream of making the Indian national team — and playing in the World Cup, the sport’s biggest stage — was fading.His destination was the United States, where cricket had long struggled to gain any kind of mainstream visibility, and professional opportunities were typically sparse. Arriving during the pandemic on a special visa given to individuals with extraordinary abilities, Mr. Singh made around $60,000 a year by playing for the U.S. men’s national cricket team and in small leagues, and coaching on the side as part of his contract.This month, his decision is paying off in a big way. Mr. Singh and the U.S. team defeated Pakistan during a Men’s T20 Cricket World Cup match on June 6, shocking the sport. On Friday, the team advanced to the second stage of the tournament, the first to be held in part in America, which is sharing hosting duties with several Caribbean nations. The United States next plays on Wednesday against South Africa in Antigua, the first of three matches in the second stage.The team’s success has been the latest event to help boost cricket’s profile in the United States, where the sport has seen a surge in investment in recent years. Cricket still faces notable obstacles in trying to attain more widespread popularity, some of which have been highlighted by the tournament. But the most passionate backers are bullish on the sport’s trajectory.“I could never have seen cricket growing as much as it has,” Mr. Singh said in an interview.The United States shocked the cricket world when it defeated Pakistan this month.Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe majority of players on the American team were born outside the country, making the squad by fulfilling a residency requirement. The team had never appeared at any World Cup and qualified this year only because it was a co-host for the T20 event. Its star player, Saurabh Netravalkar, works as a software engineer at Oracle.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

President Vladimir V. Putin’s military needs have prompted the Kremlin to strengthen ties with the authoritarian government of Kim Jong-un, which is well stocked in munitions.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia will head to North Korea for the first time in 24 years on Tuesday after vowing to bring ties with Pyongyang to new heights and jointly combat what he called the “global neocolonial dictatorship” of the United States.The war against Ukraine has driven Mr. Putin closer to the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, who has won new status with the Kremlin by opening his vast munitions stores to Moscow.Nine months ago, after Mr. Kim arrived by armored train in the Russian Far East, the two men met at a Russian cosmodrome and toasted their “sacred struggle” against the West. The North Korean leader, in between visiting sensitive Russian rocket and fighter jet facilities, invited Mr. Putin to make a reciprocal visit.Now, the Russian president has taken him up on the offer. And the deepening relationship between the two authoritarian leaders poses a particular challenge for Washington. The United States once relied on Moscow’s cooperation in its attempts to curb North Korea’s nuclear and missile program. Now, it faces a Kremlin intent on playing spoiler to American geopolitical interests around the world.Russian state media released footage showing large Russian flags and portraits of a smiling Mr. Putin lining the streets of Pyongyang as North Korea prepared to welcome the Russian leader.What does Russia want?Ahead of the trip, Mr. Putin issued an order authorizing the conclusion of a new “comprehensive strategic partnership” agreement with North Korea.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

Police in the Hamptons community gave few details about the arrest of the singer, who was once among the most prominent stars in American popular music.The singer and actor Justin Timberlake was arrested in Sag Harbor, N.Y., for charges related to driving while intoxicated, the police said.Mr. Timberlake was expected to be arraigned on Tuesday morning.Officials declined to provide further details about the arrest, why Mr. Timberlake was stopped or what kind of car he was driving.Mr. Timberlake was once among the most prominent male stars in American music, but his most recent solo album, “Everything I Thought It Was,” was met with criticism and weaker than usual sales when it was released in March, becoming his first solo release to miss No. 1 since “Justified” in 2002.This is a developing story and will be updated. More

Being you can be a painful and scary thing. And that’s OK.This essay is part of a series called The Big Ideas, in which writers respond to a single question: What do we fear? You can read more by visiting The Big Ideas series page.I knew I was not in my own bed. I was afraid to open my eyes. There was no blanket on me, and I was in my clothes, but with no shoes. I could hear yelling and echoes. The hangover was still coiled somewhere deep in the spot where the neck meets the skull.I could tell I wasn’t in a hospital. Men shouted and someone was crying. I was keeping my eyes shut, and I tried to find the last memory of the night before. Drinks with other faculty members at the Rockhill, and then … nothing.I’d been dreaming of a car crash before I woke. Then I realized my chest, my chin and my arm were sore, and it hit me: I’d been in a wreck, in real life. I sat upright and looked around.It was a jail, all right. I got out of bed and, in a state of physical, trembling panic, went to find someone who could tell me what I’d done. On the far side of the common area, at a desk elevated above the floor, like the judge in Kafka’s “The Trial,” a guard sat behind a plexiglass screen.I stood there. The guard ignored me. The desk was at about the same level as my face. I looked up at him.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 move, prompted by fears for agency workers’ safety, could eventually affect U.S. avocado supplies if the inspections are not resumed.Security concerns for agency workers have led the United States Agriculture Department to suspend its inspections of avocados and mangos imported from Mexico “until further notice,” the U.S.D.A. said on Monday.Produce already cleared for export will not be affected by the decision, but avocado supplies in the United States, which mostly come from the Mexican state of Michoacán, could eventually be affected if the inspections are not resumed. The inspections “will remain paused until the security situation is reviewed and protocols and safeguards are in place,” a U.S.D.A. spokesman said in an email. The agency did not say what had prompted the security concerns. But Mexican news outlets recently reported that two U.S.D.A. inspectors had been illegally detained at a checkpoint run by community members. In Michoacán, which stretches from the mountains west of Mexico City to the Pacific Ocean, some Indigenous communities have set up security patrols to defend themselves against criminal groups.The United States Embassy in Mexico confirmed on Monday that the inspectors were no longer in detention.“The interruption of avocado exports from Michoacán was due to an incident unrelated to the avocado industry,” Julio Sahagún Calderón, the president of Mexico’s association of avocado producers and packers, known as APEAM, said in a statement. He added that the group was working “intensively” with Mexican and U.S. authorities to resume the inspection of avocados from Michoacán.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

Undocumented spouses of American citizens will be shielded from deportation, provided work permits and given a pathway to citizenship, according to officials briefed on the plan.President Biden on Tuesday will announce sweeping new protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have been living in the United States illegally for years but are married to American citizens, officials familiar with the plan said.Mr. Biden will detail the policy at the White House on Tuesday while marking the 12-year anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which protects people who came to the United States as children from deportation, the officials said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a policy that had not been formally announced.Under the policy, undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens will be shielded from deportation, provided work permits and given a pathway to citizenship. Officials briefed on the conversations said it could affect up to 500,000 undocumented spouses, although the exact scale of the program remained unclear.The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Marrying an American citizen generally provides a pathway to U.S. citizenship. But people who crossed the southern border illegally — rather than arriving in the country with a visa — must return to their home countries to complete the process for a green card.That means long separations from their spouses and families. The new program would allow families to remain in the country while they pursue legal status.Officials briefed on the discussions said the announcement could amount to the most sweeping unilateral move by a president to provide relief to unauthorized immigrants since President Barack Obama implemented DACA. In a separate move on Tuesday, Mr. Biden is also expected to announce new ways to help people in DACA, known as Dreamers, gain access to work visas.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

Senior Democrats who had taken the unusual step of holding out relented to pressure from the Biden administration and allowed a multibillion-dollar sale of weapons to move ahead.A Biden administration plan to sell $18 billion worth of F-15 fighter jets to Israel is moving forward after two top Democratic holdouts in Congress signed off on the deal, according to multiple people familiar with the sale.Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, who had publicly opposed the transfer by citing Israel’s tactics during its campaign in Gaza, has lifted his hold on the deal, one of the largest U.S. arms sales to Israel in years. Mr. Meeks said that the sale would take years to deliver and that he supported the Biden administration’s plans to hold up the sale of other munitions.“I have been in close touch with the White House and National Security Council about this and other arms cases for Israel, and have repeatedly urged the administration to continue pushing Israel to make significant and concrete improvements on all fronts when it comes to humanitarian efforts and limiting civilian casualties,” Mr. Meeks said in a statement.Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland and the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who had delayed signing off but never publicly said he was blocking the deal, also agreed to allow it to go forward, joining top Republicans who had agreed to the plan months ago.Closing out the informal consultation process with Congress allows the State Department to move forward on officially notifying Congress of the sale, the final step before sealing the deal and one that has almost always been a foregone conclusion when it comes to Israel. That changed in recent months amid mounting concern in the United States about Israel’s conduct of the war against Hamas, and as Democrats in Congress have increasingly hinted that they might use their leverage over weapons transfers to demand that Israel change its tactics.The decision to relent to pressure from the Biden administration was a stark reversal for Mr. Meeks, who had been outspoken about his opposition to the deal, signaling his frustration with Israel’s actions in the war, which have led to tens of thousands of Palestinian casualties and helped to create a hunger crisis in 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

Aaron M. Rosenberg compares and contrasts.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — Every writer should be allowed one pedantic grievance. Mine is the use of “kind of” as a (kind of) disclaimer before making a comparison. I’ve been guilty of this in my own writing, too, but it’s something I try to avoid, because it suggests a lack of confidence in one’s own capacity for analogy or metaphor — the “No worries if not!” of journalism.For instance, in a music review I read recently, the author wrote of sounds that seemed to “linger in a kind of harmonic limbo.” Don’t stop there, I thought to myself. Call it a harmonic limbo!I had to quash these convictions in order to solve Aaron M. Rosenberg’s crossword puzzle, in which several clues rely on the “kinda” hedge. In this case, the hesitation is not only warranted but necessary, because it’s the key to understanding Mr. Rosenberg’s theme. I admit that I kind of loved it. No, wait … I loved it.Today’s ThemeEach themed clue in today’s puzzle makes a timid comparison. We’re looking for something “Kinda comedic and saucy?” (16A) or a “Kinda religious institution?” (28A). These would be ambiguous categories even without the added qualifier, so don’t be afraid to use your crossings from the outset.Once we’ve got a few letters filled in, our “comedic and saucy” descriptor emerges: BURLESQUE-ESQUE. That religious institution turns out to be a SEMI-SEMINARY. Get the picture, sort of? Each entry uses a different affix that echoes either the first or the second half of the word and doubles as an expression of uncertainty. So, something “Kinda squishy and sting-y?” (39A) might be described as JELLYFISH-ISH, and a “Kinda hunchbacked figure?” (50A) could be called QUASI-QUASIMODO.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