Elections

Can you identify a book title just by looking at a photo from its film adaptation? (Or maybe if you had just a little hint?) That’s the challenge in this week’s installment of Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about books and stories that have gone on to find new life in the form of movies, television shows, theatrical productions and other formats.Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their screen adaptations. More

Choosing to forgive can be frightening, but it’s a powerful tool for repairing the harm done by violence, oppression and other traumas.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.In the years I served on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I came to a surprising conclusion. It crystallized when I invited the daughter of an anti-apartheid activist to the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, where I held an endowed chair position, to speak about her encounter with the man who killed her mother. Marcia Khoza was 5 years old when her mother was murdered in a raid led by Eugene de Kock, the former head of the apartheid government’s covert hit squad operations. On the 23rd anniversary of her mother’s death, Khoza went to see de Kock in prison, carrying a book on forgiveness that she bought for him. Inside the book she wrote: “Let the power of peace and forgiveness guide you.”At the University of the Free State event, Khoza described growing up with a deepening void of emptiness. “I carried so much anger,” she said, and she let the anger intensify to protect herself “from falling into the abyss.” She wanted to meet de Kock to fill the gaps of unanswered questions about her mother’s killing, and as part of her search for inner peace, she was ready to forgive him.When I joined the commission, it seemed counterintuitive that meeting someone who has murdered a loved one could be restorative for either person. But forgiveness, I came to realize, is perhaps the most powerful means of restoring a sense of coherence and continuity in the lives of survivors of historical wrongs. It can also be an incredibly frightening concept to embrace.Noma Dumezweni, left, and Matthew Marsh perform in “A Human Being Died That Night” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. The play is based on the book of the same name, written by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, that examines atrocities committed by the South African police forces during apartheid.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesForgiveness emerges from both within and outside the place of hurt, and it requires a degree of intentional openness, of reaching out beyond oneself toward the other. Therein lies both its transformative potential and its moral ambiguity — and this is what is most frightening about forgiveness. The inward psychological journey necessary before we can forgive enables us to see the humanity of those responsible for our wounding, and, having forgiven them, admit them into our world of common humanity.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 LatestA New York City panel is expected to approve rent increases for almost one million stabilized apartments on Monday evening. The carefully watched annual vote will highlight the city’s affordability crisis, a core struggle in New York and other cities across the nation.The nine-person panel, the Rent Guidelines Board, already voted in April to support an increase that could fall between 2 and 4.5 percent for one-year leases. It also voted to support two-year lease increases of between 4 and 6.5 percent. Those numbers are similar to what the board approved the past two years.The vote on Monday will set the final numbers, and landlords could start raising rents in October if the panel votes in favor of increases.About two million people live in rent-stabilized homes in New York City.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesDeep Divisions: The votes over rent increases have drawn protests.Rent-stabilized apartments house roughly a quarter of the city’s population. In a city where rents on the open market have skyrocketed and available apartments are scarce, stabilized units are treasured finds. The median monthly rent was about $1,500 for a stabilized unit in 2023, compared with $2,000 for an unregulated apartment, according to a recent city survey. But tenants and their advocates have called on the city to freeze or reduce rents for stabilized units in recent years, as many New Yorkers struggle with the high cost of living. Landlords, for their part, have asked for increases to help cover the high costs of property taxes, insurance, mortgages and maintenance.The Rent Guidelines Board examines the factors affecting both constituencies when deciding whether to allow rent increases. The board consists of two members representing tenant interests, two representing the interests of owners and five representing the general public. All members are appointed by the mayor. The vote on Monday is set to be the third consecutive year of increases.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

Billie Eilish is No. 2, and Charli XCX debuts strong at No. 3.Taylor, Taylor, Taylor, Taylor, Taylor, Taylor, Taylor, Taylor.For two months now, Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” has dominated the Billboard album chart, fending off challenges from Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa and the K-pop group Ateez, often with the help of special “versions” featuring extra tracks.This week, “Tortured Poets” logs its eighth consecutive time at No. 1, with the equivalent of 128,000 sales in the United States, including 136 million streams and 23,000 copies sold as a full package, according to the tracking service Luminate.Although two of Swift’s previous albums have posted more times at No. 1 overall — “Fearless” and “1989” had 11 each — none has held the top spot for as many weeks in a row. Consecutive runs of eight weeks or longer are rare on the chart. The last releases to do so were both by Morgan Wallen: “One Thing at a Time,” which logged 12 last year, and “Dangerous: The Double Album,” with 10 in 2021. For another example you have to go back to Drake’s “Views,” which led the chart for nine straight weeks at No. 1 in 2016.Also this week, Eilish’s “Hit Me Hard and Soft” is No. 2 in its fourth week out, while “Brat,” the latest from the British pop singer-songwriter Charli XCX, opens in third place with the equivalent of 82,000 sales. Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” holds at No. 4 and Bon Jovi’s latest, “Forever,” starts at No. 5, helped by collectible vinyl and CD editions. More

The crew of the Tutor, a Greek-owned bulk carrier sailing across the Red Sea to India, were on the deck on a sunny morning last week when they spotted in the distance what looked like a fishing vessel with two people aboard. The crew members thought it was nothing unusual, but moments later, the ship captain said, they noticed a vessel rushing toward their ship.The boat appeared to be remote-controlled — the fishermen they thought they had glimpsed were dummies — and crew members shouted, “Inside! Inside!” as they raced for cover, according to a video one of them posted on Facebook. The boat collided with their ship and exploded, shattering glass windows on the bridge of their vessel and submerging the engine room in seawater and oil, the captain said.“We were all scared,” the captain, Christian Domrique, said on Monday in Manila, where he and the crew members, all of whom are from the Philippines, were brought after the U.S. Navy airlifted them from the stricken vessel. “It was the first time for all of us to experience that.”It was one of the more dramatic episodes in recent months in the Red Sea, where the Houthi militia in Yemen has stepped up missile and drone attacks against ships in what it says is a campaign to pressure Israel to end the war in Gaza.Twenty-one sailors including the captain were rescued from the Tutor; one crew member, who was in the engine room at the time of the collision, is still missing, according to Mr. Domrique and Philippine government officials.Mr. Domrique, who spoke on behalf of the crew members at a news conference arranged by the Philippine government, said that all of them had stayed on the bridge of the ship after the attack while he contacted the shipowner, the Philippine government and the U.S. Navy, which has been patrolling the waters to deter Houthi attacks. He also warned nearby ships to avoid their location.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 Chinese Room has long delivered unconventional game worlds. The metal offshore structure in Still Wakes the Deep might be its most evocatively realized yet.Christmas, 1975: an oil rig off the east coast of Scotland. Inside over breakfast, the chatter of possible strikes and crew members wolfing down baked beans, fried eggs and mugs of tea. Outside, the briny tang of windswept sea air, the North Sea swirling tempestuously below.The teetering rig of the first-person horror game Still Wakes the Deep, which releases on Tuesday for the PC, PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X|S, is another delightfully offbeat and beautifully realized locale from The Chinese Room, a British studio.Dear Esther, released in 2012, saw players exploring a moonlit Hebridean island, tromping through purple heather. Three years later, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture whisked them off to a quaint fictional village in the west of England, zigzagging through arable fields and well-ordered front gardens.“It’s rare, still, for video games to venture away from generic-looking alien planets, abandoned spaceships or the trenches of past wars as settings for their stories,” said Simon Parkin, author of “Death by Video Game: Tales of Obsession From the Virtual Frontline.”The towering metal architecture and claustrophobic halls of Still Wakes the Deep are less naturalistic than the studio’s previous game worlds, but certainly no less evocative. John McCormack, the game’s creative director, possesses an instinctual familiarity with the era.“I can remember the texture of the carpets and the thin line of cigarette smoke that hovers halfway up a room, my granny’s slippers, what the ashtrays look like, how people talk — the slang of the time,” said McCormack, a Scot and a child of the 1970s.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 State Assembly passed a bill banning colleges from considering family ties to donors or alumni in admissions decisions.Occidental College has already dropped legacy admissions.Damian Dovarganes/Associated PressCalifornia could become the fourth state to ban legacy admissions preferences at universities under a bill making its way through the State Legislature.Many selective colleges have historically given to the children or grandchildren of alumni — who are much more likely to be white and wealthy than other applicants — an advantage in the admissions process. But the practice, never particularly popular with the public, has come under scrutiny since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year against affirmative action policies at colleges and universities.After the court’s decision, some schools — including Occidental College, Carnegie Mellon and Wesleyan University — decided to stop giving preference to legacy applicants.Now, California lawmakers are considering AB 1780, a bill that would prohibit universities in the state from giving preferential treatment to applicants because of their family ties to donors or alumni.With affirmative action banned in higher education, “it makes complete sense to now ensure that we don’t look at someone’s wealth or lineage with the university to decide whether to admit them,” Phil Ting, a Bay Area Democrat who is the bill’s author, told me. The bill “doesn’t ban admitting donors’ or alumni children,” he added. “It just ensures that there’s no preferential treatment.”Colorado and Virginia recently passed laws banning legacy admissions at public institutions of higher education. Maryland has done so at both public and private institutions. California’s public colleges and universities already give no preference to legacy candidates; the new bill would ban the practice at private institutions.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 death toll was expected to rise after a passenger train and a freight train collided in the state of West Bengal.A freight train collided with a passenger train in eastern India on Monday, killing at least eight people and injuring 50 others, officials said.The episode occurred at around 9 a.m. when the Kanchanjunga Express, which was carrying passengers to the state of West Bengal from the state of Tripura, was leaving the Rangapani station. Four coaches of the popular and often-crowded passenger train derailed when it was rammed from behind by the commercial train. Images from the accident site showed one of the passenger coaches lifted off the railway track and balancing on a coach of the freight train.The death toll was likely to rise. Local news outlets, citing police officials, reported at least 15 people dead. The driver and the assistant driver of the freight train and a guard on the passenger train were among those killed.Jaya Varma Sinha, the chairperson of India’s railway board, said rescue operations were completed. Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s railway minister, was en route to the site.The relatively low number of casualties could be attributed to the fact that the rear portion of the Kanchanjunga Express, which took the biggest impact from the collision, comprised cargo coaches and the guard’s coach. Passengers were in compartments far forward from the impact. While an investigation has been ordered to look into the cause of the collision, Ms. Sinha said human error such as disregarding a railway signal could have caused the crash.The accident again brings to the fore the issue of rail safety in a country whose millions of poor residents rely on railways for transport. India’s rail network is one of the world’s largest and is crucial to the country’s economy and its people’s lives and livelihood.The country has, in recent years, invested heavily on rail safety after a long history of deadly accidents. Although the overall number of rail accidents has lessened over the past decade, incidents with mass casualties have persisted. Last June, 290 people were killed when two passenger trains collided after one of them struck a stationary freight train at full speed and derailed in the state of Odisha.After that incident, opposition leaders demanded the resignation of Mr. Vaishnaw, the railway minister. He has said he was trying to expand a safety system, called Kavach, that is meant to prevent accidents when two trains are moving on the same track. Ms. Sinha said the technology had not yet been deployed on the route of the Kanchanjunga Express. More