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    Bangladesh Back Under Curfew After Protests Leave Dozens Dead

    Expanded student protests this weekend, after more than 200 people were killed in a government crackdown in July, have plunged the country into a particularly dangerous phase.At least 40 people were killed in clashes between security forces and protesters on Sunday in Bangladesh, as the country’s leaders imposed a new curfew and internet restrictions to try to quell a growing antigovernment movement.Revived and expanded student protests, after a deadly government crackdown late last month, and a call by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s governing party for its own supporters to also take to the streets, have plunged the country of over 170 million into a particularly dangerous phase.At least 40 people were killed on Sunday across Bangladesh, according to a diplomatic official based in Dhaka, adding to the more than 200 people killed in the crackdown on protests in July. Tallies by local news media, as well as a statement from coordinators of the student protests, put Sunday’s death toll at over 50. At least 13 of the dead were police officers, the country’s Police Headquarters said in a statement.What began as a peaceful student protest last month over a preferential quota system for public-sector jobs has morphed into unprecedented anger at Ms. Hasina’s increasingly authoritarian turn and her management of the economy.While the crackdown, which included the arrests of more than 10,000 people and the lodging of police cases against tens of thousands more, temporarily dispersed the protesters, the demonstrations have been back in full force since Friday.The protesters’ anger over the more than 200 deaths has solidified their demands to a single point: On Saturday, at a rally of tens of thousands, they demanded the resignation of Ms. Hasina, who has been in power for 15 years.In response to the resignation call, her Awami League party called on its supporters to join counterprotests — setting up the tense situation that unfolded on Sunday.In a statement sent to the news media on Sunday, as internet restrictions went into effect, leaders of the student movement called for the protests to continue uninterrupted.“If there is an internet crackdown, if we are disappeared, arrested or killed, and if there is no one left to make announcements, everyone should continue to occupy the streets and maintain peaceful noncooperation until the government falls in response to our one demand,” Nahid Islam, one of the movement’s leaders, said in the statement.As the chaos escalates, with both the protesters and Ms. Hasina’s governing party digging in their heels, and as opposition parties take the opportunity to pile on, all eyes are on the country’s military.While the army and other security forces were deployed during the crackdown in July, the army’s chief, Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman, gathered his senior officers on Saturday for a meeting that was seen as an attempt to quell concerns over the army’s position in the crisis and reinforce its neutrality.In a statement issued after the meeting, the army said its chief had reiterated that “the Bangladesh Army will always stand by the people in the interest of the public and in any need of the state.” More

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    Man Who Killed 4 After Dispute Over Stimulus Check Gets 145 Years in Prison

    Malik Halfacre, 28, wounded his girlfriend and killed four of her family members in Indianapolis in 2021 after a dispute with her over money, prosecutors said.An Indianapolis man who killed four people, including a child, after a dispute with his girlfriend over a coronavirus stimulus check was sentenced on Friday to 145 years in prison.The man, Malik Halfacre, 28, pleaded guilty in June to four murder counts in the March 2021 shooting deaths of Eve Moore, 7; Dequan Moore, 23; Anthony Johnson, 35; and Tomeeka Brown, 44, in Indianapolis. He also pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of Jeanettrius Moore, then his girlfriend, whom the police say Mr. Halfacre shot multiple times. The four people killed were relatives of Ms. Moore.Judge Jeffrey Marchal of Marion Superior Court sentenced Mr. Halfacre to two consecutive 57-year prison terms for the murder counts and a 31-year prison term for the attempted murder count, according to court records.On the night of March 13, 2021, the police received a report of a person shot inside an Indianapolis home.Malik Halfacre.Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, via Associated PressThe victim was Ms. Moore, who had fled to a neighbor’s home after being shot. Before she was taken to a hospital, Ms. Moore told the police that there were multiple victims inside her home. She told them that Mr. Halfacre had fled and taken their 6-month-old daughter.The police eventually found the young girl at Mr. Halfacre’s sister’s home. They caught Mr. Halfacre the next day after an hourslong standoff at a friend’s home, where he was hiding.Mr. Halfacre later told investigators that he and Ms. Moore had been arguing because he “wanted some of her stimulus check,” according to a probable cause affidavit.Mr. Halfacre also admitted that he had shot everyone in his girlfriend’s home and then stole her purse and fled in her car with their daughter, the affidavit said. He told the police that he had dropped their daughter off at his sister’s house.As part of the deal under which Mr. Halfacre pleaded guilty, related charges of armed robbery, auto theft and illegal possession of a handgun were dropped. More

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    Maui Wildfire Plaintiffs Reach $4 Billion Settlement as Anniversary Nears

    Hawaiian Electric is expected to pay the largest share — nearly $2 billion — but avoided a heftier price tag that could have forced the utility into bankruptcy.Nearly a year after a ferocious wildfire on Maui killed 102 people and leveled the historic town of Lahaina, Hawaii’s largest utility has agreed to pay the largest share of a legal settlement totaling just over $4 billion and compensating more than 10,000 homeowners, businesses and other plaintiffs.The proposed agreement was filed late Friday in a Maui-based state court, six days before the anniversary of the disaster. Fire victims and insurers have spent months in court-ordered mediation with the state, Maui County, large private landowners and utilities within the fire zone to resolve more than 600 lawsuits brought in state and federal courts by survivors of the catastrophe.The settlement, which remains subject to court approval, will cover less than half of the overall cost of the disaster — estimated at nearly $12 billion — which cut a path of destruction through one of the world’s most spectacularly beautiful destinations. More than 3,000 homes and other structures were damaged or destroyed, and thousands of residents were killed, injured or displaced.Gov. Josh Green had pushed for a single global agreement among all the parties to litigation to swiftly compensate fire victims, rather than extending negotiations for years without payment. State officials had also hoped to ward off a potentially devastating financial hit to Maui County and the bankruptcy of Hawaiian Electric, which provides electricity for more than nine in 10 of the state’s residents on Oahu, Maui, Molokai, Lanai and Hawaii Island.“Settling a matter like this within a year is unprecedented,” Mr. Green said on Friday. “And it will be good that our people don’t have to wait to rebuild their lives as long as others have in many places that have suffered similar tragedies.”Under the proposed terms, which do not include any admission of liability, the utility is expected to pay a little less than half of the $4.037 billion settlement, $1.99 billion, a considerable amount but less than the potential $4.9 billion liability that the investment research firm Capstone estimated last year would most likely bankrupt the company.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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    Israel Says It Killed Hezbollah Commander in Airstrike Near Beirut

    The strike was in retaliation for a deadly rocket attack this weekend in the Golan Heights. At least three civilians were killed and 74 others wounded on Tuesday, Lebanese officials said.Israel launched a deadly strike in a densely populated Beirut suburb on Tuesday in retaliation for a rocket attack in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights that it blamed Hezbollah for and that killed 12 children and teenagers on a soccer field.The target of the Israeli strike in a southern suburb of Lebanon’s capital was Fuad Shukr, a senior official who serves as a close adviser to Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, according to three Israeli security officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.The Israel Defense Forces later said in a statement that its fighter jets had “eliminated” Mr. Shukr, but there was no confirmation from Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed group, and the claim could not be independently verified.Hezbollah has denied carrying out the attack in the Golan Heights on Saturday. The latest strikes were likely to fuel concerns that Israel’s long-running conflict with the group could escalate into a full-blown war even as Israel wages a military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip after that group led a deadly assault in Israel on Oct. 7.The attack on Tuesday is believed to be the first time since the war with Hamas began that Israel has targeted Hezbollah in Beirut. In January, an Israeli airstrike in a Beirut suburb killed Saleh al-Arouri, a senior leader of Hamas, which is also backed by Iran.The strike on Tuesday killed at least three other people — a woman and two children — and wounded at least 74 others, five critically, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health. Officials were still searching the rubble for other victims, the ministry said. More

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    Netanyahu Vows ‘Severe’ Response to Deadly Rocket Attack Tied to Hezbollah

    Fears linger among Lebanese civilians after a strike killed 12 children and teenagers in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.Tensions were high on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border on Monday as Israeli leaders vowed to deliver a significant military blow against the armed group Hezbollah in response to a deadly rocket attack over the weekend.The attack on Saturday killed 12 children and teenagers in the Druse Arab village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia that dominates southern Lebanon and that has been firing rockets into Israel for months, denied responsibility for the strike. But Israel and the United States blamed the group, saying it was Hezbollah’s rocket that had been fired from territory it controls.Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who visited the site of the attack on Monday, said, “Our response is coming, and it will be severe.” Local residents heckled Mr. Netanyahu, telling him they had no security and chanting, “Murderer! Murderer!” videos posted on social media showed.Mr. Netanyahu’s visit to Majdal Shams came the morning after Israeli cabinet ministers authorized him and Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, to determine the nature and timing of the military response. The strike and Israel’s expected counterattack have raised fears that nearly 10 months of armed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah could spiral into an all-out war.Hezbollah began firing rockets, antitank missiles and drones into Israel in solidarity with Hamas after that group, which is also backed by Iran, led the deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel.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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    How a Crisis for Vultures Led to a Human Disaster: Half a Million Deaths

    The birds were accidentally poisoned in India. New research on what happened next shows how wildlife collapse can be deadly for people.To say that vultures are underappreciated would be putting it mildly. With their diet of carrion and their featherless heads, the birds are often viewed with disgust. But they have long provided a critical cleaning service by devouring the dead.Now, economists have put an excruciating figure on just how vital they can be: The sudden near-disappearance of vultures in India about two decades ago led to more than half a million excess human deaths over five years, according to a forthcoming study in the American Economic Review.Rotting livestock carcasses, no longer picked to the bones by vultures, polluted waterways and fed an increase in feral dogs, which can carry rabies. It was “a really huge negative sanitation shock,” said Anant Sudarshan, one of the study’s authors and an economics professor at the University of Warwick in England.The findings reveal the unintended consequences that can occur from the collapse of wildlife, especially animals known as keystone species for the outsize roles they play in their ecosystems. Increasingly, economists are seeking to measure such impacts.A study looking at the United States, for example, has suggested that the loss of ash trees to the invasive emerald ash borer increased deaths related to cardiovascular and respiratory illness. And in Wisconsin, researchers found that the presence of wolves reduced vehicle collisions with deer by about a quarter, creating an economic benefit that was 63 times greater than the cost of wolves killing livestock.“Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning do matter to human beings,” said Eyal Frank, an economist at the University of Chicago and one of the authors of the new vulture study. “And it’s not always the charismatic and fuzzy species.”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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    Israel Retrieves Bodies of 5 Hostages From Tunnel in Gaza

    The military said that intelligence, including information from detained Palestinian militants, had led to the bodies in the Khan Younis area.Israeli forces retrieved the bodies of five hostages from a tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip, the military said on Thursday, amid growing international and domestic pressure for a cease-fire deal that would lead to the release of the remaining captives.The bodies were found on Wednesday in a zone around the city of Khan Younis that Israel previously designated as a humanitarian area where Gazan civilians could go to avoid the fighting and to receive aid, the military said. The tunnel shaft was nearly 220 yards long and more than 20 yards underground, with several rooms, the military said.Israel has said that Hamas — which led the attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that prompted the war in Gaza — has exploited the designated humanitarian zone to launch rockets at Israel, as well as to use it for other military purposes. Aid groups have lamented that Israel has struck the area despite telling Gazans they would be safer there. Hamas had no immediate response.The five hostages — Maya Goren, 56; Ravid Katz, 51; Oren Goldin, 33; Tomer Ahimas, 20; and Kiril Brodski, 19 — had already been presumed dead by Israeli officials.From left: Ravid Katz, Kiril Brodski, Tomer Ahimas, Oren Goldin and Maya Goren in photos provided by the Hostages Families Forum.Agence France-Presse, via The Hostages Families ForumMr. Brodski and Mr. Ahimas were soldiers who were killed during the Hamas-led attack in October, while the other three were civilians whose bodies were taken to Gaza as bargaining chips, Israeli officials said.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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    Breast Cancer Survival Not Boosted by Double Mastectomy, Study Says

    A large study showed that for most patients, having both breasts removed after cancer was detected in one made no difference.For the more than 310,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer every year, no matter how well the treatment goes, there is always a lingering fear. Could the disease come back, even years later? And what if it comes back in the other breast? Could they protect themselves today by having a double mastectomy?A study has concluded that there is no survival advantage to having the other breast removed. Women who had a lumpectomy or a mastectomy and kept their other breast did just as well as women who had a double mastectomy, Dr. Steven Narod of Women’s College Hospital in Toronto and his colleagues reported, using U.S. data from more than 661,000 women with breast cancer on one side.In the study, published in JAMA Oncology on Thursday, the researchers added that most women did very well — the chance of cancer in the other breast was about 7 percent over 20 years.But the study’s results may not apply to women who have a gene variant, BRCA1 or BRCA2, which greatly increases their cancer risk. For the 1 in 500 American women with this variant, cancer researchers agree that it’s worth considering a double mastectomy.The finding that a double mastectomy is not protective against death for many breast cancers seems counterintuitive, Dr. Narod admitted. An accompanying editorial, by Dr. Seema Ahsan Khan, a breast cancer surgeon at Northwestern University, and Masha Kocherginsky, a biostatistician also at Northwestern, called it a conundrum.Previous smaller studies have come to the same conclusion. But, Dr. Narod said, some doctors have questioned the methods in earlier research. 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