World

The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam will return a Henri Matisse painting in its collection since 1941 to the heirs of its original owner, a German-Jewish textile manufacturer and art patron who sold it to finance his family’s escape from the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. The museum announced on Tuesday it was returning the artwork, titled “Odalisque,” ​​following “binding advice” from the Dutch Restitution Commission, a government body that handles cases of artworks looted by the Nazis. The heirs described the decision as symbolic justice. “Matisse made the same journey from Berlin to Amsterdam as our grandparents,” they said. “But she remained there, in the Stedelijk, with almost no acknowledgment of where she came from for 80 years.” Before World War II, Matisse's “Odalisque,” ​​created in...

Among those who sat behind him were lawmakers who, only the day before, had passed the bill in Parliament, some despite being roundly condemned by their constituents for supporting the legislation. The announcement was a sudden change of direction for Ruto, who in a speech on Tuesday evening had called protesters "dangerous criminals" and "traitors", and had deployed the army to join the police in cracking down on the protests. Ruto's government last month introduced a finance bill to raise revenue by imposing additional taxes. The government said the bill was needed to repay the country's massive debt, avoid loan defaults and cover the cost of roads, rural electrification and agricultural subsidies. But the legislation has fueled widespread public discontent, with opponents arguing it wo...

Violence erupted in Kenya on Tuesday as protesters clashed with police in the streets and stormed the country's parliament building after lawmakers passed a bill to raise taxes. Columns of thick smoke poured from the Parliament complex. Protesters furious at the tax increase foreseen by the budget law threw stones and blocked the streets. Protests have paralyzed Kenya's capital, Nairobi, and images of demonstrators storming parliament and entering the complex have shocked the nation. More than 30 demonstrators were injured and at least five were killed, according to several civic groups. Protests spread across the country to Nakuru, Mombasa, Eldoret and other urban areas. Kenya is deeply in debt and the government says it needs to raise taxes. But many Kenyans say they cannot afford t...

The forced conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews into the Israeli army has become a controversial issue that has the potential to fracture the ruling coalition. This order, aimed at integrating the ultra-Orthodox community into military service, has sparked heated debate within Israeli politics. The conscription policy has long been a point of contention, as ultra-Orthodox Jews have historically been exempt from compulsory military service. This exemption is rooted in a long-standing agreement between the Israeli government and ultra-Orthodox religious leaders, who maintained that their community's religious studies were of paramount importance. However, this agreement has faced growing criticism from secular and moderate factions in Israeli society, who perceive it as placing an unfa...

The implementation of President Joe Biden's new student loan repayment plan, known as Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE), has been temporarily suspended by federal judges in Kansas and Missouri. These rulings have put debt relief for millions of Americans at risk. The injunctions prevent the U.S. Department of Education from enacting significant provisions of the SAVE plan. As a result, the Biden administration is currently unable to forgive additional debt under the new income-driven repayment plan or reduce borrowers' payments as expected in July. Since its launch in August, more than 8 million borrowers have enrolled in the SAVE plan. They were days away from experiencing a substantial decrease in their monthly bills. College expert Mark Kantrowitz expressed his disappoi...

Connected media - Connected media The $1,000 base model of the Surface Laptop 5 comes with only eight gigabytes of memory, but most people are likely to need double that to smoothly run the latest Windows operating system and new apps and games. The model that includes 16 gigabytes costs an extra $500. Samsung Phone Samsung’s new high-end smartphone, the Galaxy S24 Ultra, has a starting price of $1,300. But it’s more realistically a $1,540 phone. In the last five years, many smartphone makers, including Apple, Google and Samsung, stopped shipping phones with basic accessories like earphones and charging bricks, a shift that increased their profit margins. And in an echo of the way computer makers upsell memory, the base model of a smartphone typically includes a modest amount of data...

Like clockwork, leap years roll around every four years. But many companies are never quite prepared for it, with every Feb. 29 marred by glitches and malfunctions.Computers have shut down, satellite navigation devices have failed and airport conveyor belts have refused to move luggage onto planes. This year, dozens of gas stations across New Zealand malfunctioned on Thursday, with car and truck drivers reporting problems filling up in the early hours of the morning.“Motorists have been turning up and unable to get fuel,” said Julien Leys, a spokesman for Gull New Zealand, one of the companies whose gas pumps malfunctioned. “It’s been incredibly frustrating for our customers.”Drivers were unable to pay for their fuel because the software used by payment terminals at gas pumps “couldn’t cal...

The hiking trail to Middleham Falls on the Caribbean island of Dominica is all wet leaves, slippery black stones and steps formed by tree roots. It could be a path in Middle-earth, shrouded, shadowy and green, fit for hobbits and fairies. Where sunlight pierced the canopy, rainbows formed in the mist, almost close enough to poke. Here and there, hummingbirds drew nectar from huge blossoms.The goal on that January day: a 200-foot forest cascade filling and refilling little pools on the valley floor, where I could — as one does in the secret hot pools and isolated waterfalls of Dominica — shed my clothes, slip into water and commune with the hummingbirds like a fairy queen.Dominica, 29 miles long and, at its widest, 16 miles across, is one of the wildest Caribbean islands. A former British c...

Some 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion began two years ago, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday, acknowledging for the first time in the war a concrete figure for Ukraine’s toll.“This is a big loss for us,” Mr. Zelensky said at a news conference in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. But he declined to disclose the number of wounded or missing, saying that Russia could use the information to gauge the number of Ukraine’s active forces.Mr. Zelensky’s tally could not be independently verified. It differs sharply from estimates by U.S. officials, who, this past summer, put the losses much higher, saying that close to 70,000 Ukrainians had been killed and 100,000 to 120,000 had been wounded. Russia’s military casualties, the officials said, were abo...

President Javier Milei of Argentina hosted U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in Buenos Aires on Friday morning to discuss the various ways Mr. Milei is reshaping Argentina foreign policy in line with the United States.A few hours later, both men were set to board separate planes for Washington. Mr. Blinken was going back to the White House and President Biden. Mr. Milei was headed to the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, where he would take the stage ahead of former President Donald J. Trump and give a speech that would almost certainly rail against the dangers of the left.Mr. Milei’s hectic itinerary — traveling south to north, left to right — shows how the new Argentine president is trying to navigate the politically turbulent waters of the United States in an el...