Liam Walker

At a remote spot in the Arizona desert, near a hole in the border wall, dozens of migrants huddled over wood fires.After fleeing war in Sudan, violent gangs in Central America or Mexican cartels, the men had all crossed into the United States illegally, walked on foot over rugged terrain for hours, and arrived at this outpost exhausted, hungry and cold.They wanted to turn themselves into the authorities to ask for asylum, but were stranded here, miles away from the closest town, Sásabe.Then, as temperatures dropped on Tuesday night, a convoy of Border Patrol agents rolled in, loaded the men…

As the holiday season winds down and Covid-19 cases start to pick up, a variant called JN.1 has now become the most common strain of the virus spreading across the United States.JN.1, which emerged from the variant BA.2.86 and was first detected in the United States in September, accounted for 44 percent of Covid cases nationwide by mid-December, up from about 7 percent in late November, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To some extent, this jump is to be expected. “Variants take some time to get going,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease…

Scoring touchdowns during each offensive possession is the unspoken goal for every NFL team. For decades, celebrations have been the norm in accompanying touchdowns. It goes back all the way to the 1960s with Homer Jones and his touchdown spike.Touchdown celebrations have become a choreographed production for some teams. Think back to the 1980s when Washington’s “Fun Bunch” made enemies after its group of players participated in a jumping high-five after a score. And think recently when the Seattle Seahawks did their best New Edition and *NSYNC impersonations, or when the Minnesota Vikings decided to play a game of Duck,…

Before Oct. 7, Hana Cooper downloaded everything from daily news reports to rabbinic blog posts, saving them for posterity in the Israeli National Library’s archive of the Israeli internet and the broader Jewish online world.But within days of the Hamas-led attacks, Ms. Cooper began spending her time archiving violent images of the assault, many of them posted by the attackers themselves on digital platforms like Telegram.“It was surreal,” Ms. Cooper said in an interview. “I was working with the same tools, but in a completely different world. The war became everything that I did.”Israel’s cultural sector had to reconstitute itself…

The rate of serious medical complications increased in hospitals after they were purchased by private equity investment firms, according to a major study of the effects of such acquisitions on patient care in recent years.The study, published in JAMA on Tuesday, found that, in the three years after a private equity fund bought a hospital, adverse events including surgical infections and bed sores rose by 25 percent among Medicare patients when compared with similar hospitals that were not bought by such investors. The researchers reported a nearly 38 percent increase in central line infections, a dangerous kind of infection that…