John Aldridge on the deck of the Anna Mary. Credit... Daniel Shea for The New York Times Looking back, John Aldridge knew it was a stupid move. When you’re alone on the deck of a lobster boat in the middle of the night, 40 miles off the tip of Long Island, you don’t take chances. But he had work to…

Ebony Fisher, 25, on the road to her mother’s house outside Vicksburg, Miss. The conjugal visits she has with her husband, who is serving a 60-year term, are slated to end soon. Credit... William Widmer for The New York Times PARCHMAN, Miss. — To spend time alone with the man she married four months…

Some seniors spend hours at a McDonald’s in Flushing. Workers say they drive away business. Group members say they should not be rushed. Credit... Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Shortly after New Year’s Day, Man Hyung Lee, 77, was nursing a coffee in his usual seat in a narrow booth at a McDonald’s…

Fox News chairman-CEO Roger Ailes. (AP Photo/2MK Studio/Fox News) In Sunday’s edition of “Playbook ,” Politico’s Mike Allen included a massive excerpt of the new biography of Fox News chief Roger Ailes by journalist Gabriel Sherman, “ The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger…

The author, at "work" (Pete Souza/The White House) Before Thursday into Friday, my head cold got worse, so on Friday morning I walked down to a bar-cafe-restaurant in my neighborhood. I had been there for a few hours when youthful, vigorous men and women wearing Business Semi-Formal started quietly…

Elizabeth Warren Wisely Ignores Meghan McCain While Explaining Wealth Tax Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren stopped by the manicured thunderdome known as The View on Tuesday (January 6) to field questions about impeachment, President Donald Trump’s drone strike on Iranian general…

Eureka Credit... Illustration by Christopher Brand Two and a half millenniums ago, a prince named Siddhartha Gautama traveled to Bodh Gaya, India, and began to meditate beneath a tree. Forty-nine days of continuous meditation later, tradition tells us, he became the Buddha — the enlightened one.…

By Degrees Stephen Gill, an oceanographer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, at the Battery tide gauge in Manhattan. Tides have been measured there since the 1850s. Credit... Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times The little white shack at the water’s edge in Lower Manhattan is…

Photo Michael Bromwich monitors Apple’s compliance with antitrust laws. Credit Harry Hamburg/Associated Press Most companies are reluctant to open themselves to outside inspection. Yet Apple is even resisting someone who was appointed by a court to do exactly that, leading to an unusual public feud…

Pope Francis greeted cardinals on Dec. 21 at a hall in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican, where he addressed church officials. Credit... Pool photo by Claudio Peri VATICAN CITY — Less than a year into his papacy, Pope Francis has raised expectations among the world’s one billion Roman Catholics…

charlesornstein: Agree. Very thoughtful. RT @JesseDrucker: Very thoughtful take from .@MeghanOr on the twin Keller columns: http://t.co/THKZIM9x1p

Maps seemed to be everywhere in 2013, a trend I like to think we encouraged along with August's 40 maps that explain the world . Maps can be a remarkably powerful tool for understanding the world and how it works, but they show only what you ask them to. You might consider this, then, a collection…

Darryl Middleton has lived in five countries and changed teams 15 times. Credit... Samuel Aranda for The New York Times ALICANTE, Spain — You are a star high school basketball player, a whirlwind on the court. You score points, get rebounds and cover the ball on the defensive end. You get a…

Witness a city in transformation, glimpse exotic animals, explore the past and enjoy that beach before the crowds. Table Mountain and Cape Town. Samantha Reinders for The New York Times Table Mountain and Cape Town. Samantha Reinders for The New York Times 1. Cape Town, South Africa A place to…

Credit Illustration by Tom Bachtell Last week, Americans got a reminder that it sometimes takes lawbreakers with a conscience to bring to light more profound violations. On March 8, 1971, burglars broke into an F.B.I. field office in Media, Pennsylvania, and stole hundreds of the agency’s files.…

One-Party Rule Residents in the twin ports of Duluth, Minn., and Superior, Wis., find their lives diverging, now that Minnesota is governed by Democrats, and Wisconsin by Republicans. Credit... Video by Emma Cott DULUTH, Minn. — The soaring Blatnik Bridge spans a modest body of water but a political…

Amiri Baraka speaking at the Black National Political Convention in Gary, Ind., in 1972. Credit... Gary Settle/The New York Times I’m not the right age for Amiri Baraka, not exactly. Or rather: I’m not the right age to have seen his changes as they happened. Mr. Baraka, who died last week at 79,…

jbouie: This is the definition of a must read. http://t.co/P2cLeXTk5O

Amiri Baraka, Polarizing Poet and Playwright, Dies at 79

The polar vortex struck Manhattan and with it—well, I will spare the reader the poignant evocations of coldness, the “It’s Cold Outside!” piece being second only to the “Hey! It’s Snowing!” one as the nadir of what used to be called feature journalism. But I will confess that I delight in the cold,…

Jodi Rudoren writes in today’s Times that the great sticking point for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations is Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as a “Jewish state,” or as “the nation-state of the Jewish people”—something along these lines. Rudoren asks, “Can Israel…

Full Coverage: Chris Christie and the GWB lane closure controversy A cache of private messages linking Governor Christie’s office to vindictive lane closures at the George Washington Bridge in September plunged the administration into a deep crisis on Wednesday, threatening Christie’s national…

“If I believe I am being gamed…,” President Barack Obama said, in a “blast” at an unhappy meeting about Afghanistan in March, 2011; that’s how Robert Gates, the former Secretary of Defense, remembers it, according to early reports on his memoir. ( Bob Woodward and Greg Jaffe at the Washington Post…

Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, held a news conference on Tuesday to announce the indictments. The photograph is from an online account of one of the defendants, who had applied for disability. Credit... Michael Appleton for The New York Times The retired New York City police…

Should Beyoncé choose to settle in the world of Adult Contemporary one day, she'll have most of the legwork already done. She's spent the time since 4 , an album that playfully extolled the virtues of marriage, crafting a role for herself in that sphere with the ambitious grace of a good politician.…

Books Cat owners speak to their cats, attribute many complex emotions to them and chide them when they bring small dead rodents into the house. People don’t pause to ask what is going on in the mind of the cat during these interactions, and perhaps that’s just as well. The role of a pet is to be…

“Poetry prevents everybody from feeling lonely,” says Nikki Giovanni.

Credit Illustration by Christoph Niemann ’Tis the season for taking retirement benefits away from public workers. In Detroit, an emergency manager has steered the city into bankruptcy, in part to avoid its pension obligations. In Illinois, the legislature just passed a bill cutting pensions and…

rembert: good way to wrap up his great year. @cordjefferson on the year's racial amnesia. http://t.co/C9weugRDoo …

rembert: another good 12-hours-left-in-2013 internet drop -- @jennydeluxe outchea http://t.co/d7qH1CjGGH

wordbk: "The shift from cameras to networked devices with lenses should be obvious" @NewYorker: Goodbye, Cameras http://t.co/UhADy91mKg

farai: My first piece for the @nytimes travel section, on black travelers and the freedom of the road. https://t.co/q54oQwM6FQ

A senator campaigning for reform says that the intelligence leadership drives “how decisions get made at the White House.” Illustration from the Heads of State On March 12, 2013, James R. Clapper appeared before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to discuss the threats facing America.…

As winter storms were buffeting parts of the country last week, our collective attention was drawn halfway around the world to Egypt. Images of the pyramids and the Sphinx covered in snow had emerged, and were being shared tens of thousands of times on Facebook and Twitter. It wasn't hard to see…

New York City police officers and recruits leaving a diversity training event at the Apollo Theater in Harlem last week. Credit... Yana Paskova for The New York Times It is among Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly’s prouder legacies: A majority of the police officers in New York City are now members of…