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For the second day in a row, mourners walked purposefully along Moscow’s snow-heaped Garden Ring on Saturday carrying bouquets to lay at one of the improvised memorials to Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition figure who perished in a prison colony the day before. The flowers, wrapped in paper to shield them from the icy wind, were not only a symbol of mourning. They also served as a form of protest in a country where even the mildest dissent can risk detention. And the people who laid bouquets at the Wall of Grief, a monument to the victims of political persecution during the Stalin era, shared the conviction that the Russian state was behind Mr. Navalny’s death. “He didn’t die, he was killed,” said Alla, 75, a pensioner who declined to give her last name because of possible repercus...

A congressional committee said Friday that it would serve subpoenas on Harvard University in a hunt for documentation of whether the university tolerated antisemitism on its campus.The move is part of an expanding Republican effort to investigate elite universities for their response to pro-Palestinian student demonstrations, especially after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel. The committee has also started investigations into Columbia, M.I.T. and the University of Pennsylvania. But Harvard is the first to receive subpoenas.The Israel-Hamas war has exposed deep political divisions among Harvard students, faculty members and alumni, which contributed to the resignation last month of Claudine Gay, the university’s first Black president.Harvard, like many other universities, has said it must...

Hundreds of displaced Palestinians fled one of the Gaza Strip’s last functioning hospitals on Wednesday, after the Israeli military ordered them to leave and threatened further action to stop what it said was Hamas activity there.Thousands of Gazans have sheltered at the Nasser Medical Complex in the southern city of Khan Younis for weeks, and many are terrified that Israeli forces will bombard or storm the complex, said Mohammed Abu Lehya, a doctor there. Previous Israeli warnings to evacuate hospitals, including Al-Shifa, the largest in Gaza, have often preceded military raids.Hanin Abu Tiba, 27, an English teacher sheltering at the hospital, described dire conditions inside, with food running out and aid convoys all but unable to deliver supplies. In text messages overnight, she said th...

Despite predictions, Boston was left mostly snowless on Tuesday. Few residents seemed upset to be spared, except for the city’s children — robbed of any actual snow on a snow day — and their working parents, who were forced to make alternate plans for child care.School officials canceled Tuesday’s classes almost a day in advance, relying on dire forecasts from Monday morning that anticipated a foot or more of snow. Max Baker, a spokesman for Boston Public Schools, said the district of more than 47,000 students was trying to ease disruptions by giving ample warning.“Scrambling at 6 p.m. is a nightmare for a lot of families,” he said.But then the forecast shifted on Monday night, and the storm’s more southerly track wiped out the threat of a Boston snowmaggedon.“I think most people understan...

The numbers are staggering.More than 100 million people are expected to vote, many for the first time. They’ll do so in booths across thousands of islands and three time zones, hammering nails into ballots to mark their choices. And within hours, if history is any guide, the world will know the outcome of the biggest race of the day: the one for Indonesia’s presidency.Indonesia, the world’s third-largest democracy, will hold its general election on Wednesday. Election Day is a national holiday, and on average, about 75 percent of eligible voters have turned out. In addition to the president, voters are choosing members of Parliament and local representatives.This election season has raised fears that Indonesia, which was an authoritarian state not long ago, is in danger of sliding back tow...

By Jordan KisnerProduced by Adrienne Hurst and Aaron EspositoEdited by John WooOriginal music by Aaron EspositoEngineered by Rowan Niemisto and Andrea VancuraListen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | SpotifyThe first death happened before the academic year began. In July 2021, an undergraduate student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute was reported dead. The administration sent a notice out over email, with the familiar, thoroughly vetted phrasing and appended resources. Katherine Foo, an assistant professor in the department of integrative and global studies, felt especially crushed by the news. She taught this student. He was Chinese, and she felt connected to the particular set of pressures he faced. She read through old, anonymous course evaluations, looking for any sign she might ha...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has ordered the Israeli military to come up with a plan for civilians sheltering in the southern city of Rafah to evacuate, his office said on Friday, as Israeli leaders have increasingly indicated they intend to ultimately send ground troops into the crowded city.“Any forceful action in Rafah would require the evacuation of the civilian population from combat zones,” the prime minister’s office said, without saying what area those zones would cover or when such an operation would begin.Roughly 1.4 million Palestinians are now sheltering in Rafah, according to the United Nations. Lying on the border with Egypt, the city is one of the last areas of the Gaza Strip in which Israeli ground troops have yet to deploy in force. Many of the people who ha...

To the Editor:Re “The ‘Gig’ Label Is Being Used to Exploit Workers,” by Terri Gerstein (Opinion guest essay, Jan. 29):We are the freelance writers and editors Ms. Gerstein mentioned who are suing the Department of Labor over the independent contractor rule that will, as she said, “make it harder for employers to treat workers as independent contractors rather than employees.” So let us explain.The Department of Labor acknowledges in its 339-page rule published Jan. 10 that most of the public comments made by independent contractors expressed opposition to the rule, “criticizing the Department’s proposed economic reality test as ambiguous and biased against independent contracting.”There are now more than 70 million independent contractors, comprising a significant portion of the U.S. work ...

Prince William, the heir to the British throne, stepped back onto the public stage Wednesday, trying to project a steely sense of normalcy, three days after the announcement that his father, King Charles III, had been struck by cancer.But as William carried out an honors ceremony at Windsor Castle and attended a charity fund-raiser in London, a shadow of uncertainty hung over the 41-year-old prince. Nobody, aside from Charles and his wife, Queen Camilla, faces more lingering disruption from the king’s cancer diagnosis than his eldest son.The advocacy work, family life, and zone of privacy that William has carved out for himself is very different than that of his father, when he served as the Prince of Wales. Whether William will be able to preserve those qualities while stepping in for his...

Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll look at whether Mayor Eric Adams should retain control of the public school system in New York City.Mayor Eric Adams’s control over the school system in New York City is up for renewal in June. The State Legislature, which will decide whether or not to extend the mayor’s primacy over the nation’s largest public school system, seems open to revisiting a model of school governance that was instituted in New York 20 years ago and has since become entrenched. Whether mayoral control has improved the system has been a subject of considerable debate ever since.I asked Troy Closson, who covers education for the Metro desk, about the future of mayoral control.Mayoral control of the schools carries a political risk for Adams, as it did for his predecessors: H...