JERUSALEM — An Israeli soldier who shot an incapacitated Palestinian attacker in the head was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Tuesday, in a case that has divided Israelis and prompted calls for his pardon.
Col. Maya Heller, a judge speaking on behalf of a military panel in Tel Aviv, reminded the defendant, Sgt. Elor Azaria, that his conviction for manslaughter was “grave” and that he could have faced up to 20 years in prison.
CAIRO — The bodies of 74 migrants were recovered from a beach near the town of Zawiya in western Libya, rescuers said on Tuesday, an ominous sign before the high season for Mediterranean crossings.
The bodies were believed to have come from a shipwrecked inflatable raft that was found on the same stretch of shore, said Mohammed Almosrti, a spokesman for the Libyan Red Crescent. Some of the bodies were found inside the stricken raft.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan soldiers and policemen on Tuesday surrounded the house of Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum in an apparent effort to arrest nine of his aides accused of kidnapping and raping a political opponent on his orders.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, still struggling with the fallout from a series of deaths of vulnerable children, named a new child welfare commissioner on Tuesday, choosing a longtime social services official who had left government for the private sector.
The new commissioner, David Hansell, replaces Gladys Carrión, who announced in December that she would step down as head of New York’s Administration for Children’s Services amid a wave of scrutiny and criticism.
The 69th floor at 4 World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan has been hit by street artists. There is evidence of spray paint, stencils and wheat paste, clues that artists who go by names like Rubin 415, Stickymonger, Gumshoe and Layer Cake have been there.
The walls, and in one section the floor, pop with colors and shapes usually found at street level — surreal splashes here, images with phrases like “No Brain No Pain” there. There are Statues of Liberty with almost kaleidoscopic faces. There is a giant $10 bill composed of words that theatergoers would recognize from “Hamilton.”
There is a crisis brewing in the cosmos, or perhaps in the community of cosmologists. The universe seems to be expanding too fast, some astronomers say.
Recent measurements of the distances and velocities of faraway galaxies don’t agree with a hard-won “standard model” of the cosmos that has prevailed for the past two decades.
An English soccer player who enjoyed a meat pie on the sideline during a game was forced to resign from his team on Tuesday after his meal spurred a formal investigation into gambling. The strange tale involves a Cinderella team, a bookmaker eager for publicity and, most important, a portly, middle-aged goalkeeper with a taste for meat and potatoes.
The Danish government has been inadvertently paying benefits to citizens fighting for the Islamic State in Syria, Danish officials said Tuesday, as outrage grows that militants are manipulating the country’s generous welfare system.
About 145 Danes have traveled to Syria or Iraq to fight for militant groups since 2012, according to the Danish security and intelligence services. Officials said this week that they had identified a number of citizens who, while receiving government disability pensions, had traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
ENTERPRISE, Trinidad and Tobago — By the time he was 17, Fahyim Sabur had memorized the Quran.
At 23, he was shunning calypso parties and giving private Arabic lessons in his neighborhood here in Enterprise, about 20 miles south of Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago.
A year later, he was on the battlefield in Syria, where he died fighting for the Islamic State.
“He never spoke to me about it,” said his father, Abdus Sabur, 56, who sells meat patties on the street. “National Security called me one day and told me, ‘Your son is dead.’ ”
Editors’ note: Here’s one of our favorite stories from the archives, now being featured in our Smarter Living collection.
Managing your money should be pretty straightforward, but that doesn’t make the task all that easy.
That’s the biggest takeaway from the handful of simple financial instruction lists making the rounds among the New Year’s resolution set.
