World News

Over the last 16 years, I’ve managed a major military base, run a government contracting business, appeared in two motion pictures and made motivational speeches before hundreds of audiences all over the country, most notably to the New York Giants when they beat the New England Patriots in the 2008 Super Bowl. Do these sound like the accomplishments of a disabled person? In 2007 I lost both my legs above the knee in an IED explosion in Iraq. My first job was to recover. But my next task after being wounded was figuring out how to stay in the Army. I am a 26-year Army veteran. During that time, I served in every major conflict in which the United States was involved, including Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm in Kuwait, Operation Joint Forge in Bosnia-Herzegovina; Operation Enduring F...

The current baseball free-agent market is stocked with quality starting pitchers. Yet it’s a starter who can’t pitch until 2025 that could sign the largest contract in baseball history. Shohei Ohtani, 29, spent the six seasons leading into free agency with the Angels, establishing himself as perhaps the best hitter in the major leagues and one of the best pitchers. So even though recovery from surgery to repair a torn UCL in his right elbow will restrict him to designated hitter duties in 2024, Ohtani is projected to come away with a contract worth in excess of $500 million over 10 to 12 years. No other free agent this offseason will come anywhere close to that number, although the next-most lucrative contract could also be a player from Japan: right-handed starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Star...

Nov. 7, 2023 2 AM PT ABOARD THE OCEAN WARRIOR ON THE SOUTH ATLANTIC —  On the high seas roughly a thousand miles north of the Falkland Islands, an 18-year-old Chinese deckhand working on a Chinese squid ship nervously ducked into a dark hallway to whisper his plea for help.“Our passports were taken,” he said to the reporters who had just come aboard. “They won’t give them back.”Fearing he would be overheard, he typed out a message on his cellphone: “Can you take us to the embassy in Argentina?”Few workplaces are as brutal as distant-water fishing ships from China, and there are a lot of them: The nation today operates the world’s largest fleet, which is more than double the size of its next competitor. It’s rarely easy for crew members to leave these ships, and often it’s forbidden. Work...

WASHINGTON —  The Supreme Court on Tuesday confronts a major test of the 2nd Amendment and its protection for gun rights, including whether they extend even for people who are subject to a domestic violence restraining order. At issue is the broader question of whether modern gun control laws may deny firearms to potentially dangerous people, including felons and drug addicts.The court’s conservatives strongly support the 2nd Amendment, and last year Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an opinion for a 6-3 majority that threatens many of the nation’s gun laws enacted since the 1960s.Thomas said the government may not deny an individual’s right to bear arms unless it can “affirmatively prove” the restriction is “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition.”Few gun laws can meet that test b...

Not LeBron James.Not Stephen Curry.Not Kevin Durant.Not Victor Wembanyama.Not Nikola Jovic.Nobody in basketball has executed a move better than the one South Carolina freshman MiLaysia Fulwiley pulled off during the second quarter of her first collegiate basketball game.That’s coming from no less of a basketball authority than Lakers legend Magic Johnson.First, here’s Fulwiley’s spectacular play during the No. 6 Gamecocks’ 100-71 season-opening win over No. 10 Notre Dame on Monday in Paris.Now here’s what Johnson had to say about it. I’m watching the women’s basketball game between South Carolina and Notre Dame right now and I just saw the best move in all of basketball including the pros like LeBron, Steph, KD, Victor, and Jokic. Everyone must see the coast-to-coast, behind-the-back mov...

GAZA STRIP —  Life in Gaza is a numbers game these days, where you try to calculate the odds of surviving even the most mundane tasks.Do you risk going out to find drinkable water, despite word of Israeli tanks up the road? How long can you stand in line outside a bakery before the drone circling overhead drops a missile nearby? Which neighborhood has shelter for you and your family, doesn’t have a Hamas member or tunnel nearby, and could possibly be spared the relentless bombing? Since the the Gaza-based militant group Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack inside Israel spurred the bombardment inside the Palestinian territory, such calculations have become crucial.Through voice recordings, messaging apps and phone calls over several weeks, our correspondent worked with Times staff writer Nabih Bulos to gi...

WASHINGTON —  Last week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken headed for the Middle East to try to keep Israel’s war in Gaza from spinning out of control, and to begin talks on what diplomats call “the day after” — what happens after the shooting stops.Who will govern a shattered Gaza? Who will feed and house its refugees?Who will police its ravaged streets?And perhaps improbably, can the war, however brutal its toll, be turned into an opening for a wider peace?“When this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next,” President Biden said last month. “And in our view, it has to be a two-state solution” — an agreement under which a sovereign Palestinian state would live side by side with Israel, with security guarantees for both.Blinken took that message to Tel Aviv on Friday...

WASHINGTON —  The Supreme Court agreed Friday to rule on whether the government may ban the sale or use of “bump stocks” that can transform a semiautomatic rifle into one that shoots hundreds of bullets per minute with a single pull of the trigger.Since 1934, federal law has banned machines guns, but there has been dispute over whether a bump stock can be outlawed as a type of machine gun.The government was prompted to adopt new regulations after a shooter in Las Vegas used semiautomatic weapons equipped with bump stocks to kill 58 people and wound more that 500 others. Officials said the bump stocks allowed the shooter to rapidly fire “several hundred rounds of ammunition” into a crowd that had gathered for an outdoor concert on Oct. 1, 2017.Congress did not revise the law, but the Trump ...

Last season, Rui Hachimura helped save the Lakers. Now the 6-foot-8, 230-pound forward is hoping to help save the Earth — even though he’s in concussion protocol with the Lakers — by dunking an approaching meteorite into oblivion.Or something like that. The details of Hachimura’s heroic endeavor will be revealed Saturday, when a cartoon version of the Japanese basketball star appears on the anime series “Crayon Shin-chan” in an episode with a title that translates to “The Adventures of Buri Buri Zaemon: Space Dunk Edition.”Hachimura provides his own voice for his character on the popular Japanese series, which debuted in 1992 and has aired more than 1,000 episodes.“My family and I are big fans of Crayon Shin-chan,” Hachimura said in a statement posted in Japanese on the TV Asahi website. “...

A Los Angeles city employee who was trapped in Gaza for weeks has been safely evacuated from the besieged territory, according to the mayor’s office.“Our office has been working to get him to safety and I have been in regular contact with his son. I am relieved to announce today that the employee is now safe in a neighboring country and out of the war zone,” Mayor Karen Bass said Thursday afternoon in a statement. The city employee is Simi Valley resident Sohail Biary, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly. Hundreds of Palestinians with foreign passports have been allowed to leave Gaza since Wednesday after weeks of attention on their plight, according to the Associated Press. The isolated Palestinian territory has faced a worsening ...