It was one of the first warm evenings of spring when my new neighbor Steve—leaning over his balcony and through the bougainvillea—suggested we should take the kids to Faraya, a ski town a few hours from what was starting to look like a war in Syria.

Ed Shadid, the cousin of dead New York Times foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid, caused a stir over the weekend when he claimed in a speech that Anthony pre-emptively blamed the Times for his death in Syria, telling his wife: "If anything happens to me, I want the world to know that the New York Times killed me." In an interview with Gawker, the surviving Shadid confirms the account and says the Times knew a trip to Syria was too dangerous, but sent him anyway.

Anthony Shadid, a 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner for his coverage of Iraq for the Washington Post, died of an asthma attack yesterday while reporting in Syria for the New York Times. He was 43 years old.

The four New York Times journalists who were just freed after almost a week in the custody of the Libyan government told their story to coworker Jeremy Peters. And it sounds as terrifying as you might expect.

Two New York Times reporters and two photographers have been missing in Libya for more than 24 hours, according to the Times.