Author: NY TIMES

Lebanon’s fractured Parliament overcame more than two years of gridlock on Thursday to choose a new president, a critical step toward bringing stability to a country attempting to recover from economic catastrophe and a devastating war.Lawmakers elected Gen. Joseph Aoun, the commander of the Lebanese military, by an overwhelming majority in the second round of voting, after he failed to achieve the necessary majority in the initial vote. It marked a breakthrough toward forming a government with a mandate to lead the country after stalemate under weak caretaker rule.The vote was seen as a crucial milestone for Lebanon, which has…

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday refused to rule out using military force to retake the Panama Canal, which was returned by the U.S. to that country’s control decades ago.Last month, Mr. Trump falsely accused Panama of allowing Chinese soldiers to control the vital shipping route, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and of overcharging American ships.He has also claimed Panama charges U.S. vessels “exorbitant prices,” and warned that if they are not reduced after he takes office next month, he will demand that the United States be granted control of the canal “in full, quickly and without question.”While…

President-elect Donald J. Trump has threatened tariffs on many countries for many different reasons.On Monday, he found a new purpose for his favorite economic tool. Mr. Trump said he would “tariff Denmark at a very high level” if it refused to allow Greenland — a North American island that is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark — to become part of the United States.“They should give it up, because we need it for national security,” Mr. Trump said of Greenland. Denmark, which has a smaller population than New York City, is not a huge trading partner for the…

Russia fined TikTok for not removing prohibited content. The results of a presidential election in Romania were thrown out over concerns the app had been used to spread foreign influence. Albania banned TikTok for a year following the stabbing death of a teenager by another one after the two quarreled online.“Either TikTok protects the children of Albania, or Albania will protect its children from TikTok,” the prime minister, Edi Rama, said on X.That was all in just the last month.This week in the United States, where about 150 million people use the app, TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance,…

Water fluoridation is widely seen as one of the great public health achievements of the 20th century, credited with substantially reducing tooth decay. But there has been growing controversy among scientists about whether fluoride may be linked to lower I.Q. scores in children.A comprehensive federal analysis of scores of previous studies, published this week in JAMA Pediatrics, has added to those concerns. It found a significant inverse relationship between exposure levels and cognitive function in children.Higher fluoride exposures were linked to lower I.Q. scores, concluded researchers working for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.None of the studies included in…

Pippa Garner, a conceptual art provocateur whose radically modified consumer goods — like a midriff-baring men’s “Half Suit” and a ’59 Chevy with its chassis reversed — offered witty commentary on gender, body modification, American car culture and the boundaries of fine art, died on Dec. 30 in Los Angeles. She was 82.Her death, at a convalescent hospital, was confirmed by Christopher Schwartz of Stars Gallery, in Los Angeles, which represented her. She had a number of health problems, most notably chronic lymphocytic leukemia, he said.Though Ms. Garner’s drawings, sculptures and inventions typically had a satirical bite, they were driven…

Peter Yarrow, whose caring and righteous vocals for the trio Peter, Paul and Mary helped establish them as one of the most popular folk acts of the 1960s, died on Tuesday at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He was 86.His death was confirmed by Ken Sunshine, his publicist. Mr. Sunshine said the cause was bladder cancer, which Mr. Yarrow had been battling for the past four years.On many of the trio’s recordings they split the vocal parts equally, braiding Mr. Yarrow’s precise tenor around Noel Paul Stookey’s gentle baritone and Mary Travers’s warm contralto. But Mr.…

For more than a year, millions of Palestinians living in Gaza have been homeless, facing severe food and medical shortages and under enduring threat of Israeli airstrikes. Nearly 46,000 Gazans have been killed, local health officials said on Wednesday, in a landscape largely reduced to rubble.So when President-elect Donald J. Trump vowed that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if hostages taken from Israel during the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023 are not freed in the next two weeks, Gazans were left to wonder: if this is not hell, then what is?“I am not sure he…

After struggling without heat for six days, a breakaway region in the Eastern European country of Moldova is now short of electricity, too, with the authorities ordering eight hours of power cuts a day to prevent the overloaded electricity system from collapsing.The energy crisis in Transnistria, a sliver of pro-Russian territory between Moldova and Ukraine, began on Jan. 1 when Moscow stopped supplying natural gas through a pipeline running across Ukraine. It intensified this week as residents tried to keep warm using electric heaters, overloading and often blowing out an antiquated Soviet-era electricity grid. The power outages have in turn…

Welcome back to Monday Tennis Briefing, where Competitor will explain the story behind the stories in court over the past week.This week, the first tournament of 2025 concluded in Australia and New Zealand. Aryna Sabalenka continues to have a remarkable record and has had too many matches end in retirement.If you’d like to follow our great tennis coverage, click here.How to beat Aryna Sabalenka in Australia?On the surface, there is little hope for others in the field. World No. 1 Sabalenka enters the Australian Open as a two-time defending champion with 27 wins in 28 hard-court Grand Slam matches and…