Author: NY TIMES

TikTok faces a possible ban in the coming days, but that did not stop one notable new user from joining the app this week: Bob Dylan.A verified account for the legendary singer-songwriter, Nobel Prize-winner and current subject of a Hollywood biopic appeared on the app this week with a 50-second video montage featuring excerpts from “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” and “Hurricane.”Fans were pleased, but surprised to see Dylan show up on what could be the app’s final days, given that a law requires TikTok’s owner, the Chinese company ByteDance, to either sell the app by Sunday…

Follow live updates on the deal for a cease-fire in Gaza.It is almost over, the end so close they can practically feel the keys they have kept all these months sliding into the locks of their old homes, the doorknobs turning in their hands, the beds they will sink into for their first night’s peaceful rest in more than 15 months — their own beds. Just a couple more days to go.Two nights before the first stage of a cease-fire in Gaza was announced, Layan al-Mohtaseb, 15, dreamed of being back in her bedroom in Gaza City, cleaning it as…

Michael Ollis doesn’t like shin pads.So much so that when the French winger came on as a substitute for Leroy Sane in Bayern Munich’s 1-0 victory over Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League in November, he didn’t wear anything.This was spotted by fourth match official Florin Andre, who instructed the 23-year-old to put on some clothes. Ollis reluctantly stuffed some into his socks, then tossed them out when the official looked away. Michael Ollis appeared to have a brief exchange with the fourth official as he prepared to come on as a substitute for Bayern Munich’s Champions League tie against…

The mother lived for 42 years in a three-story house overlooking a former gas chamber and a gallows at Auschwitz, sometimes losing sleep at the thought of what had happened on the other side of her garden wall.But the house in Oswiecim, southern Poland, once the home of the death camp’s wartime commandant, Rudolf Höss, was “a great place to raise children,” said Grazyna Jurczak, 62, a widow who raised two sons there.The home, the subject of the Oscar-winning movie “The Zone of Interest,” had “safety, silence, a beautiful garden,” easy access to a river across the road and, in…

To get its citizens to have more children and stop its population from shrinking, China has tried it all, even declaring having babies an act of patriotism. And yet, for the third year in a row, its population got smaller.Not even a surprise uptick in the number of babies born, a first in seven years, could reverse the course of an aging and declining population.China is staring down a longer term baby bust that is rippling through the economy. Hospitals are shutting their obstetrics units, and companies that sold baby formula are idling factories. Thousands of kindergartens have closed and…

The Spanish government this week announced a major overhaul to a program in which police rely on an algorithm to identify potential repeat victims of domestic violence, after officials faced questions about the system’s effectiveness.The program, VioGén, requires police officers to ask a victim a series of questions. Answers are entered into a software program that produces a score — from no risk to extreme risk — intended to flag the women who are most vulnerable to repeat abuse. The score helps determine what police protection and other services a woman can receive.A New York Times investigation last year found…

UnitedHealth Group reported on Thursday that it earned less than expected this past quarter, citing higher medical costs and pressure on its insurance division at a time when the company is still reeling from the shocking murder of a top executive last month.Revenues for UnitedHealth Group amounted to $100.8 billion for the fourth quarter, below what analysts had predicted but still 6.8 percent higher than in the same quarter the year before. The company’s full-year revenue for 2024 rose to $400.3 billion. For UnitedHealthcare, the insurance division, full-year revenue increased to $298.2 billion, up 6 percent from 2023.The results were…

In Topanga Canyon on Saturday morning, suspended midair from an electricity line, hung the smoldering top of a utility pole. The pole itself had burned away. Its remaining crosspieces resembled a crucifix on fire. By the time Bob Melet videotaped this eerie scene, firefighters had managed to halt the advance of flaring patches that elsewhere had been whipped into infernos.Barely 100 yards from the front door of Mr. Melet’s store, Melet Mercantile — a destination for fashion and interior designers who for decades have tracked Mr. Melet’s idiosyncratic tastes — lay the fire line at Camp Wildwood, a disused summer…

One morning, when she was about 7 years old, Neko Case stood on her front porch, closed her eyes and wished with all her might to see a horse.It was a tall order. She and her parents lived in the coastal city of Bellingham, Wash., and none of their neighbors were equestrians. But, as the musician recalls in her new memoir, “The Harder I Fight the More I Love You,” the young Case “clench-focused as hard as I could,” and when she opened her eyes something incredible had happened: Two gorgeous horses, ridden by two girls, came clomping directly toward…

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has delivered devastating blows to Hamas: It has killed top Hamas leaders and thousands of militants, pummeled the militant group’s tunnel network and undermined its ability to threaten Israel with rocket fire.When Hamas launched its Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel, it had hoped to ignite a regional war that would draw in its allies and lead to Israel’s destruction. Instead, it has been left to fight Israel almost entirely alone. Its allies have been decimated in Lebanon, toppled in Syria and weakened in Iran. The Houthis in Yemen have only managed to inflict occasional…