Author: NY TIMES

Two weeks before an election that is expected to catapult him into 10 Downing Street, the leader of Britain’s Labour Party, Keir Starmer, is tiptoeing on the campaign trail, the latest practitioner of the “Ming vase strategy.”The phrase, which refers to a politician gingerly avoiding slips to protect a lead in the polls, is credited to Roy Jenkins, a more freewheeling British politician, who likened a previous Labour candidate, Tony Blair, on the eve of his 1997 landslide, to a man “carrying a priceless Ming vase across a highly polished floor.”In truth, Mr. Starmer has been carrying the vase for…

This is the first act of the 2024 European Cup, helping Albania against Italy (the fastest goal in the history of the competition), and it is also a tactic often used by the top two teams in the Premier League, Manchester City and Arsenal.It came back with a vengeance when it kicked off with an old-fashioned hoof to the park.In today’s football, aimless punting seems to be a relic of a bygone era, mostly a cycle battle between one team pressing high and the other trying to find space to attack, but this more basic approach It became popular again.…

Mr. Dolce, 62, grew up in Johnston, R.I., and holds a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from the University of Rhode Island. He is currently the chief executive and chairman of the board of directors at Lookout, a mobile security software maker. He has two sons, ages 27 and 30, from his previous marriage.Ms. Tyrner, 40, grew up in Casa Grande, Ariz.The two didn’t meet again until Mr. Dolce returned to Manhattan the following month. It wasn’t until he eventually kissed Ms. Tyrner on their fifth date that she was sure of his intentions. “All he would talk about was…

Musk’s mission to CannesAs advertising moguls traveled to southern France this week for the Cannes Lions festival — an annual rosé-filled celebration of their industry — the biggest guest was someone who had crudely told many of them to get lost.Elon Musk and his top lieutenant, Linda Yaccarino, were on hand to persuade brands to return to X in a bid to bolster their beleaguered ad business. But it’s unclear if their efforts worked.Musk massaged his expletive-filled comments from November. A reminder: At the DealBook Summit, he lashed out at advertisers who had pulled back from X after he had…

Donald McNichol Sutherland was born on July 17, 1935, in Saint John, a coastal town in New Brunswick. One of three children of Frederick McLae Sutherland, a salesman, and Dorothy (McNichol) Sutherland, a math teacher, Donald lived his formative years in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia.As a boy, he was plagued by ill health, including bouts of hepatitis, rheumatic fever and polio, which left him with one leg shorter than the other. In 1970, while filming “Kelly’s Heroes” in Yugoslavia, he came down with spinal meningitis. “I went into a coma,” he told an interviewer years later, “and they tell me that…

As part of any diplomatic settlement with Hezbollah, Israel has demanded that the group withdraw its forces north of the Litani River in Lebanon, in accordance with a United Nations Security Council resolution that ended a 2006 war between the two sides. The resolution stipulated that only United Nations forces and the Lebanese army would be allowed in the area, but both sides have accused the other of violating it.Analysts say Hezbollah is unlikely to withdraw its forces from the border. French mediators have instead proposed a smaller buffer zone that would extend about six miles beyond Lebanon’s border with…

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia directly warned the United States and its allies that he is willing to arm North Korea if they continue to supply Kyiv with sophisticated weapons that have struck Russian territory, raising the stakes for the Western powers backing Ukraine. Mr. Putin made the threat in comments to reporters traveling with him late Thursday in Vietnam before he flew home to Russia after a trip there and to North Korea. He had made a similar, though significantly less overt, threat a day earlier in Pyongyang, where he revived a Cold War-era mutual defense pact with…

INDIANAPOLIS — Lydia Jacoby looked up, shocked. Just 27-hundredths of a second separated her from Emma Webb’s second-place finish in the women’s 100m breaststroke final, but they seemed like two continents apart.Veteran swimmers often describe the U.S. Olympic Trials as the toughest swimming event in the world—tougher than the Olympics themselves. In some events, the third-fastest American may be the third-best swimmer in the world. But only the top two will make the U.S. team.Small profits make up the biggest bets. Either success or failure, everything or nothing.Jacoby ended up with nothing, and just three years later he shocked himself…

When my wife proposed that we stop being monogamous, she said it would make us stronger. I said it would make us divorce. We were both right.She had planted the seed seven years into our marriage as I was finishing seminary. At the time, I was exiting a phase of my life perhaps best described as “worship pastor bro.” My Christian faith was undergoing a meticulous and scholarly deconstruction. I could begin to imagine a life without God, but with my new, expensive master’s degree in theology, I struggled to imagine a career without Him.By contrast, Corrie’s turn away from…

It’s not just Taylor Swift fans keeping a close eye on her Eras Tour dates. One of Europe’s most prominent economists is acutely aware that the singer is spending the summer jetting between Europe’s stadiums.Philip Lane, the chief economist at the European Central Bank, had the pop star on his mind when he spoke at an event on Monday. The interviewer had asked him about the risk that stubborn inflation in the services sector could intensify, especially with Europe heading into a particularly busy summer with the Olympics in Paris and the Euro 2024 soccer championship in Germany.“Well, that’s very…