Author: NY TIMES

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority intends to appoint Muhammad Mustafa, a close economic adviser, as prime minister in the coming days, according to two Palestinian officials, a European Union diplomat and a fourth person with knowledge of the matter.If Mr. Abbas officially appoints Mr. Mustafa, it would amount to a rejection of international efforts to encourage the octogenarian Palestinian leader to empower an independent prime minister who can revitalize the sclerotic authority, officials and analysts said.While Mr. Abbas was set on appointing Mr. Mustafa, a longtime insider within the authority’s top ranks, he was still holding final consultations…

Making the state tournament is a big deal for boys who play high school hockey in Minnesota, where the best of the best face off — with championships on the line — at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul.And while the tournament is a four-day smorgasbord of slap shots, glove saves and power plays, it has evolved into a full-blown spectacle — as the global hub for “hockey hair.”“As soon as our players make the state tournament, it’s like, ‘Guys, come on, we’ve got to play hockey now,’” Ryan Neuman, the coach at New Ulm High School, said in…

A messy state of play for TikTokA federal bill to force TikTok’s Chinese owner to sell the video app — or have it banned — is moving through Washington with surprising speed, after the House passed it with an overwhelming majority.Though its fate in the Senate is unclear, anti-China sentiment and pressure on lawmakers from the White House could force the issue. That belies the technical and legal hurdles in selling TikTok, as well as divisions within the U.S. tech community over the proposed legislation.The bill has scrambled the politics of the Senate. The heads of the chamber’s Intelligence Committee…

With everything a smartphone can do these days, it’s often easy to overlook one of the device’s most basic functions: voice calls. Communicating by telephone has become more complicated in a world of robocalls and automated voice trees, but your phone may already have the tools to make talking to people (or not) easier. Here are a few suggestions.Quickly Contact BusinessesNeed to call a business that’s not in your contacts list? Just search for the company online with Apple’s Siri, the Google Assistant (or its new Gemini helper) or Samsung’s Bixby. When you see the establishment listed in the search…

“Film noir” is a French coinage but France’s homegrown crime movies, a staple of the 1950s and early ’60s, seldom get their due in the United States, however first-rate they might be. Case in point: Claude Sautet’s 1960 slam dunk “Classe Tous Risques,” known in English as “The Big Risk.”Dubbed, dumped, and unreviewed upon its 1963 U.S. release, Sautet’s existential adventure was belatedly discovered some 20 years ago. Largely unseen since, it opens Friday at Film Forum in a new 4K restoration.On the lam in Italy, the veteran mobster Abel Davos (France’s then reigning pug-ugly Lino Ventura) suffers from acute…

Photos and video taken by Reuters photographers at the scene showed blood splashed in several locations around the facility: smeared on a warehouse floor surrounded by stacks of aid, soaked into the side of a box of baby supplies and pooled on the ground outdoors. At the nearby Al-Najjar Hospital, where many of the injured were taken, U.N. workers grieved over the body of their dead colleague, who lay on a stretcher still wearing the organization’s signature blue jacket, photos taken by other news agencies showed.WAFA, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, reported that at least four other people were…

Why does this election matter?The Slovak presidency is a largely ceremonial post but can play an important role when, as has been the case for the last five months, the president and prime minister represent opposing political camps.The outgoing president, Zuzana Caputova, an outspoken liberal, has used her limited powers and the bully pulpit to resist the agenda of Prime Minister Robert Fico, a pugnacious veteran politician who returned power in October after years in the political wilderness. He resigned in disgrace as prime minister in 2018 amid a swirl of corruption accusations following the murder of an investigative journalist…

What moral lapses should genius be permitted? John Galliano, self-styled bad boy of fashion, seemed determined to find out.He was a fashion-world Icarus: a prodigious talent who soared high, then crashed to earth in 2011, losing his reputation and his position as creative director of Dior, after a series of highly publicized drunken, racist and antisemitic tirades. He would rise again, but the path back was steep.The aptly titled “High & Low: John Galliano,” directed by Kevin Macdonald, chronicles this roller coaster of a career, while exposing some of the less beautiful side of the fashion industry — the toll…

Dear Tripped Up,Last September, my husband and I left our kids with their grandparents and set off to Ireland. Our $2,132 itinerary took us from Minneapolis to Toronto to Dublin on tickets booked on United Airlines through Expedia but ultimately operated by Air Canada, a United partner. We had boarded our connecting flight in Toronto (and I was already dozing in my seat) when the captain announced an operator had crashed the jet bridge into the starboard engine. We were given hotel vouchers and told we would be rebooked for the next day. Checkout time came and went without a…

In December, Ellicia Chiu and Cher Su had just a few boxes in tow when they moved into a walk-up apartment in New York’s Lower East Side neighborhood. Before their move, from Los Angeles, the two friends knew that they would need to furnish their new apartment with small kitchen appliances, décor and furniture. But instead of purchasing new items, they knew it would be more affordable to find secondhand items on Facebook Marketplace, the social network’s buy-and-sell service.“I only use Facebook for Marketplace,” said Ms. Chiu, 24, who added that she spent most of her social time on TikTok…