Author: NY TIMES

Nine months ahead of the presidential election, investors are already thinking about how financial markets might respond to the outcome of the vote, and how they should trade to prepare for it.Stock markets have soared to record highs in recent weeks, while government bond yields, which underpin interest rates for consumers and companies, are down from a recent peak in October. Despite the uncertainty of making political predictions, money managers are already contemplating how the election could alter the mood in markets.Red wave, blue wave or divided government?The combination investors see as the most likely to spur a shift in…

An Israeli raid last week has reduced one of Gaza’s biggest hospitals to little more than a shelter for a small, terrified crew of patients and medical staff, while health officials warned on Monday that food and fuel supplies were almost gone at another hospital that has endured a nearly monthlong siege in the same city, Khan Younis.Israel says it is rooting out Hamas activity at the medical centers, which it says Hamas has used to hide military operations — accusations it has made about multiple hospitals in Gaza, backing up some claims with evidence of Hamas tunnels. Hamas and…

Since 2019, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has been held in a high security prison in southeast London while his lawyers fight a U.S. extradition order. Now, that particular battle may be nearing its end.On Tuesday and Wednesday, Mr. Assange’s case returns to a British court for a two-day hearing that will determine whether he has exhausted his right to appeal within the U.K. and whether he could be one step closer to being sent to the United States.In America, Assange, 52, faces charges under the Espionage Act of 1917 that could amount to a sentence of up to…

Parisians are already grumbling about the crowds for this summer’s Olympics. They envision sweaty tourists jamming the subway cars, making the hell of commuting even more, well, hellish. They are planning their summer escapes; at worst a “télétravail” schedule to work from home.But not Ivan Buyukocakm. Glancing out at a corner known for drug dealing near his family’s kebab shop in the low-income district just north of Paris, he sees the upcoming Olympics as heralding something totally different: opportunity.“They are redoing the streets and refurbishing buildings,” said Mr. Buyukocakm, as a woman in a thin coat dragged a grocery trolley…

It was August 2020, and Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of Russia’s most famous opposition leader, was striding through the battered, gloomy hallways of a provincial Russian hospital, looking for the room where her husband lay in a coma.Aleksei A. Navalny had collapsed after being given what German medical investigators would later declare was a near-fatal dose of the nerve agent Novichok, and his wife, blocked by menacing policemen from moving around the hospital, turned to a cellphone camera held by one of his aides.“We demand the immediate release of Aleksei, because right now in this hospital there are more police…

A friend recently showed me one of the handmade sake cups that he adores. It was a deep midnight blue rounded copper cup sprinkled with gold flecks, like a starry sky. And it was made by Gyokusendo, a family company established in 1816 that specializes in tsuiki, the Japanese term for copperware hammered by hand.“The cups’ design was actually started during my generation,” said Motoyuki Tamagawa, the company’s president and the seventh family member to lead the business. “The designs and colors are thought up by the artisans themselves.”And if the sake cup (16,000 yen, or about $110) isn’t the…

In Munich, world leaders were left hushed and hollow-eyed, their annual security conference suddenly transformed into a wake. In London, demonstrators projected a giant image of Aleksei A. Navalny on to the facade of the Russian embassy. In Washington, an angry President Biden called a news conference to declare, “Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death.”Rarely has the death of a single man summoned such a cascade of grief, anger and demands for justice.While many feared the worst for Mr. Navalny when he returned to Russia in early 2021 from Germany, where he had recovered from being poisoned,…

¿Hay algo más trumpiano que las zapatillas Never Surrender de 399 dólares presentadas el fin de semana en la Sneaker Con de Filadelfia? De toda la mercadería promocionada por el expresidente y actual candidato a la presidencia Donald Trump y otras entidades relacionadas con él en los últimos meses —las barras de oro (de chocolate), los vinos, las NFT de superhéroes—, los tenis son como una hoja de ruta del sistema de valores y la estrategia electoral de Trump en forma sartorial.Son unos tenis altos dorados tan brillantes como las lámparas de araña de Mar-a-Lago, con una bandera estadounidense que…

More than 1,500 medical interns and residents in South Korea walked off the job on Tuesday, disrupting an essential service to protest the government’s plan to address a shortage of doctors by admitting more students to medical school. While South Korea takes pride in its affordable health care system, it has among the fewest physicians per capita in the developed world. Its rapidly aging population underscores the acute need for more doctors, according to the government, especially in rural parts of the country and in areas like emergency medicine.The protesters, who are doctors in training and crucial for keeping hospitals…

The Israeli government was locked in debate on Monday on whether to increase restrictions on Muslims’ access to an important mosque compound in Jerusalem during the holy month of Ramadan, leading to predictions of unrest if the limits are enforced.The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that a decision had already been reached, without disclosing what it was. But two officials briefed on the deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss a sensitive matter, said a final decision would be made only after the government received recommendations from the security services…