Author: NY TIMES

The Japanese economy contracted at the end of last year, defying expectations for modest growth and pushing the country into a recession.Japan’s unexpectedly weak economy in the fourth quarter was a result of a slowdown in spending by businesses and consumers who are grappling with inflation at four-decade highs, a weak yen and climbing food prices.The end of the year also marked a moment that had been expected: Japan’s economy, now slightly smaller than Germany’s, fell one notch to become the world’s fourth largest.On an annualized basis, gross domestic product fell 0.4 percent in October through December after a revised…

The South Korean government unleashed a wave of panic across the internet industry: The country’s antitrust regulator said it would enact the toughest competition law outside Europe, curbing the influence of major technology companies.The Korea Fair Trade Commission, with the backing of President Yoon Suk Yeol, said in December that it planned to make a proposal modeled after the 2022 Digital Markets Act, the European Union’s landmark law to rein in American tech giants. This bill also seemed to target South Korea’s own internet conglomerates just as much as the Alphabets, Apples and Metas of the world.The commission said the…

The researchThe study, led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, looked at the experience of more than 6,000 patients in the months after the federal government began allowing abortion pills to be mailed, from April 2021 to January 2022.The patients used one of three telemedicine abortion organizations — Hey Jane, Abortion on Demand or Choix — that served 20 states and Washington, D.C. The research, published on Thursday in Nature Medicine, ended five months before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, igniting a wave of state abortion bans and restrictions. Since then, more telemedicine services have…

By all appearances, the movie adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s cult favorite novel “The Master and Margarita,” in Russian theaters this winter, shouldn’t be thriving in President Vladimir Putin’s wartime Russia.The director is American. One of the stars is German. The celebrated Stalin-era satire, unpublished in its time, is partly a subversive sendup of state tyranny and censorship — forces bedeviling Russia once again today.But the film was on its way to the box office long before Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and imposed a level of repression on Russia unseen since Soviet times. The state had invested millions…

Early Friday, the Hamas-run health ministry said on its Facebook page that the hospital’s power supply had cut out, endangering the lives of six adult patients and three infants in intensive care dependent on oxygen. About 40 minutes later, it said in another post that three of the patients had died.The Israeli military’s evacuation orders before the raid on the Nasser complex, which had been the largest functioning hospital left in Gaza and had thousands of civilians sheltering on its grounds, sparked alarm from international observers.“Nasser is the backbone of the health system in southern Gaza,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the…

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain could find himself in a familiar predicament after his Conservative Party went down to defeat in parliamentary elections in two districts on Thursday: isolated, embattled and the subject of whispered plotting by restive Tories bent on pushing him out for a new leader.The crushing loss of two seats in once-reliable Conservative areas capped another dismal week for Mr. Sunak. Economic data confirmed on Thursday that Britain had fallen into recession at the end of last year, undermining one of the prime minister’s five core pledges — that he would recharge the country’s growth. Yet…

In October 2020, Melissa Cuc was visiting friends in South Florida. They were excited about attending a party that weekend. She was not.“I said I’d rather die than go out for Halloween in Miami,” Ms. Cuc, 27, said.She relented and wound up at the party, wearing a leopard-print skirt. Early into the event, Ms. Cuc was separated from her friends. As she scanned the crowded venue for them, she locked eyes with Alexander Witkoff. He wore a cowboy hat and boots — and an inviting smile.[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]The two struck up a conversation and…

In the latest sign of a growing backlash within corporate America to the 88-year-old federal agency that enforces labor rights, Amazon argued in a legal filing on Thursday that the National Labor Relations Board was unconstitutional.The move followed a similar argument by SpaceX, the rocket company founded and run by Elon Musk, in a legal complaint in January, and by Trader Joe’s during a labor board hearing a few weeks later.The labor board consists of a prosecutorial arm, which issues complaints against employers or unions deemed to have violated federally protected labor rights; administrative judges, who hear complaints; and a…

A Chinese influence campaign that has tried for years to boost Beijing’s interests is now using artificial intelligence and a network of social media accounts to amplify American discontent and division ahead of the U.S. presidential election, according to a new report.The campaign, known as Spamouflage, hopes to breed disenchantment among voters by maligning the United States as rife with urban decay, homelessness, fentanyl abuse, gun violence and crumbling infrastructure, according to the report, which was published on Thursday by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit research organization in London.An added aim, the report said, is to convince international…

The national body that certifies lactation consultants is investigating whether a consultant in Boise, Idaho, has been inappropriately pushing an unproven procedure on new mothers struggling to breastfeed, according to a letter reviewed by The New York Times.The lactation consultant, Melanie Henstrom, was featured in an investigation by The Times that examined the explosion in “tongue-tie” procedures, which have become increasingly popular even though there is little evidence that the surgeries help babies breastfeed.Ms. Henstrom is part of a booming industry of lactation consultants and dentists that aggressively markets the procedures, even for babies that have no signs of tongue-tie…