Author: NY TIMES

President Biden on Thursday ordered broad financial and travel sanctions on Israeli settlers accused of violent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, a forceful gesture aimed in part at Arab American voters in the United States who have expressed fury about the president’s backing of Israel’s war in Gaza.Mr. Biden authorized the sanctions with an executive order that goes further than a directive issued in December by the State Department, which imposed visa bans on dozens of Israeli settlers who have committed acts of violence in the West Bank. The sanctions will initially be imposed on four Israelis, who…

How do you know when it’s real love?Not for your own relationship. (That’s a question for another column.) But as an outsider looking at a couple, is it possible to discern real love just by looking at how they interact?For some, it was evident in the way Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs let out a joyous groan as he pulled Taylor Swift into a tight hug and kiss after his team won the A.F.C. championship over the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday to reach the Super Bowl.For others, it was clear the couple were head over heels after the…

President Biden, whose approval rating has suffered amid high inflation, is beginning to pressure large grocery chains to slash food prices for American consumers, accusing the stores of reaping excess profits and ripping off shoppers.“There are still too many corporations in America ripping people off: price gouging, junk fees, greedflation, shrinkflation,” Mr. Biden said last week in South Carolina. Aides say those comments are a preview of more pressure to come against grocery chains and other companies that are maintaining higher-than-usual profit margins after a period of rapid price growth.Mr. Biden’s public offensive reflects the political reality that, while inflation…

Apple has had plenty of challenges to start the year. The Apple Watch has been altered by patent lawsuits, the App Store has come under fire from developers, and the iPhone has faced renewed competition in China.Topping it all off, the company was recently dethroned as the undisputed king of the stock market when Microsoft replaced it as the world’s most valuable public company.But on Thursday, the tech giant showed the versatility and strength of its business, reporting that sales rose 2 percent to $119.58 billion during the three months that ended in December. It was the first quarterly revenue…

Videos on TikTok began to go silent early Thursday, after combative licensing negotiations broke down this week between the popular social media platform and Universal Music Group, the giant company that releases music by artists like Taylor Swift, Drake, U2 and Ariana Grande.On Tuesday, a day before its licensing contract with TikTok was set to expire, Universal — the largest of the three major record companies — published a fiery open letter accusing TikTok of offering unsatisfactory payment for music, and of allowing its platform to be “flooded with A.I.-generated recordings” that diluted the royalty pool for real, human musicians.TikTok…

In another indication that Iran may be seeking to de-escalate its confrontation with the United States, United Nations nuclear inspectors are seeing some signs that Tehran is lifting its foot, if just a bit, on the acceleration of its nuclear program.Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in an interview that Iran was still adding to its supply of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity — which can rapidly be further enriched to the level needed to produce nuclear weapons. But the surge in production that began just after the Israeli military action in…

Some European leaders jested they’d send Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary their hotel bills for the extra nights they had to spend in Brussels to convince him to support funding for Ukraine.Others, less jokingly, relayed to him he was facing the risk of a legal suspension from E.U. proceedings. And a few offered a friendly, sympathetic ear over late-night drinks as he complained about what he sees as a European bureaucracy stacked against him out of ideological animus.By Thursday morning, just one hour into an emergency European Union summit meeting, this carefully coordinated, behind-the-scenes pressure had forced Mr. Orban…

She had already trained for three hours earlier in the day, but that didn’t stop Robin Arzón, the Peloton instructor, from hitting the dance floor Tuesday evening in the cavernous lobby of the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan.The occasion was the Art Party, the institution’s second-largest annual fund-raiser, thrown by its young patron group. The proceeds from the party go to the Independent Study Program, which supports emerging artists, curators and critics.In a neon green sequined blazer and braided pigtails, Ms. Arzón and her husband, Drew Butler, his suit a complementary shade of traffic-cone orange, stood out in…

France’s main farmer’s unions called on Thursday for an end to roadblocks across the country after expressing cautious satisfaction with a flurry of new government announcements to appease them, in the first sign of a possible reprieve after more than a week of protests disrupted traffic nationwide.It was not immediately clear whether the approximately 10,000 farmers at the 100 or so barricades would heed the union leaders’ call and go home after days of blocking key roads with tractors and bales of hay, including in Paris, to express a wide range of deeply rooted grievances.The unions said that they would…

Universal’s concerns are real, and reflect some of the most urgent challenges in the music business today: artists’ need to make a decent living, the parameters of modern licensing contracts, the role of artificial intelligence. And in recent years music companies have begun to adjust to the reality that music fans’ attention is not solely focused on jukebox-type streaming outlets like Spotify or Apple Music, but also on an array of social platforms, like TikTok, where music may be just one attraction.For TikTok, as with any social media company, the issue may involve how much leverage it is willing to…