Author: NY TIMES

New Orleans – Spring 1982. With 16 seconds left in the NCAA final, a skinny freshman from North Carolina buried a pullover that could provide a championship and change his life.He appeared in New Orleans that week as Mike Jordan. He left as Michael.By then, the massive steel building for Jordan to reach national consciousness (the seven-year-old Louisiana supergiant) was used to grab the theater unfolding on its walls. In November 1980, as the eighth round of the world welterweight champion ended in a few seconds, boxer Roberto Durán was tired of Ray Leonard chasing the ring ), waving his…

Since taking office, President Trump has threatened European countries’ security and economies, angled to take control of Greenland, and promised to “definitely” slap the nations with tariffs. Even parties that would seem to be his natural allies are nervous. Some have quietly tiptoed back from the American president.But Saturday was not the day for disputes. Leaders of far-right parties in Europe came to Madrid for what, on the surface at least, amounted to a boldface names booster rally for a new Trump era.There was Marine Le Pen of France’s far-right National Rally; the Netherland’s populist, Geert Wilders; the leader of…

Employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were instructed to cease “all supervision and examination activity” and “all stakeholder engagement,” effectively stopping the agency’s operations, in an email from the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, on Saturday evening.Mr. Vought, who was confirmed this week to lead the Office of Management and Budget, was on Friday named acting director of the consumer protection bureau, the federal government’s financial industry watchdog. In his email to staff on Saturday, he reaffirmed earlier instructions from the previous acting director, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who ordered last week that staff…

At President Trump’s inauguration, Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, was relegated to the overflow room while other tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg took prime spots on the dais under the Capitol rotunda.But days earlier, before flying into Washington, Mr. Altman was on the phone with Mr. Trump, preparing an announcement that would outflank Mr. Musk and put Mr. Altman’s company at the center of the new administration’s agenda for artificial intelligence.On the 25-minute call, Mr. Altman appealed to Mr. Trump’s love of a big story and of a big deal. Mr. Altman told the president-elect…

Susan F. Wood, a women’s health expert who resigned in protest from the Food and Drug Administration in 2005, accusing the agency of knuckling under to politics by not approving over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill known as Plan B, died on Jan. 17 at her home in London. She was 66.The cause was the brain cancer glioblastoma multiforme, said Richard Payne, her husband.Dr. Wood was assistant commissioner for women’s health at the F.D.A. during the presidency of George W. Bush when Plan B, a form of emergency contraception, became a flashpoint in the abortion wars.An F.D.A. advisory panel voted…

Susan Alcorn, an experimental composer and musician who pushed the pedal steel guitar, an instrument more often associated with the country music roadhouse, into the avant-garde, died on Friday in Baltimore. She was 71.Her husband, David Lobato, said the cause of death, in a hospital, had not been determined.A rare female virtuoso on an instrument long dominated by men, Ms. Alcorn erased boundaries for pedal steel guitar — a console-style electric guitar played face up, with pedals and knee levers to alter pitch, often used to create a forlorn, wailing twang. That made it a key instrument in country music.As…

Hamas released three more Israeli hostages on Saturday as part of an exchange for Palestinian prisoners, in a highly theatrical handover in which the men were made to give speeches effectively at gunpoint.The hostage release is the fifth in a tense series of exchanges that are part of a 42-day cease-fire deal that went into effect last month pausing the fighting between Israel and Hamas. Hamas agreed to incrementally release 33 of the nearly 100 remaining hostages in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinians jailed by Israel and a partial Israeli withdrawal.Here’s a closer look at the Israelis released on…

Funds from the world’s richest nation once flowed from the largest global aid agency to an intricate network of small, medium and large organizations that delivered aid: H.I.V. medications for more than 20 million people; nutrition supplements for starving children; support for refugees, orphaned children and women battered by violence.Now, that network is unraveling. The Trump administration froze foreign aid for 90 days and has planned to gut the U.S. Agency for International Development to just 5 percent of its work force, although a federal judge paused the plan on Friday. Given wars and strapped economies, other governments or philanthropies…

President Trump has made clear his animus toward mainstream media organizations. Now he’s getting more personal.Mr. Trump and his key lieutenant, Elon Musk, who has been empowered to run what they call the Department of Government Efficiency as a “special government employee,” have attacked journalists by name in recent days on the social media platforms they own: Truth Social and X.On his Truth Social account on Friday, Mr. Trump called for The Washington Post to fire Eugene Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, and labeled him “incompetent.” Mr. Trump frequently posts on the account to his millions of followers and regularly…

The video falsely claiming that the United States Agency for International Development paid Ben Stiller, Angelina Jolie and other actors millions of dollars to travel to Ukraine appeared to be a clip from E!News, though it never appeared on the entertainment channel.In fact, the video first surfaced on X in a post from an account that researchers have said spreads Russian disinformation. Within hours it drew the attention of Elon Musk, who reposted it. So did President Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr.They amplified the false video as Mr. Musk pressed a crusade to shut down U.S.A.I.D., the agency that has…