Author: NY TIMES

In the only recent year in which Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs weren’t playing in the Super Bowl, the N.F.L. star was driving around Los Angeles in early February with his business managers, André and Aaron Eanes, marveling at billboards featuring Dwayne Johnson, the actor and entertainer better known as the Rock.“Man, I don’t think I’ll ever be as famous as the Rock,” Mr. Kelce said.His co-managers looked at each other. “We’re like, Yes, you can,” André Eanes said.The twin brothers had known since Mr. Kelce was at the University of Cincinnati that the 6-foot-5 athletic star with…

The eight Israeli justices who struck down a key part of the judicial overhaul on Monday argued that they had little choice given the law’s potential danger to Israeli democracy.On the other side were seven dissenting justices who saw overreach in the decision to annul a law curbing the judges’ ability to use “reasonableness” as a legal standard.Each justice wrote an opinion, with the full decision topping 250,000 words. The ruling capped a landmark case in Israeli jurisprudence. For the first time in Israeli history, the Supreme Court has struck down a quasi-constitutional Basic Law.The justices, led by departing Chief…

Missiles and drones hammered Kyiv on Tuesday morning, officials said, in what appeared to be a large-scale Russian attack on the Ukrainian capital and other cities. The Ukrainian Air Force said the barrage involved some of Russia’s most powerful weapons, possibly including hypersonic missiles that fly at several times the speed of sound.Loud bangs jolted Kyiv as its air defense systems tried to shoot down the missiles. Massive plumes of black and white smoke rose from locations throughout the city, cutting through the gray early morning sky, as several buildings were hit.Vitali Klitschko, the Kyiv mayor, said that debris from…

Track and field team has live coverage Texas State vs Washington State inside college football playoff exist sugar bowl. He’s traveled further than any star player in college football over the past two years — 3,064 miles, from two wins to the College Football Playoff — but on a dreary Monday in Seattle in April, Michael Jr. Michael Penix Jr. showed more than just his actual measurements. The depth of his journey. Even his parents at the time didn’t fully realize this. But now, just days before Penix leads No. 2 Washington against No. 3 Texas in the CFP semifinals…

A new year brings new beginnings. For the Styles Desk, it also comes with an old pastime: Predicting the fashion and lifestyle trends that may bubble up in the months ahead.Last January, when we pondered what might be in store for 2023, some of our thoughts proved rather prescient. Supersize lies (hello, George Santos); fake fashion items (hello, superfake handbags); and an appreciation for “regular degular” people (hello, blue-collar TikTok), to name three.Others didn’t come to fruition. Butter crocks never took off; neither did pet rats.The challenge with seeing the future is you can’t. As much as yesterday’s trends can…

John Matheson, a home inspector in Alameda, Calif., kept busy during the pandemic when the housing market was red hot. But as interest rates started to rise about halfway through 2022, he noticed that his workload began to drop. Last year, the number of jobs plummeted.“My business is about 50 percent of what it was,” said Mr. Matheson, who works as a contractor for BPG Inspections, which provides services to home buyers across the nation. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s a really bad year.”So bad, in fact, that “I am actually thinking about side hustles,” he said, adding that…

When Thomas Wong set foot in the United States Embassy in Beijing this summer for a new diplomatic posting, it was vindication after years of battling the State Department over a perceived intelligence threat — himself.Diplomatic Security officers had informed him when he joined the foreign service more than a decade ago that they were banning him from working in China. In a letter, he said, they wrongly cited the vague potential for undue “foreign preference” and suggested he could be vulnerable to “foreign influence.”Mr. Wong had become a U.S. diplomat thinking that China was where he could have the…

“I needed space, I needed freedom,” Akhmetshina said. “I’m half Tatar, half Bashkir. If you look at the history of these small nations, we were constantly traveling around mountains, the forest, living in small communities that constantly moved around.” Her affinity with Carmen runs deeper than music, she said. “It’s kind of in my blood.”Ethnic difference is not a factor in Cracknell’s production, which instead highlights gender and class tensions. For the choreographer Ann Yee, this was an opportunity to develop dances free of castanets and flamenco clichés. She described Carmen’s allure as connecting more to psychological yearnings than to…

A clash between Iranian-backed Houthi fighters who were attacking a commercial freighter and U.S. Navy helicopters responding to the ship’s distress call ended on Sunday morning with the killing of all the crew members on three Houthi boats, the Pentagon said, a sharp escalation of violence at a moment when the White House is considering direct strikes on Iran’s proxies in the Middle East.It appeared to be the first time that American and allied forces patrolling the Red Sea, a critical waterway for oil and other shipments, have engaged in a deadly firefight with the Houthis since their attacks on…

Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, the longest-serving monarch in Europe, unexpectedly declared that she would abdicate her throne after more than a half-century, announcing in her New Year’s speech on Sunday that her eldest son, Crown Prince Frederik, would succeed her.In her speech, Margrethe, 83, said that her age and health were factors in her decision after more than 50 years as queen. “Such a long time does not pass unnoticed for anyone — not even me,” she said. “Time wears, and ailments increase.”In particular, she said, a back surgery she underwent this year was a factor in making her…