Author: NY TIMES

Reluctance in France and Britain kept the commitment to political unity, an aspirational United States of Europe, weak. Still, three countries — Austria, Finland and Sweden — joined the union during Mr. Delors’s presidency. (Norway joined the European Economic Area but not the European Union.)Mr. Delors married Marie Lephaille in 1948. She died in 2020. Their son, Jean-Paul, died of leukemia in 1982. Their daughter, Ms. Aubry, is a prominent Socialist politician and the longtime mayor of Lille, a city in northern France. In addition to her, Mr. Delors’s survivors include a granddaughter.Toward the end of his tenure, Mr. Delors…

Editor’s note: This article is part of our “Origin Stories” series, which focuses on athletes’ backstories and topics related to the Summer Olympics.SARASOTA, Fla. — Summer McIntosh even caught the attention of Billie Jean King.On the night of the women’s 400-meter freestyle final at the Toyota U.S. Open in Greensboro, North Carolina, Canadian swimming prodigy McIntosh stepped onto the starting block. Next to her is American swimming legend Katie Ledecky.This is the first meeting between McIntosh and Ledecky since the 2023 World Aquatics Championships, a clash between two generations of swimmers. Ledecky, 26, is considered the greatest female swimmer of…

After losing my husband, I just wanted to feel alive. Then I wanted more. Source link

Last November and December, veteran stock market watchers forecast that 2023 would be a year to forget. They saw high inflation, a looming global recession and rising interest rates as sapping households’ buying power and denting corporate profits. For investors, they penciled in paltry gains and one of the worst performances for the S&P 500 in the past 15 years.But the market pros got the story only partly right. While interest rates did climb to a near two-decade peak, the S&P 500 has surprisingly soared to a near record high. Fueled partly by a rally in the so-called Magnificent Seven…

The Tesla technicians who walked off their jobs in Sweden say they still support the mission of the American company and its headline-grabbing chief executive. But they also want Tesla to accept the Swedish way of doing business.They call it the Swedish Model, a way of life that has defined the country’s economy for decades. At its heart is cooperation between employers and employees to ensure that both sides benefit from a company’s profit.Instead, four technicians who walked off their jobs on Oct. 27 said, they have been subjected to what they described as a “typical U.S. model”: six-day workweeks,…

Dry January sounds like a simple proposition: No alcohol. For 31 days. And some enthusiasts jump in without much planning — perhaps even hungover after a rowdy New Year’s Eve.There is no data suggesting that those folks won’t be able to abstain from drinking, said Dr. David Wolinsky, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences with Johns Hopkins Medicine, who specializes in addiction. But starting the month with a few strategies in your back pocket — and with a clear sense of your goals — may help you get the most out of the challenge.“Most of the benefits of…

Willie Ruff, who fashioned an unlikely career in jazz as a French horn player and toured the world as a musical missionary in the acclaimed Mitchell-Ruff Duo while maintaining a parallel career at the Yale School of Music, died on Sunday at his home in Killen, Ala. He was 92.His death was confirmed by his niece Jennifer Green.Mr. Ruff, who was also a bassist, played both bass and French horn in the duo he formed with the pianist Dwike Mitchell in 1955, which lasted until Mr. Mitchell’s death in 2013. They opened for many jazz luminaries, including Duke Ellington, Miles…

Maybe 40 yards in front of him, he recalled, a white van pulled up and its doors flew open.He said he then saw five men, wearing civilian clothes, all carrying knives and one carrying a hammer, dragging a woman across the ground. She was young, naked and screaming.“They all gather around her,” Mr. Cohen said. “She’s standing up. They start raping her. I saw the men standing in a half circle around her. One penetrates her. She screams. I still remember her voice, screams without words.”“Then one of them raises a knife,” he said, “and they just slaughtered her.”Shoam Gueta,…

A political activist in Hong Kong previously imprisoned under its sweeping national security law said he had fled to Britain and would apply for asylum there, becoming the second high-profile dissident this month to announce going into exile from the territory.The activist, Tony Chung, revealed on Thursday that he had arrived in Britain, and, in several social media posts, said that he had decided to leave Hong Kong after enduring oppressive restrictions, pressure to act as informant and severe stress after his release from prison in June.Mr. Chung, 22, was sentenced to three years and seven months in prison in…

BEREA, Ohio — No one feels sorry for Joe Flacco. He won the Super Bowl MVP and earned more than $175 million in his career. He won in life. but…Flacco’s 16 years in the NFL stuck with me as I watched the final chapter of his incredible resurgence. He was always good, always consistent in his prime, but never elite. He never received an MVP vote, but Carson Wentz, Derek Carr and Tony Romo did. He never even went to a Pro Bowl. He had been invited once but was not invited because his wife was about to give birth…