Author: NY TIMES

Making his final trip as America’s top diplomat last week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken arrived in Paris, his former hometown, to a hero’s welcome.France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, proclaimed Mr. Blinken “an eminent servant of peace” at a ceremony at the Élysée Palace before awarding him the country’s highest tribute, the Legion of Honor medal. With its red silk ribbon pinned to his jacket, Mr. Blinken called the medal “the honor of a lifetime.”It was a very different scene back in Washington a few days later, when Mr. Blinken gave a final speech before a crowd of foreign policy…

MELBOURNE, Australia — In 2020, 19-year-old Iga Swiatek won her first Grand Slam title.The following year, 18-year-old Emma Raducanu won her first Grand Slam title.Since then, the pair of junior Grand Slam champions have taken different paths. Swiatek added four more Grand Slam titles, and in the process remained world No. 1 for more than 100 weeks; Raducanu has yet to reach a WTA Tour final, let alone another. A major championship.Saturday’s third-round match at the Australian Open is the most important match of Raducanu’s career since winning the 2021 U.S. Open. She reached the fourth round at Wimbledon, but…

Russia targeted the Ukrainian capital and other cities across the country with a barrage of drones and ballistic missiles before dawn on Saturday, killing at least four people and injuring at least a dozen more, Ukrainian officials said.Air-raid alarms were still sounding as emergency crews raced to search for dead and wounded — a grimly familiar routine in a nation that has been battered by relentless Russian bombardments for nearly three years.Ukraine’s Air Force said four ballistic missiles and 39 attack drones were used in the assault, adding that two ballistic missiles were shot down in the region of Kyiv,…

Since 1988, the hulking presses at Lanex Manufacturing on the edge of Windsor, Ontario, have been stamping out door strikers, folding-seat latches, tailpipe hangers, frame braces and other prosaic bits of metal that make their way into vehicles ranging from Corvettes to Honda minivans.But, these days, worries about the future permeate the plant as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to enter the White House. He has threatened to impose a 25 percent tariff on all goods exported from Canada to the United States. In Windsor, that would ravage its lifeblood: automobiles and everything that goes into them.“Everybody’s waiting for the…

TikTok said late Friday that its service would “go dark” for its 170 million American users on Sunday because of a ban in the United States over fears that its Chinese ownership poses a threat to national security.The company said in a statement that “unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19” unless the Biden administration assures Apple, Google and other companies that they would not be punished for delivering TikTok’s services in the United States.The statement was TikTok’s latest attempt to pressure the administration to grant it a reprieve from a law, upheld by the Supreme…

More Americans are surviving cancer, but the disease is striking young and middle-aged adults and women more frequently, the American Cancer Society reported on Thursday.And despite overall improvements in survival, Black and Native Americans are dying of some cancers at rates two to three times higher than those among white Americans.These trends represent a marked change for an illness that has long been considered a disease of aging, and which used to affect far more men than women.The shifts reflect declines in smoking-related cancers and prostate cancer among older men and a disconcerting rise in cancer in people born since…

In its infancy, TikTok was often described as an app for teenagers’ dance videos. In 2025, it’s a juggernaut with 170 million users in the United States and, according to the Justice Department, a national security threat that must be eliminated.The platform’s path from a whimsical dance app to the target of a federal ban has been dotted with recipes, niche drama, micro trends, new entries into the popular lexicon and overnight megastars — as well as legal troubles, Senate hearings and, finally, a widely watched Supreme Court case.Here’s a timeline of the app’s meteoric rise, and a reminder of…

TikTok faces a possible ban in the coming days, but that did not stop one notable new user from joining the app this week: Bob Dylan.A verified account for the legendary singer-songwriter, Nobel Prize-winner and current subject of a Hollywood biopic appeared on the app this week with a 50-second video montage featuring excerpts from “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” and “Hurricane.”Fans were pleased, but surprised to see Dylan show up on what could be the app’s final days, given that a law requires TikTok’s owner, the Chinese company ByteDance, to either sell the app by Sunday…

Follow live updates on the deal for a cease-fire in Gaza.It is almost over, the end so close they can practically feel the keys they have kept all these months sliding into the locks of their old homes, the doorknobs turning in their hands, the beds they will sink into for their first night’s peaceful rest in more than 15 months — their own beds. Just a couple more days to go.Two nights before the first stage of a cease-fire in Gaza was announced, Layan al-Mohtaseb, 15, dreamed of being back in her bedroom in Gaza City, cleaning it as…

Michael Ollis doesn’t like shin pads.So much so that when the French winger came on as a substitute for Leroy Sane in Bayern Munich’s 1-0 victory over Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League in November, he didn’t wear anything.This was spotted by fourth match official Florin Andre, who instructed the 23-year-old to put on some clothes. Ollis reluctantly stuffed some into his socks, then tossed them out when the official looked away. Michael Ollis appeared to have a brief exchange with the fourth official as he prepared to come on as a substitute for Bayern Munich’s Champions League tie against…