Trends

  x The 119th Congress began, as it so often has in recent years, with calls from Republican politicians for wrestling down the national debt, which is near a record level relative to the size of the economy. But this time, the G.O.P. had company: Progressive economists and budget wonks, who have often dismissed finger-wagging […]

  x The third scene of the new Broadway production of “Eureka Day” could be titled The Way We Discourse Now. As written by the playwright Jonathan Spector, the scene reliably has audiences laughing so loudly that the actors are drowned out. The situation is this: It is 2018. The principal of the progressive private

  x Amid a tense line of questioning during the first day of confirmation hearings, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he would keep his financial stake in pending litigation centered on Gardasil, a vaccine meant to prevent cervical cancer, which can be caused by the human papillomavirus, or HPV. On Thursday, under questioning by Senator

  x President Trump’s sweeping executive order to halt foreign aid threatens to freeze a U.S. program supporting security forces inside a notorious camp in the Syrian desert that holds tens of thousands of Islamic State members and their families, Syrian and U.S. officials said. The order has also wreaked havoc on another U.S. organization

  x Biruk Watling, a college sophomore wearing a baggy coat and purple fingerless gloves, walked the chilly campus of Temple University in Philadelphia on a recent afternoon to recruit new members to her club. She taped a flier to a pole: “Join the Luddite Club For Meaningful Connections.” Down the block, she posted another

  x Much of the world is accustomed to thinking of Africa as an impoverished sideshow, accounting for only a small share of the world’s population and gross domestic product — but what if that is poised to change? Experts at the International Monetary Fund have argued that we are entering the “African century.” I

  x In technology, many entrepreneurs get only one defining act. Liang Wenfeng, the founder of DeepSeek, is already on his second. The engineer, described by colleagues as introspective, first made his mark in China’s investment world in the late 2010s, cofounding a hedge fund that used artificial-intelligence models to deliver strong returns and attracted

  x Internal political tensions in Ukraine have been rising in anticipation of a cease-fire that might lead to elections. This week, they burst into the open with a striking public rebuke of President Volodymyr Zelensky by the mayor of Kyiv. In a video address issued on Wednesday, the mayor of the country’s capital, Vitali

  x Hamas released eight hostages, including three Israelis and five Thais, on Thursday as part of a hostage-for-prisoner exchange, more than a year after they were taken captive during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Agam Berger, an Israeli army soldier, was released first in a highly choreographed ceremony in

  x The Food and Drug Administration has upgraded a recall of 6,344 bags of Lay’s Classic Potato Chips to its highest level of severity, warning of potentially serious or even deadly consequences from consuming the product. But if you haven’t purchased your chips in Oregon or Washington State, you have little to worry about.