ANALYSIS/OPINION: When German Chancellor Angela Merkel celebrated the opening of the new U.S. Embassy in Berlin in 2008, she could not have imagined that she was blessing the workplace for the largest and most effective gaggle of American spies anywhere outside of the United States. It seems…

Robin Thicke’s song “Blurred Lines” is one of the year’s biggest hits, but behind the scenes the song is the focus of a bitter dispute that led Wednesday to the family of Marvin Gaye filing a copyright lawsuit. In August, Mr. Thicke and his two fellow songwriters, Pharrell Williams and Clifford…

Only two offices in American political life have a double function, one official and the other ceremonial, offering, and demanding, a second role that everyone knows about, but no one quite articulates. The Presidency is one: it’s both political and monarchical. He (or, soon, she) gets the top job…

For well over a decade, the two most influential voices about consumer technology have been a sixty-six-year-old man who lives just outside of Washington, D.C. and a fifty-year-old man who resides in Westport, Connecticut. The former, Walt Mossberg, defined what it means to be a mainstream gadget…

Being single in the Netherlands is pretty great. Photo by Ferdy Damman/AFP/Getty Images I was in Amsterdam for probably three hours when I began to see that having children and not being married was not a big deal there. In fact, marriage itself is not a big deal there. I was there to talk about my…

1 / 8 The first meeting, 1987 : In June, George W. Bush goes to Capitol Hill to garner support for his father’s presidential campaign. Dick Cheney, then a congressman from Wyoming, tells him he won’t endorse anyone for fear of jeopardizing his own House leadership ambitions. Credit... Illustration…

Update: Barrett Brown has been sentenced to 63 months in federal prison, which include the 28 months he has already served, after pleading guilty to transmitting threats, aiding hackers and obstructing authorities from carrying out a search warrant. He must also pay $890,000 in restitution,…

WASHINGTON -- As Congress has increasingly injected itself into people's lives by randomly disrupting them for no obvious reason, interest in the minute-to-minute goings on of these strange chambers of democracy, as evidenced by Google analytics, is on the rise among the general public. For those of…

Jill Abramson, The Times’s executive editor, and Sam Tanenhaus discuss the many books devoted to John F. Kennedy, how his presidency changed the news media and the effect the assassination had on her. As the 50th anniversary of his assassination nears, John F. Kennedy remains all but impossible to…

Sports of The Times Bob Gibson, a future Hall of Famer, with catcher Tim McCarver after his complete-game victory over Boston in Game 7 of the 1967 World Series. Credit... Associated Press When Boston and St. Louis first faced each other in the World Series, in 1946, there wasn’t a single…

On Comedy Criticism over recent remarks by a cast member have shed light on the absence of black women on “Saturday Night Live.” Credit... Dana Edelson/NBC One decade after “Saturday Night Live” began in 1975, it added the first black woman to its primary cast. Danitra Vance, a gifted downtown…

More Syrian families on Tuesday left the besieged town of Moadhamiya, a suburb of Damascus that has been blockaded for months by the government. Credit... Khaled Al-Hariri/Reuters BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian government on Tuesday fired a deputy prime minister who has lately been its most outspoken…

You know those moments when an article, a picture or a blog post appears on the internet that makes you laugh so hard your belly hurts and tears stream down your face? You may not even know where it came from, or who made it. Well, if you've ever laughed at a picture like the one above, as hundreds…

This trader is visibly learning that mo' money means mo' problems. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images We’re in the midst of a bull market – isn’t it grand? Well, not really. Sure, the euphoria feels contagious. On Monday, the S&P 500 index – the bellwether of the broader stock market – set yet…

Bill Keller Is Glenn Greenwald the Future of News? Much of the speculation about the future of news focuses on the business model: How will we generate the revenues to pay the people who gather and disseminate the news? But the disruptive power of the Internet raises other profound questions about…

From left, Chris Inglis, Deputy Director of the National Security Agency; General Keith B. Alexander, the National Security Agency director; James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, and Deputy United States Attorney General James Cole appeared before the House Select Intelligence…

Courtesy of McSweeneys; Courtesy of Hilton Als Hilton Als, the writer of “White Girls,” poses in a photo booth. What do Truman Capote and Michael Jackson have in common? They’re “ White Girls ,” according to Hilton Als, the New Yorker writer whose incendiary new book — his first major work since…

What Ibragim Todashev’s FBI Interview Means for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s Life Last week, federal prosecutors confirmed the link between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the 2011 Waltham triple murders. By · 10/28/2013, 9:43 a.m. Print Get a compelling long read and must-have lifestyle tips in your inbox every…

It’s the Economy Credit... Illustration by Kelsey Dake At first, I thought it was my imagination. Around the time the iPhone 5S and 5C were released, in September, I noticed that my sad old iPhone 4 was becoming a lot more sluggish. The battery was starting to run down much faster, too. But the same…

Photo: Michael A. Keller/? Corbis. All Rights Reserved. I could tell she was courting me. The constant compliments about my accessories. The invitations to lectures at the library. The birthday card on my desk with an offer to buy me a celebratory bourbon. In hindsight, it seems so obvious that we…

Deportation dates are usually not announced ahead of time, so as to discourage escape attempts. William Suess was in a jail cell at the federal detention center in Charleston, Mo., when he got a knock on his door. He put on jeans, a flannel shirt, and white tennis shoes. Then a pair of immigration…

An NJOY e-cigarette. A pioneer in its industry, NJOY now has 200 rivals, including major tobacco companies. Credit... Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Geoff Vuleta was in the crowd at a Rolling Stones concert last year when Keith Richards lit up a cigarette on stage, the arena’s no-smoking policy…

In the past, a city was said to have “Manhattanized” when it bulldozed old storefronts to make room for dense clusters of commercial skyscrapers: think San Francisco in the nineteen-sixties or Miami in the early aughts. Recently, however, city dwellers have adopted the colloquialism to refer to a…

WASHINGTON — It was just a background conversation on the Acela train ride north on Thursday. Or so thought Michael V. Hayden, the former head of the National Security Agency, as he chatted away with three journalists who called him for comment on the recent reports of N.S.A. eavesdropping on the…

The Dominican Republic’s top court has declared that the children of undocumented Haitian migrants are no longer entitled to citizenship.

Al Jazeera America’s studio in New York, an essential market that the cable channel will have greater access to through its agreement with Time Warner Cable. Time Warner Cable, one of the country’s biggest cable operators, has agreed to carry Al Jazeera America, giving the Qatar-owned broadcaster…

The Food & Drink Issue See how this article appeared when it was originally published on NYTimes.com. Balthazar may look like a rustic bistro, but behind the scenes, it’s a highly efficient, well-oiled potato-chipping machine. It’s 5 a.m. on a Friday morning, and I’m looking at the “vault.” It’s not…

Everyone’s supposed to stay in their lines and be neat. You’re a rapper. You’re supposed to rap, carry a boom box, wear chains, and goto the club—that’s all you do. What are you doing collecting art? Whatare you talking about? Wait a minute, you’re getting out of the zone.People hate when people…

A car dealer’s lot in Miram Shah, Pakistan. The town, in North Waziristan, is near the Afghan border and has been a target of American drone strikes meant to kill leaders of militant groups. Credit... The New York Times LONDON — In the telling of some American officials, the C.I.A. drone campaign in…

Mary Veronica Santiago, 79, in her rent-stabilized apartment. A court is weighing whether her lease can be treated as an asset. Credit... Ángel Franco/The New York Times After her husband died, Mary Veronica Santiago fell behind on her bills, and the creditors began to call. So two years ago, she…

Special Section | Turning the Page This is the last time you will be reading The International Herald Tribune; as of tomorrow, it is The International New York Times. But weep not: This is not the first name change for what was popularly known in its early years as the ‘‘Paris Herald,’’ and if the…

Resting near the Iéna bridge. Credit... Kosuke Okahara for The New York Times Even Hemingway struggled with this city, working on a memoir of his poor early days, “A Moveable Feast,” off and on for years, before it was finally published after his death. Christopher Hitchens once called it “an…

Sports of The Times A sparse crowd at a Jackson State scrimmage after Grambling forfeited their matchup. Credit... Charles Smith/Associated Press The players’ rights movement in intercollegiate athletics escalated beyond talk last week when football players from Grambling boycotted practice and…

jet lag

After a year of traveling, Dutch writer Niels Gerson Lohman wanted to visit New Orleans, the city that his father – who died a year ago – had a great love for. The U.S. customs officials thought different. After a year of travelling, I had planned a last, short trip. I was going to take the train…